Zevti
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I want to draw more Madam
🕑 Added 2023-10-03 11:06:03 +0000 UTCCrazy I know.
It is 6AM. I'm in the bathroom. I'm fine, my mornings are just like this.
I have to say that none of this was planned. None of it. I was in the middle of the Dr. Spiral comic when I just discovered binary layers. And then it was off to the races.
Binary Layers
On a binary layer, you don't draw with anti-aliasing, and you can further clamp the colors to 8bit or less. In my case I used only 2 colors: black and white.
The canvas came out to 13,000 and 4000. It's the largest I've ever drawn on. But because there's so much less data, the file sizes remain small.
The major time saver was cutting cleaning times in half. So much drawing and erasing can get messy. So in aggregate, I was losing hours of time just making sure my lines looked clean. But with a binary layer, there are no smudges, just ink.
I did a racism
I have so many ideas. Its stirred sangria with chunks of fruit swirling about. Now, it's impossible to express them all, but the ones that persist get drawn.
I don't know why. I really don't know why. But I started imagining a white woman merging with a young black man and the whole thing being a big bowl of oof.
See, the suspension of disbelief was that both parties would be okay with this bizarre scenario. But the reality would be one wherein the old white woman is totally misinformed about black culture.
I have I white friend from Texas I talk to, and some of the questions they have can be majorly out of pocket. To a degree where it's like... you've been alive for the past 20 years, right? I don't expect you to know any rap lyrics, but do you have any idea how much time we spend on our hair and personal hygiene? Back when I had an afro, it could take me up to 4 hours a day caring for it. And growing up, if you didn't shower, you were beaten. If your clothes were dirty, you got made fun of. And if you so much as scuffed another man's shoes that was grounds for a stabbing.
What I want to put a pin in for now is that cleanliness is a major component of black culture*.
In this case of this white woman, once she's black, she would have started saying all sorts of sus shit like "Ooh, I understand rap music now!"? "Does this mean i get all the chicken and watermelon 🍉 now?" "Twerking is such a fun way to pass the time~!"
And to he fair, I could still draw those as standalone jokes. But as I thought more about it, my mind suddenly turned to Madam.
Madam is Black
This a fact.
Her OG design from 2010 was modeled after voodoo and Southern Creole magic. And I made her one love interest Gill into a former champion boxer. The only thing missing was a 40 of malt liquor screaming at you that this character was conceived and designed entirely by someone who had been living with a 100% black context based on things close to them irl.
There are no revisions here. Nor should there be any revelations because ALL of my characters are racialized or nationalized in some way. Like how Faulkner is American, but Carlita is Hispanic.
*But Madam was a departure from conventional black culture because she was absolutely disgusting.
Debuting as a vore character, Madam was all about post vore scat. 💩 I made her into this constantly shitting coprophiliac and couched in this weird story of magic to make it all make sense.
Madam eats people, and her body converts whatever darkness that was in them into harmless metric tons of turds. So sit in it, sleep in it, eat it. Compared to the evil in peoples hearts, poop tastes pudding.
Her lover Gill had their reputation ruined by jealous opponent. He effectively gets flushed out of fame, and he winds up meeting Madam in the sewers and falling in love. With Gill as the true protagonist contrasting the fowlness of his maybe-hopefully-someday fiance and just overall injustice around him. So, the former boxer becomes a vigilante backed by his magical monster girlfriend.
I've never had the opportunity to play DnD in earnest. Those of you who play it every week don't know how lucky you have it. I've never been able to have the fun that you have, so I didn't know what Hags were.
Hags
Based on what little I was able to learn. Hags (not always synonymous with witches) are beings that feed off of despair they inflict on others indirectly. And they revel in their horrid and ugly appearances because for Hags, ugliness is a status symbol.
Hags tend to stay hidden or work in the background, but they can be very powerful when influencing others, all while employing illusions and other magical tricks to lure victims into their clutches.
A young haf may be absolutely beautiful, but as they age and gain more power, they'll gain more ugly features like warts and green skin. This is often explained as a linear relationship with evil, but not all Hags need to be evil.
You can have good Hags motivated to do good things. But the important thing to understand about a Hag is that they have very particular ways of accomplishing things. So unless you're very magic Saavy lest that hag making your wedding cake accidentally eats someone when delivering it to the reception. 💒
So back in 2010 I had no knowledge of this, but with hindsight, yep that's madam. In fact, you can't even smell her poop unless you're in range and she wants you too. That's the power of illusory magic
I can draw black people now
I'm not into race play.
As a black person, it actually does feel weird being objectified because when black people show up in white porn were not regarded as kinky people, so much as big black dildos with legs. -or to phrase it differently, it feels weird knowing that you want to fuck me, but you you have zero interest in talking to me.
Part of this problem also comes from technology. White people on white paper is easy. With black people, not so much.
We are hard to draw.
As an artist, line art us my skill. I use contour and negative space to get you to see things I didn't actually draw. But this is an economy of color value. If I'm limited to just 2 colors and no cross hatching, how do I show that these lines are blacker than some other lines?
I found a way.
Understand than what I'm describing as a consistent problem for everyone. It's the reason they give black characters white hair in manga. By coloring the character darker, they need to regain some visual contrast or else we'd just look weird on the page.
But I went the opposite route by focusing on the face and natural hair.
