#HELP IM DRAWING LINES AND THEY ARE. INTERESTINGLY SHAPED.

[mxbirdman]

Dumbledore and Machiavelli??

IM RESEARCHJNG MACHIAVELLI RN AND I CANT STOP DRAWING LINES BETWEEN HIS PHILOSIPHIES AND DUMBLEDORE

“immoral actions are ok in political situations” DUMBLEDORE???

“a good leader needs virtù; not the moral goodness virtue but a flexibility in order to go between good and evil for the greater good” DUMBLEY???

the main differences i see are machiavelli was mostly honest about it. like, bro went “yeah morals are iffy in politics” and yeah. but dumbledore was just like “i am Good! i am Light!”

rip machiavelli you would’ve had such a love hate relationship with dumbledore

[paradoxbeta]

12 and 19

Your art style is fire, I need to know the secrets of your "meschanicesh/blockish/shape-ish" (idk how to describe it???) artstyle

thank you very much, thats nice to hear! im going to do these questions out of order though because the first one will take a bit longer to talk through

19. where do you find inspiration?

many places! sometimes i take pictures of cars with face-like headlight designs or normal objects that look like they could be creatures if i worked at them. if anything in the open catches my eye ill snap a picture of it. traveling and seeing new kinds of architecture is usually really good for my creative juices too so i like to look around a lot whenever i go somewhere out of the ordinary. a lot of the pictures that inspire me can be found in my #alien insp tag as well, even though thats to help me worldbuild my stellaris-fic-turned-spec-bio(?) thing its also usually filled with arrangements of shapes and colors that tickled my brain and that i hope to replicate the feeling of. i also take a lot of inspiration from how music makes me feel. more often than not though its just a random lightning bolt idea or a recycling of an old concept

12. describe your process while drawing

if i wanted to go in full depth this would be a very long response that would go all through how i color and do lighting and decide certain things and what i hope to achieve in character designs as a whole but to give you the answer in short, ill just talk about my sketches and how i use shapes, because i consider those two things the most important parts of my process. first of all my sketches are terrible. oftentimes theyre so vague that if i never make progress on them and then return a week later, i wont understand whats happening.

i mention this because i feel like i see people get wrapped up in making their sketch look good too often, and to that i say NO! an adequate sketch to me is something you could wipe your ass with! besides it helps me get the idea on paper while focusing on what i know i want to be the important part(s) of the piece.

for shapes:

yes, part of the reason why this ask took a little while to get to is because i was whipping up this and glass arena (the spikey one) was not cooperating with me and its sort of haphazard i know i know

but the gist of it is that generally what i will do is pick one or a select few dramatic shapes to dominate their design and then focus on accentuating that particular shape. sometimes as im creating a character, what that central shape is will change midway. i will also usually design the head of a character before the body, A, because its more fun, and B, since the head is small and also usually heavily reflective of the central shape, understanding exactly what shape i want makes it easier to make a body that works with/mirrors it (and then possibly make some tweaks to an already established head) instead of trying to figure out the head and body at the same time. i get that is not the ideal way to do it but i am also not a professional and sort of just winging it through everything ive ever done

im also at least somewhat attentive about the curves of lines which is what all of those red lines are for, the blue circles on glass arena and zmeu are to show where the lines concentrate. interestingly enough this sort of focal point usually isnt on the face but instead the neck because what happens most of the time for humanoids is that the (stylized) slopes of the eyebrows to the sides of the nose (or at least the form of a shape that represents this) creates a downwards arrow, which usually works well with an "upwards arrow" on the chest to sort of "pinch" the lines together at the point in between the head and chest. this is exactly what happened for them both, though for zmeu his downwards arrow is just his entire head. i dont usually draw the "focal point" but i see it in my head and try to make adjacent lines feed into it. some characters like am (semi-circle head) dont have one though, but there is still a general trend in the lines, you can see in her headshot i tried to make the lines be "parallel" or to flip/mirror the curvature of her headdress.

again i could go more into depth about my art process if anyone'd be interested in a fuller detailing, but it'd have to be a separate post. thank you for asking though, i like talking about my process!

[artcanary]

essay writing strategy

if you’re like me, maybe you have trouble staying focused on your essays or remembering what you’re writing about when you trail off mid paragraph, 

or hate scrolling up and down the page to see things youve written previously/remember what you were talking about! 

ive developed a strategy for countering this sort of thing in my own work, and figured hey maybe i should type it out because it might help some other people who struggle with similar things! so here goes! 

also, uh .. I dunno if anyone cares about this but im using the Great Gatsby as an example, so if you care about being spoiled about stuff that happens in that book.. dont read the examples?

