Djehkaujaa OC Motion Graphics LoFi Video Art

 

 [SCROLL DOWN TO BOTTOM OF BLOG FOR THE VIDEOS]

I've been feeling my OC's (Original Character) a lot lately in the past 2-3 months. She's actually a dragon, but her humanoid form looks like this, and her eyes can change colors. 

I usually depict Djehkäujaa in mid 1990s European Raver clothing, or in a variety of clothing typical of Mongolian tribes, usually with pants. However, I've recently found myself drawn to depicting her in a blend of tribal inspired clothing from the Asian Steppes, including everything from Russian to Mongolian, to Kazakh, but also Turkmen, Turkoman, Sakha, Yakutia, Siberian, and several others. These cultures always fill me with a strong, strange feeling of Déjà vu, but even further beyond that. So, I've meditated on it a lot since I was 18. In fact, that's exactly around the time when I came up with Djehkäujaa when I was a teenager. 

I've also bee drawing a lot of inspiration various old novels lately, and Clip Studio Paint.   

My newest work which features Djehkäujaa is inspired by the cover artwork by "Brom" on the novel "The Unicorn" from "Legend of The Five Rings". 

I feel pretty happy with my growth & progress in implementing "design layout" which is so much better than 5 years ago, let alone 10. I'm glad I decided to stop being so narrow-minded about it, and I feel I've improved a lot. 

I actually hadn't intended to start this one yet, even tho I prepped for it since December. I used a mixture of different Software for this project including: Adobe Photoshop, Clip Studio Paint, FlamePainter, and Rebelle 3. 

You can find FlamePainter & Rebelle at Escape Motions' website. 

I also HIGHLY recommend Clip Studio Paint! If you own a WACOM tablet or CINTIQ but you don't have Clip Studio Paint yet, if you login to the WACOM site in your account, they often give out a free 1 year license code that you can redeem. I personally bought a permanent during a Black Friday/Cyber Monday deal in 2020.Some thing with Escape Motion, I bought software bundles from them during those Black Friday/Cyber Monday deals. 

Clip Studio Paint is not 100% perfect, and even with an expensive video card (like I have) it will frequently crash. However, the up-sides of this software keep me hooked! It's 1 of my FAVORITE software to actually hand paint with on my CINTIQ. I like the feeling of it. 

If you like experimentation art, I also recommend Rebelle by Escape Motions, but I also recommend Krita, WHICH IS FREE. I like Krita for fine details and its also intuitive with your strokes on a tablet, even if the drivers are an outdated tablet with pressure sensitive functions don't work anymore.

This piece was a reworked version of a Clip Studio Paint "Asset" which you can get HERE. 

Believe it, or not, the fur on the final versions in these uses brushes from FlamePainter, and Clip Studio Paint. I customized the settings to colors I wanted, painted them on layers, then exported them to Photoshop where I did my clean-up editing. 

Also, if you haven't noticed, I have an obsession with Chinese Chengyun which is hard to explain in English and takes forever, ironically. It's sort of like a language arts/poetry style, sometimes its translated as an "idiom" which I disagree with as a translation. Chengyun is just 1 of this style of poetic language arts, and is probably THE MOST clever of all language arts in all of humanity, potentially even older than "ancient" but in fact prehistoric... maybe. The human beings whom came up with this were incredibly clever. There were even people whom could talk like this. 

It's like jive in some ways, but metaphors often within metaphors. In just a few words you can communicate things that are massive ideas. Not that Ancient Greek or Latin couldn't do this, but the Chinese way of doing this uses the writing system, and it involves a complex usage of more parts of the human brain that Western languages lack, or is totally void. So, it's very difficult for me. But, I enjoy messing with it. 

It's called Wen Yan, Gu Wen, or Wen Yan Wen. It's nearly impossible to effectively even translate what this is in English. The closest one could get to it is a lengthy explanation or lecture. From my perspective, I view it as a kind of advanced Poetry language Art. Making art with words, ideas, concepts, and feelings, but it relies heavily on structure, and numbers, or numerology. In a Chengyun, there's only 4 words, but this same style could also be applied to other numbers, including a persons name, or names. There are, however, other languages in the far East that have a functional understanding & appreciation of this even tho' they don't speak Chinese, but incorporate it into their own. But, its just something in the West that we will have no concept of. 

So, I often enjoy messing with these ideas myself. It's meant to be light-hearted on my end, since I'm an outsider.... like a small monkey that broke into a garage, messing with tools, trying to build something. 

If you notice a group of 4 Chinese characters in my work, those are Chengyun, or faux Chengyun (meaning I made them up based on either the structure, or I messed with a word play of a real one.) Chinese has a unique kind of grammar, so I can mess with it within a a certain margin even tho it's not my native tongue. I also can't help but incorporate so much Chinese substance into my work because my life is heavily Chinese even tho I am not Chinese. Even in my interests in Philosophy frequently return me to Chinese "thought" or "philosophers", especially Dao De Jing (Tao Te Ching).

Djehkäujaa, in her humanoid form is generally meat to be depicted in PURPLE, which is a major plot point in her story, and back story. Djehkäujaa is very UNLIKE my other OC, Lively. 

I don't know why Djehkäujaa has shown up so frequently in my drawings in the past few months, but she has.

