#....ignore how low quality the image is lmao

[gogomeaty]

I hate when I want to reblog something but the option is unable, it made me feel like this everytime,,,, and they're good posts and i can't reblog them y y

[yzashaven]

✰ ━━━ how they show affection for you <3

FEATURING scaramouche, tartaglia, xiao, albedo, thoma, kazuha, alhaitham, cyno x gn!reader

WARNINGS some are prob ooc 😭

NOTE (omfg these images are so low quality LMAO) on my past blogs, i usually only write nsfw so this is like... a change of pace? sort of... anyways hope you enjoy, likes and rbs are ofc appreciated! also, referring to wanderer as scaramouche since his name is player dependant

okay so hear me out when i say he seems like the type to take you to places with the prettiest views (shout out to his birthday voiceline) whether it be views of the sunset, a flower field, an ocean or beach view... as long as it's a pretty site to see, he'll take you there! scaramouche loves the way the places give him a peaceful feeling, and the way that it's just the two of you there? he's in paradise and heaven combined.

a bit similar to scara, tartaglia would take you to places. and by places i mean his homeland, snezhnaya, for the snow and to see his family. his little brother, teucer is certainly very fond of you, and tartaglia loves to watch you spend time with his siblings. he's such a family oriented guy... another thing he'd do is cook delicious meals for you! ranging from simple snacks to your personal favorites, and definitely some snezhnayan delicacies~

xiao is sweet to his lover, no doubt. but that doesn't mean he'll ignore his duties as an adeptus and focus on them. he expresses his love by protecting you... and maybe sharing his almond tofu. need his help? call out for him and he'll be there in an instant. also this whole love thing is very new to xiao, soo he's not used to things like hugging and kissing, yk those kinda stuff but he'll get used to it eventually. he does really like your company though, brings a smile to his face.

we all know albedo is a very amazing alchemist, he can make basically anything within a few hours or even minutes. he'd use his skill and powers to give you sentimental itemsㅡ such as a bouquet of flowers that never wither or ones that glow in your favorite color. If you don't really like flowers, don't worry, he can make whatever it is that you want! oh you want a dragon? he'll try and will come back to you with a small, cute, non-hostile looking one that protects you <3

he is sometimes busy due to work for the kamisato clan and being the "fixer" in inazuma, but he never forgets to make time for you! his love language is definitely quality time as he loves to just relax and accompany you wherever. another way thoma shows affection is through doing errands and other things for you such as cooking, cleaning around in your teapot realm, curing for your wounds if you ever get hurt, and maybe doing a commission or two of yours!

kaedehara kazuha... he's such a romantic man when it comes to his lover. he'll write you a poem literally every single day and compliment you every minute. kazuha also likes to run his hands through your hair as he whispers sweet nothings in your ear while you watch the sun set together at the best vantage point in wherever it is you're traveling at. he also definitely introduced you to his mom(beidou) so he takes you with him on the crux for fun adventures together! or just taking naps as the boat sets sail.

as the akademiya's scribe, alhaitham is often busy attending to those missions along with his personal investigations and other matters. so to prevent any lost time, he takes you with him. you're quite the strong fighter yourself so there won't be any problems, right? and if something bad does happen, he's your savior. despite talking sharply at times about how you weren't being careful or being reckless, he still loves you and will be happy that you're safe. alhaitham would reassure you about that too. also you study together at the akademiya library sometimes, he really likes having you around :3

cyno is a man of few words but reassures you about how much he loves you and would quite literally tear apart, limb from limb anyone that tries to harm you. cyno keeps a close eye on you especially when he senses danger is near, he wouldn't even wish for anything bad to happen to you. as the general mahamatra, fighting is practically his specialty which is why he uses that fighting experience and knowledge to protect you even if you tell him that you can handle yourself, he insists as he doesn't want to risk losing you like that.

