Tickle artists #159: interview with MetroidBOY

Contents

1 1) Do you want to tell us something about yourself and your art?
2 2) What techniques do you use to draw? Do you have a favorite artist that inspires you?
3 3) How much was the passion for drawing born in you? And the one for the tickle?
4 4) What are the tickling scenarios that you prefer to draw?
5 5) What are the aspects of tickling that you intend to represent with your art? Example: the laughing, the wriggling, the relationship between tickler and ticklee?
6 6) Online there are countless photos and videos of tickling sessions. In your opinion, what do illustrations offer more than images of real life?
7 7) In your opinion, what makes tickling so interesting for fans of this phenomenon?
8 8) What are your works of which you are most proud?
9 9) Do you have any particular artistic goals for the future?
10 10) Do you think AIs will end up enriching or impoverishing the art of tickling representations?
11 Informazioni sull'autore
- - 11.0.1 TickleScenes

1) Do you want to tell us something about yourself and your art?

I’m MetroidBOY, I’m an artist, and I enjoy doing this in my spare time. I love 3D modelling and texturing, and I’ve recently started getting into 2D character design. I enjoy video games of different genres, particularly indie and Metroidvania titles; naturally, my favourite games are the Metroid series. Through my artwork, I want to share my work and studies; in particular, I enjoy taking my favourite characters from various series and placing them in a context of vulnerability, such as tickling. My aim is also to push myself to create original characters and not just focus on existing ones.

2) What techniques do you use to draw? Do you have a favorite artist that inspires you?

My drawing technique probably isn’t particularly popular and loved by many artists, but usually, to speed up the process, I use a method that many Clip Studio Paint users are familiar with it: I’m talking about using virtual mannequins, positioning them in a dynamic pose and rendering them. At that point, I have a reference to work from, on how I want to pose my character. I often find myself having to sketch out the outlines of the body parts first, but then it’s all about adjusting the proportions depending on the character I want to create or replicate. I admit I spend hours redrawing facial expressions over and over; it’s the hardest part for me, but the one where I try to give it my best. I’m trying to gradually move away from this approach, but at the moment it’s the only one that’s allowing me to achieve fairly quick and satisfactory results.

On this platform (DeviantArt), I’ve seen many artists who have particularly inspired me over the years; there are so many that I struggle to list them all, but I think that among the many who have inspired me most are the artist dangerking11 and sevenstar (北兎七世, known on Pixiv). Outside of tickle art, one of the greats who inspires me most and whose style is really inspiring me is the legendary manga artist master Yusuke Murata.

3) How much was the passion for drawing born in you? And the one for the tickle?

I’ve always had a passion for drawing, but it was only last year that I started taking it seriously; as for tickling I’ve been into that practically since I was a child. When I saw various artists combine these two passions, I thought: why not give it a try myself?

4) What are the tickling scenarios that you prefer to draw?

My favourite scenario is the playful one, where a character can’t move or needs to concentrate, but is assaulted by another character’s intense tickling attack, all in an attempt to ruin their concentration. Or another is the classic character trapped in a tickling machine; this one is always the most extreme. Don’t get me wrong, i like that and I’m not complaining, but I always try to avoid making it too sexualised, even though that’s practically impossible.

5) What are the aspects of tickling that you intend to represent with your art? Example: the laughing, the wriggling, the relationship between tickler and ticklee?

Generally, I try to represent laughter by really emphasising the facial expressions and the way the subject squirm to show just how ticklish I think is it

6) Online there are countless photos and videos of tickling sessions. In your opinion, what do illustrations offer more than images of real life?

The illustrations offer more imagination; paradoxically, I’m not particularly impressed by the real-life images of the tickling sessions, but they spark my imagination as to how to create an imaginary setting that would be impossible to recreate in reality.

7) In your opinion, what makes tickling so interesting for fans of this phenomenon?

That’s a good question, one I’ve asked myself and still find difficult to answer. But I’ll give it a go, based on the feelings it evokes in me. I suppose it all starts with curiosity and a desire to explore, some questions comes like: how would that person or character react in this kind of situation? Are they strong enough to tolerate even something like this? Or simple what if that character is ticklish? At least, those are my thoughts; perhaps it evokes different feelings in others.

8) What are your works of which you are most proud?

I’m tempted to say that I’m proud of all the work I’ve published so far xD, but to be honest, I’m most proud of the pieces that sparked a lot of interaction with users, mainly the drawings dedicated to Samus Aran and her ticklish misadventures. The piece I’m really proud of, though, is “Even Byleth as a Weakness”, I put a lot of effort into it and I’m even working on a mini-story (though I don’t know when it’ll be ready due to a lack of time D:)

9) Do you have any particular artistic goals for the future?

One of my main goals is to create original characters and improve my ability to draw a character’s anatomical features, as well as to refine my linework and shading technique

10) Do you think AIs will end up enriching or impoverishing the art of tickling representations?

Another good question, then. In my opinion, the answer depends on what the artist (or prompter, in this case) wants to achieve and what the artist’s followers like to see. I’ve seen various tickle art pieces created by an AI; I can say that looking at the ones done badly wouldn’t give me the desire or the courage to publish them. Instead, I use them as references and try to improve upon them to suit my needs, using the personal drawing style I’ve developed. As for the ones done well, I find that they’ve developed the models very effectively to draw an extraordinary anatomy (albeit, in most cases, highly sexualised). What I’ve noticed, however, is that even if they’re done ‘well’, they still share the exact same essence, leading to a lack of stylistic diversity. By now, AIs are learning to create illustrations based on other AIs, which in turn were based on human artists. All this to say (apologies for rambling on) that, in my view, illustrations created with AI can enrich the artist by helping them to imagine scenarios to draw inspiration from; if, on the other hand, the aim is simply to generate an image and publish it as is, then yes, in this way there is a risk of impoverishment.