"Best (Psycho) Friends"

published April 27, 2025

they did it

Another surprise HUGE artwork. I didn't expect this to get done across 3 entire separate days!! And it was pretty messy to make, since I went fast and rough with my outlines, and there are so many things I was trying out at the same time. Lighting coming from the back instead of the top or front, anthropomorphs of course (I apologize for any psychological injury induced specifically by the Rocky shadow on the far left), a questionable attempt at drawing billowing flames....

I will say, one thing that has helped me a lot is SHAPES. That thing artists do, where they draw tons of circles and stuff in order to get the precise shapes and perspectives and whatnot of heads and fingers and stuff?? Yeah, I don't do that. I just freehand everything. Usually I find it stifling to have to draw around rigid/set shapes, it feels better to just go directly to making the main outline. That does make it difficult to make proper perspective in drawings, and can lead to things looking lopsided when they're drawn in any perspective other than my usual. To make up for that, I do a lot of guesstimation when rotating heads or trying to figure out where body parts should be placed for a certain pose, and that has tended to work, but that approach may be wearing out its welcome. I tried out this shapes stuff when drawing Rocky's muzzle and Flandre's outstretched hand (for the background shadows), breaking up those features into separate parts that I could draw one at a time. Drawing so many overlapping shapes really cluttered up my rough outlines, which are VERY messy as it is. But...I think the results came out really good!! I was ESPECIALLY surprised that Flandre's hand looked just like how a pro artist would do it, with all the fingers spaced out properly and the pinky finger not looking like a second thumb.

At the end, I consulted with a friend on something I wanted to add to the artwork: a Japanese secondary title. Since one of these menaces is from an American webcomic (Rocky Rickaby from Lackadaisy, on the left) and the other is from a Japanese video game series (Flandre Scarlet from the Touhou Project, on the right), I thought it'd be fitting. Said friend helped me avoid writing something silly, and so I bounced an idea off him of a rewording that could preserve the pun I wanted to put in the title. (I'll leave it to you, the reader, to figure out what that pun is 😉). He said I didn't need to credit him, and I didn't push it, but if he's reading this (hi!!!), then he can credit himself with a comment and a link to his website, whenever he feels like it 👍🏼

To wrap up, I'll leave you with some extra goodies 😉

Here's the rough practice I did to try to get Rocky's face down:

Man, I wish I was as knowledgeable about '20s American fashion as Lackadaisy's author is, because I...Idk what they wore back then 😵‍💫

And here's a version of the final artwork, but without the title and burning flames, just the flats of the two characters sitting on the bench:

This artwork was so insane to make 😂 Next artwork will probably be something more in my wheelhouse!