#also if you expect consistency in my art you've come to the wrong place

[unusualwhatsits]

Sometimes you just gotta draw a boy staring longingly at his best friend. Ref from the "Cool. Cool." scene™ Used @will80sbyers gif here for ref

Cool. Cool.

[hiuythn]

Hi, how are you? If you don't mind me asking, what are your top 7 favorite media (can be books/ manga/ anime/movies/tv series/etc)? And why do you love them? Sorry if you've answered this question before...... Thanks....

hi! I'm doing great, thank you for asking! I haven't thought of a top 7 before so that's interesting to think about. hm...I guess it would probably be:

1. Haikyū!! (it's so simple but it's so good. I heard Furudate created it to get people into volleyball and I'm confident in saying that he succeeded. there's just something so refreshing about it, but underneath everything, it still manages to communicate a thoughtful message that where you are today is not where you'll be tomorrow, and that the journey brought on by your passion—while it may not get your end—still has meaning in its pursuit.)

2. The Husky and His White Cat Shizun by Meatbun doesn't Eat Meat (xianxia danmei. my god, I went into this novel thinking it was another low-hanging fruit enemies to lovers type bait where the ML is basically abusive and the MC is a weak backboned twink, but no. no the story had me screaming, sobbing, and begging the author to stop because it hurt too much. I was in tears and I was laughing and I was in love and I was praying for them to be happy so, so bad. it's actually insane. NOTHING will beat how Meatbun managed to make me reconcile Chu Wanning's cold exterior with his soft heart, and Mo Ran's past life with his current one. I was actually baffled by how many fucking revelations, foreshadowing, and plot twists (that made sense and didn't come out of left field entirely) this book managed to have. Meatbun expertly weaved humor, tragedy, horror, mystery and romance all into one misleadingly-packaged book and I feel delightfully bamboozled.)

3. Turning by 쿠유 (Korean historical bl novel. Still reading this one, but the deep unspoken trust the MC and ML have for each other is really awe-inspiring, and they're also very competent at what they do. The relationships with their subordinates and allies are also really heartwarming. The plot is sufficiently interesting as well, and not just something cobbled together to make the characters kiss lol—not that that's bad intrinsically, but it can get old after a while.)

4. Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rock Riordan (everyone knows this one. I love it because I grew up reading it, and then reading it to my sister out loud with the voices and everything. I love an MC that just consistently doesn't know what he's doing and yet sees things through to the end, and whose motto is just "fuck it, fuck this, and fuck you". and again Percy and Annabeth have that "bantering duo who trust and balance each other out and are also very, very good at what they do" type relationship that I'm such a sucker for.)

5. Bleach by Tite Kubo (one of the Big 3 manga serialized back then. I'm down bad for the art, he's one of my favourite mangaka in terms of art style, and also it's nostalgic. I grew up watching ichigo fight through impossible odds with just his "fuck you don't touch my people" mentality. are you starting to see a pattern with me and protective, headstrong MCs? the cast of side characters are all pretty memorable, despite its growing size down the line and again, i love their designs. I know people gripe a lot about the plot and continuity errors, but I enjoyed it regardless—except for the accursed ending and Epilogue Dad Haircut..)

6. Montmorency by Eleanor Updale (victorian crime fiction novel. I was sent this as compensation in, like, 5th grade when the Scholastic Fair delivered the wrong order to me. I didn't expect to like it but it was surprisingly a good standalone read. i used to reread it loads but it's been about a decade now so some details are blurry, but i am very fond of it still.)

7. A Quiet Place (horror movie, though for me it's less horror and more of a family-centric movie. I'm awful with horror, I'm such a wuss, but this movie was so good with its character dynamics and the ending was so fitting that I couldn't help but rewatch it and have it engrained in my head. I haven't watch the other movies in this series and tbh I fully believe the first movie is sufficient on its own, not to say the other suck, I just have no urge to watch them. this movie was such a palate cleanser for me in cinema.)

thank you for your ask, had a lot of fun coming up with this list!

