#because geometry is shapes and you can look at them

[july-19th-club]

Seeing you break the numbers down to their constituent parts and put them back together gives the impression that you're a very analytical person, and I love it

see i feel like it's the exact opposite haha i dont feel very analytical im just REAL visual. abstraction confuses me i have to have it all laid out in blocks like a little kid

[insanityislife101]

POV: fucking geometry

he's so fucked up

[meanbossart]

i just need to take a second to gush about how much i love durge drow and astarion, they feel so fleshed out and perfectly written together in their fucked up wretched ways. They really inspire me to write more for my own tavs, hopefully one day ill be able to say im as happy with my own work as i get when seeing yours. I have to ask though, do you have any tips on drawing head shapes and faces? or maybe about wrinkles? i find i really struggle with that stuff when drawing and i adore how expressive and grungey all your art looks!

First of all thank you so much, I love hearing what people think of the two of them together 😭

Honestly you've hit on something that's quite near and dear to my heart, I love developing and figuring how to draw and stylize different faces to get the most unique, interesting looking results - everything about the details is highly rewarding to me. What does x type of nose look like from this angle? In this style? How can this eyeshape best translate to my art? How different does a face look when its making this expression? What does that MOUTH DO? etc etc.

In fact you kind of inspired me to put a little tutorial/guide together the last hour lmao and what a blessing it is that the two current subjects of this blog serve as great models here, being that their faces are basically polar opposites!

When it comes to heads, you've probably heard it a dozen times before that you want to think of them in terms of geometry and facets; my process to drawing them is pretty conventional so I won't spend too much time on it, but it goes something like this:

Obviously I don't do every single one of these steps most of the time, which is just something that comes from practice/developing muscle memory, but it is helpful to start off this way for two main reasons:

By making these guide lines and splitting a head into pieces like this, you'll have an easier time seeing and understanding it as a multidimensional object, and in turn, facilitate It for you when you venture out into doing wacky angles and lighting.

Making different headshapes starts HERE. notice how Astarion's "face" slate is narrower and longer, how my durge's jaw pieces sit lower on the head, how all of the same pieces came together in the same way but we ended up with one real pointy elf and a real brick of a drow - making characters look different successfully begins very early in the sketching process.

The next thing you want to do branches out into every day life: start noticing yours and other people's facial features. How does an upturned nose look from a high angle? How does the size of someone's cheekbones affect what they look like when they smile? How about when the light hits them a certain way? Does someone's lip shape changes when they pout? When they laugh? How does a person's hairline change the shape of their face? You do NOT need to creepily sketch every stranger you see on the bus, but get into the habit of actually noticing what people look like when you talk to them - when you look at pictures, when you watch movies - make a mental list of interesting ways mouths, noses, and eyes can come together in a variety of different proportions to make completely distinct looking mugs, and how they change depending on how you are looking at them.

Light and shadow play a HUGE role in how faces look, too, basically as crucial as actual bone structure does. As you see up there I tried to rough out how natural, head on, and underhead light would look on these two very different looking guys, and while we can see definite patterns, there are small differences that come to be because of the sizes and shapes of their features.

Here is a very, very basic look at how some of these features come to look the way they do, how they interact with one another, and how they compare between a blocky, rather conventionally "masculine" head and one that's much softer and slimmer.

Note please that it is not one or two characteristics that give a chaarcter their "look"; you can reduce a face to eyes, mouth, and nose through stylization and still have them be recognizable, but if you want to do more than that, you have to consider the whole package! Chin, cheeks, brows, direction of the jaw, slope and size of the forehead, depth of eyes, ridge of the nose, etc - I know this is probably far more than you bargained for, but if you start making note of a FEW of these things now and slowly add on, this will eventually become second nature to you.

Similarly, understanding how these characteristics come together will help you with rendering light and shadow in a realistic way, and predicting what their facial expressions may look like - if no two people are alike, neither are their smiles. :)

Lastly, remember that I'm no expert - I have developed my own methods and semiotics and yours may look slightly (or vastly) different, and that's fine! I hope only that by sharing this it has given you a base to work off of.

Anyways, I HOPE this has been helpful and not just the unsolicited ramblings of a face pervert.

[mayakern]

hello! the stained glass pattern is amazing! will the skirt be available in full lenght / ankle lenght as well?

thank you!

i can't say definitively forever, but for now the cathedral skirt will only be available on midi skirts. we are not making miniskirts for 2025 and the proportions of a maxi skirt are completely different from the midi skirts and the cathedral art was designed specifically to work with the proportions of a midi skirt. it just wouldn't look as good on a maxi. (also, the only maxi skirts i make are collabs with @freshhotflavors and are sold in their store and they use FHF's templates, which are significantly different from ours)

i would have to redo a significant amount of art to make it work on a differently proportioned skirt.

plus, if i'm being completely honest, i do not want to format this design on other skirt lengths.

and it’s not just the art that took a long time—in order to make this design as seamless as possible, i have to have a total number of panels that is divisible by 3. for the smaller sizes, that isn’t so bad, because i can put 6 panels on each skirt half for a total of 12. but that doesn’t work correctly on the larger sizes, so for those i have to do 7.5 panels per skirt half for a total of 15 on the skirt and then i have to do my best to align one of the art panels so it matches up over the side seam.

after i finished the art, getting these skirt templates laid out in all sizes took me an entire week and many failed attempts at doing geometry. none of the skirt halves have the same curvature and none of them are actually circular in nature. they are very weird shapes and the upper arc of the waistband and the lower arc of the bottom hem are not the same.

i actually cried like three times trying to calculate the angles of the side seams before i realized that the waistband and hemline are not perfect circular arcs so getting the angles wouldn't help.

i ended up having to manually make my own measuring system by hand to work off.

i am never doing this again it was so much work and i think the final product will be worth it but god was this harrowing.

