[COMMENTARY] [BLOG] Picking my brain: Hoshino Ai

I kind of wanted to talk about this particular piece today that I just finished since I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about my work in progress. 

This was a piece of Hoshino Ai. I won't have any spoilers about the show Oshi No Ko other than say that Ai is a character whose story is quite saddening. I think that when I come up with different ideas and such I'm very much like.. inspired by a whole bunch of media that I consume? 

So I actually have a private server for just myself on Discord where I have a ton of saved art called my "#inspo" 

This piece was particularly inspired by three sets of images that I have in my inspiration:

https://twitter.com/quanjiang1/status/1635337557008609282 

and the official cover art for Elira Pendora's cover of Cinema 

I kind of quickly drafted a rough idea of what I wanted it to look like, merging the idea of an enlarged Hoshino Ai on the big screen, probably one with her having a huge grin and her hand reached out. It's your typical idol pose where Ai is affectionately giving her love to her fans, which was much of what Ai's life was devoted to. 

I was originally going to have Hoshino Ai, Ruby and Aqua sitting in the theater chairs, but I opted out for Hoshino Ai to not be there since in the real world she's no longer with Aqua or Ruby. 

Unfortunately I didn't really like the Ai Hoshino piece that I started with here. It was mostly because I started out the Hoshino Ai piece as a vertical piece and I had some issues framing it the way that I wanted it to be.

 I'm sure I still could've used it - but I just opted for scrapping it for something else since once I got the image in my brain a bit more I felt that I had more of an idea of a color scheme, etc. so I went for that instead. 

This was what I came up with for a horizontal piece with a similar idea.

I wanted both of her eyes open since she has those captivating starry-eyes.

And from there on I was completely captivated by a color scheme by a certain artist:

千鈴-chirin-  -- Specifically for this artwork

So my colors were color-picked and the idea of the rainbow aura was from this piece. 

From there on, I continued to render the piece with the lines that mimic an older TV which would give kind of a weird nostalgic effect of a TV that doesn't play well or a DVD that's been played one too many times, showing the idea that Ruby and Aqua have watched Ai's shows time and time again to the point where it no longer runs well but the image of Ai (her face) is still completely unaffected. 

I rendered the theater image and seats as well as Aqua and Ruby to the best of my ability. I was a tad bit more insecure about the way that Aqua and Ruby came out since I really really love the sketchy painted aspect of how the artist for the Cinema piece rendered the back of Elira. It was made with a marker brush or a very thick painting brush that didn't blend a whole lot. I tried to do it a little bit but found myself embarrassed by how badly it mixed. 

I blurred the colors and then tried again to just do some simple layovers with the necessary colors and found myself liking the results a little bit more, especially the added streaks in it. 

Now for the back of Ruby and Aqua. 

This is literally pulled from the official IDOL MV from YOASOBI. The colors were adjusted a bit, but this was the reference that I had to render Ruby and Aqua. Additionally, I added a yellow glow from the TV as an overlay for this piece which turned the Hoshino Ai single piece into a more reddish hue. 

That's a rough little blog and summary on my piece of Oshi No Ko and the inspiration that comes from it.

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