#Not that Falco's face in the second picture is anything to write home about either

[ceejaykayess]

Endgame spoilers for AI The Somnium Files abound, play the best part of Uchikoshi's wild ride (said by someone who hasn't seen anything before his Zero Escape stuff).

Can't believe this started with me just wanting to draw my own take on a non-mask wearing Date in Nirvana Initiative and then evolved (devolved, even) into wanting to draw character-centric pieces on the various Dates that then further changed into wanting to work on actually adding background to works which just turned into "make most of it black, but draw attention to symbolism."

Kinda funny I got less content with each subsequent image, with the first being the one I'm most confident in. The faces just got more and more scuffed as I had to draw them from different angles to any references I have. Something to practice on, I suppose.

The first piece could be called "SINKIN' IN THE CAPTaiN'S BRaiN," since it's meant to combine the background of the two of Date' Somnium and their shared motif of being places where to interact with things, light needs to be on them. Which I have thoughts about, thoughts about natural Dadte, but now's not the time.

The second piece, similarly, could be called "VaiNLY PSYNCIN' IN THE CHaiN," or "CHaiNED, PSYNCIN' IN THE VaiN." Depends on whether you want to think of it as Saito pridefully entering Date's mind full force, or Date being forced to drown within Saito. I am horribly curious what PSYNCIN' IN THE CHaiN looked like from Saito's PoV, though. I wonder if it shared the usual motif, or if the topic of discussion being very forcefully turned to something generally unhappy would shift the Somnium's paradigm.

The third piece does not have an elaborate title, since it focuses the least on giving a proper background. It was made to be similar to the final Mental Lock in PSYNCIN' IN THE CAPTaiN, but also reminiscent of the game's cover art. I suppose you could call it... "PSYNCIN' IN THE MIRai"? But, that doesn't suit as much. Actually, to follow the idea of it being my weak spin on NI Date, we could call it "New Invitation." Or something.

Now, the important part. The Date. There isn't really much I could do on him that hasn't been done before, but that's fine. We all build together and all that. I first wanted it to be, a Date that wore his usual clothes but in a way Falco would have worn them. That is, open jacket, and replacing his sweater with a button-up purple and black-striped shirt. Showing off his chest, the whore.

Problem is, Date's usual jacket has huge fucking crossover. Any IRL equivalent I could think of usually had a vest-cut for the neck, instead of some fucking Nomura-type neck protector. So, I had to content myself with not showing off as much of the Datitties as I would have hoped. Instead, his jacket looks all poofs at the side, which is a poorly made attempt at showing that there's an invisible wind blowing everything to the right side of the image, as weakly shown in left-Date's hair being blown back and Falco's jacket being blown forward. Very, very weakly, when I consider how not as much detail as I would hope is conveyed in the pictures I took... how do I rectify that? Take closer pictures?

Whatever, next. Date has his hair in a ponytail, which you can vaguely see over his left shoulder. It's so grey compared to the rest of his hair, because I thought, "Ah, what if in the six year gap Date grew his hair out in his ignorance, and got some of it dyed by, I dunno, a friend he met, and made it the same shade as the mask he kept as a memento from whatever life he led before he woke up memory-less." Some of his lower hair near his neck is dyed, too.

Date's right hand is gloved and his left hand is ungloved because I thought it looked cool, shut up. Also, he has his right hand over his face because I decided that's what he does when he Wink Psyncs. Mizuki gives a peace sign, Ryuki shows off his respect to the aliens, Date listens to his inner-Saito (the part that is a dramatic bitch, not the serial killer part) and poses like an anime villain losing it.