Deerly

I wanted the birds to look like they were actually in the space so first thing after doing the draft was to do a lighting study

after that I covered the walls in letters in lieu of a projector/vr headset bc i have neither of those :) Then i take a picture of the section of wall and superimpose the lineart over top of it so I can pencil in the lines

et voila

[...] The perception was plain as day: the Panthers could do no wrong. And that sense of impunity is what has turned a once-anodyne cross-state rivalry into something much darker: a microcosm of how the NHL still protects its insiders and punishes its critics.

That defiance fits neatly with the Panthers’ broader identity. Under owner Vincent Viola – a billionaire financier and one-time Donald Trump nominee for secretary of the army – the franchise has cultivated an overtly Maga aesthetic. After their first Cup win, team executives proudly visited Trump at the White House, presenting him with a custom “45–47” jersey. Viola’s longtime business partner and minority owner Douglas Cifu, the Panthers’ vice-chairman and alternate governor, also runs Virtu Financial, the high-frequency trading firm he co-founded with Viola. In May, Cifu was suspended indefinitely by the NHL after an inflammatory social-media exchange with a Canadian fan where he invoked the Israel-Palestine conflict and Trump’s 51st state taunts, a move that did little to distance the team from its hard-right image.

Across the state, the Lightning’s ownership has taken the opposite tack: removing a Robert E Lee statue from downtown Tampa, supporting diversity initiatives and hosting some of the league’s most inclusive heritage nights.

In miniature, the Battle of Florida now mirrors the United States itself: grievance and aggression on one side, progressive branding on the other, both locked in a fight over what the sport, and the country, should be.

The irony is that all this has unfolded during what’s meant to be the NHL’s modern age of enlightenment. League executives boast about player safety and mental-health awareness, and evolving beyond the blood-and-guts spectacle of decades past. Yet its disciplinary machinery still operates with the opaque impunity of an old boys’ club. When New York Rangers owner James Dolan semi-publicly condemned the league’s refusal to suspend Washington’s Tom Wilson in 2021, the NHL didn’t revisit the call; it fined the team $250,000 for daring to question it. Commissioner Gary Bettman scolded the Rangers for “demeaning” a league executive and declared such criticism “unacceptable”. The message was clear enough: silence is rewarded, dissent is punished and the culture that enables violence is the one most fiercely protected.

This time, though, the silence has cracked. Around the league, executives and players are said to be quietly rooting for Tampa – not because they condone vigilante justice, but because they recognize the futility of appealing to a system stacked against them. The Panthers may have won the Stanley Cup for two years running, but they’ve also become the embodiment of a league that rewards swagger and punishes accountability.

Choose your online engagement.

Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones

Julien Baker covers No Children by the Mountain Goats + an introduction from John Darnielle

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Time does not equal cost of a commission

Please remove the idea that spending MORE TIME on art means it is of "better quality"

this is what goes into my process when drawing chibi designs:

Which aspects of the original character design (outfit, accessories, clothing pattern, etc) can I forego in order to maintain the simplicity of the design but still communicate clearly which character this is?

Which aspects of the character's body can I simplify/minimalize in order to not clutter the chibi version?

How small can I make certain body parts to communicate that this is a chibi design, but without veering too far into infant territory?

How large can I make certain body parts to communicate that this is a chibi design, but without making it look disproportionate?

How do I make a complex/dynamic/engaging pose with body proportions that heavily limits the character's silhouette?

How do I draw two (or more) chibi characters interacting with each other in a way that feels right and doesn't sacrifice the stylized proportions nor does it make it so that they get in the way of the pose?

This may sound silly but there's a lot that can go into chibi designs that people might not... consider. I might overthink it too hard on my end in comparison to some of my peers, but I think it's important for people to understand that art is a skill, which means that no matter what kind of art you create, it requires a fundamental knowledge of what you want to depict before you translate it to your own style, and that's difficult