Scribble Labs 2 - Double Vision!!

[Lin Beifong]

BONUS ROUND - RESULTS

Below are the winning team submissions of this round, as determined by 25 voters.

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MATCH 131

MATCH 132: O-X-O

MATCH 133: X-O-O

MATCH 134: X-O-O

MATCH 135: O-X-O

~*~*~

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End of BONUS ROUND
Congratulations to everyone!

Up next are the results of the Artist Favorite poll, and the formal closing of the tournament.​

 

[Lin Beifong]

FAVORITES BY ARTIST
As determined by 29 voters.

Spoiler: Music

KRIGHT DOUBLE AGENTS Bureau Blue, #3b7491 Close-up Queen ROUND 1 - 58 Pts. ROUND 3 - 21 Pts. ROUND 4 - 16 Pts. ROUND 5 - 21 Pts.

FUN WITH DESPAIR DOUBLE AGENTS Crimson Eye, #ff0000 Major League ROUND 1 - 15 Pts. / 21 Pts. (INK) ROUND 3 - 16 Pts. ROUND 4 - 19 Pts. ROUND 5 - 45 Pts.

WOGLRIL BACKUP DANCERS Sage Green, #638269 Vibe Virtuoso ROUND 1 - 21 Pts. ROUND 3 - 20 Pts. ROUND 4 - 10 Pts. / 25 Pts. (SUB) ROUND 5 - 40 Pts.

UNIJU BACKUP DANCERS Cornflower Blue, #6495ed Exemplary ROUND 1 - n/a ROUND 3 - n/a ROUND 4 - 46 Pts. ROUND 5 - 70 Pts.

WYVYYY THE BIRD AND THE BEAUTIFUL Transgender Pink, #f5a9b8 Autobiographical ROUND 1 - 25 Pts. ROUND 3 - 39 Pts. ROUND 4 - 27 Pts. ROUND 5 - 25 Pts.

DODO THE BIRD AND THE BEAUTIFUL Robin Egg, #9ae0f7 Highs and Lows ROUND 1 - 11 Pts. ROUND 3 - 60 Pts. ROUND 4 - 28 Pts. ROUND 5 - 17 Pts.

WALUIGI TIME PURPLE FLAME Grape, #771BC6 Scenario Crafter ROUND 1 - 55 Pts. ROUND 3 - 15 Pts. ROUND 4 - 4 Pts. ROUND 5 - 42 Pts.

RHG1951 PURPLE FLAME Fire Brick, #b22222 Solidarity ROUND 1 - 25 Pts. ROUND 3 - 31 Pts. ROUND 4 - 52 Pts. ROUND 5 - 8 Pts.

TOADBERT STICK DRIFTERS Sky Blue, #7bc165 Leaning Dutch ROUND 1 - 1 Pts. ROUND 3 - 36 Pts. / 3 Pts. (INK) ROUND 4 - 30 Pts. ROUND 5 - 46 Pts.

TFP STICK DRIFTERS Nico Nicoral, #ff69b4 Team Player ROUND 1 - 4 Pts. ROUND 3 - 38 Pts. ROUND 4 - 40 Pts. ROUND 5 - 34 Pts.

MCD HOMIES Homer Yellow, #ffcc00 Glow-up ROUND 1 - 13 Pts. ROUND 3 - 20 Pts. ROUND 4 - 39 Pts. ROUND 5 - 44 Pts.

TURB HOMIES Blood Orange, #ff5700 Rising with the Sun ROUND 1 - 58 Pts. / 26 Pts. (INK) ROUND 3 - 5 Pts. ROUND 4 - 0 Pts. ROUND 5 - 27 Pts.

RYAN MARBLE RIVALS Fantastic Blue, #1ca7d3 Conceptualizer ROUND 1 - 12 Pts. ROUND 3 - 59 Pts. ROUND 4 - 28 Pts. ROUND 5 - 17 Pts.

MARTY MARBLE RIVALS Meteorite Purple, #4f2683 Surprise Challenge ROUND 1 - 11 Pts. ROUND 3 - 71 Pts. ROUND 4 - 29 Pts. ROUND 5 - 5 Pts.

HEARTS PLANET CHASERS: STARLIGHT EXCELLENT Lunar New Year, #ff2c64 Soulful Symmetry ROUND 1 - 12 Pts. ROUND 3 - 42 Pts. ROUND 4 - 1 Pts. / 13 Pts. (INK) ROUND 5 - 48 Pts.

MORGAN PLANET CHASERS: STARLIGHT EXCELLENT Team Violet, ##5814c4 Be Kind to Yourself ROUND 1 - 10 Pts. ROUND 3 - 46 Pts. ROUND 4 - 52 Pts. ROUND 5 - 8 Pts.

TPG RELÖDED Ambrosia, #ffa552 Event Horizon ROUND 1 - 78 Pts. ROUND 3 - 8 Pts. ROUND 4 - 8 Pts. ROUND 5 - 22 Pts.

STARKUSS RELÖDED Epic Koopa, #68b684 Expansion Pack ROUND 1 - 38 Pts. ROUND 3 - 41 Pts. ROUND 4 - 32 Pts. ROUND 5 - 5 Pts.

BBQ TURTLE QUICK TURTLES Highlighter Yellow, ##e5ff00 Even-Handed ROUND 1 - 24 Pts. ROUND 3 - 32 Pts. ROUND 4 - 24 Pts. ROUND 5 - 36 Pts.

LAKITUTHEQUICK QUICK TURTLES Final Pink, #f068d0 One-Man Orchestra ROUND 1 - 5 Pts. ROUND 3 - 53 Pts. ROUND 4 - 8 Pts. ROUND 5 - 50 Pts.

FANTANOICE SUNBURNT SKETCHERS Pineapple, #ebcf4f Antastic ROUND 1 - 17 Pts. ROUND 3 - 13 Pts. ROUND 4 - n/a ROUND 5 - 86 Pts.

REVERSE INPUT SUNBURNT SKETCHERS East Blue, #20aafa He Be Cooking ROUND 1 - 4 Pts. ROUND 3 - 11 Pts. ROUND 4 - 30 Pts. ROUND 5 - 71 Pts.

ARC GULCHROCK GREATS Arc Color, #22aa94 Art Evolution ROUND 1 - 3 Pts. ROUND 3 - 25 Pts. ROUND 4 - 9 Pts. / 30 Pts. (INK) ROUND 5 - 49 Pts.

HOODED PITOHUI GULCHROCK GREATS Shaded Violet, #570f57 Philosopher ROUND 1 - 14 Pts. ROUND 3 - 57 Pts. ROUND 4 - 6 Pts. ROUND 5 - 39 Pts.

KOOPS KOOPS AND CO Bright Pink, #ff007f Metamorphosis ROUND 1 - 23 Pts. ROUND 3 - 14 Pts. ROUND 4 - 20 Pts. ROUND 5 - 59 Pts.

COCOA KOOPS AND CO Petty Blue, #15b0f0 Promise Kept ROUND 1 - 21 Pts. ROUND 3 - 24 Pts. ROUND 4 - 60 Pts. ROUND 5 - 11 Pts.

ROSERADE MASKED MERCENARIES Brilliant Rose, #f0509a Evocative ROUND 1 - 9 Pts. ROUND 3 - 27 Pts. ROUND 4 - 14 Pts. ROUND 5 - 66 Pts.

NINELEVENDO MASKED MERCENARIES Electric Blue, #05c5ff Directional ROUND 1 - 10 Pts. ROUND 3 - 7 Pts. / 34 Pts. (INK) ROUND 4 - 28 Pts. ROUND 5 - 37 Pts.

WINSTEIN CALAMARIO MARTERS Wheat, #f5deb3 Light and Shadow ROUND 1 - 19 Pts. ROUND 3 - 18 Pts. ROUND 4 - 52 Pts. ROUND 5 - 27 Pts.

POWER FLOTZO CALAMARIO MARTERS Meteor Blue, #4455dd Season of Giving ROUND 1 - 19 Pts. ROUND 3 - 1 Pts. ROUND 4 - 32 Pts. ROUND 5 - 64 Pts.

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Many, many thanks to...​

• Lakituthequick, whose bot makes this process a lot easier for hosts and players every year.
• Toadbert, whose record-keeping kept me sane during match-making.
• GBA and Steamlined for agreeing to guest-star in Round 5 of the tournament.
• Fun With Despair, Ninelevendo, Winstein, Waluigi Time, and Hearts for their thread commentary, and everyone who commented on Discord.
• And all of you, for playing and giving it your all throughout these seven long weeks. You did a fantastic job.

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End of Scribble Labs 2
The final report will be released on Friday.​

 

[BEEEEEAAARRRS]

Another great bracket everyone, as always it was a lot of fun to get excited over rematches and brand new match ups, and also to see everyone make it out to participate again. Kudos to Gabumon for hosting, there was a lot of cool ideas here, and I hope Labs can return with a new batch later on sometime. My coffee breaks on Mondays are gonna SUCK again

Given that this tournament was so dense compared to the usual ones- I ended up with 8 pieces added to my collection instead of the usual 5, coupled with the whole team aspect of it all. I thought it'd be fun to go back and recollect Tfp and I's decision making process throughout the past couple months (as well as shoutouts to the opponents):

Spoiler: Colors

Tfp pretty quickly reused his pink from 2024, and I ended up going with a green that was pretty similar in color value. This created a somewhat complementary set of colors that also worked with the trend I wanted to do where I'd use brighter colors for Labs, as opposed to the pretty dull ones I've used in main bracket. The pink and green eventually reminded us of one of the sets of Joycon colors available, and so that ended up giving us our team name too.

Spoiler: HOME - Backyard

Tfp took the helm at actually trying to figure out how we could start synergizing right off the bat, which was good because it was something I probably would've slacked on myself. I had an idea to stack our pieces to look like two segments of a house, and Tfp added on that there could be a bird pooping from mine down to his. Neither of these ended up panning out due to my circumstances though.

