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ikroah · 4 years ago

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Whiskey river, take my mind, don't let her memory torture me. Whiskey river, don't run dry, you're all I got, take care of me. —“Whiskey River,” Shotgun Willie (1973)

It Keeps Right On a-Hurtin’ #15 - Vegas Outskirts

Collaborative Issue! Guest Colorist: @malpaislegate / @socksual-innuendos

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Notes / Original Pencils / Transcript:

Notes:

MAN that’s gotta hurt!! Volume 2 kicks off with a bang, literally if you count the gunshot and honorifically if you count Socks’ knockout color job on this issue. Look at those lovingly rendered bullet wounds!! Muah!!!

It’s been a relief having a month off from the comic as I handled a bunch of other things but there’s a lot to look forward to in Volume 2, as you can probably tell from that very forboding fist clench at the end there. Will Agnes and Cass get the revenge they’re looking for? Can they make it big in Vegas? Will it keep right on a-hurtin’? Find out next ish as Cass leads Agnes to meet the first of their new “friends.”

Original Pencils:

The pencils for this issue are like an autopsy report of all the things that can go wrong with your art if you don’t plan ahead and pay attention. Listen, friend, to my tale of woe, and learn from my mistakes so they don’t become yours!

First, you can see a lot of places where there’s floating objects, empty backgrounds, and incomplete heads. Part of this is because I always intended to just copy and paste repeated elements across each panel instead of drawing them multiple times, but other times I was forced to just because of my lack of planning. The top three panels on page two, for example, required me to draw the background I’d use for them on a separate page.

Second, you can probably tell that I actually had to flip the two raiders around in the final lineart because I forgot to keep the hands their were holding their guns in consistent—and since I couldn’t flip the middle panel on the second page without ruining the composition, I decided to flip all of their other appearances so that they’d be lefties. I doubt you even can seamlessly wield those particular guns left-handed.

Third, the size of the cart that Agnes and Cass are kneeling behind changes CONSTANTLY and is dramatically oversized from the third page onward. After inking these pages, it took a lot of work to correct the inks and shrink that cart in each panel, but fortunately it came out looking good.

And finally, I completely redrew the second panel on the fifth page because it wasn’t until I had already handed he pages off to my colorist that I realized having a second profile shot of Cass so soon after a first one was just...redundant and lazy-looking. So I went back to my sketchbook and whipped up a much more unique, striking angle (I also just wasn’t satisfied with the quality of my art on that panel, so I’m very glad I redrew it). But again, my failure to plan ahead bit me in the ass and my redraw attempt wound up taking up a lot more space than I thought it would, so after inking it I had to basically surgically remove it from the other inks.

I’ll be honest with you folks: part of the reason that I work in such simple, thick, high-contrast lineart is because it’s very easy to make corrections and adjustments with stuff you could technically color in Microsoft Paint.

Transcript:

EXT. SOMEWHERE IN THE MOJAVE, morning. AGNES SANDS and ROSE OF SHARON CASSIDY stand over the wreckage of a caravan, scattered over a dirt road.

CASS: Hell.

EXT. SOMEWHERE ELSE IN THE MOJAVE, midday. Looking over a second wrecked caravan, at the bottom of a ditch.

CASS: Fuck.

EXT. PRE-WAR HIGHWAY OUTSIDE OF VEGAS, mid-afternoon. AGNES and CASS survey a third wrecked caravan.

CASS: Shit. The proof is in the pudding. Or the pile of ash, rather. These attacks were done with Van Graff guns for Crimson Caravan caps. I'm sure of it.

As CASS explains her theory to AGNES, a short distance from the caravan two RAIDERS peer at the two of them from inside a barn at a ruined farmstead. They have snake-bite tattoos on the sides of their shaved heads and are holding rifles.

CASS: The scorchmarks and residue in the wreckages? That's energy weapon shit. Plasma and laser. Silver Rush special. Not like it'd be the Brotherhood. And Crimson Caravan must have bankrolled this fucked-up little hunting trip themselves.

The RAIDERS move out from the barn, sneaking up on two passers-by who’ve stopped at the caravan wreckage.

CASS: That explains why they bought me out...they needed the last loose end to saddle up back west with a tidy sum.

