Original Anime Art Got Suicide For My Baby

Results are out, and yes, congratulations to sjade1 for winning. I still feel bad from losing but hey, at least our fight was one heck of a fight. LOL Glad to have battled you, sjade1. :D I accept my defeat. [strike]Though I don't really like the thought that I'm not going to be very busy squeezing brain juice to wall for next round arrggghhhh, I wanna be busyyyyyy![/strike]

For results for Round 2 - HERE

When Misa announced the theme along with the results, I thought it was impossible. "I LOVE YOU" is so not me, and it's really hard to portray affection between 2 people for me - This is what I thought at first.

But then, that really cliche phrase doesn't necessarily apply to just 2 human beings of the opposite gender; there are all sorts of love in this world. Parental love, family love, siblings love, animal love, what else? Forbidden love? It's still a kind of love. But I have to admit, it was really tough to set down on what should I wall. At first the idea of Liang ShanBo and Zhu YingTai (Chinese version of Romeo X Juliet) came in, but then, if Romeo x Juliet is stereotype of love, what difference would that apply to the Chinese counterpart of them, besides that they are Asian? Then I dropped the idea, practically doodling and scribbling all over my sketchbook while searching for inspiring love songs in my playlist.

Then I just remembered, the complicated love sketch that I did last year, which I wanted to vector, has remained untouch since I scanned it few months back. Without thinking much, I opened the file and I felt relieved. Now that is some kind of love. But since the original sketch was done vertically, I had to redraw the whole picture horizontally and adjusted a few things here and there as to fill the empty spaces resulted from the transition.

Too many things to mention in the process. It's basically slapped full with all sorts of grunge textures, played with the different settings and TA-DA!

My goal is to portray a really complicated love. As you can see, those 2 are couples, but the sad emotions written all over the lady says she's in a dilemma because her guy is a heavy smoker. (Cigarette is no good for you people) However, she's very very in love with this guy she's willing to overlook his smoking habits and imagines the smokes from the cigarette as flowers to light up her day. While at the same time, the guy breathes out smoke in checkers to mean that he also uses speeches to get her in control. The checkers and chains bear the same meaning = control/no freedom.

Title inspired from Ghost Train , a soundtrack from one of Gorillaz 's album, G Sides, taken from the first sentence of the third verse.

**Credits.

Oh crap, so many people to credit for the patterns.

AetherealityCreeksoftPrincess-of-Shadows @ DevArtresurgere @ DevArtMadamGrief-Stock @ DevArt**