#Also quite lazy (I mean- the lineart definitely is)

[milkamel]

Felt a little silly so I drew puppy Cross for the soul <3 Made sure to make his expression extra cute 💞 (I wouldn't be able to resist it either- ahemgfjh 💀)

Cross belongs to jakei Nightmare belongs to jokublog

[silly-inky]

Hiya! Hello! It's me, ya boi

Updates people Updates!

So I'm making this sort of list of things I am in the process of making or should start working on soon (or things I have yet to post about yet) with little updates about them

Dimentio drawing- this is going alright so far but is a somewhat complicated piece where I will have 2 different end results, one with his mask and one without. I'm on the shaping phase of my lineart which is usually fun for me but I decided to take a small break from it as I was put off by how much time I spent on the sketch (about 30 hours) this does not mean the piece is complicated, just that it took a while to get everything right. I will get back to drawing this soon. This is a digital drawing

You were someone to me a lifetime ago- so for those who don't know I have a fic I'm working on. I released chapter 4 last month and hope to start working on the 5th chapter this month. After the last chapter was posted I started working on the layout of the story as up until this point I was just winging it and going with the flow with not much of a plan, but I know I should have some sort of base to follow in order to keep my writing consistent and have proper flow, because of this I have planned several chapters in advance now, and those who enjoy it will be happy to know that this fic will most likely have more than 30 chapters although I cannot say what number there will be specifically. I want to try and get more chapters out in a short amount of time as I don't want to drag this out but I cannot promise anything

My writing and ideas- so as said in a previous post, I have quite a few ideas that I have had but didn't share in here either because I was too lazy, forgot, or was self conscious. I will probably start to work on a few I already have written out and start to post them, I will also start to post more headcanon posts. Because of all these ideas I have had I actually have some other things that i will be able to share, which lead into..

Mario AU- an AU ( alternate universe) of which I made sort of out of the blue by accident which I have slowly been building on and I even have some doodles to go along with the basic lore of it. What is this AU you ask? Well you'll just have to wait and see, I will say that there is definitely some role swap in which makes things very interesting

Shipping- so for some who may have guessed, I am a multi-shipper, which isn't anything new but I preface this because of me delving into these ships a bit more. For instance me drawing Dimentio has sparked a lot of Dimentio and Dimigi (Dimentio x Luigi) ideas to form and be made, I shipped it before hand but I was and still am focused on booigi. So you may very well see some Dimigi soon as well as your scheduled booigi

Please do keep in mind like I have stated many times before, I struggle with motivation a lot and it can be very difficult for me to get things done, I don't know when any of this will be finished and forcing myself to get it all finished now will only burn me out more. I'm sorry I haven't been posting a lot of content recently as I've been struggling with a few things recently, I'll try and get content out for you as soon as I can and I hope it will make up for it. I was hoping that at least by posting this you will be aware of my plans and what is currently in the works so you guys are up to date

Also I wanted to just say that I appreciate the asks so much, it really means a lot and I love answering them! I do want to add if you are one of the 2 maybe 3 people who submitted an ask a little while ago, I just want to say that I haven't forgotten about them, I wish to draw proper responses for them I just haven't gotten around to it hey, I hope to answer them soon for you though

Have some old pics of my son (ignore how pale I am)

[perfectlovevn]

(i'm so sorry, i'm not sure if you accept reviews or not so feel free to ignore this)

Helloo!! I'm brazilian and i'm still learning english so forgive me for any grammar mistakes. I've gotten all endings (i guess- please let me know if i missed anything!) so here's my review of Perfect Love! ♥

I loved this game sooo much! I never played an visual novel with a mean main character and it was just amazing. The trope of ''us'' being the actual villains is very interesting and it made the game super unique! It's also pretty obvious the amount of effort and hard work that's in the game, I was impressed by the quality of it all.