[behindthewox]

World of Social Media

(in which I am neither a professional nor native, I'm merely an observer)

The question of how to attract more new users is a big one for most site leaders. Marketing through social media is the answer, but it's not that simple. To truly succeed you need to master the arts of social media: graphic design, communication, analytics, marketing and strategy. There's a reason most companies hire people specifically for those skills to manage their online content and social media feeds, and there's a reason they are highly valued and often well paid: it's an investment that usually pays off. Skill and knowledge is rarely free.

O-O-O-O-O

But hey, who needs a marketing department, right? Marketing yourself through social media is easy-peasy!

What you'll need is the graphic material, preferably video or animated, a caption that catches the viewer's attention and a professional but chill style with your content. It must be well written, spelling errors and bad grammar make a bad impression on most people. The caption should be simple yet cover all the information it needs to cover.

When it comes to the graphics you also need to know what you're doing in terms of copyright law and licensing, who will be held responsible if legal issues arise and how firmly you need to stick to the rules. It's rarely a concern for smaller social media profiles but if you're representing a company it's probably in their best interest to keep it as professional as possible, and not taking any risks. Safest bet is to create everything yourself from scratch, and if you're using material from other sources it's important to check the licenses. Material that is free for commercial use can be hard to find if you're looking for something specific, but if you've got money to throw at it you can expand your options quite a bit. Or better yet, commission an artist to create custom assets for you!

A graphic profile is useful if you want to look professional and consistent. All the professionals have a graphic profile to follow, most companies and organisations even have rules on how their logos can and can't be used. Place the logo in the wrong corner of a document and you could be in trouble. Now, for WoX it shouldn't be very strict, I'd argue it should be more of a guideline than rulebook, but there should be simple graphic profiles to keep the content stylish and consistent. Who knows what you might end up with otherwise...

graphic design is my passion

For the sake of efficiency you'd want to get into the analytics and numbers too; what type of content generates the most responses, and which hashtags are the most relevant and useful in order for your content to be seen by the most people. You need to know your target audience, what they seek out and what attracts them, but also what puts them off and the unwritten and often changing do's and don't's.

To make it big, you want to adjust your content to the trends and make sure you don't fall behind, and remember that timing is everything. And most importantly: your best chances at widening your audience is probably through paid ads and boosted posts. If you can't rely on luck (spoiler: you can't) you're gonna have to rely on money.

Easy-peasy. Or maybe not?

O-O-O-O-O

Marketing is important in order for WoX sites to grow, thrive and sustain their userbases. Without it, most sites are doomed to fail. Some sites manage to market themselves well enough through social media but finding the right volunteers with both the right skillset and mindset is often easier said than done. Even if you find the right people and have success, it's not sustainable and it's not a reliable marketing strategy.

You can't expect professional results from volunteers, much less volunteers without any resources. So don't expect WoX sites to successfully market themselves through social media, it's not a realistic expectation.

[darkisrising]

6 , 7, 8 👀👀👀

6. do you have any kind of consistent writing schedule or just hoping for the best? I write consistently but I try not to get mad at myself if life happens and I don't get a chance to. These days I try to write anywhere between 200-500 words a day. It used to be 2k a day but for reasons unknown I haven't been able to do that lately (hence the slow down in fic updates). At first I felt really panicked about it, but the longer it went on and I realized that it wasn't getting better, the more I've made my peace with it.

7. tell us about the plot of the first fanfic you ever wrote

HA! Haha. Ha. Well, back in the days before ao3, we had to email writers to tell them how much we loved their fic. I did that and started a correspondence with a writer that was LEAGUES better than me and for some unknown reason was willing to look at my first attempt at a fic. She tried to gently tell me it was a bad idea, but I blazed on ahead with posting, and wouldn't you know it? I got all kinds of people mad at me.

Basically it was a Smallville fic that opens with Lex dead of apparent suicide via overdose? I think? The fic is explaining how things got to that point, basically Clark is now Superman and hates him (I think? I can't remember) and Lex reverts to club kid ways... I think, again, it's been a while. All I know is people apparently expected Lex to come back to life in the fic and he never did and they were big mad about it. The writer friend TRIED to explain that no one likes character death fic but I was like "no, no, this is gonna be different and great, just watch." It... was not great. Which is not to say that I don’t think character death can be done well, but this was very much not that, lolol. Oh, well. That’s how we learn: through failure.

