Kill La Kill Custom Playmat Refresh

 

Last week I wrote about how I had begun to wonder if I could re-colour some of my older mats. MY FIRST test subject was the Inzektors mat and since I liked how it turned out I immediately set to work on a second re-colour. Today I'm going to Discuss the Kill la Kill mat and some of the main ways I have upgraded it.

Lets start things off by looking back at the original version:

For some reason the first time around I went quite subtle with the colour scheme its all really carefully blended together and then somewhat ruined by my decision to add black outlines around everything. Its not even that they are poorly executed or anything its just that looking back at it now it seems a strange mix of styles.

The other strange thing I didn't really notice until after finishing the mat was that the contrast between the foreground and background probably wasn't high enough. What I was aiming for was to have the eye be able to focus on the fiber background, Japanese text, or the image within the text as separate objects. However if the differences between each section weren't strong enough things tended to run together and become difficult to read especially in busy areas like the section around the two main figures.

 Other than those two minor issues, both of which are based on an increases in knowledge and the passage of time, overall I quite liked this mat it has a neat concept and shows my first steps towards trying to use light and shadow as the main way of defining objects. That's not to say I cant make some improvements and I will be keeping these two points in mind as I go about re-colouring the image.

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The first thing I did was increase the colour intensity of the sky. I'm not sure why it just seemed to be a sensible place to start and wouldn't mess too much up if something did go wrong. In the original the really pale area starts quite low on the image that was fine but I'm looking to do a bit more with the sky this time so I start by pushing the darker colours up the page until there's only a sliver of the pale yellow left at the top. The other reason to darken the sky is because the first time around I had the situation where I had a pale colour on a character then a black outline then a pale sky which isnt ideal for making things easy to see. Making the sky darker means I can keep the edges of the characters relatively light.

The next thing to do was darken the fiber background. The first time around I couldn't get the black as dark as I would have liked so mixed in red and ended up with an interesting pastern but it still wasn't as dark as it really needed to be. This time I knew the best ways to make sure the black stays black and on top of that I'm making sure all the edges are as crisp as possible. 

The threads also get an upgrade. Any that are causing major tangent issues with other parts of the image are removed and the rest get a colour boost. Originally just red lines I also decided to up the detail to make them a bit more thread like.

Things get a bit more tricky from here since what I really want to do is move to a much more realistic style but those black lines are going to be hard to shift. Luckly because of the style I'm going for I'm going to need a dark edge on on side of each object followed closely by a light area so I can keep some of the lines as they are. There are two choices here either keep the lines on the right or the ones on the left and I decide on left since that way the light should look as if it is behind them which.is where it should be really since that's where the sky is.

Also at some point during this process I also decide to add a white line around the edges of the text. This is another way of making the various sections of the image more obvious.  

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Finally lets talk about some of the changes to the smaller details in the image.

One of the biggest changes is in Gamagori's face. There was always this sense that something wasn't quite right and while making his chest much darker improved his overall look and helped make him look more loom'y (technical term) I wanted to make him look even more dangerous so changed his mouth. the blood is gone and now you can see his teath he's gone from looking slightly beaten up to something of a shark. 

This naturally lead to a slight change in head shape which made me realize that the angle of his hair was throwing off his pose slightly. Bringing down his hairline makes it appear we are looking at more of the top of his head and improves his menacing presence. 

I could have kept his eyes but in the end decided that since I had gone so dark I may as well match them up with the stars on his chest (who knows maybe one day I'll decide to add them back in). I also got rid of what might have been his ear, the gap between the two areas of the image has to be kept in mind when drawing the characters as it can cause the brain to make things up or draw conclusions you might not want it to and this was one of them that was throwing off how big his head should look.

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When you look at the two images of the hand holding the sword you can see how the change from black outlines to shadows and highlights has taken an area that was reasonably well defined to start with and made the detail even more obvious. The best example being the red line on her arm is barely visible on the top image and in the lower one not only can you see it clearly but it also implies that its an object in its own right, a piece of material attached to the rest of her costume. Since I'm keeping the black lines on the right side of objects the left side of objects has to now have a corresponding light line and adding it here to the sword means I can imply the folds of the handle better which again adds to the sense that this thing is an actual object rather than just a picture of one.

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I have mentioned before that there are certain scale restrictions on figures due to the materials I use. At the time these were probably the smallest charters I had even gotten onto a mat but looking back now they seem rather sketchy and undefined. 

The first thing that needs doing is deciding on an area that's going to be in shadow to make it easier to see them and the most obvious choice is the fancy gold braided thing on her shoulder since that should have been in shadow anyway the first time around but then is was going for making her appear a tad more ethereal. 

The way the dark area here in the lower image gives Gamagori's gauntlet a sharp edge with hints of battle damage is one of the clearest examples of how the two styles differ, if I was to try and do the same thing with black outlines it could look good but not necessarily as convincing to the human brain. Anyway with this area darkened we can lighten the figures making it much more obvious from a distance what they are.

