more in-depth explanation above lol but yes, opening up my kofi for the above stuff! i'll still be posting art to my socials as usual, but there'll be more consistent/exclusive/early-access art and wip posts for members on kofi, along with all the benefits above
thank you very much for any support as always! muah
day 11: symbolism/themes/visual metaphor i.e my favourite things in the world - eng lit nerds make some noise!!!!!
goin back to day 11 with my favourite thing in the world: an unfinished sketchy concept. and also SYMBOLISM and themes and metaphor…and also dark green
so mika and heidi's story is haunted by one time they happened upon a drowned fox and pheasant in a disused canal, something which came at a weird time in their lives and which heidi made weirder by making cryptic suggestions about the whole thing, especially playing on mika’s (former) religious beliefs about spirit connections. Over time, it’s infected mika with budding paranoia in the form of nightmares, hallucinations and latent aquaphobia, all of which she begins seeing as premonitory
shan’t overexplain the symbolism even though my brain wants me to, but this was all inspired by seeing literally the exact same thing on a walk with my great aunt when I was like 6 or 7. the canal water was all covered in algae/pondweed so i’m guessing the fox chased the pheasant, they both mistook the canal for grass, then fell in and drowned together. even as a little kid I was like wrow this is so poignant and tragic and heavy with the potential for on-the-nose symbolism….. or alternatively it just looked cool as hell and felt kind of rare and special. either way, like 15 years later I was developing a new direction for a couple of initially completely unrelated ocs, i.e mika and heidi, and at some point in their story development, I was like now wait a second….this is just like that one time I saw those animals who chased each other into an early shared fate and drowned together…… and it fit them really well and also made everything click into place for the main story, it was kind of uncanny. Thank you nature for showing me cool things every day, and rip to the fox and pheasant you live in my mind forever and always
day 12: future
BEAS!!! beas i love you beas. initial beasley flavour on the left and future flavour on the right.
his whole deal is he wants to start a cult, so he ventures to The Big City to make a name for himself. then he realises imps like him are a dime a dozen in the city and nobody cares about him, so he has to scrape by working a minimum wage job as a cashier in a tiny corner shop. he’s from a comic I (partially) made for uni, idk how his story goes exactly but I guess it probably ends with the typical sappy message of being yourself for yourself and not for fame or fortune or whatever. he gets up to hijincks, feels sad and depressed, and goes through the torment of living with his own mediocrity in a world that demands greatness.
imps grow with power, not with age, so at the start of the story, even though he’s an adult, he’s still as small as when he was born/summoned/spawned/whatever. he’s got some shapeshifting prowess, so his future form is more an example of the kinds of feats he can pull off when his powers stabilise, and also his cool badass flaming eyes.
day 14: inspiration.
here's a convoluted block of text explaining the heretic's main inspiration, which isn't very apparent in the design at ALL but nevertheless: they’re kind of inspired by the concept of a closet costume. like how you can throw a bedsheet over yourself and cut out some eyeballs and voila. You’re a ghost. Or put a big furry coat and a mask on and you’re a werewolf now. almost all of their design links back to this in a roundabout way: the fur is meant to look like a rug/coat/furry thing draped over something. I used to have a sheepskin rug when I was a kid and I’d always hide under it and crawl about and pretend to be a monster lmao…this is what i looked like in my head maybe. The normal shoes poking out are the human element – like how halloween costumes will sometimes be mostly themed but the shoes are just practical, or you see shoes poking out beneath one of those two-man horse costumes. The face is meant to look mask-like – the glassy unfocused eyes, the fixed toothy grin, the simple cone shape. The black eyelids are meant to be like those Halloween masks that have eyeholes above/below the eyes, covered with that black fabric to make it less obvious there's eyeholes. And the ears are floppy to be like socks or something; they have those two black lines because they remind me of loose stitching. Also just some animal influences thrown in – possums, goats and bulls…..none of the closet costume stuff is meant to be noticeable or apparent in the design, so why did I put so much thought into it? who know… but this thing is one of my favourite designs I’ve made so maybe it was all worth it
In an attempt to end his life after his son is murdered, Vashishtha ties his own arms (since he can swim) and jumps into a young and strong mountainous river.
The river, apparently, in the form of a local woman, unties his hands and saves him. Grateful, he names her and the river- Vipasha (the untier).
She is identified with the modern day river Beas, and is also noted as one of the mothers to the Agni tribe.
The thing I love about Beast official art of Atsushi and Akutagawa is how most of the time you can't even tell what part is one of them and which is the other one.
