While I was searching for some old draw made when I was teen/late teen for this thread, I also found some drawings I made during my first years of University:
Yes those are first drawings of Russel and Jake my corvids OCs. The peregrine falcon is Jake's arch enemy XD Since their start as OCs, I always imagined the relationship between him and Russel similar to that of boke and tsukkomi of manzai comedy, but with ages I also got inspired to make them evolve into a bromance similar to the one you see in Book IX (lines 225 to 241) of Iliad between Achilles and Patroclus. This draw sums it up:
(it will be digitalized in future)
Silly drawing of Near trying to build his card castle. The pose was referenced from Death Note manga, one of my favourite Japanese works. In the next drawing (not posted here) Near asks Anthony Rester to bring the cat out of the SPK headquarter. I always loved Death Note style, it's one of my favourite and I try to emulate it as much as possible because it's visually very pleasant to look at.
Ok these two drawings are based on the dialogues and interaction between Michaela Dietz (Amethyst's voice actress) and Jesse Zuke (former storyboard artist and storyboard revisionist for Steven Universe). Jesse Zuke has always been my favoruite storyboard artist in the Crewniverse, I love their personality, I love their style (my favourite along with Rebecca Sugar's one). It's a deep shame they had to delete their Twitter accounts and other social medias because of harassment (I suspect transphobia) and to all who harassed them: fuck you!
This is a golden-shouldered parrot (Psephotellus chrysopterygius) a rare bird of southern Cape York Peninsula, in Queensland, Australia, classified as Endangered due mostly to an increase in mid-story vegetation, which increases predation. A major conservation project is underway on Artemis Station to save the species from extinction. I discovered this species thanks to a former friend who had a scientist OC based on this species. I really love the colour pattern.
Some stupid silliness with the "gem shaming" trend that happened on Tumblr some years ago XD
This was more of a venting drawing I did 9 years ago. The night sky and stars were made with watercolours while the rest with coloured pencils.
This was made during 2016 Losar, the year of Male Fire Monkey. The Tibetan macaque was not a coincidence since the importance of Losar in Tibetan tradition. I am unsure if celebrating it or not this year.
A crossover between an Anime character (Shamshel from NGE) and a cartoon character (Amethyst from SU). I found the sue of whip attacks and colour scheme fitting for their interactions. I know Shamshel is a lot bigger than Amethyst, in this drawing he has the same size of Amethyst's. I don't do often crossovers, but this was particularly fun to do.
Just a hooded crow drawing. I liked shading the head to give those particular light features of the bird.
Like in the thread I linked above, this is one of late teen drawings I did. It was a study to memorize head scales in order to learn snake identification since they be quite challenging especially if colubrid. I love snakes to death.
That's all for now people and friends, see you next time!
Yatsufusa
The first two drawings remind me a lot of 'The Secret of NIMH' (1982): They have a lot of character despite merely having a beak and eyes to emote with. People underestimate how hard it is to depict expressions without a humanoid face, mouth, arms and hands, shoulders... The entire body composition is so vastly different that it's hard to relate to for humans. And that goes double for still images!
Also greatly enjoyed the cute snakes. All of them look so attentive. :3
I immediately recognized the NGE-crossover but had to read the text to make sure. And I would not even describe that angel as particularly memorable. (I only watched the original NGE back when dragons still ruled the twilight sky and the stars were bright and numerous.)
(I'm too scared to look up "gem shaming". I already had my fill of 'human insanity' for today.)
On the other hand: That people would retire their accounts on the cesspool that is the right-wing platform Twitter/"X"/"Xwitter" because of too much hate does not surprise me for a second. I 'do' feel for artists who put all their eggs in one basket by mainly focusing on pleasing bots that keep the numbers up over there, but by getting out of there they can channel their energy into building a presence on greener pastures, where people actually care and their voice matters 'at least a little bit'. Staying on a platform that actively encourages abuse makes no sense. (Unless of course, you're really into abusing people. ;p )
ShangXian
You are not the first one to compare my corvids to The Secret of NIMH and I am very honoured to hear that because Bluth's style is one of things that inspire me when it comes to Western-animation/drawing style. I agree non-human animals can be challenging if you are not used to them. I think a good start might be watching documentaries and see the animal basic behaviour, then using Disney/Don Bluth's works for the facial expressions and combine them with the expressions animals use when showing their emotions.
To me this has always been easy since I started drawing them at age 4. Teachers told my parents that I gave life to my drawings and because of that I was often called by other teachers to draw on the blackboard during their lessons when they wanted to show the class a specific topic (usually animals).
I remember all NGE angels, their names and even the sources where those names come from. Since I was 15 I began to study Kabbalah in order to have a deeper grasp of those symbolism. Hanno said in an interview he put those symbols (Kabbalah, Renaissance Christian Kabbalah and Western mysticism) because they were cool. That was a period of intense study of this topic, I learned about Sephirotic tree and I could even read some Kabbalist texts (notably Sepher Yetzirah and Sepher ha Zohar). That period allowed to study Hebrew mysticism as well and see it under the historic lens of its development. I was also able to attend seminars with my best friend irl held by a Jewish scholar of Kabbalah.
Don't worry about the "gem shaming", if you know the dice shaming trend, it was a funny and silly experience. It was basically based on some bad or silly acts done by the Crystal Gems during the series.
dice shaming: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dice+shaming&iax=images&ia=images
another example of gem shaming: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FNe5uAZValvnlhasL_XbLnU3xsqc_qlJc9CR-fw_aW0E.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dce27be686edc86e7d8061c456e13f2e0cbf3846d
"Staying on a platform that actively encourages abuse makes no sense. (Unless of course, you're really into abusing people. ;p )"
I fear some people might actually do it for this reason D: