Hello, friends! This week, I decided to not be a coward and to try at least coloring the illustration I made for The Floating City, if inking still feels a bit beyond me. Idk why I have it in my head that drawing black lines around colors makes things look less professional. There's nothing wrong with stylization, self! Plus, this is a good chance for me to try a small piece of original art every week, so here we go!

As promised, this week's entry is about the Tumbaghar, the "monsters" with whom the Atasiarans are primarily obsessed. They're water-breathing, nomadic humanoids who have a different view of life in the Risen Waters than the humans of the Floating Cities do. In actuality, they're not even so much humanoids as humans, an evolutionary off-shoot well-adapted for living long spells underwater.

Yes, this is 100% giving natives vs colonists vibes, and there's definitely a bit I'm planning to explore later in the exercise about relations between the two parties. As a Bumiputera Malaysian, it's always been fascinating to me how identity is co-opted and subsequently used as a dividing line, both in Asia and the United States of America. I'm looking forward to exploring this theme in future installments, tho I think this will be the only spread involving the Tumbaghar for a while. Please note that this illustration is an "artist's rendition" meant to emphasise the otherness of the Tumbaghar. The first two entries are also written from the point of view of the Atasiarans before switching to a more omniscient pov. I am rather fond of the color scheme tho.

For now, I'm going to keep focusing on building the city itself. I'm probably taking too pain-staking an attitude towards my science-fantasy concept (even refreshed myself on the physics of buoyancy the other day) but I'm overall enjoying the process. Tho I did just realize that, in my earlier illness-induced haze, I 100% mislabeled the weeks and am now a little ahead, because I don't know how to stop counting at seven, lol. I will fix that in future installments!