(NOTE: *Agnes delivered it and Cass signed it in IKROAH #7—Lou.)

CASS: It's a racket, Agnes: torch the local competition and it's win-win for both the f—

SFX: KRAK

A gunshot rips out from one of the RAIDERS’ rifles and sears across CASS’ shoulder.

CASS (gasping): —uckers.

CASS slumps down beneath the overturned caravan wagon on the road, clutching her shot shoulder.

CASS: —Aaggghghhhhhhh.

AGNES: Cass! Are you—

CASS: Fuck! Agnes, get down you moron!

AGNES ducks behind the cover of the wooden caravan wagon just as another gunshot splinters the top lip of it.

SFX: DTHWAK!

The RAIDERS advance on CASS and AGNES’ position, firing at them from off the road.

SFX: KRAK

AGNES leans over the top of the wagon with her pistol, returning fire.

SFX: BTAK BTAK BTAK

AGNES lands a shot right in one of the RAIDERS’ guts, and she drops her weapon and falls down.

SFX: SPLUT

CASS, leaning out the side of the wagon, takes as careful of aim as she can with her shotgun by holding it with her good arm. Trembling, she fires, connecting with the other RAIDER.

SFX: KBLAM

The would-have-been RAIDERS are dead.

AGNES: ...were those the Van Graffs?

CASS: No. Just some vultures.

CASS leans back behind cover to sit against the bottom of the overturned wagon again, wincing from her shoulder injury.

CASS: Ugghhn.

AGNES (slipping off duffel bag): Cass, your shoulder—

CASS: Yeah, it's been shot. I'm pretty fucking aware.

AGNES (unzipping bag): Quick, can you take your shirt off—

CASS: What!?

AGNES: —so I can dress the wound, Cass!

CASS: Oh! Good! So you weren't coming onto me on what remains of Griffin Wares Caravan.

CASS starts removing her shirt while AGNES produces a bottle of something from her duffel bag, and dampens a rag with its contents.

CASS: And since when are you a fucking field medic, anyway?

AGNES: 2269. NCR Certified.

CASS: What?

AGES: Yeah. I've been one kind of doctor or another since I was six.

CASS: What?

AGNES: Now hold still, this is antiseptic.

CASS: Since you were six!? I...shit, wait, hang on, Agnes—

AGNES pressess the rag onto CASS’ shoulder wound, and CASS winces instinctively. But, confusingly, there isn’t any pain.

CASS: ...isn't this supposed to sting like hell?

AGNES: No, not really. It's an acetic acid solution. Vinegar, basically.

AGNES begins cleaning the wound with the rag.

CASS: I thought you put alcohol on wounds to clean them.

AGNES: That's...a common misconception. It's good for tools, maybe, but too strong for skin. And it can complicate healing if you apply it directly.

CASS: So you're telling me, all my years, I've been wasting good whiskey only making my boo-boos worse?

AGNES: I mean...it's better than nothing in a pinch, but...

CASS: Well, then. Thanks for the lecture, doc. Can you just pass the whiskey anyway? Shoulder still hurts like hell regar—

AGNES hands her the whiskey bottle. She’d already gotten it out.

CASS: —dless. Oh. Thanks.

AGNES unspools a roll of bandages in her hands, then begins wrapping it over CASS’ shoulder and across her chest..

AGNES: So. It's a relatively minor wound, more of a deep graze than a real gunshot.

CASS: You'd know all about real gunshots, huh?

AGNES (unfazed): Uh-huh. I can suture it if necessary, but for now, these bandages will be fine. Just hold still. How do you feel?

CASS: I feel fucking pissed, Agnes!

AGNES recoils, taken aback slightly.

CASS: As I was saying before I got shot in the shoulder—which, however "minor" the wound, is real fucking close to my head, Agnes—this wasn't some random attack. These caravans, my caravan, got hit by the Van Graffs and Crimson Caravan. It ain't just some tragedy anymore. Now I've got names. Places. Faces.

AGNES resumes bandaging CASS.

CASS: I told you—ow! Don't pinch my tit, dammit—

AGNES: I said hold still.