[sportyclown]

how sawamura, miyuki, yuki, and kuramochi text (friends + s/os)

will most likely do a part 2 with more boys at a later date! these got freakishly long because i am, at my core, a very mad. also might revisit as i get re-familiar with the characters, i just had this idea floating around in my head. also the way these got pro

sawamura eijun

no matter who he texts, it’s always extremely extra. not only does he always give more information than you asked for – ex. if you text him wya? he will give you a play by play of his entire route or something

 he also uses tons of emoticons. and yes I do mean emoticons, baby boy has a flip phone. ifhe does eventually get a smart phone, then this boy overuses tf out of emojis. he’s the sort of person that sees someone use a combination of emojis he likes and then tries to copy them, but uses it completely incorrectly, but its v cute.

if you send him a meme, he will respond with an unnecessary amount of hahas. 

when he’s texting his lil bae, they’re always on his mind so he ofc texts them every thought that comes to his mind! when he sees something that reminds him of you, he won’t hesitate to share it with you. 

if you have been together for a long time, then we will definitely text you words of affirmation and be very honest/blunt about how he feels about you. he’s also always sure to ask you about your day - and he seriously cares. but i still i feel like with a s/o he would prefer facetime to texting just because he likes to see you :)

overall, a very adorable texter and his enthusiasm is just as contagious when texting as it is in person. he’s kind of clueless so he doesn’t pick up on subtext. so be blunt, just like he will be with you~

kuromochi youichi

my bias might be showing here, but I feel like he is one of the most well-adjusted boys in terms of being ready for a serious relationship tbh (at least post-high school). i mean we all saw that he regularly corresponded with wakana wish that were me lmao

i think he would most often use proper capitalization, but not to the point where he uses a period after every text

would send his friends news articles about his favorite fighting games where u like gaming or not

a meme fiend in general. the sort of person who uses reaction images of people he knows. (if you’re dating, he would still have a stash of funny pics/screenshots of you on ft, but he’d ofc only use them with you <3). his convos with his friends are rarely serious

 i don’t think he’d be the type to text haha out loud, but he does use LOL on occasion. with close friends/his lil bae he might send a voice memo of him laughing hysterically if you send him something REALLY funny. ugh my annoying king <3

unlike eijun he’s the king of being perceptive / picking up subtext. 

similarly, i do think he’s pretty reliable, but for friends i feel like he might make a lil bit of a stink lmao. like lets say a friend wants him to pick something up for them, he might play like he won’t do it then miraculously shows up with the requested item. its giving tsundere vibes on the low.

with his partner: i feel like he would use emojis when he’s trying to be ~cute~. i think with a established partner he’d be pretty flirty still but he’s v much whipped for his partner so its way more mushy than it would be early in the relationship.

yes your name has hearts/stars in his phone. mans is a SAP for you

his love language is more quality time imo, so I think he values time spent with you over texting time. so a lot of your texts might be asking you to come over to hang out / get a meal or vice versa

like eijun he wants to hear about YOU, and is very supportive and good at advice when he wants to be. he can be goofy but this is how he shows you he cares/sees you as more than a friend

he’s a blushy/shy boy with his s/o esp early in the relationship, so he might be hesitant or nervous to say “i love you” or anything like that outright, but you know anyway, which just makes the times when he does outright say it that much sweeter.

miyuki kazuya

i mean it goes without saying that this man is snarky. he’s not a meme king himself but he enjoys when people send them to him and will usually play off the meme to make his own jokes.

i feel like he also likes deep-fried memes or the very abstract, post-modern memes. miyuki is good at making other people laugh, but he has a generally very-off brand humor and the things that make him cackle hardest are either at someone else’s expense (very similar to kuramochi, so they bond a lot over that) or just indiscernible without access to a huge layer of context/background

saves the reaction photos kuramochi sends him, but doesn’t usually use them. but seeing an ugly pic of eijun yelling never fails to make him grin LMAO

i think he also texts A LOT about baseball, even more so than these other baseball dummies. texts his teammates a lot of articles he reads or clips from games/cool plays. this is mostly about texts, but in terms of social media I think miyuki uses twitter/instagram the most especially for baseball related reasons, while kuramochi uses snapchat the most. 

he probably texts a lot about baseball as well, both seriously and playfully

i can see him using hahas and LOLs in equal measure, but he would also utilize the haha reaction if he had an iphone. this boy does value his wit so he would definitely have commentary about any memes or jokes he’s sent

you won’t win a joke war against him, he will definitely one-up whatever you send him with either a one-liner or another joke. how tf does he do it?

