#like the art style isnt all that consistent

[cloudishmagma]

Bld comic I felt like doing cuz I was feeling kinda sad lol

Anyways its kinda corny but I tried

James ---> @hotpinkmoon

[efplanning]

eeveelution family that studies pokemon evolution and stuff lineup 2.0

[breezere]

fuck u -tears off their sleeves-

[themyscirah]

Saw a meme post and started doodling and somehow spawned this???????

[cinnabeat]

genuinely i dont think im sleeping tonight

[kasarasun]

what if I made a thing or it already was that while Airplane wrote the world, Peerless Cucumber illustrated it (only the animals. And Binghe, fighting the animals.) And then then then

He'd totally do it on an alt account, right?? Peerless Cucumber can't be seen making fanart!! (And he's good at it. Like, wiki is using his art in the monsters and beasts pages (that Peerless Cucumber volleyed for. He also separated it from the plant section.) Because 1 its good 2 the artstyle is consistent 3 there isn't a lot of monster official art, other than that one with the black moon rhinoceros python and those other ones and 4 it's really that good)

Haha incomprehensible parenthesis nesting aside, Airplane is watching the forums, right? Not sure about other stuff in canon but he looks at the forums and the fanart and the fiction and most of it is probably corn and binghe and just a little bit of mobei-jun and also the wives tm but!! There's also that guy!!! The monsters guy!! (People would probably suspect 'Drawing the Beast's Ire'- or some other sex euphemism I'm not good at making those- of being Peerless Cucumber because 1 the writing style is the same 2 Peerless Cucumber is the number 1 contributor to the PIDW wiki and a lot of it is the monsters and beasts section and it makes sense, yes??) Anyway, Airplane shooting towards the sky suspects but not too seriously suspects Mr ire of being cucumber's fanart alt but uh uh that ends pre-transmigration section

So, Shen Yuan starts running about, right? Things seem really... familiar, maybe thats the word?- for some reason. This is because every animal and plant he's ever drawn, sketched- maybe even thought about but that's a stretch?- is his design. The firefly parallels hold their forelimbs like butterflies. That is how far down it goes. Maybe it doesn't come up until later, but beasts and monsters from fanfiction get involved, oc species, too... anyway,

Airplane Shooting Towards the Sky transmigrates 30 years (iirc) before Peerless Cucumber. He was an avid enough follower of Drawing the Beast's Ire to recognize that these are their designs! Here's where it gets really crazy. Xiao-Mobei comes along, and while he's still pretty young, Airplane can tell that this is Drawing Ire's design! Some aspect, maybe his ears or teeth, (this isn't a well built theoretical tangent) of Mobei isnt canon. Its Drawing Ire's. From that one Northern Kingdom collection. Whatever stretched his world building into coherence, completion, didn't just pull from fanwork, official art, whatever it could find, it went for Drawing the Beast's Ire's designs specifically. Damn that's crazy Airplane ahahaha moving on,

This is getting really long so I'll be a bit more concise, (want to know more? Talk to me. Please talk to me. I want to interact with the fandom. Ask me questions. Poke your fingers into my cage.) This all comes to head at the Immortal alliance conference. The monsters and beasts really start pouring in! And Shen Qingqiu/Yuan remembers his creations. However, he assumes that this is because like 1 other person maybe was Drawing ghost head spiders.

Hey, Peerless Cucumber really liked the monsters, right? The deadlier, crazier, more intricate, the design the better! So maybe, when he was drawing, he... added some things, really believable, logical additions, really just small creative decisions...

Anyway, the monsters that Drawing the Beast's Ire made were where it came to a head.

Lets have another Canon divergence. Maybe, during or after Binghe gets pushed in, out of the rifts comes a species that Drawing Ire created. It's beautiful, poisonous, beloved, and really quite deadly. Shen Yuan/Qingqiu, Peerless Cucumber, Drawing the Beast's Ire... realizes, quite like airplane before him, that he's illustrated, practically sculpted with his own hands, monsters from the Endless Abyss with claws and teeth and poisons as deadly as Peerless Cucumber thought that the really cool monsters could deserve. It feels like he's the one cutting, biting, poisoning his sweet little sheep. It feels like he's digging out the marrow from his little white lotus disciple's bones.

