Hello everyone, you all must've met Celine and got to know about her life in the fashion world. Now, let's go deeper as to how she was created!

Research

I start by collecting lots of reference images. This will give me an idea about the entire scene.

Concept

Once i've decided what i want, i create the concept sketch. This covers the story & basic style of the character, but without the rough color pass.

Basic Shading

I proceed with the main model, tracing out the shapes with the pen tool and then shading them with the dodge and burn tool in order to get soft highlights and darker tones.

Colors, Reflection and Gloss

Please have a look at the pdf file for a step by step tutorial / walkthrough as to how i achieved these effects.

Click image to download

Here's the summary -

a) My color process changes / varies with different projects, it all depends on the approach, in this piece i decided to first work on grey tones and then later overlay the colors in a different layer with the help of blending modes. Here, the 'multiply' blending mode works best. although you can experiment with the other modes to get more results ;)

b) For the reflections, which is obviously not accurate but then again to 'mimic' the effect, this can be pretty fun to do :) use the HDR file of your choice to get the best results, you can go without desaturating the file and see how the colors mix or you can retain the actual base color and just use the 'linear dodge' blending mode to get the little specs of reflection on the surface.

c) Keep in mind that, toward the end of the project, there will be changes for it to look much better than it was earlier. Sometimes certain elements will have to go just to bring the whole image together. So, just be flexible and go with the flow. Believe me, it works!

d) I was deeply inspired by the 'StarCraft' cinematic from Blizzard entertainment. I kept playing the video over and over again, carefully observing the paint, reflections and dirt, not to forget the lighting. I even saved specific screenshots for reference which proved to be extremely helpful! this was the target! this was what i had to accomplish but without the use of any 3d software.

moving on...

I now continue with the other parts of the model, following the same technique.