Tickle Artists #82: Interview with YDalfgan

Hi, I am YDalfgan! I have been creating tickle content for 14 years, but I mostly started to create tickle art for the public to see in 2023. I usually create tickle comics with a lot of focus on story / setting / dialogue.

2) What techniques do you use to draw? Do you have a favorite artist that inspires you?

I use Koikatsu as 3d model software, but do some post-processing via Photoshop. I also sometimes draw full 2d art. I draw with my mouse (I know, I am weird :P), and I usually don’t sketch at all (suuuper weird!). I just instantly draw the final image, but sometimes I have to redraw one single line 50 times to get it right.

There are a lot of artists and art which I use for inspiration, but the artist “F/Mくすぐり定食” is probably my greatest inspiration with his f/m tickle comics.

3) How much was the passion for drawing born in you? And the one for the tickle?

I have always been a very creative guy. I loved to draw as a child, which turned into doodling during boring lectures, and finally into a passion and hobby. I also like other creative activities like writing, coding and video creating/editing, maybe one day I’ll be confident enough to also use them to create a greater variety of tickle content.

As for tickling, I don’t know. I developed a tickle fetish at a fairly young age, and it has been a great outlet for my creativity.

4) What are the tickling scenarios that you prefer to draw?

My favorite scenarios are:

• a tickle situation in which the ticklee fights against the tickling, but ultimatively gives in
• the “unexpected” tickling, be it as a hidden weakness discovered, or as “secret weapon” to turn a fight
• I also like playful/teasing tickle scenes, in which the lee likes being tickled but is too ashamed to admit it

With that being said: Since I really like to create story-driven comics with dialogues, I create a big variety of scenarios (like the classic interrogation one). Sometimes I get so caught up in creating a situation or story though, one might think I will forget to add tickling at the end 😛

5) What are the aspects of tickling that you intend to represent with your art? Example: the laughing, the wriggling, the relationship between tickler and ticklee?

I really like to aim for “realistic struggling“, especially in scenarios in which the ticklee is not restrained. I also focus a lot on facial expressions, and sometimes the relationship/dynamic between ler and lee.

6) Online there are countless photos and videos of tickling sessions. In your opinion, what do illustrations offer more than images of real life?

My answer as an artist is: Infinite possibilities means you can give your creativity wings.

• Monster girls (slime girls, harpies, …) or tickle androids? Check.
• Weird tickle machines? Check.
• Being way more sadistic with the scenario than you would ever dare in real life? Check.
• Overexaggerating things like facial expressions and reactions? Check.
• Also the lee is fully “customizable”. You want them to have a certain hair color, a certain reaction, a certain weakness like a body spot or tickle tool? Check.

I guess when you’ve tasted the freedom of infinite possibilities, reality sometimes seems a little dull and one-dimensional.

7) In your opinion, what makes tickling so interesting for fans of this phenomenon?

A lot of things. As content creator it still amazes me how many facets this fetish has. People who prefer a certain body part to be tickled, or certain genders for the lee and ler role, for some the consensual (or the lack thereof) is important, …

In the end, I think it’s some kind of “soft BDSM” thing. Having control or giving up control, while the brain still classifies it as something fun and positive because people are laughing. Or enjoying the sadistic thrill while being able to say “hey, it’s just tickling”.

To answer more broadly why do I think people are into tickling, I think very few people CHOOSE to be into tickling, it’s just how their brains are wired. Which might lead into a philosophical discussion about free will – but that would go beyond the scope of this interview. 🙂

8) What are your works of which you are most proud?

Probably the two comics “Marin’s Weakness” and “Nagatoro’s Weakness”. I do think I did a great job with everything (story telling, dialogue, teasing/playful tickling, natural body movements, and all that with two very popular characters).

Besides that I am still improving every month, so usually the most recent work is the one I like most 😉

9) Do you have any particular artistic goals for the future?

Quite a few.

• I’d like to expand my reach (but in an organic way, not by creating tons of stuff I dislike)
• I’d like to improve my art (I keep discovering ways to do so)
• I’d like to keep up my weekly uploads on my Fanbox/Patreon accounts

And all that

• without burning out or losing the joy of creating
• without losing my individual way (like by only using the same three popular characters and putting them into the same three tickle poses).

Ambitious goals, and there will be compromises, but I think it will be a fascinating journey.

10) Do you think AIs will end up enriching or impoverishing the art of tickling representations?

Probably both. In 2024 we’re at a very interesting point in time where the hype around AI might start to subside a bit. As the internet is flooded with AI-generated content, all future models will be trained on “biased” data and slowly drift off in random directions. And since we still don’t know exactly how these models even work internally, it will be hard to fix this. So maybe we have already reached the peak of AI art creation for now – but as the saying goes, “it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future”.

AI tools are already helping artists all over the world, and maybe things like drawing backgrounds or in 3D modeling creating simple assets (like 10 different stones or trees) are great tasks to automate. I think in an ideal world, artists would do what they love to do, and all the annoying and tedious tasks would be done by AI.

About tickle art specifically, there will probably be some kind of coexistence, just as some people like to cook a meal themselves, and others prefer to heat up a preprocessed meal from a can or a freezer. The former one will always be something special and fully customizable by the creator, but never underestimate convenience. I personally hope it will still take a little until AI can create tickle comics with speech bubbles and a coherent story, so I hope my content will stay relevant for a few more years 😛

In the long run, I think humanity itself will face some tough questions, like whether it really wants to replace itself with something that is smarter and faster and can create 100 images in seconds. This will probably only exacerbate the growing meaning crisis.

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