definitely ignores people/conversations if he really wants to - but ofc he never does that to his BAE

if miyuki give you a dry one-line response...he’s not interested at all or he’s feeling frustrated about something else. but when he’s really happy? he will text his friends all the time and spam them! i see him as someone who enjoys texting when he has the attention span/state of mind for it. and when he’s texting his s/o his texting gets even more ~flavorful~

wit his lil bae: i don’t think miyuki would switch it up much w his s/o. is probably even more teasing with you over text than he is with his friends, which is saying something.

like talking with you just by nature of you being his partner. prob prefers texts to facetime because text kinda allows for maximum snark

he LIVES for you guys’ witty back and forth 

if he’s traveling for work or something, will definitely relish in you guys binge texting a tv show or something but just making funny commentary (or he’ll just send you funny commentary to get a reaction)

 he can dish it and he’s also not a super sensitive guy so he can take it tenfold from you as well. nothing y’all wouldn’t be used to when talking in person!

sometimes when texting him you’ll want to beat his a*s because he can be so cheeky but its endearing in a way. he definitely adds emojis to the end of his more annoying messages to give it that loveable vibe (and it works ofc, we love u miyuki)

he’s kinda clingy on the low so i think he’d prefer a partner that’s more open with their affection via text than he is. he would live for your random ilys or whatver throughout the day. also would not mind at all if you updated him on your actions throughout the day or sent him snaps - might not be able to respond to everything, but will react and appreciate it. very likely to make jokes about whatever you’re doing.

would also apologize over text. he’s not always used to apologizing can be awkward about it, so text makes it easier for him.

he would use emojis w you in a joking/ironic way. would absolute use those dumb but genius emoji combinations

yuki tetsuya

i’m literally cracking up thinking about texting him. he is one of my ultimate baes but im sorry i just know he texts dry asf. but its part of his charm!

has a flip phone. either never upgrades or gets the chunkiest most basic android if he is forced to

the thing is this man thinks that he is infusing all his texts with, like, tajin level seasoning, when in reality its pepper

uses punctuation. always. exclamation marks are used sparingly to express excitement.

but i can’t get the image out of my head of an upset tetsuya texting you a simple angry emoji (or the angry emoticon >:( LOL) if he’s reeeeeeally mad. but its v cute i can’t take him seriously. i just want to give him a hug <3

 but you know what he is so PASSIONATE about whatever he’s talking about that his passion bleeds into his text through sheer quantity of words and depth of thought. ultimately, all his conversations end up being extremely flavorful in terms of content. he is surprisingly good at having deep conversations over text.

he’s better at holding conversations with more extroverted personalities, truthfully.

he’s another one who sends random things to people when he thinks about them. miyuki of course gets so many texts/thoughts about shogi. if you get a random haiku, poem, or quote from testu, that means you’re blessed enough to be in his inner circle! he definitely thought of you when he read it and and wants you to respond!

with bae: he doesn’t really change up his texting style tbh, but he has a stronger outward reaction to what YOU text in response.

definitely the type to smile almost imperceptibly at his phone as he texts you, even if you send him something like “hey i’m at the store, want anything?”

he’s not great as verbal affection early in the relationship, so you’ll have to discern his love/affection. however baby boy is NOT afraid to just straight up say he loves you, he does it all the time and early.

he’s KNOWN for being reliable and responsible, so he will be at your beck and call when he’s able to for anything you need, but his heart is also warmed by the thought of you reciprocating that care. if your texts show him you’re thinking of him just like he does too. he’s very gentle and sweet, and checks up on you when he’s able to see if you need anything at all.

he might be reliable, but that doesn’t mean that he’s the quickest guy to respond to texts. he’s a busy guy, and he doesn’t think about his phone all the time, but he will always get back to you (bae does not play when it comes to completing things).

if they came up with a shogi game for gamepidgeon and tetsu had an iphone, your phone probably would be spammed with requests for games lol.

this is my first time doing headcanons like this so please let me know what you think or give me tips on how to improve! I really enjoying thinking about it so I hope to do more in the future <3

[non-plutonian-druid]

