#MOSS IS REALLY COOL SO IM HAPPY I FINALLY DREW IT

[tw33k-tucker]

@everythingwasnormalhere / @everythingisnormalhere I FINALLY DREW MOSS, IM SO SORRY IT TOOK ME SO LONG, I HOPE YOU LIKE IT !! :)

[totoroses]

i found this lesbian survey and decided to fill it out!

Femme or butch? is this what do i prefer or which i am? im a femme and i have no preference in dating, i’ve been wildly attracted to both and any in between

Do you have a “type”? If so, describe it. the only nearly completely common denominator though my exes are having brown eyes? i have dated only one person who did not have brown eyes. i always feel safer looking into brown eyes then blue. i woudl say i have often gone after the romantic artsy type with good music taste and some kind of signature style about them, ironically none of which drew me to my current girlfriend who i believe is probably defintiely the love of my life

Plaid button-ups or leather jackets? leather jackets! i will swoon over smartly dressed gals in button downs as well as a chill gal in some plaid unbuttoned flannel but the two together make me think of a lumberjack

Describe your style. i usually go for one of two styles- softly dressed forest wanderer, or slightly sassy soft grunge. both include my doc martens, but one is more natural colours and old fashioned dresses and the other is sassy tshirts and 90sish thrift store finds like denim and dark florals

Describe your aesthetic.pressed flowers between the pages of a book on forest spirits, rose milk tea, silver rainy downpours, curly baby hairs, white peaches, a cat sleeping in a library, custard pastries, a circle of mushrooms in moss, opals and furry moths

Favorite article of clothing? my one forever 21 dress ive had since like junior year that i can wear without a bra and it has like a cool cross back i just looooveee ittt, then also my embroidered minty 1930s style qipao sort of dress

Favorite pair of shoes? my doc martens and green chinese embroidered lace up slippers

Current haircut? currently blonde (ugh) and currently my hair falls just past my breasts, the goal is to grow it to my bellybutton!

Any haircut goals for the future? i really wanna get on the thick fluffy bangs bandwagon but i dont think i have the stamina to put up with growing them out again smh

Describe the best date you’ve been on. there was this one date i went on with one of my high school girlfriends where we went to a bookstore and hung out and then stuck googly eyes all over my city on random monuments and street signs, and we also ate thai food and listened to music and it was still one of the most lovely dates. BUT my girlfriend recently visited me in taiwan and we went in a glass bottom gondola ride up a mountain and drank from coconuts and wandered through old streets and had the most amazing tea food with a spectacular view and it was heaven

Describe the worst date you’ve been on. probably the one where i went on a picnic with my first girlfriend who then broke up with me that same day and even though our entire relationship was so awkward and not what is should have been it still hurt so bad

Single? Taken? taken!

If taken, talk about your girlfriend/wife! where do i begin! my girlfriend is a slightly shorter than me girl named lynn who loved korean variety shows, drinking coca cola, listening to cheesy love songs, and playing tricks on people (especially me). she used to be a major tomboy in middle and high school and date all the girls and get slapped a lot, as well as mess with teachers and play pranks on them and steal things from their lunchboxes. more than half of her birthchart including sun, rising, and venus are scorpio, and she wants to start her own streetstyle online brand but has not yet found a catchy brand name!

If single, what are you looking for in a potential girlfriend/wife? :)

Describe your dream wedding my girlfriend says if we get married we need two, a traditional chinese wedding (she is from china) and a western one with a priest since i am catholic, and i couldnt agree more. my dream wedding includes just very close friends and family, extravagant lights and flowers and a reception party playlist chosen by me, catered by the teahouse we went to in taiwan. i know its so silly and superficial but i want the dreamiest dress that i design, wisteria everywhere, and most of all i just want lynn at the end of the alter looking stunning in whatever it is she decides to wear

Do you want kids? YES me and lynn talk about this a lot because we both love kids and both agree on at least 4, no more than 8. and we will share who carries the kids so not just one of us is having our uteruses worn out

If you could live anywhere in the world, where would you live? guilin, china. but its a fantasy. guilin is real and beautiful but chinese laws make it so that even if we settle down there and build a house it cant truly belong to us, and in china you cant have a private business and it jsut sucks because the drema is to live in the quiet countryside with a simple life and beautiful scenery to explore together and with our children

Favorite lesbian movie? i love so many but im gonna go with the handmaiden!

