#I lost the sketchbook so i have to redo the design

[teakoodrawz]

if anyone already made this au yet then cool

[trickstermiraculous]

Your Fault

Summary - 'With a small cough, they finally took notice that she was standing there and well they looked like a deer caught in headlights but quickly that turned into glares. “Are you all quite done?” Marinette asked raising an eyebrow'

It was Lila’s idea originally but the others in the class were the ones to do it, to be honest when Marinette walked in and saw Alya, Alix, Kim and Sabrina tearing up her sketchbook with Nino and Lila looking on doing nothing to stop it, she wasn’t surprised instead she quietly took a picture and hid her phone in her pocket while she hit record.

With a small cough, they finally took notice that she was standing there and well they looked like a deer caught in headlights but quickly that turned into glares. “Are you all quite done?” Marinette asked raising an eyebrow, “Yeah, we are, hope you know all you’re hard work has gone down the drain” sneer Alix while Kim and Sabrina looked away awkwardly with now guilty expression mostly likely from the fact that they had been caught not that they were guilty of tearing up her sketchbook. “Yes, that may be true but that was for my non-commission work, not my commission work so honestly all I’ve lost it time” Marinette replied this just gave people a look of confusion except Adrien who seemed to catch on to what she had been implying.

By this point, the rest of the class came in but froze at the sight of what was happing, “Oh My God, Marinette what happen to your sketchbook?” asked Rose quickly with a horrified expression on her face to match the others her classmates had including Adrien who had to do a photoshoot today before he could come in. “Why don’t you ask them?” remarked Marinette, not one of them dares to answer.

“I’m so sorry Mari if I had known they do something like this, I wouldn’t have suggested-” Marinette cut Adrien off quickly, “this is not your or my fault Adrien this is all by their own doing so when they realise that what they did cause them a whole boat lot of trouble, they get no rights to be mad at anyone but themselves”. “And why would we be in trouble?” growled Alya, “well you destroy another classmates property did you not?” Marinette stated in a bored tone before continuing with a smile, “and considering the fact that was my sketchbook for school, the one where I put in designs for things you guys have asked me along with plans/contacts for events including our class trip to Matroplise that is coming up next month”.

As soon as she said that, you could hear anything but a pin drop. “WHAT!” screamed the class all looking ready to murder Alya and the rest with their bare hands, “yep but luckily for the class, I made a back up of everything for the school trip on a pen drive which I have here” Marinette answered pulling it out of her purse, she could hear Tiki giggling quietly.

“Don’t scare us like that dudette” said Nino, “and why shouldn’t I, you just destroyed my work which aside from the trip, everything else has basically gone” Marinette replied, “which means, not new costumes for the drama club, no new dress for Lila’s birthday party and no new design for the LadyBlog”. “You can redo them though” shouted Alix, “yes but you will be along with everyone in this class, put on the back burner as I’m not being paid like the other commissions I’m currently doing” snapped Marinette, ���paid” said Lila like it was a word she hadn’t heard before, “yes, paid, as what you are asking are handmade and design by me, a new designer who according to Chloe’s mother and Adrien’s father can get well over a £1000 with my talent, a lot higher in fact that it’s not in many of your price ranges” retorted Marinette watching the colour drain from classmates faces.

“We only did it because you were bulling Lila” cried Sabrina, “why in god’s name, would Marinette bully Lila, when I have in fact tormented her for years” stated Chloe picking at her nails and with that Max quickly pulled out his phone, “what are you doing Max?” asked Rose, “checking something” he replied not looking up but when he did he had a face full of anger, “Lila lied” he growled, “not this again” Alya groaned, “yes this again Alya because I have just checked and there is literally fucking nothing online about Lila’s accomplishment except the LadyBlog” he spat while others in the class all went on their phones.

Both Adrien and Marinette sighed, as the yelling started at Lila with Alya quick to defend her. Once it quietened down, Marinette spoke again “I do hope you can pay for that sketchbook by the way since it was £7.49”, “you expect us-” started Kim but was cut off sharply by Adrien, “you destroyed it, you pay for it”. Marinette started to leave at this point, “where are you going?” asked Nathaniel still glaring daggers at those who would dare destroy something like a sketchbook, “to inform the headmaster what has happened since we all know Miss Bustier won’t do anything proactive if Chloe destroying my handmade birthday gift is anything to go by” she answered which got a hum of agreement from the class.

“It’s not like they will believe you since your a trouble maker who got kick out of school” retorted Lila with a smug smile, “which you caused” stated Marinette, “so what if I lied doesn’t matter, they believe it’s my illness”, “you mean being a pathological liar, yeah but you don’t seem to realise I have photographic evidence of this, a recording of this entire event and physical proof” Marinette snapped holding up the sketchbook which Alya had thrown when everyone had started calling Lila a liar, “now if you excuse me” Marinette said with Adrien closely behind as she left the classroom with the yelling of the class starting again.

