Onsen Night

Update on Sept 15th 2013: Just can't quit this one! Went back and redid the floor of the onsen and then added water ripple effects on the girls and the floor. Decided to actually show one of the lights "off stage" to the upper left that was implied by the way the girls in the middle and left were lit. Now I think I'll stop.

Update on Sept 6th 2013: Went back and reworked this image to correct some major perspective issues. The original can be found here: www.pixiv.net/member_illust.ph…
You have to be a Pixiv Premium member to update images there so the old one is still posted there. I think this looks better now, but then again I've been staring at this for too long...*

Hi everyone! Finally finished the image I’ve been piecing together off-and-on since the end of May/beginning of June. Work has been (and still is) crazy busy with me taking on more responsibilities as of late, but I’m determined to make time for producing more stuff even if at a slower pace.

This image started off as just a sketch for fun of Kyoko sitting in the middle. I let the sketch sit for a while and then I revisited it thinking I’d do a very simple finished image to help me get back into doing finished artwork again. I started planning the background to go with Kyoko, but one idea led to another and soon Kyoko was joined by her friends Maya (left) who loves a good drink and Sana (right) sporting her usual twin tail hairstyle. You may recognize Kyoko and Sana from some of my previous images in my gallery. Maya is new to the group and only existed as a WIP from a couple years ago that you can still see in my gallery.

The original idea (aside from featuring naked women ) was to focus my efforts on the background. Some of the themes I wanted to incorporate into the composition were water and evening hours – familiar themes that I can’t seem to let go. Backgrounds are something I want to improve upon and make just as important as the character(s) in the image. I still have a long way to go, but I think the unique challenges that I faced in creating this particular image helped me learn a lot of new techniques and tools in both Manga Studio and Photoshop. I’ve also learned new ways to express water surfaces and transparency effects with results that I personally feel are better than my previous attempts. If anything, I got to expand my knowledge and try some new ideas found from online tutorials.

I have to say that the most helpful tool that really made this image become a reality was definitely Manga Studio’s perspective ruler. I don’t know why I never bothered using it until now, and I certainly don’t think I’ll ever go back to world without it! Quickly defining structures and shadows were made ten times easier thanks to that one tool alone! Throwing down straight lines on a digital canvas and not having to redraw everything constantly with a pencil and ruler was truly a liberating experience!

Enjoy the image! You’ll probably have to download the image to see all the detail I tried putting in. Hopefully this’ll mark the start of more to come.