HTK & Shift up
You probably have not heard of Destiny Child.
No, not the R&B popular group but the mobile game from Korea!
Yes, it’s another gacha mobile game.
Yes, as a player you collect characters and evolve them through some grind-type game loop.
Yes, it’s a waifu collector.
But it also is a very generous F2P mobile game and it is directed by Hyung Tae Kim.
You may know him , he’s a Korean illustrator and game designer.
He is best known for creating character designs for
War of Genesis 3 and Magna Carta, and for overseeing
the art direction of Blade and Soul.
Destiny Child is the first title produced by his own studio,
SHIFT UP.
You may recognize his handy work:
The game’s premise is simple:
In Destiny Child, you are a socially awkward demon that grew tired of life in the Infernal Realm and decided to move to the Mortal Realm, working a part-time convenience store job. Unwillingly, he is tricked into entering the Archfiend Contest, where he is one of the many candidates to the succession of the Archfiend Lucifaro. In the Mortal Realm, you must recruit “Childs”, which are demon familiars, born from human desires. For example, a miserable nurse is one of your initial targets.
Anyway, this mobile game contains some of the best artwork in my opinion and the pandering to my weeb-side truly motivated me to pick up my pencil and stylus again.
While on holidays, back when holidays abroad were a carefree and mask-less thing, I had the time to sketch out Bari, one of the “child” of this game. She originally made a pact with a demon in order to grant the wishes of the lost souls that kept gathering around her. Bari herself wishes for nothing more than the Hades Flower held by Willow Doryeong, and is constantly looking for chances to obtain it. This has made her rivals with Jacheongbi, who also seeks the flower.
Official Bari
Lore aside, this is the original character art:
For reference, the game has skins players can acquire via blood gems. This is hers:
Itchy pens
And so away I went with my pencil and ink pens!
About a year later, and pandemic boredom demanding it, I had to digitalize this. I took out my trusty widescreen Intuos3 and began the distant yet familiar process of drawing the lineart. How rusty was I? It took me a hell of a long time to get bac k into it, falling in the easy to avoid traps and missteps.
But what a pleasure to listen to podcasts or music and to fall into the trance of being in the “zone”! This pic is far from perfect and I had to redo it quite a few times, but it’s been fun and cathartic to say the least.
So here’s the raw recorded video footage. Straight from OpenCanvas6, with some music from the game itself.