#I wasn’t gonna tag the design change originally cause I figured it would be obvious but also I didn’t want to not give credit.

[samglyph]

Some sillies

(Yes I did change how I draw Oscar cause I liked @potato-lord-but-not’s design so much ok ok)

[blackyuna]

Stars Palette drawing rules:

use only 24 colors that represents each talent

no blending

just my thoughts just the cut

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I was gonna post this without the link to my inspiration. But this morning I randomly found it!! It was a Hakka drawing by WhiSha on Twitter (it was just a WIP when I saw it). I normally would bookmark posts but for some reason I didn’t bookmark that drawing. I know I liked it but I have this habit of going on my Twitter likes and would unconsciously like it again, thus removing the like. It’s been months and I don’t even know if the artist tagged the drawing. But today I found it! Funny thing about Twitter, you can search posts made by a user if you go to their profile and use the search box on the page BUT this only works on mobile.

Initially, I was planning to do just a couple of drawings. The simplest one I think would be Miyabi and it didn’t take me long to draw it. It wasn’t good though, so I ended up redrawing it. I was gonna stop after Arurandeisu but I don’t know I just feel like doing more. I did stop drawing by May to draw other things. Then continued in the last half of September and drew the first three graduates. I guess I was somewhat still sad because of Magni and Vesper. I was gonna stop at that but just to make it look good as a post on Tumblr, I also drew Roberu.

Then I just continued until I realized, I only needed to draw a bit more and I would have drawn all 24 Holostars talents. So I just drew the rest..

I really don’t know what I was thinking. Whenever I draw, I would either listen to Magnus Archives or a true crime podcast. Surprisingly therapeutic honestly.

I had 2 rules when I started. First one is obvious, use only the 24 colors representing Holostars. There are official Hex codes (mainly for Rio and Tempus HQ) but the rest I based on the background of the talent profile from the Holostars Official website. For Kaoru and Suzaku, I came across the color codes on Twitter. But I do take advantage of the canvas color which is always white. I’d like to think the color white represents Yagoo or Daidou Shinove. And the last rule, no blending. I was thinking, when you blend there will be a new color in between.

I do make sure to try to incorporate all the colors, which would explain why the details on Bettel’s collar are colored differently. Of course I couldn’t do that for all the talents so I just drew stars on the empty space.

I used an app called Sketchbook. When drawing I mainly used one brush that draws the sharpest lines, nothing much to say about that.

There were a couple of drawings I was worried about which is why I drew them last. But along the way, I kind of figured out what to do. Not all of the drawings were perfect. And when I couldn’t figure out what to do, I just changed the color instead of staying faithful to the design. Of course I wanted to stay as close to the original design, sometimes it just doesn’t work.

One drawing that surprised me was the Magni drawing. I was substituting colors but Magni with blond hair (Temma’s color), just looks weird. It feels like looking at a Magni we haven’t met. But somehow I managed to make it look different using grey for hair shadows (Vesper’s color) and using the skin shadow color (Rikka’s color). Then make sure to have a clear but subtle divide between hair and skin color. I was avoiding outlining the drawing but sometimes I can’t avoid it.

There are also moments that I’m thinking of a pose that would fit the talent’s personality (like Shien, Shinri and Uyu), then regret it cause gloves are hard to color especially because all of their gloves are black! But I kept it, especially Shinri cause I really want to draw his blue hand.

I wanted to draw Oga right from the beginning since he is one of my kamioshi but then again I was hesitant since Oga’s color scheme is dark. Also out of all the Stars, his skin tone is darker and it doesn’t look right to suddenly give him a light skin tone just cause it's convenient. I was going back and forth with the skin tone, I was debating Rikka’s color or Shinri’s color for the skin tone. Though Shinri’s color is probably the closest, it’s way too dark. I also wanted to color the hair mainly Magni’s color but there is no other darker color to give his hair shadows. So I ended up using the darkest blue (Izuru’s color) as base for the hair and every single black piece of clothing. Of course the colors are quite different from the original but it actually looks nice.

I’m planning to post the clean version. If you have noticed, on the posts I made, it has the line art. But I haven’t decided if I should post the clean version on the post I already created or post 3 new image sets (having 8 drawings each) for the clean version.

Well I’m done! I’m definitely gonna try and draw some other things. If I feel like it. But since I’m also doing a drawing summary for this year, I will definitely draw a couple more before the year ends. Heck, maybe I’ll draw Yagoo.

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If the links aren’t working, here are the URL you can copy paste: Rio debut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEmz1bLVUNk Tempus HQ debut: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jar19J3HXQY Color codes from Twitter: https://twitter.com/byongbyongbyong/status/1610860361745567745 Hakka WIP by Whisha: https://twitter.com/WhiSha_Sub/status/1643568245503324160 Hakka finished by Whisha: https://twitter.com/WhiSha_Sub/status/1643947160222695424

[scritch-scratches]

Hi! I have questions about Dominoes, if you're comfortable with them. 1. Has your opinion and perspective on your plot outline and characters changed at all since you began writing them? 2. What was the most fun/interesting part about designing Dominoes' world and characters? 3. Have there been any reader feedback and/or reactions that surprised you as the project's come along?

1. Has your opinion and perspective on your plot outline and characters changed at all since you began writing them?

This is something I’ve given a lot of thought to myself!

