(SFW) Synthwave Spider Solitude (Patreon)

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