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!
So I've been sharing about my first time doing a subathon on Twitch back in September since Twitch has a promotion on subscriptions the whole month. It was my first attempt at a subathon, which is a type of livestream where every time a streamer receives a subscription, more time is added to a descending timer with various rewards after a certain number of subs. I'm not really comfortable having such goals but since it was for a good cause I wanted to try it out.
Anyway, the main impetus behind this was I just wanted to make a graffiti wall with the names of all those who contributed and that's exactly what I ended up doing! I also did lots of art and drew stickers for all those who contributed 5 subs or more. The response was astounding and I ended up amassing quite a bit of art debt but it was fun trying to draw stickers and they came out really well so I thought I'd share them!
Apart from chibi head stickers I also wanted to add special icons beside the names of those who contributed. The idea I had was to ask those people for their favourite emotes on Twitch and I would draw them into stickers and stick them beside their names on the graffiti wall, with the number of stickers indicating how many subs they contributed. I thought it was a good way to fill up the little empty spaces on the wall too. Well in the end they ended up gifting way more than I expected so I just placed the stickers where I thought they would look good.
So for one of my viewers whose name is Nungbak on Twitch, I drew him two emote stickers and 3 chibi head stickers which I shared here.
For his favourite emotes, he chose this one called Kreygasm that looks like this:
Source: Redbull.com
Apparently this is from a Twitch streamer named Kreyg and is used to indicate an intense feeling of elation or pleasure (often in an inappropriate manner).
Tbh I wasn't entirely sure how to go about drawing this one because of how grainy the emote is normally. I figured I'd try a different style and go for a simpler minimalist look, like how some people replicate famous paintings but with less details. I wasn't sure if it would fit with this emote but of course we start with a basic outline which ended up looking like a wire frame.
Then I added in the basic features of his face.
I colour sourced from the reference picture and added in the base colours.
And tbh I'm sure Nungbak would've been happy with that but I wasnted to make the nose look more like a nose so I used some airbrushes to try and recreate the lighting effects in the emote. It took a bit or finagling and trial and error but I think eventually it came out pretty good!
I think I could've used another brush to add more detail on his stubble but I'd say that's a fairly accurate recreation and now it's in high-definition too.
The other emote he chose was this one called KEKW which I actually learnt originated from World of Warcraft, where users in opposing factions would see a cryptic version of chat messages, thus when players in one faction typed ‘LOL’ (laughing out loud), players on the other side would see ‘KEK’. The actual image is of a man named El Risitas, laughing on Spanish TV in a viral video clip.
Source: dexerto.com
But basically KEKW is not an acronym like I originally thought it was, but it means the same as LOL. I guess now that the boomers know about LOL it's not cool anymore so people have started using KEK instead.
Drawing this one was kind of a nightmare again because of the low resolution on the emote. But I used the same approach and started with a simple base.
I actually liked how this minimalist one looked tbh, and I think this would've been recognisable enough tbf. But I tried adding in the shadows and highlights anyway just to see how it would look.
In the end we get this which I think didn't turn out as well as I had hoped, based on the Kreygasm one I did.
Maybe more shadows would've given it more depth? I think I might've started off with the wrong base colour and that was my downfall since any shadows I added ended up looking too dark and blended into the facial features like his mustache. Granted it is still recognisable but I think it could've been better. But hindsight is 20-20, I did spend quite a bit of time on this trying to make it look right and nothing I did was working so I left it at that.
Overall though I thought the emote stickers turned out pretty alright and I'm glad Nungbak liked them too! Here's the timelapse for them:
I really enjoyed doing these stickers and was more than glad to do them for all those contributed! There's a few more to go so I'll be sharing them over the next few posts!
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
Check out my previous post in this series!
