#I tried really hard not to render and add more details

[nicoliharu]

Everyday you can receive a kiss 👊💋💗

[enteroctopusdarkysilis]

✨More Clones Brickheadz !✨

Since I acquired the Small Cody (40675), I found that there was an untapped mine. Why would they only make one ? Well. I don't have an answer to that, but I decided to take matters into my own one; so behold : 11 more. I went mostly for commanders here, but then I went a bit astray and so I added some captains to the mix.

In order, row by row :

Tukk (Not cannon but the colours are so beautiful)/Vaungh (died too soon-)/Rex (obviously)/Fordo (I did Rex, so I had to)

Gree/Doom/Thorn/Neyo

Bly/Cody/Fox/Wolffe

It was a really fun project, and I hope to do more of them in the future - maybe even phase 1s, some day~); supposedly not commanders because I did most of them (except Bacara, I know...The helmet was too tough).

And because I really like challenges, if you want to see another clone turned into one of these (Be it cannon or one of your ocs) feel free to send requests in my aksbox !)

Anyway this post is already far too long for anyone's dashboard, so closeups and details will be under the cut !

Let's start with the easy ones : Cody, Doom, Fox, Thorn

Obviously, Cody was easy, I just rebuilt the original one virtually - Nothing too hard. The printed pieces here are not the right ones, because Cody's are not available on STUDio yet, but the storm trooper ones were relatively similar, so I used these for most of these models. Of course, it means I'm lacking the sun bands, and a few other distinctive elements, but it works well enough for now.

Now, Doom is essentially a colour variation (minus a few antennas). I also used an old space piece, which has this big yellow arrow printed on it. I's not exactly what Doom has, but I feel like it's close enough for a first attempt.

Then, Fox is relatively similar to Doom, but with two DC-17s. I also moved the printed torso brick up to get that red line he has.

Thorn works in a similar way to Cody too, except I removed both accessories on the side of the helmet. I also added this tile with diagonal lines to figure the wings he has. One day I'll slap some real wings on there, but I haven't found the right image yet. I also gave him a Z-6, obviously. I really like it, so I might actually make that one physically, because the way it's build (with old binocular pieces) is pretty nice; although I doubt the pieces are available in black.

Moving on to two captains : Vaughn and Tukk !

Admittedly, not really that different either, except for one thing : I learnt to do custom prints now ! Yay ! Well, these are really basic : the blue line for Vaughn, and some trapezoids for Tukk's helmet (which are, indeed, not visible here - shame, I spent so long making these fit). The Ahsoka pattern was already in STUDio (because Ahsoka already has her own brickheadz, which I'll get my hands on someday~)

I must also add that having some cyan in this whole thing added some much needed colours in here, I'm grateful some people give their clones amazing colours (If somehow someone doesn't know who Tukk is, well just check High Ground Animation. Right now. It's really cool, trust me). Anyway.

As for design changes, I modified the faces slightly by adding 1x1 tiles, to allow for different colours variations on the face. It makes them look slightly blockier, but given the overall size of the head, it doesn't do much.

I also gave Vaughn a DC-15A. It's a bit messy, but it works out well enough. Past me forgot to render it, so here is a raw, in-software picture of it (from Fordo(s hand, but it's the same design for both) :

BARC helmets ? Wolffe, Fordo, Neyo

As I've been told, these look a bit wonky, and I'll admit its wasn't exactly easy, but in my defence, it's relatively hard to get such round shapes with bricks (lego cheated by adding the visor). Anyway, given that doing that with a printed piece was out of the question, I tried to replicate the filter's shape with actual bricks, and I used a printed piece which, technically, is Lando's moustache, but downward. I'd say it does the job relatively well.

I also added a rangefinder to Wolffe, which is a little big compared to everyone else's antennas, but It's still relatively to scale with the head itself. No custom prints for him (not sure where I would find the correct pattern images ?), but I've done it for Fordo and Neyo. Fordo obviously has his well deserved Jaig eyes (and who knew it would be that difficult to find a picture of that on internet ?), and Neyo has his symbol on the helmet, chest plate, and the shoulder not shown here.

The really tinkered ones : Gree, Bly, Rex :

Here, it was a matter of trials and errors to figure out just how to get the shapes right.

I actually started with Bly, by removing the previous visor and adding the macrobinoculars first, then I tried to shape the helmet around. Truth is, it doesn't make sense technically : the two separated parts of the helmet do not connected at all, if you remove the equipment. Luckily, no one has to know that.

Next is Gree. It took me some time to figure out how to properly get a round feel, but I feel like it's as good as I can make it like this. Colour-wise, it was surprisingly difficult to find how to balance the different shades of green, and equally hard was to figure out which silvery colour would render well in STUDio. The answer lied, as it always does, in Bionicle. Of course, none of these pieces exist in this colour, but it's not really my main problem (because none of the coloured printed pieces exist either).

Finally, Rex...He gave me some trouble, I have to admit. Firstly, the part-designing software decided to have some trouble with custom prints, which was problematic, because I simply couldn't do Rex without jaig eyes (and Fordo already had his). Then, I started with Gree's base and tried to go from there to fit Rex's custom helmet. I ended up using Boba Fett's printed visor piece for Rex, because these were all triangles. I also got rid of the printed chest piece and used some black plates to simulate the pouch he has; while also adding a a few more custom printed pieces for the arms and pauldron (barely visible, but they're here. I'm not entirely happy with it, but I don't see much other solutions than more and more custom prints, which isn't my goal, so it'll stay like that for now.

Anyway, that's way too much rambling for one post, so I'll just end by saying that next week I'll post an alt version of this whole build [here !], with some 'slight' colour alterations. Definitely nothing big.

[morningmask27]

acrylic on canvas 30x40 cm

it is very evil of Belladonna to not bite women when she probably has the entire lesbian community on their knees now

anyways, Dracula's Ex-Girlfriend was so fucking good and despite my hatred of drawing (let alone painting) humans it compelled me to create something.

I'm just going to leave a wall of commentary on the process under the cut because I need to chatter about all of this real quick

I chose this scene at the end because 1. it was super hard to find one still where Bella and Fay are both properly visible (yet somehow Fay's still facing the other direction) and 2. this scene just hits a bit different to me.

the discussion of smoking, a thing that's bad, but it being life, right as Bella drank that bartender dry made me think of a few things I experienced and while I personally will still keep on going against what Fay said here, I still got to see things in a somewhat different light I guess.

Fay's care is also so present here. Bella is self-destructing massively, but Fay still comforts her, even after she "fell back" on her bad habits (she never quit) and this hug just hit me personally quite a lot. the silent care, the "you're warm". I can't fully describe everything it makes me feel, but this scene was good.

on a more technical level. I had to take some creative liberties with the lighting and such because it was DARK and my painting skills aren't ready to make such minute details with extremely dark colors. It would get ugly and muddied, so I had to adapt. the harsh shading on Bella's face is less striking, but I don't know if I could make it better with my current skills.

This was also one of the first times I've really rendered a human face; Last time I "tried" it was 1. without a ref (unwise) and 2. when I was even worse at drawing humans and I ended up so mad at this painting that I Could Not Go Paint Again for a while because of how mad I was lol, so I'm honestly really impressed with how I managed to do this without making a huge mess.

At least until I got to add the blood. It still looks good now, but I had to fiddle a lot with the reds I used and the skintones to mitigate the damage of a few first strokes that got too grandiose.

