#Artificial Suns

[dorianne77]

Work in progress

Okay, so first of all, I’m so sorry for taking this long with Artificial Suns (and with answering your asks and comments). The continuous support on this fic has been simply amazing, and I can’t thank you enough for all the nice and encouraging words you still keep sending my way even after more than a year without an update. You guys ROCK. :) The planned update in August sadly didn’t happen, but rest assured that the story has not been abandoned.

I kept writing snippets for future chapters during the last year, and at some point I realized that my issue with this next chapter has never been the absence of a muse - I was simply too overwhelmed with the million plot points, and unwilling to commit to the development of any of them without an established timeline for the whole story. I don’t usually do detailed outlines, but this fic is packed with characters/relationships/conflicts that need some semblance of pacing, and I realized that I can’t really just pants my way through all of that like I tend to do.

So I spent months trying to pack things onto a rough timeline, but even Scrivener can offer only so much help when you have 600+ snippets and half sentences that you have no idea where and when you will want to use, so eventually I decided to buy a printer and just go back to the good old flashcard system. Now, half of my living room is covered in paper, but I finally have those 70k printed words more or less in order, and I’m happy to report that we have... way too many chapters to go before the epilogue lol.

A long journey ahead still, but whether you plan to stick around or not, I will be forever grateful for staying with me so far - take care and talk to you soon, hopefully.💙💙💙

P.S.: I hope the cards aren’t readable on the picture, but please let me know if they are. Wouldn’t want spoilers to slip now. :)

[zytes]

this manatee looks like it’s in a skyrim loading screen

[chipsy]

[tenspontaneite]

fancy pibble having a big think

[boyrobott]

Astro Boy's Closet: 1980s (2/2)

[thegreatyin]

I have played relatively little of both Sunless Skies and Sunless Seas, but I will occasionally say THE SUN THE SUN THE SUN as though I were some sort of superfan. Basically THE SUN is an infectious meme and it fucking got me good.

we got another one for the admiralty lads 🎉☀️

[turbotasthick]

A stray cigarette lain on the ground…

A voice, stern yet comforting would have scolded the younger one for even looking at it. The voice would have pulled him away, attention elsewhere…

He picks it up.

Silence. . . .

He snapped his fingers, little sparks emit from the friction and the flames eventually lit up the cigarette.

Theres no point in caring anymore.

He inhaled.

[pawphin]

hi,

[fidjiefidjie]

🖼 Vincent Van Gogh et les Beatles 🎶 Here Comes the sun 🌞

Source: Fundación Mustakis

👋 Bel après-midi

[dreamconsumer]

Phoebus Apollo.

[basilbots]

I like how Eclipse started his life round and sweet, but with the time passing, hes started to get more spiky

Yesss Eclipse growing sharper and sharper a threat a promise of violence against those who wronged him. At the same time though he also changes in an attempt to be normal- covering up his foot paws with the typical dca shoes as seen in the baby BM piece.

When he feels safer, becomes more comfortable and happy with himself like my sillies AU, Eclipse stops trying to be so spiky and jagged. He'll let himself be softer and broader and have his paws back like he was always meant to be.

[sluggybunny]

cybertober day 5: magazine

[myokk]

Thank you so so so much to everyone who sent in their character!😇🙏 these were scribbled up between art demonstrations and constant “profe la nariz la hice mal me ayudas” etc questions😅

I had so much fun drawing these, I hope I did your characters justice!!🥰🙏💓

@masqueradereveler21

@serpensortiamaxima

@eternalremorse

@superconductivebean

@slytherin-paramour

@limonnitsa

[chipsy]

[harveybwabbit92]

[I had thought about Ultras and their skeletons, then thought what if they were similar to a cat's skeleton? Where the vertebrae are all held by muscles rather than by ligaments, (That would explain Blazar.) and now I'm imagining Taro trying to hide from toddler Taiga for five minutes so he can eat a candy bar without sharing with his son, but Taiga finds him and gets into to the room by squeezing in through a gap under the door which scares the shit out of Taro! cos he didn't know they could do that!]

[princeanxious]

✨️Moondrop progress update #1✨️

Picture 1 desc/info: knowing that I'd want to make Moondrop once I finished Sundrop, I made sure that(when I remembered to, as I'm learning that i wasn't quite as 100% consistent as I hoped I was) to make traced out references of each finished carved piece so that I wouldn't waste time struggling matching both of their proportions, considering nearly every piece required a duplicate piece to help achieve the eventual 'hollow skeleton' method that I use. Also, this is what I mean when I state that theyre carved from popsicle sticks. If it works, it works. lol

Picture 2 desc/info: here's the full lineup of every carved piece I have ready for Moondrop so far, and roughly how it will fit together. Every arm piece, leg piece, and even knee joint and the head piece have a duplicate(sans for the detail on the head's piece, obviously, though the headpiece is more complex than that as well). To further expand on why I did this, instead of just having one piece each, I need to point out the arm, hand, and ankle joint pieces. They will not be connected in two places, only one, to achieve full range of movement for the limb that they are attached to.

