#some of my ocs really need redesigns / new refs that I don’t think I can get done in time for july

[onlineviolence]

just a lil heads up, but I am 100% attacking gamaliel on artfight this year >:)

YIPPEE ‼️‼️‼️‼️

[melonnade]

OC-TOBER DAYS 2-4 (commentary about each character under the cut)

2: NEW OC - Luo Yuqing

3: OLD OC - Tess (joint effort between @millidew and I)

4: REDESIGN - Sanya Harris

Day 2 - new OC: technically Xiang Wanyi is my newest OC but he was Day 1, so I’ll just do my second-newest. for a long time, Luo Yuqing didn’t really get much character development from me. from the onset, I knew I wanted a character like Song Riyuan as the protagonist of this OC universe. SRY needed a friend of some sort but I didn’t really have a clear-cut idea, so I just quickly scribbled in LYQ’s design without thinking much about it and made their concept “cloud recesses wangxian but lesbians.” so for a while, LYQ has just been “what if Lan Wangji was a girl?”

after fleshing out SRY a bit more though, I figured LYQ deserves some more actual thought from me too, so she has this sort of inverse character development thing with Riyuan. Waymond Wang in Everything, Everywhere, All At Once has a quote that lives rent-free in my head: “When I choose to see the good side of things, I’m not being naive. It is strategic and necessary… This is how I fight,” and “We have to be kind. Please, be kind.” This is SRY’s mentality at the beginning of the story. LYQ has a more cynical worldview: sometimes kindness hurts more than it helps. It’s more similar to Megumi from jjk’s “who’s to say that someone you save won’t kill anyone in the future?”

not going to get too much into plot, but over time, stuff happens and the two begin to slowly swap ideologies. after a time skip, LYQ has basically SRY’s original mentality, while SRY has taken on LYQ’s. I get so excited just thinking about how they’d interact when they meet again—they’re still so, so important to one another but there’s this distance now that they’re not sure how to navigate. to SRY, her old mentality was the reason why she wasn’t able to keep the two of them from being separated—she hates that part of herself. to LYQ, her memories of SRY were what got her through everything—she takes on that ideology as a sort of homage initially, but grows to believe it completely. there’s so much fun potential here for different situations.

I’m just going to try to describe her in a sort of stream of consciousness way. overall, LYQ makes me think of the North Star—always there, always constant, never wavering. basically, she doesn’t give up ever. not in a Naruto Uzumaki bold, confident kind of way, but in the same way Sisyphus keeps pushing that boulder, slowly but surely, over and over again. Luo Yuqing’s character is like the way waves against cliffs over the course of centuries can turn rock to sand. not sure how much this makes sense, but these are the types of associations I have in my mind with her. the vibes, if you will. she’s very fun to think about, now that I have more of an idea of what she should be.

Day 3 - old OC: Tess is the very first OC I ever made, before I even knew what an OC was. she’s a group project of a character, so I guess Millie and I have shared custody. she’s very edgy, very cringe, and was very fun at the time to make. I don’t think I ever drew any ref art of her, so this is just a drawing that I made today of what I remember her looking like. Tess is so funny to me because I remember thinking, “if she’s an assassin, she can’t be 12, because I’m 12, and 12 is too young to do anything like that. she can be 13 though.”

I drew her with her manic pixie dream girl traveling companion Sel, since I didn’t want to separate them!

I think Tess & Sel’s creation was a formative time in my life because this is basically how I make every OC now. they always come in pairs—their personalities are developed around one another, so I almost never make individual OCs. you can pretty much group all my OCs into two: Luo Yuqing & Song Riyuan, Qin Tianxiao & Xiang Wanyi, Haneul & Anna, Zach & .Soren, Atlas & Louisa, etc. If a character on my Art Fight doesn’t have an obvious foil, it’s most likely just because I haven’t drawn their ref sheet yet. anyway, I just think it’s funny how that moment in my life influenced my entire creative process, even now. if you spend enough time looking at my OCs, there are definitely clear patterns that I tend to follow though!

