I love Rurouni Kenshin, it's my all-time favourite manga (and anime, if you count only the first half, up to the point where Shishio died). I love Shinomori Aoshi, he's my all-time favourite character across all other games/anime I know.

Unfortunately I have this "curse" when it comes to my all-time favourite characters -- I just can't wall them properly. I think you can see it in Aoshi's trench coat. It WAS going well until I got to the trench coat. And I am always starved for ideas for my favourite characters. The more I like them, the less ideas I have.

Anyway, process is in the spoiler (as I always put it):

SPOILER (click to view)

The scan can be found here, though I think I got a better version from The Oro.com. I love the scan, well mostly because I love the character, but well.

At first I wanted to call it Autumn Hues or something like that, but after playing The World Ends With You and finding out about the "Nature Set" of pins, I decided that "Stalwart As The Mount" fit the wallpaper better. So I had this vision of a very "earthly" looking wall, as well as deciduous/coniferous forests in my head (could never tell the difference between the two).

My initial idea was to use purely vector shapes, just like RK's anime art, and so unlike the scan, which was painted. I hate painting (as a technique, but if other people do it, I don't mind =P). Love sharp, crisp vector shapes. And I don't have a tablet. Mouse + Pen Tool = ALMOST to infinity and beyond.

Of course I changed Aoshi's colours to the original, unlike the one in the scan which had a autumn shade to it. Had to extend Aoshi's left arm....sigh. That was difficult. Almost made him look like some beefy mafia fella -.- But anyway I think it's okay. At least it was. Everything was looking good until the coat -.- I have no idea what happened.

Then, I extended the leaves, etc. I bet anyone can tell where I extended because it looks kinda...bad. Though of course I tried my best to cover up. I added minimal shadings to the deer and that orange thing at the side so that the focus would be on Aoshi. The trees were from another scan, the one of Soujirou (it's not in AP), and I also did not give them any shading because when I did, they took too much focus from Aoshi.

Finally, the background. I had no idea what to do with that empty space, so after (yet again) referring to my 2 RK posters in my room, I did a "paint" job. "Paint" because all I did was use the brush tool, randomly add in colours of shades orange, red and yellow, and then went mad with the smudge tool. My computer was lagging at this point (and I only had 5 layers, because I had merged all my vectors to try and reduce the lag), so I didn't want to be too precise. I was smudging according to the rhythm of "EXEC_PAJA_M/.#Misya extracting" (from Ar-Tonelico, composed and performed by Shikata Akiko, my favourite singer), so you can tell how "nitty gritty", or lack of it, I was. Thank god for layer effects which can hide a lot. But I think it wasn't *too* bad.

But I did like how Aoshi turned out (without the coat). And I like the "autumny" feel, so in a way I'm kinda happy with this wall. For now.