#and keeping a consistent artstyle is also not something i'm good at

[unsung-idiot]

pplease please please please draw bill with two eyes and stanford with one?? 🛐🛐🛐🛐🛐🛐🛐🛐🛐🛐🛐🛐 /nf

I don't think this is what you had in mind, anon. But this was the first thing I thought of when I read your request, so uh yeah lmao

bonus:

[entiqua]

I love your artstyle!! Do you have any tips for drawing?

thank you so much! i'm really happy you like it!!💗 as for tips, what i would say would change drastically depending on what kind you're looking for, but some very general ones:

draw what you love and want to see most, regardless of whether anyone else wants to see it. if you don't enjoy what you're drawing it'll never come out as good or genuine as something your whole heart and soul is in. i mean you'd think this would be a no-brainer but sometimes i've had to sit back and ask myself 'if no one was ever going to see this except me, would i actually spend time drawing this?' and i was surprised by the answer

that said, it is also completely valid if your motivation for drawing is to draw for other people! there have been plenty of times where i was too artblocked to draw my own ideas but was still able to draw commissions or gifts and enjoyed it simply because making other people happy with my art makes me happy.

don't get too caught up in having a consistent art style. in my experience this 1000% hinders you

having your sense of anatomy degrade over time without you noticing because you keep drawing the same types of characters is a very real thing! if this is a concern to you be sure to draw a variety

follow a billion artists that you like the art of and you will have endless inspiration injected directly into your brain every time you open social media

my favourite practical tip for those who draw at a desk: keep a small mirror next to you at all times. absolute game changer for quickly referencing hands

if you're drawing digitally, make the canvas huge! in my experience this lets you draw messier/faster and you can't tell at all when you zoom out. if you tend to get stuck spending unnecessary amounts of time micromanaging pixels (me💀) keep it zoomed out while drawing

related to the above point, messy drawings can have far more expressiveness in them than neat and polished drawings. nowadays i never do lineart and go straight from 'barebones stickman pose' to 'varying-levels-of-coherent sketch' and use that as my lineart. sweet freedom from the sketch-looks-better-than-the-lineart phenomenon

if your goal is to improve, then you really do have to scrutinize your art, figure out what you're not satisfied with, and commit the time to focusing on it. 'practice makes perfect' kinda rubs me the wrong way because of how much i've seen it interpreted as 'just draw everyday and you'll magically improve' but genuinely it won't get you very far if you don't actively think hard about what you're trying to improve and take the steps to do it. is this a hot take idk. also hand in hand with this, not every artist is trying to improve and you shouldn't feel bad for this! maybe you just wanna make a little headshot doodle of your fave blorbo and that's your only drawing goal ever. awesome. maybe you know your art has flaws but it's passable enough to convey what you want and you're perfectly satisfied with that. (this is the stage i'm usually at). also awesome!

don't hesitate to draw something because you think it's out of your skill level. the worst that can happen if you draw it is that it comes out terribly but you learned something and can always redraw it better in the future. the worst that WILL happen if you don't draw it is that you'll never draw it. and then it will sit in the back of your brain haunting you for years. it's not like i'm speaking from experience or anything aha

look up 'hand stretches for artists' and do them if you draw a lot unless you wish to summon the wrath of the carpal tunnel demons

of course, these may not necessarily work for you, and most importantly(!) these are coming from the perspective of someone who is primarily a hobbyist. some of this won't be practical for people who need to build an audience, maintain a consistent style for work, etc. these are just things that have personally helped me over many years of drawing :)

[thewebcomicsreview]

Happy 4/13!

Happy 4/13 to you as well!

And, as I think everyone was predicting, there's new Homestuck Content today. I'm hoping this is going to be the big update where they get to the point and have the long-teased [S] page, but we're not looking good if we're opening with Dirk, whose primary character trade is long rambling speeches. This is the first we've seen of Dirk since the new team took over, though.

Ready to take the floaties off and dive back into the depths of the churning, primal ocean from which everything that matters in this story evolved, and to which it must inevitably return?

The idea that Dirk's CANON plan is ironically consisting of him sitting around idly discussing The Lore is a decent meta joke, but it got old after a page or two. Please do literally anything, Dirk.

I do like this page, though, with the art busting out of the frame. And, given what I literally just said (I write these liveblogs as I read them), Dirk's opening by repeatedly insisting things are happening in his story is meant to be ironic. He's also claiming he became a god in order to do this HS2 stuff, which is flatly untrue. Presumably he means be became Ultimate to do narrative stuff, which is an interesting order of events if that's the case, and it's not that becoming Ultimate made him evil. Also, let me put some appropriate background music on.

