Arc 3 Cover Raw Art

You might have noticed that Arc 3 now has a proper cover everywhere you can read the story! I figured I'd post the full, title-less art here with a little director's commentary; I'm still working on a gallery page for patrons where all the art I commission for the story can be available to download. For now, here'll do.

This lovely piece was commissioned from Togekko, who was a true joy to work with. She was incredibly professional, easy to work with, fast to respond to feedback, and was willing to go through lots of iterations as we changed little details. Her art absolutely rocks, and if you want really high quality art with cute characters and detailed, cozy environments, I highly encourage you to commission her.

As for the art itself, there's tons of little details, from the half-eaten Famichiki to the little circle on the mantle diagram's foot. Ezzen is the real star of the show, though, and I think he came out wonderfully. Came out. Get it? We were actually considering putting a whole design on his shirt, but it felt too busy and I didn't want to commit to figuring out a whole shirt design (though the eyes shirt depicted in 1.12 is still on the docket for eventual apparel!) Plus, I didn't want to put Togekko through that much work.

Despite me saying that, she did draw a whole mini version of the Hina poster! We probably could have gotten away with just using the actual art with some digital posterization effects because it's mostly covered by the logo, but I think doing it the authentic way has really added a sense of quality to this textless version. This poster is not canonically in Ez's room (yet) but it's easy to imagine that Hina herself put it there to claim her territory or something. Maybe I should have had Hina's actual signature scrawled across it or something.

You may also note that the poster to the left of that is a lexicon of the various glyphs, a sort of periodic table arranged by the five main ripple colors and three orders. Don't take the symbols or number of glyphs per section as gospel. Maybe someday I'll figure out symbols for every single one so you can get a real, authentic version of this poster, but that day is a long way away. What we have here sure looks pretty, though, doesn't it?

That's pretty much all I have to share about this cover, other than that I'm super happy with it. I've really been on a spree of getting art made for the story, and while that's starting to slow down now, I'm definitely going to keep getting covers and supplemental art made as we go forward. If there's an artist who you'd particularly like to see me commission, let me know in the comments!