alienmiilk - 2.4.25

Ten 1000 Joys

Feb 4 | Tuesday | 2025

Now that my wanzuo artbook, Ten 1000 Joys, is out I can talk a bit about it. but first of all, despite my self-inflicted anxieties i'm ultimately really glad i did it, and i actually finished a personal project for once! so that's a huge win

for context, the artbook was created for the unofficial wanqing and zuo le web event hosted by a fellow fan on pictsquare, a Japanese site for online conventions. I'd always been curious and interested in this type of by-fan-for-fans-online event thing, so it was really awesome that the host extended the event applications to overseas fans. I'm really grateful for the opportunity

Originally, the artbook's theme was quite general and went everywhere from hair swaps to Zuo Le asking Wanqing if he would still love him if he was a worm. In total i had about 14-15 ideas which is a ridiculous amount for both the timeframe and my skills (in both time management and drawing) so, good thing i didn't go with that

i can't believe i wrote this

sketch for one of the ideas that i didn't end up doing

Eventually i settled on the theme of four seasons, which seemed fitting considering the name of the event and also i always do four season themes; i decided to do two drawings per season because four drawings hardly seemed like a substantial amount for an artbook

one day i would like to print and staple it all together, so everything is A5 and in the right colour profile setting (i think). i drew everything on one large canvas (it helps me draw) and then cropped down the sketch to work on in new files

also, the name comes from the literal translations of Wanqing and Zuo Le's name. i did realise too late that 'Ten 1000' would be read as Ten A Thousand instead of Ten Thousand like intended but i think it's fine

Spring 1

Pretty straightforward ideas for spring (as is every other piece really). I've always liked spring-themes because it meant i could draw flowers, but then i didn't end up drawing real flowers?? anyways, it's my (to me) signature abstract leaf-floral things that i always draw; it's really fun to essentially make up flowers, but some of Wanqing's are based off, you guessed it, GRAIN BUDS - well i hope you can tell. unfortunately you can't actually see Wanqing's florals in the final piece because i think Zuo Le's turned out better

the red string/ribbon that goes around the whole piece is meant to be reminiscent of the red string of fate, and is also inspired by a drawing i did in 2023 of ocs

outfit ideas before i decided drawing the coat was too bothersome

wanqing's florals

sketch and a small diagram of me trying to figure out how a zongzi works from memory

Spring 2

I think it's kind of pathetic that i had to search up seasonal Chinese festivities and activities when i'm Chinese and should know these things but i was surprised to see that eating zongzi was a spring thing. But then i started doubting myself so while writing this blog post i asked my grandpa about when duanwu jie is (the day where you eat zongzi) and he said it was a late-spring thing so, good job me

this was a kind of 'taking a break' piece since the characters are chibi, but actually i started on this piece first after juggling around the other ones and feeling uninspired. it was with this one i set the pattern of using a limited three colour palette (except i broke that when i got to future pieces)

i researched the type of zongzi eaten in Minnan/Fujian (which Dahuang is based off of)* and found out there were widely different styles of zongzi in each region. it was really interesting, and something i hadn't thought about before because we only ever eat one kind (the kind with soysauce'd rice and pork belly)

*Someone pointed out to me that Dahuang is based off Northeastern China, so I checked the wiki again and YES IT IS, i just completely glossed over every other point in the trivia section for some reason

fujian style rice dumplings / different kinds of zongzi across china

Summer 1

The idea for this piece popped up during a small period of artblock. i didn't like my original idea for summer-1 and the nearing deadline was giving me a crisis. i tossed around the idea of playing with scale like in spring-2 and changing up the theme from ice cream to parfaits and at one point, melon soda. eventually i had enough of my indecisiveness and decided to draw on paper first. i knew changing up how i worked would help and it did, even though it was a trust the process kind of situation

during this time i was getting even more ass deep into sonic the hedgehog. and if you should know anything about the sonic art style it's that it's very stylelised and the anatomy is exaggerated, with big hands n feet - i've always wanted to draw like this, but when i drew humans, stuff like hands and feet remained relatively normal anyways, so i thought i'd let go for once and tried a (my style of) sonic-esque style

i don't actually think it's any more stylelised than i normally draw anyways, i think they're just more rounded... but the main point is that i tried to do something new and pushed through with it and ended up with a piece i was really happy with

sketching traditionally first helps when you've been doing digital a lot

i actually still really like this

original summer piece

Summer 2

Originally, i was going to draw Wanqing and Zuo Le chilling at the beach with a shared couples parfait (brought to them by wingman Shu and Grain Buds), but somehow it felt too intimidating and repetitive (i had the lil comic panels in other pieces too) so i ditched it

