#omfg the background and render style...

[stepswordsen]

【KagePro】 KuroEne Ticket Commission by Mire 🖤💙🐍🐇

Kuroha (Saeru) and Ene Ticket Commission by Mire (@/miremiremire)

Mire's Instagram: (X)

Mire's VGen: (X)

Intro

Dance of Love in the Midst of Chaos (*)

"The world can never tear us apart, we will always meet again." (*)

"I'll let you taste the biting fangs of love, and the intoxicating poison of pleasure…"

"I'll take you even further… I'll push you to the brink, and let you fall with me into the abyss. Ene..."

"Now... Shall we dance again?"

I commissioned KuroEne wearing formal wear in a Gothic ballroom with a Snake and Bunny theme, while they're surrounded by their flowers: Black Higanbana (Cluster Amaryllis) and Blue Star Milkweeds (Tweedia) 🖤💙🐍🐇💐

I asked for Kuroha to be drawn in his Design Poll outfit, and for Ene to be drawn in her Seek at Mekakucity outfit 🥰

I asked for a Snake wrapping around a bunny with hearts, sparkles, and roses, and provided the ticket info, including the seat numbers and quotes.

Thank you to Feila for helping me discuss and come up with ideas 💗 Feila came up with the title (live concert name) and quote used in the commission, which I marked with an asterisk (*)

"Dance of Love in the Midst of Chaos" = Live Concert Name

"The world will never end, we will always meet again" = Quote

I'm glad you were able to share your thoughts with me!

I also thought of using quotes from my KuroEne AU for the commission, but they wouldn't fit, given the space, so I just decided to include them here.

Ene's Mekakushi Dan number code is 6, and Kuroha is known as XX/XXX since he's not apart of the Mekakushi Dan.

So I thought it'd be a neat reference to include in the Ticket info~ The seat/row/gate numbers are a genius combination.

I chose Black Higanbana and Blue Star Milkweeds as KuroEne's flowers based on their Hanakotoba meanings. The colours and flower symbolisms suit them very well. So I asked for them to be included in the comm.

Kuroha: Higanbana - The Flower of Death, Death and the Cycle of Rebirth

Ene: Blue Star Milkweeds - Happy love, hearts that believe in each other

Mire drew both a long and short hair version of Ene's hair! I love both versions, but I love how flowy her hair looks in the 1st one. I feel like it fits very well with the composition.

Mire included Kuroha's yellow circles on the Oshi mark of the snake wrapping around the bunny. Oh my god... I love the inclusion of the thorned roses as well... 🌹

The snakes wrapped around Saeru and the bunnies around Ene... Cute... 🥺

There's SO much detail and effort put into this...

Thoughts

I'm SUPER happy with how my commission turned out! 💗✨ Everything is so breathtakingly beautiful! Mire's art style, colours, rendering, and attention to detail are so amazing! I was awed by how detailed the background is~

My commission is SO stunning! I'm still in awe by the commission! KuroEne look SO pretty in Mire's style! 🥺😭💗💘💞

Mire perfectly captured the couple's themes and expressions 🥺💖 I love how the small chibis on the ticket came out too~

Mire first sent me a message a few days ago to check in with me asking if any revisions need to be made.

Mire was very accomodating with minor colour and detail fixes, such as with Kuroha and Ene's headphones, Kuroha's yellow circles, Ene's digital facial structures, and the snake on Kuroha (which I asked to change from a white snake to a black snake with red eyes)

The changes fit them a lot more so I'm very grateful!

Great communication and very quick with updates. I'll definitely be back to commission Mire again in the future! ✨

Mire seriously outdid my expectations tenfold...

How detailed the gothic ballroom is, the flowers (black higanbana and blue star milkweeds), the snake and rabbit around them, the ticket design with the little chibis, and icon of a snake curling around a bunny…

The ticket design is CRAZY good, along with the colours and rendering OMFG

I wasn't expecting the little chibis… They're such a nice touch

I was so surprised too because the turn around time was way faster than I expected... I sent the comm form around Oct 19

Feila pointed out that event tickets are usually printed on thermal paper, so I'd love to print out my commissions for personal use.