[keferon]

me, patiently waiting all of 36 hours for user keferon to post smth for the new MOMU chapter, slowly succumbing to despair as i'm more and more convinced that they won't not post anything for this chapter

you, 48 hours later:

me:

You have no idea jgkkhkh

I never drew a kiss before. Like. Ever. I had literally no clue what to even start with. Went to look at references, tried different angles and styles. Also these guys are even more tricky than regular humans because their heads aren't shaped for that. Where does Jazz's visor go? And Prowls chevron?? How do I fucking bend the space and matter to make them kiss when their helmets are in the way??

The mental geometry was so awkward and broken oh my god. But as you can see. I managed. Something haha

[bluebellowl]

In the past few weeks, I've switched a bit to 3D art. Just graduated from Game Design uni and realised I don't actually know how to do this properly smh.

I started him (neither Ingo nor Emmet yet, in which state I like to call him Jürgen) because I got sick and tired of drawing all that animatronic geometry every single time I made a submas animatronic. So this was meant to be a posing dummy for that.

As one does I started with a T-posing guy, luckily having a 2D reference of Ingo on hand. You can still see Freddy behind him.

I wasn't sure how high poly I wanted him to be, opted for a low poly solution and figured shade smooth is gonna handle that I'm sure.

Oh boy let me tell you those side triangle thingies ain't easy in 3D space. No wonder we got such a hard time making them look good, they're an impossibility!! flippin 8D shape right there!

The cone of shame! Jürgen's been to the vet and is not supposed to lick that spot

Part 1 - Part 2

[haggishlyhagging]

It took about two hours for Daina Taimina to find the solution that had eluded mathematicians for over a century. It was 1997, and the Latvian mathematician was participating in a geometry workshop at Cornell University. David Henderson, the professor leading the workshop, was modelling a hyperbolic plane constructed out of thin, circular strips of paper taped together. 'It was disgusting,' laughed Taimina in an interview.

A hyperbolic plane is 'the geometric opposite' of a sphere, explains Henderson in an interview with arts and culture magazine Cabinet. 'On a sphere, the surface curves in on itself and is closed. A hyperbolic plane is a surface in which the space curves away from itself at every point.' It exists in nature in ruffled lettuce leaves, in coral leaf, in sea slugs, in cancer cells. Hyperbolic geometry is used by statisticians when they work with multidimensional data, by Pixar animators when they want to simulate realistic cloth, by auto-industry engineers to design aerodynamic cars, by acoustic engineers to design concert halls. It's the foundation of the theory of relativity, and thus the closest thing we have to an understanding of the shape of the universe. In short, hyperbolic space is a pretty big deal.

But for thousands of years, hyperbolic space didn't exist. At least it didn't according to mathematicians, who believed that there were only two types of space: Euclidean, or flat space, like a table, and spherical space, like a ball. In the nineteenth century, hyperbolic space was discovered - but only in principle. And although mathematicians tried for over a century to find a way to successfully represent this space physically, no one managed it - until Taimina attended that workshop at Cornell. Because as well as being a professor of mathematics, Taimina also liked to crochet.

Taimina learnt to crochet as a schoolgirl. Growing up in Latvia, part of the former Soviet Union, 'you fix your own car, you fix your own faucet - anything', she explains. 'When I was growing up, knitting or any other handiwork meant you could make a dress or a sweater different from everybody else's.' But while she had always seen patterns and algorithms in knitting and crochet, Taimina had never connected this traditional, domestic, feminine skill with her professional work in maths. Until that workshop in 1997. When she saw the battered paper approximation Henderson was using to explain hyperbolic space, she realised: I can make this out of crochet.

And so that's what she did. She spent her summer 'crocheting a classroom set of hyperbolic forms' by the swimming pool. 'People walked by, and they asked me, "What are you doing?" And I answered, "Oh, I'm crocheting the hyperbolic plane."' She has now created hundreds of models and explains that in the process of making them 'you get a very concrete sense of the space expanding exponentially. The first rows take no time but the later rows can take literally hours, they have so many stitches. You get a visceral sense of what "hyperbolic" really means.' Just looking at her models did the same for others: in an interview with the New York Times Taimina recalled a professor who had taught hyperbolic space for years seeing one and saying, 'Oh, so that's how they look.' Now her creations are the standard model for explaining hyperbolic space.

-Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women

Photo credit

[capicola323427]

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

Fun fact, in making this image it was surprisingly my most easiest yet visually pleasing work. I've always viewed at as a graph like this

Of course, that isn't true! It's more like this

That is to say, I believe this illustration allowed me to focus on the efficient fundamentals I built!

Everything here was rendered with only three brushes. All of them the default brushes that come with CSP. Which includes Pastel, Airbrush, and Mechanical Pencil. Because it was a lineless style, that means I could be a lot more forgiving of mistakes here and there. Something doesn't look right? All I gotta do is add a little more with the GPen to the shape. Or can I just draw an outline in the color I want and fill it in with the bucket tool with a area scaling of 0.10! I have to practice more with lineless styles, it is fun! Rendering was a breeze too.

Which was a simple process of:

Create shape > Shade with Airbrush > Highlight with Airbrush > Shade with Pastel > Multiply Shading > Lower Multiply Layer Opacity > Overlay with Textured Fill > Move Textured Fill Layer > Finished!

It's a few steps, but once you get into the groove, it becomes very efficient. I'm sure there's ways I could shave off a few layers, like combining the Airbrush process into two layers instead of one but ehhh sometimes I do it, sometimes I don't. Usually, the bigger the shape the more likely I'll use more layers and the smaller the shape the less likely I'll use more layers! Of course, this process isn't a concrete ruling. Sometimes, I'll use more layers for extra things like the bell required more layers for rendering the shininess of metal! Anyways, I would like to believe I did a decent job at recreating the feel, the vibe, and or general look of an old Christmas Card that's more retro in nature. With a focus on simple shapes, a lineless rendering style, and using textured brushes to render, I think I got it down packed. I used a tiny bit of Chromatic Aberration to give it a little bit of a visual pop, and brighten up the colors. It's subtle, but it works.

