So I've been working on this 12 Kingdoms (12K) piece for a while now, and I'm almost done!!! Yay!!! I just have to do this little thing called go through 52 episodes to try and find reference material for the map in the background. What I've been able to find on the net has been so crappy that it wasn't even worth saving.

Anyway, I thought it might be kind of fun to go through my process, and see if anyone likes it or has any constructive criticism on it (constructive being the operative word there). Sooooooooo ... here's a brief synopsis of how it went down.

1) I had a vague idea of what I wanted to do from the 12K soundtracks that I listen to near obsessively. In particular, there was a segment that really struck a chord with me that goes “お前は、お前自身の王であり、己自身であることの責任を知っている。だから、お前は半獣をもともとし、その想いに答えた。自らお統治できるものに、国道統治できようはずもない。” Or "You are your own master, and understand how you are accountable. That is why you were naturally drawn to a Hanjyuu, and responded to those feelings. There is no reason that a person who can govern themselves can't govern a country/country's path." as I roughly translated on the deviation page. Well, there's a lot more to the segment that they put on the soundtrack, but every time they go over this section I get chills, and inspiration about the kind of person that I want to be. Hence this painting. For those of you asking, YES, I speak Japanese, NO, I didn't copy this from a website - I transcribed it from the track, and YES, that is MY translation.

2) I started pulling reference material. One of my discoveries (thanks to ) is DAZ 3D Studio [link] , where I put together an initial render of the pose that I wanted Yoko in . One of the things that really used to frustrate me with my old models was that they didn't take into account muscular changes when the position changed, and the other was that the darn things wouldn't stay put!!! I did learn, however, that despite the advantages of using DAZ 3D, that you can still get some very unnatural poses that are technically possible, but DARN uncomfortable to really do. I'm sure a lot of people don't really find this kind of thing necessary, but I have such a dearth of formal training that I have to compensate for that and my sheer lack of practice somehow. There was a period of about 8 years where I didn't draw ANYTHING other than an occasional doodle. I find it really frustrating now, because my skills just don't match up with my concepts In addition to pose and light referencing, I also pulled together some official artwork samples to get a sense of the original anime style. I put together a small example , but left the quality poor so that it couldn't be used adversely, or infringe on any rights.

3) Put down the base lineart, pulling together all of the concepts from my reference material. Pretty self explanatory. However, in this one, I tried something new that I learned in a tutorial from one of my favorite artists, . I always love how he does his hair , and I really love his overall style. Also, I used grids to help me get my proportions more accurate. With your ability to zoom in and out, I frequently found that I had difficulty in my older pieces when it came to maintaining proportion to reference materials. The grids are my new best friend! Just wish that I could make them smaller!

4) I added in the color flats, to get an overall sense of layout and color balance. I made a few adjustments at first, but once had all of the base colors, I was ready to shade. I didn't really add any flats in on the designed border. The area was so small, and I just repeated the section around when I was done (I LOVE copy and paste!).

5) So ready to shade, right? WRONG. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm frustrated that my technique doesn't match up to the images in my head. So, I hunted around photoshop and found some EXCELLENT tutorials here in DA For instance, has some really great advice about how light affects color in this tutorial. And has some really great overall technique when it comes to gems, goldwork, and bringing paintings to life in this tutorial. She's also got a terrific youtube video of the process on this particular painting, but I'll leave it to you to go to the tutorial page and check out the links. I also looked at a veritable TON of metal tutorials, but I have to say my favorites are and I still have a looooooooooong way to go on my metal technique, but these two helped a lot. I've collected a bunch of others over time to help me learn, if you are interested I suggest you go through my Tutorials collection [link]

6) So, after doing lots of research and learning, I finally started shading. Except, once I started shading, I realized that I had to adjust more than a little of my lineart - particularly around the hands, and some of the clothing folds. I didn't include them in my scrapbook, but I ended up taking a whole slew of photos of me and my body contorted into the 3D generated pose (remember what I said about physically being able to do something, but finding it DAMN uncomfortable to actually do?), and had to do a lot of fixing. I also had to thin out lines in a bunch of areas, particularly around light-colored areas. The end result is this for my lineart.

7) After that, I added in the text quotations - the blank space to her left and right were bugging me - so now the painting looks like this .

At the end of the day, I learned a lot working on this project. I have to say that doing CG work is FAR different than working with live media. Certainly, using the color picker in photoshop is very weird compared to how I would get colors with paints, etc. It didn't help that most of my art was pencil sketches (in fact, most of the sketches in my gallery are from 10 years ago, with the exception of the MU sketches). I think that's why I really liked 's tutorial, since is spelled out something that I understood hazily when working with live references and materials. The biggest thing that I made progress in (I think) is erasing and starting over. In the past I've always been really hesitant to redo something from scratch because I love the feel a particular part gives off. Since I've really wanted this to turn out well and "go to the next level", I've been asking impartial, 3rd party people to look at it and offer comments. I first I got exasperated about having to make pose and proportion changes, but once I sucked it up, I realized that it would make the piece a lot better. It wasn't so much that I was lazy about my art - it was more a holdover from when I tried to do major edits on paper, I more often screwed up the piece a lot worse than what I started with. Being able to duplicate and save layers helps tremendously with that fear factor.

I usually don't write this much about a piece, but it has been such a journey with this one (and there is still more to go!) that I just couldn't resist putting something together on it. I hope that you enjoyed reading about the process, and that it either gave you some ideas for your own work, or is making you say "WAIT! I know a better way". Either way, feel free to add those comments to the entry. I really do look forward to them!

Till next time folks ... I's FINALLY going to bed!!!!