To achieve this, whilst still trying to keep this project's weight light, I'll create a hollowed skeleton. Essentially where the insides of the limbs(and body) are made hollow via smaller pieces of wood/popsickle stick scraps glued in-between the base pieces, but leaving enough empty space on either side to add two things. One side will have a rolled cylinder of a reinforced cardboard/paper mache combo, to provide a hollowed slot for the long joint piece side to slot into, and the other side, two hollowed holes to slot a dowel through with the joint piece inbetween. (If this doesn't make sense, dw, I plan on taking pictures when I get to that stage to show how I do it)

I also just end up stuffing the remaining 'dead-space' between the carved pieces with paper before i add clay, to further sheer off any unnecessary internal weight. Now, what you couldn't see with my Sundrop, is that by the time I finished adding clay and test stringing him together and started looking at reference photos again for color references, I hadn't realized up until that point that I'd entirely forgotten to add the dca standard wire-hook on his back. Not even superficially. So this will be where project Moondrop(whom at least uses the wire far more than sundrop, lol) will deviate from my original Sundrop design. I might use paper and cardboard to flesh out his limb shapes further before adding clay to make his body even lighter than suns, I've reinforced his torso pieces to account for the hole I'll carve into the back for my goal of a Functional wire-hook, I've made adjustments to his thigh shape for better ease of movement/posability(which might coincidentally make him just a smidgen shorter than Sun by design, shhh) because sundrops leg slots and the actual part of the leg that's supposed to slot in ended up quite a bit out of alignment due to the leg shape lacking a taper at the top to allow for a rounder end. Sundrop's legs are just a little janky bc of it.

Picture 3 desc/info: this is a look at the inbetween stage that the hip piece goes through, and you'll find that it's not reinforced with wood anywhere simply because of the completely curved surface. There were attempts made with sundrop to do this but they proved to be way too hard to bother with and less than affective with just popsickle sticks. Hense I use cardboard from a soda can box(aka cardboard that's compact and can carry a heavy capacity if the design is balanced and re-attachment points are reinforced properly) and then have so far gone over certain points with paper and glue(using the papermache method) to base reinforce places and also provide more adhesable texture internally. Because, that round piece(also cardboard) is going to sit in the main juncture of the top of the hips. A hole will be cut into it to maintain the ability to string the limbs and body together, and it will be further reinforced further with paper and glue, and later covered in clay- along with the rest of the hips inside and out, thus entirely made smaller than intended to account for the eventual bulk up of the piece. This cover provides a supportive divot in the hips that the middle torso piece can sit in that will give it the range of movement intended but also aid it in allowing the body to sit up straight otherwise(something that was discovered to be needed when working on finetuning sundrop whilst test-stringing, adding yet more weight due to the fix having been made solidly out of clay. Probably provides more support to Sundrop this way, but Moon needs to be as light as possible to prevent stress cracks/damage/balance issues/ect. If I want him to be able to have a functional hook to be used to be displayed with.

On a less technical note, there isn't much to show in the skeleton stage for the middle torso piece bc it's just a hollow cylinder of cardboard, thin enough to escape the bulk, but wide enough to still be strung through. It's just a lil tube for Sundrops frame anyway lol. Though, tbf, I might bulk Moondrops middle with paper/cardboard/whatever I decide, for the, once again, lightweight intention. I use air dry clay but even still it do be solid af when dry and sealed lol

Off camera just inches out of shot of each picture is sundrop, whom has slowly become disrobed and carefully disassembled in places to give me size references for things, but also one of these updates I'll show you how I made his head/face/ ray settup- why? Because it broke. Cuz my dumbass should've used wire and not a wooden dowel to support it all. (Further more, I'm using it as an opportunity to eventually redo Suns rays, because when I did the first set, I went for accuracy in the ray count, but still wanted them to spin freely. But I realized I HATE the gap that's left anywhere if his rays arent perfectly positioned and honestly this mechanism breaking is my sign and chance to fix it now that the rays aren't locked in anymore lol.)

I've decided to give this progress update log the tag '#projectdcadoll' from now on, so any posts I make abt this in the future will have that tag!

And if anyone has any questions about any specifics of the project, I'll also answer them/respond to them under this tag, so please feel free to ask away! I'm excited to share this process with ya'll!