This Is Such A Cool Concept

This is such a cool concept

I need to see it happen

It’s a loop!

Guys i have a wacky theory but, BUT, we know Dirk and Rose are creating 2 different new species to compete with each other on Deltritus, Terezi will judge them and the winner gets to play sburb.

We saw many discarded creatures before the big 3-year hiatus, and when it came back we could see one particular creature, a horroterror looking creature, obviously made by rose.

So rose is most likely mixing abisal creatures with her own DNA to make the ultimate Sburb player.

Acording to the MS Paint Adventures Wiki

“ Rose lalonde was never very involved with the show but purchased a shirt and re-purposed it to fit her tastes, which is quite fitting considering that the Squiddles are, in part, a subconscious reimagining of the Horroterrors and the other monsters in the Furthest Ring.”

NOW, Andrew Hussie once said jokingly that the session that created the A1 (the dancestors’s) universe was played by 48 Squiddles, but later deconfirming its canonicity in Book 4's commentary.

What if they are using that idea again? It’s normal to create stuff, delete it and suddenly dig it out because it can be repurposed for a new idea.

And with the last update confirming Rose’s species to be aquatic I think we’re headed in that direction.

I think Dirk and Rose will make their 2 species, and rose’s will be horroterror-like creatures. They will win the competition against Dirk’s species (idk probably something related to horse puppet ninjas) and a group of them will play the game.

Another instance of the squidles real form being abisal creatures is the very first creature Dirk creates, maybe foreshadowing the winner of the competition?

Acording to dirk this will be a 4 player session. Which makes the staement of “a 48 squiddles session created Beforus’s universe” false, but still a posible foreshadowing to a more reduced number of the abisal conterpart of the squiddles being responsible for the creation of said universe.

So this Horroterror/squidle people play and win the game, create a universe, and this universe is where Beforus is born (Universe A1), which then gets scratch and creates Alternia (Universe A2), which creates EarthA, the beta kid's home (Universe B1), which also gets scratched and creates EarthB, the alpha kids’s apocaliptical home gobernated by the Condesce (Universe B2), which creates EarthC’s universe, where all the surviving players now live (Universe C1), where the Horroterror/squidle people are created, who then win their game, create a universe, and this universe is where Beforus is born(Universe A1) etc, etc, etc.

There’s only five universes, which feed from each other in a wheel that creates and is created by one another. The Alpha timeline, just like a juju, it's a perfect cycle and doesn’t have a beginning or end.

There’s no escape, it’s a loop.

The muse Calliope

Omg I love him

most happiest of wriggling days to our beloved beep beep meow! decided to celebrate this crabby guy by teaching myself a new skill and learning how to make him in blender...and then i ended up making his room too and the letting him mess about in it a bit, i had a bunch of fun, there r defo some things i'd change/fix with my expanded knowledge now but im really happy with this first attempt!

anyway happy 6/12 everybody! :)

bonus model breaking crab walk hehe V=(° °)=V

If you wouldn’t mind sharing your secrets, can you drop a quick tutorial for the hades art style? You seem to capture it very well!

Hey anon! Thanks so much, I’m flattered you think so!

To be honest there's really no secret, just a lot of trial and error. I am an amateur, but I’ll point out a few of my observations of the amazing Hades team’s work that I attempted to incorporate into this Astarion drawing, especially SuperGiant Games art director Jen Zee. Everything below is just my layman’s observation of her much, MUCH better work. You should check her out yourself!

First off, here’s a simple split out of the whole process (this will be long, more below the cut:)

POSE & PERSONALITY

Hades art is full of personality so the first challenge was to pick a pose that illustrates just one or two aspects of the character. For example, Dionysus from Hades 1 below has a languid, draping pose that reflects his chill-guy party vibes. Just looking at him you get an immediate idea of his personality.

And as much as I love the later wet-cat version of Astarion as he matures as a person, for the purposes of illustration in this style I chose a pose and expression that leaned into his early, less complex, more wily self. The dagger, wink, jaunty hips and head tilt are meant to communicate, without additional context, that he’s both trying to be appealing and is not trustworthy. 

