Guys Deltarune has kinda taken over my life

So I figured out how to change my phone ringtone and notification sounds and immediately wanted to theme my phone around Deltarune because I was so hyped for Chapter 5. I legit used a ruler to make sure that my ratio for this was big enough and it worked pretty well so I'm happy about that. Flowery's boss fight annoyed me so much mainly because of how clunky the mechanics are to get used to. I feel like it would have been more interesting if throughout each fight with one of the six flowers, they used their soul effects on you (i.e. Blue makes you blue, yellow makes the soul yellow, etc), where each fight introduces each mechanic, and then the Flowery fight makes you switch in between each soul mode during each attack somehow idk it'd probably be even more clunky but ooooh my god I wish we could have gotten more chances to acclimate to the orange soul's playstyle becaue I struggled SO HARD- but yeah other than that I liked the mechanics of this chapter a lot. Also I love Mew Mew, I love her fight so much, Petal Dance is my favourite track of the chapter because of those BEAUTIFUL ZUN-PETS YEAAAAAAAAAAAH- (I was literally thinking during Aqua's fight, "wow! these bullet patterns feel very Touhou-" AND THEN THE ZUN-PETS KICKED IN AND I WENT FERAL. Speaking of feral, the moment Flowery showed up I hissed like a feral cat the moment he said his name, he pisses me off so much I LOVE HIM, he's such a professional ragebaiter. I really enjoyed Chapter 5 overall, and while a lot of people aren't that big a fan of the tone of the chapter, I think it works with it being the last "fun" adventure and is also pretty good juxtaposition to... something that happens in this chapter that has genuinely made me physically ill thinking about but tickles my morbid love for existential and psychological horror so much that it makes this game feel like a large scale psychological experiment, no joke.

Anyways, onto the art. So I wanted to try doing actual lineart for once after using the chalk brush again. Despite a few stray lines here and there, I'm actually pretty happy with how this turned out. It's a different sort of style and feel compared to what I usually go for, but I enjoyed changing up my style for this one. Choosing an actual colour palette was really difficult, but once I changed up my process and added the actual foreground and background I ended up really liking it. I was inspired by the Kingdom Heart's Stained Glass art, so that influenced the composition of the piece a lot. I'll also put my sketchbook doodle for this piece in as well, because there were a few changes in terms of Kris' design along the way. I made Kris' cape cover up the entirety of their chest because I genuinely did not feel like drawing their torso and also because I liked how it looked a lot. I really like making Kris' cape big and flowy because there's just more oppurtunities for posing and compositions that way. I also just really like drawing fabric, it's so fun. I may not be 100% satisfied with the way the pose reads, though I blame that on the fact that I've been looking at this god damn piece for way too long LOL-

I REALLY REALLY wanted to incorperate the blue roses Kris is associated with into the piece, and this ended up making me think about Kris' backstory again. So, blue roses are genetically modified versions of white roses (which thinking about it now, calls to mind the whole "copies are monochrome but you coloured us in with care" thing) and this got me thinking about theories like "Kris is the vessel we made in the beginning of the game." I'm not 100% a follower of this theory, but a part of me also believes that Kris is tied to Gaster in some way. Another idea I've had is that Kris was experimented on by Gaster in the shelter, or that Gaster is PLOT TWIST! A HUMAN! And is Kris' biological father that heard about the prophecy, had a religious psychosis about it, can did scientific experiments on his own child to try and create a vessel for them in the shelter, to which Kris escaped and was taken in by the Dreemurrs. Their dynamic would probably be something like, "no matter how much you hate me, your are still my child," and a lot of Kris' childhood was Gaster focusing on making Kris a strong enough vessel for us, the player (I wanna make another post and/or art piece talking about this so I'll leave it at that). On that note, I believe that down in the shelter, something similar to the determination experiments is going on down there, and if Dess Knight is true, then those experiments are what caused her to turn into the Roaring Knight. This is also why Friend is similar to Endogeny, they're also an amalgamate, alongside the knight (who noticeably drips darkness goop when we first see it in Chapter 3). I don't have any solid evidence as I don't know all of the lore, but I just wanted to talk about some of my ideas here.

IDK why but I tend to really struggle with using bright fuchsias and hot pinks in art. Maybe it's just because I tend to gravitate towards certain colour pallets or I just don't like using super bright cold colours. I had this issue with the last piece of Deltarune fanart I made where I just didn't like how the pink of Kris' cape stood out, and my one gripe about that piece is how monochrome it looks. I think improving on my colour range (like, the kinds of colours I use, IDK I just made the term up) is gonna be my next thing to work on because I do wanna try branching out to colours and pallets I normally don't use.

