#lineless warriors challenge

[sapphanimates]

2023 Art Summary

I originally created my blog back in April, but I've decided to jump on the trend and share a compilation of some of my favorite works.

JANUARY

My first attempt at a digital painting style, featuring a character I don't believe I've introduced here before. A reimagining of the Tails Doll, with a Phantom Ruby twist: The Phantom Amalgamation (or Maggie, as my friends call them), made for Project Alacrity. I'll have to get around to redrawing them so they can have a proper introduction.

FEBUARY

Fanart for YouTube creator, Miharu the Fox. Whilst watching one of her streams, I asked what I should draw, with her co-host Marc suggesting that I should "Draw Spyro glitching into the abyss." Seeing that they were playing Spyro Enter the Dragonfly, it seemed only fitting. So I drew him shaking on top of a trapped baby dragon in ice.

MARCH

An attempt at a papercraft style using a tutorial by YouTube user, CariadsCoffee. The character pictured is Squirrelflight (or rather, Squirrelstar) from Warrior Cats, using my own design. Learning this method of drawing is what eventually led to me adopting the lineless style I use in many of my posts.

APRIL

Parody designs of Silver and Blaze, aptly dubbed Pothead and Lighter. They originate from a Sonic 06 parody comic for 4/20 that was written by my friend, @alzikeiswrong , and was illustrated in TuxPaint by me. Whether or not I decide to actually finish and post it is a mystery.

MAY

A post made as a gut reaction to discovering the amount of articulated parts the Jakks Pacific Tails Nine figure had. 70 points of articulation is ridiculous, but man is the figure amazing. I just wish he was to scale with the normal Tails figure.

JUNE

My second attempt at a digital painting, this time featuring Blaze the Cat. Manipulating the flames and how they interacted with Blaze and the background, was a fun challenge, as well as figuring out the textures and posing.

JULY

This is the point when I discovered my lineless style. Specifically the one I use when drawing my fursona, Sapph. Her design has developed a lot over the years, from being a Minecraft X Warrior Cats crossover OC, to slowly rounding out and becoming less Minecraft, gaining new design details in the process, to where she is now.

AUGUST

A drawing of multiple AU designs of Tails for Project Alacrity, socializing at some sort of get together. This was mainly a test to practice how to frame a drawing with multiple characters in it, as well as giving them each something to do. To show the differences between these various different versions of the same core character through their designs and how they interact with one another.

SEPTEMBER

One of the ask answers for my MommyClan cat's ask blog, @stepcousinclawspeaks . Stepcousinclaw was originally created for the fanclan in August, but this panel was one of my favorites. It shows his chaotic and often arsonistic side really well. I'll return to the blog soon for a big story update. Stay tuned!

OCTOBER

October brought with it the Sonic OC Showdown 2, which I had miraculously managed to get my Trace the Tasmanian to participate in. She passed the first round by a close call, but lost by a wide margin in the following. It was a good fight, with a good string of propaganda art coming from me and some of my supporters as a part of the campaign. Thank you all for supporting me while I was a part of it.

NOVEMBER

Whilst exploring through old files, I came across a template I saved. I used it to share the designs I made for various Warriors characters, some who I already had made designs for, and others I had to make up on the spot. One of my favorites was Spottedleaf. The balance of colors and details seem just right to me, as well as being a vast improvement from the color inaccurate one I had made as a ten year old.

DECEMBER

December's was fun. I haven't ever really had a "set style." Every time I try to revisit one specific design I always make something a bit off. Same can be said for this sketch style. I loved doing it. It felt the most accurate to how my art on paper feels as I draw it. Rough around the edges, but lifelike. Sadly I've had a hard time returning to it after dumping out all my thoughts around the 06 AU onto my screen. I've been working on it. There's more to see in the coming year, so I hope you'll stick with me to see how I can grow as a young artist!

Template is by @zontarzon !

[amberduan-ual]

Project Agreement Tutorials (20/4/23)

By the time of this class, I'd completed a third of the paintings in my Project A PleinAirpril challenge which is what I brought in to show. I decided at the beginning that all 30 paintings would be the same size and shape, to emulate the experience of drawing in a real sketchbook and so if I ever wanted to print the paintings as part of a book, I'd be able to format them relatively easily.

