"Mermay" Drawing Challenge! Week 2: Process, Lore, and Commentary

hey guys we are back and we are on week two of murmee 2020 if you don't know what the heck I am talking about that's fair but it also means you probably haven't seen my first berm a video from last week you should probably check that out before you watch this one I'll be doing new installments of the series every week for the month of May so if you enjoyed the first part go ahead and subscribe for more mermaids we're gonna jump right into this because we have a lot of content to get through so put on your snorkels and then take them off and go get something that actually lets you breathe underwater because we are about to dive into this process commentary and lore of week twos of mermaid designs [Music] day eight was vent not like the vents that spider-man crawls through although I guess you could interpret it that way and I don't make the rules but no I was thinking of the deep-sea sulfur vents that provide heat and nutrients in an ecosystem that would otherwise be completely void of either it's interesting because while they're basically the source of incredible biodiversity and serve as a lifelong home for hundreds of different species these deep-sea vents are actually quite intimidating big pillars of stone and crystallized sulfur spewing black clouds of superheated smog so while I wanted this mermaid to look scary I didn't want her to look inherently threatening I referenced a deep-sea skate for the biological part of her Anatomy as well as some generic flatfish influenced the rest of her body I wanted to look somewhat inorganic like the earth had consumed her and spatter back out this was the lore installment that I wrote to accompany her design tridacna rather this creature that we've discovered she it it has been something like a guide for us in this undersea realm that she's told us is called that gray shadows shockingly our time spent here so far has been incomprehensibly blissful most of us have adjusted to the lack of gravity and I've even caught the captain doing somersaults through the water I haven't seen her this carefree in years today tridacna introduced us to bethey Raja a heat maker though imposing and severe we've been assured that this caster of ancient magic is no threat to us in fact our guide tells us that the comfortable temperature of the water around us is regulated by bathey Raja and her ability to channel the Earth's heat out through openings in the rocks I'm amazed that not even the towering clouds of sulfuric a sh and peas our ability to breathe but I've accepted the futility of trying to make sense of anything I'm experiencing at this point [Music] day 9s prompt was cold kind of a partner to the prompt event and I felt that the matically the two would go hand-in-hand I actually based this mermaid off of an animal that lives most of its life around undersea vents the yeti crab if you play Pokemon you might already be familiar with crab Bominable real life counterpart but for everyone who doesn't know about the yeti crab they're almost exactly what their name implies white hairy and with long thick four limbs that resemble the muscular arms of an ape but contrary to their namesake I wanted this design to reflect the tranquil stillness of the Shivering deep I remember watching marine isopods and a tank at the aquarium when I was younger and the way they sat so perfectly still almost glowing white in the dark water if it was just so creepy I wanted to bring that look into this design this was the story fragment that I wrote for this character we were introduced today to what I can only describe as a religious authority to this race of undersea creatures she lives below the vents of Bethy Raja where the water temperature is no longer regulated and for the first time since we've left our ship felt as if I was actually six miles below the surface dark cold and with a weight pressing down on us and making it nearly impossible to move my suspension of disbelief was lifted and I found myself once again doubting my ability to properly perceive reality lay before us pale was the one they called hirsuta we were instructed never to address her and we did as we were told she remained motionless showing no signs and she was even aware of our presence we just stood there muscles the weight pressing down around us she stood the cold so sharp that I saw my crewmembers turn as if I was looking at dead bodies floating in the water and she stood available to do a soft current all right Tennant witched every now and then what did we do to deserve this I picked serpent as a prompt for this list because when it comes to making mermaids or any sea creature there's so many different directions you could take a prompt like serpent it could be based off of an eel a sea snake or any number of serpentine fish I went with the oarfish an animal that for centuries has been fooling sailors into thinking that they've seen a mythical creature and who could blame them the oarfish is an incredibly bizarre looking animal and it can grow to be over 20 feet long I just I love the bright reds of its fins in contrast with a silvery blue of its body it really feels like a Pokemon but its faces uncharacteristically doofy looking and that's where a lot of the personality for this mermaid came from here is his lore I've met today a rather curious member of these creature society he called himself Rigali and he told me that he was the connection between the abyss people and the surface world when he told me this I must have looked up to the Sun above the water because almost immediately afterwards he said in a panic voice no I am the surface creature you must stay here it was a bizarre interaction i disrupted this warm blanket of bliss that hasn't shrouded all of us we arrived in a strange world is that really the Sun that I see above us why can we not return to the surface if we're so close the captain and some of the rest of the crew was to meet with a kind of authority figure today maybe they'll have some new information for me for day 11 I decided whether or not I should do another inorganic design like I did with the prompt stone ironically when looking at the pictures of shipwrecks I found that stone fish and other members of their family