First of all I’ve made a quick sketch in Adobe Flash. Why Flash? Well it’s a matter of choice. Maybe the main reason that vector-based sketch is very scalable and easy to edit. I drew 5 characters, each in its own layer, placed them so they remained groupped but still their faces wouldn’t be overlapped with each other. Exoprted completed lineart in high resolution transparent PNG and opened it in Painter. Placed the sketch in the upper layer in multiply mode so white color faded away and all black lines remained.
Here I start blocking out colors. I still don’t know what background I want to make but I am pretty sure it’s going to be very dark. I always start to paint with darkest possible color adding highlights and backlight afterwards. In this particular image I chooce dark purple for skin and and dark greens and browns for characters clothes. White shirts, eyes and teeths has to be as dark as possible, it will give me much more range of lighting to add afterwards, but still they have to be lighter then skin. I chooce dark warm-grey.
（这里我开始填色。我仍然不知道我想制作什么样的背景，但是我很肯定它将是非常昏暗的。我都是开始用尽可能深的颜色绘制，然后在上面添加高光和背光。在这张图像中，我选用了深紫色作为人的肤色，深绿和棕色作为角色的衣服。白色的衬衫，眼睛和牙齿也不得不用较深的颜色，它将给我很大的空间来添加灯光，但是他们还是要比皮肤的颜色要亮一些。我选择了较深的暖灰色。）
Here I start adding some light to the scene. I know that I have here only one lightsource so it’s pretty straight forward, no special tricks. Still no backlights. The main goal here is to “sculpt” the characters, to reveal the form and to focus the viewer’s attention on important parts of the scene.
（这里我开始给场景添加一些灯光。我知道这里只有一个光源，所以这一步就很明了了，没有什么特别的技巧。现在还没有背光。这里主要的目标是对人物进行造型，使观众的注意力集中到场景的重要部分。）
At this point I delete my upper layer with the lineart. I don’t need ti anymore. Start refining the characters. The most difficult part here is their skin. My lightsource here is an old lamp, so the light has to be bright-yellow, and that is the color I put on highlighted places of my characters faces. The line between lighted and shaded parts of the skin has to be orange cause here the yellow of the lightsource blends with the red of blood in cappilaries when the light enters the skin
（到了这里我删掉了顶层的线稿，因为我不再需要它了。开始细化角色。最困难的部分是他们的皮肤。我的光源是一个旧的马灯，所以光线是明黄色，这也是我放在角色面部高光的颜色。在亮部和暗部之间的皮肤区域用的是橙色，因为黄色的灯光和皮肤被照亮之后呈现的血红色相混合。）
Well now my characters are almost done. I add some details such as glasses to the guy who looks up and some details to the uniform of the constable. By the way for that purpose I used reference photos of british policemen from the late 19 th century. At this point I paint the leg. To get some nice bird skin texture I’ve made a new paper from the b/w photo of elephant skin. You can easily make new papers in painter to achive some cool texture effects. So I painted that bird skin with oil pastels over that new paper. Pretty easy. When all my characters and the leg are completed I put some dark background behind. Just to see how it works. Well I see it works pretty nice even with only floor and dark background. Add a little lightfog expanding from the lamp in order to give it more realistic look. But I need more detailed overall picture. So I move on.
(现在我的角色已经基本上完工了。我添加了一些细节，例如那个正在搜寻东西的家伙加了一幅眼镜，巡逻的警官的制服上添加了一些细节。顺便提一下，为此，我使用了19世纪英国警察的照片作为参考。然后我画了那个大脚。为了获取一些漂亮的鸟的皮肤纹理，我从大象皮肤的照片上制作了新的画纸。在painter中你可以轻易的制作新的画纸来添加一些非常酷的纹理效果。在那个新的画纸上，我使用油画笔刷绘制了鸟的皮肤。。这相当的容易，当所有的角色和大脚完成之后，我在后面放置了一个黑暗的背景。仅仅是看它效果如何。我发现即便只有路面和背景，它看上去也很不错。我从灯开始添加了一些灯光雾以便看起来有更多的细节。但是我需要更多的元素来填充这幅图像。所以我们继续吧。） 作者: 火柴盒 时间: 2008-4-25 20:34
Quick sketch of a new background. Well it’s OK, but I would like to give it much more northen, english look. Right now it seems like some italian town.
（快速绘制背景。好了，但是我希望它有更多的英国北部的特征，现在它看起来像意大利的城镇。）
Another background. It came out pretty nice but a little bit too dark and kind of medieval. So I decide not to continue with this one.
（另一个背景。它看起来相当漂亮，但太暗了，还有一些中世纪的风格。所以我决定废弃它。）
Here we go! Finally I’ve made a background I liked. It looks good, it has pretty much everything I need. It is pretty victorian, pretty english and not too dark. All that I have to do now is to work on some details and to correct the lighting.
That’s pretty much all. I make a new sky , pull out some highlights and delete the light fog of the lamp. Lightfog is always good for some touch of a realism but right now I decided to keep all the backstage as dark as possible. To add some power to my lightsource I’ve used “glow FX” Painter brush. This brush is just made for missions like this.
（现在已经相当好了，我制作了一个新的天空，添加了一些高光，删掉了之前的灯光雾。通常灯光雾能增加场景真实感，但这里我决定保持所有的背景元素尽可能的暗。为了给光源添加一些能量，我使用了"glowFX"的Painter笔刷。这种笔刷制作的效果如下。）
来源：译文3D网
That is all, folks. I hope you’ll find this “making of” usefull.
（就这么多了，我希望你能从中有所收获。）
