Ramblings on Mushishi: Mata Itsuka

NOTE: I just found this half-finished entry in my "potential blog topics" Google Notebook when I was doing some testing during work, so I decided to finish and post it, no matter how late it is.

One of the motivations behind turning my recent Mushishi wall, Mata Itsuka, from a vector-only wall (like Oyako) to a painted wall was to gain more familiarity with Corel Painter 9. I've had Painter for years (although only upgraded to 9 last year) but have only used it extensively for a few wallpapers. Frankly, having no experience in natural media aside from pencil/pen and paper, the number of options overwhelms me, and I have no basis for understanding how the oil-based brushes are supposed to work compared to, say, oil pastels. Still, a painting-based wall was just the excuse necessary to get more practice!
The last wall I used Painter on was the Okama Hunter in the Grass wall where I used the digital watercolor brushes to create a textured background. I went back to the digital watercolor tools (not to be confused with Painter's watercolor tools which is an entirely different palette) because I liked how they maintained the paper texture, and because I like the watercolor look in general.
One of the first things I discovered was Painter's custom brush maker. This thing is about 25x more complicated than Photoshop's custom brush maker and about 50x as fun, because you can actively preview the brush while you're making it but before committing to the changes. Very slick. I wasted probably several hours just messing around with controls, although in the end I created a new digital watercolor brush quite similar to the presets but with more control over the brush size based on tablet pressure and a fixed opacity (the presets were switched in pressure control on size/opacity).
Basically, I began by painting the base color for Ginko's face, then adding successive layers of shadow and highlights. I painted way outside of the outlines as I planned to mask the final color layers in Photoshop. After several frustrating attempts to figure out how to use the digital watercolor blenders, I gave up and decided to use the regular set of blenders. However, in Painter, you have to 'dry' any liquid ink layer (such as digital watercolor) before you can use the "dry" brushes (which include blenders, oils, etc.) Afterwards, though, the regular blenders were most intuitive to use and everything went from a sorta cel-style shading to a much softer gradient-style shading.
I like Painter's blenders a lot, and plan to use them in many more painty walls.

1 new wallpaper (Mushishi: Mata Itsuka)

1 new wallpaper:
Mushishi - Mata Itsuka (Vexture/Scenic)

The Mushishi walling project continues. This wall started with a simple trace of the ending illustration to Mushishi 26. With the calligraphic brush style I thought I'd make a wall similar to Oyako. Then I thought I'd do some coloring in Painter. Then... [more]

New Wallpaper (Mushishi - Peace)

1 new wallpaper:
Mushishi - Peace (Vexture/Minimalistic)

I have decided I want to do for Mushishi what I did for Kino no Tabi: make so many walls that people can't help but get their interest piqued and create new fans, who in turn will make more wallpapers to introduce more fans. This is just the beginning.... [more]

Vectorlicious + Painterlicious

My latest forays into Illustrator mavenry has been heavy utilization of the art brushes. I've use art brushes before, but mostly as accents to a greater picture; this brush-painted styled Mushishi wall uses a few art brush strokes, but mostly it's filled shapes with some tweak and roughen filters applied to them to give it the sketchy edging. There's also some calligraphic brushes in there because when you set the width to random it can mimic a varying stroke line without any work on your part - but it's unpredictable since it's the computer that decides how wide to make the outline.
However, after reading a tutorial on creating (and using) art brushes I've decided to give it more of a go. (Computer Arts magazine from the UK is really a wonderful resource. I only wish it didn't have to be shipped overseas because it makes it so expensive! Thankfully many of their articles and tutorials are reproduced on their website!) I've already done several tests and have been happy with the calligraphic style. Creating your own art brushes means you have total control over how the edges taper out or not, which is not something easily achievable with a calligraphic brush. I hope to use this technique to make several more Mushishi walls, since it's got such a rural, classic Japanese feel to it that a calligraphic brush-styled wall would complement. So far I have another Ginko wall (which will be very dark, so I may cheat on all the effects) as well as a Nui wall (which I'm thinking will be more brush-on-parchment styled, and should showcase this technique wonderfully.)
We'll see how it turns out. After all, vectorlicious and painterlicious shouldn't be mutually exclusive.

New Wallpaper (Mushishi - Drift)

1 new wallpaper:
Mushishi - Drift (Scenic)

I haven't done a non-vector wall in over two months! I've finally caught up with watching Mushishi and felt like this series deserved another wall (or five). Again with the odd perspectives, this time looking up from beneath Ginko's boat as it drifts by.... [more]

Vectorlicious vs Painterlicious

I haven't made a wallpaper without using Illustrator for some part of the wall in quite some time (since "Welcoming the Dragon" in June, to be precise.) No particular reason why except I really like playing around in Illustrator a lot more than playing around in Photoshop. Also, I've been into clean, crisp images with very few colors, and Illustrator pulls off that sort of wallpaper a lot more easily than Photoshop, and I've been choosing scans to that effect as well.
Looks like I'll finally be breaking that trend. The Mushishi scan I wanted to work with was in a very delicate watercolor style, and although I was initially tempted to try and use vectors to recreate the effect (and push Illustrator's natural brushes to their limit) I backed away from that idea because I think I've just been doing too many vectors lately. My other skills feel like they're getting rusty.
This wall will be done in a smudge-painterly style, with copious amounts of paper texture to maintain that watercolor feel. I don't do too many smudge-painterly styled walls, but it's rather relaxing to smooth out the details. In many ways it produces an image totally opposite from a vector's crisp outlines, but hey, variety is good.
I think this style will suit the Mushishi manga image much better as well.