Tfp followed the plan exactly, you can see what was supposed to be the bird poop in his, but my prompt of "backyard" stumped me. How could you show a backyard from the upper level of a house with the perspective I had given? I tried to force a compromise with some strange perspective to make the background house look like a pretty ambivalent region- like it could be the ground level or an upper level. I probably could've did it better though, and then I also completely forgot to draw the bird at all, but I don't think it would've worked out even if I had. Somehow though, we did end up using the same colors for the house and sky though, so shared brain cell.

The forced perspective on the house did end up determining how I had to draw my guy and pretty much the entire piece, which I am pretty happy about. It's kinda like you're the next burger on the grill looking up at him, which actually works pretty well with the title of this one, come to think of it. The title was a reference to a Jerma bit, and the guy also ended up becoming Jerma too. No one spotted this, but FWD did call him the "whitest guy ever" so close enough.

Also behind the scenes fun fact, there was the possibility this would've ended up a 1v1 with just me and Ryan. Marty was having technical difficulties with his PC and it wasn't clear if he was going to be able to submit at all, but ultimately things worked out for him. I liked the sombreness of his piece, Tfp's interpretation of important dinner being a pizza delivery is really funny, and Ryan depicting our team as the gormless morons while his team was depicted as the stoic chad winners made it a great match.

Spoiler: OUT ABOUT TOWN - Airport / Billboard

Tfp and I talked shop some more and we came to the agreement that he could handle the background work for both pieces, while I would tackle the main subjects. He had his Nico theme that he was going to work with, so that ended up helping me get an idea to proceed with for the piece I would send him really quickly.

That airplane in one hour? That just about killed me. I was tensed up like crazy, unable to draw straight lines and had to catch my breath after deadline was up, but I'm pretty proud of what I managed. I left a few notes for Tfp on the canvas itself, which I was so unsure of whether it would violate the rules that I submitted a copy of my piece without them. Tfp did pretty good at following the lead I started and emulating the sketchy shading I'd done.

Taking in Tfp's billboard to finish had me stumped for a bit. Ultimately I decided that I didn't know how to progress any further with what was given and decided to go with a Saul Goodman ad on there instead. It hadn't even really sank in yet that he drew this in the middle of the desert, but once I noticed that, then the Breaking Bad reference with the RV (and the second airplane) really sprung forth quickly. I think I kind of messed up Saul's arm there but that's ok sometimes.

Once again gotta shoutout how much training Winstein's been doing to bang out so much art for each piece with only an hour's time, I strongly believe he's the hardest working participant in these tournaments. Really enjoyed Flotzo's characters too, especially the Cataquack balancing his tiny briefcase on his nose.

Spoiler: VIBES - Bright / Liminal

I get to join the illustrious society of Inktoplasm participants? And against team MCD? The man with whom I'd already battled on the topic of vibes? It was meant to be. Granted, I was actually against Turb there, but my conditions for this round applied against him. My submitted condition of "hidden eyeballs watching the viewer" was inspired by the newspaper comic Bizarro, which makes a point to contain such things in every strip.

Anyways, these two characters were carried over from a piece I did in 2023 where the old guy was a wizard. The Saloon building is inspired by "The Town with No Name", a marvellous videogame where they opted to use polygons instead of textures to decorate their buildings. My piece felt like there was so many constraints that there was only one possible outcome for it. They're all facing away from the camera and they're all cowboys? Ok, guess I'll do another duel. Not gonna complain about that (and I shouldn't since I helped lab out one of those conditions that was going to attack Turb and myself). I did make sure the dead guy was also facing away from the camera, and also had a hat and a spur on his boot just for anyone looking to really nitpick me though.

This "bright" green color was from Zelen, but it's pretty much exactly the same as the one I inherited from FWD when we first did a Color Share match in 2024. It was a bit disappointing to get another green here, but I was happy to get a shot at redemption using the color. It's possible I overdid the brightness, but I wasn't going to turn down the chance to burn out everyone's eyes to really bring home the prompt

Meanwhile, everyone was showing off their strengths this round, I think this was Nine's coolest looking image and MCD delivered on a great piece that's very dark with his trademark sketchy lines. Turb is good at referencing dumb internet pictures that I and surely many others always recognize and I appreciate that.

For my real match, I was very quickly much more confused. From all the video essays I've seen on the topic, a Liminal Space shouldn't include characters at all. I've got a folder full of a hundred images on the topic because it is something I like, so I bunkered down, picked out some references and figured out how to draw a character in there.

I decided that while it'd be less efficient, it might be more impressive if I used two characters to satisfy the conditions, those being Caddicarus and the finger guns. Spiderman as a copout for the hands is in fact a gag I've done before, because I've known Tfp for a long time. Caddicarus is only someone I've known by name, I've never seen his videos. His face was pretty quickly learnable, but it was harder to find a quick look at his physique, so I just assumed he was a stockier build. I also just assumed he wore rectangular looking shoes. Then, I tried to keep my two characters off to the side and out of the way as much as I could so you could really focus on the emptiness of the location. I was concerned they might work to divert attention away from where I wanted, but thankfully it seemed to work out pretty well in the end. FWD said Caddicarus looks like he knows something bad that the viewer doesn't, and I really like that take on it.

My condition for Tfp and Cocoa was pretty much based on what we'd discussed last round, so I opted for them to focus mainly on the background work by having minimal/no characters. I didn't really think about how this cut into Tfp's theming as per the same discussions, but he made it work, and pretty well too. Break the Targets is just nostalgic by default since Smash stopped putting it in the games at all now

Koops had a really cool idea about having his image shooting missiles at the targets he required be in two of the other pictures. Sadly I'm not sure how much it came through, but that was a seriously outside the box idea that I never would've thought of. Cocoa had a really cool interpretation of the round too, a very unorthodox picture that works great, born of the pretty heavy limitations put on it.

Spoiler: KAIZO MB - favorite character with eyes?

Tfp and I were pretty excited about this one as we labbed out our colors for a while. We both decided to take MCD's yellow as it should probably be a pretty good supplementaryish color to both our pink and green, as well as working to unify our pieces. From there we needed a dark shade, so he took a deep red while I ended up with a deep purple. In theory, these should be another set of good supplementing colors. I'm not super brushed up on color theory but we felt we had a pretty rock solid palette.

Getting started killed my gusto a bit though, the only possible direction I could think of pursuing was "what if they keep adding every jackass with a pair of eyeballs in the series to Mario Kart?" DK Mountain as the punchline was what I started working on first but I really lost faith in the idea midway through. I pushed through though since I had nowhere to pivot. The mountain ultimately doesn't look that great, but perhaps the simplicity of it compared to the dump truck convoy and all the other characters helped it? A number of the ideas for characters here came from the Mario Boards thread, but I'm glad I remembered the Mario series enough to come up with the Veggie and the Sun myself.

Since this was hinging on details of the newest Mario Kart, I tried to copy its CSS design. I found that I needed to start deviating though, I figured drawing vehicles for all the characters would help the joke here. Their names aren't really listed except for the one you have picked, but again, I felt I needed to name everyone to help sell the joke.

This also ended up being the only piece I presented for this bracket where I didn't incorporate some white guy into it. Batman cat counts

Ironically enough, I found myself against MCD again, also with a prompt strangely reminiscent of the eyeball condition I had just given him and Nine. I said his piece reminded me of Slender The 8 Pages, but also the scratchy wooded piece that Nine had made against me the last time I was in a Tri-Color round. Manic looking pine trees are always a great look.

Tfp and Turb used their colors to great effect here. I enjoyed how Tfp's setting became so surreal looking that it reminded me of Bikini Bottom, and how Turb's character is perhaps so indigested that all they can see is red mist, leading to the necessity of overdosing on Pepto Bismol.

Spoiler: ECHOES - "Partners in crime"

This definitely ended up being the most fun round, even though not being able to throw in the towel after three hours was stressful to me. Also served as a reminder to what happened the last Labs bracket finale: TPG showing up out of nowhere to enter the bracket to beat specifically my ass.

I knew pretty quickly that this piece was going to be an homage to the sprite comic series I'd started where Tfp and I were basically urban explorers who got into trouble of varying severities. The Men in Black aiming guns at us, the old growth forest, and the stupid looking car (originally based on a vehicle from Mario Kart Double Dash- it's like poetry, it rhymes) all came directly from that. Us being in a car almost worked to recontextualize "Stick Drifters" too, but not really.

After getting that far though, we hit our first obstacles. I didn't know what exactly we'd done to piss the Men in Black off, and Tfp was still working out his direction. Once the work week was over, we got a group call/video stream every night and worked out our details as I got started. He came to the conclusion that his piece could include the both of us too, to make for more synergy, and he could portray my interest in Bionicle as being as overwhelming as his interest in Nico for his "role reversal" prompt.

From here, we pieced together that we could have our two pictures telling an interconnected story- we obtained some leaked company info from a convention, and now we have to fork it back on the drive home. The only major downside was that my piece was set to be presented first, so we tried to remedy it as best we could with Tfp's title.

I intended the trees to be slightly curving towards the road to make the surrealness of the background a little greater, but the effect ended up lost once I rendered them all. Oh well.

Tfp did a great job packing his piece full of references, and bringing together all my suggestions to tie our images as one story. Some of its kind of niche, the Widget dispenser in the wall is a reference to something on our Minecraft server, knowing what "G3" means kind of provides some context which you may or may not need, and perhaps you, the viewer, don't know that I'm into Bionicle at all. Regardless though I think we really put our best foot forward against Inktoplasm. GBA and Steam had another really risky idea, where you needed both images to satisfy both of their prompts. I really liked that once I figured it out, another play I don't think I ever would've thought of myself. They had some really nice colors to work with and definitely utilized them well against us. I'll admit I didn't really know how to use my own pink very effectively.

Spoiler: FREEDOM - What's it like to be a bat?

Kright gave me her McJango cat to use. I didn't know his origins or context behind him, but I thought it'd be fun to stick to this round, cartoony style so I decided on adding some more cats to the conversation. I tried reading up on the sourced Wikipedia article for any possible inspiration, but the only thing I saw was a guy who kinda looked like the Santa Claus that I'd given her, so I moved on.

