#i've been meaning to gif this since the video was uploaded and finally found time today^^

[gamebunny-advance]

"Plants" Process (Initial Sketch | Layers)

Sure, might as well talk about this one, because I actually have a bit to say about it.

So the title I uploaded this with, "Say you will about NSR..." was originally a (*mis)quote he says in the game when you fully unlock the Natura district. The line isn't especially significant, but I've always thought of it as surprisingly "quaint." It's very small, but it serves to humanize him just a little bit when up to and after this point he's dipped into cartoon-style villainy. These brief moments of honesty within his duplicitous nature is a part of why I find him to be an endearing character.

*The actual quote is, "Say what you want about NSR..." but I mistyped it when posting it. The meaning of the line is basically the same, though.

Due to this line, I've had the idea of drawing him surrounded by plants for a while. My first iterations of this idea usually involved him on an apartment balcony adorned with plants and overlooking the city. Sadly, my visions for the scene exceeded my artistic ability, so it's an idea that's been on the back burner for a while.

[A sketch I did last year based on the idea.]

It wasn't until I just randomly thought to come back to this idea that I sketched this piece.

But tbh, I don't think my vision was very clear. There's no sense that he exists in a real place (why in the world would a hanging planter be hung so low, XP). All I knew was that I wanted to draw him surrounded by plants, and that originally I wanted the color palette to be very limited.

Very recently, the SiIvagunner channel had uploaded a parody video of the Yona Yona Dance MV, which led me to listening/watching the original video (which I somehow managed to never see up to that point).

I found the limited color pallet of the video to be very striking, and I wanted to make something inspired by it combined with the experiment I did with my recent Kliff x Tati piece, which also only used about 4 colors.

However, I am abysmal at color picking, so I grabbed a color palette from @/color-palletes (link) to help the process along. In the end, I couldn't keep myself from trying to use all possible colors. Strictly speaking, there's a shade of every color in the rainbow in the final piece, which is about as far from a "limited palette" as it could be. Nonetheless, I think the darker tones of the colors do help to tie everything together, so it feels more limited than it actually is.

To return to discussing the sketch itself, there were a few ideas that changed and evolved throughout the process.

Besides moving some of the plants around, an idea I had that didn't get fully realized was that the three smaller plants in front of him were supposed to represent the game's rockstars: Mayday, Zuke and Tatiana. I had difficulty making that happen with the limited palette: since May, Kliff, and Tati share a lot of colors (notably red), and one of Zuke's main colors is green, the same color for the plants, it was difficult to main the references while still having them all not blend into each other. Perhaps with more time to think through the idea I could have reached a compromise, but as things are, that reference was more or less lost.

To get it out of the way: there isn't any real symbolism behind the plants chosen. They were picked strictly on their aesthetic value/ease of drawing them. If you wanna stretch, the Zuke vase is holding red flowers (poppies), so it's kinda referencing that time his hair was set on fire, but that's totally incidental~ However, I will say that originally that vase was supposed to hold orchids since it's apparently a flower common in Malaysia, but I had difficulty drawing them and settled on poppies. Hibiscus plants were also considered for similar reasons, but as someone who's actually grown up around hibiscus flowers, I knew I didn't really have another place to put them since those plants actually get really friggin' big.

Something else that was lost was the poster behind the snake plant. Originally I had thought to put a poster of Kul Fyra on the wall, but I honestly got pretty lazy about adding the details. That and Kul Fyra's colors would have blended into Kliff hair since she's a combination of reds and yellows. But that space felt so empty without *something* there, so I messed around with random shapes and eventually just landed on putting up some records. It's a generic detail, but I do feel like they add a "pop art" quality to the piece.

To conclude, this was very fun to work on and the turnaround on it was fairly fast. Usually for pieces like this, the process takes me a few days, but I sketched and finished this all in the same day. Had I given myself more time to sleep on this, I might have worked a little harder to incorporate some of my other ideas and clean it up a little more. That said, this is still one of my favorite pieces as of late, and I hope that I'm able to make more things like it.

#gbunny draws #nsr #kliff #gif #should i main tag this again? #i don't think so #y'all are the only ones that really benefit from hearing me ramble #if you can even call it a benefit #something i didn't mention is that i actually struggled with the face a bit #i didn't like the initial expression that much #it was a little soft for my tastes #the triangular eyes are just something i borrowed from the 'anniversary' piece i did a while back #i dunno why i did that in either case since his eyes are typically downturned #but they helped him to look sharper #so i'm okay with it