#OP your art style is so GOOD!!

[peepthatbish]

Omg look at them!!!

If chamber had baguettes/croissants instead of his weapons rip jett😔

valo art dump 😌

[gearvmac]

➥ sir crocodile & crack-shot luna commission from @taco-tuseday

[clegfly]

GTE OUT OF MY HEAD........ every liek. second post i see is you. what is this.... what is going on

Live footage of me using DARK MAGICS to beam my WICKED POSTS into tumblr user pickledmintpie’s head

[r0semultiverse]

It’s wild to me that some of you have entire discourse accounts dedicated to shipping hate & over analyzing shipping between the anime, manga, & light novels to the point of making harassment campaigns against the authors/writers of the side stories. Yet y’all don’t send the same hate towards Ikemoto & his highly suspect ass art style with the way he draws some of these kids.

[relaxxattack]

i miss tumblr user 6ds so much...

[sesamenom]

some funny snippets of a tentative timeline for the reverse gondolin au

[twentyfivemiceinatrenchcoat]

@mossmurdock

hungry,,,

[shithowdy]

this is your periodic reminder that for all the artifacts and errors and "tells" one could possibly list, the only reliable way to actually determine if an image is ai generated is to investigate the source. it is becoming increasingly common for "fake classical paintings" to circulate around curative aesthetic blogs, and everyone should be using this as an opportunity to not only exercise their investigative skills but also appreciate art more in general. you're all checking out the artists you reblog, right? 🫣

so what are some signs to look for? let's use this very good example.

what a lovely late-impressionist piece blended with evocative leyendecker-esque themes! why haven't you ever heard of this artist before? surely tumblr would be all over an artist like this. who is justin brown?

your two options from here are to do a search for the name, or a reverse image search. i prefer reverse image searching, particularly when it comes to a common name like "justin brown". so what does that net?

Immediately, without looking at any text, something is wrong: it barely exists. an actual historical piece would turn up numerous results from websites individually discussing the piece, but no such discussions are taking place. Looking at the text, though, does show the source-- and at least in this case, the creator was honest about their medium.

But let's also look at the "exact matches", in case a source doesn't make itself apparent in the initial sidebar results like this.

This section will often tell you post dates of images, and here it can be seen that the very first iteration of the image was posted 15 days ago. It did not exist online prior to that.

Seeing how long an unsourced image has been floating around is a skill applicable to more than just generative images! See a cool image of an artifact or other intriguing item with a vivid caption? Reverse search it! If all the results are paired with that caption and only go back a few months, you might just have viral facebook spam.

Sometimes generative creators are dishonest about their medium and do not tag it like in the example, so that's when establishing "jpeg provenance" becomes important. While it can be a little trickier to determine if someone is using generative images and not admitting to it if they aren't trying to pass it off as a classic, something to consider is the age of their account and the frequency with which they post. Here are some account red flags:

-Did they only start posting art after 2022, or if they did before, did their style/skill level WILDLY change? Not gradual improvement-- I'm talking amateur graphite portraits straight into complex digital renders. Everyone starts somewhere, newness is not a red flag alone; it's newness combined with existing in a vacuum away from any community.

-Do they post fully-finished paintings several times a week? -Do many of these paintings seem iterative of a similar theme or subject matter ("three well-dressed young men face each other under shade and dappled sunlight")?

-Does their style change in inconsistent ways? An artist that can swap between painting like Drew Struzan and Hokusai should be pretty well known, right? Why is no one hyping this guy?!

-Do they have social media besides the source instagram? If so, what are they posting about? Are there any WIPs? Doodles? Interactions with other artists? Gallery dates? 3am self-doubt posts? Or is it all self-promo? Crypto? Seemingly nothing art-related at all for someone pushing out 3 weekly paintings?

Basically, if it's important to you to omit this stuff when you curate, please don't just smash reblog if the source doesn't seem to be the OP themselves. Seeking out sources was important even before this became an issue, now it is more than ever.

peace n love

[energ00n]

Love your art! They all look so beautiful in your style!

This is a bit of a different take but honestly when you introduced Jazz I never thought of him as a romantic rival to D? Maybe it's that I rarely read J/OP, but to me he still feels like Orion's best friend. I would say //only// his best friend, but I think Jazz takes this very seriously: he platonically loves Orion and as the less naive/more street savvy of the two of them he thinks it's his job to make sure Orion doesn't get hurt. I can also see him being very possessive of his place as Orion's best friend.