At some point it struck me that I could reconstrue the question to be "what's it like being a bat [superhero]", so Batman and Robin became my other characters. Batman's kind of missing many of the established cat traits, so hopefully vertical line (cleft lip?) above the mouth carries there. Should've given him a tail. From my clueless point of view, McJango's outfit was somewhat justified now since the other two are also in costume, and perhaps his worried expression is a response to how useless this Batman is proving to be. The only thing that I wish I'd done was actually matching Kright's smaller lineweight, but I was in flow and not in much control of my pen pressure so I figured I'd try to adjust it if I had time later, and I didn't.

I'm not really sure why I put an emoticon in the Bat Signal but something about it being written in a font that's very very bad for emoticons struck me as funny. I dunno, I think these cat faces just brought me back to 2000's internet.

None of us knew who exactly our opponent was, which was my suggestion because I thought I'd have just as much fun challenging Kright for the first time or FWD for the third time and I didn't want to decide. I had a lot of really annoying/evil ideas on what to fill my tetris block space with, but ultimately decided on something more of a softball, which I'm glad I did because it felt more in line with what Kright gave me. Speaking of which, she did great with it, it was a clever idea and it was pretty funny.

Tfp and FWD, I don't envy what you guys had. Tingle was funny though, and Tfp had a lot of nice detail packed into his this round.

My main takeaway from this is that it's actually pretty fun to try and help someone figure out their drawing, and also that it's really fun to read what people have to say about your piece, so I think next tournament I'll try my hand at the feedback thing. I'll do what Gabumon did last year: ask me for what looks good and/or what I think could be improved. Or you could tell me to shut up

Tfp and I had a lot of fun and I think he definitely picked up a bunch of tricks to use if he returns to play. I got a bunch of stuff to attend to, including something I need to share ideally soon before this tournament's been over for too long, so I'll see you all next time

 

[Hooded Pitohui]

I greatly enjoyed Olympus Battle. Rounds like Sabotage and Relay were great fun in their own ways and were neat in challenging players to come up with particular ways to communicate with their partner, but the open communication of Olympus Battle made it a superb capstone. It allowed the partnerships formed in this tournament to come into full fruition, and you can see how much being able to get feedback from a partner improved and shaped the pieces in that round.

In light of that, I thought it'd be neat to go through the process YtSSM and I went through for that round.

Spoiler: pre-planning

Between the round's theme and rules being announced and prompts being opened, we hashed out a plan that we would jointly devise our concept, each draw a base scribble early in the week, and then spend the rest of the time refining those bases with feedback to one another.

Once we actually received our prompts, YtSSM mentioned he liked my prompt a lot, because the plot twist in Brothership immediately came to mind for him, and he was wondering if there was a way to make it fit with his "musical" prompt. At that point, thinking about how Zokket wears a pretty prominent mask, my mind drifted to The Phantom of the Opera. I did a quick search for a Phantom of the Opera poster, looking specifically for one that might work well for YtSSM showing a half-masked Zokket.

So I ended up sending this one over, saying that maybe YtSSM could take inspirations from it, and he liked the idea of going with it. At that point, we saw a synergy between the prompts, and had the idea of YtSSM drawing a poster, and me drawing the actual plot twist scene from the musical. Originally it was going to be a scene on a stage, but since YtSSM's piece ended up including specifically "Film-Musical", I changed it to a movie theater scene.

Spoiler: In Theaters 4/28/2025

YtSSM began by blocking out his image in a non-Scribble format.

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After which, he prepared his actual base scribble (I've shrunk it for the purposes of this post).

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At this point, what we did was send each other feedback through edited and marked-up versions of our scribbles, accompanied by text that offered more detailed advice. The numbers on these marked-up images corresponded to the block of text that elaborated on them. For instance, this was the first image I sent back to YtSSM, with two of the text blocks elaborating on the notes in the image:

2. The holes in Connie's and Cozette's plugs can be used to add more depth if they aren't solid color. If you look at my third round Scribble from this tournament, you'll see how I have this sort of "inner layer" around the holes in the haniwa.

[...] It's pretty easy to do by drawing a little crescent from the bottom left of the circle to the top-middle. In your case, I suggest using white and not black for the part visible through the hole, since you're seeing either Connie's face or the spotlight through the hole.

3. If you add a black shadow - separate from other shading - under the right side of Connie's plug prong, and have it follow down to the middle of the bottom of the prong, it will help viewers tell that there is distance in space between the plug and the rest of her head.

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He came back with this image, which included a really neat thicker-line, multi-colored way of tapering the spotlight, which I ended up incorporating into my own scribble for the round both for synergy and because it was just really well-done. In addition to all the feedback, he also put care into adding some depth and shading to Zokket's wirecutters at this stage, which was a nice touch.

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At this point he also asked if I had suggestion for making the Arc color portion of "Brothership" look brick-patterned to match the game's logo, we had a little back-and-forth on that, and he found a way to make that work well. After that and YtSSM adding a side-view to Cozette's prong, he had this.

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After that, we did another round of feedback:

I was actually off a bit on point 2. In trying to bring it in line with the change YtSSM made with Connie's prong, I overapplied the idea. After some discussion where YtSSM pointed out the finer details of the shape of the wirecutters on Zokket's artwork, we left those unchanged. The next discussion was improving the readability of the text at the bottom, which we ultimately got away with by just shortening my name, and so the new iteration of the image was:

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Next, YtSSM caught a color correction on Connie's prong and opted to make the visible portion in the holes black since it would be shadowed. After that, we let this image rest for a bit while I worked on my scribble - since I was drawing the same characters, I thought it might give me some ideas for suggestions. Indeed it did, and the final notated round of feedback we had concerned drawing some of the "spikes" in Zokket's cloak in the back.

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Which then resulted in the final image:

Spoiler: The Villain Unmasked

I started a day later than YtSSM, so my scribble had the benefit of following some of the conventions already laid down in his - the styling on the spotlight, the colors chosen for Connie and Cozette/Zokket, etc. I started with this as the first complete draft stage, then added some quick-and-dirty coloring to send it to YtSSM as my base scribble.

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His first round of feedback was mostly text-based, offering advice on how he drew his spotlight, noting that I had missed Connie's button, some coloring choices for Connie's legs, suggesting shadows for the holes in the prong to better match his image, and making some suggestions on what I could put in the background of the screen. Here's an excerpt, and the notated image he sent to help clarify the prong coloration advice:

Yeah. Decide on where you want your spotlight and then shade the shadows from the spotlight's perspective. Try to image it. Or even use your hand and make a spotlight shape and with the palm being the spotlight. The latter is what I did with my spotlight and shadows.

As for some coloring suggestions, some minor details are Connie legs. They are Arc Color in "Toy Time is Short", but that was because I only had that, black, and white. Since your dark purple is an option, I would choose that, but that is me. As for the holes, look at my last two pictures and you can see the difference. Like, it is in darkness, it should be dark. Also, adding the little bit of Arc Color at the top of those side pieces. They match more to the pictures seen on the Super Mario Wiki. Now as for the chair backings. I mean, they should be in the dark. I guess it would make sense that dark purple would be best for them.

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I incorporated his suggestions and built further on the image, getting to this:

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After which came one more round of commentary and notated feedback. This ended up being a strong suggestion, considering Hearts took notice of it in his (much-appreciated) commentary!

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And after that and a few more adjustments on my side, we arrived at the final image.

There is certainly a lot of power in being able to offer feedback and advice to each other as a team!

 

[Lin Beifong]

I was approached and asked if people were allowed to use this thread to put together their own unaffiliated one-off scribble rounds. Since the tournament has ended I have nothing against the idea, so I've given my approval.

 

[winstein]

I posted my thoughts in each piece I did for this challenge in my own thread since this one will eventually be archived, so I didn't feel like repeating them in this thread: Link to the thread for the full commentary.

My colour for this time is Wheat (#f5deb3). But why this colour? Well there are two reasons. First is that I am aiming to use a different colour every time I start a contest, and Wheat was in my mind even though the colour didn't have "win" in it. I also picked this because Power Flotzo picked Meteorite Blue (#4455dd). Between Wine (which I used for Picture Pilgrimage) and Wheat, the choice is clear: it's Wheat, because I think the colour gels well with blue. I was afraid that this colour would be too light, but I suppose for the purpose of a scribble, its colour could shine based on how I use it.

Spoiler: Conclusion

I feel that, even with a huge skill gap between me and my partner, I felt that my partner contributed to my drawings in a meaningful way despite a lack of communication for most of it. For the first round, the colour basically complemented well with each other; for the second round's second drawing, I got a drawing to beautify a lot to be presentable; for the third round, I got a prompt that made for a great drawing; for the fourth round, his colour helps a ton; that's not even mentioning the fifth round.

It's not immediately clear from the drawings I posted here, because if you look at them, you might think they look great, don't you? I felt that this time, there weren't any glaring issues with the drawings I did this time, unlike past contests where I felt there were aspects that could've been improved. But in reality, our team had a pretty bad losing streak. We lost the first four rounds, one is a clean sweep by the other team (Round 2). It's only the last round that we somehow won. I didn't think we would win because when we lost that much, what possible reason is there to believe otherwise? The advantage for the fifth round applies to everybody, so even if we communicated and I could provided feedback that I wouldn't otherwise be able to, the other team basically could do the same. I guess we'll take it, I am especially happy for my partner who never won anything in previous rounds. (On a similar not, Yoshi the Space Station Manager won the vote in the last round in his respective matchup).

The favourites of my scribbles are also encouraging. The one that got the highest score is the Tired of my Evil Recolor drawing, which garnered a 52 point score. The second-most is A Body of Water, which had 27 points, followed by the 19-point Infestation and the 18-point Dignified. The sweep is the third image of them, while the scores don't have any low point. It may not be almost roughly equal, but the distribution is satisfactory, since the one with the least points still ended up being enjoyable. It's certainly a better outlook compared to 2023 and 2024's point distribution (though 2022's close votes would never be topped).