Rose dipped pretty early on in that visual montage to spend some quality time trading barbs and bumping uglies with the supposedly impartial proctor of said Contest, next to the vacant meat-sack that once housed her consciousness. Irresponsible, sure, but to give credit where due, it was irresponsible in a poignant and symbolically weighty sort of way. Classic Rose shit

It does feel weird for the new team to be directly commenting on the quality of the writing of the old team like this, but to be fair, it is classic Rose shit.

New Guardian Mode artstyle, which we were starting to see in Candy as well, since these characters aren't kids any more. But in Candy, everyone keeps their faces, whereas Dirk is just his hair and glasses, like Bro.

TEREZI: YOU H4V3 1NST34D CHOS3N TO W4T3RBO4RD TH3 R4W N3UR4L T1SSU3 OF MY TH1NKP4N W1TH 4N 4CR1D 4ND SUP3RFLUOUSLY OV3RC4RBON4T3D N4RR4T1V3 R3C4P DUMP DIRK: Well, it's a recap for *you*. DIRK: But for those who haven't checked in on us in a while, it's more of a stage-setting thing. TEREZI: 1TS B4S1C4LLY 4 R3C4P FOR TH3M TOO, 1D1OT TEREZI: YOUR 1N4B1L1TY TO SHUT UP 3V3N 4S YOU 4CT1V3LY CH4MP1ON TH3 N33D TO G3T TH1NGS MOV1NG WOULD B3 4LMOST 4W3-1NSP1R1NG 1F 1T W4SNT SO 4STOUND1NGLY OBNOX1OUS

Oh good, I turned quirks back on. There's a lot of meta complaining about the writing this update.

I do like that the humans are looking more like Guardians and the Trolls are looking more like Ancestors. It's odd to have them standing next to each in different art styles like that, but it kind of works.

DIRK: Or was all that hand-wringing about how worried you were that Rose and I were becoming big bad cosmic tyrants with no regard for the poor little mortals buffeted to and fro by the vicious momentum of our designs just virtue signaling?

Dirk's use of the term "Virtue Signalling" is probably worth making a note of here. HS2 has sort of flirted with the idea of Dirk as right-wing, and that appears to be continuing here.

TEREZI: 4NYON3 WOULD B3 GR4T3FUL TO H4V3 4 B3N3VOL3NT CR34TOR L1K3 YOU TEREZI: ON3 TH4TLL ULT1M4T3LY 3NSUR3 TH31R 3NT1R3 PL4N3T 1S ORB1T4LLY BOMB4RD3D 4ND TH31R SP3C13S 4LL BUT DR1V3N 3XT1NCT S4V3 FOR 4 F3W "LUCKY" JUV3N1L3S DIRK: That's just how this shit goes down for species *lucky* enough to fucking *matter*, Terezi.

There's a lot of speculation that the Candy kids are going to end up in the game as well, and that this is even something that the original cast over there is working towards. This would require, as Terezi points out here, literal genocide. And I think that is where the Candy story is going, with Rose/Jade/Jane all being in on it and Kanaya/Karkat being cut out, so it's nice of Terezi to remind us that Sburb is evil and that sacrificing an entire planet to help your kids become immortal is kind of a dick move.

DIRK: But hey, you say you aren't feeling it? DIRK: Fine. DIRK: I can make concessions. DIRK: I've got other agents in play, and as I've said, I know you aren't going to risk fucking your end of the work up.

This is the kind of thing HS2 really need more of, stuff to speculate on. Terezi, Rose, and Dirk are literally the only three people on the entire fucking planet. What "other agents" could Dirk possibly have?

DIRK: You need this session to happen. DIRK: You need a chance to fix the mistake you've got in that wallet, burning a hole through your pocket. DIRK: You've made a lot of those, Terezi, but you know that besides being important, what we're doing here is a chance to rectify one of them. DIRK: And you aren't going to let that chance slip. TEREZI: ... DIRK: I know what it's like to make hard choices for the people you care about. DIRK: To run your brain raw thinking about how to make things right. DIRK: I've been doing it my whole damn life. DIRK: The choice you're presented with here is pretty fucking easy, and you're a very smart person, so I trust you to make the right decision.

