Artist's commentary
I tried setting the world to dark mode
It's comfortable and easy on the eyes.
https://chanomach.fanbox.cc/posts/2485139
From blog post:
Social media sites, PCs, smartphones and stuff like that call it different things but they all let you have a dark mode with white text on a black background, don't they? "Apparently you could apply it to the world too so I gave it a try," is the idea here. Everything except the main content (in this case, the boy she likes) is displayed in white lines on a black background. Like the original dark mode, it's easy on the eyes and conserves energy, so it's nice. When you hear "the world in dark mode", you think of falling into darkness, but there may be benefits like this too. I think that, but then again if this really did happen it would probably drive me mad too.
The working title was "World enveloped by darkness", but I figured a title that explains the situation would make it easier to get into people's heads. To explain it better, I also had the idea of having an on-off switch in a corner of the classroom, but that would raise questions about whose perspective this is from so I gave up on it.
Whenever I end up drawing these kinds of situations where a boy and a girl have feelings for each other, the girl pretty much always turns out this way but I'm always a little lost with what to do on the boy's side. I don't have any kind of "I want to do this", so I just try to make it as best I can for the viewer's perspective, but I don't really know how. I think that if I give him too much of a unique appearance it would make it harder to project into him, so I figure that instead of making him super handsome or anything, it's better to go with just an average, tidy boy like one you can see anywhere, but I'm not sure if that's the right call.