#back to vector art i go

[darlin-djarin]

i cant draw 😃

[munchkinworks]

[fireyartccoon]

I HAVE RETURNED (I literally forgot to post)

as an apology, have more MRD AU designs

Rouge, Basically made her arms the wings, she looked weird without the suit so ima just say she found it and kept it, she’s an escape artist but always returns back to the cages since she can’t open doors, besides, if she were to get out of there she’d want the others to also go with her

Cream and cheese, surprise surprise, she’s taller than sonic

since Chao aren’t actual animals, had to settle for making Cheese a beetle, they just randomly flew in the lab one day and stayed with Cream, the others probably have mixed opinions about cheese

Now for the guests of honor:

The Chaotix

Espio’s got some yarn spools to try and mimic the ninja bracelets or whatever they are, I think they might be the only character in this AU with an actual weapon

This kid. All I need to say drawing him was a nightmare, who knew a little bee was going to be so hard to design, he’s a little ball of sunshine tho, gotta give him that

And of course, we couldn’t forget about Vector, since I doubt anyone in their right mind would put headphones on a crocodile, he’s got a tracking collar instead, the neighborhood is oddly chill having this guy walking about, couldn’t get rid of the chain necklace, fit him too well

Have a nice day y’all, lovely posting with you

[siphisket]

Skirt Toge made a special appearance while drawing online with friends!

I ended up really liking how it turned out so I cleaned it up a bit, keeping on theme with the funky colors my friend drew behind him lol

[socksboxsketches]

[luxurysystems]

If I'm gonna do this Vice City AU any justice, you know I have to give Irwin the loading screen treatment.

[dawntheduckrb]

love whatever eye shape this is

[tonystarkfucksaround]

So I realized that I never posted some of the art I’ve made while I was trying to become an artist haha

Anyway here’s Nisha! One of my pieces for Chilling In The Borderlands Zine 🤠

[clonewarsahsoka]

I'm genuinely curious how the other students of this class are finding these papers (if they're reading them) because a lot of them are very mathematical which is easy for ME but for an arts major idk....

[foervraengd]

Mirre’s “How i render gemstones” tutorial!

(note: image above is not what is shown in the walkthrough. It is an example piece)

Ingredients:

Art program that has layers and selection tools

Patience (hubris or stubbornness is fine too)

(recommended) photo references of gemstones and/or prisms

(Optional but very helpful) Knowledge on how to use Reference layers and anti-overflow in Clip studio Paint

For this tutorial i am going to use clip studio’s “anti-overflow” feature. This post is not going to explain how to use that specific setting but you should be able to find guides on how to use it on clip studio’s official website or on youtube.

Please Note: The result of this technique will not 100% represent real life gemstones. These are more simplified but should still make an impression of the brilliance and appeal of gems, crystals and diamonds.

If you don’t work in CSP: the best workaround is to use the polygonal lasso selection tool for the same purpose.

This ended up being a long post so I am putting it under the readmore:

First off; Basic idea on how the light refracts inside a solid transparent object:

Wether it is acrylic, glass, water or crystal, the way light pass through more or less should behave the same as long as it is solid and not hollow inside. Pay attention to how the darkest parts of the stone goes along the inner edges, leaving a ”mid tone” sort of in the center. However, this might vary depending on the light setting. But it is a generally good rule-of-thumb to follow if you’re drawing something not based on a photo. Another thing to pay attention to here is how the placement of the highlight will lit up the inside of the gem in a parallel line. It also shows through on the cast shadow.

Light refraction on a cube:

I have already made two posts on this, so definitely go through them:

CUBE BREAKDOWN POST HERE

But a rough summary from those two links would be: Every side/facet of a gem or a cube etc refracts the light individually and not as one entity (that would make it look hollow and not solid). Think of it like how each piece in a broken mirror individually reflect your face back to you. Like a weird patchwork!

Putting this into practice:

For this tutorial I’m going to be nice to myself and not try to draw perfectly accurate gemstones. Instead I’m gonna draw them with a more ”natural” looking set of facets. Which actually isnt as common in real world as video games makes us think. Some crystals have geometric shapes naturally, but a lot of other stones are not as fancy. Anyway, im taking artistic liberty on these example stones because the technique I’m going to use will work for these just fine.

