sometimes youre fatally clobbered by a really good podcast and you drop everything to design a cool bug. serant is the best
i posted that first one on twitter a while back, feeling very sure of myself that serant didnt have wings. i was on episode 26 when i uploaded it. then episode 40 hit me like a freight train and it led to me studying bug wings for a frankly embarrassing amount of time. paid off in the end though because serant is even cooler with wings. posted this second picture today and then remembered that this account exists and that maybe i should keep it more updated hahah
the leaf in the background is from unsplash! credit where credit is due.
here are my design notes directly transplanted from twitter but without the character limit lmao
first image:
love that these aliens are just "tall celebi" and wanted to go a lil wild with it so i chose some other bugs to throw into her design. serant in particular has wasp & mantis traits, which i decided on BEFORE i knew her ship was called the dragonfly. oops
i didnt realize until AFTER i gave her digitigrade legs that wearing normal jeans would by physically impossible without really specific alterations that i dont think i have the skill to draw, so jorts it is!!!!!
i actually had a lot of fun coming up with how to make clothes fit her. thats what the belts on her sleeves are for, otherwise she wouldnt be able to get her forearms through the arm holes lmao
its the same w the jorts except its an invisible zipper hidden in a seam so that i dont have to draw it. but it’s still fun to think about!
I threw in the turtleneck on a whim and im SO GLAD I DID for reasons i’ll get into later.
i poured a truly ludicrous amount of time into figuring out how bug mandibles work so that i could give her a more buglike face that could still smile!! it’s still pretty difficult but im getting the hang of it
i imagine there exist shoes that accommodate clawed feet, but the image of her destroying a perfectly good pair of boots so her claws arent cramped is kinda funny. or maybe the boots are just Like that and thats just how Boots For Bug People look.
before i get into notes on the second image please look at this tragedy. in hindsight this is so goddamn funny and it’s the best possible outcome but in the moment my soul was flung violently from my body
anyway, second image:
i wish i had the words to describe the full intensity of the anguished "NO!" that echoed through my kitchen as i listened to ep 40 while washing dishes.
thankfully the anguish was temporary because?? serant with wings??? when i thought she couldnt POSSIBLY get any cooler??
im sure its clear now why im so glad i gave her a turtleneck under her jacket that first time hahahah.
sleeveless turtlenecks are a favorite of mine to begin and it was so convenient that i could also make it an open-back turtleneck to accommodate her wings. everyone say thank you to sleeveless backless turtlenecks.
its delightful to think about serant dramatically whipping her jacket to the side and launching herself into the air
it took ~2.5 weeks to figure out wings. i tried to put random lines in her wings for simplicity but it just didnt look right, so i had to study why insect wings look like that in the first place
as a result i now know more about insect wing venation than i had ever planned on knowing. it was actually pretty frustrating until i sat down and did some reading about why insect wings look the way they do. turns out all the veins have names , and the way they’re placed and where they branch can tell you which species are related to each other.
serant’s wing pattern is mostly based off of european hornets. this website, DrawWing was super helpful!! it’s really cool, do take a look if its something youre interested in!
wasps and their relatives usually have two sets of wings, and the back set latches onto the front set to be more aerodynamic. i was already struggling with one set of wings so i just fused the front and back ones together. its aliens. its fine!!!
early on, i was agonizing about how the hell serant could even fit her wings under her jacket but then i learned about wing folding. it’s the most impressive and intricate in beetles, but insects without elytra (beetle shells) can do it too. did you know earwigs have HUGE WINGS?? youre welcome!!!
im so glad i found out that serant and melas have wings BEFORE i finished designing melas. the bugs i based him on are a little tougher for me to work with and i would have had to make a lot more changes and do more backtracking. im really hoping to have something concrete of melas done soon, but i got distracted by a fun idea for oh’eler . oops . in the meantime heres a messy little doodle i put on twitter as well as an alt background for serant. i wound up going with the copper one instead because it made her wings stand out more.
if you read all this, wow thank you! i hope you enjoyed.
this was actually the first baby digimon i drew in this batch! bibimon is VERY cute, but im not happy with how the forehead thing came out. having real trouble w lighting an shading different textures lately. good practice anyway, i suppose!
