hi

Edit: Y'all I realized right after uploading this that my monitor was not showing me accurate colors so I made some quick edits. If you saw the original purpler version of this no you didn't because this is closer to what I wanted I sorry.

When I was drawing this, I was thinking about how Caine spent his whole life working on the circus, and in the end he still rules his experiences as less than/incomparable to that of humans. I like to think that this place is his home regardless and his love of creation makes him incredibly fond of it. He feels small and loves it anyways. He is rejected by the humans and loves them anyways.

Version without text and the OG sketch below the cut

Caine and Gangle go outside and touch grass. I was thinkin too hard about their Parallels as self-destructive “failed” artists and this was the result.

Brad Bird once said that you can’t create the illusion of life if you haven’t actually lived one, and that’s a line I think about a lot around the Traumatizing Digital Circus. This comic was inspired by: the purpose of making your own art in a world where AI image generators can churn out endless content for you, the way 3D software makes it easy to create infinite spaces but hard to capture authentic hand-drawn human touches, the way all my college art teachers were skeptical of the students’ desire to make anime-inspired stylized 3D visuals right up until it became the new trend in the animation industry—- and how easy it is to get so lost in the technical aspects of art & the consequences of failure that you lose sight of what art is even supposed to be for.

my artfight attacks for this year !!!

nisu — @xosause

rudy — @pkviolence

fourth and final artfight attack for the season was on @pastelaeqy's lovely aria (plus magia)!!

speedpaint is under the cut!!

artfight attack on @pastelaeqy's Aria done in my page card style! had an absolute blast with this character, she has a stunning design!

had to crunch these gifs like crazy for upload anywhere, but there's an mp4 under the cut! besides the time-heavy nature of creating it, one of the worst downsides of this style is that it's so hard to share the finished pieces anywhere because of the file size 😂💖

break through the boundaries once to declare yourself a god, then break through again to learn you were just a fool

lyrics are from stairs to the attic by the antlers, credit to @lithping for helping with the alt text