my part of an art trade with @dragonsatlartales cheru! this was a lotta fun i liked drawing these two

I've crawled out of my cave after playing Final Fantasy IX for a long ass time what have I missed?

Artist's Notes:

I'M BACK BABY! A while back I made a post with a new style experimentation thingy but I ended up deleting it because it was just kind of a boring face thing, I was planning on doing more art but then I started playing Final Fantasy IX and uhhhh yeah so that game has kind of taken of my brain for the past two weeks and I am 20 hours into the game because I love it so much. I wanted to draw Vivi because Vivi is just really fun to draw ok? I've kinda been feeling really burnt out with my lineless style, mainly because of how hard it was to do lighting. I'll show one of my initial art style tests on the bottom of this post. Again, used to have it be an individual post but it was just one face so it was kinda boring, so might as well include with this one on the subject of art styles. I wanted to kinda mix some aspects of my older style with the sketchy shading lines with a more painterly way of doing the lighting (mainly in the shadows). All in all, I think that's my favourite part about this drawing, it feels nice to finally be able to do some proper lighting again, and I want to experiment even more with my lighting and rendering in future pieces. Also, part of the pant shading got kinda lost in the sketchiness, so for next time I'll probably focus on the clarity of the more sketchy parts of the drawing, since I did go with my initial sketch for the final drawing. I also gave up on the background since I had no idea what to do for it, and I didn't put too much detail into the staff as I forgot which one I gave him in my current playthrough and I didn't want to risk spoiling myself via looking up references, but that's ok I like how the singular yellow circle on it matches Vivi's eyes. Also I was having a bit of trouble figuring out how to draw his body and how to pose him, but I like how the pose turned out a lot. It was inspired by his idle animation when in a battle in game where he does a little shimmy.

Ok I need to talk about Vivi's design because I love it so fucking much oh my god-

I absolutely love how his face is just in complete shadow and only his eyes stand out, it's so cool and unique and I love how they recontextualized the original black mage design from the classic Final Fantasy games. How they did it I won't say because I don't wanna spoil the game, but someone give this poor baby a therapist because he goes through a lot. Actually, same can be said for all of the FFIX cast, they all need therapy (again, I won't spoil anything, please go play the game for yourself).

While I do love almost all the characters in the game, even though Vivi is most fun to draw, my favourite character has to be Zidane (the main protagonist of the game). He's a really fun protagonist, and they could have easily written him as a misogynistic jerk who doesn't respect women but they didn't, and I really appreciate that. He's just an overall cool dude who's a really nice older brother figure to Vivi and also just has a cool character design (who I also want to draw eventually). Initially in the game I was planning on grinding levels for Vivi to make him the tactical nuke of the party, but then that title went to a different character (who was initially multiple levels behind the group since I grinded the party in the starting area way to much before they joined, but now they are two levels ahead of everyone and have pulled the team through a lot of tough battles, again I won't say who it is because it is kind of a spoiler and the way the gameplay actually ties into their character arc is just so good omfg). Once I eventually finish the game I'll probably write a full review on here, so no spoilers until then lol

Also, I've kinda been burning out a bit with making Touhou art, which also made me a bit burnt out with Touhou stuff in general (although I will continue keeping up with the manga) so getting into other things (i.e. Final Fantasy and even Fallout since I've watched the first season of the TV show which is a whole other post for another day) has helped me refresh and given me something new to think about. I've ended up in the exact place I feared ending up, where I would start drawing fanart for it not because I wanted to but because I felt like I had to, so I'm taking a bit of a break. When I do draw Touhou fanart again I'll try to draw for the sake of myself, and to all the other artists and fanartists on this platform (and on any social media for that matter), take care of yourself and don't forget to take breaks when you need to!

(Ok part of that last paragraph was definitley influenced by the good ol' "it's 9:00pm and I need sleeb, but the message at the end still holds up, always take care of yourself)

Oh yeah, and here is that one style experiment I did btw

Man I really fell down the "Yoshitaka Amano art enjoyer" to "Final Fantasy fan" pipe line didn't I?

Can you show us a drawing that your really proud of? And tell us why you chose it.

Oh man. I mean, to some extent all of them? But choosing…uff ok there’s multiple-

For starters this one:

Which I also posted and can be found here

Because I just really like how the lighting turned out and it’s one of my few drawings with backgrounds, and actually scenic and stuff! Was also trying out a different brush than usual and drawing lineless, so it’s even cooler that it actually turned out okay!

Then there’s the obligatory Kirby Star Allies drawing I‘ve got pinned because it was actually one of my first ones drawn digitally, and while there are lots of things I‘d change now it still holds up good enough

(Also these two were drawn on my phone, which had/has a cracked screen, so extra points for looking ok despite that)

Another one would be the first request I did because look at this

I actually managed to make them look like the characters! Accurately! How cool is that? (I mean the background and general color of the environment’s kinda bad but that’s not the focus here so-)

Also that one took at least a solid 15 hours if I remember correctly. Yeahhhh I’m probably not gonna do requests of that size again so just to show off it exists lol

And to change things up a bit- the most self-indulgent thing I‘ve ever drawn will probably never put into its own post

A full on drawing of a main OC. Feel free to cringe now, I don’t mind, it’s deserved, but- like- it actually looks kinda good y’know? I mean the line art‘s on a new entire level of bad and boy did I screw up these clothes but this was supposed to be a simple room doodle practice before it got more and more detailed, and then it turned into a kinda fantasy shop thingy, and this particular guy‘s entire concept was basically ”magic merchant man" anyways so it fit good enough and I dropped him there just for fun but then everything developed more and he just kinda stayed here. Yeah. This OC doesn’t even have a name lmao it’s just "purple magic merchant“ in my head

Ahem. Anyways-

the last one I‘ve got (and probably will make a separate post for someday is this traditional (!) drawing of best boy Kirby

It’s drawn with alcohol markers on the thinnest collegeblock sheet of paper ever. If I move my hand around, I can see it though the paper, that’s how thin it is. And the ink bleeds so much- it goes everywhere. But this drawing still looks good! And the blue marker + pencil shading worked out pretty well too! (Sure the blade doesn’t have a handle but pshhh)

Plus honorable mentions: the bat bois because cute and the backside of that sheet because it looks a bit cool. In this case yay for cheap paper and markers lol)