Aral
Naval enthusiast
Some people have suggested I make a thread for my shipgirls. I do think this is a good idea, even if it's more or less just a hobby I indulge in because my creative engines got going real intensely and it's also a nice practice for character design and development. A sharp contrast to the year 2023 where I was pretty much unable to produce anything. 2024 has started in a blast for me and it looks like creativity-wise, I'm entering a new era. Don't know if it's any more degenerate than when I would draw furries, but hey, we'll see.
My type of shipgirls has branched off from the usual Kancolle/Azur Lane, (the latter I've kinda tried out on an emulator, love the music but the moe stuff is annoying and I already roll my eyes at the art that comes during the loading times... so idk if I'll keep playing it), into a more realistic or at least semirealistic type of design and story. No big tiddies foxgirls (looking at you, AL Musashi and Shinano) just regular girls who could easily look and sound like you and me. I focus on their inner experience, their character development, their journey as who they are, or were back then. I just love diving into their individual psychologies, their perceptions of things, and how they all relate to each other in the grand scheme of things. This ship knows that ship who also knows them both and also knows another ship, who knows this one... the beautiful mess of human relationships.
For precision, the actual ship is their body, that human form is their spirit. In appearance the ship is entirely inanimate, but... is it? That's a core part of my creativity, and even more so since I started getting into boats and ships. It's about what isn't seen to the normal eye. Though honestly, I have a bit of an alternate variant where they're more or less regular humans and the battleship bodies aren't so present, but still they're the human manifestation of these very ships. They're still themselves, it's just that they don't partake in battles and all, it's like the "sandbox" version of it. I draw their outfits in the designs based on their colours as battleships (what I can find, anyway) and uniforms though I do my best not to make them too boring, but they have more casual and "normal" outfits as well that I'll draw in the future. Besides, these designs will evolve.
I mainly do battleships for now, because they're simply less numerous and it's already quite complex with just the battleships. I'll add some aircraft carriers too and other types of ships, and also some IRL boats that I know, perhaps (especially the one that started it all) but if I were to, say, do the cruisers, destroyers, tugs and all, they are often just so numerous in a single class that I'd probably be already dead by the time I would've done them all.
But anyway. I've done quite a few designs already, especially of the US Navy. I write up a sort of bio post on Pillowfort (formerly here on Agora, but it got to a ridiculous amount of comments under a single status) after that, trying to keep track of both the historical stuff and what I've already written from other ships. I just want the thing to be as close to a web as possible, with their different takes on the same things, hence why I can repeat myself a bit in the bios, especially if they had a common event tying them all. In this case, Pearl Harbor had an impact on all the extant battleships (and others) of the time, even the ones who weren't present. It affected them all in different ways. It's also what gave way to that story that seems to be building up little by little, though I also develop the pre- and post-.
The ones I've done so far, with a link to their pillowfort post (pictures are in the media section):
US ships:
USS Oklahoma (1914-1947) and Nevada (1914-1948)
USS Texas (1912-)
USS Utah (1909-1941)
USS Arkansas (1911-1946)
USS Arizona (1915-1941) and Pennsylvania (1915-1948)
USS New York (1912-1948)
IJN Yamato (1940-1945) and Musashi (1940-1944)
Off-series:
Costa Concordia (2005-2012)
HMS Victory (1765-)
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