Personal Projects – Abi Platonova

Art

VII (Gift for Mr Cho)

I wanted to make something for my animation teacher, Mr Cho, to show my appreciation for him and his class. I had this idea for SEVEN MONTHS- I wanted to draw his favorite collosi (which I had asked on the third day of school) from the game Shadow of the Colossus (he has two posters of it on his wall). This Collosi is called Hydrus (fanon name I think) or ウナギ/Eel (developer nickname), and is the seventh (hence VII) collosi you encounter in the game. This guy is an electric eel/serpent of sorts, and is definitely my top 5 of colossi in the game.

Before anything, I started with some references. I used many throughout this project, but these are some of them.

Afterward, I made a quick thumbnail sketch on Procreate. I wanted to kind of show how lengthy and HUGE this guy was in the drawing. I got his faceshape wrong since I did it from memory, but this sketch was helpful for knowing and formatting the VII (get it, cuz, he’s the 7th collosi) and Mr Cho’s name which I also wanted to be in the drawing.

Afterward- I started to cut out the paper! I cut out a big watercolor paper, since I wanted it to be larger than a normal piece of printer paper and wanted to watercolor it, since this guys an eel (and I also like the look of watercolor). Afterward, my idea was to then go over it in pen and draw Hydrus.

Fatal mistake moment: My brush was smudging the pen really bad. It's very obvious in the middle left one. — Fatal mistake moment: My brush was smudging the pen really bad. It’s very obvious in the middle left one.

Adding more fur to the tail, and fixed/deepened the orange coloring with color pencil.

Colored in the eyes & added more details, which I couldn't pick whether or not I wanted them to be orange or blue. I also took off the tape which was meant for the water color.. — Colored in the eyes & added more details, which I couldn’t pick whether or not I wanted them to be orange or blue. I also took off the tape which was meant for the water color..

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However. I made a fatal mistake. For some reason. I decided to lineart it FIRST and then doing watercolor. Do NOT Do this unless you are certain it won’t smudge. Unfortunately for me, it did! Fortunately for me, it still looked cool and I quickly just colored in the orange parts of Hydrus, giving it a somewhat heat or electric effect. I was considering using color pencil to lightly color the other parts of him, but I had viseral flashbacks of me failing to color with them, so I decided to just make it black and white and make Hydrus more detailed.
The result? I’m very happy with it! Even though it wasn’t what I had originally planned, I still had lots of fun lining it and drawing him. Mr Cho also loved it which was a mega plus!

Final product! You can also find it in Mr Cho’s classroom!

Writing

I lauv writing 🙂

Freehand Short Stories

“Freehand Short Stories” is a small series of short stories I started writing, to get myself back in the habit of not overthinking my writing and get back into that “flow” of it. In these stories, I’d go into them blind and just wrote the first thing that came to mind. Usually, these stories would be finished in a session or two, and are 2k words of less!

This is the first story I wrote when starting my “freehand short stories” series, and is genuinely one of my favorite stories I’ve ever written… something about the flow of it and messages and idk, it just works together so well. It’s a little gruesome, but it tells the message. What is that message? I can’t really remember what I had in mind when writing, but I have my own interpretations! And you can too, so I won’t say it here!

My Shadow (no drawing yet)

My Shadow Download

The second story in my series- I genuinely can’t remember what went through my head when I wrote this. I remember I wanted to do something with shadows, and then have it be a sort of time loop (?). I’m not too proud of this one, but that’s okay, since your writing won’t always be perfect! And thats the point of this series.

Music

NOTE: I am a beginner at making music, as I only really started this year! All music has been made on BeepBox unless specified otherwise.

I’ve always loved music as a kid and have wished to strongly to be able to learn to make my own. The idea of my own soundtracks and themes for my series, videos, and OCs seems so dreamy to me. Over the summer, I plan to learn and practice music as much as I can for my Zenith, where I want to make an original soundtrack. Here are some music I have made recently.
PS, I’ll give them drawings and format it nicely later…

At Home

This is my most recent music piece. I randomly had a sudden burst of energy to make something at around 10 pm, which is how this song came to be. I’ll leave the meaning up for interpretation.

When You’re With Me

The title is misleading on purpose. This song was actually a way to vent my frustrations from someone in my life who was making me feel alone and.. well, horrible in general. It’s not the best, but it did make me feel better.