I also decided that Fangs. I am a bit of a vampire researcher and seeing the different traits they get in different media is always fun and here the fangs seem a bit retractable, but Bella's a vampire and I am a sucker for fangs, so I had to include them.

my handwriting also didn't fail me too horribly, even if I had a few accidents and had to clean them up before I got this "clean" little text. I really don't have good brushes for very thin and precise strokes (nor the capacity to not tremble the entire time honestly)

This was honestly quite fun too. Four hours of listening to some music, having a weird moment with my mother on the phone and just painting. I did really not want to draw Bella's face at first and drew nearly everything else before I began, but once I did I got into the groove and it went fine, so I'm pleased with this.

[badlydrawnronpa]

hi anon ty for sending the message! I did look through their blog and they very obviously use AI - I would've published the ask normally to let other people know but I decided against it in the end because after a closer inspection I noticed that all commissions are fake (besides being fake art I mean) and they're not actually scamming anyone because. uh. literally most of the blogs I saw interact with them are empty rp blogs that are blatantly controlled by them and one of the commissions I saw on their patreon was for a defunct ohsc rp blog from 2014??? Which honestly was really funny.

so yeah, they're very much not pulling any money from that, and on top of it all they posted pics of themselves sooooo yeh, not going to blast them on a blog with a big following for trying the 'i dont use ai im a real artist' but ultimately not scamming anyone out of their money. They're also not the best at like... hiding they're using AI because you can see their traditional art in other posts, and the style or experience level doesn't match at all.

I will post some of their AI stuff underneath the read more and point out the inconsistencies tho, to help out other people in spotting out ai shit (esp non artists that might have an harder time figuring things out). If you find out the original user that posted these, please don't harass them, be civil.

BTW I'M SAYING THIS NOW: if you see something I point out and say ''ah, I do that, I'm in trouble" - no you're not, if you actually draw the stuff yourself. You can see when an artist's work (and mistakes!) are genuine. Beginner's mistakes can be made by experienced artists too, but if you look at their entire body of work you can see when something doesn't add up.

to start off, I saw anon calling them out on this one so I'm just reiterating some of the points, but here's some junko 'art' they made

when confronted abt it, they said that the fingers look weird because they can't control their shaky hands and drawing small is hard. anyway if you draw digitally you can zoom in on the canvas and work on a detail as big as you need, so that excuse doesn't hold

this other post was basically what made me just say 'yep thats ai' and it was just the second 'art' post I saw from them

while taken alone they could've been a little harder to spot as AI, with them all bundled together you can easily see they came from the same prompt; the user tried to justify the inconsistencies saying it was because they were 'experimenting' with the design of their oc and gundham's scar but I'm telling you now, no sane artist fully renders four pieces that are basically the same concept while changing the design of the character just slightly in every single one of them. anyway, here's the breakdown of every piece:

another that was way easier to break down because it's so full of inconsistencies the moment you really take a look at it

also let's be real if you render art like that you're not gonna put a bright purple unreadable text on your supposed vtuber "art"

let's end this with the AI "commission" that could be harder to break down as AI if seen in a vacuum now, shall we? esp because our friend, the fucked up melty finger, isn't there

I honestly had to look for a while at this one because if you had shown it to me and I didn't see the other stuff this person posted, I could've just chalked up a lot of these mistakes to human error. Tangents between lines, scribbles for details, forgotten uncolored sections is all normal stuff. BUT we know this person used AI in all the other posts, so we know what to look at:

again, some mistakes the AI does can be also mistakes actual artists do: be sure to check the other art the user makes before throwing accusations

they also posted a fake speedpaint that is so embarassing it made me laugh but if I start pointing out inconsistencies in an AI speedpaint we're gonna be here for a long time, so.

TL;DR AI 'ART' SIGNS:

The classics: hands and fingers don't make sense, there's additional weird lines and they melt into other part of the drawing

long hair strands and other long or flowy elements can suddenly disappear behind objects and not reappear where they should

jewels, intricate details, hairpins and other accessories bend and melt into each other and other part of the design

the resolution of the image is very low and/or grainy - a lot of artists post lower res pieces online, but again: look for a pattern and combos of all the other signs

inconsistencies between multiple art posts, character designs constantly being different, sudden art style changes - while this can also be found with real artists, this is an additional tell of someone using AI, when combined with the stuff I mentioned above. humans mistakes usually have a reason for what they happen, AI makes them because it doesnt understand what it's doing most of the time

[scribz-ag24]

Do you have a set process for coloring and rendering / adding texture to your art? If so, would it be alright for me to ask what goes into that process? I'd love to learn how an artist I admire goes about their work!

Omg I'm so flattered, I'll try my best to explain it!! ^^

Tho, okayyy, I apologize beforehand for how incoherent this might be, since I don't really have a set process at all and mostly I fake it 'til i make it haha. I'm the first to admit that I don't have a ver consistent method and that shows in how irregular in quality my art can look, even inside the general sketchy look.

(Btw sorry if some of the fanart i use for example doesn't make you comfortable but I've tried to find the best examples for each type of coloring haha)

I'll start with the brushes I rely on the most, tho I admit i made the mistake of downloading too many brushes and textures so I might use others on rare occassions xddd

These are basically the brushes I use the most. The "mezclador redondo" is just CSP's default paintbrush and I only tweaked it to find sth I liked and felt comfortable with for both lining and painting

As you can see here I only used one layer for lines and other three for each of the guys' colors. I colored it all with the default brush (tho unfortunately I lost the settings I used for this drawing in particular and haven't found them again rip). In drawings like this I just do a sketch, clean the lines (no lineart) and then paint it. After the base color I start laying out different hues to make the coloring more interesting.

This one was the same. One layer for coloring, manually adding lighter hues (see the more light and yellowish color on grovyle's left leg compared to the shadow) or darker tones. I try to add color to the shadows as well to make them feel less flat, and an airbrush in overlay tends to help with that (tho here I just used a brush).

Here you can see that I often paint over the lines on another layer to correct mistakes in the "lineart" lol. I also applied an airbrush (layer mode overlay) over celebi to make her more bright. I wanted to put this one to show that coloring doesn't have to be detailed to look nice enough. Here Celebi basically has no shadows at all but the tone of the drawing makes her look cute anyways imo ^^

In these two you can see adjustements over the full image again (yellow layer), but I also wanted to show that I don't have a set number of layers either, it depends on how many I feel like using. Again, sorry for the lack of consistency but im too lazy to have a proper method lmao

I will also use harder brushes and tone changes sometimes, instead of blending them with less dense brushes. I am also fond of adding hard lighting in some drawings. You can experiments with it on a top layer and delete it if it doesn't fit, so it's always worth a try.

Another thing I recommend is studying and copying artists you admire or like. Add things from their styles into yours, see how they work with proportions and try to use that in your own art. It has helped me a lot and, without looking to fully copy anyone's style, it does give you some ideas of how you wish your drawing would look, which motivates me (when it doesn't depress me lol)

Finally, the texturing isn't consistent either. I use one of CSP's/Downloaded texture packs, put a grainy texture on the canvas, set it to overlay and adjust the opacity until I'm satisfied. In these two images you can see I am not consistent in coloring even in the same comic lmao. But we are doing this for fun, so I think experimentation is always sth worth exploring ^^

And I think that's all I have to say. I don't control color theory at all, so I can't really explain how I choose colors. I look up some tutorials on youtube and pretend I understand lol. Ig the one thing I tend to do a lot is changing hues in a base color to make it look less flat, the same as with shadows.

