Festival

Or.

Carnival of lights (Tribute)

Nah, but here it is. It is my big Christmas piece for this year.

And oh boy, it took longer than I thought it would. But I finished it exactly one month before Christmas. Can you believe it? One a month away. Yoohoo!

Lore wise this piece is very simple, the WornDown Children and some of their friends are going downtown to the park to the Christmas festival.

The composition came to me in a dream… Well, not really but I was falling asleep. And it is inspired by last year when I and some friends attended a guild reunion close to Christmas that happened to be in an insanely well decorated street. It wasn't even a business or something, just a street filled with whoville immigrants or something. Honestly, this picture still falls short a bit. Had it lived up to that street, it would be too unbelievable.

But during the sketching process stuff changed a bit and the final background is actually based on the square in front of the market close to where I live. It's not 1:1 of course, it just has the same vibe. So don't try to look for it.

A sort of running gag I have for my Christmas pics (Not always though) is that Lil happens to own a Christmas elf costume and no one really knows why but she likes to use it during Christmas parties. 

While no one knows why she has it, the reason is quite simple and even a bit boring but she worked as an elf on a mall for one winter during highschool and didn't tell anyone and then they let her keep it. But don't go telling. 

One detail I liked adding is the kids from the Christmas break comic running past the band and while you can't see the faces of many of them. One of them, the girl, is looking at Lil with tears in her eyes from the emotion while looking at Lil because, as far as she knows, she's witnessing an actual real life in front of her eyes. And the Elf is smoking, isn't Christmas wonderful?

Among other cameos you can see Lola and her boyfriend walking among the crowd and, I have to admit, I've been naughty. I keep changing the side of her face where she has her mole depending on which one is more visible, but it's the main thing differentiating her from generic lioness number 2 so there's that.

This piece I mainly took as a challenge. One of the interesting things about it is how it responds to last year's pieces and how in turn those respond to the one from two years ago.

In 2022 I decided to make a really big piece with a bunch of characters, elaborated lighting and perspective play. 

And after, at least in my opinion, succeeding at that, last year I decided I would go smaller. With simpler pieces, often flater and quieter portraying the mundane of how the characters celebrated Christmas with their families or sometimes without them. And I really liked doing that.

So much so that this year I decided to continue that a bit but, and I don't know if this is visible or if it's just a vibe I give myself but in the last twoI kept upping the ante. With the perspective or the lighting that I actually struggled to keep minimalist, and that's when I realized that I really wanted to go big again, with even more complex lighting and perspective.

And here it is. 

After taking that out of my system I actually really want to keep doing some of the smaller pieces and I'll try, though there's also a Whisperers thing I want to do before the year ends because I think I'm going to give them New Year again. And there's also the comic I've been doing of course but there is at least one of those smaller pieces I want to do this year even if it has to stay Patreon exclusive for a while.

The thing is that this one took a bit longer than I thought because it turned into two pieces in one. I had to draw the big mural on the wall next to them. It is inspired by some murals I like from my town and the key word is inspired because I didn't steal them. I didn't just grab them and “anthrofied” them. And what took me some time was coming up with them. 

I'm adding the mural file as well.

I was going to add the Yes coyote over them but I don't think Tak would cover a mural like that unless it was already very vandalized, deteriorated, very old or flat out sucked. So now it's canon that she was actually one of the artists who collaborated on it. Hence the different styles and there's supposedly even more mural out of the frame. Unfortunately due to the perspective, I wasn't able to include her signature like in the other piece a mural of hers is featured. But who knows, maybe I'll come up with something and make an edit later.

There's a stage in the background but the band couldn't audition for the festival because the town organizers are keeping it very Christmassy so there's choirs and weather plays. Maybe certain companies will be able not to do their act without demonic interference.

This is not the most complex piece I've worked on, that will come soon, but it's probably in the top five. Anyway,

Happy Holidays!