Clay's Neopets Blog

Clay | they/them he/him | 20+ | what it says on the tin p much

[transparent-wocky]

the name’s Clay

this is my neopets blog, i’ll mainly be posting about my neopets ocs here and sometimes about what i’m doing on site

non neopets art blog is @fowlleaf, but i’m currently not actively posting there

if you’re ever interested in any brushes/assets/etc i use, feel free to ask! i don’t mind. just try to be specific so i can give you a useful answer.

roughly 90% of my art is made in clip studio paint, but some might be made in procreate, adobe apps, or assorted others.

Handy Tags:

#my art- art by me

# more tags tba

List of Neopets:

name | blue acara | ref | tag

lil blurb about them

-fuck, i’ll get to this when i get to it

[lockssteps]

disco

[aurum-k-chatters]

Using Blender as an illustration tool.

I've been on and off working on another neopets comic, and in it, there is a panel where characters are standing in the Faerieland Library/Bookstore.

I took a look at the reference material (And those butterfly wing railings), and decided this shot would be a good candidate for a 3D modeled, rendered, and re-painted background.

You see, while a lot of people use 3D models to trace over, I'm trying to go a little further and use rendered images as a base to then paint over. This is a common practice in concept art, and I think it could be very useful in comics and illustration as well.

Here is the 3D model

And here are the rendered pieces

These are- SELECTION FLATS - For selecting chunks of various editing for easier editing and paint over. These work similarly to professional comic flats, and can be easily achieved with Blenders "Workbench" render engine. UNSHADED COLORS - Colors with out the lighting so I can remove shadow and light from various areas. I do think I messed these up (They rendered too dark), but they still worked for what I needed. (I adjusted the values in post) SHADED COLORS - The shadows and light rendered with out lines. This is what get's painted over, and works well as a base for your painting. LINE ART - Rendered separately so I can easily edit the lines, since Blender Grease-pencil lines are hard to get perfect, and because we don't want the lines in the way of the painting. COMBINED - Mostly used for reference. Fun to A-B with your final image.

Here is those layers shown cleanly (Sorry the pink highlights on my custom Krita theme are like that. >_> )

Here is the layers after I did a ton of paint over work. (Behold my crappy labeling system and totally intentional typos.)

And here! Is the final outcome!

This isn't the first time I have tried this, but this is definitely, in my opinion, my most successful attempt, and I absolutely want to use blender more in my illustration and comic workflow.

The model took about a day to do. It took about the same amount of time it would have taken if I had drawn it all by hand, and now I have a cool model I can reuse! The actual painting took maybe an hour or two.

Over all fun little project! Can't wait to do it again. ;3

[transparent-wocky]

when gala has her apple

this was supposed to be a doodle but i got sidetracked lol

[transparent-wocky]

after much noodling around, i completed this drawing of Storm with a normal ass mouse on terror mountain that I've had lying around since 2020

it's also a redraw of a really old piece too! i think the old one is from 2008 based on which sketchbook its paper is from, but i'm unsure since i've always been bad about remembering to write dates on things

rambling and progress shots below the cut

misc sketch phases. and no, i dont remember why the light source was intended to be in the middle of everything like some sort of floating orb lol

color planning, the original plan was a very grounded and normal looking color palette. when i approached this again, i decided to go with something more pastel and fantasy feeling to try and lighten up how clustered the composition was

i dont care much for this drawing anymore, but i decided to finish it anyways since it was an important marker for drawing backgrounds for me

previously, all of my fully digital backgrounds were rendered lineless and painterly since it was the incorrect conclusion I'd been lead to for what a "good" drawing of a landscape should look like when done digitally. i was in some communities that severely overvalued digital painterly backgrounds and considered lined backgrounds to be "low quality", and i took those completely subjective opinions to heart years earlier, sad ant with bindle style. (for some reason tho, they always considered analog lined backgrounds to be ok. go figure lol.) this resulted in me drawing a bunch of utterly dogshit backgrounds by accident due to considering their tastes to be law instead of. just tastes. due to how they were always presented and preached.

cut to 2020 when i was finally able to remember that i can do whatever the fuck i want when drawing as long as i dont mind consequences, and decided to line my digital backgrounds like i do for analog backgrounds. (i started off as an analog artist after all)

this was the first of such drawings, but i wound up never finishing it due to something about it feeling off and not being able to put a finger on it at the time. i can see my issues with it now tho. i had intended for it to feel open and airy, but the composition is just too close up for that and cluttered. i wanted to redraw it to make things less clustered and actually more airy, but decided that just fnishing the damn thing was more important lol. the way the layers are set up in this document was a headache to come back to, since lines for some elements were in the wrong groups and attached to lines from the group above. ground lines on the same layer as the rocks and such, ugh

heres a handful of many unintended itchy looking tangents, tension points, and other annoyances from not being familiar with lining backgrounds at the time that were bothering me that i forbade myself from fixing otherwise id just be redrawing the whole piece