Favorite lesbian novel/story? i havent read nearly enough, but  adore all things by malinda lo and julie anne peters! ash by malinda lo is probably my favourite. i have to still read sarah waters though, i hear she reigns supreme

Favorite lesbian song? don’t pull away by milosh ft jviews (the music video is gay at least, i also love hayley kiyoko)

Favorite lesbian musician? hayley kiyoko probably

What lesbian stereotypes do you fit into, if any? mmmm i dont like softball so that doesnt work...i read a lot of sappho though! and i have short nails? and love buffy? are these stereotypes?

Ever been assumed to be nothing more than a gal pal? ugh yes

If a woman wanted to woo you, what would a surefire way to accomplish that? write me a love letter or make me a mixtape about your feleings something cheesy

Be positive! What do you like most about being a lesbian? girls!!!!

Are you more of a cat person or a dog person? cat but i also love pups!

Turn ons? a musical wonderful voice i could listen to and listen to, easy and stimulating conversations, passion for something that lights up their eyes

Turn offs? rudeness in any shape or form, indecisiveness or feigning indecisiveness because you think i want to make the decisions, despicable movie and music taste, smell

Do you usually ask other women out or do you wait for them to ask you? mmmm in the past it has been pretty even. i have learned though that with women it really is a waiting game more than with guys so with my current girlfriend the tension was killing me so much i had to straight up ask her if something was going on and when she said yes she did like me too i was so relieved because she admitted to having not dated anyone since high school (5 years ago for her) and not asking anyone out while at college so if i had kept waiting for her who knows if we would have gotten together!

What is your dream career? i want to be a stay at home mom and author and perhaps an art teacher or preschool teacher on the side if the books dont pa the bills!

Talk about your interests or hobbies! writing and reading and drawing and singing and hiking and listening to music and watching korean dramas and making lists and studying languages

What is the most attractive quality a woman can have? passion, not necessarily in the sexual wya, but passion for something in general. like if she is an actress you see her on the stage and see how into it she is, and offstage she talks about it in a way that shows she is capable of truly loving something so much and seeing wonder in life. or a girl who seems quiet but then when she starts to show you the music she likes she closes her eyes and knows every lyric and has this expression of true passion and love for the music, i am captivated by women who are captivated by the purest elements of life from music to dance to nature

Do you love easily or does it take time for you to warm up to someone? for women, i fall in infatuation quite easily. i was always more cautious with men of course and now i avoid them altogether. but love is something i’ve been becoming more conservative of somehow. i think because i was so hurt by someone before and gave and gave without receiving and im scared of that happening again. i have to be receiving love to give it, thats something i finally can control my impulses over and protect myself from.

Ever fallen for your best-friend? HA

Ever fallen for a straight girl? HAHA

The L-Word: yes or no? (love it or hate it?) heck to the no i couldnt make it past two episodes 

Favorite comfort food? macaroni and cheese

Coffee or tea? tea

Vegetarian? Vegan? None of the above? none but i have tried vegetarian before

Do you have any pets? a chinchilla and a cat!

Early-riser or night-owl? night owl 

What is your sign? gemini sun, sag moon, sag rising

What is your Myers-Briggs type? INFP

Who was your first lesbian crush? my first serious lesbian crush was on a girl at my middle school who dressed to the nines every day in vintage dresses and sweaters and she flirted with practically everyone just joking around and always had a boyfriend but was just charming in every way. my whoel day would eb ruined if i couldn’t just see her or say hello once, and i thought i was just obsessed until i was like ‘wait what if she kissed me’ and BAM i knew it was a real life crush

