#at this point i should just. create an art ask blog for them or something /j

[linawritesocs]

seth's new design!! wow!!

SO YEAH this is the seth redesign i was talking about in my last post!!

basically i was like "hey.. so rapunzel's hair changed color in the end, right. and it got shorter. so what if we did the same with seth, except in his case it's getting longer". and. yeah, here i am.

i think it's good for my ocs to have redesigns actually! i want them to age and i want them to change!!

and yes. yes, i know that he looks so much like riku and arata. i know. i blamed myself for not being creative enough but then i was like "well. all of them have different personalities and backstories and arata is especially different from seth and riku". so. yeah👍 i just have my fav tropes and styles and aesthetics and obviously i try to include them in my oc designs as much as possible! my vidia boy is probably going to join this dark-haired boy gang hehe.. i will introduce him. one day. give me some time.

some design notes + bonus drawings under the cut!

seth's redesign notes:

as you have probably already noticed, his hair is getting longer. he doesn't really want to cut it and he actually wants to grow it out. he's not sure if he wants it to be as long as it was when he was a child, but.. we'll see. it's actually a huge deal for him because he was afraid of his hair getting longer and he tried to cut it as often as possible since luna claimed that she thinks seth looks better with long hair, so.. he's finally able to move on :)

it's not so noticeable here bc of the filter i used but seth still has purple highlights! they're just more subtle now.

what is not subtle at all, however, that he has even more piercings and tattoos everywhere now. he has some on his back and legs too, they're just not visible here.

the tattoo on his neck is actually supposed to look like a chameleon's tail.

he has a new choker too and surprisingly, it's more pastel compared to the rest of his outfit.

he decided that he's too cool for the nrc uniform, so now his uniform doesn't have that many similarities with it, he doesn't wear his jacket anymore and his shirt has shorter sleeves. the thingy on his vest is kinda supposed to be a reference to the dark mirror.

again, not that noticeable here, but seth is wearing new colored contacts and his eyes are actually supposed to look like a purple and pink sky full of lanterns. he's still refusing to wear his glasses more, haha.

his nails are hot pink most of the time and they look more bright compared to the rest of his design.

Y E S he's wearing matching rings with rollo >:3 i am so insane about this concept, STOP ME BEFORE I START RAMBLING ABOUT IT. i actually think seth would wear a matching accessory depending on who he's dating at the moment/in this universe/timeline. and since i'm in a very strong seth x rollo mood as always, i went with this one. but i'm sure i'll get to draw the rest of them in the future!

and now. just take these silly doodles bc i had this redesign opened on my tablet when i pulled for rollo and. he didn't come home (he will. he will i am dragging him as he's screaming for his life) and i was like. at first i was like "did he not like it :(" but then i came to the conclusion that this repressed catholic school boy just. needed a moment to process it.

[elitadream]

Hi guys~! ⛅👋

Long time no see! Much longer than I ever intended, in fact. Truth be told, I wanted to make a public post sooner, but I've had a lot to catch up on in terms of notifications and messages since logging back in a few days ago. I've also made some changes that I will address shortly, but first of all I wanted to thank those of you who have reached out with so much care and understanding during my absence. Adjusting has been a slow and fragile process for me -still is-, and I sadly haven't responded directly to everyone yet because of it, but I wanted to say how much I appreciate your patience and support nonetheless. 🥹 🙏

Long story short, I was gone for five months due to a huge burnout, then progressively found my spark again somewhere along the way and have since mostly recovered. It was my wonderful friend @drones-of-innocence who reached out to me outside of Tumblr, and her sense of initiative is largely the reason why I managed to make this post in a somewhat reasonable delay. 😅💖 With that said however, I must also mention that I've deleted a lot of stuff from my page and have removed most of my work from the public eye as well. This may seem quite drastic and frankly a little unsettling, but I assure you that it was a thoroughly considered and reasoned decision! The thing is that I was still getting lots of notes on these drawings everyday and… To put it simply, I didn't want that anymore. 🙇‍♀️ Experiencing popularity was very detrimental to me in the long run and I needed to put an end to it for the sake of my own wellbeing; at least for now.

Which brings me to my next point.

After mulling it over for a while, I've decided that I would not be returning as an active creator in the Mario community this time around. 👐 Making fanart for this franchise (with such a high and continuously maintained degree of involvement) had a lot to do with my health's decline and I've come to realize that I wanted to direct my focus elsewhere going forward. For that reason, there are things which I know will never be repeated again in the future, both in regards to my art and online presence in general, but that's alright. Things change, as they do and should. I'm looking forward to reuniting with folks and would be very happy to stay in touch with those of you who wish to message me privately. Like my lovely pal @istadris said, what matters most about any fandom are the friends you make in it. ☺️

And speaking of which-

@ody-and-fanatu That's so sweet of you, thank you! 💗 I'm glad you've enjoyed my contribution to the fandom. It was fun while it lasted! 💫 My visual ideas may be gone from my page, but most of my written posts and replies are still there for anyone who wants to revisit those at least, so there's that! And I'd also like to answer some of the asks I still have in my inbox at some point. Knowing that you hold my art in such high regard makes really happy! 🥰 Unfortunately, the other account that I have is reserved for my professional work and I prefer to keep them separate from one other, but the good thing is that I intend to go back to this blog occasionally. Hoping to see you around! Cheers! 🥂

@heiressofdoodles Thanks, I appreciate that! ✨ I'm honestly doing much better than I was earlier this Spring. Back then, I was running on empty and on the verge of crashing without even knowing it. Being in constant physical pain was one thing, but feeling mentally and emotionally drained on a daily basis was another entirely, and something had to be done. It took me a moment to really figure out what was wrong, but thankfully I realized very quickly what was causing it and applied the breaks with all my might. One of my main priorities now is to be more alert and respect my own boundaries to make sure that this never happens again. 🥲

@keakruiser Thank you. 🙏💐 I'm just glad to have found my footing again. Feels good to be able to create freely.^^ Hope you're doing well too!

Special thanks also to @pianokantzart, @jelly-fish-wishes, @katlyntheartist, @triniji and @wahooitsamee for their kind words. 🫂 Your graciousness and consideration means a lot to me. 💝

As for all the nice people who sent me anon comments and well wishes, I tried to summarize my thoughts as best I could in this update, but if there's anything else you'd like to say or know, don't hesitate to ask me anytime! Now that I feel like myself again, I think I'm gonna hang out on Tumblr for a little bit. I'll be excited to see what you guys have been up to in the meantime! 🤗 Wishing you all a very good day and pleasant Fall. 🍂

-elita 🌸

[siggiedraws]

Hello! i absolutely adore your art and agree with your sonic opinions, you're overall one of the best sonic blogs out there. May i ask how do you plan out and draw your comics? How do you choose the formatting of panels themselves, the composition, the dialogue and so on? From A to Z, please! I apologize if this ask might be inconvenient, but i'm curious because i love your comics and have attempted to draw a sonic comic myself that failed miserably.

Typically the first step I will take is to just rough it out in a sketchbook, because I find it much faster and when working digitally I feel more pressure to make things look nice. This is where I start thinking about paneling and composition. It doesn't look perfect or cohesive at this stage, but at least now I have a rough idea presented with barely legible scribbles that don't make sense to anyone but me.

For paneling, large panels linger more, and small panels indicate quick succession. This is the most important rule I personally follow when making panels. It affects things like comedic/dramatic timing and how the reader will be guided through your comic.

It's important to vary up the composition when it comes to dialogue scenes where not that much is happening. The shot-reverse-shot format works, but remember that once you have an establishing shot and the reader knows where the characters are, you can get creative. I like to do close-ups where not everything is shown to create a sense of vagueness around what emotion the character is feeling.

Don't do this too excessively unless you're trying to create a claustrophobic feeling - let it breathe with a medium shot or long shot after!

In film-making, there's a rule called the 180-degree rule that basically states that in a two-character interaction, there is an invisible line drawn between them. The camera does not cross this line and stays on one side. This basically keeps the characters on one respective side of the frame at all times to avoid confusing the viewer.

This is by no means something you have to follow for comics, but if you want to create something that is easier to follow, it's a good rule of thumb that I consider when drafting! It can also be broken depending on the effect you're going for.

