Starless Sky

[FellFromtheSky]

Note that this thread is rather out of date! For my recent work, please head to ifellfromtheskies.tumblr.com

Lights fade, but I won't let them.
​

Hello Smogon! I've finally gotten around to updating this little directory of my (amateur) art thread. Please browse and most definitely feel free to give constructive criticism. I've never mentioned this before, as I thought it might be presumptuous to assume people would do so, but I'm also open to taking one or two requests at a time. Oh! Also, huge points and whatever art-ish thing you want to whoever can (first) figure out (and tell me) what my username is a reference to.

Directory

Note that the directory is organized chronologically. If you are attached to your eyesight, I recommend skipping all the way to "Monochrome Works," or at least "Favorite Pokemon of Each Type."
Sad Surskit
Old Stuff
Fakemon: Asphodoll
Fakemon: Sewisp, Tragicoon, and Phanturne
Florges Avatar
Fakemon: Cherrim-M
Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust
Favorite Pokemon of Each Type: Poison, Ghost, Dragon, Electric
Asphodoll and Banette
Mimiku
Monochrome Works
1/6 Out of This Gravity and Autumn Road
Sunrise on Mt. Freeze
Lunar Migration
Cosmic Gardevoir and Moss Garden
Ninetales-A Avatar
Wildfleur Landscape
PoTW: Togekiss
Facebook Giveaway: Absol
MAC #3 Entry: Espeon and Umbreon
Cuzelf and Dianbone for Cretacerus

CAP 22 Entry

Article Art:
Read them! Click the thumbnails to read the article and view my art!

More to come soon!​

Requests Done:
To check out my art (and what the requester is using it for), click the thumbnails.

For Infamy's RMT "predestination."

For the lovely fx.

For Grains of Salts OM: Mix and Mega.

Original OP

Well, this is my very first post on smogon. I have, however, lurked for literally years. I just never felt a very strong desire to join before. Both Pokemon and art have been very important in my life, and now that I have joined, I thought an art thread would be a pretty good place to start. I'd appreciate any and all criticism. I really want to learn.

Other Pokemon Stuff

This last one is just a 10 minute doodle.

Other Non-Pokemon Stuff

 

[strawberry]

Welcome to Smogon! Glad to see that you've decided to join after a while of lurking. I really like the first three Altaria pieces with your mixture of textures that makes me feel like I'm looking at some ancient pokemon drawings in a distant cave. A quick suggestion I could offer after looking at the next two images is that you might want to pick more dynamic colors (not over the top though) since it seems you sometimes tend to pick less vibrant, pale colors. You also might want to try using stronger outlines especially if you work on a more serious image that's cleaner and crisp, although that can be just a personal preference of mine. n_n Other than that, I love both your pokemon and non-pokemon related (esp the 2nd one) stuff, so I'll be looking forward to seeing more of your work!

 

[FellFromtheSky]

Thanks! I was really trying to give the three Altaria pieces a mystical, cave-painting-esque vibe, so I'm glad they had that effect. I really appreciate your suggestions about color and strong lines. I've always tended (perhaps unfortunately) to shy away from vivid, saturated colors. And these pieces actually have pretty bright colors in comparison to what I usually do. I often paint in just black and white or in somber, faded tones. With regard to your comment on stronger outlines, I tend to avoid them mostly because I often sketch rather haphazardly, which makes lineart really difficult to clean up. And messy lineart tends to turn clean and crisp into sloppy and careless. But I completely agree you on that note. I definitely need more practice and patience.

EDIT:

Here's another older piece of mine.

Here's this

Any and all advice would be great (for this and the others above).

 

[bubblymaika]

Ahhhh I love the traditional feel of your works! Welcome!

 

[FellFromtheSky]

Ahhhh I love the traditional feel of your works! Welcome!

Thank you!

 

[FellFromtheSky]

Okay, I'm pretty sure I'm allowed to double post as I have some new (old) content, but let me know if I can't.
Most of this stuff is over a year old, and I felt a bit embarrassed to post it, but I've decided I'd like all the feedback I can get. In addition, some of this older stuff is pretty different from what I do no. It has stronger lines and horrible unnaturally smooth blending (at least in some of them).

old stuff

My first ever attempt at digital art:

Cringe-worthy this one is.

This ones' actually not too bad:

Such an unnatural looking tree formation in this next one. And I did say I had lurked for a long time.

The signpost for Wandering Spirits.

Love non-Pokemon poppies.

These others are WIPs that I would love some direction for, in anyone can offer any.

newer WIPs

Really like this one, but not sure what to do with it.

Also like this one, but I'm even more lost with it.

