Character Design Inspiration/challenge

Starting off strong with one of my most notable piece this year. I didn't know that painting on a frustrating summer sunday afternoon in JULY is actually the best environment for your creative juices to flow...

I also just haven't touched watercolors in a while.🤔😮‍💨

Thank you to all who participated! This was actually really helpful. Surprisingly enough, I do have a lot of art to showcase to you all, and it will be a little bit of both.

Unfortunately, I have a bad habit of starting many pieces at once, So if anything, anything at all, becomes post-worthy...I will make sure to post it.

Thanks, people of Tumblr! Can't wait for my next post!

I see way too many beginner artists be paralyzed by this notion of “artstyle”. They want all their drawings to be consistent with each other, so they force random rules upon themselves (“i’m gonna draw noses this way” and “i’m gonna color stuff this way” and whatnot) that stop them from going out of their comfort zone and improving their skills. Then they use it as a crutch for their lack of said skills: “no it’s not bad anatomy/same face syndrome, it’s just my artstyle!”

I get that they want their art to have a distinctive identity, but as we all know you have to master the rules before you break them. Learn what you need to learn, don’t be afraid to try a bunch of different stuff and as you improve, trust that your preferences and your personality will shine through. That flexibility will also make you a much stronger artist.

Back in middle school, there was this girl I knew that was something of a personal muse for me. One day, she wore this very lively outfit and I just had to draw it.

It felt weird drawing my classmate, so I gave the caricature a pseudonym and gaslit her; not admitting that I did, indeed drew this cute outfit of hers.

I've been getting really into, and I mean REALLY into watercolors. And on a whim, made a very delicate piece.

This is Sorashi, an alien princess in charge of the mystical concepts of space and time. 🤔.....Somewhere in this cannon, I want to involve the planet "Betelgeuse", that massive star bigger than the sun with an unfortunate name.

Who knew talking about your OC's would be so uncomfortable...? Uh, so there's my art insight. Thanks for reading!

It's much too cathartic to read more of Vivziepop's wrongdoings.

Best pastime for something productive.

I also implore you to give the docs a read, it's fascinating...

⚠️NEW EX- SPINDLEHORSE MEMBER - KENDRAWS SOUR EXPERIENCE WITH VIVZIEPOP DOCUMENT AND EVIDENCE. ⚠️

So…this is a VERY big important post guys, so be alert and spread this as much as you can. You may know artist KenDraws, who was responsible for boarding on the Hazbin Hotel pilot, as well as WRITING too. Here is the links to the boards they did below:

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kendraw

Here are the boards I did for Hazbin Hotel!  It was entertaining working with these characters and I learned a lot! I hope you folks enjoy!

Recently, I was given the opportunity to be handed a document they had created not that long ago, about their experience with Vivziepop, and why they and Viv aren’t fond of one another anymore and don’t work with one another. The document includes commentary by Ken themselves, and screenshots of conversations they and Viv had together. The timeline of the screenshots go from 2017, where Viv was developing the pilot, to 2020, where she was pitching the show, where Ken lists everything that Viv had done. Before I post the link, I want to show a message that Ken had said in the end, to why they made this document:

With that said, I ask that you PLEASE read all of this, to get the full context, and as I said, PLEASE share and spread this across the fandom and community. Here is the document link, all written by Ken.

DOCUMENT LINK: https://docdro.id/zyvFyCb

docdro.id

Ken's experience.pdf

Who are you?: My name is Ken, you may know me as ‘KenDraw’, and I used to be a friend of Vivienne Medrano. I would share information about m

Do with this information as you will, but I ask that you spread this, so more people can see what kind of person Vivienne Medrano is, and more importantly, how something like this won’t happen again.

For now, I have no commentary, I’ll say my thoughts on my own posts, but for now I just want to get this out. PLEASE take the time to read it all, and please spread the message, and don’t pester KenDraws. Thank you.

Passionfruit article recap + additional information + my thoughts.

Here the article here. https://passionfru.it/hazbin-hotel-spindlehorse-studio-46812/

January 5th, Chai posted a screenshot of a leaked message from SpindleHorse Toon's discord.

In the message, production supervisor Adam Neylan shared the rates for the season finale of the studio’s A24 collaboration, Hazbin Hotel, which premiered on Jan. 18 and is the third most popular show this week on Amazon Prime. (Copy pasted from article)

It's a 35$ rate for rough animation work clean up so around 35$ per minute, the last step before lineart and colouring. I did some deeper digging on how this works.

According to Quora, the cost per minute depends on the complexity of the animation itself, whether it's freelance, and how much experience the animator has. Since this is cleanup animation, the cleanup animator would have to trace over the rough animation and add in-betweens. There was a user on Quora that mentioned that a basic 2D infographics animation for just a company ad can be up to 3000k per 60 seconds. https://qr.ae/pKjxu2 This is more professional though.

I can expect lower rates for Helluvaboss because it's an indie Youtube series, so there's more cost flexibility but for Hazbin? SpindleHorse should be paying professional rates. Minimum estimated cost, ranges from 2k, 8k to 50k per minute. This is the average estimated cost in the United States. Of course, this is depending on the complexity of animation itself, the number of characters etc. Hazbin Hotel? I can't see 35 dollars being a fair price for cleanup artists, because the animation is moderately complex and there's a lot of shit in the backgrounds, plus the musical sequences are also complex.

Anyways.

It says in the article that the rates would be 35$ for a second of rough animation cleanup. It's speculated that Hazbin is animated in twos, requiring 12 drawings per second of animation. I will skip over Chai's comments, because I'm more interested that Neylan confirmed that it's a cleanup animation. He didn't get specific, but some of the information in the screenshot is confirmed by him and legitimate. This confirms some of my own suspicions that Vivizepop is underpaying her staff.

