Drawing: "Ascension to Heaven" ft. Asuka

Hello guys, welcome to another blog post! This time, I bring you this drawing... "Ascension to Heaven"!

I'm very satisfied of this drawing! It was almost as I imagined it in my head, and also a way to put to the test the new design I made for this character. Her name used to be "Asuka" but I'm planning to change it to somthing more fitting.

This character is also gonna be the next one to have a redesign video on the channel, which I'm gonna release after a big announcement, so stay tuned ;) I'm gonna tease a little bit of the character design and lore in this article.

So, first of all, where does this character come from? The first design for this character was supposed to be used for a VTuber model. Yes, you heard that right! There was a time where I learned how to use VRoid Studio to create 3D VTuber models. I even succeded to create one! It has the worst design ever, a tail made out of millions of triangles/polygons that lags my PC, clipping hair and is puppeted through a suspicious program because I coudn't download VSeeFace on a Mac, but it works! (or at least used to work, because I deleted the tracking program since it was quite bad)
In the end I left the old Asuka project and created the old design for "Asuka 2.0" but I won't show it here because you already had a lot of spoilers ;)
The objective here is giving this OC a meaning again - now that I don't need a VTuber model (for now) I must repurpose this character and her story. You will see this in depth in the OC redesign video.

You may have noticed by the song in this article that this painting is especially inspired by Xi's music - in particular "Ascension to Heaven". This song is quite known in rhythm games for its high BPM, but since I can't play the higher charts of any game yet (except Project RUSHER) I haven't tried it yet, so the least I can do is actually listen to it and comprehend the insane polyrhythms this song has (they're not at the level of Ka by LeaF but still quite complex and also the song is very fast). The song has inspired me for its beauty and sadness that it gives to the listener, also I thought it fits well with the lore of this new OC redesign (again, not gonna spoil this!)

Anyway, for this drawing I made sure to use lots of gradients for a better shading. Also I added a very nice glow effect to make it even more heavenly. Fun fact! The pose I used for this drawing is actually a volleyball player!

In fact, if you rotate the drawing, Asuka looks like she is playing volleyball which I find hilarious.

Anyway, I don't have much else to say. I hope you enjoyed this drawing! Feel free to theorize her lore in my guestbook if you wish!

Thank you for reading!

WAIT ACTUALLY! One last thing: I won't be very active for August but I'll be active untile the last day of July. Don't worry, I will return!

See you soon!!

-JulieYess!! (23/07/2025)