Anyways I hope this was helpful or that it at least waas what you asked for haha. Thank you for the interest!! :DD

[hellonerf]

If you're comfortable, can you make a tutorial on how to draw in your artstyle? I'm very sorry for asking if somebody else have already asked

hello anon, thank you for asking! i will preface all of this by saying i don't mind if anyone takes inspo from my art etc. but i will probably be a little neurotic if i notice it in the wild and there's itches in my head about it. i'm trying not to let personal feelings get in the way of my principle of it here 🏇

i don't really know how to make a tutorial. i tried to draw something that could get concepts across, but it was really hard and i didn't like any of it so instead i'll just put the general process and "rules" i have in mind when i draw. 🙏 sorry if this is less helpful than if i'd use a drawing

the drawing process changes by how much i plan and whatever i feel like, but my general rule of all of this is to keep it as enjoyable for me as much as possible 😊 i start with a sketch.

if i want to shade everything in one layer ("render" even...) i go straight to color after this. this only works if i don't mind it being messy and choppy. i never mind choppy shading i find it charming personally but it will be harder to adjust perspective/proportion/composition mistakes here. i usually color under the sketch layer then i merge it all(with a backup ver out of habit) and just color over the lines and refine things. this way is not very time consuming because i don't care about messiness 🤷‍♂️

or, if i want to use lineart. i just clean up the sketch usually because my attempts to redo the energy in a sketch suck balls 🤷‍♂️ if the sketch sucks too i just try to redo it entirely. idk. sketch=lineart etc. my general rule for this is too keep things shaped and simple. i don't think my silhouettes are very good at all but i want to work on it lol. i don't like having to do details so i like avoiding them. sometimes a messy lineart can be more charming to me than a clean proportionate lineart? keep shapes in mind that you find cute ⛹️‍♂️ details add texture so you have to be careful with how you want that to go. uhhh my mind when doing lineart is too jumbled up i mostly go by intuition based on what i like in other people's art but that applies to any part of drawing

for lineart-related coloring umm ive changed shading styles a couple times here lol. but they can all usually be categorized into two. i'll simplify it with hard to soft shading 🙂 hard is like, "cel shading" i guess? it's solid. it's easier to do but also harder if the colors are too complicated. i usually do this in one layer with the lineart because i use procreate and i'm too lazy to do the selection shit 💢 i like colors a lot in art and i've mentioned how i do them before i think? i always fuck with it with tone curves and gradient maps and posterize if it'd work. just fuck around with anything and you'll start to learn about colors from there 👍 i avoid multiply and add/luminosity layer settings to shade. just because i think it looks bad on my art. and it's annoying to work with too. the hard soft shading thing is a spectrum kind of cause it's really just how many colors are used in one "object"? like skin can vary from one color base and one color shading or a gajillion colors to create texture with blush etc. but there's inbetweens where it's various colors but "hard" but also soft and hard.

soft shading is just straight airbrush. actually not really usually for me it's just me lowering the opacity of my pen as i draw and fucking around with the colors like improvisation. feels like painting but in a too stupid for traditional art way 🤤. but i've also used the airbrush a lot lately. i don't try to use airbrush in "objects" and art that need more texture, like trying to shape with airbrush is fucking hard. but i've done drawings entirely with airbrush tool before just to size it down so it's basically a blurry pen the lol. but for the other way i use the airbrush (where i block out objects and make a flat-ish gradient on it) that one is just exactly what it looks like i just make shapes under the lineart and then clipping-mask a color over it. and always always mess with the tone curve after 🤤 or maybe you can learn color theory for real #up to you

that's all that's really important i think? if you want to ask more you can. sorry if this was less helpful than you'd want i just don't rly know how to give an art tutorial i don't rly have like. a set idea for my artstyle. is not solid

[solarwreathe]

you have such a cool style! i love your dulcinea, you really bring out the weakness/danger combination of her character

if you don't mind sharing and have the time, would you mind explaining how you did the colored lineart for it? i've tried it several times and can never get the colors to look good

thank you! that dulcie was heavily inspired by young carol kane so i get what you mean about that combo, she looks a bit sickly and deer-like in that photoset but so commanding.

to get the coloured lineart look i just set it to overlay, but i attached a more detailed step-by-step under the cut:

i did the lineart with the custom brush 'daub fine pencil hard', but for most drawings i use the lighter pencil tool in manga studio 5

i copy and paste the layer, set to gaussian blur to make it look softer (5.00, but adjust to what feels right) and add the colour base.

set both lineart layers to overlay, then i copy and paste the sketch, set it to soft light and select clip at layer below

after painting this is what it looks like with the above steps, the overlayed lineart absorbs the colour but it still looks dull

i merge the layers, copy + paste it and choose the sunset gradient map, set to soft light, lower it to somewhere between 15-25% opacity, clip at layer below, merge the two layers, render the lace and embroidery

slap some blue on top and set to darken

[swifty-fox]

i fucminf LOVE ur art i want to devour it. do u mind me asking what brushes u use

Oh my god. I have... SO many brushes lmao. And i change it up a LOT because it keeps my art fresh. I use procreate is the first thing

(this is maybe half of my folders not including defaults)

The main brushes I use are from my LOVE Maddie Bellwoar who prices her stuff way too cheap for how quality they are. i cannot express how much I love these brushes. i use all of them all the time. and have for years now.

The other pack i have been using a lot is this Elizmils Sketch & lineart brushes

I have dozens and dozens that i use for so many things but I tried to narrow it down to my most basic used ones:

1 is the elizmil pack. I use these for my linearts, my sketching & my color fill

Then #2 i use maddies hand painted gouache brushes for my coloring lately. I like the texture of it

#3 I use it less now unless i'm painting foliage but her Ghibli Set is a CLASSIC and I still use it to do hair more than any other brush. She came out with a second one that I have yet to explore

#4 Then finally I have an airbush i made myself for rendering. It's just a hard blend that I overlaid a rust texture with to give it some texture variation. it's subtle once you blend but adds a lot of subtle detail.

You'll see I have duplicates here and that's because I will have versions of a brush with a hue shift on it. This basically slightly changes the color with every stroke. You can see it most on my skin/coloring brushes. There's multiple because some have more of a hue shift than others. But it mimics partially blended oil paints and just adds even more texture. which I love.

Specifically the setting to tweak is the Stroke color and BE conservative with it unless you want some crazy changes. I don't ever go above 8% really

[nhoongmeep]

Week 8

Progress checkpoint

Document your learning for this week. What theme, common to all of your work irrespective of subject or media, can you identify in all your own work?

This week im dealing with silhouette cutout illustration, which is something im not quite familiar with, and im also developing the tote bag to be BSNB background inspired. i have to admit drawing scenery and background is really hard, im not entirely sure what perspective id use, or what kind of style im going for. my usual style is watercolor based and even when i switched to digital, my redering technique still resemble watercolored a lot. In our project moodboard, we had a lot of Camelia Pham works, because i think her works altho resemble traditional method of rendering, look really mature and classy, suitable for our sudden change of target audience. i tried to learn and incorporate her style into my illustrations, but what i thought was a very quick and easy process requires a lot of experience and developement. Her works are very textured and detailed oriented, compleately opposite to mine, which is very soft, dreamy and dont mind much details. so when i finished with the totebag, i felt very off and defeated.

it was not up to my expectation and plus the foggy mind of covid just add more to the failure i felt.

i decided to draw the 2nd version with another composition

it still look really weird and out of charcter, so i developed entire different sketch hoping it would turns out better

And then i have too much on my plates with theprinting i have to outsourced it to Song Linh

They really finish the painting the way i expected it to be. and honestly im very disapointed that i wasnt able to do it. But i think it's a lesson for me to plan better and do not crumble under pressure. It would be ideal to develope more into the style if we have time, but since our timeframe is very limited, i should've sticked with things that works.

For the common of my usual style, one thing very recognizable is it's very dreammy, round and colorful. since my base was watercolor transit into digital, my works has a very sheer and dreamy, translucent. and it's often nature-oriented.

[calowlmitygoddess]

wop wop i wanna fill more ask games

1. Art programs you have but don't use

I dont have them anymore but i used to have Medibang paint downloaded.

