The talented artist, Raven Momoka and I have teamed up again to create another collaboration art. Last time she colored my Silent Princess from the Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Before that, I colored her drawing of Wonder Woman. This time, the subject is Avatar Aang from the hit series, Avatar: The Last Airbender. This is personally one of my favorite cartoon shows of all time.

The Line Art

This one starts with the line art drawing, illustrated by Raven Momoka. She depicted Aang as a teenager practicing his waterbending. Why isn't he Earthbending? Firebending? Airbending? His stance suggests water because of the way his warms and fingers are loose and wavy. Water is a fluid element. So, too, is the practice of water bending.

The Flat Colors

Since Raven's line art isn't anti-aliased like I prefer, I couldn't use the paint bucket fill tool to fill in the colors with a few easy clicks. In instances like this I usually use the lasso tool to select each shape and then apply color. But this time, however, I used the G-pen (Clip Studio Paint) and drew my shapes instead on a new layer, underneath the line art layer. My pen settings have anti-aliasing turned off, which allowed me to fill in just how I like.

The Finished Illustration

To stay true to the series, I shaded this using the simple cel-style technique. I do this by creating a new layer over my colors, lowering the opacity to 30-40%, and I draw in the lines for the shadows and fill in again using the fill tool. I like to avoid using black on my shadow layer, it looks terrible on skin. I prefer to use a dark red.

The water is multi-layered with different shapes and colors. I blurred one edge to give the impression of movement. I also imposed a texture over the entire thing. I was going to only use for the ice, but I thought it looked pretty good everywhere else too. It reminds me of a old parchment, which is really fitting considering the series is pretty primitive and rustic, with technology being equivalent to feudal times.

As part of the collaboration with Raven Momoka, I also provided her with a drawing of Aang. My version is different because I illustrated him as an adult, as seen on the Legend of Korra. I am excited to see her bring it to life with her vibrant coloring techniques. Maybe I'll post it after she finishes it.