#sidhedust art

[sidhedust]

I figured out how to overlay GIFs to finally make a veil effect for the VN! You'll see this screen when you hit "V". Once you do that, you can see things behind the veil and can get extra dialogue and all that jazz.

[ocrosemagazine]

🌟 ROSE: Stelliferous Contributor Lineup 🌟

Meet our contributors! This year we have 63 brilliant artists working with us with OCs that shine like no other.

We're so excited to be working with this team and we hope you look forward to meeting them and their characters in the coming weeks.

Artist links below cut:

appleebees – Twitter

arkeis – Tumblr

Arztea – Twitter

Ayu – Instagram

Azurearts13 – Tumblr

Blu – Website

Bratzoid – Twitter

Cas Lynn – Twitter

Chikao – Twitter

Chrispy.Inks – Twitter

Circlejourney – Website

Cleanne – Instagram

cyborb – Tumblr

Denpe – Twitter

desansen – Carrd

Egg – Twitter

Eko – Carrd

Eliot Lime – Tumblr

Elo H – Tumblr

Emil L'Amour – Carrd

FaerieRune – Linktree

Foxpirate's Art – Instagram

ghoulgeists – Tumblr

It’s Raining Color – Website

jayc-art – Tumblr

Kay Vasudevan – Twitter

kellerybird – Instagram

lavenderbed – Twitter

Lenaffin – Instagram

Little Miss Luna – Instagram

LogicalBreak – Tumblr

magpiemurder – Tumblr

Max Concannon – Instagram

Merissa Mayhew – Website

Mic S – Twitter

MOTHCULA – Twitter

Nekophelia – Twitter

PD_evil – Twitter

Peppermint Bubble – Twitter

Phenylart – Instagram

Pine_Niidles – Carrd

Punk Pixie Arts – Instagram

PXLPASTRY – Twitter

Raleigh Priest – Carrd

RaptorKizzie – Twitter

Sam – Instagram

Sam Inverts – Twitter

ScheloftheSea – Tumblr

Serrannitto – Twitter

shegry – Twitter

Sidhedust – Tumblr

silverwingstorm – Twitter

solarsnapp – Tumblr

Stardust in June – Twitter

tinypaperstar – Twitter

torgwn – Tumblr

Valcuum – Instagram

Valyce Negative – Twitter

Wolf Rocket – Twitter

yokaiy – Twitter

Zabwis – Tumblr

zerosphera – Twitter

ZombieGaby – Instagram

[sidhedust]

Uh, I think she’s done?

I’m posting the full art before the intro since I finished the art this morning and have other things to before I can make it.

Meet the Verdant Lady, a member of the Tuathe De Danann in the flesh, and who’s true name is unknown! She’s on a self-directed tour around Keona when she sees and is intrigued by Luana, the only changeling in the country. She really wants Luana to move to Tovera and even helps her with small tasks as a show of solidarity.

Alas, when a fairy especially one that hasn't become a gremlin or animal shaped being living in a mound in the modern age comes into your life and does things for you for free, there's a high chance you're in for a cartoonishly eventful life...something Luana is trying to get AWAY from. It's the Verdant Lady's appearance that makes Luana start to wonder if mortal life just isn't in the cards for her, and the LotM's appearance makes her even more antsy.

[sidhedust]

Well, folks wanted more worldbuilding and pre-Arc 1 sketches of concepts and characters that don’t come up until later-so here’s an assortment of neighbors! In order, from left to right, we have the malachite sprite, a veil sprite, a sea sprite, and a river spirit, gratuitously called a dragon in Tovera’s folklore.

Like the fairies of the Emerald Isles, these guys used to be humanoids with magic prowess and sprawling civilizations, ruling the earth, sky, and sea before humans came along. Eventually, they became spirits of many shapes and sizes due to the magic of the mortal realm becoming weak over time.

More info under the cut!

Malachite sprites and other gem-like sprites are seen in the mountains to the northeast, the Mountains of the Four. They can bend the earth, and fuse gems into their bodies for defense and fashion. If they like someone (usually because they fed them) they’ll leave crudely made jewelry in their windowsill or doormat. These folk appear in the folklore of the Ichor clan, Wyver clan, and the dwarven clans of the mountains, often seen represented in statues in front of mines, old murals in the mountains, and in stories about Ichor and dwarven brides being dolled up in jewels by them.

Magi on the west coast of Tovera see a lot of these slug-like sea sprites, especially when it’s warm-they are friendly to humans, but mages shoo them away from beaches to avoid any magic based incidents. Similar to selkies, many stories exist of slug women falling for fishermen on land. They range in size, being as small as the animals they resemble to being around the size of an adult human. They appear in the folklore of the Lagaos clan and Anfini clan, the former living from the beaches to the lakes of the land, and the latter living mostly on the coast.

