#ask round up

[biggest-gaudiest-patronuses]

why aren't there more mysteries that take place in nursing homes & retirement communities. i want to watch a group of deranged retirees-cum-amateur-detectives combine their powers of:

decades of life experience

boredom-fueled busybody shamelessness

access to the most gossipy next-door-neighbors in existence

"I am too old to be arrested and/or give a shit" attitude

and solve crimes. this should be an enormous subgenre.

[chloesimaginationthings]

i love how you draw the game mike, william and vanessa with really angular hair and eyes and the movie versions have more.. rounded edges? idk how to describe it

It’s been a lowkey way to make the movie and game vers look different!

[kinnbig]

✨ Simple Gif Colouring for Beginners ✨

I wrote up my basic gif colouring process for a friend recently, but a couple of people here mentioned they'd also find it helpful! so, as requested, this is a beginner-friendly walkthrough of the way I colour my gifs :) it's aimed at brand new gif makers with no prior experience with photoshop or photo editing.

when I first started gif making I found colouring and photoshop in general suuuper daunting, so I've tried to simplify everything here as much as possible. hopefully this will be relatively easy to follow and not too intimidating!

a couple of things to begin with:

I'm only talking about colouring here - this is not a full gif making tutorial. I've linked to some of my favourites of those here!

I personally like to make bright, 'clean' looking gifs with vibrant but natural colours, so that is the style of colouring this tutorial is geared towards. most of gif colouring is subjective and about personal taste - the only thing that I'd say is possible to get wrong is skin tones, which I talk about a lot in this guide.

as I mostly gif Thai dramas, most of the advice is geared towards colouring for East Asian/South East Asian skin tones - but the techniques should be fairly universally applicable (and here are some tutorials that talk about gif colouring for other skin tones).

I'm not an expert! I'm not claiming this is the best or the only way to colour gifs - it's just how I do it.

this post is very image-heavy. if the images aren't loading (or the gifs are running slowly or cutting/looping weirdly), then try viewing the post in its own tab (rather than on the your dash or someone's blog) and refreshing the page.

okay, full walkthrough beneath the cut!

contents:

1. intro a. natural gif colouring goals b. very very basic colour theory 2. super simple colouring (the essentials) a. curves b. selective colour (and skin tone correction) c. hue/saturation d. saving and reusing colouring e. another simple colouring example 3. other adjustment layers a. brightness/contrast b. levels c. vibrance d. colour balance e. channel mixer 4. troubleshooting a. curves b. saturation 5. fin!

1. intro

the colouring part of gif making can be super overwhelming, especially if (like me when I first started!) you're completely new to photoshop and/or have no experience with colour theory or photo/video editing.

if you're opening photoshop and making gifs for the first time, I highly recommend getting used to making a few basic, uncoloured gifs to begin with. just to practice, rather than post anywhere (though you can always come back and colour them later if you want) - but it'll make the rest of the process much easier if you're already beginning to get used to working in timeline mode of photoshop. give yourself a bit of time to practice and get a feel for things like how many frames you tend to like in a gif, where you like to crop them for the best loop, what kind of aspect ratio you like etc* - so that you're not trying to navigate all of that for the first time on top of everything else!

* frames: for me between 60-90 frames is ideal, but 40-120 frames is the absolute min-max I'd personally use in a normal gifset loops: for the smoothest loops, try to avoid cutting someone off mid-movement or mid-word if possible. aspect ratio: for full-size (540px) gifs, I tend to go for either 8:5 (slightly 'skinnier' gifs), 7:5, or 5:4 (particularly big, thick gifs lmao)

✨ natural gif colouring goals

part of what can be so daunting about starting gif making is not knowing where to start or what you want to achieve. this is definitely something that gets easier with practice - the more gifs you make, the more you'll get a feel for what kind of look you like and the more instinctively you'll know how to get there. it also helps to see if any gif makers you like have made "before and after colouring" posts - these can help with getting a sense of the kinds of changes made through gif colouring. here's one I made!

