Pardon the lack of updates after *finally* getting back into something of a groove again, but the holiday is upon us, like some kind of smothering flood of burning molasses and I’ve been tied up with things.
Holiday Sludgeposting
Posts tagged scribble
Autumnal Reverie
I’d really intended to ride the momentum from finishing out the Slayers Artober thing and keep more active drawing, but work has been kicking my ass and there’s a shitload of RGL events I have to put layouts together for when I have the energy and attention span for it so maybe I’ll put my energy toward making a nice Xmas card for you guys so at least that much can get done on time.
I’ve been kind of disappointed with my output this year, emotions and drive have been all over the freaking place but probably still in a better place than I haven been in a while, overall.
Critical Heaven has gone through some behind the scenes mutations and left it feeling sort of adrift, unsure what direction to really take it in at this point. I sort of worry about putting a whole lot of stake into the whole warplane girls thing knowing that the manufacturers take licensing seriously enough that cheapo Matchbox depictions of real world planes need to put legal info on the packaging and the military is very uptight with their depictions in the movies. Not that I expect it to blow up to the point I need to worry about it or anything, but it’s always kind of in the back of my head. The entire thing pretty much just comes from liking the designs and engineering of jets since I was a kid and wanting to pair that with my love of designing cute/badass girls and not wanting to cash in on a brand name like third world shoemakers throwing Mike Air Jorduns on shelves. I’d still like to keep moving forward on it but I’ve also been getting more concrete ideas what I want to do with Radona beyond “she’s fun to draw,” which is generally enough for me but, y’know.
Been lightly dabbling with game maker stuff again, think I might try to coax myself into focusing on Godot since it seems like a less limited tool than some others but I’m not particularly sure of its porting options if I ever made something good enough to pursue consoles on.
Have been making shmup practice into a semi regular Twitch project lately, big thanks to dot_lvl for sending a good sized raid my way last week or so (I’m bad at time.) Between Shmuptember introducing me to some cool people to watch and finding more games I like, I’ve been feeling more of a push to improve at them. Wish it was a little easier to talk about them sometimes, it’s almost like “you had to be there” as an entire hobby- sometimes a shmup sounds amazing on paper but the feel or the aesthetics or even just the sound design make it not click for me. If you’d be interested in following my progress or whatever else ends up happening, drop me a follow here, trying to get more regular with it.
Slayers Artober- Finale
Originally I was going to draw Zangulus for “the rival,” but I don’t draw Naga often and she does have a song literally about being a rival, so… here she is. I tried to pay more attention to the pauldrons this time because I usually wind up drawing them looking like they’re halves of a giant Chun-Li bracelet. On figures they’re a bit wider and look like actual armor. Go fig.
Dynast Grausherra came to mind immediately for the prompt “Chessmaster,” but things were complicated a bit because there’s like no official reference for his face. I pretty much tried to reverse engineer a front shot from the chibi art of him and Sherra back to back. Either he has a mouthplate or he has the facial structure of a Dragon Half character.
I wanted to use “A-cup Angst” as an excuse to draw a really out-there expression mostly. I was going to have Naga holding the tape but I couldn’t figure out the pose and I wanted to finish by the end of the day, when it will no longer be… Tober.
I think most people ran with Halloween costumes, and they are fun to draw for sure. The ‘impossible’ part comes from wanting to draw one of those kind of sleek, shapeshifting living outfits like Morrigan or uh, Venom I guess has, but I probably killed that with all the ornaments. She’s kind of inspired by a mix of Bayonetta and the new variant Theresa from Honkai. I made her hair white for the hell of it because I like the look and wanted to draw it like that without the ‘baggage’ of her having pushed herself to the limit for once.
Slayers Artober v5
Day 23- Cursed With Awesome: I know I keep saying I don’t like to be ‘obvious’ with prompts, but I mean, c’mon. I don’t like how close in the eye looks but I really did sketch out the position of both eyes before I started tidying up the lines. (I wouldn’t call what I’m doing on most of these ‘inking’ but I have basically been doing tighter sketches once I block out the basic pose.)
Day 24- Fantastic Nuke: I think this is the third shown or implied Dragon Slave I’ve drawn and it might not be the last, lawl. I really tried to push the lighting in this one to sell the blast effect.
Day 25- Alternative Continuity: I could have done a lot with this one but ended up effectively shitposting, haha. I know Lost Universe and Slayers technically aren’t the same universe but the shared names for some of the entities and some design elements between the main cast sure are enough to still keep me thinking of “what-ifs.”
Day 26- Playing Up Stereotypes: Based on a scene from the very first episode where Lina sees Gourry has arrived to save her from the bandits she could easily handle anyway and embraces the chance to act like a shrieky scared damsel.
Day 27- Berserk Button: Not gonna lie, I had other ideas for this prompt first but I hadn’t drawn these two (and generally… don’t) and “A-cup Angst” is another prompt down the line so…
One more of these megaposts to go, if you’d like to see them as they come out, once again, you’ll find them on my various socials but the extra notes come from here since I’m usually out of the proverbial spoons it takes to discuss these things after posting and tagging everything four times across different social media platforms. If Twitter would just go ahead and die for real, it would honestly save me a few clicks and keystrokes…
Slayers Artober v3
Day 11: Absurdly Sharp Sword- It’s a riff off of the Metal Gear Rising cover. I probably could have come up with something else but it was the first solid (ha) idea I thought of.
Day 12: Awesome, But Impractical- I’ve always kind of wondered if the gang ever went back for their Dragon Cuisine after the months upon months it was going to take to make the meat safe to eat. Plus, I like having excuses to draw Chef Ashford.
Day 13: Not So Harmless Villain- About as soon as I got done doing flat colors on Fibrizo I remembered Joyrock existed and would have fit the theme better but eh, w/e. I thought I would throw a mosaic/glitch effect over the prompt name since he’s not really introduced as a villain at all. I tried to play up the cute a little more than normal on this one just to experiment but I feel like everything *but* the face kind of flops.
14. Badass Adorable- Amelia is a character I didn’t ‘get’ at all when I first saw the series but after rewatching it with more familiarity with Japanese pop culture hero stereotypes, I love her. Not really satisfied with the proportions or pose in the end and I kind of feel like the ripped clothes comes off more like fanservice than ‘tough.’ Then again, neither thing is bad… right?
16. Teenage Genius- Sherlock Lina Sherlock Lina Sherlock Lina
16. Signature Move- I know I said before I try not to go ‘too obvious’ on prompts and I spent the entirety of last year’s list drawing just Lina but… c’mon. The Dragon Slave is so iconic other shows even copy the *chant* part.