beryllineart

[beryllineart]

I was working on a thing about the false hydra and I kind of like how it makes you forget through song, so I decided to try out some music with choir type vocals.

That's literally the whole story.

[beryllineart]

Little Announcement

If you want to talk to Dungeon Master Flowey or see some D&D shenanigans, you can go to @undertale-plays-dnd.

Disclaimer: I came up with this idea on Halloween. It's going to be a while before I'm ready to start posting stuff from the actual campaign, but rest assured, I will be working on it when I can. I'm just really impatient, which is why I've already started the side blog.

@bogos-bint3d, @drawingdragonfly, @the-great-papyru, you guys wanted to see this, right? (not singling anyone out, these are just people who expressed interest in knowing when I made the sideblog)

[beryllineart]

You ever have one of those things that you are usually good at, but there's this one specific part you aren't and that really grates on your nerves? I guess one common example would be being good at drawing humans but having trouble with the hands. Something like that, but more personal and specific.

I have had a lot of those things that I just can't get right no matter how hard I try, but I want to talk specifically about anthropomorphizing mice. It took me months to learn how to draw mice in a way where walking both on two legs and on four seemed natural. I watched The Rescuers and the Rats of Nimh so many times, pausing so I could sketch the mice in different poses. I looked up pictures of real mice and studied their skeletal structures. It took long enough that I started to consider this specific aspect of art my personal nemesis.

Until one day it clicked, and I found a way to anthropomorphize mice that actually looked like a mouse, not a human with a mouse head (I'm looking at you, Great Mouse Detective). Then drawing comics became my nemesis (specifically the panels, I suck at sequential visual storytelling) until one day that clicked too.

And this is my very roundabout way of saying my current nemesis is celtic/medieval sounding music, and if I ever post a piece of music that goes in that category that means I have won a war.

[beryllineart]

Thinking about how much fun it would be to have Flowey DM a game of Dungeons and Dragons. Technically the vote's not done yet, but quite a few people have expressed interest in seeing the Undertale gang play D&D, so I've been reading up on the rules, working on a cohesive art style, creating characters and so on.

Like, I homebrewed a "living skeleton" species modifier so Sans and Papyrus can play skeletons that aren't as weak as the enemy skeletons, and they can choose a species from the player's handbook because Papyrus likes the human +1 for every ability, while Sans is partial to the halfling "lucky" trait, but they also get unique weaknesses and strengths because they are also skeletons.

I wish I was better at drawing maps though...

[beryllineart]

how do you make your music?

if you don’t mind sharing your secrets 🧐

How do I make music? Well, I open Musescore, choose a couple of instruments (3 or 4), decide on a key signature and a time signature, then I put notes on the sheet music until I’m done. And that’s it. Now you can make your own music!

Just kidding. (This is going to be long, but there's music, so...)

What I do to make music is I listen to a lot of music, and I take notes on what effects the rhythm, tempo, instruments, and note choices have on me. My brain is wired in such a way that it can’t tune out music unless it has words, so I can focus on the harmonies and underlying stuff besides the melody relatively easily, but if you’re the type who can put on classical music and somehow ignore it, you might have to train yourself to listen to the “less interesting” parts.

After a break (so I don't have someone else's music stuck in my head), I decide what sort of music I want to make. I pick an adjective (soulful, sweet, sad, whimsical, energetic, silly, adventurous, etc) and use that to help me pick my instruments, my key and time signature, and my general tempo. For example, if I want silly music, I might use the xylophone. If I’m trying for a sad or soulful feel, a slow waltz might be just the thing. The timpani’s deep voice will give you a different kind of adventure than the tambourine’s innocent ring.

I also have to decide what I’m depicting in my music. Am I creating a theme for a place, or a person? Will this music be about a singular event or an entire journey? Sometimes I can’t answer these questions until I’m done composing, but when I can answer these questions I can turn my instruments into characters. Oh, the horn symbolizes a royal figure, but what’s this? A violin peasant dares to enter and challenge the king? It turns out the peasant has a sad backstory and is coming for revenge, and there’s a “fight” where the two are locked in battle, the horn playing with a sinister tone and the violin playing with a more hopeful one. Moments of silence, who has survived? A single note to end the piece tells you the violin peasant, though battered and tired, is victorious. Making music is fun!

Most of the time I just follow these steps, but if I’m really having trouble coming up with a melody, I have a special trick. I use a cipher to turn regular words into musical letters (this is how I celebrated Dictionary Day, by the way).

How about I show you how I make music with the word “dragonfly”? Here's what it sounds like if all I do is translate the letters into music notes.

