BDM127, 2D concept art for Graffiti Girl, 23 July

One set of bricks is warmer than the other...

GG will be animated with more "otherworldly" physical capabilities.  Her knees aren't going to bend backwards, or anything, but she should move with more freedom and flexibility than a flesh and blood woman.  Her arms and legs were already elongated and you can really see it in this piece.  She will also have a wilder demeanor to separate her personality from Monkey who will be more courtly in keeping with his surroundings.  She won't be as passive when Madame Le Snob and the Painter come to cover her up.

I like the separation between the background and Graffiti Girl.  She should be obviously made of different paint than Monkey and the shadow of the bricks through her body her will create the illusion of depth and movement over a rough and irregular surface.  To make her look like graffiti, I sketched her out in white and then roughly coloured her in with white brushwork to separate her colour layer from the brick.  The next layer was a black outline, slightly within the white, and a 51% paint bucket fill.  I am so glad to rediscover the paint bucket function!  Repeated passes of the brush intensify the colour and leave strokes.  That may be useful when I make Monkey, who is an oil painting.  That's going to take more thought and development... keeping the colour flat will be part of what separates him from the backgrounds.  He may need to be made with heavier paint bucket fills.  GG has a nice chalky/spray quality and was done entirely in Photoshop.  That's a lot of stripes to be doing in every single frame.  I will explore the tiling pattern option that Rachel showed me.  That should speed things up considerably if I can find a way of making it look right.  Or maybe a brush that will paint two lines of different colours at the same time.  Does such a thing exist?

I did the brick in Corel painter and then imported it into Photoshop to filter, adjust colour, and arrange on the wall. The second layer was made with a flat light colour and a few passes with a brush to add interest to the grout.  The lighter grouting with separate the brick without interfering with the black outlines of the characters.  I know that I can make my backgrounds wherever I want, but the characters will be rendered exclusively in Toon Boom Harmony.  I need to spend more time learning how to use that program's paint functions.  The background style is looking much more painterly than McCracken-y.  WWCMCD?

Simpler brick background

Right back to where I started!  I will not be McCrackening the brick.