Ok it is shut up time 👍

[fallenclan]

Related to FallenClan designs! All your designs are super amazing, what’s your simplifying process/how do you decide design for cat pelts? Cause I always struggle with simplifying/deciding how they look especially bengals and cats with white patches… thanks if you respond!

I’m ADHD and struggle with consistency and simplifying lol, though more complex designs are pretty, I lean more towards what you do w/ you’re cats as they are simple but still super pretty + it makes it easier to consistently draw them all for stuff like this! (These comic like moon updates :])

(Also hope none of this came off as offensive, it’s all meant positively! I really really admire you and your designs :])

ty for the compliments!!! very sweet ask and I shall do my best to give a good response o7

generally my method with designing characters/drawing is to just wing it. fuck it we ball basically. but i DO take a lot of inspiration from other people's warriors art, taking the time to analyze what i like about their styles and what different sorts of patterns i can use

(i also regularly consult the Clangen Sprite Guide for better looks at white patches/tortie patterns and such, highly recommend)

the first thing i decide when i'm designing a new cat is what fur texture i want them to have. i have four that I pick from (pictured below, in order), wavy, spiky, curly, and square.

i decide the fur pattern based on the cat's personality (a more stoic cat might have square fur, while someone more bubbly might have curly, or someone more excitable have spiky, so on and so on), and also based on their parents/how many cats i've designed with that fur pattern recently.

after that is snout shape, which is probably my favorite part. i love to draw cats with a very pronounced snout, not unlike an oriental shorthair, but i generally slide around between that and a more typical, stubby snout, occasionally veering off into the very square snout of a maine coon. this is also a great spot to determine how sharp you want their jaw to be, which is something that can really help set a design apart! (a couple of snout examples below)

then i usually move onto colors. i like to pick an undertone for the cat first, so i know what sort of pallate to work with. as you can see in the pictures below, ravenstar has a purple/blue undertone, and toadbelly has orange/red undertones

this helps me make all the colors look nicer together, so i don't end up doing something like making a very warm colored cat with blue-toned white patches (which would make the white patches look super cold/too bright), which can be a really cool stylistic choice, but isnt what i tend to go for

once i've drawn out the cats fur shape and picked my colors, i'll move onto the base coat. over my time of having the fallenclan blog i've discovered that having a very simple pattern underneath the normal pattern can add a lot of visual interest to a cat, and make them look less plain.

here's a good example! one of the first cats i designed, oaktuft. their pattern was super basic--one base color, plus the inside of the ears, and then the color of their patterns.

and here's another cat that i designed a little more recently--Shiverspots! you can see that even just the small change of adding a bit of a lighter color to her underbelly made a world off difference. plus my style got a lot more defined lol

i have a couple of different base patterns that i use. here's a few more examples. i've even started to experiment with more than two colors!

once i've got the base done i move onto patterns. this part can definitely be tricky; trying to make a dozen brown tabbies with short fur be distinct can be . a challenge. i like to follow the steps of what i've already designed--a cat with spiky fur might have very sharp, angular stripes, and a cat with curly fur might have much rounder ones.

i think a good rule of thumb for if your pattern feels a little too basic is just to throw some more colors in there. another shade of orange, a more pale tint to some of them, whatever. and don't be afraid to erase it and start again! sometimes a design just won't work, and thats fine :)

the final thing i do is to add little design quirks. a particularly sharp jawline, downturned eyes, a crooked smile or a gap tooth, whatever! little things can really give your cats character.

i really hope that this helped!!!

[itsc]

this isnt a new trend but my eternal artist pet peeve is artists of literally any age agonizing about Finding A Style. i remember being obsessed with Finding My Style as a teenager and it is something i have seen artists talking about for all 20 years of my netizenry and its so. you don’t have to!!! your style already exists!!!!!!!

your style is whatever is so innate to your own mode of creation that it will come through in your work regardless of your efforts to make it Look Any Kind Of Way. you don’t have to look for it. in my experience it will manifest naturally. you may not even know how to see it. but other people will!

it’s FAR more important imo to practice enjoying your art, rather than building like. obsessive habits of Brand and Identity etc into your creative endeavors. you shouldn’t be afraid to try new mediums or moods or methods or styles or grow or even regress simply because you’ve been made to think that your consistency and your ability to deliver what amounts to a predescribed product each time is more important than whatever makes the act of making art appealing to you.