At what age did you know you were a lesbian? im not really sure. i identified as bi/pan from freshman year to junior year i think, but then was realizing i definitely had a preference and didn’t want to be with guys in a relationship at all to be honest but even up until last summer i was really questioning if i was asexual, so its been a journey but i think i finally fully realized i am a happy happy lesbian after meeting lynn

At what age did you come out (if you have)? i was 14 when i first told my parents i was bi, 18 when i said im a lesbian 

Are you crushing on anyone at the moment (celebrity or otherwise)? just my girly friend

Talk about how your day went i worked this morning 7-11 after only sleeping 4 hours since i got hooked on ‘tipping the velvet’ the bbc miniseries, said goodbye to a friend, had school and did a presentation on how to make rosemilk bubble tea, i ate at a moomin cafe with my coworker, and now am working on homework and doing this survey and putting off my night cleaning duties eheh

Talk about your dreams/aspirations for the future  i just want to have a family and to have my books published, thats all i really need. a loving wife, my sister still by my side as my partner in crime, so many children, so many stories finally told that people are reading. i really want to build a lovely house for my family like my grandparents did once upon a time, with secret rooms and unique hiding places, a house they can pass down as they grow up and it can have our lineage. i want to live by the mountains and trees and water, i want to be able to speak mandarin, cantonese, korean, japanese, icelandic, italian, arabic, and polish fluently

[ualscout]

Captain's Log: No One

I did roughly 8 hours of field research for this project. If that doesn’t show how hyped I was, I don’t know what does. 

We were told to go to the British Museum to take notes and sketches of artifacts that interested us. We’d then incorporate our research into our first animatic by centering/including the artifact in a story. The British Museum is a pretty fukken big museum, host to artifacts from cultures all over the world. I was gonna be there a while. 

My first area of interest was the Ancient Egypt section. Even thought it was packed, I took a lot of sketches and notes on stuff I could picture as the centerpiece of a story- a means of congregating or hosting. For instance, a lot of libations bowls that would be used by many people a day who visited a temple took my interest, or the towering sarcophagi that looked way too big for only one person. I initially didn’t want the artifact to become the character, but to assist the characters interacting with it. That way, I could tell a story around it. 

My next stop was the Ancient Greece section. As a kid, I knew everything about greek mythos. It’s a religion not only with multiple gods, but fatally flawed gods is so interesting to me. I took a lot of notes, but most of the notes ended up being around the story as opposed to the aesthetic of the artifact. The Greeks shared an area with the Romans, so I took some notes there as well. I moved onto Ancient Asia. There was a lot of interesting material, I liked to look at the jade crystal carvings and imagine the cronch from biting down on one. They had interesting masks, but not too much stood out to me in there. As I spent more time in the museum, the more monotonous everything got. I don’t think it’s the cultures being repetitive, but it does show how humanity fixates on very similar topics, even beyond cultural barriers. Kind of like parallel evolution. Where I really started to find my spark was Ancient Europe and Scandinavia. Aesthetically and mythologically, I love vikings. Pagan traditions are really cool as well, it all just seems so foreign to me (we don’t learn much about it in American schools). Stuff was interesting me again, but nothing was really catching my eye… Until I was being ushered out of the museum at closing time. I saw a deer skull, the antlers still attached, with holes drilled in.

It was from Star Carr. Made of red deer skull, it served as a headpiece and is among the oldest evidences of shamanic religion. It seemed so unsettling in an ancient and earthy way on its own, the idea of someone wearing it intrigued me. Coming home, I started on three base ideas to bring into class. The first was using an ancient viking mirror as a gateway between an eldritch horror and a young adult who’s distant grandmother just passed away and received the mirror as inheritance… except the eldritch horror acts like an elderly guy with clearly racist beliefs but trying to seem like he doesn’t. They talk by fogging up the mirror and writing. 

The second was two people arguing over who would win in a fight: a person on horseback or a centaur. Inspired by the fact that any times centaurs are featured in art, they’re always fighting a human. Even after writing a rough script for it, I don’t know who would win. 

