Romancing SaGa 3 Fanart

So last week, I beat Romancing SaGa 3. It was a very interesting game and not really like anything I've played before. I would say it felt like a mix between Live-A-Live and Final Fantasy VI, but even that doesn't describe it entirely. I got kind of frustrated towards the end, since the final battle was really challenging, but I ended up beating it. And so to sum up my play-through, I drew an illustration of the characters that I used, fighting against Forneus. This started as a sketch, and then I got a little carried away and had fun playing with effects and experimenting with a new kind of style.

Here's the final illustration!

And now let me take you through the process!

 I ended up starting this one out on a mid-tone background. I was originally going to just doodle them, and a few of these were even sketchier, but I didn't save those layers.

And then I cleaned some of them up a bit.

I colored/shaded them in, and moved the characters in the BG back a bit, so that they looked more distant.

I set the BG lines to be a lot more opaque so they don't look as jarring.

And then I blurred certain elements of the characters a little, so important parts were more focused. 

I blurred my characters with motion blur!

Don't worry the next step fixes the spookiness.

I set the foreground to 75% opacity and Vivid Light. And then the background blur was set to 58% opacity and Overlay.

I decided I wanted that attack to look more epic. So I drew some action lines to create a better focal point. 

I set the object to Divide, so it would fit in better. 

I decided that wasn't enough of an effect, so I duplicated it and rotated it slightly so there would be two of those. I also set this to Screen 42%.

Then I duplicated that one again and set the new effect to Lighten 55%.

And then the final product! I just added some noise effects to give it a little more texture.