I should have shared this one sooner because I did it a few weeks ago but I wanted to keep him on my sleeve until I actually had the final result of his purpose.
Most of you know it but I have a few Sam tattoos, I'm working on a full sleeve on my left leg in fact (under the knee 'cause I hate having tattoo I cannot show off or see lol).
Even before Captain America Brave New World came out, I was planning to tattoo MCU Sam on this leg, because of everything he already meant to me, of everything I did for him. I spotted a few good sentences in trailers but I waited, obviously (and good thing I did because they didn't make the final cut LOL).
There're two sentences of the final movie that I wanted on me, because as a disabled person who lost their life to trauma it just felt so familiar.
The first one being "I wanted my life back" because that's how I feel. I broke, through the illness but mostly through people's cruelty with the weak. Everytime I was forced to face death it was never because of my health issues but rather because of people's mistakes, abuses even. I did stabilize my health, even taking the best of it, but I was never able to recover psychologically.
It left me with a shit tons of invisible scars that hurt a lot daily and prevent me from building myself back and having a new life. So of course, everyday I curse people who made me this way and everyday I wish I would get my life back. A life where I didn't have to think about everything I think about in order to keep that stability, but also a life without all these traumas, when I could just go out alone if I felt like it (Last time I did go alone, it was in 2008). I never found in me the strength to overcome these fears and there's not a single day going by without me thinking about my previous life and the rage and ressent that are born of it.
So this sentence has a deep meaning to me, it hit super hard, because I feel the same.
So as soon as I went back from the theater I doodled this in order to turn it into a tattoo. Sam doesn't cry in the movie but I keep drawing him crying, it makes me feel peace when I do. Like I said with another art, I guess this is my way to shred the tears I was never able to express.
Because of my health I'm not allowed colors (one, eventually, but not a full palette) so I keep it black and white. I added blue after I was done with the result, because I loved it so much that I wanted to post it and I needed to add life in it. The choice for blue is obvious enough. That's also why I animated it.
I love his hood and I love his eyes so I wanted that. Even if it didn't make the final cut, I wanted the long coat too.
It was kind of a one shot art, I doodled it and went with the final result, I didn't have to touch it up. I gave him a pose that makes him kind of "floating" but also looking like he was laying down, if that make sense. He's not but the pose is similar. I wanted him to hold his knees, even, but I let go of that idea before I even started drawing because it would have hidden his little body and face a bit too much. I also had the long coat falling down his shoulders, it's an aesthetic I like and something really fun to draw. I made him really round, unlike my usual chibi, to make him smooth and somewhat sympathic. Floating like the little fallen angel he is. The little angel who lost his wings.
I animated it in order to post it because I enjoy doing very simple animations, hand drawn, through photoshop, so it takes an awful amount of time but I don't wanna use after effect and stuff like that for personal work, I don't personally enjoy the process of these computer generated animations, I'd rather have a very imperfect result and do it myself frame by frame and have fun. After all, if I was drawing to impress I wouldn't draw Sam at all.
This very simple tears animation took 5 frames, then I added a second tears animation to make it less repetitive, then I added the blinking, then I added the stars and I ended up with a 20+ frames animation for such a simple thing.
It made me feel so good to do this art. It's the most personal thing I ever did and yet, one of the simplest. No overly complicated composition, not much than a few minutes doodle. So simple and yet. I guess sometimes what you need to express is just that simple.
MCU Sam went through rewriting and certainly he got nerfed, he's not nearly as developped as he was meant to be but for me it was enough, it was enough to shatter me (in a good way), to make me change and overcome my traumas (or at least considering it). Since I met this Sam, my choices are no longer driven by fear, they are my choices.
That's why the second MCU tattoo I'm getting, the next one will be "I'm making my own choices now".
This next tattoo is ready but we'll have to wait a few more months for that. When you tattoo yourself you can no longer bath for a month and I love swimming way too much to tattoo myself near Summer haha. I'm trying to finish my leg before 2026 but that will depend on money of course. I'm both very impatient and very patient 'cause while I have other tattoo projects, I enjoy working on this one a lot, I don't want it to stop already lol.
Anyway, until next time!
Enjoy~
