soap and ghost, after months of flirting, of having each other’s backs and saving each other’s lives, of knowing the other better than they know themselves, finally getting together
ghost letting himself free fall onto the bed, soap following, always following his lead. they barely pull apart enough to get their shirts over their heads, hands running over muscles and scars and holding close
soap kisses every new scar that’s revealed to him, from the thick keloid divot over his ribs from some kind of puncture to the innumerable slashes and stitch wounds holding his torso together until he’s mouthing over his collarbones; the tips of his fingers lightly caressing the edges of his mask
ghost who’s been so quiet, so overwhelmed by soap’s touch that all he can do is sink into him, panting gasping breaths, finally pushes out, “don’t ask me. please…”
soap freezes, mouth hovering over his skin. “ghost…?”
ghost’s face is tilted away, eyes held so tightly shut they tremor while the rest of his body stays lax beneath his. desperate. resigned. “please don’t ask me, johnny.”
soap lets his hand fall from the mask, coming to run soothing circles over his clothed hip. “why?”
“because i’ll say yes,” he confesses and it’s great and terrible; a warning and a relinquishment laid at soap’s feet. “i’ll always say yes to you.”
for a long moment, there’s nothing but their shared breaths, nothing but their hearts beating for the other. until soap finally leans down to press a kiss to the corner of his hidden mouth; his lips meeting faint raised scar tissue he might never see
“i’ll never ask.”
ghost’s eyes drift open and they catch on soap’s; on a sea of promise and fierce protection
you cannot tease wei wuxian and hua cheng hunting for funsies and not show that to us??? it has to go one of two ways right? either an absolute visious blood bath where everyone cowers in fear or the equivalent of a teenage girl's slumber party. both??? both.
Hunting each other for sport is the keystone to a fun slumber party
HOWDY EVERYONE- so excited to FINALLY be able to show off my piece for this year's Bumbleby Big Bang!
Unfortunately no accompanying story as of yet- but I really hope you guys get to read it someday! The premise involves Yang cursed to be trapped inside a sword, which was an idea I KNEW I had to make move.
Details and development stuff under the cut!
Lots of fun collaboration with the author, Celeste! We worked together to find the look-of-picture, Blake's outfit, how the Grimm look, the style of the sword, the whole shabang! I'm really happy with how it all turned out!
When I first saw all the prompts, even before claims opened, I got to work on a handful of exploration pieces based on some of the summaries, to decide which of the stories I was interested in would be the best fit. Here's the initial idea for this one I put together over a lunch break:
After showing Celeste, we got to work finding the look we wanted! Went back and forth a bit and found this great look for Blake! Also shoutout to Pinterest boards for visdev inspiration I love you Pinterest boards.
Just about everything stayed to final anim, with the simplification of getting rid of that purple cloth hanging from her belt, (since I already had the rope ends to think about working with), and the light purple strap across the chest, since leaving it out would simplify the linework on her chest.
The sword also went through a bit of change! Celeste had the idea of Yang making the sword catch on fire, which I LOVED. I went with a split design so we can see the fire more clearly start from the hilt and grow to cover the whole blade.
And from there we brainstormed animation ideas! I went all over Youtube for video reference of sword work (that would be complex enough to be interesting, but short enough to be manageable). I found something we liked from Motion Actor Inc., a channel I've used LOTS for both personal and professional work (I work in 3D Animation, for those who don't know). I edited this together, to see the action from multiple places at once, which gave me the idea for that camera move that's in the final anim!
Now for the fun part! Make that badboy MOVE. For the cam turn, the first frame she's in the air I'm referencing the top left video, and the frame she lands I'm referencing the bottom left one. While she's airborne I'm just inbetweening that! No reference for the Grimm, just wanted it responding to her attacks, but I end up tweaking the roughs later on to make the block feel stronger.
Then from there we had to actually figure out Grimm designs! Nimona had just released, and Celeste and I loved it, so she asked if I could take some inspiration from Nimona's shadow form! GLADLY. Here's what I came up with!
I was going between how the movies and comic designed Nimona, really loving the almost liquid shadow of the movie, but also how the comics had this broken up/held together rougher form. Celeste liked the second to last one the best! The original plan was to have it leave a wispy shadow trail like the concept art, but to simplify the animation we left it solid instead!
Next up is tiedown! Basically just getting the roughs more on-model, so the lineart comes out nice and clean. I've also transferred the new Grimm design to the base from earlier, and fire's also outlined orange so it reads clearer. (SPOILER- if you look REAL close here, you can see Yang visible in the fire! I liked the idea of Blake's slash also doubling as Yang throwing a punch. The idea is in the concept art earlier but now it's working with the action.)
Next step- final look of picture!! I asked Celeste for sources of inspiration to draw from when thinking about environment design, and we got Nimona, She-Ra, and Owl House! Used each of those as springboards for shading style, colour palettes, and how the fire would look!
From there, we kept the straight trees/bush/lake/foreground greenery from the first one, the blues from the second, and the fire from the third!
Once I had this frame, it was a matter of working backwards and making the background work pre-camera turn (which was ABSOLUTELY the most challenging part of this process). Learned a lot doing this! Procreate isn't quite equipped to make something like this efficient, but I'm pleased to say that Dreams would make something like this easier in the future (keyframing objects instead of hand-drawing/spacing duplicates by hand, for example).
From then on it was just colouring the lineart, adding shading, and finishing up the background! Beginning-to-end this whole process was beginning of July to end of October!
I had an absolute BLAST putting all this together. Here's to next year where I find a way to do something even more ridiculously complicated!! It's fun!!!
Will never stop thinking about how Leo, all alone in an endless void and being beaten again and again and again by the only other living thing around, still finds comfort in that space. The situation he was in was completely hopeless, and in any other circumstances he would not have escaped, at least not fast enough to save him from permanent (or even fatal) damage, be it physical or mental.
And yet, despite the bleakness of his situation, despite the agony and helplessness, all he needs is one glance at a crumbled photograph, one glance to remember his family, and that’s enough of a reason for him to smile.
Maybe that’s why his powers center around manipulating space - because no matter how much space is between them, no matter how dire his own situation may be, just the thought of his family, alive and okay, is enough to give Leo hope.