Chumi, I’m running out of openers: Hey all, welcome to the commentaaaary! This month we’re talking about MORE LYL’AC, FRAF user commands, and that lil’ snippet of that special someone… Let’s get into it!
Kim, has not run out of openers: This one’s a fun one! We’ve been itching on wanting to bring back reader commands for a long time now! Tryna think how it would work… How quickly could we pump out these unique reader command panels… It was a little tricky, but we did it! We did it all because we wanted the people to be able to experience a little bit of that og Homestuck fun!
Floral, going as The Craft For Halloween: This update really proved the joys of spritework, even with the more advanced animation, things are so much more simplified.
Haven, late to the commentary: Hi guys whats up.
Floral: Let’s get down to business, for Update 19!
Panel 834 by Haven
Panel 835 by Floralmarsupial
Chumi: Noooo Caretaker!!!
Panel 836 Thumbnail by Floralmarsupial
Panel 836 by Floralmarsupial
Chumi: NOOO Meemaw!!! I remember us talking about what those little face frondles are called. Maybe there was a time when they were referred to as udders.
Panel 837 Thumbnail by Floral
Panel 838 Thumbnail by Haven
Panel 838 by Haven
Haven: Doing these captchalogue animations is always so fun.
Chumi: I really really enjoy the photobrashing and effects on this one!
Panel 843 by Haven
Haven: Around the time I was working on these panels I had recently finished playing through Half Life 1 and this is a little memorial to the countless hundreds of dead Gordon Freemans I walked to their demise by not noticing tripmines. It isn’t an actual HECU Laser Tripmine like from the games and that's only because I wasn’t looking at a picture of them when I drew this. Also you just know this makes waking up Ly’lac in the morning a real pain for The Caretaker.
Panel 844 by Haven
Haven: Just reusing an asset Kim made for this. The face got funnier to me every time we used it.
Panel 845 by Floral
Haven: Floral really brought this one to life, it looks so damn cool.
Concept art by Haven
Haven: Early on we drew up that Nymph eyes would turn invert when they used magic as pictured above with dear sweet precious forgotten Unused Blue Nymph. They also have those symbols creep up on their skin when they charge up and the result of combining both effects is a pretty sick visual if I do say so myself.
Edit by Haven
Haven: It’s just eternally funny to edit human ears off of characters.
Miles: It’s funnier still that this was literally the first look anyone got of the satyrs. Our rambunctious boytoys introduced as a gaggle of (admittedly peak) anime teenagers was something we were very “Should we... actually do it this way?” about, for approximately five minutes before the hilarity of it outweighed any real trepidation or sense of propriety. Also I’ve said this a lot but DNAngel is really fun and worth a watch and also Extremely Homestuckian in its themes of Maturing and how hard it is to be a kid and grow up and how nobody understands and so the fact that we were able to slip it into the comic feels great for me. And hopefully for you too. Anyway I’m running away again.
Haven: Big fan of her Orbacular Ball of Mess.
Haven: Symbol reveal on this delicious looking bottle of liquid something.
Chumi: It looks suspicious…
Haven: Cute Gumby and Pokey aside eagle eyed readers will notice that the hand is the same from the previous two Ly’lacs holding up cube/gold panels
Haven: :)
Haven: This part with the user submitted commands made me laugh because I had drawn a KYS command being sent to Ly’lac visual gag a long while ago and I was so happy we got to use it this early. Sorry Ly’lac.
Panel 857 Thumbnail by Floralmarsupial
Chumi: SHE’S BEAUTIFUL!!!
Floral: I took on portraying the primordial Rose and I’m sad I didn’t save my exploration sketches! I really took the idea of this being the idea of Rose from a very small Meemaw who is so much older now and looking back.
I prioritized the sun imagery since her hood covered the rest of her face and Meemaw added the second set of eyes.
Panel 857 Thumbnail by Floralmarsupial
Floral: The juxtaposition of the silly sprite panel to the epic imagery is so fun!