2. Is it easier to draw someone facing left or right (or forward even)

Left!

3. What ideas come from when you were little

Many of them tbh, many of my characters are like 10+ years old and come from when i was a tween

4. Fav character/subject that's a bitch to draw

I actually really like to draw enviroments (in theory)

5. Estimate of how much of your art you post online vs. the art you keep for yourself

All, all of it, i have no self control.

6. Anything that might inspire you subconsciously (i.e. this horse wasn't supposed to look like the Last Unicorn but I see it)

Hmmm i dont think so? i at least cant see any influence that wasnt there purposefully

7. A medium of art you don't work in but appreciate

sculpting! i tried to do it but gave up, still i love to see timelapses videos of people sculpiting

8. What's an old project idea that you've lost interest in

Ugh sooooo many, so many. My first characters have sort of faded away, and other projetcts i gave up halfway.

9. What are your file name conventions

Jokey, very non-serious titles. Like 'siblings road trip' or ' shit hit da fan'

10. Favorite piece of clothing to draw

DRESSES!!!

11. Do you listen to anything while drawing? If so, what

Youtube videos, like gaming comentary or video essays

12. Easiest part of body to draw

Face and torso.

13. A creator who you admire but whose work isn't your thing

Hmmm idk to be honest, i dont have one i think

14. Any favorite motifs Duality!!

15. *Where* do you draw (don't drop your ip address this just means do you doodle at a park or smth)

My room.

16. Something you are good at but don't really have fun doing

Hmm nothing i think, i just draw things i like drawing lmao

17. Do you eat/drink when drawing? if so, what

nope!

18. An estimate of how much art supplies you've broken

None!

19. Favorite inanimate objects to draw (food, nature, etc.)

Nature!! i love drawing nature! <- never draws nature

20. Something everyone else finds hard to draw but you enjoy

Clothes. I like doing the folds and then the rendering

21. Art styles nothing like your own but you like anyways

Semi-realistic anime styles, or very overly detailed styles.

22. What physical exercises do you do before drawing, if any

Nonee lmao, thought i do stretch my arm/hand while drawing.

23. Do you use different layer modes

Multiply+ Overlay+ Add (glow) are my best friends

24. Do your references include stock images

Yeah sometimes.

25. Something your art has been compared to that you were NOT inspired by

My art never gets compared LMAO. Characters ive drawn have been compared to characters that have nothing to do with them though

26. What's a piece that got a wildly different interpretation from what you intended

None i think?

27. Do you warm up before getting to the good stuff? If so, what is it you draw to warm up with

No warm ups, we raw dogging this

28. Any art events you have participated in the past (like zines)

Currently participating in one!

29. Media you love, but doesn't inspire you artistically

Music i suppose.

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated

SO MANYYYY

[box-of-infinite-books]

Morning reblog + some additional information for each mob:

- Squirrels spawn in various forest biomes. Squirrels will naturally run from player but a player can gain their trust by throwing a apple on the ground and letting the squirrel eat it. If trusted a squirrel might lead the player to special trees that contain hard to see hollows a player could collect a resource from.

- Ducks are simple mobs, they can fly for a short time, they lay eggs, and the move through water very quickly. Originally you could breed them using bread, but after heavy backlash Mojang just changed it to seeds.

- Many Minecraft mods over the years try to make a snake in Minecraft that doesn’t look awful, and I think some of them have some really creative solutions. That being said when they show off the new Official snake the entire model is just one single long thin rectangle.

- Scorpions spawn in deserts. Will not actively chase player but will be aggressive if the player gets too close, they are also aggressive toward other aggressive mobs, making them potential guard dogs of sorts. Weak to Bane of Arthropods.

- Phyllonorycter uchidai, from Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. Phyllonorycter uchidai is a moth of the family Gracillariidae. It is known from Hokkaido island of Japan.The wingspan is 6–7 mm. The larvae feed as leaf miners on Sorbus alnifolia. The mine is ptychonomous and located on the upper surface of the leaf.

- Tarantulas have identical ai to spiders but are a tenth of the size and their hits don’t even do half a heart of damage. Leads to heated online debate on why the sizes of bugs in Minecraft are so inconsistent (Note, joke would have been funnier of firefly’s had not been scrapped, rip)

- Grape Ape: Large Gorilla

- Okay I know I said a tardigrade could spawn to be as big as a horse and I stand by that, however I just tried to picture how microscopic organisms would work in Minecraft , and first placemy brain went was “100,000,000 single cell organisms spawn on each block all fully rendered but too small to see, making the game instantly crash any time it’s booted up” and the idea amused me enough that I have nothing else to add. I would like to stress however, Neutral Aggression.

- Mercedes Benz do not spawn in naturally and are spawned in using the new item Car Keys. Mercedes Benz can be tamed if you feed them the item Premium Unleaded Gasoline and are rideable if you have the item Drivers License. None of these items are actually craftable in vanilla.

- Honestly I don’t think Raccoons need a more detailed description, you just, instantly understand what this guy would be like.

[felassan]

Jon Renish (Foundation Technical Director @ BioWare, working on DA4) recently did a Twitch stream where he played through some DAO. Although he works on DA, this is his first time playing through DAO. He’s playing through it looking at random details from a dev perspective as he’s currently working on DA4 and therefore wants to know more about the previous games.

On the stream he mentioned some tidbits on the development of DA4. There were also some insights and anecdotes about the development of DAO and similar. It’s a 3 hour stream so I collected them here in case that’s of use to anyone (for example not everyone can watch streams which don’t have subtitles/captions). The stream is a fun/interesting watch though, so if you’re curious or able to watch I recc doing so. 😊 The rest of this post is under a cut for length.

Please note that there’s some paraphrasing on my part, this is not a transcript.  There are also some additions from another dev who featured on the stream to give some commentary. The stream also contains more snippets that at times I couldn’t make out (I tried my best!).

(There is a mention of Cullen’s VA in the text below.)

DA4

Jon said he can talk about things about DA4 that aren’t “consumer-facing”, but he can’t say anything about the game that would be consumer-facing but which isn’t already publicly available. There are several reasons for this. One, that’s not his job, there are people whose job this is and they let each other do their respective roles. Two, BW are a publicly-traded company, so if he said something that could affect that that would be insider trading. Three, they’re not done making DA4 yet, so if he said that they have added [x] to the game and people got all excited about that or pre-ordered on that basis, but [x] ended up being cut, people would be like ‘BioWare lied to us’, when it’s just that things changed during the course of development, as is often the case

He’s glad that fans are excited for the game but notes that fan expectations are always double-edged. It can be really tough as some people started ‘playing’ the game in their heads as soon as they heard of it. That’s fine, he loves that, but he hopes that peoples’ expectations don’t turn into requirements. Clearly BW have alluded to certain characters, like Solas, being in the game, but some fans say things like “If [say] Morrigan isn’t in the game, then, rahhh!” Y’know, there’s a lot of talk about how certain characters have to be in the game, and yeah.

On characters which are quantum (i.e. characters which can die or which can have similar end-states as death in previous games): their being quantum makes it really hard for the devs to work with those characters in subsequent games. The devs naturally aren’t going to put as much effort into characters which could have died previously. A character can have had an amazing appearance throughout/role in a previous game, but if there is a risk of something happening to them and of them being removed [effectively] from the plot, it just doesn’t make sense to have them as a major character in a subsequent game. If a character can, say, sacrifice themselves in some glorious ending, the devs have to make sure that if they use them again, in worldstates where the character didn’t do that, the character is kind of ‘muted’, as the devs don’t want to disrespect the players who made a different choice

A comment in chat expressed a wish for Shale in DA4. Jon’s response is that he has no idea on that front

Bugs don’t come out of crunch, they come out of development in general. Crunch does impact on the quality of a game though. In recent years BW are always really trying to reduce crunch, they’re currently working really hard to bring it down. The best way of doing that is by controlling scope. As creatives it’s tough to balance wanting to make great stuff and be industry-leading with the desire to constantly do extra passes over things they’ve created like the audio, art etc. Their biggest enemy is time, other ways of reducing crunch or time spent in general include iterating tools to make often-repeated processes as time-efficient as possible

I think the following was an observation on the industry in general as opposed to a BW-specific/-exclusive comment: he thinks that as a result of this sort of thing [working to reduce crunch], a lot of games are going to have to be smaller and a lot more focused in scope i.e. the devs will have to focus on hitting the key selling points of that particular game/series as hard as they can, and cut down on branching out sideways/wide on a bunch of random other stuff

Jon doesn’t personally engage in character creators in games, but he knows that for some players that expression is worth a lot of time and focus. BW want to be industry-leading in this kind of stuff as it’s something which is interesting/key/integral to their games

In a way BW have made their own nest of problems what with every DA game being so different to the previous one. Still, he notes that each game has a staunch fanbase that says that their particular favorite game is the best one in the series

He doesn’t want people who think that DA4 isn’t what they want to buy it and be upset - there are so many other great games out there! BW are going to make the game they’re going to make - if some people like it, that’s great, and if some people don’t, that’s cool. Sometimes waiting until reviews are out and/or really seeing beforehand if a game is something that you want [has things/features in it that you want] prior to getting it - as opposed to jumping right in or pre-ordering - is a good idea. Fans don’t always know what they want, but they do know what they like - these are 2 different things

He hopes that whatever they ship for DA4, people go “I enjoyed this experience”, and that then, if there’s additional content for it down the road, people can decide, “do I want this further content?”

On hair: BW are using the new hair technology in the latest version of the Frostbite engine, so they’ll see what they can do! This was said in response to a comment about the hair in the latest FIFA games (as EA make FIFA)

A comment in chat asked about a flying mechanic (griffons). Jon’s response is that flying is such a heavy gameplay mechanic that you can’t put it in a game without everything in the game being built about it (see Anthem)

Relating to the above comment, in DA4 mounted combat would be cool but then they’d have to make the game ‘around’ mounted combat and make the mounted combat feature meaningful

On the underwater concept art: it should not be interpreted as a promise of gameplay. BW have amazing artists who sit down for a couple weeks while they’re in early production and just draw loads and loads of all kinds of stuff. Concept art is like a moodboard or Pinterest board. Elsewhere in the stream he advised, take all the concept art together like a mosaic and ask, ‘what is the overall theme[s] here?’, and to zoom out from individual details. [This stuff echoes PW’s word on concept art]

BW don’t generally write things or the choices as bleak as the choices in DAO were anymore. This is a conscious choice on their part, they want their game to be fun [note: this was said when the side quest in Orzammar where the Warden has the option of convincing a dwarven mother to abandon her young baby to die was being played through. It seems to refer to intensively grimdark choices/beats of this kind]

I think this was more of a general comment on games: SSDs (solid state drives) mean that players will see shorter elevator rides (Mass Effect - was this a reference to the remaster?) and fewer switchback corridors (those are actually loading zones). Generally, these are going to change mechanically the time it takes to do stuff in games

The devs have lots of features on their backlog that they’d like to offer players but each will ofc involve implementation and subsequent maintenance, and each one that is chosen to add is being chosen over something else. And sometimes, it’s hard for them to tell if [x] feature or [y] feature would be better to add to the game

They’re about to work on a giant feature (a pure tooling feature, something that isn’t consumer-facing) that is probably going to take ~2 staff years of effort [I think “staff effort” includes multiple staff working concurrently, so 2 years of staff effort doesn’t = 2 years of time chronologically] to get done in the next few months. They’re investing all this effort across the people working on it because they don’t want their artists and designers etc to have to deal with the problem that it’s going to solve anymore. I’m not sure what this feature is but elsewhere in the stream they referred to tooling and automation and gave the example of, the better your tooling is, the fewer times you have to manually set the camera for a human vs elf vs dwarf position, for dynamically-generated [cinematic?] content and for the first pass to be automated (if this is the case, less time is spent/wasted on redoing it and manually touching it up) [see last bullet point in this section]

He doesn’t know how big DA4 is going to be but said “let’s ballpark and say like most games it’ll be somewhere between 70 and 100 GB”

If we kept our Wardens as the PC throughout all 3 games, at the end they would be so powerful that it’d be a bit like “Let’s just do [thing], I’ve killed gods before, whatever”. He thinks it’s good that they have fresh characters each time in DA in order to reset that power level. Some people want more Commander Shepard in the next Mass Effect and he feels like, ‘what else could you possibly want / what else could that character possibly do after 3 games?’

When asked how much freedom he/they have now to focus on next gen, he said that there’s actually almost no difference on that front. The problems never change. They now have better renderers, better ray-tracing, better graphics cards etc, but they have always made DA games for high- and low-spec PCs, so it’s actually about gameplay systems. The freedom isn’t power-based and them getting access to more cores and more RAM generally isn’t going to change how the games are played. The games still have to be made for hard drives on PC. Dev creativity matters more than power here. The challenge of building a BW game is more about/from managing loads of different plotstates, loads of different art pieces, etc

On the title situation (two): names are the last thing they worry about because names have to go through legal before being approved. Every name, including character names, has to be checked in case it’s a famous person, or associated with something bad, or offensive in a different language due to localization etc

They don’t do face scans of people with big beards

There was also a bit about changes/developments to/in the cinematic design process and associated tooling [?] but I found it too hard to follow sorry >< This bit of commentary begins at timestamp ~ 1:52:45 and continues til ~ 2:00:05 [keep listening through the bit where they pause for a cutscene]

General BW

There’s currently ~350 staff in Edmonton, ~200 in Austin and more elsewhere

He notes that DA games sell pretty well, but relative to EA games in general, they’re a drop in the bucket compared to FIFA

DAI

5% of players of DAI never created a character [Q: does this refer to people who just used the default appearances/presets with no editing, or people who only played multiplayer?]

The mounts don’t actually go faster than running, this is an illusion

I think they said it has 55,000 lines of dialogue. [I’m pretty sure I remember devs elsewhere saying it has 80,000 lines of dialogue]

One of the companions had to have their name changed during development because of legal/translation reasons. It sounds like the original name sounded too close to something offensive

DA2

Back when DA2 was internally code-named “Nug Storm”: this was at the beginning when it was pitched to the team on a set of slides. The image on the slide for that pitch had devil horns, a metal hand and no flesh, it was just made out of fire and flames

DAO

The engine DAO is made on is the third engine that they tried for it during development. [David Gaider has gone into the DAO engine stuff some on Summerfall’s series of DAO playthrough streams]

The cracks on the cracked eluvian asset are modelled after the crack on the Tardis in Doctor Who from around that time, as at the time some devs had been talking about Doctor Who a lot. A dev actually added this factoid to DAO’s entry on TV Tropes but someone else (evidently not a DA dev) came by and deleted it saying that it was too much of a stretch x)

Before the game had its name there was an HTML script that randomly generated possible titles for consideration, it adds verbs and nouns together e.g. “Grim Dark”. One of the craziest possibilities that it once generated that the devs always remember is "Bone Wind”

One of the portraits that’s used for decoration around the world in-game (it’s of a bearded human man) is actually of a specific BW staff member

He played through Stone Prisoner, where Wilhelm’s son Matthias gives exposition in the cellar. Matthias is voiced by GE and this had been pointed out to Jon earlier on. Jon: “I don’t think that character’s voice acting was super strong there”

