Heyo, I’m Will—your local raptor artist—and in this video I walk you through my full illustration process in Procreate, from thumbnails all the way to the final “big fancy splash art to flex with.” I’m drawing Bootheel (yes, the cowboy) with a ton of foreshortening, so I start by sketching multiple thumbnail ideas instead of marrying the first pose that pops into my brain. Then I scale up the thumbnail, refine anatomy in the rough sketch, and lean hard on references (I literally put on a cowboy hat and used a toy revolver… the photos are too silly to share). For the gun, I straight-up screenshot the in-game model and copy the angle—work smarter, not harder. Also: I hate drawing complex geometric objects, so yeah, tracing a small element is fine when it’s not the whole piece. From there I go into crisp thin lineart (lower your sketch opacity so you can actually judge your lines), flats, and my rendering approach: I shade each color individually instead of slapping a multiply layer over everything, because it keeps things from getting bland and lets me push different shadow hues per material. I show how I handle folds with a mix of hard shapes + blending and selection + airbrush, and how I make metal look crunchy and reflective with sharp contrast, environment colors, and textured scratch brushes. The background gets a perspective grid, some free city/window brushes, and a last-minute “make it nighttime” color scheme pivot—plus reflections to sell the skyscraper height. Final touches are the fun stuff: rim light, a “smoking gun,” homemade lens flare, dust, and chromatic aberration (and yes, this piece took me 30 hours).