OH SHIT I CAN'T BELIEVE I FORGOT TO MENTION THIS
the placement of the elim. contestants is roughly correlated to their relationship with the final 4 contender they're closest to

I was indecisive while making this, and was considering something like this, where the eliminated contestants recieve less focus. This screenshot's just the layers being on low opacity though lol

I just had a realllly clear vision in my head of the glass being vibrant, so I kept it that way.

I, well, didn't count, but I think I spent about 10-11ish hours on this, spread across 4 days. Not bad, i think! I'm getting faster!!!! Yay!!!!

I rendered the eliminated contetants first, then Coiny, then Book, then Needle. I only rendred TB last minute (because i kept forgetting about him)

I can't screenshot all the layers, but I will tell you I used the Glow, Screen, and Overlay layer effects the most throughout this.

I also spent 2 hours on shooting stars that I ended up scrapping lol

Here's what I used for the glass w/eliminated contestants!
It's what I spent the most time on (Oh, the pain of picking colors. I can still feel it)
The linear burn rainbow layer was a color layout i did on a whim when i was desperate. i then set it to low opacity and linear burn and it worked well

the bad news is that the rest of the drawing is stuff i'm a lot more uncertain on

-i'm probably going to add just a few more effects (adjusting as i go, mostly just to lead the eye into the center. nothing crazy) as i progress, but me being done with this means i'm done with like 60% of the drawing now. Yippee

THE COLORS ARE WORKING

this rendering is going to kill me oh my god dude

additional: make a preset color palette for the glass colors and choose accordingly

4. with any of the above, ignore specific characters having specific colors and do rainbow glass colors

just notes for me personally:
- DO VARIATIONS, please please remember to do this
options:
1. keep/don't keep flat colors, glass colors pastel
2. don't keep flat colors, glass colors very vibrant
3. keep flat colors, tint it with layer effects. glass colors vibrant (what i was going for rn)

PICKING COLORS IS SO MUCH HARDER THAN I THOUGHT OH GOD

I made a (kind of) mistake with the ordering of these characters but i'm going to go with it because i have already lined and colored them. I will try to trust the process