Oh neat! I didn't know I'd signed up to get holiday art this year, but new Bright Bats pieces are always awesome in my book.
Tinker is technically supposed to be a ferret, but I can't really tell those two animals apart, so all's well that ends well, right? Thank you!
A ferret? Well, crud. Don't look much like one from the available concept image I have for him, but a squirrel would make an appropriate substitute, methinks. Glad ya liked it! And you're most welcome.
Ah, January. The deadest month in terms of economic activity, unless you're someone who has to work outside and plow snow, and the most chill month of the year. It's practically the middle of winter for those living in the northern hemisphere, and with it brings the white stuff whether it comes in the from of snow, ice, or frost.
It's no secret that winter is my favorite season of the bunch mainly because I can't stand feeling hot and sweaty, the latter especially since my skin produces a lot of oil via genetics and outbreaks occur more frequently as a result (and about the only gripe about the winter is having to deal with the various diseases that are commonly spread around this time of the year, like the cold or flu - I'll take a little frostbite over feeling miserable for over a month.) Though I won't spill the beans on where exactly I live, I can tell you all however that I live where snow is fairly uncommon where I'm situated. Every time I see frost on the windshield of my car or covering the grass and loose tree leaves on the lawn it invokes a nostalgic experience for me.
If you've been following my posts throughout much of 2020, you may remember me saying that "if I wanted a Yuna figurine, then this Unit will have to make it itself." (If not, that's okay.) Originally, I was going to sculpt a wintery, figure-skating Yuna using my reserves of polymer clay. I began working on it late November, only to get swamped by the sheer amont of effort necessary for December's works. In addition, this condition I have which is only getting worse as time passes made working on everything else really slow. I plan to see some about it in another month or two, but as far as what can be done about it... is a whole 'nother matter...
Ugh, I'm getting distracted again! Anyway this piece, so I ended up drawing up what I envisioned then so at least I had an image to show for. And even if I had time to sculpt this, I would have to go through a lot of trouble with finding the right types of resin I would need to create the figurine's base as well as dealing with the longer curing time of the resin in cooler temperatures. Not wanting to risk not finishing, I had to scrap the idea for the Yuna figurine in exchange for a digital drawing instead.
Being the fan of the winter season that I am, the chilliness of this is so... cool. What? There wasn't a more appropriate description! Just try me! But, if looking at this image makes you feel cold, then I suppose I succeeded with my chilly imagery. As much as I wanted to see more of her skin tone, I couldn't get that to work without clashing with the rest of the colors in the image. In turn, I kept to a more muted tone for her skin, eyes, and everywhere that's normally yellow on her. The only things to bother me from this work being the outlines of those large snowflakes having no width variance (they were supposed to be more 3D, but I ran out of time to accomplish that, sorry...) and the emptiness of the environment behind the Mistress. I know that it's supposed to be somewhere on Forbidden Island, but even that place had more geographical features!
Fun Fact: It snowed the night before this post was made.
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If seeing Yuna do her impersonation of Elsa made you shiver (and curse at me for posting something that made you feel cold because you hate the feeling,) well, good news. This next piece covers something that's definitely a bit warmer feeling; however, it's not the comforting type of warm, and it's more like an infernal kind akin to fires of war and incendiary destruction. Vengeance incarnate - it is the perfect term regarding Servitor Unit Lucina's complement - Phoebe.
A month late for this 2nd class Servitor, but again, better late than never, right?
Now, I believe is the good time to explain the origin of this OC. If you recall from seeing my 2018 post about this character, you may remember me saying that this pint-sized Servitor Unit was based off a certain character and I left no other clues as to who it may be... and for good reason. Bear in mind, I'm aware that this kind of material will most probably tarnish my reputation to some degree, but for me, honesty is the best policy, and it's time come clean on the matter and peel off the band-aid on this one. I'm not going to say this character's name; rather, I'll let you see for yourselves who inspired the firebranded Phoebe in
3...2...
