Here's a project I've been working on for a year and a half. It took me a lot longer than I expected and the process of actually animating anything was just 40% of the time I spent on this.
Really hope you like it! Comments and reshares are appreciated!
I love how Lockwood and Nathaniel both have complete impracticality for the sake of fashion in common. Lockwood with his absurdly long coat. Nathaniel with his ridiculously large sleeves. That is not the correct attire for hunting ghosts or summoning demons but nobody cares the awkward goth teen aesthetic comes first. Incredible.
Saw the Inktober Prompt for Day 1 (Gargoyle) and immediately thought of my boy, Bartimaeus. Made this, even if it’s completely out of my usual comfort zone in terms of lineart, since i wanted to keep with the spirits of Inktober. Probably not gonna do any of the other days, because life is too stressful but still.
Bart!
Comissions are open, click for better quality. Reblogs are love!
I’m sure it’s on purpose but a little thing that I think really humanizes the spirits is the way they call the Other Place home? There’s something so different between saying they want to go back to the Other Place and saying they want to go back home.
I think it’s especially obvious in Ptolemy’s Gate when Bart has been on earth too long, he says he’s tired and wants to go home and its just like GUYS. 🥺 LET HIM GO HOME 🥺 HE JUST WANTS TO GO HOME 🥺🥺🥺
And just how shocked and horrified he is over the other spirits burning their way back to the Other Place when he wants to know why any of them wouldn’t want to go back home and it just has me 🥺🥺🥺
This form is not described in any of the books but the concept won't leave me alone.
The first shape that Bart ever took:
I imagine it's the first living thing that he sees aka his First Master. I know there is a footnote about it being some blonde, angelic and innocent looking form but... come on, how does that make sense? I'm fully comfortable putting that down as an instance of his unreliability towards us as readers.
From the Bartimaeus wiki, Bart's first summoning was 3010 BCE in the city of Ur.
Unfortunately, I couldn't for the life of my find a visual reference for this exact time frame and location; at least not one that was detailed enough to actually serve my purpose, so the reference for the drawing above is slightly later (2600 BCE, Ur), namely the Queen-Priestess Pu A Bi (written in Akkadian at the bottom left corner).
Please look at the absolutely gorgeous real-life ornaments at the Penn museum: https://www.penn.museum/collections/object_images.php?irn=1138#image4
This fantastic paper helped me figure out the rest of her garments (at least I hope I got it right xD):
What lay beneath: Queen Puabi's garments and her passage https://scholar.google.de/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=what+lay+Beneath+Queen+puabis+garments&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&t=1710439461867&u=%23p%3DJlQNlOGQ3iMJ
For the spear I loooked at Google images, the tip should be Bronze (because we're looking at a Bronze age civilization, how mind-boggling is that; he's so old it's hard to wrap my head around)
And look at these details; I'm really happy with them!! Nope, not even royalty was wearing shoes at that time yet I learned!
The four butterfly wings were inspired by some throw-away comment by Bart that they were trendy at some point, no idea if the timelines add up, they just looked cool to me.
He is 5000 years old. He is a 14 year old boy. He cannot touch silver without physically melting. He eats pigeons that think he is handsome. He measures distances in rat ass lengths. He has three boyfriends. He is deeply traumatised by lions. He can belly dance. He hates the cops. I didn't say his name but he popped into your head, didn't he?
[ID: the “gotta be one of my favorite genders” meme. It is a picture of a black person in a white tee and blue jeans holding their hands together in front of them and looking to the right, while standing in front of a car. The top text says “ shout out to shapeshifting immortal beings wearing the shape of their long-dead human friend(possibly partner)”. The bottom text says “gotta be one of my favorite genders”. The person is surrounded by PNGs of Venti from Genshin Impact, and Bartimaeus from the Bartimaeus Sequence. End ID.]
if i had a nickel for every time jonathan stroud wrote a female character who was traumatized by having all of her friends brutally murdered in front of her, i would have four nickels.
which isn't a lot, but FOUR?
(The characters are Lucy Carlyle, Holly Munro, and Flo Bones from Lockwood and Co, and Kitty Jones from The Bartimeaus Sequence.)
I'm putting this on my blog so people can find it in the future because I just realized the Bartiforums are no longer a thing, and sadly none of the posts that got picked up by the Wayback Machine are actually archived properly.
I knew that we celebrated Nathaniel's birthday on November 26th, but I couldn't find out why. I knew we knew it was in November because of the books, but Stroud didn't give us an exact date.
Except we did finally squeeze one out of him! He used to answer questions occasionally on the Bartiforums, and gave us November 26th as Nathaniel's birthday. Despite best efforts, we don't have birthdays for the Lockwood & Co. trio, or for Kitty for that matter, but at least we can celebrate Nat's!
Bartimaeus (in his form from prequel) in my art style (colorful, soft-shaped, with fine lineart) and in evil art style (more darkish, angular, with thick line art)