I was also listening to Penumbra Phantasm a lot while working on this piece, and while a lot of people thought it would be the final boss theme, idk I always saw it as being Kris' theme weirdly enough. Maybe because the original version of it is played on the piano or I just really like Kris and think they deserve a cool-ass theme lol. I do think they'd take after their father and include the game over leitmotif in "Faint Courage" because I think it really fits them. I was even humming it at certain points while listening to Penumbra Phantasm and it actually works really well in the key of the piece. If I were to ever compose a musical piece for like, a battle theme for Kris, I'd probably throw in a leitmotif or two from Heartache to represent their connection to Toriel, using Penumbra Phantasm as a base, and then using the Faint Courage leitmotif as well. The main instrument would probably be a piano because I think their love for playing the piano should be reflected in any potential boss theme they get.

You'll also notice some changes in how I designed Kris' armor. Like many aspects of my art style, the way I interpreted Kris' in-game armor was inspired by Yoshitaka Amano's work on the Final Fantasy series. My headcannon is that Dragon Blazers is the Deltarune equivalent to Final Fantasy, and the aura that Amano's works give off just feels like the kind of aura Kris wants to exude. Like, they'd fucking love the fact that their armor looks like it came straight off of some Dragon Blazer's box art, so they have every right to aura farm.

I like how the blockyness of their cape ended up contrasting with how intricate their armor turned out, and I also loved rendering their hair. One thing that I've started doing when doing the lighting is having it almost reflect off of the armor to emphasize how shiny it is.

So the process of figuring out Kris' armor started in my sketchbook. I found a bunch of references of how Amano designs armor and tried to sort of capture the vibe they gave off while drawing Kris' armor (also Noelle as a bonus, I'll be honest I'm still trying to figure out how to draw her in my style as well). I also wanted to give them some silver hoop earrings because that just feels like something Kris would wear all the time.

In some of my initial drafts for Kris' armor I gave them long sleeves but found that the short sleeved look just worked better for Kris (also is more accurate to their in-game sprite) and also fit the vibe I was going for (I'll put some of those initial sketches in here too). The one I did in colour was like, one of the first drawings of Kris' dark world form I did. You can also tell these are old because of how wack the anatomy is (also bonus Ralsei, Frisk, and Friend). In these older sketches I gave their cape this collar that I stylized by making it a triangle, and even tried giving Kris some chainmail but I was never 100% happy with them. You can also see where I started trying to take some inspo from Early final fantasy designs with Kris' armor. I'm also really really bad with markers so please pardon the shitty colouring. Weirdly enough I have an easier time with Kris' in-game palette traditionally than digitally idk. Originally I was going to give them a heart-shaped chest plate but I'll be honest I couldn't make it work digitally. Also, I do not CARE if the long ass cape is impractical, it's fucking cool as shit and it lets me have fun with Kris' silhouette when drawing them so SHHHHH-

aaaand this is the reason why I said I never wanted to draw pianos ever again because HOLY FUCKING SHIT THE PIANO WAS TOUGH TO FIGURE OUT-

It was worth the work in the end, but holy shit it was fucking agonizing.

Ok so the scene in chapter four where Kris plays the big ass piano in the church's dark world had a really big emotional impact on me and I knew what I had to do.... draw it.

I've seen a couple of other people's renditions. One thing you'll notice in mine is that Kris' caplet is blue/gray because I wanted to take full advantage of the fact that from behind and during that scene the colours used in the sprite art for them playing the piano are the same as the colours used to shade their armor and I was having a rough time getting red and pink to work nicely with the piece while also fitting the vibe i wanted. Besides, it's not like the Dark World in this game can never impact the way lighting hits certain colours and stuff so just take this as an artistic liberty lmao. I really wanted it to have this dreamlike feeling, because the dark worlds in Deltarune (ESPECIALLY chapter four's) remind me of settings I've seen in my own dreams. The music for this chapter was also phenomenal, dark sanctuary is so beautiful and well composed and Hammer of Justice is probably the most Touhou sounding song ever composed by someone other than ZUN and I get excited every time I listen to it.

So, the big piano in the Church Dark World in Deltarune can be interpreted and illustrated a couple of different ways, but omg going off of the game alone was kinda tough since it's kinda hard for me to make out details in pixel art (which is just a product of the medium since you gotta keep stuff simple a lot of the time), and what I wanted for this drawing was to make the piano/organ feel MASSIVE. Kris, Ralsei, and Susie are teensie tiny in comparison and I love the idea of the dark world exagerrating and amplifying aspects of their light world counterpart's location. However, there's only so much you can attempt to get away with when drawing instruments because at one point the piano was looking like this.

If a sentient piano were to look at this, would this image be the piano equivalent to an Alternate from the Mandela Catalogue?

There were at least 90 keys on the piano at this point in the process and the moment I realized it I knew this piece would take a while to do. Eventually I got to this part in the process where I could finally block out the main composition elements and idea for the lighting. This was when I also realized that I didn't know what the fuck to do with the hands for this pose, and had to consult so many stock photos of just people playing the piano at a specific angle in a specific pose and none of you have any idea how hard that kind of reference was to find that actually gave me a good idea of the anatomy.

