Set in a parallel universe, humans were attacked by monster clan led by the demon lord Franko some 20 years ago. The monsters ravaged and killed a majority of people. Since then, the world has become a harsh place to live in. The ones alive were captured as slaves by monsters. In this chaotic time comes Joy the lady warrior with unnatural strength. She wields a large sword on one hand and monstrous left arm which she can control at will. The monster arm feeds on the flesh and blood of the enemy. In fact, she's a half human/half monster being, a by-product of Lord Franko's deed 20 years ago. Her mother passed away after delivering her to this world, just minutes after naming her "Joy" in hopes that one day the baby girl would return joy to the grim world. Raised by an old knight who survived the incident, Joy learned and mastered the art of sword wielding. The old knight taught her till his very last breath various fighting techniques and how to control the evil within. Now her education is completed, and she's on her way to set things right.

Now that the pieces are ready, I can then start designing the character. Now let's fire up Corel Painter! For the conceptual process, you can use any size document. In this case I chose 1600 x 1200 at 300 dpi.

After you start up the application, select one of the basic brushes such as pencil (2B) to test out the flow of line. You might notice that it doesn't react exactly as you expected, but do not worry, there's a way to adjust the feeling of your stroke.

The first thing you may need to check is the Wacom Tablet Properties which can be found in Control Panel (For Mac this option is available in System Preference Pane as well).

Double clicking on the icon will bring up the settings. You can adjust the setting under "Tip Feel" to customize the pressure sensitivity of the tablet. Do some testing and go to Corel Painter to test out the result of your adjustment. I generally set the tip feel to about depicted here, as my strokes tend to be quite firm.

Back in Corel Painter, you can also adjust further to make the brush stroke perfectly fit your sketching style. To do so, go to Edit > Preferences > Brush Tracking. (in Mac OS®, choose Corel Painter X > Preferences > Brush Tracking).

Brush Tracking allows you to set how the Painter program react to the pressure sensitivity of the Wacom tablet. By using sliders correspond to self explanatory names, you can adjust and customize to fit your exact style. It's good practice to do this every time you start a Painter session as each day (or even different time of a day) my preferred pressure is a bit different.

This is just my personal preference, I generally sketch in a new layer as I use the canvas layer for painting. It allows me to add layers of other sketches on top easily. For sketch layers the mode is set to "Default". My brush of choice during this phase is Pencil 2B.

After a few minutes, the image of the character starts to come out. Don't stop now, as this is still an exploration mode. Here are results of the multiple doodling sessions. remember sometimes it takes a while to get the right character out of your mind.

At this stage, I'd let the character shine out with the predescribed features. I also do take note for future references about specific areas of the design.

While sketching your idea out, it's best to let go and not worry about messy lines and such. Sometimes, I even leave mistakes in rather than undoing my stroke or using eraser tool.

However, if you wish to perform undo what you just did, simple press "Ctrl-Z" (or "Command-Z" in Mac OSX). To erase parts of your drawing (and Wacom is very handy for this) simply use the eraser tip of your Wacom pen (standard pen only) much like how you would in using traditional pencil and erase away the unwanted areas.

I've sketched out multiple images in order to nail down the specifics. Here are some of the sketches made for the character. These will be the base material for the final result.