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These are the practice scribbles I did for the entirety of the challenge:

​

Spoiler: Sketch of Practice Scribbles

There sure are a lot of images, aren't there? The reason I decided to do mini images (each at 300 pixels squared) is that I am inspired to not do small experimentation stuff and do what Uniju did and made complete pictures. But instead of doing full-sized ones, I did them small because they are simpler to picture, and anything that is small will surely be better if the same techniques were applied in a bigger canvas. Each of them basically have a motive to be practised (the motive being in italics and square brackets), in the order in which they are completed:

1. A1 (23/3/2025): Deep in the Cave [Getting the hang of four colours] - With a dark and light colour, the possibilities are endless, so there were experimenting with sketches, starting from the rock. That is until I decided I wanted to do a cave. From there, it's a matter of finishing it. You might notice that, similar to my past works, there are lots of white residue. Even though it would probably look messy, I think it added to the beauty, so it wasn't cleaned up.
2. B1 (27/3/2025): Midnight Playground [Getting the hang of partner's colour] - Probably one of the messier ones. The objects look very hastily added, and the light portraying a sidewalk wasn't the best. However, the background is good, especially the clouds.
3. A2 (27/3/2025): Trees in the mist [Getting the hang of my colour] - I have seen a picture depicting trees in the mist, and I knew I wanted to draw something like this with my wheatish colour. Unfortunately, I have forgotten where the photo was found at, so I can't find a proper reference. Therefore, this is going by my memory, so I can't tell if I picture the scenery correctly.
4. B2 (29/3/2025): Misty forest [Second go at the "trees in the mist"] - This is the one where I managed to find a reference online using keywords consisting of "mist" and a forest or trees. It's not the photo that I recalled seeing in a book, but I decided I like the scenery so I wanted to recapture the look. The mist leaves something to be desired, but the rest turned out really well!
5. B3 (01/4/2025): All roads lead to the kingdom [Preparation for Relay, the 1st round] - Because I already checked with my partner and a background should be drawn, I had to practice doing a background and doing it fast! The result isn't shabby for its limitation.
6. C1 (06/4/2025): Candlelit date [Preparation for Relay, the 2nd round] - I do not know what to expect my partner to draw, so I did this in case my partner drew a background for me to fill. I decided on a closer look on two people, and decided to make the guy short and the lady tall because it's different from the norm.
7. C2 (06/4/2025): Circle chase under the coconut tree [Preparation for Relay, the 2nd round] - The second attempt at this, depicting a bigger scene. Again I don't know what my partner would draw so I am doing a second image as extra practice. Given how I lost both rounds in the Relay Battle, I can't help but feel that the effort didn't pay off.
8. A3 (10/4/2025): Catching apples [Imitating a Game & Watch display]: I watched Mario's Bombs Away and can't help but admire the way the characters are positioned to make use of the entire screen, so I wanted to something similar. Initially I wanted to do one colour, but I found that it wasn't enough, so the partner's colour is added.
9. C3 (10/4/2025): Documentary at the paddy terrace [Experimenting drawing a cute girl]: Certain artists drew a cute girl in their art, so I wanted to see if I can pull it off. The entire package ended up splendid, but I think I am not as good as those who did that.
10. A4 (11/4/2025): Conflagration Calamity [Practice with conditions for Sabotage]: Using the VALID conditions list, I used the randomiser and got "Use a lot of white" and "There must be fire". Deciding on what to draw is difficult! So I can expect the actual Sabotage to be difficult if I have a bit of a hard time deciding on using these two conditions. I ended up doing a fire scene where the village is burned to the ground, because I imagine there would be a lot of white here.
11. B4 (12/4/2025): Flock Away at Dusk [Experimenting drawing a contemplative scenery]: I felt like I have never drawn one of these scenes as a piece (inspired by Uniju), but the only problem is I wasn't sure what to drawn. When I see a wallpaper of a flock of birds flying away from a dark tree, I knew this is a perfect candidate for a scribble. It wasn't comfortable drawing the silhouette of the trees because the branches might make it look messy, but I think that as long as I draw the branches in a logical way, it works out in the end. The easiest part are the birds, because they don't need to be detailed. The sky took some experimentation to get, but I settled for a half-white, half-wheat image. All-in-all, a satisfying piece.
12. C4 (13/4/2025): Futuristic City [Wanting to draw a large foreground with a small background]: Initially I wanted to do an ordinary-sized person in a "foreground" with a smaller background, but later I wasn't able to make it look right, so the ordinary-sized "person" is retooled as a robot, and a highway is added. The background is fine and stayed as it is.
13. D1 (15/4/2025): Tulip Garden [Experimenting tricolour with Roserade's Brilliant Rose]: Before the tricolour round started, I wanted to experiment doing one before I knew who my opponent, and I considered who is my most likely opponent. Roserade is one possibility, so I picked pink and chose a colour that I think would complement the one I had, which is a dark shade of green. One of the biggest challenges is to differentiate the objects but I think this one looked fine. I was more afraid that this image would not have enough colours, but I think I handled it pretty well, all things considered.
14. D2 (21/4/2025): Desert Sunset [Experimenting tricolour with Fanta's Pineapple]: I read some articles on what colours work well with Wheat, and one of the colour palettes have yellow and orange. That's why orange is opted as a third colour. It's based on Turboo's Blood Orange, but it's a bit darker. Anyway, a bright colour scheme deserves a bright scenery, so a desert mountain it is. If my mother can see the two people on the mountain, I didn't need to worry that nobody can see them.
15. D4 (21/4/2025): Black-and-white Revival architecture [Experimenting tricolour with Power Flotzo's Meteor Blue]: One of the colour combinations I wanted to do is red, blue, and yellow, and I got the last two down, leaving red left. Because yellow is light and blue is medium, red is going to be a dark colour. Of the three tricolour pieces, this took the longest because I drew lines to get a better sense of perspective. This basically used up a lot of my time before the drawing, leaving little time for the next one.
16. D3 (21/4/2025): Flying, Flowing Free [Experimenting tricolour with Revin's East Blue]: Initially, I wanted to do a stormy sea with this colour combination, but time was running short to do the actual drawing, so I opted for something simpler: the feeling of freedom in flying... or is it swimming? I couldn't decide, so I did both basically. The scene is meant to depict the joy of doing both. The most challenging part is deciding on how to do the background, but once that is done, the rest basically falls into place. Also, there was a dark purple that I would've used for the tertiary colour, but I ended up using a dark blue based on the Wheat palette recommendations.
17. D5 (24/4/2025): Storm at the sea [Playing around with tricolour with the Ninelevendo's Electric Blue]: I initially said that Ninelevendo's Electric Blue wasn't in my tricolour practices, even though he's part of the challengers who didn't win any rounds back then. I took his emoji as an obligation to draw something. Remember the idea of a storm over the sea I had? Well, I decided to salvage that. And the purple colour I initially wanted to use? That's salvaged as well. I had a hard time drawing the sea, so I just draw-feel it. The end result looked like the sea is only slightly turbulent, but at least it's not a perfectly calm sea!
18. A5 (26/4/2025): Still Pond [Practice drawing a body of water]: When my prompt is "A Body of Water", there are lots of things that could be one. I decided to test something simple first, to get an idea on if blue works in depicting a body of water. I think the dominantly yellowish gives it a peaceful vibe, thus I added a picnic mat and tree (that's only seen in reflection).
19. B5 (26/4/2025): Frozen Stream [Practice in drawing icy body of water due to Power Flotzo's decision to do something wintry]: Because of Power Flotzo's Holiday Time prompt and doing something wintry, I decided that my body of water is going to need to be wintry to match. That's why I looked for frozen stream to depict frozen water. It's also here that I decided that snow should have blue shade to differentiate it from the surroundings.
20. C5 (27/4/2025):The Thing from the Sea [Practice in drawing a "body of water" coming from a body of water]: A final part of my practice, after deciding what to do for my last piece, is to have a being coming out of water. Problem is: what scenery should I use? I don't remember what was used for reference, but I wasn't sure how to incorporate it with my water-person, until I drew out an idea that I an satisfied with. The two things aren't quite related, but I wanted to draw both. That's why they are together.
    
    Between the last two practice ideas, I have decided on what to do: a water-person coming out from the water in sequential fashion, and then making him cover in snow to form a snowman. I think this confluence of ideas can only happen in this round where I have enough time to think, draw, and communicate with my partner.

Thank you for reading.

 

[Lin Beifong]

FINAL REPORT​

Stating my own impressions of the tournament course and evaluating feedback received,
both through the feedback form and observed in other places.

12 people have chosen to fill out the feedback form, all of them players.

Let's proceed with the analysis.​

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The 2v2 format in general​

My primary goal with hosting this tournament was to ascertain whether a Scribble doubles format is possible, and following from that, desirable. Outside of some unique challenges involved with this particular run, I would say that the 2v2 format is viable.

Among these challenges, one thing that was particularly notable to me was the increased complexity of match arrangements. One of my initial goals with match-making was to reduce the amounts of rematches that would be occurring. While relatively successful in the first round, I quickly abandoned this goal as players coming in clusters of 2 made the process very unwieldy. In one case, adhering to this "rematches bad" mindset resulted in an unbalanced match where one team requested their player positions to be switched, to ensure a more fair experience. This signaled to me that creating new matchups was not desirable as a primary goal if it came at the cost of other, arguably more important balancing factors.

Another thing I noted was a general complication of player roster maintenance. Making changes to the roster mid-game, the kinds that would be necessary due to player drop-outs or poor sportsmanship, is markedly more difficult in this format due to the presence of the second player in a team that will be unjustly affected by these changes. It is very demoralizing to have to drop a willing and able player from the tournament because their partner has suddenly evaporated. I would suggest future hosts to look into solutions for this problem.

Feedback​

11 players thought the 2v2 format was successful, 1 thought it needed major changes.

Most reactions to the 2v2 format ranged from accepting to appreciative. Positives listed here were the fun of having a partner to collaborate with or rely on. The idea of having a best-two-out-of-three system seemed to find approval, as it took some pressure away by making it possible to still win even if you personally couldn't sway the votes in your favor that round. While communication was restricted a bit more during the earlier rounds, some found this aspect fun as a challenge to seek out ways of collaboration in spite of the restrictions; by planning cleverly and flexibly.

Despite some relishing the challenge, others felt inhibited by the lack of communication opportunities and felt it difficult to find their synergy. The lack of understanding what would sway people on the team vote, and subsequent need to force connective elements into ones drawings under pressure, proved a source of arresting confusion.

