sarracenian

Various Qi Dandan drawings

I will at some point draw her wearing something different than just the qipao. But not today.

REQUEST: Old Samus

Yo, been away from the internet mostly for about over a week. It was quite refreshing.
Been slowly coming back, to fulfil another art request (and also I guess maintain some online presence too since that's just part of our lives now hahaha)

Will they ever do an old Samus? Probably not, but then I think generally all media everywhere have a bias against old women. You have no idea how letdown I was by Dandadan when the grandma wasn't an actual cool crone lol.

While I was away, I also subbed another Chinese historical drama because that's a thing to do for me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVSsU_ebGgg 

Only done 3 episodes so far, shall see if I feel like doing more. Maybe I should make that part of my patreon? Sound off in the comments if that's what you'd be interested in.

NEW REQUEST THREAD

Time for a new Request Thread! where you get to make an art request by commenting below! My apologies for not putting these up in a long while.

This time I will be accepting One of my choosing! I liked the last time when we did some simple situations like characters doing stuff, so I'm gonna do one of those again

Please comment below!

Sukeban Moumou - faux-laserdisc cover

Maybe I should've made it a twilight sky instead of a sunny one. Oh well, I'll do that next time. Either way, this was a fun thing to draw. This is based on covers for anime laserdisc OVAs, esp. ones posted by wiz_caleb on archive.org. Should plan for more Moumou dress ups next time.

Also some bonus Moumou expressions:

sukeban moumou wip

The winner of the last art poll!

Have you guys ever watched the Sukeban Deka OVA? Its great. I still haven't gotten around to the TV adaptations even though I should, but I also wanna watch more of Hana no Asuka-gumi. There's just so many things to watch! So much!

Also Moumou is just a bit too tall to fit into the uniform I think

EDIT:

Will also get around finishing these too probably 

灵禽真君 2 Avian Lord-Ancestor 2

More of the dinosaur demi-man.

They actually did have feathers on the lower-body, but lost it over-time due to age.

Qin Bailing and Guan Qinglang putting on uniforms

You know.

Qi Dandan artdump

bunch of Qi Dandans drawn, some inked and two sketches, because that's where my mind was I suppose.
The 3rd one was originally part of a whole thing but then I only drew the one so now its just Qi Dandan being kinda ooc and sultry

End of September Poll (Moumou outfit special)!

This time I had an idea; What if this time we decide what kind of outfit to have Moumou dress up in? Thinking of doing in the style of also those anime laserdisc covers or splash arts (examples seen here)

(The pictures are more for illustrative purposes mostly, not necessarily the literal outfits I'll draw Moumou in)

Exterminator City (Commission)

This illustration was commissioned by Eppu, the video-essayist behind Unfeatured Films (a recommended watch from me, particularly if you like to delve into obscure cinema!) and friend of mine, for an as-of-yet upcoming video of his.

This was based on a B-movie called "Exterminator City", which I've never heard of before. This trailer/montage calls it "Robot Puppet T&A Cyberpunk Insanity", which seems succinct enough introduction. Its funny how my digital setup managed to crunch down the original colors I had (2nd pic) into something with a different vibe. Bit of a shame that some of the blends get lost during that translation, but hey such is the way with creative accidents.

Guan Qinglang splash art

Also, finally finished this one. An experiment based on the various splash arts of new gacha mobages that's popular right now, such as all the Hoyoverse games and Wuthering Waves and whatnot.

Didn't turn out the way I wished it would tbh, but hey such is the price of experimentation. Should I do another one of another character later? I will think about it, if I ever come up with another idea.

Also bonus sketch:  

灵禽真君 - Avian Lord-Ancestor

"What if the ancestral patron deity of the bird yaoguai is so old, he's an actual dinosaur." 

Here is the winner of the art poll! It was actually a tie between this and Samus, and I decided to go with first come first serve, as this guy was on the lead first. Which is fine, 'cause I'm happy I got to draw this guy out.
Little known fact, but I'm actually a huge fan of the many new modern reconstructions of dinosaurs in paleoart, such as this one for the various raptors. There's just something so tangible and "real" about them, like it makes me feel oddly that same sort of melancholy as when you are a kid looking at dinosaurs and realizing you can never meet them irl.
To the point, its actually a little hard for me to go back and look at some of the dinosaur stuff where they don't have feathers or otherwise utilize modern reconstructions hahaha. Oh well, its not like those Jurassic World movies look to be any good anyway lol

Traditionally (at least in Journey to the West's take on it), I don't think yaoguai are supposed to live super-long, so I dunno how the Avian Lord-Ancestor got to live for so long. Either he really is an actual xian, or Immortal, or knows something we don't...
(his outfit is roughly based on elements of Zhou dynasty clothing too, also)

EDIT: It is now colored! I'm just gonna edit it here rather than make a new post so close to the prior post.

