THE ART OF MARCOS SOL

This is a tour de force, really. It ended up taking me +40 hours over the course of 9 months. But since I knew SOOOO worked for years on the song, it gave me determination to finish it. On top of being one of my favorite songs and bringing me comfort, the art also left me awestruck, so I wanted to honor both in some way. So I felt it was reasonable to spend however long on it until it was finished.

If you've never seen/heard the song I've linked it below. It contains quickly flashing lights, body horror, and themes of psychological and sexual abuse, so be mindful of that.

Drawing Len was the easiest part. The human form is something I'm used to, even if I had to study the ribcage, spine and hip bones a lot to draw him. Then came the wings, which I'd also drawn before, and they were hard but not too much.

What made me almost give up on this multiple times was the spinal cords and the hands. Well, the hands I knew I could do, there is just a f*ckton of them but I've drawn a lot of hands in my life; I knew it would be tedious and a little hard but not impossible. But the spines?????? God, that was hard. It was too hard.

I learned the three different groups of bones that make up the spine. I learned how different they are in shape and how different they look being rotated. But in the end I had to resort to 3D models, which I downloaded online, and they were not rigged or not in the way I needed them to be, so I proceeded to pose each vertebra individually until I got something close enough to what I needed. Then I painted over the 3D model, like, everything, because I decided to use a textured brush that could not be replicated easily by messing around with filters.

The hands I also photobashed from 3D models that I posed myself but it was much easier to pose them since they were already rigged. I was dreading them but they ended up being much easier than the spines.

Hitting the timelapse button on CSP is always very difficult for me because I become self-conscious. However I wanted to do it this time because I knew this piece would be hard to figure out, since I don't do cross hatching often, and I wanted to be able to look back on what I did right or wrong later (I often forget how I obtained the final result for a piece after I'm done with it).

This was very therapeutic for some reason, the Hazbin style makes me feel so free lol. In truth I gravitate to semirealism because I feel self concious about stylizing too much, so actually having an excuse to draw pushed proportions ("this is the show's style") turns the perfectionistic part of my brain off and actually lets me have fun drawing...

About the piece

By the way yes this is a repost - I scheduled the post at 3 AM and didn't realize the image looked so dark/low contrast. Fixed that and added some flair as well.

Trying to get a hang of his expressions still... His hair is so incredibly fun to draw!

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with this when I started it other than redraw the screeshot. When I finished coloring I realized I didn't want to post another colored sketch with a grey background so I was like ah, let's quickly draw the background and do some compositing. I admit I got carried away but oh well - I saw the opportunity to test all the filters available in CSP 4.0 and took it... It's been a while since I used chromatic abherration, it always looks so funky. :P

Here's the original screenshot (S1E1):

Maintaining his silhouette and expressiveness in a semirealistic style is sooooooooo difficult cuz the exaggeration helps sell emotion incredibly well. I can't rely on animation principles either since it's a static image.

These redrawing/redesiging exercises have increased my appreciation for the whole art team tenfold. Hazbin is so maximalist in all its designs and that must be hell to animate and get results these great.

It's also just been incredibly fun. I wish I could do this all day. Sadly, I have a life to maintain... what's the point, though, if I can't just draw Alastor all day. :( Lol

I love this show and I wanted to try my hand at designing each character in my style, which is usually more realistic, and particularly in a way that emphasized their human characteristics while still keeping the animal hybridism. I thought it would be a fun character design challenge - and it was!

I wanted to talk a little about my thought process for each of them as well:

These two were both very challenging since their original designs are more animal than human, and in making them more human there's a high chance I lose their overall silhouette and defining characteristics.

Angel Dust was the most difficult because he's so spider-y... I tried to keep that especially with the arms, eyes and pincers near the jaw (didn't really stop to figure out if they would be pedipalps or cheliceras) but idk if I managed. Other than that, to stay in the mid-century-ish vibe the whole cast has going on, I tried getting inspiration for his clothes from burlesque and cabaret.

Initially I wasn't going to give him sleeves but then when I added the skin markings I thought 'hey that's too many stripes' and scrapped it lol.

Husk was difficult as well but I had a blast. Initially I couldn't figure out what his design was meant to be, then after looking up the details of his creation apparently he was supposed to have a magician aesthetic and the cards alluded to the sleigh of hand skills that come with that. I think that got kinda lost in his character in the show somewhat because I thought the whole card motif was just about gambling! So I tried bringing more of the old-school magician vibe (and then proceeded to forget the hat... but oh well).

Halfway through designing him I remembered he has tails and wings and then I thought hey what if we give this bad boy more feathers (both the details on the tip of his ears and his brows) and make his tail a lot more bird-inspired? So I based his tail off the turquoise-browed motmot, which has a really long tail - and also has thick brows like Husk! >:)

I love this show and I wanted to try my hand at designing each character in my style, which is usually more realistic, and particularly in a way that emphasized their human characteristics while still keeping the animal hybridism. I thought it would be a fun character design challenge - and it was!

I wanted to talk a little about my thought process for each of them as well:

Lucifer was the first one I designed in this batch (I'd actually made a study of Alastor about a year ago) and was definitely one of the most fun to figure out. I tried to lean a lot into the circus ringmaster aesthetic and allusions (which I really love; personally I love the concept of Lucifer seeing Hell as his circus/playground and I really want to see how that's explored in the show lol), and in the process I found out that a lot of his design comes from that. If you look up ringmaster costumes/attire you can see a lot of elements that are clear inspirations for his clothes.

Since I found that to be enough, for this design I chose to mostly give his clothes more details and make the proportions more realistic (something I did with every character).

Sadly I don't have as much to say about Alastor other than my starting point for him was Willy Wonka... XD His smile and the coat are the most challenging parts about the design I think. The smile in particular because it is very unrealistic to have such a wide ear-to-ear smile like he sports all the time, so I had to tone it down a bit and finding the balance is hard. The hair and ears were quite fun, I went for a very messy look because I think it helps sell the scary vibe - if he's too posh and clean his aesthetic starts to look a little ridiculous which is not what we're going for.

Otherwise Alastor was quite the smooth sailing. I really really love drawing him and I love the end result.