#another random character art

[noornight]

I like her glasses

[ohposhers]

ok so @casycloud090 pointed out this random fucking frame in Trolls World Tour and i went insane and had to draw this mystery bull man-- i made the executive decision to name him Buffalo Billy cause i am CRINGE and FUNNY and he is an OUTLAW COUNTRY TROLL!!! (they have bull features instead of horse features brrr) tysm casy for showing me this im obsessed with him now

[soni-dragon]

ive seen a couple pokemon character color wheels around so i tried one with some of my favorites!

[voidedjuice]

Gray crow

[wasyago]

they're a killer queeeeen

[cainternn]

smile! you're on camera :)

[zeldalizzy]

Wait a minute...you're not Zelda!

What if the LU boys met the Super Mario Princesses? I had this random thought, and then I had to draw the girls in the LU style! It was super fun to reimagine them, and I drew inspiration from their SSBU character designs. What would these three princesses think about Hyrule's heroes? Click the image for better quality :)

P.S. Thanks so much for all the support on my first posts! I truly appreciate it! 🩵

[killjo-q]

Was feeling blue today

There was a strong itch to use blue on something and they were the first two characters that came into mind hahaha..

[cokowiii]

I know I forgot something just can’t tell what… also more mixed feelings lol

Edit: THE THING I FORGOT WAS THAT I SCRATCHED THE LOVE TRIANGLE THING OMFG

Previous——Next

[garbasaur]

Amber from Rune Factory 4!

[normiree]

"Do you ever wonder why it rains?"

[enquire]

Gizmo Stardust!

Okay... it's Yamato's time to shine. I'm pretty happy with him! He was fun to draw and pretty easy to pick colors for... I do think maybe he could use a gear bag, or a vest, or something of that nature. I've been trying to only add accessories or clothing when it serves a purpose, so waffling a bit on that here... oh well. Maybe later.

Gizmo Stardust is a prolific inventor who lives in Canterlot with his father and sister. He's also heir to his dad's company, Stardust Industries, which recently became a lot more successful thanks to his inventions. Gizmo's hoofwork is present in many of the technological advancements in Canterlot and beyond.

One example (that brought Stardust Industries to where it is now) was Gizmo's most well-known creation; the airship. The introduction of a new form of flight to Equestria revolutionized the transportation and shipping industries. The airships Gizmo designed elegantly mesh together the mechanisms behind Equestria's balloons and trains, but require very little fuel thanks to sails which function in much the same way as pegasi wings.

Gizmo's also has a family friend, Thrift Twinkle, who he and his sister have known since they were little, thanks to their fathers being friends as well as business partners. Thrift and Gizmo are still pretty close, thanks to being friends when they were foals, and the fact that they got their cutie marks practically together.

This happened while Gizmo and Thrift were working together to save their respective family businesses. It was Thrift's business savvy and creativity which kept them from going under, and Gizmo's invention of the airship which brought both of their companies flying back into success again. Thrift helped Gizmo's inventions get off the ground, and worked to keep him funded until he finally completed his work.

Naturally then, the rebranded 'Phoenix Goods' was the first company to support and benefit from Stardust Industries' latest and greatest invention. And so, they managed not only to save their parents' crumbling businesses, but rocket them into unprecedented new highs.

It was during this process, through creating and helping each other, that both Gizmo and Thrift got their cutie marks. And more than proved their mettle to their parents at the same time. Both of them were overjoyed (and a little relieved, because they were blank flanks a little longer than most, and far longer than Gizmo's sister was)

When the two of them were younger, Gizmo had cheered on his sister when she got her cutie mark. When he got his, she responded in kind, throwing him a huge party and inviting practically everypony she knew to celebrate. It was during this bombastic party that Gizmo met Saber Frost.

He stumbled across him while taking a break from the chaos out on the balcony, where Saber had spent most of the night away from the light and revelry inside. Surprised to find somepony he didn't know awkwardly standing on the outskirts of the gathering with nothing but a glass of punch and a stony look on his face, he struck up a conversation. They hit it off, and Gizmo convinced the other not to leave the party, instead inviting him to join the two siblings for a quiet walk after the celebration concluded.

They may live far apart, but that doesn't stop them from seeing each other pretty often. For one thing, Thrift has reason to visit Canterlot on company business fairly frequently. And whenever he does, he makes sure to set aside time for the trio to hang out.

It was on one such visit that Gizmo introduced Thrift to Saber. They didn't click at first, but Gizmo and his sister, as usual, brought their friends together without too much trouble. Since then, three became four whenever Thrift was in Canterlot.

And when Saber was reassigned, Gizmo helped encourage him to request the region of Equestria where Thrift lived. Knowing his friend would be there to look out for Saber made him a lot less worried. Even though Gizmo knew it was for the best that Saber left Canterlot (and in fact had been trying to encourage and persuade Saber to accept the reassignment for a long time) he still misses their weekly chats over coffee and tea.

I love that I have enough ponies done to start weaving their stories together now. Also here's what he looks like without the hat or goggles:

[doctorsiren]

Old art of mine I found while looking through my procreate gallery

[neo-wolfe]

Noon Aurius!! 💜🌌 Tiefling Circle of Stars Druid, for a Dragonborn Mafia campaign!