The shimmering, opalescent veil sprites double as wind sprites, and can be found anywhere. They attend to the Veil, monitoring it and repairing it when it’s disturbed by magic anomalies. When they aren’t doing that, they’re pranking humans and neighbors alike, using their power over wind, glamour and perception to bend and twist the veil and freak mortals and neighbors out-mortals are skeptical of the neighbor’s existence, and neighbors don’t like being seen, so it’s a fast way to get a scare out of both and a laugh for yourself. Because they’re everywhere, they appear in a lot of clan’s folklore, both human and odd folk alike, usually as a type of wind spirit.

Lastly, the spirits of rivers, the curly-furred, humanish faced dragons, are a rare sight. Many mages haven’t seen one in their lifetimes. It is said that they live in houses made of sand, shells, and water based plants smashed together at the bottom of rivers, either solitarily or in a small pod of other dragon spirits. Like eastern dragons, these neighbors are long and noodle-like, and to travel they gather water vapor to make clouds to walk on. What little is known about them is that river towns, like…well, Dragonriver, have lots of art and festivals centering these beings, often appearing as symbols of good fortune-it’s said that those who take a lantern boat, place waterfowl, fish, or fresh fruit on it, and send it downstream will have a great fishing/hunting season, and the river won’t flood the town next season.

[sidhedust]

I'm still on hiatus, but I caved in to drawing and sharing these sketches because I've been playing Hollow Knight to calm my nerves. It's nice to draw more simple shapes for once.

Anyways, this is Luana and Floris (not introduced yet) as...bugs. In a bug version of Tovera. Yeah. Extra explanations under the cut.

I don't know how to communicate their powers and other quirks in Hollow Knightverse speak, since of course my systems are different from HKverse's. But the is one thing I do know is that the snails' manipulation of soul very close to Luana's magic type (as she is one of the few people in the story that can use pure magic as a weapon in and of itself), and they even live in burial mounds, which fits her species well.

As for Floris, he's royalty, a descendant of someone who's treated like an ancestor of all ancestors, a powerful spell-slinging first monarch (so something like the grandson of the grandson of the grandson of the grandson of a Pale Being-like figure) so he can have a few higher being like traits as a treat.

Originally, Luana was a weaver, but since only witch characters weave sigils and the like in story and that isn't her primary way of using magic, I decided to go with the species that more closely resembles her mage class, that being a mixture of neighbor/theurgist.

Floris was also a weaver/higher being hybrid like Hornet, but now he's kinda mosskin-like/higher being hybrid. For spoiler reasons, I can't get into the nuance of his HKverse self's whole biology.

[sidhedust]

Tadaaa! This is my full piece for @ocrosemagazine! Featuring Luana in her changeling form and a few star sprites!

You can buy the full zine to see everyone's OC's in all their getup and support a good cause, the Rainforest Trust, which all proceeds go to.

[sidhedust]

FINALLY, a MAJOR devlog/update!

ALL CHAPTER 1 BGs/SCENES HAVE BEEN DONE! On top of this, the chapter's dialogue and flavor text is pretty much done too, but I'm smoothing everything out to make it sound as natural as possible.

All that's left are CGs, which are all composed, some even already have lines, I just have to color and shade. You can find a few of them here and here.

I still have TONS to cover-there are 8 chapters, with 2 and 7 being the longest, but there are actually only a few more bgs/scenes to be done since once the characters are in a location that's kinda it.

I MAY release a demo, but since the movel is kinetic and the plot picks up in a weird spot it's a kinda iffy move.

I don't do a lot of bgs in my usual art because I don't draw a lot of full on scenes in my illustrations, mostly because I like focusing on one thing at a time and I like saving my juice for important things. So I save that energy for the VN proper. So I'm proud at how these turned out! They almost look professional, if not for the obvious weaknesses here and there.

[sidhedust]

~Under His Anxious Gaze~

As a..."friendship," let's call it that, blossoms on the streets of the dazzling capital city, an onlooker, confused and concerned, can only sit back and ponder what this means for the future of the kingdom.

More Arc 1 art! I had this idea in my head for a bit now and had to slap it down real quick.

Here's a version without Vivianus glaring over them.

[sidhedust]

They're done! The character intro comes later, but the short version is these guys met Luana at age 16, when she came back to the human realm. She gave them food, and since then they've been watching over her, though they don't interfere with her affairs because of her pride.

It's also funny how things came full circle-I finished this as the new year came around, and the last piece of art featuring them was also made as the new year came around as well!

