KAWACY’s 

ODA NOBUNAGA COMPLETE PROGRESS SHOT GUIDE

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This is a complete progress shot guide of one of my artworks:

Oda Nobunaga [Fate/Grand Order]

I assume everyone knows this waifu already. But if you're new to the Fate franchise, I will
tell you a little bit about Oda Nobunaga. Oda Nobunaga is a character from Fate, Fate/Grand
Order to be exact. She's designed based on the historical Oda Nobunaga who lived during
the Warring States Period of Japan. Fate however had to genderbend Nobu because there
are a lot of male F/GO players in Japan and those men are their target audience, that's the
fact.

The moment I was introduced to F/GO game, she immediately became my Number 1 top
favourite character in Fate. Mostly because everyone knows I have a fetish for characters
with red eyes, black hair, and military uniform. And coincidence enough, Nobu has all of
those traits in one.
Honestly, I didn't really take inspiration from other artists this time. But I might have been
influenced a little bit by some of these arts done by MlinD and Krenz Cushart.

I have had this drawing done by MlinD for years now. It's a character from the game
HerowarZ and I really loved the pose but also the coloring of the drawing. This image might
have crossed my mind when I was trying to decide the pose for my Nobu.

As for Cushart, he has inspired me a lot in the digital art field. Mostly because of his use of
colors is phenomenal and I've aspired to be able to paint like him. This time however he has
inspired me with the color scheme in one of his landscape drawings. I love how he used the
grey with a hint of orange here and there for lighting.

PROGRESS WITH EXPLANATION

Note: I draw using both programs: Paint Tool SAI and Photoshop.

1. Lineart.

I don't really have a rough sketch for this one. Believe it or not, I drew everything right away
with already neat lineart. Unlike usual where I would first draw the super rough sketch with
thick lineart, this time I had the idea in my mind all completed.
But of course I did the anatomy first before everything else to make sure the composition is
all alright.

As always to simulate a pressure to my pen strokes, I had to use Eraser Tool to control the
thickness and thinness of the lineart.
Because sadly compared to my iPad Pro, the pen pressure on my Wacom Cintiq wasn't as
good.

2. Base coloring.

After I had the lineart, I continued to give base colors to the character. And as always, I
messed with the original color palette of the official character to get the color palette that
suits my taste.
I added some chibi Nobus too in the background because I thought it was too empty, too
many white space.

If you look closely, I used white border for this drawing to have that 3D pop-up effect. I tend
to do this when I draw action scenes to make them more dramatic. Here are variations of
white border I often use:
And lastly, here are the brushes I used for painting base colors:

I had to line all the edges first with Airbrush Tool before filling it with color because I wanted
the edges of the base to be smooth and feathery instead of that very sharp line which Pen
Tool often makes.
 3. Base shading.

Now for the base shading, I mostly used Gradient Tool and Airbrush Tool to create that
super soft shading.

I picked a second color in this step, usually darker color to act as shadow or lighter color to
act as highlight. But before applying it, like always I would rotate the color wheel first to
have more color variation rather than just picking colors straight from one color family.
And since the lighting was coming from the top of the character, I had to place the shadow
all on the bottom part of the drawing.
Here's the Airbrush Tool I used to paint all that gradient shadow.

I made sure the size of the brush was big enough to cover big part of the drawing.

The chibi Nobus in the behind too were entering the 'base coloring' step. It's the same
coloring method as the step before this.
 4. Lighting.

Now it's time to make the lighting a little more intense. The way I paint lighting is still the
same as the way I painted my lighting 4 years ago that is by adding a Multiply layer on top of
the existing base colors.

But before that, I had to decide from which angle the lighting coming from. In this case, I
decided for the lighting to be coming from the top of the character which is actually the
most common lighting I use for dramatic effect.
Here's how I added the lighting:

I always add orange streaks on the edges as transition color because orange complements
purple very well. But there are also many other lighting color combinations that are good,
such as grey combined with cyan or blue combined with pink.
 5. Detailing.

Now it's finally time for detailing. I mostly used Marker Tool for this process. Here's the
Marker Tool setting for detailing:
The brush size was quite big I know, but that's because I only had to rough painting the
overall drawing in this process. It didn't need to be detailed.

Detailing eyes.

Detailing eyes is always fun because I can customize the eye shape and get creative with it.
Although, this rule I have made in the past still applied: that is to add skin color on the
eyeball and/or the eyelashes to act as transition color or reflection.
As for red eyes, usually I would add an extra red glow on the brighter part of the eyeball.

This is the difference of a glowing eye with the normal one:

I either used Hard Light or Overlay for the glow layer's Blending Mode to make it glow
obviously.

