#different style cuz I was looking how to draw ink

[maro-postacord]

My past attempts from last year to do Inktobertale 2023 (I hadn't realized that in the second drawing the date is january of 2024, that level of desperation to finish the challenge is funny 〒▽〒 )

I think I had a drawing from Inktobertale 2022, but my old laptop in which the drawing was went blue screen and didn't turn on anymore, so I lost all my drawings... I think so, I'm not sure, technically it was in the ":D" disk, and I was told we could take it out and get back all my stuff, but I guess that might be a little expensive and it isn't my priority, hopefully when I finish college or I get some money to spend I'll be able to do that, it would be a fun experience, like a time machine haha (*^▽^*)

[sparklykat-hideoutenthusiast]

I've seen people doing an intro post so I suppose I should do the same right? I have no idea how to do this, I'm just winging it :3

INTRO POST TIME WOOO!!

[last updated: sat dec 7th at 7:18 PM 2024]

(I update this often, a reread of it every now and then would be greatly appreciated!)

Maybe every week/month depending on your time scale? ↑

Follow my other blog where I reblog a bunch of stuff and things for the full experience of my personality and interests! @eckos-reblogs :3

@everytime-i-reach-the-postlimit ←Exactly as the name entails

@nature-is-mystical ←is my other random blog that you can follow as well if you want.

that blog is just for reblogging nature stuff and posting nature stuff. (Occasionally rhymes come with it ig)

side blog for fanart!: @sonar-fanart-hall

I'm always working on making reference sheets for OCs ^^

Chill dude side blog: @cool-dudes-official

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I will continue to edit this, probably for the rest of time to get it right since I'm a slight perfectionist lol

Hello! I've been an artist for around 5 to 6 years, and I still kinda suck at it! I do traditional art normally but I've been branching out to digital art as well. I mostly draw animals, anthropomorphic creatures, creatures in general, whatever beautifully ugly faces I can come up with, and sometimes human faces!

I classify as a furry but do not reblog a ton of furry stuff nor do I have a fursuit. I just like drawing and seeing anthropomorphic animals :3

Furries, Therians, anyone of lgbtq+ community (including ace people cuz apparently there's a debate about that), weirdos (but NOT in the gross way), and more are welcome on my blog! :3 ❤️ (you're kinda automatically welcome if you're kind anyway lol but whatevs :3)

Tags and stuff! To help you find stuff in my blog better through search :)

#Ecko draws -exactly as is obvious, it will be for when I make art, digital or traditional.

#Echo Rambles -For posts of mine that include mainly me talking about random stuff

#Echo rants - for when I rant. Similar to #Echo rambles but different..

#Echo answers - For when I answer asks!! :D

#The Clowder seeks - For when you guys ask me stuff!

#Mama Change - For when I mention my mom. (Her name is change..or it's more of a nickname but no one calls her by her actual name except for professional/job people like a dentist or something)

#Echo asks - For when I ask questions :3 lol

#Eckos moots <3 - for interactions with moots, obviously 🙄 (I love y'all sm)

#Ecko irl - me irl

My main Media for traditional art is, pens, pencil, gel pens, paint markers (posca) and normal markers! I hope to soon branch out to ink! (Maybe one day you'll get to see some watercolor stuff from me. It's not that good of watercolor art and I don't enjoy painting too much tbh)

Anatomy You say? Don't know her 😔

If you are interested, I do art requests! It's not guaranteed to be good or to be done quickly but I will try my very best every time. You can even request multiple times if you'd like! Like a ton of times! I really don't mind!

You can also request art of fandoms I'm not in but make sure to give me a good reference or the drawing will look off :3

Art requests open until further notice.

If there's something I don't mention here that you're wondering if I can draw or not, give me an ask in my inbox and I'll let you know! (Pls, I'm friendly I swear)

You can also dm me if you'd like but I'd prefer the askbox instead (⁠´⁠-⁠﹏⁠-⁠`⁠；⁠)

I can't draw/don't want to draw: items, anatomy, bodies (unless you want the equivalent of a boxy stick figure), rendering, lighting, dragons (without a reference), romance/NSFW (no, just no.), hands, human legs (for the life of me 😭), +more

I can draw/like to draw: faces, animals (mostly cat related ones but you can request any animal and I'll at least try to draw it.), different hair styles (only with a reference), eye bags (I think they're pretty lol), dragons (only with a good reference), gore (not the best at it but I'll will try my best to make something nice and bloody for ya!), +more!

My name is Ecko and it's my preferred name but you can refer to me as Melleona (my OC) or by a nickname as well if you'd like! (just please ask me first if you want to use a nickname as I'm bad with setting boundaries.)

My pronouns are She/Her but feel free to refer to me as it/it's! :3

Speaking of which! This is my OC, Melleona:

She is 14 years old, she is introverted and blunt but also shy and insecure. She has anxiety, dealt with a bit of depression, and she's very casual as well as lazy (like me lol)

She's half Cat, she has greyish blue eyes (not visible in the drawing), slightly blueish black hair that's long enough to reach her ankles, she has a mushroom themed party hat, and some wicked whiskers!

If there's anything you'd like to ask me about her or ask her, go ahead and ask away! I love anons and normal asks! ❤️❤️❤️ (There is a slight filter on the drawing. I'll edit this later and put her color palette below ❤️)

I'm a minor! Mind your words, don't send me gross/weird asks or messages. (I've already had a few people message me asking for my age, a picture of me, and my sexuality. No, I will not be sharing my real appearance on here. my age? Minor, that's all you need to know. My sexuality? I don't know and you don't need to know either, respectfully ^^❤️)

IDC if I post something slightly suggestive or that says I know about 18+ themes. I posted it, not someone saying something to me of those themes. Sure, I understand the stuff but It really doesn't matter now does it? It just means I understand enough to know you shouldn't be saying that stuff to me. (Boundaries ✨)

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I do half-curse in posts from time to time. I do censor it a bit tho, like "f7ck" for example. Hope ya don't mind (⁠；⁠^⁠ω⁠^⁠）

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I'd appreciate it if people reblogged my art!

I don't appreciate reposting it however.

Just in case you don't know what the difference between reposting rather than reblogging: it's when you (typically) take a screenshot of the art, and then repost it on either Tumblr or a different app rather than hitting the reblog button!

While this has never happened to me personally, I do feel like it's worth mentioning.

Oh, and, don't under a circumstance feed my art to AI. I can forgive reposting my art. I put out there for people to see not to get fame from it but under no circumstances EVER will I allow feeding my art to AI. It is not human. It does not make art.

AI artists don't exist unless it's used ONLY to assist with a process that is still mostly YOUR OWN SKILLS THAT YOU'VE CULTIVATED OVER TIME. AI is NOT art but it can HELP with art.

ミ⁠●⁠﹏⁠☉⁠ミ-ミ⁠●⁠﹏⁠☉⁠ミ-ミ⁠●⁠﹏⁠☉⁠ミ-ミ⁠●⁠﹏⁠☉⁠ミ-ミ⁠●⁠﹏⁠☉⁠ミ

don't dm asking me to commission from you. like said before, I don't have money bc I'm a minor + I don't like being pestered for me commission you. talk to me like a person, not an ATM.

If I want to commission someone, I will dm them and even then, I'm most likely to commission art from a friend to support them.

I support the lgbtq+ community! And I don't discriminate against race. I really shouldn't have to say this. (˘⁠･⁠_⁠･⁠˘)

I will respond to money asks with "!!" And that's it. I don't have money and even if I did I don't got any money to spare. I'm broke and struggling too. Not to mention, I'm a minor and can't just go out and get the stuff. I hope you understand and I wish you all the best!❤️❤️❤️

Some games and shows and stuff I like:

Shows and stuff: Rick and Morty, adventure time, lost in space, bsd (never watched it but I've seen enough of it on the Internet to know a bit about it. Very interesting :3), Some of the Life Minecraft series, httyd, doctor who, and more!

Games/fandoms: Yonder(Yonder Cloud Catcher Chronicles.), Minecraft, the Stanley parable, tiny bit of South Park, cotl, MLP(childish I know but I don't care. I love them), creepypasta, SCPs, Trevor Henderson's creatures (mostly cartoon cat), plants vs zombies, fran bow, little misfortune, and more!