I adore your tarot card series, your art is amazing and one of my favorites in the fandom. I have a strange (possibly unanswerable) question, but do you have any tips on emulate Gabriel Bá's style? I've tried to, but it always feel like a poor imitation. I feel like yours emulates his amazingly, while also being unique to your own. Sorry this is probably confusing, and feel free to ignore if it doesn't make sense.

awww thank you so much!!! honestly I feel like I'm still figuring out how to mimic his style. but! I love talking about how I make art, and what I think about when making art, so Anon, I hope you are ready for this extremely long and convoluted reply under the cut

first of all, reference! obviously lmao. I just googled around for pictures from the comics. but if you have something specific you're trying to draw you should definitely get the closest equivalent. 

[ID: a screenshot of a canvas on Procreate. It has a large upright rectangle surrounded by various panels from The Umbrella Academy comics. End ID.]

This is my reference for the tarot series. I really ought to have more, and make tailored reference sheets for each card, but I’m lazy lol

Once you have some reference (don't be afraid to decide that some of your reference isn't that helpful, or that you need more), you can get to ~analysis~

Basically, this is just getting a feel for what the artist does that makes their style distinctive, especially when its different from your own. Things to look out for include proportions, amount of detail, the way eyes, hair, hands, and clothes are drawn, and any other distinctive features of note (like how Bá often exaggerates the chin). A good place to start is by tracing the form!

lets use this picture of vanya as an example (sorry about the quality lol)

[ID: a panel from The Umbrella Academy, of the White Violin playing and tuning her violin. End ID.]

Tracing the white violin’s form is fairly straightforward since she’s not wearing any clothes, but even so this is not just an outline- you want to mark the pieces of her body (such as head, shoulders, ribs, stomach, hips) and how they fit together, like for example:

[ID: the same image as above with the opacity lowered. A red line tracing the outline and joints of her body has been drawn over the image. End ID.]

(I also marked how much of her head that her face takes up, which can be helpful too.)

from this, you can learn that Bá has drawn her with a large head, small shoulders, a torso too wide for her shoulders, and a very long torso- very long ribs in particular, as her stomach and hips are more traditionally proportional. Doing this more times, with more characters - being careful to outline the body under the clothes, not the clothes themselves - can give you a feel for how Bá generally draws proportions. Based on my own experience, I can tell you that the “torso disproportionally wide to the shoulders” thing is pretty typical, and that though he does tend toward longer torsos, this is pretty long even for him.

If you want to get more specific, you can. for example, you can use this method to examine how his faces are proportioned - how how much space in the head that the face takes up, how much area the eyes take up versus the nose, whether there is more space in the forehead or the chin and so on. 

[ID: a panel of The Umbrella Academy showing a closeup of Vanya’s face. The opacity has been lowered, and the basics of the forms of her face have been sketched over in red. Arrows note which line indicates her hairline, that the line of her brows is used to determine the size of her face, and have sectioned off how much of her face is taken up by her eyes versus her mouth and nose. End ID.]

This can vary depending on the character, but I’ve noticed that he usually draws ears as very small, sharp, and low on the head with minimal defined shape, and when he draws hair, he usually draws it in one big shape with minimal interior lines.

 You can also use it to figure out how he draws hands - some specifics that I’ve picked up are that his hands are usually more realistic than mine, and that the meat of the palm, where the thumb connects to the hand, is generally very pronounced and is also generally a round shape (I usually draw this area fairly pointy).

Figuring out how Bá (or any artist) generally proportions a character can go a long way to making your own imitation feel more accurate. Another good, though more straightforward, thing is to examine and imitate how he draws details - how he draws t shirts if you’re drawing a character wearing a t shirt, how he draws trench coats if you’re drawing a character wearing a trench coat, and so on. When choosing reference, keep in mind is how close to the “camera” whatever you’re drawing is, and try  to get reference that is located at a similar distance. There’s more detail closer up and much less detail farther away!

and of course, practice before you jump into your final piece! You can try to copy directly from the reference a few times, and then place your version directly over the original to examine where you went wrong - if you tend to make your heads too big or your torsos too short - in order to keep it in mind for the future. and also practice the pose you’re planning to draw and examine its proportions compared to other drawings Bá has done. And don’t be afraid to trace!! tracing is taboo for final pieces but it can be extremely useful for practice, as long as you are paying attention while you do it!!!