On the in-game area towards the end of Stone Prisoner: Outdoor areas in games are large and one of the things needed for them is streaming, so different chunks can be ‘streamed in’. There’s a tower [?], and technically the top of the tower was made an outdoor level so that sky stuff could be there, though it didn’t really need to be. The person that made it an outdoor level chose the very smallest chunk size for the terrain mesh, which determines how fine of a streaming they do. So when playing, every time you moved like 4 meters, the game would stream out 50-100 chunks behind you and the same in front of you (this is the bubble around the player of what actually exists). Because it was so small, it was constantly thrashing the CPU and disc to do all the loading. The devs were like “this isn’t going to work”, but they barely had any time. The solution: they made a new level that was outdoor and copied all the sunlight and other settings, but with the largest chunk size. They copy-pasted the entire level from one to the other. The problem with that many chunks then is that there was a giant expanse of flat terrain sticking out of the middle of the tower. They didn’t know if the story was going to involve shots of the outside of the tower for this sequence or not, so they took the terrain deformation tool and bundled all the terrain vertices at the bottom of the tower in a giant clump. So to this day there’s a mess of vertices and twisted terrain at the bottom of the final level that probably no-one has ever seen [not sure though if this anecdote is in reference to a place in that DLC or somewhere elsewhere in the game?]

There were also some tidbits on Anthem, however I didn’t note them down (sorry).

If you think I misheard or misunderstood anything from this stream please let me know and I will edit/fix it. :) 

(Thankyou to some of my friends who explained a tech detail from this to me.)

[source]  <-- current rewatch link

[christopher5418183]

Week 10

This whole course we have been learning how to create physical sketches, physical sketch models and digital models. This has provided many different opportunities to learn new skills and improve on old skills that can be used for future course as well as during full time work. 

The first few week of the course, we learnt how to use engineering tools to create a variety of different types of sketches such as orthogonal, auxiliary and perspective sketches. I have quite a bit of experience sketching orthographic views in high school so relearning how to do them was not that hard. However, I definitely think I have improved from my high school days as I have learnt how to format my page better, add additional relevant information to the title block and used fineliners with different line weights to create a crisp sketch. Auxiliary views took a bit of time to wrap my head around, but once I understood its purpose and how it was drawn, it was quite easy to sketch. These first few weeks for the first assessment were relatively fun and interesting. Next time I will try to improve on my speed since the drawings did take some time but also would like to make less mistakes when I create the sketch such as misplaced lines and measurements. This can be remedied through continuing the practice doing more and more sketches.

For the next assessment we learnt how to do create perspective sketches, free hand sketches and digital rendering. Perspective drawings were definitely much harder than learning auxiliary sketches but I slowly got the hang of it. It was challenging to figure out how to draw some of the detailed areas of different objects accurately. But the more perspective sketches I did, the easier it became and the quicker I could do them. We also learnt how to free hand sketched different designs of a perfume bottle and use many drawing techniques to create something realistic. I was never really good at drawing and the decent drawings I create take me a long time. However some of these drawing techniques were able to assist me to make cleaner sketches. However I struggled quite a bit when creating a perspective sketch for the perfume bottle since there was so much more detail compared to the previous perspective sketches I made. It took a while but in the end I was satisfied with my result. Digital rendering was quite intimidating to me because I have virtually never used photoshop before. Because of this, I chose bottles that looked similar in size and didn’t have super complex shapes. In the end I was pretty happy with how it turned out. Overall this assessment was definitely a step up for me but I think I was able to manage relatively well. I enjoyed the perspective sketching but not so much the freehand sketches and digital renders.

For the final few weeks we learnt to create physical models and use a 3 dimensional modelling program to create models and clean up digital scans. Creating the physical model wasn’t too hard. Because I love creating craft at home and have had 5 years of experience in wood working at school, I didn’t find it too difficult to create a foam model. The only setback was that I had very little experience with foam so I was definitely a lot more cautious than usual and took a lot more time and care. This was worth it because I’m quite pleased with my end result. However, when I began using 3ds max it was quite a roller coaster. I have little to no experience using autodesk apps and 3ds max was a completely new experience. I followed the videos for tutorials and it took a bit of time to understand but was not super difficult. But when I tried making my own model in the program, I was not sure where to start. I found it hard to think of what functions I should use to make any object. I eventually figure out how to do it but it definitely wasn’t the best model and quite a painful experience. We then learnt how to prepare a 3d scan in rhino and 3ds max so that it can later be 3d printed. Considering my last encounter with 3ds max I was quite intimidated but in the end I didn’t find it that difficult. It was honestly quite interesting how we could modify a scan of a physical model digitally and then create digital iterations to be later 3d printed so we could have physical iterations. After that we learnt how to put it into the 3d printing software to be printed at any time. These final few weeks I found were equally as challenging as the previous three. This assessment had its ups and downs but overall was helpful for future projects.

All in all, this course has definitely been helpful and useful. Not everything was that enjoyable but most things were definitely informative and helpful. It was definitely useful to look at my peer’s work to share our knowledge and advise with each other to improve on both our strengths and weaknesses. I look for to be using these skills I’ve picked up sometime in the future.

[amajikilvr]

HEY SHAWTY 😏😏!!!! hehe fr hi bby (@⁀ᗢ⁀@) !! Umm ok request time! Can I pretty please request tamaki and shinsou Hc's with a very... positive/sunny fem!reader? Maybe kind of girly/rlly feminine :) I'm not sure if this is specific enough HAHHA UH OF NOT THAT THEN JUST A FEM READER who's really kind and can give it but gets really flustered/embarassed when anything is returned (≧﹏≦っ);; thanks... sorry if this was weird ilysm!

(Sorry I kinda gave u two options, just go w whichever u feel more into writing!!)

headcanon corner - girly and flirty reader

reader type female (she/her + feminine terms used)

characters included tamaki amajiki + hitoshi shinsou

tamaki amajiki

you’re too much for him. in a way he can never get enough of. in fact, he craves it. just one chiming giggle from you makes his cheeks and ears flush warmly, his palms dampen with sweat, and heart patter like heavy rain hitting the sidewalk. you make him feel warm all over.

when tamaki is nervous and needs a method of grounding himself, he’ll sometimes train his stare at your earrings, noting every precious detail of them as he takes careful breaths.

his favorites tend to be the dangly pairs or anything that sparkles and twinkles (like your eyes when you smile at him).

your rings or bracelets end up being something for him to fiddle with whenever he’s holding your hand in public and feeling a bit anxious or restless.

he thinks your frequent jewelry wearing is not only adorable, but also adds to and enhances your alluring beauty. there are times where he’ll simply sift through your jewelry box and ask you about every little piece.

tamaki loves to buy you cute accessories and such. he’ll see something in the store and think “oh, she’d like that.” (she would look nice in that) to himself. next thing he knows, he’s shyly handing you whatever it is.

the sweet taste of your lip gloss and light scent of your perfume are two things tamaki’s brain has begun to associate with his adoration and infatuation for you. seriously, he doesn’t even have to be nipping at your lips or cuddling close for them to have effect; the mere thought is enough to make him perk up like a jittery excited bunny.

and your words. even before dating, you were always singing him praises and giving him all kinds of affection. he didn’t know how to handle it in the slightest and sometimes he still doesn’t...

tamaki’s own flirting surprises you both. usually, it’s by pure accident because if he tries too hard about it, he’ll more than likely flounder under the pressure.

without even thinking, he called you his pretty girl once. he nervously watched for your reaction and was very surprised to see that you looked even more flustered than he felt! you were speechless, doe eyes blinking at him before finally replying with a hesitant fluttering kiss to his cheek.

