[ID: 2 Digital illustrations of a female DMCV Vergil in a dark space, lit from below. The first is a closeup of her face as she wipes blood off it with the back of her hand. Her eyes are slitted and electric blue. The second image is the fullbody. Blood's splattered on her clothes and hair, and soaks her forearms, hands and face. She glares up while swiping her bloody, gloved hand across her mouth, other hand gripping her sword, Yamato, by her side. Blood drips down the sheathe. Vergil's lit from below, casting eerie shadows on her face.
Design: She wears trousers and a vest. The highcollar vest's altered so the midsection curves across the chest like a corset. Her matted hair's waistlength, unbound, and falls across her face and arm. Her arms are toned, and her fingers taper to clawlike points.
The image is grainy, and encased in a square pink border; only Yamato's hilt pops out over the border. End ID.]
Read more for second version without blood.
[ID: The same image of fem Vergil as above, but sans blood and with a subtler grain effect. End ID.]
I was listening to Familyjules/Lollia's Bury the Light cover for some of this. I like their different approach to the more growly parts of the song. The vibes of that cover influenced this piece a decent bit.
30 notes
·
View notes
Headcanons about living with Astarion
I thought about some of this lately and since yesterday's warmup got out of hand... (Behold him lounging:)
First things first, if you think living with Astarion will be neat and organised just because he himself always looks put well together: you are in for a surprise
This man - as much as he cares for aesthetics - tends to be messy
Especially since it's been forever that he could actually have and keep stuff, so expect books everywhere, cups left on surfaces, stuff laying around on the floor (and let's be honest, growing up as a noble before didn't teach him anything about being domestic...)
He'll learn though, especially when you reach a point where you could almost throw stuff at him (but he still struggles with it and him buying so many books surely doesn't help)
Astarion is basically cat: lounging everywhere - no surface is safe! Although a comfy sofa or chaiselongue are preferred spots!
Especially when you've sat somewhere and it's still nice and warm and smells of you; "Was that your seat, darling? Well, not anymore!"
But then he would pull you in with a chuckle and have you cuddle up on his lap and also refuse to let you go ("Love, I've only just gotten comfortable, you can't leave now!")
What he lacks in order he makes up with style - to a point it might make your blood boil: "Astarion, please, I couldn't care less if the red of the drapes matches the pillow cases!" "Yes, well, darling - don't take it personally - but I wouldn't have expected you to care anyway." Then he has to dodge several pillows being flung at his head)
Astarion leaves little notes for you to find, like for example if he's gone to run some errands or maybe just because - to tell you he loves you; at some point it kind of becomes a game of him hiding notes somewhere in the house and waiting how long you take to find them - scolding you if you take too long! ("My sweet, a trained donkey would have found it by now! Open your eyes, love, you can't possibly be that distracted by my beautiful face!")
Astarion learns about companionable silence with you - obviously he's very chatty and you love nights just wasted away with talking and joking - about everything and anything; but he also learns how pleasant it can be to just sit there, all cozied up with you and feeling the deep peace of easy silence with you
That or spending some quality time together: him spending time with reading or doing embroidery, you with drawing, also reading or anything else - as long as you're together
At least for a while Astarion really enjoys having a place where he can just... be; obviously this eager little vampire can't sit still forever but he revels in the knowledge of having a place he can always return to, somewhere to be safe and comfy, somewhere he can always be with you
Alright - at least that's how I could very well imagine living with Astarion might be, hihi. This man keeps living in my head - by now I'm sure he's changed my brain chemistry forever, for good...
2K notes
·
View notes
[Click image for better quality]
I FIGURED OUT A WAY TO FUCKING MAKE THE IMAGE SMALLER FOR POSTING ON TUMBLR WITHOUT SACRIFICING THE ACTUAL QUALITY OF THE IMAGE OH MY GOD
Ok so, what I did is go into the clip studio paint file, make a new file, copy and paste the group in the original file, merge everything, get rid of the extra stuff outside of the canvas, and then make the flattened image smaller and crop the canvas. Once you have that, export it and you're done. This helps maintain the actual quality of the image and also helps shrink the file size down to something actually postable (if anyone has a better way of doing this please tell me)
[Edit]: Ok I guess posting something to Tumblr just naturally compresses the image a bit more somehow because I'm looking at it now and zooming in too much makes it a bit blurry so I'm still gonna have to futz around with image quality for future pieces oof
Artist's Note:
I'm so glad I figured out a way to do this because I like working on a big canvas so I can get as much detail in as I possibly can. Only problems are how laggy it gets while drawing lol.
