#I want to know where the fuck are we heading lorewise WHAT IS GONNA HAPPEN NEXT DE

[umbralvalkyr]

Xipe Totec the Flayed One would wear the skin of his enemies [...] And so does your Man in the Wall - Lettie (KIM) combine with how Albrecht came out of that first foray into the void Blind, deaf and flayed...plus the fact he even worries he's not actually himself.

idk something to think about

[lancerfay]

Happy New Year! I want to be more like, documentative of stuff I'm doing this year because it really helped me confidence wise to see how much I'd done once I sorted my drawings by year. So in lieu of just posting sketches, I think project progress posts might happen at least for a while if they're fun. Especially if folks find it interesting or helpful to see someone else do stuff at a different pace than "and now here's a finished thing". So with that in mind! OC and Vtuber mo(th)del stuff after the fold (long post):

Character Designing

You might remember my previous sketch for redoing her hairstyle (her OC name is Fay btw because mildly self inserting). In addition to the hair, I went and redesigned her outfit and figured out a color palette.

So Fay here had a few previous design iterations, a lot of the monstergirl bits are hugely influenced by Juniper Actias, one of my favorite streamers not only because she's a monstergirl enjoyer but also because she streams so much of her drawing and animation (rigging) work for her models its hugely inspiring (link for her twitch, other links are in her channel bio). I've obviously made sure to distinguish Fay here from Juniper but the influence is at least IMO undeniable nor am I particularly concerned with it being so noticeable, I'm just gonna give credit where it's due.

Face wise I was inspired by this (horny) art of like a bile titan (Helldivers 2) gijinka where the mouth split open on these seams, and that was such a cool way to have mandibles and a fucked up mouth opening (here https://vxtwitter.com/Museumofendings/status/1769777921747456421) cropping the image to show the example here because the original is kinda NSFWcore

On to the outfit, I had an old outfit design, a few actually, and those are here:

As you can see, the color palette's kept a few things and lost a few others. The teal color (my favorite color) has stayed even though I never made a conscious decision for that, it just felt right. That orange was originally picked for matching to the type of moth she's inspired by (Death's Head Hawkmoth) (also yes I know moths don't have mandibles but I'm a monsterfucker sooo...). We went from primarily sashes (its a lore thing) to being an old labcoat design mixed with some of the sashes. Conceptually she's a necromancer and the magic in my worldbuilding is very scientific in vibe, so the combo of doctor and whatnot is fun. You can also see that her claws now take the shape of scalpel blades which is very intentional (inspired by GirlDM's villainess model, Twitch Link more links in her channel bio too). Semi related the claws themselves are lorewise bone that she's grows into those shapes. Very The Locked Tomb core necromancy where its not so much skeletons as much as it is just manipulation of organic matter which is much more expansive and fun. Maybe someday I'll do a loredump about my fantasy setting I write in, but for now you just get that.

Vtuber Model Time

So I make Vtuber Models. Not a secret. I love the process, I love how creative the people that design vtubers can be. Great examples I follow not already mentioned above that I'm pretty sure make their own models are BooBeeQueen, Syraxis, LobotomyBunny, and if pngtubers are more your vibe you gotta see Oceonax who has so many bespoke animations its insane. Additionally if you watch PorcelainMaid AKA Jowol, he's done so many super sick character designs for folks to adopt as vtubers. So anyways, I love vtubers as a creative outlet and for animation its really really fun to see my own art moving just because I'm making faces at an iphone, like below! with my current/most recent model:

This little dark academia cowgirl was fun to make, she's got lots of hand toggles I was messing with, and what I learned when making her was a huge step up from my first model attempt you might remember, the android girl (link to old tumblr post here).

When it came to the moth here I have, a lot of ideas, but to keep it so it actually happens, I'm going with very basic for now. In total our project is going to have: - Face and body movements, facial and mouth tracking, and one or two hand postures to toggle, just like the cow lady up there. - A non-standing pose, as I've only done front-facing models so far and I really like how both Juniper's sitting model looks as well as Matara Kan's sitting pose.

For the tracking we know how to do that but will cover it once we get there for folks that are interested, right now we're making art assets, which folds into the pose! Here's the pose we're going with:

This half-kneeling I think is dynamic, in character, and is (I think) unique and interesting while being able to show off the whole outfit! Not super well pictured are here secondary arms, but we'll get there once we start rendering the parts, since lineart for these things looks...

