Living the Moment

After watching the first few episodes of Frieren, I fell in love with the world, the storytelling, and the characters. I knew there was gonna be a lot of bittersweet moments by the premise alone, and for this piece, I wanted to show it in some way.

PROCESS:
My general idea for this piece was to make use of reflections since Frieden's present journey is basically a retrace of her past journey with her past comrades. It can also show how much has changed since then: not only is she traveling with apprentices of her past friends, she now begins to understand humans better and treasure moments more. 

I began sketching the composition first. I had Frieren be front-and-center, while Fern and Stark are beside her. I had Fern fix Frieren's hair like she usually does in the show, acting somewhat motherly towards her unorganized master. As she does so, she has the usual banter with Stark, the only other teenager in the party, and someone a lot of us are assuming she's slowly developing feelings for, as does he. 

While her party members flirt, Frieren looks to her reflection, and I drew her old party members in place of Fern and Stark's reflections. I specifically placed Heiter where Fern is, and Eisen where Stark is, because they are their masters. But Himmel the Hero stands smiling behind her, with his own reflection. A ghost in Frieren's mind and someone she aims to find at the end of their journey.


Now, when it comes to organizing my layers, I would draw the characters first after sketching the prompt. But I do not draw them immediately in the spot I've sketched them to be in. If they don't take up much of the canvas, I'd scale up their sketch, make a folder just for that character, and start from there. I'd do the lineart first, making sure there are no gaps in between lines, so it would be easier for me to use the "Bucket" or "Fill" tool. This honestly makes the lineart stage the most tedious one. After I've done the characters, I then flatten and position them where they were originally placed. 

For the background with the flowers, I did a combination of tricks. I did photo bashing, where I took a picture of my backyard with grass and rocks and edited them onto the grass in my artwork. After that I made use of flower brushes, and the power of Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V for the rest. 

Finally, once I'm satisfied with the characters and how the background looks, I add my finishing touch. I flatten all the layers, copy the flattened layer, unflattened it, then pasted the copied flattened layer at the topmost layer. I set it to "Overlay" and applied "Gaussian Blur" to it in order to make the colors pop more. I would then adjust its "Brightness and Contrast" to my liking until it neither too bold nor ineffective.