Once all of the genuinely hard shit was done, the rendering was really fun, especially the armor. I had so much fun playing around with Kris' armor, and even though you can't see it because of the caplet Kris' wears, I actually put in a lot of detail into their cuiress. The way the pauldron kinda curves around the should was also influenced by Yoshitaka Amano's artwork for the Final Fantasy series, because his art makes me think of the type of aura Kris' would really want. They probably post like they're in one of Amano's artworks in group photos in the Dark World and when they were younger when prompted to do a "cool photo" with Noelle since they're both nerds.

I liked the idea of the cape kinda falling apart into a weird abstract trail, and it really helped with the composition of the piece, though it mainly came as a result of kinda struggling with the cape itself... anyways,

Kris has pretty much become my comfort character and I've only been apart of the UTDR fandom for less than a month. I've only done one run of Undertale since I already knew a lot more about it than Deltarune, and omg I am so glad I had zero clue what the hell was going on with Deltarune aside from Friend, Spamtenna and The Weird Route because I genuinely can't get this fucking game out of my head now ESPECIALLY KRIS OMG. THEY'RE SO INTERESTING AND HAVE WORMED THEIR WAY INTO MY HEART SO I GUESS WE'RE EVEN????

After watching a theory vid arguing how Kris could be the vessel we make from the start of the game, while I don't 100% argee with the concept, I love the idea that since Kris was born their only purpose was to fulfill the prophecy and nothing else. My headcannon right now is that Gaster was Kris' therapist, not in a way that actually helped Kris get better, but more in a "oh god this is the type of shit you'd learn about in a psychology class when talking about a controversial and unethical mind experiment that has helped us learn a lot more about the human brain but oh god that shit should not have happened." Not saying it would be like a physical torture thing (though they probably got the god ol' determination experimentation treatment in the shelter probably), but moreso an erasure of Kris' sense of self to try and perfectly mold them into exactly what they need for the prophecy. Fuck, maybe during the goner creator sequence at the beginning of the game, we're not playing as us but rather Kris in a sort of demonstration where he lets Kris create a goner, a copy of themself, who they want to be, and then forces them to watch it get discarded, thrown into the Depths. No one can choose who they are in this world, and you are no different. Carol would absolutely make sure to remind Kris of this fact. I think it's the reason Kris may have stopped playing piano at one point. The day Carol saw Kris playing piano she would have made sure to stop it in an instant. What do you think you're doing? Do you have any idea how selfish you're being right now? And why would they do this? Well, in my interpretation, I think Kris being a part of the Goner creator also had a different purpose. To show them something. To remind them of what exactly they will become... a vessel...

Something I noticed when seeing stuff related to the Weird Route is how much the player's influence is present. Things like us being able to read Noelle's thoughts, the whole "who's going to hear?" thing... maybe the Weird Route is a version of the game where as we, the player, force Kris to do worse and worse shit, continuing to push them down their own downward spiral, we start to override their personality, their conscious becomes ours, and our determination overcomes theirs.

I think Carol and/or Gaster taught Kris how to tear out their own soul, or they forced Kris to learn "the hard way" by ripping it out of Kris themselves as a punishment for deviating from the path they were destined for. Because of this, Kris picked up the habit and learned how to do it to themselves. At first they would have done it to make sure their soul is still theirs, but over time they became paranoid. They lost trust over their own thoughts, scared that at any moment they will stop being themselves and will lose control over their body, and that any little intrusive thought they have is a sign that the possession is under way, that soon they will lose control of their body, their mind, and begin hurting the people they care about (This is also where my headcannon that Kris has severe OCD comes in). In this case, I think the reason for Kris attacking the soul when its trying to get Dess' guitar is because at that point they're so deep under Carol's control that seeing their own soul, their true desires, freaks them the fuck out and is trying desperately to suppress it.

But that's in the normal route. By the time we get to Chapter 4 in the weird route, the battle for the dominant consciousness is already underway. What I think is interesting about the moment after Noelle asks "who's gonna hear?" and the player responding "me" is the moment when the lighting goes red and the wind blows from out of nowhere. This hasn't happened (yet) at any point in the normal route, even when Kris puts the soul back into themself we don't get anything like this. I think at this point in the weird route, the turning point for the game in general, we, the player, will begin to overpower Kris' will, and soon enough, replace them entirely. By the end of the weird route Kris will spiritually be dead, an empty husk for us to control. Maybe they begin to look more and more like an actual goner. Maybe the only characters to actually stick by us would be Noelle, forced by her mother, and the player, to serve the walking husk of their childhood friend to bring about the apocalypse.

And we know that something like this is absolutely possible, and this happens in every single genocide route of Undertale. To go back and update my theory I posted about Undertale being the consequences of Deltarune's prophecy or "bad ending" I think Chara and Frisk are still both aspects of Kris. Frisk represents who Kris actually was before we possessed them, and Chara represents what we, the player, turn them into. A hollow, soulless version of Kris that gets left behind once we complete the game. When our weird route save file is long gone, and all that's left is an empty vessel. I think under this new lense, it still allows Frisk to be their own person while still connecting them to Kris, more of a reincarnation if you will.

And oh would you look at that, the game Tenna's game board is parodying happens to be a game series where the protagonists and antagonist are stuck in a cycle like that hmmmmm interesting.