Once I have a draft, I'll typically go into editing and changing things that don't work quite as well as I'd like. This can be done by yourself or you can get it revised by a friend, like I do!

After the draft is finished, I'll get to lining and colouring. To be honest, it's not something I can teach so easily, but rather something that takes a lot of time and practice to learn. I typically draw the backgrounds with thinner lineart so that the characters stand out. Same deal with colouring - the characters stand out from the background colour-wise. There are multiple ways to do this, but for example, here I made the background have less colour contrast than the characters and stick to an orange-ish tone, while the characters are different colours from the background.

For speech bubbles, generally the words should fit the shape of the bubble to the best of your ability. The line spacing should be as close and compact as possible without touching the lines above or below. This is to save space on the page so that speech bubbles don't take up a majority. The tail of the bubble should point towards the character's mouth.

Avoid tangenting! This is when the very edges of two different things touch each other. It creates a flatter effect so you want to avoid it as much as possible.

That's about all I can think of right now. Hope this helped!

[chaaistained]

☕️ . careful ! you might burn yourself ≈≈

hi, i’m chaai !!

.

.

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🗝️ you’ve now unlocked my ingredient list—what goes into this cup of chaai?

chaai has layers—the usual sweetness of sugar and honey can be formidable when melted into scalding hot water—such is the very girl who steeps the leaves of this blog.

with a cinnamon spiced tongue, she speaks, she whispers, she sings her dreams into reality.

for all the burns that this world gives her, there is but only one truth and it is imagination.

chaai finds solace in solitude, she finds comfort in creativity, she finds motivation in music and inspiration in intricate stories.

a writer, a poet, a singer, a dancer / a crier, a screamer, a laugher, a prancer.

a childlike whimsy will forever permeate the aroma of chaai. drenched in jasmine and sandalwood and frangipani intoxication, she will braid flowers into her hair and use the fallen petals to cast her spells.

the bursting flavours of ideas that she has bubbling inside will leave stains with every single klutzy stumble she makes as she tries to reach her point in a concise manner.

chaai is a welcoming drink, an open hand, palm outstretched to the sky, ready to be held by another (you only need to ask!).

brewed just right

what chaai likes

☕︎ chai (shock horror), talking about her dr’s i beg you, send an ask, journals, notebooks, ink stained fingertips, stories, poems, essays, analysis, romanticism in art, the sight of rain from a window, the strength in one’s imagination, the multiversal theory, when the world used to feel more vibrant and saturated, love letters, rnb and classic jazz, her beloved friends and mutuals

when you steep it too long, it bitters

what chaai dislikes / dni

☕︎ racism, homophobia, xenophobia, classism, colourism, sexism, not being a decent human being, unacceptability of other’s choices when it comes to their dr’s (if it’s not your dr, don’t police it—there is nuance in feats as ancient as reality shifting , things like aging up/down, race swapping, gender swapping - idgaf, do what you want and let me do what i want), general rudeness and self entitlement (be respectful or be blocked), anti-shifters because we really needed more attention whores in this world apparently . if i feel like it i WILL add to this list

tea bags come with tags

my most used tags :

#by chaaistained — anything that i created or wrote and would like to share with my name proudly declared in the tags <3

#chaai chats ≈ — random musings, muddles rambles, whatever sparks my interest, plagues my thoughts, something i want to speak on or ponder about, no rhyme, reason, or rhythm aside from the fact that i thought it and i needed to share it

#chaai recs ๑° — my recommendations, whether it is for scripting or manifesting, shifting advice, even post ideas or inspiration, anything i enjoy and i reckon others should see

+ and additional tag of #highly recs !! when i feel that spark of interest or inspiration burning bright from your post

#signs from the universe… — for the odd serendipitous piece of art or quote or poem, wtv of the sort, that i believe has a double meaning more inclined to shifters, also the tag for whenever i come across a post that personally feels like a sign for me

#chaai channels ; [insert dr-self]༄ — when i find a post that aligns with my dr-self, or when i make such a post

#chaai for : [insert s/o] ৻ꪆ — when i find a post that reminds me of any of my s/o’s, or . more accurately, when i’m raving and jumping around in my feels for them ..

#chaai’s moodboards .•° — my moodboards !! i’m proud of them :)

#chaai loves » [insert moot] ✿ — personal tag for my moots

#teacup anons !! — personal tag for anons

+ claimed anons : bodygaurd anon . 🍦 .

don’t swallow the tea leaves ! for they leave you a message 🍂

this is my first shifting/loa blog !! i was really inspired by @hrrtshape to finally move my ass and make one (you should definitely follow her !!).

if you see similarities in what i post it is because of this (i HAVE spoken to emma and have informed her that i’ll be ib-ing her and/or tagging her in my posts).

i look forward to making friends on this blog≈≈

and if you find my main . no you didn’t, got that?

chaai brews; tea assortments — dr archive

cuppa queries; order in — ask responses

chaai ponders; ring stained pages — on loa/shifting/manifestion/creativity

2024 © chaaistained

[olderthannetfic]

Genuine question: what's the point of writing fanfic? As in, what's the purpose? No one in the fandom I'm in comments on fics and I even got told off by one person for doing so, as it "encourages bad writers and makes them think they're good". So it seems that it's a lot like book writing, where people work hard and are creative, but instead of getting paid and getting comments on the work, you just sit there silently hoping someone will press the kudos button and make a number go up. I feel like that time and work could be better spent on making something you might get some kind of profit off of. Don't get me wrong, I love doodling fanart, but I don't post it, as I'm aware that there's no point to doing so, and while it's a nice way to fill the time on a commute, it's not something that takes me as much time and effort as fanfic does. So... why do people bother? Sometimes I describe ideas I have and people I know in my fandom will tell me I should write it, but I don't see why. I get more interaction from just saying "imagine if [thing here]" than I would by sitting down, writing for hours, editing and posting [thing here], so what would the point be? I'm not punching down or going "haha women and their fanfic lol!", I genuinely do not get what the point is and this blog feels like it might have someone reading who knows the answer.

--

Do you make art for profit? Genuine question.

There's nothing inherently wrong with being motivated primarily by external factors, but it's not actually why a lot of people create things, whether it's books or recipes or doodles in a notepad.

I enjoy the actual process of writing.

I think many people lose sight of that aspect in an era where tons of <500-word fics that are mostly outlines and "Imagine if..." posts get disproportionate attention for being easy to consume. But the satisfaction of doing a bigger art piece and doing it right is real and motivates a hell of a lot of creation.

I suppose you might be thinking "Okay, but why not just write it alone and never post?", but I like sharing. Showing off my finished creation is part of the joy, and sharing with other people like me is too. But those aren't quite the same thing as worrying about kudos. It's like dressing nicely when you leave the house because you feel great when you know you look good vs. needing another person to tell you you look good.

To be honest, though, this type of feeling has grown in me the better I've gotten at a craft. The closer my finished projects get to the vision in my head, the easier it is to find them fulfilling and to be excited to share them. When I fall short of my own ambitions, it's discouraging no matter how much attention I might get from others.

I feel like it's time for my regular reblog of Adam Westbrook's video essay series The Long Game.

The third and least known in the series is all about this idea of who you're making art for if you're not getting material rewards in the short term. It talks a lot about autotelicity—being internally driven instead of externally.

--

But if you really just want clicks, anon, start a blog that accepts anon asks and posts about wanky stuff. Actually tag things, unlike me, so people can find you.

No, writing for attention isn't worth it.

The time investment is too great and your brain will always fixate on the times people didn't respond instead of the times they did.

But that's not actually why most people write.

[lullydoesstuff]

Tips on how to create a Demon Slayer OC

Hello guys and welcome back on my side-blog! Today I wanted to talk about something that might be useful of you want to create a good KNY OC and just... vibe with them or create art, write about them... everything. If you want to see mine you can find all of them on @bluespiderlully (that is also my main blog), but for now let's just talk about some things you have to keep in mind while creating.

