TIL my 'quick sketch' layer was hiding under my final render for 3 months

I was going through my old project files last night, cleaning out stuff from a commission I finished back in June. I opened the layered PSD for a character portrait I did for a fantasy book cover. And there it was, this super loose sketch layer I had turned off at some point, just sitting there invisible the whole time. The final piece looked fine, I got paid and everything. But when I flipped the sketch visibility on, I realized I had completely changed the jawline and eye shape from my original idea. The final version worked better for the client's brief, but my early sketch had way more character. It was like seeing a ghost version of the same drawing. Has anyone else ever found a hidden layer that made you second guess your own finished work?

2 comments

2 Comments

charlie3848d ago

Holy crap, three months? That's wild. I've definitely left layers turned off before but never for that long without noticing. It's creepy how much of our own work we forget about once it's "done.

taylorm898d ago

Man I feel that. There was this one time I went back to a project after like four months and found an entire section of linked nodes I had completely blacked out about. It was just sitting there with no connection to anything else in the file, just orphaned and forgotten. Really makes you wonder how much goes on in the background of our brains while we're noodling around in there. Solidarity on the creepy factor for sure.