Oh, and here's something cool! To get a more embossed Christmas Card feel, I used a new tool that came with Clip Studio Paint!

N O R M A L M A P !

Cool, right? I use a pirated copy of Clip Studio Paint 3.0 and it comes with a tool that allows you to create normal maps from illustrations. Which, from what Google tells me: "A normal map is a texture mapping technique used to add surface details to 3D models without altering their geometry" ...Neat!

Anyways, here's what it looks like

Freaky, right?

It looks like an embossed letter when you set a layer color to it too!

Anyways, I overlayed it on top of the finished illustration, set it to multiply and set the layer color to a warm yellow and it gives it not only texture but a sense of depth too! It's super cool, if you digitally paint you should try it!

With Normal Map Overlay Effect

Without Normal Map Overlay Effect

It's subtle but it's there.

Anyways, that's enough blathering from me! Merry Christmas everyone! I'll be answering some asks this week, so stay tuned!!!

[the-teddy-roosevelt]

Let me tell you a little thing about cars.

I have had a gripe against modern car design, at least here in the States, for the longest time. Recently I have seen the utter abominations of the 21st century be more and more common and finally decided to share my stance to the wonderful world of the internet! So, be prepared for a lot of reading because this is a full scale rant with the occasional photo.

And now: Why Modern Car Design is Going to Kill Us All.

I have been doing much research these past months as I continued to observe more of these "newer designs" I have spoken so much about, and there are a few things I need to delve into.

The Flat Front

Supersize Me 2: Not so Electric Boogaloo

Elon's Bastard of a Car

1

The Flat Front

So, these cars I have been talking about, just to be more specific, are SUVs and Light Trucks/Pickup Trucks.

You see that massive, flat front in the image above? Well, believe it or not, that is causing more deaths in car-related accidents yearly! Due to being so boxy, when a pedestrian is hit, they are more likely to break bones around the torso/head, then pull the person UNDER the car rather than how a car normally would hit the person's legs, then they would hit the hood of the car.

These can also create massive blind spots/zones where you can't see what is right in front of you.

I shall dive more into this in the next section.

2

Supersize Me 2: Not so Electric Boogaloo

So, onto the next section. As you can see above you, this is a comparison of two cars, only 24 years apart(end of Escort to start of F-350). Only 24 years, and it had a 246% increase in weight, was 91.7 in. or about 7.64 ft. longer, and 26.8 in. or about 2.2 ft. taller.

This is a dramatic increase for little to no reason other than to "protect the drivers". As we have discussed in section 1, this is not the case. In fact, if one of these larger SUVs were to hit another, usually smaller car, it is more likely for the smaller driver to be killed, or at least seriously harmed by the bigger vehicle.

Speaking of smaller, children:

Children are one of the biggest victims of these larger cars with them being run over either in frontovers or backovers, most often by their own parents in a driveway.

If you don't fully believe me that these cars are truly big enough to run over the younger side of children, an entire experiment was done, putting kids in front of parked cars, and just look:

Terrifying.

I addition to this, the larger frame of these cars means that they create more pollution. Let me explain: The bigger cars needed more fuel, that means more fossil fuels being burned, and due to the US's car based infrastructure, there are more cars being produced, that is even more fossil fuels for both production and upkeep, and more pollution.

But oh dear reader, these SUVs and Light Trucks are not even the worst of it...

3

Elon's Bastard of a Car

Gentlemen, women, and all of you folk in between, I give you: The Tesla Cybertruck.

This... Thing, is the bane of everything I hate about modern car design, from the boxy shape going throughout the car, to being an "indestructible" vehicle, and its ability to kill anyone.

Okay, that is a lot I am claiming, so lets break it down.

We have already talked about how dangerous the box design is, but the Cybertruck appears to be a geometry problem found in high-school. This is unbelievably dangerous, making any crashes with other cars much more likely fatal.

The fatalities can also be helped by the fact the damn car is made of STAINLESS STEEL and "indestructible" according to advertising. Most cars are made to be able to crunch in order to let the force of impact be more spread out throughout the vehicle. Yes, it will cost quite a bit to fix, but hey, you're alive. Meanwhile when it is made out of such a hard material, such as steel, that crunch isn't going to happen and only kill the people inside the vehicle, and the people crashing into the giant steel block.

The company claims it can go from zero to 60 miles per hour in 2.6 seconds, which, if true, would mean it has a faster acceleration than most NASCAR and Formula 1 vehicles, with none of the accompanying engine roar to warn anyone that it's coming. The headlight, meanwhile, is one single bar of light, which some experts are already worried will blind oncoming drivers.

There are so many other things about this utter abomination that I would love to talk about, but I think this is where I'll leave off.

One last thing, I just want to say how this is mostly my experience and research from the United States of America, and not the rest of the world. Also, I do not see these things getting much better unless somehow the US removes all of its car based infrastructure.

Thank you for reading my friends, and remember, fuck monopolies.

[ssspringroll]

DL (mediafire)

Today I bring you not cc, but a small collection of .blend files for making cc a little easier. If you've ever wanted to quickly put a braid into a custom hair without completely obliterating your poly count*, then these might be able to help.

*braids will still add a LOT of polygons to your hair, but since every single polygon is visible** on these tiling braids, at least you know they're all being put to use, whereas if you were to physically braid 3 strands of geometry, lots of those polygons would wind up inside the braid, just adding to your count without contributing anything to the look

**if some polygons end up inside of other meshes, you may want to delete them to reduce the poly count further. The boolean modifier may be able to help you, but I haven't tried

These are completely hollow, tiling braid "facades". They just look like a braid, without being anything more than a stylized tube. Available in 9 shapes (which are all pretty similar, more or less, but have different 'vibes', and one of them technically doesn't resemble a braid, but if you squint it looks close enough) and 3 polygon counts to hopefully fit in with your project.