Day 4 - redesign: another part of my OC creation process is when I scrap certain universes, I try to reuse the characters if possible. either I’ll essentially blend them up with another character to create someone new or I’ll just stick them in a brand new universe. Sanya Harris initially was a best friend/sidekick-type character in an urban fantasy monster-hunting OC universe that I’ve abandoned. (like all of my other OCs, she had a partner OC too, but he’s been recycled into Zach lol). she was a college student working a part-time job as a motel receptionist in rural Kansas. now, in her current backstory, she lives in California and is a teenager going to summer camp. this whole situation is very funny to me.

actually, a lot of my OCs would fit for the “redesign” prompt because all of the recycled ones are basically redesigns. for example:

let’s compare the art I drew of Tess to Haneul’s original design from 2021. “they’re the same photo” meme etc, etc.

their personalities are very similar too—they’re basically the same person. again, I find this hilarious, but yeah, there are definitely character archetypes that repeat in my OCs that are easily identifiable if you’ve been watching me make a lot of them over the years.

[violetosprey]

I was in a drawing mood, so I decided to draw my OC Gale after her redesign.  This is my personal tumblr so I can put it up if I want :P

Tried something different for fun.  Sketched with pencil, then penned, scanned as pdf to computer, then used PhotoShop Elements and my ref sheet to fill in the blanks.  Overall, I like how they came out.

Also I guess the chibi version I drew counts as the first time I drew her full-scale (feels like cheating since I can’t really do proportions right sooo went with a style where proportions are kind of skewed to begin with :P)

Also decided on her full name: Gale Fairway

I went with a name combination that doesn’t pop up in google search that’s both a plain sounding and unique last name.

Since she’s the OC I use for TDDUP with Marcus, I’m gonna jot some more notes down below for writing/character development practice.  You can ignore.

This is more notes than writing and actual story here.  These notes may be changed or rewritten later if I think of something more appealing.

Initially meeting Marcus/ First Impressions

Gale met Marcus in a bar.  She was probably there with a friend chatting.  Her friend headed off to the bathroom and a guy came over (very drunk) and tries to hit on Gale.  He’s aggressive and/or unpleasant and she had a hard time getting him to leave her alone.  Marcus cut in and got the guy to back off.  He was a police officer at time, but just off duty.  Probably flashed his badge to help get the guy to go away.  Gale thanked him and Marcus offered to get her a drink.  She politely declined and said she’d be leaving soon with her friend.

Marcus headed off to another end of the bar when Gale’s friend came back.  Gale told her what happened.  They chatted some more and her friend noted that Marcus was looking over every now and then and teased Gale that she was possibly missing out on “having some fun with a cop.”  Gale was pretty inebriated at this point and admitted Marcus was hot, but figured she wasn’t up for a one-night stand that night.  She was not dating anyone at the time, but didn’t really feel like she needed to get laid whenever the opportunity struck.

Gale and her friend started heading out and Marcus came over when they were outside to chat for a bit.  Her friend hinted towards Gale one more time then had to take a phone call, leaving Gale and Marcus alone.  Marcus got a little more forward and flirty this time, and alcohol + hot dude + cop + saved her from a guy earlier = “Oh why not, it’s just one night” for Gale.

Gale let her friend (who was ecstatic) know she’d be heading out with Marcus.  Her friend left and Gale and Marcus chatted and did “other activities” that night *wiggles eyebrows*. (note: Not sure about location)

Fast forward to next morning.  Gale was a little groggy from last night, but Marcus and her woke up in bed together.  She tried to get up to get ready to leave, but Marcus kind of holds her back (in a safe, playful manner).  Basically started teasing and smooth talking to try to get her phone #.  She’s not up for the idea at first (kinda just thought it’d be a fling, and he said during the night he gets busy with work), but eventually she had other engagements to attend to, so she just gave in and quickly handed her number to him before she left.

Entering a relationship with Marcus

Funny enough, Marcus doesn’t call Gale for several days.  She figured he was probably just playing around when he asked for her number and then focused on his work.  She didn’t take it too much as a loss.

