Odaibako | This is like a blog post I guess (it's too long for most websites)

https://odaibako.net/posts/01981125923d296830187008ae83fd58

"Your artstyle is very cool! How did you come up with it? Did you use any inspiration from other creators/media when you came up with it?"

Thanks. My artstyle is derived from taking elements of things I find cute and mashing them together, and the ease of editing that simpler colors/aliased lines provide. I should probably provide some extra context, my progression was very…nonstandard. This might be long; you can jump to the end of this novel if you want a shortened version.

Originally, I started "drawing" by editing sprites when I was in my teens because I wanted to see what [VIDEO GAME CHARACTER] would look like with [VIDEO GAME CHARACTER THAT IS A RABBIT]'s ears. Eventually this expanded to other things like editing Link's sprite from ALttP to always be a rabbit.

After some time, I learned about fetishes on Encyclopedia Dramatica, and then subsequently learned that people would draw transformation imagery and post it online. This sounds strange now, but at the time I thought I was alone in this desire of mine. In search of new imagery of this subject, I found my way to a certain underwater basket weaving forum for the first time, specifically on a Friday, and there just so happened to be a transformation thread up. There I became familiar with works by artists like Tetetor-oort and Edmol. I liked their artwork quite a bit and tried to find more artwork from other artists, but I came to a realization pretty quickly: there was a large lack of images I actually liked.

When I started out collecting images, I would censor images if they contained genitals since I really wasn't into that at the time, but like a lot of things I eventually stopped minding. Looking back on it, I think it was mostly due to REALLY not liking how people drew them more so than an aversion to seeing it in general. There's a lot of things I don't care for, but if it's drawn a certain way, I'm more open to it.

At first in an attempt to keep up with my high demand, I ended up using imagination on "regular" furry images with an artstyle I liked, usually if the subject was embarrassed. This became easier over time, but the lack of actual TF images I liked was starting to become a little depressing, so I started to edit certain images I thought would be "easy" to edit.

Common images would be something that had a simpler artstyle and were usually black and white. I got a lot of mileage out of Paint.net's inksketch feature, which on certain settings causes the lines to become aliased and solid black, which was easy to edit. At some point I started getting tired of doing that, so I went back to smaller drawings and eventually made Aster to use as a base character to practice drawing on. At first, I was using outlines until eventually I omitted the outline all together. I started the smaller drawings in GraphicsGale then moved to Aseprite eventually (I moved to Aseprite sometime into my gamedev journey). The difference in ease of use between the two programs was like night and day.

This continued for a while until I started learning how to develop a game. Sometime after working on it, I really wanted to advance from having placeholder rectangles for everything, so I tried figuring out how to sprite and animate the characters through sheer force of will. Aseprite has a timeline feature which makes edits extremely easy, so when I'd go back to making my smaller smut, I'd have files with many, many frames.

Eventually I needed to make portraits for the game, so I had to ask myself "what do I find cute in an artstyle"? Ultimately, I planned on adding furry characters to the game even if everything I had shown online at the time was humans, so I needed to go with something I found appealing in the furry direction. Specifically, I wanted to check games with portraits so I could see multiple expressions.

I have a preference for furries with "hair", so my first thought with this was a game I played before, Solatorobo. I picked up some minor details from it like sometimes the hair color is the same as the tail. This isn't unique to this, but I thought it looked good so from then on, I had a much higher tendency to do that in coloring. In terms of other bits, I would look at various artists to see how they drew specific body parts. At this point I'm a bit of an amalgamation, but I would say one of my stronger influences was rmtwo_b.

After getting really discouraged with the game at some point, I stopped working on it as I felt like my skills were too inadequate to finish it. I continued doodling in Aseprite until eventually I wanted to draw bigger things as I started to feel the limitation of the size I was drawing at (it was really hard to draw good seams at that resolution without making the sprite look super busy).

I tried 3D Modeling for a bit because I would play VRchat with friends sometimes, despite not having a headset. I even made a model for Aster, which I then heavily modified to make a model of Almiraj from Fullbokko Heroes (The Almiraj model is available for free on my subscribestar if you want to look at it.). I've entertained the idea of making VRchat models, but without a headset it'd be a little annoying, I think. I'd like to try making more models in the future if I ever get one. How I did certain parts was also based on observation from other VRchat models, from artists like crepix, mofuaki_, and ryokutyuuseki.

Eventually in 2023, I decided to really attempt to draw something "larger" in Krita, which I started by taking some of the images I made in Aseprite and resizing them very large and then redrawing them with an outline and such. One of the earliest ones was an inanimate inflatable Maractus TF. At some point I got over my anxiety of uploading these things online and started with some Leavanny pictures, then over time it got easier. Early on I would draw the image in Aseprite then resize it and redraw it, but eventually I stopped doing this as I got used to drawing it big from the start.

So to summarize:

*I used to edit sprites when I was younger, which then turned into editing "regular" images, which then looped around to drawing small pixel artwork because I wanted to replace the placeholder rectangles in my game, which eventually created Aster who I kept modifying excessively to practice drawing on, which then eventually led to me doing 3D models for a bit, which then led to me drawing larger images in Krita/CSP.

*Solatorobo was one of my earlier influences.

*I am an amalgamation, but rmtwo_b is probably one of my biggest influences.

*Model-wise, VRchat models from crepix, mofuaki_, and ryokutyuuseki were pretty influential.

This entire drawing saga actually all started because I wanted character chao in Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. I would elaborate, but this script is already extremely long so I'll spare you the details. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.