What is Art Fight?
Art Fight is a month long event that takes place every July, where artists across the internet get together and "attack" (ie. draw) each other's characters.
This year it's being run by rainy, with ~600,000 participants split across this year's themed teams, Fossil vs Crystal. As far as I can tell, the teams and points system matters as much in art fight as they do in british panel shows - that is to say they really don't. The game is not about winning but about the actual art that happens as a result of the event.
Attacks
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| Kaede and Bao at the restaurant |
I love illustrations that capture or tell stories, and this is doubly so when you consider that a lot of visual story telling in character design comes from what they wear and how they express themselves through body language. My first attack was directed at Nephrited's character Kaede. My favourite design note was this bit:
Personality wise, she’s incredibly incredibly sarcastic. Not all the time, but if you give her a chance to snark, she will execute snark. She’s friendly enough, but the friendliness lies under an exterior made up entirely of slight insults and overprotectiveness
As she "appears of Japanese descent" I decided to pick out a japanese restaurant as a location, and had the scenario being that she's giving snark to someone (POV: you're Mica) for arriving late - a "So, you finally arrived..." moment. For an added bit of fun I also included a little Xiao Bao in the background waving over. I mainly tried to capture the warm lighting of the restaurant, and added in a bit of letter boxing to separate out the foreground elements.
★ ☆ ★ ☆ ★
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| Grace of Sunset Optunia, c.2025 |
This time, I was looking at a character design from zephyrsflight, which was a character in the cookie run style called Sunset Optunia Cookie. Her design seems inspired by the striking hues of Opuntias, or prickly pears, which feature vibrant yellow and red flowers and fruit against typical cactus green.
Her description included notes that made give give off a certain amount of vainness with a penchant for shiny things, but also "caring for the low". My interpretations of this is a sort of saintly style
I wasn't too sure how to do her design justice in the Cookie Run Kingdom style so I took some inspiration from her flowing dress and wings for a stained glass style.
Doing some research for this one to figure out just how stained glass designs work, and what's interesting is it's quite similar to limitations with tris in 3D modelling - where possible you avoid concave shapes, and especially sharp inner corners, since this apparently introduces weaknesses into the glass, and it also much harder to cut. It would explain why a lot of designs use large, smooth curves and supporting frames for complex objects.
Also, a lot of stained glass found in places like churches use a mix of the window frame for thicker lines combined with thinner lines painted black or at least dark, which seems to keep style consistency even if a separate pane is not needed - or is too complex to create.
Honestly I don't know, I'm sure some stained glass hobbyists will prove me wrong, but either way I'm happy with the result!
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| Bijou - Forager Amongst Flowers |
This attack was actually a revenge attack - managodess had actually drawn an attack on one of my posted characters prior to this, and I had just finished my previous attack so I had to take the opportunity!
Bijou is described as living off her surroundings, and preferring the company of the animals around her, which inspired this little outdoor scene. I have a slight obsession with the way splash art images are composed - using natural borders such as the rocks along the river and leaves on the trees to allow the illustration to exist independently of its surroundings. You can see an earlier attempt here.
I tried a few rendering techniques here, using HSL tools to adjust colours, trying different brushes for the dappled sunlight through the leaves (komorebi), and palette selection tools to find some nice colour combinations for her dress. Bonus points if you can figure out the bird on her finger!
★ ☆ ★ ☆ ★
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| Passing Time around the Fire |
Vita and Fufu telling ghost stories to Marche who is definitely 100% not scared, and Kell who is definitely not having her reading focus broken by the events transpiring.
My final attack was directed at karob, who I had been speaking to before the event about some characters he'd been cooking up - a trio of bug ladies off on an adventure. Each of the characters had a brief description about themselves, but also a line about their relation to Marche, which made it fun to imagine a scenario with them interacting with each other.
As this was getting towards the end of the event I wanted to try and speed up and finish my last submission and get it over with (since GMTK jam was coming up), but of course I ended up going all in and doing a clean line art and render on this one too because apparently I can't stop myself.
Using photos references from when I went camping with friends and chilled by the fire, I started messing with the lighting in the scene to reflect the strong orange light against a stark black backdrop. The lighting felt quite overpowering at first, and I had to tone it down a few times since it was getting hard to tell that Kell was supposed to be wearing a blue dress. But as usual, contrast and colour relativity comes to the rescue (this is where we prioritise luminosity when differentiating aspects such as shapes, and how we infer the original colours in a scene based the differences between them rather than the exact colour we see).
★ ☆ ★ ☆ ★
Defenses
I also want to do a shout out at the lovely art I received during the event.
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| Fairy Book Club by Josien (jopilatje) |
A cute ink illustration of my mascot and book worm Paige along with some friends, in a note book (haha!). I have endless respect for people who work in traditional mediums, ESPECIALLY when there are no takesies backsies.
★ ☆ ★ ☆ ★
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| Batting for you by managodess |
Adorable art of one of my city dwelling OCs, Azzie, after making a mess on the wall with her spray paints. Mana did a crazy number of attacks over event, I think possibly over one a day, many of which you can check out on her art blog.
★ ☆ ★ ☆ ★
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| Fond Memories by Dani (auroranekai) |
Beautiful illustration of Lucille in a polaroid -the artefacts from the shot developing was a real nice touch. She has made a lot of illustrations showcasing her impressive skills across 2D and 3D, which you can find on her art blog.
★ ☆ ★ ☆ ★
It was nice to know that there was no pressure to get a large number of pieces done, and that it was possible to find time between the other events of July to create some pieces. Were I to do this again I want to focus on trying to get out a lot of smaller sketches as part of the process of speeding up my art process - and also in order to attack more people!
And that wraps up this retrospective of Art Fight 2025! Will I join again next year? We shall see...