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Next chapter of Sparrows Sing is up!

(Embedding the link still isn't working, but you can find it here)

With wonderful editing once again by @kamikazequail!

I've been really looking forward to this one, hope you enjoy. There's babble under the cut

A few thoughts on the dreams:

I like to think that in Ogata's subconscious, winter never stopped after the war. The cold and snow is embedded in the ptsd and feels like an inextricable part of who he is just as much as all his other unresolved issues. Sugimoto, on the other hand, has started healing since meeting Asirpa, and there are living things in his dreams including the plants. He's more connected to the world and society than Ogata ever was, and that understanding of things outside of himself reflects in his dreams. However, they were both deeply affected by the same battlefield, so that's where their nightmares overlap and they're both seen as they perceive themselves.

I imagine they were both very isolated by their places in the battles, in kinda opposite ways. Sugimoto was often the sole survivor in the thick of it, and earned this legendary status that othered him from his comrades, not to mention the survivor's guilt of going through the same shit as everyone around him but not dying like they did. Meanwhile, Ogata specialized in sniping at a point in Japanese history where sniping wasn't an established tactic yet, so he was the only one doing it, which meant he was always in the background doing his own thing while everyone around him fought and died or came back scarred by combat that never touched him. Combined with the way everyone couldn't stand him as a person anyway, it was like he was in a completely different battle from everyone else and never acknowledged as part of the group (who probably developed pretty strong trauma bonds with each other). The result being that both felt alone in that battle and never had the community support to come back from it, so some part of their subconscious is still stuck there in isolation, as something not quite human the way everyone else is. I like the idea of those dreams creating a kind of shared isolation where they can pull each other out of nightmares. Maybe it's not comfort, but it's change, and it's company, and even if they're not the same they at least aren't alone in their differences. Right?

I dunno how well it came through, but I've been kinda thinking of Yuusaku's happy disconnect from the surroundings that Ogata is in as a representation in Ogata's subconscious of the feeling that his brother always seemed to be operating in a different world than what he was able to participate in, where the rules were different and things were kinder. Now it's like his spirit is dwelling in a paradise that Ogata is locked out of.

I really wasn't expecting to enjoy writing the Yuusaku dreams this much, but they've turned out to be some of my favorite so far. I haven't actually gotten to the point in the story where he starts haunting Ogata full force, so I don't know what the vibe is supposed to be like beyond fan art I've stumbled upon, so I've just been having fun playing with the sense of eeriness and dread. Hopefully it's working.

Anyway, that bear in Sugimoto's dream (I pictured him having a much more significant moment there from his own perspective before Ogata crashed it). It was kind of inspired by this period of a really fucked sleep situation I went through as a kid and the weird dreams I had during the time. It was a recurring dreamscape where I'd get trapped progressively deeper in the ocean, and if I swam too far out I'd encounter this massive black sperm whale resting upsidedown with its nose touching the seafloor and the rest of its body floating up at an angle. For some reason it was the most terrifying thing I'd ever seen. In my dream I knew for a fact that it was wrong for me to be in its presence, and that it was both dead and ready to awaken at any moment if I got too close. I developed a bit of a phobia of whales after that which never completely went away tbh.

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Squiggly mermaid

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Another old drawing that reminds me of Viktor

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So here's a fairy OC I drew in 2018 that reminds me a lot of Viktor. I feel like I have about a hundred of these laying around.

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An unfinished goddess

I'm thinking I'll probably digitize this and fix it up eventually

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I was thinking of a lionfish

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Koito always feels under appreciated somehow

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Only vicious when he has to be.

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Redraw of an amazing panel I did for a golden kamuy flash sheet

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Hajime in the sea.

Tattoo sample

This man makes me so fucking emotional.

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Ogata Hyakunosuke tattoo design

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Tattoo designs I'll be putting together on a tattoo flash sheet but I wanted to share the sketches here first!

(The flowers are persimmons that I'll add to Saichi's design.)

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Some flats before I work through the shading.

Tristan prefers to wear gold over silver.

He loves cars with leather interiors. He thinks his brother's taste in modern cars are corny.

Tristan wants to see if he can go back in time before his lifetime but he's scared to try.

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Here's some inking before I move to the next step.

-Tristan loves listening to music that remixes old songs from the 20s that he grew up listening to. He's all about electroswing.

-Tristan is bad at just sitting down and enjoying a meal. He shovels food down and doesn't really taste it. He's always hungry.

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Fun facts about Tristan:

-He can look down an object's path through time and use that object as a grounding tool to time travel.

-He sometimes coughs up green slime.

-He befriends a creature he coughs up with the green slime.

-He's terrible at first dates.

-He has anxiety.

You can read the first few chapters of Hunger Beauty Terror Magic here!