🩷 Design

This part is very important when it comes to art and descriptions, I'll start to say that I've seen MANY original versions of the Demon Slayer Corp uniforms and that many of them look good, so if you design a totally new one, go for it and slay. Another important thing concerning the uniform is buttons, there's plenty of characters redesigned out there, they have colorful buttons in their uniforms and they all look so cute, but in canon we see that the buttons' color is used to define the rank of someone, common slayers have silver buttons, Hashiras have golden ones. We're talking about a military thing, so rank is pretty important and this should be kept in mind. Last but not the least: it's 1920s Japan, so maybe having your character wearing some ballet shoes or sneakers might result cringy, avoid that.

🩷 Backstory

This is maybe one of the most important parts. When you write a backstory you should consider the period of time where the story takes place and the general rules of the world where your OC is living. For example, Taisho Era: your character could have lost their parents due to WW1, or they could come from America or other parts of the world used to interact with Japan (selling/buying stuff), possibilities in this case are infinite and this era gives you the opportunity to create the best backstories ever. Next, Japan had major tensions with China and Korea so this gives you the opportunity to insert this in your OCs backstory (this is something I didn't use, I just have an half-American character but I regret not using any of this political tension for any of my characters, please of you're out there and trying to create an OC, do it, it's very interesting).

🩷 Personality

Don't make your character a Mary Sue/Gary Stue. If you don't know what a Mary Sye/Gary Stue is I'll explain very quick: it's a too perfect, too kind, too sweet characrer, without any flaws and loved by everyone... I think the reason why this characters don't work is clear, the lack of internal and external conflict is very important, since we're talking about Demon Slayer let's take Tanjiro as an example. Tanjiro is kind, but he's not perfect and he keeps asking himself if what he's doing is morally okay, he keeps tormenting himself about the fact that he's actually killing people just for his mean to turn Nezuko back into a human and he blames himself for other people's deaths... this is the demonstration that you can write a kind and sweet character, but focus on thier psychology and ideas, if they're already perfect they won't have any evolution, and once they had one maybe at the end of the story, don't make them perfect either, especially since you're talking about a world were your OC would most likely be a soldier, if they end up being alive they'll have traumas and let's be honest, no one will ever be perfect.

🩷 Power

Okay, so this is maybe the main point. DON'T. MAKE. YOUR. CHARACTER. OP... thanks, here's a cookie for you 🍪. If your character is an Hashira like mines, they ABSOLUTELY need a reason why they're one, okay? They can't be weak of course, they need to be very very skilled at something. We all agree about that but making your character extremely powerful, extremely strong and skilled, "they're the strongest Hashira ever", "they can solo Muzan" doesn't make your character interesting, it makes your character cringe. But of course they can have skills that others don't have, let's take one of my characters as an example: Ayumi Shinazugawa, my favourite child. She has a bow, no one else has one and she's really skilled with it, no one is as skilled as her... with a bow... because Ayumi is a 1.50mt schizophrenic blueberry with anxiety, she's not stronger than other Hashiras. If they need a sniper, okay, they'll take Ayumi, if they need anything else they'd take someone else, definitely, and she's not the kind of character to be sent in a mission alone, it's just unsafe.

🩷 Relationships

We're now at the last point. Having characters that are siblings with other characters in the show can become very very interesting, because you can explore more the canon character too, I personally love this trope everytime. But now let's come to romantic relationship, ships, the best thing on Earth after white wine mixed with strawberry juice. First, if your OC is an adult please leave Muichiro, Tanjiro and every other minor alone, if you want your character to date one of these the way is very simple: make them a minor too, shipping a minor with another minor is fine and it's realistic too, if you think it's wired just think about your first romantic relationships and crushes... how old were you? Probably 14/15. There's another thing you must consider, the fact that many characters in the Demon Slayer universe have a rude personality, I mean, you could totally ship your character with people like Obanai or Sanemi, but their personality should at least match theirs or being similar, to date someone you have to get along with this person, so consider this, it's not something to ignore, and it absolutely counts for friendships too. Consider that if your character is very kind they could have disagreements with characters like Obanai or Sanemi, and the disliking would probably be mutual.

I hope this post was useful for you, and I hope you all come out with amazing OCs, I love to see them and I love how much creative this community can be so please don't spare your creativity and give life to the OC in your head that just wants to be drawn or written.🩷

[magnusunpopularopinions]

Anon says:

“I'm so glad this blog exists!! Now I can actually be honest about this show without getting my neck metaphorically snapped ajskdke

Short Version: I seriously think that the romance between John and Martin is the weakest aspect of the show and the crew fumbled the ball on making them believable.

Long Version: I understand that Martin was madly in love with John from the start but, even after the ship became canon, I genuinely don't understand what they see in each other. Se1 Jon treated Martin like shit and even if it's supposed to be interpreted as typical Tsundere behavior, I still don't get why Martin fell in love with the workplace bully. And likewise, John's complaints and dislike for Martin's clinginess and shoddy work ethic were justified as John seemed like a married-to-one's-work type of guy, it makes complete sense for Martin to drive him up a wall.

The reveal from Elias (118) that Martin has some "precious image" of John inside his head made a lot of sense. I was like, 'Oh! So he's only in love with the idea of John, not the person he actually is!? That's crazy!' And I was honestly happier under the impression that his feelings were unrequited and he was just too obsessed to take the hint. That would've made his adventure into Lonely Avatarhood way more interesting. To know that the man you love isn't the him you want to be with and the real him never loved you back anyway...

On that point too, John's desperation to keep Martin from turning fully in Se4 felt more like a begging plea to keep the last of his original assistants alive than anything truly romantic.

But nonetheless, John and Martin have only interacted a handful of times before the end of Se4, and only two of them were positive (039 being the main one I can remember). The rest of the show's runtime is them hearing about the other through hearsay, progressing the plot, and arguing over John's increasing monster-status, with an added dash of John getting audibly uncomfortable whenever romance came up in conversation. That's not enough to build an eventual love confession and romantic relationship on. No matter how hard the fandom shippers carry it with their art and fics, they shouldn't have to do the heavy lifting in the writers' stead.

Don't get me wrong though! 186 and Epiphany (winner of the Magnus Fluff contest) were FANTASTIC, and if we had seen more of THAT before they got together, I'd have no complaints!

It just wasn't apparent enough that John ever reciprocated in canon.”

—————————————————————————

Thanks for sharing! Let’s chat!

1) Sorry to anon, but the ask went HAYWIRE in my inbox and this was the only way I could get it out. My apologies! I haven’t changed anything!

2) Ok, ok… I have to speak my truth. I am also not the biggest fan of Jmart. I agree with anon- Jon is the kind of guy who likes to be and works best alone. Martin’s approach to Jon did seem quite obsessive and it just felt very… sudden that they should become a couple. I just never saw it, and when it did happen, it felt quite out of left field.

3) Now I want to play devil’s advocate to anon and myself because DISCUSSION! I love talking things out in a respectful and kind way, and that’s what we’re here to do!

-Alrighty so, if Jon is adverse to romance as anon says, why did Johnny and Alex decide to make Jmart cannon? Wouldn’t that go against all of Johnny’s hard work in building up believable characters?

-Secondly, doesn’t fan response make Jmart more believable? This to say- if fans picked it out so quickly, doesn’t that mean it was obvious from the start? (Or is this just how fan bases work? Michael and Gerry never met and yet we have DoorKeay!)

4) I wanted to reiterate something: Quite often my posts get circulated without the context of why I made this blog (and honestly I may start putting it at the bottom of every post I make from here on out.) I created this to be a safe space to share opinions without harsh feedback or rude response. You are very welcome to disagree with someone! In fact, I encourage this sort of back and forth! But if your words are not respectful and kind, then I cannot hear you out. We can disagree with each other and still be kind. If we cannot be kind to one another in such a small community as a fan base, then it becomes harder to hold on to hope of kindness outside of it.

I’ll step off my soap box now, and say that I’ve been meaning to say as much for a minute. It does not correlate as much to this ask/post as it does to some others that have received mixed responses. As expected, some people have taken my posts and responded in negative ways.

I can’t stop people from responding negatively. What I can do is make sure that, no matter who sees these, that they know where I stand as a Tumblr user, blog author, and person. I value kindness and respect above all else. If I ever veer from this, call me out.