The last idea was using the mask I found. I liked the idea of it holding an ancient spirit tasked with protecting a humanity that has long since forgotten its existence. I also liked the idea of it being able to possess other living creatures. Not sure if I wanted it to be horror or not, but it would certainly be unsettling. You can probably tell which idea I went with. 

Today, we wrote a script. This is the only area I have any expertise in. My script ended up being 10 or so pages of screen direction and character building, but I finished the dialogue as well. 

The story follows three hikers who venture into some Scandinavian woods on a backpacking trip. Haak is the most serious and the leader, he has the most survival skills out of the group. Maya is the prankster of the crew, but is just as experienced as Haak. Robyn is the physically weakest character, often scared by everything and unnerved by the surroundings. The characters leave their car and enter the woods, but not before trying to make sense of the cryptic writing on the worn and torn trailhead. Robyn is the only one who seems to pay any mind to it. As the group start, a narrator that could be Robyn starts speaking about “tales for a trip through the woods.” The tips start out as actual advice one would use for a backpacking trip, like packing extra food and always having a map, but slowly get more cryptic and unsettling. The characters make their way through the assortment of settings in the woods, focusing more on the nature around them instead of what the group is doing. As the tips get more cryptic, saying stuff like “it may seem like the trees are following you, they’re just keeping an eye on you” and “be grateful you don’t know what’s under the dirt, pray you never find out,” the forest seems to retaliate against the characters. For instance, they get lost and double cross an area they’ve already been in, get haunted by the eyes on the birch trees, and more. Eventually, it all leads up to a normal bear attack being an Ursa Major, a bear with stars in its pelt and no need to hold a solid corporeal form. Haak and Maya get struck down by the bear after supposedly subduing it. As it’s coming for Robyn, Robyn backs up into the form that was following from beginning. The head is out of shot, but it puts a strange headpiece on Robyn, and allows Robyn to fight back against the bear. Once the fight is over, Robyn is faced with the ancient spirit who saved them- a towering, scraggly figure made of twigs and forest materials. It’s creepy to look at, and was framed at the start to be the creature tormenting the group. The creature reaches out and touches Robyn’s forehead, using their body to say verbally “no one believes in you, you should believe in yourself, too.” In Robyn’s voice. The next scene happens where the group dropped the car off, Haak blinking back to consciousness. Somehow, Robyn saved them, and Haak passes out again knowing they’ll be okay. Help arrives as Robyn looks back at No One for the final time as the spirit disappears into the forest. 

The idea is how humans have interacted with and continue to interact with nature. The reality is the forest provides, but it does not protect. People putting faith in the old gods to protect them is a tradition long dead with history, but the idea of this god still holding onto life for the soul purpose of protecting those who may wander into its domain is a very human story, even if it’s behind a creepy mask with origins we don’t entirely understand. It’s inspired by my love of hiking and nature, I actually work in the summer as a camp counselor at a ranch that takes our campers backpacking on the weekends. Each of the human characters show some kind of recurring theme I see in the people I go on these hikes with, and some are named after them. I think drawing the sets and characters for this will be pretty fun, I look forward to it. 

Character design is up next. I started with Robyn, the rest of the characters would follow in style. 

I wanted Robyn to have a very childish look, but not dumb childish. Like a smart bookworm who has no idea how to survive outside a library, much less civilization. However, Robyn couldn’t look like they thrived in society either. They should be a shy nerd who’s out of their element everywhere, not just in the wild, which just makes being in the outdoors that much more terrible. I also wanted Robyn to come off as genderless so anyone could relate to them. The story isn’t about their gender or age (even though in cannon the characters are in college/university/living on their own, but the style still makes them look like children… oh well) it’s about the forest and how they interact with it. 

I had a hard time getting a grip on the style I wanted, everything seemed so forced and I was never happy with what I drew. I kept erasing and redoing and changing without keeping anything. About halfway through the day, I was still only half a character sketch page done and feeling quite hopeless. I realized I was trying to be perfect on a sheet that wasn’t supposed to be. It Sucked… but I figured out the style I wanted. The t-shirt and swishy basketball shorts is the epitome of beginner hiker attire. I stopped caring so much about the quality of the drawings and just started drawing action poses. 