Also, it's nice to have a little fucking narrative tension on this planet for once. Dirk and Rose are each creating an entire sentient race for the purpose of sacrificing them. Terezi is in a position to save the world, but doing so means giving up her chance to save John. Wow! Stakes! It's nice when stories have those, instead of just idly fucking around doing nothing for the sake of a meta-joke! Also it means the bad guy is being evil instead of merely boring, which is also a nice thing to do now and again.

There's not much to analyze in this art, but it's stylin'. The guardian mode look is great. Is Rose wearing lipstick on her robot face?

ROSEBOT: I've been very bad and I need to be punished

There's been a very subtle incest-y vibe with Dirk/Rose in Meat, and apparently we're keeping that too. Being sexually depraved is becoming like Rose's defining trait.

Localized time travel, while technically possible, tends to get pretty fucked even in the most ideal of circumstances, to say nothing of the fact that it's way outside my wheelhouse as a Heart player. The concept works pretty well for my purposes, though, and as a burgeoning omnipotent narrative god, I can mimic it in a way that's functionally identical. The move here is that I'm going to envelop the local galaxy group in a pocket of my influence and narratively accelerate it via Bullshit so that whatever's going on in here goes on faster, so we can get to the good shit faster, so we can get on with our jobs, and so you gawking voyeurs have more of our lives to guzzle greedily down.

Oh, that's kind of a cool ability, but also what can't an Ultimate do?

A while back, it became apparent that while my Deltritan offspring were to be terrestrial, Rose's were going to be aquatic.

Rose's team is going to win, and it's going to be the 48-player Squiddle session that creates the troll universe, making all of Homestuck canon an inescapable time loop through which no new ideas can emerge, except for the influence of Candy.

ROSE: For all my temporary discomfort with the prospect of settling down on Deltritus and starting what could very loosely be considered a family with you,

Rose he is your dad.

DIRK: I'm doing this for all of us.

Hm. No big [S] page and we still haven't gotten to the point, but we've made the Dirk half this story significantly less fucking boring, so I guess that's a win. This is an update the story desperately needed, giving Dirk some characterization and leaning in to how fucked everything here is.

Also, spending the entire update teasing a timeskip to the start of the game and then ending without doing it is a good meta joke, provided we don't keep doing it for ten more updates.

[evelmiina]

Hi Eva,

I have a fee questions regarding your wonderful work. I'm currently working on my visdev portfolio, but going a bit insane thinking about keeping my artstyle consistent if i'd ever be hired. I just looked through your background paintings and wondered how you keep your backgrounds in a consistent style. I love your nature studies too, and they look so different from your work pieces... More free and explorational. Is it difficult to keep up the habit of learning new techniques and exploring styles once you're on a job? I'm so full of ideas and feel like sometimes the idea would require a certain style/technique to be pulled off in the best way. Do you feel that too sometimes and is it restricting in a way to then keep the style of the paintings the same.

Would love to hear your thoughts on that!! :)

Hi Eekonis!

First off: don't worry! I don't think consistency is an issue... I feel like any artist no matter the level, feels like their work is all over the place. I think of consistency more like per project, rather than overall my work. 

If you're interested in vis dev, a good way to showcase your work in a portfolio and not feel overwhelmed and all over the place, is to create just one project. I saw in your portfolio the bat story exploration, that's great! Just pick one of the ideas you have. Truth is we never feel ready to do something and we postpone and ruminate, but you have to start somewhere. My friend always says, "vain tee se" (just do it) and that's really all there is. Imagine your story as a film/TV (or game, or comic, but you have to choose one), and make designs and paintings of how you imagine it. You can try searching for visual development portfolios and see what other professional artists have included in theirs, there's so many ways to go about it. From the top of my head I'm thinking Aurelien Predal, Marie Thorhauge, Scott Watanabe, Kevin Roualland, Sylvain Marc. Also art books of movies or shows you like are really useful. There's a lot of art of movies and artists, tutorials etc collected in character design references website, from all around the world.

If your own idea feels too vague or the story is not set and you get stuck on it, you could also choose an existing story like a fairytale or a novel. Try to be intentional with your pictures - you want to be clear and tell a story after all, you want people to feel like they get to know the characters and the world from just one picture, and they really want to know the full story. In your portfolio, I like your bat story explorations and it seems cool, but it's currently missing some characterization and story. It would be a good idea to illustrate story moments or character design that really shows the personality, gesture, acting. And when you create environments, make them feel lived and inhabited, give them just as strong mood and character as you would to characters. 