TOU: Same as my cc. Read it here. I obviously don't own this concept, so feel free to reverse engineer, make your own braid tiles, etc. Just don't use mine for anything commercial (using them in commissions is fine, just not paywalled final products!)

You will need to be using one of the newer versions of blender, I believe 2.8 and up. These were made in blender 3.6, so the files will not be compatible with old versions like 2.7x.

Quick start guide:

Open your hair wip's .blend

In object mode, 'Append' the 'BraidTile' object of your choice

Select 'BraidPath' and, in Edit mode, position it however you like

Additional info under the cut, because I tend to ramble, and these require a little bit of a primer before use, probably. Unless you for sure know what you're doing, in which case, feel free to just take these and run with them.

THIS IS NOT A TUTORIAL ON MAKING HAIR, OR HOW TO USE BLENDER. Seek that information elsewhere.

Before appending braids, you may want to open up the blender file and look at all the shapes, to decide which one you want to use.

When you first append your braid, or open the blend files, you may notice it does not look like the preview images above, and instead looks like a shiny pink slug. This is intentional! For previews and development work, I use @/simandy's base textures, but your hair will probably be using a different texture, so I have not included a texture at all.

Simply switch the material of the 'BraidTile' to the same material your hair is using, and adjust the uv map accordingly. I'm going to assume if you are making hairs that you know how to do that, so it will not be explained here.

Once you have your braid appended, and have edited the UV Map of the 'BraidTile' piece to your liking, you can also try scaling the tile in the X, Y, and Z axes to change up the look a little. Make sure you select all of the vertices before scaling, to make sure it still tiles. This should be safe to do, and not mess up the tiling at all, but make sure you do it in Edit mode, not Object mode. (If you mistakenly do it in Object mode, you just have to press ctrl+A and select 'scale', and that should fix it)

When you have your braid adjusted, switch over to the 'BraidPath' object, and use edit mode to move the points around however you want. This is just like any other hair strand, if you're used to making hairs with paths and curves then this should already be familiar to you. All the same controls should work.

And, if you already have a curve in your hair that you'd like the braid to snap to instead, you can select the 'BraidTile' object, locate the curve modifier, and switch the curve object to any other curve in your .blend. You'll want to change the curve in the array modifier to the same one, most likely.

If you haven't used curves to make a hair before, here's a couple quick controls you might like to know:

ctrl+T will let you Twist the object around the selected point(s) alt+S will let you Scale the object around the selected point(s) selecting the first or last point of the 'BraidPath' and pressing E will Extrude a new point, making your braid longer

Remember to do all of your positioning on the 'BraidPath' object! You do not need to edit the 'BraidTile' at all once you've set up the UV map and adjusted the scale!

It should tile, twist, etc. with little issue, and should get longer or shorter according to the length of your curve with no issue. If it doesn't, make sure both the array and curve modifiers of your 'BraidTile' object are using the same curve. They should be using the 'BraidPath' object by default, but if you changed this manually, ensure that both modifiers match for best results.

Unless you know what you are doing, I do not recommend messing with any other settings in the modifiers, or adjusting the 'BraidTile' mesh in any way besides scaling the entire object at once. Otherwise you could end up with gaps and holes in your braid.

When you are done posing your braid, you can apply the modifiers to turn the whole thing into a regular mesh. I like to make a copy of my 'BraidTile' and 'BraidPath' first, just in case I want to go back and change the shape later. After converting it to a regular mesh, I'd recommend going in with proportional editing turned on and randomly scale and move a few of the pleats just a little, to make the braid look a little more organic. You can even add a couple strands to make it look messier, if you dont mind adding to your poly count even more. But this comes down to your preference and style. The braid below has had some half-assed editing done to demonstrate the concept. (Note: This is actually the low-poly version of this particular braid shape)

Ultimately, it is up to you to decide how you want to blend the braid in with the rest of your hairstyle. I can't tell you how to do that, as it is ultimately going to come down to your own personal preference, workflow, and the hairstyle you are making.

How do I know if I should use Hi, Mid, or Lo poly?

This is largely due to personal preference, and how you're using the braids in your project. I have included the three different poly versions to try and be mindful of the overall poly count of your poor poor meshes, but even a lo-poly braid is going to add an easy couple thousand polygons to your project. Keep that in mind! If you plan on having a LOT of braids, something like this EA hairstyle, for example:

You will probably want to follow their example and use a very simple mesh and just apply a braid texture instead of using these. EA's braids here appear to be a simple box shape painted to look like braids.

If you only plan on having one, maybe two braids in your entire project, especially if they are very large braids, then you might want to go with the hi-poly option. They're the smoothest, roundest choice.

If your braid has a very small diameter, you can probably get away with just using the lo-poly option, and save some polygons you won't need anyway.

The mid-poly version exists as a sort of happy medium. They aren't quite as pointy as some of the lo-poly shapes, and they won't inflate your poly count as much as the hi-poly models, so you may find you prefer them for your applications.

It's all very subjective.

I think that's pretty much everything I wanted to say. If you have specific questions, my inbox is open.

Keep in mind I am not very skilled in blender! There's probably some optimization that can be done if you know what you're doing, and I welcome you to tweak these meshes to your heart's content, if that's you! I made these for me, but I figure they could make someone else's life a little easier too, so here you go.

If you make anything using them you are welcome to tag me! If you don't end up making anything with these then I hope you at least have some fun playing with them!

[lupucs]

Do you use the slider things Kevin Temmer uses for animation? I don’t have any animation software so idk what to call anything

There are a lot of sliders when you mess with 3D, a 3D program like Blender is basically slider-mania. I will go out on a limb here and assume you might be talking about rig sliders.