CASS: —I told you, when you told me about this guy who shot you...when I let you drag me out of that fucking outpost...and when we went to Boulder City...that I would do the exact same thing in your shoes. Now, it is the exact same thing. This fucker shoots your eye out, these fuckers ash my caravan...these same fuckers I sold my own goddamn name to on a piece of paper. I mean...what else are we doing out here, Agnes? Getting shot at by Khans and Raiders just for kicks? Are we just fucking around?

AGNES finishes bandaging CASS, then leans back, pensive.

AGNES: No...no, I really guess we’re not.

CASS: That's what I thought. Your friend in Vegas can wait. Help me get mine, and we can get that shitheel together, and that's a prom—

CASS raises her arm to shake her fist as she speaks, straining her shoulder injury.

CASS: —mmmmmmghhhh. Ooww, oww, oww, oww...

CASS grabs her shoulder in pain while AGNES looks off in the distance and stands up. She looks out towards the horizon—towards VEGAS, and the pre-war casinos and hotels that still gleam and glitter in blinding sunlight.

Her fist clenches. Her brow furrows. Her body tenses, all over, staring at that city, that place.

The caravan wreckage remains alone on the highway, brahmin bones long picked clean by scavengers.

AGNES SANDS IN: IT KEEPS RIGHT ON A HURTIN’

VOLUME 2: MAKE IT BIG IN VEGAS

#fallout new vegas #fallout #courier six #rose of sharon cassidy #volume 02 #15 #ikroah archive

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icancdramahanfu · 3 years ago

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Making the first layer of Wen Ke Xing’s outfit - the Zhong Yi/中衣 top.

In my previous post, I laid out all of the items I have used to date to draft my basic pattern. The best thing about using the Hanfu Pattern Making book by TT Duong is that it tells you where to make adjustments between layers. Like add 1/4″ for layer 2 and then 1/2″ for layer 3 etc. I realized with how form fitting my layer 2 draft was, I had inadvertently determined my layer 1 measurements. Now, WKX’s outfits generally have wider sleeves than ZZS; I made a guess as to how wide to make it and the overall shape.

I am not sure if I will make the matching black pants that are underneath, I’m already looking at four layers in total and I currently live in a literal desert sooooo, yeah, I might just go pant less. However, the pattern guidebook tells you how to make the matching pants! I’m the best spokesperson for the book. Support the author, buy the book!

References include this action shot here:

Where we can see the white fabric follows the general shape of the teardrop shaped sleeves. I also used the scene here to find a guide so that the armpit fabric wouldn’t be too bulky here.

The top of the sleeve where it connects to the main part of the garment is pretty narrow as, there are usually 2-3 layers on top of that. I figured I’d keep the sleeve pretty wide for two reasons 1.) to test out how it flows and 2.) I can always make it smaller to fit inside the layers above it.

To keep my measurements straight, I turned to the layer one pattern in the book for the general shape but to transfer my current measurements.

I redrew a rough sketch of the shirt and drafted a fresh pattern on more wrapping paper (this time Christmas trees instead of the fun sprinkles). I made the curve on the neckline even smaller taking it down to 1/8″ of an inch as I liked how the 1/4″ curve looked on my second mock-up which was on top of another layer of fabric.

These are my rough sketches which I transferred to the wrapping paper with all of my measurements. All numbers are based on the previous mock-ups in my initial post and the only major adjustment was to make it shorter in length from below the waist and to change the curve at the corners to be much smaller. With the pattern pieces, I made sure to vertically align it with the selvedge edge of the fabric and was cautious with my spacing, trying to keep enough open fabric for the sleeves and the neck placket. Cutting the fabric:

Before cutting out the fabric, I made sure to sharpen my scissors with a block for knives. I then patiently traced my pattern onto the fabric and slowly cut it out. For some reason, I lack patience when it comes to cutting fabric. Not sure why. Sewing order:

The book smartly instructs you to 1.) first sew the sleeve onto the shoulder. This is brilliant advice! Take that complicated Western patterns where you have to artfully pin the fabric together and then slowly sew it together. After you sew the shoulder and sleeve together press your seams down with an iron.

2.) Sew the back seam together with right sides pinned to each other. Press down with iron.

3.) Sew the armpit/side seam/sleeve - I started just past the curve into the underside of the sleeve. Due to the large size of the sleeve it was annoying. I then went back to the base of the side seam of the garment and kept about 3-4 inches open and sewed in the direction from the waist to the armpit.

