Inkscape Aqua

And here we have the vacant stare, an iconic staple of expression. For many years, it was considered an instinctive response to witnessing something mentally or emotionally traumatic, and while its original connotations remain, the applicability of the blank stare has expanded to accommodate a state of mind described by many as "no thoughts, head empty" and creative minimalism associated with artistic uncertainty, which artists of all ages describe as "figuring things out."

In my entries and on social media, I speak offhandedly about "The Inkscape era." It was an experimental time for me, as I was figuring out what digital art platform was best for me. This lasted from late 2018 to mid 2019, where I jumped from Photoshop to Pixlr and from Illustrator to Inkscape before settling on Clip Studio Paint, which had the best of both worlds for raster and vector art. I was able to salvage the designs for my SPACE Characters, as they are the oldest characters in my repertoire that I draw to this day (I'm excluding the Ani-Mental characters, as I stopped drawing them outside of redesigns in 2018).

Considering how strongly I associated myself with Aqua, is it any surprise that she was the first character I illustrated? I drew her with "the princess outfit" you see here until April 2020, where I began drawing Aqua with her signature white cardigan. I remember adding the cardigan to her design because I struggled to pose her arms with the puffy sleeves. This was the most significant change next to the eclipse emblem on her dress: With her long hair, short dress, and star emblem on her chest, the eclipse emblem shaped up to be an unnecessary addition that I ultimately removed from her outfit. It's still part of her character, but as a necklace she keeps on display in her house rather than an accessory she wears on the belt of her dress. Her belt is also smaller in modern designs and she no longer wears tights, the latter of which was implemented after receiving feedback from my peers.

Other major changes for Aqua are her color palette and hairstyle. Her colors here are very dull, which I made brighter during my transition to Clip Studio Paint later that year and carried over into her redesign in April. While her color palette changed significantly, her hair is arguably the most notable difference between her previous design and modern incarnation. I struggled with Aqua's bangs due to Inkscape's vector line tools, but the rest of her hair was difficult to keep consistent in size and fluff. Looking back, it was miraculous that a twig like her could support the weight of her hair! I found curling it to be much easier than rounding it, I shortened her hair to waist-length rather than knee-length, and I differentiated her hairline from Shadow's. Ironically, I think Aqua's design here had longer hair than Shadow's did, which is inverted for their modern incarnations.

The least significant changes to her design compared to her modern incarnation are the location of her star pin and the size of her eyelashes. Every character during the Inkscape era had the star pin on their chest, which changed in 2020 when I began finding more creative ways to include the star rather than using pins. Her pin is now a hairclip in her modern incarnation, and her eyelashes are the same in number, but smaller in size. These changes may not seem like much, but have a look at my recent drawings of Aqua and see how much she has changed. I first posted her modern incarnation in May of 2020, so a year passed between finishing this piece and posting that one. I've also found prototypes of Aqua's modern design that haven't been archived at the time of writing this. Old artwork may be hard to look at sometimes, but it's important to revisit the roots and see how far you've come. This version of Aqua walked so her modern iteration could run.

May 30th, 2019