A rig is kinda like a skeleton which makes characters move. It essentially works like the armatures stop-motion animators use. Sometimes, a 3D rig can have sliders to make animating faces and other things easier. I usually make these sliders myself, and it's a pretty lengthy process. They look something like this.

These sliders control the face. If rig sliders isn't what you were referring to, then I will assume you might be talking about shape keys.

Shape keys are cool and awesome and rad because they are like layers in a drawing program. You switch them on, sculpt on the geometry, and then a slider will change the shape to what you sculpted the geometry into. I usually use them to make extreme expressions on pre-existing characters:

I also use shape keys to fix errors, like when geometry clips together, or whenever I want to make free-form changes, as they allow for a lot of creative freedom. Hope some of this was insightful! :'D

[ask-unpleasant]

hey chat sorry for the month of inactivity. i was unmotivated to do anything with this blog

but then i looked at some of the art on here and realized that i just lost my love for the character designs. so you know how we're gonna fix that? we're redesigning some characters bayybeeee 😈

starting with the man the myth the legend, here is UNPLEZZIE 2.0

he's probably the only one i had genuine problems with other than not being very aesthetically pleasing. he seemed too boring, his proportions were always a bit wonky, and the way he became more and more simple the more i drew him dumbed him down to just...awkward.

for this redesign, i kept all the features that made him my unpleasant. the only really signature thing i changed was his hair, sorry not sorry he had to fire his barber. i changed his scars to be far less opaque as to not clutter him up (which was the main reason i left them out most of the time), the only drawback is that i'm no longer just scribbling them in with a brush, they're actual geometry, so i cut back on the arms just for my own sake. also his tail now looks (and acts) like an actual docked tail.

next is the QSWX GVCTXMG AMXLSYX VIEPPC FIMRK GVCTXMG GLEVEGXIV SJ XLI CIEV, here is CREEPY 2.0

creepy was probably my least favorite character to draw. its head shape with the hair that always ends off screen, the 4 arms, the lack of any real way to move visible, it has always been a mess of a character. don't get me wrong, creepy is my second favorite character to write for (beaten only by neuro), i love its personality and its inflection, i just never got the chance to show that because i hated drawing it so much.

so for the redesign, i've basically reimagined it. its face hair now has an actual definitive ending, it has a more unique shape, and is just much more expunged-friendly in my opinion. it looks even more like its mom now...

next is this one, i thought she was american. here's PARANORMAL 2.0

i'm gonna be totally honest i have no idea what i was doing when designing para for the first time. that outfit was 100% subconsciously stolen from some other character i can't think of right now. it also really just didn't fit her character at all. also i dont know why i gave her boobs???? what????

anyways for the redesign she's basically a whole new design now. i wanted to play with some shape language. also, para always had a sort of inhuman quality to me, despite her personality, so i've given her inverted eyes and some animalistic features. i guess it adds irony or something, i dunno.

and finally, the moment GERIATRIC CAT you've all been waiting for, UNNERVING 2.0

in truth nervy's design is my favorite. the only gripe i had is the lack of legs, like with creepy. also i had to give her one of the same pride flag ass gradient as the rest so she'd fit in with the rest. other than all that i love her she is perfect just the way she is with minor adjustments

that's all the redesigns done!! i only did these 4 because stabby is not mine to redesign and NEURO is perfect just the way it is. feel free to give me any constructive criticism for these redesigns, i can always tweak em a bit. also the more stripy gradients wont a pattern that follows the contours of the body but rather just unmoving plaid always. i hope this lengthy yap sesh contributed something to something, maybe gave some insight into my characters.

and if you got this far i put a public discord server link in the intro post. you dont gotta ask anymore. dont tell anyone....shhh....*lovingly puts my finger on your lips* *smirks* *bolts away* *gets hit by truck* *instantly fatal*

[molagboop]

Metroid Dread Model Deep Dive: Raven Beak, Part 1

You know him, you've (probably) fought him, he's a staple of this blog...

It's Raven Beak! We're finally doing this.

Today, I'm providing a comprehensive look into Raven Beak's model. I probably won't have enough space to cover the entire thing, as the image limit for Tumblr posts is capped at 30, but we're starting with the head and working our way down.

The rest of this post is under the cut for your convenience.

Navigation:

Fullbody turnaround and helmet meshes

Helmet details

Shoulders, arms, and hands

Arm cannon

Wings and torso

Legs and feet

BONUS: Naked head

Raven Beak is referred to as chozocommander in the files: his textures are abbreviated to "commander[whatever]" in the files, with the name of a mesh or general purpose specified in the square brackets (commanderbody, etc). Raven Beak appears in three maps: Hanubia, Artaria, and Itorash. As Metroid Dread's cutscenes are executed in-engine, his model can be extracted from the map packages for the aforementioned regions.

There are several models linked to him during cutscenes that aren't part of his base model: chozocommander_arm, chozocommander_face (appears in Hanubia and after the mask breaks in Itorash), chozocommander_wing_r (which he rips off during the cutscene preceding phase 3 of his fight). chozocommander_arm is a more detailed version of his left arm that exists in the actor files for both Artaria and Itorash, the two zones where a cutscene involves the camera getting close to his arm while he chokes Samus out.

With that out of the way, our first order of business is his helmet, and there's a lot to look at.

Here's a list of all his meshes. We'll go over each part as they become relevant. Relevant to our current objective is helmethead, helmethead_clean, helmethead_cinematic, and brokenmask.

You'll notice that each of these have two meshes to their name. The names that are lower on the hierarchy are the actual helmets, and those higher on the hierarchy are overlays for the eyes to make them glow.

Here's what that looks like without scene lighting:

With the overlay...

... and without the overlay.

helmethead_clean features Raven Beak's helmet without the crack from the Super Missile: this is what we see during the opening cutscene in Artaria.

helmethead bestows the crack over the right eye.

Of all the helmet meshes, the cinematic version is the cleanest and most detailed: this one is used during parts of cutscenes where the camera zooms in on Raven Beak's face.