1...[TRIGGER WARNING]Uhh... yeah... um... I think I'm gonna go hide in a bomb shelter now... As silly as it may sound, this more popular character from the Fire Emblem series is Phoebe's progenitor. So what's with the trigger warning beforehand, you ask? Well, I'll explain. After creating and naming my namesake Servitor in the later part of 2015, I was curious to know what other things were being tagged or posted online with that name in mind, so I initiated a Google search and... found this character filling up nearly 95% of the results. Keep in mind that when it came to the Fire Emblem franchise at the time, I was very much living under a rock at that point only being familiar with Marth, Roy, and Ike from the Smash Bros. series (I also didn't get Smash 4 until 2016.) Feeling defensive about the success of my own character being swamped out should I post any SUL stuff online using that name because of this character, in response, I thought about making a character in my own version of the MML universe that could serve as a "punching bag" of sorts for our servant protagonist (except, this punching bag fights back, kind of like those from Luigi's Mansion.) Oh ho, but some design changes were in order! Even back then, I knew that if I just drew the lady in a System get-up that it would have too obvious of what I was trying to accomplish. For one, we can't have someone like that towering over Lucy, so first, let's give her an impish body type. And, to make her fit more with the aesthetic of the System, let's give her red eyes.
Oh, come on! Even that crest of hers looks like a blatant knock-off of the Brand of Naga. You weren't even trying to cover this up! If I could give my younger self a thunk on the head, I would. This is what soon resulted afterwards. I named her Phoebe after having a similar etymology to Lucina's (radiant, shining) as a parody to why we can't have two people of the same name in the same fictional universe and since the name has already been taken up by the main character, she ended up getting this name instead (I have yet to see an instance of name plurality in any major fictional work that isn't used for a descendant, family relative, or incarnation of an individual, so I rolled with it.) Then I wanted to give her a devilish look, I thought. Admittingly, this first attempt at designing Lucy's nemesis was kinda shallow; I just modeled Phoebs after Servitor Unit Lucina and accessorized her with bangles and a ponytail. Like her inspiration, she also wears a diadem but it's red and spiky. I also gave her clothes similar to the other Unit but is dark blue in color with yellow markings like the Fire Emblem lord character. She wouldn't stay this way, however, and less than a month later, her design changed again...
Better, but that crest STILL looks kind of like the Brand of Naga. Okay, I do want to admit that the reason why I changed Phoebe's design had little to do with the realization that I would receive a lot of hate from fans of that character and more to do with the fact that the design struck me as boring. So, to satiate my hunger for a better looking villain character for the angelic Servitor Unit, I decided to increase the devil attribute further and gave her more prominent horns and a ponytail that resembled a devil's tail. So now, we have the devil themed character fighting the angel themed one. Even if Capcom one day debunks the whole theory that Sera and Yuna are attributed to angels and devils respectively, we can still at least create our own lesser Units to fill in that void. This is the part where I written in the whole "was once the guardian of the Saul Kada key" at some point... or maybe she has that key of aesthetics, probably the more likely of the two reasons, maybe because it resembled a pitchfork to nail the theme in the coffin.
Three years would pass before I would return to redesign the Terran Servitor again in 2018, where I wanted to make her fit in with the universe a bit better (and after realizing that I made Lucy wearing essentially a Mother Unit's uniform and doesn't make sense in her case.) In addition, I wanted to finally begin separating her from her inspiration and making Phoebe her own thing. Design-wise, she gets a more prominent unique hairdo with the tail bit being changed as well as a beige-ish pair of baggy pants. Her skin-tight boots were swapped for some pointed shoes akin to those worn by the two canon Servitors, Gatz and Geetz. Character-wise, this is also when Phoebe's background gets elaborated on more than just being merely another opponent that Servitor Unit Lucina has to fight in the story; in some distant past where the Master System was at odds against the Elder System, Yuna had this unit by her side at the time to help her fight the Elder forces. After an incident that had Yuna's loyalty to the System put into question, Phoebe was promptly demoted and reassigned to a series of Bureaucratic and Purifier Units. At some point, she was tasked with guarding one of the 4 keys to the global carbon reinitialization program, as shown in this image of her. This is also when I finally managed to illustrate her Reaverform, just codenamed the "Hellfire Fiiru" for its fire-based attacks and capabilities.