Detailing hair.
Straight black hair was quite a challenge for me to paint since I didn't want to use only black
for the hair color or it would be very monotone. I've incorporated skin color and sometimes
some other unrelated colors like dark blue or dark red to keep the black interesting.

Even straight hair has that hair flow which I needed to pay attention of for it to look straight
but natural.
 6. More detailing.

Anyway these are the rest of the detailing process in close-ups:

Detailing skin.

As always when painting skin, I use mostly Airbrush Tool; the softest airbrush I could find.
This is pretty much the difference of my skin blending compared to other material:
The color palette of my skin contains mostly of pink and purple. I avoid yellow skin as much
as I can because it doesn't look flattering in the eyes, at least in my eyes.
Detailing coat.

Coat has that thickness that most t-shirts don't have. That's why I had to get that material
drawn correctly or it wouldn't look much like a coat. This thickness can be shown the best
from when I draw the sleeves.

For the background, I mostly referenced the collapsed buildings from some real war ruins
photos from the history.

But the color scheme was heavily influenced by Cushart's artwork as stated earlier.
 7. Even more detailing.

And finally here's the rest of my detailing process:

Detailing gloves.

Drawing gloves is just like drawing regular hands but with added fabric folds. Not every part
of the hand is covered with folds; some parts like the wrist or the base of the fingers have
more folds than the other.
There's also this additional line on the side of the palm where you stitch the glove fabrics
together that I must not forget to draw.

Detailing belt.

The materials for belt usually consist of metals and leathers. Coloring the metals is a lot
more complicated than the leathers obviously. They're usually very shiny and reflective
much like when I draw gold.

As for one of the hanging belt on her waist, I added a base without lineart and stack some
gun ammo on it. While the big ammo on the back was drawn with my old ammo instant
brushes in Photoshop of course.
I had to blend the sky in the background this time with a rough brush for it to resemble oil
painting. I used Airbrush Tool with Middle Flat texture to do the job.
 8. Polishing.

In this step, I made a new layer and painted over everything with even smaller Marker Tool.

This step usually takes so much time as I detail everything even further with even smaller
brush and fix my messy lineart by covering it with colors.
Polishing eyes.

Polishing hair.

As I polish hair, usually I will add some hair shine for the finishing touch. These are some of
the hair shine painting methods that I often use for my drawings.
Polishing skin.

There are variations of skin highlight to make the skin painting look more realistic:

I added some smokes and flying ammo on the back and the front of these characters to add
more volume and depth into the drawing.
 9. More polishing.

This is the last step of polishing. Everything was done with the same Marker Tool as last time.
Finally here are the rest of my polishing steps in close-ups:

Polishing gloves.

Polishing belt.
Polishing coat.

Painting the gun ammo was pretty much similar to painting gold. The depth rule was applied
to these ammos as well. The rule was to make the farthest objects faded in color while the
objects closest to the camera are the most detailed.

I added some gold chains using self-made chain brushes in Photoshop, both the solid chain
and the hollow one.
And this was how I added shine to these chains. Basically I scattered my ‘Middle Flat’
Airbrush to randomly add gold shine on the chains.

Nobu's hat was drawn in a separate canvas before it was imported into the drawing. I drew
the hat using Line Tool to have those straight lines aligned and then I clicked Transform >
Distort after importing it to match the angle of the original drawing.

I drew the smokes with a solid Pen Tool before filling it with color and painting over it.
 10. Finishing.

There are several finishing effects added in this step; including the sunrays brush, levels
color correction, RGB effect, instant dust brushes, possible textures, etc.

These are the instant brushes that were added in this step:
Basically what I did with these torn particles is to reverse the color, dark particles on a light
background and light particles on a dark background.

I had to add Color Adjustment Layer to color correct Nobu's face area. I needed it to be
more intense in shadow.

That's why I picked the 'Levels' Adjustment Layer to make the black even more intense.
I decided to apply my usual RGB effect. For those who aren't familiar with this effect,
basically it’s me messing with the RGB Channels tab.

As I opened the RGB Channels tab, I resized the red and blue layer in the directions shown
above.

This was the result I got from messing with its RGB Channels.
I used no textured layer this time to show more of my raw coloring. I was only counting on
instant brushes for mild textures this time. Besides, this time it's not really a horror drawing.
I tend to use heavy textures only on drawings with horror/thriller genre like FNaF, Hazbin
Hotel, creepypasta, etc.

That’s all for the .PDF explanation this month. I hope it helps and thank you very much again
for your support! I hope to see you all next month for even more interesting rewards! 

March 2020: Complete progress shot guide by Kawacy.