Heavy Crystal

Hi everyone! So glad to present this brand new piece of fan-art to all of my watchers who've been waiting for something new. I wanted to take a good solid chunk of time to make this up this week. And I'm very pleased to say that it is even better than my last new piece. So the break I took from drawing did not adversely affect me. lol

As you can probably tell, I'm a pretty big fan of Steven Universe these days. Not a super-duper fan, mind you. But it is by far the most engaging and entrancing cartoon out there right now. Lovely characters, beautiful design, so much feels. And since I'm also a fan of dark 80s animation, randomly one day I had this thought of "what would it look like if the glowing green omnipotent orb from Heavy Metal the movie was instead one of Paridot's robo' spheres?" And then naturally I thought of what the Gems and Steven might look like if they were depicted in a more 1980s style. I certainly didn't nail the look of the Heavy Metal movie in drawing style or shape, but I tried to give Steven a more realistic design to reflect the sensibilities in the 80s, and I took notice of SU's pilot episode in order to get the right retro look for the other Gems here. Of course I took some liberties and changed a few things, namely Garnet and Pearl's hairdos.

I also created two special brushes for this image. The first was one for the slanted round dashes that streak across the sky in the first and second image, which you can see often in the backgrounds of SU. And then I also created a polygon trapezoidal brush in order to get a similar looking gem-like pattern in a few subte spots of the entire piece. I think the layered effects on Mr. Universe's van turned out the best out of everything.

I really enjoy mixing together two seemingly unrelated things that surprising work well together, in a cross-over image like this. I've done a few others, and I'm quite excited to continue making more. If any of you can think of any strange but fun cross-overs, feel free to send them my way in the comments section. I'd love to hear about 'em.



My commission section is now open if this particular piece has intrigued you about what I can do. I mostly create fan-art of existing characters, including any art you may like to see of yourself or your own OCs. I can do posters, website banners, title-cards for videos, promotional artwork, post-cards, and other things of that nature. However, character design isn't quite my forte. But feel free to take a look at my commissions guide on my profile and get in touch with me if you have something a little different that you're interested in having done, and I'll see if I'm up for it as well.

Thanks so much everyone for checking this out. And here's to the upcoming season of Steven Universe.