Shinka Drawing Method
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Just showing one of my methods of completing a pic. I only use this one when the picture needs to be somewhat sterile and clean. The lineart is truly a nightmare using this method.
Because the lineart has to be near to perfect, the draft requires slight tweaking of draft elements on separate layers. Each colour represents a different element that I add individually and change on the basis of how it fits overall into the drawing.
Because I'm bloody dumb and lazy, I draft the background AFTER the primary lineart. I don't do this anymore though as I've become much more proficient at backgrounds since I drew this. In a way there are some advantages this way, as the BG can be easily altered to fit AROUND any changes made to the primary lineart without massive effort.
Adding base colours, each on a translocked layer for sequential masked cel shading.
At this stage I'd already be reaching in the order of 50 - 100 layers, each base having at least 1 multiply and 1 screen/addition layer for the cel shading. The reason I do this is so I can easily null anything I don't like without affecting other parts of the drawing/colouring. It's pedantics more than anything, there's no real reason to have so many layers.
I really don't use this method anymore. It does yield nice results about 80% of the time, it's somewhat based on luck and experience. Not only that, this is a linear sequential method of drawing unlike many concurrent ones. Each step is done one at a time, and revisiting a previous step is extremely costly. Once a mistake presents itself, it's either make or break for the drawing. Recently I've been shifting over to a more concurrent approach which involves drawing and coloring the BG before or simultaneously with the primary element (usually character) of the drawing. This way mistakes can be corrected on the fly, although it does require a fair bit more thought than that required for the sequential method.
Below is a chart I made quite some time ago detailing my procedures. It still mostly holds nowadays, except I'm more heavily dependent on watercolours now. It may well mean I'll stick and refine the current drawing style I have right now.
