It took me about a year to complete the first album of my Rumberitas characters as emotes. This was one of the most challenging and ambitious projects I have ever done. I will show you my creative process so you can get an idea.

How It Started

Because I have a VTuber friend who introduced me to the technical aspects of chat platforms (Discord), streaming services (Picarto.Tv/Twitch), and the benefits of an engaged, loyal community, I decided to embark on my journey with my NSFW YouTube channel as Rumberas Candela.

Somehow, I managed to create a small community of creative asexual people and wanted to give back to them with my art. It doesn’t really matter whether I’m selling services, products, or simply sharing my story through art for connection and entertainment.

What Made Me Do It

There are numerous artists creating something similar, as well as others taking advantage of the situation by selling AI-generated products while posing as illustrators. Regardless of how fucked the situation is, it boils down to 2 factors:

1. Enjoying the creative process, even if it takes me decades to publish it, knowing the impact I can bring to a community.
2. Being proud of the creations that push me to polish my skills and expand my portfolio, while making me relevant to the industry.

When it comes to drawing emotes, you have 2 things that you need to keep in mind: how limited your canvas will be, and how intentional your artwork needs to be.

The Creative Process

I did research about these 3 main concepts: Appropriate sizes, visual references (including memes), and compositions. The most important thing about composition is that you draw what you are supposed to convey in a limited space between minimal pose, gesture, and emotion. Because I was excited to draw different scenarios of my rumberitas based on their personality, I got a bit overwhelmed with the workload and froze. To avoid feeling discouraged about the project, the first thing I did was an extensive investigation before any production.

Composition & Color Quality

I researched some products via Ko-Fi, Twitter, and Etsy. The last one was easy to navigate whenever examining for emote bundles since it provided the most accurate search, variety, and high-quality images. In their platform, I could observe how the artists marketed their emote bundle packages with their grids, color contrast comparison (background chat), and basic but vital information about their product in the image.

Visual References

I could replicate the same emotions and poses like any other artist does when making a bundle of the emotes, or push my limits by using uncommon material of references to make my art not just appealing, but relatable, depending on the personality of the characters. For instance, I used Discord Emote.GG to find the most unique emojis and replicate them with my style. It’s a good source for inspiration, totally recommend it!

Sizes & Formats

I was introduced to StreamFrogs Twitch Emote Resizer. It was helpful to obtain the basic sizes for the usage of the emotes: 122px, 56px, and 28px. They also include a zip file folder with the resized images for convenience.

Conclusion

A lot of effort, dedication, and patience is all I can say for the duration of the year. Even though the art industry sucks with the AI situation, I’m still relieved I get to experience the workaround of my creative process, polish the craftsmanship, and enjoy the results of my creation with my community.

Thank You For Reading!

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