Curate, connect, and discover
based on a recent art trade i got
reading comprehension non-existent tbh
i keep my character descriptions short (literally one sentence) cuz I know no one is reading all that but like... why do ppl draw him smiling when my one sentence description is literally "he doesn't smile"
who wants to do OC art trades?? DM me anytime!! bruh his name is puma guy cuz I still don't have any name ideas for him
yes its been open this whole time but I have some free time coming up and I want to draw! could've just reblogged this but uh idk
i've edited this ref so much it's not funny I hate the curse of having a super crisp imagination in my head cuz if something is wrong by one pixel and puma guy doesn't look EXACTLY how I envision him then I'll hack up the ref and completely restructure it so it matches as closely as possible with what I see in my head
also i gotta do more art trades because of how much I've changed my ref tbh I can't have ppl draw my OC based on a wrong ref I feel bad
sigh the shading pattern on my ref is SO messed up like what even is that
me when a man with long eyelashes and stubble
also i LOVE ALL YOUR GUYS OCS!!! everyone has such cool characters omg!!! i love reading OC lore its so fun
your art trades are the reason I need to finish my Ray ref sheet
omgg nah but i'd love to see you draw puma guy tho I'm just curious I'll help you with it as usual lol
anyone wanna do OC art trades?? (closed for now, will update when open again)
i got some time (no guarantee for how long it'll take but it'll prob be a week or less) since no one (on reddit or artfight at least jk but not really) can draw asian characters ima try my luck with puma guy since he's... well it depends on the person race isn't real anyways
refs are the images in this post, DM or comment with some refs and basic info of your character (can be long or short, but I just wanna know like the vibe of the character)
you do NOT have to draw all the details (I have super complex OCs feel free to simplify) or follow exact palettes and stuff just don't change it too much
dont really have that many rules for what you do I'm fine with pretty much anything I just love any art I receive (even the lewd art lmaoo ppl are simps for my other OC yilin, straight up got art of her in a bikini once and honestly the only thing stopping even that from being removed is artfight rules)
also i prefer less cartoony OCs (i mean... look at my art style its kinda hard to draw a stick figure in a realistic way since the more simplified a design is obv the less info you can get from it) but it doesn't have to be as realistic as mine just know I'm gonna end up matching the simplicity/style of the OC since I don't wanna just make stuff up, I like to stick to designs closely
i gotta DRAW my brain is making meee and i don't have any good ideas rn
photoshopped tf out of my old drawing of him you can tell the pixels get cut off/blurred I'm too lazy to redo it
btw check out my previous art pieces with the tag art trade on them for an example of what you'll get
bshshshshs the way you color skin is AMAZING the light scatter and reflection and stuff is awesome
what are your OCs like?? what are some cool things about their dynamic and reasons why? anything you want to talk about but don't get a lot of chances to?
omg THANK you i was just chilling and I instantly got like 10 notifications thank you sm!! ngl almost no one asks me about my OCs so don't mind if I absolute drop a bomb on you lmaoo
jayden (chinese guy with devil horns hair and eyepatch) thinks in a very black and white way, his two solutions to any problem are to beat it up or hug it out, no in between. and he loves snacks, one of the first parts of my comic (not gonna be posted for a long time unfortunately) is just him getting mad at a little spirit cuz it takes a bite out of his cookie!!
speaking of spirits the lore of my universe is kinda crazy too, there's a spirit world and tons of demons and cool creatures, and how it works is that ANYTHING you believe exists, exists in the spirit world its a true show for imagination lol and I love being able to just come up with wacky creatures or terrifying god-like beings.
also i said universe, not earth, for a reason. cuz there are ALIENS in my universe (the alien arc is gonna be soooo long, my plan for my comic is to include every character and plotline I've ever created, and I have been making OCs/stories since I was in elementary school) and I've made whole solar systems and technology and alien biology
magic is also a thing and it's closely tied with the spirit world. puma guy (no name yet but he's the purple blonde guy with eyepatch, and was literally created as a joke cuz I wanted to make a funny plotline about a flipped version of jayden) is a magician and he's very good at it too, and in my universe magic is actually quite closely tied to science, and for example, you cant just make an apple appear out of thin air, it has to obey (at least some, teleportation is completely not understood) the laws of physics and nature.
jayden is super happy all the time and he's rarely serious. he's very nonchalant about violence but it's not necessarily the first action he'll take. he cares a lot about justice and what's right though, he can't even comprehend that some ppl are truly evil, he innately believes people to be good because that's just what his morals are. he cares a lot more about other people than himself. also his Chinese name is 尊强 (zun qiang) which literally means something like "honour strong" he also has an evil sword with a demon in it that he can control cuz he has a bigger stronger demon inside him (unironically why his nails are black, he's not emo its the DEMON)
also i have something in my story called "levels" which is the shape inside my character's eyes (they all have one). jayden has a star, puma guy has a flower, yael has a backwards play button etc. what level you are is how many sides the shape has, with a curve counting as one side, so since jayden has a star, he is a Level 10. scientifically and medically its not called a level, but more like "spiritual fingerprint" since its unique for every person and cant be changed, its a literal part of your spirit. the levels actually do have an impact spiritually cuz the higher level you are, the better you are at seeing sprits and stuff which isn't necessarily better as the greatest warlord in history also had the highest level of 14 and went insane and died cuz of all the spirits he was seeing.
