Hey Hive!
We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!
We're still on the series of commissions I did for one of my streamer friends who goes by Phangtasy on Twitch! I haven't done an actual commission in a long long time, but it is available upon request if any of my viewers or streamer friends would like me to do some art for them. Since Phangtasy contributes quite a bit to our community so I was more than happy to help out!
I'd previously done some emotes for him which I'm glad he really liked, and his avatar is a pig which is quite easy to draw. Here's one of the older emotes I did for him (link to the post here):
I'm not fully satisfied with how this turned out but since I was new to animation at the time, but since it was a free art I left it at that.
Anyway, for this last emote Phang wanted something completely different. He wanted a squirrel emote as a reference to this little squirrel he made friends with one time in the park. It actually really cute and he even sent me some photos but I'm not sure if he'll be cool with me sharing them. I think this is one of the ones he edited:
So initially he wanted something like this, with the angel wings like an innocent squirrel emote because he said he's so innocent. It's clearly a lie so the irony is very apparent.
I didn't really like how this squirrel looked and I found another reference that looked super cute so I tried to merge that pose with this style:
Then I came up with this sketch:
He said it looked good so I went on to the outline.
I thought it was really random for him to have a squirrel amidst all his piggy emotes and I guess he thought the same too since he said later on that he wanted a fake piggy nose on the squirrel.
He also wanted the crescent moon here somewhere since he also includes a moon in all his emotes as a tribute to his partner at the time who goes by Moon. The idea was to have the squirrel hugging the moon which I thought was really cute.
Here's the squirrel with the piggy nose which I thought was kinda random and didn't look like it matched well.
Here's the final version without the nose which I think looks a lot better.
Either way that was initially the end of that until, Phang told me that he and Moon weren't a thing anymore. So he wanted me to basically remove the moon from all the emotes. It was quite unfortunate but couldn't be helped I suppose.
I removed the moon from all the pig emotes I did, but this one was quite central to the piece so Phang suggested I replace it with a Tetris piece since he plays it a lot. I thought it was pretty smart but to fit in a T-piece I would have to change the arms a little bit. Here's the new sketch:
Once I got the okay I worked on the outline:
For the colour he sent me a reference for the Tetris block colours and wanted it to be a multicolour one which I thought would be perfect.
I chose the combination I thought would look best, and we end up with this:
I thought it looked good at the time but maybe I could've done more shadows on the arms around the T-piece. Phang thought it looked great though, and really liked the colours for which I was glad.
Here's a timelapse:
https://youtube.com/shorts/RjGEMNjDlLI
We're finally done with all the commissions I did for Phangtasy! I was actually really happy working on these, and I'm so glad he was understanding and patient with me. Granted I had to prompt him a little on some things but overall it was a pretty good experience working on these. I've heard of a lot of horror stories with artists doing commissions for clients and it sounds like such a pain.
But it's probably also because we know each other and we're friends that it was such a good experience. Either way I was more than happy to help out and glad I could give back after all he's done for my community. More importantly, Phang really liked this set too, which makes me even happier.
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
