Snacked for a Hundred Yume @ Greenhouse
12 Aug 2023First and foremost, some quick context: Snacked for a Hundred Yume or SHY is a “project” of sorts that I’m starting to routinely practice backgrounds and poses alike. It’s pretty simple: I draw the location of every Vending Machine Finder expedition on Yume Nikki Online, which refreshes about every 3 days. With that said, let’s get to my thoughts on the first entry for this project: today’s vending machine is in the Greenhouse.
To start off on a negative note… I have finished this 2 days late. By now, I should’ve been working on the drawing of the vending machine in Decrepit Dwellings by now… but I really, REALLY underestimated how much time I was going to take to finish this entry.
Besides lack of practice, what made me lose an ungodly amount of time here was usage of background layers so bad it’d give anyone with no more than 7 days of experience in digital painting a brain aneurysm. Long story short, making big changes in the whole lower half of the background would’ve taken about thrice the normal amount of time - this is why I haven’t populated the space beyond the barrier.
The same issue pretty much forced me to - with great pain - leave alone the left side of the barrier/fence, even after quickly realizing just how wrong its proportions were, compared to its right half. In hindsight, I should’ve tried drawing the barrier’s diamond pattern front-facing first, then using the perspective tool to place it correctly, perhaps during the sketch process. I’ve seen god-tier artists use the perspective tool for backgrounds before, so I guess using it like this would be socially acceptable.
Now we arrive at the stuff closest to the “camera” - which I thankfully believe fares much better compared to what I’ve talked about until now. I’m fairly happy with how Urotsuki looks here, especially considering I haven’t sketched her nearly as much as I usually do with other characters I make high-effort drawings of.
I guess the vending machine looks fine enough, although it does lack a ton of detail as soon as you move your eyes from its top to the lower half. The fancy shines are probably what saves it… I wonder if I’ve gone a little overboard with them?
Before I wrap this up, I wanted to mention a couple extra things:
- For the first time, I tried to use some very slight post-processing to improve the contrast of the final picture.
- The canvas for this drawing was originally much larger than what’s shown here. I had to heavily cut it down to save time, but also becuase there wouldn’t have been much to fill the extra space anyway.
That’s about it for this drawing - now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get moving to get my snack at Decrepit Dwellings before the Vending Machine Finder expedition refreshes again.