Were's First 7 Teaser and Process

This page hardly deviated from the original thumbnail sketch which makes it a good example to share my process! What we are looking at is panel 2. After the sketch is cleaned up, the sketch is lined with clean line art. 

Then the lines are filled with flat colors of the character under normal lighting conditions. For hairy characters like Curtis, his skin is on a different layer from his beard and shirt, eyes, teeth, etc...

Then comes my favorite part which is the shading. I take into account where the lights are coming from as well as any bounce lighting that may hit the target. In this case, Curtis has a lamp on his left and his right.

Then come my least favorite parts: adding the body hair. Each strand is drawn by hand and follows a body hair pattern for a properly organic look.

As previously stated, Curtis' skin is on its own layer. This comes in handy when adding the thickening brown fur with my brush as it does not influence his shirt at all. I have to lock opacity of the skin layer as well to make sure I don't expand the edges of the color. This takes a long time and also has to follow the direction of the hand drawn strands of fur. Additionally, the arm has more intense brown coloring where there is more overlap of fur such as the bottom of the forearm and the edges of the arm.

After all the coloring is done, I can convert the brightness of my monochrome shading layer to black and white and lock opacity. This lets me change the shading color of his skin to red instead of black for a more skin-like appearance.

I change the blending mode of the shading layer to multiply(though its not necessary), and then add the lighting conditions for the room on a new overlay layer. This scene is lit by lightbulbs so I chose a warm yellow color. I also added some shiny highlights to his beard, motion lines for his head turning, and some noise around his arm to show some tf going on there.

This process is done multiple times on every page depending on how many panels it has. I have definitely brought up before that the pages are beginning to take longer and longer as Curtis grows more fur - and this is him still fully clothed.

Not sure if anyone was really interested in my process but you have it now. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk!