Artist notes re. "Reset Hao" piece, find it here.
"Lava whip" That's literally all it took to pick up this "side quest".
A mind world nail-biting twins fight to the death that nearly gave me a heart attack may have had something to do with it too!
Hunt's fantastic writing painted a dark, moody, angsty, evil Hao using an alight fire-whip oversoul in my brain and I could not let him go to the land of forgotten.
I realised my memory was pulling up Anakin Skywalker and his neon red light saber. And so I started there for inspiration. (During my art process he was dubbed "Anakin Hao" too ahaha.)
To achieve what I had in mind for Reset Hao(tm), I realised after closely examining the lighting of Anakin I needed to utilise a dark pallet. This is something I'd never attempted before. I did several tries and tests before committing to sketching a final design. This is also something I'd never done previously. I usually sketch my final design first, line art and then decide how to paint/light it. So I was doing things backwards this time.
All in all, this was the most challenging piece I have ever attempted for Hao. Everyone knows by now how much I hate drawing this man in a poncho. The fact the poncho itself took over a week just speaks volumes of how bad I am a drawing that damn sheet. Or just clothing in general.
I do, however, love drawing his lego pants and belts. I think that's plain to see. He's so spoiled. And the bastard knows it.
Lastly, I have to comment on how much I adore exploring Hao's dark side. I think it's fair to say the fandom as whole, myself included, want to see this man in silly situations, fluffy light-hearted and warm scenarios with his twin, or will write a literal multi-fic novella saga and redeem him over and over again to cure our collective aching hearts for him. Sitting with a version of Hao (2001) for so long looking like this reminded me just how evil and scary he is/can be. So I'm delighted to have had a chance to draw him this way. I'm such a fan of angst, especially angsty twins, and it is definitely because of his blood lust why I'm so consumed by him on a daily basis.
Thank you @thornedwitch-art for inspiring me!! I had such an amazing time with your hateful child.
Read Reset by @thornedwitch-art on AO3 here.
