I drew these while I was in a very severe state of burnout combined with Long-COVID brain fog and fatigue. I was unable to get anything done, I couldn't think straight, I had basically no creative juices flowing, and working on anything for any substantial amount of time was too exhausting and made everything worse, but I still wanted to draw something.
So, I opened up clip studio, and just started drawing, without really putting any thought into it, without worrying too much about how stuff looked, just playing around with colors and tools and effects that I wouldn't normally use. That portrait of Vae was what came out. I liked how it turned out, and it was fun to make without being too draining, so I took a crack at it again with a different character a few days later, and the next thing I knew a couple weeks had passed and I had made four of these.