So, in clip studio paint, I first draw the stones on a vector layer. I give them facets for the front side. Then I duplicate the layer, remove the front facets and replace them with the facets on the back of the stone. The third image here shows both layers visible on top of each other. I now put these into a layer folder and mark the folder as ”reference”.

Now, on a layer below the lineart folder, fill with your base tone. Then make a layer on top (if you can clip it to the base tone, do that), this layer is where you decide where the highlight will be placed. In some cases the highlight is only lighting up one single facet - it really depends on the design of the stone. You can also blend and soften the highlight here if it looks good for you, just make sure not every facet is highlighted. The highlight layer should be on top of all the other layers clipped to the base tone layer.

Now it is time for the juicy juicy stuff! Turn on both lineart layers so they’re both visible. I hid the hilight layer here because it was in the way, but might not be needed in your case. Make a layer clipped to the base tone and paint in the darkest tone. This is where anti-overflow helps me out, because when i run my brush over all these crossed lines it will make the stroke pop in and out for each facet. If you dont use CSP, this is where you can use the lasso tool and select every second facet. It will take a bit more time but it should work similarly.

After the darkest tones I then make a layer for the inside light that the highlight has lit up. Here i keep it inside the darkest tone but this might vary depending on the light setting. If it looks good to me, then that’s what i stick to.

The way I approach rendering the facets here is like the grid in the example images above, every shade and tone appear more or less in each facet but the amount is relative to their position. So a gradient wouldnt have a smooth transition; it would be slightly scewed in each square on this example grid. Essentially like how some bathroom window glass panes look like.

Now it’s time to hide the lineart layer folder and check if the gemstones look decent to you. If not, then you can look up some reference photos and analyze where the values group together the most; be careful not to focus too much on the photos 500 million sparkles. Squint your eyes or blur the reference and try to see how the overall values behae.

I, personally, am satisfied with these rocks so I slap on a gradient map (you can manually color in them too if that’s your thing) and call it a day. The lit up inside of a gemstone tend to have a brighter and more saturated color than the mid tone.

Other Examples with this technique:

If you look up ”gemstone types” you can often find images displaying various facet types from more than just front view. These can serve as useful base templates for practicing this rendering technique. The backside of a gemstone is called the “pavillion” and is really useful to have at hand when it comes to painting the inner refractions. You can probably also use 3D models and convert the wireframe into lineart. But that is slightly out of my pool of knowledge.

Applying this knowledge without using a base lineart layer is of course possible. In this painting I followed a simplified summary of how the facets sparkle: Keep the highlight shape to match the front facet design, and all the inner refractions should be more scattered and split up but face a direction towards the center of the gem. Now don’t you think this sort of makes the gems look like eyes? That’s right! You can, and absolutely should, apply this on eyes to create the most sparkly anime eyes ever.

Now, refracted light that lands on the surface surrounding gemstones varies depending on the material - and if the gem is inside a metal frame it usually doesnt create this much refraction around it. But I want to have fun so i decided to break this rule in the name of pretty sparkles. :)

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

So.... Stock image

https://www.vecteezy.com/vector-art/11430941-halloween-black-silhouette-repeating-border

[Referencing this post!]

Yuuup, that’s pretty much the same thing as what we see in the PV… 😅 Same shapes, same pattern order, everything.

Upon further research, it seems this isn’t even the first instance of this stock asset being used by Disney. It was also used for a limited edition Sally-inspired perfume called Rag Doll. I believe it was sold at Hot Topic back in 2013:

It’s a little saddening seeing TWST use stock images instead of like… you know, new assets 💦 This is following a somewhat disappointing trend of TWST animated PVs going down in quality and budget, especially over the years. For example, for the anniversaries:

2021 - 2 minutes long; all students included in highly individualized limited event outfits and movement is dynamic.

2022 - 1 minute long; all students and even staff are included but in standard uniforms, noticeable drop in art and animation quality (for example, look at Kalim and Silver in the flight scene). Animation itself is framed like Yuu is taking pictures of everyone—but really, it’s a convenient excuse to hold on static shots of the photos instead of actually animating them.

2023 - 1 minute and ~40 seconds; only the third years in their school uniforms and Grim in ceremonial robes are featured. Animation appears slow and somewhat clunky. And dear god, that weird panning shot of Malleus and Lilia; that Lilia is practically traced from his live 2D model.

2024 - 1 minute and ~10 seconds; basically a glorified slideshow with fancy effects. Only the dorm leaders in their school uniforms are shown.

