Whatsits

[malymin]

made with nex3's grid generator

Blue is the original; tawny is the result of swapping the red and blue color channels in GIMP.

Feel like there was a period where almost gem-like eyes were popular in anime creature design, which also trickled into anime-influenced designs outside Japan. Wanted to vaguely capture that sensibility. I also generally kind of wanted to draw something that was "mascot character like", but still (despite the fantastical elements) looked more like an "animal" than a "toy." Cabbits from Tenchi Muyo, the fox-squirrels from Nausicaa, etc.

Made with Crayola "Pip-Squeaks", except the eyes and the very pale yellow-white areas - I don't remember the brand of those markers, but they're color changing markers of some sort.

Comments

[eff_ess_oe]

These are so adorable! Love how the color swapping turned out. Kinda makes me think of a shiny Pokemon...

[stepnix]

oh i love them Crystals in the forehead were also a trend, right? the uhhh rayearth mascot had one for example

[malymin]

Mokona! And Ryo-Ohki, and a bunch of Gen 1-2 pokemon like Golduck and Persian and Ampharos and Espeon, the "full forms" of Kerberos and Spinel in Cardcaptor Sakura, Arf/Alph and Zafira in Nanoha...

I thought it would be fun to combine the "forehead jewel" and "jewel-like eyes" in such a way that it looks like the animal has three eyes.

[kalium]

Ooh I love them. The colour swap looks really natural too, I could have taken that for an unedited drawing if it stood alone. If they were part of an agency I'd gladly take one or both.

[malymin]

If you have photoshop, GIMP, or a similar image editing program, you can get some really striking results by taking an image with large amounts of blue and swapping the RB color channels. Cyan becomes yellow, deep blue becomes red, and the colors in between become various shades of orange and brown; the inverse also occurs.

It's my favorite way to do "palette swaps" for scanned traditional artwork.

[malymin]

Thanks! Honestly, I've played a bit with your free-to-use not-quite-kats images with color channel swapping... it' neat to see what new palettes it forms. "Blue" can end up golden or red, bronze and copper... and at the same time, the inverse occurs. Red/Green and Green/Blue swaps don't look "natural" as reliably as Red/Blue swaps (has to do with the relative brightness and darkness to the human eyes of the "pure" hues), but when they work out they're really stunning.

In order to have an agency I'd need to get off my ass and start working on website stuff again. ^_^; I don't really like my current page theme very much, but starting over from scratch seems so daunting.