Bass Drop

Don’t get me wrong, unambitiously redrawing shitpost edits of manga panels is great and all, but making the second, surprisingly great experimental drawing in the past couple months? Yeah, I think that sounds quite better.

Following the trend of the past couple drawings, I’m using reference more heavily than usual (and I’m still using Jujutsu Kaisen brainrot as fuel).

This was kind of a daunting shot to draw, the “dynamic” feel of the original frame from the Jujutsu Kaisen anime was pretty scary to think about in particular.

Regardless, I somehow managed to not let overthinking get the best of me and I took on this little challenge.

There isn’t much to say about the lineart here, besides Teto’s twin drills being way too large even for my style, and Amanai-Rei looking quite good thanks to some well-placed deviation from reference, where I’ve gone for a more exaggerated face expression. Oh, and I also allowed some highlights to “bleed into” the lineart, which actually looks pretty nice on Teto’s hand.

My shading/lighting process here was influenced by Eleakuma’s art, which I’ve been exposed to somewhere along the making of this drawing. You can make it out a little on the smooth hand lighting, and on Teto’s shirt.

It’s weird to think I would’ve originally gone for a single shading and lighting color per “material” weren’t it for that influence, it would’ve definitely dragged this drawing down a couple notches.

The background was tricky, and even though I’ve put quite some effort into it, it’s easy to see I haven’t dedicated as much care to it as to the characters. I tried to take some shortcuts for its making, such as duplicating the general shape of all the debris, scaling it down and cleaning up the lines to give it a 3D look without wasting too much time on it - I believe that was a good call, considering the drawing was already taking a bit longer to finish than I had expected.

Fast-forward a bit, and I had pretty much everything done. Characters, background, shading… but that vague dynamic feel of the original scene was still missing. That’s when I copied the near-finished drawing on GIMP to (MANUALLY) apply chromatic aberration, and that actually made quite a subtle, yet strong difference.

I mean, it really had better not been a waste of time, cause I swear that process was seriously a chore to do manually. Honestly, I’m kinda surprised chromatic aberration isn’t a built-in filter in Krita. Maybe I missed something somewhere?

In the midst of all the other stuff, I also ended up kinda forgetting about composition, and I had to crop off quite a large chunk of the canvas, which is why this drawing probably feels “cramped” in some way.

Anyway, wrapping up: result? Good, I’m happy with it!

I ended the last art post saying things go in alternating highs and lows, but… you know, I wouldn’t mind staying up high for a little longer, instead of dipping low again after a good drawing. As long as breaking that balance doesn’t backfire…