5) I appreciate you guys a lot, and I have been so so grateful to have this community. Keep those asks coming!

Thanks for sharing and remember to keep your words kind!

-E

[astro-vision-au]

Welcome to Astro-Vision!

This blog was created to house nothing but Smg4 related stuff, including my Au! You can find my main blog @the-masked-astro

You are welcome to ask any questions to the characters above or any other Astro-vision version of the Smg4 crew! [At this time the smg4 crew are getting redesigns, so asking questions to some of them may be delayed]

Please be mindful this account is ment for those 15-16 and up. Please no spam liking!

Current events!

What Is Astro-Vision?

Before asking a question, it's highly recommended you take a look at the wonderful Astro-vision outline!

[OUTLINE IS CURRENTLY BEING UPDATED, IT WILL BE UP AGAIN SOON!]

Here, you will learn more about the stories and characters! [At this time, this outline is still a work in progress, so some information may be missing]

Why is Astro-Vision so big? I'm so lost...

Ahah, yeah that's to be expected unfortunately! To put it simply, Astro-vision was made to be a mental gymnasium for my brain. Ever since I was a wee babs, I've always come up with stories and tales to keep myself entertained, an overactive imagination would be putting it lightly. Astro-vision, and all my other stories are basically a place I can throw all of my silly headcannons and stories.

Astro-vision is so big because not only does it house my smg4 au, it's also a massive crossover with smg4 and all of my other stories, the ultimate play pen for my silly little brain. Because of that, 90% of the story is still in my head, and I tend to pick random bits from random points in the timeline to show to you, and often forget you can't just read my mind [trust me, you wouldn't want to anyways] but that's where asks comes in! Please don't be afraid to ask, because if you can't find something it's probably because a deadass forgot to say or mention it lol.

What can you ask?

You are welcome to ask any of the characters any type of question! Or you can ask me directly about the story! If you have any non Astro-vision questions for me please send those asks to my main blog! Almost any and every question is welcome, but here are some things you may want to avoid!

Any nsfw or inappropriate questions, please keep it pg 16!

Complex or specific rolplay asks. Things like "gives charecter item" are fine, but things like "gives character hug or high five" or any other interactions that require me to draw you or your character, are only reserved for close friends. It's nothing personal, it's only to keep the ask train flowing smoothly!

If you are unsure if an ask breaks these rules or not, you are still allowed to send it. You won't be blocked or anything, it just won't get answered!

Where do asks fall in the timeline?

For those who don't know, Astro vision has 7 planned parts! Possibly more to come! While the events that happen on the blog are not cannon to the story, the story, of course, influences how characters respond or answer asks! As of right now, the blog timeline is at the very beginning of Pt 5, with a few sprinkles of future parts and characters to be featured here soon! Basically this means characters will only be able to answer questions with information from pt 1-4, anything that pertains to a future event either can't be answered directly or cannot be answered at all.

For example, if I give spoilers about what happens in a future part and you ask a character involved to elaborate, they won't know what you're talking about. There will be exceptions, but this is the general rule!

Where can I find refs for characters?

All references have the #reference on them, so just look up that # and you should find them!

It's been a while since I've asked, was it missed/ignored?

I work full time! And my job required me to often stay late and come in early, so asks can take days to a week or two depending on the que. Unfortunately I can not give an exact date when an ask is discarded, but I would say about 3 weeks! Unless it's something I can answer in text formate, it most likely won't get answered till Wednesday or Thursday [my days off] which means if you want you ask answered sooner I would recommend asking on Monday or Tuesday, or possibly Wednesday. If you ask on Wednesday and it doesn't get answered by Friday there's a good chance it unfortunately won't get answered till the next Wednesday.

Do you take requests?

Normally no, but I am currently taking requests for my Mr. Puzzles! You can request him interacting with other puzzles in the Sexyman contest that's coming up or in specific outfits. My commissions are unfortunately closed at the moment!

Can I make self inserts/my own stories in the au?

Well yes, but also no [let me explain]

You CAN make stories, self inserts etc! However as of right now they will be NON CANNON. Astro-vision is ment to be an open story, but since there's a lot of info and things about the story I haven't released yet, it's not really possible for people to make stories and characters that are 100% cannon. I am working on a big project that should not only allow people to make their stories and characters cannon to the au, but make it easier, more interactive, and rewards people for contributing to the story!

The hope is it have this done in April when my smg4 1 year anniversary hits but unfortunately since this project is so big and I have a lot of other things going on it may take longer. All I ask of for your patience! 🙏

-

Overall, just enjoy your time here and enjoy the silly little characters!

[matrixbearer2024]

Modernity AU Main Four Lore Snips(1/?)

Sorry for the lack of art and content on my main and my blog guys, been really busy so far given the holiday. I plan on updating things asap but for now I'll try my best to answer any asks or entertain suggestions and comments regarding the modernity AU! For now, I offer some little lore snippets that I think should be more helpful context clues. I'm not entirely sure how to slot these into my askblog in the meantime so have at thee!

Fiddleford's family comes from a successful pigery which had eventually expanded and branched out. The corporation his family actively owns distributes and sells meat products all over the world.

It's something I don't really talk about much aside from saying it's old money, but I do generally think given the current world and all that meat products could either be a hit or miss. In this case, I wondered what it would be like if his family had been successfully rooted in the business for decades. Generally speaking, it's not a guarantee and oftentimes the food production industry can have it's ups and downs. Still, I figured with the convenience and efficiency of the modern day- why not try?

So yeah, when I say Fidds comes from old money in this AU— it's old money. Like, decades old at this point. Thankfully, the Mcgucket family is generally very smart about their riches despite the fact they could quite literally throw money at everything. It's also why sometimes Fidds doesn't realize his privilege borders on rude when he's just that accustomed to a lifestyle with insane amounts of money.

Bill's necklace isn't inanimate, not that anyone knows or notices even.

That actually has a lot to do with his backstory, the demon triangle actually still does exist in this AU but this human Bill is a completely separate entity from the Euclidean. His necklace works more like a window for that chaotic piece of geometry and it's why I constantly draw it emoting or reacting to certain things around.

What I will reveal about Bill's backstory is that his entire family is part of a weird cult that worships the triangle and his role to play in most of it is generally as a homunculus. Something "human-like" or a "humanoid puppet" in terms of alchemy. He is human, just born and created for some pretty screwed up reasons. He isn't even the first, nor the last. It just so happens his siblings either died from complications growing up or during childbirth.

It's why his aunt and uncle were able to get custody of him pretty early, taken away from his biological family at the age of three and the guardianship was legally transferred when he was five. Bill's fascination with triangles in this AU isn't really unfounded, he just doesn't know the real reason why. But the scars that his blood family left behind did stick, and it's why he has such an aversion to the occult or most religious regalia.

Ford having a general lack of interest or indifference to romantic relationships actually has a lot to do with his upbringing.

Personally, I don't think Stanford would be entirely keen on the concept of "love" given how he sees the bond between his parents. That and he doesn't see how someone could turn so irrational or blind with the right cocktail of hormones. He doesn't see the objectivity in most of it so he's generally just confused or doesn't care enough to try. It's actually why he didn't even entertain Cathy's confession letter, immediately assuming it had something to do with bullying or a chain instead of anything amiable or even romantic.

He's not disgusted or has an aversion to it like many of his peers assume, he's just indifferent and doesn't have it as a priority. Ford isn't actually sure if he's ever really even fallen for somebody before, the closest he's got and is painfully aware of is just caring for somebody to a detriment without even feeling "lovey-dovey". Do with that as you will.

Stanley loves musicals, he loves watching them and listening to the soundtracks. It's just not very known because he feels like he has a reputation and he'd rather leave the "geeky" thing to his twin.

This isn't to say that he has an aversion or general distaste for being labeled as nerdy or geeky, just that he loves to knock heads with his brother for being the "cool" Stan. He first watched Wicked on broadway and then everything else soon followed, Hamilton, The Greatest Showman, Six, Dear Evan Hansen, etc., things just snowballed from there and he's been hooked ever since. His favorite probably really has to be "Six" or "The Greatest Showman".