it was then tamaki discovered that he had significant impact on you as well. in that way. he couldn’t even lie, it made him feel good inside. he still refuses to force any flirtiness out of himself, simply enjoying the moment and letting everything go naturally.

he’s prone to blurting out blunt compliments and unlike you, he barely even gets embarrassed about it now. your reaction is truly the cutest thing to him; watching you go from your bouncy self to adorably ruffled just from his actions alone. it’s actually a real boost to his confidence...

you and tamaki both share a gentle and fragile disposition when it comes to intimacy, hearts racing and faces heating up at the first stroke of tenderness from the other.

hitoshi shinsou

the thing is, hitoshi considers himself to be a fairly composed and confident person. and then there’s you; your shining smile, bubbly laugh, and lovely outfits... he’ll start to wobble a bit, but he will be damned if he lets anyone, especially you, notice.

you took that as a bit of a fun challenge, of course. flirting with him freely and absolutely relishing in how caught off guard he always looked.

that hasn’t changed now that you’re finally together.

the two of you go back and forth; you flash him a winning smile, running a hand through his thick tufts of hair, and he’ll response with a fervent kiss planted on your painted lips as revenge for effortlessly rendering his cheeks a vivid cherry red. that’ll quickly wipe the victorious look off your face...

he always jumps at the chance to watch you model new clothes and is beyond happy to give you an honest opinion for every article shown to him. yes, you two have mini fashion shows. he’s showering you in sweet words, unfairly smooth about it, making you flush with embarrassment each and every time.

you giggling away while twirling around for him, skirt or dress swishing tauntingly at your upper thighs? for hitoshi, nothing beats that.

“you look good, princess.”

he’s smitten for you. you’re the only thing that can never fail to make his face light up. well, besides certain furry friends, that is.

speaking of, i’ll go ahead and end this by saying hitoshi would probably love to see you in cat ears or something similar...

[grimae]

I'm so deeply fascinated and joyful about your Book of the Sun drawings, both from an audience standpoint and an artistic one. It's so distinct and wonderful, and there's so much detail and nuance to the texture and the line weight right alongside the intuitive concept of "gold lines on black." It's so great, I feel like I'm browsing an ancient grimoire. Some of my favorite art anywhere, period.

Do you have any tricks or insights you've learned artistically throughout the last 24 pages? You mention loving the problem solving aspect of art, and I'm so intrigued by that.

Thank you so much! Always glad to hear these pages inspire and fascinate other people. I wish I was better at sharing the lore behind them, but part of me always goes “nah you will just spoil things, don’t even know where to start” (what things? why? wouldn’t they just make people more interested?) and another part goes “the way you write this doesn’t sound 100% perfect yet, do not share unless it is perfect” (why must it be perfect? I have no deadline, I can always go back and explain more, too). I started working on these pages in November 2019, which was by all means an incredibly tumultous month, so it’s now been 18 months in which I did these 24 artworks, besides the usual progress in skill I can see with my normal art, I can also clearly see it in the BotS pages. Older pages tend to be muddy. And not focused. One page, the 4th for example is to this day the one I dislike the most. I drew it while I was stressed as I had to leave for a couple days and really wanted to get it finished - which was a mistake, I should have taken my time to fix what annoyed me. Another page, 9, suffers from a similar problem but in a different way. I finally figured out something plot related and desperately wanted to draw a page for it, but I didn’t know yet fully how to translate it - didn’t stop me, should have stopped me tho. 4 on the left, 9 on the right here. Now looking at them again I do see positive things and stuff I did well, though. It’s important to keep your eyes fresh. If I work on a picture well until 1 AM and then actually get it finished, I’d rather just close photoshop nowadays and sleep instead of getting overexcited. Goes for non-BotS work too. Goes for commissions. Anything. I’d rather sleep another night instead of handing in something I am not feeling all too well with.

Later and younger pages tend to be cleaner in a way. Something thing to focus on, ornaments are kept small and not distracting with a hundred lines. As example here pages 19 and 20 (below). One big thing to notice clear negative space which is only defined by this slight colour jitter (I’ve got several brushes to add those now, all slightly different). The upper two pages have these blocks of small ornaments and lines for no reason that make them difficult to look at and concentrate, in my eyes. Especially 4 suffers a lot from it. I could have grouped  them up, I could have not added that black splotch around Alazar’s muzzle, I could I could I could. Same goes for the unnecessary golden lines outside of the circle in 10. The rays, yes. The rest? Hm.

And here’s something more, which took me quite a bit to actually get fully - using tiny different changes in hue and value without actually rendering. Negative example is 5, once again a page drawn a year ago, the other two younger. I didn’t know what I was doing back then, it was the first page I wanted to experiment with bigger blocks of grey, and I had no idea what I was doing. I like the black and greys in the clouds, how dense they look and oppressing, but it was unnecessarily confusing. There’s too much going on in them compared to the bottom. I feel like it keeps pulling the view up, where nothing is, essentially. Drastic example I didn’t circle are Judrig’s arms in 21, I tried really hard to actually make them black (for lore related reasons) but the picture kept collapsing on itself, something about it got muddied too hard and made it difficult to focus - until a friend said that, yes, for lore reasons her arms should be black, but if you make her arms red, a colour you already used a lot in previous pages, you can use the black or dark greys for bigger areas and accents without sacrificing readability. Which was good. And I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.

Also I keep saying this in bad tones, “I dislike this page”, “negative example”, but I honestly do not hate any page. I’m happy with them, I’m happy with the progress I can see in them and it makes me excited for the next ones to come. I told myself I will not redraw any of these pages because if I start, I will never stop fixing mistakes no one would care about with a project that is already going way out of hand - but in a way I am proud of. There’s also older pages I really really adore, such as 8, or 6. In lore, the book is drawn and worked on by many multiple vampires, over multiple centuries. It feels a bit like an excuse sometimes, but it does help to explain the slight changes that come with me improving in general. At least to myself.

[therealvagabird]

I’ve been thinking about disabilities on the tabletop for some time now. Given, there are certain systems that accommodate for this, but I’m only really familiar with D&D 5E, and that also seems to be the most popular system currently running.

So here’s Part 1 of (hopefully) a series of homebrew rules to let you play disabled characters in 5E. This first bit includes stat reduction effects for all your core stats - reflecting what it would be like for your character to have cripplingly low Strength, or Intelligence, or Constitution, etc. I tried to design these rules to have some level of trade-offs, and make the roleplaying experience more interesting rather than just more difficult, but make no mistake, these are still disabilities.

Stat Reduction Defects

To represent permanent debilitating disabilities of the body, one or more of these defects may be taken at character creation to add additional mechanical depth to your roleplaying experience. Each defect comes in three levels of severity. Only one level of any given defect may be chosen, but multiple defects across stats may also be taken. For example: a character may not take level 1 Wisdom deficiency AND level 3 Wisdom deficiency, but may take level 1 Wisdom deficiency, and a level 2 Dexterity deficiency.

CONSTITUTION

Level 1

Subtract 2 points from your Constitution score at character creation. You gain 2 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

You are of a poorer constitution compared to most. You do not suffer hurts well, and are prone to sickness, but you are not wholly crippled.

Level 2

Subtract 4 points from your Constitution score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Withering. Whenever you would gain a level of exhaustion, you gain one additional level of exhaustion as well.

You are afflicted with a wasting illness for which no healer could find a cure. In addition to the normal pains that result from such a low constitution, even doing normal tasks weighs upon you, and you struggle persistently with simply living your life.

Level 3

Subtract 4 points from your Constitution score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Withering. Whenever you would gain a level of exhaustion, you gain one additional level of exhaustion as well.

Major disability: Frailty. Your poor health has affected your overall physical ability. You have disadvantage on all Athletics and Acrobatics checks.