“Finally, I’m so sorry about making us take the high road but by the time I knew, Lila had her claws in everyone,” Adrien said rubbing the back of his neck, “not your fault you had no idea Lila would get me kicked out or get people to destroy my things and to be far I never told you that she threatened me so we’re even” Marinette replied, “she threatened you” Adrien asked as his head snapped around to face Marinette completely, “yeah but it was the threat of ‘I will take all your friends away if you don’t follow me’, the normal supervillain threats you hear on a kids cartoon so I didn’t take it seriously, she threat me in the bathroom how cliche is that also I had more faith in the class” Marinette stated, “I guess that’s true, still I’m sorry” Adrien replied with the face of a kicked puppy, “it’s alright let’s just go explain the situation to the headmaster then everything can get sorted out” she said and with a nod they both quickly headed to Mr Damocles.

Notes: It's the ripped sketchbook trope but it's not the entire class this time. An actual oneshot this time, hope you enjoyed it. I didn't add the whole class because I felt like most of them wouldn't do this to Marinette so I pick the most impulsive and not likely to FACT CHECK, people in the class.

AO3 Version

[inikavulpixelreviews]

Let’s Talk About Pokemon - The Rolycoly Family

837: Rolycoly

OHHHH!!!! OH OH!!!!! THE COAL MONSTER!!! THAT I PUT ON MY WISHLIST! OH How I instantly fell in love with this little guy when it was first revealed. This design is so neato in its lovable simplicity. At first glance it's little more than a chunky hunk of coal with a single eye. Oh, but they eye GLOWS as if it has coal burning on the inside! That on top of its general body shape makes it look like a living miner's helmet! Hah, how clever and original for a little coal critter!

It even has a unique ability that has it interacting with Fire and Water, boosting the Pokemon's speed if its hit with moves of those type! Cool! And how I LOVE that grumpy little visage it has. It's just a single eye but it still lends so much fun personality to the thing. But Rolycoly comes with a little something extra:

It's on a WHEEL! It has an entire wheel-shaped shard of coal on its underside that allows it to roll around like a unicycle! That is PRECIOUS! And boy howdy has the excitement for what this thing could possibly turn into get me pumped. So many neat Fakemon ideas floating around. That and I absolutely KNEW I was gonna be using a Rolycoly once I started playing the game myself. I just HAVE to see what this coal dude turns into!

Personal Score: 10/10

838: Carkol

Oh, well... hrmmmm. We're not off to a fantastic start, I guess. My instant turn-off on the other side of that evolution screen was that Rolycoly instantly lost its cool cycloptic eye in favor of a much more regular looking face. Why does it just look like Golem's face??? Like I can't stress this enough. If a Pokemon has a unique feature, especially one that is a rarity like a single eye, or a droopy face, or having shaggy hair cover the majority of its face, or even a complete LACK of face, it absolutely should NOT lose these features unless it has a compelling enough reason to, like fulfilling a design theme. There are so little Pokemon that are cycloptic that it's SO ANNOYING that it instantly fails at step 1.

I also don't really like that's already SORTA lost the wheels. They're there, and they function as wheels, but they're behaving a lot more like legs most of the time. It doesn't even keep its glowing eyes. They light up during certain animations but that's it. Nor do I like that a pile of coal is precariously going over its back. It makes it stop looking like a coal monster and just that it's a monster that carries coal. The shape of its back should evoke the look of a mine cart filled with coal and not BE a mine cart full of coal, if you get what I'm saying?

Even if it was just the face that was redone, I would've taken it. But if I could do a little tidying up and redoing of Carkol, it wouldn't take a TON to do it. The basic shape is fine to me, just good lord please give it its face and wheels back.

Personal Score: 5.5/10

...But not all hope is lost just yet! There's loads of Pokemon with a good beginning, and low middle, and a good end. Awkward teenage stage am I right? Even if its face isn't just a single eye anymore, at least it's keeping the wheeled theme! In fact, you could really build off of that! Like making it a train! A TRAIN POKEMON, LIKE ON MY WISHLIST AGAIN! That'd be knocking out two birds with one piece of coal! Surely they couldn't possibly think of ditching that aspect of this line, especially since it's been present in two stages so far! Surely the least possible thing that could happen would be if this almost literal mine cart Pokemon had suddenly lost all its wheels and miraculously turned into a generic bipedal dinosaur that walks like literally any other Pokemon out of nowhere. That’d be like, the worst case scenario. But that wouldn’t happen, right?

...

...Right?

