#but I really loved working with the idea of contrasts!

[loustica-lucia]

Heroes of the Dragon Age

An animation I've made for Dragon Age Day 2023, featuring my main Warden (Alyssa Cousland-Theirin), Hawke (Eleena Amell Hawke) and Inquisitor (Sulevin Lavellan)!

It's to this day one of my best artwork and I thought I should share it here too! 90+ hours between the original sketch, outfit design, the rough animation, rotoscope, inking, flat-colours, background shading and even the audio :')

Interested in the process? I detailed it below since it was my first time doing something like that:

I would like to start by saying I'm not a professional animator!Everything you've seen here is the result of experimentation and a lot of practice to learn and understand how 2D animation works.

My first idea started in May 2023. I just finished rewatching DA Absolution for the X time, and wanted to analyse why I loved the intro so much. (Even after countless rewatch, I never skipped it once.) I was inspired to study it with my main three protagonists!

Then came the first test with Alyssa Cousland-Theirin, my Hero of Ferelden! I tried to understand which part to separate for the animation. Mainly the hair and cape because it flows a lot more than the rest! If I recall, my first idea here was to make her counter flame attacks (?). Then, as the camera turns around her, I tried to add a grid to know how the camera would work around it.

I ended up making the clip longer, so she could position herself to the further left and leave space to the two other protagonists.

Now it was time to try to animate Sulevin Lavellan, my Inquisitor. I really kept that quick doodling style just to capture the vibe without putting too much time/effort into it! The background would be static to contrast with Alyssa's. I also loved the idea of a rogue sneaking!

Instead of working on Eleena Amell Hawke, my Champion of Kirkwall, I went back to Alyssa and started working with Clip Studio Paint 3D models (this entire animation has been done on the EX version of the software!) It helped for rotoscope animation and maintaining likeness! That's when I got the idea to make the background swirl around the character to let the eyes be guided by the rest of the screen!

After a couple more hours, I planned the entire animatic with 3D models and quick doodles! I finally found a cool pose for Eleena Hawke, which was honestly the hardest of the three to imagine for some reason? I tried many other poses but ended up picking an animation from the game!

This whole time, I was studying a bunch of background ideas and how studio Red Dog Culture House (who made Absolution) work! Thankfully, they have a YouTube Channel where they shared some BTS content so I could analyse it!

Then, I simplified my character and their original designs in the style of the studio! These outfits are how I imagine them after Trespasser. Alyssa as the Queen of Ferelden, looking for a cure to the Calling, Hawke following Fenris to Tevinter & Sully as a Red Jenny Inquisitor!

The idea for Sulevin's animation actually came from a piece I doodled on a live stream, when I was drawing pose studies and turning them into finished artworks haha As for Alyssa, I wanted to draw the fight that got her facial scars!

Once their designs were ready and the background ideas too, I made the rough version of the animation! Basically a sketch done on top of the 3D models to add the details, staying pretty rough just to capture the idea and movements.

Then it was time to start the lines! I decided make a folder per frame, so I could separate all he main elements and draw them one by one. It helps keeping the likeness of a character in the different frames without having big "jumps" between frames! In fact, every parts were coloured differently to recognize them, and then I used vector erasers and masks (Ah yes, the entire lineart is done in vectors of course! It's easier to adjust and save time when working on similar frames!)

At first of course, everything overlaps! But I find it easier to draw too much and erase after, just to make sure everything is coherent in each frames! The cool thing about CSP is how you can change the colour of the layers in one click! So all the coloured lines turned into black in one second, and I could reverse it just as quickly to double check!

Then I started working on Sulevin! I made a blue line to mark where her feet were, as the sketch in the background wasn't perfectly straight! (Like Sulevin's sexuality 🤭😂) The silhouettes were very quick to do, but I had fun adding more & more details as she came closer to the foreground!

I really wanted to add that little dagger trick, but I remember it required me to change the pacing of Eleena's apparition, as it was recovering her arm too quickly! I had to change the pace of multiple frames quite a lot during the project, to make sure the flow was right! For Eleena, most of her animation remained around her arms and the staff itself, as magic would be the most difficult part! That way each character has their own focus: Alyssa has a very animated background, Sulevin got the grappling hook and Eleena the ice!

