Chibi Goldenheart and Nimona in Oscars 2024 outfits.
3/16/2024. No pencil underdrawings. Platinum Preppy fountain pen, using Noodler's Ink. Colored with Copic markers and ShinHan Art Touch markers. Clean up with white-out and digitally in Krita.
I was rushing to draw, 6 minutes before midnight, so I could still say I restarted my daily drawings on the 16th. So I had no plans, and just started drawing without thinking. The Magical March drawing challenge is still going on this month, so I originally was going to draw Ballister as a "magical boy"/"maho shonen". I ended up basing it on the outfit that Ballister's actor Riz Ahmed wore to the 2024 Oscars. But then I got lazy and ended up not adding all the embellishments to make it a "magical boy" outfit. Apparently, I wasn't lazy enough to not draw 2 other characters though. lol I got the buttons and coat front wrong on Ambrosius, and I was drawing directly in pen, so I couldn't fix it. But Ambrosius's outfit is based on what his actor Eugene Lee Yang wore to the 2024 Oscars. Nimona's outfit is based on what ND Stevenson wore to the 2024 Oscars.
Remember when the fandom had a big discussion about Ballister holding his sword by the blade? And we all wondered how he could touch the lighted part of it, if it presumedly was some kind of cauterizing-laser part of the sword?
Well, if holding a European broadsword by the blade is as common a fighting technique, as this video explains, then it's possible that the Knights were all given gloves that could cancel or were impervious to the "laser" part of their swords. It would be reasonable to issue every Knight, specially protective gloves as part of their standard equipment. That way, the Institute wouldn't have to limit the types of sword-fighting styles that they could be taught.
Though I still like everyone else's idea of the swords having an on/off switch for the cauterizing-laser panel. That still makes sense to have an extra safety, even with specially protective gloves. Especially when a sword is not in use.
Goldenheart Week 2024 prompts at https://www.tumblr.com/goldenheart-week/749067591128072192/goldenheart-week-2024-prompts
Day 1 (6/27/2024) prompts: "Firsts", "Memory", and "Common Ballister AU".
I chose "Firsts". In this case, the first time Ambrosius came to visit Ballister, after Nimona blew up the Director, the wall, and herself.
For a while, I headcanoned that despite Ballister accepting Ambrosius's comforts at the moment he realized Nimona would not be coming back, Ballister still didn't fully accept Ambrosius back as his boyfriend. It would take some time, before Ballister would want to give Ambrosius, the second chance and forgiveness, that Ballister wished for himself with Nimona.
6/28/2024. Pencil underdrawings. Inked with Stabilo Point 88 pens, Copic Multiliner 0.35, Zig Clean Color Real Brush 054, and Copic Gasenfude. Colored with Copic markers and a ShinHan Art Touch marker. Text bubbles and background made in Krita. Ambrosius's dialogue used Candara font. Ballister's dialogue used Bahnschrift SemiLight font. I don't usually, hand-draw my bubble tails, since I can't digitally draw well with a stylus, but I wanted them frayed and unsteady to convey their fragile mental states.
Referenced S.H.Figuarts Body-kun for Ballister and S.H.Figuarts Body-kun Rihito Takarai version for Ambrosius. I should have used more references, especially while so out of practice with drawing, but I rushed through this drawing.
Movie version Ballister Boldheart and Ambrosius Goldenloin.
I honestly don't know if my chibi are chibi anymore. This keeps happening lately. Is this what they call "your art style finding you"?
5/16/2024. Drawn in Platinum Preppy fountain pen, using Noodler’s Ink. No pencil underdrawings, so mistakes cleaned up digitally. Colored with Copic markers and ShinHanArt Touch markers. Digitally added bubbles from a previous drawing. This time, tried digitally adjusting Ambrosius's scale/fin line colors to yellow, in Krita.
Here's how it looked without digitally changing some of Ambrosius's line colors to yellow:
Maybe this was in the online digital Nimona artbook before it went offline, but I didn't pay attention to the costume design rules for all the people in the Kingdom, until this video "Visual Storytelling: The Production Design of 'Nimona'" by Gnomon (from which I screencapped all these pics).
It's interesting to consider how these clothing design rules symbolized Ballister's and Ambrosius's positions in society, but also might have reflected bits of their personalities.
"So we first approached it by a very anthropological approach, where we sat down and said, "if this world was to actually evolve in a closed setting, behind these walls, from the medieval, in this kind of fear-based world, how would society evolve from the medieval rules? And how would that work?" So we researched the medieval rules and found that there was the distinction between, you know, nobility and citizenry, and then non-citizens. And so that was a good place to start for us, to say of "How do we organize this massive pool and system of crowd characters? but in a---in a getable way, that also relates to our story and expresses this world that we're doing?""
The Institute:
Nobility:
"So we broke we broke it down into contemporary, um, a contemporary ideology, where our main---our nobility was much more based on, um you know, haute couture rules, where we were---they were simple. They were bold. They were evolution of the kind of royal colors and sumptuary laws that the medieval had, but in a modern, in a modern take."
Citizens:
"Same with the citizens, where we leaned more into broader scope, where we needed to have the ability to have business wear, and athleisure, and, um you know, the color palettes that would be associated. …The range of body types that you would need, and…the range of races and ethnicities."
The Magicals:
Interesting thing about The Magicals, is this note "NO blue or neutral grey (due to the Institute's persecution, magicals have refused to wear Institute colors)."
Ballister's regular clothes seem to be the same color palette as The Magicals. Given the order of these slides, The Magicals seem to be the lowest rank in the Kingdom's society. Previous concept art showed that the Nimona 2023 movie originally would have portrayed a secret society of people with magical powers like Nimona. I assume these costume design rules were for them, though they got cut from the final movie. It seems appropriate that though Ballister has no magical powers, he is dressed in the colors of the Kingdom's lowest societal rank. But as anyone who has drawn him has noticed, the pendant on his shirt is blue. The one color which The Magicals do not wear, because it is the color of The Institute. Ballister is a commoner trying to become a Knight of the Institute, so it makes sense for him. And though Ballister's clothes could maybe be considered shades of gray (as per The Institute), they have the same dark values of The Magicals and are actually more of the "earthy" tones, noted in The Magicals' palettes. Ballister does not wear the light, almost silver, grays of The Institute. But he does wear a blue pendant. And though his pants have a thin golden stripe running down the sides, which is another color emblematic of The Institute, on second look, it is less gold, and more of a light tan, another earthy color. Almost makes me think that after the end of the movie, maybe he should change his blue pendant to purple, since these design instructions for The Magicals also note "One subtle purple item on each magical as a symbol of resistance and solidarity". (It explains the shade of purple in Nimona's skirt.)
Interesting to look at Ambrosius's outfit, while considering these design instructions. Ambrosius does not wear the "bold" colors or high amount of patterns prescribed for Nobility. Instead, he wears white and a dark shade of blue, with mostly solid, non-patterned clothes, as prescribed for The Institute. He is their symbol, through and through. Except for one point: his hoodie's secondary color of tan. Not only is tan an earthy tone, like The Magicals, the lowest societal rank in the Kingdom, but is takes up a noticeable amount of space in his outfit. It is almost like his one little piece of rebellion against his birth position and the expectations of society for him to represent The Institute and Nobility. It may be his one expression of who he is as a person, rather than the expectations placed onto him. It's kind of interesting that they let him get away with that. Maybe he had to fight for it. Maybe it makes him feel closer to Bal. Maybe he likes the distance it puts between him and the Institute. Maybe he didn't get brave enough to start wearing such colors until after he met Bal. (Now I'm getting into headcanon territory.)
Medievals:
This was explained as the costume design instructions for the flashback characters from 1,000 years ago.
Faebruary 2024, day 15. Chibi Ambrosius and Ballister fairies picked a pomegranate.
2/16/2024. Pencil underdrawing. Inked linwork with Stabilo 88 pens, Kuretake Zig Clean Color Real Brush pen, and Copic Multiliner 0.25. Colored with Copic markers, ShinHanArt Touch markers, Copic Multiliner BS, and Platinum Preppy fountain pen using Noodler's Ink. Corrections made digitally with Krita.
References for Ballister's wings:
"Black Heart" butterfly
References for Ambrosius's wings:
"Wallace's golden birdwing" butterfly"
References for pomegranate:
https://www.herzindagi.com/diet-nutrition/pomegranate-recipes-benefits-article-221381
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Pomegranate/Helen-Elaine-Lee/9781982171902
Every Faebruary, I draw chibi butterfly fairies of my current OTPs. This year, it's Goldenheart.
Unsure how Ballister would get his cybernetic arm in this AU. So I skipped the whole subject by not drawing it.
