Mathew

Since last year, my goal for Art Fight 2026 was going for broke and attempting a 100-character mass attack, and giving love to as many chefs, cooks, and bakers as I could. The original idea was an “Art Fight Bake-Off” with 50 chefs from each team facing off on either side of the piece…and then Art Fight hit us with three teams and that ruined my plan completely LMAO 

As I prepared for the event, the chefs I started bookmarking struck a nifty dichotomy between “man, I’m just happy to be here” and “I will pick a fight with God and WIN”, so that’s how I ended up splitting them up, and some additional preliminary planning led to this absolutely chaotic scene of my boy Swee just trying to hold a nice and normal bake-off, the sad sap.

But, why chefs? Because food unites everyone, and the people who make it every day, to share with us and keep us all happy and well, are so, so important. The act of creating food, to make something that is here and gone, yet sticks with you as an experience, is art in itself, one that’s rooted very much in the present, as fleeting yet long lasting as Art Fight itself. My love for both cooking and this incredible art-trading event was poured into every bit of this attack, and every single chef drawn.

Yes, I read all your character profiles to get a sense of their personalities, and it became an honestly fun-as-hell puzzle to properly place them and even form some micro-scenes and interactions. I’ll admit the task was daunting at first, and a part of me was worried it wouldn’t be possible, but I will say this isn’t my first rodeo. (shameless plug of my webcomic, GO!) To be honest, my biggest concern was file size and potentially breaking my poor CSP with it LOL, but my computer held on tight even while each save took several seconds, and I didn’t even have to extend my canvas, everyone fit! =D

Speaking of, this is OBVIOUSLY not the full size of the piece, I had to shrink it down to fit the size limit for the site. The full size piece can’t even be posted on Tumblr, though that version is still bigger but within THAT site’s limits. If you’re interested in the full piece and you’d like me to send it to you, DM me.

If you’re skeptical of whether or not I started this early, here is a timestamped VOD from July 1st of me opening a fresh canvas to get started on it. The prelim sketch I opened next to it (doodled by both me and MSKirby) was purely for planning and visualizing, and was never used in the final piece.

Here are some detail shots too!

And then, as a bonus: every day I finished progress of the attack, I'd send the WIP to my Discord server, and starting on Day 3 I changed Swee's dialogue bubble text each day LMAO