8. what’s your relationship with constructive criticism and feedback like? do you seek it out? how well do you take it? I like con crit, but I think a lot of people---in rl and in fandom--- don't know how to give it so I'm wary of taking it in spaces that aren't set up for it. I also believe that it works better and is more useful if the writer is mentally prepared for it. Because it *is* a very intimate thing to be sharing something you've written, and though I firmly believe everyone can improve---and if someone is interested in getting better they need to listen to crit--- if you’re not expecting it there’s always the risk of it hitting in the insecurities. So, yeah, my rules for it are that I need to be prepared for it and usually I need to have asked for it first. I think in general it works best if you go into it asking your reader to give you feedback on a specific issue that you’re looking for feedback on so that its more productive than “i really liked it/ i didn’t like it” because that stuff is so subjective it’s not all that useful as a place to springboard from. Compliment sandwich is always a good way to go when giving it--- compliment, critique, compliment--- just so the writer doesn’t spiral into a den of self pity, which is always a productivity cockblock.

I also, personally, have a rule that when receiving it I can’t “explain myself”. Like if someone says something is a problem it is SO tempting to explain away the issue in great detail to PROVE them wrong, but that just becomes defensive and time consuming. I try (try, don’t always succeed because *taking* critique is just as much an art as giving it) to listen to it as the impressions of someone who doesn’t live in my head and cant see all the brilliance that lives in my brain (ha) and then parse through that what I’m hoping their impressions/understand of the material to be and if they went off course somehow then that’s on me and I need to go back in and fix it. No need to tell them that they didn’t ACTUALLY get that that was supposed to xyz, because lol I can’t do that for every reader I encounter. BUT if someone sees a problem with a fic, I totally don’t mind if they reach out and say “Hey, do you mind if I give you some feedback on something that didn’t work” (or something) so that I can mentally prepare for it and make sure I’m in the right emotional place to be told about all my faults, lol Thanks for playing!!!! 💜 * Ask game

[loftyloftyloftyloftylofty]

Hello! Sorry if you've covered this a lot, I was just wondering - do you have any guides you'd recommend to a beginner in pixel art? Also, any guides on getting into game development? (mainly the programming side of it) Again, sorry if you've covered it and/or these asks sound demanding.

Hmmn, I can help a little bit! Buckle up.

The guide that I think is the most useful is not actually a guide for pixel art. It talks about using colors and using light sources.

There are a lot of different styles of pixel art, and I think that most of the time it is safe to say that a pixel art style is defined by its rules. Rules create consistency. Consistency creates immersive work.

We can use Starbound’s pixel art style as a simple example of how to create art that has rules. Starbound’s wiki actually has a guide set up to help people create their own assets, but it misses a few important details.

Some (but not all) of the rules that many starbound pixel art pieces use:

1. Most of the objects in starbound are drawn so that you can see the front corner of an object. Here’s an example:

The back half of an object rotated this way usually takes up about 25% of the width of the object. If you look at the other tables, chairs,and props in the game, you’ll see that most of them follow the 25% corner rule.

2. Most of the objects in starbound use a 4-tone palette. The 4 shades of brown used for the wood of this object are the same shades of brown that they use for most other wooden things. The four shades of yellow come from their brass palette. Consistency with colors can be very helpful if you use it correctly.

3. Starbound’s light source is always top-right. Every piece of art in the game is shaded as though there was a single white light to the top-right of the art.

So with all of this in mind, if we take a look at my art for Cat Story, we’ll see a few differences from Starbound’s style.

Using Cat Story’s art style, most objects are drawn with a camera angle directly from the front. The 25% corner rule does not exist in Cat Story. 

The light source in Cat Story is usually from the top-left... even if there are lights in the room. 

Most of the time, I use colors from the 6bit RGB palette.

Some styles of pixel art don’t need to limit which colors are used. My style uses these colors as a general guideline, but sometimes I lighten or darken colors from this palette to give myself a few extra colors to work with, like the background wallpaper in the room above.