[transparent-wocky]

fun meta oc lore time

allen wrench started off as an au version of RH, lore wise

but things diverged so much and i got attached so i made him into his own character instead

his blueness and stripes are a homage to RH's design at the time of au conception! (and a reincorperation of an unrelated scrapped species oc design, who i had yoinked allen's lore at that point in time for before i scrapped them lol) oh and the matching missing tusk is in relation to RH's missing tusk in current iteration too.

and to go full circle, allen wrench has an au version of himself that's not too terribly diverged, but different enough to be noteworthy (doodles from before design finalization, when i was trying to make him cuter lol. the non neopet version is akin to some kind of rubbery slapstick cartoon creature. i am quite fond of drawing that version since he's just so malleable and amusing.)

old ass art below the cut, for those curious about RH's old design

i think this dates to winter 2013? based off the outfit i'd put her in (casual ogrin & the nails). that, and the amount of wax all over this thing. i hate color pencils so much 0/10 watercolor is my best friend.

yeah i had to take a new pic of this since i couldn't find the one i already took, and i was already in that (physical) folder bc i was looking for something (tbh a new pic was needed since the original pic was taken with essentially a potato)

anyways heres a bonus equally old drawing of art

i remember there being an "upgraded" digital version done during computer lab times at school with corel, but its lost to the sands of time along with the rest of my digital art from then that wasn't printed out.

personal lost media.

oh well.

[transparent-wocky]

what if dimensional looked like vector arcade graphics (when seen in person)

if you have access to an arcade with a working copy of asteroids, or another classic vector graphic arcade game, i highly rec checking it out

[maraqua]

More neo comics!

[transparent-wocky]

i assumed disco xweetok were the usual, neon with paisley and maybe some hippie-esque accessories, but instead this is a walking disco ball??

surprised since usually brush style breaks are reserved for pets with unusual anatomy/features (and this execution is much closer to mosaic imo)

then again, this is the only modern era disco pet made so far, and many of the modern era additions to brushes have been noticeable style breaks (for better or worse, depending on the combo)

the topology choices they made on this one bug me a lot tbh, especially for the hind leg lol

[transparent-wocky]

the saga continues

[transparent-wocky]

cyclops shoyru fanart

i sometimes think about that blogpost? ama? where old TNT staff mentioned having to constantly specify that the shoyru is not a cyclops and just has 2 big as fuck anime eyes (like a goldfish) to merch designers/manufacturers

i like the idea tho, it makes them cuter to me

[transparent-wocky]

brainstorming, again

decided i wanna un-retire maxean as a character since i have new lore ideas (ignore the old hissi version lol)

also wanna add a krawk and a draik to my lineup (long overdue) since yeah. my lizards.

[transparent-wocky]

new and overhauled design for Xintzee (as of 2026)

scrapped their old everything and sucked the warmth and delight out of them because it just wasn't working anymore (and also did some fiddling with drawing vandagyres as a whole to fit my tastes better while keeping the elements from the official design that I like. since X's previous design was more "random furry i call a neopet" and was honestly closer to an eyrie with a docked tail lol)

fun meta lore fact: their on site version was named after a homestuck oc of mine at the time, but with some letter rearrangement/addition. that oc has been retired for a long long time.

---

Xintzee is a christmas vandagyre who's stuck working on Kreludor for the time being, after a series of gambling mishaps

One of these days, they'll be able to afford to permanently return to Neopia.

They regret ever visiting Krawk Island.

"how do the boots work when they have rear toes" dont worry about it. it's fine. furry logic.

[transparent-wocky]

finally got around to submitting a comic to the NT! it was accepted a bit ago and published into the latest edition as of writing

didnt wanna jinx myself by uplaoding this before it got accepted into the times lol

i actually drew this around october-ish (when i posted that drawing of uwuf at their lain-esque computer setup), but kept forgetting to submit (and each time i did remember, it was a themed week)

despite drawing ... over 100 neopets comics (and thats without counting all the unfinished ones or scrapped wips) this is my first one i actually submitted on site. me and bro used to draw gameplay-diary neopets comics together in our sketchbooks

yay!!

[nettleneopian]

[transparent-wocky]

fiddling with vandagyres again before i draw a new ref for xintzee (design overhaul rather than just an update, despite keeping their on-site custom the same)

[transparent-wocky]

im sending them to space now btw

[transparent-wocky]

fiddling with vandagyres again before i draw a new ref for xintzee (design overhaul rather than just an update, despite keeping their on-site custom the same)