The music and sound effects are pretty good, I loved it all! The artstyle is very pleasing to look at and the black/white/grey contrast with Milo's blue/red eyes are such a nice touch too. I also loved the amount of easter eggs (you couldn't imagine the face I made when I named myself 'Ren') and secret endings/scenes.

Fortunately, when I first played, I knew nothing about the game nor about Milo (which I believe made the experience better since everything turned out to be surprising) and the endings were really good. Through the gameplay, I've encontered one grammar mistake (which I forgot to screenshot it, sorry) and one sprite glitch but nothing that made me annoyed.

After finishing the 8 main endings, I decided it was time to look a little bit on the official Tumblr's page of the VN and that's when I decided to test out all of the easter eggs and that's when I discovered the secret scenes.

So, to summary it all: absolutely 10/10! I can't remember the last time I had so much fun playing a game and being so invested in unlocking all of it's content! I was flabbergasted when I lost all of my endings heh

Please let me know if I missed anything- I'd be more than happy to clear the game entirely.

Hello there! I love reviews. On my other blog I always write recommendations/reviews for other vns, so I'm always open to seeing what people like and dislike about the game. I hope you don't mind that I'm just gonna mash these two asks into one ask.

Thank you! I also think that a lot of vns don't always focus on being the bad guy in the story and those that do I usually enjoy quite a lot! I'm glad you like the quality of it, it was a lot of fighting renpy and it's UI because I have a one sided rivalry with the base renpy UI. I tried to make it look good though I think I maybe should have attempted to redraw some of the sprites for Milo (for like the third time).

For the art style itself, I actually did it in black and white because it was originally for the 2023 yanjam and I wanted to make a style that wouldn't be extremely tiring for me, and I really like lineart so I made everything in black and white (and also because I'm lazy, I say as I animate half of my assets). The red and blue really make it pop at the end since it's one of the few time color is used in the game. I love when people put easter eggs in their game and I know of a lot of yandere vns so I wanted to put in a ton! I'll probably put in even more in the update when I get all of the extra stories done because putting easter eggs like that is very fun.

Having no knowledge of a game is always a good way to be surprised about the premise and I think it definitely was something good in your case too! For the grammer/ sprite errors if you do ever play or remember what they were, please let me know. I'll try to fix it in the next update if possible.

It's always so nice seeing that people like my game though! I tried my hardest to make it a worthwhile experience and considering it's (technically) my first game, it really makes me happy to see that people really like it! Hopefully it doesn't have too much of the first game amatureness that tends to come (nothing wrong with it, but I hopefully have showcased I kind of know what I'm doing, I say, sweating profusely) .

Yup! That is all of the scenes in the game so far. At least that you can access. If you look inside of the code, I actually have two scenes that I put in there. One of them is pretty much a test scene featuring the character from the next game I'm making, and the other is a special scene where you go to Milo's apartment. You can't access those in the main game, but you can play them if you edit the code a bit.

Basically (for those who don't know), all you have to do is put "jump" and then the name of the label afterwards (so for instance if the label is "rabbit" you would put "jump rabbit") after label start in the code. The two scenes that are not accessable in the game are the last two scenes in the script.rpy file just to make it easier for you. (I put a note that says like "#I'm very dedicated to my craft I say as I disect Milo and then beat him with a stick" because I'm sorry Milo, you deserve better)

But yes, thank you for taking your time and writing your long review! I love it so much.

[airabuhan]

anon asked: Hi!!! I’m a tad bit shy so sorry if I seem awkward but… What inspired your art style? I noticed that you have very soft coloring and you have very cute art

hmmm i suppose a good part of it is inspired by enstars? at least, i admire the enstars art style a ton and it probably shows in the way i draw the characters somewhat, though it's not like a 1-to-1 replication of it by any means haha (i can't do clean lineart at all with the type of shading enstars does unless i purposefully try and replicate it which takes SO much time) i've been inspired by a number of art styles in particular though, many of them looking very different from each other? i can't really exactly point to one specific art style besides enstars that i can definitively say greatly influenced my art, it was more just me feeling inspired by certain aspects of how people colored, drew, painted, and the amalgamation of all of the artists i look up to shows in my art now? i did want to have an art style that had a more rendered, finished, almost paintery style while still maintaining a sort of anime-art style (i can't explain this well ahaha) but i don't know that that description particularly fits well with how my art style looks at the moment