in general, I like to make my gifs bright and 'clean' looking, with vibrant but natural colours. these are the things I'm usually hoping to achieve with colouring:

brighten dark scenes

remove muddy, yellowish lighting or filters

saturate colours

correct any skin lightening filters or overexposure

make lighting and colours as consistent as possible between gifs within a single gifset, especially gifsets featuring gifs from multiple scenes/episodes/videos

this guide is focusing on natural colouring, but of course there are many cool ways to make stylised/unnaturally coloured gifs. imo you'll need to master these basics first, but if you want to learn how to do things like change the background colour of gifs or use gradients or other cool effects, then @usergif's resource directory has loads of super helpful tutorials!

✨ very very basic colour theory

[disclaimer! I don't know shit about fuck. I do not study light or art. this is just an explanation that makes sense to me exclusively for the purposes of gif making.]

the primary colours for light/digital screens are red, blue, and green. having all three colours in equal measures neutralises them (represented by the white section in the middle of the diagram).

so to neutralise a colour within a gif, you need to add more of the colour(s) that are lacking.

in practice this usually means: the scene you want to gif is very yellow! yellow is made of red and green light, so to neutralise it you need to add more blue into your gif.

it can also mean the reverse: if you desaturate the yellow tones in a gif, it will look much more blue.

looking at the colour balance sliders on photoshop can make it easier to visualise:

so making a gif more red also means making it less cyan.

removing green from a gif means adding magenta.

taking yellow out of a gif will make it more blue.

tl;dr:

neutralise yellows by adding blue (and vice versa)

neutralise reds by adding cyan (and vice versa)

neutralise green by adding magenta (and vice versa)

2. super simple colouring (the essentials)

starting with a nice sharpened gif in photoshop in timeline mode. (these are the sharpening settings I use!)

some scenes are much harder to colour than others - it helps to start out practising with scenes that are bright/well-lit and that don't have harsh unnaturally coloured lights/filters on. scenes with a lot of brown/orange also tend to be harder.

I usually save a base copy of my gif before I start colouring just in case I end up hating it, or find out later that it doesn't quite fit right into a set and need to redo it etc.

so here is my base gif!

it's an okay gif, but it has a bit of a yellow tint to it that I want to reduce.

colouring is easiest to do in adjustment layers, which can be found under layer -> new adjustment layer - or for me they are here:

there are lots of different types of adjustment layers that do lots of different things - but for me the absolute essentials for colouring are curves, selective colour, and hue/saturation.

I also use brightness/contrast, levels, exposure, vibrance, colour balance, and channel mixer sometimes, depending on the gif - but I use curves, selective colour, and hue/saturation on every single gif.

✨ curves layer

the first thing I always do is a curves layer. when you first open one it will look like this:

first I usually click the ‘auto’ button, just to see what happens. sometimes it makes a big difference (it usually brightens the gif a lot) - but on this gif it didn’t do much.

if it had made the gif look nicer then I would have kept it and added a second curves layer on top to do the rest of these steps.

the next step is selecting the white and black points with the little eyedropper tools.

the bottom eyedropper lets you pick a white point for the gif. click somewhere super light on the gif to see what happens - for this gif, I clicked on the lampshade on the left. if it looks weird, I just undo it and try somewhere else - it usually takes a few goes to find something that looks good.

here's what that did to the gif:

then I pick the top eyedropper and use it to pick a black point by clicking somewhere really dark, again playing around until I find a black point that looks good.

here's what the gif looks like after picking the white and black points:

this can take some experimenting, but you can make super easy drastic changes to your gif just with this. in this case, the curves layer took out a lot of that yellowy tint.

and this is what the curves graph looks like now:

you can click and drag those lines to make further changes if you want - I usually leave them alone though. the colours of the lines indicate which colours have been changed in the gif - for example, you can see from that steep blue line on the graph that blue has been added to neutralise those yellows.

next I usually do another curves layer and just press the ‘auto’ button again to see what happens. usually it brightens the gif a bit more, which I like.

