Ok so fun fact this was initially meant to be a flat icon but somewhere down the line it turned into an entire fullbody. No idea how exactly that happened but I’m willing to bet it has to do with me listening to the same song for the whole time I worked this and then some As you can probably tell by the title, today is Cricketcry’s 2 year birthday / creation date! I didn’t actually begin owning them until June 1st 2024 iirc since they were originally an ota design by a friend (@VERDlN), but that just means I get to have TWO Cricketcry celebrations so win either way This character has changed SO much over the time I’ve had them, but all of the changes have been for the better I feel like. Originally meant to get murked for good in arc 1 of afc, I ended up realizing that for lore reasons it’d make more sense if they stayed in the story, thus leading to their eventual comeback in arc 6. It’s actually weirdly poetic if you think about it: a character who has no fate in-universe and who was meant to die countless times is the same character who was supposed to only be present in two arcs out of a combined 20. In both scenarios though, they were given a second chance, an opportunity to continue their journey all because of what comes down to luck, which is also fitting considering that they’re named after crickets too. It’s good that it worked out that way though, since otherwise that would’ve been SUCH wasted potential seeing what their character’s turned into lol Yapping about this animal isn’t the only thing this project is about though, because it also has art of course! Like I said, originally meant to be an icon, then turned into a full. In the long run though that was probablyyy the best outcome, since that meant I got to incorporate all the flowers seen here! The flowers featured here are lavender, black dahlia petals, their orange flowers, and a grass lily. The latter is actually an easter egg of sorts since it was in their very first original design, as in the one from before I officially owned them! They haven’t been drawn with it since, but I’ve been wanting to draw them with it again for a while now, and today seemed like the perfect opportunity for that lol As for the other flowers, the orange petals were included because of course they were, and the black dahlia petals are here since it’s their canonical favorite flower! On that note it’s also apparently a good companion flower for marigolds, which was what their orange petals are inspired by + the name of a Cricketcry/Bramblemask comic strip I did over on main a bit ago. I only chose marigolds to base their petals off of due to the symbolism they carry and same goes for black dahlias being their favorite so the connection between the two was VERY unintentional on my end haha And lastly there’s the lavender, which I decided to use because. of course I did. Why would I not. If I didn’t include the flower known to be associated with queerness in the Cricketcry Flower Piece of all things that would maybe be the most missed opportunity to ever missed opportunity (/silly) As a whole though, I am really happy with how this piece turned out!! I’ve been doing a lot of fullbody stuff recently, and I’m happy to say that I do think I’m getting better with using more creative poses, something that was a goal of mine for my art this year! Thatt should be all I believe!! I know I’ve been horribly inactive for like all of 2026, but thankfully things have been going well for me and I have 2 definitive projects planned soon and I might also post some loredumps that I meant to post a while ago but ended up not doing so. Granted the art for those won’t be as recent as the art in my projects usually are since they’ll be from like January, but I’m still proud of them so I’ll likely do it anyways ^_^
