2022 Sketch Dump

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As is something of an unintended pattern, here is a hoodie Reyl to kick off 2022.

The theme for 2022, overall, is 'composition'. I started to use more of my canvas space in 2022 and as a side effect started thinking more about how my posing affected the composition on the page. This is not an example of this though, this is just a Swift. Also because of the brush I was using a lot of these sketches are messier than normal but the idea is... mostly still legible! (I do two passes when sketching with this brush and these are the first passes).

Cute little Zach in a sweater. This was to try and show his third eyelid, but it's only really visible if you include animation or colour. Zach (and Palidans in general) tend not to show their third eyelid unless they're drowsy, sleepy, squinting hard, or underwater, but Zach in particular often forgets he has this due to being raised in Kitiven, and doesn't use it to emote at all (some Palidans do if they're being rude).

Ideas about Reyl as a witch, since she does try to become one a couple times. Plus, it's easy to imagine, since I already know what her ghoul would be like, and a witch is just a smarter, less monstrous ghoul. I envision she would have these thorns that would weave in and out of her skin that she could use to attack or bind people, and that would blend back into tattoos on her skin when not in use. Her magic would invoke temporary paralysis and is unrelated to the thorns. She has some random feathers and claws, and some weird stuff going on in her empty eye socket, but her overall appearance as a witch would veer more human. (So she doesn't get wings or flight).
I imagine her MO would be to kidnap Raum, shove him in her cave lair on a mountain, and never ever let him leave while being too insane to realise this is messed up.

A random Mephi—I like this attitude and the flow of this one.

Zach has an idea to propose!

If you remember those outfit swaps from 2021... I still had the text document outlining which characters were getting swapped with who open, noticed it, and drew from it. Here's another Trivia in Zach's outfit, still looking surprisingly good in it.

Cute Arsene praying but not knowing what prayer is.

Cute Phoenix all curled up.

Phoenix with paper and glasses. Phoenix has sensitive eyes and needs shades to get through summer, and reading glasses if he's dealing with large amounts of small text on a white page, which is a common thing with the royal family (though his actual visual acuity is fine, it's just brightness that gets to him). Aquila used to deal with it too though not so severely, and has no vision problems since becoming feathers.

Aquila with gun. It's hard to be good at physical combat when you have zero muscles, but fortunately Aquila too can utilise the great equaliser.

Little doodle Phoenix.

Random Trivia with mask up.

Elegant flowy Trivia.

Surprised Zach.

Reyl showing off that whole composition idea with minor perspective.

Camellia in top down perspective.

Random Mephi eating something. He doesn't look that enthused about it, but it's probably a corpse.

Mephi pointing at viewer/being vaguely threatening.

Camille sitting up.

Raum seated.

IRL Poppy checking her phone. I like this one a lot still. I'm not sure Poppy is brave enough to put charms of her favourite characters on her phone, but I imagine she does have phone charms and a cutesy anime phone case.

Random flowy Raum looking over his shoulder.

Phoenix reading a book.

Random dynamic Mephi.

Random less dynamic Mephi, sitting.

Raum in fashionable shirt reclined with rose.

Cute Phoenix.

Phoenix POINTS!! At YOU!!!

Random Mephi with horns, tail, and wings. Mephi doesn't like having many pieces that are obviously traceable to something that already exists, but he does have his quiet biases in what 'sort' of shapes he manifests.

Disgruntled Mephi a little close to losing it, though only for a moment.

Mephi getting fired up to retaliate in a fight against someone with a chance to beat him. Man, the attitude's nice but his head is too big. Let me shrink that head...

In the middle of all these Mephis, a Camellia.

Mephi sitting on a pile of junk.

Random Raum.

A very nice Verti. I like this one a lot.

Chibi Mephi.

One of those gimmick pieces where you're meant to print it out and hold it like he's hanging from his tail or something, except it's Mephi so who in their right mind would touch it? And instead he just sits on the floor.

