An After Bionicle Day Present and A Ramble

 I made an art piece for after bionicle day yesterday and posted it to my tumblr. I thought it might be best here to ramble about how I got into humanizing bonkles in the first place and how my art has changed over the years.

While I'm claiming anime was the biggest part of why I doubled down on improving my art, humanizing bionicle pushed me closer to diversifying my designs. Initially that was not really the case, a lot of my bionicle designs looked the the same. (And it is taking everything for me to share these designs cause I'm not proud of how I used to draw characters and it embarrasses me OTL) What inspired me before was looking through bionicle art on DeviantArt and see other people's interpretations of the toa and what they would look like as humans. So being the little kiddo I was, I really wanted to try my hand at making my own versions too!

                            

These definitely aren't the oldest examples I have, but looking back at how all these designs look, Almost all of them have spikey hair, pale skin, and what have you. I was probably 15 years old when I drew this, so I've definitely grown past these tropes as best as I can. Though I can tell you one thing younger me had more than I do now, an INSANE amount of time and passion. I wanted to be an animator back in high school, so I started making animations of these guys too.

Legit, I grew better as an animator doing little scenes like this and it sort of prepared me for what would be expected of me in college. But I no longer practice animation and I really wish I did, I would love to make an animation with my updated designs but it just takes SO MUCH. Anyways, once 2015 rolled about and Bionicle was coming back, that's sort of when I started to push myself to get more skin tones into these guys. And even so, I improved my art a lot by now, starting to learn better form and vary my designs a bit more.

So in 2016, that's when I finally went off to college at the Art Institute (which that was a journey and a half to get through, holy crap, that's a story for another day). And so while I still loved doing Bionicle art during that time, I was more concerned with my own projects. And in that time, I learned how to draw better, how to study references better, and overall get a perspective of what the art world is like. Yeah, my hopes were dashed for an art career, but I still love drawing to this day - I get enjoying from sharing my works, and my humanized bionicle drawings was where I got the most enjoyment out of my interactions.

As I said before, I went through a lot during my college years, and Bionicle had become a comfort to me during hard times. Every so often, coming back and drawing these guys, getting new perspectives on their designs, it's helped my art grow a lot. 

The inspiring reactions I get from these works over the years has helped me work towards bettering myself and my character designs. Bionicle has HELPED MY ART SO MUCH! And I hope to put those skills to all my personal projects that I want to create and share one day. 

Anyways, I always love seeing people's hashtags when they reblog my stuff on tumblr. It just helps make my day a little better and gives me a boost of motivation. Everyone's support is always appreciated~ ❤