#ghostpheonix5-2

[ghosttrolls]

Paint a danny with zombie?

i never know which version of danny to draw for requests lol

link to my (OLD) palette challenge from 2021 for those curious, i'll still draw requests using this palette challenge thingy :)

fun fact, this palette

is pulled from this drawing

which i drew in 2019, on one layer, lol. you can see my red sketch lines peeking through in some places. scuffed but i liked it back then quite a bit. why i didn't save the full image to my pc i'll never know. on my main monitor the two shades of brown look pretty distinct to me, always have, but they get muddied when viewed on some devices... ahh that's the life of an artist. ce la vie

[ghosttrolls]

Can I also ask your opinion on Wizards 👀? My roommate and I watched it (with my roommate not having seen the previous series) and it was....something. Probably didnt help that Merlin made more more angry each episode lol

All good if you liked it though of course! Just here to chat a bit. And there are still some aspects of Wizards I remember enjoying, esp in relation to the familiar

Merlin was just speedrunning child endangerment lol

You did already ask me about Wizards a couple months ago, however I'll add I think honestly the story aspect that bothered me the most throughout that show was Steve. The whole time I was waiting for Steve to realize he was a descendant of Lancelot, and use that realization as a way to look inwards and find some kind middle ground between "egotistical bully" and "spineless coward," which are admittedly two sides of the same coin.. but he just never got that introspection. With stuff being laid down as early as Trollhunters season 2 we watched Steve's bully ego crumble slowly, and it would have been soooo satisfying to see strides of character development come out of that. He was on his way in 3Below but then his girlfriend went back to space and he just became a blubbering nothing of a character who never adjusted to life with weird magic in it... which I guess is a character type in itself, just felt like it was going somewhere that never ended up coming...

Anyway Steve Palchuk deserved better. especially after they made him a teenage father (mother?) of 7 non-consensually. nobody deserves that I think.

I know people really disliked Merlin going into Wizards after Trollhunters season 3, myself included, but I hated him a little less after Wizards, honestly. It was annoying that Merlin just wouldn't give Douxie the time of day until he was 900 years old, but they actually got some closure going on with that... unlike some other aspects of the story.

[ghosttrolls]

Also, are your halfblood OCs from our world but different, or a whole new place?

This ask is so interesting to me because I've posted in the tag "halfbloodsix" only a handful of times times across all my different tumblr accounts... Not that I haven't been posting the OCs more than that, but I just haven't been working very hard to link "halfblood" to them, lol. I'll put this under a readmore since the post is gonna be long...

To start off, only one of them is a halfblood:

Six. Also known as Mazhaven, after I started getting help with the names. He's half demon, half human. But he was raised on Earth, normal Earth (with a few exceptions), BY DEMONS. He grew up thinking he was a regular demon. His story centers around him finding out that he's been lied to, by everyone in his life, and he's actually being hunted, and he has to figure out who he can trust and make the right choice quickly.

I have had a lot of help from a friend building the lore, naming and designing other characters, and everything, but that, at the basic level, is all my original work. If you're curious about some of the stuff we've worked out together...

Basically in this universe, Earth exists as we know it today. The average human is not aware that there's anything magical out there at all. There is a demon world, which we haven't named yet (i cannot name anything to save my life), and that's where demons come from.

Most every demon has a sort of magical reserve within them that is kept alive and charged by the magic inherently flowing through everything in the demon world. All their abilities and strength come from this reserve. It's pretty normal/easy to visit Earth, because it turns out it's not that hard to make a portal there... but not a lot of demons do it very regularly because you run out of power eventually - it's different person to person, but you have to be careful when visiting because you need enough magic left to make a portal BACK HOME, or you're stuck there.

Demons that are also half human, however, don't have this limitation. Due to them being made from both worlds, they can go between freely without worrying about draining their power reserves. Halfbloods have been banned by the demon government because they are deemed "too powerful to exist," which is why Six has been living on Earth this whole time. He doesn't know it, but the others that raised him are acutely aware that since he exists, the government will want to track him down and use this power to become more oppressive of the general public, which is bad.

The story has been through so many rewrites and i have new ideas even now that haven't been implemented. but a few of the demons that Six lives with that i wanna show before i close out are Eight (Tay), Ten (Solara), and Eleven (Nova'Dak).

I draw Six and Eight together a lot, and Nova and Solara together a lot. I'm sure that doesn't mean anything :) heres a buncha random doodles

Also, there's a twist somewhere about Six's mom being someone in a very powerful position, which adds to why he was hidden in the first place. she's sure that he will grow up to become a powerful demon one day, maybe to overthrow the government, maybe to serve a greater evil purpose? who knows...

also, all the demons that Six lives with have human forms, but you don't get to see any other ones other than Six's, sorry... just don't wanna share that since i've been mostly dissatisfied with my design work on that front. all this art is from a period of time going back about 6 or so years, and i could stand to refresh... certain things.

[ghosttrolls]

I recall watching 3Below and being excited at the human forms they chose. It was definely an show odd partially because it was my first time watching a spinoff/anthology type thing, but I had fun, I found it my favorite. I think it stood strongest when it didnt have those crossover elements aside from the bully...Steve(?).

What are your thoughts, good or bad 👀?

I did enjoy it! I think what it struggles with the most is pacing, it really feels to me like a show that needed as many episodes as Trollhunters (or at least more than it got) to really breathe and explore their settings and characters more thoroughly. Certain aspects of the story felt rushed or flimsy to me and I think the main cause is trying to fit too big a story into too small a runtime - however I don’t think it’s as bad as it was for Wizards, that show went a mile a minute.

Every now and then I get an itch to rewatch 3Below, actually! I think it’s really fun, and I’m always drawn to stories with a “secret identity” - and all the main characters have one, lol. I really like that on top of the way it handles Krel and Aja being immigrants and how the friends and teachers they are surrounded by work really hard to keep them in Arcadia Oaks, the story also has a focus on “legacy” and “destiny” and how sometimes it’s better if you don’t follow the paths someone laid out for you. After coming from Trollhunters’ end which is like “you were always going to lose everything, your destiny is not your choice” it was really nice and fresh seeing Aja and Krel make their own decisions and learn and grow separate from their roles as royalty.

I also think, in general, the way they show aliens learning about earth through context and friends helping to close gaps in misunderstandings was in a way really kind. They really have some kind of support network after not too long, I think going to high school in Arcadia Oaks would probably have been the best ever. The solidarity is unmatched.

I also like how Krel and Aja have such different interests. The progression Aja has from trying to skip out on the coronation to actively choosing to go back home to be a leader after having some more real-world experience is just really cool I think; to me it felt less like “she is doing the proper thing for a girl in her position” and more like “she’s choosing to help where she knows she can and take a stand” and she is just, so strong, too. Krel was the one shouldering all that at the beginning (covering for his sister all the time) and his arc where he learns there’s more than that, he doesn’t need to be a fighter, and making that choice to step away was also very very cool. Nobody was mad at him for not having “manly” interests and I feel like the story just respected him a lot when it came to not fitting where his family put him.

Honestly, out of Trollhunters, 3Below, and Wizards, (and I guess… rise of the titans) I think 3Below probably had the most solid ending for me. It didn’t end with like, a ton of unanswered questions or unbridled rage aimed at a specific character who we’re supposed to get along with. I’d say that’s pretty solid!