Then, looking at the Halloweens:

Terror is Trending - 30 seconds; All students included and dorm costumes showcased. Unique shots and framing. Even Ramshackle Ghosts (who are important in the event story) are shown.

Endless Halloween Night - 4 different versions of the same commercial (including different characters doing the voiceover work), each ~30 seconds each; all students featured. Nice lighting, fierce expressions, varied framing.

Glorious Masquerade - 1 minute and 30 seconds. Several static panning shots, but at least the colors are striking when most other things are monochrome or muted. ~20 seconds at the end dedicated to hyping up Rollo.

Stage in Playful Land - ~35 seconds. Only the 3 SSR boys are featured, with most of the animation being in their head tilts. Less than 10 seconds is dedicated to hyping up Fellow and Gidel.

This year’s event… 20 seconds using a stock image and panning up from it to the TWST logo, no new assets.

I DON’T KNOW, maybe I’m overthinking it 😭 I’m definitely not the first person to notice this though… It’s been a point of discussion in my fandom social circles.

But hey, let’s keep our heads high! It’s very possible that we’ll get a more formal animated PV in the weeks leading up to Halloween. In fact, I’m certain of it since this current PV doesn’t show new costumes or the new twisted character, as is tradition. What we see now might just be a bonus material they’re releasing to really get us excited. Plus, we’ll probably also have an ABEMA stream with more Halloween-related news ^^ Let’s look forward to that!

[thecoppercompendium]

So, you want to make a TTRPG…

Image from Pexels.

I made a post a long while back about what advice you would give to new designers. My opinions have changed somewhat on what I think beginners should start with (I originally talked about probability) but I thought it might be useful to provide some resources for designers, new and established, that I've come across or been told about. Any additions to these in reblogs are much appreciated!

This is going to be a long post, so I'll continue beneath the cut.

SRDs

So, you have an idea for a type of game you want to play, and you've decided you want to make it yourself. Fantastic! The problem is, you're not sure where to start. That's where System Reference Documents (SRDs) can come in handy. There are a lot of games out there, and a lot of mechanical systems designed for those games. Using one of these as a basis can massively accelerate and smooth the process of designing your game. I came across a database of a bunch of SRDs (including the licenses you should adhere to when using them) a while back, I think from someone mentioning it on Tumblr or Discord.

SRDs Database

Probability

So, you have a basic system but want to tweak it to work better with the vision you have for the game. If you're using dice, this is where you might want to consider probability. Not every game needs this step, but it's worth checking that the numbers tell the story you're trying to tell with your game. For this, I'll link the site I did in that first post, AnyDice. It allows you to do a lot of mathematical calculations using dice, and see the probability distribution that results for each. There's documentation that explains how to use it, though it does take practice.

AnyDice

Playtesting

So you've written the rules of your game and want to playtest it but can't convince any of your friends to give it a try. Enter Quest Check. Quest Check is a website created by Trekiros for connecting potential playtesters to designers. I can't speak to how effective it is (I've yet to use it myself) but it's great that a resource like it exists. There's a video he made about the site, and the site can be found here:

Quest Check

Graphic Design and Art

Game is written and tested? You can publish it as-is, or you can make it look cool with graphics and design. This is by no means an essential step, but is useful if you want to get eyes on it. I've got a few links for this. First off, design principles:

Design Cheatsheet

Secondly, art. I would encourage budding designers to avoid AI imagery. You'll be surprised how good you can make your game look with only shapes and lines, even if you aren't confident in your own artistic ability. As another option, public domain art is plentiful, and is fairly easy to find! I've compiled a few links to compilations of public domain art sources here (be sure to check the filters to ensure it's public domain):

Public Domain Sources 1

Public Domain Sources 2

You can also make use of free stock image sites like Pexels or Pixabay (Pixabay can filter by vector graphics, but has recently become much more clogged with AI imagery, though you can filter out most of it, providing it's tagged correctly).

Pexels

Pixabay

Fonts

Turns out I've collected a lot of resources. When publishing, it's important to bear in mind what you use has to be licensed for commercial use if you plan to sell your game. One place this can slip through is fonts. Enter, my saviour (and eternal time sink), Google Fonts. The Open Font License (OFL) has minimal restrictions for what you can do with it, and most fonts here are available under it:

Google Fonts

Publishing

So, game is designed, written, and formatted. Publishing time! There are two places that I go to to publish my work: itch.io and DriveThruRPG. For beginners I would recommend itch - there's less hoops to jump through and you take a much better cut of what you sell your games for, but DriveThruRPG has its own merits (@theresattrpgforthat made great posts here and here for discovering games on each). Itch in particular has regular game jams to take part in to inspire new games. I'll link both sites:

itch.io

DriveThruRPG

Finally, a bunch of other links I wasn't sure where to put, along with a very brief summary of what they are.