Misc Rambles

OH MY GOD MY HEART JUMPED WHEN I FIRST SAW THE ART

THE DETAIL IS CRAZYYYYY... THE CHIBIS ARE SO CUTE~ THE COLOURS AND RENDERING ARE SO GOOD AND THE FLOWERS AND BGS ARE SO WELL DRAWN!!! I'M OVER THE MOON!!!

I'M GETTING EMOTIONAL 🥹😭💗💘💞🫶✨

THEY LOOK SO GORGEOUS I'M ON THE FLOOR

HELLO I NEED TICKETS PLEASE

KUROENE INVITE ME TO YOUR WEDDING!!! 💥💥💥

ENE MY WIFE!!! MY PRINCESS!!! MY ANGEL!!! 💙💗💘💞✨

I LOVE HOW FLOWY HER HAIR LOOKS

MIRE MADE THEM LOOK SO GOOD THEY'RE SO PRETTY

THEIR EXPRESSIONS AND THE COLOURS AND RENDERING TOO!!!

THE ART IS SUCH VISUAL EYE CANDY...

ENE LOOKS LIKE SUCH A PRINCESS HERE... MY BEAUTIFUL PRINCESS

MY WIFE AND HER CRAZY ASS SNAKE BF

I'M OVER THE MOON ABOUT THIS 😭💗💞💘🫶

I LOVE YOU KUROENE 🖤💙

My Message

This was the message I left for Mire!

KuroEne look SO pretty in your style! 🖤💙🐍🐇 You perfectly captured their themes! I'm so happy with how my commission turned out! 💗💞💘 Everything is so breathtakingly beautiful 💓

The chibis and Snake/Bunny Oshi marks on the ticket are SO cute! The hearts, sparkles, and thorned roses fit them so well! 🌹💖✨

Your art style, colours, rendering, and attention to detail are amazing! I'm in awe by how gorgeous the commission is 🥹💘💞

The colour scheme (black, gold, blue and white colours) harmonize so well in the artwork! I love how you drew their expressions~ The way you draw eyes in your art style is so pretty! 🥰

The background elements, such as the flowers (black higanbana and blue star milkweeds), and golden frames and black gothic ballroom, are so well drawn! 💐

The ticket design is amazing and has such good graphic design. The arts and chosen fonts go so well together! It's honestly one of the most creative commission formats I've seen.

I love both versions of Ene's hair you drew 💙 Thank you for the wonderful commission, and for being understanding with minor detail and colour changes as well! 🙏

I will definitely be back to commission you again in the future! 💗✨

Commission Rambles

Kuroha and Ene's Design Poll outfits by Sayuki

Ene's Seek at Mekakucity outfit by Satou Mahiro

I love Kuroha/Saeru's changshan inspired outfit by Sayuki 🖤💛

Ene's Seek at Mekakucity outfit is so pretty, I just knew I had to commission her in it 💙

You can read more under the cut if you're curious on the ideas that Feila and I came up with! We were coming up with ideas of what should be included in the commission.

We spent 3 days coming up with ideas and discussing the specifics (Themes, Background Elements, Ticket Info, etc.) before I sent the commission form.

Commission Rambles

This was the commission form I sent

Definitely the most detailed form I've ever written

I usually just describe the design details and poses and expressions, and then hand a Google Drive link of visual references. I included a folder of KuroEne's refs, and some photos of the flowers and gothic ballroom as inspiration

I just like to be detailed with my commission forms cuz I find it helps the artist

For the last SS, we drafted ideas for potential flowers, then narrowed it down to the two we chose. So we didn't include it in the final form

Feila mentioned that higanbana are also poisonous flowers... Fitting for a snake 🐍

Higanbana is PERFECT in symbolism for Kuroha/Saeru, especially since Awakening Eyes manifests as black snakes and aura spirals.

The Kagerou Daze VII -from the darkness- illust by Sidu draws him with black aura spirals that coincidentally look just like the spindles of higanbana.

Blue Star Milkweeds and Red Higanbana

Black higanbana doesn't exist IRL, so it's just wilted red higanbana.

I haven't posted it yet, but I'm in the middle of writing a post on KuroEne and Flower Symbolisms (based on my own picks). I mentioned this more in depth there

I considered putting Snake of Clearing Eyes or Saeru, but I feel like KuroEne looks the best as a ship name so I went with that.