And that brings us to the current take on Servitor Unit Phoebe. The composition of this one's meant to reference Lucina's 5th birthday image - but with a twist. Remember how there was a large cosmic cloud surrounded by stars and the whole ambiance of the piece was all peaceful and calm? Well, there are stars, but most are obscured from view due to the smoke clouds resulting from Phoebe's destructive and war-bound nature. The area is dotted mostly by embers from the fires below, instead of the array of beautiful stars we saw with Lucy. The Key has been re-tooled to be a fake, as only serves to reference a previous occupation of hers and is just merely an object she can teleport. When not burning her foes to the ground, she can teleport wherever she wants, turn invisible so she can eavesdrop on whomever may be violating System ordinances, and create large balls of fire not unlike those used by the Wojigairon.
This might sound a bit blasphemous to say this, but part of me wants to believe that this is better than the Lucina one (distant booing.) In this one, there's no confusion as to where the light sources are coming from and this composition feels much less flat by comparison. Also, that lighting/shading on the Reaverbot form, especially on it's topmost section is almost perfect. Phoebe's alternate form, in contrast to Lucy's canine form, is only shiny in a few spots with a relatively more matte body as to make her look darker. Texturally, she looks more interesting and there's more in the way of geometry to behold. Yeah, I know that form's practically a remix of an existing transformation state, but I kind of wanted to redraw the original form and add some attributes to better connect the form with its owner. The only problems I have with the piece are that that some of the smoke clouds look kind of misshapen (too straight in some places on the left side) and there's a notable error with the tapering of one of the blades on Phoebe's right "claw." But aside from those, yeah, there's nothing that I can reasonably nitpick about this one. I guess that's one benefit for NOT being the first character made for a story, at the expense of the first character looking the least refined one of the bunch.
*shrugs*
So, if the baggage from Phoebe's development history is enough to warrant removing her from Servitor Unit Lucina's story and substituting her for another unit who was not created out of spitefulness of another fictional character and can potentially hurt my reputation, then why haven't I deleted this imp from my catalogue of System Units? Do I still hold a grudge against one of the most popular FE characters in existence now?
As for the second question, no. My stance on the masked lord character herself in her own games is more or less neutral, neither against nor for her. I've come to accept that if I really wanted to boost my own IP's popularity, I'm going to have to go through the right channels to do so (advertise, get others invested in Lucy's story, etc.,) which I'm in the process of doing so right now. After all, I did mention in a previous post that a past self is not necessarily their current self - people can change. As for why Phoebe's still around, well, I believe that her existence serves as a reminder for one not to lash out at something that urks him/her unnecessarily and irrationally due to troublesome emotional impulses. Sure, you want your precious brain child to be loved and shared by everyone, but in the end, that may not be the case for whatever reason - that's just reality. There's always going to be someone who turns a blind eye to your creation because they just think it's not interesting enough to him/her (which is not the same as disliking a character, though either can hurt the creator's feelings :/.) Honesty is a double-edged blade; however, I feel as though lying and hiding the truth can eat away at one's mind and is more painful to bear the longer it just coasts in there. So, revealing the troubling details about Phoebe's development is purifying, yet still potentially harmful to me. Also, I'm not going let the angry opinions of people deter me from keeping her, especially those coming from the fanbase. So, there!
Speaking particularly revealing stuff
*clears throat*
Servitor Unit Lucina: wanted for several charges, including vandalism, compromising at least half a dozen bank accounts, grand theft auto, and (looks up) indecent exposure. And because of the current state of things, I'm adding rave party participation to that list of charges. - the Inspector
This piece was originally intended to be the first one in this post to mark off the new year, but at the last second I decided to change mind as I felt it was more appropriate to talk about this one after discussing Phoebe. Why? Because
as you know very well that you can't talk about Phoebe without bringing up her compliment and that she's the main character of the story gotta look out for #1 blah blah blah for one, this work's also had an interesting development history behind it. I originally started sketching on this in early December, again hopefully thinking about getting this done around New Years day week. Since I was going for a tricky perspective shot, I loaded up 3D Builder and got that model of Lucina I used to create that underwater piece back in August (this one) posing it roughly how I envisioned her at first.
