#karleeen

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You know that art trend that was like “draw your OC before and after the trauma” with the Undertale quote? I did a version of that with Karleeen in April! Although with her it’s less of a “before and after” and more like…. during? Well, in any case. It gets a lot better :)

Still images:

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Studio - Karleeener by Kanokoso_ Performing Arts

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Karleeen gets crushes very easily

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Karleeen’s room, during day- and nighttime! I think drawings of environments can really help with showing how a character is like, a window into their life.

Close ups of some details:

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Hair guide (and overall style guide) for Karleeen so I don't forget how she's meant to look at each point in her tween-to-early-adulthood life stages. I’ve seldom drawn her as an adult but look at her :) She’s so grown!!

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Had this funny and uncannily real Miitopia interaction which would 100% happen if these characters came to meet, I think. So I drew it out! Featuring Miranda Vanderbilt of Monster Prom fame and Karleeen of... fishyfishyfishtimes fame? This time she needs no introduction as the joke is pretty obvious lmao

It would no doubt be left entirely ambiguous whether or not Miranda intends this to be a threat. On one hand, she’s been raised and conditioned to see torture and harm of those lower than oneself as wholly normal, not to mention she’s a fish out of water in a foreign culture and to her this could simply gifting someone with something that reminds her of them (creepy amount of pins aside). On the other hand, Miranda can be oblivious but she’s not stupid. She's executed blackmail plans before. So… well! Fortunately Karleeen was going to be her friend anyway…

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Fun fact: Karleeen can skii 👍 I drew several images to show just how she does it, too! For all your many-legged needs.

Despite what you might think, having eight legs fastened onto four skis actually improves Karleeen's skiing maneuverability, as her feet naturally point "sideways" from her body and her “ankles” aren't particularly twisty. Having two points of contact in each ski (akin to a snowboard) lends her more fine-tuned movement and more kick! She can't quite ski in her normal standing pose, but let's be honest, no one should, you'll fall. To ski, she must simply keep her four middle legs closer to her body, with "bent knees" (patellas)

Normal cross-country skiing works just about the same as on any other person, her skis alternating in kicking back and moving forwards to glide. The biggest difference here is perhaps that her ski poles touch the ground between her legs as opposed to the ground on her sides, which is simply because her stance is very wide. Her arms have a lesser arch of movement because her legs get in the way, but the propulsion from having four legs push back on each kick as opposed to just one means you wouldn't really realise there's any hindrance of any kind. To turn, she simply extends one of the legs on her second frontmost pair of legs, and to slow down she’ll extend both.

Skate skiing is a little bit different, instead of kicking back on both skis of one side she only uses the back skis for kicking, and does a slithering motion on her front skis to keep up momentum, as if on ice skates. Nifty!

Here's some more detailed drawings of her skis and ski boots, for cross-country and downhill skiing! Karleeen's feet are rather small and so are her boots, the material is bendy like on ski boots for normal feet. Since cross-country skiing doesn't require any crazy tricks, her boots are held in place on cross-country skis with velcro straps. Her downhill skiing boots and the skis themselves are bigger and more robust!

So that's it! I’m not sure how Karleeen would manage ice skating for the aforementioned sideways-pointing feet reasons, but as a Finn and avid cross-country skiing enthusiast it’s of most importance to me that many-legged taurs of the Sirpaverse can enjoy the joys of skiing :)

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Ahti II and Karleeen drawing from 2021 :) Ahti invites Karleeen to his grandparents' summer cottage every summer for a few days. The lake water is very refreshing in the heat!

Alt. version:

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One of the most fun things you can do as an artist with characters is make one of the characters an artist, too. Then you get to pick an artstyle for them!

Karleeen (Ahti's buddy) likes doodling a bunch :) Her art looks like this:

I tried colouring a couple but I don’t think I want to have the art coloured, the simplicity of only having lineart that implies shape instead of deliberately showing it in colouring is a part of the charm

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I finally gave Karleeen her own tag :DD In case you didn’t know this is Karleeen:

She most often appears with Ahti II because the two are best friends! Karleeen is Ahti’s only consistent friend, actually. Suits them fine; they share a love of the outdoors, and mutually support each other and each other’s rambling sessions. Karleeen likes to learn about fish from Ahti while playing video games or building a new contraption of some kind — she’s an aspiring inventor and would like to study engineering when she’s older… She has a pretty good chance of going far, despite her less than ideal schooling history she’s one witty girl!