i'm sure a lot of my art style now also comes out of the habits i'm just used to doing ahaha like how some of my 'finished' drawings are quite sketchy in a sense because i'm too lazy to sit down and render for hours and hours hgnhgh. i don't really do line art, because early on when i began drawing more seriously i was kind of frustrated with the whole process of doing line art and i preferred to do sketches and cleaned them up later in the process, and i have more fun drawing that way so i think that affects how my art looks a lot. it makes rendering SO time-consuming though, having to clean up all the mistakes because i was too lazy early on to clean up the little details :") i suppose that process does makes my art look the way it does so...

as for coloring, i'm honestly still learning how to color now ahaha i actually have no idea what i am doing in regards to coloring... coloring for me is just slapping colors onto the canvas and playing around with blending modes until hopefully something looks cohesive, though with playing around with colors and layer modes i've started to color in a way that's relatively consistent now? but my method of coloring is kind of all over the place and a little different compared to how i've seen other people may choose to color (throwing all the flat colors onto one layer and slapping a bunch of multiply layers and such until it looks cohesive) ... yeah learning how to color intentionally is definitely on the bucket list of things i want to learn, and some of my favorite artists are able to utilize color in such a beautiful way that i can't help but admire

thank you for the compliment!! my drawing process is lowkey whack, but i've drawn inspiration from so many artists even if my art really does sort of look nothing like some of the artists i greatly admire... to name some artists i've admired (even though my art looks quite different from theirs lol), i like gearous, @/velinxi, @/meltsmelts, @/cirqlr, and a bunch of other danmei artists over time. sorry for the long-winded rant, i like talking about art and artists i admire [Smile or comment on the answer here](https://retrospring.net/@airabuhan/a/110669242407708697)

[valeriapryanikova]

hihihi !! came across your tumblr while looking at hermitcraft/life series art (your art is lovely by the way, definitely going into my cool people with cool art collection) , and saw that you use/used krita !! as a krita user, i would love to know your main brushes and canvas sizes, and art process too :D would love to get into things like illustration but no clue where to start ,,

hello! since i get asked about stuff like that relatively often and i'm usually too lazy to answer properly everytime i'll use this ask to answer all of those in one big post :D

Brushes

i don't think i have main brushes? i jump from style to style quite frequently and i love love love trying out new stuff so the set of brushes i'm using for any given drawing can change drastically but there're a few that came to my mind

i've been vibing with the first brush the most lately! it's kinda has spray paint feel to it?? but not really? idk but it's fun to make messy sketches with :D 2nd and 3rd are probably the brushes i find myself coming back to most often bc they're just really basic lol

all of the brushes ^ are default krita brushes bc i dont like downloading brushes from the internet so if you wanna find cool non default krita brushes you'll need to ask sm1 else sorry

(btw my advice: don't care about brushes. limiting oneself to a certain set of brushes can also limit the creativity so don't do that)

Canvas Size

my default canvas size is 2000 x 2000 px and it usually goes up from that if i need other proportions for a piece - basically that means that the shortest side of (almost) any of my drawings is minimum 2000px (2000 x 3000, 2500 x 2000, etc). for pixel art it's the same rules but for minimum of 200px!

