hiii just wanted to say that your art is so awesome sauce coolio, the colors and the lineart are so bright and pretty and detailed,, may i have the pleasure of knowing how you choose your colors + what brushes you use n artstyle stuff etc etc,,, (❛⩊❛)
Hii!!! Thank you!!!
I'm not the best at explaining but i'll tryy
I usually work in FireAplaca and just use the default brushes they give you. I like to turn off the antialiasing sometimes, because it makes everything look kind of crunchy and like it was drawn in MS Paint. The lineart is just a cleaned up sketch. Also no stabilizer, i hate how it feels.
my fav default brushes↑
Sometimes i also draw on Autodesk Sketchbook on my phone. I love the brushes there, though it's kind of hard to draw with a finger. There's also a desktop version, but it's really laggy and keeps crashing for some reason.
I usually pick one base color that matches the mood i'm going for and choose the rest of the palette in accordance to it.
Here in the first panel, my base color is green, so i nudge every other color towards green. Kind of like the light is reflecting off the walls and the floor onto them, but really exaggerated. Tenna's bowtie and Mike's bowtie become orange, and i think the lilac of Tenna's head is too far from the green, so i just make it gray.
The further the color i need gets from the base, the grayer it becomes (unless i want something to stand out).
I think you can achieve the same effect if you color things normally and add a color layer on 50% opacity that's the same color ar your base, i just think it's fun to pick everything manually.
I don't know how good of an explanation that was but i picked up a lot of stuff i know about color from Marco Bucci videos, so i reccomend checking them out. I remember watching this one about color harmony several times.
I'm not sure what to tell you about artstyle stuff. I guess i try to use hatching and folds in the clothing in to better show the from of whatever i'm drawing.
Okay, I am not a good analysis person, but I have seen several takes that destroy Spamton's backstory in wake of the new Pink dialogue, so I wanted to hopefully course-correct that. The new lore we got does not drastically change Spamton's backstory, but adds onto it.
Mainly: Spamton is not currently hiding from FRIEND. He did not drastically change his appearance himself to hide from them. However, I think it's reasonable to say he was possibly chased at some point, as he provides advice on dealing with cats in his QnA and all cat element defending armors are related to him, with the dealmaker tied for the most reduction. In that way, he is doing what he can to protect Kris and co. from FRIEND, who is now targeting them.
Also, FRIEND is very much separate from Mike, and Mike may even have been or still is hiding from FRIEND, but that's more speculative.
(Here is a tumblr post with all of Pink's new dialogue, as a refresher)
Firstly, the appearance change line is most likely referring to someone (or multiple someones?) other than Spamton. The way he refers to being made into a living puppet heavily implies someone else turned him into one, along with his general hatred of being a puppet and desire for a new body (NEO). Spamton did not alter his appearance himself, though perhaps it could have made FRIEND lose attention regardless? We don't know for sure, as Pink doesn't say if changing your appearance actually works; we just assume it can because the cats aren't “too smart.”
Now, you could say Spamton's glasses are him changing his appearance to hide. However, if he did do this, it wouldn't have helped him escape. Placing the dealmaker on any of your party members does not prevent FRIEND from continuing to follow the party, who are being chased, so it probably wouldn't have helped Spamton on its own in that regard. However, his glasses do provide the best defense in the game against cat element attacks, which is noteworthy. *
Now, I want to get into more speculative territory, as the benefactor, mantle holder, whoever owns FRIEND, and why Pink knew them are a whole other mystery. I think Spamton may have been chased by FRIEND after signing the contract with Tenna. It gives him a clear motive to run and not come back if he was afraid of FRIEND chasing after him. For one reason or another, he is cut off from Tenna's contact and turned into a puppet. So far, we have not seen FRIEND outside of the dark worlds, and perhaps part of Spamton's motivation in becoming NEO (and, a lightner by extension) was to escape it by getting into the light world. All his previous motivations we knew about for NEO do still exist, there is just one more motivation possibly on top of it.
Pink says the cats get bored of chasing eventually, and I think Spamton is in that category. For a guy that reacts with extreme disgust at any CRT, he has a comparatively tame reaction at the question about his thoughts on cats in his Sweepstakes QnA. However, he gives “free tool tips” about how to deal with cats by describing how items can help you defend against elemental pairs, and the first one he mentions is… puppet/cat. No one asked him to do that. Spamton is not worried about dealing with FRIEND; he already has, and he gives advice on how others can deal with them. Every armor that gives defense against puppet/cat (frayed bowtie, true tie, dealmaker, and the mannequin) is heavily related to Spamton in some way. This could be because he himself uses puppet/cat attacks, but I think both can be true at once. Interestingly, dealmaker, the item most directly connected to Spamton, gives 40% resistance, the most out of any of the puppet/cat armors. (*Both it and mannequin were nerfed to 20% in chapter 5, but I think that's just a balancing thing like twin ribbon's nerf and not lore significant? The bomb attacks are the only Pink attack not reduced by them anyways so I don't know why Toby hates us waaah)
Lastly, I wanted to talk about Mike. We didn't get any new info on Mike, but the new info about FRIEND changes things. Namely, FRIEND=Mike is pretty much deconfirmed, and I think that's a pretty popular theory? We know that both Tenna and Spamton are fond of Mike, Spamton doesn't want revenge against Mike, Mike's room existed before the fake Mike's took over, and Mike is capable of communication, as he was able to warn Tenna about creating the Contract. None of this really fits for an evil pack of cats that hunts and bites you.
I propose that Mike is his own character, and he's not evil or anything. Why he's there, how much he knows, what he looks like… all of that, I can't answer. But, I wonder if he is the one in hiding. If FRIEND is why he disappeared one day from TV World. Did he take the fall for Spamton? Is he the reason Spamton gets to walk free, albeit still horrifically transformed into a puppet? Is Spamton a puppet because he evaded FRIEND? Is this why Spamton keeps what he knows about Mike close to his chest? For Mike's safety? Did Spamton get the Dealmaker from Mike to protect Spamton against cats, or did he make them himself??? I'm writing more fanfiction than theory at this point, but I think it's quite an interesting development in the Mike mystery, and I'm fascinated to see where chapter 6 may bring us.
I do think there's a big point to be made about how Kris is currently a target of FRIEND (It's been in every chapter since 2, where we enter the ROOTS adjacent basement… hmm…), as well as them and Dess following the tail in the past, but I wanted to focus more on Spamton (and Mike, since he's connected) so I could actually finish writing this little essay. I'm unfortunately not too much of a brainrotted Delta-spiracist so I apologize if I missed any notable details. Feel free to add on.
