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[[04/25/2025]: Number Six in the 'over 4000-view club'. ]
[ (01-25-2024) Number 13 in the 'over 3000 views club']
[ (11-05-2022) Number 44 in the 'over 2000 views club']
So, Roland has fooled around with soccer, but never as part of an organized team. So imagine his surprise when his offer to assist
samuke's OC 'Sam' with a practice session has him practically drafted onto the team, uniform and all. But this practice session is going to be out of the ordinary--it's to take place on an absolute quagmire of a soccer pitch. Nothing but ankle-to knee-deep sloppy mud in which to "practice".
This scenario was inspired by events in a third-season episode of a videogame-derived sports anime known as Inazuma Eleven, in particular episode 80 "The Last Match" where for unclear reasons the team is made to practice on a mud field, with predictable hilarity. How I came across this show will be discussed in Technical.
So, after the initial shock wears off, Roland dutifully tries to play his part, doing his best to stay on his feet in this mess. His cleats help him find some grip in the shallower sections, not so much where it gets really thick. He's only as dirty as you might expect running through a half-foot of runny mud would get you. Sam on the other hand throws all caution to the wind and has fallen repeatedly. Seeing Roland is nowhere near as muddy as he (and presumably the other 'players'), Sam takes it upon himself to get him into the swing of things by making him take a spill into the mud. As the two charge toward a ball Roland notices that the mud looks suspisciously deep--why else would the ball be sitting half-submerged in it?--and pulls up short to avoid tripping himself. As Sam races past, he seizes the opportunity--and Roland's shirt--as he starts to lose his footing, dragging both of them into a sliding belly-flop. You can imagine what they looked like after that. Maybe enough people will want to see them in the aftermath to prompt a sequel pic :D
Technical:
The premise for this pic surfaced during my trip to FA:United 2019, as I got involved in a direct-message convo with samuke, a fellow member of the Creative WAM Discord server. A link to a pic of his OC playing soccer on a muddy field led to a discussion of its inspiration, and this is where Inazuma Eleven came into the picture. After looking over some screenshots, I decided to try doing a sketch of Roland and Sam depicted practicing on the mud field as an after-hours activity. I later DL'ed that episode at the con hotel to extract additional screenshots, and during the inevitable after-hours downtime (this was Thursday evening, the con starts up Friday morning), I worked up a design for his character, since Sam is a Sonic fan-character and I needed to adapt that to my style while keeping him recognizable and sketched the above scene in pencil during the night of October 3-4.
Fast forward to May 2020, and during the vacation time I would have used at FWA had it not been for COVID-19, I had finished up another piece pairing one of my OC's with that of another Creative WAM participant ("Tina Talk") and thought of this pic. Coincidentally I received another DM from 'samuke' and I decided to do the color job. One "small" change was to add the top panel, which didn't exist till this past weekend, showing Sam & Roland walking to the field and giving a little context to their interaction. Being that this would take place in the mud field depicted in the Inazuma Eleven ep. I decided to draw in the backdrop buildings visible behind the field. Of course there weren't any scenes I could use directly, so I sampled some colors from a still and free-handed what I now believe are the gym buildings (the anime is of a school soccer club) in the backdrop. Adding this ballooned the vertical scale of the pic to 4300 pixels and 720 megabytes within Krita once all picture elements were added. Word balloons were added from Micrografx Picture Publisher since Krita doesn't render 'Gnatfont' correctly yet.
Now, being that I was trying to keep to the look and feel of the I-11 anime, I tried to keep the color job to cell-shading, and mostly succeeded. The mud surface is a little more detailed, and the mud sticking to the characters is definitely too complex for TV animation--I wound up removing some details right before delving into writing this description. But the real time-killer, one that I did not expect was shading and highlighting all the flying bits of mud and muddy water scattered about the scene. Every last one of them had to be selected and painted with highlight and shadow layers, not to mention how to light and shade the intricate twisting globs of mud spraying up around their feet. Surmounting this many hours after I thought I would (I "had" to add all the ripples and splashes from the mud and water drops landing around them), I finally left the pic alone to get some sleep, and Memorial Day morning, smoothed out some more unnececessary detail in the mud splatter and on Roland's visible shoe, finishing up by adding additional 'muddy-water' stains on their shirts beyond their coatings of thick mud.
Pencil drawing inked and colored in Krita 4.2.8. 24 layers, 720MB in-app, 38MB on-disk. 12 hours 46 minutes total editing time as per Krita's internal project timer. Project ID: 462
[ (01-25-2024) Number 13 in the 'over 3000 views club']
[ (11-05-2022) Number 44 in the 'over 2000 views club']
So, Roland has fooled around with soccer, but never as part of an organized team. So imagine his surprise when his offer to assist
samuke's OC 'Sam' with a practice session has him practically drafted onto the team, uniform and all. But this practice session is going to be out of the ordinary--it's to take place on an absolute quagmire of a soccer pitch. Nothing but ankle-to knee-deep sloppy mud in which to "practice".This scenario was inspired by events in a third-season episode of a videogame-derived sports anime known as Inazuma Eleven, in particular episode 80 "The Last Match" where for unclear reasons the team is made to practice on a mud field, with predictable hilarity. How I came across this show will be discussed in Technical.
