Guest Artist of the Month | Smile, everybody's watching~ by Mars_Arts

Howdy! I’m Mars (she/her, they/them)  

I’m an artist on the East coast of the United States. I’ve been drawing and doing art since I was just a wee bab that could barely hold a pencil. No special training or anything, just a love of making stuff to slap on my walls and a fatalistic obsession with mermaids (and now, cowboys) I wish I could say I’m doing something cool with school or with my career but I’m really just doing my best at this point haha~ I almost went into performing arts for uni after I was offered a few scholarships to some pretty cool schools for some programs I was in, but I decided to live vicariously through my own characters instead :3c (that stuff gets ungodly expensive even with scholarships lol).  I did a bit of mortuary work but it didn’t pan out for a couple reasons, but now I’m a cool candy lady who works at night. 

I came across snaccpop content very early on because I knew a few people who were very into it, and latched on to it in private. I don’t think I actually made anything for it however until September 2022 when I drew Jack as a cow. An amazing start, I know I know. Those are my roots and I’m proud of them.  SWWSDJ became something I latched on to very specifically due to some severe difficulties i was having around that time in my life, and as someone who’s always loved horror romance, it ticked all the boxes for me. played the original demo, played the new demo, and then the newer demo- I’ve played all the demos haha~ anyways, Jack and [Redacted] stuck with me hard and now I’m a mega simp for a dead clown man. Anyways I really like [Redacted] specifically, he is my bbygirl, my malewife, I want to lick his shoulder hair and groom him like a cat (I’m totally normal about him) 

During the stages of this piece, I wanted to go with something scary and unsettling considering this is a horror game, and also I just like spooky stuff. I like taking real world inspirations for my more serious pieces, so I took the story of Edward Mordake into mind when putting [Redacted] on Jacks back.  Mordake was a man who lived in the 19th century who had a face on the back of his head that could laugh, cry, and whisper- and supposedly whispered bad things to him at night. It’s a very interesting dive that I recommend looking into if you’re into morbid history.  

I wanted Jack to be put in a reversal of that role- Jack is the second face. He is the poison that tells himself he is the better version, he isn’t unclean like [Redacted] is, and he should do terrible things so he can have his way.  [Redacted] is the piece of him that he’s tried to throw away and forget about. No matter what though, he will always be a part of him, always weighing him down, always be right behind him and peeking just around the corner.  The rest of it is pretty cut and dry, the background is the stage, your friends are in the audience, dead eyed and unable to do anything about their circumstances. I just thought having three dead dudes would make it look extra spooky lol. You’re reliving a past you didn’t experience in the first place with Jack while losing the futures you could have had with each of the three guys.  I took advantage of the golden ratio while designing where each character was and where the focal point was- Jacks arm follows the leftmost curve and the peak of his head is the peak of the arch. 

Jack of course is the main focus, your friends are an afterthought. They’re blurry and off focus just behind Jack, while he’s holding paper cutouts that should be cute, but instead they’re bloody and showing how your loved ones were taken away from you. I wanted everything to feel unnerving, I wanted it to be just off enough to where it gives you a bit of a pit in your stomach. I hope I was able to achieve that while also giving you a piece you want to stare at and take in all the details I wiggled in there  >:3 it was a very fun piece to make and I hope yall enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it 

I don't think I can add anything else to this piece after the wonderful statement that Mars prepared for us. Their art is stunning, and we believe that we were able to really capture the essence of Sunny Day Jack here—the deception, the horror, all of those elements that make you feel unnerved and at the edge of your seat! Enjoy all of the work that Mars has done for us; we couldn't be happier with the result!

And for those of you looking for a little bit more spice... Hang on until our next wallpaper~!