Making Spirits Bright: 2015 Advent Calendar Challenge

Had a little time trying to figure out what to do today @_@, but after listening to a preview of an upcoming 12 Tracks song (yeah, cuz I'm special 8D), this came together much quicker. Aina's hair and sweater always give me fits cuz they never are the same every time I do it. This time the red is more raspberry, and the green turned minty. The hair is honey-colored, which is her natural color more than the light brown I sometimes end up with her.

I like the colors better in this, but Aina is a really fun to draw.

I originally planned this for yesterday, but I wanted time to refine it. Its been awhile since I last did the entire West branch of the Office of Creepy and Crawly, which Ransom runs. Ordinarily, James would be here, but as he was already in the core team's christmas picture, I felt it would be redundant.

Things have significantly changed since the last time I ran the line up. Formerly Elizabeth was a blonde bombshell, and nowadays, she's going by Liza, and she a beautiful african-american vampire hunter. Titian's hair color has gone from brown to black to adjust for his genderless-ness (not his fault, he can assure you), and Rebecca has a nice proper outfit I modeled off some fan art from Fatal Frame 2. Ransom's outfit is the same as the last redesign though. Let's not go crazy, right??

The red window is a paper cut out, since its so hard to do solid colors with cheap markers. Its the same technique I used for the 103 release of M1, which has a red variation (the first release is black, with the same technique). This time I used an exacto knife, which was challenging when you don't have a cutting mat.

I was out at dinner with my sister and mom and bf and my sister came across this tattoo image she really liked, with flowers and berries in an ice cream cone. I really liked the thought of that so I tried it. I used 2 different colored Christmas Camellias and free handed it for a more natural work. No pencils here, bro.

The cone is made from a piece of paper embossed by an embosser a friend of mine gave me to use. Its shaped like a purse! Its super fun to crank things through it and see patterns pop up.

Another birthday image for my friend Adam, and it stars his kitsune boy Xander. His request was Henri and he drinking hot chocolate which was ADORABLE (Henri, like me, has an insatiable sweet tooth). This image came to me in a flash, quickly drawn, in between decorating a tree and cooking tonight. @_@

Xander's coat came out with such a warm red that it contrasts well with Henri's green coat. All things considered, I really like how this looks.

Remember actually making snowflakes? I found that I almost forgot @_@. But it was really therapeutic, cutting all these different shapes in triangles and arranging them.

Except I couldn't figure out who to add to it til later @_@ but in the end, Lunis always delivers. I'm just wondering if I should make him ym christmas representative but then I made Lucy so….XD

I'm surprised that the colors popped and didn't actually compete or get lost against the patterned paper., but maybe that's just part of Lunis' magic.

Isn't it weird to see a party pic up and finished so quickly?? Its a little simple but I had to grace it with some awesome girls. Skuld's been in a few but my lovely hostess to the party also appears with me to my left (the picture's right).

This year I drew the outfits we wore, and Skuld has this awesome Baymax dress that I totally want. :3 The music dress is new for me, but I love it.

Its been awhile since I last did the kids from Decon's series From Dreams to Nightmares, and so since Sarah starred the last time, I actually wanted to try all the kids since they'd been retooled a little. I designed Jamie's outfit from the ground up, but a different artist took a crack at Sarah's and Zack's outfits a long time ago, so I adjusted accordingly. I re-did Jason's slightly (its not notable in this shot, of course), and Simon's was done last year for the huge Battlemania project.

Each character is done in their image colors, which Deacon provided so kindly after I woke him in the middle of the night @_@, and the style is another take on the last time I tried the Gente style of Natsume Ono; last year I did it with E.Q.

I saw another picture like this and wanted to try the style and composition. This semi-chibi style with the large eyes and longish limbs looks good on Mei. I like how the blue ribbon comes out even against the tealish-blue background.

The gold snowflake star shape is cut from some lomography paper I got from some camera I bought years ago and sat on. Try figuring out what cameras are on it. XD It pops nicely with the blues. I love keeping paper, though its hard to find places to hold so much paper @_@. I probably will be using more paper for more collages. The washi tape looks good on the green marker, too.

So I've done a birthday image twice (though only once on the correct day XD;;), but this time I included Digby in my semi-longer limbed style for Animal Crossing. I had to design an outfit for Digby that matched Isabelle's, so I used the same red, and used a similar green for his tie that I use on her holly.

It was a little tricky to match their heights but I think it worked well. I need to draw more in this style. XD I also need to draw more Digby (for those who don't know, Choco has a Digby costume and I have an Isabelle costume, plus the awesome fact Choco and I also SHARE the same birthday too XD).

I decided to do a pic that used a coloring style I've used a few times, though lately I last used it on an E.Q. piece in Bass and Treble's image colors. I picked some image colors for the twins in Creepy and Crawly: Next, Toby and Jessica. They came out rather nice, though warmer than the actual piece (the green is a little more emerald).

Since my construction paper is smaller than my sketchbook, I framed the pic with camera themed washi tape, which is a nod to their mother, Mei. I'm not sure the image colors will stick but its a nice warmer palette for a christmas image than the usual colors.

This year's Funpack from Dinosaur Dracula included an awesome "Salacious Crumb in a jar" among other neato things, like instant snow (or polyacrylate, which I use at work). The days of the XE calendar are long gone, so I dedicate the 23rd to doing a pic about something that strikes me from the site or the Funpack, something that resonates with me.

This year he had a short story--on festive green paper--about being down with the flu on christmas. Now as someone who routinely gets sick every year in december, I can relate. Never on Christmas but this year was close. @_@ But the thought of that freedom from the actual stress and the frenzy of holiday itself was also profound to me. Freedom from everything just to be wrapped in your own world, however feverish it is, is attractive, I admit. Its why I keep coming back to DD so much no matter what. I think I relate to the littlest, sometimes even inconsequential things Matt sometimes talks about on the site. Its honest. Its simple. And its genuine.

Merry Christmas Matt. Hope you got the freedom this year, even a little, but without the fever dreams.

This one was a tough one to map out and then put everyone in. @_@ I'm just under 30 different individual series, from mainline series to their spin offs (like Creepy & Crawly, which has about 5 spin-offs or sister series running concurrent to it), adding only one this year, which I'm tentatively calling Forest Life, which is represented by Ichi, whom has appeared once on the Mellow-MACHine album Chiaroscuro.

Believe me…it was a challenge to not only put each representative in, but this year, being the idiot I was, wanted even paired representatives to appear together, so Bass and Treble (E.Q.) appear together, as well as Jessica and Toby (Creepy & Crawly: Next), the Senior Winchester Twins (Distance: Golden 7), California and Ohio (The Union), Anni and Kawaii, Vicci & Kymi and even Milo and Doll (Milo's Room), so there's well over 30 characters packed into my little head, which makes it an accurate representation of the universes I juggle every day. It probably will take over an hour to ink and color, but then, the last pictures are always a character heavy day (which is why they're called All-Characters).