Then it was time to start adding colours! Just like for the lineart, I separated every colour on it's own layer, so I could easily adjust the colours later if needed. I added one colour at the time, going through all the frames, and then another colour!

I made full palette tests with the colours I would use for their background at this point, checking if the details remained readable! Alyssa was the most challenging in terms of clothes, because I made her a very detailled armour! I had to simplify the Theirin heraldry, vectorize/redraw the Cousland, and make a brush for her cape's pattern!

Once I was done adding the flatcolours, I started the background, and oh boy it was a wild ride. For the cave, I painted multiple tests. I imagine was to use CSP panorama tools, which transform a texture into a 3D sphere, so each corners must match to look good. Sadly, it made the background very blurry, so after hours of testing, I changed ideas. Instead of the random fire balls (?) I originally imagined for Alyssa, I made three simple frames of a Rage Demon to attack her.

I ended up using the cave as a repeated pattern to make it turn 360° around the character. For Eleena, I mixed inspiration from the comics, Dreadwolf & Absolution, using warm colours matching Hawke's signature red. Just like I made the cave very grey/blue to match Grey Wardens. For Val Royeaux, it was more complex because I wanted to make it green, matching the Inquisitor's signature green. But bright green couldn't work, and the original colour during day time was blue/white/gold. So I added more leaves, played around the design a bit! After adding the rage demon, I made the shading! It was surprisingly easy and quick to do now!

I clipped a white layer on the flatcolours to not be distracted by the colours, and made thin lines to separate the light/shadows, then simply filled everything with the bucket tool! Then you set the layer to multiply and remove the white layer, and you have celshading shadows! Now the character looks out of the picture, so I added layers of blue in color burn, saturation and substract blending modes to make her look like she's in the right setting! Of course, I did the same with the other two, giving Hawke a red overlay and Sulevin green shadows!

Then I added the details, it went from white irises, to sword/staff smears to earrings and smaller finition that goes on top of these layers. To add the lights, I simply selected the shadows and reversed the selection! Using warm and cold tones to create contrast with the purple/bluish shadows! I also added more ambient light layers for Alyssa to reflect the Rage Demon fire. Now it was time to add ice magic! My first attempt had too many frames, making it look weird! Sometimes it's better to lower the frame rate to make things less bumpy!

Then I downloaded some cool ice brushes on CSP assets that made it look less like blue magical flames! But when I covered the screen in ice, I realized "Oh wait, I could make a cool transition from the ice, to blue lyrium turning red?"Red Lyrium truly links these three games and The Veilguard somehow! I spent the next hour painting over the idol and putting it in a black background, with lyrium and then the golden Dragon Age title text.

For the SFX, I used free youtube libraries sounds & "Darkspawn!" comes from the violent human female voice set (iconic for ""Can I get you a ladder? So you can get off my back!"😂🤭) After editing all that, the animation was finally done!

Here's the final math:

About 15 hours for the sketching/rough/animatic phase, 30h for the lineart, 25h for colours, 10h for backgrounds, 5h for details & 5h for music & SFX, for a total of 90 hours. Aka the same amount of time it took me to finish Baldur's Gate 3 the first time lol

If you have any question regarding the animation or the softwares etc. do not hesitate to ask, I'll do my best to answer!

[panlight]

my take on the whole clumsy bella / amazing at vampire thing was that i thought she wasn't exactly *meant* to be a human and all of her clumsiness was alluding to this

I think this might have been what SM was going for, too, at least in retrospect. I don't know that she planned it necessarily -- your mileage may vary on that! -- but that's sort of the only way I can make the Bella the Best Vampire stuff work in my head.

She was ~destined for Edward specifically with her alluring scent and silent mind, but she was destined for vampirism more generally, never fitting in with the human world, always out of step, clumsy, awkward, etc. She can smell blood (although it makes her sick), she's good with weird, blah blah blah. I can see how it works there. Interesting contrast with the "Bella's an everygirl and purposefully somewhat vague in the original book so people cant step into her shoes" thing, though.