‼️if nothing is working: usually with a bit of fucking about a curves layer works well - but sometimes you can’t find a good white and black point anywhere, and instead your gif turns wacky colours and nothing looks good. this happens more often with very heavily colour tinted scenes :( the troubleshooting section at the end goes over some options, including starting with a levels layer instead.

✨ selective colour (and skin tone correction)

skin tones are made up of a mixture of yellow and red.

removing yellow (or adding blue or red) to a gif will make the skin-tones too red - and removing red (or adding cyan or yellow) to a gif will make the skin-tones too yellow.

adding blue to this gif with the curves layer took out the yellowy tint, which I wanted - but it also took the yellows out of Kim's skin tone, which I don’t want. so I need to put yellow back into the skin tones specifically - without putting it back into the rest of the gif.

selective colour layers let you select an individual colour and adjust the levels of other colours within that colour. you can change how yellow the green shades are, or how much cyan is in the blues, for example.

I need to add yellow back into the red tones to correct the skin tones on this gif. this is the case for most gifs in my experience - the vast majority of the time, unless a scene is very heavily tinted in another colour, a curves layer will add blue/remove yellow.

in the 'colors' dropdown, select the 'reds' section and drag the 'yellow' slider higher - this will add more yellow into just the red shades within the gif.

the amount of yellow you need to add back into the reds depends on how much yellow was taken out of the gif initially - I just play around with the slider until it looks right. if you're not sure, it helps to have some neutrally-coloured (not white-washed!) reference photos of the people in your gif to compare to.

here's the result. Kim's skin is a lot less pink toned and much more natural looking:

✨ hue/saturation

this adjustment layer lets you adjust the hue and saturation of the gif as a whole, and also of each colour individually.

I don't use the hue or lightness sliders unless I'm trying to do something more complicated with the colouring.

clicking the dropdown menu that says 'master' lets you edit the saturation of each colour individually. this is useful if your gif is still super tinted in one colour.

I thought the yellows on this gif were still slightly too bright, so I switched to the yellow channel and desaturated them slightly. (remember if you do this then you need to go back to selective colour and add more yellow into the red skin tones to balance out the desaturation!)

then I increased the 'master' saturation of all the colours to +5:

I usually find the right amount of saturation is somewhere between +5 and +12, but it depends on the gif.

‼️if the gif feels undersaturated, but the saturation slider isn't helping/is making the colours worse, try a vibrance layer instead.

done!

✨ saving and reusing colouring

you can copy and paste adjustment layers between gifs to make your colouring even across each of your gifs for one scene - so if you're making a set of multiple gifs of the same scene, or you think you might want to gif the same scene again in the future, you can save it as a psd so you can reuse the colouring again later.

each gif's colouring will then still need tweaking - different cameras/angles/shots of the same scene can still start out with slightly different colouring.

I recommend uploading the gifs as a draft post on tumblr so you can see what they all look like next to each other and catch any inconsistencies.

✨ another one! (speedrun!)

HI KEN!

the white point for the curves layer was in the window behind them.

the curves layer removes the muddy yellow tint, but again it makes their skin tones (especially Ken's) very red toned, which is adjusted by the selective colour layer.

3. other adjustment layers

imo many many gifs can be coloured really nicely with just those three adjustment layers, but some need different adjustments.

✨ brightness/contrast

pretty self explanatory!

I personally usually avoid using the 'brightness' slider because I rarely like the effect - I only tend to use the 'contrast' one. 

the 'auto' button is sometimes useful though, especially if you’re struggling with the curves layer.

✨ levels

levels alters the white and black points of the gif, like curves - but unlike curves it doesn't also alter other colours.

use the sliders beneath the graph to alter how dark/light the gif is. you can slide the black slider further to the right to make the blacks darker, and the white slider to the left to make the whites lighter.

levels is a good place to start if your curves layer isn't working.