Now that I have something down on paper, I have ideas on what vibe I want, what instruments to use, and even what rhythm is needed. Sometimes I completely change things if I can think of something better until the original little melody is practically non-existent.

The fun part about this is, if I had chosen to use say, an electric piano and a trumpet, I would have made a completely different piece of music, even though it would have been inspired by the same configuration of musical letters.

I don't need to use the cipher very often, but if I have no music in my head it acts as a catalyst and gets my mind going. Plus, it's fun to imagine that I'm putting a little secret message into my music.

A lot of how I make music comes from 6 years of playing violin in my school orchestra, so I have picked up a few things, but I don't know anything about chords and stuff (and music theory vocab goes straight over my head). You can kind of tell I'm a violinist with my tendency to focus on melody and inability to focus on more than one instrument at a time, ha ha!

[beryllineart]

My Brother is Awesome!

Guys, my brother and I composed a piece of music together and it sounds so good! I composed the melody on the flute and he did the piano accompaniment.

He's so talented, I'm so jealous of the way he can put down the harmony and the chords. He says he's amazed that I can come up with melodies. I'm glad we've got strengths in different things, it makes it a lot more fun to create together. We both suck at naming things though...

[beryllineart]

Ummmm.... soooo.... I kind of went crazy and made DnD characters for the Undertale gang... and I've started a campaign idea in my head... and I want to make this idea a reality.

I'm considering making a sideblog dedicated to Undertale playing DnD where people can ask Dungeon Master Flowey questions, suggest NPC's or special items, and see a story influenced by the roll of the dice. (Like, literally. If someone gets a nat 1 and loses their soul or something, I will allow it to happen.) It would look something like this, but with more polished art.

Does that sound fun, or should I just post the character sheets here and leave it at that?

There will be DnD/Undertale shenanigans regardless, I just think if I did a sideblog I could make a longer story without feeling weird about it since this is my general blog.

[beryllineart]

Birdtober 7

I remember seeing roadrunners summer 2023. Two juveniles and an adult.

[beryllineart]

Triple Holiday!

I'm sorry, I wanted an excuse to draw Sans as Cursive, and this way I was able to combine the very important holidays of Knock Knock Joke Day and Magic Day. I like Minecraft and I couldn't think of any better cursive jokes.

Oh yeah, I guess it's Halloween too. Happy Halloween!

I'm getting a really dumb idea where Cursive is actually Sans's DnD character (squishy wizard, of course) and he speaks in cursive whenever he casts a spell. And Papyrus's headless horseman is a fighter who (of course) has a guard/soldier background. It's an au that the characters get to make up for themselves. Maybe I should come up with DnD characters for other Undertale characters as well. Would Alphys like TTRPGs?

[beryllineart]

How2Draw Papyrus

How2Draw-- Papyrus

Undertale and its characters belong to Toby Fox

*Sets pencil down... backs away slowly...* I cannot believe that I actually managed to do a How2Draw of Papyrus. And he looks so good! There's only one extra drawing because I was not about to push my luck.

I haven't done a How2Draw since August, but this is one of the most notoriously difficult Undertale characters to draw. And now I have a cheat sheet to help me draw him right!

I'm feeling good about my art right now, I think I needed a win.

[beryllineart]

I have learned some things about myself. 1) I find it really hard to compose anything to be longer than a minute (a minute and a half is pretty much my max) and 2) Everything I do sounds so relaxed! Whyyyy?! I don't dislike it, but sometimes I want to make something that can cause excitement and adrenaline by listening to it.

Heh, you could say this is an artist's study in a way. I listened to the How to Train Your Dragon soundtrack and took notes on the structure of a few of the songs. Basically stuff like "quick violin notes in background" and "brass instruments here to provide punch" and stuff like that. Then I implemented those things in this piece.

Oh, and 3) I suck at putting in dynamics and accents and staccatos and stuff. It's hard enough to figure out the right notes and rhythms, okay?

[beryllineart]

Facial Expressions: Sans

Hey look, it's some of my first drawings of Sans from all the way back in March! They're... kind of terrible, aren’t they? I've kinda been beating myself up on how bad my art is compared to other people lately, so it was good to look back and realize that at least I'm better than I was only 7 months ago. I still kind of suck, but at least I don't suck as much as I used to.

Also, can we please please please make the blue and yellow gradient thing for Sans's eye more common, because it looks so freaking cool. Plus, yellow is a bright and warm color so it's more likely to help draw people's eyes to it without you having to make his eye all flamey.

Maybe I should do more of these with other Undertale characters and some of my OCs. Of course, you would have to see the nightmare fuel my first attempt at drawing Papyrus was...

[beryllineart]

Alphys's Gamer Arc- part 2

<PREV, NEXT>

I had to color that second page using my laptop's trackpad... you aren't getting more detailed than that, sorry.

