Oh Zoe

Shooting back to 10 Confessions & A Kiss on a free moment, the Zoe 3D model has begun to become a bit more finalized. I'm still waffling: pencil or not pencil or not. And with recent improvements in 3D, I'm thinking not... for the same reasons I'm thinking not for Akashik. It's faster for me. It's easier on my hands. It's produces more consistent artwork.

But then again I may just do things the way I'm doing Heavenly Bride, only in pencil.

Anyway, while working on a 3D render of the new Zoe (in progress) I accidentally hit on easy toning. I suck at toning because I suck at shadows among other things. But this might work.

Here's how to do it:

6 layers: numbered 1 to 6 with 1 being the top layer

Layer 1: Akvis sketch of original render with settings to produce fine outlines. If you can't do AKVIS sketch, play around. There are other ways. I just really like the results AKVIS gets me. Set to multiple, 50%. Here I had to draw in her freckles as they got lost in the process. I'm going to have to surmount that.

Layer 2: In PSP, find all edges of original render. There are Photoshop equivalents for this, just hunt. Finding all edges produces a nice very light outline of the original. You can adjust brightness and contrast to get rid of some areas or fade them out some. You don't want the lines here to be too dark. Set to multiply 100%

Layer 3: from original render, half tone in PSP or screentone for Photoshop. These dots are size 3, which I've found is ideal for this size. I'd use bigger if the image were huge, but this is a 100 dpi image (although 2000 pixels wide). Set to overlay.

Layer 4: Some sort of adjustment layer for greyscale. 

Layer 5: duplicate of original render, set to screen 50%

Layer 6: original render