The background is a red and black chessboard floor with smoke around the edges, there is a central light which i created using the gradient tool which is set on an overlay layer. The chessboard was created by replacing all the white in the picture I had found and changing to to a red.

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The original image was found on google images but i couldn't find the original owner of the image. There for I don't know if the image has copyright protection on it. For this reason I can't sell the image I am creating. 

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My next task was to draw my characters into the digital canvas I started by sketching the rough poses I wanted to use for each character.  I knew roughly what poses I wished to use for each of the characters, due to my sketch experimentation. 

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This meant I could do a quick sketch of my plan and then my changes of what I decided needed changing. To start with i did Purple lines for my sketches, as you can see within the image, the fixes were done in red and the green was a later fix after I had started the next step within my piece so I had to take a step back. Most of the fixes were pose based as they didnt work as I had hoped they would. 

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The next step was to create the line art / Outline. Some people think its just a matter of tracing the sketch however I also make changes from the sketch while I create the line art. An example of this would be the tail on the front most character, In the sketch it's much less curled and ends covering more of the character behind her.  Although there aren't many changes between the sketch and the line art there are enough to change the image a considerable amount. The size of the brush used and density had to remain the same the whole time, If they didn't the lines would look all over the place and wouldn't match up well, which would make the piece look messy without it.  

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After completing the outline i add the basic colours. I call these Flats since all im doing is picking out the colours for each part of the piece,

                            I wasn't 100% sure as to which 

                            colours I wished to use for each 

                            part so I tested colours and kept 

                            using different ones until I decided which ones I liked most. I decided to use pink as in real life I wear a lot of different coloured wigs so I can connect myself with the character better. 

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The other hair colour choices don't really represent the other members of my class but I chose them as I thought they would work well with the design elements they gave me to include. 

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At the bottom of the page I have included some of the messages between me and my classmates about the design choices that led me to create the piece. 

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My next task was to shade the piece and to add textures to bring it to life, This time i decided to also match the lines colours to the coloured area, This part is one of the most time consuming parts of making this piece since shading them takes a long time to add all the definition and finding textures isnt quick either, In the future I plan to make / take pictures of textures myself. 

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The final part was to add back in the background and layer on the smoke I wanted to include to add some definition to the piece and make it darker and more evil looking, while keeping the cuteness of some of the characters.  

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