odyssey

hey there! so, i finally have time to do this, hopefully it's helpful but idk i'm honestly terrible at giving art advice because i'm like, a very trial and error person. however hopefully this step by step on my process is helpful. keep in mind, i only use paint tool SAI to draw, so i'll be showing what i do on SAI and nothing else. reallt sorry but that is simply all i have! any way:

i start off with a simple sketch, i try to add some form of movement in my gestures to keep it less stiff- arms, legs, posture, they don't all need to be doing something, but you can't have them all do nothing. expressions are important too, you want a baseline of how you want your character's mood to be conveyed. usually with Odessa here, her expressions typically exude confidence to the point of looking smug and self assured. how a character expresses emotions in a drawing tells a person a lot about their personality, so varied expressions are very important!

next is lineart. this is where i solidify a character's pose, expression, and general anatomy. lineart can be kind of a pain and i rely on a stabilizer tool being at level 15 to keep my lines smooth and straight. you can also use a clipping tool to color your lineart to make it look less bland. black lineart is only good for a more stylized drawings like i did here, but almost every single one of my drawings has colored lineart.

now it's time for flats! in order to make your art pop more it's good to use colors that are bright but not eye burning bright. i put each color in a separate layer, hair for one layer, skin, etc.. you need a good base to work with in the beginning and you can tinker with hues and lighting in the end stages of a drawing to make it pop more or be more muted to your liking. flat colors give you a general idea of how the character's color palette will look.

now, here's the most important part- shading! i always have my shading layers over my lineart to keep it from interfering with my other layers and take higher priority, the only thing above shading is strong highlights like eye shines and jewelry shines. you want to shade with a NOT gray base, this will make your art look bland and flat. i used a darker muted purple and used the multiply tool to put over the drawing's colors. you want to make sure the color you pick is dark enough to be seen, but not too dark that is contrasts too much with your base colors. i also use two different layers for shading, one for general shading and one for shading darker areas like the inner ears, parts of the hair, or under the head. after that, you can clip onto individual color layers to add a more airbrushed/watercolored shading to add a little value over the cel shading. you can also use this to add different hues to the skin, since skin is not one color, human or monster/alien/cryptid!

next is highlights! and highlights are important to make your art "pop." honestly, i always feel my art is terrible until i add the highlights. i don't know why, it just changes it for me. with highlights, you choose your color layer, and highlight with the same color on that layer in a clipped layer (set to screen, like you do with multiply) to keep color consistency. i probably made it sound complicated but it's not! i love highlighting hair and skin, it gives it that shine to keep your art from being dull. you can also airbrush/watercolor highlights but keep it very well blended in to keep it from looking choppy and clunky. i also want to add that for extra shiny highlights, like for eyes or jewelry, i like to use the luminosity feature to make it extra bright.

at this point the drawing is more or less done! after this, i like to fiddle with colors, hues, saturation, etc., to make it stand out even more and keep it from being sterile. this is where you can have fun playing around with colors. you can merge all your layers together, and clip a new layer to your drawing, and add extra colors with filters to see what feels good. i used a combination of purple and red to make Odessa look more flamboyant and interesting. this is a little addition that can change the whole vibe of your drawing, adding extra colors, lights, shading, are all great to make your art stand out better.

Oh picking her voice was so EASY. lol

If she had a VA, it'd be Jennifer Hale.

One: my partner and I grew up hearing her voice, so she has a lot of emotional attachment. Two: in turn, we both each wanted OCs as individuals that would have her voice, and she was the only one we felt worked (wound up peak collaboration). Three: she's really good at acting and the range she has is optimal.*

Best clips to have an idea of her voice are:

Metroid Prime opening (Samus narrating)

Alex from Eternal Darkness (blonde ponytail woman)

When she wants to throw people off guard, she can make her voice higher to seem more approachable. It doesn't happen often, but when she does it can sound like this (Thorn) or if she really wants to seem sweet, it's this (Cinderella here). This does not work after getting hella tall, but she can still trick people if they can't see her.

All our OCs can sing because we want it that way. lol Jennifer Hale can so it was a no-brainer. Classic is this (still Thorn). Original is this.

Hi there!

