Original Ecchi Cover Art + Banners

[MahluaandMilk]

@Zzxcv
Thanks so much for going through and explaining more about saturation. I'm bad about not giving people visuals when I try to explain things (I should probably work on that).

@Forlorn
I do like all the design's you've come up with. Now that I'm studying more about color theory (or rather, osmosis'ing it from being around Devola and ArtSlammer/SlamJam), I can say that it seems to be a point of art that would interest you where you are now. ZZxcv Has definitely given you a great starting place. Just know that your composition is already good. I think you could easily use both designs that you've produced as different "chapter covers", because it would be a shame to scrap the earlier one entirely.

[devola]

That 2nd cover is a definitely bolder! Still, I think I like the first one a bit more. If you tweak the values so there is higher contrast between the figure and the background I think it'll work just fine. You could also try adding a black border to the figure, to really highlight the contrast.

One thing from an artistic viewpoint though is that your figure is kind of melding into the background right now because it appears quite flat. There are a few ways to remedy this, but better shading is probably the most straightforward way.

So far though, it's looking good, keep tweaking it! Let me know if you need clarification on any of my suggestions.

[Zaxx Cev]

Okay I have to repost this because the other account got banned but I feel this can help other people who might stumble upon this.  The main thing I want to focus on is the colors and lighting

Step 1:  I changed the entire thing into grayscale because it lets you see the values of the piece.  If you notice I also add a gray background.  That is so when you draw in the highlights then they will pop out unlike having a white back ground
Step 2:  We need to determine a consistent light source.  Your light source is shining straight down on the breasts but the berries are saying that the light is coming from the side.  I went with the berries and laid in the areas of light
Step 3:  Looking at the areas of light we can add the shadows to where the light isn't hitting
Step 4:  Picking your colors
One of the things I noticed is that you don't change your hue (color) while you are shading.  This one gets pretty complicated so I'll explain the basics of color with a normal light source.  The whole reason we see colors is because the color reflects off of what the light is shining on.  The highlights is where the light shines the brightest, because of that we start to rub off the color of the light (bright yellow) and it mixes with the color of the material.  Now when we shade we are losing the color and go towards blues/purples as they are the darkest hues.  If you notice as we darken we not only lower the ↓value↓ but we also increase the →saturation→ to avoid getting muddy colors.  Now as you go into even darker areas the light is no longer hitting the material so we will not only lower the ↓value↓ but also lower the ←saturation← since light is the primary reason we have the saturation.  Also one of the best ways to know which way to change the hue is to look at the color wheel values (I put the grayscale on the right side).  If you have a yellow you want to go through the reds to shade and green would go through the blues.  You do have to be careful with green as the cyan colors start to brighten up

Step 5:  At this point you should have gotten your colors down and you can shade according to steps 2/3.  If you are looking to copy the same soft brush style as I put down then it's mostly using a large soft brush then using alt clicking with a brush to select colors in between to smooth it out.  You could also use the blur tool to remove a lot of the strokes.

Step 6:  This is where I use the dodge and burn tool.
First you have to flatten your layers.  What I do is put everything in 1 folder and Ctrl-J to duplicate, this is so if I make a change that I don't like then I can always go back to the original piece.  I do this on several parts of creating a piece so I'm never afraid of doing drastic changes.  Next I select the layers and Ctrl-E to merge the layers/folders. I usually exclude the lineart layers but sometimes you might want to merge them as well, it's mostly up to your personal preference and if you color your lines

Now this is when I use the dodge tool to brighten up the highlights and the burn tool to lower the values of the shadows.  I like to use about 3-8% on the dodge tool with a big soft brush over the focus and about 10-30% burn tool with a big soft brush over the shadows (especially those near the focus to make them contrast more.

