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[sotethemighty]

"Excellent Jade. Age hasn't slowed you down one bit."

When I heard Thomas refer to Jade as "Big Boss," I knew exactly what I had to do. Of course, in keeping with the theme, I also had to draw inspiration from Yoji Shinkawa and his wonderful works. I'm a really big fan of his conceptual art, he really shows his skills when it comes to visualizing concepts. All of his concept art makes heavy use of rough, sketchy lines, and very minimal colours and brushes. Really, Shinkawa is able to say so much about a character with so few strokes, it's unbelievable. I suppose that's what concept art is supposed to be like, but that won't stop me from thinking that it's really cool!

I think I was able to get a good approximation of his concept style here. Obviously there are some areas of improvement, like the packs, but other regions, like the inner left leg and the hair, I think they turned out phenomenal. For anything that isn't a stick or any of it's pokey flavours, I struggle with drawing them. However, I think the rifle turned out pretty well here. I was originally going to give Jade the gun that the IPC grunt uses, but that looked out of place, and I think the rifle suits her much better. If anything, the combination of military gear and musculature gives her a more commanding presence, which is a perspective that I find interesting.

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[sotethemighty]

"Rules are made to be broken!"

I was working on another piece but I was really struggling with the background; I couldn't seem to get anything right. In a bout of frustration, I started sketching random poses, and the end result was this pose shown by Stelle. I really connected with this one, my workflow was very harmonious and I was able to easily jump from finalizing the sketch to applying shading and light. The legs were the easiest part of this process; mentally, they stuck out the most to me. They are in the foreground and occupy half of the pose, so I guess this probably why.

In spite of that, I did struggle with some parts. My struggle with shading and detailing hair has now been overcome and replaced with leather, I am not a big fan of how light reflects and scatters across it. I personally find my execution quite unsatisfactory, but frankly, I don't have the braincells to bother fixing it. I'm also unhappy with the eyes, they look like a cross between real-life eyes and more stylized, anime eyes. Combined, I think this creates an uncanny appearance to Stelle; she looks like she is only half-awake. Two more items to put on my to-learn list, I guess.

The mental image of firefly staring up to see the shadow of a baseball bat over her struck me one day. I flew to the computer and made the second image. I have no other words to speak about for that thing.

Overall, it was a week and a half from start to finish, actually only a week if I don't count rest days. I think I was really able to expand on what I learnt in my previous work, so even though there are obvious flaws, I would consider this a success.

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[sotethemighty]

"Do you still remember why Izumo forged these blades?" I recently figured out how to import custom .bmp files into Paint Tool SAI 2. Around the same time as this revelation, Acheron's Myriad Celestia dropped. Something about the rough and discrete nature of the art style resonated with me, and this is the end result of that. Usually I draw an outline of the scene objects before filling in the colour, but it was reversed this time. I think this method had a profound effect; everything feels a lot more organic and alive. I did struggle with drawing Acheron, adding detail to the clothes and hair was an interesting challenge. However, I like to think that my execution was successful; especially the pink highlights that contrast with the rest of the piece. This message is also very much belated, but thank you for all of the appreciation on the last work! It is truly pleasing to see that people do enjoy it. Hopefully the next work will not take seven months to post. Twitter Reddit HoYoLAB

[sotethemighty]

Thumbnail I made for RTGame's greenscreen movie night.

I worked on this from September 5th to October 22nd, and while I think some features could of been improved, I like to think that I did pretty well. I did run this through Glaze, so there are some strange looking bits of colour, but it shouldn't detract from the overall viewing experience.

If you're interested, here's the submission: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kFk46CoOpmc