Art Attack #130: Getting Comfy in a Taco Blanky 😊

taco.cat (67)in #art • 2 years ago

Hey Steemit!

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 we're still on our streak of posts where I share about art pieces I did for those in my chat who redeemed free art over on my Twitch channel! One of the perks of being Twitch affiliate is having customisable channel redemptions so anyone in chat can trigger different stuff using channel points! Since I'm an artist, I thought I'd reward my loyal viewers with free artwork at 150K channel points!

I was not expecting this redeem to be a hit since I priced it so high, and I was surprised to find that a lot of people hoarded so much channel points! So I was flooded with requests left and right during Q4 2021.

Anyway, one of the earliest requests I got was from my fellow streamer, ohhridz! He was the whole reason I got to affiliate and was also the first person to subscribe to my channel! And he introduced me to so many of other streamers that I am happy to call my friends now!

So I was more than happy to oblige his request, which initially was to "surprise him" but I immediately protested since that's one of the most annoying prompts an artist can receive imo. He later changed his mind to a chibi version of himself, which suited me since I can't draw people very well.

Ridz later came up with an idea for a follower emote that's basically Ridz in a taco blanky kinda like the blankies emote. And I thought it was so cute and wholesome I got to work immediately!

These were the references I used:

I used his emote that was done by another one of our streamer artist friends as a reference since it was so well done and came up with an initial sketch with just the normal blankie.

The next step was figuring out how a taco blanket would look like.. It actually reminded me of the burrito blanket which you can buy online:

Source: aliexpress

Anyway, I figured I would draw a kind of wrap with his head in the middle and eventually got something I thought was really cute:

I sent this sketch to Ridz and was so glad he loved it and said it was so cute too! He was so excited for it he showed his chat and they all agreed that it was cute! I was so touched that everyone liked it! Here's the clip:

I worked on the lineart and colour on-stream and Ridz stopped by to check in and I got his approval!

After an hour or two on stream while drawing and chatting, we get this! I wasn't too sure about the colour of his eyes and mouth since I thought it would be too dark to see especially since the actual emote size is quite small but I used the colours from his other emote and made it a little brighter so I thought it was okay.

I sent it to Ridz after doing a few adjustments off-stream and he loved it and thought it was perfect! I also added a little paw print on the blanket as a sort of "signature".

Ridz sent me the preview of what it would look like on Twitch and it seemed pretty good as it is so I guess that was that!

Overall, this was super fun to work on and I was really happy with how this came out! It was one of those pieces where it looked good from the sketch right to the end. A rare occurrence where I didn't hate myself or my art for once! And I'm so glad Ridz's chat loves it too! Many people said it was so cute and now it's even on his merchandise! Oh dang, what an honour! I didn't know he's put it on merch but I felt so touched when I found out!

I really owe Ridz a lot so I'm glad I was able to pay him back in some way with this emote, and I'm so happy he's found success as a Twitch partner now! We all said he would be the first one to get it and we were right, and I couldn't think of anyone more deserving. GGs!

Here's the timelapse btw:

Thanks for reading!