I'll be using this model to explore the smaller details.

All helmet meshes except the broken mask have their own textures: the broken mask uses the basic helmethead's textures.

brokenmask (left) and brokenmask01 (right). These are used to animate the sequence where the helmet breaks in the post-boss fight cutscene.

Earlier, I mentioned that the cinematic mesh is cleaner than the others. The textures and geometry on the cinematic mesh are crisper and more defined because it's used when we want to get a good look at his face: you don't need to see every plane of his beak in high definition during combat.

Here's a closeup of each primary model for the helmet to demonstrate. From left to right, we have helmethead_clean, helmethead, and helmethead_cinematic. helmethead_clean appears to have the lowest clarity in its textures. helmethead is passable, but the planes on helmethead_cinematic are leagues cleaner: there's very little artifacting (the janky crunch affiliated with lower quality jpgs), the colors appear richer, and effort was made to define the negative space.

Look at the owl-shaped crest in the center of the headdress (helmethead left, helmethead_cinematic right): there are darker lines between the arch behind the head, and care was put into darkening the spaces between the eyebrows, around the eyes, etc.

I've already hit the image limit, so we're going to examine the details on his face even further in another post: I've waited so long to share all the little differences between these helmet meshes in excruciating detail, so I suppose it's only fitting that our first entry is more about that than it is showing off the finer details of the headdress and mask themselves.

I would not have been able to dive this deep a year ago when the image limit was capped at 10. I hope they increase it further so I can inflict you with more model facts.

I am working on the second post. The navigation section at the top of the post will be updated as things go live.

[useless-catalanfacts]

What would Kitri (Quiteria) from Marius Petipa's Ballet 'Don Quixote' have worn for her everyday attire and bridal gown, considering her background as the "beauty of the town" from Barcelona, the daughter of a housekeeper, and her role as Don Quixote's imagined Dulcinea and Basilio's bride? Please search "DON QUIXOTE 💃: The drama, plot, and history of ballet's brightest gem ✨✨" regarding the ballet.

I've read the book but I haven't seen the ballet. What I'm understanding from this question is that you would like to know what the historically accurate dress would have been for that character? I've seen a part of that video you mention and I can see why you're asking, since the clothes they wear don't look appropriate for Don Quijote at all (they wear very 19th century Andalusian clothes for a story that is very famously set in La Mancha).

We have this information to work with: 1) she's from Barcelona, 2) the setting is the early 1600s, 3) she's the daughter of a housekeeper so she's lower class, and 4) the occasions for her clothes are an everyday wear and her wedding.

Luckily, a Catalan tailor called Baltasar Segovia (from Perpinyà, Northern Catalonia) published a treatise in the year 1617 titled "Geometry book for the job of a tailor", where he explains how they make the clothes, including the patrons. This is how the historian Francesc Riart has drawn them (I'm taking these images from his article "Una evolució en imatges"):

Figures of a middle-class man and woman, from the images of the time.

Women's dress shapes, without the additions, from the patrons by Baltasar Segovia's treatise.

I think this is the kind of dress could work as a wedding dress at the time. Remember that the idea of a white wedding dress originated very recently (Victorian England) and wasn't widespread here until a couple generations ago (personally, neither my mother nor grandmother married in a white dress) and even then it was a class issue, because that's a kind of dress you wouldn't be able to wear again. The wedding dresses used to be a nicer dress, often the one that could be worn on Sundays.

Our main information for lower class clothes is written sources and art, because the pieces of clothing that have survived this many centuries are a clear case of survivorship bias: they were worn little, made of good-quality resisting material, and they were considered worthy enough to keep as they are instead of recycling the cloth. Poorer people would have worn the clothes until they're broken, adding patches or repairing them as needed, and then would have recycled what was still good of that cloth.

The clothes used by most of the population back then were made of flax or wool (cotton wouldn't be widely used until the proliferation of chintz factories starting in the mid-1700s). Though texts of the time mention that fashion in Catalonia included pieces made in a specific Catalan way ("a la Catalana"), same as each part of Europe had their own way (documents at the time show that people could easily recognise the difference between a Catalan-style and a Spanish-style piece of clothing), in general the clothes were very similar to the clothes worn in other parts of Western Europe. One thing that was widespread for religious and reputation reasons was that married women had to cover their hair, but before marriage it didn't have to be covered but it was generally tied back (not only for fashion but also for hygienic reasons).

In the early 1600s, outer clothes tended to be dark gray (this would quickly change throughout that century and by the late 1600s people wore very bright colours, including the lower class).

One of the ways we have of knowing what ordinary people wore is to look at the registries of people who used the Barcelona public hospital (I'm checking the data as published by Francesc Riart in the article "Una evolució en imatges"). In 1618-1619:

89% of women wore a chemise/shirt

Over this, they would wear a skirt and lower class women very often wore an apron.

68% of women covered their hair with a "tovalloleta", 28% covered it with a "manto", and 10% with a "drap de cap", all of them being different kinds of kerchiefs.

Their clothes in winter and in summer were almost the same. They wore more socks and leggings in winter and the percentage of people who wore closed shoes instead of espadrilles ("espardenyes") rose in winter, but the rest was pretty much the same. The difference between seasonal clothes was likely higher in upper classes, but people who used the public hospital are mostly poor and some middle class.

In the city, most people wore closed shoes instead of espadrilles, which were the standard in the countryside.

An idea for the dress could be a mix of these two, with the dress in the left but slightly darker, and since we're in the very early 1600s it could still have a riff (the neck thing) like the one on the right.

Left: painting of Mary as a child weaving, from 1600s Catalonia. Right: painting from the late 1500s or early 1600s Catalonia, representing the "ideal woman" (in an extremely misogynist way). Both from Ethnologic Museum of Catalonia.

As for jewellery, lower class people often wore jewellery made of glass or metal mixes. Many have been found in archaeological sites in Barcelona like El Born and Santa Caterina.