He did finally contact her though, and they met again over coffee.  They hook up again a few days later at night and then get back to their respective work.  This pattern repeats for awhile: lack of communication because of work (on both ends), meet up for hanging out or sex again, then back to work.  At this point in time, Marcus is not was not being overbearing.

Marcus wasn’t actually the type of person Gale would go for when looking for a boyfriend.  She tended to go for the more bookish types, maybe with a sense of humor (note: John from the game would actually be more of the type she’d usually date, meaning she tried something new with Marcus, and later went back to what she was comfortable with).

This happened enough though where they decided to actually start dating.  From here on, Marcus puts in a little more effort to start texting/calling Gale more frequently.  Gale found this sweet, especially because she knew how much of a workaholic he was.

Overtime, she noticed more sensitive sides of his personality as well (note: not sure if I want to make the “saved Munchie from a car engine” event before or after marriage- but Marcus should have shown SOME soft side prior to marriage).

Sex wise, Gale’s not actually the type that gets “adventurous,” but she started to open up a little more for Marcus (he could get a little “naughty”) since she really liked him.

Eventually, Gale would genuinely fall in love with Marcus and admitted to him after sex one night that she was a little afraid she wasn’t good enough for him.  After all, he was attractive, confident, and had a successful career.  (note: I have not decided on what Gale’s own career is at this point).

Marcus quickly held her and assured her he’d never leave her.

Extra Notes

So I’m doing this weird thing where Gale’s kind of getting developed “around” the relationship she has with Marcus.  Many of her personality traits aren’t fully fleshed out with me yet.  I’m seeing if it’s a little easier to come up with the story first and adjust her accordingly. 

There’s a of couple traits about Marcus that are considered canon (I think) that I want to keep the same: 1) he has dated people beforehand, 2) he’s a workaholic, 3) he’s a “dirty cop” when it comes to sex :P and 4) he never physically hurt the MC prior to the kidnapping.

What I’m going for I guess is a...”slow burn” turn into a yandere for Marcus?  The timeline I have no clue of honestly.  I kind want Gale to have been married to Marcus for at LEAST a year (maybe more).  For that to make sense though, I want to build it up to be believable why she was with him for so long.  Gale met a guy who wasn’t her usual type, but fell in love with him because of his softer moments and the way he paid so much attention to her.  Her own insecurity of losing Marcus at one point would be a key reason as to why she wouldn’t see certain warning signs early on.

She liked the attention he would give her at first.  And even as it increased gradually, she’d just see it as him making an effort because their jobs don’t always let them be together.  She gets a little blinded honestly by something “too good to be true.”

Now with Marcus I’ll be honest...I’m not EXACTLY sure in my head at what point he becomes a yandere.  I don’t know if I consider him to have fell in love at first sight, but he’s a master manipulator who takes it very slow to work his way into Gale’s life completely.  Or if he’s actually just a normal guy she’s dating at first because getting to know her more leads to him developing an obsession.  I THINK I’m leaning towards the second.  I say that because I kind of like the idea where Marcus has been with other people before without developing an obsession, and this would have just been another person he started to get along with and date, but it turns horrifying excessive later on.

It’s also too bad since I’m still fleshing out Gale, then I have no idea what Marcus likes about her :P 

Otherwise, the beginning sounds like a pretty standard story opener.  Nothing new or unusual.  My lack of story skills prevent me from thinking about all the events in sequence.  More so just key events and how the characters do or do not mesh together.

[jirdan-does-art]

DR Sprite Edit Tutorial!

So this has been in the making for a couple of months due to a lot of art blocks and stuff, but!! I think this will help some people who have asked for some advice on how to draw your ocs dr ocs in the DR style (or at least close to it)! I’m gonna try and make this as simple as possible without all the complicated steps!

Just to say it now, I use Paint Tool SAI and I have the download file as well for anyone who would like it as well. The download link will be at the bottom as well. This is gonna be long so bear with me!

Let’s get to it!

Okay so first off!! You wanna have a ref of your oc! I usually use dreamselfy cause it gives you a lot of options (I used the japanese version and the simulator to put it all together. If you guys want those links, I’ll put them down at the bottom for you guys.)