I just will always find it weird that we spent so much time, especially in the middle two books, worrying about how sad and miserable and lonely it is to be a vampire, how her very soul was at risk, only to have Bella become one and love it and be great at it. It just doesn't jibe with the Cullens' whole deal. Which is fine, I guess, but I kind of preferred the idea of these people making the best of a situation none of them asked for and finding a family, love despite what half of them see as a terrible curse. Bella being like "Actually being a vampire is easy and amazing!" tarnished the vibes for me. I wanted to see her learn, grow, adjust, understand why they had warned her against it. She could still succeed! She could still be happy! But just skipping the adjustment period and having Bella's thirst be a complete non-issue after like her second day as a vampire made me sort of go . . . why is she even writing about vampires at all?

But at the end of the day it's not really a "vampire story" so much as a YA romance with some light vampiring, and that's okay. It is what it is. I just happened to read it during a marathon read of vampire books, so I personally was reading it as a vampire story and there were lots of elements I really enjoyed from the 'vampire story' angle but then Breaking Dawn just ruined the stuff I liked because it got the Happily Ever After a romance calls for rather than the bittersweet ending I thought the vampire story needed.

[nittroy]

In light there's darkness- Cmm from @n1ghtmeri for @lesserideafountain Thank you for working with me >:з ✧

[andoutofharm]

the way patrick talks about the way pete thinks is so beautiful

[dye-it-rouge-et-noir]

"For particularly important things, it's always more reassuring to write them down like this." - Zhang Beihai

[ID in alt text]

[sea-jello]

Day 27/October 27: Swim || Hide || "I'll just stay inside."

oh my GOD i started and finished this in a day almost NONSTOP i told myself oh it’ll just be a sketch or doodle or something you probably won’t have the time or motivation to do it really detailed and I GOT CARRIED AWAY AND WHAM 5 HOURS GONE

flat plus closeups

i pray cropping the pictures doesn’t crunch them

[wreckedhoney]

hardmode enemies-to-lovers would be....teddy and marie......forrest and ponty.....henry and the secret archives....peggy and brad......

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[my-thoughts-and-junk]

Anyway I think the twist being the main character was what they despised all along fucks actually

[cq-studios]

29. How do you think they would be as a parent?—Ephemer

Ooh, okay, I do spend quite a bit of time thinking about this.

So, I think Ephemer would be a really fun dad overall, but he’s also not entirely stable.

He’d mask a lot of his pain with his cheery demeanour but sometimes his kid(s) will come home and just see him completely broken on the couch or something. Ephemer has a lot of trauma and I very much doubt Scala in general, let alone early Scala, has a good grasp on or ways to help treat mental health issues.

Speaking of that trauma though, I don’t think he’d want his kid(s) to be Keyblade wielders. I’ve talked about this before, but Daybreak Town certainly had a lot of kids dying… all the time. I can’t imagine that anyone, let alone someone as social as Ephemer, could’ve avoided that. I feel that Ephemer would be against kids wielding Keyblades similarly to how Skuld was against Shift Pride, with the compromise being the education system. Even still though, I can’t imagine Ephemer would be too comfortable with the idea.

I also think for similar reasons that he’d be a bit of a helicopter parent lol. All up in his kid(s) business, always checking in to make sure they’re okay, can’t let them out of sight for too long. Like people who had too much freedom when they were younger tend to not give their kids enough freedom and Ephemer certainly had quite a bit of freedom when he was younger.

I feel like his partner would try and rein him in a bit, to moderate success. The anxiety wins over quite often, but it gets better as the kid(s) get older.

I’m trying to think if I have any other headcannons about this but I think that’s it

[sanstropfremir]

Hello! I was looking through your kpop opinions tag, and I found what you said interesting and insightful. I was wondering what your opinions were on Key's Gasoline :D

i have............complicated thoughts on gasoline. i LOVE the graphic design and album marketing and i like a big chunk of the songs on the album, i think a lot of the styling and the mv are really well done. all those outfits are custom builds and the embroidery work is UNREAL, as garments they are beautiful pieces of work. but i don't really like how the song is just a retooled version of industry baby. and i'm not sure how i feel about all the crosses, to be honest. the use of them is obviously very intentional and undoubtedly they mean something TO key specifically in terms of his faith but it's..........not really a thing i can get behind, personally. something about it feels a little too evangelical to me and i will absolutely admit that i am overly sensitive to that kind of thing bc i've had more than one run in with evangelical attempts to convert me. i don't ACTUALLY think it was meant specifically as a whole dogmatic evangelical thing but i find myself being a bit......uncomfortable with the imagery even now a year later.

