About

This is one of the hundreds of configurations I created for Song A Day - an NFT project that sold out in like 20 minutes 😳

The backgrounds, character bodies, expressions, instruments, and clothing were all variable assets that could be interchanged to create thousand of possible outcomes. A task of engineering these illustrations to all fit well with one another.

I plan to spend a lot more time writing up a proper case study of the whole thing, but for now here's a breakdown of how I built this background.

Process

I always start my sketches extremely rough as seen above. Just to get a grounding sense of what I want where. Each background needed to be somewhat composed to allow the character to take center stage.

Tightening up the sketch with some stronger straight lines in procreate, and in the next slide I went through and traced most of my main shapes in adobe illustrator.

Color

Here, with some color, I'm bringing in basic shapes, focusing mainly on my values (black and whites) and slowly building up details.

Fortunately and unfortunately I often have a really clear picture of what I want in my head, which allows me to improvise a lot. It does however, make it difficult to explain some of my decisions.

Detail

More details here. I know I can build up some fun stuff in the corners and sides as the character will stand off the background well in the center. I'm using a lot of gaussian blur and will eventually dial a lot of the strength of the color back as to not distract.

Results

With some post processing, color correction, texturing, and the character dropped in, we're done :)

Follow Me

I've been sharing a lot of process reels on instagram lately. I'd love to have you come hang out over there as well!

@BoneHaus