Turns out the mistake everyone makes is trying to simplify black features before they even understand what those features are. So noses, lips, hair... you think I'm exaggerating them, but when you step back from the page, your brain identifies the black person immediately.
The process
Eventually these details synthesized into a crazy idea to explain how Madam became madam.
The napkin write-up had it as all witches must be female. It's not an institutional rule. No, it's defined by nature. Witchcraft in this universe demands a feminine spirit, so men can't do it. --Madam had always dreamed of becoming a witch and spent their childhood practicing despite their big black handicap 🍆. But through determination, Madam attends a Witches academy where they're given the privilege of merging with an elder witch and finally becoming a woman. This human madam would then live as such for years, growing fatter and uglier each day until one day she becomes the giant gator we all know and love.
I planed out the poses in Design Doll with help from Rubber Noodle Inc. The Madam model had been made ages ago, but I never got around to using it. There's a new Gill in that file, too, but I haven't drawn him yet.
I arranged the poses in SAI2 and quickly saw that I could make a full growth sequence, so I committed. On a single binary layer I started drawing, and I wouldn't stop.
I got assistance from Mana Mallowhound, Kanada, Johnson Tsang, and Yoshizaki-sensei for different parts and talked the idea over with friends like Baylith. But even with their help, things ran away from me.
Each pose became a puzzle to not only figure out how this was supposed to look but also making sure each part understandably flowed into the next. Madam herself gets bigger each frame her gator self was actually the easiest part. No, her human versions were harder because even at the ludicrous resolution I was drawing at, I had to compromise on how I wanted to draw them. Resulting in an overall more cartoony look.
But I wasn't done.
I saved off the PNG to a whopping 585 kb (binary layers are magical)
I then converted the image to an SVG. This means my artwork can now be scaled to *any* resolution.
I then imported the SVG into a program I stated using for wire frames called Figma. It's meant for front-end devs making mockups for websites before moving to CSS
I then asked Chat GPT for a list of 8 things and it gave me Aristotle's 8 virtues of good character and I used their untranslated names to serve as the magic words labeling each part of the transformation
Some of you may have noticed how the Roman Numeric count doesn't use IV for 4 and instead uses IIII. This choice wad made became it resembles how certain clock faces are labeled. It makes things rather elegant because now there are 4 hours with just "I"s, 4 hours with "V"s, and 4 hours with "X"s. I can't post a picture right now but it's a very beautiful look for a clock and I wanted to capture that here as these moments of the sequence also show a progression in Madam's life.
especially between IIII and V we get the shift from when pretty Madam becomes Ugly Madam, as the literal witch in her remanifests. It rests on the fulcrum making it the most impacted part of the entire illustration.
In Figma I composited this all together and saved it off with the press of a button without having slept in some 64 hours due to both being high, but also in the moment.
September 30th was my goal. But as stated earlier, each part is a puzzle so more and time wad needed. Perhaps I'd bitten off more than I could chew, but the process had gotten so much faster, I wanted to test my limits.
Fun fact, I'd forgotten about Spooky Month 👻 so this whoooooooole thing became a rather fortunate accident.
What's new with Madam?
1. She can't speak anymore but everyone can understand her.
True madam speaks with monstrous grunts and alligator roars but her dialog is presented by Garfield thought bubbles 💭.% Madam started losing her ability to speak like a human during stage 6. But in stage 8 you see her wearing a new magic hat.
That hat isn't just made from young madam and the witch's hats, but it's lined with Gill's old championship boxers and outfitted with a magical speaker that translates her words back into English (and French)
And this is important because the magic translator is technology based. A major departure from her magical roots. Madam is a total boomer with tech so the fact that she's now slowly making an effort to learn shows substantial growth 👏 which is appropriate because to date this is my most technical picture.
2. Madam can transform into any version of herself.
Madam can make magical pills that transform her into her alternate versions. She can retain her beautiful appearance or even return to being a black boy or a white witch, but there's a catch...
These transformations only last for as long as the pill is in her system. So when the time comes to poop, panic sets in because she's about to poop out her own disguise! And the uglification process doesn't happen over years, but during her ripping ass 😱
3. Gill has some Vainglory
A ritual he used to have before a match was sizing himself up in the mirror. Back when he was beloved and confident. Now he feels like half a man, but that champion in the mirror comes back when he fights for what's right.
So imagine him looking in the mirror and feeling sad. Then he looks over and sees Madam destroying the toilet, and he remembers all the times he's had with her and suddenly the champ is back.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=KfIiO8-YY8o&si=Cmj5rGwH78UEwS4S
Will I be drawing 💩 again?
I want to. But I'll never post it publicly. If there's poop it'll be a signposted attachment.
Will I be starting on the Manga soon?
Not this year, but I do want to draw more Madam.
Any more questions? Please leave them in a comment below
Comments
Zevti's Labyrinth
Boomer Jokes about her weight and smell, but they're actually accurate. As for her being a fusion and originally male, its a non issue. Fused Madam has been that way since the academy, so long ago on this timeline that he doesn't care.
Rockaway Carter
So how does Gill take the whole dynamic to his relationship with his Witch Wife?
Ryan Atkins
This sounds like a very interesting race without color design article before getting into gator witch and how she works. I never considered that as the only Mangas I actually ever looked at have been bleach, which did such a good job adding in the other racial features I didn't think about it, and record of ragnarock, which uses majority non human characters.