[project-sekai-facts]

hi, just wanted to provide a little help on the balloon cover art ask.

its hard to find evidence for (and i dont have the time to do so) as its one of those things where its kinda "you had to be there" to know it even happened + it was well over two years ago, but there is something of an implied reason "charles" has a different cover art between versions!

after enas first focus, insatiable pale color, and i mean like directly after the event ended (at the same time "infinitely gray" got added), they suddenly changed the cover art on "charles". since release it had been the cover you can see with the vocaloid ver., but after ena's focus, they changed the sekai art to be what it is now, the flowers (what seem to be lilys) on the pink background. i cant remember if it was ever *directly* confirmed, but it seems to be implied that the current art on the sekai cover is something ena made herself! even matching it up to art we've seen previously of hers, such as during release campaigns, card arts (rainbow canvas and portray yourself), and other places, it seems (to me at least) to be in something of a similar style with somewhat-rigid lines and monochromatic palettes, just more simplified and digital!

as for "nomad" and "ame to petra", theres no real known reason why they have different arts. its possible they intended to have something similar to "charles" with "nomad", seeing as its enas second focus song which coincidentally had different arts like "charles" does, but thats purely speculation, and "ame to petra" has no reason to have different arts. its possible they just like giving balloon songs different arts :0 which isnt exactly exclusive to balloon songs either, "inochi bakkari" has a different art depending on the version youre using. maybe it has something to do with the producers themselves, but thats just more speculation.

sorry if this is a little vague and unhelpful, but this is something i remember being pretty big around the change of the art and i guess it mustve faded into obscurity with the expansion of the game and wider community. hope this helps give a little more info! :)

Mm yeah I could see that being true. I'm not entirely sure how the story of that song would connect to the event but considering the date it was changed and the style, it does add up.

Nomad has a different cover because all commissions have a unique in-game cover, adding the original for that as well, alonside the two jackets for Ame to Petra, was probably just to be consistent with Charles having two.

and i actually might be able to give a reason for Inochi Bakkari. Looking at the image history on the wiki, the jacket was added ~july 1st, which was just before the Saying Goodbye to My Masked Self event. and if you look at the lyrics, the song fits a lot with mafuyu's arc. also note the purple butterfly on the jacket, i think it's a nod to Kanade's immiscible discord card.

[writings-ofthe-heart]

JUST FINISHED BES, GOING CRAZY JUMPING ON THE WALLS‼️‼️‼️‼️

I'll post my thoughts on it here ummm its gonna be very long sorr🤦🏽‍♀️

HUGE BES SPOILERS YOU'VE BEEN WARNED

Ok first of all can we talk about the ART???? THE STYLE?????? OH MY GOODNESS ITS SO BEAUTIFUL IT REALLY REMINDS ME OF THE OLD JAPANESE ART AND COMIC BOOK STYLE TOGETHER?!! i love the uprising of stylized animation its so nice and good

ok second, THE CHARACTERS?? I love how they really kept everything consistent, taigena character development is 🥰🤌 mwah beautiful, akemi i lub her badass attitude honestly its rlly good at showing every part of japan in the edo period the brutal honesty of how women lived back then is amazing, omg speaking about akemi, madame kaji and her girls‼️‼️ so lovely i hope we see them in season 2 omg the purple girl when she got fucking killed i was so sad omfg my poor girl dude honestly and pf course imma make one big paragraph abit Mizu

ok mizu i think omfg omfg let me just say SHE'S LITERALLY THE MAN LIKE MIZU THE WOMAN YOU ARE😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍😍 i could not get enough of her, her voice??? her face??? her personality??? flawless😍🥰 the character development is precious omfg the way she was such a cold stone killer in the first episode and you could see her heart thawing while still keeping that revenge and anger alive??? AMAZING omfg props to the writers because they did so well. i really cant wait to see more about her backstory, ESPECIALLY ALL THE PLOT TWISTS IN THE LAST EPISODE???? WDYM HER MOM ISNT HER MOM???????? also im so curious about Violet? cuz she killed him but... honestly.... i saw someone theorize that it was her mom that was white and not her dad because in my head it makes sense i dont think the white father would be so hateful for mizu?? if the white parent was the mom then it makes sense for the dad to be ashamed of her,,,,,,, maybe its just me and violet is a man not a woman, idk i cant wait to see what happens in that storyline