So Odessa's design was created by @queenofthelanternfish and her first official art posted on here was this piece. There are slight alterations to her design though that have been occurring since we decided to make her non-fandom. My partner made her to be a character that was a 'perfect blend' of Entrapta and Hordak, and ensure that's also really pretty and easily recognizable (no overly complicated design).

Her skin is navy-blue from the neck down and a part of her ears but we opted to make her whole body entirely white to expand the albino feeling. Hair only grows from her scalp and of course her eyes and eyebrows. Her eyes and hair will remain the same color, but her mother now shares that exact same shade of hair (eyes are dark brown), and her father is all white as well with jet-black hair (he has red eyes with near-invisible slits).

As well, we altered her height. She used to be 5'7" but her aging process is now that she grows up like any human person, and does reach the height for 5'7" at 16 (170.18cm). But in her 30s, her father's genetics catch up to her, so to speak, and she starts growing taller again and goes through a slower growth spurt. By the time she reaches her 40s, she's 7'3" (220.98cm).

She'll keep her tech-y design and there are armor suit designs my partner and I have done during the years we've had her, but they've yet to be posted. Additionally, if you want character design lore, Odessa was modeled in color scheme after Maleficent from the 1959 Sleeping Beauty film, to contrast Aurora, modeled after her namesake of the same movie.

Because she's been developing into a genuine character, she's been obtaining other kinds of traits:

1: despite being a hybrid she is extremely strong and durable

2: her hair is not "alive" it's controlled by micro follicles in her headband

3: she lives a long time. a long time.

4: she can be arrogant, but there are characters who are more so and she would mock them because they can't back it up.

5: her brain processes things differently; all the hybrid children can do this. they have photographic memory and can remember every single detail ever seen or experienced. for better or for worse. there's more but it'd take a while.

6: she has night vision. she likes to sneak up on people with it.

7: she would need a powerful iron file to get her nails down. nails can go through anything, which is helpful for her since she's always building things.

8: on that note, she builds and invents things quite often, or rather she tries to improve what already exists. her main things of invention are medicines and vaccines that she hopes to use to eradicate all form of disease. (aka she's not an antivaxxer).

9: she is banned from several planets in the future.

10: the animal that represents her all-around would be an orca.

11: she was formerly an ace/aro person, but she developed into demi.

12: her pronouns are anything but she/her is the most convenient.

13: she knows how to cook, but prefers the easy microwavable stuff. she does, indeed, prefer instant noodles and junk food.

14: she collects rare artifacts, species, etc. throughout her travels and eventually develops her own personal zoos or museums dedicated to preservation.

15: she has hundreds of thousands of cousins. while in the fanfic we tried to be conservative with the number of "uncles" that she had, we said fuck it on the original narrative and she has about a million uncles. granted not all of them have children, but many do while they try to move on from being an army.

16: with that, her paternal lineage is functionally extinct. if anyone tried to have children that was that species, it would only be through incest over years and years.

17: her best friends are still Tristan and Hydrangea, the seamista and scorfuma children respectively. they have been developing into their own people too so things won't be too recognizable anymore, at least for the parents. the kids haven't had much change.

18: in our version, she has an adopted older brother but no one has met him yet as a reader.

19: her spaceship is named Celeste as it was in the fanfic, and she uses it all the time. she does consider it to be a pet.

20: she has two romantic relationships throughout her entire lifespan. of note, she is not sex-repulsed. if someone asked her for sex, she's not opposed as long as she finds the person interesting. boring people are not her thing, but it takes a real connection to pursue a romance.

I just wanted to ask if there is gonna be an update about it or not? (Totally cool if not, I am just very nosy and very in love with the AU!!)

Anyway, good luck with your aquarium and your fish and shrimps (and probably more, I can not recall 😅). They are all really cute!!!

omg thank you so much!!! in terms of updates, my girlfriend and i are actually working on odessa, and all the fankids actually, into an original story and become their own characters apart from fandom~

this will mean some design changes and obvious plot changes, but odessa still remains largely the same both design-wise and personality-wise!

and thank you, i have snails now too! i "stole" them from my mom's tank because she thinks they're pests but i find them darling as can be ;w;

oh, and because i haven't posted anything art related in so long, here's a drawing i kept in my files for a loooooooong time now that i never posted; hope you like it!