So I got a bit carried away with stuff this week, had some bad news, had some real bad news, then some good things, and through it all I was making stuff. Which is, honestly what's keeping my mood up is that I can still create and try things that succeed.
So my boss at my new job was very very kind and gave everyone whole christmas hams (each) for the holidays, I was, super unsure what to do with it for a week, but came to the idea of making little hand pies, then I could bring some into work still, go thru the ham, and eat maybe a little healthier.
So I took a vodka pie crust recipe and stuffed those into my cupcake pan with some fried shallots, brie, and the ham itself, all into little cupcake sized ham and cheese pies and oh my god. They were delicious.
While I was at it (technically before) I also made the pudding pies from the recipe in Awaria, Vanripper's new game (Helltaker dev) about sapphically kissing ghosts. Unsurprisingly, vanilla pudding filled pies were addictive and not only did I eat all of those in like two days. I also ate all the ham and cheese ones in like four...
On to model stuff though.
Vtuber Stuff
So I have a few ways I've rendered models as I get better. The first one (android) uses a bit of a cel-shaded style that I felt was good enough at the time, and I tried for softer more regular shading on the cowgirl model later on. For the moth here, I wasn't sure what exactly I was going to do for the skin and clothing, but I knew I had an idea for the hair so I started there. I took a look at stuff like Arcane and how they render hair, looking at my cowgirl model again, and then just kinda combining them. I ended up with a really gritty, messy render with chalky looking outlines and I kinda dig it.
Also yes her hair IS very reminiscent of Vi, I realized that far too late to want to change it because unfortunately that's just also been my hair irl for like 6 years so we can all fight over it I guess...
From the hair, after I got to this point, I was thinking, wow, I wonder what those brushes would look like when I did shading, because sticking to a soft airbrust was contrasting weirdly with the hair rendering, and I was still staring at Arcane screenshots and stills and going "... I wonder..." which is where I ended up going off.
Obviously, I can't go fully into the painterly direction like Arcane does. The way that vtuber models move - and my future plans for this model and how I need it to move - would mean that level of specificity just wouldn't work out long term. That in mind I've struct a balance between clearly visible brushmarks visible in the shading and texturing, coverage, and color simplicity.
It's always important to remember with vtuber models to imagine it sitting at less than 1/4th your screen size down in the corner. I used to have these marks be less pronounced, but they were indistinguishable at scale that would actually matter. Think of it exactly like contour makeup. It's there for the scene you're seeing it in! Not for zooming way in on the face at close detail all the time.
Anyways I think it kicks ass, the skull motif in the shading comes through and the colors of everything blend well with the brush I was using to make a kind of edgy look that fits her hairstyle and aesthetic.
For today (Tuesday) I actually spent most of it running errands and fixing my phone by replacing its broken screen (success though). So I didn't do much work at all on this other than some inner mouthparts - which are a secret - and then stylematching the eyes to this new render style. I added some texturing to the larger parts of the eye like the sclera and irises, and reshaped the shinies to be sharper. I think overall it looks really distinct and interesting!
Once all these head parts and inner mouth parts are done, I want to go into live2D with them and get that rigged before I move on to the body. Not for any particular reason other than I want to see how much more I'll need to draw for the head toggles to look how I imagine them, so I want to just get started ASAP.
Past those, I was working on commissions, which is, by my own policy, a no-sharing kinda thing (reminder my commissions are open:tm:). So here you go with the bonus doodle. Mothgirl Fay in sorta chibi-er proportions! (Idk what to call this)
Happy New Year!
I want to be more like, documentative of stuff I'm doing this year because it really helped me confidence wise to see how much I'd done once I sorted my drawings by year. So in lieu of just posting sketches, I think project progress posts might happen at least for a while if they're fun. Especially if folks find it interesting or helpful to see someone else do stuff at a different pace than "and now here's a finished thing".
So with that in mind! OC and Vtuber mo(th)del stuff after the fold (long post):
Character Designing
You might remember my previous sketch for redoing her hairstyle (her OC name is Fay btw because mildly self inserting). In addition to the hair, I went and redesigned her outfit and figured out a color palette.
So Fay here had a few previous design iterations, a lot of the monstergirl bits are hugely influenced by Juniper Actias, one of my favorite streamers not only because she's a monstergirl enjoyer but also because she streams so much of her drawing and animation (rigging) work for her models its hugely inspiring (link for her twitch, other links are in her channel bio). I've obviously made sure to distinguish Fay here from Juniper but the influence is at least IMO undeniable nor am I particularly concerned with it being so noticeable, I'm just gonna give credit where it's due.
