Hi. I recently got into digital sketching to produce cleaner-looking drawings over my former mechanical pencil and sticky note method. I've slowly been improving over the past few months, showing my sketches to the users in the Avali Nexus social thread where they were generally well received. But it's getting to the point where I'm realizing a high-traffic area probably isn't the best place to showcase drawings. Kinda hard for people to see it if it's buried in the 30 pages of posts that appeared over the previous six hours. So, that's my backstory. But you probably aren't interested in that. I can't say there'll be a whole heck of a lot here; I only have a few highlights of recent things. Just a heads-up, I don't draw a lot of base-game starbound stuff. Most of it is of the Avali race from the Avali mod (if you haven't checked it out, check it out. They're adorable). It wasn't until very recently that I tried to start coloring things, so a few of these will be black-and-white line arts. This is probably my favorite avali sketch that I've done; it's a drawing of one of my close friends, affectionately known as "LD": Somewhere in the writhing mass of posts that is the Nexus, someone thought it'd be funny if avali puffed up when they got embarrassed. One thing lead to another, and this happened: This is my first ever attempt at coloring something: Drawing Avali is fun and all, but over time my mind started wondering, "Hey, what Ryuujin did with the Avali is really cool! You should try coming up with a race and see what happens!" So I did. Thanks to my friend Intrebute, I was able to shred the horrific species names I came up with and use his suggestion of "Kineptic" It's a play on "Kinetic" and "Nepeta Cataria"(catnip). Obviously, they're based off of cats: "Kineptic" fits them because the gloves they wear (not shown in this picture) use technology (space magic, whatever you want to call it) that gives them the ability to, simply put, use telekinesis. Unmodified, the gloves make use of the energy stored in the user's body to do work. One of the most common things they use this for is mobility: they lean in the direction they want to move, then use the gloves to propel themselves forward. It's kinda like trying to balance a broom on your palm. If you move in the direction it is falling, you can counter the momentum and keep it from falling out of your hand. I was mad one day and this happened: I'd love to make these guys into a playable race, but I have no spriting skills and it's a bit daunting of a task for my modding teammate at this time. Maybe someday, though! So... yeah. That's it for now. My skills are randomly generated every morning when I wake up, so updates here will be erratic. Thanks for looking!
I really like the Kineptic! Telekinesis is an awesome ability to have, and the whole concept of momentum riding sounds really fun. Great work! As for the spriting thing, I think there's probably someone on this very forum who'd be willing to help you out. There's lots of talented people here (such as yourself). Anyway, good luck! You should make a post when they get made into a mod!
Thank you! I will most certainly post about it if they become a mod. The tricky bit is that I want them to be digitigrade like the Avali. 'Course, I'm sure cramming all those tails in the sprite wouldn't exactly be a walk in the park, either! Given their tendency to levitate around, animation would probably be a bit easier. I'm tempted to ask Ryu if he'd be willing to let me use the avali base sprite, since that would (with a few exceptions) make armor and vanity items cross-species compatible. They would't levitate then, but I guess that's what tech is for. Thanks! My brain is spewing out ideas for them constantly, such as what they can and can't do with the glove tech. For example, since using the gloves drains actual stored energy, they are effectively using their bodies as batteries. Once the battery is empty, the gloves stop working--and so does the user. Because of this, proper eating habits (which would ironically be considered very bad eating habits in reality) would be a key part of kittens' primary education, and a liscense to use the gloves would be required. I'll have to try drawing one with a candy bar in one hand, a liter of soda in the other, and various other tooth-decaying, artery-clogging goodness levitating around it. Assuming you are talking about the Kineptic, you should see the kittens! 'Course you could also be talking about the avali. I have a drawing giving my take on what a very young avali kit would look like, but it was a collaborative effort between myself and @Intrebute. Intrebute, would you mind if I posted it here and took all the credit to share it with people who haven't seen it?
They're all cute ;u; I do like the kitties best though; my goal in life is to be a crazy cat lady. I wouldn't mind adding some Kineptics (plural?) to my family o3o
You are free to use the base sprites from the Avali if you want, there's a few mods that use them (At least several people have asked permission, not sure how many of those mods were ever finished)
I've been told double posting is okay as long as you are adding new content and it's been a while since the last post. I hope that's the case, 'cause I've got two new drawings I want to post. These two started out as mechanical pencil and sticky note drawings. As such, each image was only about the size of my thumb while scanning. I, being too lazy to either resize the small image or shrink the size of the brush, settled for outlines that were a bit too thick. I wanted to work on my bird's-eye perspective, and looking down at a baby looking up at you seemed like a good way to do it. He's dragging his favorite jingly toy along behind him. It'd be easier to tell that's what was happening if I knew how to background. I'm no fashion aficionado, so I apologize to those of you who are funky all-up-in-it with the latest hype trends. They like flow-y, billowy clothes because of the way they flap around when they move.
Oh man, oh man! I pushin' the limits of reality now, people! I'm trying to shade my stuff now! I'm a shading n00b. And not too great with clothing, either. Better than what I used to be, though. And he's wearing a subligar, so don't worry about that.
So, Ryu was musing the idea of an avali making his feathers permanently shaped like spikes while in the pin feather phase of growth. And then I had to draw.
It's been a while! I have a single drawing for ya; it's not much, but I've been practicing really hard when I get the chance, and this is sort of thing is getting easier and easier to do:
Haha; that's really well done! I'll follow this thread, I see great potential here! Keep up the good work, and your shading and colouring is good too; just so you know!
This one is another attempt at shading. Not even close to perfect, but good enough to be my new avatar. Yes, Teal fur. Compare to quilava pls.