The next most important character would be No One. I had a lot more fun playing with No One’s design, probably because I didn’t have to make it look human. I wanted to make them look imposing, scary, but made of the environment. Like, with clothes of moss and litchin. Almost stitched together. I played with making them tall, wider, hunched over, in layers. The hardest choice I had to make was the horn shape. I pulled a lot of references from different horned creatures even though the original skull was a red deer. 

Eventually, I came up with final designs for both. I made up Haak and Maya while storyboarding, their designs were simple and based on real people, like their personalities. No worries ‘bout that. Their character models followed the base Robyn’s exploration found. 

Next, storyboarding. I spent so much goddamn time in storyboarding. Not too much happened, but I did like plotting out everything. I realized I can pretty easily plot out the setting and where the characters are in relation to each other then manipulate the camera as needed. Pretty nifty. The only problem is 1. Im bad at drawing and 2. Drawing the same thing over and over again kinda sucks. I spent a lot of time designing the varying backgrounds the characters would walk through and played with how the forest would interact with them. For instance, what if a path suddenly changed or wasn’t visible on the second cross through? What if you could see the reflections of eyes in the cave shadows before the characters entered? 

The idea originally started over the summer. I was hiking through a birch forest and noticed the markings on the white bark looked a lot like eyes… what if they were watching while you passed by? I let this fuel my imagination and inspire the script. I liked playing with where mystery or malice could hide in the forest, which is a lot of places. Sure, people generally feel threatened by the animals, but the terrain is arguably more dangerous. I didn’t want to introduce a wildlife enemy until the climax, or it would just make it less impactful. If a wild animal is revealed to be evil, it gives another face to the force tormenting them, which takes away from the little cameo No One gets at the start. 

Nothing really important happened over the storyboarding period. Just little epiphanies. I realized I got better at drawing the characters and much quicker at it as time went on. I spent a lot of time editing shots and order, which is why the storyboards are messy AF. Made me feel kind of self conscious because everyone at my table had works of art for storyboards, but whatever. They’re supposed to be tools. I also made the very stupid choice to go over every single goddamn board in digital. It was hell. Next time, I’ll probably do everything digitally… 

Capturing audio was hard not only because of the location but because of the season. For instance, I need cricket sounds, nature sounds, car sounds (that I could control), and quiet crisp sounds. Too bad I go to school and live on a street that’s triangulated by a fire station, police station, and hospital. And everyone seems to be lighting things on fire, getting crimed, or dying. 

I got what sounds I could, but I had a fun time recording with everyone. It was the first time the class was forced out of their comfort zones and made to talk to the people outside their tables. It was a welcome change and I met some cool people. We would talk about what sounds we needed in our stories and whenever we realized how to get that sound it was a group epiphany with excitement. Too bad nowhere in Camberwell is quiet. 

Instead of having one of them narrate my lines, I just did them myself at home with my own microphone. It was just easier because I knew what tone I wanted this character to be. In terms of pitch, I just edited it in Audacity. The quality of it didn’t matter, because it wasn’t supposed to be exactly human. I played with it being lower pitched, but if I wanted to make it seem like Robyn was the real narrator, I would need it to be higher. It sounds pretty close to what I wanted- hollow, indifferent, but all-knowing and wise beyond the years the voice should belong to. 

I knew from the start I wanted one of two songs in the soundtrack, even though Joe said no songs… sorry, but I envisioned it with this music, it wasn’t structured around it but it was structured with it. Both are the instrumentals behind the songs, so there’s no words, but I did make a playlist of music I wanted to inspire this animatic with at the start. Both songs were at the top. The first song is “Welcome Home, Son” by Radical Face. It’s got a steady beat, good organic guitar, piano, and what sounds like bells. It’s got a REI feel to it (and I’m realizing now that you don’t know what REI is, probably… but I’m keeping the comparison because it’s true) which is kind of like adventuring somewhere greater than yourself, understanding the greatness of it, being slightly scared of it. Like you’re on a quest with no destination. Like facing the mortality and insignificance of yourself in this vast and wondrous world, but instead of fleeing in fear or rejecting the fear, accepting it and finding a home in it. The background vocals add to the feeling of humanity that’s not quite ‘human’ but when tested it tended to mess up the dialogue. The sound of bells and wind chimes was nice, like a feeling of emptiness or forgotten home. Just all around a great song. Also there’s a wind sound effect, like it’s blowing through the trees outside the mouth of a cave. I just think it’s neat and put it at the beginning. 