Face wise I was inspired by this (horny) art of like a bile titan (Helldivers 2) gijinka where the mouth split open on these seams, and that was such a cool way to have mandibles and a fucked up mouth opening (here https://vxtwitter.com/Museumofendings/status/1769777921747456421) cropping the image to show the example here because the original is kinda NSFWcore
On to the outfit, I had an old outfit design, a few actually, and those are here:
As you can see, the color palette's kept a few things and lost a few others. The teal color (my favorite color) has stayed even though I never made a conscious decision for that, it just felt right. That orange was originally picked for matching to the type of moth she's inspired by (Death's Head Hawkmoth) (also yes I know moths don't have mandibles but I'm a monsterfucker sooo...). We went from primarily sashes (its a lore thing) to being an old labcoat design mixed with some of the sashes. Conceptually she's a necromancer and the magic in my worldbuilding is very scientific in vibe, so the combo of doctor and whatnot is fun. You can also see that her claws now take the shape of scalpel blades which is very intentional (inspired by GirlDM's villainess model, Twitch Link more links in her channel bio too).
Semi related the claws themselves are lorewise bone that she's grows into those shapes. Very The Locked Tomb core necromancy where its not so much skeletons as much as it is just manipulation of organic matter which is much more expansive and fun. Maybe someday I'll do a loredump about my fantasy setting I write in, but for now you just get that.
Vtuber Model Time
So I make Vtuber Models. Not a secret. I love the process, I love how creative the people that design vtubers can be. Great examples I follow not already mentioned above that I'm pretty sure make their own models are BooBeeQueen, Syraxis, LobotomyBunny, and if pngtubers are more your vibe you gotta see Oceonax who has so many bespoke animations its insane. Additionally if you watch PorcelainMaid AKA Jowol, he's done so many super sick character designs for folks to adopt as vtubers.
So anyways, I love vtubers as a creative outlet and for animation its really really fun to see my own art moving just because I'm making faces at an iphone, like below! with my current/most recent model:
This little dark academia cowgirl was fun to make, she's got lots of hand toggles I was messing with, and what I learned when making her was a huge step up from my first model attempt you might remember, the android girl (link to old tumblr post here).
When it came to the moth here I have, a lot of ideas, but to keep it so it actually happens, I'm going with very basic for now. In total our project is going to have:
- Face and body movements, facial and mouth tracking, and one or two hand postures to toggle, just like the cow lady up there.
- A non-standing pose, as I've only done front-facing models so far and I really like how both Juniper's sitting model looks as well as Matara Kan's sitting pose.
For the tracking we know how to do that but will cover it once we get there for folks that are interested, right now we're making art assets, which folds into the pose! Here's the pose we're going with:
This half-kneeling I think is dynamic, in character, and is (I think) unique and interesting while being able to show off the whole outfit! Not super well pictured are here secondary arms, but we'll get there once we start rendering the parts, since lineart for these things looks...
... A little bit insane. If we're honest with ourselves.
The reason for this is because the model requires each piece that's going to move to be an individual layer and self-contained part. As you can see, the legs for instance are made up of chunks.
Vtuber models are functionally paper dolls, and you use temporary transform tool style warping to animate and move. For that to work the parts of the art needs to be "cut" up into these pieces. Not here that the foot and calf are one piece, I might change my mind and make each foot its own piece just for more options! For now though we're doing it this way.
The face and torso are directly front facing, this is because it's far easier to make a straight on face turned sideways look good than it is to take assets from a 3/4ths angle look anything normal facing forward, and we have to keep in mind the range of motion for those parts.
For the chest you can see here all the lineart for each of the nine (9) parts!
We do this here because we want each piece to have different physics. The way that her breasts move will be different than the cloth physics for the scarf, which is itself different from the cloth for the hanging fabric, and is itself different from the chest strap there, which isn't going to have physics but does need to move independently of the chest for working with facing angles.
We've only just started the head, but you can see here that the hair is already at least seven pieces, and the mouth interior is going to be more than ten.
As seen there where teeth and alternative texturing on the mandibles creates already eight of them, and we haven't even made the cavity parts like the throat or the (I'm not sorry) anatomically accurate proboscis tongue.
So that's where we're at as of 01-01-25! Welcome to 2025 by the by (how hellish). At this current pace, this might be done by the end of january.
I hope if you read this far that you thought this was interesting! Thanks by the way! I'm happy to answer questions if folks are interested in making vtuber models or why I picked different character design things, yapping about creating is always fun! Lastly you can have a bonus little drawing of F4 (the android girlie) I did a weekish ago~
For the folks that followed and liked like 60 things today, I see your notifs and you made me very happy I'm glad you liked my stuff enough to look through my past posts <3
Publicly for the first time! Offerings detailed below, send requests to:
[email protected]
Payment through Venmo or Paypal (I don't have an invite to vgen)
Pricing subject to change dependent on complexity of request.
Me when I don't post in forever.
I didn't die I just got laid off and started roleplaying in final fantasy while I look for new work. Here enjoy some character sketches.
Fay, my main character, looking like she's wishing for death (in canon for her arc)
Her girlfriend IC, Commina, who's equally not-okay but in a complimentary way.
Me when I don't post in forever.
I didn't die I just got laid off and started roleplaying in final fantasy while I look for new work. Here enjoy some character sketches.
Fay, my main character, looking like she's wishing for death (in canon for her arc)
Her girlfriend IC, Commina, who's equally not-okay but in a complimentary way.
theartofmadeline
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