Affinity Suite, the programs I use for all my layout and designing. Has an up-front cost to buy but no subscriptions, and has a month-long free trial for each.

Affinity Suite

A database of designers to be inspired by or work with. Bear in mind that people should be paid for their work and their time should be respected.

Designer Directory

An absolute behemoth list of resources for TTRPG creators:

Massive Resources List

A site to make mockups of products, should you decide to go that route:

Mockup Selection

A guide to making published documents accessible to those with visual impairments:

Visual Impairment Guidelines

A post from @theresattrpgforthat about newsletters:

Newsletter Post

Rascal News, a great place to hear about what's going on in the wider TTRPG world:

Rascal News

Lastly, two UK-specific links for those based here, like me:

A list of conventions in the UK & Ireland:

Convention List

A link to the UK Tabletop Industry Network (@uktabletopindustrynetwork) Discord where you can chat with fellow UK-based designers:

TIN Discord

That's all I've got! Feel free to reblog if you have more stuff people might find useful (I almost certainly will be)!

[ryanseslow]

How to Create Paper Cut-Out Reliefs: Tips and Techniques for Beginners

Back again with another lil' series of 2D wall relief paper cut-out forms. Both of the pieces below follow the same process and technique. Im really happy with the process and outcomes. Im working on animating them as we speak. I'll add them to this post later. My paintings inspire my drawings, and my drawings are inspired by those same forms found in my paintings. It makes sense that every so often I want to make those forms "pop out" and off the surface of a flat plane. Alas, it all starts with a quick sketch. See below, just a series of light loose free flowing lines take the lead, forward ->

Here we have a dude posing for a profile style portrait. Most likely, this is inspired by the NYC B-Boys from the years 1983 - 87ish. Either way, it's nostalgia for me. Once the sketch feels good, I'll break out the paper and x-acto knife. I keep telling myself that one day Ill work with another material other than paper for these works, perhaps wood or metal.. It will happen, I can foresee it for sure, hang in there. Im using a white bristol paper for the cut outs, I believe it is the vellum type and not the glossy, but either or will work just fine. I love to cut paper and the whole medium of paper art in general.

Paper cut-outs, also known as paper cutting or Kirigami, is a traditional art form that involves cutting shapes and designs out of paper. The history of paper cutting can be traced back to ancient China and Japan, where it was practiced as a folk art. The Chinese and Japanese would create intricate designs, often featuring animals, plants, and mythical creatures, and use them as decorations for festivals and special occasions. I always loved it and have felt inspired by these pieces.

Using the sketch above, I apply the "map" of the shapes and forms that I see. Sometimes I redraw those forms on the paper that I will cut out, and sometimes I just "draw" with the x-acto knife to recreate the forms. Sometimes, it's a combination of both of those techniques. There is also a series of "out-take / byproduct" cut outs that do not make the final piece, those can be saved and used for the next piece, obviously!

I layer the forms on top of each other to compose the arrangement as a whole, its fun to watch it all come together, in the next phase, you will need some kind of durable tape or you can make little paper forms that can be pasted to both sides of the forms as they stack, this will create the gauge and depth of the piece once it is placed onto the wall.

This is the final composition above, I love it! I used a roll of duct tape to make small cylinder forms that connect the pieces together, the piece as a whole comes "off of the surface of the wall" by about 1.5 - 2" inches - you can play with this a bit but keep in mind, the tape makes the piece heavier and it will want to comply with gravity :)

I hung the piece (also temporarily adhered via the same duct tape) for the photoshoot and to also get a good look at how it will function on the wall. I have an old painted fire place in my studio that is a great surface for hanging things, I love the contrast of textures between the bricks and the paper, as you know, the shadows will be super cool to see too.

Once I had the whole piece constructed I took a few pictures of it. I immediately wanted a clean vector line drawing of the whole character. I brought the photo into adobe Fresco and used a vector brush to draw this lovely variation. This is how my brain works, I switch paths because I know they are really pipelines to the "next thing" that I will push this to, so forward we go.