the animation is so smooth its so satisfying and the colors??? the backgrounds of each frame is so detailed and wonderful???? oh mt goodness if i could pause it every frame juat to admire the art (and mizu) i would 100% god omfg

I just cant wait for season 2

ALSO THE LAST SCENE WHERE MIZU JUST WENT??? TO LONDON?? NOW EVERYONE THINKS SHE'S DEAD😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 she looked soooooo good tho so I'm not complaining....

also there's def gonna be a triangle between taigen , takoyashi and akemi bro, like theres no way there wont be

tbh.... im kinda #teamtako because he's a cutie... maybe ill write for him.... idk Hes so cutie patootie like his little stammer is 🤌 u dont see it often and he's royaalty? great character designs

ringo i love you my favorite boy i hope he will be well

ok thats all

[socksandbuttons]

I’m a new digital artist do you have any tips for starting?

ALRIGHT SO. it took some days to answer this sorry. Do everything. Like just go FOR it. In how u wanna draw. Not everyone has like... a similar way to go about digital drawing. (Some people paint, I do mostly cartoonish and cel...shading??) So whatever feels best for you. Sometimes you learn a new thing its okay to evolve in your art thats normal! Style is... a hard consistency bruh. Stabilization... is your friend if you really want a nice smooth line. (I use it sometimes if something not going great, esp if you want to really follow that sketch!) Lining IS an option. Dont be held back by lining. You can use the sketch, just duplicate the layer and erase some of those lines and boom! lineart. You can adjust as necessary. LAYERS ARE YOUR FRIEND. I draw on a computer so layers are quite unlimited. I know apps that restrain you to few tho which is Dumb but like i guess its a mobile art program. But dont be afraid to use them. Or one. You can get away with one layer, thats how i started before i learned about layers. (Art programs came a long way since then.) SAVE. FREQUENTLY. Also please PLEASE back that up somewhere that ISNT the app itself. If you lose the app or the login... good bye to all that. I have the luxury of usbs and an external hard drive. Just find a way to back that up. Art is a lot of memory and storage just expect that. And yes keep them because then you have something to look back on and go 'dang. ive learned'

The clipping layer is also very useful. u want your lines colored but theyre a different color?? You dont have to redraw that! You can clip a layer over it and color over the lines and boom. Colored lines. Same with coloring layers too btw. Very useful art thing to use. yes even in painting. Also this does help once a while but you dont always have to draw on white, u can change the bg color to something different (depends on the program u can default it to something else so u dont have like.. open the previous file to get the color again.) Like i will change it to greys blues or something lighter cause it turns out. things look very different on different colors. (color theory hello... i cannot teach u that.) There is always a free option somewhere. Do not worry. Um thats basically what i got for ya. Some programs have different perks for you that others wont tho. Such as csp and its delightful vector layers (Sai has this too but i CANT change the pen type. vs csp where u can use any pen. BUT CSP DOESNT HAVE MY WATERCOLOR BRUSH... that i adore.) Animating is a different proceedure. but What it is that i used for a while UHM... Pencil2d. Then i moved to opentoonz. (they are... very different... but opentoonz does infact make some things easier)

[thatumbrellaoni]

part 1

short part 2

ygo stuff from my japan trip, which Im back from. also it rained in Nara and I ate too many sweets (part 1 isnt even half of it), so I got a cold and a sore throat. but Im on the mend. Im no longer (too) down with the sickness.

starting with the doujins! it aint much because Im very very very very picky but after several considerations, I grabbed these bakubaku and a marimari of sorts (those last two doujins arent shippy as you can see on the label "all chara" but theyre my boys so I got them).

the upper right one (gift) is by high mode, the circle who did the infamous and hilarious intensive care series!