[fanartsofdoritoilluminati]

Don't worry, he is ✨ F I N E ✨

78 111 44 32 104 101 32 105 115 32 110 111 116 46

Also he left you a message on the photo (also, if it wasn't obvious, he was turned into a cat as a part of his treatment)

[northern-passage]

i've shared some of Alex Freed's narrative writing advice before and i recently read another article on his website that i really liked. particularly in branching/choice-based games, a lot of people often bring up the idea of the author "punishing" the player for certain choices. i agree that this is a thing that happens, but i disagree that it's always a bad thing. i think Freed makes a good case for it here.

...acting as the player’s judge (and jury, and executioner) is in some respects the primary job of a game’s developers. Moreover, surely all art emerges from the artist’s own experiences and worldview to convey a particular set of ideas. How does all that square with avoiding being judgmental?

[...]

Let’s first dispel–briefly–the idea that any game can avoid espousing a particular worldview or moral philosophy. Say we’re developing an open world action-adventure game set in a modern-day city. The player is able to engage any non-player character in combat at any time, and now we’re forced to determine what should occur if the player kills a civilian somewhere isolated and out of sight.

Most games either:

allow this heinous act and let the player character depart without further consequence, relying on the player’s own conscience to determine the morality of the situation.

immediately send police officers after the player character, despite the lack of any in-world way for the police to be aware of the crime.

But of course neither of these results is in any way realistic. The problems in the latter example are obvious, but no less substantial than in the former case where one must wonder:

Why don’t the police investigate the murder at a later date and track down the player then?

Why doesn’t the neighborhood change, knowing there’s a vicious murderer around who’s never been caught? Why aren’t there candlelight vigils and impromptu memorials?

Why doesn’t the victim’s son grow up to become Batman?

We construct our game worlds in a way that suits the genre and moral dimensions of the story we want to tell. There’s no right answer here, but the consequences we build into a game are inherently a judgment on the player’s actions. Attempting to simulate “reality” will always fail–we must instead build a caricature of truth that suggests a broader, more realized world. Declaring “in a modern city, murderous predators can escape any and all consequences” is as bold a statement on civilization and humanity as deciding “in the long run, vengeance and justice will always be served up by the victims of crime (metaphorically by means of a bat-costumed hero).”

Knowing that, what’s the world we want to build? What are the themes and moral compass points we use to align our game?

This is a relatively easy task when working with a licensed intellectual property. In Star Trek, we know that creativity, diplomacy, and compassion are privileged above all else, and that greed and prejudice always lead to a bad end. A Star Trek story in which the protagonist freely lies, cheats, and steals without any comeuppance probably stopped being a Star Trek story somewhere along the line. Game of Thrones, on the other hand, takes a more laissez-faire approach to personal morality while emphasizing the large-scale harm done by men and women who strive for power. (No one comes away from watching Game of Thrones believing that the titular “game” is a reasonable way to run a country.)

These core ideals should affect more than your game’s storytelling–they should dovetail with your gameplay loops and systems, as well. A Star Trek farming simulator might be a fun game, but using the franchise’s key ideals to guide narrative and mechanical choices probably won’t be useful. (“Maybe we reward the player for reaching an accord with the corn?”)

Know what principles drive your game world. You’re going to need that knowledge for everything that’s coming.

[...]

Teaching the player the thematic basics of your world shouldn’t be overly difficult–low-stakes choices, examples of your world and character arcs in a microcosm, gentle words of wisdom, obviously bad advice, and so forth can all help guide the player’s expectations. You can introduce theme in a game the way you would in any medium, so we won’t dwell on that here.

You can, of course, spend a great deal of time exploring the nuances of the moral philosophy of your game world across the course of the whole game. You’ll probably want to. So why is it so important to give the player the right idea from the start?

Because you need the player to buy into the kind of story that you’re telling. To some degree, this is true even in traditional, linear narratives: if I walk into a theater expecting the romcom stylings of The Taming of the Shrew and get Romeo and Juliet instead, I’m not going to be delighted by having my expectations subverted; I’m just going to be irritated.

When you give a player a measure of control over the narrative, the player’s expectations for a certain type of story become even stronger. We’ll discuss this more in the next two points, but don’t allow your player to shoot first and ask questions later in the aforementioned Star Trek game while naively expecting the story to applaud her rogue-ish cowboy ways. Interactive narrative is a collaborative process, and the player needs to be able to make an informed decision when she chooses to drive the story in a given direction. This is the pact between player and developer: “You show me how your world works, and I’ll invest myself in it to the best of my understanding.”

[...]

In order to determine the results of any given choice, you (that is, the game you’ve designed) must judge the actor according to the dictates (intended or implicit) of the game world and story. If you’re building a game inspired by 1940s comic book Crime Does Not Pay, then in your game world, crime should probably not pay.

But if you’ve set the player’s expectations correctly and made all paths narratively satisfying, then there can be no bad choices on the part of the player–only bad choices on the part of the player character which the player has decided to explore. The player is no more complicit in the (nonexistent) crimes of the player character than an author is complicit in the crimes of her characters. Therefore, there is no reason to attempt to punish or shame the player for “bad” decisions–the player made those decisions to explore the consequences with you, the designer. (Punishing the player character is just dandy, so long as it’s an engaging experience.)

[...]

It’s okay to explore difficult themes without offering up a “correct” answer. It’s okay to let players try out deeds and consequences and decide for themselves what it all means. But don’t forget that the game is rigged. [...]

Intentionally or not, a game judges and a game teaches. It shows, through a multiplicity of possibilities, what might happen if the player does X or Y, and the player learns the unseen rules that underlie your world. Embracing the didactic elements of your work doesn’t mean slapping the player’s wrist every time she’s wrong–it means building a game where the player can play and learn and experiment within the boundaries of the lesson.