Altair AC Walkthrough

I've been asked to make a tutorial of how I make art... To be honest I don't think I'm good enough for that, basically because I base almost everything I do on other people's tutorials (some of them available here on DA), but I thought someone might be interested in a "short version" of how I do some of my "rough pics" anyway! C:

I did this in Photoshop (but you can follow the same steps in different programs of course! C: ), working on a maximum of 3 layers (background included; I used the third layer - usually a duplicated one- to test out how some scaling/rotating/warping of parts would look).
I used two brushes, a soft one with some texture (only for the face), and a chalky one, tweaking the setting a lot... (you can say I was experimenting with this pic...xD)

So here we go!

1) After filling the background with some blues and greys, I blocked in Altair's body shapes very, very roughly. As you can see, here I worked without a lineart and directly in colour.

2) Starting with the face (it'll give me a lot of pain, especially the mouth...XD)

3) I can't say it often enough: FLIP, FLIP, FLIP! C: (every time I do it, I laugh, because my paintings look horrible the first few time I flip...XD If you keep insisting and adjust the character's anatomy or...well, everything that looks wrong, it'll even out in time. Sometimes I'm able to make everything work out flawlessly - not always, mind you - to the extent that I forget where the character was originally facing! XD )

4) Still working on the face. I think it was at this point that I made the head smaller...

5) Almost there! Working on the outfit now, with rough strokes, aiming to suggest the details more than actually drawing them...

6) And here's the final version! C: I made his head big again, and I also scaled both his hands (I zoomed in to better render his fingers). Using the scale tool (because I always make everything messy with the Fluidity filter...== ) I also made his boddy "narrower"... He was too bulky before! C:
A few adjustment to the background, and I called it done! C:


I know it's not perfect, and I don't know if I was clear enough in my explanation... If you have any question, shoot! C:

Hope someone'll find this helpful! <:


You can see the final version here! C: