Even I didn’t expect there would be a part 2 until I finished all the Valentines…
So, from part 1, you already know how I made the base design. However, after seeing some other Valentines on my Twitter feed, I was inspired to make the rest of the HypMic divisions…meaning I had to make even more lines on the fly. I took Samatoki’s straight from the list in part 1, but had to get really creative with the rest. (…By “creative”, sometimes that meant using ellipses.)
The order I went with is more reflected in the colour schemes this time – Ichiro -> Samatoki -> Jiro -> Sasara -> Rosho -> Saburo -> Hitoya -> Riou -> Rei -> Kuko -> Jyushi -> Jyuto. Specifically, I kept the grey ribbon for consistency between the Buster Bros (if you don’t know who those are, that’s Ichiro, Jiro and Saburo) and made it darker for Kuko and Jyushi’s black ribbon, while having blue backgrounds for Mad Trigger Crew’s (Samatoki, Jyuto and Riou’s) wasn’t entirely deliberate and was based on what the ribbons looked good with. Sasara and Rosho’s almost being a flip of one another was quite deliberate though, considering their division colour of orange and Rosho’s orange drop shadow. Sasara’s orange/blue I did ask for feedback on briefly, but ended up asking at a time where no one answered and since I was cutting it close to Valentine’s Day in my region at that point, I kept it. (It’s so hokey that I think it somewhat apropriate for the guy, anyway.)
I fiddled with the Hue/Saturation tool again for coloured ribbons/drop shadows, but this time also used the Colour Accent (a plugin by Kris Vandermotten) and Invert Colours tools to make blacks, greys and whites and for Jyuto’s ribbon/drop shadow, the Sepia tool. Some of these Valentines took less than 10 minutes, but some I didn’t think of a line immediately and had to make another while thinking of what could be done.
Jyuto’s was the one I struggled with the most, because there’s a lot of potential for some very ~dangerous~ lines there (well, he is known as “Sexy Revenge Cop” in the fandom…). The one I went with in the end is a sort-of-reference to Bayside Smoking Blues, but has enough wiggle room to appease shippers of all kinds. I also had “My love for you is uncrushable” (reference to his song of the same name)…before having a moment of doubting my entire command of the English language (which is surprisingly common when translating, but not so common where bad puns are concerned) and “I’ll keep you in my uguu cage of love” (reference to his ability, but I gave it the axe because it was unlikely people would get it) in mind before going with the more platonic line.
The best ideas come to me in that period between going to bed and falling asleep. That’s when I had the brainwave of working in the numbers one, two and three into the Buster Bros’ lines one night before committing myself to making them all. The italics weren’t too obvious when I tried with Ichiro’s, so I opted with underline instead. I came up with Ichiro and Jiro’s as a pair (although I had a choice between “guy” and “fan” for Ichiro’s and didn’t pick until I had to type it on to the Valentine), but Saburo is such a deadpan snarker that I ended up looking at Ohayou, Ikebukuro (where the brothers discuss their type of girl briefly) for inspiration.
Sasara’s jokes are really hard to get wrong for me (remember “happy moo year!”?), so I took the song I mentioned in part 1 and turned it into a one-man comedy routine, thereby making it original.
Here’s the final results:
Other notes:
- Jyushi normally talks in a very oblique manner, so his line was originally “Let us partake in the festival of love and manufactured chocolate” before I started thinking about a way to include a mention to his pig plushie, Amanda, who he loves dearly. This oblique manner of speaking is also why it’s “eternal love” and not anything else. I was going to make a very bad joke on 0 yen smiles (see ARB on that) but couldn’t make it work.
- I was going to shove in an outright mention to scams or money in Rei’s, but (again) couldn’t make it work, so I tried the “smooth criminal” angle instead, based on various lyrics he’s had which suggest seducing ladies.
- There’s this pastel pink which I tried to work in as one of the background colours and the closest I got to that was Jyushi’s lavender, which is to its direct left on the colour selector. By the way, Rei’s is actually not a maroon like Hifumi’s, but rather a deep pink/wine red (which is the closest I could get to replicating the colour of his shirt).
- I don’t know all that much about Buddhism so I unfortunately couldn’t play off that, but Kuko likes shonen manga and he was a delinquent at one point, so I took “I like a woman who can kick my ass” and changed it to be more inclusive.
- The tweets themselves also have a few references – Dotsuitare Hompo’s is a reference to Ah, Osaka Dreamin’ Night, Fling Posse’s is a reference to Scramble Gamble and the Buster Bros’ is a reference to Ore ga Ichiro (which you may recognise from the anime, since that part was in there).
- All in all, this lot took about 4 hours.
This post is great! Keep up the good work!