There was a sentiment that signing up with a partner you already knew and had a good work rapport with gave you a huge edge, and a concern that not everyone had access to someone like that. There were concerns from people who felt like there was a huge skill gap between them and their partner, and worries of dragging their performance down. Some even felt anxiety and pressure from having to stay in contact and communicate regularly.

Thoughts​

The biggest factor here was a call for more freedom of communication. I don't know a perfectly clean way to achieve this. An idea would be to ask partners to draw at the same time and allow them to talk to each other during, but this approach would heavily disadvantage players with demanding jobs who do not have aligning schedules. An acceptable compromise might be to keep the restriction on communication while the clock is running, but lift it for the time after. This would essentially allow the first-drawing artist to relay their prompt and work to the second, and give them an easier time to incorporate synergizing elements into their drawing once they start their clock.

To address the concerns with regards to team-building and balance, it seems some kind of aiding framework prior to the start of the tournament could benefit players who don't come in with a partner already selected. Whether that would take the form of a more centralized way of helping players find other players searching for a partner, or the host being more involved in setting expectations and giving suggestions... the future will see.

Stack Battle​

11 players would like to see it return, 1 asked for major changes

This was conceptualized as a very simple, warm-up type challenge to ease people into the concept of the 2v2 format. You already knew the two colors you were carrying into the round, leaving a relatively stress-free environment to allow players to acclimatize to the basics of the tournament. I believe this was relatively successful.

Beyond that, the extra-color type gimmicks are usually well-liked, and the initial positive reception of this round caused me to bring back this feature for the later Olympus round, where originally I conceptualized it as a regular color affair.

Feedback​

Most enjoyed this round greatly. Adding a second color to your personal choice unlocked new possibilities and felt liberating. Particularly, taking the second color from your partner instead of your opponent allowed for greater control and was well-received. Some even enjoyed this so much, they want to do away with a dedicated round for Stack Battle and just have it as the tournament's default state.

One regret expressed was that the gimmick was relatively uninteresting and didn't take much advantage of the team format.

Thoughts​

It seems that using two personal colors instead of one is a good candidate for a mainstay. Whether as a dedicated round gimmick or a tournament-wide default will have to be decided.

Relay Battle​

7 would like it to return, 3 asked for major changes, 2 abstained

This gimmick was pretty much the inception for the entire tournament: A round wherein two artists worked on the same picture. With each of them given too little time to get out a fully-polished picture on their own, they would have to work together to create one whole. In a sense, you could consider it a combination of Labs 1's speedy scribble and complete-the-scribble.

Feedback​

Lots of mixed opinions on this one. Some called it their favorite and praised the idea, while others saw it as a stressful exercise. Most visibly there was a huge debate on whether it was more difficult to start an image or to bring it to completion. Some felt bad about submitting an incomplete picture in the first week, despite that being the intended course of action. They greatly preferred the second week, where they could bring a work to completion. Others enjoyed the first week more because the knowledge that their partner could salvage their mistakes later took some pressure off of them. There was at least one instance where someone was handed a mostly completed image and they didn't know what else to add as well.

Most of the complaints levied against this gimmick involved the short time limit. While it was noted as a good call to give the second artist the bigger chunk of time, many wished the two time limits put together would have added up to the full 3 hours, instead of just 2 and 15 minutes. Others noted that differences in artistic skill ended up weighing most of the required effort on the more experienced artist.

Thoughts​

While it was a fairly stressful round and I definitely see an argument for a longer time limit, I believe the results were actually largely successful. Many players came together in a beautiful way despite the harsh time limit, and even teams with a perceived skill gap between the two artists succeeded in covering each other's weaknesses. If the time limit was extended and an effort could be made to maybe compress this round into one week instead of two, I could see this becoming a fairly reasonable recurring challenge.

Just make it clear that sending in a half-finished image on phase 1 is the expectation, not some horrible shame or failure state.

Sabotage Battle​

7 would like it to return, 4 asked for major changes, 1 abstained

If there was one part of this tournament I expected to malfunction, it was this one. Of the first four rounds, this was the only one you could say didn't remix some concept from Labs 1. Most rounds for this tournament I actually came up with well in advance to running it. This was the only one I thought up on the spot while I was writing the first post in this thread and realized I was one gimmick short.

I think for some nonsense I cobbled together last minute, it actually ran fairly well. That one condition that rolled two other conditions into itself was certainly an edge case and I was on the fence about including it. I looked at the two artists who would receive it and, embracing the experimental aspect of this game, decided to try it out because I knew those two would be able to handle it. I would not have inflicted this upon less confident/experienced artists.

I also, while writing conditions into the bot, made the decision to include references wherever appropriate. This was to prevent players from wasting time having to look things up on their own. I don't think I heard too many complaints about people not knowing what they were supposed to be drawing, so I'm going to say this was successful.

Feedback​

Some people had fun with it. They praised the comedic potential from the randomness, as well as the aspect that put a portion of the power into players' hands. The fact that it forced some artists out of their comfort zone was well-regarded as well. Some mentioned that this idea, while interesting, didn't interface with the team aspect well enough and may lend itself better to a 1v1 format where you can't accidentally hinder your teammate with your sabotage.

Others pointed out that the stacking of two conditions in addition to a prompt was creatively stifling and locked them into one singular approach. It was noted that people prioritized adhering to the conditions and, in some cases, neglected to pay attention to the prompt. Some cautioned against the disruptive potential of conditions that were too meta, such as the double condition, or (in a hypothetical future scenario) conditions that reference conditions from previous games.

One last thing that was pointed out was that, while teammates were forbidden from explicitly revealing their condition to their partner, the nature of their discussion would make them able to vaguely guess what it was going to be anyway, making the restriction on communication rather pointless.

Thoughts​

If I had to make an immediate change to this gimmick, it would probably be to just have the two conditions but not an additional prompt on top of it. I think that would alleviate some of the issues of the stacking instructions suffocating personal choice. Apart from that, advice I would give future hosts is: Make sure the conditions you accept are kept simple, don't completely dictate the shape an image will take, and you should not accept any conditions that would completely shut down the other condition.

Synergy Battle​

10 would like it to return, 2 asked for major changes

Labs 1's tri-color round had too much freedom. This may just be my personal opinion, but outside novelty gimmicks there should never be a round where your personal color stops being a factor in the match (even in "swap colors with your opponent" games, your color still has a presence in the match). Discarding it willingly feels... wrong.

My main gripe back then was that, by ditching your initial color, you could just pick whatever pleasing palette you could think of (or look up online). My aim here was to ground this limitless freedom and tie it back into that initial color choice you made. Originally it was going to be "First color is your own, second is your partner's", but then that was essentially the first round again. So I broadened the choices towards any of the three other colors in the match.

Feedback​

Thoughts towards tri-color were generally favorable. Some praised the more restricted selections of colors (noting that having two colors pre-defined made it easier to pick a third), though concerns were stated that there was a pressure towards picking your partner's color again, so both pictures could have a similar color scheme and would thus be picked for the team vote. Others preferred the complete freedom of Labs 1's variant and found the restrictions stifling, especially when all other available colors in the match had a similar brightness to yours.

Thoughts​

I think some amount of restriction is necessary for this gimmick to not just turn into "ignore the rules, do whatever you want" chaos. It's difficult to say whether locking down two of your colors was too much of an overcorrection on my part, but I staunchly believe restricting at least one of your colors to the one you brought with you is necessary. That initial choice of color should always matter.

As for other tournaments: It was brought up that this restriction on your second color would obviously not work in a 1v1 scenario, since there would only be one other color in the match. I think a way to address this could be to move this gimmick to later in the tournament, and then let you pick from the colors of your opponents that you've faced up to that point. That is, if you wanted to keep the restriction on the second color at all.

Olympus Battle​

8 would like it to return, 2 asked for major changes, 2 do NOT want it to return.

The round I was most nervous about, and the one that inspired the most horror scenarios for what it could be. I think I heard theories from "free-for-all" to "randomized partners", to "Yap is going to bring in some god artist who all 30 players have to face off against".

In reality, this round was supposed to be the logical end point of the team-based experience. I wanted to have one round where teams could utilize the full extent of their cooperation and achieve the apex of their scribble potential. Therefore I deemed Olympus, the seat of the gods, a fitting descriptor for the round. I kept this description to myself though because I didn't want to pressure artists into feeling like they had to deliver their peak performance. They ended up feeling that way anyway though so next time I'll just call it something unimposing like "cuddle funtimes do what you can".

The main point of this round was to contrast with the draconian communication restrictions of earlier rounds. A deliberate contrast between "be careful how much you share" and "all limiters off, go nuts". The free time limit was there to facilitate this for people with jobs or other obligations that limited their available time, not as the main gimmick. In retrospect, maybe I should have made this more clear, but then again I DID bold and underline the part that described the lack of restrictions.

Feedback​

Lots of wildly different opinions here. Some people LOVED it. They had the time of their life talking with their partners freely and swapping WIPs back and forth. Some loved it so much they say the whole tournament should operate on this level of freedom. Others felt crippled by the stress of having to deliver "the perfect image", felt guilty for not spending every waking minute working on their picture and thus not letting it realize its full potential. They preferred the time limit where they only had to worry about the image for three hours and then it was out of their hands. Some also said they found the level of communication they felt was expected of them intimidating.

Thoughts​

This one is difficult to assess. The main takeaway here is that most players loved the freedom of communication. The more divisive aspect was the lack of a time limit, so this is what needs to be addressed if this gimmick were to return in the future.

Another concern I've seen come up is that this round further widened the gap between inexperienced and experienced artists. It was noted that this format mainly favors artists who are already confident and experienced, while leaving others further behind.

I can see this to an extent, but not in the way it is asserted here. Experience and lack thereof makes people approach this round in different ways, but ultimately I think it actually (mostly) benefitted the inexperienced more. I've seen cases here where less-experienced artists really blossomed under the tutelage of each other, delivering work far more elaborate than what they usually can. Meanwhile many veteran artists, while they delivered stellar work, it didn't look that markedly different from something they would have been able to pull off in three hours (just with slightly less polish). I think my conclusion here is that less experienced artists benefitted from the additional time more in a technical sense, but were also proportionally more burdened by the pressure due to a lack of confidence.