Grace: Caution. Your delicate nature has made you hyper-aware of potential dangers. You may add your proficiency bonus to Perception rolls. This effect may stack with other bonuses to your Perception. You also gain advantage on Investigation checks to detect potentially poisonous substances.

You would be described as “sickly” at your halest. Due to your affliction you are highly susceptible to all physiological damage. In some ways it’s a miracle you’ve lived this long. The fact that you’ve made it so far shows that you have an attentive mind and personality.

STRENGTH

Level 1

Subtract 2 points from your Strength score at character creation. You gain 2 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

You are weaker than average and are not suited for hard labor. Martial pursuits are likely out of the question for you.

Level 2

Subtract 4 points from your Strength score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Weak. When prone, you must use all of your movement for your round if you wish to stand up again.

Beyond simple lack of strength, you are weak by all adult standards for your race. Even doing conventional tasks is taxing for you.

Level 3

Subtract 4 points from your Strength score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Weak. When prone, you must use all of your movement for your round if you wish to stand up again.

Major disability: Crippled. Your body struggles to even support itself. You have disadvantage on Acrobatics rolls, and your base movement speed is reduced by 10.

Grace: Unthreatening. Your thin and frail appearance puts most people at ease, as they assume you are no great threat. You have advantage on Persuasion and Deception checks when trying to convince others you are not a threat to them.

Your bones and muscles wither as if you are starving, and even the weight of your own frame can be too much at times. While those who value strength would look down on you, at the very least you give off an unthreatening aura.

DEXTERITY

Level 1

Subtract 2 points from your Dexterity score at character creation. You gain 2 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Fine details are not your strong suit. Simple tasks or things which do not involve so much precision are more your pace.

Level 2

Subtract 4 points from your Dexterity score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Lame. Your base movement speed is reduced by 10.

Your poor dexterity has manifested as an overall lack of agility. Due to some illness in your joints even walking can be a fitful struggle.

Level 3

Subtract 4 points from your Dexterity score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Lame. Your base movement speed is reduced by 10.

Major disability: Palsy. Make all tool use checks at disadvantage, otherwise using tools takes twice as long.

Grace: Blunt. You are inured to rough terrain, since all terrain seems rough to you as it is. You are unimpeded by all non-magical Difficult Terrain, including crowded urban areas.

You are afflicted with a palsy which makes precision work near impossible without significant effort, and your every motion is only half in your control. “Clumsy” would be a generous term. However, if you put your mind to it there is nothing stopping you from engaging in more straightforward tasks.

INTELLIGENCE

Level 1

Subtract 2 points from your Intelligence score at character creation. You gain 2 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

You are less intelligent than average, but besides being mocked for a dullard you are not overly handicapped.

Level 2

Subtract 4 points from your Intelligence score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Unlearned. You cannot read or write the script for any languages you speak.

Your mind does not function with the vigor that it should. This has rendered you unable to comprehend the written word and put you at a severe disadvantage in life.

Level 3

Subtract 4 points from your Intelligence score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Unlearned. You cannot read or write the script for any languages you speak.

Major disability: Slow Minded. You have disadvantage on any Intelligence check to recall information.

Grace: Pity. Many people are predisposed to take pity on you and grant you assistance in matters requiring a sharp wit. Commoners may offer you work, though not always good work, while upper-class individuals may give you charity more readily. Scholars and other learned folk may find you irritating, however.

Your mind is handicapped by some manner of defect. You have immense trouble learning and retaining information and would likely be called “simple” by most members of polite society. However this has had the benefit of some people being more forthcoming with charity out of a sense of pity.

WISDOM

Level 1

Subtract 2 points from your Wisdom score at character creation. You gain 2 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

You lack a little something most people seem to have. Call it a sheltered upbringing, a slowness of the mind, or something else, but it’s expressed in a marked absence of wisdom.

Level 2

Subtract 4 points from your Wisdom score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Phobia. You must roll or choose a Phobia from the following table. When exposed to the Trigger of that Phobia you must succeed on a Fear (Wis) saving throw or become Frightened. Once Frightened you can re-roll to break Fear once per round in combat. If out of combat your comrades must aid you in overcoming your anxieties. Your Trigger will not activate again until you have taken a short or long rest.

Your mind is frail. In addition to lacking many of the insights and experiences other people seem to pick up naturally, you’re easily Frightened and maladjusted to the wide world.

Level 3

Subtract 4 points from your Wisdom score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Phobia. You must roll or choose a Phobia from the following table. When exposed to the Trigger of that Phobia you must succeed on a Fear (Wis) saving throw or become Frightened. Once Frightened you can re-roll to break Fear once per round in combat. If out of combat your comrades must aid you in overcoming your anxieties. Your Trigger will not activate again until you have taken a short or long rest.

Major disability: Disconnected. Your inability to read the world around you has impacted your ability to connect to other people as well. You have disadvantage on Deception and Persuasion checks concerning creatures with the Humanoid type.

Grace: Oblivious. You have advantage against being Charmed, and on Insight rolls against being Deceived by Humanoid creatures.

Some might call you slow, but your issue isn’t one of intelligence. Things simply don’t make sense to you, and you drift on in life unable to fully take in the world around you or the people in it. Your strange disconnect from others has some upsides – while it is hard for you to convey your thoughts to others, and are as perceptive as a stone, you can sometimes see through the illusions of the world that others take for granted, given that you are unburdened by the veil of how things are “supposed” to be.

Wisdom Phobia Table (d20)

If you have taken the Phobia trait you must either roll for a result on this table or choose a Phobia at will. Meeting the Trigger of this Phobia will require you to make a DC-15 Fear (Wisdom) saving throw or become Frightened. Once Frightened you can re-roll to break Fear once per round in combat. If out of combat your comrades must aid you in overcoming your anxieties. Your Trigger will not activate again until you have taken a short or long rest.

CHARISMA

Level 1

Subtract 2 points from your Charisma score at character creation. You gain 2 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

You are a rather unsavory sort, either due to some deformity, or simply a bad personality. Most people will not appreciate your company.

Level 2

Subtract 4 points from your Charisma score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Repulsive. You are either deformed or off-putting in some way that makes people want to avoid you. When attempting to enter conversation with a Humanoid creature, roll on the Repulsive Reactions table to determine the result.

There is something wrong with your demeanor. Perhaps your appearance is unnaturally hideous, or you emanate an unsettling feeling. You’ve had to find new ways to adapt to a world that despises you.

Level 3

Subtract 4 points from your Charisma score at character creation. You gain 4 point-buy points to allocate into any other stat.

Minor disability: Repulsive. You are either deformed or off-putting in some way that makes people want to avoid you. When attempting to enter conversation with a Humanoid creature, roll on the Repulsive Reactions table to determine the result.

Major disability: Shunned. Your inability to connect with others has left your interpersonal skills lacking in more ways than one. You have disadvantage on Insight checks against Humanoid creatures, as well as disadvantage on Animal Handling checks.

Grace: Discarded. You are so hideous most people will go out of their way to avoid you, even to the point where you might use this to your advantage. You have advantage on Stealth and Intimidation checks against Humanoid creatures.

You are a monster – or at least most people seem to think so. Whether by virtue of your disgusting appearance or some black pall that accompanies you, no decent folk want your company. However there are certain ways a savvy individual might leverage such disdain to their advantage.

Repulsive Reactions Table (d20)

If you possess the Repulsive trait, you must roll on this table before you enter into conversation with any Humanoid creature. Make a Charisma check and determine the outcome based on the reactions table. Individuals with whom you are personally acquainted or who are obliged to interact with you, such as party members, friends, and most shopkeepers, clerks, and clerics do not trigger a roll.