All The Drawings Of My Hakuouki OCs (featured In My Fic "A Friend Like You") That I Made Over The Course

All the drawings of my Hakuouki OCs (featured in my fic "A Friend Like You") that I made over the course of Drawtober 2023! ✍🌸

#21 Maiko Furukawa Kohana #9 Tayu Ba Makoto

#19 Tengu Tani Sanjuro #5 Furukawa Chie & Yokai

Day 18: "Zombie", featuring Toudou Heisuke! 🌸 (Hakuouki).

I know Heisuke isn't a literal zombie but some kind of vampire, lol, but I plan to draw another character for the "Vampire" prompt and, since Heisuke is literally brought back to life as a monster that goes berserk and tries to eat humans, I think he counts as a metaphorical zombie, haha! 🧟‍♂️

Btw, here's each portrait on its own (because you can't zoom in on Tumblr's PC version 👀) and also the OCs vs Artist clean template (.PNG file) I designed in case someone else wants to fill this art meme!

Here's my version of the OCs vs Artist meme! ✍💖

🔸Favorite OC: My poor freckled daughter with self-esteem issues whose life I love to mess up with memory issues and vampiric apocalypses, Furukawa Chie (Hakuouki OC) and her mischievous Shiba Inu stray dog, Yokai.

🔸First OC: April Saito (Digimon OC), who I created when I was only 10 years old! April will grow up to become a Digimon rights activist, so I thought it'd be fun to draw her protesting with a "✅Yes to Digital Intelligence / ❌No to Artificial Intelligence" sign along with Gigimon, who has a matching anti-AI bandana.

🔸Fans' Favorite OC: Rice Ritz, head of the "Kame Warriors" (my troop of Time Patroller OCs from Dragon Ball Xenoverse), who used to be wildly popular back in 2018 when we ran amazing "OC vs OC" tournaments on DeviantArt.

🔸Easiest to Draw OC: Furukawa Kohana (Hakuouki OC), which caused my sister to go "What do you mean Kohana is the easiest one for you to draw?!". 😂 Maiko/Geiko are one of my special interests, so she's one of the few OCs I can draw from memory without having to consult a character sheet, lol.

🔸Hardest to Draw OC: Tani Sanjuro (Hakuouki OC), the arrogant yet skillful captain of the 7th Division of the Shinsengumi that both me and my fic's readers love to hate… and who has features as difficult to draw as his whole wardrobe!

🔸The Artist: Lady Yomi herself! 👀 Referenced from a real photo so that's why I'm wearing my noise cancelling headphones, haha.

I drew this in 2016 after watching Heisuke's Hakumyu play (Hakuouki), since the final battle against poor Sannan reminded me so much of Anakin and Obi-Wan's duel in Star Wars, lol! 😆🔥

✋Heisuke: "It's over, Sannan! I have the high ground!"

😡Sannan: "You underestimate my power!"

😨Heisuke: "Don't try it!"

🤸‍♂️Sannan: "AAAAAAH!" *jumps in the air and gets his legs chopped off*

I'm so happy after (finally) deciding to stop posting my art on DeviantArt! 🤟💯 It's like 5 tons of weight has been lifted off my back, as I put up with the staff's hypocrisy/greediness and the constant dogpiling of AI shills since 2022, but the way they escalated this year (4 different incidents where Help Desk's pro-AI bias made them side with the harassers over and over again 🤡) ended up making me realize that dA is no longer the place I used to call "home", but one of the biggest havens of lazy, entitled, and manipulative AI art thieves out there. 💀

As I said in dA when I announced my departure (after 12 long years where I was awarded both Seniorship and Deviousness in recognition of the work I did for the community 🙃); unlike AI shills, ARTISTS don't depend on a site or a generator to make art, and our skills accompany us wherever we go without anyone ever being able to take them away from us. Art is FREEDOM, and it will always be. ✍️💖

A site as corrupted as dA doesn't deserve to receive a single drop of traffic thanks to our art (the one they're currently exploiting in their Stability AI/LAION-powered "DreamUp" generator 🚮), and the best way to punish the staff for their greed and cruelty towards human artists is to stop posting art there as millions of artists have done since 2022. 💪🎨 Can't wait to share more art with you guys in this new stage of my artistic journey!

(There's more info about the non-stop harassment I endured for being one of the few remaining vocal anti-AI Senior Members in my last 2 dA posts, which will be deleted after a few days).

🎨Art Update: I was putting the final touches to my realistic RuPaul portrait when I got sick with Covid and had no choice but to rest (I'm immunosuppressed and have to be careful with this virus 🤕). I planned to start my entry for Becky Kidus' Animal Portrait Contest after posting my RuPaul artwork, but the deadline is July 15... so I don't think I can finish it in time. 🙃

📸P. S. In the meanwhile, here's a WIP screenshot of my RuPaul painting!

📚Fanfic Update: I'm taking advantage of being in bed sick with Covid (and therefore unable to draw 💀) to finish editing the new chapter of my Hakuouki fic on my phone, so it should be ready soon! 👍 (Endless thanks to my dear readers for being patient despite the slow updates! 🐌⏳).