Happy April 1st, ladies, lads and nonbinary chads...

The Crazy Clown Collab is Out NOW!!!

We did it, friends; our circus is finally open to the public! This project wouldn't have been possible if not for the contribution of 120 talented artists donning their clown makeup for this occasion! In terms of first collabs I'd say this one has been exceedingly successful, and I'm very grateful for everyone who took part.

Putting together the final scene was a fun challenge for me, and it went through several iterations before I landed on something I liked. Initially, I anticipated this being a much smaller collab, with maybe like 20 or so submissions. As such I considered making a slightly more detailed background scene with more props and such for the clowns to interact with.

This is a rough early sketch for the background scene. I considered adding a small stage and maybe some hoops for clowns to jump thru etc., but I didn't get around to adding any props other than the tightrope. (Which itself would soon be removed when I eventually decided to ditch the props altogether)

This is the final bg with all the clowns removed. It's pretty simple, but I wanted the clowns to be the main focal point, especially as the submissions continued to roll in. I believe this is what the kids nowadays call a liminal space. :P

Organizing so many clowns was a bit of a challenge; trying to manually sort over a hundred layers in CSP is not my idea of a good time. So, I decided to organize them into a number of folders, ordered from closest to furthest. This made my life a lot easier, and made individual adjustments much more manageable. I did my best to make each clown as visible as possible, without making any particular clowns seem like the main focus.

I also had a fun time adding a few cheeky interactions between the clowns based on their poses and designs. There are a few of these, so keep an eye out for some silly details here and there.

And that's about everything! I'd like to once again offer a huge thank you to everyone involved in this goofy little project; it never could have happened without you! Happy April 1st, everyone, and thanks for clowning along with me

~ Nat <3