personal color reference i did for myself last year including some face/headshapes. it’s still accurate to a degree but i never exactly explored it further, i need to correct that

For the fourth time now, I can proudly present my entry for this years SiIvaGunner Birthday Gallery! I had to put up with a lot of obstacles this year, like starting in June when I normally always started in early May, my parents and my brother visiting during the exact time frame I wanted to work on this, a crippling addiction to playing Dragon Quest Monsters and many more.

But as you can see, I really locked in at the end and finished it exactly one day before the deadline (17th June).

Now to explain my vision for this piece: I'll have to admit, since starting my new job in February, I didn't have any time to keep up with the loads of SiIvaGunner rips that are uploaded each day, since I always listened to them at my old workplace while I took care of my mountains of scientific journals. At my new job, I don't have anything to do with journals anymore. I mostly talk to students at the counter all day. Can't really listen to YouTube videos when someone wants something from you every minute. I also do a lot of things related to facility management in between (our library buildings are practically falling apart in some places...), so even when I'm not at the counter, I have way too much stuff to do to listen to rips. Sigh. Sometimes, I miss my old job.........

But I'll try my best to catch up some time in the future. At the very latest in September. My first vacation days in 7 months... Anyway, let's get back to the image at hand:

In the foreground, there's obviously my beloved dynamic duo of besties: Woodman and Nozomi. Woodman has been missing from the channel for 1 and a half years. Please bring him back. I miss my wife, Tails...

For this piece, my theme was centered around my favorite SiIvaGunner joke from the past few months (or has it been years?): The raft ride. I wanted something fun and summer-y, so I decided to put all the characters I drew in cute little sailor outfits. For Woodman, I just drew him in something simple that I thought of myself, which complimented and incorporated his usual armor.

Next we have Nozomi, who dons her outfit from μ's fifth single "Wonderful Rush". I had a few water themed outfits to chose from with her (and Honoka, for that matter), but I chose Wonderful Rush for Nozomi since it just fit with the aesthetic I was going for.

Next to those two is Coraline from the 3DS street pass game "Ultimate Angler", which is also prominently featured on the channel. For her outfit, I just modified her usual attire a little to fit in with the sailor vibe. I also turned her sun visor around because I could for the life of me not figure out how to draw it properly at this angle. Uhhh... I mean, I turned it around because I thought it looked cool.

I hope you can see that I had an absolute breakthrough in Gimp. I think I already talked about it on my Buck fanart, but I finally discovered layer modes. After 4 years of working with Gimp. Spectacular, I know. If you don't notice it here, you'll definitely notice it on the next image in queue for the robot master quest I have going on. I can already spoil you who it's gonna be this time: Tornadoman! I honestly couldn't believe what I was drawing. I think I was possessed by something for a few hours. It was honestly a little scary. But I think you'll see what I mean once you see the actual image, it's really different from the usual stuff I draw.

Getting back to the topic of this picture, let's talk about the background now. I decided to draw a little ship with lots of familiar faces making up the crew.

The ships captain is Honoka, who is standing on the very left of the deck. I took her outfit from μ's single "Heart to Heart!", which also fit into the aquatic theme quite nicely.

Right next to her, under a rainbow flag that's fluttering in the wind above them, is Aquaman. My beloved. Since I drew him into last years birthday gallery image, I decided to do the same this year. I also put a little starfish on his hat because I think it looked cute ;)

Standing epicly and mysteriously on the top of the boat is Meta Knight. I don't know if you can see it when it's zoomed out so far, but he's holding some kind of folded map in his right hand. Maybe they're looking for treasure??

And on the very right of the ship are Tito Dick and Robbie Rotten, reenacting that one famous scene from the Titanic movie.

After that, we shift our focus to the left of the image, where we can see Fluttershy flying over the island from Tomodachi Life.

And that's it for this image folks. I hope I'll finish my Mega Man Fully Charged art before the weekend ends, so stay tuned for that next! And after that, we're going right back to the robot master grind. ;)

If you saw my previous post discussing an Ultimate Angler rip, Telling Fish Tales, you'll already be well informed in what make rips of this game stand out. This obscure, little-discussed 3DS download game was the favorite of a certain SiIvaGunner team member called Marrow, who tragically passed in 2019. In the four years since, Marrow's legacy has lived on, as Ultimate Angler continues to get a bevvy of new rips made each Season, and even a full-on album dedicated just to them in Season 7.

What I find so special about this ongoing support for Marrow and his cherished gem of a game, is ironically enough just how not-special it all feels. Rips of Ultimate Angler - such as Turnabout Fishters - aren't packaged with visual flair, or made with the express purpose of reflective sadness, or restricted to just making references to other things Marrow loved. Turnabout Fishters and all the other rips that surround it have such a beautifully simple mission statement - to remind you that Ultimate Angler exists, has a lovely soundscape, and is worthy of your time and love.

Turnabout Fishters is a simple rip executed perfectly - it takes the Turnabout Sisters theme from the Ace Attorney series and translates it beautifully into the mellow, acoustic style of the Ultimate Angler title screen. Its a beautiful theme, with beautiful instrumentation, and an immensely emotional core lying under it all with context in mind. Yet I adore that these rips work just as well as simple celebrations of Ultimate Angler's sound: I've seen a surprising number of commenters on these rips unsure of what the past context is regarding Marrow and Ultimate Angler in general. That context is easy to find online, certainly, but I love that Ultimate Angler - and Marrow, by extension - is able to put so many smiles on people's faces, solely through the SiIva team's shared love of the game, with context not even being needed.