With this being the first layer, I first sewn the actual seam and then went back and overlocked the fabric in. For future layers, I will likely overlock before sewing to prevent fraying. If I you have a serger use that instead; I don’t, soooo overlock stitching is my friend.

With the top almost complete in three easy steps I then turned to the neck placket.

Neck placket fun times:

The neck placket was a little more complicated and I cut lots of extra fabric. I also doubled the width of the placket. Hanfu Pattern Making suggests a width of 2″ with about 1/4″ more for seam allowance. Just looking at the outfit and knowing that Gong Jun is 6″ tall, I guessed that the placket on his collars was wider than 2″, since you fold it over making it only 1″ wide in reality.

I made a neck placket that was 4″ wide and almost 40″ long. The best way to approach the neck placket is to think it is a giant piece of bias tape. Fold it in half and press with your iron. Make sure to fold under the edges by about 1/8-1/5″ so you don’t have a raw edge.

I cut out a 2″ strip of medium weight interfacing that was around 6″ long. Line up the middle of the interfacing with the middle of your giant bias tape/neck placket. Press the interfacing into place with your iron (if it is fuse-able) and then pin the neck placket onto the raw edge of the collar neckline. Make sure that halfway point of the placket is lined up with the back seam, which should be in line with your spine. With the placket edges folded under and it as a giant piece of bias tape, I pinned it in place and top stitched it with the right side up. I did this so I could keep my hemline neat all along the collar placket and I took it all the way down to the waistline edge, where you will add the shirt ties at the end.

You can add the neck placket how ever you feel, but this worked best for me. The curve of the neckline puckered a bit. I think this is a combination of the relatively stiff cotton fabric I used and being too aggressive in the curve. I went in afterwards and removed a few seams with a seam ripper to remove some of the puckering. Since the placket is thick enough, removing those few seams didn’t change anything and took out a few of the puckers. I think the actual outfits are made with a more stretchy fabric or they adjusted the tension while sewing to allow it to have more give and looseness.

Hemming the edges: For the slits on the side I did tiny folds; I folded the edge less than 1/8″, pressed with my iron, folded again by about 1/8″, pressed and pinned it. The vertical sides were covered with my extra neck placket bias tape. I don’t think I’ll do this with future layers, but I wanted to give it enough weight to stay fixed and lay relatively flat.

The edges of the sleeves was made by folding the hem over twice (pressing each time you fold it) and then double stitching it. This is the almost finished item, just missing adding the waist ties to the inside and outside of the left half. I very much like how the armpit turned out, a few inches of it being narrow before curving out.

The sleeve needs to be ironed, as the curve keeps wanting to fold in. I also didn’t realize how thin the fabric was until properly folding it over. Granted, I am wearing a black tank top underneath, but the contrast between the neck placket and the rest of the garment is pretty obvious.

You can see how wide the sleeve is and even with folding the edge back to make the hem, it still falls past the first knuckle on my hand. Overall, I’m happy this this so far. I need to wash and iron the shirt to remove all of the markers and try to get some of the seams to lay down properly. I am tempted to try to make this with some cotton jersey since that has more give in it (think t-shirt material) to make it look more like the layer in the drama.

But still one can even tell that the fabric in the drama outfit isn’t super thick because the cuff of the sleeve is more opaque than the rest of the sleeve, when you look at the image of them at night.

That’s all for now. Next up is making the second layer with my red cotton calico fabric.

#hanfu #hanfu pattern #pattern drafting #word of honor #wen kexing #sha he ling #WOH #shl #cosplay #historical dress #cdrama #cdrama dress

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tsarisfanfiction · 3 years ago

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Long Way From Home: Chapter 13

Fandom: Thunderbirds Rating: Teen Genre: Family/Friendship Characters: Scott, Tracy Family

Look what’s back again! I’ve got another three chapters written now, so that’s approximately three weeks’ worth of content coming along (provided I remember to post!) Sorry for the delay on this one, TOS!Scott and TOS!Virgil decided to be rather tricksy, but I finally got them wrangled!

<<<Chapter 12

Other-Virgil was just leaving his room as they turned the corner, a sketchbook in hand.

“Oh, hello there,” he said. Scott didn’t miss how his eyes flicked to his brother for a moment. “Successful trip?”

Scott shrugged, spreading his arms slightly to show that he wasn’t wearing Other-Scott’s clothes any more. “Successful enough,” he said. “There’s more on order, but we managed to find some things to bring back with us now.”

Brown eyes, painfully familiar and just like Virgil’s, glanced over his outfit. He didn’t comment, but it was obvious that like Other-Scott, Other-Virgil found his idea of casual clothes to be different.

Well, at least it meant no-one was going to be muddling them up any time soon.

“That’s good to hear,” the man said, glancing towards his brother again. Scott glanced across as well, wondering if Other-Scott was sending him any cues. His doppelgänger seemed quite content to stay out of the conversation, although he likewise wasn’t leaving them to it and carrying on to the games room without Scott. “Tin-Tin said I should talk to you,” Other-Virgil continued. “She said something about appearances?”

His voice raised questioningly at the end and Scott recalled Other-Gordon making a similar suggestion back while the others had been out on the rescue.

“Appearances?” Other-Scott asked. “What does she mean by that?”

Scott sighed, realising that he hadn’t mentioned to the others about the different appearances yet, and rubbed his face with one hand.

“My brothers don’t look like yours,” he explained. “Not as much as we look alike, anyway.”

“They don’t?” Other-Scott asked. “That’s strange.”

“Tell me about it,” Scott agreed. “Gordon – your Gordon – suggested I talk to you about it,” he continued, nodding at Other-Virgil. “I guess Tin-Tin got there first.”

“Not ‘our’ Tin-Tin?” Other-Scott jumped in. “You differentiate the fellas, but not her?”

Scott shrugged. “I don’t call mine ‘Tin-Tin’,” he explained. “We call mine Kayo.”

“Kayo?” Other-Virgil asked. “That’s a mighty strange name.”

“You’d think her a strange woman,” Scott replied. “I wouldn’t say she’s nothing like Tin-Tin, but the similarities are a lot more subtle than between you guys and my brothers.”

“Interesting,” Other-Scott commented. “You’ll have to tell us about her.”

Scott chuckled, remembering Tin-Tin’s reaction to his attempts at describing his sister. The men were likely to be even more horrified. “At some point.” He turned back to Other-Virgil. “So, did you want to do this now?”

“Whenever works for you,” Other-Virgil said. “If you’re busy with Scott now, we can do it later.”

“He was just coming to watch me remind Gordon which one of us is the billiards champion,” Other-Scott said. “You’re welcome to join us if it won’t disturb your concentration.”

“I think I can draw with you two in the room.” Other-Virgil rolled his eyes. “It wouldn’t be the first time, if that’s okay with Scott?”

He found himself pinned with both blue and brown eyes and wondered if this was how Gordon and Alan felt when they were on the receiving end of him and Virgil. “Sounds good,” he agreed. The idea of staying in the vicinity of Other-Gordon for a while longer, as he found his feet properly with the rest of this universe’s Tracy brothers, was a comforting one now that the younger man had fully proven himself on their semi-disaster of a shopping trip. He wondered if Other-Scott suspected that – whether or not he did likely depended on what, exactly, Other-Gordon had told him down in the hangar.

“Come on, then,” Other-Scott said, leading the way along the hallways – Scott once again finding himself passing the door to the lounge and hoping Not-Dad wasn’t going to appear – and down the stairs. “Laundry room’s here,” he said, pausing and sliding open a door. “You can just put them in here and Kyrano or Grandma will deal with them.”

Scott padded into the room, glancing around at the contraptions that had to be washing machines, although just like everything else, they didn’t look much like the technology Scott was used to. What was at least somewhat familiar was the splash of blue in an open wicker basket – while not identical to his own uniform, it was clearly this universe’s IR blue. It was also smeared with dirt and clearly waiting to be washed, so he dropped Other-Scott’s borrowed clothes on top, fighting the inquisitive desire to get a closer look at the uniform.

Making sure that this universe’s International Rescue knew what they were looking for if any of his brothers had somehow also fallen through trumped his own curiosity and he retreated back into the hallway where Other-Scott and Other-Virgil were waiting for him, before they all entered the games room.