He may have also heard about D from Orion before, maybe even heard about that "insignificant" comment, and even if he didn't, I can see him making Orion spill the beans very easily. He probably also quickly realized D's feelings, and Orion's, too, and in that his interaction with D (the comic where they talk about the garments) feels more like Jazz going "Orion is my friend, and very dear to me, so that is //my// reason to let him touch my visor/touch his garment. If you don't want me to use my connection to Orion to separate you two you better mech up and treat him better and admit to your feelings towards him, because otherwise you don't deserve him."

That also works very well with the two images of how Jazz and D treat Orion's garment: D holds it like something he wants but (feels like he) can't have. He has it wrapped around himself like he thinks he has to hold onto it when others rip it away, but it also makes him totally tangled up in it - a good metaphor for his feelings for Orion. Jazz on the other side is very sure in his place as Orion's best friend, and unlike D, he //trusts// Orion (the garment is around his throat) and Orion's feelings (the garment hangs loose, and he doesn't try to hold onto it because he knows it's not necessary).

It's your AU, so you can obviously take it in whichever direction you want to, but I thought you might be interested in my take on it.

I always enjoy knowing that my work can be interpreted in more ways than one (unless it’s just something blatant wrong that hurts character’ story) so yours aren’t any less delightful! I don’t read JOP either (there’s almost nothing to read) and it is true Jazz has never done anything to explicitly label his gestures as romantic toward Orion, characters’ vagueness is something I take pride in at times. It was interesting hearing a different take on Jazz here

[jelloapocalypse]

First off, incredible video, it was extremely Jibun-wo to see digimon make the cut! That being said, I gotta know, would Dandadan have made top 10 if it hadn't come out past the cut off point? It feels like such a slam dunk

Aha okay I am happy someone asked me about this.

So. If I am being dead honest with you? If I am being a trillion percent real? Even if it came out three years ago, Dandadan would probably not make the list, and if it was on it it'd be pretty low. Like high 90s maybe.

I did a temperature check with Amy just to see if I was crazy after watching it a few times and she came to the came conclusion I did: The Creepy Nuts song absolutely slaps and is insanely catchy. No surprise there, it's Creepy Nuts, they're awesome and you should check out their stuff.

Watch this little clip of them in real time. The way their bodies flow as they perform (see 0:37) is mesmerizing. I love it.

That being said, I think Dandadan's visuals are just Pretty Good™.

Most of the shots are flat pop art colors with A Weird Creature on them and big text. It's not bad, but it's also not exceptional and it doesn't tell me a lot about the series. Speaking as someone who hasn't watched Dandadan and doesn't know what it's about, I'm still not really sure! Seems like the glasses boy... can transform into a Creature? And they fight... aliens? So it's like Kaiju No. 8, maybe? Looks like a shonen. That's all I got. Speaking as an outsider, it doesn't really have any kind of thematic hook or solid show pitch.

BRIGHT COLOR + BIG TEXT is a current trend in, like, Netflix openings that I'm not a huge fan of. It's a lot of POP but not a lot of substance, if that makes sense.

There are some shots where the stylization hits harder than others. Big fan of the song credit in this one. It's creepy and weird in a hypnotizing sort of way.

The rest of the shots in this style with monsters just make me think "Oh, ok. There's monsters? What makes these monsters cool or unique?" And the opening doesn't really answer that question, which I think is an issue when a solid third of your OP is just shots of the monsters.

I should say, I loooove that slow part in the middle of the song. But I mostly like it because of the song, the visuals aren't really doing anything for me.

It doesn't help my opinion of the OP that this shot with the girl wiggling her hand around is the one that shows up in all the Top 100 lists and New Anime OP quizzes. I think this motion is a few frames short of looking good, tbh.

If I had to guess, this is because this show is made by Science Saru. They make lots of cool weird shit like Lu Over the Wall and The Night is Short, Walk On Girl and their style is a mixture of high-effort anime with wild, almost rubberhosey western animation influences. They also did Scott Pilgrim Takes Off, which I think looks gorgeous. I also think you can absolutely tell it's the same studio if you watch both OPs side by side.

Oh hey, look at that. A Netflix OP with big thick text over bright pop art colors with traditional media textures overlaid on top of it.

