The Time Factory Locker Room

Being the multiverse's most highly-trained workers tasked with ensuring the continued existence of every world, Time Sweepers have some pretty long days.  As such, there's always some nice leisure to be found in the Time Factory locker room, between the relief of the day's work being done and the strong bonds that such work creates.

Tends to end in Picaro yelling at someone, though.

Okay, I think I mean it this time when I say that this will be the most I put into anything I ever make for BLiNX.  That's not to say I won't ever try anything similar again, but it would be a while before I do.  This was twelve hours of putting pencil on paper and then another thirty of going over it all digitally, and I think it's unique in that I've never really combined most of my developed skills in one piece like this before.  I generally only pay much attention to things like perspective if I'm drawing a landscape or something similar, since the living things inhabiting the image are usually the focus otherwise, and I don't care to spend hours on a background that I don't want people to focus on.  This time, though, I tried to stick to the perspective as adamantly as possible, both on paper and on the computer (as I redid some of the lineart when I went over it digitally).  Getting the floor to map properly took something like an hour in its own right, too, since I've never done something quite like that despite having already gotten experience from mapping images to curved surfaces.  I tried to answer "yes" to most of the questions I posed to myself about whether or not I should include a certain detail, since little things can go a long way, like the shading on the doors of the lockers giving them a lot more depth despite being so minor.  I also tried to reproduce the Time Factory locker room pretty faithfully, with the exception of adding the shower off to the side.  I think it fits the decor, though.  I also had to incorporate some artistic liberty into drawing Blinx and Pelon's fur patterns under their clothes, since you never see them, but I think what I decided on was pretty reasonable.  That leaves me wondering, actually, if anybody else has drawn NecoJi hatless until now.  I'm also happy to have fit in some small references to Blinx's punk outfit from the first game's prize art, since he's putting on the same shirt and you can see the boots in the locker.  The piercings didn't make it in anywhere, unfortunately, but they're probably hidden away in his locker somewhere.  It was nice to speculate on what Blinx would choose to wear when off the job, and the punk outfit (which I incidentally quite like) is all we've seen that might count towards that.

I'm hoping some personality came through with the characters, too.  For the most part, they're all doing something, which can be easy to forget to implement into art sometimes.  Blinx seems to be talking about something somewhat enthusiastically, NecoJi seems a bit more mild-mannered (I generally think of him as the most balanced in terms of personality, not overly energetic or strict but still doing his job), Picaro is being his usual hot-blooded self, and Pelon's just playing around or poking fun at Picaro or something.  I actually don't have any idea what any of these guys might be saying, but I'd be interested in hearing what people seeing this think they might be talking about.

As to why I took on this whole three and a half month long venture, I've been thinking lately that I want to push myself from time to time to make pieces that I'm actually proud of as tribute to some things that I like.  I'll work on a few others, though most of them won't be quite as ambitious as this one or take as long.  There'll be at least one other big one if things go as planned, though.  This one was actually meant to help build a world, whereas the rest will probably focus more on the characters.