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DeepChrome — How Many More?
Published: 2011-04-08 01:20:18 +0000 UTC; Views: 9653; Favourites: 378; Downloads: 0
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Those of you who keep up-to-date with Homestuck have noticed the current trend of Dave's emotions.Dave fascinates me. I'm not entirely sure why but his cool badassery is definitely part of it. I'm also intruiged by characters who show chinks in that super-calm facade, showing that they are still human, that they actually do care, and so on.
So....let's recap a few things about Dave.
**WARNING: SORT OF SPOILERRIFIC IF YOU HAVEN'T CAUGHT UP. SO PLEASE IF YOU HAVE NOT READ ALL THE WAY UP TO THE CURRENT UPDATE BEWARE!! I AM NOT TO BLAME IF YOU WENT AHEAD AND READ THIS DESPITE THE WARNING AND GOT ALL CRANKY. KARKAT MODE OFF. Also, if you want to fast-forward over spoilerr-ish things, just jump to where it says END POSSIBLE SPOILERS in Karkat-style caps. Thanks. ^_^**
Back when he saw his first "doomed self" he had a bit of a BSOD, staring at the blood on his hands. Then he makes an immediate plan to cool the time-travel a bit.
He also has a definite soft spot for Jade. Rather than letting her see the above-mentioned Dave corpse and freaking out about it, he chucks the corpse out of his window. A Future Dave even helps as Jade's server player when John started that job and became derailed from it by his quest.
We've also learned that he can't kill one of his otherselves to become a God Tier hero. I suspect it's the above BSOD over his own doomed selves that leads to this. And I really can't blame him; but it makes him human. More human than he lets on.
And now.......the biggest spoiler.....we learn Bro has died, and that Dave is now, at the current update, at the site of the battle. The conversation he had with Terezi about it is....telling, to say the least.
SO, all that in mind, I get the distinct impression he is headed for a very character-developing emotional breakdown. All this time he seems to have been taught, trained even, to keep his cool no matter what the situation. He's usually got that deadpan expression, and hides his emotions behind that veneer of ironic half-poetry he spouts. But I think it's obvious - and most of you who are current on Homestuck - think it's obvious that facade he keeps up is starting to crack.
And why wouldn't it? All the kids have gone through one hell or another by now.
***END POSSIBLE SPOILERS***
Anyways I drew this a while back when I realized I had a developing Dave fandom, and had gone past the section where he's having trouble coping with the idea of alternate-timeline versions of himself dying.
Sooo, I spent probably three days off and on with this thing, trying to get it to a higher quality level than my usual stuff. I stuck to the limited MSPA-style color palette, and wanted to make the red, black, and white really stand out. I wanted to get it close to the caliber of some of the cutscene art we've seen in Homestuck already, if only to prove to myself I could make my style mesh with somebody else's.
(I also kinda ship Dave and Jade, which is why she's there hugging him.)
Anyways, there you have it. A friend of mine critiqued the WIP phases and helped me get it to this point now. I had hesitated for a long time on posting this due to the intensity of emotion in it, but after seeing the current updates' focus on Dave and his emotional status, I figured it was time to throw this one up.
3 days with Photoshop CS3, and a Cintiq.
Dave, Jade, and Homestuck are copyright Andrew Hussie
Give that man some love for such an amazing epic, please.
EDIT 4/8/11: Thanks to some awesome crit by ~Zenon1293 I've touched up the trolls' lineart and shading a bit. I think they should look a little better consolidated with the overall look of the piece.
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Comments: 62
it was so sad when Bro died... I almost started crying.
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I know, it was like OH GOD NO HUUUSSIIIIEEEE.
Now so many characters are dead we almost don't give a flip. Especially after what just happened to Karkat not too long ago. Yeesh.
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hey which act are the spoilers from? me is afraid of reading :3
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Lost track - probably from an earlier one, like 3 or so?
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oh ok hehe im on chapter 6 already so i'll read this...
*after reading*
oh my god this is sooo sad and soooo going to happen!!! im sure! i didn't understand what was in the picture b4 but it's so clear and :...( god why do i love sadstuck so much???
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I recently passed this part, I noticed that too. And its all cause of Bro. Bro was cool, he is cool. Even with the smuppets, he kept it at a low for as long as possible.
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Hehe yah, he did.
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Dammit.... i like my fuckin karkat mode on. DX oh well luv it even tho dave is all bloody and whatnot
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hold on karkat mode and gamzee mode ON/off -drinks faygo- FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU -for no reason-
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OH MY GOD. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH i HAVE TO RESIST THESE SPOILER SHIT YOU LITTLE DEUCE.
ALSO YOU'RE ART IS FUCKIN A-MAZING. BUT STILL, OH MY GOD. i WOULDN'T CARE IF YOU SPOIL ME IN OTHER SERIES. BUT THIS.
FREAKIN' INNER BATTLE.
okay, my Karkat mode is done xD and I didn't even read it! but maybe I'll remember reading your description again when I reach to the latest.
also. Dave/Jade Fuckin' win.