Science Saru is an incredibly talented studio and they're much more artistically daring than most of their colleagues, but I think they're at their best when they get to work with a very unique artstyle, like the ones you see in Walk on Girl and Scott Pilgrim. The Dandadan characters being closer to "regular" anime proportions doesn't work as well with their slightly more staggered style (i.e. the money shot of the girl moving her arm with a low frame count).

If you ask me? I think these OPs are pretty close in quality to each other. Both quite good, neither quite exceptional. Dandadan is better though, mostly because the Creepy Nuts song is so good.

I think that's where most of the hype for this opening is coming from. Creepy Nuts is at the height of their popularity in the anime community right now. Anime fans got a taste of them with Call of the Night, a series named after one of their songs, and people loved that opening but it didn't "pop off". Then Mashle came and it went megaviral. Everyone loves the second Mashle opening because everything about it slaps. It's so good. It also shows you a lot about the character of the protagonist and the show itself. The way Muscle Mob stays unflappable no matter what happens and the way his friends react to his antics show off the show's gimmick (One Punch Man at Hogwarts) very well, and it shows the dynamic he has with the rest of the cast. He doesn't give a shit. It looks kinda funny. Plus the way they use the character face tattoos to accent different shots is inspired. Very cool!

I've heard pretty universally that Mashle is kind of a bad show. But do you know how many people I know were tricked into trying it because of that opening? Its like seven of them. That's some wild advertising power. Sure, Mashle doesn't have a lot going on, but the opening pitches what it does have so well that you can't help be a little bit interested in checking it out.

Dandadan just doesn't really do that for me. I look at it and I think "Oh, okay. Cool Creepy Nuts song."

I think a large amount of Dandadan's popularity as an opening is just that people are excited for more Creepy Nuts. They were relatively unknown (at least in the west) by the time Call of the Night came out and lots of artists only do one anime opening and never touch the medium again. Mashle was a sidewinder. It came out of nowhere and proved that Creepy Nuts were not only willing to do more openings, but they were willing to crush it every time. Both of the shows they did songs for have GOAT openings.

Then it was announced fuckin' Science Saru was adapting Dandadan and the NUT BOYS were gonna be returning to do the opening? Everyone was so hyped for it. And guess what! It was really cool! They did it, yet another cool opening. They set expectations and met them pretty well while they were directly in the middle of the public eye, and I'm so happy for Creepy Nuts, I hope they make fuckin' millions off this because they deserve it.

But! I don't think the Dandadan OP has the spice the other two openings they worked on do.

Call of the Night is an incredible opening. Cool dynamic between the main two characters with evocative visuals from start to finish. The psychic vampire bite? The film-making language and clackerboard? So much fun. Diagetic lyrics. A fake-out pause in the middle of the song. Half the shots are upside down and they did it on purpose. It's a great execution of a cool artistic vision. Legit one of the strongest OPs ever made.

Mashle season two comes out. Incredible opening. Sick urban street punk rapper flare to it. The characters walk in front of graffiti, the protagonist raps about how his haters have nothing on him and he can kick everyone's ass just because he's the best. Animation that far outstrips the stuff present in the actual show. Cool artistic vision, hella execution.

Dandadan is like a pretty cool 2020s opening that happens to have a Creepy Nuts song, and you get the sense the studio was told "Hey, Mashle's second opening has like 80 million views on YouTube. We got Creepy Nuts. Do that, please." And they did! It's a similar mix of bright colors, rap, and mixed media. Mashle has grafitti, Dandadan has the texture of spray paint stencils. Looks cool! Kinda looks like Mashle, but weirder and more abstract. And that's fine! Is it list material? Ehhhh. Is it Top 10 material like some comments are claiming? Abso-lutely not. Absolutely creepy nots.

In terms of VMCTJ, the Dandadan opening has S-tier music and above-average visuals and credits. I think the theming is middle-of-the-road and there honestly aren't any Jennies for me at all. Amy and I have sort of trained ourselves so that any OP where the music does most of the heavy lifting kind of gets put on the backfoot right away, because nothing shoots an opening to popularity like a fuck jam and you need to be wary of that when judging them all on the same criteria.