the lower left one is a novel anthology. I was on the fence, and the only reason I convinced myself to buy it is the r18 label. I was like, I already have too many hobbies, do I have time to read this... hey the bakubaku sex contained within could be worth it!!! might post summaries (or full translations of it) when I get to it.

this was the ygo section of one of the shops I went to. but all of them had the same ungodly amount of seto/jounouchi books. this could be your heaven.

everyone else was relegated to "others" lmao bakura icon for the label

this was the only genre that mattered to me, but yall really need to separate your bakuras. both bakuras were under that label when thats only supposed to be ryou 💢

I was watching ygo on jp netflix and the subtitles also didnt consistently differentiate between the bakuras. disappointed, infuriated, and upset by this continued injustice.

as doujin artist screaming machine gun-san once said in 2009,

“Hey, commentators… Can you please separate Bakura Ryou, Thief King Bakura, and self-proclaimed ‘Zorc’ Dark Bakura? You can separate your burnables but not this chaos!? No matter how chaotic these three are, this is not chaos!”

also visited the popup shop in shinjuku.

and bought satan cuz my ryou standee was getting lonely at home.

tbh this art style leaves much to be desired... I mean, compared to jf2023 ryou... ryou is super cute. do better, satan. I almost didnt buy you.

but I did. among others for fun. the seto birthday postcard was a tokuten for actually buying at the shop. the three bookmarks were also tokutens per each item you bought. the can badge was a random pull. seto always a good surprise.

the priroll can badges I love to bits. he is so cute. I wish I could eat him again.

[solarkindred]

You guys know the canon illustrations of Hogwarts founders?

Yeah I totally disagree with them. And I read a founder’s era fic where Hogwarts was actually built as refuge for this war fought between wixes and muggles. And I’m totally all for that.

So, today I’m going to describe my renditions of the founders.

Salazar Slytherin- A tall, lithe white haired man with handsome and sharp features. His eyes are a striking and vibrant yellow, akin to a snake’s. He’s of pure-blood and noble descent, wearing fine clothing of the highest qualities. His nose is pointed and long, eyebrows sharp and masterfully crafted. His usual attire often consists of flowy long sleeved blouses and tight pants or silk tunics. Salazar was from a high point in society, his parents are what most other nobles call “lunatics” for allowing their son to play in the dirt and own pets such as snakes. He likes plants. A lot. The elixirs master and field medic, along side Helga.

Godric Gryffindor- Another tall man, but he’s much more defined and muscular. A gorgeous blonde with viridescent green eyes, a mask of stubble on his chin. He often has a lopsided grin on his face, always able to brighten up a room with his mere presence. A lovable oaf. By modern terms, he’s a bit of a himbo. He has a certain affection to felines, even has a chimaera mount he rides into battle (he raised it from a cub. His explanation to his success is, and i quote, “As long as it imprints on you, you’re good.”) Terrifying but cute, sinnamon roll. Frontlines and defensive teacher, rune magic knowledgeable.

Helga Hufflepuff- A stout and slightly chubby black girl with hair as wild as wild can get. An immigrant and servant girl to the Ravenclaw family. She’s treated well by her masters, especially by her charge, Rowena. Her friends often ask for portraits of either scenery or themselves, her painting skills are of the virtuoso variety. (does that make sense?) She has a knowledge of poisons and medical applications, sometimes her knowledge coming across as terrifying. Cute but terrifying. Poisons and main medic, stealth/assassins operator.

Rowena Ravenclaw- A raven haired Asian-English noble of moderate height. With a cunning smile and knowing sharp cobalt eyes. Pretends to be knowledgeable about everything but is easily dumbfounded at the most simplest of things. Constantly asks Salazar to explain his snake-speak and Godric to explain his pet chimaera. Rowena prefers to wear expensive furs and layered satin dresses that can somehow pull off the modest style. She’s the woman to flaunt off her riches when she gets the chance to. But can dress extremely modestly when the situation calls for it, situations like war. The strategist of the group.

I have wands for them too, but honestly i feel wand making isnt as refined an art yet during their era. Ollivander lineage is an established “wandsmith” family. Hogwarts comes as the Wix-Muggle War begins and develops (you’d think the wixes would win but boy are muggles resilient) also, yknow the Unforgivables?

