#todayis.mail

heh...ur looking right at em...

jk. strap in. ur getting my entire following actually. this is a bit now. to everhone reading this i half heartedly apologise BUT ALSO I FUCKING LOVE YOUR 🫵 ART AND WHAT YOU DO FOR THE FANDOM 🫵

what do you mean there's a 50 person limit. i'm not done yet.

Odachi for the title

YES! for the pie slice texts

Chaparral Pro Bold for the bubble text OR Rockwell with bold turned on since Chaparral is an adobe font

poses

for noel's primary pose i referenced both vere and kuras' HAHA kinda cheaped out because i yoinked one arm from kuras and the rest from vere

for noel's secondary pose i used kuras' as a base (i liked the idea of them turning their back to you to ice you out)

touchstarved poses for the sprites are pretty static! just make sure for the primary that there's a bit of life in how ur OC is positioned (i've noticed a lot of them will put their weight in one foot)

expressions

i'd draw different parts of noel's face separately on top of their original sprite (separated eyes, eyebrows, and their mouth) - that way you can make a lot of expressions via combination hehe

i started with a basic 6 - neutral, happy, sad, angry, shocked, eyes closed - before i started expanding. happy closed mouth smile? ok now happy openly laughing! angry twisted mouth? ok now angry YELLING

technically you're MEANT to put these elements in different LABELLED folders...but i don't follow my own advice sometimes...

drawing wise i just do lineart and then for colours i colour-pick what's already there #worksmarternotharder

by the end, your sprite file will look like this HAHA

BOY DO I!!!!

- Noel's mentor acted as the village shaman and would often leave them under the tutelage of other elders whenever they visited

- it's an isolated village in an apocalypse. there was a lot of child and infant mortality. which meant that despite their curse, noël grew up beloved by the villagers whenever they visited

- they were super shy as a kid, usually the only things you could get out of them were questions about how the world worked

- the heart fringe has been with them since birth 🙂‍↕️

- they grew up well-rounded because of the villagers and still retain some of the skills up until they reached eridia. hand them a guqin or guzheng and they'll be playing in no time

- had the messiest hair as a kid, eventually, as they entered puberty, it straightened out

- got their cheeks pinched whenever they went out. twas inevitable

What do you mean they almost died in the snow???? You know, it's almost funny that Noël and Vere have combined trauma / backstory around snow... HMMMMMMMMM??? 👀 (lighthearted)

(I'm so desperate completely normal to know more Noël backstory DHFGJFAJJA-)

they almost died twice in the same year a few months after they murdered their mentor lol. (but i'm in no mood to draw that so you get them being manhandled by vere and kuras instead >:)

first near death experience was the snow one!! they encountered a soulless and managed to get the killing blow but not before it threw them into a tree branch. (so it's the scar on their side) they did not have a good time pulling themself off of it. in fact, they had an even worse time stumbling through a growing blizzard whilst bleeding out!

they got rescued by a caravan tho ^_^

the second time was a few months after the initial rescue, the caravan was attacked by bandits and they were the only survivor because they begged for their life :C they were essentially held hostage by that bandit group as a healer until they could make an escape and take everyone out.