#art and writing things

[renegadeknight]

Hi Rachel! I hope you’re having a lovely Christmas if you celebrate. You’re both a writer and an artist, so I want to know: how is your approach to one different than the other? Or maybe how are they similar? Which do you feel more compelled to (if you even have a preference)?

Hi Kayli! Christmas is always a mixed bag for me but there have been some very lovely moments this year. I hope you've had a good holiday season as well ❤️

This is a fun question because I've honestly learned a lot about my writing in the past two years and one of the things I learned is a similarity to art! I used to agonize over writing stuff perfect from a blank page and so I would spend a lot of time staring at it, trying to pull the words out. But this year I've really embraced the "the only thing a first draft has to do is exist" mentality and it's really helped me just get ideas down, sketches of scenes is how I view them, it doesn't have to be good, finished, or polished right away, it just has to be enough to build on later - like a first sketch when I'm drawing!

(this got a little long so the rest is under the cut)

Then I go back for a second pass and add more details, more color/figurative language/body language/etc while I flesh it out, much like a second/cleaner sketch or adding color/rendering artwork. Its something that feels very obvious in hindsight but just didn't click until the last year or so.

I'd say the biggest difference between the two is that I almost always start art with finding references for whatever I want to draw. I hover somewhere between a 3 and 4 on the aphantasia scale so even though I have ideas and impressions of what I'd like to get down in my head, I can't picture the details of how should look without references. Whereas in writing, I tend to only need reference/research when it comes to certain topics/specific elements of a story - altho I will say I have created moodboards/reference boards to describe certain settings in a bit greater detail than my baseline attempts, so I guess even that is sort of similar!

Over the years I've oscillated back and forth between art and writing so I don't think that one is more compelling than the other overall but for *right now* I am definitely more compelled by writing. I'm sure there are a lot of factors at play there but I think a big part of it is just the community fandom space that is cultivated with fic writing. We are all here because we love these same little guys so much and I have made some wonderful new friends along the way 🩵

thank you so much for the ask, this was fun to think on and talk about 🩵

[noodles-and-tea]

Continuation of this

[sabertoothwalrus]

tips for getting people to like your ocs

*disclaimer: this is based on what’s worked for me, aka an artist that likes to make comics/storyboards. so this advice is directed at people who do that

you can do things like this:

Which is fun! Character sheets like this are great, especially for personal reference! But frankly, I don’t think most people engage with this (at least I personally don’t). You could have the coolest character in the world, but it will be harder for most people to feel invested when they’re presented so neutrally like this.

My main piece of advice is: get better at writing.

That might sound harsh when said like that, but let me explain what I mean! (Not trying to imply you’re bad at writing either!)

What I tend to do is just throw characters into situations with as little handholding as I can. Give enough context that readers can follow along, but don’t feel like they’re being explained to.

what can you learn about the characters through their designs alone? (age, personality, economic status, occupation, etc)

what can you learn about the characters’ relationship though their interactions alone? (are they close? familial? romantic? is there hostility? are they tense/relaxed?)

what are the characters currently doing? what were they doing previously (how long have they been talking)? what are they going to do next? can you convey this without dialogue?

how do they feel about what they are doing? are they content? focused? over/understimulated? would they rather be doing something else?

where are they? does it matter? would establishing a setting in at least one panel clarify the scene? is there anything in the enviroment that could tell some of the story?

what time of day is it? what time of year is it? what is the weather like?

Now, with all this in mind, I'm going to give you another example. I'm going to use completely brand new characters for the sake of the experiment, so you won't have any bias (aka I can’t use Protagonist from above, since you already know all about him).

Did this get more of an emotional response from you than the first example? Why do you think so? Who are these characters? How do they know each other? What else can you infer about them? What happened? Who is "she"?

Now, you don't have to actually answer all those questions. But think about them! You can tell people a whole lot about your characters without ever showing them a list of their likes and dislikes.

Obviously, comics aren't the only way to get people invested in your original characters! But regardless, easily digestible formats will grab people's attention faster than huge blocks of text, and comics are a lot less work than doing wholeass storyboards.

Now go and share your ocs with the world!!!

[theoldaeroplane]

worried that thing you put in your art or writing or game or music is too self-indulgent, too self-referential, too niche for anyone but yourself? fear not! you can do whatever you want forever. and you should.

