It had always been on my mind to sell my art as physical items, as I've always been a huge fan of showing off things that you love. The more I've collected wall art over the years, it really enables you to enrich others with the things that have brought joy to your life, even if they are as simple as cute chibi stickers on your hydro flask, car, or even your laptop.
With that said, I've always seen so many different styles of stickers from other artists, and usually they are chibi style or just straight up NSFW. In more recent years, AI art is flooding the web and kind of just infecting the beautiful hand made stuff that we artists work hard to make, but that's for another topic on another day.
I for one, am not particularly talented at drawing cute styles of characters, but I believe my strong suit to be subtle emotion, so I figured that I should start there. I wanted the focus to be on the character's faces, so I decided to start with a sticker that is purely a bust shot.
Being the Unofficial Mythra Fan Club President, we obviously start with her. I felt like this pose right off the bat was a good start, and felt like didn't need any changes. I also wanted them in summer/spring style outfits, because personally, drawing Xenoblade outfits is a pain and I am pretty lazy (Plus I like urban streetstyle fanart). Let's also add the rings as well for some added shipping....
At some point along the drawing process I started thinking about adding sunglasses to the art to add to that "Summer" theme. It looked great, because Mythra with aviators is dope as hell and I think fits her character. Although it looked great, it took away from letting us see her eyes. So I decided to let it sit for a bit.
After much thought I decided to make it a holographic version. I think the added bling makes it much more special.
It took me quite a while to get this pose down, and to be honest, I think it's an acceptable pose for her character. Do I like it personally? Not as much as the others. Getting the right sunglasses shape for her head was the most difficult part, as I experimented with multiple sunglasses frames and thought this one was the best.
These frames in particular are cool, but don't fit her head shape, at least in the style that I drew her in. Might have to experiment with it more later.
With Nia, I wanted to give her a different angle, because the front bust angle was already used twice. Getting the pose of the hand was pretty important to add something extra. That sly look was also something I envisioned with her before I started drawing.
With Rex, I really wanted to capture him in his stages after Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and before Xenoblade Chronicles 3: Future Redeemed, where he is full blown unc status. I like to daydream about his family lifestyle after the events of the 2nd game, and this is what I envisioned for him to look life in that time period. Wider shoulders, defined muscular frame, and a more confident look in his face while maintaining his youth. I think I did an alright job.
He's also got two different earrings! (:
I had originally opted for these stickers to all be die cut, but later decided that I wanted them to be uniform in size with a circular shape. In hindsight after having them made, I may change it and go back to die cut, as that style of cut is way easier to integrate for others who like to sticker bomb their stuff. I hope people are okay with the circular stickers...
All in all, I am very satisfied with every sticker that got made, and will definitely use the failures as experience for the next set of stickers. It may be time to go into the other cast members of Xenoblade 2 before I go to the other games.
And I've got a really cool idea for keychains as well, hopefully I can get on that before the end of summer!