I chose to bevel the corners of the paintings because I liked the softer effect it gave, rather than the sharp 90 degree turns. I set the paintings slightly inside the square of the canvas rather than directly on the edges because I wanted there to be a bit of a frame to each painting, and also because I wanted room to date each piece underneath. It also had an added benefit of creating more continuity to my Instagram feed, where I was posting the pieces.

The first two paintings I did for PleinAirpril were plein airs done from real life observation. I constructed a little window out of cardboard for my first painting, which I did at night time from my room.

I used a lot of brushes with color mixing for these two because I'd seen other digital artists create really gorgeous effects with the color variation. I focused a lot on trying to capture the colors and lighting I saw relatively accurately at this stage.

For the third painting, I followed along to the first Warrior Painter's demo with Angela Sung, one of the hosts of the Warrior Painter community! For this demo, I was trying to follow the same painting techniques as Angela. She uses the lasso tool a lot to select certain parts of the painting, and then fills that area with a solid color. I think it was a valuable experience to try and work that way, but I found that it definitely doesn't work for me very well. I didn't really feel like I had a lot of control over what I wanted to do, and it really slowed my process down a lot as well.

For the next two paintings, I tried to push my colors a bit beyond just what I saw, but in hindsight they were pretty close to the original. I experimented a bit with linework in the chicken painting, which I liked but ultimately gave up on in favor of lineless painting instead.

Also at this point, I started using reference photos instead of drawing from real life, since it cost a lot of time to scout out and visit specific locations, which I discovered for Day #2 since I did that at Holland Park near Kennington Palace. Almost all the rest of the paintings I did were of photos I took from spring break, which I wanted to do since it was like a way of documenting the places I traveled to :)

For Day 6, I painted while watching Marco Bucci's YouTube video series on tips for better painting. It was really helpful to take in his tips and I found myself actively incorporating his tips into my painting as I worked on it.

I merged my shapes into defined sections and was conscious of making sure colors from certain dominant areas were also present in less prominent areas, to a lesser degree.

For the next four paintings, I tried to keep those lessons in mind and experiment with my painting techniques to see what worked the best for me.

[kinda-daily-warriorcat]

[renymoon]

A lil warrior challenge made by Satzzzart on twitter! This took me three days but it was fun so worth it

[tab-cat]

Made ths without useing any bases and i gotta say im pretty proud of it.

So heres one of my warrior cat ocs, rumble'rush.

[ionicexpressions]

"A Lark Who Failed to Fly"

My character, Larkpaw for rp @land-ofthe-lost

[cutelittlevamp]

Horrortober Day 11 - Punish

I am so sorry for the reader in todays post .-. I truly am

But having a prompt like punish with Ares is just ... well

TW: Mentions of death; corpses; blood; (Ares is the goddamn god of war, let your imagination run wild -_- I tried to be not that grafic though)

You could say Ares is a yandere or simply an asshole.

Stay healthy everyone^^ Having a cold sucks

Forgot to add @yandere-sins and @pastelbirb o.o It's their Horrortober Challenge

_____________________________________________________________

➤ Day 11: Punish “I don’t want to do this! But you leave me no choice.” | Do a lineless art.

-

Soldiers. Mercenaries. Paladins.

No matter what kind - good or bad - your family members have been warriors for generations. You, too, had been taught to fight with all kinds of weapons from a very young age yet you never could bring yourself to enjoy it like your siblings did.

No matter what kind of weapon you picked up you were a natural at using it.

Your parents said you must be blessed by Ares himself and they were very proud. They even took you to visit one of his shrines when you were only very little. You saw a man there with red eyes and white hair. He frightened you yet your parents took no notice of him nor your discomfort. The stranger would haunt your nightmares for many years to follow.

That didn’t matter much to you though and more and more often you left your home to ‘train’ while you actually just did things you enjoyed doing or wanted to try for yourself. Things your family frowned upon, like drawing or playing musical instruments, also fishing or gardening.