It helps that he knows how to sing and still does, he just doesn't do it often to avoid people from making requests or asking him to perform. Stanley doesn't have stage fright like his twin, he just gets tired very easily by it when it's non-stop performing tunes he doesn't even like or know.

That doesn't stop him or Ford from drunkenly singing "The Other Side" or "Defying Gravity" at three in the morning after a weekend of partying though.

The Stan Twins for the life of them will not stop debating on whether tea or coffee is better.

Ford is jittery because of the copious amounts of caffeine he ingests and Stan sometimes wonders if you could drop from too much caffeine. He's tried to stop and only ended up sleeping like a dead man for four full days. Fidds still often refers to it as a post-exam hibernation.

On the other hand, Stan is often too aware of the crash his brother gets and would rather sleep more often than end up shaking and twitching non-stop from caffeine. He does need the boost though, so he drinks tea.

Bill usually often thinks that it's like trying to watch oil and water mix while eating breakfast with the Stan twins given that most of the conversation is just swallowed by this debate. His guess is it has a lot to do with the fact Ford is not a morning person and he makes it everybody's problem.

Fiddleford loves horseback riding and it's a hobby he's had ever since he was a kid. He has a stable and field for his horses. Fidds both buys the horses and pays for their care with his own allocated allowance.

It's not really even because he's into cowboys and everything, he just finds them very sweet animals and genuinely interesting. They're basically bigger and faster dogs in his mind. Most of the horses Fidds buys aren't even wild, they're retired horses that most owners would already decide to get rid of because their either aged or far past their use(carriage horses, racehorses, etc.).

Fidds' favorite horse which he's had for around 15 years now is a retired deep brown racehorse named "Marlboro". That horse is already around 20 years old and was forced to retire after it slipped and fell on the racetrack. That horse belonged to a relative and was just given to Fidds as a gift for his 8th birthday.

Marlboro loves his person so much that every time Fidds returns home during breaks, the horse straight up starts walking out of the stable and stops for absolutely nobody.

It's something his family is slightly surprised and alarmed by sometimes because Fidds' horses do have designated caretakers and vets that do their job well. It just so happens that the horses really just remember Fidds and are more than happy to see him again.

Fidds doesn't always ride his horses whenever he's home but he never fails to visit all of them and check in. As of now, he has six horses and four are stallions(all gelded); the other two are mares. Fiddleford isn't really interested in breeding horses anyway so this doesn't give him any issue.

Bill has a slight obsession with the show squid game but doesn't really talk about it.

The concept and idea behind the show and the games genuinely interests him for reasons he isn't sure why. Though, he would sometimes think about it for a long while trying to figure it out. It also doesn't help that the games also tend to fixate on human desperation and greed, something that terrifies the blonde as much as it intrigues him.

It resonates with how he typically sees his own life, a pick your poison of: "you die now or die later". Even so, Bill is a bit irked with himself for gravitating towards something like this when he also finds himself nauseated by the amount of death and gore. His fixation generally merits mixed feelings on his end but it's a fixation nonetheless.

Stan and Ford throw things at each other almost daily, it doesn't even have to be for any specific reason other than they're screwing around.

Ford has thrown at thesaurus at Stanley before for the sake of a joke and consequently couldn't stop laughing at the sheer utter confusion his brother had because of it. He does debate on doing it more often though when Stan annoys the heck out of him by just murdering the English language.

On the flip side, Stan's also gotten hilariously good at sniping his twin with a pillow when the guy does or is about to do some really dumb shit. Like messing with rocket fuel that may or may not explode? Yeah Stan's chucking that flask out the window and hitting a bullseye to the face on a grumpy Stanford with a couch cushion.

It's all fun and games no matter what happens and both of them know when to take it seriously or when not to do this. Though so far, it's generally free game and the twins are just that chaotic even as adults.

[jonathan-cranes-mistress-of-fear]

Hey, I just wanted to thank you for supporting Scarecrow x OC/self-insert. I'm tired of people who hate on creators who try to have fun or tell they own stories. As much as I like comics characters I'm sucker for OC's and what they bring to the table, because each is unique and brings different dynamic to the table! I Recently found two blogs with Oc I observe with interest. One being @mask-knife-is-scarecrows-girl, I find they Oc Meg Crane cute and I have great fun reading they posts. There is also @amor-god-of-love, of which I saw the picture of "I'll cut your throat..." from Princess Mononoke involving Jonathan and they OC and I fallen in love with it. Seems they Oc is love based and I'm sucker for good love Vs fear dynamic. Anyway sorry for rambling, but could you give your opinion on why people hate OC x Scarecrow so much? We should encourage such creativity not put creators down because of it.

Love your blog <3

-Anon

Hi! I love this ask! OCs are frequently disliked or at the vesy least, ignored in the fandom. The best advice I could give anyone with a self insert or OC is to never stop creating. Your audience will come. I did not start out with nearly 7k followers, it took me nine years to get to these numbers.

Fandom loves regular posts. Case and point, I watch game grumps every day and have made it part of my daily routine to watch new episodes at lunch time. Becoming part of a persons routine is a VERY high complement and I'm sure there's people who are checking my blog in the same manor. (I mean, I know there are, I see the notifs)

It's not that people HATE Scarecrow/selfship/OCs it's that people don't want to jump into something that they can't relate to, for whatever reason. If could be their sexuality, gender, etc..or simply that they don't know this OC and the creator has not pushed them enough.

I had an OC in the past, and I always got questions about her. One, because I made a lot of posts about her, and two because I had followers who luckily enough, wanted to know more. Give them some breadcrumbs! I don't really talk about this character anymore, but maybe one day I will bring her back.

Also! Mask Knife is great btw! I adore reading her posts!!

I absolutely agree we should support creators but OCs are like original art, you gotta post frequently, until your audience finds you. And they WILL find you, but you can't give up. If I stopped posting in 2016, I imagine the fandom-scape for Scarecrow would be different.

OCs and Self inserts are nothing to be ashamed of, we've been self inserting since the beginning of fandom way back into the star trek days. Also, I don't know ANY OC who isn't at least A LITTLE bit of a self insert. OH! And if that one weird artist can self insert himself into the freaking PPG reboot, then y'all shouldn't feel shame making fanfic and fanart

[justladders]

A Thing About Asks

Just wanted to talk about something that's been happening to me a lot more as of late and figured it needed to be its own post.

I get your all's asks. I see them and get an idea for something to say back. Since this is an art blog, a lot of the time the ask is something art related, which means drawing something to answer them.

I have a lot to do irl, outside of the internet, outside of this site. When I get on Tumblr, I want to look at/laugh with/share art and whatnot. This is basically the one place I go for that. When I'm free at home, I get to spend some time of that time drawing for myself, for projects, and even for answering asks.

I like getting asks. I like when people have something they're curious about, want to share, or want an opinion on, and it's nice to know there are people that are comfortable with bringing some of those questions/ideas to me. And yet, asks are not my #1 priority. I have things I already want to make. It's why I do any art at all. I have jokes, designs, concepts, and stories that I want to put down and be able to share. Replying to asks that bring something new to the table is fun too, and sometimes that's what I feel like doing when I get my free time.

I have some very old asks that I still haven't gotten to. It's not even that I don't want to answer them, but I find motivation to create certain and specific things to be extremely fickle. I'll answer asks out of order: some very old, some literally as soon as I get them. I don't try to pick and choose, I just draw whatever whenever I have the drive to.

But.

Spamming the inbox doesn't make me answer faster. In fact, it makes me want to not answer at all, because I don't condone or want to reward that kind of behavior.

An ask is not a free pass to *demand* art. I should make a point that I don't think of a lot of asks I get as being like this. I understand that the thing about being an art blog means lots of questions for/about/of characters that I draw, and I like that. It's fun to create interactions and that kind of thing. I don't think everyone that has an ask about potentially drawing something is "trying to get free art," there are just some people that will repeatedly hound as if they are owed something. (It's sometimes hard to tell if an ask even sent -I know, I use this site too- so I don't consider it badgering if you're like, "I can't actually tell if that worked so sorry if this is a repeat.")

