#20 Dark and a little darker

Wow, twentieth post?? And I'm still here? I do not think I have ever been dedicated to one anything for so long. From this special occasion, I want to thank you, for going all of this. I bet it was not easy, probably harder than for me. I hope whatever you are doing, you also do not stop pushing for your dream. They are important, you know? What is the sense of living without the dreams?

Dreams are things impossible to reach. At least now. I think, paradoxically, dreams are not important, because we are supposed to achieve them. They are so valuable, because of things you have to give up for them. There is no dream that can be achieved without a sacrifice. Sometimes you have to lose everything to win everything. Sometimes you lose and gain nothing. This place is cruel, the best people with, on the first-hand sight, the smallest dreams have to give up so much, and some reach the stars without much effort.

But we have to do it. We have to push, risk, rise and fall. If not, if we give up on the dreams, then me might not lose things that we have, but they become worthless. And for the rest of your life, you will ask yourself: "Could I do it? Maybe everything would have turned out ok?"

I do not have an answer, and I hate it. What can I sacrifice? Myself? People around me? What if I will reach my dream and find out that it's not that great?

We can only have hope, and do ours best. I wish that for you, so you will always have to, that in the end everything will be alright.

I know, I know. I said, no more black outlines, but it's a force of habit for me. It will take some time to change the method.

As some may recognize. Today I tried to not hard the Umbreon. I kept the "one color and one shade" method, but time without any model (I mean, I was looking at the official art, but no ready pixel art or anything like that)

The eye was such a hassle. You have no idea how many iterations it had. The rest is pretty standard. Shape and details.

Without my precious black lines, I had a problem to keep the consistent angle (Spoiler: and I did not manage to do that). That's why I made little lines to help me. Also, the head looks so terrifying with this eye, maybe I should have kept it. It's so menacing. The shading was made (literary) without thinking. I just followed what was on the original image.

More eyes! Yey! It was so frustrating to do, that I have to show you at least few of them.

This one is so sad. Look at this baby! He is almost crying.

Whatever he took, must be good... and illegal. He sees things beyond this realm.

Another aspect that was problematic was the head. On the original, he is looking back and has a shadow on the bottom half of the mouth and the neck. I had no idea how to recreate this without a black line to show where the mouth ends.

Now he is looking mad. Perfect! The shading on the leg also changed to show his belly a little.

The one-colored legs were looking kinda bad, so I changed them. The belly also evolved, but I can not tell why I decided that this is the correct shape, it just looks good.

Here, I'm still fighting with the chin. Maybe if I were better, I would be able to make a shade and outline the chin at the same time, but I'm not. Welcome to my site.

Final piece. I do not really think it ended up looking great, but it's the best I could do. Also, the back leg changed a little, to better to reproduce how it looks at the original image.

At the end, thank you for this journey. I never thought I was capable of such things, I only had hope (and a giant amount of self-hatred, but it's not required) when I was starting this project. As it's stated at the very start, I wanted to be able to finally give, not only take. I'm incredibly happy that I could give these 20 posts to you. If I made you smile or motivated you at least once, it was all worth it! I costed my a lot of sweat, tears, frustration. I lost count have many times I wanted to quit. I'm not a hero, full of talent, not an incredibly hardworking, honest guy who with a clear path ahead of him, I'm just a silly Citrus. If I can do so much, think what you can achieve! Please, do not give up, no matter how hard it is, I believe in you!