Peaceful things. A waste of time and talent, your family would call it.

You often thought about leaving them yet you never really did it. Not until that one day your cousin barged in through the door and announced that war was upon you. Forgotten was what had occupied the mind before. Everyone seemed somehow happy about the news. Not about the fact that war was coming in itself - they knew too well what war meant for everybody - but about the fact that they could show their talent to the deity they worshipped: Ares.

There was a big feast that night but you didn’t attend it. You were sure they’d be fine without you after all this wasn’t the first war your family faced so you left.

You’d come back one day after the war had ended. Maybe then you could look your parents in the eye and tell them the truth.

Yet that day was never meant to come.

When you returned home you found the house just as it used to be. The only difference was that the plants had grown a lot. Strange. Normally the training area was kept clean of any kind of plant trying to root there.

You decided to just ignore it for now and enter your childhood home. Nobody was there. You looked everywhere but could find nobody until you finally went to look at the training area.

The view in front of you almost made you vomit.

There just in front of your eyes was your entire family. Every single one of them lay dead. Even the children had been slaughtered. How you could have missed the smell of decay was beyond you as the corpses didn’t seem to be very … fresh. Some of them you couldn’t even recognize anymore as there weren’t a lot of facial features left on them. Or no head at all.

You couldn’t bear to look at the gruesome scene any longer and stumbled back into the house almost collapsing the very second you were inside.

How could this have happened? Who would even do something like that?

And, especially, why now? The war was over, wasn’t it?

“You know” you heard a cold voice behind you and tensed but didn’t turn. What did it matter if they’d kill you now too? “I did not desire to do this. They have always been so devoted to me.” Shocked, you turned around after all just to see the very man you had seen all those years ago at the shrine. “Ares,” you whispered, having finally understood who it was that you had seen. That you saw just now. He smiled faintly when he heard you speak his name. “You left me little choice here, don’t you think. After all I did for you. The blessings, the gifts. Yet you choose to reject me.” He shook his head slowly while stroking over the back of his sword, which was red as blood much like his tattered cape. Remembering your childhood lessons you looked around the room for a weapon you could use yourself, dashing towards the first one you saw but he was faster. Ares pushed you to the ground as if you were but a small child. His sword slightly cut into the skin of your throat as he made you face him with it.

“It seems you still haven’t understood but don’t worry. Once I’m done with you you’ll be even more devoted to me than any other member of your family ever was.”

[gaming]

Indie Game Spotlight: Dicey Dungeons

It’s about to get dicey this week with our latest Indie Game Spotlight! Dicey Dungeons is a deckbuilding roguelike with dice that’ll see you fighting monsters, finding better loot, and levelling up your heroes as you work together to take down the goddess of fortune, Lady Luck herself.

We took the opportunity to ask Marlowe Dobbe, artist and animator of Dicey Dungeons, about inspirations, mechanics, and game jams. Read on! 

What inspired the making of Dicey Dungeons?

Dicey Dungeons is mainly inspired by the deck-building genre, particularly a game called Dream Quest in which you traverse fantasy environments and fight enemies with cards you collect as you go along. Dicey Dungeons pivots from that format, in that we’ve added dice-rolling and chance. It’s got the main trappings of a deck-builder, with a little bit of a twist.

Can you explain the core mechanics we can expect from the game?

Each playthrough sees you descending through six floors of the dungeon, with a variety of enemies, shops, and pickups. You fight enemies by rolling dice and assigning the number value of those dice to your different equipment (i.e. if you roll a six, you can do six damage.) As you play, you collect different equipment, with some with special effects, others needing specific number values, so you really start to put together different types of builds each time you play. Battling enemies, upgrading your equipment, and levelling up your characters, all help you to beat the boss at the end of each run—leading you to unlock new characters and challenges to engage with on your next playthrough!

Who are some of the characters we can expect to meet?

There’s a core cast of six dice characters you can unlock and play, all of whom have very different mechanics. You’ll start with the Warrior, who’s the most straightforward attack-and-defend type of character. As you progress, the dice get more varied and more challenging. There are also more than 50 different enemies you can fight, all under the rule of the main villain, Lady Luck.

