#pivasks

him! he's a very holdable shape and easy to rest your head on (which I do semi frequently). and also a real object I made that you can purchase from my friend's store here:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/1056295505/16-plush-character-pillows-science-pals

haha thanks! the lack of half life stuff lying around makes sense tho. they're old games. half life 2 episode 2 came out all the way back in 2007, the series has had its heyday loooong ago and a lot of stuff from back then has been lost to time. so, yeah, there's gonna be a lot less of it around nowadays compared to hlvrai. half life alyx came out in 2020 and was absolutely incredible, but it's a vr game and I'm not going to pretend thats not a limiting factor in who can engage with it*

it's honestly staggering how popular hlvrai got over the pandemic, but for better or for worse it was a huge influence in introducing new people to half life and it's the reason why a vast majority of my recent friends got into the series. without having them to talk to about it, I probably wouldnt have drawn as much HL things across the last 4 years myself lol

thanks! working with the default 16x32 dimensions is certainly a challenge. i dont know if you could change the sprite size nowadays but when i started on this way back when, the content packer didnt even exist so youd have to re-pack everything back into XNBs lol...

the first sprite i did was actually harvey's, because i wanted to make sure the format/style i settled on could handle all the tricky edge cases and he had glasses AND a tie AND a mustache. if i could fit in those three things then everything else would fall into place.

my files for this have always been in disarray since i kept picking it up and putting it back down, and i can barely find the stuff i already worked on, but heres a screencap of some of the villagers i was working on back in 2018

still plenty of things i need to fix or figure out or redo (palette adjustments and then some).

lol thanks. i think its fun to draw all the little details... ive been drawing hl2 stuff on and off for, no joke, actually literally 15 years now so like... over time you end up memorizing more and more of the little details and where they go and how to draw them. skill development is cumulative, so its gonna be rough starting out

heres a drawing of my hl2 oc from 2007 (LOL??) and you can see which details i paid attention to and which i Did Not:

i got into some sort of weird persistent habit of drawing the vest like that even though it doesnt really look like that. anyway drawing the metrocop vest got a lot easier when i realized its really just dividing spaces in half over and over. here is a gif of what i am talking about and also an excuse to draw mr calhoun:

He’s here!! :D Thank you, he is very holdable :)