Just remembered I never posted these: designs of the characters from Ayreon's The Human Equation, part of a project that I named "The Character Equation", which consists on making a design for every Ayreon character ever (AT SOME POINT. Whenever I don't have dangerously close deadlines. I'm going to be taking my sweet time with this.)
They are heavily inspired on the costume design for The Theater Equation, but they are modeled after the singers in the studio album and their designs are more simple since I tackled these with a comic-making mentality (so, nothing too complex in case you had to draw these designs over and over again in multiple pages and panels).
I go over the process of most of these on these videos! I still have to finish a third one... eventually... but things kept coming up and I had to leave video-making aside.
Lately I’ve been obsessively listening to this song, having daydreams of this cool angsty and drama-dripping video montage that’s way beyond my scope of talents.
But let me (over) share, nonetheless.
The pre chorus but when they say:
“You’re like a butterfly, caught in the middle”
I just SEE Astarion gazing at Karlach with love and sadness when she isn’t looking. And it’s like AGH my heart 💀
Then:
“You’re like a star”
Is Karlach looking at Astarion under the moonlight, as they lay in bed, he’s trancing or something and she watches him breathe. Yes, the lot.
I don’t even like butterflies as imagery, wtf is wrong with me. Anyway. I love creating movies and shit in my head and torture myself with it. It’s GREAT.
So have a listen.
It’s all epic but sweet and melodramatic and angsty and introspective metal.
Thank you Devin, for always setting my mind spinning somewhere else.
I made this for TikTok, thinking it would get kids into this literal icon's music. It flopped there (obviously kids have no taste, there's no other way to explain it), but it's got 100,000+ views and 2000+ likes on YouTube, so I must've done something right. Enjoy Devin Townsend being absolutely unhinged @ Download Fest 2006... P.S. Guess the main demographic for this one. I wasn't surprised one bit.