Art Attack #196: Swole TacoCat Bonking 🔨

Hey Hive!

We're back again with another Art Attack! If you're new to the series, this is where I share my drawings and the process behind them. A behind-the-scenes look at my artwork, if you will. This is not to say that I'm very good at art, or that I'm a professional in any way. In fact this is the opposite, and serves as a reminder to how I first started, and lets me track my progress too!

I've shared about my streaming journey on Twitch in multiple posts and the art I've done both for my Twitch channel and for my viewers who redeem free artwork from me with their channel points. A few years ago, I wrote about the emotes I did for my Twitch channel and now it's years later I have done so many more and have even redrawn some older ones so I guess it's time for a huge new update in that aspect.

Here are some that I did 3 years ago that I forgot to write about last time:

The first one is called TacoSwole which I actually did post about long ago, since I also used it as a bit badge. Badges are special icons that users can put beside their name in the chat that will show up on individual Twitch channels and if you send bits/cheers on a channel you get a special badge too!

My chat likes to say that I'm super buff since I do exercises like pushups while streaming whenever someone redeems for me to do it, so I thought of making a buff TacoCat emote!

I didn't know how to draw the arms at the time so for the rework I thought of looking up references for buff arms. I found one I thought looked simple enough on shutterstock. I didn't want anything too detailed since it was going to be 72px at best it wouldn't be seen easily.

I'm not sure if this was an improvement per se, but I think it looks less cursed than the other one.

Honestly, looking at this now I wouldn't know how to change it which is why I probably haven't after all this while. Maybe next time I'll make it look better and draw it like the swole doge meme that looks like this:

Another one I wanted to share is the bonk emote! If you've been on the internet for a while you've probably seen this meme before:

If even the Daily Dot and South China Morning Post are writing about it it's practically mainstream or even outdated by now. But my chat gets quite naughty sometimes so they deserve a bonk from time to time. Some streamers would do the opposite and have chat bonk the streamer but it's mostly the other way around in my community so I thought of drawing me with the hammer/bat.

The main problem I had with this one was finding the right position and pose for my TacoCat to hold the hammer while still maximising the 500x500px canvas.

But I also wanted the hammer to take up more of the space so it would be obvious in the chat that it was a bonk. I also wanted to model it after Kirby's hammer since I really liked the colours.