#i- i can not draw humans in the psychonauts art style

[gristol-liker]

HOII!! i know its not the truman/gristol art but i want to draw the archetypes from your psychic gristol {WILL- my take on it <3} hope its ok i may use some of them for my story tho - chulipexe

THESE ARE BEAUTIFUL!!!!

Schemer Gristol is my favorite of the archetypes I created, so I'm inclined to like his interpretation best, but, wow, that shadowy, firey Gzar Gristol is really something! Then again, Gristol looks so adorable in that pink skirt... but the stamp head is such an interesting idea... but little Gristol in the scribbled-in coat... but the connecting string... but- Ah, it's too hard to choose; THEY'RE ALL AMAZING!!!

Seeing these gave me the idea that the archetypes have "true faces." If Gristol can mask who he is so well, who says the archetypes can't do that too? Putting on a false face to appear "normal" or "more presentable," to others. After all, he's so good at lying, even to himself. (Jotting down a few ideas...)

Yes, you can use them for your story :)

[snurgle07]

Say all your psychonauts 2 thoughtS

All of them huh? I think about this game so much, I’d be here all day, but this certainly gives me a good excuse to ramble about some things I love about pn2. :D

- The characters are amazing! 10/10 I care about pretty much all of those freaks. The art style makes them all look so charming in a lopsided weird sort of way, and the game is so empathetic to everyone that even the characters we don’t get much of or who serve a limited purpose still feel well rounded and real.

- Raz is excellent. He’s loads of fun in the first game and continues to be a blast in the second. He’s even more adorable and earnest in the sequel and I love that for him!! He’s definitely one of my favorite characters of all time, I adore him.

- Adoring the characters goes for everyone though. And pn2 has a whole new cast of characters who are all super fun in their own ways. The Psychic 7 especially are super cool. My biggest soft spot is for Lucy, but I love Bob, Ford, and well, the rest of the seven really, a whole lot. Getting to meet the Aquatos is also awesome, and the interns are cool too. Lotsa cool groups of characters to enjoy.

- The story? Awesome. Feels grander than pn1 to be honest, and I like that, but also it’s completely great on its own. It’s got loads of mind shenanigans, drama, great mental health commentary, and manages to balance out all the trauma with enough healing and empathy and even a bit of humor that it all still feels nice and hopeful despite everything. Like yeah there’s a lot of angst material certainly, and as a fan I gotta love that, buuuut sometimes I need a piece of media to punch me in the gut and then give me a warm hug afterward.

- On the note of mental health stuff, I feel it did great. It’s noticeable that they talked to experts and people with personal experience. They were able to convey the mindscapes of certain traumas and mental health issues with more accuracy. The first game was certainly empathetic and kind in regards to that, which was a big deal at the time, buuuut the accuracy was a bit lacking back then. Pn1 shows it’s age a bit in that regard. Pn2 improves on that wonderfully with both kind and more researched explorations into the mind.

-The morals regarding the complexity of the human mind and the messiness of humanity and how we often make mistakes and have more to us under the surface… heroes are often flawed, villains may just be a version of a person we made up in our mind based off of our limited perceptions… aughh good stuff. There are so many good takeaways from psychonauts 2 and I love it!

- Also on a more personal note, I probably owe this game my fascination with psychic powers and psychics in fiction. It’s tangentially what got me into Mob Psycho 100, and has inspired me to make some psychic ocs. The art direction really impacted me and even the way I draw. My style has opened up so much more since practicing drawing such funky looking characters. I genuinely think it has helped me improve a lot and helped me discover more about what kinds of art style I adore and inspired my own. The gameplay too, alongside the art direction, has impacted my aspirations a lot as far as being an artist and hopefully to work in game design— which is to say it’s super inspiring! I think it can inspire people in a myriad of ways, it’s a very unique game like that, and it really reminds me why I love art, storytelling, and games so much. I genuinely feel I owe it a lot for a variety of reasons and I’ve seen many others who play it feel the same. :)

TLDR: Psychonauts 2 my beloved…

Thanks for the ask! I will never not want to talk about psychonauts, this game is sticking in my brain for good.

[beebfreeb]

what are your inspirations?

Well depending on what exactly you mean, this answer gets really long.

Many of the video games and shows of my Very Young Life, one specific older family member, and every time I see a piece of art that is strange in execution and/or in concept and go WOAH!!! Also the TRS-80 Model IV my favorite device ever.

Here is the shortest general list I can come up with off the top of my head. It is not at all comprehensive, but it includes many of the works that were influential to my personality and creative style:

Psychonauts

Okage Shadow King (experienced only through letsplays)

LittleBig Planet series

Gregory Horror Show

Destroy All Humans for the ps2 (too young to be playing this and was bad at it so an older family member finished it for me)

Legend of Zelda Twilight Princess Wii Port (same as above)

All cartoons I watched at age 6 (Invader ZiM, Powerpuff Girls, Felix the Cat, the original Transformers cartoon on VHS but I thought it was boring, classic Scooby Doo, and classic Tom and Jerry)

Princess Tutu (Princess Tutu made me crazy insane + Was young enough to still play pretend when I watched it and thus would reenact every seen with Rue in it as Rue)

Source Engine (constant and early exposure to GMod, HL1+2, Portal 1+2, TF2, and various SFMs and YTPs. This made me normal.) (Watched older family member play these)

The Stanley Parable may also count as Source Engine stuff but I had all of the Narrator lines memorized when I was like, 8 or 9. I was insane about this one in a special way.

