Hey Hive!
We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!
So this was actually another birthday gift I did for one of my mods on my Twitch channel, who goes by Akuji! He’s been on my channel pretty much since the beginning and is now one of my closest online friends; we’re practically like family now! He’s always there for me so when he was going to start streaming again I thought a new banner was the least I could do for him! I actually drew him something in 2021 too that he really loved but I thought a banner would be more useful.
For this one I thought of combining the games we’ve played together like Genshin Impact, Minecraft, Valorant, Stardew Valley and even adding a little bit of Harvest Moon since he loves that too. I didn't really have a big plan for this other than including Sage's wall from Valorant and having Sage on top of the wall since he does that strat a lot.
Then the idea just evolved from there and I decided to include his other mains in Valorant like Killjoy, Viper and of course the animals from Stardew and Harvest Moon, and maybe the Creepers and Endermen from Minecraft. I ended up with too many reference pics:
But they were really helpful and I initially wanted to have his name on Sage's wall but decided against it since I wanted the wall in the middle and I know his name would be covered by a window on the banner on Twitch. So we end up with something like this sketch:
It took a while to find good placements for all the characters I wanted to include and I initially wanted to have more but had to cope with the space constraints. Thankfully the I could just use the Creepers and Endermen as-is and don't have to draw them myself. Not that it would be difficult but it still saves some time. Once I got the sketch it was time to draw and draw the wall first!
It was actually easier than I thought especially since I found some good references. I thought it ended up looking pretty good and quite accurate to how it appears in-game!
From there it was just a case of working on each character one by one. It took a loooong time but thankfully I planned ahead and made sure I had more than enough time to do it. I did outline the characters first before starting the colouring but I didn't want Killjoy's bots to have a thick outline so they would blend in more.
I worked every few days and started with his favourite Genshin character - Qiqi! I've drawn her before but in a different pose and since this was just a copy of an existing emote it wasn't too bad. I did try to include all the details in her hat though.
Next was Killjoy! She's also my main on Valorant and man does she have a ton of colours. I really liked this chibi style I found and decided to draw her similarly but in a different pose, like she's placing her bots. Of course that meant I had to draw her bots too which took such a long time! I tried to distort it such that Botty on top of the wall would look like it was facing the distance and I think it looked okay? It was definitely a challenge trying to colour them accurately though even with a reference.
The animals were significantly easier to draw of course since there were less details on them. The only thing about them was trying to colour them accurately.
But I think they ended up looking pretty alright. Although I wasn't sure about the Panda since the perspective was a little off. I realise the front characters were looking quite flat like stickers on the wall instead of in front of it like I envisioned but with the space constraints I didn't know how else to change it. And I know Twitch will compress it and mess it up so I didn't want to complicate things.
I thought the Viper came out pretty cute, especially with her poison orb! I was kinda iffy on how to have her still be seen in her orb though since I didn't want to cover her up.
But I just adjusted the transparency and viola! Akuji likes to hide in his own poison just like that so I thought it was really apt.
Last but not least was Sage, on top of the wall just like I envisioned, with a sniper. The gun was definitely the hardest to draw and colour since I barely knew how to draw it much less distort it in such a way. I think the barrel looks a little shorter than I intended but I did try extending it and it looked so weird so I left it at that.
For the background I just went with something that could contrast the turquoise wall and went with a nice sunset with green hills. By that point I was just so exhausted with this piece and was so relieved it was finally done!
Since it was meant to be his Twitch banner I included his username as well which at the time was AkujiDainLovett. He's changed his name from Akuji26 to AkujiDainLovett and back but I think this suits the banner anyway. And with that this piece was finally complete!
This definitely took me quite some time and although I do like colouring, the amount of detail even on these chibi characters took a lot out of me. I was exhausted by the end of it and ended up taking a break from art for a while. But when the time finally came to show him his present I was so excited and relieved that he loved it!! It was a little belated since we were actually on vacation but here's the timestamp for when I showed it to him on-stream:
I showed the full timelapse on stream but here's the quick 30-second one:
I'm just so relieved that all that work paid off and was worth it since he loved it so much! I think he almost cried but he more than deserved it with all the help he's given me too! I feel like I owed him so much so this was my way of paying back.
That's all for now! Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
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