... A little bit insane. If we're honest with ourselves.

The reason for this is because the model requires each piece that's going to move to be an individual layer and self-contained part. As you can see, the legs for instance are made up of chunks.

Vtuber models are functionally paper dolls, and you use temporary transform tool style warping to animate and move. For that to work the parts of the art needs to be "cut" up into these pieces. Not here that the foot and calf are one piece, I might change my mind and make each foot its own piece just for more options! For now though we're doing it this way.

The face and torso are directly front facing, this is because it's far easier to make a straight on face turned sideways look good than it is to take assets from a 3/4ths angle look anything normal facing forward, and we have to keep in mind the range of motion for those parts.

For the chest you can see here all the lineart for each of the nine (9) parts!

We do this here because we want each piece to have different physics. The way that her breasts move will be different than the cloth physics for the scarf, which is itself different from the cloth for the hanging fabric, and is itself different from the chest strap there, which isn't going to have physics but does need to move independently of the chest for working with facing angles.

We've only just started the head, but you can see here that the hair is already at least seven pieces, and the mouth interior is going to be more than ten.

As seen there where teeth and alternative texturing on the mandibles creates already eight of them, and we haven't even made the cavity parts like the throat or the (I'm not sorry) anatomically accurate proboscis tongue.

So that's where we're at as of 01-01-25! Welcome to 2025 by the by (how hellish). At this current pace, this might be done by the end of january.

I hope if you read this far that you thought this was interesting! Thanks by the way! I'm happy to answer questions if folks are interested in making vtuber models or why I picked different character design things, yapping about creating is always fun! Lastly you can have a bonus little drawing of F4 (the android girlie) I did a weekish ago~

[oldlionsarch]

*cracks knuckles* here have the stupid new lion’s arch rant no one asked for, because i went on a rampage again this morning. copypasted in from discord without editing because i’m a lazy piece of shit.

[friend A] GDI I AM IN LA FOR THE PERSONAL STORY BIT

AND

IT'S THE OLD VERSION

WHY DID THEY CHANGE IT

this is gorgeous and atmospheric and whyyyyyyy

[friend B] Yeha new LA sucks

[friend A]  Like it's pretty...

Underwhelming

[friend B] It's pretty like a theme park is pretty

[friend A] Yeah

No real pirate vibe

[me]  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA FUCK NEW LIONS ARCH

GIVE ME BACK MY GORGEOUS PIRATE SCRAP CITY

I'm eternally eternally eternally salty

And I deeply regret not taking more screenshots before it got wrecked

IF I HAD KNOWN

Ugggggggggggh

LA was my fave city and now it's just pain and sadness

I'm glad they added old lion's arch to the story instances but like

You can only explore a small part of it

There was so much mooooore

Navigating the vistas and doing map completion there was SUCH an adventure

Fucking rickety platforms and scaffoldings for days it was glorious

It was so. Fucking. Beautiful.

Jumping around on ships hoisted hundreds of feet in in air like BRUH. BRUH. WHY WOULD YOU TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME

I don't want to live in a fucking theme park

It's stupid and concrete and flat and boring and clean it's awful

I want rickety old wooden structures that look like they should have collapsed last year

[asshole devil’s advocate friend] It just moved closer to an ideal Asuran city

[me] I want giant sails casting shadows on the ground below

FUCK!!! YOU!!! D:<

[asshole devil’s advocate friend] u.u

[me] Rata Sum is way better than new lion's arch and you know it

[asshole devil’s advocate friend] I never said that Rata Sum was worse

[me] Their old concept artist did all the original cities

New lions arch was some new guy who doesn't know how to city 

[asshole devil’s advocate friend] Just that new LA is more structuraly sound and modern

[me] The old cities had so much LIFE and CULTURE and STORY to them

Ugh asura are more than structurally sound and modern you asshole

Asura have their own culture and art and style

[asshole devil’s advocate friend] I agree with that

[me] It's fucking obvious

And you're just being a troll to make me mad and GUESS WHAT ITS WORKING CONGRATULATIONS

[asshole devil’s advocate friend] Just that the function of new LA is greater than that of old LA whereas it lacks in form. Something like Rata Sum is certainly greater in functionality and perhaps in form than both. And I will get out of your hair then. I apologize.