(i'd like to actually draw it when i have time though)

as for the actual piece i ended up drawing, i didn't think i'd like the outcome of this piece as much as i did. i was nearing the end of the eight pieces (this was the 2nd last) and i had 2-3 days left, and truthfully i just needed something done or else i'd only have 6 drawings and i would be really disappointed in myself for not completing the set

i had fish flying out of the fishbowl because i felt bad about perpetuating bad pet fish keeping practices (i've watched a lot of fish care youtube videos for no particular reason), and then still felt bad, so drew them as fake fabric fish - though i don't think i conveyed this very well

the final result is a surprisingly very cute piece that kind of reminded me of a red pocket. i especially liked the colours i went with, so i think i'll use this palette in the future... i think it's funny i did this piece out of what was basically desperation, but it ended up being one of my favourites. the lesson here is to let go of perfectionism because sometimes the results will surprise you, or something

Autumn 1

I've always really liked artworks that placed the viewer in the position of the thing the subjects are looking at, for example i often see this type of concept with fridges (i want to draw this too)

obviously, it being the autumn drawing meant the mid-autumn festival aka mooncakes !!! and i had just watched a video about someone making mooncakes at home in their oven so i thought it was perfect for this. it didn't really occur to me that you baked mooncake, despite the name, i kind of thought they just spawned into existence

i had some trouble with this piece because of the pose Zuo Le was in. eventually i gave up and took a picture of myself kneeling in the same way to use as reference, and i'm so glad i got over this stubbornness of not using refs because it helped so much. i also used 3D models (cylinders) for the mooncakes' size and position placement

the moral of the story is to use references, and also to eat mooncakes because mooncakes are delicious and my favourite one is the red bean kind

initial autumn-1 sketch ft grainbuds and yun qingping in the bg

their tails are also almost touching

Autumn 2

Mid-autumn festival, full moon, it's the same type of theme in a different location. Despite the point of this artbook being wanzuo aka as a ship, this is one of the few pieces that reflects they have any kind of romantic implication - on one hand it's because two people standing next to each other is, to me, ship art, and also i don't have the mental power (nor skill really) to draw people kissing or doing..........anything more. at the same time, a ship doesn't have to be strictly showing romantic gestures all the time anyways (i like sonadow, they beat each other up), so really love transcends having to do typical romantic things to show love, i think, something like that

anyways, in this Wanqing is doing his very very best to reach out and hold Zuo Le's hand, who is very oblivious to his feelings. wanzuo to me is a 'slowburn for 100k words' type of ship, i think they'd both be clueless about their feelings because they're so job orientated, and it'd take them literally years before they consider the other a romantic option, and then a few more years before they start holding hands

Winter 1

This was probably one of my favourite ideas when i was sketching, but then it became one of my (in my opinion) weakest pieces in the whole thing. all because of my lack of skill in executing the vision i had

i won't be too negative but there are various things i wish i had done better, but that means i know what to improve on and learn so, that's good

on a more positive note, i really loved their expressions in this one, and i like how the tree ended up looking

the lore is that either Shu, Grain Buds or Yun Qingping tied Zuo Le up and put him there

one of my favourite concepts, guy is gift

i really like how Zuo Le looks here

Winter 2

Winter-2 ended up being my favourite piece! I was apprehensive about my ability to turn this into a complete drawing, i have a problem where if the sketch is too 'complete' (in the sense that it's not that sketchy and rough) then i become really frustrated when lining etc because it'd never look as fluid and good as the sketch. this was true for awhile, i tried many different styles of lineart and i thought i would just have to colour and work with the sketch (and even then, because i was tidying the sketch up, it would lose what i liked about it)

eventually, out of mostly curiosity, i inked Zuo Le's head with a thick, pixel brush. and somehow, i really really liked it (wip). i also really liked the contrast between the envisioned soft snowy scene with the hard lines of a pixel brush

i broke the three colour palette pattern with this one and it worked out really well. though i wish this was a horizontal piece, but i can easily edit that when i feel like it

the reference for the mountain in the back was Matterhorn, a famous mountain in the alps yes but also i went with this because of Matterhorn, the defender operator. at one point during the artbook's life, the theme was going to be travel-themed, with Zuo Le and Wanqing visiting different countries around Terra - this was Kjerag. story-wise i don't know why they're there, but it's an homage to my friend's favourite faction

Cover

At this point in time i still had no idea what the cover would look like, which is a problem considering the deadline was dangerously close. but as soon as i decided on the name, i had a vision of each letter of each word representing a visual piece of Wanqing and Zuo Le

sadly i ran out of time to do this, but it might be something i revisit if i ever want to polish up the artbook for printing or anything similar

on the bright side, the snake S made its way into the final cover, and i think that's the most important part of the design (+ Wanqing's horns)

my favourite one is probably D

And that's it! the whole eight pieces and my (thought) processes (as much as i can remember writing it now anyways)

again, i'm really glad i did this. i learned so much and all things considered i'm really happy with the outcome. shoutout to aforementioned friend Kei for both encouraging me to sign up to the event and for their support during the whole process and when i had moments of self-doubt

hopefully i'll finish and publish the fic i had originally wanted to finish for the event, too. but for now, fly high, farm yaoi

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