“I was beginning to think you weren’t coming,” Other-Gordon commented as the door slid open. He had his back to them and seemed to be poking around with the balls. “What took you so long?”

“I thought we’d like an audience,” Other-Scott shrugged, and Other-Gordon spun around.

“What did you do to prompt all this?” Other-Virgil asked him. “You’ve not even been on the island for several hours.”

“Precisely,” Other-Scott said, striding forwards and selecting a cue from the wall, which he inspected carefully. “Gordon, off the island for several hours and more or less unsupervised.”

“Not entirely unsupervised,” Other-Gordon protested, as Other-Virgil moved further into the room and settled in a chair by the chess set. Taking the cue, Scott followed and sat himself in the other. “If we didn’t already have Brains and John’s word that he’s you from another universe, I’d be suggesting it myself after that trip.”

Scott thought that was a bit of an exaggeration, considering how off-centre he’d been the entire time, but he appreciated the words regardless.

“Another me or not, that didn’t stop you telling the world you could – and did – beat me at billiards,” Other-Scott pointed out. Other-Virgil choked back a laugh that showed just how unlikely that scenario was in reality.

Other-Gordon seemed entirely unrepentant about that, which didn’t surprise Scott in the slightest. “We can always make that true now,” he said. “Ready to play?”

In answer, Other-Scott headed for the table and scrutinised the balls his brother had been poking at. Scott suspected he was checking for sabotage.

Other-Virgil rested his sketchbook on the table, drawing Scott’s attention away from the billiards table and towards the blank paper.

“How about age order?” the brown-haired man suggested. “Should we start with John?”

“Might as well,” Scott agreed, staring at the blank page and trying to find the words to explain just how his John differed from Other-John. Without another word, Other-Virgil started to sketch. Scott blinked, not expecting him to begin before he’d started describing his brother, but it didn’t take long for him to realise that it was a sketch of Other-John that was forming on the paper, rough and ready to be amended.

Watching him was oddly relaxing – Scott had never been an artist himself, but he had memories of watching both parents and Virgil sketching throughout his life. The sight and sound of graphite over artist’s paper was familiar, homey, and Scott propped his head on his palm and tried to focus more on what was being drawn than the emotions it was drawing up.

The background clack of ball hitting ball, and smug brotherly noises as Other-Scott presumably made good on his promise to teach Other-Gordon a lesson, helped him keep his mind in the present. He glanced away from the rough sketch of Other-John to see Other-Scott grinning triumphantly at Other-Gordon as the two brothers set up a new game. One victory for Other-Scott, it seemed.

“I thought it would be easier to start with a base,” Other-Virgil said suddenly, snapping Scott’s attention back to the now-complete sketch. “Tin-Tin’s recounts of your descriptions suggest you’re just as bad as our Scott in that regard.”

“I have you for anything to do with art!” Other-Scott called over, and Scott grinned ruefully in agreement.

“He’s not wrong,” he shrugged.

Other-Virgil shook his head, and tapped the paper with a finger. “We’ll get to colour later,” he said, “but what changes do I need to make to the sketch?” He spun it around until Scott was looking at the sketch the right way up, and he squinted at it.

It was clearly John, but at the same time not. The challenge was picking out what made it different to his brother, exactly.

“What do you mean, colour?” Other-Scott called across.

“I thought you were teaching Gordon a lesson?” Other-Virgil retorted. “Keep getting distracted and he might be the one teaching you a lesson.”

Other-Scott chuckled, and then there was another clack as they started playing again.

“John’s… younger,” Scott settled on. “Slightly less angular, maybe?”

Other-Virgil whisked the paper back around to face him and started changing lines. “How old?”

“Twenty-five,” Scott said, watching as the sharpest edges to the sketch were smoothed out slightly. It was a good thing Other-Virgil, just like Virgil, was so artistically adept, because Scott knew his descriptions left a lot to be desired. He really wasn’t an artist.

It was a long process, as Scott frowned at lines and Other-Virgil redrew and redrew them again. He knew exactly what his immediate brother looked like, of course, but descriptions had never been his strong point. Thankfully, Other-Virgil was patient and seemed to have expected Scott to be pretty terrible at them.

