Dess Holiday

Guess who decided to make a blog for a character we know basically nothing about!

This will be a blog that takes place not that long before Dess goes missing, so for right now she's just a punk teenager!

Info/Headcanons:

Dess is 16 here! I'm putting Noelle and Kris at around 10 for the sake of easiness/for reference (we have no idea what the age gap between the older and younger siblings is so I'm making it up lol, also this means she'll have no idea that current Kris and Noelle are Kris and Noelle if that makes sense)

Running with the "Dess is the Knight" theory! Chapter 3 and 4 spoilers beware! Since this is pre-all that there'll be a bit of alluding to that here and there but nothing explicitly stated

Aro lesbian beams Dess! (Sorry Dessriel shippers I must live my truth) Official now!

She/her but is chill if you use smth else, girl's not picky or anything

Rules:

Flirty asks are fine but y'all...Dess is 16 here, behave yourselves

No spamming asks! I have a life outside of this blog, believe it or not lol

I'm sorry if a response is late! Once again I have a life outside of tumblr

Not really a rule but something to note: Because we don't know much of anything on Dess right now (at the time of this blog being made, chapters 3 and 4 dropped a few weeks ago), ALL of this could become non-canon/ooc in the blink of an eye

Kris uses they/them, yall (I know this isn't a Kris blog but I just gotta reiterate this for the people that claim its not real)

Magic anon stuff is cool! Just don't abuse your power lol

Other stuff:

Mod is @phoenixablaze666 (I use she/they)

If you're into undertale/deltarune I have a blog for my interpretations of the 6 souls that fell before Frisk @the-fallen-six (it's very dead because no one's sent asks in forever)

I have a spotify playlist for Dess if you're interested: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3zRgas7xVm0ODFywRhUt0H?si=CgdCDYu9SQSsyT22lj3h_g&pi=MApb_u5ZTvylq

Also dropping my design here lol

I did it, chat! Dess is here and I'm so happy with how it turned out!

I think this is the longest I've spent on a piece in a while - according to Ibispaint I spend a little over 24 hours on the drawing (this does not account for the initial sketch/drawing I did in my sketchbook; if I had to take a guess it took around 28 hours or so from start to finish - most of my pieces take like 10-12 hours for comparison). I also used like 70 layers so the app was struggling by the end lol

ANYWAY onto talking about the piece itself!

I've seen/reblogged a ton of Dess art on my main blog (it's all so cool btw, love seeing people's interpretations for a character we don't have a canon appearance for) so I think I probably subconsciously ended up adopting a lot of similar traits to other designs - y'know, the blue nose/antlers, black hair, flannel (which she does canonically own so it's all cool ig lol), and the overall punk/alt vibes but I wanted to still try and make it my own!

I gave Dess freckles bc (A) That's cute as hell and (B) I've seen fanart of both Dess and Noelle with fawn markings/spots so I thought it'd be neat. Fun fact I also have freckles irl! Also it took me like 3 attempts to render the skintone/fur; for whatever reason I kept being unsatisfied with how it looked, but I think the end result looks good enough

I debated between giving Dess a chipped tooth or a tooth gap but settled on a chipped tooth - girlie is pretty rough and tumble so I figure she got it from a fight or failed stunt or something like that. And yes, Carol would definitely have been pissed about it. You know she would.

I originally wanted/tried to give Dess some sort of punk/alt vibes makeup look (I looked at pintrest for ideas for a while) but ultimately gave up on it. Maybe it's bc I don't give ocs/characters makeup all that often so I don't have much experience with it but it kept looking off - either goofy/cartoonish (ik my style is pretty cartoony but still) or more grown up than what a 16 year old should probably be wearing. Dunno, maybe if/when I have more experience with it I'll try again.

Like I said earlier, I went with black hair like basically every other design I've seen (if Noelle has her mom's blonde hair then it makes total sense for Dess to have Rudy's black hair) but had the vision of a super high and long ponytail rather than the more shaggy/shoulder length visions I've seen from other people. I also wanted her to have a slight wave/loose curl texture so I tried to do that - hope it turned out well, I'm not used to rendering ponytails from front view so I had a bit of trouble with it. I also rendered it with purples since I usually render black-colored things with either blue or purple.

Don't know how much tumblr is gonna nerf the quality but if you look at her eyes there's an ice texture overlaying in the irises!

Plaid is so hard chat, I'm not gonna lie; it took me a couple tries with adjusting the thickness on the lines so nothing was too crowded but it all still read as plaid. The pink stripes were originally white and thicker but they were altered because they stood out too much.

Tried doing those frayed ends that some jean shorts have; it looks kinda bad lol but I think it reads as how it's supposed to.

Hoping the tights read as tights lol

I have absolutely no idea how to render leather/combat boots. I took a couple different shades of grey, blurred it slightly, and hoped for the best. Also I looked up lace code for this! From what I saw, pink is for feminism and purple is for queerness (I think pink can also be for queerness?). I lowkey regret the laces lol; they were so time consuming and for such a small detail that doesn't even matter all that much. At least it's a pop of color to break up the greys/blacks at the bottom.

For the bat, I did some basic rendering then overlayed an image of red wood to get the texture I wanted. Also I added the stickers I mentioned in another post! Those took a while, even though they're pretty small. I know bats are 3D objects and all but I still wanted to showcase everything on the small space I had. Also I did the white outline to give that sticker-y look manually rather than use the stroke filter bc it wouldn't cooperate nicely when I tried it. Just did a layer underneath the stickers and tried to keep a consistent weight around everything.

I really like rendering piercings. Something about the process is satisfying to me and it looks really nice. I would've given Dess bigger earrings but I couldn't decide on how I wanted to design them and the right-hand side already has a ton going on already so I just settled for a few basic earrings and one of those chain ones on the left side. Also not pictured here but she also has a tongue piercing! I love giving characters tongue piercings.