So here’s a breakdowh of how Agent Albatross was made.
Started out trying to make a completely different character, a charismatic pacifist who had lost her arms.
Stole her boots from this… vampire pirate guy, whatever his deal is.
Could not make the pose work as well as I hoped, so I started reworking the design into a sailor type. Rather than her arms, she had lost a leg.
The pose still wasn’t quite right and didn’t seem balanced. So I tweaked the angles and swapped her legs.
Once I got the pose like I wanted it, I started working on the colors and the background.
The stars needed some work. I added twinkling to cover up the biggest ones, which looked a little out of place. I also added several gradients to break the monotony and create a rather pretty view of space.
Started working on the shading, one item at a time. Breaking the process into smaller pieces like that helped my sanity.
Once the shading was done, I saved the image and immediately closed the window so I wouldn’t be tempted to make further tweaks or changes.
