CREATE AMAZING MANGA FIGURE ART

Manga and anime character artist Ilya Kuvshinov brings to life a girl and her toy Totoro, using a range of Photoshop blending layer modes Procreate & Photoshop

- Ilya Kuvshinov

A decade spent in art education, followed by another 10 years immersed in digital painting techniques have enabled me to identify the different ways of approaching commercial work, and helped me to uncover new ways of expressing my ideas in my personal art.

I usually work in Procreate on an iPad, and Photoshop on an iMac Pro, switching between both applications. For this workshop I created the sketches on an iPad and finished the piece in Photoshop, taking advantage of the bigger screen size and the program’s larger range of tools. You’ll see how even basic effects such as Lighten, Darken and Color Burn layer blend modes, Gaussian Blur and Liquify can help you to create those pro-level finishing touches.

Digital art tools either attempt to imitate the effects of traditional media, or take a painting approach that, for the most part, is far removed from real-world processes. My work doesn’t resemble a ‘real’ painting at all, apart from during the early sketch and line-art stages, and when developing shadows and background. Instead, I rely on Photoshop to enhance parts of the image as I go: first by developing the mood of the artwork, and then adding details throughout the scene. It’s a totally different approach to working in traditional media. Here, I’ve used vivid colours, light blooms and gentle rendering to express my love for the films of Studio Ghibli.

1 Generate rough sketches

The ImagineFX team’s idea for the cover is “a girl hugging a plush toy, maybe a Totoro one”, so I start by creating four sketches in Procreate: three with Totoro and one with a shark plush toy. I’m mindful of the cover layout, so the face of the girl and her soft toy should roughly be in the middle of the composition.