All this is important foundational stuff to getting a good imitation, but what really sells the style, and what can make any sketch look at least more like the comic no matter how unlike the style, is the final lines and coloring.

heres an uncolored piece of art by Gabriel Bá.

[ID: a black-and-white illustration of Five, Diego, Klaus, Allison and Luther standing in a jungle, presumably in Vietnam in the 1960s. End ID.]

I use it for my example because it’s easiest to examine line art when there isn’t any color.

this has more detail than the panels in the comics, but from it you can learn a few things. The most important thing is that Bá uses a thin pen with absolutely no line weight variation or tapering, and also uses large black shadows. He also occasionally uses intermittent dots or dashes to add texture. Many of his lines, particularly the ones for small details, are very wiggly. And much of the time, a given curve is actually made up of a series of straight-ish lines. 

The pen I use for the linework looks like this.

[ID: a set of scribbles made by a pen that does not vary in width, and does not taper at the ends. The curves are slightly jagged. End ID.]

now lets take a look at the coloring. I don’t know if Bá does the coloring or someone else, but the style is still very distinctive and worth taking a closer look at.

[ID: a panel of The Umbrella Academy showing the Sparrows from the end of Hotel Oblivion. End ID.]

All of these colors are flat colors, with no gradients. Not terribly surprising for a comic book, but worth pointing out. All of the shading is very geometric, and there are almost no curved lines, even in the shading for the smoke. most areas have a base color and a shadow, rather than a base color-shadow-highlight, or even multiple highlights and shadows (this is a rule i break frequently). The shadows are likely individual colors picked to be darker than the base color, rather than one color layer set to “multiply”. That’s fairly obvious, but I point it out because its different from how I would normally shade. Occasionally, colors do not fit neatly into the outlines, usually on background objects rather than characters. There are almost no areas where a low-opacity color is laid over the other colors; any places where this happens are almost invariably small and shaped like a rectangle, as though drawn by a chisel brush.

The brush I use for the colors looks like this.

[ID: a set of scribbles made by a chisel-shaped pen. It also does not vary in width, though vertical strokes are thinner than horizontal strokes because of the shape of the tip. End ID.]

for figuring out what colors to use, I honestly recommend just finding a scene that you like the coloring for and taking the colors directly from that. It’ll teach you how to use color palettes like it in the future, and the coloring is already done by a professional, so why not let them do the work for you! If that feels too much like cheating, I still recommend at least taking inspiration from them.

All the practice for form etc is important if you really want to feel like you’re imitating the style, but honestly even just copying the line art and coloring techniques will get you pretty far.

this got. so long. I hope at least some of it was helpful!!!

[niteview]

How did you color your icon? It's so pretty!

omg thank you so much!!!!!!! ;--; i rlly appreciate this!!!! 💖💞💖💞

i usually just wing it & am by no means an expert so if this is Messy that’s why LMAOOO also i kinda went in depth w/ pictures about my process here but these are the adjustment layers i normally use when i colour 😊 

(pls ignore how low quality my scan is at full size lmao 💀)

0) i sharpen my img before colouring!!

1a) curves. first i created some curve layers, to set the black point, and another to set the grey points. i always, always, always!!! use this layer. it is my base for Everything lol

i like the dark colours to be pretty saturated & i use this layer to get the look i want!!

1b) i then set the grey color point layer opacity to 50% because it was looking a little greenish. i find white colour points difficult to work w/ but you can also use them here too! honestly it’ll vary from image to image!!

2) colour lookup. i usually use soft warming when i do but i guess i liked how this one looked that day lmao. i set the layer’s opacity to 30%.