839: Coalossal

Not to come off as blunt right off the gate here but this did it. I didn't think it was gonna be possible. Gallade is no longer my least favorite Pokemon of all time. Because in the end, as much as you could say Gallade sullies the Gardevoir line's unique take on a knight just by association, you can at least IGNORE Gallade. Just evolve your male Kirlia into a Gardevoir anyway because Gardevoir is just better than Gallade in every way anywho. Gallade? Literally WHO??? But Coalossal is impossible to ignore if you were a fan of what Rolycoly was putting down. And even Gallade had a FEW merits to it. Coalossal has almost systematically taken every little bit of what has cool and unique about Rolycoly and thrown it out the window in favor of being an all-around copy-paste job.

Okay, for a moment, let's pretend Rolycoly and Carkol never existed. Coalossal was just a single-stage Pokemon on its own in a cave somewhere or whatever. What about Coalossal is individually unique to it and it alone? Sincerely close to absolutely nothing. No single individual aspect of this design is unique in any way. Want to know the major reason why? Because Coalossal already existed. We've already had Coalossal for about ten years now. But back then, we called it Rhyperior.

I'm personally not a gigantic fan of Rhyperior either, but look at this. This is absolutely comedic. They're the fucking same. They are the SAME creature. Coalossal is nothing but an off-color Rhyperior. Like come ON. At least Rhyperior has the benefit of having is rough body serve a visual motif where it's wearing construction gear, with sound-canceling headphones, complete with wrecking ball tail. A solid rock monster design, even if I personally prefer Rhydon. I can confidently look at Rhyperior and see that it’s gone through revisions, redraws, and polishes to make it unique even in its own evolutionary line.

Can I say the same for Coalossal? I honestly can't say I do. With Rhyperior fresh in mind, what's Coalossal's visual motif? It's made of coal, I guess? Its face SORT OF looks like a cowcatcher on a train. But here's a question, why doesn't it look MORE like a train if train was clearly a motif they wanted to go with? If it's a train monster, why is it bipedal in the first place?

The only bit of its design that's even a little eye-catching is the pile of coal clumsily piled onto its shoulders, but I already said why I don't like that. It makes it look like Coalossal itself isn't a coal monster, it just carries coal around. Besides, most well-done designs aught to still have at least some value to them even if you took away one aspect of said design. Rhyperior with a plain tail with no wrecking ball is still a funny construction site rhino man. Even Carkol with no coal on its back would've still been a weirdo mine cart monster. Coalossal without the pile of coal is just naked Rhyperior.

Things only get worse when you add Carkol and especially Rolycoly back into the equation. Rolycoly's unique features were that it was a coal monster with one eye, riding on a wheel and it's shaped like an object. Carkol at least continues most of this, mostly ridding of the single eye thing. Coalossal gets rid of all that's left. No more wheels, no more object shapes, no more fun, it's just a coal thing now. Literally the first thing that comes to your mind when you think “I want to make a coal monster.” A rough draft in monster design form, printed and published for the full release.

I have to wonder, how many questions of whether this looked good or not the decisions to make in a train monster but also a bipedal dinosaur-thing was a well enough thought-through idea? Is being a dinosaur with a cowcatcher on its head visually interesting? More visually interesting than its previous stages, where it had far more visual motifs going on? Was it a conscious decision to say yes or was there a time crunch where they had to settle on a “close enough” design to pad out the Pokedex?

And you know what's more than likely the thing that murdered this line? Time.

I feel bad for possibly implying it was going to be nothing but smooth sailing this Gen when I made my little Sword and Shield pre-review. Because the more I've dug into Gen 8 the more I've realized how many designs in here are heavily flawed. And I can only blame the very evident drop in quality on the clear lack of time Gamefreak has these days. Generations are getting shorter and shorter and it's starting to show. Had SwSh not happened for another couple years, I guarantee I wouldn't be making this rant right now. This kind of blunder is simply so uncharacteristic of Gamefreak's art department. Like say what you will about the games themselves but Pokemon's been running strong from Gens 5 to 7. It's hard to believe the same company that made creatures like Mimikyu, Buzzwole, Sigilyph, or Pumpkaboo churned out Coalossal here.

Here, I'll embarrass myself and share a bit of concept art of a personal project of mine. These designs aren't too terribly spectacular, are they? That's because they're just the rough drafts. The very first instance of me drawing a creature in order to have their design idea on paper, because I can flesh them out later. They’re very wonky looking, weirdly generic at best because later on, “Ash Wolf” there would later become...

“Billowolf”. And heck, it’s plenty possible that it’ll go through one more redesign or so before I’m fully satisfied with it. Coalossal feels like the former. A sketchbook doodle of a “coal dinosaur” base idea that was meant to be more fleshed out later but wasn’t given the opportunity.

