chimken-nugget

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Marshmallow's Grave

blurb:

If Marshmallow's life could be described with one word, it would be: uneventful.

Only after his death does his story truly begin...

From the day a kit opens their eyes, their nursery days are filled with stories of Great battles and that of the benevolent StarClan. Everyone wants to end up in StarClan! At least, that's what's to be expected...

What then happens when one is not content after death? That is the dilemma Marshmallow finds himself facing.

Perhaps there's more to life and death than the six clans...

Cover for @harriertail 's cover competition :))

This is supposed to be a novella cover, but official en novella covers are pretty simple, so i took some creative liberties there

Click keep reading to see my creative process and what Marshmallow's story is all about :))!

Symbolism and Plot Summary: 

If I had to describe this book cover in 1 word, it would be 'juxtaposition'. 

The juxtaposition between night at the top and day at the bottom, between the more serious drawings at the top and the doodles at the bottom.

The juxtaposition between StarClan!Marshmallow being in cool shades of white and holding himself up, whereas Falling!Marshmallow is falling (lol) and is on fire, between Starclan!Marshmallow having lost all his defining features (representing a loss of identity within Starclan), and Fallling!Marshmallow retaining his distinguishing features (such as his 1 unique paw).

The juxtaposition between a goofy name like 'Marshmallow' and the more serious word 'grave', between the fact that Marshmallow is wearing forget-me-nots when his status as a side character means he will inevitably be forgotten from the narrative very quickly.

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To make sense of why I've included all these contrasting elements, is the novella's contents and its relationship with the main story. 

I designed Marshmallow (prefix Marsh, suffix Mallow) to be your average side character. He's the silly name you'd find in the allegiances, and he serves no real purpose to the main story besides the odd remark here and there. He exists just to be whatever the author wants him to be. That is, until he dies brutally (read: fridged) as a means of causing unnecessary anguish for the protagonist. The clan holds vigil for him, and he is then promptly forgotten for the rest of the series.. 

In his novella, Marshmallow reflects on his (quite frankly) uneventful life and begins to develop self-awareness towards how... *artificial* StarClan is. A big theme of this novella would be exploring individuality within StarClan, herd mentality, and whether anything lies beyond the StarClan borders. This would be in stark contrast to Marshmallow's yes-man, nothing-burger 'the prey is running well' side character personality he had whilst still alive. Only in death does Marshmallow begin to break out of the mould...

I'd like to think that this novella would end with him deciding to do the outrageous and leave StarClan's borders to go to the River of Spirits (yes this is Warriors canon). Eventually he chooses to live on in the form of a flower. Rather than wait to fade away, he finally has the autonomy to have the *choice* on what his fate will be and how he will live out the rest of his days.. 

This description isn't super polished (neither is the cover art tbh, i didnt have the time LOL) but id like to think the ending would be bittersweet (another juxtaposition !!) and a bit more unique in comparison to the tone of my 'series'.   

if you couldn't tell, im a very 'the blue curtains symbolise sadness' type of person- putting my GCSE English skills to use LOL

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Breakdown of the Cover:

Marshmallow ref:

i made this ref at the same time as the cover, so that's why the headshot looks so similar (they are 2 individual drawings, if u zoom in it's more obvious :,) )

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FINAL Artist note:

MAn did i rush this LOL !!

im supposed to  be on hiatus rn to focus on uni exams (which i am STRESSED over), but i decided to temporarily come back on here to make this cover during the short breaks i give myself. ill probably post this on instagram with Marshmallow's ref sheet after exams r done in August lol... Marshmallow is actually my first WC OC and i love the guy.. he literally just exists. 

hope everyone is having a stellar week, cos im not unfortunately 

hope to be back to posting my warrior cats and N art again soon 

bye (again) for now :]

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Leafpool Animation !!!

check it out on YouTube or Instagram :)

hoping to one day achieve MAProject animator levels so i can participate lol

flipaclip audio syncing is very fiddly tho..

