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#-I've decided to link the most superfical ones in one place
katyahina · 1 year
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The most common Bloodborne fanart mistakes
We all approach fanart differently! Most people draw characters simple and get the point across, with any alteration being down to art-style. Some people willingly take artistic liberties based on their preferences. And some people try to be very accurate to the canon, to the point where they feel sad upon finding out that they've been unaware of something (like me and all three of my fans fsjfhjds). The latter is often caused by both lacking spread of good references and artists using fanart of other people for the reference rather than the source material. If you also belong to this category of fanartists with me, here are some of the most common fanart pitfalls to avoid!
Lady Maria's eye colour: It is a somewhat frequent mistake to draw her eyes blue! In reality, her eyes are very pale green, even a little desaturated, so, greyish-green:
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Henryk's skin colour: In the game, it is hard to know unless you deliberately zoom in his face, and even then it might be accidentally blamed on the lighting! I especially see this mistake in Eastern fanart. Thanks to a dataminer Zullie the Witch though, we can know for sure that he is brown:
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(Here ( x ) is the page with all sliders)
Little girl's ribbon: Most drawings depict this one as simply... well, white ribbon. It can be tied around a braid, a ponytail, or simply rest on whatever other hairstyle. But in the game both the icon and the way it is worn by Messengers features a layer of frills:
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Only one daughter: Gascoigne and Viola have two daughters: one, younger, is the little girl that used to wear the white ribbon which we never see, and another, older, is the one we can talk with later and see dead.
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She is not an obvious encounter, and it certainly doesn't help that her little sister doesn't mention her! There are many fanarts that only depict just the little girl whereas the intention is to depict the whole family, and some even use this older sister's design for her, though, as a result! Two of them existing is also confirmed by the voice credits:
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Micolash's hair: This is probably the most obvious case of people using existing fanart as a reference. His hair is purely black and somewhat messy, even curling somewhat!
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But it is a common fanart thing to give him brown, 'pointy' hairstyle. I think it is sorta 50/50 though because black hair is hard to work with in art, and sometimes 'brown' is just a way to have better colors in general! Lighter color is needed, and simply lessening it to 'dark grey' can just feel not so satisfying. It is an error usually if he is like.. idk, next to a character whose hair IS drawn as black, so there is an obvious comparison.
Adella's hair colour: She has a reverse problem! Commonly drawn with completely, no-shade, pure raven black hair, exactly what Micolash's hair is, when hers is simply dark brown:
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Edgar's hair colour: A frequient one is depicting him as that 'yellow' type of blond, when in reality he is strawberry blonde (if not somewhat a redhead):
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Yurie's hair and eyes colour: I've fallen for this one myself, and it took me some time to withdraw from, so it is better to just not do to begin with. However, it is simultaneously 'the most widespread mistake' and 'not a real mistake' since this character is bald; although her data states she is a blonde, only her (rather fluffy!) blonde eyebrows are observable. Her eyes are grey, like with plenty of the characters in Bloodborne!
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Fanart of her almost exclusively depicts her with black hair and blue eyes, though. Again: technically she is bald, and colour of eyebrows might not match head colour, so the real error is only when artstyles that color eyebrows and eyelashes darken them!
+ Possibly this happens because her name is mistaken for Japanese name Yuri. This is not true: the existing name Yuri is written as ゆり or ユリ, whereas this character is named ユリエ. This little fucker エ at the end is not silent, and this is the key: she is yu-ri-YEE, not yu-REE! Also, ユリエ would be a Japanese spelling of the name Julie - Czech, French and Danish variant of the name Julia. I personally think this is most likely, since Yharnam is heavily inspired by Czechia!
Brador's beast hyde: It is hard to call a frequient, because fanart of these characters together is not frequient... xD But I've seen a few instances of Brador wearing his beast hyde while next to a Laurence who is still alive and a human. This is not possible, since Laurence was the first Cleric Beast, and the hyde Brador is wearing IS that of a Cleric Beast:
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We can not know whether Brador killed Laurence or someone of the following clerics since Soulsborne hates clarity and Miyazaki drinks my tears and my tears alone jfhdfhsdhfdhs But we can conclude for sure that he only has this hyde after Laurence was killed. (Naturally, in some types of fanart, this doesn't count! For example, the 'everyone is here' types of fanarts or simple shitpost doodles do not have to be strict to the timeline! In fact, they should not be, lol)
"No-Beardor": Again, this is sensitive to the time context and intention: it counts when the intention is to depict his 'invader' state as it is during the game! Naturally, bro probably shaved more than once in his life fhhhdjss I think it is the fault of a particular "screenshot" of him going viral as a reference for him, when in reality his invader and jail state features a rather noticeable beard:
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Gratia's clothes: Again, not a popular character to draw, but at some point a fanmade Wiki claimed that she is wearing Yharnam Hunter's set! This found the way in fanarts of her, when in reality, she is wearing an altered Old Hunter set, wearing a cap instead of a wide hat and missing the large flowing cape and her left glove:
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Arianna's hair and eye colour: Her eyes are often drawn as either blue or brown, when it reality, it is, strangely..... purple? Meanwhile, there is a frequient fanart trend depicting Arianna with her alien baby in which her hair is still yellow, whereas in reality her hair loses colour after the event:
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I've actually made the exact same error the one time I drew her with her kid :') This situation ties Arianna with another important character, Annalise, who used to be a redhead and has lost her hair colour in connection with her pregnancy, presumed aborted. I elaborated more here ( x ), but the point stands: this change is impossible to spot in the game with its dramatic fucking lighting dfdsfsgdfs It is something only really spotted through data analysis!
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I think that's the most frequient ones! There is really no problem in taking artistic liberties, but there is a category of artists that do not really want to and there are details that just can't be spotted in the game by normal means! And some errors can be painful to look at, like white blue-eyed blond Henryk fanart :pensive:.
In recent couple of years, we are being spoiled with awesome references thanks to dataminers and bloggers that spread the information! As for ER fans, they are actually having it easy since dataminers started to expose all the models right away whereas BB fans had a long 'dark era' xd But in general, Soulsborne games are built around the idea that no one will be able to beat the game alone; we all gotta communicate online through the notes other players have left! This mentality further travelled into understanding the story of these games by exchanging the information we've found.. And like, what I am trying to tell is that I am very happy that the same mentality of cooperating spreads on creativity as well! All the references here are the result of awesome dataminers hacking the game and being kind enough to share with the community! There are many more things such as model rips, internal filenames and super handy screenshots galleries that sometimes help to not only create a more accurate fanart, but also to even understand some extra lore! Yeah, like Arianna's hair hinting at a very important plot twist about Cainhurst. x) My point is!! communicating about what we have noticed with other fans is how these games existed and formed the coolest community, and fanart might be not different. What I shared here is just a really small portion of what can be used, and someone found this post useful, I am happy!
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