The LoFi Videos:

 The Short Versions:

The Full Length Versions:

I do have another composition I will also be doing a VFX/Motion Graphics Edit/LoFi/Relaxation peice as well:

I'm hoping, eventually, to record some of my own Jaw Harp music. But, I'm still learning. I got this one from Siberia in Russia:

My new #JawHarp #Mouth Harp from #Siberia #Russia!!!!
I've been practicing for a few weeks now! #music #musicalinstrument @BlackUniGryphon #HandMade 😁 pic.twitter.com/pvyrqdgMQj

— Black UniGryphon Arts 烏獨角獸 (@GryphonUni) January 23, 2022

New YouTube Brand Channels

 

I launched 2 new Brand Channels on YouTube. It was a major goal of mine, and both Channels are up. The content will come in on those channels whenever I get to them. They're both a side project. I had to make 2 channels because altho both are intended relaxation content, the content is quite different from each other. And, altho' both are NON-NARRATIVE video media content, persons whom like 1 type of content might not like the other. Both are intended as background listening, meditative or relaxation content, and BOTH just clash with the content on my main channel. 

The first Brand is called "Oppressed By Purple" and it's main mascot is a spoiled, pampered, lazy tuxedo cat named Lila. She's the both the Mascot, and the Logo for the brand. She primed the audience to know that this is something you relax to. It's also sort of funny and cheeky.

I like the name, because its weird. If you are familiar with brands like Urban Decay or Liquid Death they poke fun at a seemingly creepy or scary sounding phrase but having the opposite meaning. Both are intended to by high end products which use creepy sounding names... in effect, it evokes this idea that "I SHOULDN'T WANT THIS....BUT I DO!!!!!"

Also, think of Michael Jackson's "BAD". Beacuse... "bad" is "good".... I dunno... its was an 80s thing... Wicked, huh?

The content itself is rather basic. In Oppressed By Purple, its mostly static shots or B-Roll of a setting or environment. It's ASMR content, with background sounds, or nature sounds, or sounds of an environment. 

 

The other Brand is called "Oppressed By Violet". This brand is a LoFi MUSIC Motion Graphics style of content. Both this brand, and the other brand, are BOTH SECULAR and NEITHER push ANY kinds of religious ideologies onto the viewers. IF YOU ALREADY HAVE a personal preference for spirituality YOU CAN bring it WITH YOU and enjoy the content regardless of whatever it is, however, no one overtly needs any religion, spirituality, nor ideology to enjoy the content at all, whatsoever. You will NEVER be pushed into ANYTHING you don't want. You could even be an atheist and still enjoy it. It has no real agenda. It's intended (both) as background content that one plays merely to ignore it on the conscious level. It's pretty at first, if you want to watch it, but you don;t need to be fully engaged for the entire video. You can just leave it on as background sounds, and be very passive with it. Its value is that its intentionally unimportant other than to relax the audience as they do something else, like studying, office work, or whatever. Or, even meditation. 

You are NOT pushed to buy anything either. Think of it as a gift, or a kind gesture to other people. You only get whatever you want out of it. 

Oppressed By Violet also features Lila the tuxedo cat on another chaise lounge, but this time she is an Anthro Cat Girl... or  "Furry". I'm NOT ashamed that I like Furries. I think they're cute. Altho I attempted to keep both pieces as more minimal and "cartoonish" or simplified, they both expressed themselves in their own ways, and ended up slightly more realistic than I'd intended. I wanted to go with sort of a Bugs Bunny meets American Comic Books sort of style, like Marvel or DC.... but that didn't happen... Anyways, it's pretty stylized that it's not quite realism. 

I will say this tho: I USED VARIOUS KINDS OF SOFTWARE FOR BOTH OF THESE. 

 

I used:

Adobe Photoshop CC 2020

Krita

Clip Studio Paint

Adobe After Effects CC 

I also downloaded Autodesk Sketchbook.... but I need to practice with that a little, because I wasn;t sure how to apply it to this project yet.... 

I thought I would list some of my influences for my references here:

Cat Gazette 

NEJM Journal Watch 

SoGeti Labs 

Jezebel: Guide To Spoiled Rotten Pets

We Love Cats: Cats That Have No Idea They're Spoiled 

12 Signs You Spoiled Your Cat

Bored Panda:  62 Spoiled Cat That Live Better Than You

Also, if you type in "Spoiled Cat", "Pampered Cat, and "Lazy Cat" into a search engine like DuckDuckGo and various others like Google, you could find similar stuff. I researched all the ones I could think of, and also "tuxedo cat". You can get a feel for what I was referencing. I SO ENJOYED researching this cat stuff because I find cats to be SO FUNNY! Also very cute! I cracked up so frequently while researching for this stuff. 

Here's some of the artists' artworks I also referenced:

Dark Natasha

Vyrhelle

Orpheelin

I actually started my research on this back in July/August, because I was really starting to conceptualize my work/projects for this stuff for even longer than that. I had a few bumps in my road tho. I was expecting to be done this stuff in September, but when I had to do my Furry Anthro Cat Girl version that I found I ran into a bit of an art block... It was pretty bad. I had very bad anxiety also, and insomnia. But, once my friend, Hope, started chatting with me for a lil' while, it budged me forward. 

Here's the basic Intro/Outro Graphics for Oppressed By Purple:

Here it is for Oppressed By Violet:

The general content of Oppressed By Purple is like THIS:

The General Content of Oppressed By Violet is like THIS:

That's basically the gist of it... 

It's nothing ultra exciting. It's RELAXING...