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A Year of HxH Characters

posted by graham on

A short boy in checkered vans and a tall-collared jacket with a skull on it holds his hand out as if to manipulate a finger on the other hand into a sharp claw A hunched over Frankenstein monster wearing a suit and pointing one finger out in a finger gun Shizuku, a short woman with glasses, a turtle neck, and a gold cross necklace, looking off into the sky. And Blinky, her Nen vacuum, who has eyes and teeth and a tongue Owl, a gray-skinned man with a gargoyle head wearing sunglasses, who has a toothpick in his fanged mouth and a tan kerchief in his pocket Worm, a mostly nude man with a 💩 head bursting out of the ground as rocks and dirt fly skyward Rabid Dog, a man with spikey hair and sharp teeth running open-handedly towards the camera Leech, a Junji-Ito-style portrait that's zoomed in on the face and has lots of unsettling details, including a long and thick tongue that looks kind of like a slug Porcupine, a short bald old man with a giant mono-brow looking up at the camera and doing the 🥺👉👈 expression Very simple sketches of each of the other named shadow beasts, along with their names below each one A barbarian stepping with a boot on a canyon rock while catching a bazooka shell in one hand and a bullet in his teeth A man in a rocket-boosted wheelchair electrocutes Killua via long metallic snake wires A guy wearing a mask slamming his hand down in the air while a giant magical hand slams the ground in front of him A muscly guy with shoulder-length straight hair, a button-down, and a bow and arrow A man with a sort of pompadour haircut and a mustache and beard but no goatee crosses his arms and holds an ink brush in one hand. He wears no shirt, only a vest A woman with purple hair billowing out against gravity, and in a matching purple cocktail dress bends over and blows a kiss at the camera A short, androgynous looking woman with pointed buck teeth rolls up their sleeve while grass green musical lines swirl around her A shiny purple plastic box with a red lid, opened to reveal three sections, each containing one of the items listed in the quotes below An overhead shot of an old woman sitting at a table, holding a tea mug A three panel comic: 1. Ging Freecs wearing his animal coat and scowling while holding his hand out, 2. A zoomed-out view showing Ging riding atop the head of an enormous melting frog, 3. A further zoomed-out view of that melting frog riding an unfathomably large green dragon, all soaring above clouds over the open ocean An over-the-shoulder forced-perspective view of a guy sitting on a tree branch, curled up in a ball from recoil, with his hands out producing a hadouken of smoke that goes down to an acorn bullet zooming towards Kurapika on the forest floor A bored-looking lady resting her head on her hand on the front counter, while raising her other hand into the air with her pointer finger out, summoning a magical ghostly gremlin. She has lots of tattoos, including a forehead one that says HUNT A girl with dark purple hair hunches over with arms akimbo. She wears black and pink clothes that are both pink witch and a little bit spooky A woman in dark red scrubs patterned like a ninja and wearing a stethoscope holds her hand out towards the camera with an even darker red glow of nen around it Kastro and his ghostly imperfect doppelganger pose back-to-back as they each prepare to deliver tiger bite fist attacks A one-legged cloaked man holding a cane, with a tube coming out of the face-hole of the cloak, raises his hand as if letting three purple spectral beyblades be ripped towards the camera. He is flanked by two blueish ghostly silhouettes of the other two of The Chosen 3 in a forced 3-point perspective A tall, lanky man with messy hair wearing an untucked button-down stands looking slightly worried, but otherwise non-threateningly A little guy with tightly cropped brown hair in a dark gray gi with no belt, holding his hands in fists at his sides and slightly bowing as he says Osu The guy pointing at himself meme but it looks like nervous Killua with extra eye make-up and text at the bottom that reads Friends? A woman in an old formal purple dress, a bulky visor, and a big floppy hat stands fanning herself An old, hunched-over man wearing a cloak and a stole over it that says one kill per day A fancy looking man with Handsome Squidward's face sits in a blue chair next to a dog with human arms laying curled up on a throw rug A young black woman wearing a red hooded cape standing in a defensive pose with her cane in some sand An anime woman in bright clothing holding a small microphone and speaker gestures behind her to a mountain in the background An old, absolutely ripped man holding his lower back with one hand and leaning on the other arm bent over an industrial-sized trashcan on wheels A butler wearing a vest and tie about to flip a coin, with a menacing grin on his face Mike, a dog with arms that is the size of a house, squeezes a human like a stress toy with purplish haze clouding everything An illustration of a person kneeling as he digs furiously at the ground at dusk A low angle illustration of a buff man in a robe walking towards the camera with his left hand dragging through the gray brick wall as he moves An illustration of a cloaked figure next to a woman with thigh high boots, a skirt, and a crop top, with big poofy bright magenta hair in two ponytails An illustration of a muscular anime guy who is on fire from clenching his muscles so hard An illustration of a gangly guy with long dark hair holding two candles of different sizes A forced perspective illustration of a blue man punching the ground really hard so that it cracks An old woman holding a cane who is in a green dress with comically large black eyebrows An illustration of a lady with sunglasses, a vest, and a sniper on her back An over the shoulder illustration of a man with a grey moustache and no mouth while running mid-stride A bald old man with a white beard wearing a blue and white robe and geta sandals, holding a squash ball in his right hand A drawing of Menchi holding 9 knives on the left and a much taller Buhara holding a fork and wearing an apron on the right An illustration of a boy dressed in all green holding a fishing rod above his head and leaping toward the left. His outermost layer is a green camo-textured robe An illustration of a guy in red and blue spinning nunchucks in one hand while slightly crouching and guarding his chest with the other hand. Guy holding what looks like a bat attached to a beehive over his shoulder A drawing of a man smiling and pointing to a ninja mask that he's holding up next to his face An illustration of a buff, bald, shirtless male 90s action-figure with pins sticking of it A lad holding a skateboard while wearing a white t-shirt. Their white hair points up like a flame, and they drink a fowl-looking drink contentedly A Martin-Prince-looking kid sitting in front of a laptop like Schroder from Charlie Brown A drawing of a Jojo-looking person with a pale white face, pink hair, and a pale lime green doublet with playing card symbols on it A guy in a white button down and black pants sheepishly rocking on the heels of his brown oxford shoes with his hands behind his back A green green jelly bean man in a t-shirt that says GAY on it

