2D Artist

2DARTISTMAG.COM2DARTIST MAGAZINE | Creating a vibrant character conceptare likely to be what catches the eye first, andyou don’t want that to be the rim light.09Making it vibrant: At this point I feltthat the painting was still lookinga little dull. I had started off with a very darkpicture and added in a dark background. Thecharacter was standing out because of thepurple rim lights but it was not enough, andI really needed to make him pop more.Making use of the mask again, I started to playaround with layer blending modes. Paintingwith a soft white brush on an Overlay layermade it easy to add more dramatic lightingand vibrancy to the painting. I also decidedto draw the viewer’s eye to my character’sface first by making his eyes bright green sothat they really contrasted with the pink andpurple palette of the rest of the image.10Final adjustments: Using blendingmodes is fun but they can oftenaffect the lightest and darkest parts of animage which results in an unnatural feel. In thefinal stage of this process, I wanted to lightenthe darkest blacks a tiny bit and darken thebrightest whites. I did this by playing aroundwith the Levels adjustment panel to knock thelevels back down to a point where I felt that thecharacter fitted into the environment nicely.The easiest way to access the Levels adjustmentpanel is by hitting Ctrl+L on your keyboardor by adding a Level adjustment layer (thecircle icon at the bottom of the Layers tab)which can conveniently also be set as aclipping mask, affecting your characterbut not the background. Once I was happywith the levels, that was pretty much it!Rough details were added to the background to reinforce theconcept lighting``````Rim lighting tied the character to the background while alsomaking him stand out``````An Overlay layer added more dramatic lighting and vibrancy to the painting