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Don't worry about it. I read a little thing called Homestuck where there's this dude capslock yelling ALL THE FUCKING TIME.
And thank you. 
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xD yeah, I'm somewhere in the middle of Act 5 with Eridan cajoling Kanaya to help him talk to Vriska :/
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I know I've commented on this before but
I just spent 5 minutes making squeeing noises completely.
Then my sister told me to shut up.
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Hah, thank you.
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this picture is
the biggest win i have ever seen.
All the thought and I can just FEEL the emotion in this JOKHFDSHJG<3
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Thank you. 
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I should probably feel bad for this, but I totally support breakdown!Dave. X3
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Heh, I thought I'd feel bad for doing this kind of thing too, but I'm finding it more interesting to see characters at a breaking point. What they do, what they choose, where things go from there, how the breakdown affects their development and the progress of the story.
So yeah, more breakdown!Dave plz.
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Breakdown are really the best way of seeing a character develop. Like that one quote that says something like "you only know a man when you see him at his worst" or something like that... I can't remember what the quote is or where it's from, but it stuck with me. XD
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I agree with your statement completely. And also that explains why I always (in my head) push my favorites to have a good cry! XD
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Making good characters cry is like a pathological, deep-seated need in folks like us. Like here: [link]
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YOU JUST LINKED ME TO TV TROPES. GIVE ME A BROFIST. RIGHT NOW. XD
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THAT IS WHAT I'M TALKIN' 'BOUT!
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Sounds pretty true to me.
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It really is. Like anyone can put up a front when everything's okay. When everything goes wrong, that's what people are really like. For example, Eridan is insecure and wants to be safe.
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Yeah, I can see that. What a person's fears are, what they really want out of things, and so on.
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Would you mind if I used this picture in a Dave/Jade video on Youtube? I will give you full credit for the work.
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As long as credit is given, I'm fine with it.
Hope the video works out - oh, and when it's done, link me. I want to see this.
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Would you mind if I used this picture in a Dave/Jade video on Youtube? I will give you full credit for the work.
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Tragic Dave is my crack. <3 This is every bit as heartwrenching as the update itself, and I wish that he would SHOW SOME EMOTION, FUCKNUTS, IT'S POISONING YOUR INSIDES!
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Aw thank you. Glad you liked it so much.
And yeah Tragic Dave needs to get with the program, and blubber a bit, and then go be a fucking badass.
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Just knowing that this piece can evoke feelings like that in someone (as intended) tells me I did something right. Thanks.
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I like the spotlight effect used on Jade and Dave. It's almost like a tragic play being acted out in front of Karkat and Terezi.
This piece has also been one of those rare examples of not only wonderful art but intriguing discussion as well.
I love talking about characters, Homestuck or otherwise, but due to friends not reading the same things I do or simply not enough time this interest is usually ignored. So please excuse me while I gush a little.
Dave is indeed an interesting character. Early on, even though it was played humorously with the smuppets, Dave has shown how explosive his emotions can be. It showed that stuff still got to him and it made me like him even with all his cool kid nonsense. To see some straight up, serious, or as serious as Hussie ever gets, emotional growth for this cool guy would be amazing and you've provided a taste of that.
As for Dave and Jade, I always took their relationship as a little sister to an older, protective brother sort of thing. Jade thinks Dave is the epitome of cool while Dave in turn thinks she's childish and needs protecting.
Well, that's enough rambling on my part. Hope this has been vaguely intelligible.
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Thanks for the long reply. I don't get these very often, and I enjoy when I do.
I agree about the Dave/Jade relationship. What's nice about this image is that it can be taken as either a ship or as a friend consoling a friend.
I do see what you're talking about with Dave and Jade. I don't think the other's really seen past the outer shell of what they project to each other just yet. Someday that will change. Dave certainly doesn't know Jade can have her own meltdowns and be as clever as she had with throwing her dreamself's remains into the kernelsprite...and subsequently realizing how bad an idea that was and going mental on her.
Anyways...I'm glad you liked this piece so much.
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The foreground of this piece looks very beautiful. It's tragic and the way you've done it with simple white and red helps it to hit home a lot harder. It seemingly implies the sort of desolate feeling that you're implying here. It's kind of a "all the colors have faded away, and only the blood remains" sort of impact, and the emphasis on that really hits the viewer in a way that colors would have detracted from. I love the foreground to death.
Meanwhile, the back round could use a little more work. I believe that it's quite necessary, so that the whole thing isn't just white and stuff--That alone would hurt the eyes, and the dark colors of the back round not only offsets the white quite effectively, but also draws the eye back to the comparatively eye-catching foreground, where the attention should be. But parts of the lineart on Karkat and Terezi are a little sketchy in some places, like you couldn't quite get that straight line. It gives it a bit of a messy effect that tends to happen when something large is taking up a good part of a picture as it is here. The best parts I can cite are Karkat's eyes, the horn further from us, and part of Terezi's nose and neck.