A year ago, a new podcast came out, and with it brought me one of the silliest and most fun art projects I've ever been a part of. There's plenty more art to come, but I wanted to do a bit of a review as I migrated and archived the old art from cohost onto here. Rather than filling up RSS feeds with over 50 drawings one at a time that many of you may have already seen, I've opted for this grid approach. Each one is clickable to go look at the original cohost post. Maybe I'll update them to web-archive once cohost shuts down. Who knows?

Media Club Plus is a podcast by Friends at the Table and its premier season focused on Hunter X Hunter anime based on the manga by Yoshihiro Togashi. I've been listening to Friends at the Table for years, and I knew that the group behind Media Club Plus would be fun to listen to, even if I didn't know anything about Hunter X Hunter (HxH). Part of the conceit of the podcast, after all, was that Jack De Quidt had also never watched the anime nor read the manga, so we would both be going in with basically no knowledge of any of the show.

Originally, I planned to watch some of the anime if it timed out nicely with being free some night when my partner was busy and I had nothing to do. I listened to the podcast regardless, since it was fun and funny and had some interesting stuff to say. It was a delight to hear Jack try to explain what they thought characters' names or backgrounds or powers were in this anime where new people were introduced basically every single episode. In the very first episode of the podcast (covering the first three episodes of the anime) the following exchange occurred[1], at which point I knew I needed to draw something:

Keith: Well, I mean…have you seen how many gay people are in this show?

Jack: Uh, so far—

Keith: They’re everywhere.

Jack: Fucking loads of them.

Dre: Yeah.

Keith: There’s loads of them.

Jack: I don't think…now, let me think. Have I met a straight person in the show so far? [Keith laughs quietly]

Dre: Leorio.

Jack: No…

Sylvia: Mm…

Dre: Mm…

Keith: No.

Dre: Okay.

Jack: Tonpa?

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: Uh…

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Yeah.

Sylvia: I don't know. You hangin’ out with three guys we’re calling the Blowjob Brothers? [Keith laughs]

Dre: That’s— you know what? [Jack laughs]

Keith: Giving them money for something?

Dre: You know what?

Jack: He’s hanging out with them in a straight way.

Sylvia: I'm just saying. [Keith laughs]

Dre: You make a compelling argument. [laughs quietly]

Keith: Covertly handing the Blowjob Brothers a stack of money. [Sylvia laughs]

Jack: Satotz is definitely gay. It’s a fool’s game to name the gay people.

