Hey Hive!
We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!
This was another free artwork redemption over on my Twitch channel, where viewers can use their channel points they've hoarded over the course of watching my streams to claim free art from me! I thought since I'm an artist this would be a good way to reward my loyal viewers.
This request was made by one of the VIPs on my channel who goes by rhaiya on Twitch! I'd previously done an art piece for him a while back involving Gudetama and ramen which looked like this:
This time he wanted something a bit more simple; he asked me to redraw his discord profile picture at the time which was Houtarou Oreki (from the anime series Hyouka) eating noodles, but wanted the hair to be white and background to be dark.
This was the picture in question:
His request seemed a bit too simple for 200K channel points, and I asked if rhaiya wanted something more but he insisted that was all he wanted so I got to work. First was to find a reference for the hair colour he was looking for, and thankfully pinterest has tons of references you can find for anime hair styles and colours!
I asked rhaiya and he chose one of the white options I showed him. Next I just traced the picture since rhaiya said he wanted it to look exactly the same, but I adjusted the dimensions a little.
I did a rough tracing before going over it again with the proper line art, trying to make it as accurate as possible.
Then I coloured his hair and face, according to the colour reference I found, and it actually turned out really well!
I had a different plan for the noodles since I wanted to include a ramen bowl as well, and since I drew a ramen bowl for rhaiya the last time it didn't make sense to draw a whole new one from scratch so I reused the one I drew previously but changed the Gudetama for a chicken!
This was an inside joke we had with rhaiya who changed his gamer tag on Valorant to 菜鸟 which he said translated to rookie, but I was unfamiliar with the term and thought it meant vegetable chicken, which is the literal translation. We all laughed and went with that instead so to commemorate that I thought adding a chicken on a piece of lettuce would be perfect.
So eventually we get something like this, which I thought already looked better than the original picture since the colours are brighter and more vibrant especially with the ramen. Of course, I don't know the context of that scene in the anime but just comparing these two stills I'd say there's already an improvement.
I asked rhaiay what kind of background he would like since it felt a little incomplete and I didn't want to copy the background of the original since it looks quite dull. He suggested something dark and decided on a space background which I thought was a brilliant idea, and also gives me an excuse to use my galaxy brush again!
Because discord profile pictures are circular, I had the idea of drawing Oreki in a spaceship, with the window looking into outer space behind him. Since he is in the center and the focal point that also meant I didn't have to draw too much of the space background but I tried to fit in as much as I could and added more colours to give more contrast against his relatively plain appearance.
In the end we get this, which I thought looked pretty good, and I'm glad rhaiya thought so too! He said it was perfect and changed his profile picture immediately, to which I was very honoured and humbled.
Here's the 30 second timelapse:
If you're interested, I do draw on stream sometimes and you can even claim free artwork if you get enough channel points! We also play lots of interactive games so come hang out with us on my Twitch channel!
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