So, after the initial shock wears off, Roland dutifully tries to play his part, doing his best to stay on his feet in this mess. His cleats help him find some grip in the shallower sections, not so much where it gets really thick. He's only as dirty as you might expect running through a half-foot of runny mud would get you. Sam on the other hand throws all caution to the wind and has fallen repeatedly. Seeing Roland is nowhere near as muddy as he (and presumably the other 'players'), Sam takes it upon himself to get him into the swing of things by making him take a spill into the mud. As the two charge toward a ball Roland notices that the mud looks suspisciously deep--why else would the ball be sitting half-submerged in it?--and pulls up short to avoid tripping himself. As Sam races past, he seizes the opportunity--and Roland's shirt--as he starts to lose his footing, dragging both of them into a sliding belly-flop. You can imagine what they looked like after that. Maybe enough people will want to see them in the aftermath to prompt a sequel pic :D
Technical:
The premise for this pic surfaced during my trip to FA:United 2019, as I got involved in a direct-message convo with samuke, a fellow member of the Creative WAM Discord server. A link to a pic of his OC playing soccer on a muddy field led to a discussion of its inspiration, and this is where Inazuma Eleven came into the picture. After looking over some screenshots, I decided to try doing a sketch of Roland and Sam depicted practicing on the mud field as an after-hours activity. I later DL'ed that episode at the con hotel to extract additional screenshots, and during the inevitable after-hours downtime (this was Thursday evening, the con starts up Friday morning), I worked up a design for his character, since Sam is a Sonic fan-character and I needed to adapt that to my style while keeping him recognizable and sketched the above scene in pencil during the night of October 3-4.
Fast forward to May 2020, and during the vacation time I would have used at FWA had it not been for COVID-19, I had finished up another piece pairing one of my OC's with that of another Creative WAM participant ("Tina Talk") and thought of this pic. Coincidentally I received another DM from 'samuke' and I decided to do the color job. One "small" change was to add the top panel, which didn't exist till this past weekend, showing Sam & Roland walking to the field and giving a little context to their interaction. Being that this would take place in the mud field depicted in the Inazuma Eleven ep. I decided to draw in the backdrop buildings visible behind the field. Of course there weren't any scenes I could use directly, so I sampled some colors from a still and free-handed what I now believe are the gym buildings (the anime is of a school soccer club) in the backdrop. Adding this ballooned the vertical scale of the pic to 4300 pixels and 720 megabytes within Krita once all picture elements were added. Word balloons were added from Micrografx Picture Publisher since Krita doesn't render 'Gnatfont' correctly yet.
Now, being that I was trying to keep to the look and feel of the I-11 anime, I tried to keep the color job to cell-shading, and mostly succeeded. The mud surface is a little more detailed, and the mud sticking to the characters is definitely too complex for TV animation--I wound up removing some details right before delving into writing this description. But the real time-killer, one that I did not expect was shading and highlighting all the flying bits of mud and muddy water scattered about the scene. Every last one of them had to be selected and painted with highlight and shadow layers, not to mention how to light and shade the intricate twisting globs of mud spraying up around their feet. Surmounting this many hours after I thought I would (I "had" to add all the ripples and splashes from the mud and water drops landing around them), I finally left the pic alone to get some sleep, and Memorial Day morning, smoothed out some more unnececessary detail in the mud splatter and on Roland's visible shoe, finishing up by adding additional 'muddy-water' stains on their shirts beyond their coatings of thick mud.
Pencil drawing inked and colored in Krita 4.2.8. 24 layers, 720MB in-app, 38MB on-disk. 12 hours 46 minutes total editing time as per Krita's internal project timer. Project ID: 462
Category Artwork (Digital) / Comics
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 760 x 1280px
File Size 198.5 kB
I have another that at least involves soccer cleats, based on this video. That might get colored after my next commission. I'm thinking of doing a sequel to this pic, but don't have a firm idea of what it would look like.
I may have used stills from videos of such matches as reference for this pic. Also wondered what it would be like to participate in such a game :)
There was a local group who did pick-up soccer games at a nearby ballfield. Anyone who stood around watching would likely be invited to join in. I had high hopes that a muddy field (like, frozen ground thawed out kind of mud) would coincide with one of their games while I was there :D
There was a local group who did pick-up soccer games at a nearby ballfield. Anyone who stood around watching would likely be invited to join in. I had high hopes that a muddy field (like, frozen ground thawed out kind of mud) would coincide with one of their games while I was there :D
No timetable has been set for one. Maybe after I catch up on commissions (four left as of this writing), and the comic that I'm using to introduce new characters after events-in-progress leading up to their introduction play out. If someone wants to commission a 'what did they look like after this moment?" pic, I can move it up the queue. Stranger things have happened.
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