Character Artwork for doujin game

Yes. I know. The date stamped says March 30th which means it's been in my possession for around 3 days collecting digital dust in my harddrive (because digital data is so expansive that the far corners of those.... round disks....I can't do this. I made a terrible analogy). Anyways, the main reason I waited was to try and space out the posts for his artwork. As great as it would be to post them the moment I received them, the pace at which he draws his artwork (like my workload) comes in waves, like space invaders (cue for younger generation to say "Huh? Space what?").

As for the art itself I find it pretty obvious when he decides to scan in line art and color, and when he decides to it all in photoshop. (I take that back, I just noticed the light pencil markings) Considering this is supposed to be a cut-in (when you have character portraits or images that appear with text) I naturally asked him if white was the "null" color.

For those of you who don't know what that means, I'll gladly explain it. For those of you who DO know, sorry. What I refer to null color is the color that will is used to represent something else, like a background. This color surrounds the character outline so that only the character itself shows up "in-game." Consider it a "green screen" if you will except that game designers usually choose something else, like a specific shade of pink or purple as chances of using those colors are extremely slim (as compared to green or blue). Then, when you start coding, you set that color (I'm not sure if they use the hexadecimal RGB color scheme) to represent "null" or "transparent."

His response was an "of course not" which made me thank god inside. Anyways, artwork.

Once again, he changed up the way he shades and highlights, the result this time making it look like an evening gown. In addition to the color, the way the dress clings to the body and the necklace definitely give off that evening gown, "I'm going to be attend a ball, how about you?" look. There's another set of cross hatching in the hat once more and hair looks pretty straightforward (neglecting that it could probably touch the floor).

Upon close inspection, there's an "aura" around it which leads me to suspect he placed a copy underneath and used a very thorough gaussian blur. Eye highlights have changed AGAIN, which reminds me to complain to him that he needs to at least keep eye highlights consistent.

I need to talk to him about level balance and shading again. With the exception of the dress she looks very flat. The contrast isn't dynamic enough and it's very light from the torso up.

dimensions are 800X1200, a nice wall scroll/poster size I guess........


P.S. Don't ask me what's with the file name. I couldn't tell you even if I wanted to other than that "Final" refers to the render version.