Yeah they were forgivable during this time because sometimes you have to get extreme.

Also, muggle-borns are treated foully in the wizarding world due to many suspicions and the community consisted of mostly pure-bloods with occasional half-bloods. Godric being a good example, to me. This claim heavily denies Salazar’s supposed “pure-blood beliefs” but then again some of the things said about famous people are just the projections others push on to them. Two of his friends are half-bloods after all.

[swatchitt]

project from Landing im working on for a modernised non-mutant TMNT AU based off 2012, IDW and 2003.

Better quality.

some AU details under the cut;

i think leo would really like retro japanese stuff - mostly influenced by splinter. his music taste consists of j-pop and j-rap, anime and game soundtracks and splinters old music tapes (miki matsubara, akina nakamori). the fancast is pooter_ on instagram, he was the closest representation of what i imagined leo to look like, though I'd probably make him look more asian in appearance.

Leo and Mikey are both top in their language classes, both taking japanese, and they both have penpals they often talk to. Mikey already transitioned to texting, but Leo and his penpal chose to stay traditional to improve their handwriting.

i'm almost certain leo would draw but have one of those Fruit Basket art styles. he'd probably be very private about all his art, and quite literally refuse to show his brothers any of it.

he likes space and action animes. he just does, there isnt any reason for it.

lemme know if you want more on this au cause i actually have stuff to say for this one. (unlike that last project where i hmmed and hahhed on what to post)

I do collages on Landing... er sometimes, but I'll post most of them here.

[adanaac]

Could I ask about your OC's? Specifically Ophicucus and Tsuru, I love how majestic Ophi is drawn and Tsuru fascinates me both with the concept and also how lovely you have illustrated him.

I hope you are well, and thank you again for helping me with my questions o7.

Sincerely HMAD.

oh good i get to talk about my son!!

my blorbo my beloved my babygirl he means everything to me

i made him in 2017 so hes sort of grown up with me (or i've grown up and realised things about him that i couldn't have when i was younger. i have so many complicated feelings abt this that i made a short comic about it last year)

to preface this im not a great writer dont expect good writing from me lol all i have is my personal experience and stealing tropes from stories i like

(got a lot to say so its all going under the cut. also a lot of death mention)

So. who is this dude

Tsuru (not his real name in-story, i havent come up with one im happy with), 18 years old, a ghost

he has a little sister, Ori, 15, who was meant to be my sona but then i just drew him more and like drawing him more anyway

first 2 drawings i ever did of him. he was based off natori natsume yuujinchou at this point, i dont remember why or if i even liked natori that much, but i remember distinctly hes based off him

u may have noticed he sort of looks older in my older art. this is because first of all art style drift lol but also as ive gotten older ive figured out that 18 isnt actually that old.

theres also a black haired version of him (two actually) its basically something like this ⬇️

important to know that everything about this dude is a convoluted metaphor

i lovingly summarize white tsuru as "people pleaser" and black tsuru as "nihilist prick" in my head and those are the things consistent throughout all the AU versions of him

(important differences only to me) alive tsuru doesnt act like black tsuru at all thats just his warped self perception (he also doesnt act exactly like white tsuru either)

also alive tsuru has black eyes and the shortest hair, black tsuru has blue eyes and slightly longer hair (also white tsuru is slightly taller than both of them)

if they all existed at the same time they would hate each other on sight but fortunately (unfortunately?) he is just 1 dude with issues

the general vibe is white tsuru is the "yippee floaty trickster" brand of ghost and black tsuru is the sort of ghost in horror media that stands just outside your field of view in the darkness dripping with blood

for the longest time only white haired tsuru was a "character", "black haired tsuru" existed just as his corpse at most, a footnote

but over the past 2 years ive figured that hes actually really fun to draw and play with, and in a different way than white tsuru

(wait fuck isnt this just abe trio. i do always almost accidentally draw tsuru when im trying to draw haruaki.... fuck.....)