Consistency within a project is just about setting rules and limitations, some of them come from the ability and skill. Others are more like, what brushes to use, what are the visual goals, influences and references. You can go pretty far in breaking down how pictures are made and what makes a style. For example, why do Ghibli movies look like Ghibli? What kind of color palettes, compositions, camera angles, tools were used? How realistic/cartoony is it? There’s internal logic to everything designed, and with practise it becomes more visible.

I don't know if I intentionally try to learn new styles all the time. I'm generally just motivated by doing what I think is fun or what I want some piece to say about story, character or my own feelings and trying to do it best I can. It sounds simple but... if the goal is to do something really well, then I just do my best to learn it. There are some styles that I really love and think are amazing, but would probably take decades to pull off and I just accept that I don't really want to go that way, and I focus on things that I really want to keep at. It's always possible to switch directions, but to get good at something you have to commit to one thing at a time. 

So yes, I face my limitations all the time. I'm very familiar with feeling like, so and so would do better job, someone is always better than me for sure. Sometimes it is painful to not be able to draw or paint in a way I want. I think this probably never changes, it's just human nature. But I dunno, some people get satisfaction from making AI do their project in the style they want, but if I was able to do something in a snap of fingers, like just get the perfect style for my project, it wouldn't feel good to me. I guess I want the full experience of suffering and joy of figuring things out myself. Sometimes it will suck and hurt, but you learn more about yourself and it'll get easier to recognize what you really want to make. Then, you can always do a little bit better next time.

[findingyourrootscomic]

Hi! I really like your comics in general, I’m not usually one to follow webcomics but yours are apart of the exception! I really like your artstyle and something I don’t really see brought up often. It’s amazing to go back to the first page of FYR and see exactly how much you improved in your art, anatomy and backgrounds. The first page is so different than the current page! And I think it’s amazing to see that growth within the comic! It’s also amazing how gradually you see the improvement, it shows that you’ve been consistently working on the comic and I respect that work ethic a lot.

Also, big fan of how you draw pokemon and how even pokemon of the same species have clear differences within them with color/patterns/size. Like RAUGHHH that’s my JAM when it comes to pokemon designs! It makes them feel like actual animals I could step outside and see!

I don’t really have any questions or stuff about the lore specifically, my question is more on the technical sense. I’m a big believer in the art itself is just as important as the characters and story itself. But how do you panel your comics? Do you have any tips? I have plans to start up my own comic but even though I’m an artist I’ve never really done a comic before ^^

Keep up the great work! I eagerly look forward to the next updates.

Thank you!!! Yeah, 6 years really makes all the difference huh. :'D I'm really happy w where my art has gotten, I think I've been improving faster now cause my bestie @zeropro started redlining my page sketches somewhat recently, for all my comics not just FYR. So thanks to her influence and help, I think the comics look really really good now!! I've been studying art p hard since I started comicking, I've come p far but I still have a lot to learn. Zero has taught me a lot. Thank you for helping Zero!!

I panel FYR just w a straightedge tool. When starting a page, I lay down the sketch and panel over it, I draw in the panels as pink and then turn them white after I finish the lineart and set up the colorblocking. CotL is different, on recent pages I actually changed how I panel the comic, I now use FireAlpaca's paneling tool to draw them. It's like super easy and way faster than what I was doing before lol. I believe Tinysweetbunny uses the same tool for Pipe Up. The panels are always one of the highest layers in the stack, the only thing that goes above them are generally speech bubbles and dialogue. Keeps it clean.

[bulgariansumo]

My brain wants to ramble about Mario movies, so I will do that. There will be bias, and there will be spoilers, but I think I'm going to at least put the section about the 2023 movie under a read more. Let's begin.

Super Mario Bros.: The Great Mission to Rescue Princess Peach! (1986)

My love, my light, my heart.

Making a movie based on the Mario origin story(?) of "guys stumble into fantasy world, save princess from monster" is difficult if you don't add something to it, but adding things comes with the risk of deviating from the source material’s vibe, since it’s so simple. It’s the same problem with movies based on Dr. Seuss books.

Something a lot of people don't realize when watching this one is that Super Mario Bros. only came out a year prior. The people tasked with making this movie had very little to work with. Luigi didn't even have a consistent color scheme (though prior to this, he was always depicted with green somewhere.)

This movie’s solution to these problems? Keep it simple. Mario and Luigi spend the movie collecting "the three legendary powerups" with a dog and then go fight Koopa. They have misadventures on the way, and Mario eats Mario-branded ramen. It's fun, it's silly, it's goofy!

