Digitober 2021: In Closing

Like last year, I wanted to give a proper closing to this year's challenge too.

Digitober Thoughts

I inevitably ended up missing four days this year, sadly. 😅 But like last year, I've decided to draw the line at 27 and not bother catching up to the missed days of Digitober. I'm satisfied ending the art challenge with a very fall-themed piece. Now I can breathe out a sigh of relief at not needing to post something every single day again, or just making something past the due date just to say oh I did the entire challenge ayyyyy 🙄

On the bright side, I managed to post over 25 entries this year, so that's still a huge plus compared to some art challenges I used to do. But looking at all these entries... I feel like this year just turned into another excuse for me to make all these assets for Gator Buddies. 😆 I'm not complaining, though.

I also noticed that a lot of this year's entries were anatomy-centric (though when is it ever not, amirite 😉). After doing Indulgence, I now feel more willing to draw full-body poses, legs, and feet.

I think what definitely got me out of my comfort zone this year was all the .gif sprites I made. I had snippets of various animated sprite tutorials in my head, most I had either gleaned over but constantly put off. When I finally started with 8 Flavors of Slime, I was mostly testing the waters, but I quickly got the hang of it (I have Aseprite's easy-to-understand interface to thank for that).

Improvements

Last year I said I would focus more on perspective drawing and landscapes. That really didn't pan out as well as it should have. 😅 On a related note, I just discovered and bought EasyPose on Steam, and holy crapcakes this app is mind-blowingly insane. So many models, preset poses, and props. 🤯 I'm super excited to play around with this to make all sorts of perspective drawings with it.

If there is anything I really want to improve on the most in my entries, it would be Carpet Sea. The result of this one was really just bad in my opinion. I have an idea of how to make it better, but I'd like to make other perspective drawings first.

All in All...

This year was great. I needed this art challenge, really. A month ago I was going through a rough patch, and doing art has helped me cope with it. Art, and many many hours of sleeping and napping. I'm being an obvious hypocrite saying this, but I wholeheartedly agree when anyone tells me to not take sleep for granted.

I'm not sure right now if I should do a challenge again next October. I think future me might actually take a crack at it again... (No pressure, future me. 😉) For now, I'd like to relax, and take my time making some art and watching videos on Skillshare for the next couple of weeks. 😎

Fall Fish Treats

Ah, finally. A proper autumn-themed piece! 🍂 Candy isn't a thing in the Swamplands, but fish sure is. Our gators like going door-to-door this time of year asking for fish to commemorate the season. 🐟

I don't celebrate Halloween myself, honestly. Here in the Philippines, most people and I celebrate All Saints' and All Souls' Days and associate this time of year to going to cemeteries to visit the graves of our relatives. Halloween is often left to upper-class/elite neighborhoods with families who speak more English and have kids who struggle to speak their native tongue. 😏 Nevertheless, happy Halloween, folks. Even if I don't celebrate it myself. 😉

Their outfits are based from this old Inktober post.

Pin-Up Hildegard

Whenever I post about my twin OCs, I'm almost always featuring Sylvie. It's about time I featured her sister Hilda for once!

I still, for the life of me, can not figure out what kind of profession Hilda would have compared to her sister. Cop? Retired soldier from the army? A doctor? An executive? Decisions, decisions... All I know is that she's renowned in her field and has a bright future with her current career. 🤔 I should really do a little more research into this sort of thing.

Pin-Up Sylvette

Oh my god I'm absolutely shaking right now she's being very cute despite her outfit SEND HELP 😩

The original draft was of her just playing the violin. Then the idea turned into making a sketchdump of her in various facial expressions. Then the idea turned into her just wearing her undergarments sleepwear.

HELP SHE'S 2CUTE5ME HELP AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA 😫

Nectar

Logo for a brewery or a honey bee farm that I doodled a long time ago when I was interested in logo design. I found the draft on my phone along with a bunch of other logo doodles I made.

I was thinking the tagline would go along the lines of "The Sweetness of Nature" or "Natural Sweetness". Either of them just sound like a tagline for something like Aspartame, though. 😅 But I would personally go with the former, if I had to choose between the two.