LINEWORK & SHADING

Next is the linework and blocking! The Hades art team tends to use a combination of near-mono-thickness black lines, where exterior lines are thicker and interior lines are thinner or have no lines at all. They will often forgo an interior line to communicate form via color blocking instead. The style also makes heavy use of absolute black for the deepest shades, especially on more sinister characters or spooky aspects of a characters design. (See: Zagreus’ three dog head skulls and his red eye perpetually cast in deep shadow.)

It took some back and forth to find the right balance of black shading for Astarion. Too much and he looked too sinister and not approachable enough. Too little and he looked too innocent. 

Picking a strong light source helped with determining the direction and placement of the shadows so that just enough was obscured/revealed. It also helps in differentiating forms from each other so that, for example, the arm doesn’t disappear into the chest and become unreadable.

Using heavy black shading was a particularly useful trick in Astarion’s case, because his camp clothes color palette is fairly monochromatic between his light hair, pale skin, and white/cream shirt. That much light color can easily blend in too much and become boring: the flats I used were slight variations of white, from a warm reddish-peach to a yellowy cream to a cool light gray for the dagger.

COLOR & LIGHTING

Last is color! In Hades 1 and even more so in Hades 2, the lighting schemes are deceptively complex. There are often multiple light sources and use of bounce lighting to add a lot of visual interest. For example, check out this lighting on Polyphemus from Hades 2:

Not only does he have a cool moonlight hitting him from above, he also has a warm orange rimlight lighting him from the left, AND cool lavender bounce light bouncing off the ground and hitting him from below. All these combine and layer on top of one another to help emphasize the forms of the cyclop’s musculature and the textures of his sheep wool coat. 

I don’t think I was as successful in my own lighting scheme, because I’m an amateur, but I determined that the scene in which I was placing Astarion has a high sun and was outdoors. This means that the light hitting him from above would be a light, warm yellow and the bounce light hitting him from the left would reflect the nearby water and blue sky of the environment. 

To achieve this, I made use of different layer modes in my art program (Clip Studio Paint) to apply purple shadows (via the Multiply layer mode) and highlights (via the Soft Light layer mode) in a light sky blue and a light yellow for the primary and secondary light sources.

I ran into trouble with the blade, because it was also a light metal in an already light-color-heavy color scheme. At first, it was blending in too much and hard to read. So I decided to give it a bit of a magic teal glow to help it stand out, which meant adding a few specks of magic light reflecting back onto the face and clothes as well. 

INTEREST & DETAILS

Speaking of, Hades style art makes extensive use of adding little speckles of high-saturation color to add visual interest and cohesion. See this Zagreus portrait which is primarily made of grays, a tan bone-color, and reds: 

But sprinkled in are neon teal and magenta that don’t relate to the lighting at all. It’s just there to break up the blocks of color, bring unique colors like his green eye into the rest of the portrait, and direct the viewer’s eye. These highlights are slightly less bright in Hades 2, but still there, such as in this depiction of Apollo, who mostly glows with a warm sunlight but also has random pops of sky blue and green flecking his armor and hair.

The pops of color are often placed more centrally on the figure to keep your eye on the important parts of the portrait, like near Apollo’s face and on his armor. The color pops aren’t as frequent at the extremities; too much on the arm and your eye would be drawn away from his face.

I took a similar approach where I grabbed some of the brighter colors (like Astarion’s red eye, and the teal glow of the dagger), to add dabs of color that normally would not “make sense” from a lighting perspective, but add a little visual interest:

Also I totally studied their approach to Apollo’s curly hair to create the impression of Astarion’s curls!

Anyway, I think that's all I got for now, I hope this helps! There's more but this is already REALLY long so I'll stop here. In the end, it's really just a process of observation and replication of things you love in artwork you admire. Give it a try, it's a lot of fun :)

OH MY GOD THAT CAPE IT’S AMAZING

Seafoam prince (AF sona)

I'm actually quite proud of this one. I had the opportunity to experiment with new colors and brushes and I fell in love with the results.

I won't deny it, I would like to receive attacks from this one...

Tag urself jade Harley edition