3) selective colour. one of my fave adjustment layers!!! i mainly focused on the reds because it’s the bg colour in the photo but i’ll always use the neutral & black adjustments. 

here’s what we have so far:

4) channel mixer. okay tbh i’m still rlly new w/ using this layer and this won’t be a Drastic change lol but i did it anyway??? this goes for selective colour too but when you’re dealing w/ ppl i hardly ever touch the green mixer bc it will either make your img too green or too purple 

5) levels. the last thing i did was add a levels layer!! i dragged the top middle slider to 0.96 and the bottom right slider to 245. this dims the final img a little which i personally rlly like!!! 

and here’s my final product!!!:

[signaturedish]

No, no, please never stop! I loved reading that and it's all true, lmao. I always seem to find the 'con that needs some quiet company or something I can do to help. I'm also 100% Going To Climb On Tallest Thing. Especially if it is a bot. Ratchet is the only Autobot I like. I taunt Ironhide, his frustration is too fun. Optimus is Tall Thing, not Autobot. The other 'cons finally realize I'm not their secret when I scramble out of Starscream who just went on a flight and... 1/2 - Optical Admirer

... climb onto Megatron in the middle of a meeting after avoiding Starscream's attempt to corral me to his berth. All of them try to stop me and freeze when they realize it is Too Late. I'm on Megatron's head. Then Megatron notes that QuickPatch is his squishy. Starscream mutters that HideFlight is my name, not QuickPatch. An argument ensues between a lot of them over which name is mine. 2/2 - Optical Admirer

Ahhh , that’s too cute!

Omg these are all such potential disasters.

Optimus has never been so close to so many frothing Decepticons aiming every single weapon of their arsenal at him without being actively captured or damaged in some way.

He’s just kind of quietly marveling at the moment while his troops are shaking apart with stress in a corner. Maybe also whispering pro-Autobot propaganda to you even tho you haven’t processed a single word he’s said as meaningful speech.

Eventually someone will start a betting pool on whether you understand he’s sentient, but no one’s sure who it was.

The Decepticons are just daring him to move while you’re eyeballing the top of his head speculatively. Megatron has been personally screaming threats and demands across a comm link while completely ignoring all of Optimus’ tired and reasonable reassurances like ‘Megatron, why on earth do you think I’d crush a human? You were there when I cried over that ant hill, right?’.

When the worst kept Decepticon ‘secret’ came out, Starscream had tried trapping you against his berth with an energon cup and a holopad like a goddamn spider. And you saw the set up he intended to leave you in- blankets? Stuffed animals?? No high places at all??? Measures had to be taken.

So you switch bots. Right in the middle of the meeting to make that statement pop. Look guys, you say without speaking, look at how much I don’t want to hang out with Starscream. Better think about that before trying to trap me on a hatefully low surface.

“Hideflight, no!”

Megatron watches with wide optics as you scamper up his arm like a mountain goat. He doesn’t know why you’ve so foolishly revealed yourself to his incompetent minions, but he’s already automatically placing you on the relatively level top of his helm. You do love napping there while he sketches out battle plans.

Just to be safe, he switches off the PowerPoint projection he had blown across every screen in the base and instead selects a digital file with a close up image of your face from his memory banks.

Your fleshy pink face is smudged with grease and you’re mid sentence and smiling cheerfully, jabbering about how pretty his red eyes are while carefully searing frayed wires off for him. It is a most pleasing image, one he believes highlights his pet’s finer qualities.

“This is QuickPatch,” he growls out, danger putting an engine edge in his announcement, “She is mine and unless you’d like your miserable lives to end right now in the middle of a monthly maintenance review you will not-“

“He means to say Hideflight is her designation,” Starscream mutters across the basewide speakers.

Soundwave finally has a proper target for his frustration, he rounds on Starscream, “Incorrect. Gadget has already been successfully programmed to respond to her true designation.” He’d spent so many small sugary human treats in pursuit of that endeavor.

“Her designation was Thunderdash first!” Thundercracker snapped.

The ensuing argument lasted three days, you couldn’t care less but played along anyways because the bribing was truly outrageous.

You secret nest exactly way too high up in the base now has fairy lights, twenty pounds of scrap metal, and three Cybertronian engineering textbooks.

[hegodamask]

I think you've already talked about this before but I couldn't find the post on your Tumblr, so I was just wondering what your process was for making animated gifs. Like what methods you use to make them, what software you use, etc? Also, what parts do you find most fun or difficult or challenging? I've started making some animated gis, and while I don't know if I'll ever be nearly as prolific as you are, I was interested in learning more about them.