(ive had tsuru for long enough that i just keep tacking details from my fav characters onto him.....)

halls smp

so ive been on this minecraft roleplay server called halls smp with other artists for the past 2 years, theres a new season of it every few months with a different theme each time to keep things fresh and ive just been making AU versions of tsuru for it so ive had a lot of opportunity to think about him

season 1 - halloween - jiangshi tsuru

this one is almost entirely unchanged from his base characterization because i didnt want to rp too much and also didnt know there would be future seasons at this point (also basically after the first day i gave up on being called "tsuru" bc its too hard to pronounce and everyone called me canada anyway)

same basic story, guy dies and theres now a white haired version of him (actually this is the same for all the AUs). in fact im pretty sure the black haired version of this one is exactly base alivetsuru. basically what ive been interested in exploring is different kinds of death, the events leading up to it, and what kind of person he becomes afterwards (but also in equal amounts im interested in making fun designs and playing minecraft and fucking around)

(this feels like the start of the beginners guide...)

i associate him with doves and at the time, tarot card 18: the moon, but in retrospect i now think he's card 0: the fool.

season 2 - winter - ishmael

guy who died at sea and eaten by a interdimensional whale and got isekaied. loosely conceptually based off moby dick, although i havent actually read it LOL but i did spend a week reading up on drowning and hypothermia

strangely, his death didnt create a white haired version of him, perhaps because he didnt have anything in life to give up his identity and replace it with. (and also remember the hair color doesnt actually mean dead/alive)

im only calling him ishmael now in retrospect, at the time he was just tsuru/canada

while designing him i had the biggest crisis bc i didnt want him to look to much like this old old oc i had (pic 1) but then i sucked it up and went with it anyway

i never got around to drawing it but his fingers are black from frostbite thats why he wears gloves all the time.

hes one of my favorite iterations of tsuru he looks so mad or upset all the time it makes me want to tease him, and also i think the grey skin and eyebags are very cute

i associate him with whales and tarot card 18: the moon

season 3 - golden grove - fox tsuru

honestly i think this is my favorite design of him i kinda popped off. i think im just a lot more comfortable working with warm colors. and also i associate white tsuru with foxes anyway (black tsuru is totally a catboy btw) (why is he not associated with cranes if his name is tsuru you ask?? bc cranes are hard to draw next question. he did start out based off cranes tbf, thats where the white hair and the tallness comes from)

dead fox possessing his dead human friend's body (although thats only the most literal interpretation of events; in all these iterations there's only ever been 1 person) the white tsurus are mostly interested in "moving on", whatever that means to each of them

btw my banner on this blog is him

hes sort of a set with s2 tsuru to me, mostly bc theyre the ideals that "white tsuru" and "black tsuru" hold taken to the extremes, and also theyre on opposite ends of the "hates people hates talking" and "loves to talk and mess with people" scale

anyway. hes tarot card 10: wheel of fortune to me

season 4 - wild west - mirage

the desert dragon, mirage. this is the season i started giving them actual names that arent "tsuru" and putting actual thought into the story lol previously it was just vibes-based character design. i have a short thing written about him thats meant to be the script for a comic, but i never got around to drawing it.

a sandworm-esque dragon that got tired of being a dragon and took up a passing witch's offer to give him a human form. this is all a metaphor i think. he has longer hair bc i wanted to spice things up a little

(also i consider this a form of death bc he left behind a giant sandworm/dragon skeleton somewhere in the desert)

the mirage-dragon thing comes from the shen 蜃 (which is used in the chinese word for mirage, 海市蜃楼 haishi shenlou, literally translating to "ocean city and shen's castle"). it's a clam-like dragon that produces foam that creates mirages over the ocean.

if u read "even if you slit my mouth", this is what the "shinkiro" or "shin" in recent chapters is. (i had one of those "smug because i already know all about the mythological creature a story is referencing" moments, which i also had with the four gods in yohaji bc i used to translate a game that mentioned them too)

isnt it romantic in a way? that the two places mirages are most known for happening are the ocean and the desert.