Karleeen is also the second main character of a story I’m writing called Man Swears Forever :] It’s posted in… some places, but I’ll probably unleash it to Tumblr once all the chapters are done (and when I’m brave enough!)

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I'm anxious about an exam coming up so here's some drawings about my Miitopia playthrough

Ahti II is a literal crown prince, for context. I made him be a mage since he's magically gifted, and I also have Ahti's best friend Karleeen as a thief (she's a swift attacker) and

and naturally myself too! I was a chef in Greenhorne, which I kind of miss to be honest. Also very important detail, I made the horse into Twilight Sparkle :)

And of course I needed Red guy of DHMIS fame! His job was cat since the job outfit is fluffy all over, he really liked Twilight. I'm going to get him back eventually >:')

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Tuna piano

Comic I made last year :) Ahti doesn't always understand worldplay but never passes an opportunity to talk about fish. Karleeen likes asking follow-up questions because Ahti consistently lights up when he gets to explain what they do and where they live and cool facts!

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I drew Ahti II and his never before seen, very best friend Karleeen (three e's is intentional) for Halloween! They're dressed as Aziraphale and Crowley from Good Omens :) Someone likened Ahti II to Azi once and given that he already had a dark-haired "best friend" who is part edgy animal... it was only natural to have this costume arrangement. Please don't spoil anything about the show though, I am only in the first few episodes of season 1!!

On another note, imagine having to buy pants with eight pant legs.

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hi!! really liked reading your merfolk post!! if you're okay with questions, i have some for you: is there one merfolk culture, or multiple? you said they have celebrations on things like the harvest, what sorts of stuff do they harvest or farm? also, how do they feel about fish... is it like how humans feel about apes or monkeys, like something fairly similar to us, or is it like how humans feel about fish, nice to watch but also... edible. or some other perspective of fish?

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Thank you so much anon!! I would love to answer, so I will!

There are multiple merfolk cultures, all as varied as terrestrial human cultures! This is because the great big event that made them happened all around the planet, and not just to a single population of humans. It is perhaps misleading to refer to all of them as just "merfolk" when they have very different ways of life... but they do still share many biological features and the same sorts of limitations, so I'm still going to lmao. As it is, most of my merfolk worldbuilding focuses on the merfolk of the Baltic Sea Kingdom, Osmeri, and Finland, since I am Finnish myself and most of my characters are too. Plus, explaining how aquatic humans can survive long cold harsh winters in the freezing water takes some more work than explaining how aquatic humans survive in a tropic ocean where food and warmth is plentiful year round!

Closest to our terrestrial harvest, coastal and inland merfolk tend to harvest fruit, which they get from trees that grow near the water! Important vitamins and all that. Merfolk also grow their own crops, but I've yet to figure out what those crops are — I am not a botanist but I know in my heart that humans will be humans and that if we had to go aquatic, we'd find some way to domesticate the aquatic plantlife through the course of thousands of years. Now on-the-spot thinking about harvest, I think harvest would be celebrated in tandem with terrestrial humans too, the merfolk could trade aquatic goods with them and then they'd have one big party of abundance 🤔

Merfolk feel about "fish" as we feel about "mammals", that is, a wide spectrum that goes from worship to disdain, appreciation to annoyance, material gain to value just from existing. Different species of fishes are their livestock, their pets, their wildlife, the neighbourhood "pests"! It must depend on culture, what's with every merson's tail looking exactly like an existing species of animal (the creation stories of merfolk must be wild) but all in all merfolk recognise that the aquatic life around them is fundamentally different from them, though they look similar.

Though I explained it in words, this is a wonderful opportunity to show a comic I made to answer this very question in 2022! It is a tad outdated, what's with Ahti II admitting that he's from Osmeri, but no matter. The children (me) yearn for the mines (to show my art):

...Too cruel? Not to worry, the domestic pikes that Ahti II is familiar with as pets and companions are a different breed from wild pikes! I'm sure they cleared that up immediately after the events of this comic.

Thanks for the questions! :]

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Look at this improvement in a year though!!!

She's wider now so I had to split the ref into two pieces but it's a small price to pay for kickass spider anatomy yo!

If only I’d have known in 2021 that spider legs are so darn complicated to draw… maybe I would have reconsidered giving the girl with eight of those a big spotlight

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There are two wolves inside me having a battle: one wolf that says I should make the mermaid form of a character into an interesting and in this case an extremely fitting animal (diving bell spider) and one that says I should listen to my heart anyway and make the mermaid form of a character my favourite aquatic invertebrate that’s also sort of sensible but not as much but it’s my favourite though (European crayfish)