Sleepy Mamimi (Patreon)

FLCL shot to the top of my favorite anime list almost immediately upon its original airing back in 2003 on Adult Swim. Some years later, it occurred to me that I had never once attempted to draw anything fetish-related for the show, despite my fondness for it.

So, nearly a decade ago, I started work on a simple foot-focused image of Mamimi Samejima, a high school drop out who's obsessed with the older brother of the series' protagonist, Naota Nandaba. When Naota's brother gets signed to an American baseball team and moves away from his hometown of Mabase, Japan, Mamimi turns to Naota as an outlet for her affections. Later, she finds a new obsession in Naota's new robot friend, who she believes to be a god, and even goes on to name him Lord Canti. She's a sad, strange, yet oddly endearing girl...

But I digress.

This is once again a failed attempt at shading in the new realm of Paint Tool SAI. I could not grasp the lighting of this one at all at the time, and was growing increasingly dissatisfied with any attempt I made to fix it. Looking back now, not only was my light source completely wrong, the colors are far too harsh, and the anatomy is a mess. It took me an embarrassingly long time to learn to stop forcing my subjects to fit on a single piece of paper. Had I drawn this horizontally, it might have turned out looking nicer, and possibly even been finished...

Also, the reason Mamimi is smiling in her sleep here, is because I intended to draw a stray piece of feathery grass blowing in the wind at her soles, tickling them as she slept. So just imagine I drew some in there, and this is now technically a tickle fetish piece! Eh? No..?