Another Random Mephi, casting some magic.

I realised that Raum desperately needed an updated reference, but also that I still struggle to draw consistent Raums.

So instead of Raum I went back to the Mephi comfort zone, and hey this is pretty nice.

A very nice Camellia with some perspective. Suddenly I understood how Japanese artists seem to get such effortless perspective in character pieces. They actually use the whole page.

More Camellia. He's floating like a gremlin.

Rather cute Camellia with minor perspective.

A very cute Swift.

Phoenix has quibbling concerns about Raum's cooking that something might've been off with the ingredients but it is not really serious, he's just being Phoenix.

A rather intense Mephi. This is one where you can see the 'composition' effect really happening, because this would look pretty nice if I cleaned it up and finished it.

VERY CUTE ZACH !!!!! HELLO?

Zach looking a bit cheeky.

Zach... doing something? I'm not sure if that's a bottle of drink or food or what that he's holding, but he looks rather questioning of whatever's going on beyond it.

Cute Zach inspecting some flowers growing on a vine.

Zach in an alley beckoning the viewer out. This is a concept I'm probably going to return to... eventually.

Zach in a sweater in significant but not unbearable pain trying not to make too much of a fuss about it. It happens, ignore it enough and maybe it'll go away quicker.

Zach with Camille. I really like his expression, it's cute.

Cute knowing Zach.

Zach in mild tears because the pain is quite bad but not bad enough to justify not doing things.

ZACH POINT!!!!

A rather cute Camellia.

Some Raums, making another attempt at confronting a new reference for him.

Rather cool Raum in smoke and a Raum in glasses that looks like what I look like when I have to think about drawing references. I'm not sure if Raum needs glasses for anything but he does look rather good again. Then again it's Raum and he makes lots of things look good.

Random Mephi. A problem with getting better at drawing over time is that I have unwittingly made Mephi look less and less viscerally horrible, but don't be fooled, that is just the anime filter.

A cute Lisbet. Nice expression here.

Camellia getting harried by Verti.

Very swishy Mephi.

Cute Phoenix sitting.

Various Zachs.

Camille looking a bit like an alien.

BICYCLE REYL. I don't have an explanation for this. I felt like imagining what a bicycle pose would be like and the model turned into Reyl, this has utterly no place in canon, she is egregiously happy to be on this bicycle, but here it is, bicycle Reyl.

Cute little Arsene.

Messy sketch but it's Camellia asleep wrapped up in Arsene in his snake form.

Camellia looking up.

Camellia threading DNA into bloom.

One of those 'Arsene and Camellia being smoopy' pictures, but Camellia is more lucid. There's something wrong with all this...

Cute Arsene.

Zachary in Pontifex garb.

Random Mephi pose.

Defensive Mephi.

Assertive Mephi.

Two dudes sitting in a hot tub.

Zany perspective Arsene

Colouring style experiment in preparation for Art Fight. I didn't use it in the end as it was a little too time-consuming and hard to colour, but the result here is nice.

Camellia reaching up.

Mephi losing it a little, finding something grimly hilarious.

A more composed Mephi, in an ostentatious form.

A more modest Mephi, thinking of ideas for the cloak he wears when hanging around people before moving to Miulu.

Various Mephis, ideas for forms and cloak designs.

A very nice Camellia pose. Very swooshy.

Dynamic Mephi. I was thinking about Laws of Saturn over this time, hence the Mephi focus, alongside him being very easy to pose and experiment with, which is why there's so much Mephi.

Trivia sitting at a shrine for the dead in Miulu, probably just visiting home.

Mephi seated on altar.

Swift jump!!

Camellia casually creating flowers.

Mephi losing it. h o n g r y

A random cute Aster. Calling Aster 'cute' feels a bit off, but she does look rather nice here.

Silhouette/quick design refresher of Aster's 'successful loop' design.