Oh hey! Thank you!! I don’t think I’ve ever gone through the process of how I make gifs in detail before, mainly because I don’t use Photoshop so I just assume my advice won’t be helpful to anybody. I don’t know how helpful this will be to you, but I’ve done a little step by step walkthrough of how I make a gif with a few general pointers thrown in. I was gonna try and keep it brief but it turned out much longer…..sorry.

I’ve put what I find most difficult and fun at the end, so you can just skip to that if you want.

As for the rest, here goes….

So, background: I taught myself how to make gifs using Serif Photoplus X2 because we used their products in highschool. Then a few years later, I updated to Photoplus X7 (made hardly any difference though). Serif doesn’t even make the Photoplus range anymore (they still sell X8 but it’s rubbish and crashes a lot, and their new product Affinity doesn’t even let you make gifs!). I’ve tried to use Photoshop in the past and everyone says it’s better, but I’m stuck in my ways like the stubborn old woman I am.

Anyways, when I want to make a gif I start off by capturing screenshots for the frames. I’ve always used GOM Player and their “Burst Capture” option to do this. GOM Player lets you choose the format your images are saved as and where you want the frames saved to. I have a special “captures” folder for temporarily storing the files in. So for example, these are my frames:

A good general tip for making gifs with any software is to use the best quality video you can find. Most of the stuff I make is with 1080p or 720p quality. I find it helps when it comes to colouring and making the gif look clearer.

Once I have my captures, I copy them into my animation “canvas” (or SPP file) which has a base colouring I’ve already made on it. It’s kind of like a PSD on Photoshop. I select my captures and drag them onto the canvas which looks like this:

The canvas is 1080p, the same as the captures but everything will be resized later. I originally captured 100 screenshots here, but I’ve decided to use only 40 in the end because I want to make a 540px width gif. If I used all 100 frames for a 540px gif it would end up being way over the 3mb limit and it wouldn’t work on Tumblr.

Now this is where the time consuming work comes in for me. Once my captures have been copied into the SPP file, they actually become layers which I have to turn into gif frames (if that makes sense). So at the moment they look like this

But I don’t have any actual frames yet at the bottom of the screen. So what I do next is go to the layers tab at the top of the screen and click “hide layers”, making them all invisible

Then basically what I do next is create a frame at the bottom and assign an individual capture to it by clicking the little grey square (making it visible again). So as you can see, my first frame is for my first capture/layer. The next frame will be the capture/layer on top of that.

So yeah, that means I create each frame individually. It’s veeery time consuming but you get quicker at it the more you do it (it’s also faster to do on a laptop touch pad rather than a mouse.). 

Once I’ve created all my frames, I reselect the colouring layers at the top so they’re visible on every frame. It should look like this

Next, you need to crop your gif and resize it. I want my gif to be 540px by 270px so I put 54.00 and 27.00 into the crop feature to get it accurate. This allows me to crop the canvas into the right dimensions.

Once I’ve cropped the canvas, I then go to the Image tab at the top and click “Image Size…” and set the image size to 540px by 270px. I usually ignore the Print Size bit.

540px is the best size for a full width Tumblr gif, anything bigger or smaller will make your gif look blurry. This gifset is a good guide for making sure Tumblr doesn’t blur or crop your gifs.

My gif is almost ready to be exported. But I want it to look clearer, so I sharpen all the layer/captures (yes, individually again). I have no settings for sharpening, but I find using the standard “Sharpen” effect under the “Effects” tab is enough. 

Once I’ve sharpened everything, I get to the colouring and exporting which is the biggest challenge for me. Photoplus’ options for exporting gifs are limited, so the only decent export options are these

“Web-safe” and “Ordered” makes the gif look like this

“Optimized” and “None” makes it look like this. Okay, but the background looks low quality and patchy

“Optimized” and “Error Diffusion” is the only one that to me, looks the best quality. That’s probably why it produces the bigger file size too (the gif below is 2.78mb)

But there’s other downsides to Error Diffusion which I’m still trying to figure out to this day.  Like how it makes parts of the gif “glitch” (that’s the only way I can describe it) or look extra fuzzy. The only way you can fix it is by playing around with the colouring. And by “playing” I mean adjusting and previewing until you want gouge ur eyes out :)

I think that’s why I like giffing The Terror so much, because the film they used has a grainy texture to it, making it easier to hide all my Error Diffusion sins. Though there’s been many times I’ve posted something and hoped no one’s noticed all the mistakes. 