Stuff and things (hobbies?): Art, apparently I make rhymes now too??, rollerblading, climbing, Hiking (iffy), sleeping, being annoying+lazy, doom scrolling, interacting with people, and more!

(I'm not really in any fandoms really..kinda like on the edge of being in each and every fandom I come across..)

General facts about me! Yippee!

I think eye bags and wrinkles are pretty (odd, I know lol), I live in a bus (not decked out like you see on social media though. We just live in a bus lol), I live with my ma (my dad is my step dad and he and my mom just broke up psooo ye), I blank out a lot and just stare at people for no reason (which freaks them out), I have greyish blue eyes (a long with some, I'm pretty sure permanent eye bags lol), I get energy right before nighttime mostly (and then it disappears as soon as it reaches around 11 pm to 12 am), My favorite color is maroon (and any type of blue along with orange and yellow and forest green..mostly just comfy vibe colors tbh but maroon is a fixed piece), my favorite animal is a cat (although I have a dog. Muffin doesn't count as a dog, she's practically human. Apart of the family.), and more!

(I'll update this as I go)

[I will block as I see fit]

Do not interact with my blog if: You're racist, you only or mostly have sexual themes on your own blog (I apologize but it makes me uncomfortable. Have some other interests and it might make me less uncomfortable ^^), if you in general just enjoy hating on people for no reason (I like to make my area a safe space for people) if you're a Zoophile (No explanation really needed but animals can't consent.) (more will be added later when I think of what to add)

Don't dm me unless you're a moot or you say your intentions within the first 1-3 messages. (moots that I've interacted with can send me a dm unprompted with stated intentions anytime they'd like. Special privileges ✨)

(Added a specific part of that bc a moot felt they were making me uncomfortable by having such themes on their blog. I didn't really realize at first but yes that does make slightly uncomfortable but I don't really care as long as you have other interests. If s3x is your only interest, it weirds me out to have those types of people interact with me. Just know you're all good moot, you're not the type of person I was aiming it at. There are other people that just don't think about anything else but $ex and relationships that creep me out and you are not one of them. ^^❤️)

Things about me, (random stuff): I am cringe from time to time, my fav colors are maroon and any kind of blue, orange is nice too though,

I appreciate any and all constructive criticism. IDC if it sounds rude and might hurt my feelings, TELL ME so I can help better myself and my blog! I'm dum and will most likely not notice I'm doing something weird or anything :P <3

•Send me asks! Wanna to hug one of my OCs, Want to slap the sh1t out of one of em, Want to introduce me to a new (or old) fandom I don't know of but you think I might be interested in, Want to say hi, Want to give a music suggestion, send an ask!

I LOVE interaction and if possible, I want to be busy with asks at all times so send a ton!

•Moots:

@theachskid @voidsweirdthoughts @burningbutter @rafrfr @rateater2000

@footlongdingledong @ender-the-insomniac @thistlebriar @rspoetry @virtualcroissantflapcolor

@jawdoesstuff @storythesilly @yourfavoritecuntist @chamber-of-voices @i-draw-things

@2oo7xddd @catsreblogging @silli-billy15 @totally-not-a-commie @khloethecatsworld

@1nd13gh0st @cur1os1tyk1lledme @nonbinaryriverclan @ilove-fanart-and-lore405 @hermitchild

@my-mom-named-me-duck @hermitchild

@williamsart12345 @lilytheaxoltollover @twobraincellsremaining @nn-the-doodle @emmajasonartz

@bugba-bugbee @railway323 @xho-the-scribble @asqadia-banthen @nasthesilly @ceaselessbackflips

@the-anxious-acrobat @justuravghazbin @callmekiyo24 @maybeyoullfindthissomeday

@sensehumor ♥️

+any future moots/one's I might have forgotten (I hope I wouldn't forget anyone 🥲)

If you don't like being tagged in tag games, let me know and I'll move your name over here cuz I copy paste the ones above for tagging in stuff: (nothing here yet!)

Moot side blogs: @thistlebriar-tags @my-dad-named-me-goose @mysterious-other-being @

Btw, moot/friend privileges: tagging me in whatever the heck you want, sending nonstop and possibly annoying asks, dming me and having a convo at random, +more! I love all y'all and am more than happy to interact ❤️

My art ↑

Yippee!! That's all for now folks! ❤️

I'll update this whole thing as I go, any questions, just send an ask and I'll update this with the answer as well as you know- replying in general lol :3

I seem incredibly childish in this intro post and my general posts but do know, I am over 12 years of age lmao 🤣

I'mma keep some notes here as well... mostly for tone stuffs cuz I can't remember these 😭

/lh = lighthearted

/j = joking

/hj = half joking

[ntls-24722]

cloesona

Featuring @artastic-friend's Kofruth and Atzurae! HOOH I've been thinking about doing this meme for awhile I'm glad it turned out so nice

breakdown:

So, I had the idea that from time to time in the comic, or when the perspective shifted, it would shift onto the artstyle of the respective species, here's how things differed.

Kofruth opens the scene in cave painting medium, cave painting that is notably lacking in Blue! Blue dye is a fairly cheap, common dye and Debu love blue, but it's sometimes excluded from cave paintings designated for fire rooms, which is... where most of their paintings are. Debu caves are completely dark except for the room dedicated to having fire, their fire room, which also happens to be the one they display their art in - because it's the one room you'd be able to see it! However, due to the lack of any other light but their fire, and the color of the cave wall, it's extremely orange in the fire room, which dulls out the blue color from their art. So, sometimes, they do away with it entirely.

Also, why is Atzurae just a bunch of lines?

Debu, due to their size, have the quirk of drawing most things from the top view, since that's how they see everything - especially the 2-foot-tall zebraelves! To them, they just look like big spiders. So they draw them as fat little spiders.

Also, Atzurae's cloesona! It's... not a zebraelf cloesona?!?! It's been given Debu anthropomorphic traits - tusks, and big nostrils! It's almost like it's kofruth's cloesona instead...🤨

I turned off the multiply blending mode to better show this - So, despite zebrapeople, especially zebraelves, championing dye production in the early history of Bolur, they only really make reds and blues. That's cuz it's all they can see! They could make a yellow due to paint something, but why do that when it looks pink, and they have red and white right there in their disposal?

There's also the art style - I originally went a completely different direction with this. My inspo was initially ancienct Chinese art since I saw the parallel of how popular the medium of ink and paper had gotten between both societies, and I had juuuust gotten to finishing before (and you can kind of tell where I was, at the scars around Kofruth's eye) realizing where I should've taken zebraelf art.

Zebraelf's aesthetic attraction is for geometry, and curvilinear designs! It's the same for zebramen too, somewhat, though not as strong as it is for zebraelves. Zebraelves LOVE making things with one stroke and they try to do it as much as possible since it resembles the uniformity and cleanliness of their stripes, though the exaggerated fur was fun (since they express emotions with their fur) so I tried to keep that, too.

There's also the anatomical inaccuracy of giving Debu teeth gaps. Debu notably Do Not have them in their front teeth, and find the seperation of said tusks creepy.

But that anatomical inaccuracy is far less egregious than the one in the next frame:

A closed mouth!!!

Debu's front teeth do retain some vestigial appearance of looking seperate through the gums and the striations, but their lips physically cannot close like this. Zebrapeople can close their mouths, though with a little effort since they have a natural grin, but Debu mouths are too tight, period.

Also, I think a zebraelf might give Kofruth a monobrow! Monobrows are seen as beautiful (due to the singular, aesthetically pleasingly unbroken line), so while not as common in Debu, they might still give Kofruth one.