The other song was “New Slang” by The Shins. It has a similar feeling to “Welcome Home, Son” but not quite as adventurous. Much like the song lyrics say, “Gold teeth and a curse for this town were all in my mouth, only I don’t know how they got out, dear…” it’s about returning home with a bittersweet feeling, somewhere you don’t quite belong, but desperately want to. The simple guitar strumming and bass feel melancholy, and the calm electric guitar (never thought I’d say that pair of words together) just make it seem like an amble through the old woods in the backyard of your childhood home, visiting the old treehouse, and sitting in it alone as you remember back to when you weren’t alone in it and much smaller. The simplicity of the song adds less of a dramatic tone and a more organic and realistic one. It’s also more comforting than “Welcome Home, Son” due to less swells and changes in the sounds. It also has background vocals, but they’re much more human and less dramatic, they almost sound like a mourning wolf separated from his pack, but his calls go unanswered. The thing is the runtime is 1/2 that of “Welcome Home, Son”… The middle section, when edited, made up about 4 minutes. 

I played with both and enjoyed both results a lot. The music starts as they enter the forest and the narration starts, following them as they go on their adventure. It’s supposed to show that time’s passing like a montage, but also ends up showing how the danger is real and haunting when Ursa Major awakens in the bear. 

My biggest issue while editing the animatic was sound design after the music cuts out. It ends at the perfect moment and even follows the story beats of the end, but after that I just had the haunting silence of the forest and the sound of the nature around the characters in which I had to put a dramatic fight scene. I didn’t want to bring the music back until No One revealed themselves to Robyn to show the connection had finally been made, but the fight scene between Robyn and Ursa Major was so empty… It felt like I was just layering bear grunts and damage sounds over dynamic shots, but it wasn’t translating as tense, it was just awkward. I also had trouble with selecting what sounds were real. Robyn doesn’t make any verbal sound, the only sound to come from Robyn is their footfalls and how they interact with the environment. I should have made more steady rules with how Robyn and the other characters are present outside of the middle montage.  

Actually while I’m writing this I realized I could restart the music and have it cut back out once No One takes back their face… fuck.

So, what did I learn from this? That I storyboarded way too fucking much and made way too many fucking characters. I was told all throughout diagnostic to be free and reach for the stars, especially in communication, but the reality is in trying to tell the story I wanted I ended up drowning myself in work. 

I really loved writing this story, though. That’s my favorite part of anything. Writing is the ONLY skill I have over everyone else, and I WILL flex on everyone when I get the chance. It was just too big of a story for right now. I mean, I got everything from a single deer skull, it didn’t seem like much at the time… Maybe when I’m better at all of this, I’ll revisit it and make it more like I pictured in my head. I felt like epiphanies kept coming to me as I was writing the script, but as time went on and I had to plan it, I would get too caught up in the details. I love preproduction though. Like, a lot. That’s for sure my favorite part of making animation and film. Just figuring out where everything goes and how it all works together is just so satisfying and I really enjoy it. A bonus is it doesn’t have to look like Perfect Art, either. The fact that it doesn’t look perfect is one of my greatest insecurities, but it’s something I’ll have to get over, and it’s easier to get over it if it’s forgivable/expected. I know once we do actual animation, it’ll just be harder to make longer stories and I won’t know how to cut down on it all… but whatever. I’ve always had a problem writing too much, so that’s just something I’ll have to learn to manage. I’ll try and do better next time. I was really tempted to make this a comedy, like I always do, but I didn’t. I made something serious for once, and it didn’t end up as I imagined, but it got close enough. 

That’s a victory Royale.