Asks are not a contract. And certainly not a timed one. In relation to the last point, I and other artists are not "obligated" to get to asks "on time." Receiving an ask doesn't mean the artist has to drop everything to go answer it, use up their free time, etc. If they want to respond, they will. You might not even know them. You might just be a complete stranger to them. You might not know what their day or schedule looks like. They don't have to set aside whatever they're doing to answer.

This isn't because I'm mad, it just feels like this doesn't ever get addressed and needed to be.

[rjalker]

I'm trying to think of what else I can offer to people who donate, I've had two people follow up for the public domain art rrequests so far...

maybe I can offer to make audio books of public domain things that don't have audiobooks yet or whose audiobook they don't like?

Yeah let's go with that. For every $10 you've donate to literally any fucking mutual aid fund, I will record 30 minutes of an audiobook for any public domain thing of your choice. Or if you've written things, I will record half an hour of an audiobook for your thing.

It's almost 4:00 a.m. but anyways, feel free to just tell other people that I am offering this.

Somebody who's not me should make a blog that's just dedicated to sharing the things that people are offering in returns for donations.

I don't know how many words I can read in half an hour, I guess we will find out if somebody takes me up on this offer.

Also if you miss the memo, for every $10 donated, you can send me a design request for a character and I will create a new public domain character based on your request, which could be as detailed or vague as you want.

This will just be my new pinned post. You are encouraged to tell other people on donation posts and tell your friends and whoever that if they have donated at any point they can request these things from me. Or ask for other things, I'm sure there are other things that I can be offering I just can't think of them at the moment.

And if you can't donate $10 but you can donate less than that, just send me a request anyways we can figure something out.

So far I am offering:

To create original public domain characters based on design requests

To record audiobooks in sections of half an hour for every $10 donated.

If you donate literally anything at all, the next time I am growing a plant from seed that is a long-lived perennial, you can pick a name and that will be the plant's name and the names of any of its clones. This includes canna lilies, crab apples hopefully, and purple passion flowers.

I guess let's say that if you or a group of you and your friends donate at least $200, you can pick a full-length public domain movie and I will novelize it. And the novelization will be public domain which means you and all of your friends and everybody can do what ever you can imagine. For reference, from the one thing I have novelized so far, it can be assumed that for every minute of the movie, it will equal around 300 words in the novelization.

I can also novelize radio plays and audio dramas that are public domain.

This place will be actually organized properly tomorrow it's 4:00 a.m. Good night.

Edit Dec 25: okay still not organized but I'll start adding links to example art.

Here's the newest wolf lineart and some colored examples!

[canmom]

canmom's notes on fixing the colours

ok so if you've been following along on this blog for the last week or two i've been banging on about colour calibration. and i feel like it would be good to sum up what i've learned in a poast!

quick rundown on colour spaces

So. When you represent colour on a computer, you just have some numbers. Those numbers are passed to the monitor to tell it to turn some tiny lights up and down. The human visual system is capable of seeing a lot of colours, but your monitor can only display some of them. That's determined by its primaries, basically the exact colour* of its red, green and blue lights.

(*if you're wondering, the primaries are specified in terms of something called the CIELAB colour space, which is a model of all the different colours that humans can possibly see, devised by experiments in the early-mid 20th century where the subjects would turn lights at different frequencies up and down until they appeared visually the same. Through this, we mapped out how eyes respond to light, enabling basically everything that follows. Most human eyes tend to respond in pretty close to identical ways - of course, some people are colourblind, which adds an extra complication!)

Now, the problem we face is that every display is different. In particular, different displays have different primaries. The space in between the primaries is the gamut - the set of all colours that a display can represent. You can learn more about this concept on this excellent interactive page by Bartosz Ciechanowski.

The gamut is combined with other things like a white point and a gamma function to map numbers nonlinearly to amounts of light. All these bits of info in combination declare exactly what colour your computer should display for any given triplet of numbers. We call this a colour space.

There are various standard sets of primaries, the most famous being the ITU-R Rec.709 primaries used in sRGB, first defined in 1993, often just called the sRGB primaries - this is a fairly restricted colour space, intended to be an easy target for monitor manufacturers and to achieve some degree of colour consistency on the web (lol).

Since then, a much wider gamut called Rec.2020 has recently been defined for 'HDR' video. This is a very wide gamut, and no existing displays can actually show it in full. Besides that, there are various other colour spaces such as AdobeRGB and P3, which are used in art and design and video editing.

What you see above is something called a 'chromaticity diagram'. the coordinate system is CIE xyY with fixed Y. The curved upper edge to the shape is the line of monochromatic colours (colours created by a single frequency of light); everything other colour must be created by combining multiple frequencies of light. (Note that the colours inside the shape are not the actual colours of those points in CIE XY, they're mapped into sRGB.)

In this case, the red, green and blue dots are the primaries of my display. Since they are outside the green triangle marked sRGB, it qualifies as a 'wide gamut' display which can display more vivid colours.

Sidebar: you might ask why we didn't define the widest possible gamut we could think of at the start of all this. Well, besides consistency, the problem is that you only have so many bits per channel. For a given bit depth (e.g. 8 bits per channel per pixel), you have a finite number of possible colours you can display. Any colours in between get snapped to the nearest rung of the ladder. The upshot is that if you use a higher gamut, you need to increase the bit depth in order to avoid ugly colour banding, which means your images take up more space and take more time to process. But this is why HDR videos in Rec.2020 should always be using at least 10 bits per colour channel.

in order to display consistent colours between different computers, you need a profile of how your monitor displays colour. Yhis is something that has to be measured empirically, because even two monitors of the same model will be slightly different. You get this information by essentially taking a little gadget which has a lens and a sensitive, factory-calibrated colour meter, and holding it against your screen, then making the screen display various colours to measure what light actually comes out of it. This information is packed into a file called an ICC profile.

(Above is the one I got, the Spyder X2. I didn't put a lot of thought into this, and unfortunately it turns out that the Spyder X2 is not yet supported by programs like DisplayCal. The Spyder software did a pretty good job though.)

Wonderfully, if you have two different ICC profiles, and you want to display the same colour in each space, you can do some maths to map one into the other. So, to make sure that a picture created on one computer looks the same on another computer, you need two things: the colour space (ICC profile) of the image and the colour space (ICC profile) of the screen.

Now different operating systems handle colour differently, but basically for all three major operating systems there is somewhere you can set 'here is the icc profile for this screen'. You might think that's the whole battle: calibrate screen, get ICC profile, you're done! Welcome to the world of consistent colour.

Unfortunately we're not done.

the devil in the details

The problem is the way applications tell the operating system about colour is... spotty, inconsistent, unreliable. Applications can either present their colours in a standard space called sRGB, and let the OS handle the rest - or they can bypass that entirely and just send their numbers straight to the monitor without regard for what space it's in.

Then we have some applications that are 'colour managed', meaning you can tell the application about an ICC profile (or some other colour space representation), and it will handle converting colours into that space. This allows applications to deal with wider colour gamuts than sRGB/Rec.709, which is very restricted, without sacrificing consistency between different screens.

So to sum up, we have three types of program:

programs which only speak sRGB and let the OS correct the colours

programs which aren't colour aware and talk straight to the monitor without any correction (usually games)

programs which do colour correction themselves and talk straight to the monitor.

That last category is the fiddly one. It's a domain that typically includes art programs, video editors and web browsers. Some of them will read your ICC profile from the operating system, some have to be explicitly told which one to use.

Historically, most monitors besides the very high end were designed to support sRGB colours and not much more. However, recently it's become easier to get your hands on a wide gamut screen. This is theoretically great because it means we can use more vivid colours, but... as always the devil is in the details. What we want is that sRGB colours stay the same, but we have the option to reach for the wider gamut deliberately.

Conversely, when converting between colour spaces, you have to make a decision of what to do with colours that are 'out of gamut' - colours that one space can represent and another space can't. There's no 'correct' way to do this, but there are four standard approaches, which make different tradeoffs of what is preserved and what is sacrificed. So if you look at an image defined in a wide colour space such as Rec.2020, you need to use one of these to put it into your screen's colour space. This is handled automatically in colour managed applications, but it's good to understand what's going on!