Not much to say here other than this is easily my favorite frame!! The sclera are shown here since they're often shown in distress, and the white is drool, which are Bolur tears

Most "vertebrates" don't have sad tears, they have sad drool, and i've decided the new reason for that is because their saliva has chemicals with a mild painkilling + soothing effect, so when they're upset their body kicks the saliva-making into overdrive both to calm it down with those chemicals, and to slow their own breathing by having to stop and swallow their own saliva

That and there's the very cool detail (in my opinion) that Kofruth is implied to be semi-animated - Marc Azéma and Florent Rivère made the claim that a lot of cave art was made to be animated under the flickering light of a fire, and that's why a lot of cave art seems to be a lot of animals abstractly juxtaposed on top of one another. (he also made a video showing this off)

Also, here's the GORGEOUS bull from the Cave of Altamira i based the cave paintings off of. STUNNING <3333

[orchid-prince]

My 1st Year of Drawing through Fanart

I really started in July, so it’s not a full year, but taking a look back at where I started in 2024 is pretty cool! Checking for improvement, noticing where I was struggling. I can even see what skill I was trying to pick up at the time based on the jump in the skills quality/the lack of focus on others. So before the year ends here is:

✨My First Year Trying to do Art✨ through the fanart I’ve made! Enjoy!! <3

Would you believe it took me 3 tries to get freaking BILL CYPHER right ?!? This is V2 actually but it’s a good indicator of where I was starting.

This was the first day I decided drawing was fun for me. I woke up, and immediately picked up my pencil to spend all morning drawing, without truly realizing it. Keep in mind I didn’t even have a pencil to draw with before this session, the other work in this notebook are, like, all pen.

🎀My baby spinel!!!🎀 I adore her🥰

Is the art good, not really, but you can tell who she is and at this point that’s kinda my only goal. If it looks like ‘em it’s close enough for me.

Side note: This is the piece that instilled the fear I will mess up any nice sketch by coloring it, a fear I still have to this day.

She may look decent here but in my sketchbook she’s ruined foreverrrr XD

Ok…maybe there’s a pattern with the kinda characters I’m compelled to draw.

Aaaanyway this is where I started focusing on hair more, the spikey look was my thing in the beginning while I was still trying to figure out how hair works. Lowkey I’m still trying to figure it out.

Also WHY DID I DRAW THE EAR LIKE THAT?!? What was I even going for 💀

Fun fact: Daria is my benchmark for progress! She’s been my favorite character since I was a teenager & she’s made of pretty simple shapes. I imagine when I get more confident I’ll take more liberties with how I draw her, like Jane, instead of trying to make it a one to one mimick.

Also bonus Sir Integra Hellsing, she was my first attempt to an actual anime style especially in the hair. And similarly to jinx you can tell this was more focused on learning on drawing her hair rather than her face. This was a trend for a few weeks which did come back to bite me in the ass with this next piece

Ya know what I didn’t see a theme with the characters I draw before I started making this post, and now I definitely do.

But OH you can SEE my struggle with her on the page🤦🏾‍♀️! This genuinely took me 2 days to do because her face frustrated me so much I rage quit till the next night.

After this I went back to practicing eyes and finally trying finding out how to draw mouths and lips in different ways and positions to avoid this problem (Didn’t work, I still often refuse to draw a face if the hair/body is pretty)

And to top it off I inked it & accidentally made her lids look like eyebrows, so now I have a fear of inking 🙄 Thanks Catra >.>

Now THIS is where I actually started staring at my hands for a good 30 seconds after drawing like “MY HANDS MANAGED TO MAKE THIS??” Because this was only 6 DAYS after I rage quit on Catra. Yet I can make this?!!? What?!?

This was genuinely just supposed to be a doodle to practice using his big ol’ grin to learn how mouths work cuz he’s all mouth and teeth. But lowkey, still have no idea how this and the next one happened. It was a weirdly good art-day for me but I had never been more proud. And shockingly I’m still really happy with how these came out, usually I get pretty ‘Meh’ on my favorites after a while. Maybe even kinda nitpicky, but these two feel like my magnum opus for the year.

^^Look at this!! If I could inject this I would! Angel Dust with Pinchers is the BEST version. I will not take criticism.

This, similar to Fizz, was mostly for his eyes and to try to get the flow of hair and fluff down.

By this point I discovered if I find which of my favorite character has a design quality that is unique that correlates to the skill, I can trick my brain into picking up the skill through hyperfixations and sheer force of will.

Aaand welcome to Valentine fails to figure out expressions and head positions, ;-; someone give me back my 3/4 front facing view cuz obviously I can’t do anything else.

This was the most low effort fanart but Marcy became a pretty easy character to draw by this point so I attempted a spooky vibe to try something new. Unfortunately they all just look traumatized, yet that kinda works for her character.

This is the point I started having a little problem, towards the end of October and beginning of November I screwed up.

I usually tried to draw every day if not every 2-4 days. Right before this I skipped over a week, for some reason tho that made me feel like my quality has begun slipping. Like if I don’t try to put lines to the page every day even if I’m just doing circles and not drawing anything productive I’m ginna lose all my progress and go back to square one. This Anya (from the game Mouthwash) is from my 4 inch doodle book I got to combat this problem.

While I’m not particularly proud of this one I will say if July Me saw this I think she’d be really proud and actually love it. So I chose to as well. Besides I adore that sweetheart Anya in any form she takes!

And last but never least: KEN TAKAKURA AKA OKARUN!!!

This is by far my favorite of my most recent drawings. Playing loosely with his shapes was pretty freeing, since I have a very stagnant idea of lines and forms, especially with hair, so getting to do Okarun was fun. His hair and collar felt very ‘scribbly’ to me which was actually fun because I wasn’t so focused on exact shapes how I usually am.

It’s not perfect (like those lopsided ears) and it’s not a direct mimick like Fizzarolli but I still really really like it.

If you go back and compare this one to even my first three I feel like I’ve gotten so much better in the last 6 months. It only makes me wanna keep trying!

***************

If you read all this, firstly thank you!!

Also keep drawing, draw every day you can. Or pick up the pencil right now and start, idc if you think it’s “bad” idc if you make 100 “bad drawings”. Art is first and foremost about having fun, feeling good while creating. Not just to get good at it, which ,not gonna lie, was my focus in the beginning. But what’s actually FEELS good in the moment is to finish up a picture and be like “WHOA I MADE that! It didn’t exist before, I made it exist!” Everyone deserves that feeling.

So pick up the pencil and get to it!

The world deserves to see what you can create <3

[your-unfriendlyghost]

hi broski ummmm what programs do you use for art and what brushes

I use procreate! For lineart/sketching I usually use a slightly modified version of the Shale brush in the default procreate “calligraphy” section- just w/ the streamline feature turned down to zero and more like…size variation? (Idk I modified it a year and a half ago I don’t completely remember what I did lol)

Then for my grayscale comics, like these,

I use this Copic marker brush w/ just straight up black and varying levels of opacity. Usually I don’t use blending brushes in these, but in my most recent one I did.

For my colored stuff tho I use a lotta this pencil brush for everything (shadows, highlights, base flats, etc) and then depending on whether I want something more painterly (like the ocs on the left) or more cell shaded (like stevepop on the right), I either use soft texture brushes or a chalk brush (I cannot for the LIFE of me find where this chalk brush came from?? I’ve been digging but idk I can’t find it outside of my duplicate??) for highlights

Some other brushes/brush sets I use (all of them are free as of rn ‘cuz I’m broke):

Habook Brushpack (specifically the rectangle one- it puts down flat colors nice and fast but also doesn’t annoy me the way most “ink” brushes do!)

Laurenillusrated Brushpack- I use these mainly for skin, they’re really nice. (Also, @laurenillustrated is on tumblr- her art is so pretty, it’s like a storybook istg. Check it out if you haven’t it’s AMAZING)

I’ve recently started using @loish’s brushpack too, and I ADORE these brushes. I used them a TON on the Christine poster. You can get them by signing up for Loish's Digital Art School, which is a great collection of art resources as a whole, and it’s totally free. Would absolutely recommend

And finally, for the halftone texture I like to put on everything, I use the Halftone Hospital Basic Tone Kit. All of their brushes are fantastic, definitely check them out if you like the look of traditional art but also like the lower supply cost of digital art lol. Or just in general, ‘cause they’re great

(Then for the paper texture overlays I love so much, I usually use stock photos tbh.)