(I'm going to hit the image limit for this post lol so here are some screenshots of a table I made to demonstrate this rather than actual gifs. sorry!)

on both sides, I dragged the sliders up to where the big jumps are on the graph - this is usually a good place to start!

✨ vibrance

vibrance... makes the colours more vibrant. it's more subtle than saturation.

it's really helpful for gifs that feel grey. sometimes adjusting saturation just makes the greys kind of weirdly tinted, but a vibrance layer can fix that.

vibrance is much more subtle!

✨ colour balance

colour balance affects the overall balance of colours within a gif.

it's good for scenes with heavy tints.

I tend to stick to the 'midtones' dropdown, but you can also alter the colour balance within the shadows and highlights if you want.

✨ channel mixer

I avoided channel mixer for such a long time because it scared me. but it's great for scenes that are very heavily tinted in one colour.

basically, it works with the levels of red, green, and blue within a gif. you select an output colour and then play around with the levels of the colour you selected within each other colour.

kind of the reverse of selective colour?

so in the 'blue' channel, the levels of blue are at 100%, and the levels of red and green are at 0% - but you can impact how much blue is in the reds and greens and blues.

this tutorial explains it well - but imo the best way to get to grips with channel mixer is just to play around with it a bit (sorry)

(when I made this guide for my friend, I also made a slightly more complicated gif colouring walk-through that included using channel mixer. there isn't space to include it within this post, but if anyone is interested I could always upload it as an 'intermediate' gif colouring tutorial - lmk!)

4. troubleshooting

‼️curves

usually with a bit of fucking about a curves layer works well - but sometimes you can’t find a good white and black point anywhere, and instead your gif turns wacky colours and nothing looks good. this happens more often with very heavily colour tinted scenes :(

for example, with this base gif:

using many of the brightest points as a white point turn it wacky colours, like this:

yikes :(

some options for these cases:

try brightening the gif first with the 'auto' button on the curves layer or with a levels layer. having a brighter gif to start with can give you better options for picking a white point.

try finding an alternate, whiter/brighter white point. look for places the light reflects - on this gif, using the light on Porsche's cheekbone works well as the white point. it also helps to find places that would be white if the scene wasn't tinted - the lightest part of a white shirt is often a good place to start, for example.

skip the curves layer, and instead use a levels layer to alter your white/black points, and colour balance or channel mixer to balance the colours.

‼️over/undersaturation

if your gif (especially the skintones) is looking a little washed out or lifeless, it might be undersaturated. boost that saturation - or if that's not working, try a vibrance layer.

oversaturation is often easiest to spot in the mouths and ears of any people in a gif. if the mouths are looking unnaturally, vibrantly red, then you've gone too far with the saturation.

5. fin!

and done! I hope this was coherent helpful to somebody.

if there's anything that I've missed or that doesn't make sense pls feel free to shoot me an ask or a message and I'll do my best to help! I've also collated a bunch of additional reading/resources below.

happy gifmaking 🥰

✨ some links!

photoshop basics by @selenapastel

gifmaking for beginners by @hayaosmiyazaki

gifmaking guide for beginners by @saw-x

dreamy's gif tutorial by @scoupsy-remade (includes instructions on how to blur out burned-on subtitles or annoying video graphics)

beginner's guide to channel mixer by @aubrey-plaza

how to fix orange-washed characters by aubrey-plaza

colour correcting and fixing dark scenes by @kylos

does resampling matter? by usergif

how to put multiple gifs on one canvas by @fictionalheroine

watermarking using actions by @wonwooridul

resource directory by @usergif

[shakingparadigm]

truly truly truly deeply insanely unfathomably obsessed with the shot of ivan glancing at the scoreboard to check till is in the lead before starting to really choke him. the kiss is definitely dubious in a toxic yaoi way that makes me we want to descend into the dark (tragedy edition) but i feel like his motives are somewhat clear, if multifaceted. sometimes you gotta hypocritically sacrifice yourself for love and also get your unreciprocated kisses in. i'm going to walk into the damn sea i thought i was READY

ALSO THE ART OF THEM CHOKING EACH OTHER FROM A BILLION YEARS AGO I KNEW IT KNEW THAT WAS GONNA BE RELEVANT AS HELL AND LOOK AT US NOW. AAAAUGH.

