*Dramatically touches hooves tracks on the ground.* "We're in horse girl territory-" Cris, not cis, white, 25+ || occasional NSFW and uncomfortable topics; 18+ please || I reserve my right to block you.
An interesting feature that I don't think would be added but would be REALLY NEAT if it did (bc it's a conservation video game) would be to include RECENTLY extinct species and how human impact and bad zoo practices led to their extinction (eg passenger pigeon, thylacine, quagga)
Meet the team working hard to bring Of Guns & Graves to life! As we head further into our creation period, we would like to recap all of the incredible artists, writers, and cosplayers working in this zine!
Have you been able to read Witch Hat Atelier? If you like Vash, I think you'll be able to connect with Qifrey too, especially as the series goes on :)
In a funny twist of fate I have been monthly reading Witch Hat since at the very least 2022 if not earlier, long before I even watched Trigun. Qifrey's always been a favorite and it has been just such a journey watching him unravel recently and end up so similar to Vash, even though they're the same guy but if you took them in opposite directions.
It's also quite bemusing to see the intense overlap between Trigun and Witch Hat Atelier fandoms. feels like home a little!
Long post talking about my journey making 27 (40 actually) horses
in December after posting to instagram about possible Horse Keychain Gacha someone suggested I pair them up with horse cards (my Equinoctia series.)
I've workshopped with a few friends because i wanted to make them Lunar Year of the Horse themed, but basing mystery keychains off zodiacs ppl might not be would make people less enthused about owning them so
12 zodiac horses became 14 to make 2 Equinoctia packs and the keychains became 12 separate animal companion horses based loosely on the months of the year with the additional Fire horse of the years 2026. so 27 total horses (of which the keychains would have keychain and card design as separate arts.)
December 22 2025
This was a somewhat 'standard' horse on my part. The pose is dynamic but still somewhat flat/lacking dimension. It was serviceable but even back then I felt like I could have done a bit better, but overall I was glad to be back in the horsey workflow.
January 7 2026
First keychain design. The horse in the Year of the Horse.
Followed by all the keychain designs done on
January 19th 2026.
I had recently done a series of cat keychains that needed much less elaborate designs, but I knew I needed to make the poses and designs centered so that the design elements made for a pleasant contour. A lot of thought went into color and elements that would make each design distinctive. I also wanted a good balance of flying, swimming and regular horses, a variety of breeds and bodytypes.
This is also the only time a card illustration was made before the keychain and as a result the keychain has more dimension than the illustration.
January 22 2026
Started working on the illustrations in earnest, trying to go for more interesting angles, which led me to try not just an interesting angle, but also a different medium: watercolors.
January 23-27 2026
One of the pieces that suffered the most modifications and took the longest simply because I was unprepared for the techniques I wanted to use both traditionally and digitally, ending up reverting to process that was most familiar to me.
February 1-2 2026
Went back to process and techniques I knew better and really started to put my ambition into interesting poses and composition. This is one I was really happy with when finishing it.
February 3 2026
This one doesn't have a lot of progress shots because I was really in the zone while making it and as you can see from the sketch most of it is already there, just needing the proper details.
February 10 2026
This was another frustrating one. I wasn't feeling good that day and I had so much other stuff that needed to be done I only got to sit down at 9 PM and still wanted to finish an entire horse that day or else I'd fall behind on schedule. This was done in 4-ish hours, using a grayscale->gradient map process because my usual methods failed me in giving me the results I wanted.
February 18 2026
Another quicker one done in a few hours trying to get on the schedule. I personally really like this one. It's meant to represent last year (Earth Snake)
February 23-24 2026
Learning from past experiences I reattempted the watercolor style, but this time exclusively digitally to a result I'm still really happy with and the process for this was also just very fun, feeling like I finally had the brushes mastered.
After quite a break from horse art returned to another quick 3-4 hour one that was set to become the cover for this new series.
March 14-17 2026
This one was once again quite challenging but in a very fun way because I changed the brushes i worked with entirely again. It was also fun because it kept making me think of vintage Cocoa Cola.
March 20 2026
Sketch made for this one that won't return for a while.
March 22 2026
Pressure was starting to ramp up that I was quite far from completion with only a month until the debut at Comic Con in April.
March 23 2026
Two horses started and one finished. I was starting to settle into a routine execution wise and things felt like there were going to come easier.
March 24-25 2026
Changed the background entirely and took quite a lot longer than expected with it, but really happy with the result.
March 28-29 2026
The trend of taking quite a lot longer than expected with finishing a piece continued, was starting to feel like I might not be able to finish all the horses in time, but I was trying to console myself with the fact that I was putting more accent on the quality of the pieces. This remains a personal favorite.
April 1-2 2026
The pace for this one was frustratingly slow, but oh my gosh was it a pleasure to actually work on it. It came out quite exactly as I had imagined it in my head a whole while back when I made the keychains.
April 4 2026
Remember this one? I had postponed it for a long while because I was afraid of how long it'd take, but with the experience of the squirrel one I learned how to shade backgrounds more surely: slow and steady did the job, and this piece I was dreading was actually done in the same day. Some 7-ish hours of work total.
This one was really hard to get into a rythm for and I flipped the canvas around an ungodly amount of times. I was trying to cut down on time by photobashing the background, but in the end everything was handpainted and the sea was really fun to make!
April 8 2026
I was starting 1 and a half pieces a day now, having truly gotten into the rhythm of things. I was well and truly stuck in horsey hell and the screenshots I usually took to show my friends became truly sparse. I finished the monkey horse in a fugue state, some 6 hours at the monitor with only dinner time for break. But as a result the sheep one got done the next day in only a couple of hours with no effect layers used. A lot of the most recent ones use little to no effect layers, as I'm trying to figure out relative colors since I'm setting them down, a lot more like in traditional art.
April 10-11 2026
But to counterbalance the ease with which the sheep were done, this dolphin one took an absurd amount of time to properly get the gist of. Returning to my previous point: i was failing to plan the colors in a traditional sense and ended up resorting to effect layers and gradient maps which muddled a lot of the piece, until I managed to find a way back to my comfort zone. Painting water is something I struggle with and I had a lot of water painting to look forward to...
But also on April 11 I managed to start and finish a whole other horse:
April 13-15 2026
Still working on two horses at once so switching between them, it felt like I was somehow getting more done at once, even though that's probably not true. These two however are probably some of my favorite horse pieces I've made so far. The one with the twin foals really appealing to my sensibilities, and it's the one I was the happiest with because while I had the idea for the longest time I was scared I couldn't execute it properly and would probably need a ridiculous amount of time to make, which in the end proved not to be the case and had an actually really enjoyable process of it!
April 20-22
I somehow managed to finish 3 whole horse illustrations in just 2 and a bit days elapsed, working on them in tandem as to not ADHD quit. This is the order they exist as in my screenshot folder. I was in a fray with only days left until Comic Con.
April 23 2026 at 2 AM
The final one was done!!! The process so well learned by then I couldn't believe I didn't have any more horses after this one (until I wanna do this again of course!)
izzy806
gummygunk
discoholicmusic
2087
vaporwave
annaxmalina