Anyhow, these are some of my favorites. But I do use others too, and this all came from years of playing around and finding what I like! I had this phase about…1 1/2-2ish years ago where I hated my art style and nothing was coming out right. It pushed me to try a bunch of different brushes- in retrospect I don’t think the brushes were what made it better, I just improved over time, but I had a lot of fun trying out different brushes. So definitely try ‘em out and experiment, because it really is a fun time :))

(As for my workflow, I talk about that here if you wanna know more about how I draw!)

[stepswordsen]

【KHR AU】 XanLena Chibi Commission by Hika ❤️💜🔥🪷

XanLena (Xanxus/Selena) Chibi Icon Commission by Hika (@/onigiwi2namayo)

Hika's Twitter: (X)

Hika's VGen: (X)

In accordance with Hika's Terms of Service (TOS), editing, using, or reposting these arts, in any way, is prohibited without explicit permission from Hika, and me, the commissioner.

Intro

I commissioned Hika to draw my beloved XanLena ❤️💜🔥🪷

Selena is my beloved KHR OC and wife 💜🪷

Her name is Nguyễn Selena, and her Vietnamese name is Nguyễn Nguyệt Vân Liên. Her Viet name, Liên, means "lotus" in Sino-Viet 🪷

She is a Viet NB assassin with a calm and aloof personality, who's reserved and mainly keeps to herself, but cheerful around people she's close to. Her design is NB flag colours 💜🖤🤍💛

She has an interest in gardening (collecting flowers, plants, learning about different types of poisons), and fashion (collecting clothes, including traditional clothes) 💐👗

Xanxus/Selena matching cheebs ❤️💜 The little Xanxus and Selena... I'm SOOOO happy!!!

My friend Snow and I used Hika's XanLena chibi icons as matching PFPs on Discord for a bit 🥰 They're just that cute 💘

Rambles

WAHHHH THE XANLENA CHIBI ICONS ❤️💜🫶 OH MY GOD THEY'RE SO CUTEEE MY BABIES!!! 🥺💗

THEY'RE SO CUTE IN HIKA'S STYLE… REALLY ADORABLE OMG I LOVE THEIR EXPRESSIONS 🥰💞💘🫶

Selena's smiley :D and Xanxus' grumpy pouty >:|

The round lines and shapes... OMGGG ✨ I love the colours too!

I love how Hika drew Selena's eyelashes and underlashes with the dots...

I asked Hika to draw TYL Xanxus' design since I felt like his TYL (Ten Years Later) design would be easier to draw.

Hika originally chose a dark blue BG colour for the both of them, but changed it to yellow and red respectively to make them stand out more!

The blue ones were nice, but omg the final versions Hika went with, do reflect their actual colours better. These fit them better! Matching eye colors (plus it makes their hair stand out from the BG more)

Since Selena and Xanxus are toned with blue/purple in Hika's colours, the new BGs have more visual contrast!

Hika was very accommodating with minor colour edits and revisions as well! 🙏

I wanna commission Hika to draw JuAli and IdaTatsu with my headcanon designs of them in the future 🥰💘✨

My Message

This was the message I left for Hika!

The finished commission arts are wonderful! Selena and Xanxus look so cute in your art style ❤️💜🥺 Really adorable~ I'm very happy with how it turned out!

I love their expressions 🥰🫶 The thick round lines and shapes in your chibi style are great. I love how you draw dot eyelashes in your chibi style!

The colours are amazing! The orange~ish red and blue tones you chose for Xanxus has such nice visual contrast!

I love how the background colours you chose match their eye colours too~ It really brings out their designs' overall colour schemes and hair ❤️💛

Thank you for being very quick and accommodating with colour revisions as well! I look forward to commissioning you again sometime in the future! 🙏 👍

Read more under the cut if you're curious!

Misc Rambles

XanLena doodles by Sen (@/stepswordsen)

I feel like the KHR ani style goes for a much more generic art style, compared to Amano's unique art style.

For Xanxus' late manga design (Rainbow arc Xanxus), Amano improves the shape of his hair and makes it more wavy and easier to draw.

Amano has an amazing art style, and really detailed lineart and inking. She's one of the biggest inspirations for me. Her style was honestly very inspirational for me...

I started drawing everyday as a kid (at 11) BECAUSE of KHR, so KHR is very important and personal to me. I first watched KHR and read the manga at 11.

Amano's style is honestly defining to my style - It shows in the way I draw faces and eyes.

I'm not big on the KHR ani's art style, but I do appreciate what it gave us with the chibi interviews, character songs, etc. It's also cuz of the KHR ani that we (somehow) get endless KHR merch.

I prefer the manga designs, but I prefer the ani's colours for the charas because the KHR ani generally gave the KHR cast more skintone variety (when everyone was pasty in the original manga)

The KHR ani did such a great job by giving the KHR charas more skintone variety... Even pale charas in the KHR ani have different skin tones from each other.

Original vs. My Edit

I headcanon Xanxus to have tanner/warmer skin.

Xanxus with darker skin (olive skin in the KHR ani, and either olive or tan skin in certain KHR ani merch arts), literally just looks better from a character design perspective, imo. That's just facts 📠

His design has much better colour contrast with the ani colours. Like the black and red colours in his design contrast better with darker skin. Also against his blood/wine red eyes. It has more colour harmony and cohesiveness in terms of the colours

Xanxus with pale skin has less cohesiveness in terms of the colours

Xanxus, Yamamoto, and Ryouhei's designs just look so much more boring, pale, imo.

For KHR, I go manga design + ani colours + my own take on the ani colours.

Since I have a tendency to saturate colours with my own arts.

As a personal HC, I think Xanxus has a very mixed ethnicity.

My Italian American friend Feuri said Southern Italy and namely Sicily has a more mixed population.

The ani colours provide a good base for me to work off of for me to improve the colours :3

I do colour edits for fun. I like playing around with colours (editing official arts to see how the colours work together) to help guide my arts. I either do colour edits first or just immediately start picking colours for my arts

...

I usually hand artists a Drive folder filled with XanLena's art refs (including my own doodles) and write some notes on their design details since this makes things easier for the artists I'm commissioning.

Selena is Vietnamese/SEAsian with light tanned skin. She has black hair with a long ponytail that goes down to around the same length as her long front hair strands, and wears a white blouse with frills and a black seam with white buttons. She wears a black pleated skirt with a white line near the ends, and black thigh highs with horizontal white diamonds, and black doll-like shoes.

Since Xanxus wears a brown fluffy accessory, red feathers (that may be dyed red -> orange -> yellow), green strings with red beads, I don't mind if the artists I comm simplify these details.

So, whenever I commission artists, I ask for them to draw my HC versions! I'm very glad that all the artists I've commissioned have been very accommodating! 🙏💖

The XanLena chibis Hika made are being used for Hika's Chibi Icon samples 🥺 Wahhhh

...

The modern remakes of old 90s - 2000s animes have such boring and bland dull colours to me.

I seriously fear that if they ever do a KHR remake or reboot, that they're gonna take away the OG KHR ani's better colours and make everyone look pasty pale (just like in the manga) just for "manga authenticity" and "loyalty to the source material" even though everyone looks so much more boring pasty pale!!! 🧍

[kradeelav]

so one of the technical bits i challenged myself with this gunter/corrin doujin was to:

(a) figure out an efficient process for professional multi-page artistic works in linux/true OSS programs - from ideation all the way to printer hand-off.

and

(b) a process that fit well with my brain and kept me from spinning my wheels endlessly redoing pages. it's a common problem with longer projects (aka why you see reboots of webcomics all the time, and also why i haven't been able to get "what greater sin" out for three years cuz i sucked at this lol).

why the focus on process though?

after mastering a certian degree of technical proficiency. it's what separates the hobbyist artists from the pros. not to toot my horn, but i'm quite good at project management process at work, and about two years ago it dawned on me to take some of that learned knowledge and actually apply it here if only to save eyestrain/wrist-strain time.

work lazier smarter, not harder etc.

before i get into the process outline, there's two programs that are doing the heavy lifting since i gave them a trial run with the last anthology and they worked great in tandem. (both cost no money and are available on all major OS's btw)

krita, my main drawing program. sketching/inking/speech bubbles/coloring/vector stuff can all be done here.

