hii id love to hear more about your pre-ts germa au!! do you have any background info or premise stuff youd like to share, or maybe smth about the character designs/outfits from your comic? -fruityumbrella
ohhh im so sorry but you're really going to regret asking me about the outfit choices !!!
I think the biggest and most obvious change is the zoro germa clone uniform - as funny as it would be to see him run around looking like a goon, i think a really big appeal of the germa au style - and also something i personally love - is the knight look! its awesome! zoro looks awesome in it! I didnt want to really stylise the armour however, because as genuinely fun as it would be to spend hours on it, i both know that'd drive me nuts for comics, and i also dont really see germa as the kind of nation that goes for these kind of intricate designs over blunter looks - especially when we see how their castle looks lol, not exactly the most impressive of designs.
so for zoro, the actual individuality in his outfit is the germa 66 symbol (self explanatory), the stripes (for me stripes = zoro, spirals = sanji), and the colours - something i love doing is dressing characters in complimentary colours of each other or something the other is wearing - i think it works really nicely, and here, im hoping it serves as kind of an easter egg that the more purplish tones of zoros outfit actually match the yellow-ness of sanji's hair, especially when the outfit overall is so dark and dreary.
the one whos design i really really loved creating was sanjis - similar to zoro, i did go with a simpler look than i could've for convinience's sake, but i added a lot more little details that kind of signal to what sanji's character and story is - because obviously in this universe, a lot is told from zoro's perspective so we dont have that direct insight upfront.
i think sanjis original WCI outfit is already quite telling of his situation - the red is too vibrant, the shirt too loose and doesnt fit right, and its overall really just not sanji, which i really like. however, i prefer to focus on the constrained aspect more than a looser look - in my design, sanjis shirt is too tight, hes got this slim knee-high boots, and most importantly, hes covered in ropes and a big golden sash. I really wanted to incorporate this bondage-esque design into sanjis outfit, both to draw attention to the royal gold's hes forced into, and the overall prisoner look - i dont think you can really tell unless you're looking, but sanjis knees are actually tied together, somewhat limiting his movement while still maintaining the style present in the rest of the outfit - i was really suprised Germa didnt do anything about his legs at any point since they're such powerful weopans and only held his hands hostage when i first watched WCI, so this is what I would've done lol! also i just wanted him dressed like this. for personal reasons.
i also wanted to overhaul the look to have a more historical vibe to match zoro's knight design, so i took inspiration from royal/noble Prussian silhouettes with the knee high boots and very sanji-like waistlines, while also adding a sash and aiguilette-esque belt - as well as adding to the rope look, an aiguilette is often used to denote an honour, and here sanji's cut the ends into a knife and fork as a tiny rebellion where he can :)
I definitely have more for the other characters upcoming but I'll be here for like a month straight if I start talking about all that!!! Thank you so much for your ask you're a star !!!!
my take on the agnes/gertrude/elias situationship is that gertrude seems like the most normal one to outsiders (she's less prone to arson/creepy mind reading at inopportune moments), but she is still the archivist and therefore kind of eldritch. everyone in the institute has just sort of accepted that yes, the archivist does sleep with her eyes open/is muttering incantations, and it's the least weird thing she's done this week
ok the funny thing is, technically, if by "most normal" we're going off of who is the most human, Gertrude is the normal one. but I don't believe for a second that that's how she's perceived among the rest of the archive staff lmao. like...all her assistants wind up dead, she actively works to make sure her filing system is the least effective one possible, she takes random mysterious vacations and comes back looking like she's just gone ten rounds with a tornado...I absolutely think that Gertrude has the reputation of being the eccentric on staff. I've prepared this diagram to illustrate my point:
my mass attack for artfight!! thought it'd be fun to emulate to psychonauts clairvoyance style, through the eyes of my own psychonauts oc.
characters belong to(in order) @rottenrichi, @sjokomila,@cubezart, @tessereact, @dammarchy211, @hatchetsandwhatnot, PIWI(af), @peach-crem
Hello I am very obsessed with your art the crisp lines and your colours are everything to me shaking in my boots !!/pos
Do you think you'll ever post a tutorial/speedpaint ? Showing maybe how you choose colours or how you shade, things like that (mb if you already posted one and it flew past my radar)
Have a nice day !
THANK U so much!!!!! to be honest my process is super hectic and messy, and i never really have a clear goal in mind other than the main focus of a piece (im really bad at visualizing things <\3)
also i use procreate, so the speedpaint videos don't show my process of color picking and layer editing
buuuut if ur still curious heres my vid for my Ace piece, sense u didnt clarify (i used my sabo piece as reference for proportion and cohesiveness)
content warning for flashing screen / lights
as you can see, i mess around a lot with my shadows and tones, and never stick to a certain color. Art is about experimenting around after all :)
but to a little more in depth for my process, im a MAJOR warm tones user, and use softer colors for flats, while i usually pick cool tones such as green and purple (and blues, in this case) for shadows. Also i never really use actual pure white, always opting for light yellows or green/blues. It just makes it pop a little more imo
for lineart, sometimes i stick with black, but other times i will go for a deep blue hue, if i feel like it brings out the flat colors more. Another big thing is i LOVE messing with layer modes, which alter my colors a lot. Some of my biggest uses being luminosity, color burn, and any light modes
Anyways im not an expert artists or anything and im still learning and experimenting as much as the next person, so im not all that organized and clear with my process so i apologize, but if ur still interested i could try making a clearer process tut in the future !
I started this drawing with the intention of a quick doodle of that face Grian accidentally built last episode as being like some cute, no-thoughts-head-empty salamander dude that I’d post like “This is the big salamander in Grian’s base! His name is Derrick” or whatever. At some point it just started looking very creepy and when I couldn’t fix it I decided to just kinda....roll with it. So....
This is the eldritch horror in Grian’s base! His name is Derrick