How did you come up with the art style for Dicey Dungeons?

The art style is very characteristic of my style as an illustrator. I pull a lot of inspiration from video game art, as well as mid-century illustration, which you can kind of see in my flat, lineless way of drawing things. From the get-go, we liked the idea of going a sort of Alice-In-Wonderland route, with seemingly random environments and characters, and I think that whimsy really comes across in the final product.

What has been your best experience during the process of creating Dicey Dungeons?

The general creative freedom! Terry, Chipzel, and I have all had a lot of freedom in our own areas of development, while on parts of the game that have been collaborative, I feel we’ve all done a great job of coming together and representing our individual ideas in-game.

Do you have any advice for someone wanting to get into game developing?

My tried-and-true answer to this question is to take part in game jams! Whether you participate remotely or in person, a game jam is the perfect low-stakes environment for honing your skills in art, coding, music, writing, etc. If you choose to team up with other people during jams, it can be a great learning experience on how to work with others, which is important because developing a  game is by-and-large a collaborative process. I got my start doing game jams with my local game development community, The Portland Indie Game Squad. That enabled me to practice making games while building my portfolio at the same time. Dicey Dungeons itself started as a game jam game too!

Ready to try your luck? Dicey Dungeons is now available on Steam and Itch.io!

[gerardway-is-my-babygirl]

Like fire you will blaze through the forest, but beware....even the greatest flames can be extinguished by water.

Warrior cats quarantine challenge, day seven: Favorite prophecy

I love this prophecy so much, Bluestar Isn’t one of my favorite favorite characters but I still love Bluestar’s prophecy

It just sounds so cool to me and Its so Interesting!!

I also figured out how to make stuff blur and I also made this lineless! I got really Inspired by runaway-modblog’s art, sorry If It looks to similar to hers

Don’t sue me

[thegracetrack]

Beautiful Beginnings

At times when we can’t hear God, it’s not always that He has become silent. Sometimes, it is that our lives have become filled with noise.

And so in my attempt, to hear God better and clearer, I went for a silent retreat at the Monastery of the Transfiguration. In the mountains of Malaybalay, Bukidnon few days before 2018 ends.

It wasn’t planned. It was supposed to be a trip to Malaybalay only to see community friends who lived there and family friends who was in a vacation. Then a little thought bulb lit, “Why not spend the day in a retreat?”

Unassumingly, I went to the aid of my trusted friend, Google and found a contact number. “It might not be working,” I thought. But still gave it a try anyway just to appease my soul, and that little, tiny voice that whispers, “Why not? Just try.”

In the other line, was a calming voice whom I later found out to be a monk. I swear I was just inquiring. It wasn’t like I was 100% sure. After all, this isn’t planned. “I’ll arrive late afternoon. Could I still be accommodated?” I was waiting for a reply with the likes of, “Sorry that’s too late. Come back again tomorrow” Or “It’s the holidays. We’re not accepting retreatants.” Instead, what I heard was the most accommodating and tranquil reply, “How can I refuse you?”

Like a dead end God sets up for the stubborn, I knew I had to walk in His invitation of being intimately in His presence, and to come away with the one Whom my soul loves. And so I did. I said yes and made a booking.

God sends means to affirm me of that decision. After I put down the call and asked for necessary permission of family members, and my pastoral leader, a sister, gave me a call telling me if I wanted to hitch the ride to Bukidnon, and that they could drop me off The Monastery. Right after that call, the other sister whom I was meeting, in Malaybalay rang up to tell me they are planning to go to the Transfiguration on the same day when my retreat was supposed to end, therefore, that I could also hitch the ride back to the city. See what the Lord did there? I only needed to say yes to the Spirit’s invitation to go to the retreat and God took care of all my transportation going forth and coming back, almost instantly! Truly He is sovereign.

I smiled. God has prepared something for me. He has planned this to be.