The kiss was.... very morally dubious, yes, but I can see why he did it, both from a selfless and selfish standpoint. The way he pulled Till back in just to check the scoreboards behind him was insane. He wanted to make absolutely sure. I don't recall Sua ever having to check the scoreboards during her performance.

Sorry, about to go off on a tangent here, but I can't stop thinking about the differences between Ivan and Sua's sacrifices.

Ivan's plan of sacrifice was a lot less polished than Sua's was, most likely because Till wasn't performing to his usual standard (unlike Mizi, who sang her heart out for Sua). He needed to take drastic measures when he realized Till wasn't cutting it, but his fucked up little head also wanted one last extremely selfish act, an attempt to burn something into Till's mind. So why not hit two birds with one stone?

Sua's plan of sacrifice was a lot more simple, provided no more spectacle than what was promised of a normal contestant death. She knew she was loved, so her final act before death was to play her part in the performance she and Mizi dreamed of ever since they were young. All she wanted was to grant Mizi's wish before death. A celebration of their love. A final I love you.

Ivan was so desperate he went all out. He had to make big strides, perform explosive acts of passion and aggression. He had to force it, had to interrupt his own performance in order to get the outcome he wanted. Unlike Sua, he wasn't loved. He wasn't even looked at, so he had to take desperate measures to get even a sliver of the attention he craved. His final act was far from a gift, more like a plea. Less like I love you and more like Please love me.

[starflungwaddledee]

i wanted to do a piece to commemorate all the amazing waddle dees who entered the @kirbyoctournament this year! as starstruck is the last dee standing in the mainline tourney, that's a big legacy to carry, but she's doing her best...!

if you want to help her keep fighting the fight for the Humble Waddle Dee against all these super cool knights, dark matters, gods, and ancients, you can vote for starstruck here!

additionally with the first round of second chance voting now open, all these dee's are back for more, and you can give them your vote in the second chance bracket!! sadly a few of them are up against each other, but from top to bottom, here are links to vote for your favourites!

galaxia // ideena // pip // fondue // starry // mimi // daisy // rainbow // wadhat // wridee // stellar // rope mf // keyper // seam // lemon // flower // and of course starstruck being squished to within an inch of her life there 😂

character credits, from top to bottom!

galaxia @centellazul // ideena @tazmilygray // pip @emmyp0ps // fondue @moonmacabre01 // starry @staring-at-a-blank-pagee // mimi @clownie-rainbow // daisy @starrygoober // rainbow @cali-kabi // wadhat @iwontusethis255 // wridee @mxmanynames // stellar @drawscutestuff // rope mf @mint-termsandconditions // keyper @bloodiegawz // seam @cloud-the-forgotten // lemon @snazzyladreal // flower @eliastheownerof0axolotls

i hope you all enjoy it!! best of luck to everyone and their wanyas in the tourney and second chance!! 💖🙏

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

come get yer Laughin'stock! get it hot off the press! free Laughin'stock right here!

