TopHeavy

2023 J-Cup Commission 4: Busty Tracer's Air Conditioning Broke

Added 2023-09-11 14:12:29 +0000 UTC

Edit: updated with newer and more refined version. Kept the old version for the sake of comparison and posterity. Also added "desert" background.

Over the years I've picked up a lot of techniques from other artists that I've tried to implement in every single piece I do and I think that has made my work worse. It isn't that the advice was bad or the techniques were bad. The exact opposite in fact. What was bad was my decision to use advice from artists with competing visual styles. It turned my work into a kind of aesthetic slurry. With this piece I took a small step back and opted not to do a couple of steps I would normally do. Just to see how it turned out. The result, I think, is much cleaner.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to be re-examining how I do things in the hopes that I can improve. I like how this turned out, but the quality of my work feels like a shot in the dark. That isn't OK. Especially if I'm trying to make a living with these illustrations.

As an artist, I am my own worst critic. My goal is always to make what I like looking at because I believe that what I want to see and what the audience wants to see is the same thing. The thing is, I haven't been happy with my work lately and I'm afraid to render Toph Heavy as a result.

I like the soft rendering for Toph Heavy. I'm going to keep it, but I hope to refine it so that it isn't so mushy.