It’s been nearly a year since I’ve started drawing again and I’ve started to get relatively good at it. The inner critic is the biggest hater, so I’ll keep it at “relatively good” for now. I like some of the emotes I’ve drawn for my Twitch channel quite a bit, actually, but the issue with those is that they suck in dark mode. Hence, I figured I would talk today about what I need to change/what I want to improve. I also wanted to talk about other things such as “what is this format?” and that sorta stuff.
I enjoy drawing. I nearly enjoy it as much as I enjoy writing. It’s relaxing and I’m getting better at it… Just like with writing blog posts and all of that. Hence, I figured I could just combine the two into a category of sorts where I talk about my latest creations, struggles, and what I’ve been up to. I won’t do it regularly, obviously… But when I do, it’s gonna be rad. Progress updates, ideas, creations, etc. :) Maybe I’ll even use the Story feature on WordPress for some extra “daily content” or whatever. Speaking of daily content, Inktober is around the corner but I don’t particularly care about it ever since that plagiarism incident by the creator… and I didn’t quite find any cool prompts by other people, so I’m just gonna try and doodle something different every day or every few days. I’d imagine that could be a lot of fun! As for this format here, though, I’m not super sure yet about whether or not this will be a returning thing. I mean, I think it might be cool to share stuff I drew on the blog but at the same time, it may just be only this post based on a bunch of factors (mainly my motivation). We’ll see! Maybe there’ll be a new category eventually? Who knows?
As far as my current struggles go: I’m reworking some of my emotes and while I originally planned on creating Halloween versions already… I didn’t want to do that before the new colour scheme and all of that was sorted out. My issue is that my dark colour palette is quite badly visible in Twitch’s and Discord’s dark mode. Hence, I gotta rework it. Most of it is because of the dark palette which is why I’m going to move away from the original look and I may go with a brighter facial tone, more akin to grey instead of black. It still works and looks quite adorable actually.
In this quick little sketch here, I tried out a different angle essentially. Since the head is now looking slightly up, the hat is also slightly angled in the process. As a result, it works as a bridge between the background that eventually will be transparent and the head/face. For contrast, there’s my current wave emote up there near the top of this post.
On top of that, I also made it a bit more simple and less detailed while also shortening the hat. You know how annoying that dongle can get in combat? As a lich, you wanna fight in style but also do so practically. You haven’t lived for millenia for nothing, right? Also, it’s a cute hat. :3 uwu – A coloured version can be found on my discord btw in case you feel like joining and/or chatting!
In this quick sketch on the left side, I tried out different colours. My goal was to make it lighter while keeping it purple and applying the new angle to a different emote or an idea of sorts. The new eyes look quite good as well and it overall is much more simplistic and much more adorable compared to the colour version of the sketch up there.
The new face tone works really well, too. But I’m probably going to turn the brightness down while sticking to the grey tone. I may just have to see how it looks in practice with dark mode and all of that. Here on the left, it already looks a bit better with the added lighting and the slightly darker grey tone…
Apart from that, I also am kind of changing the style… or at least I’m trying to find my own style. The initial emotes look adorable – and I love them so much that I’ve been using them on and off as header images or filler images between paragraphs in blog posts. The new style is a bit more adorable, I think? I guess it’s more of a chibi-style or it’s more chibi from before… I don’t want to go full-chibi, though… I really wanna find that kind of art style that works for my emotes but also is applicable to other people’s OCs. After all, I want to draw emotes for people more often and create something that their subscribers and viewers are happy with.
And well, over here on the left it’s obviously not “black” anymore but it’s still quite dark, so I’ll have to check at home if it works better on my monitor/when it’s downscaled and uploaded. I may actually have to zoom in a little bit more and add the button back to the robe and stuff. Of course, this isn’t perfect yet. After all, the lines aren’t how I want them to go and the lighting was based on the tone of the lighter grey, so I’ll have to rework that… I may even try out going with less shadowing/lighting and all of that since I tend to overdo it… but at the same time, I love the plastic-looking eyes quite a bit… But for now, it’s pretty good and I’m happy with how the new angle looks and how the grey tone works for the colours. Let’s hope that it works in dark mode!
Obviously, I still need to figure out my line art and vector layers and that little extra line between the colour and the actual line art that some artists do – so I’m not super good yet or at a point where I’d be satisfied with my skills… BUT I’m getting there. If I do end up writing more often about my progress and stuff, I’ll probably talk about that fine line between line art and colours in emote design! It’s an interesting thing that can help “make an emote pop” but it’s hard to do, at least for me, and I’ll need to practice more! Hope you enjoyed this one! Got any drawings of yourself? If so, feel free to comment about your recent progress and what you’ve been improving at! :)
Cheers!
This post was first published on Indiecator by Dan Indiecator aka MagiWasTaken. If you like what you see here and want to see more, you can check me out on Twitch and YouTube as well. If you find this post on a website other than Indiecator.org, please write an e-mail to me. Thank you!
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