Thief to French Maid (Patreon)

A sneaky rogue tries to steal a precious goblet, but ends up serving it, instead.

Really proud of this one! I love how the action, poses and colors all came together.

Originally, I wanted her to spill the wine as she snatched the goblet. I spent quite some time figuring out how to convey both her speed and surprise in a single frame:

While I love this pose's dynamism, the commissioner's outline had her transforming by drinking the wine. It didn't make sense that she'd sip it after splashing it all over herself. There's an alternate version of the sequence where the 3rd image has her looking down at her shifting, wine-soaked clothes but it only exists in our imaginations.

Instead, I went with her staring into the glass:

I liked the idea, but the pose itself felt a bit stiff and off-balance. During inks, I moved her leg back in both middle stages. This made her stance more natural and gave the action better flow, from horizontal to vertical. I also fixed the relative sizes of each stage which were way off in my pencils.

I had originally planned to light the entire sequence from the left, which is why my lines are thicker on the right. As I was coloring, however, I decided on shifting from cool back light to warm front light during the TF. This required me to modify my line weights. Thankfully, it's incredibly easy in Clip Studio Paint. I draw my inks on a vector layer, which allows me to use the Correct line tool to thicken or thin any line just by clicking on it, without needing to redraw it.

This is how you make a new Vector Layer in CSP (you can draw on it with any brush, just like a normal layer):

And this is the Correct line tool:

Still couldn't avoid some drawing, but it was much less daunting:

You might've noticed I have two inks layers, above. I came across this tutorial about softening linework. It's super subtle, but I liked the warm, glowy effect (you can see it especially on her fingers and eyes):

Finally, I added the window outline to the first stage. It's meant to help the dark outfit pop from the background, and also give the eye a high contrast area to focus on at the beginning of the sequence, and keep it from drifting straight to the end.

That's it! Hope you enjoyed the image and found this interesting! Thanks for the support!