Commissioned by  backlash

Zak and his friends are something of a rarity in the fandom in that they all wear shoes as part of their default outfits (well, all except for one, but we'll leave him for later), and not only that, sometimes using specific styles of real-world footwear. As such, artists commissioned to draw Zak and friends would benefit from references showing a standardized view of what these shoes look like when drawn on these characters, since a lot of otherwise competent artists have trouble drawing shoes "correctly". This is seen even among manga artists, where many schoolgirls' penny loafers look strangely blocky in contrast with the technical accuracy of the rest of their uniforms. This revelation long ago prompted me to learn how to draw shoes "correctly" on my own OC's, or at least recognizably based on real-world styles. Hence this series of commissions intended to help...other artists commissioned to draw these characters :D

Some characters in this group have specific styles made by a particular company (like Zak's Birkenstocks) while others have more generic examples not based on any particular real-world model. In the latter case I picked the closest real-world equivalent and adapted the drawn version from that. The character is drawn in a full-body view wearing said shoes with their default clothing, along with close-ups of the depicted footwear in outside-edge, arch-side, front and top-down views. Where applicable, I added notes pointing out details that are often missed, mostly limited to those that can still be included in low-detail renderings (say, in comics or group shots).

As an example, one such detail are the straps on Birkenstock sandals, which actually run diagonally across the wearer's foot when seen from above (most artists draw them straight across), and slope down from the arch side to the outide edge of the shoe (because well, the foot itself slopes down from its inner to outer edge). In addition, I provided top views of the same shoe as drawn with three-toed as well as four-toed feet, to show how these can be drawn on both types of foot model, whichever one the individual artist is used to, even though this is kind-of redundant on shoes with enclosed toes, I just included them for the sake of consistency across these references.

Technical:
This series was proposed while I had other projects on hold during the work on Mercenary Salvage, the last of my AC 2022 artist-alley commissions. While I didn't take on additional work during that period, I did listen to ideas from folks who reached out to me via DM, ideas that I placed on a brainstorm queue that would shorten their development time once I was freed from the in-progress commitment. To break up the tedium of looking at that same pic day in and day out, I did test sketches of the characters in this series, with the intent to ink and color them when they became "official" commissions. As such, much of the groundwork was done when I finished the AC22 pic a couple of weeks ago. While not artistically groundbreaking, I did attempt to streamline the character models (compared to how I drew them previously) with a 'cuter' design inspired by an earlier set of character references done by  finimun.

As one last touch, I added a white outline to the standing character, a visual frill I don't think I've done before. Simply put, I made another layer under the character lineart. With this done I set the lineart as a reference layer, so when I magic-wand select the blank layer below, it would pay attention to the lineart layer and make a mask out of everything outside the character silhouette. Next I inverted the selection, (making the mask just the character silhouette) then enlarged it by about 8 pixels before flood-filling it with white, leaving a sharp halo around the character and setting them apart from the neutral-colored backdrop.

Digital drawing done in Clip Studio Paint EX. 36 layers (mostly text objects), 14.7MB .CLIP file. Part of Project ID# 511