Also bonus lineup. What a pantheon; 
 

Another new comics idea to do

Do you ever experience a piecce of media, say an RPG I recently completed, and like one of the characters or the concept enough to wanna do something about it, but making fanfics/fanarts seem too passé and you just kinda wish there was a separate story and context with just the things you like alone (like say, classic pulp adventure-investigators, Showa manga aesthetics, and Hong Kong occult/exorcism films), and so just go ahead in doing exactly that.

Hey, better to just own up to my hack-fraudulence and cringe now so that I have less debt to pay later hahaha

This mainly started out a bit in trying to imagine what the personality of Persona 4's main character is like while playing (without any prior knowledge on anything else P4 in general) between me and my roommate somehow it just evolved into elaborate bits feat. Naoto, that then finally ended up me coming up with a whole storyline and characters, which I will share some other time when I have more stuff written up.

Anyway, I should prob get around watching more Kolchak: The Night Stalker also.

A new Art Poll!

Hello!

So here's a new one; I realized there aren't as many new higher Tier Patrons as many any more, and I also realized I've started to accumulate enough WIPs that I kinda all want to finish into full pieces.
So I'm gonna make an impromptu poll centred specifically on that.
The Request Thread will still stay open, I will just answer it once anyone posts something to there.

1+2) Guan Qinglang splash art / Shanghai Combat Revue teamup poster: https://www.patreon.com/posts/wip-its-guan-but-109832099

2) A Howling Banshee poster: https://www.patreon.com/posts/howling-banshees-101528016

3) Space Casette Moumou aliens cometh poster! https://www.patreon.com/posts/moumou-has-cow-88809418

4) One of the alternative Bubblegum Crisis poster: https://www.patreon.com/posts/wip-sylia-of-bgc-106298463

5) Ancient bird/Dinosaur yaoguai: https://www.patreon.com/posts/sketch-dump-1-65721853

6) Do Another Samus! https://www.patreon.com/posts/110236719

A new Request Thread!

Time to open up Requests again! Where you get to make an art request!

This time I will be accepting Two of my choosing! Once again doing simple situations like characters doing stuff.

Please comment below!

Samus gazing at the world (done)

There's this great painting by Dai Jin (the Ming dynasty painter) which I still think about where there's this visible glare of sunlight coming from the upper corner, probably one of the first times I've seen light depicted in such a way in shanshui painting from this long ago. Its great. I sometimes think a lot about how much there exist art from a literal millenia ago that already knew about complex art theories and keen observation. Even though its not unusual and I already know this in the back of my mind, it still catches me by surprise, like those murals in Pompeii for example.

Funnily enough, I can't recall seeing any artwork that depicts Samus accompanied by an actual bird. Seems kind of an obvious thing to do, you usually see bird motifs being common, but no actual bird animals of any kind.
I suppose it kinda does have the same effect as if you drew a normal human guy accompanied by a chimpanzee or something hahaha. Though I suppose its kinda goofy in general how in genre-fictions, when there's a non-human race, their art motif is pretty much exclusively based on their own faces 24/7. I bet if Morrowind came out today with Elder Scrolls' modern art design sensibilities, all the buildings would just be grey and pointy and pseudo-gothic (y'know, for the 1000th time in a row).

EDIT: Also a colourized headshot quickie:

Samus gazing at the world (inked WIP)

Wow OK this is going somewhere hopefully.

I originally wanted to do a timelapse but then I didn't because I realized my drawing style would make for an awfully long and boring timelapse that'd just make people ask "Is THAT how he does things wtf".

(If you are still interested on me doing timelapses, do comment below)

I originally wanted to use my OG pen settings before going with the slightly softer one, which means two entire character line arts lol (the second one didn't took long tho). Its kind of a shame getting a hand on a physical artbook of Hua Sanchuan's stuff is a lot harder when you don't live in proximity of China/some weirdo country no one's ever visited called Finland.

Still in the middle of figuring out a better schedule for these. The current plan is that I would do Requests/Polls at the end of the month or so, with them fulfilled somewhere during the middle of next month. Polls & Requests would entirely depend on if I have many drawing ideas or no ideas respectively. That sound good?

hey hey its Samus sketches

Hey, its winner of the art poll.
I forgot how much I do enjoy drawing Samus until now, and now it feels like maybe this is my purpose. Maybe all along I was supposed to be drawing Samus all the time

So hey that's fun. Thinking of maybe using the first one as the one to finalize, since I was looking at a lot of Hua Sanchuan paintings while sketching it

Happy Patlabor Day 2024

It was Patlabor Day, so here's a redraw of my fav manga cover for Patlabor

(wip) its guan again but splash art (+ new team pic)

Letting you in on a secret; I am forever cursed to find faults on every previous Shanghai Combat Revue I did, so that means I am forever also trapped into sketching out and drawing new ones based on the team. Is this healthy?

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Also hey, if you are a tier 2-3 patron, remember to vote in the art poll if you haven't yet!

Question to everyone / Request for input

I've recently been thinking about where to take this Patreon from now on.

As I've been kinda doing this for a bit now, and realized I haven't really changed too much on how I operate, I feel I am somewhat letting people down with how things are operating so far. For that I am sorry for, since I tend to not think about as many things as I should unless its directly brought to my attention.

 That's why I'd really like to hear out your comments and see where I can improve and what else you'd like to see me do on this platform.

(If you don't feel comfortable of commenting in public, you can also shoot a DM)

Once again, I am very grateful for every support I get from you guys, since I really don't expect to get that much attention let alone any form of monetary support drawing these.

End of July Character Art Poll

Hey! Its time for another art poll!

And Oops all blue characters*.

 
I realized I've not drawn Kamen Rider or Samus Aran in a long time, even though that's kinda where a lot of my artistic journey started from, arguably. Partially out of spite too, since I didn't feel like at the time no one "got" Samus than me lol (not as much anymore; Remind me one of these days to list out on all the people's takes on Samus I really like)

(* Cao Cao won't probably actually appear in his Koei games appearance, but the themeing here is too fun).

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beach time summer moumou

Going to the beach on this nice July day. Had a bunch of different ideas for Moumou to wear, so I did all of them

I thought about the Tim Rogers video on Boku no Natsuyasumi (great channel btw) and got thinking about the Japanese summer pop aesthetic, which is also why I tried to do a take on it.
I should push harder for that specific pop art look next time tbh its a very pleasant one.
 
(though my Arbitrary Contrarian instincts might still get in the way, because somehow I subconsciously convinced myself (read, shooting myself in the foot) that the regular 80s Japanese pop aesthetic is just One Step Too much for my late 80s-early 90s VHS anime mascot character lol)

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As an experiment, I've also attached a .clip art file, for people to play around with the layers a bit and if people want to see how things slightly look behind the veil.

Please do comment if you want more of these files in the future!

Sylia Stingray from Bubblegum Crisis (also Priss)

Finally done, took a longer while than I had anticipated, but then I went to do this in a far more complicated way than I prob should have. Imitating those painted cel anime backgrounds is a journey still ongoing.
Still unsure about it so don't be surprised if there's some changes later on, but for now it is here.

Have I ever told people I actually run a Bubblegum Crisis RPG game for some friends? Yep, since 2023 actually! We've managed to be lucky an run it consistently for nearly every Thursday, using the janky but functional official BGC RPG system by R. Talsorian.
Its really fun, though also not an easy system to recommend unless you know what you are getting into, but is perfect for realizing any 80s cyberpunk feat. women in cool power-armor fantasies one may have.
The players basically play as their own Knight-Sabers ("Knight-Tempest" as its called in this game), whose suits look something like this:  Perhaps some day, I shall draw them in their regular civilian garb. Try my hand in imitating the Kenichi Sonoda style once again.

Doppelganger Double Gang / 双重二童

Finished up these character sketches I had also.

Since all main canon Sakura Wars teams all have a support team as well, or "the Wind Division", of course Shanghai Combat Revue should have one also. I had the idea of "Doppelganger Double Gang", because it would be very funny if there was this amateur xiangsheng 相声 duo who basically just filled the radio comms with their routine half the time and annoy everybody.
All my characters seem to be "what if happy but also annoys people", huh.

Funnily enough, did you know that there actually was going to be an official Chinese developed Sakura Wars spinoff, and its set in Shanghai too? Wild. They also had two supporting characters that looked like twins because I am a hack hahaha (tho in my defense, I mostly forgotten what anyone in that unmade spinoff looked like).
The game never came out, and to be frank it didn't look like it was ever going to be popular enough to sustain itself anyway let's just say. Oh well.

Hey, that means more room for imagination for me!

Moumou summertime (WIP)

Suddenly was hit by a divine bout of inspiration and needed to get the summer pop mix Moumou before I lose it. So another sketch it is to be eventually finished.

Only later did I learn that the camera I was using as ref (Panasonic S-VHS Reporter AG-455) would've been way too new for Moumou to feasibly use (its from 1995-96).

She is having a duo popsticle because she thought its like one of those double cheeseburger kinda deals and doesn't understand what popsicles are to begin with. You know how it is (I don't know how it is)

sylia cityscape (WIP2)

Oh yeah, its coming together slowly but surely now I think

Maybe somewhere in the future I'll rework another one of the ones into another Knight-Saber. Maybe Linna, her suit's cool.

oh hey Ranma's coming back

Ranma getting a revival is pretty exciting, and just when I recently got back into Ranma!

Speaking of I've also discovered this recent way people draw Ranma on twitter. First encountered if from @siyeyeyeyer, but there's a few others. Its very fun so I'm drawing a homage to it

wow Yedocia for once

It seems everytime I draw her now her design changes just a bit. Also coloured the trivia that in fact, Moumou is taller than Yedocia, because that's very funny as an idea.

It (was) Maria Tachibana day

After all this time Maria Tachibana still is in my mind, and when I dig her back up its like "god..."

Soon enough, I will finish those garage kits of hers I got.