Red-Head Sister

I had a dream last night again, one where I was adopted by an old couple who had a son and four daughters, and they lived in this lavish white mansion. The couple was very antagonistic towards me and didn't hide it. At one point the old man tried to dictate how to behave or what to wear, and I vividly remember telling him to shut the fuck up as he wasn't my dad and never will be.

I ran away from home, and one of my "sisters", a red-headed girl with curly hair and glasses, was following me and trying to convince me to come back. I flatly told her no, and she chased after me in this dark crevasse. Eventually, we wound up in the care of a bunch of strangers who lived in this arid, steampunk mountain town with homes built on the side of a cliff.

I wanted to draw the scene where this girl tried to confront me in the crevasse, but I settled for just drawing the girl instead.

Nightlight (2021)

A friend of Crocigator's ever since he could remember. Leader to a swarm of fellow fireflies, she and her companions keep a close watch on the young Stubby while the young gator is out on his adventures. Should Stubby be ever in any danger, the fireflies work as a team to inform Crocigator right away, who is never too far from him. In return, Crocigator allows the fireflies to live in the safety and comfort of his shack.

While an observer might find it odd that Nightlight and her fellow fireflies go out of their way to do this for the gators, it is said that both Nightlight and Crocigator shared a certain history with one another, leading them to be in each other's debt. This agreement between the gator and the fireflies is supposedly their own way of repaying one another.

---

Crap. I'm behind by 3 days again. 😑

On the bright side, I present to you Nightlight's new character design! 🎉

I spent a fair deal of time overhauling her previous design into one that was more feminine and more original (thus the delay in Digitober posting). Up until this point she felt like a lookalike of a mascot from a local fast food joint. I also had trouble with what colors to use until I settled for these earthy tones. She looks much more like a proper firefly now, especially with all this color. 🎨

That does it for the Gator Buddies cast for now. 😄 This was a lot of fun! And a welcome relief from all the lineless painting I've been doing too. Now to rack my head for ideas on what to make next...

Todd (2021)

Ahhh, Todd. Such a precious beaver boye. 🥰

That's it for the beavers! Now it's Nightlight's turn for the next one. 😄

Trey (2021)

It's ya boi Trey and he's ready to show you his mad rapping skillz. 😎 ...Which he learned from all his time watching human rappers on TV. 📺

Now all that's left is the youngest of the brothers. 😄

Twig (2021)

...Well, this came out earlier than it was supposed to.

As soon as I finished the piece with Pointy, I started on this. I planned to just do a little bit of it so I could jump right into it again and post when I got home from work. But I got too carried away and went straight to finishing it. 😅

On the bright side, I've been behind this challenge by 3 days, and now I've effectively reduced that to 2 days instead. I'm catching up, guys! ...I hope. 😆

Pointy (2021)

Gatorville's resident Derp Snail, now featured standalone from the others. 🐌

Now that the main cast for my comic is out there, I think I should feature secondary characters from my comic in the upcoming days too. 😊

Pudgy (2021)

Today, we have the friendly neighborhood gator, Pudgy. 😀

He wasn't originally supposed to be wearing a straw hat, but the design of him wearing one just stuck. I actually like it because it adds to his character. 😊

Stubby (2021)

And now, more of our goodest li'l gator buddy. 🐊💕 Definitely a more welcome sight than the abysmal background image I ended up making yesterday...

Carpet Sea

...You can tell I'm really struggling to put something out there at this point. 🙃

I was dreaming yesterday about sailing on a sea of carpet, and how my boat was kinda shaky from the wind. Then I slid across the deck of the ship when the wind started shaking harder and I leapt off of the railing on the side of the ship. I fell expecting water, only to see I landed safely with my feet flat on the... Carpet? Surface of the water? I dunno, but all I knew was that I was standing completely unscathed and watching the boat sail away.

I tried to depict that image in my mind? But it didn't really turn out the way I had hoped; I was never really good at backgrounds anyway, and I felt the piece was going mostly nowhere. I thought of giving it a shot nonetheless, because I learned from someone that you'll have to do more of something you're not comfortable with to actually learn how to do it.

