Claymore process

    1. rough sketch. i sketched very loosely, poured in all ideas.
this step is fluid, don't think too much, focus on shapes and proportion.

    2. construction sketch. breakdown the shapes into basic shapes.
focus on how the shapes interact with each other. the aim is to create an illusion of volume.
draw each part on different layer and color. don't skip this step, it seems tedious but
it will help you understand the object better and make it easier in later stage.

    3. clean sketch. you can also push it further to clean lineart if you want.
the aim is to separate parts with different color, so it will be easier to do layer selection
and editing.

    4. flat color. i used magic wand for selection then expand about 2 pixel and fill in with color.
sloppy on the edges but i plan to paint it over in later stage, so no worries.

    5. shown here is the light and shadows. i used multiple layers with combination
of multiply and overlay mode. start with big hard brush to cover the shadow's area.
then use smaller brush in darker areas ( top layer, multiply mode). after that, use big soft brush
on top of them so it will create shadow's gradation (multiply mode). for the light, i used soft brush
with overlay mode, layer opacity at 25%.

    6. color tint. i laid color mode layers on top stage 5. imagine a pizza sliced into 3 parts.
top part is yellow, left part is bluish purple, right part is pink. use soft brush and layer opacity 20%.

    7. rough color. stage 7 is actually a combination of stage 4,5,6. i didn't use grayscale technic or
ambient occlusion. i brokedown stage 7 into 3 stages for explanation purposes to give better
understanding of my process. i also used color balance layer here.

    8 and 9. render, tidied up stage 7. blending the colors, shape corrections, pay attention to
the edges. vary your brush hardness.

this was drawn entirely with default hard round brush. in case you're curious.
feel free to ask if you wanna know more. hopefully this would be useful for you.

cheers,
animot