Each detail, had each of their own folder of layers. What I mean by that is; "Main fur/Body", "Wings", "Shirt", "Boots", ect. This kinda is a timeconsuming process e.o
1. Obviously starts wth a line art, or sketch, which this considers as a sketch. 2. Then comes flat colours, takes forever to not get out of lines because I hate using the magic wand tool for SAI (it kinda makes the edges blocky, manual colouring best choice). 3. Comes the fun part of shading, again EACH detail having their own shade, clipped for the flat colour as it's a layer bellow. 4. Highlights, shiny things. 5. Then above all folders comes adding effects 6. It's done.
:B I must have a steel patience, this took about.... 8 hours... (the sketch itself was 2 days old), so I sat most of my day drawing this... Welcome to a life to someone who doesn't have any friends in real life (and I mean actual friends to do things outside like go for a walk, do shenanigans, and stuff). <3
Yar, it takes ages to do it. Especially when your outlines are 1 pixel big and the colours go out of line. xD Which is why I don't post a lot because I take my time with things (and off-topic art also interferes).
I relate to this. Me and my friends (who I know IRL because as of a few months ago I am now lucky enough to have friends who actually like and are good at art) did this thing called a 'swaparound' where one person sketched, another did line art, etc.
Long story short, I was in charge of coloring this one anime line-art. Now I don't normally do anime, but I pretty much did the same technique that you used here, and I actually really liked the results I got! Though it certainly took a lot of time, probably in the range of several hours.
But yeah, I essentially had the base colors on one layer and then added shading, highlights, and overlays for each individual section on others. I tweaked around with the layer effects (multiply, overlay, screen, etc.) and opacity settings on each. At the end, I think I had around 50 layers. It was insane.
Like I said, though, the results looked great. Art just takes time, that's all there is to it, though it does get faster and the process gets smoother with practice. Which is why I should definitely do something like that again. lol
I would call the switch-around more of a collaboration, I've seen many collabs where a person does that with another person, and the end result is awesome. And Anime is awesome x3' lol. Nowdays I think the collaboration in that way is kinda died out, and I've only done one in my life like that.
The folder and each section having their own folder is hell, especially when the canvas are large, and SAI has the memory thingy at the corner orange. That's when it can ruin your file before you even save it, or at least for me before I get to convert it to Manga Studio 5 because that doesn't crash at least (and it was worthy of my money to get :'3). I don't always use this kind of colouring style, maybe only for like 1 pixel line arts, normally all my colours would be on one layer. Seeing the result on this one, I think I may keep on the layers.
If it's a boring day I think time passes quickly when you draw things, one thing it's 1pm, next thing it's 6pm and you haven't even gone to the shading because the base colours are trolling you by going out of line and leave spots you never noticed (if manual colouring and not wand+bucket, even though manually the tablet pen nib wears off faster that way).
lol