The Drawfee Channel

It is so easy to get lost on YouTube, trawling through the endless hours of content and before you know it, half an hour, an hour, a day has passed. Throwing up recommendations onto my home feed, it is actually a surprise the wonderful Drawfee Channel didn’t pop-up sooner. Covering multiple passions of mine: drawing, Pokémon, gaming, anime, each episode sees the channel’s hosts participate in bonkers drawing challenges by suggestion of the community.

Each challenge typically allocates three of a possible four hosts ten minutes with which to draw their creation, with a rendered outcome presented at the end. As might be predicted by now if you are a regular reader of this blog, I was drawn especially to the Pokémon themed videos. Tasked with transforming a random-number generated Pokémon into a Dark Souls boss, Skarmory was first up. Perhaps ideal for this challenge, Dark Souls known for its medieval style (and insane difficulty), Jacob has done a fantastic job of adapting the creature for this purpose. Accentuating the bladed wings whilst incorporating a shield element upon the tail, you can imagine various lunges and sweeping attacks of which would require quick evasion to avoid certain death. The eyes especially procure a menacing persona, peering through its facial armour.

Where YouTube can let down is with the commentary. Being a visual and auditory medium, it only takes an irritating voice or dull conversation to detract from otherwise interesting content. Thankfully hosts Jacob, Julia, Nathan and Karina all have voices that don’t grate (from a British perspective), whilst the banter that flows during the drawing segments is funny and entertaining.

Stepping away from Pokémon for a moment, a challenge I particularly like saw the fusion of Disney, gaming and anime characters. With the former two categories selected for Jacob to fuse, Stitch and Master Chief were proffered. The end result is brilliant, extracting key characteristics of each, Stitch’s big ears and nose, Master Chief’s helmet and gun, and blending them into a bizarre Hawaiian trooper. I hope that suit is air-conditioned.

Often overlooked in the Pokémon series is the design of the characters, more specifically the gym leaders. Offering fantastic imagination with each tied in style to their chosen type, they also boast reams of personality. Here the hosts were tasked with drawing themselves as a gym leader and in a twist to the standard format, were given free-reign on how long they could spend. Selecting the Steel type, I love how Nathan combined elements of each of the six members of his team into his attire. Adorning a Perrserker helmet, Excadrill pauldron and Bisharp gauntlets for instance, the barbarian theme is ideally suited for steel. Producing a stunning end result embracing the Dragon type, Flygon and Dragapult are circling Karina, readying an assault. The bold colours and composition are visually striking, whilst the ruffled collar, decorative stripes and fanged facial mask are all in-keeping with the theme.

With hundreds of videos in the challenges section, and many more besides, The Drawfee Channel is a great source of entertainment and inspiration. If you are a fan of any of the mentioned topics, or drawing in general, then this is certainly a channel to check out.