Skin Process: Tachyon & Tachyon Lite
I wanted to share the process for these two because it's interesting and might be a fun read for people who don't normally make or draw Flight Rising skins. I was the one who actually drew the skin, but 5 other artists helped bring it to life. So it ended up being very different from my typical workflow!
Here's how we went from this to this!
I first wanted to make a skin for Tachy about a month and a half ago. This was my first go, and I even submitted it to the queue, but I really wasn't happy with how simple it was. I was still trying to keep his design 'simple', close to the stuff I draw him with in his comic, but it just didn't... look very good? I don't make this kind of skin a lot.
The hood draws a lot from the way this skin drapes - I messaged lightleaf to ask if they'd be okay with me borrowing from how they drew the hood, and they said yes. So, I had a skin, but not the skin I wanted to make. I submitted it to queue, but I'm glad it got rejected for lines and shadow reasons. Can you imagine if this is just the version that I went with?
This is when I asked auroshen for help on fabrics, tassels, and additional ornamentation. We wanted to go with a Tibetan sort of look for Tachy at this point, and auro delivered a very very nice sketch. However, auro still wasn't happy with it and asked me to hold on while they figured something else out.
A couple of weeks went by. It was at this point that I decided, if I wanted this skin to look good, it was time for me to call in people who were good at doing the things I wanted on the skin. I wanted to draw most of the skin myself still, but I asked stillhunt to give me a sketch for his wings that I could base my lines off of.
I usually draw on 1250px canvases. This time, I asked specifically for the sketch on a 750px canvas so I could break myself out of the usual type of lines that I do. I then relined the wings myself. At this point, we'd thrown out the colour scheme that the original skin draft had. I was having a really tough time with what colours to go with! I knew I wanted something multicoloured and matching his Jester perfectly, but there were still a lot of decisions to be made.
(In particular: we liked the gradient of red on the inside of his wings, but we weren't sure about the yellow. I wanted to match it to the Mistral Mantle apparel (that I didn't even end up putting on him anyway, LOL), and the red of the Jester matched the flow of the ribbons well!)
I also changed the lineart of the wings from the rounded secondaries to the much sharper and more jagged ones that my original skin draft had. It seemed to suit him better! Also, we could get a nicer red gradient going this way along the secondaries, which was my original goal. By this point, none of the original sketch from al was still part of the current lineart. It had been replaced piece by piece, ship of Theseus style as I coloured.
Now, this is the part at which I usually stop in the skin. But I knew I had to be better for this one, because I seriously wanted this skin to be GOOD. So I took a deep breath and submitted to the process of merging the lines on top of the flatcolour and rendering the wings. I think they turned out pretty well. :D
This is where I asked my friends to do sketches on Tachy again. This time, I asked for open-ended sketches, things that they wanted to contribute. While they were doing that, I also received advice from 43617 on the ribbon flow and fethermage on the wing colours (more RED!) Big big shoutout to @grimae @fr-sucrose @mythicalviper-fr for sketching their own additions on the Tachyon skin. Asmo gave him gold scales, auro delivered on a remake of their previous sketch, Myth added feet and tail tassels, and Sucrose drew his flowers.
Now is when I relined, recoloured, shaded, and rearranged everything, added touches of my own, and then merged everything down and rendered the whole thing. I don't draw fabrics, and I was CONSIDERING asking someone ELSE for help again on that! But auro send me the psds of some of their own skins (warning: very good). That's how I realized fabric patterns don't have to be that detailed or intimidating if you don't want them to be. I was putting them off until last because I was scared!
I also looked at how other artists render fine golden details and shiny beads for the other parts of the skin. In hindsight now that the skin is on site, I think the lineart for the eye pendants should've been thicker. They stand out to me for how 'flat' they look on the dragon, which could've been fixed if I outlined them more strongly.
That's how we got to the skin you see today! I also made a 'lite' version to use for commissioning art, and wearing apparel with. (You don't want to throw the version of a skin with all the bells and whistles at an artist for a pixel commission, and having an on-site version is far easier than keeping an image on hand of how he 'should' look simplified.) Here's the final version of the skin with additional highlights and the flower arrangements.
Thanks for reading along! It took me about a month and a half (first draft was October 16th, final skin was approved yesterday) to get here. A lot of that was waiting around and thinking about what I wanted to do. Once I started the 'revamp', it was about a week to finish. The first few days were doing the wings, waiting for collaboration to come back, and relining. The cloak and the final few bits of pendant/cloak rendering took me a day, and then I let it sit for a while before I sent it off to the skin queue. (Right before Thorntail release, actually! I was worried about the wait time.) In the skin queue, he was rejected once for lines and shadows before being approved on the second try a week later.
Here's a gif front to back of the whole process.
I'm really glad with how this skin turned out. He looks wonderful and it couldn't have been done without my friends.
About my device and drawing program: CSP, 750px canvas size, 3-4px default hard round brush and eraser. (You don't need fancy brushes to make great skins.)
If you have questions about this or skinmaking in general, I'm happy to answer!
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