Extra info under the cut, if you want more background info.

They have power over plants, but as little people, they can do mending work on clothes and shoes, cook, clean, make pottery, that kind of stuff.

Basil (leftmost character) and Ringo (rightmost character) are brownies, fairies/Tuatha De that shrank due to staying in the mortal realm and now just do housework for grateful mortals. Naturally, they're...very old. Basil and Ringo aren't their true names, but at this point they could care less about that-they're in retirement now, using their time to help out the local changeling on the block because why not. Basil is calm, collected, and perceptive, and Ringo never lost his energy from his youth. Both act as older friends to Luana, but their age shows in their advice and ways of thinking when she calls on them.

Naiporo (middle, of course) was always a small person, since he's a koropurkkur, a species of little people that used to live with and aid humans, but have since retreated to the wilds in full as humans no longer need their aid. Now, his kind live simple lives in the wild...which bores the hell out of him, so he left his home in the northeast, Mosir, for new horizons. In his travels, he met these two old guys among the mounds of Ierene, and has been their friend since. Since he's mentally close to Luana's age, he teases her and talks to her more like a peer than most neighbors, who are centuries old, would.

[sidhedust]

Hey! It's been a while!

After getting my shit together, I've decided to crack down and work on the worldbuilding aspects of the site while my projects stay in limbo. The first thing I wanted to do was fix the encyclopedia of the site, which was a glorified dictionary/list of junk. And that's no fun.

Over the next few weeks I'll be making a little pamphlet/zine encyclopedia and posting it to itch for free when it's done :3c it'll also be up to read on my site, which will update as I finish pages like a webcomic (but more sporadically ofc lol).

[sidhedust]

“You can try and protect her from further harm all you want, but you’ll fail before long. Not even your divine inheritance can diminish or avert the dreadful aspects of this gift we call life.”

Inspired by a theme in the story and a few scenes in Arcs 1-3. It’s arrogant to try and be someone’s savior, to assume you can override and then prevent more trauma-but it’s hard not to try when you love someone.

Missed my Colors!3d days and I’m trying to get out of an art slump, so I decided to go ham on the brushes Procreate comes with and do a more messy paint kind of sketch.

Apologies for the sudden eye strain! I wanted to try this kind of 3d effect for a while now.

[sidhedust]

The first HWTF is done! These are just mini comics that tackle offscreen events, small questions about the world, and other junk. Everything I make has a little section dedicated to this side stuff on my official site, but I haven’t even started my other projects development wise so they’re empty…except for HWTF now! Yahoo!

Of course, these comics go up there first. You can find the HWTF section here!

Today’s comic is just a warm up for getting back into comic creating and experimenting with new styles, taking notes from my peers inspired by the same things I am and dropping the hatching for more line based shading. Here are some close ups since the expressions were the best part of drawing the comic and reading it over.

[sidhedust]

I can now post a preview of my contribution to @ocrosemagazine to socials! You can find the zine proper on their itch, which can be found here!

Get a load of Luana in all her glory, as well as her fellow models from across the many worlds my fellow artists have made for only $5! Proceeds for all sales are donated to Rainforest Trust, so you can support a good cause and look at contributor ocs in celestial-themed outfits!

[sidhedust]

Posting them separately too, for documentation/making it easy to find. I like to use my socials as asset organizers too, since my personal comp can be swamped with art things AND school things.

This is also a good time to remind people that the page for the VN is up on itch, in case you wanna follow development there too! <3

[sidhedust]

Doing a new title screen. I want to do different variants of the screen based on story progression, but for now I only have this version done

Here’s some alt color versions, which I think look even better than the base one!

[sidhedust]

I've been thinking about creative things lately and I feel like I shat the bed with the ideas I run with. I have these thoughts once a month and can brush them off because I have support and I'm grateful for it, but today they were unbearable. I understand the sentiment of "fuck the weirdos in your head" when making artwork, but I don't think people understand how unapproachable you can come across when you write or draw a certain way.

Part of everything in life is about understanding that being you means rejection is bound to happen-you have to be you to be known and liked for who you are, and I AM liked for who I am. But lately the lack of community in VNdev has got me down, makes me miss webcomics and makes me want to do something else >_< it's so childish, but it's true. It isn't that I'm being rejected or overlooked outright, I'm just starting to dislike my artwork on top of having a hard time enjoying the dev process when the community is either full of chuds or people making otomes.

I really do have half a mind to change it all up, or at least put The Little Guild on the Hill on the backburner and focus on my more accessible work, all while changing my style to a more paint-like look with cross hatching for shading instead of going fully into that pen/pencil fairy tale look.

I dunno! Just something to reflect on I suppose :/