Panel 857 Color Sketches by Kim Quach
Kim: I color-picked her text color and the slime in her room for these color sketches! I initially kinda liked the green cos it gave it kind of a spooky halloween-y pop (kinda Promare-esque tbh), but the splash of only purple framed her just right.
Chumi: I do love the green!!
Panel 857 by Kim Quach
Kim: I went a little ham with this one, honestly LOL. Drawing the magic I just let my wrist move however felt natural that would flow, and it ended up looking kinda fire-y looking! Since nymphs are a species that are pretty organic in both being and shape design – you might've noticed they’re a little… curly! So I liked the idea of also incorporating these swirly shapes into their magic as well.
Floral: We also played a lot with the shape of the eyes as they were illuminated and the little dots just felt right.
Floral: Moving onto Update 20
Panel 865 Sketches by Haven
Panel 865 by Floralmarsupial
Chumi: Ly’lac’s lil dopey face is CUTE!!!
Floral: She soooo cute, I wanted to bring some whimsy to this panel and the original sketch was made by Haven after pitching the idea. It was such a perfect face, I was so happy to finalize it.
Haven: I have 100s of dopey little Ly’lac drawings so it’s always a convenient pleasure to be able to get one in the comic.
Page 2697 from Homestuck
Panel 865 Sketches by FloralmarsupialFloral: This was a fun bit of visual gag, the original thumb was in sprite mode with the symbols over her computer but this was way funnier.
Panel 866 by Floralmarsupial
Floral: More progress shots of cute little Ly’lac, even more overwhelmed than she already was. It was cute with her eyes closed, but the swirly eyes were the perfect note from someone.
Panel 856 Thumbnail by Haven
Floral: These poses were so good.
Panel 856 by Kim Quach
Haven: Kim really knocked this one out the park, it turned out so damn good.
Kim: I had a lot of fun making this little sequence! I made her extra cute here, hope u don’t mind.
Chumi: I don’t mind at all…. Please do it more.
Panel 857 by Kim Quach
Kim: Just to sell how stupid this moment was I wanted this to look at shit as possible. I sometimes both love and hate when I scale up things in CSP it kinda makes pixel art look like dog shit.
Panel 858 Thumbnail by Haven
Panel 858 Rough by Kim Quach
Panel 858 by Kim Quach
Kim: Ah… She fell…… This one’s a relatively simple panel, but it made me laugh a lot to make it LOL. I had to get the comedic timing on this one juuuust right.
Panel 860 Thumbnails by Miles
Panel 860 by Kim Quach
Chumi: Our mirthful purple boy!
Kim: Now who could this possibly be… Nahh, must be no one important.
Chumi: Alas, we can’t talk about him just yet…
Miles: He’s busy! I love whenever my sketches end up in an artist’s commentary and I get to sneak in here for a little bit. Kim took my concept and made it sooooo delicious but I do still have a lot of fondness for the first one I sketched up with TC’s face specifically stylized to match his Naglink wizard icon. Anyway... I’m running away again.
Panel 851 Thumbnail by Floralmarsupial
Panel 851 by Kim Quach
Kim: And here’s the last panel for this update done by yours truly! However, not without some helpful guidance from Floral’s awesome concept art and Miles’ clear vision for the Satyrs!
Concept Art by Floralmarsupial
Floral: Everyone kept saying this building looked like a PS4 LOL. Miles had the note that the building should be brutalist in reference, but I also wanted it to look like a piece of art. Unconventional and involved.
Kim: What we wanted to be sure to convey clearly was that this building was supposed to feel imposing and HUGE. Hence why in my final panel, I just kept making it taller LOL. It needed to feel GRAND! What are satyrs if not a little extra?
Chumi: It definitely looks rad! This giant, scary block of a building… I wonder what’s going on in there. We’ll just have to find out in the future. Thanks for coming everyone, and have a great one!