Trying to redo that Necturna one, maybe with some more natural tree formations this time.

This one needs some help with color.

Any advice or criticism would be fantastic.

 

[ant]

that florges looks like the stuff i usually steal from tumblr to use as avatars. i love it. that espeon is also amazing. keep it up and welcome to smogon!!

 

[FellFromtheSky]

that florges looks like the stuff i usually steal from tumblr to use as avatars. i love it. that espeon is also amazing. keep it up and welcome to smogon!!

Thanks! Hopefully I'll get around to finishing that Florges. And I'm glad you like the Espeon, especially considering how ancient it is.

On another note, lately I've been just bombarded with Fakemon ideas. I just drew up one of them.

It's supposed to be a counterpart to Banette (that also evolves from Shuppet, but having something to do with happiness). But unlike Banette, this doll is worn and well loved. I was torn between making its secondary typing Normal or Fairy, but I tend to slap Fairy on Fakemons way too often, so I settled for adding some fairy tale flavor into its movepool. Speaking of movepools, here's Asphodoll's:

Asphodoll Level Up

-Phantom Force
-Play Rough
-Sweet Kiss
-Charm
-Night Shade
-Play Nice
(4) Charm
(7) Night Shade
(10) Play Nice
(13) Shadow Sneak
(16) Helping Hand
(19) Disarming Voice
(22) Aromatherapy
(26) Pain Split
(30) Shadow Ball
(34) Bestow
(40) Encore
(46) Body Slam
(52) Healing Wish
(58) Switcheroo
(64) Return

In addition, it gets Shuppet's level-up moves and egg moves. The TM and Tutor moves are the same as Banette.

Oh, and the name comes from Asphodel, the flower of the death and the angel of comfort, and doll.

 

[FellFromtheSky]

I have more Fakemon! A line based on the fact that the Latin words larvae and pupae, mean ghost and doll, respectively. And the phantom of the opera somehow got tossed in as well. Tragedy/comedy masks too.

I'm pretty satisfied with these two. But I'm not sure I like the colour scheme on this next one.

As always, I'll appreciate any criticism.

 

[FellFromtheSky]

Okay, a triple post. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's okay because I have more content.
First, I finished that Florges WIP over the weekend.

I also have another Fakemon:

The idea for Cherrim-Mega came to me as I was thinking about the relationship between cherry blossoms and the samurai. The samurai really identified with the cherry blossom because it, like they do, falls in its prime. So, because cherry blossom = samurai = secondary fighting type + leaf sword.
These next one was me discovering that I can alter the values of layers.

 

[HelenTheHero]

I'm loving all of your Fakemons! My favorite is the final evolution of the Bug/Ghost line, it looks mysterious and beautiful.

 

[FellFromtheSky]

Okay, so, I've been painstakingly cleaning lineart in an attempt to make the pieces below look a bit more eye-catching (also trying to use more vivid colours). These also are part of the whole "favorite Pokemon of each type" thing that I'm trying to do.
Poison:

Ghost:

Dragon:

Electric:

I'm loving all of your Fakemons! My favorite is the final evolution of the Bug/Ghost line, it looks mysterious and beautiful.

Thanks!

 

[FellFromtheSky]

Here's a little something that was done while I was eating way too much chocolate with way too much time on my hands.

I'm actually pretty pleased with how it turned out. Chocolate seems to have a positive effect on my artistic ability, or at least my mood.
This other one's a WIP that I sort of like and will probably finish.

 

[FellFromtheSky]

CAP 22 Stuff

 

[D_what]

Hey there! Great work so far :D I get super excited when I see other artists say they want to learn, it resonates a lot with me - the fastest improvement I've ever had BY FAR was when I explicitly said I wanted to learn and was practical about doing ot. (less so now because I'm hella lazy but w/e.)

From what I've seen so far, I think (tying in to what Tikitik said) you'd benefit significantly from this particular task:

--------------------------------------------------------------


Next time you're feeling adventurous or energetic, colour a picture using values only within the range I've outlined in pink in this image.

Hide

That's not to say you only have to use blue! Rather, the point of the exercise is limit your access to pure blacks and whites and any of the colours you'd get by mixing with them. With a limited palette, you're forced to think analytically and creatively about how you want to represent light - will you compensate by making the rest of the image darker? Perhaps use a light grey? Or bright blues or yellows as a light source? There's a lot of methods to approach, but I think the result, if you can grasp it without sneaking some white in there or abusing layer modes to get the colours you want, would add a lot of depth to your stuff. It's a really great exercise.

