Ref Sheets
My birthday's this Thursday, August 19th. [self-pity deleted] So I got the idea of making a wishlist in the form of a twitter thread of things people can draw for me plus a call to action to buy stuff from my stores and donate to my Ko-fi and Patreon. The list includes three versions of my Cattype persona, two OCs and any yokai but especially Amabie, baku, tengu, and namahage. So scraped together some drawings I had of the personas and Toni the oni (unfortunately I still don't have a ton of good sketches of the other OC) and made some reference sheets with some notes on how to draw them and a little extra info.
I had a lot of fun making these ref sheets. Even if I don't get any drawings for my birthday, I hope I was able to entertain people with them. And if I do get drawings for my birthday I hope I provided something that was able to inspire someone to do so. (Also, it'd be a lot easier to share stuff on Jigoku Yeah and 1000amabie if people sent their stuff to me. I've wanted to be able to use that Twitter/tumblr to promote people's art since I started it.)
For the sake of preservation, here's the ref sheets in a recreation of the thread with a few commentary notes.
My birthday is on August 19th! So here’s a list of my birthday wishes for people who follow me. It’s mostly drawing stuff for me or buying stuff from me. Hey! Buying a gift for me is buying a gift for you! Win-win!🎁
First on the list of things you can draw for me is, of course, me. I have three versions of me you can draw. Standard Cattype, Baké Cattype, and Beasty Cattype. I scrapped together some pics I had laying around of each and added some notes for reference 😺😼🐱
I added the manekineko and meowth to Baké Cattype's ref sheet because I had the extra space and I thought it'd be cute. The manekineko is the original ink drawing I made for the manekineko design you can buy from my Threadless store. The meowth is the only drawing made specifically for this thread because it felt wrong to not have him there. Also, if I'm being honest I was hoping to draw a little more attention to the bit about Manekineko powers. Like the exclamation point tail, it's an idea I'm very pleased with but I haven't gotten around to ever using. I might be jinxing it by saying this but it would make me so happy if I got a bunch of drawings of Baké Cattype scrambling to pick up coins on the ground or wrecking shit with gold coins. Like, "I should leave a tip for my coffee!" *Destroys cash register in a flurry of gold coins*
I'm actually not a super fan of meowth. I chose the name "Cattype" because I wanted an internet moniker that had something to do with cats but was afraid of getting stuck with a name that'd grow out of. (I was 14 when I was thinking about this BTW) I didn't want to use a super obvious reference to a show for that reason but seeing that meowth and persian were both "cat types" with different adjectives gave me the idea that if I called myself "Cat-Type" I could switch out the adjective any time I wanted. Of course, that's not exactly how internet monikers work. You can't change the name of your social media accounts anytime you feel like it (Well, maybe you can but it's a bad idea) so I haven't been able to use this concept that much except when it comes to these personas. It's the reason I call my yokai persona ''Baké Cattype" instead of "my yokai sona". I do make an exception with my sheetsona- which is a version of me as a sheet ghost that I draw around Halloween time- but that's because I wanted the ideas of sheetsonas to catch on. (Seeing as as they haven't, maybe I should give it a proper adjective name. hmm.)
I have a very good reason for emphasizing the importance of Beasty Cattype's buck fangs but I don't feel like typing it here.
Next we have my oni boy, Toni! Mascot for my yokai twitter @jigokuyeah👹
In addition to the Powerpuff Girl knees, a Toni's back is inspired by Dexter from Dexter's Laboratory. He's got a straight line for a back and is kinda shaped like a B. I almost added that detail in the notes but I didn't want to seem too restrictive.
This tweet seems to be the most popular of the thread and I think that might have something to do with the bit about Toni hating Shrek. I'm very pleased with that fact. :3
Another original child of mine! Anise the baku magical girl! I’d probably have more sketches of her if it hadn’t taken so long to get her dress down. Read more about her on my blog.✨🛌💭
Instead of using her picture in thread I just used the link to Anise's blog post since the image for it was the same as the picture I was going to use.
Next we have yokai! Some of my favorites are tengu, baku, and namahage but any yokai I can share on my @JigokuYeah Twitter and Tumblr is fine.👺
Instead of spending a lot of time google image searching yokai and wading through the hundreds of options, I decided to save time and take photos of yokai in some of the yokai books I have. This was also an opportunity to show off some of the yokai books I have. The pages on tengu from my copy of How to Draw Manga: Occult and Horror seemed fitting since continue the theme of pointing out small details in art. Also I just really love this book and I'm glad to have it. The second image is from a book on the 5th Kitaro series, the third image is from Yokai Attack, and the last image is from a yokai encyclopedia by Shigeru Mizuki.
Ah! And of course I have to make a special mention of Amabie! Gifts of her will be reblogged on both my JY Tumblr/Twitter and my 1000amabie Tumblr. This little cutie’s going on my cake this year! 🐥🧜♀️
Another birthday wish of mine is for people to take the Delta variant more seriously.
Finally we we get to all the ways you can give me money. You can buy stuff from from my Etsy, Threadless, Ko-fi, and Zazzle. You can find a handy guide to all the places you can buy my stuff on my website! Let me know if you have any issues with it. 👕
You can also donate to my Ko-fi and Patreon. Sorry if my Patreon is kind of a mess. I’m still struggling to figure out what to do with it. Another birthday wish of mine is good advice for someone who only has 5 patrons.
If you for whatever reason want to send me a physical item, DM me and I’ll send you my PO Box (if I find you trustworthy enough)🕵️♀️
Well, that’s it for now! It was a lot of fun gathering images for this. Making model sheets is fun. I should try making some proper ones. Again, my birthday’s on the 19th! Feel free to talk to me about anything you see here.
And by by "Feel free to talk to me about anything you see here" I mean ask me about my yokai books. Questions and comments are good too.
I enjoyed making the ref sheets so much that I wanted to post them on Instagram but Instagram won't let you post multiple images in one post unless they're all square. So I added patterns to fill in the negative space, then I thought, "Maybe I'll add some texture and see how that looks", "I have a picture of Anise formatted for Instagram but why don't I make it a little different? How bout I add her spoon-shaped wand?", "I could just post Amabie on a plain color background but I already have have this cool wave pattern I made just for Amabie posts so why don't I use that?", "How bout I add a reminder for people to take the pandemic seriously with a Sailor Moon reference?", "And now to make two completely new images to represent the "any yokai" and "buy my stuff" articles on the list!" I finished the yokai image and made some thumbnails for what the Buy My Stuff pic might look like before going to bed. I had been working so hard on these in one day that I felt like I had spent an immense amount of psychic energy. The next day I started working on the final image and it dawned on me "...wasn't the point of this post just to share the ref sheets I made on Instagram?"
So seeing as I put way too much effort into these, there's no way I'm not sharing them here.