social media eats the quality of images really hard so i usually don't see the point of drawing on bigger canvases than that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Art Process

there isn't much to say about the art process for me bc i'm sure my process is not too different from everyone else's process lol for lineart stuff it's the usual:

super messy, super quick sketch

cleaner sketch (depending on the art style and the vibe i'm going for this step can be skipped)

messy colouring (also can be skipped sometimes; this step is just for myself to find the colour palette i wanna use and to determine whether i like the drawing so far or not so i can change the idea or completely abandon the piece)

clean lineart

flat colouring + shading

adding small details, colouring the lineart, making lighting prettier, etc. (this one cannot be properly described bc for me it's usually a mess of tweaking everything and nothing until i like the final product)

for lineless stuff i don't have a process - i put pretty colours on the canvas and just,, Pray for the best or smth lmao

it most likely won’t be helpful but i do have youtube channel where i (once in a blue moon) post speedpaints! they might help in understanding what my art process is

and that's it i think? i hope this was useful at least in some way :D it's not the best idea to ask me about any of art related things bc my approach to art can be summarised with throwing stuff at the wall until smth sticks lmao

[artificiary-fr]

ok so arti’s unnecessary opinion time

Just wanna give a disclaimer that these are just my sort of thoughts in general, and are in no way an attempt to demean, attack, or cause drama about any artist or staff member, or community member. Just kind of what I’ve observed and come to the questions/conclusions of. I got a little opinionated at the end but I tried not to single anyone out save for I think, one unnamed example? 

I’ll put everything under the cut here, because I know I have a tendency to get wordy (and spoiler: It did. This is a super long post, I’m sorry). So, here we go...

TL;DR: I like the gene, I’ll wait for the revamp before giving a concrete opinion, there were definitely some issues, I appreciate that staff took note/action, more communication like this or the dev streams is good (though communication between staff/community is a Thing unto itself of which I probably have a Disliked Take on and that was the really long part that isn’t necessary to read)

Okay before anything: the familiars. They’re super pretty! I like the recolors, and now I’m gonna have to grind the Kelp Beds for those boss fams. Dang. I love the kitty golem recolor.

With that out of the way, here we are - the subject of today’s discussions... Glowtail.

So, my first opinion: It’s not a bad gene! I can see some curious use for it, certainly. But there are some problems with it (and yes; I am aware staff has addressed this and pulled it to fix those problems! That’ll be more relevant later on here c: )

Note One: I think I do understand why it is a gem gene. Yes, design/thematically it does appear to fit the bill of a Baldwin Gene more. But I’d like to posit it’s the completion of a gem-gene set - Wasp/Bee/Glowtail. So in that regard, it makes sense!

Note Two: My personal opinion with the gene is that I like it, but it feels... hm. Plain isn’t correct. Like it’s missing something, I guess? I wish the segmenting was a little more prominent, and that the glow or gradient had a little more glitz/glamor, maybe some glitteries around the hips, to really sell it as a gem gene. I do like the glow we have on the other bits of dragon like light reflection, though, because it adds a little bit of dimension! All in all however even so, I do like it, and I won’t cement my opinion until we see what their updated version looks like in the future.

Note Three (The Problems): The art errors. What... what happened here?

As we’ve noticed, male snappers and male tundras are the two big offenders, with large chunks of color erroneously sitting outside the lineart quite noticeably. There is also part of the ‘glow’ (the aforementioned light reflection) that doesn’t make sense - being on parts of the dragon where it shouldn’t be, like on the front of wings where the tail is not in front of said limb, but behind.

But like... how did this not get caught before it got posted? Was it a time crunch, or it just... didn’t get quality checked before this happened? It’s really unfortunate. :c

Something I do with my art - and this is just my own process/thoughts - is when I’ve put down the base color, before I do any shading/highlights/big details, I pop a layer underneath the entire drawing and fill it with a high contrast color to the palette. That way any bits where I missed coloring in - or didn’t clean up outside the lines - becomes super noticeable, and I can fix it then instead of being a problem later. Maybe doing something like this before throwing the gene through the color automation process would’ve helped?

Last Note:

I feel like part of why these errors went unnoticed is because of how often, and sometimes how rushed, some of these updates have been - and this has been more noticeable in this year than otherwise. Is it because of community dissent with wanting more updates creating more crunch? Due to low-attention reticence creating a need for pushing more ad revenue / more “come to the site there’s new”?