If in doubt, play cautious and stay away from the pink lines. Being more restrictive is better than less when learning. And if you want to try a monotone themed pallet, go for it! Or stick entirely within the darker half of the range, or limit yourself to using the dark half of one colour and a single different bright colour for contrast. There's a lot of room for experimentation and you really get to grasp colour this way. Ideally, doing several small painty sketches and then one bigger image would be the best way to approach it. Let me know if you decide to take it on!

Hide

I learned this myself after meeting DestinyBlue from deviantart irl when I was "in training". I loved how she approached colour, and asked her what she would have done had she been doing my (best at the time) painting here: http://dunnyct.deviantart.com/art/Shiny-Pokemon-Battle-SAI-203739742?q=gallery:DunnyCT/12191077&qo=22 She said good things, but noted that I was relying too heavily on white and black lighting, which ended up flattening out the image, plus detracting from both the explosiveness and the realness of it. So she said, tl;cr, ditch the white, learn to rely on other colours. So I got home and painted http://dunnyct.deviantart.com/art/Weavile-not-really-a-speedpaint-323464121?q=gallery:DunnyCT/12191077&qo=10 instead, no white or light colours allowed! It's by no means the best thing I could have done, and definitely could have benefited from access to the full range of shades, (particularly grey, which I ignored...bad idea) but I learned a lot from it. The next few months I kept leaving out white and often black in my paintings until I felt I grasped it enough to reintroduce them. White and black definitely aren't bad, it's just that it's hard to learn how to use colour properly when most of us grow up learning "shade with black/lighten with white".

-------------------------------------------------------------


As an aside, which I think should be mandatory in the ^ challenge above, and a useful tip generally outside of it, before you start sketching or colouring anything, replace the background with something other than white. It can be a medium grey, light grey, dark grey, muted brown, pale blue, dull burgundy, but avoid leaving it pure white. It sets a bad range for shading later (if the background is de facto the brightest thing you can get in the image, it'll be hard to shade the subject decently).

 

[FellFromtheSky]

Hey there! Great work so far :D I get super excited when I see other artists say they want to learn, it resonates a lot with me - the fastest improvement I've ever had BY FAR was when I explicitly said I wanted to learn and was practical about doing ot. (less so now because I'm hella lazy but w/e.)

From what I've seen so far, I think (tying in to what Tikitik said) you'd benefit significantly from this particular task:

--------------------------------------------------------------


Next time you're feeling adventurous or energetic, colour a picture using values only within the range I've outlined in pink in this image.
Show Hide


That's not to say you only have to use blue! Rather, the point of the exercise is limit your access to pure blacks and whites and any of the colours you'd get by mixing with them. With a limited palette, you're forced to think analytically and creatively about how you want to represent light - will you compensate by making the rest of the image darker? Perhaps use a light grey? Or bright blues or yellows as a light source? There's a lot of methods to approach, but I think the result, if you can grasp it without sneaking some white in there or abusing layer modes to get the colours you want, would add a lot of depth to your stuff. It's a really great exercise.

If in doubt, play cautious and stay away from the pink lines. Being more restrictive is better than less when learning. And if you want to try a monotone themed pallet, go for it! Or stick entirely within the darker half of the range, or limit yourself to using the dark half of one colour and a single different bright colour for contrast. There's a lot of room for experimentation and you really get to grasp colour this way. Ideally, doing several small painty sketches and then one bigger image would be the best way to approach it. Let me know if you decide to take it on!

Show Hide


-------------------------------------------------------------


As an aside, which I think should be mandatory in the ^ challenge above, and a useful tip generally outside of it, before you start sketching or colouring anything, replace the background with something other than white. It can be a medium grey, light grey, dark grey, muted brown, pale blue, dull burgundy, but avoid leaving it pure white. It sets a bad range for shading later (if the background is de facto the brightest thing you can get in the image, it'll be hard to shade the subject decently).

Wow! Thank you for so much feedback! I actually attempted to adhere to the challenge you outlined in this image:

I started with a non-white background, but obviously didn't stick to just one or two colours. I did, however, stay within the range you outlined (except in the sclera of the eye, in which I chose a rather too-light grey for the challenge). I'm actually pleased how it came out, at least in comparison to some of my other images. I think I shall continue this challenge for at least a month. Maybe I'll try the monotone/duotone version next!

 

[FellFromtheSky]

It's been so much fun participating in CAP 22! Anyway, this post contains all of the supporting artwork, WIPs, initial concepts, and the explanation and justification of the design.

