welcome to the compound
This year’s theme was genres, which was another interesting set, Piku always puts a lot of effort into making these lists. I think my favorites are the Xellos and Filia Youtube beefing both in concept and I think they’re some of the sketches that turned out the best too. Some of the posts may be a bit out of order since I’m adding to the gallery from two different devices but I’ll try to touch them up and add a little commentary along the way.
Work is doing things, make them stop
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.
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…
Probably one of the weaker feeling ones I’ve done so far this month, Gourry’s kind of squashed and Lina’s kind of tucked away but I wanted to emphasize the boy more since I draw so many Linas already.
When I was trying to think of ‘shout outs’ in Slayers I actually could think of more times other anime referenced it than it referenced other things. But when I think of Slayers making references I think of the Shampoo lookalike twins, Mimi and Nene. And the Col. Sanders bandit. But I went with these two.
I kinda feel like the drawings are starting to fall in line with my baseline quality from back when I was drawing basically every day which is good, but I must press onward!
I thought I’d play with the prompt a little and have Amelia building a couple models. I knew exactly which gunpla to start from, heh. I kind of picture the Zelgouf ‘stones’ being extra armor plates or missile pod covers.
I set the brush thickness way too heavy for this one and it looks like my old Sharpie comics. You might think that’s a good thing if you were around that far back. Thanks for being one of the real ones.
(That said this one kind of did shit numbers on the socials and I kind of blame there being too much text- people seem to like pictures that speak for themselves)
“What’s good, Valgaav?”
“Not much, just crossing the street.”
She’s not in full yandere mode but given that Sylphiel is a priestess capable of memorizing the highest black magic spell after just seeing it performed in front of her, she could definitely be dangerous if someone wrote her off…