In the background, the clacking of balls hitting balls continued, complete with commentary and occasional brotherly snipes. Scott wasn’t sure how many times they’d played by the time Other-Virgil finished his latest redraw of a line of John’s hair, and a lump formed suddenly in his throat.

“That’s him,” he said around it, trying to swallow it down before any of the other men in the room noticed. “That’s John.” Still in the grey and white of a sketch, his genius of a brother stared out of the paper at something in the distance, intent and determined. It was a painfully familiar expression, one Scott saw most often on rescues, when his brother was amassing more data even as he talked him through what he already had.

A hand slammed down to cover the sketch and Scott blinked.

“Gee, really, Virg?” Other-Gordon quibbled from where he’d suddenly materialised right next to Scott. Next to him, and peering over Other-Virgil’s shoulder, was Other-Scott.

“You fellas can see it once it’s coloured,” the artist said firmly. “And not one moment before. Go back to your game.”

Both brothers grumbled good-naturedly, but did as they were told and retreated back to the billiards table. Other-Virgil pulled his hand back and looked up at him.

“I don’t have my colours here, so what do you say about doing all the sketches now, and then we’ll go to my room to sort out colours later?” he suggested.

Once again caught by the sketch of his brother, fiercely determined and no doubt wearing that exact face right now, wherever he was, Scott just nodded numbly.

It was gently tugged out of sight as Other-Virgil turned to a fresh page in his sketchbook and started drawing again. This time, Scott was anticipating the appearance of Other-Virgil in graphite so it wasn’t a surprise when he formed out of lines of graphite on paper. The artist was clearly used to self-portraiture as the sketch was just as flawless as Other-John’s had been; it was almost a shame that he’d have to completely alter the hairstyle this time – Other-John’s wasn’t all too dissimilar to John’s, but the two Virgils appeared to have markedly different ideas on hairstyle.

Even before the sketch was presented to him, Scott reached across and tapped the brow. “Same scar,” he said, noticing that Other-Virgil hadn’t bothered to add that in, presumably because he hadn’t expected something like a scar to carry across universes. It was a fair assumption, especially as Other-Gordon had already made an observation about how his own scars differed from Other-Scott’s, but in this particular case a wrong one. Scott wondered if, like the hydrofoil, the cause was also the same.

Other-Virgil’s eyebrows raised, showing off his scar particularly well, but he dutifully added it in.

“Also younger?” he asked, and Scott eyed the paper critically. The sketch was spun around so he could see it better, and he nodded his thanks.

“Twenty-three,” he confirmed. “But don’t soften the cheekbones much.” Other-Virgil made a noise of comprehension and took the paper back to begin the long process of amending it to Scott’s awkward specifications. “And you might as well scrap the hair entirely,” he added. Other-Virgil paused and gave him an incredulous look.

“There’s no similarity there at all?” he asked. Scott shrugged and peered again.

“Maybe the hairline,” he allowed. “But completely different hairstyle.”

He got a contemplative noise for that, but Other-Virgil dutifully erased most of the hair, leaving just enough to keep the head shape obvious, before following Scott’s instructions to amend the face shape until he was happy it was his Virgil, and not Other-Virgil looking out of the paper.

“However does he keep his hair like that?” Other-Virgil commented when they finally reached the hairstyle, the sweeping peak taking shape on the paper after several amendments as Scott tried to get it just right.

“By stealing my hair gel,” he replied dryly, “and short circuiting the entire island’s power with his hairdryer.” Gordon was not the only one who remembered that incident well, even if Scott usually refrained from mentioning it – it wasn’t like he needed to, what with the squid bringing it up at every opportunity. One day Virgil was going to make minced squid out of their brother, and it was probably going to have something to do with that incident. Probably.

Other-Scott chuckled, proving that he was still eavesdropping even as he continued to thrash Other-Gordon at billiards. The younger man sounded like he was getting quite tired of being defeated, although he hadn’t yet begged off entirely. Then again, Scott suspected Other-Scott wasn’t the only one using the game as a pretence in order to listen in.

Other-Virgil ignored them as he once again redid a line in Virgil’s hair, and Scott did likewise, although in his case it was mostly because Other-Virgil had once again taken his breath away with a likeness of one of his brothers. Unlike John, Virgil was looking straight at him, greyscale eyes still warm and the slightest bit concerned, mirrored in the set of his jaws. It was another painfully familiar expression that Scott had found himself on the receiving end of many times.