I myself had the opportunity to participate in an Olympus match. It was probably the most peaceful and relaxed match I ever participated in. Make of that what you will.

If some kind of compromise could be found where there is a time limit, but full communication is still allowed and possible, that would be the way forward.

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(Final Report will be continued in part 2...)

 

[Lee Chaolan]

Joining the bandwagon of behind the scenes commentary on the drawing process, idk maybe some of you weirdos find my thoughts interesting or something

Spoiler: Pre-Game: Masked Mercenaries All out attack

Motivated by tb's team scribble, I had a silly idea after seeing Starkuss post in discord, considering the merc name I thought it'd be funny if Rose and I killed TPG for supposedly breaking forum rules. Rose was down to draw in his OC in, so it was almost like a practice relay/olympus round. Honestly probably one the best scribbles I've done (though that's not particularly surprising considering the freedom to draw whatever I wanted and lack of time limit), and I really loved how Rose' contribution in the earlier panel added to the humour.

Spoiler: Round 1 - Bringing your work home

I didn't have a particularly strong idea for this one, and I think it probably shows. I had trouble coming up with what kind of "work" would make a good gag, I initially considered having someone bring something massive with them, like Link master-handing a log to his house or a monster hunter bringing back a rathalos to a camp with an annoyed wife, but to me neither really felt like "jobs" that would be easy for the voters to make a connection to the prompt with. Naturally I tried to think of something Mario related, and plumbing becomes a fairly easy profession to make something comical with. Remembering turb making a similar joke solidified the idea, which I decided to reference with the title.

I also didn't have a good idea on how to frame the composition for the scene; the bros. house is generally only depicted from the side or top down in the rpgs and I wanted it to be clear that mario was walking through the door, so I basically just made up a box and stuck luigi at the front. I had some difficulty coming up with ways to use both colours, there's very little synergy between them when used in shading. Because I didn't feel particularly strongly about this piece I didn't spend as much time cleaning things up, which lead to things like the floor bleeding through the kitchen bench. The one thing I was somewhat happy with was being able to draw the bros without using any references for them, since normally I would imitate official artwork or a screenshot. They look a little wonky but it's good practice.

Spoiler: Round 2 - Police Station / Night Club

Before starting, Rose and I decided to focus on making backgrounds so that the other could come in and add whatever character or situation they wanted and spend less time trying to draw things behind other elements. We didn't make this a strict rule, but the prompts being locations made it fairly easy to stick to.

I felt like there wasn't a lot of freedom with how to depict a police station, drawing the outside would have been kinda boring so I decided to go for the indoor setting. The angle/perspective I went for was mostly inspired by Rose's Kremling Cafe scribble, I figured it might help lead to an easy background to draw similar characters in, and even gave it the preliminary title "A busy day at the NDPD". I was kinda surprised when I saw that rose didn't add any characters in the final image, instead opting for cooler shading and a different joke, which was unexpected but still worked pretty well as a "less is more" kind of approach. I'm glad that they didn't feel obligated to keep my initial idea and went with what they wanted to draw instead.

After seeing the round theme, an immediate idea I had was having the bros in streetwear in a new-york inspired setting doing hip-hop album cover style poses. (Idk why my brain seems to default "town" to "new york"). This wouldn't have matched the previous prompt very well, but after seeing dance club I knew I had to take the opportunity to draw them. I tried to give some other ideas consideration before jumping into my pre-conceived idea, most of them involved characters dancing in some way, linking in to the poster rose put in, I decided that my idea matched well enough to use anyway. (And also I thought it'd be funny.)

Drawing squatting poses is hard, especially of non-standard proportion characters like the bros. There aren't any good references of the bros doing these poses either, so I spent the majority of time here just trying to get the poses and perspective right. I think I did a decent job all things considered, however I ran out time to really add much detail or shading to make my addition blend in with rose's background more or just make the bros good. The end result looks a bit rushed because of it but it what it is, I'm just happy that I was able to get my dumb joke out. (didn't see anyone pick up on it but the outfit Mario's wearing is based on that one Mario's pinball land commercial btw). If I had more time to come up with a name I probably would have went with "Mario B-Bros." instead but ah whatever I'm sure the joke was obvious enough.

Spoiler: Round 3 - Dynamic / Dark

The combo of no nintendo characters and characters having to be different body types was rather difficult, there are plenty of non-humanoid Nintendo characters and I could have easily used non-Nintendo fighting game characters for a dynamic setting… buuuut I had to work something else out. I could have just not used any characters at all, but that felt like a cop-out that people would be less likely to vote for. I've had the idea of doing a ukiyo-e style scribble for a while, so I figured a samurai on a horse would be decent enough combo to incorporate into the drawing and allow for "dynamic" looking poses, even if a bit hard to draw. It helped that the first search result for "dynamic painting" is the great wave because animal crossing calls it that lol, so adding water felt like an easy addition to aid the connection to the prompt.

There's a lot of cool texturing details in ukiyo-e work which took a while to replicate, I don't think I've ever spent as much time on a background until this drawing. Unfortunately a lot of ukiyo-e work also makes use of gradients, which… are a lot harder to imitate with the colour limitations of scribble. I think more foresight on how to use the colours and which shading techniques to use would have resulted in clearer, less busy image, but I'm still relatively happy with this one.

For the inktoplasm round the sabotages felt a bit less restrictive, the main conflict I had was trying to incorporate the chicken into the dark theme, normally if I were to draw a chicken I would make it cute and chibi-like. (you know what thinking about it as I'm typing this, a roast chicken coming out of the oven would've been a great match with the vibe lol). Both the dark prompt and eyes made me think of Majora's mask, and the anju/kafei sidd quest is powerful, sombre moment that sticks with you, which is what I decided I wanted to depict. Cuccos are a pretty infamous part of zelda so it didn't feel out of place to stick one in there, and I was originally planning to have the mirror shield to be hiding behind Anju to make the eyes more hidden, however I started to run out time and ditched drawing the human pair, which kind of left the eyes on the mirror shield being not very hidden. Maybe I should have drawn skull kid on the tower or something. Overall this is easily my favourite scribble I've done of the game, possibly even out of all my previous scribbles together, however by not putting much focus onto fulfilling the sabotage conditions, drawing a scene from a game that the majority of voters probably haven't played and mcd's scribble just generally being good resulted in this one losing the matchup, which I think is reasonable. I'm not sure who's colour this was but it was pretty fun to use, especially for the wooden parts of the window, I wouldn't mind using a colour like this again.

Spoiler: Round 4 - Coming up with new mobility options for 3D Mario game

This was a pretty fun prompt to choose an idea for, initially I thought of having Mario parkour over things Mario run style, then Mario in a segway, until finally settling on the idea of the switch 2 forcing the new console gimmick like odyssey did, and drag x drive was a pretty obvious inspiration. (Seriously, the control scheme in that game seems painful lol)

I started with the wheelchairs as I felt that they would be the most annoying thing to draw, I used various greys as placeholders while I was trying to work out the colour scheme. Because of that they ended up without an outline, which I think made them stand out more in the final image, a bit of a happy accident. The colour scheme was a little difficult because my formula for previous tri-colour rounds is to use two similar colours together for shading, then a complementary colour of the opposite brightness, which wasn't possible with the colours present in the round. I went with pito's as it was the best equivalent to black that would still work well with my colour, and I essentially just used a darker version of my own colour for the rest of the image. The end result is a bit overly blue but I felt like it was the best I could do. The bob-omb battlefield background was actually a pretty late addition, I drew the characters a little too small and figured I needed to fill the image with something so I kinda rushed the rest out after finishing with Mario and the Koopa. It was interesting to see how highly this ranked on the favourite scribble poll considering that I considered it to be kind of simple, but I guess with some art that can also be a strength.

Spoiler: Round 5 - Little demons on my little computer

What a prompt lol. Had a hard time coming up with anything, one idea was mini-akumas around a circuit board but I felt that the "demon" aspect of the prompt would be hard for people to make the connection with if they weren't familiar with street fighter. Rose immediately suggested having the scribble hosts on a screen with a "they keep making me draw" caption which is pretty much exactly what I ended up doing as it felt like the best idea by a long shot.

Rose's prompt was a fair bit harder to pin down due to the subjective/interpretive nature of the prompt. We had a few ideas floating around, from E Gadd putting down the Mario clones to rose's oc giving the awards staff mercy by only giving them 5 presentations to do. I had considered linking our scribbles in some way like yap did with wyvy in the last scribble or others had done in this tournament, however we decided that placing the emphasise on our prompts was more important for the drawings. Ultimately rose went with the awards angle, though in a completely different direction than I had initially suggested, which resulted in a heartfelt and cool looking space setting. Overall it was pretty fun to share ideas with each other to come up with solutions to the prompts, even despite their difficulty, would definitely be willing to do another round with open communication like this again.

Burnout was setting in at this point, and without clear artistic inspiration like some of my other scribbles, I had a hard time motivating myself to put pen to paper (so to speak). I probably only spent 2-3 hours on this one, went for something a bit different by using shaping tools for some cleaner-looking lines, I think in the process it ended up making my oc look a bit unnatural. Maybe I'll have to save that idea for until I get a drawing tablet. I went for a lain-esque analogue horror approach which is hopefully the part that looks cool, and went with the further emphasis on black after getting rose's opinion, which I think was the right call. I'm not particularly happy with how it turned out as a whole, but it's still fine enough and people seemed to have really liked the concept considering it was voted as the favourite scribble of the game from mine, so I'm glad that people found it interesting.

Okay I think I'm done typing this time for real release me from this prison of commentary (this was fun would do again)

 

[Lin Beifong]

FINAL REPORT​

(continued from part 1)​

---

​

Ideas for future round gimmicks​

I have already offered Projection battle as a potential new round gimmick, and the short beta test that was conducted in the tournament bonus round suggests the format to be functional (as long as it is made clear the projections themselves should take 20 minutes to make at most, and are received timely). The way it was implemented there is suitable for 1v1 matches. An alternative version for 2v2 matches could be that a player receives projections from both their partner and their partner's opponent (like in sabotage), and must incorporate these in the absence of a traditional prompt (basically like a more adversarial form of Picture Pilgrimage/complete the scribble).