Preview of Little Red Riding Wolf drawing on its Lunar powers:
​

Main Art

Supporting Art

Using Moonblast:

Using Parting Shot:

Action Poses:

Concept art:

Possible Shiny:

Explanation

The idea for the wolf as little red riding hood came to me a while ago, as I was brainstorming fakemon for a friends fakedex project I was helping with. Ultimately, the project never came to fruition and so the design was never externalized. When I saw that the typing for CAP 22 (also the first CAP I've participated in) had been decided as fairy/fighting, however, I decided it was time for little red riding wolf to be realized. The design went through quite a few iterations and I'm so grateful to all those who left helpful comments, particularly the superbly magnificent artist (huge understatement), Yilx, who suggested messing with proportions to make the design more 'chibi' like. This feedback led to the well-built red riding wolf becoming the dainty little rose-coloured riding wolf.

Justification

Typing Justification

Typing Justification: The typing is justified in three ways: relation to the little red riding hood tale, build, and colour scheme. The design is influenced primarily by Charles Perrault's classic European fairy tale - the Tale of Little Red Riding Hood. This relation is meant to obviate the fairy-type aspect of the design, the same way Mawile and Xerneas are related to the Tale of the Two-mouthed Woman and the Myth of the Tree of Life, respectively. In addition, the dainty, light-footed, and exaggerated face and proportions of this design, reinforce its status as a fairy type. While, the boxing gloves, upright posture, nimble looks, and enlarged fists, communicate the fighting type. Furthermore, the colour scheme, which originally consisted of vampiric reds and dark blues (conveying a dark-type vibe), was altered (in response to feedback) to a colour scheme consisting of rose-pinks and cerulean blue in order to better convey the designs fairy typing.

Parting Shot Justification

Parting Shot Justification: A parting shot is defined as a threat, insult, condemnation, sarcastic retort, or the like, uttered upon leaving. To communicate this, the design was made nimble in stature and given a 'tsundere'-ish, mischievous expression, to look as though it might run away mocking its pursuer through a fairy-tale woodland. Its basis on wolves, foxes, and the maned wolf (also called stilted fox), which are often represented as devious or tricksters in literature also helps to justify parting shot.

Stats Justification

Stat Spread Justification: Firstly, speed is justified by its nimble stature. Similarly shaped Pokemon, such as Weavile, which has base speed 125, and Lopunny, which has base speed 105, it is clear that 119 speed is not unreasonable for red riding wolf. Secondly, it's attack, which was decided to be base 78, is justified by looking at similarly shaped Pokemon. For example, Lopunny has 76 base attack. Other somewhat similarly shaped Pokemon with base attack close to 78 include: Riolu, Electabuzz, Marowak, Machop, Golduck, Wigglytuff, Clefable, Slowking/bro, and Politoed. Even the physically imposing Suicune has only base 75 attack, so it is certainly no stretch for red riding wolf to have a 78 base attack stat. On the special side, CAP 22 was given a base S. Attack stat of 115. This is very reasonable when considering a very similarly shaped Pokemon, Lucario, also 115 base special attack. In addition, I conceived of it drawing on power from the moon (as wolves are closely associated with the moon), which seems to be more of a special attacker's power. Moving on to the defensive stats, CAP 22 was given 84 HP, 86 defense, and 88 special defense. These relatively average, frail-ish defenses make perfect sense considering red riding wolf's slight stature. In addition, similarly shaped Pokemon, like Lucario(-M), Lopunny(-M), Weavile, and even Pangoro, have similar defenses (70-80s range).

Ability Justification

Ability Justification:
On Natural Cure:
This ability is usually associated with cute, woodsy, nature-related Pokemon, pink blobs, or Pokemon actually known to regenerate limbs and such. This design falls in the first category, along with other cutesy nature-related Pokemon like Celebi, Shaymin, and Swablu. In addition, the diet of the maned wolf, which this design is influenced by, happens to consist of up to 50% of a fruit known as the wolf apple. This fruit was noted for its nutritional qualities and was used in traditional folk medicine. More importantly, however, its thought that the inclusion of this fruit in the wolf's diet wards off infection, specifically giant kidney worm infection, which is usually fatal for the animal. Perhaps Natural Cure as its ability is because of its diet.