I’m unsure, but it’s unfortunate nonetheless. I think staff, and FR as a whole, would benefit from like... hm. How to word this...

Maybe taking more time on updates / a more extended schedule so things aren’t as crunch (of course this being said, I don’t know what the workload is like so I can’t even say if crunch is applicable), and more open communication? Like how the dev streams were going - that was pretty well liked and everyone I know got pretty excited to see em and how the art was doing. It also opened up the avenue for more open communication / more nuanced opinions or thoughts.

---

But herein lies the huge issue, I think, with communication. This is the part where I’d like to reiterate, this is just my observations, and is not intended as an attack, a vaguepost, or deliberate callout at anybody. There’s no malicious intent here. This bit could also be construed as drama I suppose, and I apologize for that because again - not the intent. Just my take.

I’ve noticed posts going ‘no drama please’ or being tired when new updates come out of like, ‘oh boy here comes the negativity’ so I don’t think it’s just me who’s seen it, but have you guys noticed when anything new comes out, there’s an immediate rush of extreme salt and negativity?

And I don’t mean posts where its like “it’s not for me” or “I don’t like it but here’s [detailed/explained reason why]” - those are the nuanced opinions I mean. Those are fine. I mean the ones where people in forums, or on the more prolific drama blogs, are just.... mean/empty? Like “FUCK staff I hate how lazy they are with this it’s shitty looking” - that really vocal generally super salty in general minority of the community. Just hate without explanation, or just kind of aimless generalized attack/complaint.

I think that’s where communication with Staff fell off the bandwagon. The really loud, really vocal minority of folks who throw super salt or yell “This Sucks You Suck” completely overshadow the people who are well intentioned with sharing their opinions or problems/criticisms. The toxic bits and really vitriolic words are what gets seen and noticed. I think this is the majority of what gets heard, which is why communication got so closed off / shut down unless positive, in recent times. Do I agree with that? No, I don’t either - but I’m just looking at this from the outside. Idk how staff feels or thinks.

And this goes for both people who don’t like the content, and people that do.

Remember that the Keel thread got locked because someone who was white-knighting started getting real nasty with people in the thread, and going to extremes insulting artists who did mock-ups to help visualize their thoughts/opinions and was just being a real douche?

What I really wish was that we could have more open communication. Some of the things I really liked to see were like: Dev Streams, Community Updates/Q&A, Opinion Polls, That Update Progress on Breed/Gene Progress from a while back. All of that was excellent. And I like to see the community responding in well thought out ways! I like to see staff more hands on too! We’re only human and love this site and our dragons and want to see it at it’s best - but they’re also only human, and make mistakes, and we don’t know what’s goin on in there, just out here.

Trello is a really good way to kind of show that communication, and is transparent, but isn’t free-to-use for businesses, so... of course I also don’t know how Stormlight Workshop runs their business/hours so I’m just blowing hot smoke. But anyway, I think everyone would benefit from slowing down and opening up. If things are going slow, that’s okay - if Staff opens up to the community and says “This is taking longer than expected, but here’s upcoming releases / current in-progresses” I think we’d be like oh okay things are happening and it’ll be nice! As compared to everyone gets super antsy, nothing’s happening, no-one is talking... and then we get hit with a bunch of updates, some of which, like today’s, have... issues.

Of course then I worry that with more open talking or “we’re experiencing delays” the more vitriolic will get even angrier/saltier which doesn’t... help... but I mean... yeah. 

ANYWAY so I’ve written a full dissertation essay here without really intending to (see? I warned y’all! I ramble/don’t shut up ahahaha) so I’m gonna just stop myself here before I start going in circles. This last chunk I don’t really know what the meat of what I was trying to say was, now, I think. Sorry about that. It was just “here’s my stream of consciousness” apparently ^^;;;;

Have a good evening y’all! Thanks for listenin’ to my (rant?) if y’all made it this far. You’re appreciated and thank you for letting me bend your ears! Stay safe in this crazy world, hang in there, and have a good one!