This is all accompanied with a charming art style that really takes advantage of the ability to push character expressions. For the cast, we have:

Mario - He’s not the smartest, the strongest, or most fearless, but he’s determined, and sometimes that’s all you need. This movie depicts him as a lovestruck dreamer, so a good chunk of his lines involve him calling out to “Piichi-hime~” Also, he’s a gamer. His character is nothing unique, but it sets the tone of this movie, something that I feel like Mario’s character does in all three.

Luigi - Pickaxe in hand, his number one priority is getting his coins. He and Mario share about three brain cells total, but he lacks the idealism of his brother, trying to keep him grounded in the things that really matter: money, food, and their business as…grocers? He’s there for his brother when it counts, though. Most of the cast has their fair share of goofy moments, but he is the designated comic relief, and Yuu Mizushima’s performance serves that well. He sounds unhinged half the time, it’s great! Fun fact: This is the first time Luigi is depicted as thinner and taller than Mario.

Peach - She spends most of the time wishing that Mario would save her, as one might expect, but even this early on, she has a little bit of agency. Her first introduction is her fighting off the enemies after her, and she manages to pull a clever trick on Koopa midway through, though it doesn’t help her much.

Koopa - Very doting on Peach and willing to accommodate her whatever way he can, except for letting her go. His portrayal by singer Akiko Wada combined with the rounded artstyle makes him more adorable than menacing.

Kibidango - The dog that tags along with Mario and Luigi. He tries to be their voice of reason, but he can’t talk, and they don’t listen. He’s mostly there to help the plot along and provide a twist at the end. 

For the most part, this movie sticks to using material from the game. There’s some deviations, like the dog and a wizard, but they don’t feel too out of place and, if anything, lend to the movie’s fairy tale-like quality.

Mario games generally try to maintain a whimsical, timeless vibe, and this movie captures that best. It’s not perfect, but it's a fun little romp that I highly recommend watching at least once, only an hour long. Please watch it!

Next are my thoughts on Super Mario Bros. (1993).

I also finished my thoughts on Super Mario Bros. (2023) if you're interested.

[voidyapperemi]

shoutout to all artists who:

feel they have a 'beginner artstyle'

are still at a beginner skill level despite being 'too old' or having created art for years

can only draw a few characters

can only draw from one perspective

can't draw poses/anatomy

can't draw pespective

can't draw something correcty the first try

can't draw something without a reference (USING A REFERENCE DOESN'T MEAN IT'S NOT YOUR ART. IT'S JUST HELPING)

can't draw it the way it looks in their head

just start drawing with zero plan and see what comes out

don't work on improving their skills (if you don't want to, not because you're procrastinating. DO YOUR WORK GUYS)

can only draw a certain thing/are only interested in drawing a certain thing (i don't and can't draw backgrounds)

feel pressured by the 'need' to improve! even if your art sucks you shouldn't be stressed about how fast you're improving :3

don't have expensive art supplies (traditional)/a stylus or tablet (digital)

What matters about YOUR art is that YOU have fun making it! No matter how many stupid thoughts about how it doesn't look how it does in your head and that it doesn't feel right show up, PUSH THROUGH IT!!! You're doing this for YOUR enjoyment. And whatever that means for you IS OKAY!!! If that means you don't improve? Fine! If it means you have to ask other artists for help, or use a reference, maybe even trace a part of the pose (with credit)? ALSO FINE!! Do whatever you need to for you to be happy! Because if you consistently feel like shit creating your art, it'll stop being a hobby and just become another chore for you, ART IS FOR YOURSELF FIRST!!!

And to all my artists that do prioritize improving their art: I love you too!! Both ways of creating art are completely fine! There's just different goals behind them, and any combination of these can work too! How you choose to create art and what you do it for depends entirely on your own funky little brain :P I don't mean to discourage learning with this post- In fact, I'm damn envious of those who do, keep up the good work - What I do mean to do is calm down all the little silly goobers who look up to all these other artists so much they hate their own art! Because honey, that's now what you should be doing - Creating, and getting better at creating, art has to come with some level of fun too! I'm gonna have to start my own learning journey at some point in the future- but when? I'll see! C:

[mliter]

Hi-Fi Rush.

Revealed during some showcase Xbox was having that day, this surprised literally everyone when we learned that it was available right at that moment. No marketing. Any nay-sayers were immidately shut up because the game was right there to play. It was a real ballsy move.

Due to how Forspoken soured any attempt at comedic writing in video games around the time, i immediately turned off the trailer for this game the moment i heard "Yup, that's me." My attitude would quickly change after pressing the play button by accident again.

