Little Crazi and the Tooth Fairy + process

I've spent the last month trying to figure out Photoshop and Illustrator. I've got to say that drawing in Photoshop is a very pleasant experience, mostly. My biggest "come-the-f**k-on!" is the fact that you can not easily and in an natural manner change the size of the eraser when using a Wacom tablets eraser at the top of the stylus. When using a brush with the tip of my stylus I press an Express Key configured to CTRL+ALT plus a stylus button configured as a right click and then I drag the stylus right/left to decrease/increase the brush size. Doing this maneuver while the pen is flipped still resizes the standard brush, not the eraser, and it seems like there is no other way to do this. The only way I've managed to resize the eraser is to:

1. Flip the stylus back to its tip
2. Select the eraser tool
3. Resize the eraser
4. Select brush again
5. Flip the stylus back to the eraser.

This. Is. A. Hassle.

More on the PS/Illustrator experience in a later post. Yesterday I finished my first drawing in Photoshop. I realized when I was done that this piece was probably more than a little bit inspired by the I Hate Fairyland comic by Skottie Young. Well, this is the result:

Little Crazy and the Tooth Fairy (click to enlarge)

 The process

Below is a animation of the process of drawing this picture. In general, it goes as follows:

1. Define a clear easily readable silhouette.
2. Sketch rough on new layer.
3. Iterate the sketch for more details and clean up as you go until happy.
4. Ink up the line art on new layer.
5. Select the new silhouette (magic wand outside ink, invert selection shrink selection by 2 px).
6. Fill the character silhouette with black on new layer below ink.
7. Lock transparency and apply base colors.
8. On new multiply layer between ink and color: apply shade. Don't use black/gray, pick a color, this makes it more alive. I also used a layer mask here to make it easier for myself.
9. Apply a darker and more saturated tone of same color to create heavier shades where needed. 
10. Add highlights where needed on a new screen layer above the shades.
11. Apply squashed fairy.
12. Add balloon, text, background and other decorations as you see fit.
13. Sign the thing.

Little Crazy and the Tooth Fairy, Process.

That's it for now.
10-4 //Niklas Häggström