So anyways, yeah! Dandadan is pretty good. I'd hesitate to lock it in anywhere in the Top 100, but I think my gut would place it somewhere between like... 160-140. That's still REALLY good, but I do have to think at least some of the comments asking about it on Patreon and YouTube are fueled at least in part by a love for Creepy Nuts and more than a bit of recency bias.

Hope that answers your question, lmao

[centrally-unplanned]

California Crisis: Gun Salvo

I watched the 1986 OVA California Crisis, and it was really good! This anime, if you have heard of it all (which is unlikely), is famous for two things. One is its look:

Which in anime form did not exist before, and has not existed since. When you research “California Crisis” in English the source everyone pulls from is this essay by longtime industry man Fred Patten, and he describes it as “the over-solarized art style most commonly associated with the commercial artist Patrick Nagel, who was very ‘in’ at the time.” I believe him on that being an influence - he worked with the creators after all - and my primary documents from said creators are quite limited; but those that I have never mention him. They certainly were aiming for Americana - but what is causing this unique look is the use of thick, black outlines on the inner shading of the characters (something Nagel doesn’t really do), which producer Yoshikazu Tochihira mentions as a common technique used on vehicles in anime at the time. Given how heavily cars and ‘copters feature in this, I think the look was also sort of its own idea to create stylistic cohesion between the key parts.

I am not going to say it always works - on our main girl Marcia it is sketch, those eyes man:

But for our boy Noera it comes out a lot nicer:

He has less demand to be “typical anime”; bishoujo can’t blend here but surfer bum absolutely can.

You get used to it over time though, and it excels at capturing the idealized West Coast aesthetic. In particular, by being “not anime” it really helps you feel like it is somewhere else than Japan. The OVA is filled with long panning shots of detailed Los Angeles streets and beaches, named restaurants and garbled English menu items aplenty. Our friend Fred Patton - who isn’t a fan - comments that “Animation fans at the time said, only half-humorously, that it looked like the main purpose of the video was for a handful of Japanese animators to come to California and take a road trip from San Diego to Los Angeles for location shots.” But that never happened - this was made on a shoestring budget, and according to the same source as before no such site visit occurred. Instead, reference material was gathered by “searching bookstores, travel agencies, libraries, and even the American Cultural Center”, and it was a lot of work to get the details even half-right from that. Stop spreading lies, Fred Patton! Wait until you get my strongly worded comment on your blog, I don’t care if you passed away 6 years ago (RIP an absolute legend), get your facts straight!

Aided in this sense of immersion is the OVA's second source of notoriety: the absolutely banging city pop soundtrack by pop star Miho Fujiwara. The OP, Streets Are Hot, lives up to the name, straight fire:

And while not as peak, the rest of the OST doesn’t disappoint. Anime Youtuber STEVEM has a video on California Crisis that digs into the music side, as the history of city pop is absolutely his jam; for me I will just comment that it is a little lost now how western city pop was in Japan. Today it is of course “peak Japan” after its 2010’s retro internet boom, but if you listen to pop music from 1970’s Japan you still hear a lot of blending of western musical sensibilities and more traditional Japanese vocal stylings and instrumentation. City pop was one of the earlier genres to fully shed the past and embrace synth instrumentation and modern vocal approaches. And the aesthetic often pulled specifically from California - these are not album covers that scream Tokyo:

All of this is to say that this OVA is not only of its time, but it also embodies its time - a paean to the California Dream of the 80’s Tokyo youth:

Fucking vibes, man, for this alone the OVA really hits for me. Though of course, for all the Americana it is still an anime:

(Which by the way, Marcia rides a motorcycle on the highway and is clearly like 17, so Noera's rejection of an offer of sex here is more linguistic evidence for the bifurcated meaning of the word “lolicon” to refer to both actual prepubescent eroticization but also any preference for “youth” over “maturity” in typologies of femininity, intersecting with the bishoujo boom of th- okay okay, put the gun down, I’ll move on, geez…)

Sadly for California Crisis, its contemporary audience disagreed quite strongly with this being a symbol of the era; it was a huge flop. The OVA was the flagship project of a new anime venture by producer Hiromasa Shibazaki called Hiro Media Associates, and that shoestring budget was some very thin string. Shibazaki was launching his own anime+ magazine at the time, Globian (as seen in the links above), which was used to advertise their works - but towards that goal California Crisis only ever produced a single promotional image, which you see utilized everywhere it is mentioned:

So it just didn’t have the resources behind it to draw in a crowd. And the crowd it did draw in, best I can tell, wasn’t enthused; the art style was off-putting, the plot itself is a bit of a meandering mess, the long panning shots are ~vibes~ yes but also ~budget~ and obviously so, and the ending is a bit of a vague question mark. It was supposedly going to have a sequel, but Hiro Media, and Globian alongside it, closed shop soon after it was released, leaving audiences feeling that it was unfinished.