I had an extra code for 2 months of Xbox game pass (christ this is a good service) & downloaded it when it was available. Immidately starting the game, i'm introduced with a well animated intro cutscene that seamlessly transitions to the beautiful cel shaded visuals.

At this point, i realized that everything in the world is synced to the beat. the player character's footsteps, his jump (if you can time it right) and almost everything working in the background. After stepping out, i truly recognized how much style this game got.

For one, the character design & art. Look at this!

Everyone's has a look that i would see at 6:00 PM on Teletoon. Everything that happens makes me think of something that would be written by man of action. Makes me think of Slugterra. Storm Hawks. This type of Disney XD Awesomeness character design is distinct and it blew my mind to see it return in such a fashion. I don't see it that often and i hope this inspires more to look into it. I know it did so for me.

The presentation is some of the most consistent and high quality i've seen in a video game. I felt the same wonder i felt seeing the Lego Movie for the first time while running through this. The animation, both 2D and 3D is outstanding. Hi-Fi Rush likes to flip between the two on a dime, without warning. The cartoony artstyle and how they utilize it is exceptional. Radical color changes, motion lines, visible effects straight out of a comic book, expressions that snap on a dime, allowing for gags to be easily pulled off with little use for realism logic. The cutscenes like to jump to an fps of 24 to keep it up. The sound effects and things that happen within them are all to the beat. There is an insane amount of detail and polish here. This is a playable cartoon, through and through. There's very little to break the illusion they're selling you. There's even animation of both Chai and 808 messing around as you transition to the other part of battle. They don't have to do that, but they did. There's so much love in this project. I see the vision and you will as well. I played the entirety of this just in awe of what i was looking at. This is what happens when you let creatives just. go wild.

As RANK10YGO put it, everything about this game feels like a can of Fanta on a hot summer day.

The combat is masterful. I hear that people that were involved in some of the greatest character action games were on this project. You've got parrying, movement, and allies that you can swap in to extend combos and disarm specific enemies. The combat isn't really deep, but good lord is it fun. Also, take all of that and put it to the beat of the music.

Exciting camera work, explosive effects, an energetic UI, voice acting that gives everyone life, everything on the screen is moving. All to the beat of Shuichi Kobori's glorious compositions. This is the exact stuff my mind dreams up of when i space off.

The boss fights are absolutely jaw dropping by the way. You think it's gonna go the way you think it is, but it doesn't. It's something different every time, some of them aren't even fights!

Even after finishing off the great story, i unlocked some extra features and a postgame that encouraged me to play again on harder difficulties. Character customization, a model viewer with a wealth of character information & a music player was immediately available to me. Most AAA games like to lock that content behind DLC or pre order bonuses. I thought i was missing out on not getting the deluxe edition. but i felt like i wasn't. The game isnt really that long as well.

It's clear that this game was designed with fun in mind. Profits probably came second, but Tango Gameworks clearly wanted to create something fun and memorable. This is a title that i would've seen in 2010. Not 2023. I had not one bad experience going through this title. It felt like there was absolutely no corporate meddling, nothing holding the team back as they developed it. This shit is what dreams are made of. It's been years since i've been taken in and enamored by a video game like this. I had so much fun. I love Hi-Fi Rush with all of my heart. I'll never forget this.

[yuseirra]

YESSS! Soo relatableee! I cannot draw un-chibi norman.. especially his eyes?? It doesn't look like him at all.. (┛◉Д◉)┛彡┻━┻ but the hardest one for me is still emma.. my Emma doesn't look like emma. At. All. (Her hair is going to kill me) (like 'ples, I'm already slow enough. Don't make me draw slower') p.s I really love your norman tho, he looks so soft!

Hullo! I wonder if the messages lately are all from the same anon ‘v’// I feel so because of the emojis and the way of talking but I can be wrong ’A’!) Sorry if I am!

Yeah! For norman especially I use both the comic and the manga artstyle for refs aaa and it feels slightly different depending what reference I lean closer to.. for me, he’s the one that’s the hardest to draw with a consistent style. I’m still working on it and hopefully I’ll be able to draw him more stably..

About Emma! I wrote it in the drawing earlier but I actually really enjoy drawing her hair, although it takes up some time to draw all the curls and swirls. There’s something relaxing about drawing them!// Maybe I’ll share how I draw her hair next time but it’s kind of like drawing roses- you start from the middle, with the center being her antenna and you expand it! It’s also slightly? bushy and messy so it’s like you can do whatever you want with it, indulge yourself with the swirls!

