It was my friend ruedischmuedi's birthday in December! For those who don't know, Ruedi's the Number One Excadrill lover in the world by a huge margin. Needless to say, a birthday illustration needed to feature it!

I think my idea for the drawing was pretty clear from the start, yet the execution was embarrassingly bad at first  The anatomy was all over the place, Excadrill's head looked like a rat  Bro did not deserve that.

It took me a while but i managed to more or less figure out its body shape, how it's pretty much a sphere with limbs. Afterwards, honestly everything else went pretty smoothly!

I did a couple of experiments on the floor to figure out the best way to texture it and ended up with this that you're seeing. it's supposed to be different kinds of rocks and sand scattered around. I must say it was pretty fun to do it xD I'm not sure it looks that good, but i was told by some friends that it does, so I'll have to trust them.

I'm super happy with the outlining and coloring. The palette is quite but not overly vibrant, and I feel like the metallic parts of Excadrill are just the right color. I did something weird by making the sky around its body a bit darker, and i think it worked great to tell the metals apart from the sky.

Only part I'm not content with is the cake... Meh, it's kind of hidden, right? Doesn't stand out at all and I'm not sure what I should've done about it.

Finally, the clouds are completely made out of dithering and super proud of that idea, it looks coherent with the sand on the floor and I feel like it makes it more forgiving to not get a perfect shape for the cloud.

Anyways, overall I'm very happy with this drawing even though the beginning was chaotic. I mean, I always start my drawings quite chaotically lol.

Pleaaaase do check out Ruedi's profile!, she's an amazing pixel artist and nobody should miss out on her art <3