Behind the scenes + process: The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter

This post documents the drawing process of the commissioned card illustration  "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter(竹取物語)" that I drew last year for Onmyoji's Card Game.

Brief description of the requirements

This illustration is commissioned by Onmyoji's Card Game. The description of the content is in the picture that follows.

character backstory:

The bamboo cracked open the moment Kaguya-hime emerged. The brightness of the moonlight radiated through the crack and reflected on Kaguya-hime's body, which was lying in the center of the bamboo, emitting light. Kaguya-hime was not able to leave the bamboo; she could only look into the distance through the small crack.

(The document issued is a confidential document, hence i paraphrased and summarized the contents—it's not the original)

The written content in requirements was thoroughly comprehensible, but translating it into a solid picture came with many problems.

For example, how does the bamboo really look like inside? How does the character stay inside...?

For instance, observing the common scenes in life—inside a classroom or in a forest—we can search for many physical references and illustrations. However, the location of "the character is inside the bamboo" filled me with questions.

If we search for a realistic physical reference, we can only get the following picture.

It then hit me, of course—I can still find virtual works! Like "The Tale of Princess Kaguya " is a fantastic anime movie reference!

Indeed, the animation also covered of the beginning of the birth of the little princess!

But she came out wrapped in bamboo shoots...

After some searching and not finding very suitable references, I reached out to clarify my doubts. Very quickly, I received a reply:

The scene does not have to be realistic, you can add any items that match the character's setting to enrich the picture. Bamboo leaves, Penglai jade branches, Kaguya hime's various treasures, etc. can be placed on the canvas.

After the discussion, I decided to add bamboo shoots and leaves as the main decoration for the background and deliberately chose to not go for realism—but to create a fantastical piece.

Drafting Process

According to the text, the only light source for the picture is the moonlight outside the gap of the bamboo, and the inside of the bamboo is quite dark as an enclosed space.

Therefore, I shaded majority of the picture which would be in the dark, with a small piece of moonlight illuminating Kaguya-hime's face to show her demeanor. Some bamboo leaves are distributed from the foreground to the mid-ground to enrich the picture as visual elements.

The sketch was officially confirmed to be okay, so I moved on to the next step.

Increase the inherent colors to enrich the bamboo leaf layers

The distinctive colors of the characters were added based on the persona pictures.

For the bamboo leaves, I collected some photos I took and commercially available photos of bamboo leaves under the CC0 protocol, and combined them in the image using the old method from "Four Seasons of Anomaly".

(For details of the method, see: https://www.patreon.com/posts/behind-scenes-51590958

In the initial draft, the bamboo leaves were all completely black, however, during the painting process, I found that the darkness of the bamboo leaves would make the sketching level of the picture very monotonous, so I added the light-translucent bamboo leaves as shown in the picture below, and made changes to the warmth and coolness levels to enrich the sketch-and-color relationship of the picture.

Refining color relationships

I used the moonlight as a warm color with reference to Kasamatsu Shiro's prints, and again enriched the layers of pure gray, warm and cool, and brightness of the surrounding bamboo leaves, creating three color versions in total.

A warm toned version:

Version with cooler colors and decreased brightness:

A more cool-toned version:

The client chose the second one, and requested for Kaguya's face to be highlighted more clearly. At this point, the general tone and composition of the entire picture has been finalised.

Refining the Image

After the general relationship is confirmed, I will merge all layers for refinement.

Still using the procreate brush 画笔, I cleamed up the stray lines and hairy edges, increasing the excess of light and dark junction.

Connecting the sketch and color relationship, I increased the brightness of the parts with light shone on them and enhanced the pink tones in Kaguya's skin and the distinctive red of the collar.

I added the moon decoration on her sleeves that I had missed earlier, and rearranged the bamboo leaf's form.

Finally, the work will be successfully completed when it is confirmed by the client

Bonus Scene: Animation Layers

In some illustrations that need to be animated, there are often separate layers for foreground, mid-ground, characters, and background. I was extremely uncomfortable with splitting layers, so the layering of the front and back scenes was split after the final drawing.

And the final card face animation... really looks good!!! The animator did a great job!!!!

Overall, it was really a great collaboration, big thanks to everyone in the project team~

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The reason why I wrote this post is because I received some comments that were curious about my works for Onmyoji's Card Game. I personally follow the three steps: draft - color draft - completed illustration—for clients to give their feedback. The draft is mainly used to finalise the general composition, the color draft is to determine the general tone and composition, and the follow-up finished drawing will not appear with any major changes.

However, I am unfortunately unable to share PSD files of commercial illustrations, so in a few days I will also update a post that will be the official share of next month(July), containing process images as well as PSD files with layers. XD

Still thanks to my friend Valerie for providing me with help for English translations, and thank you for your reading and support, comments are still welcome!