Bast's Art

i used to draw a lot when I was younger, but anymore it feels like I just have nothing to give to it, and it’s left me kind of, like, bitter and jaded? about it? I realized that I’ve been suffering completely unmitigated burnout for years of my life and I’m sure that’s got something to do with it, but now I’m in a place where I haven’t picked up a pencil in like 6 years and don’t even know what to do with myself.

if you don’t want to, please don’t feel pressured to respond, but I’m just sort of curious as to if you have any perspective on the issue. thank you so much for your time, and for sharing your work for all these years!!!

Oh wow, that's wild that's you've been following my art that long! Thanks for sticking around so long!

As for advice on balancing art and life uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I'm not doing too swell about it either, so I'm not sure what advice I can give, but honestly if you just doodle in a notebook, it can help build that habit back. You don't need to be drawing full illustrations or anything "useful". It can just be enough to enjoy the process

I haven't been drawing consistently for a while at this point and when I draw, it's often sketchy and messy. Honestly, the most drawing I do is doodling in my work notepads between meetings. Similarly, when I try writing, it's rarely anything "real" and just random scenes and dialogue that pops into my head

Then if I'm tired and struggling to commit a lot of energy to art, the process still relaxes me because I've made it the habit to doodle

Especially when you're burnt out or you've taken a long time out of drawing, just let yourself do something disposable. It's a gentle way to let go of the expectations that have built up, and it can help you realise what comforts you about art (e.g. I like sketching faces and clothes)

People have already talked about how every dark-skinned character is grey (which is already weird enough) but I've also noticed that the characters have a lot of colours

I noticed this most on Sirocco, but it's also Leda and some of the others

On this bust portrait of Sirocco, I counted 13 distinct colours, and from the model he has even more on the rest of his outfit.

A lot of colours is not strictly bad character design, but they're not necessarily grouped together either. He's got cool purples, yellows and turquoise, a dusty warm skin tone, then highly saturated warm reds, greens, and silvers. There's no pattern to which hues are dark or saturated

Even comparing his design against two other characters with a lot of contrasting colours, Petra still only has 10 (which can be grouped into about 7 due to similar shades) and Daichi has 7. This is despite seeing more of their bodies

The colours themselves have more design to them. Peta is mid-toned purples/red + contrasting saturated green and yellow. Then Daichi is dark cool green/blue with a bright pink and orange.

I'd assumed it was just what the Three Houses designer was always like, but they'd previously stuck to analogous palettes (to the point of the Golden Deer each having a single colour)

To be fair to the designer, this isn't uniform. Ursula, Dietrich, and Ninae have pretty elegant designs, with one of two main colours with black and silver as a neutral

But even when the number of colours is an elegant choice, the contrast between them is quite strange, like Alexandra wearing a pink and turquoise that are almost exactly the same value against each other

It's interesting when something feels a bit incohesive, because the best colour design in Fire Emblem has a real gift for it

Fates is desaturated, with a focus on dark colours with pops of highly saturated reds

Shadows of Valentia keeps a low contrast and a focus on papery golds

Even something highly saturated like the Arcana keeps a heavy focus on saturated reds, golds, and blues with contrasting black and white

I tried a new sort of design method this time: black and white blocking with I then fill with colours

There's a fun exercise to practice outfit/character design: draw your OCs in t-shirts and jeans

Absolutely no worries! I responded a little late a night so that last bit was probably a bit more intense than warranted

Your skill and style are spectacular! It's easy to see how much care you put into everything you add.

Thank you, that's very kind and I definitely try to put care into my designs, but just be careful about insulting other artists when complimenting others

As much as I have a very different design style to the original Love & Legends and I enjoy putting my own spin on the concepts, the original artists and designers are still very skilled, and most importantly, often limited by the marketing of these games. It's awful, but these artists have to fight tooth and nail to get any kind of diversity into corporate games and it's not a fight they always win

Lovestruck developers have talked about how difficult it was to convince higher-ups to give any character dark skin or how every male character was mandated to have a six-pack, and that's just snippets of what they probably had to go through

thats it. thats the whole ask.

One funny thing about doing this Love & Legends remake is that I also get to draw the cameos

Love & Legends Season 6 is officially finished and available on Windows, Android, Mac, and Linux!

This is an unofficial recreation of Love & Legends from Lovestruck Voltage featuring unique art and GUI.

Despite the horrors of the Witch Queen's war, your bond cannot be broken and you're starting to dream of your future together: a peaceful world, marriage, maybe even children. What new powers will you need to discover to secure it, and what powers will the Witch Queen unleash to stop you?

It’s a visual novel/dating sim with seven unique routes, each with six seasons fully available (~1M+ words total). The main character is a bisexual woman from Chicago with two female and five male love interests. Alain's route is complete.

Seasons 1-5 and Season 6-9 are split into two games for file size. Download the second part to read Season 6!