And I'm noticing more and more that this is gonna be a repeat complaint going into Gen 8. Lots of ideas with decent or even excellent potential not being lived up to because the designs haven't been through enough revisions. We're well aware of an internal approval process that happens within Gamefreak for these Pokemon to get accepted, and I can only wonder if they just settled with “good enough” designs simply because they were running out of time. Like for PETE'S sake this annual release schedule needs to stop. I hope this new trend of DLC will alleviate the Pokemon Rush. Hell, I'd encourage it so long as they're fairly priced and maybe even bring in a handful of new Pokemon designs each. It's not quite a year off the constant Poketrain but DLC is a lot easier to make than an entirely new game or even a “deluxe edition”. I don't care if we go back to a release schedule of one generation per major Nintendo system. Just let these guys have the time and leeway to do their dang jobs without the stress of ridiculously tight deadlines. There's still so much talent within Gamefreak and it's maybe easy to forget that they're the ones that made the more beloved entries in the series back before they forced a game out almost every year.

And to be clear I DO NOT mean to say all this to shame whoever designed Coalossal, even if they themselves are proud of it. Nor am I shaming anyone that does like Coalossal (just given I’ve gotten comments before acting like I’m being the opinion police with this review series.) Alarmingly enough, my taste isn’t law! And that’s fine. I’m just wondering if the higher-ups on the art team have given Coalossal a pass under less time-constrained circumstances? Or would they have sent it back in to go a few more rounds in a feedback loop? The basic point of this rant is just

Obviously, I'd want this line to follow through on the train motif and have Coalossal actually be a goddang train. And of course keep the single eye.

I do hear one of the defenses of Coalossal being dinosaur-shaped being that “it's a fossil fuel coming back to life.” If that was the intention, that should've been the theme from the very start instead of the rolling wheel idea. (Even under this light, I still wouldn't call Coalossal a very good design. It's far too generic to be doing even that cool idea justice. If that WAS the idea, I’d say it’d be way cooler to do a monster that’s moreso crudely trying to imitate the look of a dinosaur.)

...Awkward thing is, Coalossal wound up sticking in my team for the whole game. Mostly because I wasn't sure if any more new Fire types would be coming afterward (there weren't) so. My Sword team has my least favorite Pokemon on it. I still love ya though, Obsidius. It's not your fault your design wasn't finished. ):

Personal Score: 1/10

I'm sorry if it feels like I'm just dunking on Pokemon after Pokemon here. I PROMISE there's some Pokemon I'm excited to talk about coming up later. In fact, oooh, Applin's next! Applin will be a good palette cleanser, yes.

G-Max Coalossal:

Oh yeah, Coalossal has a G-Max form too. It's better, I'll give it that, and it SORTA brought the wheel thing back but only in having tire-shaped thighs. Pbbbth. The scale is imposing and at least its eyes look a little bit cooler again. I can't bring myself to like it much better just by association with Coalossal. It's fine, I guess. I'm not even gonna rate it. I just don’t like it. It’s fine. Eh.

[Archive]

[leminwedj]

    Happy 5th anniversary Undertale!

    A few days late to saying that, but again, this orchestra is hitting me hard.  Also im currently sucked into working 30 hours a week, on top of online school.  It's stressful, but at least I have a functioning sleep schedule. (it desperately wants to stop functioning again)

    I found out about Undertale when I was 13, which is like the prime age for something to weld to a person for the rest of their life.  For some its a hobby, or a band that was popular at the time.  For me it was this game.  

    Part of the reason why this is taking so long to make is because when I had the idea for redo, I didn’t have a good clue as to what exactly makes a good game.  Over these 5 years i’ve learned so much about game design, despite not actually having released any real game of my own yet.  A lot of the time spent working on redo before this year was more like experimentation.  Now that I know what i’m doing (somewhat), I can work on this for real.  Once I have time to of course.

   If you look back at the beginning of this tumblr, you will find that redo did start as another web comic type of thing.  Again, i’m glad tumblr wasn’t letting me upload photos for some reason, because that put the idea for this alternate universe in the time-out corner to think about what it should be.  As it currently stands, redo can work either as a game or a web comic.  Although a web comic might be easier to just “get it out there,” I want to stick to turning this into a full fan game of Undertale for a few reasons.

   For one thing, I can spend as long as I want fine-tuning every part of a game from end to end before releasing it for people to see.  There were also a few times after looking back at what happened to Dreamer Reborn where I went and found a bunch of other fan games that were too convoluted to finish.  To me it feels like I have make redo as a game to fulfill the lost echoes of projects that could have been, but fell apart from having a massive hubris to begin with.

    And now, another update with game making.  Progress over the summer has been less than I anticipated, and its mostly boring backend bullshit for the player code anyways, so i’ll spare the fine details.  Movement is being finalized to a base version, animation is being experimented with, and a good solution for item/inventory management backend is being figured out.  All the progress that is being made is solid looking too, since the github repo is encouraging us to not completely scrap stuff.

    hey look at this crummy terrain generation I did for fun while you wait for something significant

    Anyways, I want to finish this with one last thing.  Occasionally, I grab the note cards i’ve drawn on and lay them all out together at the same time.  the leftmost grouping is stuff I made in the early phase of redo.  Stuff from about 2016-2017.  All the cards on the right side I consider kosher with what I feel redo is right now.  The notebook there is something I carry around sometimes, and i’ve put a lot of stuff in there like sketches and small bits of writing explaining the game.  Not to mention, there’s the sketchbook that’s sitting there as well.