Terezi looks quite beautiful. Her lips are stunning, and her very womanly face shape gives her a very pretty look. Karkat seems to have a very long face, though. The following is a bit of an opinion, however: Karkat's long face makes him look rather old, like a guy in his early twenties, rather than in his pre-teen years. And his fangs look more akin to Sollux's long fangs, while, if you look at Karkat, his fangs are very strange. His canines are actually smaller than the other front four. And his main two are actually slightly rounded. And all six of them are small, though they poke over his lips. I'm not sure how close to the character you wanted to keep it, however, and if you preferred him with the long fangs and weren't going for sticking to the character, than it would be fine. Also, from our pov of looking at him, his right eye is a little too high up on his face.
The concept of this piece, though, is beautiful, and I really like that you did this. :3
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Wow, thank you for taking the time to write all that.
I'm glad the foreground's having the intended effect as far as an in-depth assessment goes. That was indeed the focal point, and if I missed that mark, the piece wasn't going to come off the way I wanted it to.
What are you thinking of for the background? A gradient? Texture? Some better color contrast? I'm just curious, as you suggested more could be done with it. My challenge with the piece was to get fairly close to the MSPA style, but still keep enough of my own on it. So I was going for fairly solid colors, no gradient-style shading, etc.
Fixing the linework on the trolls is actually a pretty good idea; the trouble came in trying to do their fairly messy hair and keep the clean polished style of the foreground. Some careful reworking, and possibly line tweaking to clean that up probably would help the overall look a lot.
That's an interesting point you also made about Karkat's face being fairly long. I drew this on a Cintiq, which is usually angled enough away from me that some features may be coming off as needlessly long and be in need of shortening simply due to that visual "parallax" effect. (I'm still working on reducing that, but it's an annoying pest with my art nowadays.) I also may have added too much length to his face to account for his sort-of-jawdropped pose there as well.
Again, thanks for taking the time to look at that in-depth.
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Ah, groove under the bottom lip. My bad.
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I think I get what you meant.
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Ah, here's a way to look at it--The distance from the groove between the bottom lip to the bottom of your jaw is the same as the distance from your upper lip to your nose. So if you stick to that, you can avoid the long face. Though, his nose might be a little long, too, and that might be part of it.
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That's an interesting measuring stick. I'll try it, see if it helps any. Thanks.
Long noses are a problem I try to fix before I get to lips, because sometimes I can eyeball and TELL that the nose is too long. So yeah, that might be part of the problem too.
I appreciate the help!
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Hey, you spent a lot of time helping me through mine. :3 Not to mention the piece is absolutely worth it, so I'm more than happy to help. :3
Ah, no, I like the current simplicity you have with the back round--Again, it helps keep the focus on the foreground. When I said that it needed some work, I meant with the improvements that I mentioned after to KK and Terezi. Sorry for not being specific. :3 But those improvements would help the back round quite a bit.
And yeah, long faces can be rough. I hate when there's a difference between what you're looking at and what actually is, like when you're sitting at a table and not leaning over it to look at your paper. (Which kills your back. Ugh.)
The problem with this distinct jaw-drop, however, is that it does a bit of the cartoon jaw drop. Karkat's mouth isn't terribly open, while in reality, a jaw drop is just that--the jaw dropping from the top of the mouth. So the mouth would open in parallel to how far his jaw is dropping because the lips would travel with the jaw. Instead, here, his jaw is dropping a lot, while his mouth isn't open that far, thus creating the long face. If that makes any sense. XD
Oh, I know. It's because some people just blow up at critiques, so everyone is scared to step on people's toes. XD I hope this was helpful. :3
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That clarified a lot, actually. Thanks.
I'll see if I can improve the trolls a bit...it helps that I DON'T have a gradient on there, because I'll be better able to fix things.
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I seriously like this. C: Character examinations are always the coolest to read, and you wrote a good one! Just reminds me why I can't stop myself from loving Dave so much. Good job on the picture, too! <3
Also, Dave and Jade do make a good pairing! But what I really like to see is his potential with Terezi as well. I noticed that with Terezi, he's more open and willing to talk with her, which is really sweet and cute in it's own way. But with Jade, it seems he tries harder to look even cooler in front of her by protecting her and such, which is really cute as well. C: So I pretty much support both as of now.
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Thank you.
As for ships, I rather like Dave and Terezi, either as a redrom or as a friendship. Both work, and believably so. And Terezi is just obnoxious enough to ignore any of Dave's aloofness, as well as willing enough to care about him because she can see past his veneer. In a way he needs her badly right now, everyone else just stays away cause he's the coolkid, it seems. Even John is too nice to step up and say "Dude, deal with it." Terezi on the other hand, is just as blunt as Dave, if not more so.
So yeah, my two primary Homestuck ships are Dave/Terezi, and Dave/Jade. I haven't figured out who everybody else fits with. A friend pointed out that Karkat might be red for Jade, and I can kind of see that ship too.
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