Then, it was light source and photo shoot time. Im not really happy with these picture as traditional "photographs" as I know I can do a much better job, but, as a series of "sketches" for a planned photo shoot, these will really help to make those plans a reality. I love neon colored lights. I have a bunch of them from various places and spaces that I found on the internet. Amazon has a great selection of flashlights with various colored light options. Get a few and play around with how the light can effect your work and the shadows that it creates. This is where the depth and gauge of your pieces play a role. The photos below are also a part of the same session, which all took place over a few days.

Here is another variation with a different character.. What do you think? Shall I make more?

[jackgoodfellow]

Sometimes I think about how, as a child, I felt anxiety that I would never be able to create something totally unique, completely my own.

It felt like every story has already been told, every song sung, every line already drawn a million times before.

AND YET--

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣👌👌👌👍👍👍💯💯💯

Context: that cake is the most detailed face I have ever drawn in 20 years of illustrating faces. I can't imagine what further context you would need to fully understand this image. XDDD

This is an excerpt from page 5 of 6 of this comic! (<- That's the tumblr link - the AO3 version has full image descriptions due to tumblr alt-text character limits.)

Please look at my beautiful darling Samo eating a delicious cake!~

[thankskenpenders]

IDW's Fang the Hunter miniseries! All four issues are out now! I don't have as much to say about it as I did with the Knuckles show, but I do have some thoughts.

So! This is a pretty fun miniseries. I liked it.

It's fun to see Ian get to write a four-issue arc starring the Hooligans, his precious boys, with a B-plot showing Sonic and Tails' perspective on this little adventure. As always, Ian captures the characters' voices well. In particular, I really liked Bean in this, who despite being a slapstick screwball is actually a pretty perceptive guy. He often acts as sort of a voice of reason for Fang, seeing right through his sweet talking and pointing out how badly all of their schemes go but sticking around nonetheless just for funsies. And the art (illustrated this time by Mauro Fonseca for the first issue and Thomas Rothlisberger for the rest) is as good as we've come to expect from IDW's Classic Sonic output. Overall, this is a fun little romp that captures the vibes of the Classic era very well.

...But...

Well, as I've said before with the Amy and Tails anniversary specials, I feel like we're kind of seeing diminishing returns with these Classic spinoffs. They're fun, sure, and very nice to look at, but their writing always leave me wanting more.

A big part of this is just that there's just less to work with compared to the Modern universe. The Classic cast is much smaller, and within that cast there are a bunch of characters currently going unused, some of which are currently off-limits. Aside from the appearance of the Witchcarters in Tails' special, we've pretty much just stuck with the cast of Sonic Mania and the Hooligans, as established in the first special. No Chaotix, no Battle Bird Armada, barely any Honey. (Classic Vector was able to get a tiny cameo in the Amy special only because he was so obscured that it gave the IDW team plausible deniability to say it was actually a different character if Sega complained.) It's a very small box, and Ian's recent Classic comics haven't particularly expanded the boundaries of that box. They're just excuses to play the hits for old times' sake. And that was a lot of fun the first time around, but the novelty is starting to wear off for me.

I will admit, sure, the tighter focus on a specific set of characters from the games is a big part of the appeal of these Classic comics. They're simpler. They're nostalgic. They're shining the spotlight on characters that can't be used in the main series. They're the slavishly faithful old school Sonic comics that we could never get in the '90s, because the comics we did get diverged into their own continuities with tons of new characters. I get all that.

But the thing is, the Sonic comics have always added all those new characters because you can just do so much more with them. The game cast is great! But they're corporate mascots Sega keeps on a tight leash. You can do so much with a character like Sally or Surge that you could never do with any of the game characters, and by pushing into new territory with these new characters you can also bring out interesting new sides of the game cast. Maybe Sonic himself can't have some crazy complex character arc, but you can see how he'll respond to the things going on with these other characters, and how these other characters' arcs are informed by their relationships with Sonic.

So I look at the Fang miniseries, and I'm like. This was pretty fun. But by the end, what was the point of the story? What did we learn about the Hooligans as characters that we didn't already know? Is the point just to depict an adventure where things go off the rails a little and Bean and Bark end up a little miffed, explaining why they weren't with Fang in Superstars? There's potential for an arc there about the dissolution of the group, but it really does come off more as the type of spat these three probably get into all the time before coming back together for the next job. It's neither super dramatic nor super funny, feeling more like it ends on a fairly matter-of-fact note where Fang's like "welp, time to go do the events of Sonic Superstars" at the end, not particularly plussed by anything that happened in this arc. What we're left with is four issues of the Hooligans encountering recognizable characters and visiting recognizable locations from the Classic games, with little that really feels new or fresh here.

Ironically, the most interesting story element to me here (aside from Bean's characterization) is its tie to the main comics, something previous specials couldn't do since Sega had yet to reunify the Classic and Modern timelines. The plot of this comic revolves around Fang following the myth of the "eighth Chaos Emerald," riffing on both old playground rumors and Sonic the Fighters. What they actually end up finding isn't an extra Emerald, but rather the Warp Topaz that would eventually end up in Starline's possession in the Modern era, having apparently been found by the Hard-Boiled Heavies in the cave seen in the 900th Adventure special.

That's kinda neat, and the abilities of the Warp Topaz are used in fun ways. But this isn't exactly something to write home about for people who aren't lore nerds like me. There isn't a particularly meaningful connection between Fang and Starline's arcs here due to the presence of the Warp Topaz, it's just a thing for the wiki. Again, Ian's in his connect the dots mode a little more than I'd like here.

(...So wait, if Starline didn't find the Warp Topaz himself, did he track down the cave where the Heavies found it to leave that "greatness began here" graffiti? Eh, I guess that sounds like something he'd do. He's known for nothing if not his obsessiveness.)

So, again. This was a pretty good miniseries. This all makes it sound like I hated it, but I did like it overall. I particularly liked seeing the Hooligans fight the Hard-Boiled Heavies. But it leaves me feeling less fulfilled than something like Scrapnik Island or Tangle & Whisper or Imposter Syndrome. I get that, by the very definition of the word, Classic Sonic is always going to remain trapped in amber to some extent. This isn't the version of the franchise that's supposed to grow and change. That's what Modern Sonic does. Classic Sonic will always be trapped in the early '90s. I'm not asking for them to add a dozen new characters with complex dramatic arcs to the Classic comics, since that's not what Classic Sonic is about. But I think the other Classic Sonic stories not written by Ian - i.e. the driving school story by the McElroys and the two stories about Amy by Gale Galligan - show that you can tell fresh new Classic Sonic stories that aren't just about remixing the hits from the games.

If we're going to continue getting Classic Sonic comics from Ian (and I hope we do!), then I just hope he's able to find a better balance between familiar and new ideas, like he and Evan do so consistently with their Modern Sonic output.

[witchofthesouls]

I wish I had digital art skills because I'm haunted by The Primes' Rooster AU, such as:

The sheer hungry look by Liege Maximo licking up the mess upon Sentinel's thighs and pressing his mouth on the most perplexing valve anyone as come across.

A well-bitten Solus smoking a cigarette in the berth, a contented and well-bedded Megatronus next to her slipping on a nice drink through a straw, and Megatronus is sharing that with a slightly dented Sentinel who's between them and has his own super curly straw to sip the cocktail.

Quintus' labs with the Prime recording the procedures. A serious face in one frame, then a "Oh, someone's (it's Sentinel. He has permission to get inside and Quintus is too deep in Science to realize there's another person there.) messing with my valve. Well, the newsparks do need materials and I can't remember the last time I've eaten."

Alpha Trion and the Cybertronian version of Kama Sutra

Vector Prime distantly watching over others clanging with a glass of wine because of his voyeur kink

Sentinel with his own weapon forged by Solus herself. It's a cross between his canon sword and the Skyboom shield.

Short-king Sentinel with his tall-ass Primes and equally tall-ass teenage/adult children.

Starscream's and Sentinel's dramatic BEEF with each other. Literal cockfighting between these two.

And Rooster!Sentinel in Canon!verse, going "Look at me. I'm your sire/geni now." to Orion and D-16.

On one hand, pre-betrayal discovery is Rooster!Sentinel slinging the Cogless versions of two of his sons/grandsons over his shoulders. On the other hand, post-betrayal discovery is Sentinel versus Sentinel. D-16 won't bow before the false Prime, but he'll lower his face because of the resulting selfcest and the filthy, filthy commentary on Megatronus' (his hero's) sexual preferences. (The High Guard peanut gallery chiming in over Megatronus' getting his back blown by Solus and/or Prima.)