[beryllineart]

👃-Nose 🐘-Elephant 🧛-Vampire 🐘-Elephant 🌹-Rose 👩‍🎓-Graduate 🐙-Octopus 👃-Nose 👃-Nose 🍎-Apple 👩‍🎓-Graduate 🍦-Ice-cream 🚐-Van 🛗-Elevator 🟨-Yellow 🐙-Octopus ☂️-Umbrella 🦄-Unicorn 🥔-Potato

*runs*

I suck at drawing Berdly... but I really wanted to rick roll him. He's definitely the type who would be fooled into clicking on a rick roll link, but he prides himself on being too smart to be fooled. Pride comes before a fall, after all.

[beryllineart]

Should Have Been Me

Guys, this comic made me cry while I was making it. You don't get how crazy that is, I was listening to a comedy podcast and I was still tearing up. Anyways, this is my 66th post, so I wanted to do something Gaster related and decided to do something from my Uncle Gaster au.

Undertale belongs to Toby Fox

I'm gonna analyze my own characters now ('cause I want to) but if you are curious about this au, feel free to send me an ask!

Okay, so this comic was originally going to be about Dana and Gaster having a fight after the death of their brother, but I couldn't figure it out, and I realized that that didn't really fit the idea I have for either of them. In fact, Gaster has had a shell around him for most of his life, and he only lets people through (like Dana) after it breaks or weakens. This is one of those times.

Since the idea of this au is that Gaster separated himself from his family, cut off all contact with them, etc, how does him opening up and being vulnerable with his sister end up in separation? Well, this is actually one of the healthiest moments in their relationship, when they were feeling the same way and were just grieving together.

The main problem is personality differences. Dana and Gaster are polar opposites. Dana is cheerful, extroverted, optimistic and confident. Gaster is quiet, very introspective and doesn't open up easily. Roman was a good bridge between the two, and he would often encourage Dana to be a little more thoughtful and would teach Gaster how to just have fun (Roman's personality is a lot closer to Dana's, but since he's closer in age to Gaster he spends a lot more time around his brother and has learned the ins and outs of what makes him comfortable).

Anyways, Dana (and their parents) seem to move on too fast after Roman's death. They adjust to this new life and they start being happy again, but Gaster's not ready for that yet. He's still got a bad case of survivor's guilt, plus he and Roman were really, really close. He needs more time to adjust and accept, but more importantly, he needs time to grieve and he needs someone he can talk to. Unfortunately, he doesn't feel like he can talk to anyone in his family because they are all happy now, and they wouldn't understand how he feels. (They would totally be down to talk, by the way.) He starts to feel like he's forced to cheer up and act like everything's okay.

Eventually the sting of Roman's death fades a bit, but Gaster can't fully find closure because he never fully mourned. He can't handle being around his family anymore, so he just leaves and cuts off all communication. (There have been a few fights between him and his sister and parents that helped this decision as well.)

I don't think Gaster ever hated his family though. That's not in his nature. He gets angry at and hates himself. Dana tends to get angry at other people, and ooh boy, when Gaster didn't attend their parents' funerals, she was mad... She and the rest of her family did nothing wrong, so she doesn't understand why Gaster would punish them like this. What she doesn't realize is that Gaster thinks there's something wrong with him, and he doesn't feel that he deserves to be a part of his family anymore. He's punishing himself.

Anyways, here's the other post I made about Uncle Gaster, and sorry if this was a bit too wordy, I just love overanalyzing these sorts of things. You should see me feverishly figuring out every aspect of my Steamtale Undyne, why she hates her prosthetic arm but wears it anyway, how her childhood impacts her captaining style (and how she treats Monster Kid because of it) and... alsdjf;alkdfj, I'm rambling again.

[beryllineart]

Animation vs Undertale

October 22nd is National Color Day. About a year ago, I binge watched all 3 seasons of Animations vs Minecraft, and after that YouTube recommended that I watch AvG's playthrough of Undertale. Alan Becker's Papyrus voice is still my favorite version of him.

So yeah, if it wasn't for these goofballs and their ability to literally bring tears to my eyes, I might not have discovered Undertale. (Speaking of which, how about that last episode of the Influencer's Arc? So good to see Green mending things.)

If things look a bit off, sorry, I didn't have internet and so I couldn't look up references.

[beryllineart]

I'm working on composing video game boss music. Choose a trait and I'll make a comic and a song.

Usually I have a little something besides a poll to catch people's attention... but it doesn't really do anything, even when I leave it up for a week. So we're just doing a barebones, 1 day poll and if I don't get any votes, oh well.