Aw thanks ;v;!!// that makes me feel a lot better!! I know you’d know because you seem to be an artist too but isn’t it really sad, when you know a character’s supposed to be good-looking but you just!! can’t make them the way you want them to be?? Norman please (not just him to all the characters I love but) let me draw you well.. 

he is a soft boy!!/// That’s why I like him Although yeah he’s doing something pretty extreme right now he’s in it for emma’s wish and his family. He’s still soft inside, I’m sure. So glad to hear my drawings of him makes you feel like that..!// I’ll keep practicing!! Thanks and good luck to you too!

[depollutingshosz]

why is sharing my art on social media such a big deal for me?

just some rambles not anything fandom related!

Let me just get my reflections noted down so I can understand myself for a bit here. I'm easily distracted and my mind just feels very buzzed all the time, so I can't exactly pinpoint why I'm so nervous when I'm finally taking the step to publicize my fanarts. This will be awkward. I'm not so good with words anymore.

The thing is, I've always just observed fanarts. Artists who post on social media. I just started art back in 2020 and I've always been hyperaware of the level that my art is. I've jumped from artstyle to artstyle, never truly memorizing or building a proper process when creating. So whenever I'm infront of the canvas, I blank out for the whole time and when I finish, I don't remember what I did to make it look like that. I don't have consistency. All I know is that I was in the zone. And I never seemed to remember anything when I'm in the zone tm. I've always looked at my art and estimated how it would do in social spaces. A bad thing, really, and self destructive, I know. But you can't just tell your brain to stop, can you? Yeah I never got around to training my brain to stop that awful automatic response. Thinking about posting my art and how well it will be received by fandoms, or people in general, ruins my motivation. It's a domino effect, once I start thinking about numbers, I go down the rabbit hole of oh so awful social media predictions. Why do numbers even matter? Why would a set of data ruin my day, dictate my mood, and make me reevaluate my worth as an artist? What a confusing set of neurons my brain has. I know how much algorithms hate me.

Hence, why I'm so nervous when I've finally taken a step to make proper art accounts. It isn't such a big deal, isn't it? It's so easy to make accounts. What's the problem? Well. The thing is, now that I have the knowledge that I already have accounts that I can just. Post my arts on. I get all jittery and I feel this awful sensation of anxiety and suddenly the colors are all wrong suddenly the head is too big suddenly I need to refine the clothes suddenly the hand is too unhand-ish. I suppose sometimes it does help me correct some parts of my drawings? But getting obsessive is the risk.

Also. I dislike but want attention. I'm basically holding up a sign saying "ME. I NEED ATTENTION, GIVE ME ATTENTION!" but I'm hiding in the corner so only a few people can see me. But I want to share my art?? To have other people in on my little brainrots and headcanons and my amusing little creations. I want to be something to contribute to a thought in other people's brains about a fandom they're in? I suppose by this point of my reflection, I realize that I have a desire to create and share my creations even if it's a small fleeting thought in your head.

Though, I'm not so nervous posting my things here. It's a safe space, i guess. And once I post here, I'm sure I won't have the energy to make any changes to my content. So a tactic I can use to fight my own dumb dumb brain is to. Post in my little world. And the other vast, scary, (often toxic) spaces wouldn't matter as much.

As a final note, I haven't posted art here (who even am I and what fandom am I even in HAHA) because I keep finalizing my watermarks. What with ai and art theft all around, I at least want to practice caution. Do you realize I'm just making excuses?

[1007xf]

i would Absolutely tell you! i am about to study for my final exam tho so ill just copy and paste the infodump from discord. also i Am two of the characters (kinsidering another but not sure)

ok so this is a power puff girls x mother series crossover called Psionic Pro Boys and . and holy fuck its edgy. its so much edgier than both the sources anyway. But i like it so that excuses it

its the mother characters placed in a powerpuff girls environment yknow? the main 3 characters are ness, lucas and ninten (the 3 protagonists of their respective games) and theyre a part of the psionic pro boys, or PPB. theyre superpowered individuals who are there to save their town, before AND after bedtime! and. oh my godd they are DIFFERENT. definitely a lot more explosive. theyre aged up a bit (around 16) but oh my godddd holy shit. the creator of the au (im going to call her sherbet shes rlly chill actually i miss her) recently posted new designs for them (she changed up their races to make them more inclusive i think) which i think works, i still kind of prefer the old designs??? that or i just like her old artstyle better. she drew lucas with two left hands in the old design tho shdndhdnnsbdb

there's the psychicexpert girls, the PEG, which consist of paula, ana, and nana! theyre a rebel group afaik and are also superpowered! i am nana so i should know, but i dont. classic me.