I hope this answers your question!

[thedarkivist]

Trick or treat!!🧡🖤✨

@knitted-pigeons, let's do a fairy tale AU one from the vault, shall we?

When Ferdinand bursts into their bedroom, he lets the door swing closed and lingers only long enough to give the handle a light pat before he crosses the room, shaking down the snowflakes glittering in his hair and melting on his cloak.

"You are not going to believe what-" Belatedly, he notices Hubert's expression and deflates somewhat. "You seem rather… displeased with me," he ventures carefully.

"Do I?" The dancer makes a show of crossing his arms over his chest. "What an astute observation."

Ferdinand shuffles his feet and offers him a shaky, sheepish smile. "I may have… lost the track of time out there." Then he adds quickly: "In a perfectly regular way."

Hubert doesn't answer and turns his face towards the window, his lips drawn into a tight line. Their suite in the castle is bathed in warm, indulgent candlelight, and fire crackles away in the fireplace. Within - safety. Without - only darkness, undisturbed by the snow that blankets the land, swallowing down footsteps of reckless travellers with every fresh layer.

Shame prickles at the back of his neck and it takes everything he has in him not to squirm. Hubert's point, even if wordless, is clear. He should've waited for someone else to wake up and at least tell them where he was headed. Only, once the first ray of anaemic winter sun stirred him awake, all he could think of was the road winding around the castle and all the paths branching off from it no matter which direction he'd choose.

Still, he tries: "The snow let up for the first time in days, I had to take advantage-"

"Sometimes I wonder if you have a death wish," Hubert says. He walks away from the window, and sits down on the edge of the bed, twisting the fabric of his uniform between his fingers. There's no trace of irony in his voice, and Ferdinand's stomach sinks when he realises he's telling the truth.

He drops to the floor at Hubert’s feet, and rests his chin on his knee, looking up through his eyelashes. “On my honour, I do not.” Hubert doesn’t take the cue to stroke his hair as he normally might, but he stops fidgeting at least.

“I have something to show you,” Ferdinand continues, already reaching into the folds of his cloak, “before it melts.”

What he produces is a piece of ice. Hubert reminds himself of that, not quite ready to abandon the argument. It’s a piece of ice, such as could be obtained by reaching out of the window. A piece of ice, only remarkable because of its shape.

Ferdinand takes his hand and sets the piece of ice into the palm of his lover’s hand. “Strange and beautiful, is it not?” A little smile appears on his face, a tender, hopeful thing. Then he whispers: “Like you.”

By some quirk of magic, the piece of ice is shaped like a rose, down to the finest curve of every individual petal.

For a split second, Hubert’s expression softens with wonder. He raises the flower up, marvelling at the light fragmented in its geometry. Already, the edges are damp, and a single icy drop rolls down his forearm, making him shudder.

Ferdinand gets up, takes the flower from him, opens the window, and carefully sets the rose in the snow that piled up on the windowsill.

He closes the window again, turns around, and offers Hubert a smile. “Now you can be cross with me, if it pleases you.”

A huff in response. “It’s not about whether or not it pleases me, it’s about how you throw yourself into unnecessary danger without even telling m- anyone first.”

Ferdinand returns to his spot at Hubert’s feet, and rests his head on his lap, the curve of his neck on display. “I did not want to wake you when you slept so peacefully. And I was not far, only as far as that pond we came across in autumn. Do you remember?”

Bright pink spots appear on Hubert’s face and neck. He does remember. “How am I to know that though? I don’t mind if you wake me for this. An hour later, and we would’ve sent a search party for you.” “I will keep it in mind,” Ferdinand promises, so earnest Hubert doesn’t quite know how to react.

He averts his face and, finally, runs his fingers through Ferdinand’s hair.

[beebopboom]

A Bookshop in Soho Eden

This is not a new idea and after reading these wonderful post by @the-apology-dance here and @queerfables here my brain just got hooked on it. I wanted to see though, if I could take this idea one step further and oh boy can you - so if you want to join me down this rabbit hole I went down strap in for this rollercoaster - I broke it down to three parts that I will post separately

This is technically season 3 speculation as I bring up some points connected to the Second Coming for further down the line

Also I'm just going to lay out the information then connect in all in the end so just stay with me - it will all connect

But without further ado

Aziraphale's Jobs over the years

Let's start at the beginning or just after - the Garden of Eden

Angel of the Eastern Gate and donned with a flaming sword - technically on apple tree duty according to him but we only see him after the whole eating the apple business. What we do see is him doing is opening his “gate” for them to leave, closing it, and then getting questioned by God - specifically about his flaming sword. The next time we see him he is back at his post on the wall - Adam and Eve are quite a bit away by now - and this is when Crowley comes up to him.

The thing I find interesting about this is that he is still there after the apple business is done and over with - and he is still in guarding position, looking out towards the humans

So let's take a look into the actual bible for maybe an answer as to why -

Genesis 3:24 - “He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turn every way to guard the way to the Tree of Life”

Now the Tree of Life is an interesting mention with it's connection to the Second Coming

So let’s take a quick look into what the Tree of life is

The Tree of Life is mentioned in two particular stories in the bible - Genesis and Revelations - or in other words the Beginning and the End

Adam and Eve had access to this tree and were only warned against the Tree of Knowledge because they couldn’t have both - eternal life or knowledge of good and evil

So once they had taken a bite from the apple God then revoked their access to the Tree of Life by banishing them from the garden and placing a guard - no humans were to have access anymore

Until the Second Coming comes around where all the humans who have passed judgement(all the names written down in the book of life) and get to live in Gods’s paradise again - with the Tree of Life in the center and fully accessible. People are able to consume the fruits from the tree once again

The point I'm trying to make is yes technically he was on apple tree duty then but now he is on Tree of Life duty - it’s the purpose of him remaining in Eden, and on Earth among humans. Protection for and against humans

