Art and Alliteration in the Land of Tomorrow

A new child has been born to the reference family. I will be uploading SFW reference for gesture drawing and get back to updating these and continuing update Digital Brushes. Thank you for your patience.

Elves drink hand sanitizer with cranberry flavoring.

Let’s play the biggest game of kick the can on the internet.

In 2023, it was horror. Things not being what they seem; the unknown, things that go 'bump' in the night-- stories that revealed dystopian devastation as their twist.

In 2024, the theme was grief. Whether it was lost opportunity or lost loved ones, we had an overwhelming number of submissions that touched on the subject.

In 2025, the theme was not being good enough. Trying your best and failing, trying over and over and over again, feeling like you weren't 'built right' for the world-- with an even mix of happy and sad endings.

This year, the theme seems to be shame. Lots of work about embarrassment and about how trying can (and will) lead to catastrophic failure. It's not "Try anyway," it's "Don't you see how foolish trying is? Do you not see all the signs that this is dangerous, that it will fail?" where the character does fail and the lesson is "You should've read the room, idiot."

There is a city that this darkness can’t hide.

There are the embers of a fire that’s gone out,

But I can still feel the heat on my skin.

This mess we’re in, well you and I,

maybe you and I,

I was reading one story where the apocalypse was impossibly-rising oceans. Like, water is appearing from *waves hand* the Earth's crust or something, and literally all dry surface land on Earth is going to become underwater in X years. Part of the story was about a giant research project to invent FTL to send a few hundred humans to a nearby star which might have a habitable planet. You know what they were hoping to find? A planet with liquid water. Their plan was to descend from their starship and restart civilization using just the tools they brought with them, on a world with no life and no breathable air and the wrong gravity and the wrong temperate and the wrong sunlight and the wrong day-night cycle, just because it had liquid water. You know where else has liquid water? The flooded Earth you just abandoned. Instead of researching starship technology, you could have spent that time loading up all the same civilization-restarter tools into boats.

Art by Boell Oyino

May’s Theme: #TravellingBeekeeper

Presented by IDEA Academy

Discover the artists of the Character Design Challenge community and the current Theme of the Month in our Facebook Group! And when you repost your design on our Patreon page, you can also win awesome prizes every month and choose the future themes!