Keith: Yeah.

Dre: Sure.

Jack: Because it’s all of them.

Keith: Oh, we didn't say, but every time a character is introduced, there’s a little popup underneath that says, “Gay. They’re gay.” [laughter]

Sylvia: Oh, yeah, we did forget to mention that.

Keith: Yeah, it’s sort of, like—

Sylvia: Sometimes it’s less nice about it, which is interesting, but…

Dre: Sure, yeah.

Jack: Yeah. Yeah.

Keith: Yeah, it’s sort of like in the manga how Hisoka’s got the suits of cards under everything he says. In the anime, it just says— reminds you that everyone’s gay all the time.

Sylvia: It says “gay,” whenever Hisoka speaks. [all laugh]

Keith: Yeah. Yeah, at first, it’s just when the main characters speak, and you're like, “This makes sense,” but then it starts spreading out to everybody else, and you're like, “Oh, okay, that— okay, sure. Interesting choice.”

Sylvia: Oh, green bean man too? Okay, sure.

Keith: Yeah.

Jack: Green green jellybean man?

Sylvia: Green green jellybean man. I really gotta keep up with the Jack naming conventions.

Dre: Mm-hmm.

Sylvia: My bad.

Jack: [laughs quietly] I love green green jellybean man. I think it speaks so much to the—

Keith: Well, he’s interesting, because he has a t-shirt that just says “gay” on it. [Sylvia and Jack laugh]

This led to my first drawing -- of Beans, the Green Green Jellybean Man, wearing his shirt that said "GAY" on it, posted on cohost on September 24th 2023.

A green green jelly bean man in a t-shirt that says GAY on it

I had done a little bit of phone art as a fun way to handle Asks on Cohost, but I hadn't really gotten that familiar with using the Sketchbook app on my phone. It took some time to develop a process that was pretty repeatable, but now I find drawing on my phone to be second nature.

From the drawing of Green Green Jelly Bean Man onward, the project took the form of a very slow game of tellestrations. The hosts would watch the anime and record their descriptions of the characters on air. Some time after that, the podcast episodes would be edited and released publicly. I'd listen to them, try my best to jot down notes of which characters were in which episodes[2], and then wait for the transcriptions to come out. Some time later, I'd notice the transcriptions were ready, and pull quotes from them about the descriptions into cohost as drafts. I tried to have a couple of drafts ready for art at any given point, so that I'd have no excuse to delay actually working on the art once I had some free time. Then I'd take these descriptions and try to work them into a cohesive design for a character. Finally, I posted characters on cohost and then linked the cohost post in the Friends at the Table Discord server so that someone in the community could post a picture of that character and I could see how close I came. I've seen a dozen or more times where members of the discord hide their images from me with a warning to me so that I don't accidentally spoil myself. So far, there have been very very few characters spoiled,[3] and I think that's kind of incredible.

I did a lot of this art while in transit or while watching TV. I did a lot of it while unemployed when I didn't have other side projects to work on like Wizard Sokoban or this blog.

The podcast has reached The Chimera Ant Arc and it's wild to hear how little Togashi slows down in terms of introducing new characters every episode. I truly did not fathom just what an undertaking this project would be, but I'm having a lot of fun, and I'm learning both on the character-design side and the phone-art-technique side, so I'm sure it'll all be worth it. Even just looking at these ~50 or so makes me happy. It's hard to believe it's already been a year at this point.

Here's to the next 50!

If you're looking to follow just my art or just my posts about HxH, you can find individual RSS feeds for each of the tags links below.

  1. Shoutouts to the Transcripts at the Table project, which consists of community members who are paid to transcribe podcasts under the Friends at the Table umbrella, including Media Club Plus. Without their work, I would have had a much harder time making any of these pieces. ↩︎

  2. I gave up on this sometime around when The Phantom Troupe was first introduced because the characters -- and therefore their descriptions -- often spanned multiple episodes, so notetaking wasn't as helpful. ↩︎

  3. I saw a picture of Tonpa before I ever posted any art which disqualified him as a character to draw in my eyes. I also had seen a few pictures of Gon because he's the protagonist, but since I couldn't possibly skip the main character[4] of the show, I decided to just interpret the details given to me very literally and avoid using any other knowledge of what he looked like. ↩︎

  4. Or at least, the main character's boyfriend? You should listen to the podcast. ↩︎

tags: #art #digital art #hxh #media club plus #friends at the table