I won’t begrudge anyone their taste, or pretend it is not a very uneven work. However, I want to redeem the OVA’s core narrative from its reputation; I think it is honestly great, and it absolutely does not need a sequel. So let’s get into the plot - this is a story of a 20-something bar hand Noera, who runs into motorcycle-riding teen Marcia alongside a quasi-sentient UFO orb that just crash landed on earth. It beckons telepathically to be taken to Death Valley, a call which Noera resists but Marcia commits to heart-and-soul. Along the way the military, the CIA, the Soviets, every deep state boogeyman you can think of, all try to stop them, car chases and gunfire akimbo. Our duo bond, eventually they succeed, and the alien gives off a Kubrickian abstract flash of light and then vanishes - roll credits.

Ignore all the details, the mechanics, the CIA, all that shit. Puzzling and unsatisfying when you are watching it as a 17 year old, sure, but you are smarter now, you can separate the wheat from the chaff. Instead, why does Marcia want to follow a random alien orb into Death Valley?

Hilarious levels of on-the-nose buzzword dropping, oh sure. But behind that? Marcia is a teen, looking for meaning. She watches TV, reads books, dreams of being a hero, a protagonist, and this is it - the call of adventure! She is being offered the slot of main character and she isn’t going to turn it down. She literally name-drops Close Encounters of the Third Kind as part of her motivation, she is story-brained. When you first hear this line, you are like Noera, you eye roll it. But on reflection there is nothing more American than being the center of the universe - it truly is the American Dream.

But Marcia is not the main character of this story - the singular promotional image is lying to you. Noera is as well, and he has wisdom she doesn’t. Noera lives in the city fringe on a low wage service job, driving a beat-up Chrysler he presumably maintains himself. A blue collar man of habit, a himbo before it was hip. He follows Marcia to protect her, he casually rejects her post-car-chase adrenaline-rush-induced sexual advances. And, while they are escaping the military by hiding in a bar, he runs into an old high school friend Jack - who happens to be one of those military agents!

We have been seeing this guy the whole OVA, running the entire alien hunt operation. Top of the class, super genius, going places. Noera is unphased, and he and Jack reminisce about gags and girls from the old days. Noera congratulates his friend for “getting out” of his hometown, as it were, and then plot-duty calls, Jack’s real life calls, and he has to leave. As he does, Noera calls out to him, “Come visit me!":

And Jack leaves without saying anything:

Because it isn’t highschool anymore, right? This guy is in the Big Leagues, he isn’t gonna schlep out to some podunk bar in Long Beach because a dude he used to help do his geometry homework offers him a dri-

Oh, nevermind! Because none of that shit matters, right? We are all just dudes, let’s share a beer.

Marcia stares unaware through the entire scene by the way:

This is Noera’s “culminating moment” for his story, and she doesn’t track it.

Chasey chasey fighty fighty Death Valley journey and Marcia delivers the orb, she wins, with Noera’s help she saves the alien. And so it pulses out a sparkly rainbow, something that could maybe be interpreted as a thank you, and then leaves - giving them absolutely nothing to show for their efforts. Marcia is left on a panning shot, shocked and disappointed, holding a now broken piece of useless glass. She was never the main character of anything. She just ran an errand.

This is such good American Dream commentary! It ends the way all stories about the American Dream end - with it being a sham. Because it is. It’s all narrative, all marketing, all the outside trappings of something disconnected from the inner reality. Since this isn’t a midcentury novel but an anime OVA, the trappings of success aren’t a detached suburban home and 2.5 kids - it's being the hero of an action adventure epic. But fiction is fiction no matter the genre. Marcia doesn’t get that yet - but Noera already did before the VHS tape began to play. And Marcia’s budding realization is paralleled with Noera's own showcase of the socio-economic dilemmas that more typically define the genre - success doesn’t change who you are or what you need.

