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!
Here are some that I did 3 years ago that I forgot to write about last time:
I think the idea for these next two came from one of my viewers! Lurking is a thing on Twitch that people do to show their support by having the stream open in the background of whatever they're doing. So viewers would say they're lurking or send a lurk emote in chat and the streamer would know not to call or chat with them since they'll be away.
I had quite a few ideas for a lurk emote since we could play around with cats hiding in and under things. I've seen a lot of streamers' lurk emote be their characters hiding behind walls so I think that's the standard but I wanted something different. Since chat was going to be the one using it I thought I'd let them vote on which one they wanted.
Ultimately they decided on the cat hiding in box which I thought was really cute and perfect.
I followed the reference and did a simple outline, writing lurk on the box to make it clear.
I colour sourced the image for the box and for the actual colours of the cat I wanted something colourful so I chose a calico cat following the colours in Neko Atsume, the cat collecting game.
It looked good, but was still missing something, then someone in chat said to add tacos into the box so it would look like the cat was hiding in a box of tacos. The taco is my channel point icon so I thought it made sense since people lurk to earn channel points for redemptions.
In the end we get this which I thought was perfect and so cute! To this day this emote is unchanged and I think it's one of the few I would still leave as is. The good thing is that this emote is totally free for anyone in chat to use! Even my chatbot uses it since I have a lurk chat command that contains this emote.
The next day after I showed this off on stream, another viewer suggested I make an Unlurk emote that has the cat coming out of the box instead! I haven't really seen people use Unlurk but I guess it's to show that whoever went to lurk has returned to stream and can participate in chat. I thought it was such a cute idea that I went to work on it immediately!
This was my sketch for how the cat would look in the box:
After I outlined it I wasn't really sure about the paws but since the emote was going to be very small in chat I figured it would be fine. For the colours, I followed how Breezy looks in Neko Atsume to match his body in the Lurk emote. But of course I changed the word to say Unlurk instead.
After I coloured in the box and the cat, I added in the tacos to fill it and it was done! I thought it looked really good!
I can't decide which one I like better but I remember someone in chat liking the Lurk one better because of the cute butt on the cat. They even sent it in chat even though they weren't actually lurking just to see it! It was such a joy to work on these and I'm glad they liked it that much!
Here's the timelapse for these two emotes:
These emotes are still unchanged and in use 3 years later and I wouldn't have it any other way. I don't think I'll ever change it since they look so cute. Which one do you like better?
Thanks for reading!
To find out more about me, check out my intro post here!