This is an old character of mine named Kagami that I’m gonna use, they needed a redesign and to be re-written so I thought this would be the best opportunity for them! They are non-binary and so I think the best base sprite to use is Ibuki’s! It fits their body type. 

What I’m gonna do first in sai is load the sprite into it and lower the opacity and add another layer on top of it. (I also load the ref in there next to the base sprite so that I have something to look off and draw it how I want it.)

This is the brush I will be using for all the lineart:

(I tend to keep my stabilizer on 3 so that it gives me a little more steady lines when i draw)

The first thing I do is trace one side of the sprite on the new layer. It’s important to remember to make sure the lines are clean and it’s okay to redo the line as many times as you need until you get it to how you want it!

After this I’ll take the layer, copy, paste it and then flip the layer and line it up to the other side like so:

Now before I do anything, I start on the face so that I won’t forget it later or that it doesn’t look too unproportional to the face when I draw the hair. I’ll repeat the same thing I did for the bust in the previous image and go from there.

If you see off to the left, I’ve made separate layers for the eyes, mouth and eyebrows. This is really important that you do this if you want to make expressions for your oc to use in posts and such! Plus it’s just nice to have it all separated. You’re going to now start drawing the hair! Now Kagami’s hair is really simple, I’m going to draw it as I see it until I get it to what I want it to look like! Make sure the hair is on a separate layer so that you can erase what you don’t need of the head.

Now that I have their hair done, I’m going to make sure that the hair is on another layer before making it invisible so that I can start on the clothing. You’ll add another layer and begin drawing on that. It’s important to note that clothing folds, it moves, and makes the character look a little bigger. It happens often that you can draw too many folds and wrinkles or too little. Points where limbs can move tend to have more wrinkles placed near them on clothing. 

So i’ve drawn half the jacket, and to make it so much easier on myself, I’m going to copy, paste and flip it to put it on the other side, and then add the scarf and some other details to make it a little less like I copied and pasted it. (I ended up changing a few things because I am indecisive, but overall you should have a complete outfit on your oc.

What you’re going to have to do next is get rid of the excess lines from the bust layer and make it to where lines aren’t going through each other. You’re gonna wanna do that with the hair layer as well, erasing things that don’t need to be there. After some time of cleaning up lines and erasing, I now have the lineart of my sprite!

Now the next step is very important, it’s how you make your sprite transparent. Circled in Green is what you want to click on and you're gonna click on the outside of the sprite so that it looks like this:

Circled in green on the sprite is spaces where you want to use the select tool (that’s in the brushes) to fill in the empty spaces. After you get it filled in, you want to go to the top where it says ‘Selection’ next to the ‘Layer’ dropdown and click invert. Your sprite should look something like this:

The next thing you want to do is create another layer. Take the color white and use the bucket tool ON THE NEW LAYER. The sprite should be completely whited out. On that layer, you’re going to want to set the layer to multiply so that you can see the sprite again. That layer with the white on it, merge it with the lineart layer. Create another layer and set that layer to a clipping layer (circled in red). The layer should be set to ‘Multiply’ as well. Now what you can do is color on the sprite without having to erase! Like so:

This is what your layers should look like!

The clipped layer should be the layer you color on! I personally only use 1 or 2 layers to color so I’m just gonna do ahead and use 2 layers to make it easy. You want to use the first layer for the base color:

Make another clipped layer and met it to multiply so that you can start shading. You want to use colors that are a little bit darker so that the shading looks a little more natural. Rule number 1: NEVER shade with black, unless the base color you’re shading is black itself. It causes the shaded part to look muddy and you don’t want that. It’s hard to explain shading and how you do it because it depends on where your light source is. The light source on this sprite is coming in from the right, so most of the darker areas will be on the left. 

Now when you color the eyes, you want to create another layer under the eye layer and color the inside of the eye white. Merge the eye layer and that layer you colored and create another layer on top of it and set it to ‘Multiply’. I would look up a ref of another dr character and see how the eye is colored and shaded there because I tend to do it a bit differently. After you’ve colored it, merge the two layers again and then you’re all set! You should now have a sprite!

