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Description
Making fiends, making fiends
Vendetta's always making fiends
Making fiends while Charlotte makes friends

15 years ago today, Nickelodeon premired the TV show adaptation of the internet series Making Fiends. Created by Amy Winfrey, the shows focuses on two different girls: Vendetta, a green girl who runs the town of Clamburg with an iron fist by unleashing fiends onto its citizens, and cater to her every whim to make sure they don't set her off, and Charlotte, a blue girl who becomes Clamburg's newest resident and is determined to make Vendetta her friend, oblivious to the fact that Vendetta will never reciprocate the friendship. In each episode, Vendetta tries out different methods to rid herself of Charlotte with the help of her personal bodyguard, a giant orange hamster named Grudge, only for Charlotte to screw it all up thanks to her powers of kindness.

Considering the amount of acclaim the original webseries got when it came out, it was no surprise when the TV series received the same amount of praise, as people enjoyed the concept of the show, and that the opposite behaviors of the main characters make for some interesting interactions. Unfortunately, despite its success, Nickelodeon decided to unceremoniously cancel the series after only producing six episodes. To make matters worse, Nickelodeon ended up keeping the rights to the Making Fiends franchise, meaning that Amy Winfrey is incapable of producing any new episodes of the web series without getting into any legal trouble. The show's short lifespan and decision on who gets ownership of the show honestly pisses me off so much, because this show had the potential to be something amazing. It was because of this show's cancelation, along with the information on what happened to another Nickelodeon cartoon, Harvey Beaks, that revealed a dark truth to Nickelodeon's business tactics: the longevity of the show is completely determined by how successful it compares to SpongeBob SquarePants; if it fails to come anywhere close to the sponge's success, it'll get axed. However, despite my qualms with how Nickelodeon treated this show, there's also a silver lining. Even though Amy Winfrey couldn't make new episodes of the show, she's proven herself to be an amazing director working on other shows. A few years ago, I learned she was one of the main directors of the Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman, and she is known for having directed some of the most iconic episodes of the show. Perhaps the most famous episode she's directed is the Season 5 episode "Free Churro", where BoJack delivers a eulogy at his mother's funeral. What makes the episode so iconic is that it's literally 22 minutes of Will Arnett (BoJack's voice actor) talking to a camera and pacing around a small room, yet delivers a lot of impactful moments with a plot twist that honestly blew my mind.

Anyways, back to talking about Making Fiends. If I had to point to my favorite episode of the series, it's probably the fourth episode, which features the segments "Puppies! Puppies! Puppies!", which is about Charlotte playing around with Vendetta's cloning machine, "Dear Pretty Diary, Dear Stupid Journal", which is about Charlotte and Vendetta talking aobut their day from their point of view, and "Marvin the Middle Manager", where Vendetta has a student named Marvin fulfill her fiendish duties while she takes a day off from school. Now that I got that out of the way, I can now talk about the artwork.

I knew from the start that I wanted the artwork to features giant fiends that make up the giant 15 in the background. While examining some reference pics on how the fiends are drawn in this show, I tried to make them distinct from each other due to each fiend being different than the last; the 1 is drawn lineless, with a black-and-purple gradient, and with tentacles, and the 5 is drawn with a solid color, and has claws. I also decided to draw in a few bats, not just because they're some of the most iconic fiends in the show, but to also fill in some empty space. As for the main stars, I wanted to try and capture their personalities here as much as I could. Along with that, I also tried to see if I could replicate the way these characters are drawn as much as I could. I think my favorite thing about making these characters was coloring them in. Along with being very fast to color in (as they're just one solid color), I also love the technique I implemented when it came to their colored outlines. As for the backgrounds, I based it off promotional artworks made for the show, where I simply just drew the silhouettes of the buildings and used the eyedropper tool to make the background colors the same as the artworks I sampled.

Hope you like this artwork, and what are your thoughts on Making Fiends? Do you remember watching this show when it was on Nickelodeon?

