2025 was my second year participating in Artfight. This year was Fossils vs Crystals (I chose team fossils).
images courtesy of Artfight – Art Fight 2025: Fossils vs Crystals
Below are all my attack thumbnails if you are interested – I’m going to highlight a few of my favorites/ the ones with the most interesting processes.
The border I used was a modified version of FTU Team Decor (2025) by Genes1s_00 on Toyhouse.
This one was done for a good friend of mine, based on a prompt from him – we worked together on the outfit and pose based on the idea of a Kippa (the name of the character) in Hot-Topic-esq attire going clubbing. He ended up with this reference page for the outfit –
From there we worked on sketching out the pose together live – he ended up liking this profile and so we ran with it. I went with a simple rendering style here without any significant shading. I used one brush and brush size the entire time, along with a limited color palette, and made heavy use of hatching.
Another attack where I used a similar rendering style was this one against a character called Flamel. Below I have included some of the references provided by the artist. I really enjoyed adding character and texture to the flames without using any lighting effects or gradients. Like the piece above, the entire thing was done on one layer, from background, to sketch, to colors, to rendering. Additionally I enjoyed another simple composition without any background elements to highlight the character. The texture of the sides of the toaster was also fun to do.
In this attack, I wanted to include multiple scene elements, and do so again on one layer. I ended up using a subtle layer effect over the basic art in order to make the lighting a bit more dynamic.
The final attack I would like to highlight is this one, which was a revenge for an attack done against one of the characters I had created for The Big Wedge. I started with the silhouette and worked my way in (though I ended up tweaking some proportions later). Unlike the above, I utilized layer effects for shading in order to get the backlit effect.
Overall, I really enjoyed this year’s Artfight (even if my team did fall to team Crystals) and am looking forward to next year!