really enjoyed hanging around sunken nautical vessels so I decided that I wanted this character to take some influence from those animals I imagined this large beefy fish that collected pieces of shipwrecks and used them for all sorts of purposes as weapons and shelter and even clothing using a part of a bow of a ship really gave the design a very dark souls blood-borne feel it was at this point that I actually realized that most of the characters that I had done this week felt very Dark Souls ease but I like that because I love Dark Souls his character design this was the lure for day 11 time to calm down calm down tell me again what did you see hundreds no thousands everywhere shattered scatter dragged through the mud they collect them you can collect them you still haven't told me what you saw what is he collecting ship's captain he's collecting the wrecks of ships and I found it what did you find the Bellport the sub that we came down in it's here pressure that was the prompt for day 12 I won't lie the first visual that pops into my head was the blobfish because they might be the most dramatic example of what an animal that lives miles below the surface of the ocean looks like when it is acclimated to sea level pressure but instead I went with jellyfish animals that don't care how much pressure there is around them because they have no bones one jelly in particular nicknamed the firework jelly was too cool not to use this was gonna be my first prompt where I did a lot of saturated colors and where I didn't want the color of the water to have an impact on the color of the character because this design stood out so much for my other characters I decided that she should be more important maybe some kind of a mythical figure this was the lure that I wrote for her easily the surface is as much a gateway to the animals as it is a stairway into the abyss these kids have remained open the responsibilities of those government either side established and respected but for all your admiration of what you have yet to learn you have abused us and betrayed us the service is a doorway and despite you may think clothes [Music] day thirteen was sand another prompt that temps and inorganic design but instead of making a mermaid out of sand I decided to base this character off of a creature that spends most of its time buried in the sand the Stargazer look these things up but they're incredibly creepy I've had a fear of dark water since I was a little kid despite my love for sea creatures and things like this are the reason why the idea of your foot touching the seabed and getting snapped up by some beastie lying just below the sand is so indescribably nightmarish to me and even though these animals aren't really big enough to harm a human but nevertheless I wanted my mermaid to look like if you missed your footing she would grab you and pull you down and you would never see the Sun again no wow saying that actually makes me wish I had designed a a Bobbitt were mermaid look up Bob it burns too because I would have been even creepier yeah anyway this is the story that I wrote for day 13 they don't believe me they won't listen to me but whether or not the crew is willing to accept the true nature of our host I think my incessant ramping has caught the attention of someone I've been floating so long I've forgotten what it feels like for my feet to touch the ground and now I'm afraid to ever let that happen maybe maybe she's an assassin sent by the abyss people to shut me up maybe she's just some rogue feral like the lurkers but she's always there hiding just under the sand waiting for me to sink low enough to grab maybe when to find my body the crew will finally believe the danger that we're all in [Music] the last day of this week day 14 the prompt was fossil I threw this prompt on the list because there are so many awesome prehistoric creatures that would make amazing mermaids and I wanted to see all the different ideas that you guys would come up with me I wanted to do with Dunkel asti us because I love those things they're an extinct species of fish with bony plates making up most of their body and the Dunkel osseous is as cool-looking as its name is ridiculous sounding and looking at and how the colors are actually kind of reminding me of Obelisk the Tormentor I like her though it's probably one of my favorites that I've done so far this was her lore [Music] I wish I had a better way to track the time we've spent in this place the Sun seems never to set if we seek respite from its light we're forced to dive deeper and seek shelter among the rocks or coral my intuition tells me that has been something like two days since we've left the bell board the crew seems to be settling well but I haven't the slightest idea of how I'm going to get them home Riker is the only one among them who's starting to crack under the unusual circumstances of our voyage but that can hardly blame him I haven't seen him in some time now he disappeared after he described to me he missed collecting wrecks of sunken vessels he was under the impression that the abyss people are sinking them intentionally and bringing them down here and it seems unlikely I'm not sure any of them even have the capacity to sink an entire ship except perhaps the one they call auntie Dunkel I've seen their swim overhead once or twice she must be fifty feet long but if these creatures really did mean us harm wouldn't we be dead by now so there it is week two of murmee what did you guys think which design was your favorite mine was probably day nine let me know your favorites and of course before we end I want to showcase the murmee work that you guys have done if you want to see your artwork featured here in the next video be sure to tag your designs with hashtag Mariana murmee on social media or share them in the subjectively fan out channel of our discord thank you for watching guys and I will see you all next week [Music] [Music]

Channel: Subjectively

Views: 52,776

Rating: 4.9891438 out of 5

Keywords: mermay, art, design, character design, how to draw, photoshop, procreate, time lapse drawing, drawing, mermaids, creature design, illustration, dramatic reading, speed draw

Id: urDPv9j37ps

Length: 17min 4sec (1024 seconds)

Published: Thu May 14 2020