Some general tips for colouring

Unless you’re going for a certain effect, emphasise on the colours that are already in the shot. In my gif  above for example, I turned up the blues and cyans.

Use Levels or Curves instead of Brightness and Contrast.

Zoom in on your gif to spot any Error Diffusion glitches.

Be mindful about whitewashing POC, especially if you’re following the pastel gif trend.

Look at how other people colour their gifs and use PSDs for reference but don’t rely on them too much.

Colouring can increase or decrease the gif file size. If you need to get below 3mb, try toning down super vibrant colours. If the shot you’re giffing is dark, make it a bit darker. If it’s light, make it a bit lighter. 

If all else fails, just make the gif black and white.

Reading all this back makes how I make gifs look like a nightmare lmao. But I’ve been doing it this way since like, 2012 and i love it. I started out making very bad Star Wars and Lady Gaga gifs but as time has gone on and I’ve gotten better, I’ve found I enjoy making things for smaller fandoms much more. I like that if I want a certain set or edit on my blog, I can just go and make it (with varying degrees of success) instead of waiting for someone else to do it.

You appreciate the work that goes into making a movie or show when you make gifs too. Like, you notice subtle little things in the actors performances or something the cinematography is trying to convey. You get to revisit a scene in detail and then share it with everybody else and if you’re lucky, watch them scream in the tags get some nice comments.

There’s lots of other stuff I like about making gifs but I’ve rambled on far too much so I’m just gonna shut up for now. But I think I’ve covered all the important stuff. I don’t know how much of a help I’ve been (there’s still stuff I don’t understand myself) but if there’s anything else you want to know just drop me a message. Good luck with your own gifs!! I’m sure you can do  a much better job than me!

[dotsz]

Hi you mentioned overlay in your post and I was curious if you could go over that a bit more

of course! buckle down cause this is gonna be quite a fair set of screenshots lmao-

i use overlay a lot for lighting and some of my shading, usually to give the image a tint. you notice how my pieces tend to have a lot of pink? that’s overlay i put on the drawing to give it that tint, and this is how i do it:

(also you’re gonna have to ignore the writing, i had a diff set of images before i realized the quality was annoyingly low so i just redid it here)

this is the original version without overlay, pretty dull colors overall.

i then add a layer of color over it (on a DIFFERENT LAYER), usually pink or purple, but it can be any color you want the tint to be:

and then switch the layer mode from “normal” to “overlay”…

and you get this:

it gives the image a tint of the color, you can play with opacity for whatever amount of tint you want. again you can do this with purples, greens, blues, yellows, whatever you want!

i use overlay for lighting as well, just cause it blends with layers really nicely:

(yellow/orange/reddish for a warm light, blue/purple/light green for a colder one)

with overlay:

you can then merge it with the original large overlay layer below, and i’m not sure if this will work on other programs but on autodesk (what i use) it tends to merge the opacities together too, so you get it even more nicely blended:

and that’s not all!

you can also use overlay to shade things - it works a lot like multiply, layering over the color if you’re not too sure which to use. purple typically works best, and usually on lighter colors, otherwise it doesn’t blend as well. when that happens, it’s typically better to use multiply since that’s made for actually “multiplying” the color and making it darker. 

but anyway, this is overlay shading with purple on lighter colors:

and this is it on darker colors (again, with purple specifically, it’s probably different using other colors):

so, yeah, overlay is pretty cool, especially if you want to give your drawings more color without worrying too much about selection. pro tip: overlay doesn’t show up on white, like you can see here, so it’s best to go wild with lighting and stuff on a white background. if you have a colored background, you need to be more careful to shade in specific areas so it doesn’t overlay on random spots that don’t make sense. like this:

i’m sure i’m missing some key points, and i’m by no means an expert in this - i just tend to experiment and see what works for me! i’d definitely recommend toggling opacities and color shades the most, since that’s what makes or breaks overlay.

hope this was helpful! and sorry for the late reply, i was offline all day :) good luck!