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I've actually made a few more adjustments to the image since writing this post, there was something just not quite right about the white line on the left side of Gamagori's arm which I couldn't figure out until I started doing this review and realized it was because it shouldn't be there at all - the highlight would have been on the blue area next to it not on the arm itself.

And thats the thing really, art is never totally finished, its just a case of putting down the brush at a certain point and them how long it is before you might pick it up again.

Until next time, our work is never over

Refreshing a Custom playmat : Inzektors

 

This mat might look familiar. Way back in the mists of time or 2012 to be exact I created this mat but it looked somewhat different. Today I'm going to look at the Inzektor mat and how it eneded up getting a shiny new look.

The original post for this mat along with a making of video can be found HERE.

 

There are a number of my mats that over the years for one reason or another I've ended up hanging on to. Mostly I've been using them as test subjects and while I'm pleased they have maintained their condition all this time occasionally I'll walk past them and wonder if I should be doing more with them. Well the other week I walked past and thought since they are test subjects why not have a go at seeing if it was possible to remake them in some fashion, to answer questions like how easy would it be to update a mat? What areas would be the most difficult to change?

For this first test I decided to keep it simple. Update the characters in a way more in line with my current style and change any areas I wasn't completely happy with the first time around. For these reasons I chose the Inzector mat since it's a relatively straightforward design with a number of areas I would quite like to improve. It's also the oldest in the group and didn't have the protective layer later mats have gotten so it should be easier to alter.

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The first thing to do is clean the mat. It's been hanging in a high pedestrian traffic area for 3 years so I assume its probably picked up at least some dust. In the end I find its held up very well, the colours haven't faded, the pegs holding it to the hanger haven't caused any permanent depressions (in fact I don't even have to iron it) and when I start cleaning it I find there is very little dust buildup. I did come away from the process thinking that perhaps in the future I could improve things further by putting them in clear plastic bags and connecting the haners to that.

If your going to clean one of these early mats I advise getting a soft damp cloth and just giving them a light wipe over then letting them dry naturally, they shouldnt be to bothered by water but heavy rubbing may damage them.

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Mat cleaned we can start on the refresh proper. The first thing I do in this instance is build a new lighting scheme. In the original there is left, right, and central lights but there's a bit of a lack of consistency on my part which makes reading that quite tricky so I'm going to cut the central one and rework where many of the shadows and highlights are to make things more ovious and the shading sharper. 

With a better Idea of where the light is coming from I can change from flat shaded with black outlines to a more realistic shading scheme where edges are defined by areas of light and darkness. Changing from one to the other does however throw up the first problem, the black lines are rather stubborn and in some cases almost imposible to get rid of fully we will see later how this also afects the design choices for the background.

One of the interesting things I discovered while working on this project was watching areas increase in detail. It was as if their clothes went from old school Standard Definition where creases were sort of implied but not really to modern High Definition where you could have seen the stitches, well if I drew them in I didn't go quite that far. I guess its a similar phenomenon to how the sketches go though phases of level of detail increases before becoming the final design, but you know, three to four years apart.

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The next thing I wanted to do was get rid of the weapons in the background, no one uses those cards and they pull focus away from the characters. The thing was there's quite a lot of line work going on in them and I would rather not have to do the entire background black just to obliterate them.

Some experimentation later I found I could overwrite them with certain dark colours and then take the background back to light colours by applying them in vast quantity's over the top of the new dark patches. the downside is that It uses a lot of resources I was just going to have to get creative and think up some other solutions.

In the end I decided since I quite like the hex pattern in the background perhaps I could make more of that. We need to lose the oranges and yellows in the background anyway since we want to avoid using colours that are on the characters as much as possible so if we make the hex's smaller we can use a bunch of blues and greens and any really stubborn lines can be hidden in darker hexes.

I'm still left with some lines that don't stay in their hex's though so the circuit pattern from the original scheme comes back to do double duty, add some depth to the background and change peoples perception of what they are looking at.

No those arnt lines from a previous design they are circuits. Sometimes it beter to change somethings meaning rather than the thing itself.

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In terms of use of colour in the background other than the dark hex's to cover things most are random except for the teal hex's at the top and bottom which are very much placed deliberately to squish the other hex's further back near the center of the image to create a feeling like they are in a round room with really odd wallpaper.

I also get to finally make it seem like they are standing on something rather than floating in the air which is not only a  big plus but gets rid of an aspect of the original that had been bugging me for a while.

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I'm definitely much happier with the final peice after its facelift than I was before I think its a definite step in the right direction. With what I have lernt from this experiment I can start upgrading other mats confident that it is possible, although it does make me wonder if I still have the mat in another 3 years what will I think of it then?

Hopefully I can look back and think there's so much that can still be improved. Because we should always be striving to improve our skills and learn new things.

Until next time. recolour the past.