libreoffice writer - basically microsoft word for linux. i use it for arranging multiple pages, reordering, and exporting as .pdf to give to the printer (while amazing at rendering, krita can't export as pdf or show multi-pages)

so!

process wise, it occurred to me not too long ago that i needed to consolidate my multi-page creative projects into 3 major gates.

thumbnail sketches

proof of concept layout

"last 10" final

thumbnail sketches

thumbnails are a common concept in comics, but they're great for print front/back matter too. thumbnails ain't here to look pretty, their sole purpose to get the idea from your noggin to on the page.

here's a completely unaltered spread from my journal with a ton of thumbs and notes for this doujin.

so what's the kind of stuff i think about with thumbs?

how panels in a comic fit together with the major emotional beats + line of action. does the eye follow the pages naturally? do you "feel" the emotional impact?

does the compositions work with each other? negative/positive space, weight on top or bottom or diagonally, etc. do the pages feel claustrophobic or too empty? do they breathe?

decorative framing elements that reflect the tone you want + how they generally lead the eye across the page

random notes about overall tone or potential future pages

etcetc

at this point i import that digitally, and start drawing a proper sketch off of it.

fast forward from that sketch to:

"proof of concept" layout

i'm calling this proof of concept instead of a draft as they serve different purposes. a draft is a half-finished work you can just screenshot and show to anyone for feedback (like comms). proof of concept here is showing a certian level of completeness across draft pages to measure consistency.

lack of consistency is the mind killer killer of comics.

proof of concept is specifically meant to nip the 'fizzled out halfway' issues in the bud. it's to show you how cool it looks altogether already, but also shed a light on problem areas that are potentially popping up on the earlier side, so there's less time wasted.

this is a little premature in the process for a proof of concept screenshot, but you get the idea here in a later strip, shown here as screenshots imported into libreoffice writer:

another reason that made libreoffice writer essential is the accurate 2-page spread view. between that, being able to resize the page to whatever you need, and the very easy pdf exporter (with customizable compression), i don't know if i could do this kind of project here.

now, backing up - what kinds of consistency are we checking for here?

does the inking/coloring style change noticeably in a jarring way?

is there one comic strip that the pacing/paneling sucks in comparison to the others? or feels awkwardly added in tone and perhaps better saved for a different project?

is there one panel within a sequential series that's torturing you? what's the best way to throw it out and redo it even faster?

do the front/back matter support the meat of the inside in a clever, on-tone way?

did you accidentally change the font halfway through after you liked your new shiny toy? which one works better?

etc

keep in mind we're not just checking the consistency in one strip, it's for the book as a whole.

and then lastly,

"the last ten" final

"the last ten" is a mental concept i've used for the last ten years for single comic pages. it's especially tempting to noodle over endlessly making one comic page perfect, when you could have done ten reasonably good ones in the same time, and so i made this my last step making IC pages.

once when you approach a level of reasonably done, but kinda hate the page and are procrastinating on getting it out, stop, rest your eyes overnight, and list the last ten minor things you'd change.

once when you've changed those? out the door it goes.

i'm gonna switch to a different project but here's a good example of a "last ten" stage applied to illustrations when i did fallen!gunter's FEH mockups.

looks pretty complete, right? WRONG :D

i can't remember the exact last ten i used, but it was something like:

too much of one specific glowy purple on both, i wanted more contrast with the red glow + "water" texture

needed more effects on the first image to better match FEH's aesthetic

change Leigh's credits after they got a chance to see it and give the thumbs up

knee/shin on left looks unfinished painting wise, clean up

missing chest plate silver decorations on left, clean up

etc

this is the last hail mary check to hack your brain into being satisfied with the page. you've had your say, onwards to the next one.

now, you can also have an additional 'last ten' for the project as a whole. but it's especially critical for comic pages to help keep the momentum/tempo/pace going.

anyway!

we'll see how all of this actually works in practice depending on how fast i can get this doujin out. :)

[scarlet97531]

((⬆️Drawing ink(/sys) made of himself back in December that never got posted here))

((Personal vent/rant about comparing myself to headmates and masking⬇️))

⭕️❗️ink hasn’t really been around front lately so his clothes have mostly just been rotting in the back of our closet cause his style is pretty different to the rest of us, but like. Sometimes I wear his stuff anyway cuz it’s actually really comfy, but whenever I do I always get compliments about how nice I look from people irl. And like, compliments are nice I guess, but. I never get compliments when I’m wearing the clothes that I like. So it kind of feels like the people we know irl like ink more than me without them even knowing there’s a difference in the first place. I mean, I know they’d like ink better if they knew us too, cuz obviously I’m not exactly. Like. Well I feel like our names say enough about that. Ink is artistic and cheerful and friendly, and I’m weird and traumatized and queer in ways the people in our life don’t seem to want to deal with. Ink is a lot closer to what irl ppl think we are like, he’s more similar to our mask I guess.

It makes me feel like it’s better for me to just mask more, to try to make myself more pleasant for other people instead of being myself. And I’m like 90% sure that’s our family’s fault for being unwelcoming to my attempts at being more genuine, and I know it’s possible that I could find people that actually like me, but with the people we have to be around right now it feels like it’s my fault.

And like I know this is relatively a very minor problem to have, I know even we have bigger problems that I should probably be more concerned about, but it’s just always the little social things that really bother me.

Being compared to another version of yourself is a strange problem to have.

-Killer Sans the skeleton I guess

[shynetyme06]

1 - 23 :3

cracks knuckles okay

1. how would you describe your art style? uhhhhhhhh, maybe "safe" is the word rn. whenever I think of my art style, what comes to mind is just how little I've been pushing things with it. I wanna change that ;D

2. what's your favorite thing about your style? I realize I like to use semi-realistic proportions, its cool how comfortable I've gotten with drawing faces and bodies

3. what's your least favorite thing about your style? It's so static man. same thing I said for the first question, I don't think anything really looks bad, but it just is lacking in creativity in comparison to the older art that should be looking worse than what I do now. I prefer my older stuff ;D (looking at you inktobertale2021.. where did it all go wrong)

4. favorite thing to draw? regular ol people. human characters are def more in my comfort zone, which explains why I keep hitting skeletons with the humanization ray (also I prefer to draw feminine characters)

5. least favorite thing to draw? I can't even say I rlly dislike it cuz of how rarely I even do it, but I am procrastinating so hard on learning backgrounds..

6. warm colors or cool colors? cool colors are my fav, but i find it easier to work with warm ones (I used to put a cool overlay over all my warm toned drawings hgdhfg)

7. show us a WIP behold, the wip ever. this drawing... was supposed to be posted on august 2022. and then, it was supposed to be posted on dec 21st, dream and nightmares birthday. (atp if I do end up wanting to finish this idea again, I'll probably just scrap it and start over)

8. what's the most fun and least fun parts about your process? most fun is flat color and rendering. (though I rarely do the latter anymore) and for least fun, tbh a lot of the sketching part tends to be difficult for me, sometimes its cool tho

9. show us a finished piece alongside the original sketch example from when sketching was fun

10. how many different sketches do you usually have until your piece is finished? I think I do need to make more of at least thumbnail sketches tbh.. I usually just make one and keep editing it, trusting the process. (and that fails like 70% of the time. woww wonder why sketching isnt fun for me-) 11. show us the last thing you drew, be it a finished piece or a small doodle can this count,,

12. show us an old drawing first deltarune drawing. here's the redraw I later made of this :3 (also old hsgdhgf)

13. how long do you usually take one a piece? depends. I'll have like 276478923 wips started, and then I get a random idea that I just have to do right at that moment, and I'll get it done in like 1-4 hours. meanwhile old sketches start to rot and maybe if its lucky I'll revisit it before my motivation dies and my style is too different to wanna continue from where I left off 14. digital or traditional? digital all the way, i've gotten too dependent on the transform tool + liquefy ;D (and many other things tbh but I'd be here all day if I tried comparing them more jhdjdf)

15. if digital, what program do you use? procreate, the layouts on other drawing programs scare me

16. favorite media to work with when drawing traditionally pen on paper (am I understanding this right wdym media-)

17. what do you love getting compliments about? I like when people enjoy the humanizations I come up with, and also original designs in general 18. are you satisfied with the attention your art usually gets? hmmm yeah

