One Chick, Many Ds

Cheek: a round dull pain that clocks your entire head in a different direction. It’s painful and throbs but the main effect of a punch to the cheek is how jarring it is. You feel it in your mouth, your teeth. And no matter how you position that punch the knuckles will always hit the jaw and cheek bones adding a frame of sharp pain in which the redness will be painted.

Temple: getting hit on the temple pushes your head to the side rather than turning it. It’s disorienting because it leaves you very off balance. It essentially feels like a bad pressure headache, like when you have a sinus infection on a plane, but in one spot and on the outside. It’s sharp in the middle and radiates outward and even after the initial impact it pulses like an earthquake epicenter. It easily causes long lasting headaches and is the most likely of these examples to cause a concussion.

Eye: this is a weird one. The fist doesn’t fit within the eye socket so either the knuckles on the brow and cheeks bones protect the actual eye or they don’t. The former option gives a full spreading pain below the eye which results in the classic black eye look and a sharp pain on your brow similar to hitting your shin on the couch. The latter option, well bad things can happen when a hard fast object makes direct contact with your eye but for the sake of this it feels like a vacuum bc the concave shape is being covered and pressurized. The eye feels pushed back and pulled forward all at once. It doesn’t necessarily hurt that bad for that long unless the punch was meant to do damage. I’m fortunate to say I don’t know what it would feel like then.

Nose: remember that prank kids used to pull where they’d line up their hands with their nose, push them in one direction and crack a knuckle at the same time to pretend to break their nose? Yeah that’s what it looks like when someone punches you from the side in the nose, except it’s someone else’s hand and your nose makes the sound instead of their knuckle. It’s just like breaking any bone where you hear it and feel the action if it being done but that moment of shock blankets you for a split second until all the pain comes rushing back. It’s sharp and needlelike and can give you black eyes just to add insult to injury. If you get hit in the nose from the front it’s like the uncomfortableness of when you have to sneeze but can’t. Except that feeling took all the steroids and is now using your face as a punching bag to express its roid rage. It crackles outward like static electricity under your skin, your eyesight gets fuzzy and you can’t tell if it’s because you’re tearing up, it’s hard to open your eyes, or you’re momentarily stunned and blinded. Just know it’s all three. I find that this one knocks the wind out of you the most. Gotta remind yourself to breathe just don’t try to do it through your nose.

If you really want to know what this feels like I’d suggest joining a mixed martial arts because they’ll teach you correct form and power distribution and you can spar with pads and actually hit each other.

It can flow in ways to create a lush paradise or concentrate so heavily in areas they become borderline toxic. The Nibel Mountains (while I know part of their problem is there's been a reactor there for 40+ years; do remember Nibel is facing the same problem of ecological collapse the Midgar Wastes are, so that's why it looks Like That. Nibel is just lucky it had one little town instead of a giant city) are essentially Gaia's version of active volcanoes, just without the heat of magma and lava. The Lifestream is also so close that those mountains were intimately tied with the cycle of life and death in Nibel probably for generations. Rhadore, similarly, was a volcanic archipelago, and her people knew that well. Shinra? They refused to listen as they always do.

The Lifestream itself is also one of the most animist concepts I've ever seen in fiction. It is All Life. Everything upon Gaia is intimately woven into the fabric of the Lifestream; plants, animals, rocks, rivers, oceans, Everything. It contains all memories that have ever existed and will ever exist upon Gaia. The Lifestream is the movement of the waves, the rushing course of rivers, the memories of materia, the slopes of the mountains, the rustling of plants and leaves, it is the souls of all things, it is mortal and gods alike.

The world we see in FF7 proper is a fantasy world that is slowly being consumed by capitalism and a cyberpunk hellscpe (those are often the same things). It is a fantasy world that has forgotten what it once was, what it still is. It is about a people who have been utterly disconnected from the very river of life that created and sustains them.

Light threatens to overcome the Warrior; the Exarch offers unexpected solace.

Little preview below: ~~~

What did you think was going to happen, you fool? That he’d like what you did? Like you? He doesn’t even know who you are. And even if he did, your destinies will never align. You’ve known that all along. Soon he will, too.

Again.

He remembers the way Arkin bent for him. The arch of his neck as the Exarch wound him tight, the small, faraway sounds he made as he had unraveled in submission. It was beautiful, the way the Warrior had opened under his hands. It was a precious gift. He would give anything to see it again.

Well. Nearly anything.

ANYWAYS SORRY FOR THE RANT!! 😓

HI NO WORRIES FOR THE RANT!! Regretfully I have not drawn a whole lot of Sephiroth... perhaps that shall change someday? 🤔

Hmm I think I know what most people's advice would be, like "oh don't worry about art style just do whatever you like!" and yes, that's kinda true, but it's not really helpful. So here's my thoughts on the matter:

I find that the best approach to finding a style that fits you is to start by identifying your own tastes in art. Instead of worrying about consistency, focus on finding brushes/tools that feel good to use, colors and lines that appeal to you, and then play around with those. You'll find it a lot easier to make art that you like if you let yourself have fun with it, as opposed to subjecting it to pass/fail criteria.

For example, it's probably not surprising to hear that I love vibrant, colorful geometric art. I struggled for so long trying to use fancy brushes and weighted paintstrokes to make more realistic portraits, and it frustrated me because even if other people said it looked great, nothing I made looked right to me. Turns out it was my toolkit hiding my own art style from me. The moment I switched to solid colors and the goofy default pen setting, BOOM. Suddenly I was on a roll.

As for anatomy, you're already doing great!! My trick for anatomy (and for anything at all, really) is to break it down into simple 3d shapes. Fun fact, almost everything with the human body is just varying cylinders. Your neck? Cylinder. Hand? 5 cylinders attached to a cylinder that's been slightly squished. Torso? That's cylinder, babe! Arms? Legs? You guessed it, cylinders.