Now Aziraphale had one more job that I wanted to bring up, courtesy of the Demon’s Guide to Angelic Beings who Walk the Earth, and that is Garden Designer. We don't know exactly when he did this so we can only guess - I’m going to out on a limb and say the 16th - 17th century French Gardens

Developed from Italian renaissance gardens, this style of gardening used symmetry, parterres, and geometrical shapes. I’m just going to touch on some key features but if you want to learn more here are some links (here and here)

These gardens tended to start at the house and were meant to be view from above on the terraces. There would be a main path way that would lead away from the house and would come to a circular center that was often just lawn or water sometimes surrounded by trees, it was from here that the garden was broken down into sections. Through the use of geometry they created perspective and optics with rows and designs of the plants placement. Closer to the house these designs were more complex with them getting less complex the further away. Symmetry and control over the plants was a big part as it was a way show a man's mastery over nature. Water was also a key feature mainly through the use of still water ponds that served as mirrors. On top of all these interesting designs the gardens were often decorated with statues. These gardens were meant to tell a story whether viewed from above or walking within - it would seem as though you were going through different rooms

Some of these these design elements might sound familiar and they should - it's only reflected in one of the most visited places in the show

The Bookshop - A.Z. Fell and Co.

Aziraphale opened up the bookshop in 1800, but had been working on it for years as we learn from Crowley in 1793, all due to his love of books. Not that the actually wants to sell his books and actively makes it unpleasant to a customer.

The bookshop also serves another purpose though - it's a safe place. I've theorized before in this post about how something happened before 1793 but after 1601 that made Crowley get in trouble with Hell due to their arrangement - a fear that Aziraphale has had from the start. So Aziraphale took this chance to combine the things he loved and the need for a safe place so he could hang out with the one he loved - all wrapped up in the explanation that he was just doing his job and was able to make it a Heaven’s embassy - unable to enter without permission and easy ways to sneak out. But I’m not here to really talk about the emotional connections -

So let’s look at the actual layout of the bookshop - the bare bones at least

As soon as you go through the door you are hit with a second circular doorway - pointed out to be the omega symbol. In this front little area there are three tables but then we lead into the center of the bookshop with a big circle rug lit up by the skylight and surrounded by four pillars. It is from here that the bookshop opens up into different pathways and sections all directed by the actual bookshelves. Towards the back of the shop is a staircase that leads up to the second floor where you can still look down and around the lower floor. There are statues placed all around the shop with extra tables and chairs throughout and quite a few rugs with some French influenced designs on them laying about.

(credit to whoever made this - you are a godsend)

Rings some bells doesn’t it?

Now you may be asking why these specific gardens instead something more like Eden to commemorate their first meeting on Earth. I mean this is Aziraphale we are talking about - the angel who got himself arrested because he wanted to go on a french date and who decided to learn french, or in other words one of the more romantic languages, the human way. For designing a bookshop that would be their safe space picking a french design is not too far out there.

But what if I told you there was more to his bookshop and the of Whickber Street as a whole.

If you remember the whole Tree of Life rant I went on earlier let me add one more piece of information - the geometry symbol

so is that bookshop is not only meant to represent their Eden but particularly the paradise that is the reward of the Second Coming? Is he actually really doing his job in protecting the Tree of Life from humans? Even if it was a subconscious choice on Aziraphale’s part - could it explain the concept art of the cut dream?

Technically on Tree of Life duty guarding his books/fruit of eternal life from humans in their modern day Eden.

Now I’ll admit it doesn’t line up perfectly but I wanted to include it because my next point can still stand either way - and I’m going to go more into this idea in the other parts.

Rivers of Time

In Eden there is one big river that when it reaches out of Eden it splits into four rivers that water the garden and reach to the ends of the Earth - Pishon(full flowing), Gihon(bursting forth), Hiddekel(swift or darting), and Euphrates(fruitful). The Tree of Life it is said to have a river on both sides.

Now I’m sure we have all noticed the some weird instances of time being messed with in the show - particularly in the streets of Soho. They are sped up, slowed down, and normal speed. Often these roads are also depicted as wet.

So let me throw in the idea of Timestreams

It’d probably be easier to go read that but basically it’s -

The concept that time is always flowing forward or backwards, and meeting in the middle - always on the move always connected - never quite knowing where you step in. Just like the flow of water.

And wouldn’t it be ironic that Crowley, our time stopping demon, and his car are now constantly in this stream of time darting around only to finally stop and slow down in the bookshop

So we can take the four streets of our little spot in Soho connect it to the four rivers and apply some time fuckery - you get a place that is full and bursting with life, people darting all around looking and buying things that make their life more fruitful. But time is a bit wibbly wobbly for the residents, always flowing and connected - past, present, and future - so we get characters that are parallel’s to the past, that may have existed in a different time or universe, and that repeat often.

So if the Bookshop is their version of Eden it would make these streets representative of the rest of the world - what with a street that lead to chinatown and have various French and Italian restaurants along another - this idea is not too far out there

But also if you take the Bookshop as a little more representative of the Tree of Life in particular with the two streets surrounding it - Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death can very easily be equated with the Tree of Knowledge. The whole of Whickber Street is their Eden.

This is what happens when you have an Angel and Demon with too much affect on the world around them living in one spot for hundreds of years

So to wrap this all up please remember this is just a theory and for fun - take it as you will

But if you have followed along this long and I’ve somehow managed to get you entertain this idea of the Bookshop being their slice of Eden - whether Eden itself or just a single part of Eden (Tree of Life) with the whole street being Eden - wait and see for the next part

After all the apple (coffee) did come from within the Garden and then they lost access to the Tree of Life (bookshop)

This was Part 1

In Part 1.5 it just a couple theories concerning the Book of Life and more, like an intermission

And finally Part 2 we discuss the second place the Tree of Life is mentioned, the Book of Revelations, and how we have already seen a version of the Second Coming