19. how often do you draw? very often, I just don't have finished things to share most days

20. a piece from this year that you're really proud of :3

21. something you would like to improve on the dynamicness (well, the lack of it) of everything, as said before

22. what inspires you? Ink sans and a ton of creators in this fandom (also animated shows and movies, I love animation)

23. what's something you hope people notice when looking at your art? idk tbh, just notice it at all and I'm happy :>

[jazzyblusnowflake]

Which brushes do you use for CSP 😳??

oh i always dreaded this question lmao-

ill be honest and clear cut with yall~

✨I have no idea✨

//wHEEze-

ok lemme explain, [tho if you dont wanna read all this just skip to the images in the end that i posted of my dumb self made and modified brushes] i have always used different mediums in my art~ ive used SAI, Gimp 2, CSP and occasionally Photoshop for the effects, filters and some brushes~ and i almost never remember where i downloaded them from because, first off, they were free anyway and i also almost always change them to fit my style beyond recognition to how they originally looked by default XDDD

MOST of my work is usually with SAI with almost the only brush i use in general for everything [ Inking, Coloring the edges, Shading, Lighting, and most other hand drawn shapes and hatching and etc ] is used with these settings. i never change it because i had years of experimenting to finally be comfortable with these and i will die a painful death if anything happens to my laptop before i could save these settings so i keep it in my art files just in case lmao~ [i do NOT like change and trying new stuff is2g i need therapy-]

HOWEVER when it comes to CSP i have had..... very depressing progress yay :D ... SAI in my experience has been a bit sucky in being able to handle large sizes and layers or anything else and having the possibility of crashing but the way it makes some things easy has been a MIRACLE for my lazy ass, i might have given up art before i ever even started if SAI didn't exist, but as how all EASY things usually are they start lacking in variety after a while, and i realized since one of my friends had bought me a CSP a long time ago, heck i might as well use it and oh my GOD the anxiety it induced ended me up with an IV and several trips to the hospital for injections to calm me down [and potentially temporarily blinding me] im not even joking. i mean yeah i was going through stuff back then that did NOT help my situation in general but the fact that CSP doubled my anxiety cuz i just couldn't draw with it made me have several existential breakdowns where i thought i will never be able to improve my art as a self proclaimed artist anymore because i had gotten so used to only working with what i found PERFECTLY comfortable to my own tastes that im just useless at getting used to anything else... so what happened was that i went on the most violent weekly spree of downloading any brush i could that even resembled REMOTELY to what i wanted- i also searched for brushes on tumblr or google or anywhere else- i watched so many CSP transition videos on youtube my brain was spinning and i was on a rout of self destructive agony to make this WORK. so now i have a bajillion downloaded brushes and all of them have spawned 20 other copies that i have aggressively modified beyond any sort of resemblance to what they used to be- it doesn't help that the file names and the brush names are different so i cant search for them either 😑

but if the brush names could help you in finding them uhhh, heres like.... 1/10th of the brushes i downloaded and modified that i actually did NOT go back and delete because they are fun to have around XD

have fun, //goes to cry in a corner-

[stepswowdsen]

【Magi】 Judar Wearing Hanfu 🖤❤️🐈‍⬛

Judar doodles 🖤 ❤️ 🐈‍⬛

In my HCs, Judar wears a type of hanfu called Ruqun (襦裙). Ru (襦) is the cross-collared top of a hanfu, and the wrap-around skirt is called Qun (裙). The coat jacket is called Da Xiu Shan (大袖衫)

He'd look great wearing black and red hanfu with white and gold accents~ I haven't drawn his hanfu earrings yet, but I imagined they'd be gold with a red jewel, or something similar! 🥰❤️

Rambles

Compiled the most recent ones I like

I like all of these except 4, but my faves are 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7

(Just gonna repost this cuz I did a bit of an edit)

1, 2, and 5 especially have really nice eyes~

Oh, and the last one is the one I did before. I still like this one, actually, but I'd fix some stuff

Rambles

Judar doodles 🥰

I've been experimenting with drawing different eyes.

I think drawing a cat-like mouth with the fangs poking out also looks cute…

Nyan nyan. Nyam nyam 🐈‍⬛

Sen: CEO of Nyam Nyams (Meow meow mfs)

I sketched 8 in total. The eye style I've been experimenting with honestly looks nice???

My faves are 1, 2, 5.

And then runner ups are 6 and 7

In terms of the ones I like the most

I'm so picky with my arts so I've just been constantly trying to outdo my own sketches and make them even better to see which ones I should turn into concept art ref sheets. Cuz I wanna make a ref sheet of my Judar hanfu HC so that I can commission arts of him in it

But I like these ones a lot actually. Hehehehe 😚🙏

I drew slightly different eyes on the 5th, 6th, and 7th ones!

Different from my usual style, but inchresting…

It's definitely still very "me" though, especially with how sharp the eyes are drawn, the way they're inked, and the eyelashes. It's like a trademark of my art style. Like it's still very Sen-core in the way the eyes and underlashes are thickly lined but they're even more thickly lined than usual

The eyelashes are just thicker and the pupils are just inked differently. I like experimenting with different ways to draw his pupils. I have like 3+ different types of ways I could draw them

Other Sketches

I wanted to draft the post to post on mobile but Mobile only allows a limit of 10 images on posts, wtf 😭

I'm back home now so I can post the rest of this

And the other rough sketches I did but I don't like these as much as the top batch

The eyes of the 1st and 4th one in this batch are nice actually but I'm not satisfied with the expressions

[annthefool]

since i only have 3 oomfs from twt here (n I also assume they dont go on tumblr a bunch) ill just say some of the ideas for the art of the untitled logs I been keeping on my mind for a month now 🤧

.

art direction wise: itll be very focused on stippling for the 'pictures' taken by the camera, since pictures look fuzzy n crunchy if you look hard enough, which will be interesting to do with a pen I gotten recently, a pilot 0.38. but for the other ways to go by the art and how it'll be done will be somewhat different. the 'pictures' will be in these rectangular boxes to signify they they were taken by a camera (though not too strict on that aspect since i dont want it to be the same rectangle) but if I'm drawing a character talking from memory it'll be very gestural with simple indicators to what a thing is. a single pen stroke for the hair, n will just look very clean. but if it's of a fight scene then that's where things get interesting.

.

i will mainly use printer paper for the 'pictures' n other not very detailed or heavy handed works, but for a fight that needs that sort of reworking because of how I want it to look in the sketch, then the inks, and the (very very Very minimal) color placement will be more important. which i have more somewhat thicker paper I nabbed from school for another use but never got to. and regarding color, I've always been interested in the high contrast, inspired by pitch canker with the usage of reds black n white he does and haruko ichikawa, the mangaka of land of the lustrous. but how I'd intend to use high contrast is for something with a impact or the drama, shock of the sorts, with a whiteout pen for drawing very minimal detail. like if I want to emphasize the face or even the body, showcasing their strength or emotions while they're the black silhouette with the background being one solid color of white or red. but if i do want to draw all the pen strokes n detail then I'd wouldn't do the stippling, it'd be more reminiscent of BLAME! from tsutomu nihei, messy detail and most importantly: Cool as hell. it is the big inspiration for TUL anyway so why not go all out. i use crosshatching for my shading, so it may or may not work out? as crosshatching isnt very known to be Messy, moreso Perfect and Precise but ill manage.

.

back to the very minimal color usage I said I'd do: why so? well it may have something to do back to pitch canker again and another visual style that is very much so Cool. at least to me.. let's say I want to emphasize a character bleeding out, ill only do black and white as i actually dont have many pen colors besides the ones I Stole from school or i was given to by my parents, and also cuz BLAME! god damn it! ill use a blue pen, if you're wondering. or a character has a color code in mind, if they feel like a Phosphophyllite cyan then ill use that color to assign them with.

