Month: March 2013

Untitled

Alex Heberling

bssmf:

THROWBACK THURSDAY FRIDAY

Augh, I forgot to post one yesterday! Whoops!

Did you know that this was Sailor Uncia’s original design? Her team hadn’t quite coalesced in my brain yet, though I knew they’d be based on my friends and her on me. Except, I wasn’t really embracing self-insertion at the time, and was trying to hide our connection. ^__^

Later, when designing Sailor Canis with her IRL counterpart, I forfeited blue for purple, and decided to give Uncia my hair color and glasses. For quite a while she kept the patterned skirt and collar, All the girls had uniquely patterned skirts, and only recently did I streamline them because REASONS.

This was a gift from Crystalfyre (of the now defunct Crystalstars), requested through her old Senshi Request Form. I liked the setup so much I eventually put one of my own on my site, and drew a LOT of otaku senshi from it! (I was not this good, however.) This is from 2000 or so.

CRYSTALFYREEEEEEEEE.  She was one of my artist idols back in the day, but I’ve lost track of her over the years.  The fanfic she created with her friends had some of the most detailed profile information for each of the senshi characters, which was a big inspiration when I made my little website for The Hues with their profiles and such. :)  She was one of the first people I followed who would borrow poses from official artwork in order to practice, and that it was okay to do so as long as you clarified you were still learning.

Long ago, when I was a wee little Alex, I followed Crystalfyre’s art tutorials, which I think really informed my style back in my teens. 
The old photo I posted the other day of my art supplies back then were pretty much because I read her tutorials.  When I started using the computer to color my work, I similarly followed a how-to on cel-shading that she wrote.  I still abide by her jewel-shading technique to this day.

This woman had a big influence on the development of my artwork.  Last I heard, she was studying traditional animation, but like I said, I’ve lost track of her over the years, and she’s probably been through a couple different screen names in the meantime, but I hope she’s doing well and still making art!

And this was yet another Wall ‘O Text brought to you by my nostalgia. :P