12-16 Update Artist's Commentary (Patreon)

Chumi, 新年快樂: It’s my time fellas… This is my first update!! I was so excited to draw for it, an actual childhood dream come true!! And now you all get to see it!! Rah rah rah rah!! You guys can’t see me excitedly pumping my fists in the air, but please imagine me doing so 🙂. And GOTDAMN, was this a long one! Shoutout to James and the writing crew for letting me work with such a fun update, I’ve now drawn more Callies for this update than I have over the course of my entire life.

Kim, 🤫 you know: And props to Chumi for taking on such a HULKING update! I think this is probably the largest update to be uploaded in the entirety of Beyond Canon so far. I remember Chumi very specifically requesting to do the art for this update because it featured Jade in it. Or, well, sorta. Her dead body with Alt-Calliope possessing it. BUT HEY, there’s a bit of an alive Jade here too!

Chumi: Check out my messy boards! This is the first time I’ve ever boarded anything, so it was definitely a bit of a learning experience! The fact that a lot of the panels stayed mostly the same is pretty sweet, but seeing how the final panels came out and comparing them to my shitty lil’ boards is really the best part! I felt that there were some good callback opportunities as well, you can see all the original panels I wanted to reference in my notes. Did you catch them?

Andi, the magnificent: I remember when Chumi shared this to us and immediately I was like “YES!!!! THIS IS WHAT I LIKE TO SEE FROM HOMESTUCK! “ I was just so gleeful looking at each panel and how well it all read and how it made me laugh. Chumis got a really nice style and adapted quickly to the workload, I am very thrilled Chumi is on our team. Looking forward to seeing future updates with this style and seeing the Muse again just made me all the more excited. You NAILED IT, dude. 👏

Kim: Luckily, the convenient thing about Homestuck is that while we remember a lot of really notable dynamic panels, a good chunk of Homestuck’s compositions are also Very Simple and pretty straightforward. Andrew has really mastered the art of keeping things economic but still visually interesting.

Chumi: Panel 2 originally came out looking pretty different. Because this was my literal second panel ever, I wasn’t used to the HS:BC style yet and my actual style was showing through a lot. Thank you to Art Director Kim for giving me a lot of pointers on how to fix everything up!

Chumi: The key is… LONGER!!! MAKE THEM LONGER!!! Shrink those big ol’ eyes and that big bobble head!!! I feel like I’ve gotten a lot better at this, but you just gotta see for yourself in future updates hehe.

Kim: Style matching is the trickiest part of joining any production and it’s probably one of the most valuable skills an artist joining the industry can have! It’s hard not to accidentally dip into one’s own personal style when drawing. Even I still struggle with this out of habit sometimes– it’s our inherent nature as artists! At the same time, it’s kinda fun to see how each artist uniquely brings their little kick of flavor with each update. It’s what I’ve always found fascinating about board-driven shows tbh :-]

Chumi: They don’t even care that Callie just dropped dead. Hey, where’d Aradia get an iPhone 14?

Andi: Probably hopped some universes to get the latest one, heh.

Kim: I hope the fandom widely discusses which Homestuck character is an iPhone user vs. Android user.

Chumi: I really missed the sketchy doodle style of some old MSPA panels, so I wanted to bring it back at least once or twice!

Chumi: I just put random shit in their bedroom. None of it really means anything, other than I just wanted to reference what their old rooms looked like. Davebot’s got his shades off, but the light shining from his robo-eyeballs makes them look red in other panels. Also, no one’s gonna clean up the fruit on the floor?!

Kim: Look at Dave’s original room and house, you just know he ain’t cleanin’ for SHIT!!! Also, speaking of Davebot’s eyes, my headcanon is that whenever he talks his eyes kinda light up with his voice. (Is it still a headcanon if I work on it?)

Chumi: The debut of Davebot’s sprite form! We actually got a bunch of new sprites in this update… Davebot, Wingless God Tier Aradia, and Jade!Callie. Shoutout once again to my guy Kim for helping me with Davebot’s cape and stupid lil legs.

Andi: Oh hell yes. Love me some new sprites.

Chumi: They just let her bod lie there for a while. I wanted to draw her hair as fucked up looking as possible, as if she were a corpse that was left to sit on the cold, hard floor of a rocket ship for an untold number of days/weeks.

Chumi: They don’t give a shit!!!!!!!!!

Chumi: Now that I am a late-20’s working individual, I understand beer and cracking open a cold one with the boys. An ice cold, light beer (I will ignore commentary on my beer preference. My favorite beer has a score of 57/100 on Beeradvocate.com. Which is a score of Awful. Don’t care. Aradia drinks the same beer as me.) on a Friday night, you and the boys are eating chips or perhaps a warm stew together, chatting the night away… Boy I wish that were me.

Chumi: And that’s it for this month’s artist commentary! Thanks for reading, and remember to keep up with next month’s update as well! Cheers, and hope you had a happy holiday!!!