    AND,     and and and and and there’s another sketchbook I got that has a really nice surface on the paper that I enjoy sketching stuff on, so here’s the first page I filled up in it.  The pages can barely fit in my scanner.

    Here’s hoping these next 5 years aren’t horrible.

[sadrien]

prince of cats

chapter four: my lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand

on ao3 || on ffnet 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

hey how is everyone? if you follow me on tumblr, you'll know i wrote like 8k for this fic in one day, and hopefully i'll be doing a lot more writing for it this week, so it looks like posting will be constant all the way through which is pretty nice!

thanks for reading! enjoy~

Marinette pulls her hair up into a messy bun as she makes herself a hot chocolate. It’s almost noon, and she slept far too late, but yesterday was a day. She had sat in Adrien’s kitchen for longer than she had ever imagined, familiarizing herself with the swoop of his hair and the way the corners of his eyes crinkle when he smiles.

And then she had gone over Alya and Nino’s and had screamed about it for almost an hour over dinner.

Marinette glances over to the window by the sink, where the window is cracked open. For some reason, she half expects Plagg to appear, purring and demanding something to eat. If she thought she had it bad before, after spending a few hours with Adrien, it’s infinitely worse.

She is totally and completely screwed.

Marinette takes her hot chocolate and makes herself comfortable on her couch with a sketchbook and some old markers that she needs to use before she can justify spending an outrageous amount of money on new ones. She really should be working on designs for work — the head designer had a theme for a new line that they were throwing around — but she finds herself reverting to old styles that she played around with back in collège and lycée. There’s something familiar and comforting about the draped evening dresses and elegant suits.

Men’s wear is boring and Marinette intends to fix it.

She’s scribbling out a jacket design that she absolutely despises when there’s a knock at her door. She sits back on the couch with a sigh, twisting up her hair and shoving her pencil in it to hold it in place.

She’s surprised to see Adrien standing in her doorway with an awkward smile. “Oh, uh, hi!”

He lifts a hand in greeting. “Hi, I’m here to, um…borrow a cup of sugar?”

Marinette raises an eyebrow. “You…are?”

“I…” Adrien rubs the back of his neck. “Would it be weird that I kind of just needed an excuse to come talk to you again?”

She blinks in surprise.

“I’m not good at this friend thing,” he continues quickly. “I was… I was homeschooled and when I went to university I didn’t really talk to anyone I didn’t already know—” Adrien stops and buries his face in his hands. “I’m just trying to say I have no idea what I’m doing,” he mumbles. His ears are steadily getting pinker and pinker.

It’s almost unbearably cute.

If Marinette hadn’t already been completely sold, she is now.  

“Hey,” she says softly. Adrien looks up from his hands, face red. “I’m not doing anything today. Want to come in for a drink?”

He glances back into the hallway. “Not coffee, right?” he asks, smiling weakly.

Marinette steps to the side so Adrien can get through the doorway. “Coffee is disgusting.”

“You’re disgusting,” Adrien says. He spins in a slow circle, taking in her apartment. “This is nice,” he says softly. “I love your posters.” He motions to a Jagged Stone poster hanging in the center of the wall. It’s surrounded by other posters, ones she’s stolen from events when no one was looking or that Alya or Nino had bought her from the internet.

“Thanks,” Marinette says as she closes her apartment door. “I made it.”

Adrien’s eyes go wide. “You did?!”

She nods. “Back in collège. I entered one a contest where you had to design a poster for one of Jagged Stone’s concerts. The winner got two free tickets.”

“And?”

She smiles smugly. “Watching from the front row was incredible.”

“Wow,” Adrien murmurs. He looks back to the poster. “You’re amazing.”

Marinette ducks her head as she feels her face grow warm. “It was just some work in Photoshop, nothing fancy.” She had spent hours and hours on it, looking up tutorials on YouTube and asking for opinions from everyone she knew. It wasn’t nothing, but she has a million things she would do differently if she could redo it. “Anyway, I don’t have any coffee, but do you want anything to drink? I have milk and hot chocolate and like…water.”

“Water is fine if you don’t mind me invading your Sunday,” Adrien says. Marinette bites her lip as he wanders over to her couch, knowing her sketchbook is sitting open on the cushions.

She waves away her worries — if he hates or judges her for one bad jacket then they probably should stop trying to be friends immediately — and turns toward the kitchen. “I don’t mind,” she promises. “One sec.”

Marinette is pulling a glass out of the cabinet when Adrien calls out to her from the couch.

“Did you draw this?”

She blows air out the corner of her mouth and quickly fills the glass with water. “Yeah,” she says as she walks out of the kitchen. She hands Adrien the glass. “I did mention I was a designer, right?”

