Stuck

So I've been stuck with this image since early this week. It seems that no matter what I do to the background, it's not what I want. Usually when I'm stuck on an image like this, I just set it aside hoping that I'll get back to it. To date, I've never returned to an image that I've set aside in this manner.

Some of these are really a shame, since the rest of the image is very, very good. It's the one detail that bothers me that seems to ruin the whole thing. In this case, I don't want to simply throw away the image or set it aside. I need this image in order to make the new web theme that I have in mind.

To the right is a composite of the last three versions. The forth version is a photoshopped suggestion by my friend and fellow Otaku, Ratz. The original idea of the sketch was to portray Akisa listening to her MP3 player. The flow of the image was more or less an isosceles triangle. The short side would be the wall on which Akisa is leaning, with the peak reaching into the background on the right. The problem is that the desk I had drawn in the background is out of place in this triangle.

You can see this clearly in the third image. The desk is too far up and too the right. Under most circumstances, I would be able to erase the desk and reset it to the proper location. The problem is that I didn't notice what was wrong until after I had "set" the line art. I don't ink my drawings for a few reasons. One, I'm prone to making mistakes with my drawing that are difficult to correct if I've done them in a permanent medium such as ink. Inking also takes a great deal of time that can be easily approximated with dark pencil lines and some contrast adjustment. Finally, I find the inking tends to "sterilize" the image. I find the messy pencil drawing has more feeling than an clean, inked line.

I can still erase the lines I used to create the desk, that isn't the problem. The problem is that the lines have a noticeable imprint on the paper, and will leave ghostly after-images in the shading step. I could correct some of these in post, but I'm concerned the modification would be apparent. Ratz suggested to simple take a hi-res scan of the image, move the desk, and reprint it. My initial tests don't look promising. There's noticeable loss of detail in the reprinted images. Whether or not that loss of detail will be apparent on the screen is something I haven't tested yet.

One idea I haven't tried yet is to do a digital composite of character and background. That is, I will draw a new background on complete new media with no character. I'd leave the current Akisa sketch as it is. In post, Akisa will be cropped out and superimposed on the scanned background image. This will create a complete image without a lot of modification. What would help this idea would be if I could print Akisa on a transparent material such as vellum or clear plastic. This would be used a guide for drawing the background. The problem is, I don't have a clue where to get something like that.

Update: It looks like a pad of Tracing paper will work smashingly, it prints out cleanly on my inkjet and is translucent enough to see through the image.