This color palette has a lot more color saturation than the palettes used in Starbound’s art, which is why it doesn’t really mesh that great when you recolor your Starbound character using this palette. 

Looks weird and out of place, right?

If you adjust the color levels in the image by a tiny amount, it becomes very very easy to see just how much more saturated Cat Story’s colors actually are!

What happens when we put art from Starbound into a screenshot from Cat Story? Well, it looks very out of place, because it follows different rules for color, size, shape, and shading.

Sometimes, rules get more abstract. Cat Story also uses rules for color heat. Thinking about colors relative to their distance from white or black, with white being the hottest color and black being the coolest color offers some insight into interesting color relationships.

Remember that 6bit RGB palette? This is what it looks like when you take the color away and only look at the heat:

Color heat is a tool that you can use to direct the viewer’s eye to important pieces of your art. 

I try to make the character one of the brightest objects on the screen so that they are easy to see for the player. 

The next brightest things are usually terrain that you can walk on or objects that you can interact with.

The darkest objects are background props.

Obviously, sometimes it’s appropriate to make exceptions to make a piece of art look more interesting! I have many brightly lit windows in the underground city maps in Cat Story - but I try to keep them small and unobtrusive when I can.

It also helps a lot if you make your enemies easy to see.

Rules and color choice are only the beginning of defining an art style with pixel art. 

Some people prefer super low resolution artwork ( @thewakingcloak ), and others prefer comparatively massive canvases ( @shmoopdev ) . 

Some people use 3D models to give themselves a better frame of reference for their pixel art. ( http://oddtales.net/ )

Some people use dithering ( @lazymoth - check out their creepycastle project ) to shade and create gradients, other ( @virgovsthezodiac ) people ( @ramheadedgirl ) prefer ( @preecedev ) flat  ( @artificerdev ) shading styles.

Anyway I’ve spent an hour or two longer than I expected on this reply, so let’s move on to the other half of your question.

How do you get into game programming?

It depends on what language you want to program in. Personally, my hammer of choice for game development is C++.

There are a lot of different places to start if you’re brand new, but no matter what programming language you want to use, you need to know some programming basics.

This is the resource that was most useful for me to begin programming games in C++. Shoutouts to Lazyfoo!

Websites like stackexchange / stackoverflow also help a lot when learning basics of programming. 

What are some things that are important to know if you want to program your own games?

Learn how to do things using timers. If you attempt to do huge amounts of stuff all at the same time, it is often more complicated than simply doing a little bit of work once per frame. Breaking up your workload with timers often helps performance, too.

Start with a small project, like clicking on a colored dot for points. I thought a platformer would be easy and I’m here 3 years later still trying to finish what I started. Do not attempt to build some enormous MMO as your first project, that is a bad idea; speaking from experience here.

Learn to keep your code clean. Comment everything even if it’s obvious what it does, because 5 weeks from now it won’t be obvious anymore.

Learn the difference between public and private variables/functions and use them appropriately so you don’t trip yourself later on accident. That’s the reason those safeguards exist - to help you not accidentally use the wrong tools.

You are going to need to be able to understand math relationships. The computer will do the heavy lifting for you, but you need to understand the formulas and why they work. Basic things like moving from point A to point B, which looks like this:

new_position = old_position + normal( destination - old_position ) * movement_speed

 Thankfully, most of these math relationships are very easy to use once you understand them. Now is a good time to brush up on your trig.

If you’re going into gamedev in C++, learning how pointers and references work is non-negotiable.

Some other notes: 

A lot of helpful code libraries are out there on the internet that are designed specifically for making games. Most of these helpful libraries are free for you to do anything you want with them. SDL2 is my weapon of choice, but there are many other options available that might be better for what you want to do.

Sometimes it is appropriate to use tools like GameMaker or RPG Maker to make a game. Sometimes it isn’t. It is useful to know how to use these tools, and it is also useful to know how to get your hands dirty and do it yourself.

Lots of games have basic programming included! You can learn a lot about how programming basics work from reverse engineering objects in Garry’s mod, SecondLife, Starbound, and plenty of other places.

There are hotwings on my desk that need my attention.Hopefully this is more helpful than “Practice a lot and also google some stuff”

Cheers,Lofty