#i have several bg3 sketches that i'm working on

[museofvoid]

i want to cosplay him so bad y'all have no idea

[bat-connoisseur]

I turned your Baldurs Gate 3 characters into furries. Sorry. Actually no I'm not I won't pretend anymore.

General notes and specific species under the cut.

Astarion: He is a Ghost Bat! I like to think him being a vampire and being a bat are entirely unrelated, it's just a coincidence and he's honestly pretty mad about it. Ever since I first started playing bg3 I had him assigned as a Ghost Bat or a Spectral Bat in my brain, just arbitrarily, and I went for the former just because the colours work.

Gale: He's a Eurasian Lynx! I had to make him a cat. I just had to. And I trawled through the wikipedia pages for pretty much every type of cat and Lynx was about the only one that fit in my brain. The fluff kinda evokes his beard and hair I think, and I almost didn't have him have proper hair, just the fur, but in the end I wanted to be consistent about it so he got it. Peep the greying muzzle because mans is stressed and dying.

Karlach: She's a Bongo Antelope! I knew I wanted her to be some kind of large hooved mammal, because of the horns but also because their builds and general sturdiness really suit her I think. It was a tough pick, there's so many cool ones, and when sketching I was actually going to have her be a Mountain Nyala, but I changed my mind last minute just because the colours of the Bongo fit SO well. They're also my favourite antelope. Let me have this. She's so cool and she gets to be one of my favourite animals.

Lae'zel: She is a Pterosaur! My specific reference was Dorygnathus, but I was fairly loose on the details and so she doesn't super resemble them beyond the teeth and tail. I wanted her to be something prehistoric since the Gith are aliens or something (i dont know dnd lore that well), and so I wanted her to be in her own sort of category apart from the rest so, prehistoric! I considered making her a dinosaur but the idea of a Pterosaur just really appealed for whatever reason. Kind of parallels their dragon riding if they can fly, I suppose? And their Enhanced 10 Foot Vertical Leap.

Shadowheart: She's a Hare! Very specifically a Hare rather than a rabbit. Hopefully that comes across. I wasn't super sure what to do for her honestly, but in several scenes she has these big scared eyes, and she's generally just kind of having an awful time and being harmed by the gods for the whole game and I was like 'hey I know an animal that looks like it's been personally slighted by the gods' and so Shadowhare was born. There is a part of me that wishes I'd made her a cat for the warrior cats joke though.

Wyll: He's a Pine Marten! I just kind of got it in my head he should be a Mustelid of some kind, I'm not sure why, he just has that kind of vibe to me? Maybe it's the way he moves, maybe it's his skill at killing, maybe I'm just biassed because I love him and I love mustelids, who knows. I looked through em all and I didn't want one of the bigger sturdier ones like a Wolverine because. Strength stat of 8. So I went for one of my smaller favourites, the Pine Marten. The reason he's not an animal with horns naturally like Karlach is because I still wanted them to look out of place on him! I toyed with giving him wings (because they're cool) but ultimately didn't wanna stray toooo far from Pine Marten.

And that's all! Perhaps I'll get around to anthropomorphising the non origin characters, but who even knows. Halsin would almost be too easy. I could make Jaheria a cool ass fox or something though. Much to consider. If I do them then I'm gonna be doing my Tav Deimos and my Durge Lethe though. That's da law.

[meanbossart]

Asks about VaM, art advice, and miscellaneous stuffs

HI! Real quick please refrain from referring to Sad Sack as S/S for the uh... Obviously reasons LOL We call it "sads" for short!

If what you're asking for are recommendations for a website to host that kind of thing, Neocities, Twitter, Itchio and as you mentioned AO3 are all perfectly good options! Patreon too (depending on how gnarly you're planning on getting) but I'd suggest keeping that as a secondary host option because I don't think it lends itself super well for getting your work circulating. I believe Bluesky allows that kind of thing too, but I'm not too sure since I don't use it.

