Maverick's Tale Poster

Here's a poster I made of the main characters from my medieval fantasy series called "Maverick's Tale", which I later used for my Patreon announcement. 

PROCESS:
For this piece I wanted to show the six main characters looking cool as they stare off into the distance. Each of them have their own unique fighting style, colors, and role to play in the team. I had Maverick be front-and-center because he is the protagonist. Virnel, the Black Dog Knight, stands beside him, as he is the only other knight in the team and is second-in-command. I had Ffion the Fox and Kain the Ram on opposite ends of each other. Ffion scouts ahead and Kain guards the rear. Lastly I had the two most powerful characters of the team at the front, Kuro the Crow and Pihu the Parakeet. 

I pictured the background to both be serious but hopeful. So I set the weather to overcast with the sun still shining down. 

After sketching everyone in place, I began working on the characters individually. What I'd do is I'd scale the sketch up to make them bigger, and I'd begin the lineart stage. If you look at the timelapse video, you'll notice that doing the lineart takes the longest and it is honestly the most tedious. My coloring process and art style requires me to make sure no gaps are present in between lines. This is because I use the "Fill" or "Bucket" tool to do the flats (flat colors, no shading). This would make the coloring process the fastest as it could be done with a tap on the screen. However, there are parts on the characters that have metal on them, so I'd utilize the "Airbrush" tool to have softer shading on the flats since metal is reflective. 

After shading the character I then flatten the folder they're in and resize it to fit their place in the composition. (I leave the unflattened folder at the bottom-most part of my layers, hidden, just in case)

After a few characters have been done, I began working on the background, where I make use of my photo bashing skills and other brushes Clip Studio has. For the grass, I simply used a bunch of grass brushes to give them a natural look, and I photo bashed in some parts of my backyard grass to add more realism to it. Since they're mostly traveling a war-torn land, I had Pihu sit atop a piece of ruin that's been weathered. 

Finally, once I am satisfied with the piece, I would add my finishing touch. I'd flatten all the layers into one, copy that layer, UNflattened it, and then pasted what I copied at the topmost layer. I'd then set it to "Overlay" and apply "Gaussian Blur" to make the colors pop more. I would then adjust its "Brightness and Contrast" to my liking.