(SFW) Synthwave Spider Solitude (Patreon)
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What do you get when you add my old Invader Tak design plus the greatness that is a DFO necromancer (on the right here) plus a love of synth music and recently discovering the greatness of Lebrock plus recently watching Spiderverse, with a side order of percolating ideas and themes relevant to it over the course of this whole mishmash over the last, say, three years?
Answer: this picture 8D
I've long been fleshing out this Tak as more of an OC than the interpretation of an Invader Zim character she used to be back when me and a friend used to write and doodle in IZ three years ago, and I think it's coming together nicely.
I'm definitely gonna probably draw pretty heavily from all of the different things that influenced her design over the years, but I'm also gonna do my best to turn her into something that can stand on her own as a proper self contained OC.
So for now...here's a brooding, emotionally confused and weary space bug rebel, stuck on the planet she turned traitor to protect, pondering her life choices, the whole 'university lab technician by day/vigilante by night' she's become in the meantime, and possibly even the person that lead to all of this.
All under the eerie neon lights of a synthwave city that never sleeps.
That said, there was a LOT of experimenting going on here. I've only recently started to claw my way back out of a 4 week long emotional crash that involved a lot of confidence and insecurity issues over my art, plus some pretty hard IRL things, so I've been taking the opportunity to dabble in as many new things as I can, such as my freehand, or trying different lighting and shading ideas. This idea'd been floating around as a barely started sketch for over three months, and on rediscovering it, I decided why not.
I have never been so glad to do that.
That entire silhouette in front of the window, with the spider legs silhoutted against the moon, is probably one of the COOLEST visual things I've ever managed, and it wasn't even deliberate. I had no idea they'd look THAT good, and that's not even counting the body silhouette. Took another friend's advice on the shading, especially the traces of color around the edges of each silhouette. Didn't even think of that but MAN did it work.
The suit was probably the other big triumph, considering it took who knows how many tries before I was able to give it some real texture and gradients over there in the corner with the shading, so it'd stop being a two dimensional blob, and get some real depth.
Anyway i could go on, but it's late, and after three days on this, I'm tired 8'D