Alek and Russ smoochagram (Step by Step)

Develop the idea- Firstly you gotta talk to your commissioner and get an idea of what they want. For this, they wanted something goofy, new, and warm and adoring.
Sketch- The night before I made a little doodle of ideas I'd like to play with and one of having fire turn into water kind of just fit perfectly.
Mood board- creating a mood board I think is something that you just have to do. Get more complete and sometimes better ideas of what you want in front of you. The plume from the splash was one of those things I saw from a simple google search and I was like, YES! I gotta have that in there!
Refining the sketch- figuring out whether or not this idea is one that will work in the realm of touch and form. I think it does so we continue!
Colors 1- I figure I refine things at the color stage! Why waste time putting so much effort in the sketch after I've got the shapes and touch right! I really wanted to turn up the color mixing to 11 on this one. Make the splash feel like a firework, you know?
Colors 2- Moving on I did my best to consider several aspect of lighting. The reductions of all other spectrum of light being removed other than blue from being underwater, maintaining the opalescent colors, in the characters and the return of the red, orange and yellow spectrum of light as the fire brings those colors back! (I learned about that from watching a submarine something or other on youtube. Shining a white light on something while you're underwater brings back the local colors of things, rather than just the blue spectrum) Needless to say I barely know what I'm doing so I'll probably love this piece going forward!
Colors 3- so fire didn't really work with the vibes of the piece. It combined with the exploding colors at the top and the characters kind of just made everything too busy. So I stuck with the bubbles and the warm under lighting, since warmth is part of the theme.