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this trend but with n !!

if u couldn't tell, im not exactly the biggest fan of the n is zoroark theory.

idm when people present it in a compelling way, but when it's just saying that n acts "weird" and therefore he must be a pokemon.. it's just yikes

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this week's post is a dtiys for @bowiestarzzz from over on Instagram :)!!

characters are their OCs Pricklestar and Robinbelly- which i definitely recommend checking out !

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my DTIYS submission(s) for @alxyias over on Instagram !!

couldn't help myself and ended up making 2 pieces :)

they're VERY experimental but also was rly fun messing about with textures and hyper-pop style

N's room is a bit of a sensory nightmare for me so i tried to incorporate that LOL

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Tried out animating cats. cool.

(im not happy with the end product, unfortunately.. eh, we live and we learn)

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no new art this week since im busy with a warrior cats animation, so have this outdated meme i drew 1 (or 2 idk) yrs ago and never finished lol

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Por Que Te Vás trend but with N and Hilbert

yipppeeeee !!

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Mothwing: Rejecting Blind Faith

This started out as a Mothwing full-body (and slight redesign) for Blixemi which ended up becoming another one of my book quote comics LOL.

This one is less of a comic / book scene, and more of a mish-mash of my favourite Mothwing quotes (around the OOTS portion, mainly)... Mothwing's been through a lot (med cat canon event)...

So yeahhh.... HUZZAH

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Tall Shadow: The Earth Belongs to Noone

don't do much DOTC stuff but this was a request over on reddit, also it was a lot of fun trying to figure out how to turn this quote into comic form..

Shame the clan cats never take their own advice lol (final panel meme is also by me)

I also included my draft just cos it's pretty cool to see how an idea starts out before it is finalised :)

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Piece i did for @/symphony_sonata 's 400K HABROMANIA DTIYS over on Instagram

i don't usually do fully rendered pieces so this was fun

Also the first time in a while I've drawn smthn that isn't N or warrior cats lol

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N post !! (it's been a while)

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Brightheart and Swiftpaw: Lionclan

for the warrior she became, and the warrior he could never be

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was so much fun to be a part of this !!!

i didn't have a clue what direction the story would go in but im so happy with how it's turned out

good job everyone !!!

then what - final collaborative comic

it only took... 8 months (i can explain i swear) but it's finally finished! its extremely long, so i'm putting it under a read more. enjoy :D

page 2 - @unhappy-sometimes

page 3- @neapenning

page 4 - @missedthememo

page 5 - @chimken-nugget

page 6 - @spencer-is-someone

page 7 - @shrimparmy

page 8 - @missflufffanfics

page 9 & 10 - @nightviator

page 11 & 12 - @awesomedurraworld

page 13 - @spacemichelle

page 14 - rough by @quinonoid, final by me

page 15 - @izzy-draws05

page 16 - @cresneta

page 17 & 18 - @dipothebookworm

page 19 - rough by @cat-copnt, final by me

page 20 - @gijipaw

page 21 - @tinypaperstar

page 22 - @esomq

page 23 - @kittyshy123

page 24 - @peanutseagle

and pages 25-30 by @buf309 / @buf309-art-binder :)

Oh boy. a project like this was gonna take a long time already because of the scope and sheer number of people, but add in a bunch of technicalities + extra work in the end + the few extra pages i had to draw + finals week and... yeah. 8 months later. its funny bc this was supposed to be to celebrate hitting 25k, and im at 27.7k now 😭

BUT IT'S FINISHED! i'm so proud and so in awe of all the talent that exists in this fandom. i have definitely learned a lot from managing a project like this. I would love to do it again in the future (but maybe on a smaller scale, LOL).

special shoutout to @buf309 for all that legwork you put in the end with SIX PAGES, that also managed to bring the story together. I honestly did not know how the heck you would bring it all together, but you knocked it out of the park.

this was lots of fun. thank you everyone and i hope you enjoyed :D

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Drawing each arc I complete:

Power of Three

"gee whiz, i sure am glad crowfeather's not my dad !!" said crowfeather's accident babies for the tenth time that day.

