HAPPY NEW YEARS FROM ME AND MOD CARRIE !

This year has been amazing. Especially because of you all ! I’ve been so much happier since I’ve become a part of the self shipping community. I’ve never seen a group of people who are so supportive and accepting and sweet… I hope you all have an amazing New Years, and I hope 2020 treats you well !

- Mod Esther

If the Fated AcolyteandQuincy T. Page are any indication, it’s no surprise that I love creating self-inserts that are designed as faithfully to their source material/time period as I can manage! And after discovering two games that would ultimately shape this blog into what it is today— Rivals/Lovers of Aether respectively— it only took a couple of days before I decided to design a self-insert for the Aether franchise.

And I did! … sort of.

Because designing a Rivals/Lovers of Aether self-insert would involve choosing an animal to base myself on as well as drawing him anthropomorphically as well as taking what I would come up with for his Rivals design and make a Lovers-accurate design based on it… the prospect of a Rivals/Lovers S/I was easier said than done.

However, I did have a general idea of what I wanted his character to be like for both iterations, and before long introduced Psycha, the Clairvoyant Enigma, to my blog in this post right here! It was after I uploaded this post that I began scouring the internet for inspiration on how to design an anthropomorphic sheep character, and while I did ultimately begin a sketch of Psycha’s Rivals counterpart…

Longtime followers know which counterpart came first.

And as of today, February third…

It’s been a full year since the creation of Psycha’s Lovers of Aether design!

Personally, of all of the OCs and self-inserts that I’ve shown off on this blog, I think Psycha may very well be my ultimate favorite. While I make sure to design all of my self-inserts to have an aspect that I have— whether that means their personality or what they look like— I find that Psycha is the absolute closest to who I am as a person (Barring the fact that he’s a 4'10" sheep, of course).

So, some time after I began speaking of him more and more in various posts on this blog, I knew that I wanted to draw him again for the one year anniversary of the design of his Lovers of Aether iteration. I initially intended on drawing up a completed art piece of his Rivals of Aether iteration, which is pretty much finalized by now, though…

I think it’s safe to say that Psycha’s Lovers design is the definitive Psycha.

Some might notice two interesting details in this drawing of Psycha; firstly, he’s not wearing his usual blue plaid flannel. I realized when going into drawing him again that I had only drawn Psycha without it once, and that sketch didn’t even end up being posted. I figured I ought to draw him in just the t-shirt he wears underneath it for a change— it’s also the first time you get to see his full ‘Supaboy’ shirt design, which is modeled after the Super Famicom logo!

Secondly, proudly pinned to his chest is a heart-shaped bi flag pin. I decided to include this because, in all honesty, I didn’t start embracing the fact that I was bisexual until a little after I designed Psycha, which was when I knew for certain that I swung both ways in terms of gender attraction.

It’s kind of an unwritten rule at this point that all of my self-inserts are bisexual, though the most bi S/I of them all is for certain Psycha. Even in spite of his sheepishness, I feel as though he would be proud to show off who he is with such a pin, and it fits his design a lot better than I expected it to. Perhaps I’ll make it a permanent addition!

I’m really proud of this drawing of Psycha, seeing as in some ways it’s a fully realized version of this sketch, and I hope that you’ve enjoyed reading about the process of this art piece of Clairen’s very canon love interest!

(As a side note… hey, Dan Fornace and @elranno, since it was decided to add the four new workshop rivals to the Rivals lineup… can we make Psycha canon to the Lovers universe for real?)

Happy one year anniversary to me discovering Steven Universe and falling in love with White Diamond <3

It should come as no surprise to longtime followers of both this blog and my main that I take great joy in designing self-inserts for my favorite franchises, whether it’s to see how well I can capture a certain vibe or just so I can have a good visual of what I’d look like in that universe to kiss my beloved F/Os— though, if I’m being honest, most of the time it’s the latter!

Doing so has been easy for the most part, as a lot of the franchises some of my most treasured S/Is hail from don’t necessarily have a complex visual style. Take for example Psycha, who was easy to design outfit-wise after basing it off of an outfit I would wear, or perhaps my Centaurworld S/I, who was even easier to design as all I had to do was draw a toony version of myself with a deertaur half!

Given my recent adoration toward my latest hyperfixation Winds of Change, it was a given that I would design a self-insert for its universe, and I was already brimming with ideas for what a fantasy version of my fursona would look like in the world of Alestia! However, as a contrast to most of my other favorite medias, Winds of Change boasts avery detailed visual style and outfit design for its cast, which meant my S/I would have to follow suit as to not look too out of place.

And about two weeks of on-and-off work later…

I can finally unveil my Winds of Change self-insert, Micah Winddane!

