wow! today is the digital stars miku expo nyc show. this post is super late, but i've had it written for a while, so now is as good of a time as any.
in 2025 i illustrated for FLAVOR FOLEY's album, CARDIAC CONTREPOINT! in addition to the album art, i drew six of the visualizers which were animated by rice "ricedeity" deity. this is gonna be on the thought process behind them.
the idea was to show off each character in their song's outfit with an associated item and trademark color. i was given basic sketches and info for each song, and then started from there! this is where i'd show the sketches but i wasn't sure if i can Lol
around the first deadline i came in with some rough sketches for posing. but more importantly, colors! i had versions for everything with:
just the main color + B/W
main color + black + only item is white
color + B/W + an ACCENT color in screentone.
we went with the last one! it had the best clarity between them all, maintaining each song's visual identity while having a good contrast.
CONCEPT & DEVELOPMENT
because of the dimensions of phones, i decided to go with a "not-quite-full-body". rice's sketches also had the face mostly obscured, and i thought that looked pretty cool. (besides, at least for me, they also ended up covered by that weird black bar on phone screens)
i had to keep in mind that phones have different sizes for the visualizers, so some stuff would probably get cropped.
we threw around some scrolling text for extra flair but it ran into the aforementioned cropping issue, and so it was eventually scrapped for a clean image.
i went through the list and sketched out a couple poses for each song, trying to keep in mind the personality of the piece and the clarity at scale. the items were mostly set prior, with some discussion on rawdog and queen of venus. i will now describe the thought process for each pose as briefly as possible
butcher vanity - chef pose a la gordon ramsey. a little threatening
rawdog - lol
weathergirl - acceptance. her hands are kind of clasped like a prayer lost to stormy winds
weiward romance - i redid hers the most. i really liked the way cactuskhee drew her hands in the mv, so i wanted hers to have an implied motion akin to the rapid swaps. feng yi's pose is more heavily contrapposto to give the impression of playful movement.
water the roses - watching a dead rose get deader... i have always liked gumi's design, so i'm a little sad i couldn't get her goggles in … well there's a little bit. and i got to draw them in the anniversary
i also remembered like a week before deadline roses Don't grow like that and was like ? is it still ok?
queen of venus - the most fun to draw… i like the roman architecture in the MV and the sacramental feeling. but i also wanted it to be kind of intimate and precise…
her hands also are intentionally placed to cover her p
rocessor
PROCESS
This is the point where i confess that i actually am like really bad at lineart because it is so fiddly. it's a patience testing process.
my favorite kinds of lineart to look at are either the zero pressure, no shading stuff that occurs commonly in animation (like masaaki yuasa for instance). or beautiful inkwork with intense control of pressure and curves
unfortunately idk how do either of those
but i actually am pretty pleased with the linework here! i looked at stuff like the cowboy bebop op and initially tried to go with very consistent, form forward designs.
it was a struggle for me. i mostly went in order while working on them (per stage) and i ended up redoing yi xi's lineart a lot. the first time around it felt very stiff and clunky. second time around i had the pen the same the entire time. and rice was like Hey can you add some more thickness in certain areas
it was late in the process when i realized that i never actually was told i had to have all the lineart be black or connected...
so i went back and started coloring in or erasing parts to give it a looser feel. which is more natural of a process for me anyway!
a big inspiration was MANOdeMARINA. especially their somnium files merchandise illustrations. i remembered this artist right at the end and was like Damn… wish i had done that sooner… i just think their combination of shape and ink-like brushwork creates great movement with clarity
hayden was the first one i completed. it was really helpful to have one completely finished so i had a full basis for consistency. i think his art might actually be my favorite of the bunch…? i just like how the hair and clothes accents came out. the sheer fabric of is sleeves was something i wanted to capture.
plus the sweat drops are just really funny.
after that it was a matter of sitting down and just drawing consistently. like i mentioned earlier i did have to redraw weiward romance a bunch to get that playful, bouncy feeling in there
we had the rule about the limited color palette, but then i put some lighter shades in weiward romance to get that glowing lantern look that's part of her hair. and then it was kind of over… there's blue streaks in butcher vanity, gradients in rawdog, damp strokes on weathergirl, the glowing effect for weiward, another gradient in water the roses, Adachi rei's solid accent color hair……….
well that just goes to show... how much things can change when they start as an idea to when you actually have to make it happen... the only stylistic concept that was the same from proposal to execution was the SCREENTONES.
i suggested having screentones to match the mosaic look in the album art. but each tone would be comprised of an image texture, like the posterized, toney look on flavor foleys' website !
So it's sort of like that……………… this part was a lot of fun. and very simple too… i didn't have to fight the piece to make it work.
the last step was combining layers in a way that would be editable for the visualizer's, since they would need to be animated. it was decided pretty early in the process about what the animation for each song would be, so i separated based on that
for example. on butcher vanity, the arm was going to move, so that's just a different layer
for some the animation wasn't going to need any moving parts so it's just BG layer and the character. i did try and keep the files clean and separated this time though, unlike my usual files.
after that flavor foley did all the work! if you are reading this precisely on 5/8/26 and also are at the racket in nyc for the miku expo digital stars show, you can get a postcard from me. i am dressed as adachi rei.
ok here's my powerscaling list of the cardiac contrepoint song characters based on how hard they were to draw
feng yi >>> Eleanor forte > gumi > yi xi > Adachi rei > hayden
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