Hey Hive!
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 last week, I started sharing about a piece that I worked on for one of my best buds' birthday! He's one of my gaming bros and we had a lot of fun playing Stardew Valley and Among Us on weekends during quarantine time. Those weekly gaming sessions made quarantine a lot more bearable, since I didn't really see or talk to anyone else besides Sean for quite some time.
But anyway, after a sudden spark of inspiration, I decided to draw an Among Us comic for him and it soon became on of the biggest digital art projects I've ever done! Here's the draft/rough idea:
In the last post, we left off at the third panel, so let's continue! The fourth panel is pretty easy - just Teddy and his pet running through Storage back to the cafeteria.
So here's a map of Storage:
Source: Among Us Wiki
And I decided to draw the top left corner since that's the fastest route to the cafeteria. So starting with the background:
In theory this background is pretty simple, just that it requires some fine details on the barrels and box.
But it wasn't too bad, and I think I did okay.
Last was to copy the sprites I drew in the second panel to this panel and flip them!
I realise the background on the fourth panel was a little small though, so I zoomed it in a little before starting work on the final panel!
For this, I wanted Teddy and his pet in the corner of the cafeteria, and everyone else around a table surprising him with a birthday cake!
For the background, I referenced the same cafeteria map of course:
Source: Among Us Wiki
So starting with the background, I tried my best to draw the table, but I can't make perfect arcs in the app that I was using, so it came out kinda wonky unfortunately.
Unfortunately, I forgot to save a couple of screenshots, but the next step is pretty easy. I drew the flamingo hat and Teddy's suit and coloured them. Then I duplicated the crew member outline 8 times and filled them with different colours.
I also decided to include a ghost crew member for Sean since he's always missing out on our gaming sessions, but still a part of our crew for sure!
Next, I worked on a banner for Teddy saying Happy Birthday, and the cake! The birthday cake actually took quite time time if you can believe it. There's like 30 or so layers just for the cake since it has quite a few different colours and shadows. Then it looked kinda plain with just the cake so I drew in some drinks as well since Teddy likes to drink.
The cake and drinks were traced and colour sourced from stock images I found online, but it still took quite a lot of time to replicate them. And soooo many layers!
I also added some simple facial expressions on Teddy's mask to give him more personality, like he's sus of Red following him as he should be.
I was thinking of leaving it as is, but then since I still had some time (since I was rushing this in a week), I thought it'd be more cool to give the crew members hats customised to our gaming squad! And by that I mean draw them as we would appear in-game based on our customisation choices. Just to make them more unique, you know?
So I referenced some screenshots from when we would play together, and eventually found a suitable hat for everyone!
I just had to be extra and wear some clothes too, so I drew a uniform on myself. But here's the final end product!
I drew some balloons and birthday decorations around too since the background was looking a little plain with just the banner behind. And I thought it looked so cute! I loved the pastel colour choices too!
And here's the full comic with just backgrounds, because I thought it was cool too.
Afterthoughts
The premise for the comic was pretty simple since it didn’t need dialogue, but man it was a lot of work. I knew this was gonna be one of my biggest digital projects ever because I basically had to do draw full backgrounds and characters in colour 5 times. It was initially 4, but I felt I needed another panel to convey it better. So it was essentially what I usually do for digital art multiplied by 5. And I only had a week to do it. Oh boy.
And it basically took me all week to get it done. The backgrounds weren’t so bad, other than getting the perspective right. I did trace the characters and some of the items like the cake and drinks just to make sure the proportions were exactly right (and save some time). Colouring was definitely the fun part! But still tiring nonetheless. Overall, I really loved how this comic turned out! And I felt so proud to finally get it done and have it look pretty dang accurate to the in-game graphics. I remember when I was done I still had a day or two before Teddy's birthday and I was so excited for him to see this piece!
I remember on his birthday Teddy was quite busy with school and stuff too, so I patiently waited until he was done, saying there was a surprise waiting for him after that. And when I finally sent it to him he went giddy! I couldn't stop smiling when I saw his sweet thank you messages! He even asked me to send it to our gaming friend group and everyone was so supportive and wholesome! 💞
I even posted this on reddit but dum dum me forgot to watermark it with my insta tag but regardless, it actually blew up on the Among Us subreddit!! It was crazy! It got into hot posts and the upvotes exponentially increased from there. To this day, that post is my most upvoted posts on reddit! You can check out the post here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AmongUs/comments/k93m31/drew_this_for_a_friends_birthday_today/
There were a lot of weird comments, but most of them were quite wholesome thankfully.
And I was so surprised by how many people thought this was an edit from the game or something! But when they found out I drew the whole thing out they were blown away! I posted this on my art instagram page and it got featured by so many Among Us instagram accounts too! It was so crazy, but it made all my effort worth it for sure! I definitely did not expect my art to go viral at all, and I legit just drew this to make Teddy happy on his birthday! But all this was a nice bonus for sure. And it made Teddy's birthday even more special! 😊
After I was done with this piece, I took a break from art for a while, but not for long though. Because I went crazy with art shortly after that. But more on that next week!
Thanks so much for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