also prince lefayze (long hair dude with blue eyes) technically is level 1 but the monarchy insists that they are actually level infinity and just better than everyone else. lefayze is obv part of the very corrupt monarchy but he's quite cut off from what goes on and genuinely has no clue about all the horrible things going on until jayden comes in cuz he's basically forced to work for the monarchy but he takes his chance to get closer to the prince and show him how messed up the king (his father) and basically everyone else is. the king literally makes decisions in the prince's name, so this makes him quite the target even though the prince has never actually made any policies or statements, he's just a figurehead.
the fact that hes a target makes a lot of ppl try and kill him for valid reasons, although their hate is misplaced cuz again, he's not even doing anything, he's clueless.
i havent posted this dude, but there's a guy named fernando (I took his name from that abba song I kid you not, also took yael's name from new soul by yael naim, cuz that song is fr her) and he's... not on friendly terms with jayden, and that's being nice. I'll reveal what actually happens later, but he's the one who took jayden's eye, and no one's happy about that.
also the main cast of my TEN OCs (most are not posted) can turn into animals, jayden can turn into a lion, lefayze into a wolf, yael into an owl, Fernando into a deer, puma guy into... well, a puma etc
yael i've only posted once but i don't draw her a lot even though I've developed quite a lot of lore for her (involves autism and childhood trauma, very serious stuff actually, my story has comedy and very tragic/messed up stuff, but her story is one of the saddest) and she always ends up being the middleman between all the people fighting around her cuz she's dating fernando but she also doesn't think his actions towards jayden were fair, so it's kinda just complicated.
puma guy, being the opposite of jayden, is very serious all the time and he beats nazis up, that's literally his whole thing (very relevant in modern times I know) and he wants a relationship real bad, and it certainly isn't hard to find ppl who like him cuz he is attractive, but he can't talk to them!! he suddenly loses his ability to speak coherently around people he respects or people he likes, and it kinda messes things up for him. not to mention, since he's fighting all the time, it's just hard to manage a relationship, so even when he gets someone he isn't able to keep it going and it usually comes to an end. also he's probably got the strongest virtues of all my OCs, he only beats up bad people and he doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, always tries to be a good person (thank his parents lmao)
puma guy is literally the only one with a healthy relationship with his parents, the way he was raised by them did make his extremely selfless and it made him not complain (if he didn't want to eat veggies or smth his dad would just say "my dad was in the camps, eat up" and his mom wouldn't help cuz she would also just say "well my dad was starving and his house got bombed" ww2 generational trauma goes crazy
so puma guy bottles up all his problems and refuses to care for himself cuz "other ppl are doing worse than me" I love writing complex characters man
jayden and puma guy dont quite have the absolute hate for each other like jayden and Fernando, but because they are literally written to be opposites, they often disagree on simple issues (classic "I want to paint the wall blue" "I want to paint the wall pink") and they kinda have a really funny competition between them.
jayden and the prince... oh boy where do we even start. well I'll get this out of the way, they like each other a LOT, and its an interesting dynamic cuz jayden is always getting hurt to protect the prince, and the prince always feels really bad cuz he too cares about jayden.
i have one other character who's also fleshed out, but I haven't posted them (I really should tbh, but my current ref is literally more than a year old) and their name is rocksalt, and they are very blunt, no nonsense, say it like it is kinda person. they don't really show fear and they kinda just have a nonchalant attitude. very suited for being involved in laws and stuff. also they can turn into a cobra and again, more childhood trauma.
last thing... i have an old written story about jayden and his love for boba, it involves gang members and the old boba shop owner... who literally ends up in the hospital and has an IV filled with boba. and I wrote that for school, no joke. not to mention, I got a really high score on it the teacher was raving about it brooo
i lied about last thing, i also made a whole entire plushy of puma guy, except its a silly fat cat and that is literally the FIRST depiction of him and the first concept of him I ever made, a lot of the elements of his design make sense when you see the plushy
this was my first design of puma guy (technically second, one day I will share the handmade cat plushy OG version) erm... it's not very good lol, also from an artistic perspective... ngl find it crazy that this was less than a year and a half ago I improved like crazy!! also I couldn't draw buff people we don't talk about it I distinctly remembering him looking less weedy when I actually drew him idk
the space pattern sucks ew i've really stepped my game up on that too, face is also janky I was still slightly in my anime phase
messy lineart works but like... this is just messy and not in a cool way
its so washed out my art is so saturated now compared to this, this looks like a watercolour version where's all the pink my boy is PINK
shading is ehh i remember loving the skin and pants but it looks pretty flat and the blue... i didn't know what I was doing with that
i HATE the mouth idk it makes me uncomfortable
man it's so crazy to look at my old designs BEFORE I came up with distinct hairstyles for them
he looks like such a generic anime boy it's kinda funny
the basic things that changed is that he looks older, has curlier hair and looks a bit sleepier but I actually do tend to stick very closely with my original designs (even though I've created some of them when I was really young)