Apart from that, people have made the following suggestions:

• A quad-color round where the only colors available are the personal colors of every participant in the match.
• A round where an in-between image is presented, and both pictures must be drawn to connect to a side of it so that the result merges into one picture, kind of like in Picture Pilgrimage.
• A standard round, but in addition to black, white, and your color, you can also use a shade of gray.
• Monochrome, using black, white, and gray only.
• A round where you receive your prompt, but then must tell your partner what to draw and have them execute your vision (perhaps with a word limit).
• A round where the canvas is divided in half, and both partners draw on only one half (this was already possible in Relay, but here it would be enforced I assume).
• A combination of Relay and Olympus where partners are allowed to pass their image back and forth and make adjustments based on each of their respective prompts.
• Allowing different canvas shapes, like 800 x 450 pixels.
• A round where a color gradient or other image is provided, and at the end your scribble is projected on top of it, with one of your colors being made transparent (see example below).
• A round where there is a global condition to draw Susan Boyle.

Spoiler: Example

The 3 hour time limit​

12 players were okay with the 3 hour time limit

The time limit was pretty unanimously accepted. It seems like 3 hours is the way forward.

Prompt selection​

Originally, I wanted to have all prompts within teams either contrast or be thematically related to each other. The obvious problem here is that, once enough players caught on to this pattern, predicting your partner's prompt would become very easy, and thus it would become possible to "cheat" by preparing concepts and image compositions ahead of time. Even if the intent is not to cheat, it might still happen subconsciously just by thinking about the prompt.

So in the end I limited the concept of matching prompts to one round, just to see how it would go. People seemed to like it, but I hope they will understand how doing this too often could compromise the game.

Feedback​

The reaction to this tournament's selection of prompts ranged from serviceable to pretty good. People noted the contrasting round 3 prompts as a positive, and thought Kaizo Marioboards was a welcome evolution of previous Kaizo rounds. One player did not like the round 2 location prompts, deeming them too mundane and not particularly inspiring.

Thoughts​

After Labs 1, I made the deliberate decision to steer prompts away from Mario again and keep them more generally applicable (outside of Kaizo rounds where the plumber will be present by necessity). No one has mentioned the absence of direct Mario prompts as a negative, so... my assumption is that this works. It gives people the option to draw Mario if they want to, without being forced to come back to a franchise they may have outgrown.

"Vibes" and "Kaizo Marioboards" seem to have been the favorites. "Echoes" will need some work if it is to return as a round theme. Specifically, making sure the prompts within all have a comparable level of difficulty, and if not, at least don't put the hardest prompts into the same team.

Team Inktoplasm​

11 players would like to see it return, 1 asked for major changes
5 would be interested in signing up to future tournaments with randomizing colors, 7 would want the option but not use it themselves

I had the concept of a randomizing team in the back of my mind for a while, and when we ended up with 15 teams, I didn't want to go to the last team and say "sorry, you can't play now", so it seemed pertinent to give this concept a test drive. I am very glad I did, because it worked fairly well. Even if in the middle of the game I was starting to get seriously worried this thing might win.

We have so many different colors from past games, finding a future use for them through this concept or the option of signing up for tournaments with a randomizing color might be a good idea.

Feedback​

Reactions to this ranged from ambivalence to "this was the best thing in the entire tournament". It seems to have been accepted as a way to fix the dreaded uneven number of sign-ups issue without forcing players into a replacement slot.

Oddly enough, though one player expected major changes to the concept, they praised it and did not state any issues that needed to be fixed.

Additional Feedback​

9 players would consider joining another 2v2 scribble tournament. 3 would not.

More calls for more freedom of communication. Words of encouragement for future hosts. One player appears to have developed a phobia of Susan Boyle. I'm sorry, I hope you can get that sorted out.

Player Portraits​

Not a part of the feedback survey, but I would like to mention it anyway.

Historically, it has been tradition for the Scribble host to draw portraits for players who sign up to the tournament. While this has been fun, it is also acting as somewhat of a barrier of entry to future hosts who may not have the schedule and stamina to draw 30ish pictures in one week anymore.

I would therefore like to ask players to consider taking on some of this workload in future tournaments. You can do your host a huge favor by simply drawing your portrait yourself and posting it with your sign-up post. It's also good practice for jumping back into the scribble mindset.

Be kind to your hosts and help them where you can.

Final Thoughts​

The players have been loud and clear in one regard: They want a greater emphasis on communication and cooperation. Find a way to unshackle their voices without completely screwing over people with tight schedules: that seems to be the main problem to solve here.

Consider whether to make the stack battle condition a global feature of team battle tournaments. It needs to be determined whether this will enhance the gameplay or trivialize the gimmick/make it feel less special.

While some of the round gimmicks in this tournament had some hiccups that may need to be ironed out, overall everything seems to have been functional and could potentially be re-used in future tournaments.

The mission statement was to ascertain the viability of a scribble doubles format. With the experiment now concluded, I can definitely say: Yes, it works.



See you all for Scribble 2025 (the main one) and Picture Pilgrimage 2, neither of which will be hosted by me.
Good night.

 

[Fun With Despair]

I'll echo what some others have done so far and give my own behind-the-scenes commentary on my own scribbles - mostly because I think it sounds fun. I don't really have access to a lot of WIP stuff right now because I'm not home and also I'm insane and everything I do ends up with like 60+ layers because I'm terrible at organization, but I'll at least maybe post a few of the sketches and half-done ones i sent in in case i died mid-scribble or other pre-submission things.

Spoiler: Pre-Game - "Mission Accepted"

This is one I can't entirely take credit for, as obviously my partner drew half, but I feel like this is one of the best things I made for the tournament overall - even after everything else that came along. I tend to like making these little introductory pics for Scribble, so after putting our two colors side by side and realizing how cool they looked, we figured we would do one for this one as well.

I made the basic template for this one, the red on one side and the blue on the other, with the crack down the middle - then drew my side and handed it off to Kright. Our team name and theme this time was based on two factions from Killing Game 8 and Killing Game 9 - the Crimson Eye and the Bureau of Paranormal Investigation, with these two colors being emblematic of their organizations, which is the basis for a lot of our stuff here and during this game in general.

I can only really comment on my side for this specific half, but a lot of the vibe of this one and the somewhat different, angular style was born from a lot of the art I've done for Perch's Wild West KG. While the stuff I've done for that one is a lot closer to painting with little in the way of actual lineart save for the involvement of characters or smaller details, the general shape language is very sharp and angular, which I tried to apply here as well.

Spoiler: Round 1 - Sleepover/"Bump in the Night"

Man, I don't really like this one in hindsight. Actually, I specifically really like the first page because I think the lighting is cool, but I don't know about the rest. Maybe the monster owns actually. Either way, going into this one I was pretty rusty when it came to the conventional Scribble style and I wound up committing to the same artstyle as my intro pic... kind of.

"Sleepover" was a prompt I was immediately horrified by, you see. I don't particularly enjoy drawing people, even if I have gotten somewhat better at it, and this prompt practically necessitates having to draw multiple characters interacting in some way. It's also a very "wholesome" prompt, which I don't really vibe with, my COLOR really doesn't vibe with, and also is probably the reason I lost to a scribble that did carry that kind of warmth to it. I decided to go with a horror theme instead anyway though, and figured I could take advantage of that to keep the actual characters in shadow.

The monster is easily my favorite part of the image, I think he's pretty cool. I set out to just make something that would be uncanny and kind of freaky, but without too much detail so that it wouldn't clash with the silhouette look of the piece, and he turned out to be one aspect I was pretty happy with. I also added a mirror above their bed reflecting the TV - and as you can see in my second draft, the show on the television was originally going to be a representation of Dagon's Mirror, my Inktoplasm scribble that I did first, as a reference to the fact that they both had a mirror. I ended up scrapping that and instead having the commercial for coffins from Commercial District last year show up instead though. Just couldn't get the former to look good/readable.

Overall I'm not super happy with this one, but somehow we managed to squeak out a team win anyway, so I'm not complaining. This one's my only loss of the non-bonus rounds, so it's not like I was doing bad.

Spoiler: Round 1 (INK) - Something New for the Mantle/"Dagon's Mirror

Ah, Dagon's Mirror. This is, conversely, maybe my actual favorite of the entire tournament. Funny how these things work out, huh? My Olympus was probably much higher effort and more detailed, but I find this one very charming. There's... not much of a story behind this one to be honest, I got my prompt and was browsing youtube for some music to put on in the background, when I noticed in my recommended some horror podcast(?) apparently talking about a story called, well, Dagon's Mirror. I don't actually know what the story is about because I didn't watch it, but I found the name evocative and decided to steal the name and mental image it gave me for this one.

I had a very strong vision for how this one should look from the very start, as you can probably see via the sketch on the left. Guy with a lantern, approaching a mirror in a spooky old house. In the writings of HP Lovecraft, Dagon is an ancient deity worshipped in drowned temples by all manner of horrible creatures dwelling within the yawning trenches beneath our deepest oceans. Lovely guy. Naturally, I decided to theme the mirror itself around the ocean, with representations of oceanic elements and the vague reflection of ships upon a stormy sea plastered across its rune-etched surface. In hindsight, I probably could have done more with it, but this was my first scribble I completed, so I'm happy I got this much done.

I really loved my palette with this one, reminding me of a "greatest hits" collection of my previous Toxic Green and Shadowshade colors. Together, they look very vibrant and cool, something that allowed me to use a lot of black as my base color in my overall composition. I noticed in my last maybe 30 mins though that there really wasn't much white at all after I removed the fire from the fireplace to give the lantern more focus, so I wound up adding all the melty candles everywhere, something that I think added quite a bit to the atmosphere and mystery of this one.

I'm not surprised this one got second on my poll, even if it was heavily skewed towards round 5. I really felt good about it, and I honestly think I still would feel good about it later in the game.