Now, If you're asking about public reaction rather than guidelines, anywhere you go you might find people that don't jive with the work you do 🤷 just be upfront about the type of content you're making right off the bat to avoid having anyone stumble upon it by accident to the best of your abilities, otherwise, I wouldn't worry too much. I know we're constantly exposed to examples of overwhelming harassment and "dogpilling" happening to others but... Truth be told, most of us won't ever get to the size/internet level of fame where we experience that. I think the threat is a little bit... Overstated, nowadays. Not to mention that most of the time people are getting harassment for things that have nothing to do with their work, and rather relating to their behavior and attitudes. Play smart, be responsible, and be honest! Whatever comes next is in god's hands LOL

Thank you for the ask! Not sure I was of much help ��� but frankly when you're just starting out it's best to focus on getting the work done first and just throwing it out there, wherever it may be. You can worry about technicalities like that later!

I GOT YOU MAN the full sketch is now up on my patreon!

YES AND YES WHETHER IT BE STORIES OR ART OF DU DROW AND YOUR CHARACTERS SLAMMING PINTS TOGETHER BE MY GUEST PLEASE

I love seeing everyone's take on my weirdo so much, anything is honestly welcomed!

AW DUDE thank you so much! Especially for suffering through the mammoth of a story that ANE turned into - writing has never been my strongest point so I'm always shocked to hear from people that enjoy it 🥲

About the booze question, honestly I'm not picky at all, I usually go by price and by that I mean whatever is cheapest LOL but I prefer a dry white as far as types go.

You only have to pay for it once! You get a code that unlocks the software and all of it's features and you're free to cancel your subscription after that. At some point the code might change or there might be an update that requires subscribing again - but that seems like a very rare occurrence so I wouldn't worry about it.

OH NO I HAVE DEFINITELY TRACED MY OWN REFERENCE BEFORE, but not entire poses! When something is challenging I'll make a point of drawing it out the usual way.

I can remember a couple of instances from Nick and mine's comic where I traced pictures I took of myself, just as a time saving measure. Again like I said in the post, there are several ways to employ tracing your own material that is perfectly acceptable. I have also traced bare-bones 3D backgrounds that I made for the same reasons.

I know you specifically asked about tracing when something's complicated, but I still wanted to be upfront to demystify the practice under different circumstances. The rule of thumb is to never use it when you know it would be inhibiting your skill development!

Happy to hear you wanted to pick up the skill! I definitely understand the urge too LOL since playing BG3 and becoming so invested in the stories and characters my art has improved a ton, simply from forcing me out of my usual style and making me want to capture different moods and scenarios - finding something you're passionate to draw is, frankly a great damn start.

I replied to a bunch of asks asking for pointers and advice a while back, one of the questions was very similar to yours and I still stand behind the advice I gave then. Hopefully you can find something helpful here! https://meanbossart.tumblr.com/post/740543514692173824/some-art-advice-asks-ive-been-meaning-to-reply

HMMM I don't usually think of myself as the best teacher/tutorial guy, but funnily enough I can think of a few things about this topic that I could elaborate on lol. If I do that in the near future, I'll put it up on my patreon (for free as with everything else.)

If there are any specific things about it that you (and anyone else who would be interested in it, for that matter) find challenging and would like for me to focus on, let me know!

---

That's all for now folks, and as usual thank you so much to everyone who's left a nice compliment, word of encouragement or funny tidbit in my inbox as well! I can't reply to you all individually, but I see and read all the messages I get c:

HAVE A LOVELY REST OF YOUR WEEK

[oathbreakerapologist]

One Half Year of Oathbreaker Apologist

It's been almost exactly six months since I started drawing regularly for the first time in years and subsequently turned this blog into an art blog, and it felt like a good opportunity to do a little retrospective!

Warning that this post got ridiculously long lmao.

Several years ago, I left the art school I'd spent pretty much all of high school dreaming of attending, and I went off to get a very different degree and pursue a STEM career (of my own free will, lmao). I'm starting this post with that bit of information in order to say that for most of my life, I fully planned on being an artist professionally, and I was well on my way to doing so; I did sculpture, installation, and performance as well as (traditional) drawing and painting, and I'd shown work in galleries and a museum. Then, for a variety of reasons, I left the art world, and I mostly stopped making art. Towards the end of my short time in art school, I'd picked up digital art, and I picked it up occasionally throughout the post-art-school period, mostly to make the odd portrait of a DND character approximately twice a year. But I was busy, and I felt like I just didn't have much to say through art anymore.

