Textless version of Goombella, for those who prefer!
[Click/tap image to view best quality] [More: Mario | Fan Art]
Chamomile #378
New comic every Sunday (Click/tap comic to view at best quality) Archive | New Reader?
#AMaY Commentary
Wanted to give a little commentary on the #AMaY project but needed a couple days breather haha. This mostly focuses on how I created each day with the full hidden final image in mind, but I also talk a bit about like “Why Amy???” on a personal level at the bottom.
So firstly, worth revisiting this old popular music video if you have the time, it was pretty viral back when it came out. This will become relevant shortly - not a huge deal if you don’t want to watch it, but the reason I’m bringing it up will spoil said music video a bit so yeah, mentioning it and encouraging a watch now without context.
So yeah, #AMaY! It really came down to the wire on finishing it due to work, and I had to eat into my 2-week comic buffer that I’m now due to rebuild to keep up in the end.
It was basically the result of just REALLY enjoying drawing Amy and joking with friends and such to the point of being like “do I really enjoy drawing her that much that I could do a whole month of it? I think I could”. Wasn’t wrong!
I didn’t have any set prompt list in mind, my idea was just to draw what idea grabbed me on the day. Then, inspired by various things I’ve seen do this but particularly that aforementioned music video which does the same reveal at the end, I had the idea of “what if I make it so they all make a picture of Amy when connected up”. I had already sketched out this idea for the first day:
But started over after having this moment of inspiration.
What I didn’t factor in is how this sort of effect is MUCH easier with simpler, larger pictures. I really should have just done her head or something, then most of my backgrounds could just be vague geometric shapes but didn’t realise the practicality of it until it was too late, which is why we ended up with so many backgrounds of strange patterns and twisty pipes and such that I would try to mask by putting in additional patterns and pipes and whatnot as red herrings that were lower contrast than the ones making up the Amy picture.
I drew out what the final secret picture was going to be across a grid representing the days in the month, then each day I would start with a canvas of one square and figure out “now what sort of background can I turn this into, and what kind of Amy would belong in that background”.
Naturally I had some ideas I was already leaning towards - goth Amy was one of them. When I looked at this portion of the image, the only sort of background thing I could see was some kind of cartooney medieval tower with a rim at the top. From there I realised the skirt could be bushes or walls around some dramatic graveyard hills, the creases in the skirt could be a path as long as Amy is positioned to hide the fact that they aren’t actually connecting in the context of the hidden image. In some cases where it wouldn’t make sense for a background element to suddenly stop, I instead used foreground scenery, such as the gravestone directly behind Amy here, to turn the element into the shape I wanted. These pipes that are going behind metal panels in the Chemical Plant background in order to turn them into eyelash shapes are another example:
Then when I got the idea to turn the lineart of of hidden Amy’s skirt rim and chest into long wispy spirits escaping from the earth or something, it was just a case of adding a bunch more random ones of those to the rest of the background with lower contrast so they don’t stand out as much as the important ones do. The one in the foreground also does the job of cutting off the path that makes up the tiny bit of Amy’s leg lineart. Within the context of the graveyard background, the path continues, but at the zoomed out view, it can’t be distinguished at a glance.
This was the kind of thought process that went into the more elaborate backgrounds. Naturally there were some where the Amy idea COULD come first, because what was required of the background was so simple I was kind of free to turn it into anything - or just take a day off and do simple geometric backgrounds.
(Again though, you can see here that I did all the circles as red herrings to imply that the little blob in the corner is another one - but the corner one is a deeper colour than the others).
And of course there were some days where I just COULD NOT think of anything that wouldn’t be completely conspicious, so I just made Amy take up as much space as possible so I only had a few background lines to deal with, trusting that the grand context of the final hidden image would solve it in the end.
The final note is that I didn’t JUST draw from these segments - I was steadily building up the full collage as I went, so I’d always have a “bleed” area I’d draw into with the existing surrounding days to make sure that the final result DID all connect up.
So yeah, that’s the broad strokes of it!
To end on something more philosophical, I did sort of end thinking to myself as I spent all these hours drawing her - “Hey though, what is it about Amy? WHY do I love drawing her so much? Why is this one my blorbo?”
Humour me as I get all deep about cartoon pink hedgehog but I think it comes down to a few factors.
Let’s address the elephant in the room first - unless I’m specifically looking to evoke her canon-self, I draw her with a more anthropomorphic sexy figure compared to the blobby, noodle-limbed body she has in the actual series, don’t I. You see, in Sonic Adventure 2 there was this one promotional 3D render of her where they gave her one heck of a rack and also once I was on the internet as a teenager and partaking in the fandom, I saw other fanartists do the same with thighs to match. This was all during a vulnerable time in my development and it all made me a little unwell about Amy permanently, I think. Like, that cute haircut, the knee-high boots, the shiny short-skirted dress, this is all stuff that looks really attractive when you slap it on a human body!
Sonic himself is like… peak character design. There’s a reason he’s lasted so long and holds such mass appeal as a cartoon character. The only way to improve on that perfection is to make a girl version, and that’s pretty much what Amy is. So no wonder she’s so fun to draw!
And tailing off that - as an aspiring femme NB person who has not always been so, I do think I’ve always had a particular interest in the hyper-feminine aesthetic, which Amy has in spades. I think that’s also a big part of her allure to me as a character. Much like how I live a lot of my feminine interest vicariously through my pin-up art, dressing up my OCs in cute clothes and such, I think that extends to Amy as well; a kind of obsession with the youthful hyper-feminine aesthetic that I just never got to openly enjoy in any real way earlier in life because I hadn’t figured all this NB stuff out yet. I just love cute girly pink stuff!!!
That’ll do it I think. I could probably waffle on about each individual day’s art if I really wanted to but this is long enough as is. Check out the alt text if you like as I often mention easter eggs and costume details in those to try and make sure those with eyesight issues are getting the same experience as those without.
Thank you again one and all for enjoying or at least putting up with the month!
Hm, how to describe this one? This is Alice from the comic Phantasm Dyad by @jezmmart - who has been drawing daily Amy Rose art this month for #AMaY
Hm, how do I respond to this one? I could have never expected this, just completely amazing on both a conceptual/characterful level and a “oh you drew my OC really hot thanks” level!! XD Thank you!!!
ALT
💖 #AMaY 31
[Click/tap image to view best quality] [More: #AMaY | Sonic | Fan Art]
ALT
#AMaY 30
[Click/tap image to view best quality] [More: #AMaY | Sonic | Fan Art]
ALT
🍦 #AMaY 29
[Click/tap image to view best quality] [More: #AMaY | Sonic | Fan Art]
ALT
🔰 #AMaY 28
[Click/tap image to view best quality] [More: #AMaY | Sonic | Fan Art]
ALT
ALT
ALT
ALT
Chamomile
Phantasm Dyad