Adrien takes the glass from her, a crease between his eyebrows. “Why did you scribble it out?”

Marinette sighs and leans against the back of the couch. “I hate it.”

He frowns.

She reaches down and takes the sketchbook from him. She tilts it in the light, scrunching her nose as she studies it. “It’s too…” She points at the collar. “It’s just not working for me. It’s very…angular? But not…in the right…”

Huh.

“Can I have that pencil?” she asks, holding out her hand. Adrien hands it to her and she flips to a new page. “Give me like…less than…a minute…” she murmurs, scratching a new jacket on the page. It’s similar to the other one, but with better proportions, angles in different areas, a collar that isn’t so horrible.

She can feel Adrien’s eyes on her.

“You didn’t come here to watch me draw,” Marinette says when she’s got a basic sketch down. The most basic she can get, barely more than an outline. She tucks her hair behind her ear and looks up to see Adrien watching the paper intently.

“I don’t mind,” he answers almost automatically.

Marinette stares at him for a long moment. She tries not to get too lost in his eyes — she is, in fact, trying to read him and make a point right now — but it’s a challenge. “You said you came here for sugar,” she says eventually.

Adrien shrugs. “I needed an excuse. And I don’t have any sugar, so I figured that I might as well try that cliché.”

She furrows her eyebrows. “You…actually don’t have sugar. You drink your coffee black?”  He nods and she grimaces. “First of all, that’s disgusting. Second of all, what do you do when it’s two in the morning and, like any real adult, want a mug brownie?”

Adrien blinks slowly, mouthing the words back to her. “Mug brownie?” he asks when his brain has apparently decided to work again.

Marinette puts down her pencil. “You’re kidding, right?” She takes in his slightly dazed and incredibly confused expression. “You aren’t kidding.” She gives herself half a second to consider before she closes her sketchbook. “Come on,” she says, motioning toward the kitchen.

“What are we doing?” Adrien asks, trailing after her.

“I have to teach you how to adult.”

✦ ✦ ✦

“If you’ve got random chocolate chips laying around,” Marinette says, “this is where you’d throw them in.”

Adrien frowns at the chocolate bar she’s handed him. “This is a chocolate bar.”

“Yes,” she agrees. “It is.”

“What do I do with a chocolate bar?”

Marinette rolls her eyes. “You are so lucky you have me, because you’re hopeless. How have you lived on your own for…how long again?”

Adrien laughs awkwardly. “I get it. What do I do with the chocolate bar, oh All-Knowing One?”

“Watch this.” She unwraps the chocolate bar and puts it down on the cutting board she always has out on her counter just in case. She pulls a knife from the drawer and starts chopping up the chocolate bar. “It’s magic. Almost like chocolate chips and chocolate bars are made of the same thing.”

Adrien crosses his arm across his chest and leans back against the counter. “Okay, I probably should’ve been able to figure that out myself.”

Marinette gives him a pointed look. “You think?”

“Why do you add more chocolate anyway?” he asks. “You said it was optional.”

“Why wouldn’t you want more chocolate?” she counters. “Also, it’s fudgier.”

Adrien hums. “You just have this memorized?”

Marinette nods as as she splits the chopped up chocolate in half and puts some in each mug. “Eventually you just know that you need two tablespoons of cocoa powder, because it’s three in the morning, you’ve been prepping for finals since noon, and looking at a screen for the directions is too painful. Memorization is inevitable. Besides, how else are you supposed to get through university?”

“Uh… Willpower?” Adrien suggests.

Marinette makes a face. “I’ll stick to my double chocolate chip cookies, thanks.”

“You know to make double chocolate chip cookies?” he asks in surprise.

“How are you alive?”

✦ ✦ ✦

As the mug brownies cook in the microwave, Marinette teaches Adrien how to make chocolate chip cookies. Not exactly her original plan for her Sunday, but it means spending more time with Adrien. Also, Alya and Nino will never complain about cookies.

She tries to keep the conversation flowing as they measure out ingredients and mix them together in a large glass bowl. Adrien is twenty four, just like she is, and moved to Paris a few months ago. He never really wanted to go into business, but he doesn’t know what he would’ve gone into if his father hadn’t offered him a job. He did like physics when he took it and he goes off on a ten minute tangent about gravitational waves.

When Adrien is passionate about something, he lights up like the sun. His eyes sparkle and he gestures with his hands, brandishing the spoon in the air. He talks quickly, backtracking and making asides and random commentary the entire time.

Marinette finds herself turning away to hide her smile an awful lot.  

He asks her about designing and she somehow finds herself offering to show him some old designs sometime. He says he once could make a pillow. She laughs and says that she started out with a lumpy pillow that looked more like a very sad ball.

When the cookies are in the oven, the take their mug brownies and curl up on the couch in the living room.