Once you step back from the sci fi spycraft stuff - which admittedly trails off - and see the themes, the ending is perfect, a sequel would totally ruin this. This is the best 80’s anime OVA commentary on the American Dream done through an otaku lens around. Definitely beats all the others in that category, for sure. Totally.

Anyway if you wanna fight me about my hot take meet me at the Waffen SS bar in 1980’s LA where I will be getting the shit kicked out of me for yelling my center-left political opinions while tipsily standing on the bartop:

All that research and I still have no explanation for this shot.

[butcher-my-name]

Hi!! Just wanted to let you know (anonymously because I'm shy™) that I absolutely adore your art and take on mha!!! Your style and designs are so unique, and you draw Deku in a way that makes him feel even more relatable to me (I also checked out the fic Photo Op after seeing your sketches, and it has also become a favourite of mine!! Trans & autistic Deku my beloved) I always get so excited when I see you post, keep up the good work!! I look forward to seeing more of your art <3

i never know what to say when ppl say genuinley nice shit like this, but seriously thx, it means somethin to me✌️💥💥💥

[ninjagood4]

Uh, hey! I've already decided what style FotP is going to be, but I can't decide on the other artwork. I like to draw in many styles, but really don't like the chaos that happens in the profile because of it, want some stability.

A lot of people have said that the LMK based on Ninjago is the best thing I've been able to draw. It's really gaining huge momentum everywhere. I rarely do it, so…. why not make LMK my main content? What if my artwork looked like this forever? Example…

Plus it means I'll start drawing not only redraws, but individual artwork as well! It's a great opportunity to master the LMK style and raise activity, as other works are less good and remain in the shadows. I can leave the opportunity to parody styles for commissions, for example, and do it just for fun not as intense. Really I just don't understand what's going on in my profiles, one work looks completely different to another… It's not good. Maybe parodying styles is cool, but it's best not to overuse it. I'd really rather leave that skill for commiss, and if anyone wants something other than LMK and FotP, I'll do it.

Btw the FotP style is something I have yet to showcase, I've only recently been able to draw good sample frames and a poster, and will now be releasing all FotP content in this style (but☝️ will tweak it up a bit to make it all look proportional and not so blurry). Just a reminder that it's a combination of The Lion King animation and my old style. I also like that it reminds me of LMK in some ways, so that's another reason to focus on just those two styles! :D And and and… this style works really well in animation, and considering I'm going to start making animations in 2025 it's just fine.

It's still weird for me to say this. I started with no line and did something similar to WildBrain for years, and it's weird to completely abandon it and start something completely new. LMK and FotP are really better, they are easier to do and the result is not inferior. The main thing is to master both of them at the highest level.

I don't want 2025 to continue with the current chaos and uncertainty that 2024 has had. I really spent the entire year just trying to come up with the style for FotP and fulfill the requests, and all this greatly affected the quality of the content. Everything was constantly changing, some looked terrible, some looked good. Activity dropped off a lot and stopped growing, and I personally got confused on what to focus on. So now I'm going to follow a new tactic! >:D

And finally … I have very ambitious plans for 2025! In addition to starting to draw animations, I want to actively release concept art for FotP, improve its drawing and, most importantly, start drawing the comic itself! Yes, yes, I will finally start it, since I have been working on it since 2022 and in 2024 I was delayed by the lack of style. I just didn't have the ability to visualize all these ideas 🥲 As for other works, I will start developing the LMK style, drawing redraws and just fanart ^^

If about commissions, then I would like to increase the activity of orders and will try to cooperate. I don't know if it will work out, want to connect my profession with drawing without any changes and orders help me stay here (I literally can't imagine myself in another role). I avoided collaboration, but it turned out not to be so scary, so in the future I will try to be more open 🙃 The rest of the styles that I drew before, again, you will be able to request in the commission (FotP and LMK will also be available), and in addition, you can offer your own style (let's say you wanted to see your character in the style of Lilo and Stitch, Phineas and Ferb, Avatar etc. 🤷‍♂️). By the way, I plan to start accepting commissions not only for Ninjago, but also for various series in general. This was only the first year of commiss, and during this time I made several mistakes that I will now avoid, and began to understand this system better. Hope that next year I will open up better. Think for the first year the result is basically good :3

Thank you for reading to the end, see you soon! Let the changes be only for the benefit <3

[passerinesoncaffeine]

@justacasualidiot

so i couldn't stop listening to ruler of my heart

[qsycomplainsalot]

AI isn't Art it's just Illegal Predatory Randomized CGI

Reposting this because OP blocked me, can't begin to guess why.