When you go to save, save it as a .png file. It will prompt you with this:

Click the second one so that it turns out like this: (If you drag it around you can see that there’s no white background, making it transparent!)

Congrats!! You did it! Sprite editing takes time to get used to and it's not always eyes, but all I can do is urge you to practice. It’s the only way you learn and get better. You don’t have to take everything that I said seriously, either. If there’s something that works better for you that you’ve found a lot easier, then do it! It’s all about doing it how you want to and what makes it fun for you! Art should be fun to draw, isn’t that the whole point?

I hope you guys found this really helpful!! I’m actually really impressed with this sprite it came out better than I thought. 

Thank you for reading!!

Here are the links from the top!

SAI Download: [Link]

Dreamselfy Simulator: [Link]

Dreamselfy @Trade: [Link]

[avernale]

I'm a Taurus born in the Year of the Rooster, and that's no cock-and-bull story! ... ...Ahem... Anyway, I realize you random denizens of the internet probably aren't inclined to give me presents, so I'm not really expecting anything to come from this post. But if you are so inclined, then some art would be nice. I have an entire gallery just for reference sheets of my characters (and two I made for my friend FroxMagis of his characters, so maybe not art of them. And Gardevoir is obviously copyright of Game Freak, Nintendo, Pokémon Company, etc., but I will accept fan art of it) Refs on DeviantArt: https://www.deviantart.com/avernale/gallery/61886284/Character-Refs Refs on FurAffinity: https://www.furaffinity.net/gallery/desperadocoyote/folder/38396/Reference-art Bonus - Astarte the Gardevoir (dA): https://www.deviantart.com/avernale/art/Astarte-the-Gardevoir-WIP-04a-Purebred-Version-735018772 Bonus - Astarte the Gardevoir (FA): https://www.furaffinity.net/view/26650567/ Bonus - Mandrake the Dryad (FA): https://www.furaffinity.net/view/4679517/ My characters tend to be more of the "Hero" type, so action shots and heroic poses are preferred. Amber is a straight-up brawler with lightning powers, while Crisis and Desiree more akin to magical girls. Well, Crisis is more of a witch, and if you can find her Sonic-style ref, that's her preferred magical girl suit (the "Cowboy" one is good for more Batman-esque scenes). Desiree is supposed to have more of a Sci-Fi/Space Cowboy theme and I'm thinking of redesigning her outfit, so seeing a new costume might be neat. Lecca is a DragonBall XenoVerse OC, so something DBZ would be cool. Casual stuff is also cool, especially of the adoptables (though Magical Girl Chalupa would be super cute). If you want to do NSFW, then Desiree is my designated centerfold. Eternity's ref is unfinished, but if you want to do something with a dominatrix she's your girl. The other characters are kind of a maybe, and a more decided "No" for Chalupa (the puppy) and Candace (the zombie). Crisis is a nudist (and asexual, for what it's worth), so something tasteful, casual, and/or cute, but not especially lewd, is fine (her walking out of a ice cream shop with a cone is an image that I've had in mind since about last summer). My characters doing NSFW together is... intriguing, especially with Desiree (and/or Eternity). Zero I'm not particularly open to having NSFW of by himself (maybe with Crisis? I'm toying with the idea of them as a couple), and whatever lewd art he is in should focus more on the girl(s). Amber I'm the least open to having NSFW of right now, mainly because I don't have enough SFW art of her (Crisis I have tons of, so a little bit is fine). Definitely don't have her with Zero, since she's a Lesbian. Of course what would be really cool is art or ref sheets of characters I don't already have art or ref sheets for. I know I don't have text-based references up for them, either (maybe I'll do that soon), so if you're interested you'd have to ask. These include Chase the fox kemonomimi, Elan Rave the Gardevoir Master (art, no ref), Vera Lane the World's Strongest (physically) Illusionist, Keaton the Samurai Tauros (art, no ref), and his sister, Kitsu the Samurai Ninetales (same). And I guess that's it. No need to ask if you want to surprise me with the finished product. As always, thank you, stay safe, and happy arting!

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