A Fire Emblem: Three Houses fan piece that took me over a year to take from concept to final painting.
I’m documenting this one here now because all the WIPs are in a Twitter thread and actually a blog post is probably a better medium for chronicling things and adding some thoughts.
I’ll start with thoughts on the final piece. I’ll admit, I’m not fully happy with how it came together. The colours are nice, but looking at it three years later, many of the faces are a bit weak. I think I was torn between how much detail to put into various parts of the image when working with watercolours, which can be temperamental – and I was trying to deliberately incorporate unpredictable elements like paint splatters to boot. I was probably too afraid of messing things up further with the faces to work them much more, including adjusting skintones. Some of this fear is justified – watercolours are not a medium that afford a lot of flexibility for adjustments or fixes.
Still, I think it’s fair to say the final piece suffers for my fearful approach.
I’m going to take you through all the test pieces that went into this piece and I think you’ll understand my disappointment after you see them – when there’s great elements in a test piece, their absences in the final artwork feel like a letdown.
We’ll start with the very first scribble, which apparently was the product of insomnia. I think it was pen scribbled straight over a watercolour gradient.
After that, the idea for the full painting quickly formed – a circle to span the whole rainbow.
I was torn on whether to include Byleth or not in this – partly because I was unsure whether I’d try my hand at the other Houses as well. In the end, they didn’t make the cut.
After this, I did a ton of experiments for the colour bleeds.
I LOVE how this one was coming together. Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough space on the test paper to continue it. I think I spent the entirety of the rest of this undertaking trying to chase what I’d done in this piece. Argh!
Some style experiments. The paint splatters came out great in this one and the one below.
I think what I didn’t appreciate in my test pieces was how little space there’d be for splatters to not collide in the middle. I then tried to lean into it, placing the eagle logo in the centre where all the colours converged.
There was a lot of time between the test pieces and before I was finally ready to undertake the final piece. I think in the intervening time, I considered doing the entire painting digitally, and experimented with how that would look.
But eventually, I got back on track to do things in watercolour. That didn’t mean throwing out the digital tools! Instead, the composition was drafted digitally for tracing. Of course, it went through a couple iterations too.
I think this tracing has made the sketch feel quite rigid as a result. Byleth was officially excommunicated.
Here was how things were looking after the paint splatters were done. I definitely went into that scared.
Looking at this progress photo, I think I definitely oversaturated the scan. Maybe things could be helped somewhat with a colour retweak… ok, let’s look at these files.
Hang on a moment… what the heck? Looking at the files in my art folder… I already did a re-scan! It’s dated February 2022, about seven months after I originally posted the painting online. But I never posted the rescan? Or at least, not in the Twitter thread. Another reason why using Twitter as a digital archive is a bad idea…
Anyhow, here it is. I think there’s some definite improvements in the colours, and it looks like I adjusted some of the skintones. I wasn’t able to fix Dorothea’s dark blotchiness, but at least Petra doesn’t look so pale in comparison. I think one of the issues I had with the original painting was how dark the paper scanned, so when trying to eliminate the paper textures and shadows I ended up really pulling the colours in weird directions.
So I’ll present this version without trying to wash out the background to white. Still not perfect, but an improvement, I think. Maybe I should go in for a third try, sometime…
This blog post goes through a few of my Tableturf inspired artworks from 2023, ending with a quick timelapse of this painting:
With the launch of Splatoon 3 came a new game mode, Tableturf! I got quite into the idea of Tableturf, even being a part of coordinating an art collab project – Arty Siege – which paid homage to the in-game cards. I did lots of work for that – creating various design elements, having fun data merging artwork in InDesign, thinking about how the physical game would really play out, coordinating artists and creating artwork!
The art that I worked on included assets for the card backgrounds, and I illustrated one of the cards.
These background images were ink paintings traced from game screenshots. After doing a little photography tour in the game I exported the screenshots and used the Find Edges filter in Photoshop. I printed these reference lines to carbon paper and transferred them to watercolour paper.
After scanning the ink paintings, I applied some gradient map adjustments to them to adapt them into the card background.
I chose to illustrate the Splattershot Jr. as my designated card for the project. I’ve drawn the newbie squid before and as a Junior player (I became a Junior main because of having to unlock kits on many, many systems) I just feel a certain connection to the default loadout.
During initial project advertising, I used this artwork. The pose is taken directly from the pose of the original Tableturf card. With this version of the artwork, I mocked up the first version of how the cards would appear, including tweaks to the card UI and creating a 3D view of the card.
My motivations for changing the UI were to make the Arty Siege cards distinct from the in-game works, but also to think about what would make sense for a real card game. The original cards put all their important information at their base, but I wanted to make all the pertinent information visible easily from a fanned out hand of cards. So I moved the grid and special costs to the left side.
I also straightened the alignment of the block grid. The angled grid was cool, and saved a little space, but I felt that when looking down at the game board and determining how to make a move, it was easier to visualise the move you wanted to play by having an aligned grid. Maybe that was just me, it’s not like things in the real world would be completely squared anyway.
