From the favorites list #4

 

 

The Shrine and Motel of the Goddess of Love is probably one of the funniest takes on the "Ranma and Ryoga fall in love" idea, and the summary itself does not try to hide it: "Ranma's 'brilliant' scheme to cure his curse backfires and now he and Ryoga are... married? How did this happen?"

Being pure absurdist humor, this story by Ranfan05 does not go for subtlety at all, and it never tries to be anything different than what it is: a recollection of how poor choices by Ranma led him into a situation where he (or rather she) ends up married to Ryoga and slowly developing feelings for him. Same can be said about Ryoga, who decides to go along with the whole thing, to the point that he also starts developing feelings for Ranma's female form. Oh, and did I mention Ranma's curse gets stuck?

But how did that happen? Well, let's just say that a chance to get the curse removed by being the first couple that stays at the aforementioned Shrine and Motel of the Goddess of Love didn't go as well as Ranma initially planned. Being too worried about asking Akane to marry him and deciding to instead play pretend with Ryoga so they both could get their curses removed didn't work the way the two of them wanted.

While the story was never officially completed, being left incomplete at 10 chapters since 2011, the cliffhanger at the end of chapter 10 actually works quite well as an open ending, so I'd count this story as being complete in my opinion.

Give it a read if you're interested in a story that doesn't take anything that seriously and only aims to be as entertaining as it can be; the chapters are short and fast paced, making it a quick read that works well to kill a few minutes while waiting for your next bus stop or if you have a few iddle minutes at work.

New Lost Together fanart

So, I had some free time recently (a rarity these days) and I decided to do a new piece of art for Lost Together. In order to make it quicker, since my job plus my master's keep me really busy, I decided to try to use a template and see if it worked well. In the end I think the result was better than I expected. 

I unfortunately don't have time to color it right now (but maybe Dai will be kind enough to do it sometime soon), because of my master's and a new project at work. In any case, I may try to do it eventually using Kleki to practice, it's been many years since I've colored anything digitally and I want to see if I still remember how to do it and if not, I can always relearn with modern tools at my own pace.

Anyway, here's the new illustration, it's based on a scene from chapter 16.

I actually like how it turned out. If I had to mention anything, I'm not too happy about female Ranma's pants or her clothing in general but I think I did a better job with it than I usually do. To be honest, drawing clothes so they look good when worn is surprisingly difficult, and one of the things I always have trouble with. But since I'm not a pro and I don't sell art or anything, I guess it's not a big deal and I'll improve bit by bit f I practice when I have the chance, or at least I hope so, right now I'm glad I didn't get worse after more than a decade of not seriously drawing anything.

Lost Together, three original character designs

 I had some free time the other day so I decided to try and draw some of the OCs (Original characters) that Dai and I have introduced in Lost Together, the fanfic that we cowrite.

While not as good as I would have liked, I think the designs came out fairly well. This is just the line art since I didn't have the time to ink them or color them. I may do it later if I can, it's been a very long time since I colored anything so it could be fun to see if I can still do it properly or not.

Here they are.

Character 1

Pencils: 

Ink and shading version:

 This old lady is Lotion, an Amazon village elder who has been training Ryoga and Ranko for her own personal motives, which she has kept secret so far. I tried to make her similar, but also different, to Cologne. All in all, I really like how this drawing turned out. 

Character 2 

Pencils:

Ink and shading version: 

This girl here is Chervil, a girl from the Musk Dynasty, and Herb's love interest, she's currently trying to find the story's MacGuffin, but hasn't been very successful on account of Ryoga getting lost all the time, something that makes tracking him impossible. I like the proportions and overall look, but I feel the hair needs lots of work.

Character 3

Pencils:

 Inks and shading version:

 

The last character is Jurojin, who plays the role of "shadow operative" and bodyguard for Kirin, the leader of the Seven Lucky Gods of Nekonron. He was introduced as Monlon's love interest in order to give her a little more to do. I also like the way it turned out in general, but I feel the legs and clothes need some work.

Mega Man X fanart for Relic from the seas, colorized and with background.

 

After playing around with the Ranma fanart for Lost Together, I thought it would be a good idea to give a background to that old fanart I made of Vile fighting Sigma for my Relic from the Seas story. 

The results are fine as far as I'm concerned, the image could of course be better but I'm satisfied with how it looks.

Here it is how this illustration progressed.

First, the line art:

Then the image colorized:

Finally, here's the image with background included:

Improved fanart, now with 100% more background!

 

Way back in 2019, I made a post talking about a fanart for Lost Together I drew that Daisuki Fox was kind enough to colorize, but the image lacked a background.

To show you how the illustration has progressed, this is the original line art I made:

Line Art

Here it is colorized but without a background:

Color, no background

Here it is, colorized and with an adequate background:

Color, plus background

 

I always felt it would look better with a background, but I only just recently had the chance to add it to the image, and I really think it looks better now. 

I believe that with this the fanart is complete to most of my satisfaction; it could be better, I know, but this is probably as good as I can make it, and I'm happy enough with it.