(Check out underneath the cut for a lengthy deep dive on the creation of the above drawing as well as a full view of this sheep seer’s weapon of destiny!)

Gosh, where do I even begin? There is just so much that I want to talk about when it came to designing Micah Winddane that it’s tough to find a good place to start!

Because Winds of Change has an all-anthro cast, it ended up being a given that I— yet again— would be choosing to model my S/I after a sheep, much like my fursona, Psycha, etc. However, rather than using Psycha as a base as I had for my fursona, I actually modeled Micah Winddane after an actual breed of sheep… the Leicester Longwool!

True to their name, Leicester Longwool sheep are notable for their overly lengthy fur, and given that my hair is currently at the longest length that it’s ever been, it felt only fitting to design my Winds of Change S/I around them! This also meant that I would be using a more golden color for the hair as opposed to the usual ‘tan-white’ color most of my other sheep S/Is have, and if you look closely, you can even see that there’s a distinct fur pattern on his face!

With sheep specifics out of the way, let’s focus on Micah Winddane’s outfit. If you read the tags of my first Winds of Change related post on this blog, you might have seen that I first wanted him to be an 'anxious but good-hearted visionary with a cool fantasy robe'— which, to be honest with you, was how I had been envisioning him throughout my time playing through the game’s prelude!

The only reason the whole 'cool fantasy robe’ aspect didn’t stick around for long, however, was due to a certain set of characters in Winds of Change possessing such a look… The Triumvirate, antagonists who are shrouded in mystery underneath an iconic white robe with a yellow trim.

Not wanting my S/I to be dressed too similarly to the big bads, I had to opt for something a little more modest, and in line with the outfits the rest of Winds of Change’s cast wear. I took to Google to cherry-pick several medieval outfit designs, and took my favorite aspects of each one to combine together into a base outfit.

For a while, the above lineart was just about all I could come up with. Of course, it looked a little bland by this point, but that was merely because I hadn’t given him a good coloring, yet… but that was another hurdle of its own. I knew how I would color his fur and hair, but what about his clothes…?

Thankfully, Winds of Change’s canon provided a solution. Around the point of the game where you receive the all-powerful Blade of Exodus— which we’ll also focus on in due time— you also are given a change of clothes… clothes that are described as a 'combination of Valessa and Fortaime’s outfits’.

It’s a good thing that the base design I had already drawn didn’t stray too far from a hypothetical mix between Valessa and Fortaime’s clothes, and it even served as a good basis of how to color Micah Winddane’s own. I color picked certain colors from both their designs to use in my S/Is and was soon able to settle on a color palette that I liked!

… but the design still felt particularly lacking. The colors looked great, as did what I had for an outfit, but the more I looked at my current progress, I felt as though something was missing… and then, I had a brilliant idea— if I couldn’t give him a robe, what if I gave him a cape?

Fortaime’s baggy scarf was my main inspiration in settling on a shoulder cape, and the instant I had the idea of giving my S/I one, I wasted no time in adding it to his design… and I’m so glad that I did, because it made him look SO much better!! I knew that I wanted his cape to be a shade of blue (My trademark favorite color), and settled on a faded shade since a more vibrant blue looked a little too shrill amidst the other colors.

Lastly, since my Winds of Change S/I is the foretold Seer, he would need to be equipped with the aforementioned Blade of Exodus throughout his adventure. However, upon coming up with the idea of giving Micah Winddane a large sword sling to carry the blade on his back, I realized something…

… the blade only has two canonical appearances from what I’ve seen, and only one of which— being found in the game’s logo— shows it in full color. I was thankful to even have a visual of the Blade of Exodus, but only having the linked image to go off of in terms of color made redrawing it a bit tough, as I would have to improvise a bit to make it look less desaturated.

And what started out as improvising turned into a slight stylization of the Blade of Exodus’ colors! Throughout the game, there’s a large emphasis on how obvious it is that you’re the possessor of the blade, and I decided to give the blade colors that stand out from the otherwise dull colors of Micah Winddane’s outfit!

… uh, wow. I think that might just be my most in-depth design deep dive I’ve written yet. But everything that I wanted to touch base on has been accounted for, and with all of it written out at last, it feels so wonderful to finally get around to sharing this design with everyone as it’s one of my ultimate favorite self-insert designs I’ve ever created!

Happy birthday and happy end of the 10th year of knowing each other @im-a-ho-ho-hoe ! <3

So this is a shameless self-insert of myself as a princess with Blackwall from DA:I as my prince charming. Idc if it’s cringey or not, I think we’re a cute couple and it makes me happy lol

Here is the drawing (below) I used as a pose reference. The original artist is called Ponzu.