(*You may notice a difference in games even if they're not colour managed. This is because one of the things the calibration does is update the 'gamma table' on your graphics card, which maps from numeric colour values to brightness. Since the human eye is more sensitive to differences between dark colours, this uses a nonlinear function - a power law whose exponent is called gamma. That nonlinear function also differs between screens, and your graphics card can be adjusted to compensate and make sure everyone stays on the standard gamma 2.2. Many games offer you a slider to adjust the gamma, as a stopgap measure to deal with the fact that your computer's screen probably isn't calibrated.)

For what follows, any time you need the ICC profile, Windows users should look in C:\Windows\System32\spool\drivers\color. MacOS and Linux users, see this page for places it might be. Some applications can automatically detect the OS's ICC profile, but if not, that's where you should look.

on the web

Theoretically, on the web, colours are supposed to be specified in sRGB if not specified otherwise. But when you put an image on the web, you can include an ICC profile along with it to say exactly what colours to use. Both Firefox and Chrome are colour-managed browsers, and able to read your ICC profile right from the operating system. So an image with a profile should be handled correctly in both (with certain caveats in Chrome).

However, Firefox by default for some reason doesn't do any correction on any colours that don't have a profile, instead passing them through without correction. This can be fixed by changing a setting in about:config: gfx.color_management.mode. If you set this to 1 instead of the default 2, Firefox will assume colours are in sRGB unless it's told otherwise, and correct them.

Here is a great test page to see if your browser is handling colour correctly.

Chrome has fewer options to configure. by default it's almost correctly colour-managed but not quite. So just set the ICC on your OS and you're as good as it's gonna get. The same applies to Electron apps, such as Discord.

To embed a colour profile in an image, hopefully your art program has the ability to do this when saving, but if not, you can use ImageMagick on the command line (see below). Some websites will strip metadata including ICC profile - Tumblr, fortunately, does not.

For the rest of this post I'm going to talk about how to set up colour management in certain programs I use regularly (Krita, Blender, mpv, and games).

in Krita

Krita makes it pretty easy: you go into the settings and give it the ICC profile of your monitor. You can create images in a huge variety of spaces and bit depths and gamma profiles. When copying and pasting between images inside Krita, it will convert it for you.

The tricky thing to consider is pasting into Krita from outside. By default, your copy-paste buffer does not have colour space metadata. Krita gives you the option to interpret it with your monitor's profile, or as sRGB. I believe the correct use is: if you're copying and pasting an image from the web, then sRGB is right; if you're pasting a screenshot, it has already been colour corrected, you should use 'as on monitor' so Krita will convert it back into the image's colour space.

in Blender

Blender does not use ICC profiles, but a more complicated system called OpenColorIO. Blender supports various models of mapping between colour spaces, including Filmic and ACES, to go from its internal scene-referred HDR floating-point working space (basically, a space that measures how much light there is in absolute terms) to other spaces such as sRGB. By default, Blender assumes it can output to sRGB, P3, etc. without any further correction.

So. What we need to do is add another layer after that which takes the sRGB data and corrects it for our screen. This requires something called a Lookup Table (LUT), which is basically just a 3D texture that maps colours to other colours. You can generate a LUT using a program called DisplayCal, which can also be used for display calibration - note that you don't use the main DisplayCal program for this, but instead a tool called 3DLUT Maker that's packaged along with it. see this Stack Overflow thread for details.

Then, you describe in the OpenColorIO file how to use that LUT, defining a colour space.

The procedure described in the thread recommends you set up colour calibration as an additional view transform targeting sRGB. This works, but strictly speaking it's not a correct use of the OpenColorIO model. We should also set up our calibrated screen as an additional display definition, and attach our new colour spaces to that display. Also, if you want to use the 'Filmic' View Transform with corrected colours (or indeed any other), you need to define that in the OpenColorIO file too. Basically, copy whatever transform you want, and insert an extra line with the 3D LUT.

Here's how it looks for me:

in games (using ReShade)

So I mentioned above that games do not generally speaking do any colour correction beyond the option to manually adjust a gamma slider. However, by using a post-processing injection framework such as ReShade, you can correct colours in games.

If you want to get the game looking as close to the original artistic intent as possible, you can use the LUT generator to generate a PNG lookup table, save it in the Reshade textures folder, then you load it into the LUT shader that comes packaged with Reshade. Make sure to set the width, height and number of tiles correctly or you'll get janked up results.

However... that might not be what you want. Especially with older games, there is often a heavy green filter or some other weird choice in the colour design. Or maybe you don't want to follow the 'original artistic intent' and would rather enjoy the full vividness your screen is capable of displaying. (I certainly like FFXIV a lot better with a colour grade applied to it using the full monitor gamut.)

A 3D Lookup Table can actually be used for more than simply calibrating colour to match a monitor - it is in general a very powerful tool for colour correction. A good workflow is to open a screenshot in an image editor along with a base lookup table, adjust the colours in certain ways, and save the edited lookup table as an image texture; you can then use it to apply colour correction throughout the game. This procedure is described here.

Whatever approach you take, when you save screenshots with Reshade, it will not include any colour information. If you want screenshots to look like they do in-game when displayed in a properly colour managed application, you need to attach your monitor's ICC profile to the image. You can do this with an ImageMagick command:

magick convert "{path to screenshot}" -strip -profile "{path to ICC profile}" "{output file name}.webp"

This also works with TIFF and JPEG; for some reason I couldn't get it to work with PNG (you generate a PNG but no colour profile is attached.)

It's possible to write a post-save command in ReShade which could be used to attach this colour space info. If I get round to doing that, I'll edit into this post.

video

In MPV, you can get a colour-corrected video player by setting an appropriate line in mpv.conf, assuming you're using vo=gpu or vo=gpu-next (recommended). icc-profile-auto=yes should automatically load the monitor ICC profile from the operating system, or you can specify a specific one with icc-profile={path to ICC profile}.

For watching online videos, it seems that neither Firefox nor Chrome applies colour correction, even though the rest of the browser is colour-managed. If you don't want to put up with this, you can open Youtube videos in MPV, which internally downloads them using Youtube-DL or yt-dlp. This is inconvenient! Still haven't found a way to make it colour-corrected in-browser.

For other players like VLC or MPC-HC, I'm not so familiar with the procedure, you'll need to research this on your own.

what about HDR?

HDR is a marketing term, and a set of standards for monitor features (the VESA DisplayHDR series), but it does also refer to a new set of protocols around displaying colour, known as Rec. 2100. This defines the use of a 'perceptual quantiser' function in lieu of the old gamma function. HDR screens are able to support extreme ranges of brightness using techniques like local dimming and typically have a wider colour gamut.

If your screen supports it, Windows has a HDR mode which (I believe) switches the output to use Rec.2100. The problem is deciding what to do with SDR content on your screen (which is to say most things) - you have very little control over anything besides brightness, and for some reason Windows screws up the gamma. Turning on HDR introduced truly severe colour banding all over the shop for me.

My colorimeter claims to be able to profile high brightness/hdr screens, but I haven't tested the effect of profiling in HDR mode yet. There is also a Windows HDR calibration tool, but this is only available on the Microsoft store, which makes it a real pain to set up if you've deleted that from your operating system in a fit of pique. (Ameliorated Edition is great until it isn't.)

Anyway, if I get around to profiling my monitor in HDR mode, I will report back. However, for accurate SDR colour, the general recommendation seems to be to simply turn it off. Only turn it on if you want to watch content specifically authored for HDR (some recent games, and HDR videos are available on some platforms like Youtube). It's a pain.

is this all really worth the effort?

Obviously I've really nerded out about all this, and I know the likely feeling you get looking at this wall of text is 'fuck this, I'll just put up with it'. But my monitor's gamma was pretty severely off, and when I was trying to make a video recently I had no idea that my screen was making the red way more saturated and deep than I would see on most monitors.

If you're a digital artist or photographer, I think it's pretty essential to get accurate colour. Of course the pros will spend thousands on a high end screen which may have built in colour correction, but even with a screen at the level I'm looking at (costing a few hundred quid), you can do a lot to improve how it looks 'out of the box'.

So that's the long and short of it. I hope this is useful to someone to have all of this in one place!

I don't know if we'll ever reach a stage where most monitors in use are calibrated, so on some level it's a bit of a fool's errand, but at least with calibration I have some more hope that what I put in is at least on average close to what comes out the other end.

