Top Wo Nerae 2 Fraternity

Hello, this is my second wall to go to the gallery and it's a Top 2 wall again. My idea was to make a "remake" of this scan:

http://www.animepaper.net/gallery/scans/Top-Wo-Nerae-2/item99495/

I wanted the vectors to look very close to the original scan so I really went for the smallest details (including incomplete/irregular/rough lines). Some might think it's a mistake, but I like the final result because I think it kinda gives a more natural look, not so "vectorized" appearance.

Basically, I vectored using the shape layers technique. First I vectored Nono completely (the pink-haired girl) in Photoshop CS2 (tracing and coloring). Next I decided to challenge myself and experiment vectoring with Illustrator. It was really tough, as some tools have significantly different behaviour in each program, so it took some time to get used to it. I traced and colored Tycho (the purple-haired girl) with it. I really didn't like much vectoring with Illustrator, but it has cool features like mesh gradients, so I decided to work with both. Therefore, I traced Lal'c and Nicola (I guess you know who they are now.. ^^) in PS, and colored them in IL. By the time I vectored both, I already had acquired quite experience with the tools, so it wasn't so difficult to shape the lines the way I wanted them to be exactly (well, Nicola, was indeed a pain to do, because he had really irregular lines).

To add a final touch to the vectors, I added some mesh gradients to each one. The effect is very soft and almost unnoticiable but it's there. I really like the way Lal'c's face has some slight changes of tone. ^^

Once I had the characters, I went to the background. I made a basic starfield, and added some nebulas (after studying a few nebula tutorials). And finally I've made those circle shapes, the cogwheel and lines using the PS Pen Tool and added the text along it and tweaked it a little bit.

I must've spent about 20 hours for each character, and 10~20 hours for background + tweaking everything until the final version. All of this through 2 months. "Hard work and determination" as they say in Gunbuster. ^^

I must thank Tama-Neko for his insight on the mesh gradients tool (it was really helpful reading his tutorial), nat and the others for their feedback at Session Zero, and Warrior for pointing out problems (I think this version has improved quite a bit). I hope everyone to enjoy this wall as much as I do! ^^

3rd Revision: I know that it's a bit pointless to make a revision after months have passed and no one will see it but I'll make it anyway. A couple of things were bothering me a bit since the wall made into the gallery. So I decided to give a hightlight on Nono's eyes since they were too dark and adjusted the overall coloring of the vectors. The other change was on the 4:3 version of the wall, I had used simple black borders to compensate the different ratio but it looked like the image was cut so I reworked them. That's it! ^^