Photography, collage, readymade and various of the more abstract styles of painting and drawing are all art, and AI isn't. Why is that ? Simply, there are skills required to make technically interesting artpieces using these media, let alone meaningful ones. A skilled photographer might not be skilled with a pen, but their knowledge of composition and observation will always be transferrable to a new medium, in a way that they'll never start their art journey from scratch again. Because they're already an artist, because they've already done art and are skilled at it. Speaking for myself it took me a decade to get to a level where I was able to get paid for my work drawing traditionally, and once there it took me less than a year to reach a somewhat similar level switching over to digital. The skills are more comparable than with say collage or sculpture but the core principle still stands: I had gone and learned traditional art in art school, and while there I learned a slew of skills that were not at all limited to one tool, and when it came to switching I did not have to learn these skills again. Because by that point I was already a trained artist. I could just switch to sculpting with clay tomorrow and the biggest challenge would be to find a new market more than any skill issue.

Meanwhile fucking about with a computer to generate new pictures randomly has NO transferrable skills whatsoever. So much of the work has been taken out of your hands by a pattern seeking piece of software that it is impossible to learn anything from the experience. It's just plain to see when before you click the doodad to generate a new picture, you have NO IDEA what it will look like, none whatsoever unless you've been iterating on it before. You're not having an idea, formulating it in your mind and applying your skills to getting it out into the world, you just sort of have an idea and then a machine does the actual art work for you.

The only way you could possibly get better as an artist from doing this is if somehow you were deluded enough to think the process of scalping every artists' work in history was ethical, while also being observant and caring about art history enough that you'd learn critical skills from looking at the result of your quotation mark work end quote. Which is something you can do by going on a museum, or the internet. And if being an art historian isn't good enough for you, I invite you to actually join the elite exclusive vip club you're funding the death and automatisation of, by simply picking up a pen and piece of paper and starting to draw. It's that fucking simple.

PS: People trying to compare writing prompts with poetry: poetry does not include a stage in its process where all your artistic intent is surrendered to a machine to churn out a mash up of unethically sourced content. Nobody is going to buy a small book of computer generated picture prompts to keep on their night stand. You guys are delusional.

[demaparbat-hp]

Hi! I wanted to just drop in and say I love your work (both your art and your writing. The way you draw katara is my all time favorite, really!), and was wondering other than the AUs you currently have, are there any other ATLA ones you really enjoy? Lately I’ve been enjoying chaos!avatar/vaatu vessel zuko, and blue spirit/painted lady zutara. Though in less of a hidden identity way and more of a spirit touched, body-sharing fma:b style, way. But that’s enough about me, tell me about you!

Oh! I love this question!

As you know, AUs are my lifeblood, so it comes as no surprise that every now and then someone will post something about a new AU and I'll get obsessed over it for weeks.

@late-draft's The Last Air Key Holder AU has everything. Breathtaking worldbuilding, amazing character dynamics and designs, and a generally great use of futuristic elements (hah!) in the building of the world and the storyline. A Sci-fi ATLA AU that gets even better every time op expands on it.

Then there's @pineapple-frenzy's famous Soulmate AU, which I had to mention because...well, because I just had to. Flowers growing in the places of your body where your soulmate has been hurt is such a beautiful and bittersweet concept, especially when applied to ZK. This is such a sweet AU and I love it so much.

@bluespirlt's Blue Spider AU is such a fun choice for me because, despite my little brother's attempts at converting me, I don't really like Spiderman (Batman is better for me, tbh). But I cannot see this AU and not love it. The art is great, the concept is fun, the fic is amazing! The ZK dynamic is everything the Fandom loves about them packed into a vigilante AU and I am here for it.

Lastly, there's this beast.

A long time ago, @the-badger-mole made a series of drafts, AUs, I-don't-really-know-what-they-were AU Bot Plots. One of them, despite being terribly short, and most probably forgotten already, has made its way into my heart and decided to stay there for good. The infamous Library AU. There's nothing about that AU except for that single post, I believe. Do I care about the lack of content? No. Did it stop me from fanart-ing the hell out of it? Nope! Should I be less obsessed over the idea? Yeah, probably.