"Who's Lila? - Michael 'Mike' Graves" Aesthetic/moodboard

"Who's Lila? - Michael 'Mike' Graves" aesthetic/moodboard

[sources: x / x / x / x / x ]

Aesthethic/Moodboard made with GIMP using stock images from unsplash for the character "Michael Graves" of the videogame "Who's Lila?" by Garage Heathen. Both the game and this piece of art make use of 'dithering'.

Additional thoughts beneath the cut:

Sadly, most interactions with Mike in the game are rather confrontational and the player doesn't find out a lot about the character, but I wanted to put what little bits the story tells us about Mike into a moodboard - the loss of his little brother Malcolm and the subsequent grief, his (complicated) relationship with Tanya, the myriad of feelings he is dealing with due to the events of the story.

I quite like how this turned out. I also noticed I am getting faster at figuring out how to choose images, arrange them, dither them in a way I like etc. And I also enjoy trying to follow the format I set for this particular set of moodboards. Dithering is really fun and I have started to try out different things with that artstyle in the last few weeks.

"untitled"

Ditherpunk/Glitch art made in GIMP.

At the point that I am preparing this post, this piece was already made a month ago, I just completely forgot about posting it. Now that I have looked more into glitch art and the likes, I finally feel like I can gauge what I even made tbh.

Just some random experiment, but I think it really looks cool. I originally planned to use this as a background for another piece but I think it looks good on its own too.

"Memories"

[sources: x / x ]

Fanart for the "Backrooms" series by Kane Pixels on Youtube, focusing on the character of Ivan Beck. Made in GIMP with free stock images from pexels.com.

(I am actually made this today and am posting it way ahead of schedule - I have multiple months of work in my backlog at this point oops. But considering we got a new video I felt its warranted.)

So I not only found - what I consider to be - perfect Ivan stock images, but also an image that reminded me of the Backrooms/Found Footage 3, and so I wanted to make some fanart with both. I initially tried to emulate the style in how Kane Pixels' song covers on YT look, which seemed fitting, but kinda ended up doing my own thing.

I really like the result - of course we do not have a lot of info about the character at this point, but there have been hints that there are themes of memory involved and that Ivan is linked closely to the Backrooms themselves. I like to think this piece managed to capture that.

[background picture: x ]

Mixed media collage with an original drawing made by me that I then edited and colored in GIMP, and combined with a picture from pexels.com for the background. Based on whatever the heck Kane Pixels may or may not be teasing in his instagram stories and on his server connected to sun imagery and the phrase "splendor"/"splendid".

Further thoughts below the cut:

This was *awesome* to make; I haven't done traditional drawing in a long while and while I had to edit and combine multiple drawings in GIMP, it was great to see that I could make something like this myself completely from the ground up. I honestly wasn't sure I could and seeing that I indeed can do this is a huge boost for my self-confidence.

Coloring isn't something I am very good at tbh, but this gives this piece a sort of uncanny look that I actually think fits it quite well. Kinda gives it tarot-card vibes a bit.

To give a bit of background on the inspiration for the pic, Kane Pixels has had a few instagram stories and posts in his server that include similar motifs; a smiling sun and the phrase 'splendid'/'splendor'. Personally I think it might maybe be connected to the "Splendor Solis", but it could also just as likely be trolling on his part. We'll see.

No matter whether this ends up being *anything* on his part, it was fun to try and recreate the general idea and feel of the posts and just run with it, and to prove to myself that I could make something like this in the first place.

I have a different picture with a stock photo background as well as a picture with just the sun-mask-figure, which I will hopefully also post in the future.

I just found out that Flawed Peacock also releashed a new video on the game 'Immortality' in the same timespan as well. It's 10 hours long.

Getting a new game announced by Garage Heathen AND a new TOV(-related) video by Kane Pixels all within the span of like 24-36 hours is *wild* in the best way.

"Basilisk 2000" (Aesthetic/Moodboard)

[sources: x / x / x / x / x / x x ]

Aesthetic/moodboard for the horror game 'Basilisk 2000' made by Akuma Kira @stylishkira, made in GIMP and Aseprite with stock images from pexels.com and wikimedia commons (CC BY 4.0). The pictures have been edited via color indexing.

(I recommend opening the aesthetic/moodboard in a separate tab for the best viewing experience, tumblr really compressed esp the top right picture.)

Good thing the video by Sagan Hawkes about this game taught me that 'perfection is the enemy of finished', or I would have struggled to finish this piece. Which is kinda fitting.

I found and followed a tutorial by tofupixels about color indexing with palettes in Aseprite and found out that this isn't just great for making pseudo-pixel-art backgrounds, but also for emulating the low poly graphics of the 2000s web and video game graphics. Which in turn made me remember this little game and inspired me to try and make a moodboard for it in a matching art style.

I (re)listened to the video by Sagan Hawkes about the game while making the moodboard. Making this was fun and a bit frustrating at times. But I also learned a lot, which is always great (and a good antidote to perfectionism, since learning new things is always an improvement imo).

I might post some of the graphics I used (or didn't use) for this piece separately, since I like how they came out so much.