the a-feuc* bus stop | a-flyleaf/art-2026

A line of characters at a bus stop, on a chilly day. Some of them are talking, some are

*“a-feuc” = a-flyleaf expanded universe clusterfuck, AKA what happens when I get possessed with the urge to draw all my human characters in one go and also in the same scene. But limited to main characters only, for my sanity. I don’t want to know how long it took!!!!1!

process shots: initial sketch, 2 versions of a 3D bus stop, a base palette, and palette adjustments — Figured I’d model the actual structure so I wouldn’t have to figure out perspective. Then actually designed the thing, *re-*modeled it, and went ham on tiny little details that are literally not visible at all in the final thing.

Referenced an assortment of photos, none specific enough for linkage, but Dimensions.com is an extremely useful resource.

Decided to torture/challenge myself, while I was at it, to put everyone in different clothing from their Cartoon Character Defaults. There are not huge changes for most of them, granted. My only outfit design principles are “does the distance/no-detail version read cleanly” and “would I feel like drawing it a billion times in a row (e.g. for animation or comicking),” so it tends to skew simple.

height & palette reference: the lineup roughly blocked out, standing & sitting, then with full outfits — Ignore the barbie doll anatomy. I had the passing thought of modifying that base stick-figure to be proportionate for everyone, then decided *that would take too much got damn time*, threw the PNG in the 3D scene, and eyeballed it.

Base height lines from deviantArt.

transparent PNG of the fully-clothed characters in the 3D scene — Ignore the barbie doll anatomy. I had the passing thought of modifying that base stick-figure to be proportionate for everyone, then decided *that would take too much got damn time*, threw the PNG in the 3D scene, and eyeballed it.

Base height lines from deviantArt.

Tried something different with the lines this time: blocking in the darkest areas wholesale, then filling the rest. It would probably have been more noticeably time-saving if I wasn’t doing it for 8 fullbodies in a row.

just the lineart — I wasn’t strictly planning on coloring the lines. Then I thought the contrast looked all out of whack with dark everywhere. Did I plan for this in advance? Of course not.

lines with color — I wasn’t strictly planning on coloring the lines. Then I thought the contrast looked all out of whack with dark everywhere. Did I plan for this in advance? Of course not.

Didn’t know what to stick in the background, didn’t feel like scribbling in detail; roughly smushed together these three photos, tossed in a couple trees to fill side space, scribbled in a bunch of overlays bam we done here.

a brighter, more saturated version of the final art — Part of the overlay spam was a minor levels adjustment. I kinda like this version more :V but it’s a *bit* too vibrant for the initially-intended mood.

Time taken:

September 28–30: ~16 hours 20 minutes, including 3D scene (sans figure, who was already made) & up to about half the lineart
October 6–7: 8h 45m, Everything Else

…totals 25h 10m. Cool. Alright. Awesome. Anyway, back to three-fourths headshots in the void ᕕ( ᐛ )ᕗ

(+bonus factoid: The main image is a JPG! I use compressed images for WIPs whenever possible, but in this case the exported PNG was over 7MB(????). There is no noticeable difference between that and a near-full-quality JPEG—and for less than half the filesize!!)