Anyhow, relatively late into the project I started feeling a bit insecure about that version of the Junior being my entry into the project. I was surrounded by an incredibly talented pool of artists and felt like I needed to step up to the standards of my peers! I still like my original artwork but I also felt inspired by the work I’d done on the backgrounds to do a piece in ink and use gradient mapping to add colour.
This time, I based the pose on some promotional artwork from Splatoon 2 – I wanted to show off the square ink tank because while the flat ink pack of Splatoon 3 features in some of the cards, many of the other ones seem to take cues from Splatoon 2’s fashion options.
Here’s the final version of the Splattershot Jr. card. Please do check out the Arty Siege website for all of the other works!
One of the things I did at the end of this project was to print out all the cards, which was a lot of fun! I felt like I built a new connection with each of the artists and their artwork in the process of printing, cutting and sleeving the cards.
While wrapping up Arty Siege I had a vague idea of running a promotional Tableturf tournament – maybe something in a casual vein, or with a bit of a team gimmick to allow a mix of player skills among drafted teams. The team angle was influenced by my favourite anime – Chihayafuru – a show that features a competitive karuta game based on the Ogura hyakunin isshu.
Chihayafuru is beautiful, and the way it depicts friendly competition really hits home. And there’s just something so great about the earnest enthusiasm of the players – they’re engaging in a pretty niche hobby so having the opportunity to play is something they’re truly grateful for. Coming from a grassroots Splatoon scene, I feel the parallels between the competition depicted in the show and some of my favourite times being a member of the Australian (and broader) Splatoon community.
I wish competitive video gaming was filled with people as kind and grateful for the opportunity to play with others as the karuta players in Chihayafuru.
Although I didn’t end up running a Tableturf tournament, the imagery and the idea for an art piece stuck with me.
As much as I adore Chihayafuru, I’ve never felt brave enough to try to tackle fan art for it. The gorgeous scenes, the sense of movement, the game that I only have the most superficial understanding of… it all felt quite intimidating.
But Splatoon, I feel comfortable in that universe…
(A universe which coincidentally seems to have a version of karuta already!)
However, my painting is not an attempt to retcon that karuta into Tableturf. In my headcanon, the two coexist. I just wanted to borrow the aesthetics of karuta for my Tableturf scene. I was inspired by the glowing sunset scenes of karuta which I associated with the characters practicing in the school clubroom, but also by the tournament games played while wearing kimono.
Before starting this painting I did two “mood studies” – just getting a feel for whether I could tame the contrast of yellows, oranges and purples before I started. Watercolour can be a tricky medium, and it’d be hubris to walk into this kind of endeavour without a plan.
That first image is sort of a Chihayafuru fanart, I guess – the scene is most likely Arata sitting alone with his cards – but that wasn’t the purpose of the sketch. I wanted to get a feel for how I’d depict the trees in the windows, and the light entering the room. The second sketch really sets up the composition that I’d ultimately use for the final piece.
After deciding on that sketch, I made simple 3D version of the scene in Blender.
A digital sketch then filled in the character details
Which was then printed out and transferred to stretched watercolour paper, then painted over the span of a few weeks.
I also wrote a poem to go with this painting. It’s based on poem 77 of the Ogura hyakunin isshu. Here’s one blogger’s translation and writeup about the poem (I chose to highlight this blogger because they also have a post about the Karuta that appears in Splatoon 2!)
The translation included in that post is credited to Joshua Mostow,
Because the current is swift,
even though the rapids,
blocked by a boulder,
are divided, like them, in the end,
we will surely meet, I know
Swift waters parted by the jagged rocks are joined at river's end.
The overall mood that I get from this poem, having only experienced it through translations, is a mix of urgency and yet steadfast certainty that comes from love. Apparently, the “swift currents” were not in the original poem, and were a later edit, but I think the imagery is certainly much stronger with the idea of rapid waters.
I felt the scenario could be mapped quite closely to the energy and movement of Turf War, and by extension, Tableturf. The rapid currents can be whirls of paint instead, and the boulder standing in the way of the lovers could well be a grey block, created in Tableturf when both players play their cards over the same squares.
I chose to write my poem following the rough syllabic rules of the original poetry, the lines having 5-7-5-7-7 syllables. But I put a western poetic spin on them as well, making use of rhyme throughout.
Our rapid advance,
Blocked by chance or wit wherefore.
Must we halt our dance?
No - surge forth in this turf war!
We'll unite our ink once more.
The rapid advance describes that rush to claim turf, as well as for the rivals/lovers to meet at the middle of the map. “Chance or wit wherefore” refers to how the grey block ended up in their way. Was it coincidence that they played in the same tile, or was it cunning strategising from one of the players? With this obstacle in place, the shape of their relationship (whether it be a rivalry or a romance) is affected.
The ending couplet describes the characters choosing to rise above (or work around) adversity – in-game the boulders would not be passable at all, so they must certainly have some grit! Like the swift waters in the original poem, they’ll be sure to meet again.
I love how this artwork and poem came together. Reflecting upon them I feel all those warm fuzzy feels from all the ways that Splatoon – and more recently Tableturf – have made their impact on me. I’m grateful to have had another great year of art, friends and community and I’m looking forward to more good times in the future.
