angsty cyborgs & soft androids

Sometimes, Vince feels like living dangerously.

Project no. 26: Kei Nakachi, representative of Earth. She didn't want to stand up for her photo shoot.

I don't think it's visible in these pics, but Kei's wearing a silver ring (read: a bit of "silver" yarn to imply such) on her right hand.

Dusting off my fruit-based djinn characters. (Or rather, I started dusting earlier this year with the intention to post a long series all at once, then realized that these are gonna sit around forever if I do that)

These gals are royalty in all but title, and unlike the first time I drew them years ago, they have actual names instead of "[fruit name in Arabic]". The strawberry, blueberry, and banana djinn got redesigns; the mango and papaya djinn are totally new.

Project no. 25 and my physically-largest and most challenging one to date: Seine, an earth dragon of Ashlands! (Forgive the unfortunate state of our basement.)

Ho. Lee. Shit.

"Let's make Seine," I thought. "It'll be a good excuse to try out variegated yarn," I thought. (Her redesign, not yet posted, still has her with pure ivory plumage, but I was planning on making more dragons with variegated yarn and wanted her to match.) What I did not anticipate was how much time, effort, yarn, and stuffing was going to go into her--to give an idea, Seine took not only what was left of my first medium-blue skein, but the entirety of a second.

Seine ended up being a fairly rewarding project, but I'm now faced with a problem (besides the obvious "where the fuck do I put her"): it's currently not feasible for me to make the other dragons, at least not at this size. (Do I want to rule out chibi-fied dragons entirely? Not quite, but that would mean making Seine twice) Kaiju Seine might just have to be a one-off.

Pattern below, for anyone who wants to spend a couple weeks making a giant fuck-off dragon. Note that if you want to go the variegated route, you'll specifically need Red Heart's "Mirage":

This was meant to be part of a set, but I ran out of steam trying to do it this way (as opposed to felt pen and lo-fi doodles), so here's what I got.

Another dusting-off of old characters; Justy and Honey were originally two of my first Megaman OCs, Jumpgirl and Hologirl (and are about as friendly as they were as Robot Mistresses, i.e. not at all), while Larissa was originally named after the sword Laevatein, floating around a few Marathon AUs.

Things I am currently working on:

Felt like updating Mari's outfit, and then Pavo got added in. Behold, the peacock siblings in a rare moment of peacefully sharing space (in the sense that they're not talking to each other and thus not having their fifth major communications breakdown of the month).

Some more outfits for DV's main trio; Vince opted for something a little more colourful than his usual fare.

(Not pictured: Lovelace having a conniption over fashion crimes.)

Project no. 24, Johnnie Blackburn! Because I wasn't going to leave Hortensia waiting forever.

Now, you may have noticed that Johnnie isn't sitting in that third pic. That's because all worsted yarn is not equal and Johnnie turned out not in scale with... well, any human(oid) character I've made thus far. Whoops. But I do think she turned out well in spite of that, her hair especially.

Pattern:

Full-body doodle of Johnnie brandishing her Blood Arts knife.

Thanks! ^^

"Looking at me like this, you'd never realize that I was human."

--

A second take on my "Man Machine" pic from 2021, now with fewer clothes and more invasive cables.

Vince and Enzo got an entire page of doodles to themselves.

Behold, a character I created specifically to be made into a plush. Long story short: I don't generally use multicolour yarn in my amigurumi, but I wanted to use some Big Twist "Living" for something other than an afghan.

The fellow on the left is the final version. My first shot can be seen on the right, and, well. Ashlands (the concept of mine which has dragons in it) is rather dark and dreary palette-wise, and Version 1 was way too Friendship is Magic. And even then, there wasn't enough rainbow for what I wanted. So I relegated it to a different folder and tried again, this time actually painting this guy's iridescent feathers and basing his colouration more on stained glass windows. Both are included for comparison's sake.

He might get a role in Ashlands's story, however minor.

So I'm kind of at a loss for what to do right now.

I had a longer post about my feelings wrt: the MidJourney deal (everything's likely already been sold/scraped and it's too late to delete) and about the possibility of not being able to escape the extreme toxicity of certain corners of tumblr (i.e. abuse apologia masquerading as media literacy, creative freedom, prison abolition, etc.), but I couldn't make it not sound like a disconnected mess.

To be blunt, I'm not confident that tumblr will survive this. Either it metaphorically dies with everyone emptying out, or it literally dies because Mullenweg decides to wash his hands of the whole thing. I want to keep using the site and not let my tumblog(s) gather dust for X more years, but it feels like I'm sitting in a burning building.

I've at least got Pillowfort and mastodon[dot]art as far as posting my artwork, but I'd want Dreamwidth for longer-form text, and so far it doesn't seem like activity there has meaningfully picked back up.

Guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm currently in an existential rut. :U

A giant and his human(?) enby pal, based on a weird mecha-flavoured dream. They met when Lysandros stopped the village sprogs from accidentally dislocating Ashura's arm.

Project no. 21: Princess of the Blood Moon Court, Hortensia! Wasn't enough room for six hair spikes, but I think the four big ones she got represent her hair shape well enough.

It may not be super-visible in the front photo, but I used a bit of "rosy cheeks"-colour yarn for her lipstick.

Pattern below: