This was a collaboration with NoWaifuN0Laifu based on his design, where he wrote a character quest for ES Hozuki and imagined her as a crystal element hammer user - “I made ES Hozuki’s quest (feel free to use WFS)”. On a whim, I offered to draw his design for him.

You can see 2 other images on either link, a full-body view and the prototype designs:

You may have already seen this, but I thought I’d share it here on kbin since I deleted my posts on reddit.

This was kind of tricky for me because I had to improvise a lot on the design. I had a few prompts, like “beautiful black and purple kimono”, but they say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that was five words. So I had to research what kimonos are like, and learn about cultural things like don’t draw the right side over the left, because you only do that for dead people, etc. I watched a video where someone showed how they put on a kimono. They’re really complicated to wear, but interesting nonetheless.

Looking at it now, there were some things I wish I fixed, but by then I wanted to be done!

One thing I wanted to mention is that in this drawing, I tried out the bloom effect where you imitate the way light bleeds when you use a physical camera. It tends to make things look softer and more full of light. You’ve probably seen it in anime here and there, or video games. I didn’t know how it was done and always wanted to imitate that look, so it was intriguing to try. I couldn’t do it too much in this piece though, because I already abused applied glow dodge to a lot of the drawing and it would have made everything look too washed out. If you’re interested in how to do it with Clip Studio Paint, You can see this tutorial video by Manu Mercurial (timestamped at 11m14s).

  • OpenStars@kbin.social
    2·
    1 year ago

    Brace yourself: to some extent, you are what you do. Someone who has a job as a “teacher” or “doctor” or “scientist” or “engineer” etc. may not have their heart in it, but that becomes who they are (to some degree), when they invest time into learning how to do it right. And then into perfecting their craft, moving through the various levels like novice, professional, whatever.

    I remember hearing about the Game of Thrones TV series - I never watched a single episode, b/c people described it for what it was: a cash grab, where they seemed to care less about their craft and more about finishing on-time & under-budget, and in that show about dragons & swords & magic (or whatever, again I did not watch it so I do not know!:-P), they even had a modern car driving down a road in the background of one scene, a starbucks coffee cup in another, a plastic water bottle in still more, it was just REALLY poorly done. In comparison, series such as Breaking Bad are just CRAFTED so much more excellently, that they really stand apart. One is a true work of art, the other is a mere TV show. It is good to aim to set your work apart from those who DGAF, even if you unlike them do not have a multimillion-dollar (or whatever) budget and a whole team of hundreds (to thousands) of people working on the project.:-(

    And speaking of art, people “criticize” all the time, but a true “critique” I view as something else - the latter is something you outright welcome when it comes your way, a work unto its own:-). Like even a negative critique I would guess, delivered from a true master of the craft, could be more welcomed than a strongly positive low-end & empty gesture of support (like: “you missed an opportunity there to truly convey the dual essence of the tension between the…”, vs. just “me likey!”:-P).

    I wanted to say more about my own thoughts about myself as an artist, but I guess I’ll put in a separate comment.

    • niantre@kbin.socialOP
      2·
      1 year ago

      well you do make a good point about your actions forming part of who you are.

      to clarify, i think more what i disagreed with was the reverse of that idea where people have the mentality that since they decided that they have a fixed identity or potential, they lack the ability to do something.

      so for example, rather than saying:

      • i do “X”, therefore I am “Y” as my identity

      some people might say:

      • I am “Y” or not “Z”, therefore it’s a foregone conclusion and I don’t have the potential for “X”

      I disagree with it to some degree because a lot of disciplines, in my opinion, have a greater weight on motivation and effort than necessarily talent alone (i’m excluding certain fields like say where certain inborn traits like height is a dominating factor of success in basketball, for example). people always want a magic answer to success and the disappointing answer is that hard work is involved in most cases. (yes, networking plays a huge role in some fields, but at some point your work has to stand on its own merit). and pointing to geniuses in any field as a way to say you’re unqualified to do something, i think is not useful because there are geniuses in every field who trump the rules. but they’re statistical anomalies, so why base universal principles around exceptions?

      • OpenStars@kbin.social
        2·
        1 year ago

        That much is all so true, yes! Like someone who works a job as a teacher and who goes through the motions all day long every day, may not be a “teacher” actually, despite their career. Or speaking of things like nepotism, the bosses nephew may be the “manager”, who nonetheless never manages to get around to actually managing anything at all… Those who do not seek to perfect their craft - they are in it for the rewards they can extract from such, while someone who seeks to do it regardless (although I mean… you do gotta eat, and pay rent:-D), that to me seems a true “craftsman”. Talent is a whole other dimension (you can do something a lot and yet not be good at it, yet), as is enjoyment (you can do a really good job despite not having fun with it), but ultimately we came down to the same underlying point: if you don’t actually put in the effort to DO something, then how can someone say that they ARE such? Effort is what makes the dream turn into reality.