Marinette flips on the TV and then looks over to Adrien. “What kind of movies do you like?”

Adrien pokes at the steaming brownie with his fork. “Honestly, anything. I’ll watch anything from bad Hallmark movies to action movies to Disney classics to comedies.”

She hums as she opens Netflix.

“What about you?”

“Whatever can act as background work while I design,” she admits. “I like to multitask.”

“That’s a good one,” Adrien says, pointing his fork at the screen.

Marinette stops on the movie he’s pointing to. “Anastasia?”

He nods. “Have you seen it?” She shakes her head. “Oh man, it’s a classic. Up there with Disney movies.”

She raises an eyebrow. “Really? What’s it about?”

“It’s a musical—”

Marinette scrunches up her nose.

“Hey, don’t make that face! Musicals are great!”

“Not usually my cup of tea,” she says with a shrug.

“Give it a chance,” Adrien pleads. “It’s about the lost daughter of the last Russian Tzar, but she doesn’t remember who she is. She’s just trying to find her family in Paris, she doesn’t realize she’s royalty.”

Marinette takes one look at his pleading eyes before she sighs and gives in. “I’ll give it a try,” she says, and hits play.

It’s worth it to see Adrien smile.

[nazkanazar-kaleidoscopeworl-blog]

SUMMARY - MY VERY INTERESTING ROLLER COASTER RIDE IN GETTING MY RETAIL PROJECT DONE

Welcome aboard, as you have chosen my ride I will take you through some very important instructions which will enable you to read with better understanding. Please fasten your seat-belts as the ride is about to shoot out. The ride was called the retail project which was to design a showroom for the chosen brand and produce a number of deliverable as required. The final outcomes: firstly, to produce a stack of papers carrying the research part [ development pack], a simple representative of the million dollar idea was given as concept models, the volume and space was brought to life by an architectural model,A2 presentation boards to brief the entire journey and sample board to highlight the main materials of the ride.

I refer this project as a roller coaster ride for a number of reasons. Firstly, roller coaster ride is my favorite at all times because I love the Adrenaline rush that I experience after the ride – which was the success of accomplishment after the project. Further the adventurous part of it as to how the curiosity and tension mounts as you get closer to start the ride- as experienced when the deadline got closer. Likewise, I could list many similarities I found through my adventurous ride I took for 9 weeks.

The brief was introduced on  13th of May. I remember as to how confused and lost I was, as it required a number of deliverables. I followed by the lecturers’ requirements for each review date to be able to stay on track and get it done. I planned my days to make sure I had satisfying amount of work for the reviews conducted.

Firstly, I started off with the research about the brand Desigual. It was the first impression of their marketing tactics that made me fall in love with the brand. Eventually, that led to choose it as my project brand . As I proceeded researching I got more involved into how they carry out their marketing, their sense of respect to different skin, website presentation and so on. I wanted to present my sketchbook in a magazine style in which I included models of Sri Lanka in different rival dresses to stay in the context of the showroom location.

Furthermore, my point of interest towards marketing backed me up to do an in-depth analysis of the brand. This made me investigate various different aspects as well. I have included the marketing mix, five forces of theory, market segmentation, used primary and secondary research data for my conclusions and so on. The sketchbook also covers the draft plans and sketches to derive the final renders and plans. I have always included the short-listing process to make a clear connection of my development course.

It was challenging to filter the most credible and best sources of information out of the highway of information I had collected. Thereafter, jotting them down in an attractive manner was even tougher as it had to be something that they could easily absorb and understood at a glance. This was tough for the statistical data, the questionnaire results and numerical facts. It was because, I had to visualize the data in proportionate shapes to appeal better.

Secondly, I started on my renders for which I spent hours in front of the laptop to get an attractive outcome. I had to always keep looking at the development book as it carried the main elements that led to renders. That was the moment of realization to have everything recorded as it helps the final outcomes to be derived faster. This part of project tested my attention to previous lectures very well because, it did test all the knowledge that had already been taught. It took a lot of time to do mistakes and reverse as it was the very first attempt in doing many things at once. Unfortunately, all my time spent on render went to waste I had to redo as hand renders were required but it was part and parcel of it.

Meanwhile, I had to concentrate on having my materials been collected as per my render. Luckily, I had some backup materials which I had already collected through certain contacts, through exhibitions and so on. Therefore, I had to spend few less hours searching for the correct piece of sample. I would say this was an interesting aspect as it got me thinking like a real designer. For example: I had to choose what sort of carpet I needed which made me question the durability, the aesthetic aspect, the ability to maintain and many other aspects before I arrived at the final sample. The hunt for samples molded me to talk to people in a convincing manner to persuade them to lend samples, understand the variety of products available out there and be able to get the job done quick remembering I had various things to follow up with. It was an informative journey.

Thirdly, I started working on the model. I wanted to throw some colors for my model to be able to portray the brand Desigual at a glance.

