guess we're here :))

- it’s fun to be awake & in an upright position

- consciousness is a gift

A fic written 2 years ago is NOT OLD. Two years is nothing. Two years ago was yesterday.

“I’m Not Afraid”

So the idea was to have Markus and Connor connect hands underwater - androids can communicate through wireless connection, but it is only through physical touch that they share their memory and feelings. I’m always fascinated by the imagined intimacy exclusive to constructs and MI’s yet inconceivable to humans.

Kind of like when Murderbot pondered if how he felt reuniting with ART could be similar to humans hearing a heartbeat they recognize - unfortunately, it is not. What it felt about ART’s feed presence is a qualia entirely foreign to us.

One can only imagine - and imagine we sure do.

As for the setting, memory has long been tied to water, from the spring of Mnemosyne all the way to Carl Jung. There is also this eerie sense of delay, a sort of “paralysis” of the will when reminiscing of the past - partly because memory is so fickle and unreliable, partly because one can never cross the same river twice - that is not dissimilar to when one tries to wade through or move under the water.

I’ve also noticed that a motif I keep coming back to in my personal works is some form of medium - ie. glasses/mirror/water etc - that alters the quality of light, often to match the emotional state of my subject. So, this should also be one of those ones ;)

Anyways, the composition is simple: tilted surface of the water, two hands touching while they look into each other’s eyes. I stabilized the tilted shot with two triangles (outlined in pink) - the smaller one formed between Markus’ inner elbow/Connor’s palm/where the two foreheads touch. The triangles are also echoed by the LED logo on Connor’s uniform. Neat.

(I also framed the top right corner of the canvas to balance out the weight without being distracting.)

Connor’s rigid posture + form-fitting uniform VS Markus’ relaxed body language + flowing sleeve is also a pointed contrast. I probably should have used blender for this but uhh I rawdogged the anatomy instead (which did come back to bite me in the butt later).

I did a few studies for underwater color, lighting & texture, then I pulled out a gradient map to ballpark the color layout. Though I did find the first draft a bit too dark and stuffy (?) for my liking, so I used curve + color selection + color balance to blend towards warmer hues.

Rendering the waves was challenging as expected. I kept close to the same large shapes as in my color draft, and added more details along the diagonal line that leads to Connor’s face. I also tried out perspective blur from a Procreate tutorial to add some Tyndall effect:

For rendering, I always try to stay as close to my color drafts as possible - it might be boring for some, but I hate rendering so, so much that unless I have a touchpoint to reference back to, I will never finish any piece ever :p

Here’s a close-up (flipped version) with LED - it’s too much fun to draw but ah well. Connor’s LED is on the left temple so you shouldn’t be able to see it.

Here I also corrected perspective for Markus’ shoulder (ah here comes the repaint. I’m eating my tablet.) and added more light rays based on underwater photographs I found. For final touches:

Color aberration: dragging around each RBG channel by like 3px

Bloom: stamp all layers>lens blur>opacity 25%>change to screen mode>level correct to super high contrast>erase to taste

I added some bubbles

@introvertsnation