The comm form basically describes our ideas. I could talk about our ideas a lot more in detail eventually (but in a different post)

[kozachenko]

I've crawled out of my cave after playing Final Fantasy IX for a long ass time what have I missed?

Artist's Notes:

I'M BACK BABY! A while back I made a post with a new style experimentation thingy but I ended up deleting it because it was just kind of a boring face thing, I was planning on doing more art but then I started playing Final Fantasy IX and uhhhh yeah so that game has kind of taken of my brain for the past two weeks and I am 20 hours into the game because I love it so much. I wanted to draw Vivi because Vivi is just really fun to draw ok? I've kinda been feeling really burnt out with my lineless style, mainly because of how hard it was to do lighting. I'll show one of my initial art style tests on the bottom of this post. Again, used to have it be an individual post but it was just one face so it was kinda boring, so might as well include with this one on the subject of art styles. I wanted to kinda mix some aspects of my older style with the sketchy shading lines with a more painterly way of doing the lighting (mainly in the shadows). All in all, I think that's my favourite part about this drawing, it feels nice to finally be able to do some proper lighting again, and I want to experiment even more with my lighting and rendering in future pieces. Also, part of the pant shading got kinda lost in the sketchiness, so for next time I'll probably focus on the clarity of the more sketchy parts of the drawing, since I did go with my initial sketch for the final drawing. I also gave up on the background since I had no idea what to do for it, and I didn't put too much detail into the staff as I forgot which one I gave him in my current playthrough and I didn't want to risk spoiling myself via looking up references, but that's ok I like how the singular yellow circle on it matches Vivi's eyes. Also I was having a bit of trouble figuring out how to draw his body and how to pose him, but I like how the pose turned out a lot. It was inspired by his idle animation when in a battle in game where he does a little shimmy.

Ok I need to talk about Vivi's design because I love it so fucking much oh my god-

I absolutely love how his face is just in complete shadow and only his eyes stand out, it's so cool and unique and I love how they recontextualized the original black mage design from the classic Final Fantasy games. How they did it I won't say because I don't wanna spoil the game, but someone give this poor baby a therapist because he goes through a lot. Actually, same can be said for all of the FFIX cast, they all need therapy (again, I won't spoil anything, please go play the game for yourself).

While I do love almost all the characters in the game, even though Vivi is most fun to draw, my favourite character has to be Zidane (the main protagonist of the game). He's a really fun protagonist, and they could have easily written him as a misogynistic jerk who doesn't respect women but they didn't, and I really appreciate that. He's just an overall cool dude who's a really nice older brother figure to Vivi and also just has a cool character design (who I also want to draw eventually). Initially in the game I was planning on grinding levels for Vivi to make him the tactical nuke of the party, but then that title went to a different character (who was initially multiple levels behind the group since I grinded the party in the starting area way to much before they joined, but now they are two levels ahead of everyone and have pulled the team through a lot of tough battles, again I won't say who it is because it is kind of a spoiler and the way the gameplay actually ties into their character arc is just so good omfg). Once I eventually finish the game I'll probably write a full review on here, so no spoilers until then lol

Also, I've kinda been burning out a bit with making Touhou art, which also made me a bit burnt out with Touhou stuff in general (although I will continue keeping up with the manga) so getting into other things (i.e. Final Fantasy and even Fallout since I've watched the first season of the TV show which is a whole other post for another day) has helped me refresh and given me something new to think about. I've ended up in the exact place I feared ending up, where I would start drawing fanart for it not because I wanted to but because I felt like I had to, so I'm taking a bit of a break. When I do draw Touhou fanart again I'll try to draw for the sake of myself, and to all the other artists and fanartists on this platform (and on any social media for that matter), take care of yourself and don't forget to take breaks when you need to!

(Ok part of that last paragraph was definitley influenced by the good ol' "it's 9:00pm and I need sleeb, but the message at the end still holds up, always take care of yourself)

Oh yeah, and here is that one style experiment I did btw

Man I really fell down the "Yoshitaka Amano art enjoyer" to "Final Fantasy fan" pipe line didn't I?