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shelly and tisha

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Me starting to copy the random noises my friends make

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hello. i made a little guy

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solarballs thoughtpost. ive been thinking about this fandoms character interpretation cuz solarballs writing team has usual consistent character writing but it also has like really easy projectability ?? like u have the characters as they are and everyone in this fandom has there own little things they think about them and their own favs even when they don’t have a lot of center focus. using earth as an example here cuz hes my fav i feel like i tend to keep his “oh im the best!” side yknow in the joking way, bc i feel like thatd be a natural progression of his character. at the same time i also make him a bit more upbeat than he is in the show as after his arc he’s honestly mellowed out a bit of his energy he had in the start which MAKES SENSE i guess i just have his character in mind where hes talked about stuff and had the #healing arc. used earth as an example but its so cool to see what others designs and interpretations of the characters are too. and then theres like certain things that connect designs but everyone adds their own touch i just find that so cool. bc solarballs while yes has character consistency it isnt a character focused show, more of a plot one. i do think they keep character exploration and plot pretty equal but at the same time i feel like theres a lot u can do with the solarballs characters as is and its so cool to see that explored in this fandom. Okay thought post over hehe

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"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

Ismatu Gwendolyn, "you've been traumatized into hating reading (and it makes you easier to oppress)", from Threadings, on Substack [ID'd]

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RELEASE THE BABY!!!

friend told me to post this silly thing I made

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Awkward

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MACHINE, SHUT UP!!!

based on this thing from twitter

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MCC TCG Sky Battle Art Part 2

Blockwise, Mobility, & Combat Skill Cards Art

So guess who drew 30 cards in 2 weeks :D thumbnailing is my passion

This was heavily in collaboration with Noxcrew Creative Director Skyao who was wonderful to work with and it was truly a team effort to figure out what would be the best composition to show what each card did. There was a ton of back and forth where comps I'd drawn for certain cards got reassigned to other ones which saved a lot of time. The card names fluctuated here and there throughout the early development too since they weren't set in stone yet so some names on my iteration passes are different to what they ended up being in the end.

You can see this is where I brought back the benday dots + triangles from the booster box covert art because it was just an easy quick way to create poppy visual interest but also keep it cohesive to the overall art direction of the game assets. Skyao had created the lil standee guys for the game board creator pieces at that point and thus the characters on these cards are based on them. I still call them my cute legally distinct spidermen though -w-b

[Speed Bridge] had to be done first for the rules video so it gets its own separate comp set!

Getting into the card comps, I realised very quickly that it was WAY too many cards to keep track of, so I made a whiteboard canvas and this was where a big bulk of the brainstorming and reorganising went on. Confirmed card compositions to the left, my comp iterations to the right for Skyao to look at/pull from/draw over.

To give an idea of how much the cards evolved/got moved around, here's a breakdown for one of them:

None of my original [Build Block] comps were used, top left got rotated by Skyao and turned into [Corner Peek]. [Set Up] comps (the name was later changed to [Trip Em' Up]) got converted into [Build Block] and [Reflective Barrier] instead.

So then, Skyao drew these to help visualise for me what she wanted [Trip Em' Up] as a card to be

And I drew these to iterate on the concepts provided

I drew the left one first and Skyao pointed out how it was weird how the characters were successful, and the point of the card was to create obstacles to inhibit the opponent, so I drew the second one and that got approved. Problem was, that card comp was now conflicting with the [Reflective Barrier] chosen comp because they looked too similar - small character on bottom left, large focal point on upper right of the piece. So I ended up making a completely new composition for that card and it became this:

To me the most important thing about this project was that every card looked different from each other and you could instantly tell at a glance what it was for.

Blockwise thumbs round 1

round 2

(KYOYK stood for [Knock you off your feet] which came from [Set Up] which later became [Trip Em' Up]. There was a lot of card name changing going on X'D)

There were less revamp rounds going forward because of the recycling comps + I communicated more heavily with Skyao to figure out what the cards did + it's easier to draw movement/combat than it is object based illus XD

Mobility thumbs

Combat thumbs

The final [Spot Weakness] card is a combination of the bottom right comp I made for it with the scared dude of [Sadistic Joy] (that card name later became [Life Siphon] I think?)

Truly cannot understate how helpful the drawover and comp assistance was

[Quick Craft] was a comp Skyao made and I just made it look pretty My favourite dual composition cards are these guys

These are the cards that I pushed foreshortening and perspective the most and I'm really happy with how they came out

Just need that composition spice

But ye that's the skill cards :D

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i love yellow you can tell

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it's time to actually be multifandom!!

getting myself back to drawing after getting very sick... AGAIN.. !!

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I don’t think it’s the writing quality that’s diminished and made the newer episodes not as good as the moon revolution, I think it’s the bad pacing that’s really dragging down the show.

The planet X arc was great. Well written, exciting, had some very big and valuable themes that are really tough to tackle and (in my opinion) I think they did really well on. But omg if I see another episode that has a “Part #” at the end one more time I’m actually gonna be disappointed. I think it’s supposed to be a suspense tactic to keep interest among the viewers but all it’s doing is making it difficult for the writers to expand their narrative and put in any actual art in their work. The music in the latest episode was so so nice, it was really pulling it together for me and I would love to see more aspects in the show that have more passion and emotional impact, like that music. Maybe, better dialogue that isn’t rushed or cut down? Extending the video time so the scenes aren’t cramped? Spending more time on the animation and expressions so we don’t have as many animation errors? Stuff like that.

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gaaay

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some thoughts about the new episode because I really want to express some of them

honestly it's probably my least favorite episode of all, i don't like saying this but it's probably the weakest one from almost every aspect.

I'm okay with it being solarcards based, afterall it's something based on their own project, I will let it pass, though I think it was a pretty weird way to execute this... competition? To be fair making this basically an ad was quite unnecessary, considering how tense this supposed to be. The cards just.. took away the tention for me.

I hate how they made the moons completely stupid. Like, how they didn't realize one of the cards was about Uranus?? They were talking FACE TO FACE to X, and he told them about the name change and stuff. It just feels like they didn't find any other way to make them lose, so they just made them stupid so that X could win. They should've chosen different cards about things the moons ACTUALLY didn't know about (like Theia), because honestly this was just embarrassing. Triton not recognizing Haumea was also weird.

About Ganymede and Europa not telling anything, it just felt as if went back in their character arc. It felt SO out of place to me as well, again, as if intentionally making them dumb. Also Ganymede saying it was Planet X. like. my guy, I know you have like 1.3 braincells but YOU ARE NOT THAT STUPID. He knows about X's story, I guess I could let this one pass because he just kind of panicked and X was also called a hypothetical planet. But that's a huge stretch.

Also a random fact about Yuri Gagarin was genuinely unnecessary. They usually put the facts very smoothly into episodes, but that was just. Completely out of place, and they even repeated that. Like man, what even was that-

The episode has its cute moments, like Phobos amd Deimos getting their planet, i really loved that one it was adorable!! or the interaction between Europa and Callisto, and all of the small details like characters' expressions and stuff. But they are unfortunately not enough to cover the bad sides of this episode

this definitely feels so rushed, I REALLY wish they just gave themselves some time and didn't try to finish the arc before new year

also them promoting AI was quite dissapointing, to say the least. But I won't get into that because they did promote AI before and it would be weird for me to blame them now despite that I didn't when they did it the first time

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By @cardboardsea

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2023 isn't over yet but here's a handful of commissioned wizard designs i've done so far!