Photoshop
Concept artist and illustrator Vassil Mihaylov demonstrates his workflow for creating a futuristic cel-shaded character illustration
In this workshop, I’ll be making a cel-shaded story illustration of my character, the FERA Robotics cyborg San. It’ll be a nondestructive workflow, which will involve using layers and retaining the editability of the piece even after it’s finished.
I’ll go through a bunch of steps, including sketches, line-art, flats and shading. The character is the focus; however, since it’s a story-driven piece I won’t be overlooking the background. My goal is to create a night-time scene featuring the romantic lights of the metropolis skyline. I love this stuff. Night scenes are beautiful and quite difficult to get right, especially when it comes to the colours. I’ve always been fascinated by how different artists approach them.
The design of San comes from my passion for storytelling and video games. I also love mecha and military vehicles. My influences include Elden Ring, Starcraft 2, The Witcher, Castlevania and 2021’s Dune.
I’ll be creating this character in Photoshop, although this workflow should work with any art software. I’ll mainly be using the Paint Bucket tool, a few standard brushes and a bunch of adjustment layers.
1 The story behind the character
The character I’ve chosen to draw is San. She’s a character from my sci-fi fantasy universe ALLOY, which is set in the 23rd century. She’s a corporate combat cyborg and high-up executive at FERA Robotics, a mega-corporation that specialises in nanomachines, body augmentations and medical equipment. San was orphaned during her early teenage years and adopted by a FERA soldier. She grew up to become a cruel and cunning yet elegant woman.
2 Put together a mood board
I always like to make a mood board before I start drawing. I use PureRef for this stage, but there are other options such as Miro. This mood board is quite small because I can i