so kiwimon’s got this attack that just kinda... launches other smaller kiwimon at it that i think are referred to as chibikiwimon. it didnt seem to have an official entry on the wiki i pick ‘mons to draw from so i made my own!
i gave it my version of chibikiwimon a stylish bracelet and some red talons! id assume its roughly the size of a watermelon, and you could punt it like a football. perhaps it even bounces!
i messed up the colours a little bit but i do like the presence of the tabby stripes. woudl you give this digimon your chickemn sandwich. no? you monster.
this little one is doing whatever the opposite of scheming is. i doodled a lot of geese over the summer (my camp name was goose) so im getting pretty good at wings and feathers i think!
evil little nyaromon based on a very mischievous salamon my friend plays as in digimon tabletop. i have no idea if nyaromon is their in-training form but i think this is what they’d look like if they were. for this one i added the white ear tips and the earrings because this character’s champion stage is a fangmon rather than a gatomon. i also added extra stripes and eyespots because im a sucker for those. they’re fun!
ive been filling the last few blank spaces of my sketchbook with baby digimon. unfortunately since they are such small drawings, my scanner absolutely massacres the quality and wrecks the colours. it’s still good colouring/shading practice though! ive been really dissatisfied with my cell shading as of late and i know it’s because im spotting mistakes that i didnt catch before but i havent figured out yet how to fix them. frustrating!
i like to add tiny differences to the digimon i draw, usually in the form of adding extra stripes and markings. this babie got some of those, as well as toe beans! look at her go! she’s on a mission
terriermon-x but this one’s substantially less fluffy and substantially more unsettling
after (re-)digivolving a second time, nova continued to live unaware that he had existed before his most recent hatching. however, a friend of his grew impatient that his memory wasn’t returning, and took matters into her own hands. this deeply upset nova, who had been experiencing senses of familiarity toward digimon, humans, and situations that he’d supposedly never encountered before. he had a small existential crisis and a big big cry, but came out of it accepting both sides of himself. he’s still a little disoriented at having two distinct sets of memories though.
this version of terriermon-x is a lot bigger than both terriermon and the usual terriermon-x. the top of his head (horns not included) reaches the waist on a human of average height. his two sets of eyes can move independently of each other.
after a short baby training montage consisting of biting people and screaming, zerimon-x digivolved into gummymon-x where he dropped the bomb that he has no recollection of anything prior to his hatching. he did this in an extremely graceful way: by asking his tamer to his face “who are you?”. this was not at all traumatic to anyone (false) and the “newly” named nova lived in blissful ignorance for a while longer, playing with his friends and experiencing a life without self-hatred. weird!
i play this digimon tabletop game with some pals and my character, a terriermon named nova, made a Poor Decision that resulted in him dark digivolving and going berserk. he had to be defeated by his best friend and sent back into the digiegg state. when he hatched again, he had the x-antibody, which altered his appearance. it also altered his memory, but being a baby, he couldn’t really do much about it other than babble out baby noises and demand affection
this background reminds me of an avocado. anyway i wish tesshin had been more interesting?? i remember being like “why does he know like 50% of the battouga” and i think that its such a missed opportunity to not have him have some kinda identity crisis about being trained as gins successor but knowing that he’ll never be able to fill those shoes for real. esp when he meets weed and weeds able to do the battouga super easily. double especially since, yknow, his clan got murdered by the dogs who raised him. KINDA FUCKED UP IMO!!!
finding refs for this dog was a nightmare. i swear rocket is never drawn the same way twice. although to be fair if i had to draw him like dozens of times id sure id draw him inconsistently too. i still think hes the most interestingly designed ginga character (from what i can remember anyway!)
what the hell happened to smiths voice between gng and gdw anime. actually i guess it makes sense that they couldnt get the same voice actor back after like what 20 years?? anyway i made the mistake of watching gdw first, being like ‘why are we all crying about this old dude’, going back halfway to watch gng where smith would become my favorite character, then started over watching gdw and was like. oh no. oh no
apparently i have not uploaded anything here since january of 2019. The Before Times... well, i guess i’ll just dump any art from the past 3 years here now in an unceremonious heap