Passionfruit asked SpindleHorse's employees current and former employees plus contractors. They had to be kept anonymous because they feared a retaliation from Medrano and her fan base. This is classic workplace abuse. Anyways- they had mixed opinions, but most of the time it's described as "disorganized", "tight deadlines" and offered low "industry average pay."

Passionfruit tried to reach out to Vivziepop, but she declined.

Trust me Vivziepop, we can tell you have no experience.

No HR person, explains the many many problems. There's a risk that they could be doing something potentially illegal and without an HR person to check the laws, Vivzieopop is putting in a great deal of risk for a lawsuit by one of her former employees. Not that I give a shit that she gets sued, because it's justified.

You're not an indie studio if you're working for Amazon and A24.

I mean with her behavior on threads and twitter, I can't blame her employees being terrified and at the mercy of losing their job because Vivziepop can't take criticism.

God that's so fucking vile. It's under the table sweatshop bullshit right here. Especially for a studio that was picked up by A24 and Amazon. I would understand if Spindlehorse was still an indie studio with no backings at all, but they have A24 and Amazon backing them. Plus, Vivziepop hired popular VA's that have voiced characters from Rick and Morty, plus Encanto. Adult Swim and Walt Disney studios. What bullshit excuse do you have for that?

Here are those deleted tweets with Erin Frost.

I've talked to Ken, this document is 100% valid, it's consistent. Ken used to be a friend of Vivziepop's but as you can see in the document, they have a falling out, because Vivziepop is not capable of owning up to anything + the transphobia. Vivziepop has a history of taking credit for other people's ideas and it's gotten worse recently.

And yes, the guy that wrote this article also made a documentary on Onision.

I have some closing thoughts about this. Vivziepop has no idea what she's doing and she refuses to fucking listen to anyone. I made this blog with the original intention to call out how stupid her shows were and how badly written they were, but it's escalated to this. I'm very left leaning, I'm anti capitalist, I'm anti corp, I believe in unions, I believe workers, no matter what industry they are in, deserve to be paid what they are worth. Watching Vivziepop practice the same tactics that many corporations inflict on their employees, especially fucking Amazon, makes my blood boil.

Viviziepop has a history of refusing to accept any form of criticism, tracing, and taking credit for shit she hasn't done. It's morally wrong at this rate. She's an asshole. Do you know how infuriating it is to watch Vivziepop squander and abuse her position as an artist myself? She's living the dream that very few artists have the privilege of having. To get famous off of your OC's and your original stories, is a very hard thing to do,. To watch her abuse her position and other artists around her, makes me have visceral rage. There are artists out on the internet that have better characters, better stories, better fucking ideas compared to Vivziepop and they never see the light of day because it's extremely hard to break into the spotlight. God. Fucking damnit.

Anyways...

This tumblr blog has a shit ton of evidence and screenshots of what Vivziepop has done and said. Its a lot to cover. I don't know how much more proof you need that Vivziepop is an asshole. Wake the fuck up and stop being a sheep.

Yep, that's pretty much it.

I was born almost 20 years ago, And for a good portion of my adolescence any question your standard 7-year-old would have I would obnoxiously ask my family members when they didn't look busy.

It took until I was almost 9 to learn that babies weren't birthed orally. And I only just recently learned that ice does indeed carry bacteria.

The first tip is a bit contentious. A sketchbook arguably should contain high quality art pieces and doodles for variety and range of artistic expression. No wrongs in a creative process, right?

Being too hesitant to use a sketchbook for fear of "mistakes" is a personal flaw, Not a flaw of having only one sketchbook.

art tips post

for all the artist following me

Have two sketchbooks: One for finished and high-quality art (stuff made with Prismacolor or Copic if you use that or art for your portfolio) and the other sketchbook for more messy doodles. This way you have a place to try new things and mess up as much as you need. When I only had one sketchbook I was scared to draw in it because I didn't want to mess it up

Do studies. I cant tell you how much I've improved just by doing studies of shoes, hands, noses, and all that. This works for when you have art block too since you’re not really making stuff up and just learning how real things work.

Learn from others. I’ve never taken a real art class because 1. I can’t afford it and 2. there’s no good art classes/programs at my school. I’ve been following several artists and learning from them over the years and they’ve helped me tremendously. Just please do not steal art because that is never okay.

Break down concepts. If you notice there’s something wrong with your piece then figure out why. You can’t get better if you leave mistakes and don't try to understand whats going on. If the color is weird figure out if the values look right or maybe its the saturation of the color.

Watch youtube tutorials. Here are some youtubers I think are pretty good art teaching all things art: Draw with Jazza |  DrawingWiffWaffles |  Proko |  Baylee Jae

Have an inspiration folder/blog. Sometimes you just need a collection of starry nights or a misty forest or even a French bakery. All of those things can help you get inspired to draw. It could even be completely unrelated to what you plan to draw.

There are no dumb ideas in the creative process. If you want to draw a lizard in a dress go for it! If you want to draw various pastries with faces do it! Don’t let the thought of it being too dumb stop you because if I’ve learned anything in my several years of drawing it’s that an idea can lead to another and another and another and you may get a really good idea just from doodling dumb things.

Here’s a few things that can get you started on drawing better:

Dynamic poses | Dynamic clothes | Dynamic figure drawing

COMPOSITION | PERSPECTIVE | CONSTRUCTION

Anatomy:

Legs

Arms

Hands

Heads

Body (Female) (Male

Color Theory

Improving your sketchbook

Most importantly, don’t give up! You may not immediately get notes or followers but it’s more important you get better than to have popularity. How do you think those popular artists got to where they are now? To be good you’ve got to work at it.