[justaz]

i saw a tiktok from sapphirerainsky/starry about a love spell and there was no way i could expand on it in a tiktok comment so i’m here. anyway, sorceress casts a spell over camelot that makes everyone fall for the person who has saved them and the intensity of their feelings corresponds to how many times they’ve been saved. so the average camelot citizen is quite fond of merlin while the knights are more forward and flirtatious and offering him gifts and whatnot. and then theres arthur who physically cannot stand being more than -3 centimeters away from merlin at all times, like it physically pains him to not be touching merlin.

anyway the sorceress finds it amusing once they all catch on and confront her. her eyes pin on merlin and she explains the spell and why everyone feels the way they do. since they’re all conscious/aware under the magic, they’re like “wtf?? we know merlin has saved us a time or two here and there but i would literally gut myself and offer my skin to him to keep him warm” especially arthur who is like “i want to mold our bodies together into one to breathe the same air, for our heart to pump the same blood, for our eyes to see the same sky”

so the sorceress is like “well, lets let them save you this time” and snatches merlin before disappearing. the knights are frantic, arthur is quite sure he’s having six heart attacks at once. merlin and the sorceress are in her cottage sipping tea next to a fire. she’s chatting with some serving boy who has somehow saved not just the king but all of camelot at least three times and then boom apparently she’s talking to freaking emrys??? he asks politely for her to undo her enchantment and she’s like “holy fuck yeah ofc i’m so sorry”

the knights get a clearer head to search for merlin and eventually the sorceress just returns him and arthur drags him into a bone crushing hug and is babbling all this nonsense about worrying he’d never see him again. merlin exchanges a look with the relieved and amused knights behind him. but merlin is never the one to turn down affection from arthur so he returns the hug and is like “uh arthur?” and he hums against his shoulder. merlin grins “you know she removed the spell, right?”

[zarnzarn]

(check the tags for more and also the tag for other fics in the story!)

athena, scowling as she gets bullied into marrying the people she pined over for the last 1000 years, suddenly realising something: wait a minute

odysseus: what?

athena, frozen: wait a damn minute you know what this gives me rights to do

penelope, also realising: oh fuck yes

odysseus: I don't like the sound of whatever's happening here what are you two fucking talking about?

athena, grabbing the marriage wine and tossing it back, then kissing her new wife and husband and handing penelope a spear as she picks up a mace: we'll be back shortly, you can start celebrations without us.

penelope: do u have anything that can start a fire

athena, pulling out an old contract and scanning it before throwing it over her shoulder: yes. are you scared of heights or can we fly.

penelope: fucking bring it I've waited years for this moment

zeus: where are they going

hermes, picking up the contract: they're going to... Ogygia? Oh fucking shit they're going to fucking kill Calypso- hey, hello, WAIT-

[jeeaark]

And now my brain goes mad.

Greygold X Lae’zel X Emps?

Does Icarus fly too close to the sun? Do mortals not wish to wield the power of gods without consequence??

Can dreams really come true???

No one in this universe wants LaexGreygxEmps to happen more than Greygold. But Baby Steps. Right now, they'd be ecstatic if all three of them were in the same room without any blood spilling. Oh, the 19th century Victorian blush they'd have if they ever got to the point of hand-holding.

[jicklet]

Nancy Drew (2019-2023)

Thank you for 62 spooky, funny, wonderful episodes about love. ♥

[mrs-gauche]

I hope the Lighthouse is full of weird looking magical things/artifacts/tools, that are just so old that simply no one knows what they were even made for, a bit like Howl's Moving Castle? Like, imagine there's a running gag or something where Rook and the rest come across a thing and everyone's like "Oh, better not touch that, we don't know what it does" and then they make a really big deal of how no one's allowed to ever touch. that. thing.

And then later on Rook has another Fade Call with Solas and they have this very serious conversation, when Rook just casually interjects "Oh yeah btw, what is that thing?" and Solas just sighs and waves it off in passing, super annoyed "Ugh, that's just an ancient elven bottle opener. Are you even listening to what I'm saying—"

[911whatsyoursanity]

eddie makes everything weird, like not in a horrific way, but like instead of joining his boyfriends on the couch cuddling like he wants to, he just stares with cow eyes at them from across the room cause hes second, triple, quadtriple guessing himself

buck and tommy are just waiting to see if he'll actually come over by himself this time. especially since they're on his couch

[purrfectlycontent]

thinking about all those years ivan spent learning about boundaries and how to maintain healthy relationships but then throwing that away (and, subsequently, his relationship with till) during round 6 by initiating that kiss

comic translations by @/whatafruit on twitter x (except for the last two, those are mine)

[anethiawoods]

playing slay the princess as intended (watching your friend stream it and then roleplaying as improvised ocs for each of ur runs)

[shakingparadigm]

what is the theory that ivan manipulated the event where till and mizi met the wagyein?