I had a good ride and good conversation with my sister-in-Christ. Until their generous family dropped me off. I bid goodbye to them and said my thanks. The Monastery staff were expecting me and so I went in. “PAX!” A big sign greeted me in the doorway. It means peace. I walked the hallway by myself, amused for whatever the Lord has in store, happy to be all by myself at that moment, for there are journeys we need to take alone. But not really alone. God was with me.

I took my new journal out. It was freshly taken out of the plastic, it had no design at all and blank in the lineless pages. My previous notebook I used as my prayer journal just recently ran out of leaves so I bought a new one.

“For some reason, I am here,” I wrote. “For some reason I am staring at the blank pages of my journal. As if these blank pages symbolizing my new beginning, a clean slate. From here I shall start anew. These empty spaces, I invite Thee, my lord, my life-your empty canvas, mold it, create it as you wish.”

“Did you ever know, dear, how much you took with you when you left?”-C.S. Lewis

It’s true what they say, that when someone dear dies, a part of you dies as well. I felt that I had always become so tired and lifeless since then. I felt that my dad took away with Him my tenacity, drive, passion and creativity for life. I felt like I was just a set of dead bones, waiting desperately for Someone to call out life in me. At last, after 3 months or so, I came to my senses and had a desire to spring back to life again.

Since it was a silent retreat, i was to do things on my own as the Spirit leads. And I asked myself, “Why am I here?” Without a second thought, I wrote, “To reclaim the part of my self that died when dad left.” That was my agenda. I’m going to get my old life back. Or so I thought.

I put myself to sleep early in the night to prepare for the dawn mass with the monks and a few other mass-goers.

And deep in my heart I felt God speak, “You are not here for a reclamation. You do not reclaim the parts of you that died. Instead, I am going to give you a new heart and a new Spirit.”

I remembered God’s promise in Ezekiel 36:26, “I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit. I will take away your stubborn heart of stone and give you an obedient heart.” (GNB)

My desperation to pick up the pieces of my broken heart and my shattered life has only done me more harm than good. I have only obtained more cuts in my hand and more wounds in my heart than I already have. Simply because the ability to breathe life back into my dead Spirit is not mine, it is only God who can do that. He is offering to give me a new heart and a new spirit! Sounds like a good bargain. I only need to give him the broken fragments of my life, my weaknesses, my disappointments, my torn heart and lifeless spirit in exchange for a new one.

Again, when a beloved dies, a big part of the bereaved dies too. And i cannot resist the change that will have to happen into my life, into my way of doing things from the little ones like chores and morning routines, to the big things like finances and responsibilities. And that’s okay. Maybe it’s not about getting my old life as a carefree daughter back, it’s about letting God give me a new one- standing up from the rubbles, a warrior, a fighter, but at the same time always founded that I am a beloved of God, ready to face the challenges of the new day that awaits.

In the beginning and in the end

After the beautiful moment of solitude at the mountains, I went back home to my valley, ready to await 2019. My family always went for the late night New Year’s Eve mass. And I was very moved with one of the mass readings.

John 1:1-2

“In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God, He was in the beginning with God. All things came through Him and without Him nothing came to be.”

I realized that what was written in the very start of the chapter of John about this God who was there at the beginning, is the very same God who promised to be there in the end as Jesus promised in the end of the chapter of Matthew (28:20), “I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

What a beautiful consolation, as my 2018 ended and my 2019 began, and in all of my new beginnings and ends: God will always be there. And that’s what makes it beautiful.

[glitter-pastel-scales]

Warrior cats 30 day palette challenge day 1 - Favorite cat in Bitter remembrance

Here we go,day 1!! And since I have two favorite cats I had to draw both of them,Leafpool and Jayfeather.<3 It took FOREVER to design they're markings aahhh! I had to use a lot of references of tabby cats,and then I stylized them a bit. And I also used this as an experiment with making lineless drawings,but it's kinda time consuming so most of the other ones will probably not be lineless lol. Also I have no idea what's going on with the background,I just used a texture in sai that I liked cause I literally don't know how to do backgrounds lmao!xD

[ospreysart]

Jackdaw’s Cry

[ospreysart]

Falling Feather

[ospreysart]

Appledawn

[ospreysart]

Antpelt

[ospreysart]

Beepaw