So yes, this is basically just me attempting to be more comfortable with making backgrounds, half-assed as it is.

Crocigator (2021)

I was feeling lethargic and pondered if I wanted to actually make something today, but I forced myself to come up with something because I'm already lagging behind by 3 days, so I drew Crocigator. 🐊

I didn't really know what I was aiming for with this at first, until I reached about halfway through the whole thing and I had the colors already set down. I decided to try a different kind of shading where I duplicated my base layer of colors, darkened the duplicate layer and started erasing on it. I finished surprisingly faster than I usually would. So now I have a new way to work smarter with the shading of my art in this style. 😄

Walking Crocigator

Oof, this one took longer than I expected. It's now finished, though! Today, we have a walking Crocigator sprite!

I used what I learned from making the Stubby sprite. 😄 Considering his sprite is much bigger than Stubby's, you can really see how the dotted pattern of shading really stands out.

Walking Stubby

Oh my god. More sprites. And it's of Stubby. My heart 😭💕

I had fun working on this. 😄 I was trying something different with the shading so his sprites didn't look so flat. It worked! ...For the most part. 👀

I think I will make sprites of the other gators too, just for the heck of it 😄

Etherei - Concept 1 (2021)

Managed to force myself to make something before I skipped another day of Digitober 😖

I featured Eth before, in 2019. Back then I was so dead set with his hairdo and look. After looking at my unpublished concepts of him again, I went nah, nah, this isn't exactly the look for him, and he needs to have something better. A couple of revisions later, I finally nailed a look... And his color scheme.

Holy balls, I said back then I'd feature more of my personal project called The Aether and Radisrol. Unfortunately I never really did. Whoops. 😅 For the most part, save for some works of Zephyr and stuff like this concept of Etherei, I opt to keep development regarding that in the closet. When I feel that my project is more cohesive lore and story-wise, perhaps I will post more about it... 🤔

The Many Forms of Puddingcat

I was mulling over various ideas of how Puddingcat would look like in a 2D platformer videogame. I figured that on different stages he could pick up temporary power-ups that would allow him to change forms and overcome obstacles. All of these forms would naturally wear off over time, but certain situations will also revert Puddingcat to his original form.

Here are the currently available variants (I couldn't really think of any more past these four at the moment so I might add more later 😅):

• 🧊 Icecat
  Allows Puddingcat to float on water. He is impervious to damage in this form. The ice will melt when it is hit by fire.
  
  
• 🍪 Cookiecat
  Prevents Puddingcat from being affected by fire and grants him immunity from the burn status. This form allows him to spit balls of molten chocolate on his enemies. This form, however, makes his body brittle and susceptible to damage and will wear off if jumping from a high place or when struck with a heavy attack.
  
  
• 🍓 Jellycat
  A gelatinous form that lets Puddingcat bounce and reach extremely high places. Will wear off when coming in contact with water.
  
  
• 🍋 Limecat
  Makes Puddingcat immune to poison, while allowing him to spit balls of corrosive acid on his opponents. This acid poisons enemies and melts metals. Wears off over time as the lime slice on his ear and mint leaves wilt.

[10/14/2021] Edit: Adjusted spacing of the bottom cats and their flavor texts.

Noody's Art Contest 2021 Entry

I missed a day for Digitober, but that's because I was busy working on my entry for a streamer's contest. Was worth it, though. 😄

I was also doing a lot of light experimenting on this one, mainly with the flames of the Incinerators reflecting off of her back, hands, and hair. The aura of the halo could only really be seen on a dark background (which my site has, thankfully); but I don't think I did enough to show how it lit up the top of her hair... Oh well.

I'm honestly confident about my work and I think I may snag something from the competition. But if not, this was still a fun piece to work on and I'm surprised I managed to finish it 2 days before the deadline. 😂

If you're into Guild Wars 2 and PvP in Guild Wars 2, you can check out Noody's Twitch here and check him out. 😄