Design refresher for Aster's 'things are going wrong and I don't know why' loop design.

Cute Lisbet go :o

Very flowy lisbet, thinking how to apply the easy perspective from filling the page into a smaller fullbody canvas, as well as considering adding things to her legs to make her less topheavy. They don't exactly work and her proportions are a bit off, but the flow of this is nice.

Swooshy Aquila.

Zachary and Camille. Proportions are off, but I like the mood of this a lot.

A SUPER CUTE CAMILLE. Really like this one.

Baby Camellia and Verti in colour.

A nice hoodie Reyl with Arm raised. I like her expression here.

Mephi doodle.

Mephi in cloak has left footprints.

Random Mephi is disgruntled. I like this one.

Hoodie Reyl.

Mephi sitting, observing diligently but not that interested (but also not that uninterested).

A nice random Aster. I'm glad Aster gets some love too, her nasty character premise means she sits on the backseat a lot when it comes to discussing GoH or its characters with others, but I truly do like her.

More random Mephi.

Reyl with her glass eye out and a packet of smokes.

Reyl and Zach. This is really cute but their sizes are so wrong (Zach is taller than Reyl), I still love it though, he the squirt.

Random Arsene.

A couple Reyls, including hoodie Reyl. Reyl is very heavily in my comfort zone for drawing, so I draw her a lot.

Ideas for what would later be Mephi's design in Poppy's dream realm.

A rather nice Mephi with ears and tail. Good energy on this.

Alternate outfit idea for Poppy in her dream realm, maybe for visiting in someone else's dream realm (Raum's?). I imagine Poppy as changing her appearance semi-frequently, but not being creative enough to come up with many ideas, so she's reliant on others to give her ideas that she can shove her aesthetic into.

And here's another rather nice Mephi with good energy, in his Archon form this time. Swoosh!

Ideas for Mephi's form in Poppy's dream realm; that is, this is what he gets filtered into when shoved into Poppy's dream realm. His shapeshifting is severely limited (he basically can't do it) and he finds it extremely uncomfortable and restrictive, especially since this form doesn't locomote very well, so he really doesn't like it. He also doesn't like the stupid neck ribbon, but can't take it off. His hands are constantly dripping blood that he's always compelled to clean, and his stomach is transparent where you can see the ~agony of thousands of tortured souls beating to be let out~, but it's hidden under the cloth (which is a mercy thing from Camellia so Mephi isn't freaking out about it all the time). The wings are retractable.
Archons in general don't enjoy being in each other's dream worlds, because they all have strongly self-natured 'vibes' they want to be conforming to and the dream worlds twist those a little. Poppy really hates what she turns into in Mephi's dream realm too, for what it's worth.

Cute random Arsene.

Spaced out Zach doodle (I am the one who is spaced out).

Mephi walking.

Mephi cloak design.

Dream world Mephi doodle.

Cute Lisbet.

Mephi in cloak on knees in mountains looking up.

A rather nice Raum.

Determined Lisbet, still experimenting with giving her foot accessories.

Nice atmosphere on this Mephi. Mephi in cloak.

Poppy's Dream World Mephi. He has to curl over himself like that even to sit with elevation.

Mephi sitting.

Mephi being downcast, as usual, and a random form idea.

Aster showing off the strength of her silhouette with that coat and ponytail.

A very nice random Reyl. I like her face a lot here.

Cheeky Trivia takes off mask, or maybe she's about to put it on.

A couple Reyl faces, I like the second here a lot.

A nice, very swooshy Arsene. 'Where's his other eye' he's fine.

Ghoul Reyl. I like how the atmosphere of her ghoul is a lot more sober or down-to-earth than normal Reyl.

A normal Reyl, for comparison. I like her angry atmosphere here.

A cute little Zach.

Random Mephi form.

Another Random Mephi form—I like this one a lot.

A Mephi sketch.

And some final Mephis to close off the year. There was a lot of Mephi this year.