On Aroma Veil and Parting Shot:
This section is intended to justify Aroma Veil as an ability for this design. The justification stems from the fact that wolves have scent glands all over their body's. Notably on their paws and tail, for the purpose of territory marking (its not just pee). The scent these glands exude helps mark territory for real wolves, but I could see this Pokemon using this scent to magically guard against taunt and infatuation and such, as magical fairy wolves are wont to do. This territorial instinct also also helps justify the belligerent move, parting shot. The inclusion of parting shot is also justified by its tsundere-ish expression and its basis on wolves and the maned wolf (also called stilted fox), which are often represented as devious or tricksters in literature.

old justification

As this being written, abilities are only being discussed. However, some that have been mentioned and seem to have the community's support are: Unaware (so far mentioned 8 times), Prankster (so far mentioned 7 times), Regenerator (so far mentioned 28 times), Natural Cure (so far mentioned 46 times), Poison Heal (mentioned 10 times), Limber (mentioned 8 times), Contrary (mentioned 13 times), and Serene Grace (mentioned 14 times).
Unaware, Contrary, and Prankster can all be explained by the design's devil-may-care, mischievous, tsundere attitude.
Limber, Serene Grace, and even Natural Cure could be explained by the nimble, light-footed aspect of the design.
Natural Cure, however, as well as Regenerator, make more sense for this design when one looks at the Pokemon who have such abilities. Most Pokemon with natural cure are either cutesy woodland creatures, grass-types, or can regrow lost appendages (Corsola and Starmie). This design fits into that first category, accompanied by Chansey and Altaria. At any rate, Natural Cure is by no means incompatible with this design. Regenerator, on the other hand, is a bit harder to justify, as most Pokemon with the ability are based on creatures that actually can "regenerate" something in some way. However, some Pokemon, such as Mienshao and Tornadus-T, have the ability possibly be reason of their limber, mobile, quick-to-recover forms. As such, Regenerator is not an unfitting ability for this design.
Finally, Poison Heal is the hardest to justify, but perhaps it need not be, after all pokemon have had weirder abilities in the past (e.g., Krillowatt has Magic Guard and Trace, and Cawmodore has Volt Absorb)
This design is also appropriate for a few other, less discussed, abilities I've seen mentioned such as Rattled, Justified, Guts, Vital Spirit, Mold Breaker, and Intimidate.

WIPs

Suporting Material for WIP

Initial Sketches

 

[FellFromtheSky]

A thing I did because the new Pokemon's name ミミッキュ (Mimikkyu) sounds like ミク(Miku).

ミミク

 

[FellFromtheSky]

Three Image I've done while trying to adhere to D_What's advice:

 

[D_what]

Aaaargh :D they're so charming! Especially that cutiefly one, I'm actually jealous. It's such a nice atmosphere and I always instinctively avoid or mess up monochrome (or near monochrome) images. They're really, really great. Do you feel you've learned anything that you can apply generally, now? Or identified areas you'd like to try out, or things you might be weak on, or have a particular palette in mind that you're thinking of tackling?

 

[FellFromtheSky]

Aaaargh :D they're so charming! Especially that cutiefly one, I'm actually jealous. It's such a nice atmosphere and I always instinctively avoid or mess up monochrome (or near monochrome) images. They're really, really great. Do you feel you've learned anything that you can apply generally, now? Or identified areas you'd like to try out, or things you might be weak on, or have a particular palette in mind that you're thinking of tackling?

Thank you! With regards to areas of improvement, I feel like I've definitely had to think more about light and colour. typically, when shading, I would often just apply semi-transparent layer of black or white, toggling with transparency and layer modes. But having to forgo black and white made it so I actually had to think about the lighting and how it would affect colour and so forth. It also drew attention to how lazy I've been with linework, but that was really nothing new. Anyway, thanks so much for your advice/challenge. Here are two other non-pokemon images I did in accordance with it as well (sort of, I cheated on the second one).

 

[FellFromtheSky]

Another image for D_What's challenge:

It was originally a duotone image, with a blue and orange palette not using black or white and then, after finishing it, I messed with brightness and contrast, which is why the mountains appear black and parts of the image are very light.
It's also the fantastic new Alolan Ninetales which was, I think, a fantastic design. Yay for Ice/Fairy Ninetales!

 

[FellFromtheSky]

Ideally, doing several small painty sketches and then one bigger image would be the best way to approach it.

I finally did a bigger image, but I wound up reintroducing white/verylightyellow as I was displeased with the contrast of the original image. In attempting this challenge, I realized that basically all of my images look really flat, so I tried to counter that in this piece. I'm not sure I was completely successful, but I'm relatively pleased with it.


Here are some other images I've done in the mean time:

Other Stuff

Here's a banner I recently did for user Infamy's RMT predestination:

 

[FellFromtheSky]

New Thing:

Also, this is art of a completely different sort, but I made little moss garden:

It's got a mister inside that periodically mists out undulating waves of well, mist. It's very restful and soothing.

 

[FellFromtheSky]

New Avatar:

Plus something I did for this article:

Finally, a disgusting attempt at making a sprite, which I clearly have no idea how to do: