leifandthorn

[leifandthorn]

Redraw of this wedding fashion showcase from 2016! Now with softer colors, and brush-drawn embroidery/flowers, instead of just whatever I could ink by hand.

Ceannic couples tend to dress in whites and pastels, although the darker knightly dress uniform is common if you're pledged to an order. The flower crown is a must, for all genders and presentations -- it's a general symbol of goodness and prosperity. Expect a lot of other flowers too, as a point of national pride. Sønska couples wear a lot more black, because the last thing you want in your wedding photos is to blend in with the snow. Plus lots of red (because it's lucky), and as much gorgeous detailed embroidery as you can afford. The jeweled silver circlets tend to be family heirlooms.

[leifandthorn]

I always do "winter/snow/pine trees" wallpapers in December, and I really wanted to shake that up a little.

Well, December is summer in Australia! So here's an Australia-inspired desert landscape, in the summer sunset. Russ Raifort from Leif & Thorn on a rock in the foreground, taking some readings.

Support on Patreon to get the high-res wallpaper in multiple sizes.

[leifandthorn]

Draw This Again: Annie Getting Pets

(Read the original post on Leif & Thorn)

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Costume reference for an upcoming magical girl from Leif & Thorn.

She's mixed-race, half Sønheic, and the guiding theme for her costume is "grill/fireplace." (Her transformation re-colors her prosthetic legs to match her costume.) She's also designed as a palette-swapped foil for Agent Delphinium, for...reasons.

[leifandthorn]

Meanwhile In The North (Again) 1/12

(Read the original post on Leif & Thorn)

[leifandthorn]

Redraw of this waltzing bonus sketch that went in Leif & Thorn Volume 1.

(I'll be putting the redraw in Volume 7! If you missed the crowdfunding campaign, you can grab it at the BackerKit preorder store.)

[leifandthorn]

Do not meddle in the affairs of Delphinium, for you are fragile and would look good without kneecaps.

Redraw of some art from 2016! This time I looked up reference photos of people swinging large axes, so her pose is more like the references than the original drawing.

[leifandthorn]

Thorn with a cozy poncho, a cozy cup of hot chocolate, and a cozy Leif.

Redraw of some art from 2016! It got a little avant-garde with the palette, so instead of trying to recreate the exact look, I did "similar colors, as created with one of the palettes I regularly use in 2024."

[leifandthorn]

Slow News Day: Dissociative Systems

(Read the original post on Leif & Thorn)

[leifandthorn]

Some analytics from the 30 Days of Leif & Thorn project! In which I took a random selection of past comics I'm proud of, crossposted them on a bunch of different social-media sites, and made them fight.

The sites, with my current number of followers on each account:

Tumblr ( @leifandthorn ) [228]

Mastodon (@ErinPtah@universeodon.com) [100]

Bluesky (erinptah.bsky.social) [151]

Instagram (erinptah) [235]

Facebook (leifandthorn) [34]

(I was doing Xitter (ErinPtah) [437] for the first part, but stopped after their AI-scraping announcement, and didn't bother adding up the data here.)

More than a week after posting the last one, I went through them, counted up the Total Interactions Per Post (likes, comments, reblogs, reposts, reskeets) and put them all in a spreadsheet.

Chart with everything:

...Okay, let's lop the peak of that one hot Tumblr post off the graph, so we can compare the rest of the lines more clearly:

Top 2 posts on each platform:

Tumblr: is "borrowerscore" an aesthetic yet (62), Kale's intro: still iconic (18)

Bluesky: setup for the storyline we're doing now (7) / setting up a brick joke (7)

Mastodon: fully wiped out by a different subplot (11), setting up a brick joke (10)

Instagram: setting up a brick joke (5), is "borrowerscore" an aesthetic yet (4)

Facebook: [a 7-way tie between posts with 2 responses each]

And here's the chart without the Tumblr data at all:

I made these by scrolling down feeds from most-recent to least-recent, so the charts are in reverse-chronological order. Doesn't really matter, they mostly didn't change over time.

(A non-Leif-&-Thorn post on Bluesky went viral in the middle of this, and my follower count there went up by 4x overnight. You might notice that my nonviral-post activity levels did not quadruple.)

Average response per post, highest to lowest:

Tumblr (7.48), Mastodon (3.76), Bluesky (3.72), Instagram (2.07), Facebook (0.93)

Median response per post, highest to lowest:

Tumblr (5), Mastodon / Bluesky (3), Instagram (2), Facebook (1)

Final observations:

A couple extra-popular Tumblr posts dragged the average upward, but even looking at the median, Tumblr scored best

Mastodon and Bluesky were an almost perfect tie. The Mastodon highs were higher, but the lows were lower, so it balanced out

I stopped posting regularly on Instagram at the end of 2021. This reinforced that it was a good decision!

Facebook does let users share posts! Unlike with Tumblr/Bluesky/Mastodon, not a single Facebook follower did

[leifandthorn]

Draw This Again request: Mata and Pato, at their wedding.

Even after all these years, the proportions and the shading on the original version really hold up. The main thing I wanted to "fix" is, the giant (normal-size) roses aren't a background accent here -- the husbands are physically surrounded by them.

[leifandthorn]

Extra Bennet (Slow News Day: Tech Problems)

(Read the original post on Leif & Thorn)

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Next of the "Draw This Again" prompts for Leif & Thorn.

Originally from a batch of mostly-final character designs posted in 2015. By now, I try to use a limited personal palette for each character's wardrobe, so the redraw follows those.

(This is set pre-canon, so it didn't spoil readers for Thorn's impending realization that Hyacinth grew another foot and dyed her hair.)

[leifandthorn]

Taking some "Draw This Again" prompts for Leif & Thorn art!

Thorn having a moment with imp!Kale and faerie!Leif, originally from 2017. Spot the differences. (I stuck to the exact skin tones from the default Leif & Thorn palette, but played with the colors for everything else.)

[leifandthorn]

Slow News Day: Tech Problems

(Read the original post on Leif & Thorn)

[leifandthorn]

how it started:

how it's going:

this pumpkin spice glow-up I swear (2016 vs 2020)

[leifandthorn]

Agent Dex, Agent Delphinium, Magical Ivy, and Lord Imri, from Leif & Thorn. (High-res wallpaper versions here.)

Terrible US politicians spent this whole election season whipping up fears against trans people. I wanted to draw a team-up of "trans characters who would throw down to protect you." But with two vampire hunters and one vampire in the group, Ivy has to step up and protect them from each other.