At this point I usually consider the piece complete but I did want to mention some things about composition.  First is that you always need 1 focus so everything else around it has to have less detail or you will distract your viewers.  Another way to have the focus pop out more is to give it contrast with the surrounding areas, you can make contrast with saturation, values and even hues (colors).  And one of the last ways to make your viewers look at your focus is by directing their eyes with objects that point towards the focus.  In your piece the focus is the breasts not so much the cupcake.  If you wanted the cupcake to be the focus then I think changing the angle of the breasts and having them up higher on the piece would be a better alternative.

I put the final piece into grayscale so you can see that we still have 1 focus area

[It’s still me]

Now the fun is officially gone...

Well no one said it would be easy. Alright. Thank you.

I might change the focus because the breasts were meant to be a distraction not the focus. If that makes sense at all??? Remember, witches target underage boys here. It’s a guy thing that I was trying to capture. It’s alright police, this was in the past, different mores lol.

That’s why I said this is more abstract/artistic than the actual manga. The cover just depicts a stereotypical concept of witches. I would be cool if I could convert it into an old timey folktale wood ingraving thing. I forgot what that was called.

Alright, I might have both covers ready by tomorrow.

[Zaxx Cev]

If you want the cupcake to be the focus then I suggest changing the angle of the body so they aren't most of the piece and more towards the top.  Other than that, you can keep the details that you had on the cupcake and saturate it more.

[It’s still me]

I doubt that i even did what was recommended.

I tried doing the mixing of colors. I added blue, like the actual color blue, and i mixed it. I used clip stuido Paint, but the free demo version and i can't use a lot of features. I use to have the 2 year trial version, but i got it around 2 years ago  . I can't even do the monochrome. So i just colored everything black and white and grey, so i gave up on that.

Anyways, i did this.

[MahluaandMilk]

The breast area looks much better in this version! The cupcake is very clear, too. The drool looks a little odd--but that could be fixed by lowering the opacity on it, I think. I feel like both of these could work. I'd still look into learning some of the things about saturation like how Zzax pointed out.

[Zaxx Cev]

Dodge tool is in photoshop but with this critique I used Manga Studio so it would be closer to what you are used to.

Since you don't have a dodge tool in Manga Studio I've found a way to somewhat go around it.  While the dodge tool isn't that important and you can do all the effects manually by choosing the colors I find it really makes it more vibrant.

Another thing is I did check your colors on the lolipops and while there was some shading to it, it wasn't contrasted enough to see it.  I only did 4 of the white lolipops but when coloring white usually you want to use white with a tiny bit of the atmosphere color (blue unless you have a colored light source where it would also change the lighting scheme of the entire piece).  Now when you see the piece in grayscale you will notice that the lolipops will stand out more as they not only have more contrast in saturation but values as well.  In the bottom right I put a scale for what you should be looking to use in material colors for the most part.  While you can exaggerate it is still best to avoid full the very top and very bottom of the colors as those are for lightsources/blackholes

As for the head, I did see that you tilted it and added hair but keep in mind that when the head tilts the hair will hang down and you are turning the top where the hair is connected


I did a before and after for you to see


I know you said that you had the demo version but I posted some ways to get the effects that I used.  Also know that this stuff is optional and there might be other ways to get the same effect but try seeing if they work for your version.  Sadly the grayscale is a bit of a process unlike photoshop where I can just have a layer at the top to click grayscale on/off at anytime.


Lastly I want to teach you an easy way to change colors and values on your layers.  This works for Sai, Manga Studio, Photoshop (only 3 I have).  So choose the layer you want to adjust and press Ctrl-U to be able to adjust the saturation/hue/value of that layer.  If you are afraid it might make too much of a change duplicate that layer then do it so you can go back and forth to see the difference.

For the other cover I haven't really decided about the critique but it would be more about composition/layout more than anything else.

[It’s still me]

@Zzax Cev thanks. I’ll show what limitations the program I use has. The convert layer feature is not available on the free version.

I’ll try your fake dodge tool method.

Any updates on the covers might be in a few days. I need to work on some other stuff.