Description
Making fiends, making fiends
Vendetta's always making fiends
Making fiends while Charlotte makes friends

15 years ago today, Nickelodeon premired the TV show adaptation of the internet series Making Fiends. Created by Amy Winfrey, the shows focuses on two different girls: Vendetta, a green girl who runs the town of Clamburg with an iron fist by unleashing fiends onto its citizens, and cater to her every whim to make sure they don't set her off, and Charlotte, a blue girl who becomes Clamburg's newest resident and is determined to make Vendetta her friend, oblivious to the fact that Vendetta will never reciprocate the friendship. In each episode, Vendetta tries out different methods to rid herself of Charlotte with the help of her personal bodyguard, a giant orange hamster named Grudge, only for Charlotte to screw it all up thanks to her powers of kindness.

Considering the amount of acclaim the original webseries got when it came out, it was no surprise when the TV series received the same amount of praise, as people enjoyed the concept of the show, and that the opposite behaviors of the main characters make for some interesting interactions. Unfortunately, despite its success, Nickelodeon decided to unceremoniously cancel the series after only producing six episodes. To make matters worse, Nickelodeon ended up keeping the rights to the Making Fiends franchise, meaning that Amy Winfrey is incapable of producing any new episodes of the web series without getting into any legal trouble. The show's short lifespan and decision on who gets ownership of the show honestly pisses me off so much, because this show had the potential to be something amazing. It was because of this show's cancelation, along with the information on what happened to another Nickelodeon cartoon, Harvey Beaks, that revealed a dark truth to Nickelodeon's business tactics: the longevity of the show is completely determined by how successful it compares to SpongeBob SquarePants; if it fails to come anywhere close to the sponge's success, it'll get axed. However, despite my qualms with how Nickelodeon treated this show, there's also a silver lining. Even though Amy Winfrey couldn't make new episodes of the show, she's proven herself to be an amazing director working on other shows. A few years ago, I learned she was one of the main directors of the Netflix animated series BoJack Horseman, and she is known for having directed some of the most iconic episodes of the show. Perhaps the most famous episode she's directed is the Season 5 episode "Free Churro", where BoJack delivers a eulogy at his mother's funeral. What makes the episode so iconic is that it's literally 22 minutes of Will Arnett (BoJack's voice actor) talking to a camera and pacing around a small room, yet delivers a lot of impactful moments with a plot twist that honestly blew my mind.

Anyways, back to talking about Making Fiends. If I had to point to my favorite episode of the series, it's probably the fourth episode, which features the segments "Puppies! Puppies! Puppies!", which is about Charlotte playing around with Vendetta's cloning machine, "Dear Pretty Diary, Dear Stupid Journal", which is about Charlotte and Vendetta talking aobut their day from their point of view, and "Marvin the Middle Manager", where Vendetta has a student named Marvin fulfill her fiendish duties while she takes a day off from school. Now that I got that out of the way, I can now talk about the artwork.

I knew from the start that I wanted the artwork to features giant fiends that make up the giant 15 in the background. While examining some reference pics on how the fiends are drawn in this show, I tried to make them distinct from each other due to each fiend being different than the last; the 1 is drawn lineless, with a black-and-purple gradient, and with tentacles, and the 5 is drawn with a solid color, and has claws. I also decided to draw in a few bats, not just because they're some of the most iconic fiends in the show, but to also fill in some empty space. As for the main stars, I wanted to try and capture their personalities here as much as I could. Along with that, I also tried to see if I could replicate the way these characters are drawn as much as I could. I think my favorite thing about making these characters was coloring them in. Along with being very fast to color in (as they're just one solid color), I also love the technique I implemented when it came to their colored outlines. As for the backgrounds, I based it off promotional artworks made for the show, where I simply just drew the silhouettes of the buildings and used the eyedropper tool to make the background colors the same as the artworks I sampled.

Hope you like this artwork, and what are your thoughts on Making Fiends? Do you remember watching this show when it was on Nickelodeon?