The Packers had a couple of bad seasons, but don't worry! The world's cutest athlete, Super A.I. Kizuna Ai is here to make sure 2019 is the best season ever! Either that, or she'll run screaming into the wrong endzone and crash head-first into the goalpost. Definitely one of the two.

Ai Kizuna's channels:

Main - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC4YaOt1yT-ZeyB0OmxHgolA

Gaming - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbFwe3COkDrbNsbMyGNCsDg

--Project Notes:

I wanted to make something to celebrate the newest addition to my "best things ever" list: Ai Kizuna. I don't know how they managed to cram so much cute into one character, but she's just so adorable, it's not even fair. A lot of the internet is just horrible people doing horrible things. And don't get me wrong: I enjoy a good shit-show just as much as the next cynical jackass, but sometimes it really starts to grind. It's good to watch something that's just cute and wholesome to remind myself that there are good things in the world. Anyway, for this piece, I felt like trying something different. Since the NFL regular season was under way when I discovered Ai, I decided to draw her as a Green Bay Packer. My first thought was to draw her as a cheerleader, but I thought that was too obvious. My next thought was to draw her as a coach, to go with the A.I. theme. But I decided that drawing her as a player would be more fun. 

The result was a crossover that probably no one wanted to see. I'm something of a rarity; a nerd who likes sports. So this was more of a personal piece, I guess. Just something I wanted to do because I wanted to do it. But I did have a REALLY hard time finishing it. Not just because of the lack of free time, but also because I had no idea what I was doing. There was a lot that I've never done before, so I had to figure everything out as I went along. As a result, I had to put in hours and hours of working with green-and-gold pride just to get this far (I don't even want to THINK about how long it took me to sketch the hair). I also spent a huge chunk of that time studying references, like staring at pictures of Aaron Rodgers' armpits to figure out how to draw the jersey sleeve. Art is stupid, sometimes. 

But the shitty thing is, it doesn't really LOOK like a lot of effort went into it. Honestly, I almost decided not to upload it, because it has a LOT of problems. Her head looks a little too flat. The hair just looks plain bad. The jersey doesn't have enough folds, because I have a hard time getting them to look right. The "Lambeau Lights" version looks kinda cluttered and sloppy. And this piece showed that I REALLY have a problem with foreshortening. But I decided that I put in too much work to just discard it like it was nothing. But I do think my style needs a SERIOUS overhaul, because looking at my output, it's obvious that something needs to change. The shoulder pads were the hardest. The NFL's incredible shrinking pads did make it easier, but it took me a LONG time to figure out how to draw them with Ai's arm raised. I just couldn't figure out how to fit the scutes in between her arm and neck. It's baffling, because I was about the same size as Ai when I was in high school (and even today, I'm not much larger), yet I had no problem raising my arm up while in full football gear. So it shouldn't have been as hard as it was. Accommodating her breasts was also a challenge, and I think I may have overdone the "squish" factor. But on the positive side, I chose a slightly different method of coloring the eyes, and I think the results were MUCH better. I also fixed my bad habit of drawing characters with toothpick arms and little bird legs, so this piece was a lot more realistically-proportioned. And Clip Studio's paltry texture options actually came in handy for coloring her jersey mesh.

--A few notes on stylistic choices: 

I didn't have any specific position in mind when I drew her gear. I just drew what I thought would be fun. For her pants, I chose to recreate my own 7-piece pad set from memory. I know that hip pads aren't really in vogue in the NFL, but I just wanted to try them anyway. For her cleats, I modeled them after the Nike Lunarlon Superbad Pro cleats. However, I changed the "Superbad Pro" text on the ankle strap to read "Super A.I. Pro" instead. I also added a heart on the side. For her gloves, I mainly followed the Nike Vapor Jet 5.0 receiver gloves, but I mixed in a few elements from other gloves, as well. Her wrist braces were modeled after the DonJoy wrist wraps, but I changed the stitching on the straps to be more personalized to the character. I replaced the Nike "swoosh" emblem with a heart on her gloves, jersey, and pants, but I kept it on the toe of her cleat. I also replaced the NFL shield logo with the little A