Starlight, AKA Vlue, and I organized an art trade a while back, and we both got it done last week. We asked for very similar themes from each other, which makes sense given how much our tastes and subjects in art overlap. However, as you might expect if you're at all familiar with their work, we both took rather different approaches to the crinkly hijinks we were going to subject each other to.

You can see their absolutely adorable half of the trade on Twitter and FurAffinity!

As I'd mentioned while working on this in stream, I was really excited to do this since I'd been looking forward to getting my hands on them again. Back when I still made direct art rewards for my crowdfunding patrons, Vlue was one of those who I drew a lot of, and very fondly remember enjoying experimenting on over the years! (NB: You'll need to be logged in and set the search range to "All Time" to see them)

And yes, I do mean "experimenting," as you'll see in that collection. 😊✨

I genuinely had a blast making this, and I think it's some of my best work in quite a while. Although the planning that went into it to make all the layering work with zero redundancy (or as little of it as possible, anyway) was a bit of a headache, it was a fun challenge that I enjoy giving myself, and it worked out especially well in the end. I'd love to do more trades in future, it's always a good time.

I'm especially fond of the outfits I dressed up 73 in, as well as how menacing Soul Chocolate looks. Since Soul is very much "artist surrogate" in pieces like this, I figured it'd go all out on 73, much like I did when making this. It knows what a good mark they are, so might as well dial up the shenanigans to 11. 💝