Guess who my favourites were for this arc challenge (impossible) /j

(You can find my drawings for arc 1 and arc 2 here)

Anyways,, my thoughts on this arc (a long-ish read):

Leafpool and Squilf my beloved !!!! The only ppl whose reactions were reasonable to the secret reveal were Brambleclaw and Hollyleaf, given their characterisation. Everyone else's reactions were over the top and stupid. Lionblaze thinking he's not a clan cat anymore was stupid. Wth is Firestar then ???? 'one of the good ones' ?????

The Tribe cats book (Outcast) was a disaster that was only necessary to establish the Jaywing-Jayfeather connection. I may be one of the few ppl who genuinely loves the journeying and the tribe (i loved TNP), but this book reeked of colonialist ideology.

Sol being a professional BSer is so funny, brother just said whatever, and the clan cats made him more of a threat than he actually was. What proof did Blackstar have that Sol predicted the Eclipse besides the words of Thunderclan apprentices LOL

Literally all Sol had to do was sit around and look pretty, say some vague crap, and everyone ate it up LOL

Erin Hunters pls bring back Sol

Everyone loves Purdy. Your dad loves Purdy, your adoptive mum loves Purdy, the old racist woman loves Purdy. YOU love Purdy.

also,, 3 'controversial' hot takes:

1) I enjoyed TNP more than POT. idk maybe it's cos leafpool is my favourite character, so im biased, but POT seemed to drag and was a hard read with all the brooding and 'im better than everyone' comments hollypaw, jaypaw, lionpaw made every 5 seconds.

The last 2 books were peak tho- Erin Hunters cooked hard with the fire scene and death berries scene.

2) Hollyleaf not being one of the 3 is actually a good decision. ik the fandom has never rly liked this fact since it's due to such a silly reason (the authors couldn't think up a power in time), but I think not having a power made her story so much more impactful. Hollyleaf *wanted* to be special in any way possible (by being med cat / leader etc.), so to be able to make peace with the fact that she's not 'special' in the way she thought she'd be, is good character growth for her in the next arc. Hollyleaf's 2 character traits in POT was 'warrior code' and 'wanting to be special' so both of these elements being completely shattered for her was probably one of the more interesting things to happen in this arc.

3) Squilf and Leaf keeping the secret makes sense to me. When I read Leafpool's Wish, I was under the impression that starclan was insistent on the 3 having a "nuclear, stable family" which squilf and leaf interpreted as having to keep it a secret from everyone else (they were probably planning to take it to the grave).. I agree with the fandom that this secret thing wasn't handled in the best way, practically everyone already knew about the crowleaf situation BUT I do also think that starclan had their (stupid but kinda valid) reasons. The biggest reason would probably be to have the supposed 3 grow up loyal to the code from birth and in a healthy family, so that they wouldn't crash out when they discovered their powers and turn evil or smthn..

They were kits born from 2 codes broken, so knowing this from birth would maybe have them not rly regard the code with the same importance as others. Also, as accepting as thunderclan is, being a moderate clan is such a low bar to cross that the racism and discrimination Holly, Lion, and Jay would've faced would still be pretty horrible. Arc 2 and 3 brush up a lot on the fact that the other clans (and even cats in thunderclan) are unhappy with the way Firestar is accepting of anyone. If worst came to worst, I do think Firestar would have been pressured to exile Leafpool and her children, dooming the clans as 2/3 kin of kin are no longer in the clans. We already saw the clans threatening Firestar over Sol.. so yeah...

of course I'm just reading through the lines and the Erin Hunters in all honestly likely did it to put drama in their kittycat soap opera LOL

However, as the no.1 Leafpool defender, that is my take

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Snowkit Moment !!!!

shoutout to the only line said by snowkit before getting wiped off the face of Warrior Cats

truly the most warrior cats moment of all time

the authors didn't deserve u snowkit 😔

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OC ART REQUEST FOR @infiiniite

ITS HIM !!!! HOPE U LIKE IT :)