DOS games such as Princess Maker 2 and Star Control II

Spore the best video game ever (Watched older family member play this and extensively cheated when I played it myself)

Sid Meier's Civilization IV (Watched older family member play this)

I used to roleplay Flowey extensively on Shamchat during middle school.

2001: A Space Odyssey. I first read the book in middle school and then watched the movie years later and my brain blew up.

Fallout New Vegas (Watched older family member play this)

Older family member also taught me how to program at age 11 using QBasic on a TRS-80 Model 4. This TRS-80 later survived a flood.

As for various concepts that I like. I have been autistic about robots and AI since I was 5, and have been equating the mechanical and the divine since 2018 (looks nostalgically at Omega one of my favorite OCs ever) and so you know. The inherent transgenderism/autismism and various things wrong with my brain and personality of being designed for a singular purpose but because you were designed poorly you are unable to fulfill the role that you were built for.

If you have something more specific, let me know! I am also inspired by every time I see someone on here who posts a drawing and it looks cool.

This is the TRS-80 Model IV by the way isn't she awesome? She's an older sister to me. I miss her every day of my life.

[rainbowchewynuggets]

Okay, change of plans.

Despite my best laid plans, my intentions to produce that Hellboy comic through October are turning out to be more unrealistic than they were before I moved. Unforeseen circumstances are going to reduce the amount of free time I have in the near future (thanks, Ian), and I straight up overestimated how quickly I’d be able to draw each page. Which happens a lot.

See, there’s kind of a bigger problem here. I routinely find myself getting excited about making a comic project, writing it all out, and then burning out repeatedly as I draw it. For the longest time, I thought that was just what it took to draw that many cool pictures on one page. It wasn’t until I started living with a friend from college that I realized there was a problem. Or, he realized it first. He’s astonishingly good at clocking me through my stubborn bullshit lol. He said that maybe I constantly burn out because I’m using 100% of my artistic capacity 100% of the time. Which sounds ideal on paper. I’m making the very best art that I can. But it’s completely unsustainable because, uh… I’m a human with limits, as I constantly forget. And comics take a lot of stamina.

Because I don’t understand comics. I read comics all the time growing up, but I didn’t draw like them. I learned to draw from making fine art pieces in school. I drew with realism and life drawing as the core of my practice because that’s what my dad had been taught back when he aspired to be an animator at Disney, and that’s what he taught me. The only thing that ever impressed art teachers and classmates was how accurately I could draw a face or a vase or a landscape. So I did that as well as I could.

Now, I should be clear here. Realism absolutely has a place in comics. Some of the most beautiful and intelligent pieces of work I’ve ever read had clear roots in realism. Life drawing is a sensible basis for any kind of representational art, in my opinion. Sequential art that’s just a series of fully-rendered paintings astound and enchant me.

It’s just that I think that level of detail and accuracy just isn’t right for me. Partly because my writing style is also super extra. I have big spiraling ideas that take a lot of time and pages to execute. My writing is actually just now reaching a point where I can whittle it down to reasonable finished scripts that I can draw with (which might be why I never realized this art problem before). And sooner or later, my brain wanders off onto something else. So being stuck with these big projects that are so exhausting to execute leads to a kaleidoscopic labyrinth of “break” projects that are supposed to be easier. They never are. Because my brain doesn’t know how to do “easier”. Like anything, I think “easier” will take practice. Study.

My plan, therefore, is to study an easier style to keep in my toolbox. Something fun and shape-based that lets me lean on the forms of abstraction and simplification that I already use in my current dominant style. Mostly, I’m looking at Scott Campbell (lead art director of Psychonauts 1) right now. And I’m gonna try working with some brushes that won’t leave me agonizing over line weight. If this works, it might give me more time to think about color dynamics, lighting, staging, and expression (since you guys seem to love that so much in TMA Encore; I love it too).

What does this mean for Hellboy and Encore, then? I think the best thing to do for Hellboy is post the pages I finished before I moved and release the remaining script in text form through October. It’s not as good as having the whole thing drawn, but I think having initial pages will at least help readers visualize the rest. (And I’d really like people to be able to experience the whole thing because I feel like it’s some of the best writing I’ve ever done.) Then, starting in November, I want to get Encore wrapped up. This will take the form of a kind of… hybrid media presentation. Encore has no complete script, but I can write a dramatic summary of what happens chapter by chapter, accompanied by drawn panels and sequences of important moments. Like a picture book. That kinda fits the dark academia vibe.

Following that, I’m going to use that Psychonauts fanfic I mentioned months ago as a study tool. I have a whole side blog for that (link), but I might crosspost them here when the time comes. And from there, hopefully, I’ll have a sustainable work ethic and can start on my own original projects. With videos. And patreon!

It’s a big weird shift all of a sudden, I know. This may just be another art blog on tumblr, but it’s important for me to try to be consistent and accountable when I make projects. And if I can’t do that, I at least want to be transparent. (Who knows–talking about this might help someone else who’s struggling, too.) I have kind of a rare opportunity in my life to sit and focus on art right now, and I don’t know when another will come again, if ever. So I want to use the limited time I have to improve and position myself for success (and wellness) going forward.

I hope you understand. But I have a feeling you will. You guys are real nice. :)

Thanks for reading.