GALLERY

Apocalypse Rising

Originally drawn: 15 Mar 2025

Introducing the cast of Helvetia's NPCs! Most of them, at least. The reason I drew this traditionally was because I wanted to gift this to my GM. It was supposed to be a birthday gift, but I was too busy with school (I'm in computer science...). And then it turned into a Christmas gift, but I was too busy with working on commissions and pulled left and right back home. So now, it's just a regular gift I pulled out in two days.

From left to right, top to bottom: Agents Abaddon, Hassan (we call him Henri), Jessie, Uriel (we call him Fisher), Scarlet (we call her Marianne), Molly, Elsa, Eve, Kira. Though all of their designs (except Marianne, Eve's goat mask, and everyone's clothing) were made by another artist, I did a spin of them to adapt them from an anime style to my style. Naturally, all these NPCs belong to my GM.

I've had this mixed-media idea to use tracing paper for years now. It was originally going to be for another drawing with (yet another) different Delta Green character, but I decided to apply it here first. And now, I'm gonna talk about its process. I hope you're sitting all comfortable, because BOY was it a process that left my hands literally shaking by the end of it LOL

So, the reason why I rushed designing and drawing 9 portraits in 2 days was because my GM was coming from out of town to visit me. I knew for weeks when that would happen, but I still wasn't able to start because I was just that busy man HAHA. Yet, I was stupidly, doggedly determined to pump this out so that I'll be able to hand this gift over as soon as I was done with it, just to get this idea done and over with, and because I didn't know when was the next time I'll be able to meet my GM. (Aka I'm impatient and impulsive) (have I mentioned I have ADHD?)

I started by sketching on my iPad. This was the part that took the longest, because I was effectively designing 8 characters from scratch. As I said above, the characters were drawn in an anime style. Translating that to my style included designing unique face shapes and facial proportions for every character, because I wanted everyone to look distinct and also look their age. This is also why I sketched on the iPad, since it's faster to erase and undo and modify things digitally. I wanted things to look as accurate and precise as possible, after all -- I'd use this sketch over the final thing as reference to draw these characters again!

As a fun bonus, here's some design lore! When Jessie (top right) appeared in-game, everyone kept calling him Gus from Breaking Bad. So I partially based his design off of Gus LMAO. For Elsa (bottom right), I partially based her off of Elsa from Indiana Jones. Both are German, both are blonde, both are doctors, and I love Indiana Jones; why would I not? If she's capable of leading an undead army, she's capable of maintaining a 40s perm in an underwater laboratory. (I also want to draw her with a long braid, as inspired by yet another fictional blonde German woman, Helga from Atlantis: The Long Empire! I keep seeing Elsa as two of these blondes in my head.)

I sketched/designed 7 of these guys through the night, slept, woke up, and sketched the remaining 2. I cut my Bristol pad (the white paper) in half, cut the tracing paper accordingly, went to classes, came home, printed my sketch, and cut that out, too. For some reason, the sketch printed out too big? Now that I think about it, I think I know why (not dpi related, but software related). Oh well -- I worked around it anyway. I set up my table-top easel and my lightbox, and I was good to go! (No behind-the-scene shots for this set-up, unfortunately. Maybe one day!)

Another fun bonus: when I was streaming my sketch to my friend at like 1am or something, I drew the red stuff to demonstrate what I was going to do. Many strokes later, my friend goes, "Aren't you on the sketch layer?" So now you're stuck with the red marks too lol)

The black inks were done with a tachikawa and a g-nib. It was my first time using them both. It went badly lmao. I was expecting the g-nib to be more flexible, but it was actually quite stiff. It could make thick lines, but that required more force, and because the inking style I chose had a lot of line width variation, I had to press down on the nib a lot. That, combined with not having used dip pens for a year and rushing so badly, made me lose control of the nib many times. I was incredibly upset at how the inks turned out, actually. Even though it was a gift, throughout the entire process, I was thinking, "Wow, I should apologise for giving this as a gift." Gosh, I even smeared ink down Elsa's face. That was a pain to clean up.

I really chose the wrong inking style, but it wasn't like I could change it and make the drawing look inconsistent. At least I know better now -- I'll stick with thin lines and using multiple thin lines to make thicker ones. And at least I found out I can ink ridiculously fast (or at least a lot faster than my usual speed) with the g-nib! But I really do want to enjoy using this nib, so hopefully changing my approach/technique will help me. Thank goodness I always have Deleter white ink(?) and Clip Studio Paint to clean up and fix things too, like my mental state.

Fortunately, the 'red' layer drawn on tracing paper went a lot better. I wasn't expecting my water-based Tombows to look so bold! I thought I would need to pull out my acrylic paints for that. Admittedly, I rushed this part because I was really running out of time. My GM had actually arrived by the time I was inking my third portrait, I think. Fortunately, my roommate kept my GM very entertained (both are major league yappers). But whatever, the red layer looked good for what it is!

And that's how my hands ended up shaking by the time I finished this! Drawing this felt like drinking a can of energy drink without actually drinking anything. I was so high-strung and filled with adrenaline, I had to take a good thirty minutes or so just to cool down and start functioning normally again.

But hey, at least I've finally got this idea I've had in my head since last year out on paper. I did what I set out to do, despite it taking HOURS longer than expected. And most importantly, it's finally over! My life can resume and I can get on to other things in life, like schoolwork and job-hunting...

(This version below is an alternate version of the final digital product. It has less contrast than the final version above, but I like how the tracing paper's texture/effect is more obvious here!)

(Oh, and here's a timelapse of the inking phase...)