[markantonys]

PSA: reposting gifs is stealing!

i'm directing this specifically at the wotshow fandom because i've seen this rampantly in the wot on prime tag in the past week, but it applies to all fandoms.

gifmakers spend hours creating gifsets for you all to enjoy. if you just save their gifs and repost them in your own post without crediting them, as if they were your own gifs that you made, that's extremely disrespectful. it's equivalent to reposting art without crediting the original artist, which as we all know is a big internet no-no.

so, what to do instead?

1) Just Don't Repost Gifs. if you like the gifs so much, just reblog the original damn post. it's not that hard.

2) say you're making a post and you want to use someone else's gif to illustrate your point. use the little gif button within the text post editor. this will allow you to search for gifs on tumblr and insert them into your post, and doing so will automatically put the creator's name at the bottom of the gif and link back to the original post.

3) what if you have a certain gif you really want to use in your post, but you can't find it in the tumblr-wide gif search feature? then provide the same crediting information, but manually. tag the OP of the gif (this will give them a notification and give them the opportunity to ask you to remove their gif from your post, if they wish) AND link to the original gifset (so that if someone's looking at your post and thinks "wow, what a pretty gif! i'd love to see the full set" they can do so).

(also, i can't speak for all gifmakers. i used to not want my gifs reposted at all, but i've accepted that's a losing battle, so my official stance now is that you may use my gif in your own post IF you properly credit my blog AND my original post using either method 2 or 3 above. but that's my personal stance and other gifmakers may have different ones.)

(also, i should add that methods 2&3 are, for me at least, only if you want to use a specific gif or two for illustrating your point in a text post. if you're thinking of reposting an entire gifset of mine and just, like, giving it a different caption or something, do not do that. just reblog the original gifset.)

what about reposting to other platforms? well, that's also subjective for each gifmaker. i saw one of my gifs reposted to twitter a couple weeks ago and i was kinda pissed about it, although i would've been a little LESS pissed if the tweeter had credited me, which they did not. on the other hand, made-for-tumblr gifs look like ass on other platforms, so i also don't really care that much if twitter users are looking at a tiny shitty compressed version of my lovely gif whilst tumblr users are enjoying to its fullest extent.

[roo-bastmoon]

Incredibly lucky to even be here

I just realized, exactly one year ago today (May 11th) I was diagnosed with endometrial stromal sarcoma and given less than a 34% chance of survival. I'm incredibly, miraculously lucky to be well and cancer-free today. I owe that to my amazing doctors, and also in a small way to BTS.

The moment I got told I had cancer, I immediately decided to only entertain thoughts of complete health and victory. It was a pure and immediate defense mechanism and I stuck to it. So no sad songs or movies or TV shows. No online drama. No negative nellies or naysayers. No stressful projects at work. No arguments, no entanglements, no regrets.

For months, I would focus only on laughter and quality time with loved ones and things that brought me joy, even as I had to deal with practical stuff like creating a will and a pet trust and filling out life insurance forms and undergoing test and surgeries.

BTS (and Jimin, as my "recruiter") gave me moments of grace and beauty and art and warmth and giggles--and kind ARMYs gave me a sense of belonging and community, especially during a dark and terrifying time, when in the quiet of the early morning hours, the sense that my own body was my worst enemy would eat at all my mental defenses. I could switch on my phone, go to the timeline, and ARMY and BTS would be there.

If I seem to be very Pollyanna-ish or boringly polite these days, it's because I decided one year ago to focus on what I want instead of giving energy to what I don't. I know bad things are very real and they need to be confronted--of course! But I also know that depression, anger, and fear can erode the myelin sheath wrapped around our nerve endings and weaken the walls in the chambers of our hearts; that toxic emotions can bleach our hair of color and rob our nails and skin of suppleness; that negativity can lengthen our immuno-response times to bruises and cuts.

So if other folks get a thrill, a hit of adrenaline, from drama and trash talking in our fandom, more power to them, I guess. It must serve them in some way I don't understand. Me? I find meanness and pettiness draining and damaging. So I'll never do that. I'll never rudely call someone out in public or go on their blog to rant or snipe openly about members or fellow ARMY. I will just keep myself to myself and do my best to be authentic and kind and hard working.

Doesn't always work. I'm human. I will absolutely make mistakes (case in point--the campaign idea yesterday that could have really harmed Jimin. I didn't think about all the consequences and I'm so grateful to the people who patiently set me straight.) Please know that if you ever feel strongly I'm going in the wrong direction, you can always speak to me--I'll ask a million questions, I'll hear you out, and I'll try to be flexible in my mindset. You don't have to hide behind throw-away accounts or talk to others about me. I will do my best to always be kind and act in good faith with everyone. (But I'll likely still make some mistakes, because my intentions are good but I myself am not perfect.)

By and large, I feel I'm just really astronomically lucky to be here. I know the kind of cancer I had is very sneaky and could come back at any time. So how I spend my time left in this life matters to me. I want to be a source of good in the world, help other people, experience bliss and celebrate good things. I don't want to be selfish or destructive. If I start to go that way, I know good friends will gently call me back.

Like BTS, I want to connect with people and help build something worthy. So if you're on board with that, let's be friends. And if you're not, let's part amicably.

I just... figured I should probably say that... out loud. So that's that on that.

Love you guys,

Roo

[front-facing-pokemon]

I want to apologise for bombing your notifications with eevee reblogs

Though eevee does very much deserve it :3

i turned off notifications loooong, long ago on this blog. so they all got grouped together on one line when scrolling through the activity pane! but yes, eevee absolutely deserves it

hello, everyone! it's time for my basically-bi-monthly-at-this-point round of asks! i said i'd get better about answering these more often, but. well! here we are. maybe i'll do it this time! here we go:

for the most part, the models resource! there are a few other associated websites like this one, such as the spriters resource and the sounds resource, which are all incredibly good for all of your random-game-resource needs!

iii'm not sure entirely what you mean! for a lot of them, i do prefer to have the angles close-up and taking up the whole frame (as i just find this funnier), and it does depend on the angle in question. for the record, angles are voted upon in the front-facing pokémon discord server, meaning if you join there, you'll get to see multiple more angles for any given pokémon (and you don't have to say anything—or even vote, technically!). however, if what you're looking for is more head-on angles (as i've been told these were good for art references in the past), then you can reference the first round of the pokédex on this blog, which you can find by just searching any given pokémon's name! (e.g., searching the #rayquaza tag on the blog should give you a result you may be looking for, although looking at that angle now [and toucannon as well] i can see how these in particular may not be very helpful for art references) given the state of the original rayquaza and toucannon posts, i'll see what i can do right here:

toucannon, unfortunately, just genuinely does look like that from the front, no matter how much i zoom it out:

so here's a 45º-ish angle:

hopefully these serve your needs!

a concept i've talked about many times before! perhaps you need to read my tags more often! in short, i took up shiny hunting in scarlet/violet earlier this year, and in my efforts shiny hunting, i found that the game didn't like me very much, and would often spawn shinies for Literally Everything Except The Pokémon I Was Hunting. my flygon hunt was an especially notorious one, creating that clip that i believe i posted where i ended up with two shiny exeggutor spawning on the same screen while i was in the midst of shiny hunting the trapinch line. quite awful! i've come to call these shinies that spawn while i am hunting any other pokémon "evil shinies," as it's happened to me enough times to have a name of its own. i have maaany video clips of this very same thing happening to me multiple times, but lucky for me eventually i got all the shinies i wanted and just. stopped shiny hunting. now it's just something i do on rare occasions to pass time

this is… an interesting perspective! i guess looking at its older 2d sprites and its official art, the way that it's posed could… suggest this if you never really looked at it close enough. like that one post where the artist thought blaziken had big baby eyes because of the sprite. it's interesting how many different interpretations can arise due to the medium of pixel art!

sorry! that was a little issue with rearranging the queue– wait mamoswine is a retrofi—

oh! yeah, it was! that's… the only reason you didn't see it after piloswine, surely… no other reason…

anyway! that's all for now. my inbox is still lying to me about the number of asks in it, in case you were wondering..!