yessss that defo answers my questions! ur thoughts on compassion & community intertwined w rebellion definitely show up in ur art lol. something more specific i have been curious abt is ur version of the endings of each specific hunger games & ur characterization/portrayal of the victors at those points! if u have any more thoughts abt any of those characters or their games id love to hear.... im also very not neurotypical abt hunger games
For sure!!
But this is a novel and a half so I apologize in advance
(also most of this is from memory so anyone can correct me if I'm getting any details wrong)
((TW: For visual depictions of Blood, Gore, and Wounds))
I realized I'd seen barely any art showing what the victors would have looked like when they won their games. They were all just kids and I feel like it can be easy to forget that sometimes
For all of them, I made the background one of their main "weapons" but tried to make it look like its turning back on them instead since there are no victors as Haymitch said.
I'll try to explain them all more in depth individually going in the order I drew them:
Finnick Odair, 65th Games:
His main weapons were his trident and nets that he made with vines. His background is one of the nets ready to trap him.
Finnick was the youngest victor ever at only 14. I really really wanted to emphasize just how little that is. (Especially since we know exactly why the Capitol loved him from the start…) Once I actually drew him looking that little I had to step away for a bit because I made myself too sad…
Outside of just how horrific his age is as a concept, I tried to think about what circumstances would lead to him actually winning when surrounded by older tributes.
I think he would have had to avoid any kind of fight he didn't have the upper hand in. We know that he got the most expensive sponsor gifts in the history of the games (a trident), so he probably got plenty of sponsors outside of that as well. Because of that I doubt he needed to go looking for supplies much if ever so it was easy to avoid people there. He was also probably in a career pack, despite his age, due to his training and his popularity, and they would have hunted other tributes down together much like the one we saw in the first book (safer in numbers).
Once it was narrowing down and the pack broke is when I think he started catching people in nets.
All of that is a long winded way of saying that's why, unlike the other victors I drew, I only show him with minor cuts and bruises.
Originally I was going to draw him with a kind of strained smile like he was acting for an audience from the start. But I decided I actually think its sadder if he believed he was popular because of his skill and strategy as a fighter and only learned the whole truth after he won and that's when he started acting more for the camera.
Instead I gave him a more muted despair kind of look, like his world is crashing down.
One of my favorite parts about the movies, mainly THG and ABOSAS, is when they give the career tributes at the end a moment of realization about what they've done, and I wanted to give Finnick his. I'm a person that believes Finnick had to have volunteered for his games. I think he would have legitimately believed in the propaganda the career districts were fed and had a bit of a (very middle school boy) ego about his abilities.
(I was NOT expecting to write so much about his lmao)
She's most well known for ripping someones throat out with her teeth. (Her background is her sharpened teeth getting ready to eat her.) This is treated by The Capitol, and by Katniss, as grotesque and terrifying blood lust (Which obviously the Capitol loves her for).
However, and I'm not at all the first to say it, that sounds more like a terrified and desperate attempt to survive a fight she was losing and an example of hysterical strength. We know that Career packs have had bloody betrayals in the past and I can see Enobaria being a part of one of them. Enobaria doesn't have a canonical age, but I decided to put her on the younger side (15 or 16.) I can imagine some of the older, bigger tributes deciding she was the weakest link towards the end and that was the result.
I tried to make the blood around her mouth and down her shirt look more faded, like she tried desperately to wipe it off
(Also I had to step away from drawing again after I drew her little tooth gap)
I think she probably leaned into the bloodthirsty image afterwards as a way to protect herself and (maybe even started to believe it too)
Annie's known for losing her mind after seeing her district partner decapitated in front of her. After that, she ran off and hid until the game makers started an earth quake, which made the large dam in the arena break and cause a huge flood. Annie was the only survivor because she was the strongest swimmer.
So I decided to make her background dark water that's churning up and over her head.
I also think it can work well as a way to show her mental state in the moment (and afterwards)
Annie is actually one of my favorite characters in the series and I've been writing out a plan for a possible comic series about her that'll go more in depth about my headcanons for her. (when I say comic series, I mean sketches and oneshots, not a full thing lmao)
It wouldn't take place during her games (outside of a few flashbacks when I need more context), instead it would start at her Victory Tour and go into her first (and last) year as a mentor for the 71st Games. Which is a perfect segue to-
Johanna Mason, 71st Games
Johanna is actually first mentioned early on in the first book when Katniss is wondering if the reason Peeta is crying is because he plans to act weak and helpless as a strategy in the games. (Katniss, he just found out he has to fight in a murder tournament with his crush. He's just Sad.)
She bases her theory on Johanna, who pretended she was a "sniveling, cowardly fool" in the arena until the final stretch of the games when she proved to be deadly with an axe.
OR….. Katniss is an unreliable narrator and Johanna was actually a terrified kid from a district with so few victors that she was the only name in the bowl for the Quarter Quell… This is totally just a personal headcanon of mine tho lol.
I think there would have been a point in her games where she realized she actually had a chance and that's when she seemingly had a huge character turn around. Maybe there was a infighting with the careers that ended in multiple deaths and there was only a few left along with any other tributes hiding away like her. Maybe she poked around what was left of their camp, found the axe, and felt strength from her district.
Her background was a little harder for me. Just slapping a big axe behind her felt cheesy. But them I remembered her saying there was no one left that she loved.
So instead I put trees that could represent her loved ones (Two fully grown trees, a younger "teenage" tree, and a sapling) that are in the process of being cut down.
Haymitch Abernathy, 50th Games
Don't worry, I'm almost done.
I don't have as much to say about Haymitch since we know SO much about what happened in his games. But his background was probably the hardest for me. His main weapon was invisible after all. I thought maybe the axe that was used, but again, That would look cheesy. I tried (and kinda failed imo) to draw the cliff side the force field was on instead. But the main thing I did was split the three panels I had on the previous drawings into six for two reasons. 1: Because he had to face twice as many tributes in order to win and 2: Being the only victor of a district that's tributes are seen as fodder for the blood bath means he had to meet and watch the death of twice as many kids every year.