A kind of funny series of events happened in late December/early January of 2024. One was that I finally started playing BG3. The other was that I encountered the art of @/meanbossart and @/barbatusart for the first time. I could say a lot more about what the body of work produced by those two has done for me as an artist, but all I'm going to say for now is that their work taught me to love digital art again. So, in approximately early January, I picked up my iPad, and I drew something, and I drew something, and I drew something, and I drew something, and... I just kept drawing. For the first time in a long time, all I wanted to do was draw. My life began to revolve around it. When I was working or out and about or otherwise busy, there was a little clock ticking in the back of my mind, counting down the hours or minutes until I could go back to drawing.

All I want is to make images I like, and have fun while making them. If I've done both of those two things, I've succeeded. Over the past six months, I've succeeded a lot.

All that being said, I wanted to do a bit of a look-back at some of the things I've drawn over the past six months!

January/February

My first-ever pass at drawing Ghost, an approximately 30-minute sketch-paint, is top left. I've changed his features quite a bit since then, but it's fun to know that the downturned eyes and high nose bridge were rock-solid locked-in since day one. You can also see the vague shape that eventually evolved into his weird little U-shaped forehead wrinkle. After that I moved into my "tidy hatching and geometric forms" era, which was interesting and which helped me improved my line confidence and pen control quite a bit, but which was ridiculously tedious to do lmao.

March

I tried doing a comic for the first time (top left), and while the final product is hit-or-miss to me now, I learned a lot from it, and I produced one of my favorite Ghost faces I've ever done (top left image, top right panel). I also drifted away from the super neat, tidy, geometric style. Around this time was when I really locked in on the way I wanted to do most of Ghost's features—his triangle eyebrows showed up for the first time here and have stayed ever since—and I played a bit with his body type (which still looks different every time I draw him lmao). Then I did another comic (bottom right image), which I like the look of quite a lot more.

April

I rediscovered white on black, something I did quite a bit of when I was doing traditional art. It produces a look I find really evocative, like good black-and-white film photography. I also drew a different guy. Allegedly I do that sometimes.

May

I don't know how I did this, and I couldn't do it again if I tried. What the hell.

January through March was pretty sparse on strong highlights. I started to become less afraid of them around this time. I also started to pin down Ghost's sense of personal style (for the rare occasions when he's not naked).

June/First Few Days of July

I'm in my Ghost Backstory Era and loving it. Every day I'm conniving about new ways to engineer Orin/Durge relationship agony. Genuinely, though, in the past couple months I've attempted and then finished several pieces that made me think, "Holy shit, I drew that," which is insanely exciting. Also, I'm starting to feel like I've finally started to land in a satisfying place with respect to the ongoing battle between my two favorite ways to depict anatomy, using either a lot of blocky, geometry forms or a lot of slinky curvy shapes.

I don't really have much of a conclusion to this, other than to say how much I appreciate the handful of people that leave fun comments/tags on my work—y'all's comments mean so much to me, your enthusiasm about my art makes me insanely stoked, thanks for all the love for my guy!

If any of y'all made it all the way through this long-ass post, thanks for reading :)

[cassieuncaged]

Get to Know Me :)

Tagged by: @babygirlbrainrot and @elfinbloodbag

No pressure tags: @mintspider, @galaxycunt, @chadillacboseman, @kyber-infinitygems, @unpetitoiseau, @captastra, @firstaidspray and anyone else who'd like to participate :)

last song: Washing Machine Heart by Mitski

fav color: many though I'm obsessed with green and practically every shade that exists.

currently watching: Nothing at the moment. Trying to pick a new show to get hooked on. Thinking about starting The Bear. My friend really wants me to watch Vox Machina so that's a contender too.

last movie: Rewatched Get Out (2017). Probably gonna give Nope (2022) a whirl next because I have yet to see it

currently reading: Just started Burn the Negative by Josh Winning. Not too far in but I'm enjoying it :3

sweet/savory/spicy: each has a special place in my heart though savory is my favorite.

relationship status: been in a relationship since 2018.

current obsession: Baldur's Gate 3, Astarion, Neil Newbon, Willem Dafoe, Steve Buscemi (some things never change)

last google: I am Kenough hoodie because I'm literally a second away from shelling out $60 for that Ryan Gosling Barbie fit

currently working on: work, paperwork for going to an acting conservatory (that shit is time consuming), several different BG3 fanfics, sketches I'm not happy with (but I'm trying my best)