see, the girls are fucking EXPLOSIVE and very, VERY destructive. mean characters too. i'm like. slightly dumb but very kind and considerate. (bro even NEIL tolerates me but ill get into that in a but) and also i can play piano. woohoo! she just like me fr.

ok so these mfs' backstories are definitely darker than the original show/games (keep in mind i did not watch powerpuff girls i would not know) since they were either abused or abandoned by their parents and were found by HIM and adopted by him. HIM is a fucking demon (possibly the devil) btw. he's definitely a villain ill get to him one day

ok so yknow how i said this series was definitely very fucjing edgy? there was supposed to be a fourth psionic pro boy. travis, to be specific. he was constructed using his brother's dna(?) and he was like. really fucking clumsy. after a fuck up with the other boys, people started making fun of him and he started getting bullied in school more until he fucking MELTED and became the original substance of the chemical x (or whatever the fuck) inside of him. i think this was corruption or something i dont remember much. but holy FUCK

i should mention that i (claus) am also a character in this!!! claus was separated from lucas idk when and found a different chemical crystal(?). he became superpowered but didnt tell anyone about it and became anxious about it so he ran away. he was found by another villain named zento, who soon adopted him and trained him. bitch has never felt emotions besides hatred and jealousy so yknow he has not had a good life!!! also my cybernetic canon is here too. in an accident claus lost his arm, and was replaced with robotic parts. he has a skin glove thingy to cover it up tho

ok do you want even more edge??? do you???? now you do! theres canonically a reverse world. different characters based on their og world counterparts. i mentioned neil; he's ness's counterpart. he's a part of the psionic punk boys, or PPNKB to shorten it. the other members are luis and nixon, and by god theyre fucking EDGYYYYYYY. neil is my favourite for reasons (the reason being that i am nana /j) and to be completely honest im not sure if i just Really Like him or Am him. so anyway holy fuck these kids were Abused and Neglected (neil and nixon were) and some even became Not So Human! luis and nixon did thats for sure. i am very Fond of them.

yknow how i mentioned that i was claude? thats luis's brother! after an incident where a cult society killed our father and found my brother, i watched them torture him until they had a buckets worth of blood and ran the fuck away to the police. they ended up reuniting me with my mom but we were both traumatized lmao. also i (claude) am probably autistic or something since i have a special interest in bugs (CANONICALLY) which i did not fucking notice until now holy shit

and then theres the psychic fancy girls! or the pfg. paulita is the leader! shes very girly and enjoys makeup, but she isnt afraid to get her hands dirty! arianna is like paulita but more cutesy :) *and then theres nara.* shes very pretty but shes a cold person with little remorse for what she does. she barely shows emotion and holy FUCK is she strong. like my gee. she is NOT TO BE MESSED WITH.

hmmmmm is there anything else i feel like talking about rn.... OH WAIT THE YOKAI CARRIERS

so theres this bitch named tony.... he was just an exchange student. and like. ||he became friends with jeff. like really close friends. and since he gay he had a bit of a crush on jeff! but since he started spending more and more time with ness and less and less time with tony he got really fucking jealous. like. REALLY jealous. so much so that he ended up developing psychic powers on his own and became a cherub. he did swear revenge on ness so thats his main target.|| i dont know where the bio for tony is but i did find one in my dms with sherbet so ! yeah.

and then we have lloyd! lloyd is definitely one of my favourites bc hes a floral beast :) so anyway he was like. bullied by ninten in school. so like he does NOT like ninten. same with varik, an exchange student, who acts just like him. his abilities are powered by his emotions, so theyre very hard to control. the yokai taking hold of him is a furutsubaki. feel free to look into it :)

theres some other yokais but like. i do not have the bios on them and do not remember them

that should fortunately be it

Wow that's a lot of text! And golly gee did I read it all and would do it again/pos

This does indeed fall into very edgy territory but honestly? I love edgy shit. Like stupidly edgy. Edgy for the sake of edgy I love it!!! And edge aside there's some genuinely cool stuff here. Travis just fucking MELTING into chem x is way to goddamn metal sorry. I'll be real I don't know jack shit about the mother series I never got into it even tho I know it's an important part of gaming history oopsie. So I really don't know how this compares to the real thing. And there's definitely a lot of info here and I feel like this makes way more sense and flows way more nicely when put into context lmao. But honestly still thanks for sharing this was a cool read!