Diving into my archives (with a surprise for you!)
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Art & Inspiration letters from NIGHTEͶ (Nathan Guilhot)
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Hey there, Reader! 🌿
Hope you're doing well this week! So to be honest, on my side, I wasn't able to make a lot of art. This was my last week at my job, which turned out to be both more work and more emotional than I expected. And I didn't anticipate that I would need to decompress as much as I did :')
I did however make a gigantic curry on Sunday, so that's what I call a productive weekend 🙂↕️
But more seriously, I also spent a lot of the weekend doing some digital house-keeping, and I ended up going down a rabbit hole into my own archives. Let's talk about that, because I found some things I think you'll enjoy :)
A decade of art (most of it being pretty bad haha)
So as I mentioned, my background tasks these past few days was transferring my archives: backups from old computers, a rather large quantity of not-so-legally acquired anime, and buried in all of that: a lot of old art.
I won’t go too deep into it or we’ll be here forever -- I have over a decade worth of files and most of it is neither good nor particularly noteworthy. But a few things stood out!
For example, my very first “digital” art from 2014. Not that long ago when you think about it, but it might as well be a different person who made it. Behold!
I was a teenager back then, I had just received my first laptop and had very little idea how you were suppose to do it: I actually scanned a drawing from my sketchbook, then cleaned it before turning it into vector for some reason. That's why the lines look so weird! I’ve learned a lot since then 😄
Much later, around 2017-2018, came my first real attempts at making backgrounds. Yes, I was avoiding them for all this time :’) And I actually didn’t made any serious attempts at improving them until 2021 maybe
From an animation I tried to make, around 2017
This is from a first visual novel I published around 2018, and I used this very blurry art style to hide the lack of details
This is from 2020! Notice how I empty the background feels
Backgrounds were a serious issue back then. I was getting a bit more comfortable later for on, but for example here I made a series of drawings for my family and looking back, I was clearly still struggling with colors
This one was for my brother and his cat :) I still think it's cute but what an eyesore color-wise
Now I’m happy (and kinda surprised) that landscapes became my specialty!
Okay, here is something completely different that I never shared online before: I was also dabbling in animation, and here I found a magical girl transformation sequence I made in 2021 and completely forgot about.
I did it in one night, no reference, no planning, running on pure adrenaline (and sugar). This was in the context of a magical girl project that never saw the light of day, but maybe I'll talk more about it someday!
In retrospect it was very much inspired by the first Precure series, but I had a lot of fun making it.
The most interesting thing I found while going through everything was the early history of what I now call the Blue Roof City, the fictional city where all my illustrations take place.
At the very beginning, the concept was going to be a vibrant but dystopian cyberpunk city. Dark, gritty, that kind of thing. The concept was mostly in my head, but here are some early drawings I found:
Offering - 2023, you can see I was starting to settle on the European architecture!
What made me change the tone completely was when I made the illustration “Make the world your garden”, maybe you’ve seen it before!
Make the World your garden - 2024
Turns out, I also found in my archive what inspired it: I found the subject in a random screenshot from the game Gravity Rush 2, which I haven’t played actually, but this one image made me want to make it my own.
To be honest, looking at them both I’m a bit embarrassed about how similar they are haha, but I’m grateful for everything that came after this tone shift! :)
This was the moment where the city stopped being dystopian and became something warmer and more cozy. And I’m really happy it went that way. It’s more enjoyable for me to draw, and I think you enjoy it more too :D
How the city looks like nowadays :) I much prefer the blue sky and optimism
There’s something I find genuinely meaningful about being able to bring a bit of peace into someone’s day.
What do you think by the way: where’s the line between inspiration and copying? 😄 Looking at this screenshot made me curious about your opinion!
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In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this look at my very early artworks! :) My goal today was to show you that there is no talent I was born with that made everything easy; just a decade of trying things out.
The surprise: all of my timelapses in one place!
Ok here’s the thing I’m excited to show you!
I know a lot of you love seeing how my art is made, and I film a timelapse of basically everything I do. The problem is that I almost never share them: I forget to export it, or I post it once and never again. It’s a bit of a waste.
So this weekend, I went through everything I could find and exported all the timelapses I had. I had more than 50GB of raw footage, and exported in the best quality I could manage. There is now 12 of them on this Google Drive, and probably more I’ll find later :)
I’m not sure if I’ll keep everything available at full quality forever, but for now, go have fun with it!
This is going to be very useful for my next market too; I love putting timelapses on a screen to show people how the art is made while they pass by!
My Daily upload on YouTube: We just crossed 30 videos!
I’ve been posting every single day for a month straight now, and I’m not planning to stop anytime soon :)
So far I’m quite happy with how the experiment is going: I feel like it’s getting easier to speak to the camera and get my point across; it’s not perfect yet, but I can feel the progress.
One thing I keep learning by posting every day: if a video feels really hard to make, it’s usually because I haven’t thought about the subject enough yet. It’s just not done cooking.
So I pick things that feel easy for me to talk about, and I think you can tell when I’m genuinely into it anyway :)
Cool links of the week
Here is the most important one! My fiancée, known as Astheri Art online, has been working very hard for month on an beautiful illustrated book, and they made an amazing animation to promote it! ❤️ It’s in Polish, but please go show some love on Instagram. It would genuinely make their day :)
Ever thought of an emoji that should exist? Well, you can check if your idea has already been rejected on this very cool page! Person in Suit Levitating has to be my favorite 🙂↕️
And I’ve also been really enjoying the work of Johanna Forster ! I really love her linework and the way she uses gentle nature colors. Go have a look at her work !
Alright, thank you for being here with me today, even on a quieter art week! I'll see you next Tuesday with hopefully something new to show on the illustration front ;)
In the meantime, please have a wonderful day, and take care!
Take care, - Nighten
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