Spoiler: Round 2 - Food Stand & Stadium

Yeah, not gonna bother putting those titles in that spoiler tag. Shit would be looooong. Anyway, I'm only going to be focusing on the parts I did here, not the parts Kright did. Partially because I just don't have a version of those pieces without the titles as I'm not at my desktop and won't be for a bit - and partially just because I didn't actually draw those parts so it feels weird to talk about them in a self commentary.

This shit was so ass. Kright really managed to bring it home with her additions and make this an excellent piece, but I was really feeling miserable about this one when I handed it in. I genuinely thought it might be unsalvageable - though I don't necessarily feel that way now looking at it with hindsight. There's some elements I really like even in this blatantly unfinished one, like especially the alleyway (even if it is a bit narrow) and the general concept of the whole thing. I thought it looked extremely flat and boring originally, but then again it just outright wasn't finished so that shouldn't really have been something I worried about.

I guess that's part of the issue of Relay, really. Didn't help that the clock was fucking cruel to me here.

Leaving text instructions on the image is something I'm a bit surprised more people didn't go for actually, with it seemingly just being myself and tb who did it. I thought it was a good way of conveying your intent with the image, because it can be pretty tough to just look at someone's random incomplete junk and figure out what they wanted to do. Paid off in the end though, because my partner managed to perfectly capture my mental image from the start.

This one is a bit of an interesting one, because Kright and I managed to sort of "cheat" the prompt here with a gamble that thankfully did work out. As soon as the round theme went up, we began talking about ways we could prepare for the round, and I came up with the idea that we could do this whole sniper scope thing provided the location she got was somewhere outdoors. She just had to draw a character in the middle of something, and I could easily do the rest with time to spare.

When I got handed the first half of this one, I was quite happy as she designed it specifically with this idea in mind. Completing this one was a breeze, and I think the final result is pretty slick and stylish. I wish I had added more HUD elements to the scope maybe, but I don't have a terribly large amount to say about it outside of that - and maybe some cleaner lines in certain parts where I just didn't have the time to tidy things up. I wouldn't say this is one of my favorites just because it's aggressively simplistic, but I certainly did enjoy working on it and especially the collaborative process that led to it.

Spoiler: Round 3 - Welcoming/"Angler Fish"

I honestly barely had any kind of sketches or anything for this one, it practically popped out of my head nearly fully formed. I'm not entirely sure what the reception to this one was really like, but I rate this one highly similar to Dagon's Mirror. Like I have said, I was pretty scared of wogl hitting me with some bullshit car-related prompt after her question, and I really didn't want to draw a 2008 Honda Civic - which is why I put my own bullshit condition in. Thankfully, what I got was actively helpful, as I think the spider lily aspect served mainly for inspiration rather than a hinderance and I never draw Mario characters ever.

I got struck again with the "wholesome" prompt with Welcoming again, but unlike Sleepover I had a much better idea to twist this into something somewhat sinister. I decided to go with the notion that the "Welcoming" spoken of in the prompt is some kind of lure, a dangerous light in the darkness of the forest. Whether the house itself is some kind of creature luring you into its maw, whether its some kind of Hansel and Gretel situation - or hey, whether you read it as a genuine beacon of safety, I felt like this concept was strong at least.

The spider lilies being a vibrant white instead of red was an early, early choice. I wanted them to act almost like lanterns along the path, guiding you towards the central light at the center of the image. For that reason, they share the same stark white as the light behind the door, as though they're some ephemeral light source in and of themselves.

The title, of course, is something I picked because I felt like it very much encapsulated the feeling I wanted this image to convey. I was worried that people wouldn't get it and be confused, but it seems like that wasn't the case. I'm very pleased with the way this looks, I doubt there is much I would change besides maybe improving the texture of the foliage up near the top of the image.

Spoiler: Round 4 - Idiots are Hard to Hypnotize

This is one where, as cool as the final image looks, I really dig the sketch specifically because of the expression and the... comparative lack of energy. It feels like it could have been a meme from 15 years ago with the text "time to kill yourself" or something on it in impact font. Anyway, because I was up against Inktoplasm, a team I actually did want to win if I couldn't, I felt a lot less pressure than usual on this one and therefore I sort of let myself get a bit weirder when it came to composition and energy. Credit where credit is due to the Inktoplasms though, YTSSM has really been taking feedback into account and his improvements kind of made me sweat a little, so good for him.

It took me a surprisingly long time to conceptualize this, at least like, in terms of the final composition. I had a scrapped version that was meant to be a TV advert with this guy as a sales guy trying to hypnotize you, the viewer. I liked that part of the idea, the idea that the voters were the idiots. The TV part though seemed a bit too similar to Commercial District and Yap's scribble from last year too so I scrapped it. From there, it flowed pretty steadily into the final piece, the alternating spiral of color being my attempt at making something sufficiently hypnotic. I sort of wish I made the hypnotic spiral more... spiral-y, more of a curve to it, but I think it looks sick as hell still.

When it comes to choosing my palette, I, like most others in this matchup besides Kright, took Hearts' Inktoplasm purple. It was just a rather nice color. The third, dark indigo that I chose as my custom color was something I picked simply because it looked good. I had a special method of trying to figure out what palette to use, you see:

...I just took last year's Parked in the Dark and filled it with palettes until I found one that looked cool. I figured this one did look cool, so here we are. I'd like to claim I took some deep dive into color theory or whatever but lol. I also had this test extremely unfinished half-scribble I made with it to practice just in case I got slammed with something that explicitly referenced Mario, either the series or the guy.

Spoiler: Round 5 - Mystery/"Found Out"

Here it is, the big one. Olympus Scribble. I was pretty elated when I got my prompt for this one, I was really looking forward to drawing this because this was one of two (the other being horror maybe) that I really hoped I got last year during the entertainment round. While I think I did well in that round regardless, it was nice to see that my dreams were fulfilled, albeit with a rather heavy delay on it. From the very start, Kright and I wanted to do this kind of murder scene deal, though the actual context of her piece changed a lot. In my sketch, you can see what looks like part of the celing interior (side note that spiderweb actually looks decent wtf), this is because one of the original concepts would have featured her character in the attic performing some sort of occult summoning ritual with this guy's blood (unleashing the beast).

This got scrapped in part because of the matchup order, where we felt it could have been better if she was second and therefore hiding in the basement. The progression seemed off if we did it the previous way, I suppose. The same goes for several other concepts involving her character bloody and smug elsewhere after fleeing the scene victorious. I started off drawing the actual scene first, even if I had conceptualized the characters earlier, and while for the most part its just a kitchen, I'm very proud of the outdoor scene and especially how the aesthetics of it call back to Kright's Welcome to the Neighborhood and our introductory pic. This is somewhat of a sequel to that one, I suppose.

I ended up shifting the characters around a lot for readability and while they didn't really have much in the way of concrete designs, we decided that at least two of them would be Dexter and Liz from Killing Game (left and middle respectively) as their designs both worked as a reference and also immediately understandable agent designs for new viewers. No idea who that third dude by the door is, we don't talk about him. I made a few small little changes to the entire thing up until the very end basically, but the meat of it really remained the same. That police car outside was an especially late addition only made because it looked a bit empty.

In the end, once Kright got the go-ahead to be allowed to say fuck on the mario boards, we picked our titles as just kind of a funny thing really. A fun way to make their connection clear and act as a joke in and of itself amidst these two scribbles that really didn't have much in the way of comedy to them at all. I definitely understand why people think this is my best one and its definitely the one I put the most work into, but I don't entirely think it's super stylistically interesting. Still though, scribblers take notes: detailed scenery = free win, baby.

Spoiler: Bonus 1 - Susan's Plan

This fucking thing. To be honest, this one's gonna be real short. As soon as I got the tile that had fucking Nico on it, I knew she had to die. And Susan had to be planning it. Thankfully for our queen, the tournament already gave me a free Susan to work with, so maybe that too was planned.

And then uh... I dunno I was in like a fucking fugue state for an hour and then I was basically done. Surprisingly, or maybe not, this one barely took me any time at all. I did a final pass where I added the weird horror-movie-esque coloration to her face and fixed her hair over the next hour, and then I just had to sit and look at this fucking thing for another hour or so. Really, I don't know what even happened with this one. Susan's plan. Deal with it.

Spoiler: Bonus 2 - "Now Abandoned"

Shockingly, or maybe not, this one went through a looot of random concepts. TPG and I didn't have a super rock solid concept for this one at the very start outside of the shared notion that he should draw a locale when it was bright and lively, and mine would be the same locale but, well, now abandoned. Whether "Homecoming" would be a literal homecoming event or people coming home was something that we weren't initially sure on, and some concepts tossed around were that it could be in a Victorian mansion focusing on a statue as the central shared element rather than that big window.

These are a few examples of extremely rough shit I did with that concept and ultimately abandoned (heh). These were to have an urban explorer guy walking around with his flashlight on that central element, something I think could have been pretty cool if it worked out, but it didn't really so it's a concept I might revisit in the future if I ever get the chance. I have to say I particularly like the one on the right with that Tintin looking ass on the spiral stairs. I think it's a much cooler perspective that what I ended up going with, and I might just finish that one for the hell of it one day.

Anyway uh, the actual product:

Once we settled on the Homecoming in question, we had the idea to have one be a natural, peaceful scene and the other to be... well, a bit dismal and lifeless really. I managed to put the initial version together rather quickly with little in the way of a proper sketch, and from there it was just adding details and texture to make the scene feel more like a place and incorporate more of TPG's scene as well. I tried to even match his manner of coloring some things while doing the window, though I'm not sure how it panned out on that front - looks cool though.

I'm mostly very happy with the lighting in this one, I've always really loved doing shadows and lighting more than I like actually drawing stuff sometimes, so an excuse to just hide everything annoying behind a layer of thick shadow sounds good to me. Having his Tarnished Bronze as an option was awesome, this Wario-ass palette was so much fun to use and really looks great. Very glad we got to do this matchup after the fact - it was a great experience.

We capped it off with these borders on the bottom representing the state of the overall building over time, which was his idea and a great contribution to the pairing. We figured these would be nice and allow our pieces a clear connection even on the voting form where they may be far apart. Originally mine was going to be at the top as a mirrored version of his with changes, but with the big moon there it just messed with the composition.

Hoo boy, never writing anything again.