I had an idea for a drawing with Reimu and Zanmu because I really like thinking about their potential dynamic a lot. I also wanted an excuse to draw Zanmu again but in my normal rendering style because last time I drew her she was in my more sketchy style with generally flat colours so I wanted to draw her again. Speaking of, looking at the sketch for this is a jumpscare that I never enjoy seeing, like, man am I glad I didn't use those for my final piece.
Also about her spear. I was originally gonna make it like the ones she had in game, but it kinda threw off the whole piece. It was too big, too blue, and too flat, so I just went "fuck it" and gave her a different one instead. My headcanon justifying this is that the ones she uses in game are for danmaku battles whereas in any other fight she just uses a proper yari, or she still uses the yari and just makes it all glowy to power it up, maybe both lol. I pulled as much inspiration as I could from Sengoku era spears, and even put in some blue into the decorative part of the spear and also added a little skull to pay tribute to the original spear. Also, in my research I saw some art of izanami and izanagi making japan and saw that the yari izanagi has had a little decorative tassley thingy on it so I took some inspo from that and just made it one of Zanmu's tassles (Idk when that art was from or if the spear was still accurate to Sengoku period Japan but hey, probably the same reasons Eirin puts little bow ties on her arrows, it's just for personalization purposes).
I love rendering hair and clothes so much omg, while I like the super curly hair Zanmu, the longer, wavier hair suits her better for this drawing (I imagine it only does that like how Ghibli characters hair moves when they feel angry lol). I love making Zanmu's hair all messy and crazy, as well as giving her grey hairs, this woman has aged like a fine wine. Also, if the hem on the ends of her sleeves, top of her shirt, and her pants look like gold to you, that's because it is! It's fairly light so she's not collapsing under the weight, but it's gold! (I don't care how impractical it is, it's just cool). Not the undershirt though, it's made of a gold fabric. I had a cute idea with Reimu's hair to make it have a red shine to it. I also changed up Reimu's outfit so it isn't just a blob of red. I like it a lot when Reimu's skirt and outfit is segmented into different layers, so I wanted to incorporate that.
I tried to draw their hands differently as well, but IDK how noticeable that is. Also, I am super happy with how the side profiles for the two of them turned out, I used to struggle a lot with how to make the side profile of a character actually look like the character, so I'm really happy that they actually look like themselves.
Also added in the tree and rocks in the background as an homage to Zanmu's character art in Touhou 19, just because I was getting kinda stumped on what to do with the background lol.
In terms of a story idea with Reimu and Zanmu, idk why but the potential plotline of Zanmu wanting to ascend to godhood is so fascinating to me. Like, it is very possible that if she just convinced everyone she was a god (which would be very easy for her to do), she would become one in a heartbeat. Also, if she were to become a god, with her ability to return stuff to nothing, could she hypothetically get similar abilities to (Jojo Part 5 spoiler btw) GER? Like, idk about the death timeloop stuff, but the concept has been haunting me every night as I have been trying to find loopholes in GER's ability for a while now ( for no reason in particular). Back to the main topic, I imagine that she would probably tell Reimu that if she were to become a god she would take over the Hakurei shrine since the god there might as well be dead, and Reimu just says to her, "Over my dead body bitch." Like, I have no idea how to summarize their dynamic but like, it's the type of hero-villain dynamic where the phrase "We're not so different, you and I" would definitely be a phrase said during a fight. I think that if another IN style game were to release, Reimu and Zanmu would be in a team together. They could also have an interesting mentor and pupil kind of dynamic. Can you tell that Zanmu has been charging my mind rent these part few months? Like, instead of living in my head rent free, she kinda just uno reversed the whole situation and now she's the one charging me rent. What happens if I get evicted from my own brain? Actually, scratch that, I don't think I wanna know.
