#is anyone still here from 2017 other than like tanz and co. that would be nuts

[emberglowfox]

“Probably ought to bring you up to speed on something right now. In order to escape, we're going to have to go through HER chamber."

Redraw of an original from September of 2017– someone liked it and made me think about it for the first time in a while. My Portal dragon au was a fun time. I miss just being mindlessly self-indulgent like that, haha.

This is a bit of a weird redraw. Usually when I do redraws, I try to match the style more, so the technical improvement is clearer. But with this one, I was thinking more about, like… if I had the skill then that I do now, what would I have made?

Growing up, I was really envious of looser styles that could rely more on color and light than lines. Lineart and cell shading is still my bread and butter, clearly, and I’ve always enjoyed it. But when I was younger, it sometimes felt like a cage. The old drawing, with its blurry but strong colored lighting, is an obvious attempt to get away from that.

So, I paid less attention to the specifics of the original composition and tried more to capture atmosphere. I love the lighting and aesthetic of Portal 2, it’s still incredibly influential on me, so I wanted to see how much closer I could get now. I’m not all the way there— especially sketching this at 2am with no references— and there’s a lot of things I still want to improve. But I’d like to think past me would have been really, really excited about what I can do now.