1. Rewrite/copy down your prompt. 

If you have short term memory problems like I do, this can help you actually remember what it is that you’re supposed to be talking about; and if you have issues skimming and skipping words in a sentence, it forces you to read all of it and not miss a key part of your prompt. 

Example prompt: Explore the thematic significance of symbols of wealth in The Great Gatsby, and what the author uses them to say about society in the text. 

2. Make a messy bullet point list of what you know. 

This doesn’t need to be organized. In fact, it shouldn’t be. At this point you’re just throwing your ideas out onto the word processor. Examples you can use, points you want to make, anything else that comes to mind. 

Example: 

Gatsby’s car

Daisy as a symbol of money & american dream

(quote about her voice being full of money)

the valley of ashes 

capitalism is bad bcuz it favors people with old money etc 

the boat guy 

3. Cut down & reorder your bullet points to make yourself a neat little list. 

Your outline is starting to take shape now! If you can, it’s a good idea to try and think of transitions now; how you’re going to move from subject to subject in your essay. Now is a good time to elaborate on your points, too. 

Example: 

Daisy as a symbol of money & american dream

(quote about her voice being full of money)

the valley of ashes 

(tie that in with the deaths of gatsby and wilson, all the people who “lost” in the book started poor, transition to:

capitalism is bad bcuz it favors people with old money etc, end with fancy ass profound quote if u think of one by then 

4. Gather all your points and squish em into one introductory sentence.

Your thesis statement, if you rather. Your thesis statement is something of a “preview” of what’s to come later in the essay, so it’s better to write this after you’ve got your outline down! Make sure that your thesis statement answers/addresses the question posed in the prompt. 

Example: 

topics covered (daisy, valley of ashes, capitalism, people dead) 

In his novel the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald seems to be criticizing how the American system is stacked against the poor, making it difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to truly achieve the elusive “American Dream”. 

5. Stick all that together

Now you’ve got the backbone of your essay! - your thesis statement, and the “topic” of each bit of the rest of your essay. Put this all together, and you’re ready to start padding it out. 

Example: 

(theeeeesiiiiiiiiiisssss) In his novel the Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald seems to be criticizing how the American system is stacked against the poor, making it difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to truly achieve the elusive “American Dream”. 

Daisy as a symbol of money/the american dream (quote about her voice being full of money) 

The valley of ashes (poor people in a bad situation in the wasteland of the city) 

capitalism sucks bcuz it favors old money, profound quote, bam done we’re gona rock it 

6. Start padding out your essay! 

See, what I like about writing an essay like this is that you don’t have to scroll around your page in order to know what you’re supposed to be writing about in the section you’re working on. Using your bullet points as a guide, write your paragraph under each one. 

Example: 

Daisy as a symbol of money/the american dream (quote about her voice being full of money)

A powerful symbol Fitzgerald uses to represent the American Dream is the character Daisy Buchanan. She is explicitly said to have a voice “full of money” and is pursued by many. However, when Gatsby finally achieves his dream of having her in his reach, she seems less magical, less perfect than he remembers; much like the American Dream seems from “close up”. Interestingly, the only one in the end who gets to have “the Dream” is Tom, someone born into money. Gatsby’s attempts to keep her are arguably in vain due to the fact that he used to be poor. 

The valley of ashes (poor people in a bad situation in the wasteland of the city)

Further commentary on wealth is evident in the area aptly named as the “Valley of Ashes”; the shadow of glamorous, frivolous New York, it is where the poor are left fighting for scraps and cleaning up what the rich left behind. (god, im not gonna finish this, im not getting a grade for this, you get the idea right? write the essay inside your outline. use it like a spine. like a tree trunk, and write the leaves around it.)

7. Write out an intro and conclusion to fit your middle paragraphs. 

Your introduction needs to “fade in” and bring the readers to your “point”; your conclusion needs to “fade out” and show the bigger picture and how your essay applies to other areas. (These aren’t rules that are set in stone per se, just good guidelines to follow when you dont have any other ideas.) 

Your thesis statement is ideally the end of your introduction, leading into the rest of your essay. Generally, the thesis is “restated” in different words in the conclusion, as if in summary. 

8. Delete your outline bullet points and clean it up a little. 

This is like erasing your construction lines after you finish a drawing, and then make sure it flows smoothly together. Reading it outloud to yourself is a good idea, it will help you catch any glaring errors. 

9. Congrats you wrote that dam essay!! 

good job dude!!!!! give yourself a pat on the back and maybe a treat bcuz you deserve it!