It's not a theory, actually! It's confirmed that Ivan orchestrated the whole event. The true reason as to why however is still unknown. The information provides more context to this scene, though:

During the earlier times of ALNST the most rational explanation for this scene was that Till ran after a flower crown (presumably Mizi's) and Ivan followed him in out of curiosity. Now we know that Ivan was conveniently just standing there because he was waiting.

Side note, I find it heartbreaking (and maybe a little funny, sorry) that Till most likely didn't notice Ivan in this scene. That's just like him, isn't it. Always too busy running after Mizi while Ivan trails behind, an ever-present shadow.

I'm not sure how Ivan manipulated the circumstances for both of them to end up there, but it is confirmed that everything was intentional. What strikes me most is how they describe this particular scene:

I can't copy down what they said word-for-word (Patreon info), but they described Ivan watching "creepily" as Till and Mizi are faced with danger. We know that Ivan was familiar with the Cerberus wagyein beforehand, enough to touch its teeth and even to rest himself inside its maw. To Ivan, the wagyein is not dangerous, but to Till and Mizi, it could be. Ivan prepared the wagyein, led them there, and watched "creepily" from afar as Till fell on his knees, seemingly injured.

The closest I can get to making sense of Ivan's "scheme" is that he wanted to see how other children would react in a dangerous situation. Ivan's always been an observer, after all, and he's learned to survive by copying the more "normal" behaviors of his peers. This situation occured when Ivan was still young and had not yet developed his more charming mask, so perhaps he staged this encounter to study a situational response, to learn and mimic the emotion of fear. And what better subjects for the experiment than two of the most expressive and reactive humans of their batch? It helps that he was already fixated on Till beforehand, too. I think Ivan became irreversibly obssessed after this incident, especially since it's framed as a turning point in Ivan's life, comparing Till to the stars.

This is just my attempt at an interpretation, though. It could very well be for another reason. He most likely chose Till and Mizi specifically for personal reasons, not just for reaction. I'm still not sure on the purpose behind the whole thing.

The team wanted to capture Ivan's "dark emotions" through the shot of his stalking, which could relate to his more sinister intentions. His gaze can be read in a few different ways, though. Curiosity, interest, fear, etc. Maybe that's why they decided to redraw the shot in ROUND 6.

I think this better sells the feeling they were trying to convey.

[somegrumpynerd]

This little interaction made me so happy! Killer really fought through Dream to give Cross his necklace back

Asjlkhdkgkd I'm so glad you liked it!! I had fun putting a little story into that one ^^

And, because I am normal and don't think about these guys for hours every day, here's some backstory:

When Cross first joined, Killer actually took to him pretty quickly (Dust and Horror did not get warm welcomes). Which is to say he immediately started flocking to Cross to annoy him and compete with him on missions. Cross didn't have the benefit of knowing Killer already to see these were affectionate annoyances, so to him Killer was just some guy who had a problem and wouldn't leave him alone.

During that mission, Nightmare was calling a retreat when he put a hand to his chest and realised the heart locket was gone. Killer saw him looking all around frantically and had a good idea what was lost, since it was the one thing Cross would absolutely not part with since he joined. So, Killer ran back out towards the stars to look for it, because why learn self preservation now. It was the first thing to convince Cross that Killer actually was being (relatively) friendly, despite all the annoyances.

And also, a doodle of the afterwards of that picture

because it's probably the only time he's managed to get Killer to shut up lol