The Making of Runaway, by Hyung Tae Kim

Apr 5, 2005 | While my works are called CG, I still begin each one the traditional way: with a pencil and a piece of paper. There aren’t many special techniques. Basically, I decide on the theme and choose specific materials to convey it, and then I compose the scene. The procedure hardly ever changes. Here’s a step-by-step look at the making of Runaway.

1. Sketching – Characters

Runaway is a recent original piece, a rather light-hearted illustration of the police pursuing three fugitives. The general theme is futuristic -- stark concrete walls and all -- but I also add some fantasy elements with the swords and courtly garbs.

I begin by drawing a few thumbnail sketches or croquis to roughly decide on the composition and setting

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Let’s use the last thumbnail sketch as the base. Usually, many people decide on the details and prop designs later, but here I’ll sketch some of them out first.

After the designs are generally done, I revise the thumbnail sketch in a larger drawing, paying close attention to the composition and perspective.

When the layout is final, I draw the faces of the characters. This determines the expression of the illustration.

Then I smooth out the bodies of the characters and roughly decide on the styles of the clothing: a midsection-revealing top and triple layer skirt for the girl in the middle and the previously designed jacket and shirt combo for the guy. Let’s decide on the clothes for the lady at the back as we go along.

At this stage, I tidy up the outlines of the characters and draw the details of the clothing somewhat. The important part when smoothing out the body lines is not how well you outline the characters but how well you express the placement of masses in the foreground, middle ground and distant space, enhancing depth of field. I try to convey the masses with a few repeated strokes.

More details for the girl’s outfit. I focus on making the link between the top and the skirt look as natural as possible.

Since the styling for the girl is mostly done, let’s move on to the guy. The design for the guy’s outfit is rather plain to emphasize its textures. And by designing a Kwe symbol on the shoulder and refining it first, I point out what I want to accent.

Then I draw some more details for the girl’s sword. Since it's one of the most important props, I design and draw it, along with the girl’s arm, very carefully.

It’s time to work on the girl’s hair and accessories. They’ll cover most of the top I drew earlier, but that doesn’t mean I could’ve skimped on the details. The girl’s chest is important since it affects the flow of the hair and the main point is to accurately depict this flow.

One of the important points in sketching is “direction”. Of course, the flow of the main characters and theme is very essential, but what I’m saying here is that it’s always best to draw from left to right, top to bottom (if you’re right handed like me). It’s common sense, but it's also something you simply forget when you’re engrossed in drawing. And then you suffer from the pencil smears...

So for that reason, I draw the lady on the left before drawing the girl’s skirt. By fitting her with a peculiar costume, I can give this neglected third character some emphasis.

Then I illustrate moving from the girl’s skirt to the guy’s pants. When you’re illustrating from character to character, it’s very important to not break the flow between them. You can finish one character and move on to the next if you want, but it’s easier for me to balance the flow of the characters by working on all the characters little by little.

After illustrating the skirt, I refine the guy’s hand, sword and pants in that order. I also pay special attention to his suspenders.

2. Sketching – Background

With the character illustration done, I carefully draw the background. The background for this piece isn’t that difficult to draw if the composition and the vanishing points are in place, so I’m just going to dive into it. First, I decide on the exact positions for the pillars of the abandoned building, and then illustrate pipes and other props to match the general atmosphere.

After that, it’s time to draw the security police in pursuit. The costumes are the same, but I illustrate them with a feel of variation in mind.

3. Scan & Edit

I scan in the sketch in two portions and piece them together on the computer.

When the sketch is first scanned in, the white paper and black pencil lines aren’t accurately read because the contrast is low. So I adjust the Contrast Level, making sure I don’t go too far and lose my important lines along with the unwanted strokes. You can either fiddle with the Level values directly or change the Brightness/Contrast. This process makes the sketch clearer and gets rid of eraser marks.

Then I further clean up the sketch by manually erasing any marks still left over.

4. Finish

And the sketch is at last ready for colouring.

Note from the Webmaster:

This is Hyung's method of working from a sketch to a finished drawing, and ready to color. When you are finally ready to color, remember to keep lighting and color palette in mind. Hyung-Tae Kim favours yellow tones and purple shadows, and he always has cast shadows in mind. He colors everything digitally using either Adobe Photoshop or Corel Painter.