CommDoodles(Early Access): Harmony's Breathless Distress! (Patreon)

A commission for Sealfield (on DA) which sees their superheroine OC, Harmony, in a bit of breathless distress! No worries, though, the heroes always get of these jams! Right? Right?

The Rant:

So, first, subject matter, because this is a bandaid that needs ripping off. 

How do I feel about breathplay?

 Honestly its a very wobbly gray area next to the line of stuff I won't touch. That's kinda the thing with Damsel-in-peril, hypnosis, their related kinks and, on the far end, snuff and its related kinks (y-errgh...), part of the appeal is in the tension, and knowing that the danger is "real" for the characters, but also being able to separate from the idea that it is "real," because its fiction.

For me? I don't mind seeing it in illustrated form, mostly because the content creators I like who do do arts like this, do make it a point of implying that the character in question won't actually die. Sometimes, its a consentual act with a second character standing by to aid the gagged character. Sometimes, like the above, the character is expected to eventually free themselves, and thus, in a weird way, they're not in any danger at all.  If the character is expected to, and does, actually die? That's a massive turn off, though, for me.

It's part of the reason I don't do it with Abby. Not because I have anything against breathplay, but Abby is frequently placed in situations where her safety is explicitly not guaranteed, and in certain situations, she isn't expected to recover from (being transformed, corrupted, etc). As a content creator, I not only have to create for the kind of reaction I would like to have myself, but I also have to create knowing the kinds of reactions to expect, and with breathplay, there is an implication that Abby will die. Since she never wins, and barring torture situations, whoever put her in that situation probably does want to kill her, and the fan reactions I neither want to deal with, nor put fans in a situation to have to expect. It's cute when Abby gets captured, restrained, fondled, hypnotized, transformed. Not so much fun when there is a possibility of her being killed, or painfully maimed/dismemebered.

that's not to say, there's no way I'll never do it. But I'd have to be careful.

With commissions, that's a different story, especially with OCs. Harmony is Sealfield's OC, and thus, its fine, though, admittedly, I'm not sure if I'd still say yes if she didn't belong to Sealfield, for similar reasons as to why I don't do live-action versions of characters, or actual people without their permission.

Techniques: 

With this commission, I was still between using my Samsung Galaxybook for smut, and my desktop for SFW content, so I started doing this one in Photoshop (since my Gbook can't handle Adobe Animate, which I normally use for inking/coloring), and coloring primarily there. With colors, I didn't really want to paint each individual stroke (I can do it, I just don't like to), so I used a color technique I use for my monochrome art: gradient maps. This was to mimmick the drag/drop technique I use for my color vector work, albeit in raster.

I overlayed map layers over the areas for specific colors, so that the lighting would be consistent. To a certain extent, I think that's fine, but I wasn't really satisfied with how the colors unified in process, versus being conscious direction on my part. You can also see certain parts of the maps where they don't line up properly and the color bleeds where it isn't supposed to (not noticeably bad, but still so for my eyes).  Either way, it was too much work and I never went back to it again, which, I probably should try to. It can't hurt, and getting better at it will give me another avenue for art production, even if I love vector and cel-shade art and probably won't deviate from them any time soon.

What do you guys think, both of breathplay and this alternate color form? Let me know in the comments!