RyanLightArt

Story artist, writer, and I'm making a web comic.

[theryanlightart]

Thunderstar: Chapter 8 - The Western Continent

Since 2020, I’ve been publishing new pages for a web-comic called Thunderstar! If you’re interested in reading about a goth girl space pilot and her panicked teen sidekick fighting bounty hunters and evil cults, come give it a read!

(Also available to read on Webtoons and Tapas)

[theryanlightart]

I always thought it'd be cool to have a Sonic game where all the characters are cel-shaded, like Hi-Fi Rush or Jet-Set Radio. SOMEBODY MAKE THIS HAPPEN. 😭😭😭

[theryanlightart]

Last completed piece of 2025! ✨✨

Wonder Woman has meant quite a bit to me this past year, and although she's had limited media coverage as of late, I've read a number of her best comics and stories that have really bumped her up to be one of my favorite characters. Here's hoping she can be done properly again sometime soon...

[medli20]

Anachronism

(process/thoughts under the cut)

This piece kind of took me on a journey, so I figured I'd talk about it here to share with you guys.

One day while I was taking a walk, I saw a pigeon sitting on a rooftop silhouetted against the sky, juxtaposed under an airplane's contrail. I thought it was a cool visual that contrasted two different modes of flight against each other, so I stored it away in my mental vault to come back to later.

A month or so later, I realized I was going to get a much larger booth at an upcoming anime convention than I'd initially thought, and I figured I needed some more prints to round out my display. I thought back to the pigeon and threw this together, hoping to sort of tell this story about a dopey-looking bird staring forlornly up at this sleek plane. I decided to change it since my goal was to sell prints at an anime convention, so I subbed the pigeons in for my OC Raven, a fantasy birdman character from my webcomic. I still like the pigeon idea though, so I think I'm going to reuse the composition for a separate project later.

I was kind of spitballing ideas for this illustration in my Discord server and half-joked that Raven might not be super appropriate for the illustration, since the webcomic he's in doesn't have airplanes so it would probably feel a bit anachronistic.

Then I hemmed and hawed about it before deciding to lean into it anyway-- contrasting birds with aircraft, past with present felt like too much potential for implicit storytelling to pass up. I swapped his usual post-industrial outfit for a more fantasy-adventure-y… gambeson? doublet? jerkin? and dressed up the scene with antiquated, overgrown stonework to further sell the vibe.

It was here that I realized that there's CONSIDERABLY more reference material for raven wings from the front than there are from the back, which made this tricky. I don't think it ended up mattering much anyway, since I had to scale the wings/feathers in a way that would look like it'd fit a grown-ass man, so they like… don't actually look like raven wings anyway lol.

Not a whole lot of commentary here, but if you can, please take a closer look at the quilting on his gambesondoubletjerkin. It's not an important detail or anything, but I'm just pleased as punch with the way it turned out :)

Devin Elle Kurtz makes really wonderful plant brushes btw, 10/10 highly recommend

She also makes really great cloud brushes too. Anyway that's it for my process on this piece, thanks for checking it out :)

[theryanlightart]

If you would've asked me twenty, ten, or hell, even five years ago what my top art fixations were... nowhere on that list would you ever find Barbie.

But after the movie came out and put such a fun, campy, creative spin on Barbie and her world, she became such comfort food to draw! The glossy outfits, the big, poofy hair that would make Dolly Parton blush and enough pink to burn your retinas clean off; it's such a unique aesthetic that I just can't help but embrace. 🩷✨

[theryanlightart]

You ever have that day where you just want to retrieve a priceless, ancient artifact from a lost civilization, but somewhere in the middle of it all, you get attacked by a pack of starving raptors?

Yeah, Lara Croft isn't quite having an ideal Christmas, but hey! She seems to be enjoying herself...

[theryanlightart]

A couple years early to the party, but in light of the announcement that the original, theatrical version of Star Wars from 1977 (aka the Holy Grail of nerddom for at least 25 years or so), I thought I'd put out this tribute poster to celebrate. I love quite a few of these movies, flaws and all, but the original is still my favorite. It's just so fun, the story still holds up, it's nice and simple, and it doesn't require a whole lot of context to get sucked in. It's just a gay old time and I love it!

[theryanlightart]

Her name is Changeling 💚🩷

[jsketch12]

alright that's it *turns the male-only protagonist into a butch*

[mimsymars]

Feels like Tumblr is the right audience for this one

[theryanlightart]

Superman and Lois, inspired by a similar image by Jose Garcia-Lopez!

[theryanlightart]

Some days, you just gotta be a Barbie and go on a bike trip 💖💞✨

[theryanlightart]

Updates of some poses I did a few years ago. Can't wait for this to become a reality in some capacity. :)

[theryanlightart]

[theryanlightart]

My two favorite brawly badasses 💙💕✨

[theryanlightart]

[phantomarine]

How do you write a child character that isn’t annoying

Children are people and every person is different - make them like you'd make any adult character - no less three-dimensional, just a bit less broadly complex and with a shorter backstory

Children will know a few things REALLY well (like a kid who can tell you every dinosaur at the museum) but will be lacking in obvious knowledge in some places - let them not know some big concepts, or what certain words mean

Children have flaws - don't be afraid to give them a flaw, even if it's not a highly-negative one - perfection can be as annoying as imperfection

Children can be smarter than you think - even if YOU were a smart kid, there can be a tendency to want to write kids as being dumb - resist this, find a better way to convey a sense of inexperience - kids can still have good instinct without having experience

Go out and just listen to how kids talk - they speak differently to adults than they do to each other - and yeah, there will be some generational lingo, but there's always universal truth between those words