if you could, I'd love it if you could share with us your process of making your sailor links! it looks like you used color pencil! is that your go to art medium?? what made you pair each sailor scout with each link??? tell us everything!
an ask? To talk about my Sailor Links and my art process? Ofc I'll share! 🧡 I’ve put orange headings for anybody who only cares about how I chose which sailor scout for which Link, or or only cares about the art process bit.
Matching up Links with the Sailor Scouts bit
Okay so I’ll preface this with I saw the english dubbed original sailor moons back in like, the early noughties I think? and not even all of them because I was beholden to whatever was shown on the TV channels etc. So I only know who the core five are and had the google for the outer scouts and went purely off vibes for those!
So first up I drew Wild. Who became Sailor Mars because A) long hair and sassy pose and B) he can use fire in so many creative ways in his games it felt right. Next up was Hyrule, again a super easy choice. His lightning spell meant he HAD to be Sailor Jupiter (also - he is the one who embodies the green colour palette the most I think!). I then drew Wars, who simply must be Venus with her long swishy hair, diva posing and the swirling star ribbons during her transformation animation, and the pose lets the scarf shine! By this point I’d decided that Time was going to be Sailor Moon because first, hilarious, second the leader, and third it felt fitting with his silver colour scheme. And Wild would be Mercury, with her fun pose and I felt like bubbles and water were a fair power for him to have as the sailor.
So then we get to the rest of the chain and I’m like huh whats happening here. Sky I knew from the very beginning wasn’t getting tied to a OG Sailor Scout, but I was going to base him off the teaser art for Skyward Sword - you remember this one before the title announcement, with his back to us, no sword, and a mysterious figure (Fi)?
It just screamed Sailor pose to me, and an opportunity to show off his Sailcloth as part of his uniform!
And Four too, I had decided to split into the Colours and use the classic Four Swords official art as inspiration, because otherwise trying to fit the four colours onto a single sailor uniform wasn’t going to lead to something particularly sophisticated, and it got to show off what is unique about him too! It meant I could play with the colours and give them each their own colour as the main colour but one of their counterparts colours for their bows, so I gave them their neighbours colour to tie the piece together visually. I think Vio turned out the best/is my fave which is a shame because he’s at the back, but the ripples and folds in the skirt are just lovely and unfortunately covered up by Green!
Also I headcanon that Four is one person until he becomes a Sailor Scout and his transformation is becoming Four scouts and the rest are like WTF YOU MULTIPLY?!. It’s mundane singular Four, or its magical sailor scouts plural. no other options. hehe
So that left Twilight, and Legend. Legend was easy, as soon as I saw a Outer Sailor Scout with a huge key/magic rod item, I was like yes thats the collector he will have a magic rod for that! Twilight was hardest but I ended up with a pose reference from Sailor Uranus which it wasn’t until I finished drawing and put him and Time’s cards side by side I realised ended up looking quite similar! But I decided I liked that with their blood relation and close relationship in the comic and how much Twilight looks up to Time etc.
first off - I'm glad to hear it looks like coloured pencil on paper cos I was trying to get the 'could imagine this as a real homemade paper trading card' style! I drew everything digitally in Procreate, using 3 brushes for the main card (2 that come with it and the free paper texture brush by Olguioo). I used the Florentine brush for the lining, shading and flat colouring (found under the charcoal menu) and the Stanley brush for the blocking.
Using the Florentine brush adds that pencil on paper texture by letting some of the canvas underneath peak through the texture of the lines, and allowing me to scribble shade or turn my pencil sideways to catch the broadside for a block of pencil. You might catch in the process video underneath that I blocked in a similar purple to my lines (and the same purple I actually used for the shading layer) but then put in my flat colours using the Florentine and didnt fully fill it, letting some of texture bring thought the speckling of the purple base, just like an under-colour in a traditional medium (you can particularly see it on Wilds hair, arms, bodice and legs, and Legends skin and white outfit parts!)
The other final thing I think that adds to the effect is actually an accident that I've only realised the cause of in the last two weeks - when I set up my canus templates I put in the inches dimensions and did not notice the DPI drop to like, 100 or less. So that's why they are actually smaller than 2.5 x 3.5 inches they should be and adds to the grainy look 😅
But yeah is this my go to medium? In traditional mediums I am a pencil lover. I'm a bit of a control freak and want to get in there with fine shading detail and contrast and using a full shading range from white to black. When I did my art GCSE back in the day my best pieces were ones in monochrome and often 2B pencil (I've since learnt about existence of 4B and 6B but the art department offered us 2B pencils at 20p each so that's what I used). I've also discovered charcoal pencils (not just charcoal sticks) which love (especially doing white charcoal on black paper) and chalk pastels/pencils which are my go-to if I want to add colour. Paint has always been a hit and miss relationship for me, I can either do it alright enough for a piece or I really really can't and there's no saving it. I think it's because I don't actually know what I'm doing or proper technique 😂 this has definitely bled over into my digital art but I am trying to explore using more painterly brushes and techniques.
Thanks for a fun ask 🧡 if there's something else you want to know or know more about please let me know I'm happy to yap
Time lapse video below (warning layers are toggled on and off creating something like a flash effect) - showing the Wild card (first one I did and setting the style), Legend (the one that came through easiest and was probably the middle) and Four (the most different and also the last one I did) and the inspiration / reference image for each