All my work carry a dominant amount of the color red to be able to grab the eyes and strike the Desigual image right away.

Throughout my reviews, I had a lot of positive and negative comments that I received which influenced for the betterment of my work.

I have committed many mistakes due to the time span and the pressure of finishing the project. I learnt that research is one of the main component in any design as it allows you to generate more realistic and more suitable design ideas. Further, arriving at renders needs to be faster as many deliverables do depend on it example: the model and presentation boards. I had to do a lot of test prints to arrive at a convincing font size therefore, test prints did save a lot of money in my case.

In my upcoming projects, I will be able perform better as I have experienced as to what component carries the highest importance and how each deliverable is dependent on each other.

I was able to exercise a number of lessons that I learnt in my semester. Each lecture had an influence on me to reach a better outcome. Example: I had a doubt regarding the exclusion of the back door which reminded that a fire exit is must in every building so, likewise there was an ample amount of influence in my work which was evident in every step I took.

In conclusion, this ride had its own obstacles, ups and downs which made it more fascinating. The driving force of living your passion takes over all the negativity in me which kept me strongly on track. It wasn’t an easy journey for me to start on this degree so, I consider every project as a platform to express my best.

[pagejones-viscom-blog]

Title Sequence Evaluation

AUB.Viscom_ Title Sequence

I was informed and motivated to do my animated title sequence from the research I did throughout the project, mainly the videos of the story I watched before I started and the other title sequences I looked at with styles that closely resembled paper cut out stop animation but digitally. Discussions with my lecturers and an animation student helped keep me on task and better my animation from the beginning black and white animation to how it ended up.

My project had many options in the beginning of different alternatives to the story line of my title sequence, but I slowly narrowed it down to what I ended up with, I had to change the snake several times but otherwise, the animation ended up how my final storyboard looked. I am glad I simplified it from the beginning versions with multiple characters, and when discussing the overall colour scheme, styling and finish with the animation student we were able to come up with a great idea that was easy to follow and keep to. (this is all written down in my sketchbook). There were lots of little changes when editing and putting together my animation, some I were able to change to a point I was happy with like the egg and mountain moving, others that I had to deal with and allow the modification to lead a new way of doing it, such as the snake and some things I just had to let go, such as the armadillo’s feet that move with the legs and not separately.

At the beginning of this project I worked really well, researching, starting to animate and draw up designs for my characters, but as the weeks went on a lost a lot of motivation which I struggled to regain, even after talks with my lectures. I stressed a lot about not finishing due to my lack of motivation and I started to have a lot of self-doubt about my animation in the middle too wanted to change it and even start over. But I need to keep my confidence in what I was doing and after a while, I was again really pleased with how my work was coming along. I was keeping all my notes in my sketchbook well as I always carry it around with me and I often illustrate or write notes in there, however, my blog became neglected and forgotten about. I kept all my research and screen shots of my work, but I didn’t put it on my blog until the end. Due to my slump in the middle of this 5-week project I had to rush a little at the end, but I don’t think it affected my animation as I still gave that all the hours it needed and worked on it solidly for the last 2 weeks.

I think I took on feedback well, there was a good back and forth of ideas with peers and the animation student I was getting help from. The lecturers would often give me the support I needed again to be confident in my work and suggested changes where I was stumped on how to fix it. I worked on a variety of options for different things, such as the snake, the text and the movement of the armadillo until I came to a point where I was happy and confident in it. There were few comments from the lecturers I dismissed but a lot of my own ideas I didn't get round to testing out, most documented in my sketchbook.

I want to become more fluent in after effects, but I am really happy with how far I have come and what I have learnt. Working with sound has never been my strong suit, so more practice in that would be great. The sounds I have used of this are sound effects that connect with what is happening on screen and a gentle music clip I found that increases and drops to build tension in places. 

I have learnt to use after effects more confidently as well as illustrator and Procreate and the Cintiq which I had never previously used. I have learnt a lot about title sequences and what impact they have on the audience, the importance and its role in giving the audience just the right amount of information. I need to make sure in future projects I keep on top of my time management better and have more confidence in my project as when I change my ideas a lot they end up being worse.

In reflection of my project, I am so proud of the work I have produced and how well it came out in the end. All the elements work together as they should and sound fits with it perfectly. The text is am happy with though a more 3D effect I think would have given an interesting end to my title sequence. There are parts of it like the armadillo, snake and sound I could keep tweaking and editing forever, but I have stopped myself at a point I am happy with how it looks and sounds. It is not as menacing as I had originally planned it to be and I was to redo it I would make that my main focus and do whatever I needed to do to make it as dark and haunting as possible, possibly even change it from an animation to film. Saying this, I have really enjoyed working in animation and seeing how far I can push my skills. There were times I need support from an animator, but I learnt a lot and the snake was the only section I needed that extra support in creating.