Sailor Uranus and Sailor Neptune art and process

Been watching some Sailor Moon Crystal and realized this couple was the first LGBTQ couple I was exposed to, unknowingly, as a kid. I remember the US broadcast version censored their relationship and rebranded them as cousins.

I had friends who were really into the series and being the internet-apt kids we were, they would stumble upon some geocities or angelfire site where they would find out how the broadcasts were being censored. I know the times are supposed to have changed, but to this day you can see how platforms like Youtube treat LGBTQ topics as "adult" content and work to reduce their availability to users and audiences. Ultimately, this is a harmful attitude that otherizes and conditions youth to see LGBTQ relationships as abnormal.

Regarding this piece, here is a quick description of the steps I take to produce it. Here is the line art; nothing too crazy here. I just drew and inked it using micron pens.

After scanning and making a couple changes like adjusting levels, I set up a different layer with flat colors. I use an aliased brush for easy magic wand selection. For this piece, I used Clip/Manga Studio and Photoshop for adjustments. The flat color layer will stay up at the top

This step is relatively simple. My line art layer is set to "multiply" and I add a layer on top of my line art layer set to "Screen." Then I fill it with a dark red color. This will turn my line art into that color.

I set another "Multiply" layer and choose a pink-orange color. I work the shadows by using a soft edge pressure sensitive brush and blending where needed.

I make another layer and set it up top. I set it to "Glow Dodge" mode and select a desaturated light yellow. This is where I work in the highlights with a medium edge watercolor brush in Clip/Manga Studio

Nearly done! All that is left is to save it out as a jpg and then open up that same file. Then I go in with the dodge tool and blow out the edges and white spaces. This makes it look like the background is an overbearing light and I think the effect is quite nice.

Thats all folks!