[aurumacadicus]

I don't have the words for this but. Art and science are always hand in hand.

The perfectionism of artists has them researching stuff in a way that only scientists can compare. Some artists become experts in biology or anatomy. Other special interests have them going down rabbit holes to make them better at their art.

Disney animators said "we are perfecting the code for this snow if it kills us" and researched and invented code until it acted like real snow in Frozen and snow scientists were like hey. Did we just fucking solve the Dyatlov Pass mystery. And the animators answered no. We made snow. YOU applied the knowledge and did the experiments to solve what could have happened at Dyatlov Pass.

And it was a team effort because of course it was. You can't have art without science. And you can't have science without art.

[brandyllyn]

Art is how we decorate space and music is how we decorate time.

Pattern by Pride and Joy Quilting. I darkened the skin tones and added trim to make braids.

[industrations]

I recently re-read Beneath a Big Blue Sky by @eyra and this fic just brings me so much joy that i had to draw a little something for it.

If you haven’t read it go do so and leave a nice comment <3

[hypnoticmoth]

Do you ever want to badly write a fic but you’re too self conscious about your writing so it stays a forever idea ?? Hahaha…

Anyway, i’ve had thought about Vox’s obsession with Alastor bringing the ruin of the Vees…. Many many ideas, and what happens and …. Augh

[hinamie]

unconditionally

[magnusbae]

To illustrate this post by @mayahawkse I would like to visualize to you the difference:

A post in 2023:

A post in 2014:

A zoom out of the same post:

This is what a community looks like.

See how in 2023 almost all of the reblogs come from the OP, from their few hours/days in the tag search. Meanwhile in 2014 the % of reblogs from OP is insignificant, because most of the reblogs come from the reblogs within the fandom, within the micro-communities formed there. You didn't need to rely on tags, or search, or being featured. Because the community took care of you, made sure to pass the work between themselves and onto their blog and exposed their followers to it. It kept works alive for years.

It's not JUST the reblog/like ratio that causing this issue, it's the type of interaction people have. They're content with scrolling and liking the search engine, instead of actually having a reblogging relationship with other blogs in their community.

Anyways, if you want to see more content you like, the only true way to make it happen is to reblog it. Likes do not forward content in no way but making OP feel nice. Reblogs on the other hand make content eternal. They make it relevant, they make it exist outside of a fickle tumblr search that hardly works on the best of days.

If you want more of something, reblog it.

[inkskinned]

i hate to say it because i'm neurodivergent and a chronic-pain-haver but like... sometimes stuff is going to be hard and that's okay.

it's okay if you don't understand something the first few times it's explained to you. it's okay if you have to google every word in a sentence. it's okay if you need to spend a few hours learning the context behind a complicated situation. it's okay if you need to read something, think about it, and then come back to re-read it.

i get it. giving up is easier, and we are all broken down and also broke as hell. nobody has the time, nobody has the fucking energy. that is how they win, though. that is why you feel this way. it is so much easier, and that is why you must resist the impetus to shut down. fight through the desire you've been taught to "tl;dr".

embrace when a book is confusing for you. accept not all media will be transparent and glittery and in the genre you love. question why you need everything to be lily-white and soft. i get it. i also sometimes choose the escapism, the fantasy-romance. there's no shame in that. but every day i still try to make myself think about something, to actually process and challenge myself. it is hard, often, because of my neurodivergence. but i fight that urge, because i think it's fucking important.

especially right now. the more they convince you not to think, the easier it will be to feed you misinformation. the more we accept a message without criticism, the more power they will have over that message. the more you choose convenience, the more they will make propaganda convenient to you.

[jamtamart]

the last disco

[all-my-ocs-are-evil]

[insert poetic title here]

fun fact: this did not start out as isat fanart

(rambling in tags)

[ninja-knox-ur-sox-off]

Hedghodg Snugglz

[cozylittleartblog]

Columbo and the Knight (1984)

put me in the universe where Columbo ran through the 1980s and had a crossover episode with Knight Rider. I think they deserved it, and I am not just saying that because they're my two favorite Old Shows. @telebeast wrote a little fanfic blurb about it and I HAD to visualize it into a comic (which is also the longest comic I have finished thus far at five pages...), so writing credit goes to them.

Autism W!

[fidgetspringer-art]

Boots on throats, as promised.