.

also. acrylic paint. that high contrast style I'd need to use a better paper for? yeah that's a big reason why, i only have blue Vermilion (because I'm DUMB and didnt realize it wasnt a good shade because walmart is SILLY) yellow black n white. obviously I need to make these drawings all in one thing so it wont be on a canvas. i described the idea I have for creating the one and only TUL book on twitter but I basically need the following: holepuncher, black n white paint, wire, scissors, ceral box, and the Prayer i have if i actually get far into making the untitled logs in the first place. itll be a book all compiled of the loose leaf, printer and slightly better papers all given 5 holes (I don't trust loose leaf with only 3) with maybe 130 pages. 100 pages isn't actually that much if you're making many different scenes in a span of 2 or 3 logs with 10+ drawings in there so, it'll be a moderately ok size for a handmade book made from paper and a ceral box with black paint on it.

.

that's the end of the more physical work needed for TUL, and my thought process really (i felt very rambly). thank you.

[alejandramdcblog]

DRAWING- FINAL CURATED PORTFOLIO

1. 1ST DAY BOXES

2. GESTURE DRAWING FROM WEEK TWO CHOOSE ONE

3. GESTURE DRAWING FROM LATER IN THE SEMESTER

4. CONTOUR DRAWING

5. NEG/POS ASSIGNMENT

6. BLIND CONTOUR

7. COMPOSITION ANALYSIS

8. HW JACKET

9. LEONARDO STYLE FABRIC STUDY

10. CROSS CONTOUR

11.VALUE

12. MIDTERM

13.FINAL

ARTIST STATEMENT

This was my first drawing class in college. I happy to say that I really like this class even when i struggle the most. This semester has been tough but im happy in how i develop little by little my skills with the class. With this experience I plan into growing and looking for more classes and focusing in my career and college. In this class i love using the charcoal pencil and sticks it was so new for me but it amazed me a lot. My favorite assignment from this class i think is all of them cuz they were fun to do and learning experience. The only obstacle that i came was with the ink and the color skin because i wasn't good at it but i tried my best for it to work. I feel like the assignment that i had most difficult of doing was the midterm because it was my first time drawing with different types of pencil but slowly i was doing the assignment watching videos and also remembering what the teacher said and im happy with the overcome of my midterm. Therefore, I will learn more and keep myself focus on doing more art.

[kimbureh]

geeking out about 3D anime

okay I *need* to talk to you about the anime movie BLAME! (2017). I didn’t expect it, but I immensly enjoyed the movie.

But let’s start at the beginning. I’ve read the manga back in the aughts, and even next to other popular cyberpunk/dystopian/dark manga, BLAME was so *different*.

Barely any words written on the pages, filled with immensly detailed drawings of megastructures that trap the sparse people inside; no horizon is visible, just structures over structures all around, piling up so high, neither ground nor sky are visible. Killy is a lone wanderer, ascending the structure-- A human being as detached from nature as can be.

later I learned how this unique look came to be; manga artist Tsutomu Nihei, and creator of BLAME, had been a student of architecture before he became a manga artist.

Accordingly, many of the panels were architectural in nature; they were “ma”, as panels without words are called, or “aida” which means “inbetween”. It’s a style of panel that isn’t common in western comic traditions, but is widely used in the Japanese way of storytelling: scenes that set the ‘vibe’, so to speak, let an emotion linger.

Not all panels shine like the ones above; you could tell the young mangaka was struggling with action scenes, which are plentiful, and especially faces. Both showed the effort with which they were brought into existence.

The action scenes sometimes are stiff, the faces skewed. They didn’t come easy to Tsutomu Nihei, although he immensly improved on that within the span of the 10 volumes BLAME ran. With time, however, I became fond of this peculiarity.

The world of BLAME is cruel and lonely; rarely does the lone wanderer Killy meet other humans, and even then, the connection is usually only very brief, be it because they die, Killy leaves, or the human turns out to be a machine in disguise who is out to kill every human it encounters. Maybe I’m sugarcoating things that needn’t be, but it made total sense for me that depicting those sparse humans would demand visible effort from the artist.

You can maybe now imagine my.... surprise when I saw the character design of the movie in 2017

anime eyes! so round and smooth! To me, it betrayed the rough and rugged style of the manga, I felt like I could re-watch K-On instead if that’s the style they were trying to sell me. Also, the Berserk movies had already ruined 3D animes for me, and I didn’t want to watch anything that didn’t have hand drawn anime characters anymore. Oh how foolish of me. We get back to that.

So, what changed my mind about watching BLAME? Glad that you asked cuz I cannot and will not stop talking about BATMAN NINJA. Seriously tho, do yourself the favor and watch Batman Ninja if you want to see a movie that is exactly as unhinged as it claims to be, and poses the perfect marriage between traditional Japanese art styles and modern 3D animation. Batman, several Robins, and a whole lot villains get teleported to feudal Japan, what more can I say. Prepare for some stunning views and increasing madnESS THAT WILL NEVER STOP AAAHH. Honestly, it’s a blast. I rewatch it yearly.

pease notice the traditional wave pattern (seigaiha) in the sky, which you usually find on Japanese fabrics, as well as the dry ink stroke look in the shadows of the characters. Here is another look:

first, a seigaiha pattern in the sky; then, Batman in closeup to showcase the rough ink brush strokes for shadows; lastly, Batman in his full armor cuz it’s dope.

ANYWAY. Watch Batman Ninja, let’s get back to BLAME. So, my faith in 3D anime was restored. It still took me a while to watch the BLAME movie, but I can only recommend it. I will probably make a couple more posts to properly geek out about it, but it’s on Netflix, it has some gorgeous shots that made me want to pause the film and gawk at them, and despite the low frame rate at times, when it goes all in, it goes all in and has hands down some stunning animation.

I absolutely LOVE that they decided to make the backgrounds entirely hand painted. Most of the time the background has no 3D whatsoever, or if there’s some, it is so subtly hidden that I didn’t notice it.

The 3D characters mostly blend well into the painted backgrounds, and I love the scratches on helmet and gear that are reminiscent of the rough ink drawings of the manga. Looking back, I cannot understand why I looked at the character designs and was disappointed. Scroll up and look at the face of the girl, she is a 3D model, no 2D. There are some gorgeous shots where you can’t tell that they’re 3D models at all, but I will keep those for a post where I’ll post spoilers. Can’t wait to get to that!

[conflitdecanard]

Hello, sorry if you've answered this question before, but what advice would you give to a absolute beginner learning to draw fantasy character illustration art? (Also do you draw while high? Since that is the only way I know how I can experience new methods of thought openly without judgement.)

Hallo (*°ｰ°)ﾉ

dxdezhjdhed I will answer this part right away: I don't consume any subtances :'D Drugs or alcohol or such

I don't know if I am the best at giving advices for such a general art topic but I will do my best (。_。) - Before all you should have fun - It may sound pretty... basic but if you draw stuff you enjoy, it will be easier to work ! It is motivating to do something you enjoy I would say

- Art style is a patchwork - It is how my art style is, I dunno if it works for many others but yah. My art style is a mix of details/parts I find really good. I took them and put them in my art style. You would not notice it because there is so many little details I took, my art style doesn't look like the artists' I took these details from. You can look for fantasy art you find pleasing. I have a channel in my personal discord where I put inspirations for my art. It can be just a detail or more details ( I would say to also save the source of the art ^^" As respect for the artist ) -There's many fantasy species and even more depictions of them- Fantasy characters is a pretty wide subject as not only artstyle will change how species look but people may have different ways of how they will represent these species too

‣For example: Firbolgs - I saw them as blueish/greyish giants with pink noses but for some years now, I draw them as cows-like humanoids from seeing people draw them as such and I just... loved this vision ! ‣ Or for goblins, I see people drawing them with tails and even whiskers ! I don't do tails or whiskers myself but it is different possible interpretations ! And the examples go on...

