This month’s Patreon prompt poll resulted in a pretty clear winner: the very first time Azula tells Sokka she loves him in Gladiator. The lead-up to this scene is pretty angsty, with Sokka having a bit of an existential crisis that results in a very sincere and thorough heart-to-heart with Azula. The argument could be made that Azula had more or less said or showed she loved him before in roundabout ways… but this is certainly the first time she says the exact words, and it was a big deal for the two of them.
All this takes place during a visit to the Northern Air Temple, and I had very little clue as to how to draw the inside of the temple properly, so I just went wild with whatever I could get my hands on in Clip Studio’s assets xD If the original temple design wasn’t this rocky on the inside… well, let’s just say this is an area the Mechanist and his people reconstructed this way xD
As it turns out, Youtube was putting up a very nasty barrier to keep a credit-card based +18 block on the video! :’D I really hadn’t thought that was what it was doing, so if that’s what the anon from before meant, sorry about that, this dang platform didn’t even explain what its +18 block meant, I thought it was something much simpler than that.
I’ve opened it to general access now, I do hope nothing bad will happen but anyway…
IT’S OUT!
It’s Gladiator’s Ninth Anniversary!
This project has been in the works since 2017, courtesy of @xurniaa who introduced me to the song and blew my mind with how appropriate it was as a theme song for late-Part 2 and general Part 3. My mind just went wild with the possbilities ever since I heard it, I did a whole storyboard, and little by little I’ve worked into building it into what it is. A lot of it was finished over last year, once I realized making this my Ninth Anniversary project would have resulted in the absolute best possible timing in conjunction with what chapters I’d be posting at the time.
So… there are, of course, spoilers in there. If you hate spoilers, probably don’t watch, but this is a way to show that we have a LOT of material left ahead, and that as dark as things are and have been and will be… there’s so much story to be told and we’re on our way to telling it already :’)
Alright, then… I hope you enjoyed the video! Thanks to everyone who’s had a hand in making these nine years of Gladiator possible! You’re all MVPs and I’m forever grateful for all the support I’ve received since I started working on this crazy, ambitious and huge story!
Fic-to-Art #17: Azula carries wounded Sokka out of the Grand Royal Dome // Sokka and Azula walk away victorious
My Patrons aren’t entirely responsible for what I did here, they didn’t strive to overwork me. They did vote for the left side of this picture when I gave them the prompt of any scenes pertaining Sokka, Azula and the Gladiator League. I was the one who went the extra mile and featured the thematically opposite situation too because… I just needed to. It was inevitable. I’m impulsive and crazy that way.
So… this artwork was finished in about four days. All because a blackout turned my world upside down yesterday and I slaved over this while my laptop’s battery slowly drained over the efforts. I only had meant to finish it for the Anniversary, exactly… then I impulsively wanted to get it done before posting the new chapters. Which I did, on Patreon :’D like… 3 minutes before the chapters. Heh. I hope people see this first, tbh…
It’s been nine years of this wild ride, and tomorrow I’m dropping the actual anniversary project that has been in the works for ages. In fact… you can strap your seatbelts already and wait about 24 hours because here’s the link to the premiere:
… so I guess just go over to Youtube to set a reminder for it, if you’d like to watch it when it releases o_O It’ll be out tomorrow anyway, so watch whenever you wish to, if you wish to, and so on…
*sigh* anyway. This has been harder than I ever anticipated it would be, but I hope this artwork will be uplifting, to a fault, compared to everything else.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, gemsofformenos!! I just wanted to wish you a very happy birthday and thank you for being such a kind, caring, supportive friend and for spreading so much positivity throughout the fandom. Your kindness has touched everyone in our community, your efforts have not gone unnoticed, and we are all lucky to have you as a friend! *Big Hugs*
~PPB
Credit goes to the mind-blowingly talented artist: @nonexistenz
In honor of the 9th anniversary for “Gladiator” by @seyaryminamoto, I have decided that I would post this artwork that I had worked on for a while. There are a lot of improvements I think it still needs, but if I keep working on them I’ll never get onto something new… so oh well!
This is a scene from when Azula and Sokka were pursuing the Rough Rhinos all the way back in Chapter 38. If that seems like a completely random moment to paint, it’s because it is haha! But I wanted to paint some mountains, and that scene had mountains so I went with it. I tried to capture the foreboding nature of the mountains that Azula described, I hope that came across some.
Though those Mongoose Dragons (Lizards?) were the biggest pain, I had to look up videos of lizards walking around just to get the movement right.
Anyways, Happy 9th Anniversary to Seyary and her incredible fic! It’s one of my favorite stories of all time, both in fanfiction and outside of it. Anyone who hasn’t read it… read it! Just be prepared to cry buckets of tears… which I certainly didn’t yesterday… nope!