i dont have too much art of him because around this time i was uhhh (checks calendar) got back into yohaji and got consumed by it for a couple months lol (can u even blame me. it was july to september that was when like chapter 91 came out lol)

an earlier version of his design that i didnt end up using but i still really like this art

hes tarot card 9: the hermit to me

season 5 - fairytales/medieval - ophiuchus

NO FUCKING WAY YOURE NEVER GOING TO BELIEVE THIS for this one i actually ironed out what kind of people the black haired and white haired versions of him are. and also specifically this one isnt black tsuru but alive tsuru

i have a short poem thing about him, to summarize its like so many other fairytales about grateful animals granting their saviors something, but it doesnt end well for anyone

hes based off ophiuchus and asclepius of course, but also a lot of other snake stories in general, like the lindwurm and baishezhuan

to reiterate, for none of these stories do i consider there to ever actually have been 2 separate people, its always just 1 fucked up guy

i also sort of consider him to be a set with mirage, for both being serpents, and also for being "black tsuru whose personality is like white tsuru" and "white tsuru whose personality is like black tsuru", thereby codifying for myself that to him, someone who's stuck in his own head a lot, what matters most to him is his ideals, what all his actions are in pursuit of

he's tarot card 12: the hanged man to me

bonus: dnd character - alba

i also have a version of him i play for dnd, named alba to match with my party who all have color themed names. a halfling ranger who's very small and very loud. except he has amnesia and cant remember anything from before he was 12 (hes around 18 now according to him), including that he's actually a changeling who just transformed into a halfling to seem older than he is to work at a bar and nearly died in a bar fight.

(if you spend as much time fretting over semantics as me, you may note that changelings are medium sized and cannot transform into halflings which are small sized, for which my explanation is that he's been in halfling form since he was a kid, and after the amnesia he thought he actually was a halfling. this is also why his hair is white btw bc changelings have white hair. pre-amnesia in his "actual" halfling transformation he had black hair. i care too much about semantics but hey isnt dnd the semantics game anyway?)

anyway congrats alba for being the only version of tsuru that hasn't outright "died"!! if only because dnd has actual rules and i can't pull my usual death-ghost nonsense as easily!!!

hes very ship of theseus to me, all versions of him are. what makes up a person? what defines them? is it their face, their appearance, their name? their personality, their memories, their ideals? if you slowly replace each of those, one at a time, with a copy thats very similar to the original, at what point are you a different person?

as thanks for reading all of this i'll reveal what some of the metaphors are, the core of who tsuru, as a character, is to me. maybe this is fairly obvious, but all the death and personality weirdness stuff is a convoluted metaphor for depression and autism, as well as the experience of reading the things you've written years ago, seeing old photos and others talking about who you were years ago and finding that person wholly unfamiliar, that you understand the thought process of that person no more than you would a stranger's, as a result of having taken apart your identity and replaced it piece by piece with things from people you like more than yourself.

im always scared of scrutinizing tsuru too hard because he's just a weird reflection of myself, and i think i'll only be able to write a version of him thats more of a "whole person" once i figure that out for myself. the only way you see your own reflection is through a mirror after all, a flattened 2D surface.

haha this got kinda weird and depressing and personal at the end (mostly bc ive been writing this in the middle of the night, its now 4am)

after seeing my soul laid bare like this, if theres one takeaway, i think its pretty obvious why i'm so enamored by the parts of yohaji that i talk about often (huh wasnt this a post about my oc why did it become about yohaji)

oh yeah i just realised u probably also wanted to hear more about my yohaji version of tsuru specifically. honestly theres not really more to it i just like drawing him in situations. like of course the same themes apply but i just like drawing this dude thats 90% the reason hes my sona. like heres a pokemon au of him i drew recently bc i wanted to draw them as kids and also as pokemon gijinkas

anyway thats all. not really bc i could go on and on about him but this is way too long and also way too personal at this point. i think about him a disproportionate amount, i only have 2 other ocs i remotely care about and the extent of my thoughts for those guys is "i think hes fun 👍"

this has probably also been like, the 3rd most comprehensive description of tsuru that ive made, 1st being the thoughts in my head and 2nd being the past 5 years worth of DMs with my friend who i talk about tsuru with

(why was this sort of structured like the beginners guide. if youve seen the beginners guide tell me if im right or delusional. if u havent, go watch a playthrough of it, have an existential crisis, and then afterwards tell me)