Marie

"Epic the musical reference? In my Reverse 1999 post?" More likely than you'd think.

The first thing I want to discuss with this drawing is the difference in rendering style. Instead of just keeping with my lineless style, I instead opted for a more painterly approach that involved using my thumbnail I made in my sketchbook as my base and then continuing from there. I found that this really helped give the whole drawing a very painterly look, and while I don't know whether or not I want to keep drawing like this, I want to incorporate some of the lessons I learned from the lessons in this piece to my usual style. For the colours, you guys know the drill, put down the base palette, once the rendering is done, use a gradient map to pretty up the colours, add some more depth and contrast, and get a better idea on what to do for the lighting. I feel like I'm starting to love rendering metallics, as her shoulder decoration was really fun to do (NO IT WAS NOT THE FUCKING DETAILS WERE A FUCKING NIGHTMARE TO DRAW AND I HAD TO FINAGGLE WITH IT SO MUCH I WENT INSANE-) and hey! I actually put some effort into rendering the bullets this time! Look at that! It was interesting seeing the different look I got by using a different method, and I was even able to get a neat pseudo-lineart effect by taking advantage of the fact that most of the sketch's outline became transparent when I removed the background, and when I filled in a copy of the drawing with black and put it underneath the main drawing, it looked really cool! I even did some lineart for the gargoyle-shadow-demon, which we'll get to in a bit. Below I have some progress snapshots showing the sketch from my sketchbook and then some progress on the rendering before I fixed up the proportions because sometimes, certain stylization decisions just kinda look better in a sketchbook than digitally... and I don't even wanna talk about the nightmare that was drawing her hand because I did not plan this out at all

If you've played the game you'd probably be able to guess what specific moment this is from...with some liberties with the colour palette because I initially had something gray in mind but when looking at the actual chapter itself realized it technically should be a lot more red but oopsie I didn't actually plan the background out too well so fuck it, let's just roll with it. The demon-gargoyle shadow was the most fun to do though, I do the same sort of technique I do whenever drawing Keiki's weird fire dragon thing, where I separate different parts of the shadow's body and mess around with the opacity so it looks more abstract and ethereal.

I'll be honest, I wanted this piece to feel a lot more... intimate??? I don't know if it's the right word but I wanted it to be more about Sentinel, the bomb, and the devil, especially because this whole drawing was inspired by that Epic the musical lyric I threw on top of the post. Literally. When I finished my previous drawing and completed reading through the story that one lyric just immediately resonated with me and I realized I had to draw her again. The composition was also something I had to noodle with quite a bit, since I didn't meticulously plan for this drawing like I did with my previous drawing of Sentinel. Speaking of time, happy holidays everyone! I'm gonna need to quickly get a drawing of Keiki done before the new years to keep with my annual tradition of drawing her at the end of every year because it's fun seeing how insane I become with each rendition of her.

Wait what the fuck was I talking about, oh right Reverse 1999 and my other favourite character! I also wanna inform you guys that she is at max resonance now... Look I don't give a shit about the meta, I don't care if I didn't put her with the popular resonance plan everyone puts her on because I want her attack points to be over 2000, I will get Nautika when her rerun comes around in another year, and in the meantime I just need Rubuska to come home because she also uses the bloodtithe mechanic AND I WANNA HAVE MY FAVOURITE HOMELESS HEALER BALKAN VAMPIRE CHILD IN MY SUITCASE GOD DAMN IT!

Update: SHE CAME HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOME I LITERALLY GOT THE UNILOG FROM THE ROAR JUKEBOX LEVEL 40 REWARD, GOOFILY SANG "Rubuskaaaaa~" AND SHE CAME HOME WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO (I also managed to free Eternity from her max level 2 insight hell so WATCH OUT PEEPS I GOT A NO NAUTIKA BLOODTITHE TEAM COMING RIGHT UP WOOOOOOO!)

I would also like to talk about story breifly as I have finished the 11th Chapter and OOOOOOOOOOOOOOO BOY I never realized how so many of my favourite characters followed the same arc of realizing the path they're going down is going to be a dark one, accepting it, and continuing to go down it. And the way it ended just OOOOOOOO it was so fucking good omg. The funniest thing about it however was seeing how nonchalant she was about Ladislas getting choked out by the devil in a hallucination, but the moment a bomb drops on Marsha in that very same hallucination she freaks the fuck out. Like, seriously, the moment she saw Marsha in her hallucination in Hill 299 she immediately put down her guard. What also gets me about the two of them is that both of them have control over the states of their body somehow. Sentinel is able to turn her outer body to stone, and Marsha can control the chemicals and functions of her bodies system, to the point where she's able to numb herself to feeling pain. Like, AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I can't get these two out of my HEAD I LOVE THEM!

Also, this line from Merel fucking got me when I was reading through the story.

Like....girl let's just put on our thinking caps for a second here and look at our current situation right now LMAO