Inktober 52 - 2021, 18
To people like me, cats are the perfect pets. Well, from the conventional selection of pets anyway. This is mainly on my getting bored quickly, when I'm devoting my full attention to something, which may or may not be a symptom of being terminally online. Either way, cats. Cats don't actually want anything from you that requires your full attention, some of them will actually ignore you, if you pay too much attention to them. It's a quality I really like about them, actually. I guess that might say something about my preference in company... As such, imagine my joy when I saw Cat on the prompt list. Just one catch: I draw people, not so much animals. Not that I mind drawing animals in concept, but I just have trouble visualizing the anatomy of anything that isn't a plantigrade biped with thumbs. I'm assuming I'll do fine with plantigrade monkeys. There's also so many great character designs that incorporate feline traits, so I wanna do some of those. I will however commit myself to put one actual cat in there. That counts as fulfilling the prompt right?
Of the recent rise in gacha games, Arknights stands out to me as the one with possibly the best character design. In a genre, where the rarest units are often the only ones with any interesting details incorporated into the design (looking at you, FGO), it's a real breath of fresh air. I really admire the designers behind the units, and like any good game with the anime aesthetics, some of the characters run around with cat ears. Some of my favourite designs are that of Melantha and Mint, so it'll be those two for me this week.
This is gonna be more or less the composition I was thinking of. I'm somewhat pleased with myself, since the cat scrambling out of Mint's leg was a first try and without reference. The head is maybe a little big, but I might keep it that way. Melantha in particular has an EPOQUE variant, which I think might be fun to draw. Using that one also gives me an excuse to think of a costume design for Mint to go with it. I noticed that I blocked the sketch somewhat inopportunely, and I might just ignore the background for this one. Not that I'm usually very much involved in backgrounds. Another issue I see myself running into is Melantha's right hand holding the umbrella. That one's situated a little oddly, but I can't really figure out how to change that for the better.
I decided to do Melantha first, and ink it as well. I really liked the crispness that came with the fineliner ink. I checked online and apparently there's different inkliners used by artists, but so far I'm managing fine with the one I use for university.
Yeah, so I noticed I got the hairstyle wrong, initially. I was kinda used to the art being cut off by the price tag, so I couldn't really see that it was tied in the back. It's fine though. I might have arranged it differently, if I hadn't already inked the outfit, but I hope this doesn't look too odd. Another thing I should've thought about before inking is the colour-scheme of the EPOQUE outfit. To be fair, her default costume is also an ensemble of blacks and purples, but if I were to start this over, I should probably flip the stripes and stark blacks. This way looks a little funky, but hey, a lesson for next time.
I did end up leaving the background blank, just the way I've always practiced. I'll talk about Mint first. Looking at the aesthetics of Melantha's EPOQUE costume, I get impressions of Victorian fashion. Not actual Victorian fashion, that one's stuffy and looks significantly more exhausting to draw, but more of a TV drama Sherlock Holmes version of Victorian fashion. I've admittedly had a little trouble coming up with anything from that same vain by myself, so I decided to pivot a little for Mint's design. She's a healer class and her default outfit features a set of robes. I took some inspiration from steampunk outfits. I split the jacket because of colour-constraints, and moved the ribbon from the default outfit. Now, by far the wonkiest element in the entire piece is the umbrella. Intuitively I thought drawing one would be easy, but maybe it's because of the angle, but I gave it five or six entire tries and this is the best I could come up with. All in all, this took about twice as long as the previous one, mainly because I made myself draw two characters this time. I'm quite pleased with the time time-to-sketch though. That one came out in thirty minutes or so. Maybe the inks will get faster in a few weeks as well.