Every year I upload later and later, if this trend continues next year I'll upload past the extended deadline. Also wanted to draw it as close to a year after [my last submission](/images/2523100) so I can keep using these collabs as a record of my improvement. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out (as usual), there's a little bit of jank but it's mostly just technical stuff that I need to improve on more. I'd rather leave this image as is and practice on my own time. I also experimented with making the hair shiny again, something I dropped doing a while back because I felt it wasn't working out. Think it looks OK again. If last year I was a baked potato then this year I can confidently say I'm a baked potato but with butter. Not bad.
From left to right: [JJKnott](/profiles/JJKnott), [Luther](/profiles/Luther), Gear cRuNCH, [Erasable](/profiles/Fritz94). Originally I had tried to convince both my friends, represented as JJKnott and Erasable, to draw their own images for the collab. That didn't work out. Turns out harassing them for 4 months on end isn't enough, so I'd better get started on the nagging for the 2023 collab. The theme was supposed to be summer and originally I wanted to draw the characters with sunglasses, but I backed out on that idea because I just wasn't feeling it (though a quick and dirty version exists in the source file). I got a nasty habit during 2021 of preferring less and less detail. Anyway it's time for me to disappear again until the next event. Welcome to 2022, enjoy your stay.
If you are interested, [here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/16Agn-z8j8m_Pte_1-CFyON9AV5LB2cPe/view) is the GIMP 2 source file.