As we learned, life and death are not unacquainted, so shall the men of lonely sea faring know and just as quickly and violently as they were brought into this life, they return from whence they came in death. The cycle, endless, the comradery, unsung but prevalent in the life after, whatever that may be.

Hello again!

Not long after the last contest, I felt the inspiration once more by this lovely, handsome character. What would a fleet of the fellows look like, protecting the boarders of our posts? So I hastily got to work and...

                                            ✨It looked awful✨

Well, somewhat.

Sorry for the formatting error of the poor bastard off to the side. But this was the point I had reached when the quality of my idea looked best! Look familiar? I created a more detailed miniature version of my last post. My intention was to take this good boy and copy him a couple times and add a little oceany flair to really make it look like a little fleet of water wading legends. However, I am not very skilled with the drawing program, Gimp, and the very concept of dividers was lost on me at the time, apparently. I mean, I thought I had it, but look at! No ma'am. You don't got it.

So, I scrapped it and left it to rot in a computer folder till the next apocalypse or technological boom makes it too obsolete to be seen again. But you know what? Phooey on myself for giving up so easily! I had a decent idea, I just needed to try a little harder. And just about an hour ago, I finally forced myself to do it!

So what changed?

Well, for starters I killed off a couple of my guys. Sorry, my dudes, when it's for the craft you gotta make sacrifices. Don't worry, their meat was appropriately salvaged and will keep us well fed for the rest of the winter. They did not die in vain. Second notable changes would be the addition of two symbols which really feel like they tie the image up nicely while also providing it a more satisfactory symmetry. Was that even a viable sentence? Oh well, this is an art submission, not a creative writing submission. This time 😶