[me] Asura use shittons of magitech in their calculations of "structurally sound" like dis rata Sum LOOK structurally sound to you?? Giant cube floating tiltwise above the jungle?

They care about soundness but they invest tons of resources and thought into making their soundness beautiful

It's possible to have both and new LA is a HUGE FUCKING FAILURE on that count

(lorewise it's probably because the fucking consortium was involved but STILL)

Rata Sum is hands down better than new LA on every count

Old LA was superior in form but only subjectively so, they were p neck and neck depending on personal taste

If anyone claims new LA is superior in form to ANYTHING else I will bite their head off, shove it in a jar:-* 

 And lecture the shit out of it

For a year

New LA is a fucking disaster of a city design the few suggestions of it being a city at all are shoved in the corner like so much secondary shit

All it focuses on is showing off ooooooh look I made giant sea creatures let's make them central to FUCKING EVERUHTING

The level of detail is literally like 2% of what old la boasted

Old LA had verticality it had actual fucking buildings instead of giant sea monsters sitting in a concrete wasteland peppered with gardens

Even in terms of function old la was arguably more functional!! New LA is more structurally sound but for WHAT STRUCTURES?????

Old LA had actual functional buildings it was clearly a place where people lived and worked it felt like a CITY

New la in contrast feels like a theme park and there's so much empty useless space and the only sign anyone LIVES there is off in the corners

The old town square sort of area was like ONE point of interest

Now it's like 80% of the city

OH THE CENTER OF THE CITH IS ABOJT ALL THE CITY THERE IS JUST BRILLIANT

Yes it's structurally sound cuz fucking concrete but what's that fucking concrete even protecting???

The fucking giant lobster with a couple of crates sitting on it?

OOOOH MY NEAT GLASS OCTOPUS THAT SITS ON THE BANK?

The GIANT FUCKING EMPTY SPACE under the glass canopy?

So much value, such culture, what a pinnacle of society we must protect

It's like they modeled a concrete bowl and then just modeled some cool toys to throw in it

Rather than actually designing a city with structures that sit close together and interact with the skyline like a fucking city should

It's awful and an insult to the old city and I hate it with every fiber of my being

It's so. Much. Fucking. Wasted. Space.

The maps are ALREADY SMALL in gw2 everyone knows that so why are you gonna take this already tiny map and fucking scatter like four buildings for 80% of it???

It's a fucking prissy art gallery for some assholes half dozen pretty sculptures with plenty of space around so you can walk around them and properly admire their handiwork

City what city there's NO FUCKING CITY HERE

I HATE IT

Also that lighthouse is a goddamn phallic middle finger to the universe it's hideous

If youre going to fucking destroy one of the best city designs in the game, at least do it the justice of designing something equal or better to replace it

This half-assed oh it was clearly done in the middle of the living story so it got like 2 weeks of work and then whoops guess it's time to release it is FUCKING UNACCEPTABLE

PUSH BACK YOUR PRECIOUS SCARLET BRIAR STORYLINE TILL YOU'RE ACTUALLY READY TO HANDLE IT RESPONSIBLY

You can't fucking sacrifice a quality piece of  work from the base game for some shoddy one-off event it's not okay it actively lowers the overall quality of the game if only by a little bit

And yes they have since added other stuff so they've "made up' for it with more content

But that fucking EYESORE of a replacement city is STILL THERE

If you're gonna do this whole thing about how lion's arch is a strong city and it always comes back you gotta, you know, BRING IT BACK

We lost a city and we got a fucking theme park with no room to live in

That's not rebuilding a city that won't die, that's replacing it with the consortium's trash and I bet they charge common citizens to use their facilities >:(

I don't even want to know how much time went into old LA versus new LA I'd probably puke

It's not a tapestry of living beings like LA is supposed to be, it's one freaking artist's hard on given form like DOES ANYONE REALIZR THE CONTRAST HERE

UgggghI'm tired now I'm gonna stop yelling

But new LA is a fucking shoddy excuse for a city and everyone should hate it 

[boyfriend] The sad thing is that it was destroyed for months. It wasn't rushed, someone decided that was a good direction for the city and they spent time making it look like that.

And that glass plaza was clearly designed to hold festivals but like everything besides Halloween happens in other cities still.