This is my first rendition of re-imagining Ghibli's work. I initially wanted her to glide over water (I considered having water skid past her feet as she flew). I used the greyscale method where I shaded in black and white value before filtering color on top.

I made a few sketches with references to the movies and covers it produced. I quite liked the one with Kiki and Jiji sleeping together and am considering revisiting that one in the future, but it felt too similar to one of the movie's covers. I was happy with the first one (the digital renditions are shown underneath the top four), however, found it too convoluted to continue with colouring and rendering. This did help me decide what kind of theme I wanted to go for, though, which was Kiki recklessly swerving through people or buildings in a hurry.

Then, I wanted to make something that encapsulated more of the environment than Kiki alone. As I mentioned before, I wanted her to zoom past pedestrians and cars, narrowly yet skillfully avoiding collision. With this in mind, I decided to have her 'hover' with cars on either side, which is shown in the next four images and particularly the final one.

I ultimately chose the one where she is squeezed between two cars. I already knew this would be difficult to execute- considering I've never drawn a car properly- yet wanted to push myself. I liked the idea that she was in a hurry- as if she were rushing to the reboot and next adventure or problem.

The first three pictures made me quite nervous because it wasn't going how I'd wanted it to. However, once I began filtering warm shades over the third and smoothing out the road tiles on the fourth, it was showing promise.

I think one of the hardest parts of this piece was I hadn't used a single reference outside of the films. Each car, building, and structure were snippets out of the movie's architecture.

Drawing and rendering Kiki was the easiest part of this entire illustration. I had the most trouble with the cars' anatomy, the background characters, and the perspective. It was frustrating, to say the least.

However, on the sixth drawing, I used a ruler in my program to balance the height of the car's seats, windows, and exterior to make it cleaner and more accurate. I would copy and paste the yellow car and dim down the opacity, which is how I made sure that each car looked similar and coherent. You can also see I started to add shadows which brought more depth to the piece.

I finished every car by the tenth and also smoothed out the pathway. Initially, I wanted a rough texture on the roads and pavement, as you can tell by the ragged brush I used. However, I soon decided to use a watercolor-based brush to blend and smooth everything out. A very large inconvenience was drawing the background characters. I made the canvas too small, which made moving assets and layers difficult because they would warp and blur. I'll definitely be using a larger canvas in the future to preserve the little details.

This is the finished piece! I added colored lines around the cars and Kiki to make sure she popped out and that the cars didn't blend with one another. Then, to top it off, I used a warm overlay filter and added dust to the atmosphere. I wanted it to look as though the sun was rising and everyone was getting to work or starting their day, including Kiki. To make it feel more domestic, I had children playing in the top left, a mother and daughter peering through a shop window, and a father with his family in the yellow car. I think every detail is important and deserves just as much care as the main focus.