If you somehow didn't see that post from before or skimmed over the text pertaining to those updates, yes, I sometimes generate references from my 3D models and use those to nail difficult perspective angles, especially given my neurological condition as of recently. Consequentially because of this, I did this for Phoebs as well...
Then I started sketching the outlines in good ol' MS Paint and then began adding in an assortment of Reaverbots from each of the three main MML titles. This took quite a while and I didn't finish until about half-ways through the month since I was working on all three of these guys at once and my impaired mental speed, which seems to get worse as the months pass by. After enough was done, then and only then did I take the quasi-completed sketch and imported it into FireAlpaca (still not quite willing to drop 200 bucks for Clip Studio) to outline and color it, the latter taking forever to get done. This may be the reason why I didn't include more Reaverbots in the background; I wanted complexity, but not at the cost of not being able to finish at all. I knew that this piece was going to test my patience, being one of the most complicated works I've ever attempted so far. I've also had to use a different lighting style from what I'm accustomed to in order to achieve the effect I was going after.
Work process stuff aside, the piece embodies exactly what I'm striving for; to create MML content infused with my own twist in order to better distinguish myself from others out there - dare to be different. I make whatever I'm feeling like at the time; sometimes I'll go for a more serious piece and at others I might go on the opposite end of the spectrum and do something really silly like this. I don't think there's too many people who'd dream depicting someone partying with a bunch of nasty Reaverbots in an underground ruin with studio lighting and loud music blasting out of a speaker set. And yeah, I did realize that using this perspective of Servitor Unit Lucina could be potentially rule-breaking so I at least censored her crotch with a close-quarters piece of confetti. Personally seems like unnecessary censorship as it makes the whole thing's dirtier than what it actually is
, especially with that face that she's making.
Hoo boy, this is a monster of a piece to dissect. Again, if I had day or more then I would have like to add in more Reaverbots in generally every area: the background (particularly the right side behind DJ Hippulbash,) foreground, midground (also, there's no MML3 representatives in the work.) Speaking of Reaverbots, that freaking Harabool was drawn in a top down perspective and looks out of place (and ruining the illusion of perspective. Darn you.
Probably should've modelled that sucker beforehand.) And on the topic of perspective, the metal railings behind the lot seem to be a bit off as well as the direction of the light beams from the top girder. Out the three pieces, this one gave me the most aneurysms the most overall. However, it's not a total waste; there's definitely some good things that I have a hard time taking my eyes off of. That confetti, man. Although it was indeed created using a custom brush, I love the sparkling effect that I gave to some pieces after further customizing most of the many, tiny individual bits. And my favorite detail about it is that it's pouring out of an Engurbots' mouth, which was an improvement from the original model reference and more creative. That metallic effect on her left bangle and her Solstaff is just...
*kisses the air* The cherry on top is the high energy feel of the whole piece and sense of motion seen with Lucy's glowing accessories.
Well, that concludes this month's update. Yeah, not having any practice pics to show for is not great, but not having my Legends stuff is arguably worse. My bad health's been giving me a royal beatdown for my physical and mental well-being. As I've mentioned, my mental processes have been slowed drastically (i.e. it took me over half a day to type this post, whereas it would've taken me a third of that time 5 years ago,) I'm constantly lethargic and my limbs feel like they have barely the energy to do what I need. My short-term memory is crap and I feel like it's more difficult to retain new memories and learn new things. I can't say that I'm emotionally stable either; it only takes recalling one mildly sad memory to bring me to tears, and I anger easily. I've lost quite a bit of muscle mass and I've already developed arthritis. And no, I'm not saying this for pity points; I'm just saying I would have more stuff done had I not had the energy levels of a sloth for most of the month.
But there'll be more stuff to come next month, mark my words. Don't worry too much; after all, it's not like I'm going to suffer from a heart attack and drop dead from this. But I am concerned over the long-term consequences, though. This has been going on for so long, and I've been trying not to mention that there's anything wrong for the sake of not making anyone feel crappy over it. Words of pity do nothing to ease one's suffering, and therefore I try avoid mention it much. But I'd figure you all deserve to know the truth than noticing my dwindling performance and think that I'm getting less interested or something else along those lines.
Well, you all keep your heads up for February's editions to the gallery. See you all then!