While I Was Going Through Old Drawings...

Souls

Something that I should also probably explain before diving into characters, is the way I think of souls.

As already explained in Undertale, the soul is the culmination of a being. I perceive it as if all of yourself is condensed in your soul. Memories, preferences, opinions. Taking one part out of that, the soul wouldn't change visibly, but physically something is missing, making the person holding that soul act, think and feel differently.

I also quite like the idea of the soul being reflected in my character's eye colours. That way, you kind of can look into their soul if you're looking into their eyes 😍.

I also really like the part with the soul traits. That means, you have one trait that you can categorise the way someone is.

The only problem I see with that is, that it's too bland. It would mean a brave character needs to ALWAYS act brave and a nice person needs to ALWAYS be nice to everyone. Because of that being unrealistic, but still wanting to include it, I like to think about it like your soul trait only shows at extreme moments. That way a character can still feel normal doing something that wouldn't exactly fit their soul trait.

If you take it a level further, it's also more likely for a character to drift into a constant behaviour that hurts their own soul. That means if a kind person is constantly being mean to everyone, it's going to affect them negatively. It could be physical but also mental. (Just came up with this last thought as I kept writing it down, but damn ... I see potential for some deep plot 🙂)

Just wanted to share a couple more doodles of my OCs. Think they turned out pretty nice.

That's Edward (former known as Decay)

And here we have Blake.

I'm looking forward to the day, I finally finish all of the concepts for my OCs so I can start telling their story.

I have to admit, I set too high goals for myself this year of ArtFight (but I tend to do that very often.)

Attack No. 2: Mari by assiduousTorture

I'm currently having same character syndrome, wooooo!

Or maybe it's a lack of inspiration.

But at least I got back to drawing and liking my current style again.

Also, if you have any good OC-challenges where I can put my OCs into please let me know. I'm bored and I need to draw them more.

And I need to figure out the remaining designs for my 12 OCs

(although, Yishu is definitely settled. I'm making like reference boards for each one and hers is pretty much overflowing)

Looking back, I stressed myself out too much in the beginning of ArtFight. One full rendered drawing a day is much. It worked for the first couple days, as you can see, but overall I lost motivation. If I ad spend some more time on these, they would have been even better.

Or it's just me being a perfectionist again. Whatever. I had fun and that's what matters.

Ookay, lineart is done. Color will have to wait until tomorrow.

And yes, I didn't outline his scar but this time I didn't forget about it! I'll draw it as I color it.

(And is it just me or do the cogwheels look weird? It kind of looks worse in the picture...)

Okay, I stopped working on the previous sketch since something about it was not right. I'm not sure what but it felt weird and I didn't like it.

Instead I moved on to the next one. Sadly, I forgot to make a picture of the sketch before slightly erasing but I wanted to show it nethertheless. So, here's Eijiro in his hero costume

Can't wait to line and color it 😀

And the last one

Attack No. 5: Siyah by Ralminno

I finally got over my art block 😀

The key was, to draw something different than what I was struggling with. I was so frustrated and at the same time fixed on drawing the face right, that I didn't realize that I had no fun doing that. After my mother asked me why I don't draw something different than faces, I drew her a couple of trees to prove that I could draw something different. after that I continued with the trees and realized that I was missing fun while drawing. Thanks for that, mom😘

I was listening to one of my usual playlists and then I had this scene once again in my head. I thought, why not try to draw it and it turned out amazing 🤩 I really need to draw more backgrounds, it's fun. I was also able to put my perfectionsim aside for that one. It's so imperfect that it makes it perfect again.

In this picture, you see my oc Ike. Since I don't want this post to get too long, I will introduce you to his backstory another time.

Tested my new markers 😀

Arm and his clothes were great, I don't like the way I rendered the hair. Guess I need to try out some other techniques.

But finally I have skintones and my characters don't look like oversaturated oranges.