While Part 1 has stuck to its emotional plot points really well, it is completely different from what I originally outlined. Some of the original scenes I wrote made it in, such as Ran’s encounter with KID, Kaito tackling Shinichi of the rooftop, the ShinRan breakup, but many, many others were cut. I still have a bunch of them in the original draft of Dominoes. Part 1 was originally going to have three completely separate plot lines: the bomb, KID, and the BO. But once it started dawning on me how massive this project was becoming, I knew I had to streamline it and get the plot lines to converge and work together. I’m pretty pleased with the result, because I feel like the resulting plot line is much more complex and less cliche than any of the originals. It was a lot of work, and really frustrating at times, but I think it worked out.

My perspective of Part 1 has really changed; setting out, I knew I was challenging myself with this sort of teen drama set up, which really isn’t my thing, and I kind of wasn’t looking forward to it. Part 1 was a means to an end, something I had to get through to tell Part 2 and 3, the stories I really wanted to tell. But everyone’s reactions have really changed my viewpoint, so much so that now I’m worried that part 2 and part 3 won’t appeal to the same audience that part 1 gripped, because they’re quite a bit different. Nevertheless, I decided a while ago that I wanted to stay true to the story I set out to write all those years ago, so regardless of reception, I’m going to power through.

2. What was the most fun/interesting part about designing Dominoes' world and characters?

I love brainstorming powers and codenames for all the characters—I spend ages lovingly agonizing over them! I have a whole google doc just for a breakdown of each of the characters’ abilities and affiliations.

But the most interesting part for me is thinking about how I can turn canon on its head. Dominoes started with a few vague questions I have had a lot of fun answering:

What if, instead of Shinichi keeping secrets from everyone, everyone was keeping secrets for him?

What would Kaito do if Toichi was killed by law enforcement, not criminals?

What if there is a reason all these murders happen?

What if Aoko finds out, and doesn’t forgive?

What if there was a problem that the infallible Yuusaku couldn’t solve? Something that no matter what he did, the answer he came to was wrong?

Plus several more that are a bit too spoilery to be discussed at this time. 

I also love coming up with the story’s twists and turns. There’s nothing quite like being struck with an idea you know is going to blow away the reader, it always makes me full-on villain cackle.

3. Have there been any reader feedback and/or reactions that surprised you as the project's come along?

Just about all reader’s reactions have caught me by surprise in some form or another—I never expected the sort of emotional investment readers have poured into the story. Going in, I very much wanted to try my hand at fiction sensationalism; I wanted to write the sort of dramatic teenage soap opera that was so common in television in the 2000s, like Gossip Girl or the OC. Something that really captures that “everything is the end of the world” feeling you have as a teenager, with each chapter being punchy at the time you read it but vacating your head the moment you finish until the next update. The goal was to create what I affectionately refer to as a “Super Opera”.

But I may have failed. I may have created something very different, because this story...it seems to haunt some people. It stressed them out, or provokes extreme emotions I didn’t know it was capable of pulling out. 

When people started bringing up child abuse in the comments, for some reason, I was really surprised. Especially when people started saying the depiction of it in Dominoes is realistic. I never expected any of it to resonate with people so much, or even intended it. It makes me kind of anxious, so since the first few chapters, I’ve become much more cautious and careful when it comes to writing those scenes. 

I did not expect the intensity of hate for Dominoes!Yuusaku. I didn’t expect anyone to like him, hell, I wanted readers to dislike him. The story is designed to bias the reader towards Shinichi, so that the reader is inclined to stick with him later on, no matter what. That plan might have worked too well.

I was even more surprised by the reactions to the small throwaway line from Kazuha when she heard about the breakup—it is a pretty common reactionary attitude among teenagers, and I can’t tell you how many times I heard similar things from my friends or reacted similarly to breakups. It is just a brief momentary attempt at supporting a friend, but everyone reacted like they thought Kazuha actually meant it. Which was not at all what I intended.

Also! Some people seem confused as to why Yuusaku revealed Kaito’s identity to Aoko, despite Kaito’s threats, but I thought the conversation between Hakuba and him beforehand made it pretty obvious. I guess some readers are coming at it from the perspective that Yuusaku did it to, I don’t know, hurt Kaito or something, but Yuusaku did it for Aoko’s sake. Kaito was using her, and it was going to end disastrously for her and many others if it continued. As for Kaito’s threat, well, Yuusaku weighed his options and the risks and decided helping Aoko was more important.

“But Scratchie, Yuusaku clearly prioritized keeping his identity from Shinichi—“

Has he? Has he?

Yuusaku in Dominoes is not an easy nut to crack, especially not when I, the author, am deliberately biasing the reader against him. That’s purposeful; I wanted to make it as difficult as possible for the reader to get in the right mindset to figure him out. 

For anyone dubious about Yuusaku’s choices so far, I’d really recommend rereading his and Hakuba’s scenes with fresh eyes. Put aside everything characters say about each other and focus on what the things they say tell you about themselves. Who seems most concerned with keeping the identities secret? Who doesn’t seem as concerned about it as you might expect? What is each character really worried about hiding, as opposed to what they want the other characters to think they’re worried about?

What makes Dominoes such a long project is the complexity and duplicity I have to try and work into each scene. The unreliable narrator tag isn’t a joke! If you want to solve the mysteries, you can’t get caught up in each character’s head, you gotta stay objective!

I’m gonna stop here ‘cause I’ve agonized over the answers to these questions for a silly amount of time. Thanks so much for sending them it, I love seeing people interested in the sort of meta behind Dominoes!