[joyridingmp3]

crazy to me to think that my dads birth chart is predominantly fire, my mothers is mostly water, my sister is super earth heavy, and i have a lot of air in mine

[starrysmiling]

thinking about the au i unceremoniously dropped like a bomb in mage's dms last night but also realised could be canon compliant since it doesn't contradict anything so behold, the concept of all time:

jax and wren are twins and both of them are in love with fern

(alternatively: fern has two hands and he is going to hold both of their hands)

hear me out okay. consider that there's a boy who makes you feel alive but your love rival is your twin and the object of your affection seems to look happier with him than you. even though you're twins. welcome to the natsubane family

but like. jax, the total brocon older twin who would do anything for wren and is the generally more oblivious energetic one who introduces fern to wren as his crush...

...wren, the more serious, observant, shy younger twin with a calmer personality and definitely not jealous of the fact that jax is a lot closer to fern than he is...

...and then we have fern, who loves teasing the easily flustered jax and the pride that jax's growth fills him with and his lively presence standing beside him in the kitchen while he bakes dessert, but also the sparkle in wren's eyes as he tells fern about the newest book he read and the genuine curiosity he treats the world with and the sense of comfort he gets sitting by wren's side as they watch a documentary.

yeah eventually fern ends up kissing both of them but it's so fun thinking that how he shows different sides of himself and enjoys himself in completely different ways with each twin. jax takes fern on exciting dates and they battle and train together as rivals and banter as best friends; wren soothes fern with his presence and they play with pokemon and are happy to spend time with each other quietly doing work because he's just that comfortable with wren. fern's cheeky prankster side shows up a lot more with jax, his gentle sweet side shows up a lot more with wren, and each of the twins feel that the side fern doesn't show to them makes him closer to the other twin instead.

and don't get me started on the dynamic between the twins themselves bc i'm going insane over wren's jealousy over jax being the one with the deeper bond as well as being fern's rival as a trainer but thinking that it means fern wouldn't love him as much as he would love jax so he ends up urging jax to be the one who asks fern out despite the fact that he desperately wants to be the one who makes fern smile.

also going insane over jax being conflicted over finding out that wren also is in love with fern and his life being built on loving and protecting his younger twin that he desperately wants wren to be happy but wren's happiness would come at the sake of his own happiness with fern and knowing that for anything else he'd give it up in a heartbeat but also knowing that wren would hate to see him give things up for him.

ough. neither of them realise that fern has two hands. fern kisses jax and sees wren half pulling a pout so he kisses wren as well. they both make him happy, but in different ways so they don't overlap and don't compete. he loves them both.

also, mage dropped this earlier and killed me on the spot.

[kaownah]

i finally finished all the liquors and im currently catching up on our dating sim, and i gotta say... the difference in quality is insane. the acting, chemistry, writing, development, pacing, etc, all in two series with equal runtimes (8 short 15 min episodes). our dating sim is giving everything, down to the little moments and character arcs, and the lead couple is just so! sweet!! all the liquors was pretty much the definition of stilted and forgettable, but this proves it has nothing to do with runtime, and everything to do with how you put a show together

[kenobihater]

finished my edit and rewatched it after exporting. i then decided the excessively blue cgi bridge jump (derogatory) was pissing me off SO much that i went back and fixed its god awful filter as much as i could without making the compression obvious. then i color graded the whole vid as well which took an hour bc i'm indecisive and ignorant 🤡🤡 at least the blood and explosions look better, and i don't want to gouge my eyes out as much watching the jump (i adore this movie and everyone who worked on it but girl this isn't the blue man group...)

[beargguyf]

wip sketch ill never finish bc i work too much now.... this was just to get something down tbh... in my minds eye he does get bigger than this, this is just like on the road to being healthy. ill eventually whip up a post game design when i get to that point