It is a bit like the paragraph above but here it is more about fantasy characters yah. If you find a way a species is draw even if it is not how it is show in " official fantasy books ", if you enjoy it and it will bring you joy then that's how you will have that species draw. Who listen to every details in handbooks anyway... /lh

- Don't compare yourself to others - Again. Pretty basic. And not easy at all to do for many, I know that myself oh my gosh... It is in part with having fun. You will not have fun putting expectations on yourself FROM yourself... It is good to have a goal but do not try to be EXACTLY like someone else. You are you and what you create is good enough. <:)

- Real life is also a good place to find inspiration - For personal designs or adoptables, I will often use stuff I saw outside or just thought about. Like: - Ragdoll bunny plushies, I had one I adored as a kid. I could do something around that yeh... - Tadpoles are so interesting ! Oh swamp goblins do exist uh ! - Ayah... This character from that movie really gave me gender emotions growing up. Hmm... I could use his hairstyle as inspiration, I loved that part the most yeh. - I'm watching videos about bugs. I'm learning about them and I could do stuff around what I learned and saw ! I'm really about using stuff you enjoy hehe :')

- You do not have to finish a piece or make it complex to make said art good - That's an advice I got from a friend recently. I would think only arts I have finished fully or put enough work into were " worth " posting. He told me just doodles/sketches are good enough too. Art is art. Art is what you create. You create ? You're an artist. It is pretty simple if you ask me.

- You don't have to post or show every art you did - I would say to experiment and don't try to make it good everytime. You can just let the pen glide across the canvas and just draw what you want just cuz you wanna try to draw it. Nobody can make something good right away when they never done it before. It is like... testing if an ink pen works ! You would probably just make a random scribble to see if there's still ink in it, if it still work yeh. You can just warm up and test stuff around and keep these for yourself. I do recommand to keep even little tests so you can look at them later, for inspiration or just to remember how far you have come ! o(^▽^)o

~

+ Not a general advice but a way of creating by just letting go I enjoy doing as a kind of exercice and game + Something I do WAY more on paper than digital is to... just start doodling and sketching without any real end goal in mind. I will start with a thought and just doodle stuff from it, like: - I think of the ragdoll bunny plushie of my childhood and just start stuff around it - Starting maybe with the plushie of my memories as best as I can, then maybe actual bunnies wearing the cute clothes my plushie wore, then maybe make the bunnies stand on two legs and have an anatomy more like my plushie had etc. I don't think or try of making it good, it helps me relax and let go. Empty my head from the day to day stress and anxiety. I will most likely never show these doodles to anyone. But here yeah it is more a me exercice and I don't say you have to follow it. And you have no obligations to follow any advices above too dhezhud (╯▽╰ ) Again I am no teacher and I believe everyone is different so not every advices or tutorial will work for everybody but it costs nothing to try ! Just be kind to yourself always ;w; @anony990

[worldviewcast]

The Origin of Worldview

So this is going to be a semi-personal, but also a semi-explanation post about alot of the background info regarding Worldview.  Yes it’ll be a long somewhat boring wall of text for many of you, but to ME it’s words I feel need to be said and it would mean the absolute world to me if people would take the time to hear me out.  Even if its only gonna be the five of you that continue on after this. Anyway...

Worldview technically started forming in my mind when I was probably about fifteen. (For reference, at the time of writing this, I’m about half a year to thirty-one) I was really into doing comics, I had done probably a hundred pages of a really dumb fantasy comic I came up with when I was TWELVE, a Sonic fancomic, and every morning on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, I would upload my micron inked and colored pencil story about some DnD characters into the school scanner to post on Drunkduck which is probably all still there today. Adventure’s Guild is missed in my heart, for sure.  But in between looking for my first job, the constant writing and doodling I was doing, and my schoolwork I was tossing another idea around in my head. A really DUMB idea, cuz ya know I was FIFTEEN. And I wanted to call it ‘My Big Brother the Ninja’. At the time I was influence by all the dumb anime I was watching and my best friend at the time who always wore black and stood about two feet over me. I don’t know if he’ll ever read this, but trust me if he knew I was talking about this he would recognize this story right away.  Well. My first job came around, along with my post secondary college work, and then a tech school I paid for, and.....life really started to get in the way of development. I was more focused on drawing Adventures Guild and other doodles for a long time, and soon enough taking care of my daughter took precedence over everything, and then I started sewing, and doing conventions....and the idea of ‘My Big Brother the Ninja’ was just stuck in the back of my head. Sitting. Waiting. Forming slowly as it waited for its existence - its time in the sun.  And at some point I decided I wanted Android/Robotic like characters too...some of my FAVORITE series are Kikaider : The Animation and Chobits (the books, not the infants show they try to pass a a fully written anime) - things like that. So I KNEW long before Worldview had a proper name I would be writing robot characters with a twist. But I couldn’t figure out what that twist was, what would make it work. The whole idea was still....building. It needed a push.  Right around the time My Hero Academia came around everyone with a creative mind seemed to be suddenly struck with a similar idea - what if unique powers WEREN’T so unique in a world?  This is fairly common now, but at the start of MHA I remember finding it weird that suddenly every half the new shows out had a whole population of super powered badasses in a world where living daily life with it was more the norm than the exception.  And I remember finding it REALLY weird this all came out the same time I evolving a similar idea for my own thing.... I wish I could prove I was evolving this ideas before I saw em but I can’t. I have a much deeper theory about the evolution of cultural art and how influences drive creative minds to similar conclusions but that’s a LONG mental dive for another day.  ANYHOW.

So my original idea in ‘My Big Brother the Ninja’ was the Ninja would be the weird super power in the normal world.  NOW I wanted the NINJA to be the ‘normal’ one...and the younger sister would be the WEIRD one because she DIDN’T have some sort of power or ability.  I fell in love with this new dynamic and now things were REALLY starting to come together in my mind, what kind of powers were people gonna have, just HOW mundane was it gonna be, how many fantasy elements did I want to have?  Because I already KNEW another element I really wanted to include was modern day Paladins - and YES I WILL be covering modern-day style Paladins in Worldview proper, but this meant the universe needed a Deity system, a hierarchy or pantheon.  And the world just started to grow....but something was still MISSING, the binding, the elements of what all I wanted to do -  Aaaaaaaaaand then came UNDERTALE.  And yes this ENTIRE long post is just me mini ranting about how WV came to be so people can TRULY understand just HOW much is inside MY universe so we can stop tagging it as part of the UT Multiverse please and thank you - it’s not that I don’t UNDERSTAND the confusion, but here is your ultimate ‘for the record’ post regarding mine and @little-noko ‘s personal frustrations. Undertale was obviously a HUGE part of pop culture, personal experiences, my life, MANY of my readers lives, I GET why the emotional connection is there and why its the first thing that comes to mind - but the ONLY part I truly was fascinated by with Undertale was the way the Souls were.  PHYSICAL Souls - an actual magical entity that represented a person - THIS idea.  This was my missing piece.  To say artists get inspiration from other artists is beyond an understatement - even Sans and Papyrus are references to Helvetica, right? If not references, inspired by, or ‘great minds think alike’, whatever your argument there....its not uncommon.  And Souls being PHYSICAL was the element I wanted to play with - the idea I wanted to expand on, and so much more I want to go into detail about but don’t want to go into spoilers yet so I’m not going to - and the absolute CRUX of my frustrations when dealing with ‘WV is just UT with different characters’.  Worldview has.....humans. Only humans, divided into four race. Mechanoid. Masic. Skeleton. Metazoan. (The last one exclusively because I wanted an excuse to draw cute cat girls, so sue me)  A pantheon of Gods. It’s own world map. Special BIOLOGY that I have developed to work specifically with the races I have built. Ability trees (diagram to come, don’t worry, we’re just still working out the kinks).  It’s own countries, nationalities, and even it’s own tangible form of afterlife which I blame watching WAY too much Supernatural on but HEY Reapers are freaking COOL man.  It’s absolutely gut wrenching painful to have people argue with me over a world that I have nurtured and slowly tended to for a good fifteen years...now that it finally, FINALLY gets a chance to exist and be worked on....I feel like the one binding element I finally found and played with and tried to expand on is the ONLY element that people care about. As if absolutely EVERY other element that I want to show just - doesn’t EXIST. We started with Finch because its a good transition from the old projects to the new and it’s the earliest event in the timeline - nothing more than that. But I’m almost starting to feel like that was a mistake because it’s TOO familiar.  There’s no going back now, and thats fine. But it does make me anxious to move on to the next ‘chapter’ we’ll be delving into.  MAN.  I hope that helps clarify a few things.  I love answering questions (those that I can) about  WV...so my ask box is always open.  For those that made it, thanks for listening. :)