258 notes
·
View notes
I can't get your yakuza headcanons out of my mind, Daitou's got me in a chokehold and I'm not complaining, like--
in regards to that doodle you made to show height difference between reader and the boys [I love your art btw (●♡∀♡)] - I can't picture myself in reader's style, I'm currently going through my goth phase in my 20s lmao; picture a big bitch with tattoos and messy hair who's listening to nothing but 2000s hits and screamo bands - so I'd like to request a headcanon of how Daitou would react to a gender-neutral reader like this :D I also like to incorporate the idea of them once being in a famous band that he's a fan of! (sorry if this seems like a lot, I have a huge imagination hehe)
but if he's more into the cute and helpless type, I'll just walk my ass out the door and yeehaw my way into another yandere's arms ✌😔
That's on me for not drawing the reader inserts as cartoonish cinder blocks :') In truth I'm a little bit embarrassed seeing how many likes that doodle has gotten, it was something I put together in a hurry and the clothing was meant to be baggy, shapeless, with not too many folds for the sake of simplicity. I myself am more of a pilgrim goth, just to emphasize the randomness of the choice.
Drawing reader inserts always leaves me a little anxious. If I use a light shade of gray, will people think I'm excluding poc? Will plus sized readers feel like they've been disregarded? What about masculine readers? As someone who's demiromantic I always struggle taking appearance or gender into consideration, because to me it has no influence whatsoever. Which is hard to express when you want to offer blank slate visuals as an extra to the story.
What I'm trying to say is that all of my characters would like you for who you are. Sure, they find your looks cute, but it's not the defining reason. Maybe you have similar traits to them, maybe you're the complete opposite and they find it intriguing. You could be a buff man and Daitou would be just as grateful to have someone who isn't afraid of him. I usually stick to a female reader for bigger stories to avoid messing it up long term, but in the grand scheme of things it makes no difference. I always imagine reader to be a shapeless blob that provides the dialogue I need for the story mood. There's no concrete preference or type for any of my OCs. I mean, ideally you'd like them back and not hang them upside down above a BBQ pit but I feel these are sensible requirements (?).
And now for the actual headcanons since my ramble is over.
First encounter is comically awkward but for reasons you’re unaware of yet. You’re obviously used to people staring at you (more so in a country like Japan), so you were expecting the curious glance every now and then. On the other hand, being under scrutiny, from a man even more unusual looking than you at that, is odd. Mildly uncomfortable. You’re shifting yourself from one leg to another, hoping to be done with the introductions soon.
On his end, Daitou is anxiously fidgeting and trying his best to focus. He’s seen this face before and he can’t shake off the familiar feeling. Where the hell…He obviously can’t downright gawk at you, and he isn’t sure how to politely formulate a question. After several sheepish peeks, it finally dawns on him: weren’t you part of that band he really likes? No, what would the chances be? Then again, how many people out there would look exactly like you? Is it rude to ask? He has no idea. He resumes his mumbled description of the apartment and hands you the papers to be signed.
Back at his place, he finally digs through his merch and sprawls out the available clues. “I didn’t know you were into this kind of music”, Kazuya comments as he looks over the man’s shoulder. He’d come over to ask about the new tenant. “I’m pretty sure it’s them.” He concludes, confidently placing his index over a CD cover. “Huh? Who? The tenant?” Kazuya holds back his chuckle. “Why would a celebrity show up for a shady apartment offer? You’re tripping, man.”
“I’m sorry, this is getting ridiculous.” You finally exclaim, annoyed by the persistent stares of the now two men facing you. You’re standing in front of the apartment building, arms crossed, huffing at the tall scarred man and his blonde friend. “No, I’m sure of it. Even the tattoo is the same.” Daitou turns to whisper to Kazuya, oblivious to your complaints. In turn, Kazuya lightly elbows him, mouthing something about being rude. “Just ask them, man.” He adds, this time louder. “Ask me what??” You groan. “W-were you…um…in this band by any chance?” Daitou manages to blurt out, searching his pocket for the CD case and ceremoniously laying it under your eyes.
Ah. It finally clicks and you exhale, relieved. You confirm their suspicions and show them some backstage photos to solidify your claim. You ask Daitou if he wants an autograph or something, then swiftly scribble your signature on a piece of paper and hand it out to him. He holds it with a wide, childish grin. “You’re a weird one, you know? You could’ve just asked. I guess I didn’t expect to find a fan in the wild, especially here.” Daitou carefully folds the souvenir, eyes lidded with nostalgia. “Oh yes, it’s great. Drowns out the screams.”
267 notes
·
View notes