Background Information

In the previous post I gave a quick overview of how the Friday 4Komas are laid out with the main focus on the character creation process. This article continues the behind the scenes glimpse, but focuses on the background content instead.

As I mentioned in the previous article, a lot of the background content is simple vector based colors and gradients. But sometimes more elaborate background artwork is needed in the 4komas.

Case in point, the urinals from Friday 4Koma 第62話:

As with the character artwork, the initial sketches are created in Adobe Photoshop using a Cintiq 12WX.

After the sketches are finished, each section is colored in contrasting flat colors to that of its adjacent neighbors. This makes it easier to select individual sections later on for coloring and shading.

Then, each selection is individually colored and shaded.

And finally, a sections are blended together to remove hard edges and are given any final touch ups.

It may seem like a lot of effort for something that will never appear more two and a half centimeters tall, but sometimes it's those little extra details that count the most.