“That’s him,” he said after a moment, once his lungs remembered what to do. Other-Virgil hummed and flicked the page over before the other two could make it over.

“Aww,” Other-Gordon protested when he realised. “Not even one peek, Virg?”

“Once they’re coloured,” his brother said firmly, “and not one moment before.”

“But it’s his version of me next, right?” Other-Gordon whined. “You gotta let me see that one, Virg!”

“Once they’re coloured,” Other-Virgil repeated. “If it’s too much of a trial for you, I’m sure you can leave. Aren’t you tired of losing yet?”

Other-Scott laughed again from where he seemed to be setting up another game. “He still thinks he can beat me if we play enough times.”

“I will beat you,” Other-Gordon vowed, heading over to the table again. “My turn to start.”

Other-Virgil rolled his eyes once the ginger had his back to them. “Say, how about we skip Gordon and come back to him later?” he suggested, a gleam in his eyes that was all-too familiar.

“Virg!” came the complaint from the brother in question, and despite himself, Scott found himself grinning just a little, even if the familiarity of the banter ached.

“We can do Alan next,” he agreed, although something heavy and unpleasant settled in his stomach as he realised he wouldn’t be able to dodge just how young his Alan was for much longer.

Despite the words, it was still Other-Gordon that appeared from Other-Virgil’s pencil, and the artist grinned at him conspiratorially. Scott returned it, although he was fairly sure it was weaker than it would normally be. Other-Virgil didn’t comment, or even raise a concerned eyebrow, however, so he assumed he’d got away with it.

“Younger again?” Other-Virgil asked, and Scott nodded. “Squarer jaw, but don’t soften the face,” he said. “He’s all angles.” Sharp cheekbones, sharp jaw, sharp wit. There was a lot of sharpness with Gordon, although like all of them he was soft where it counted. Squinting at the sketch as Other-Virgil made the amendments, Scott realised that while their eye colour was identical, one of the biggest differences to their faces was in fact the eye shape.

As with everything else, describing that was difficult, and Other-Virgil had to erase the same lines over and over again as between them, they tried to get it right. Then, of course, it was the hair, and it was quickly apparent that Gordon – and Alan, when they got there – had a hairstyle that Other-Virgil struggled to even conceptualise in his head. In this universe, it seemed that bangs always flopped down, not out.

“More hair gel?” the man asked, resigned, as he erased the lines of Gordon’s bangs for the umpteenth time.

“More hair gel,” Scott confirmed. “The other one is similar, by the way.”

“I will get this,” Other-Virgil said, low and determined. The stubbornness was just as familiar as everything else about his mannerisms. So far, Scott was getting the impression that while he might be a little quieter than Virgil, Other-Virgil was otherwise almost the same in temperament.

“His Alan giving you trouble?” Other-Gordon called across. Other-Virgil ignored him as, with a set jaw, he once again amended his lines.

“Almost,” Scott encouraged. “That’s close.”

“I’m not settling for ‘close’,” Other-Virgil told him firmly. “What’s still wrong?”

Scott surveyed the art critically, before pointing at a line. “Here,” he said. “Maybe loosen it up a little?”

Other-Virgil erased it and drew it again, and Scott found a familiar, fond smile creep onto his face. “That’s him.”

Like Virgil, Gordon was looking straight out of the paper at them, full of mirth and a little cheeky, like he’d just set a prank and was waiting for someone to fall into it. Unlike John and Virgil, who had both ended up drawn wearing expressions they’d wear on a mission, Gordon was all home comfort.

Scott decided not to think to hard about what their resulting expressions implied about his mental state.

Other-Virgil eyed it triumphantly for a moment, clearly basking in his success of finally nailing the unfamiliar hairstyle, before turning the page and starting to sketch out Other-Alan.

“Last one,” he said. “He has a similar hairstyle to your Gordon, you say?”

“What?” Other-Gordon demanded from over by the table. There hadn’t been any clacking of balls for some time, Scott realised, and he glanced over to see both brothers were leaning against the table, watching the pair of them from a distance. “You mean that was your Gordon you just finished?”

Other-Virgil grinned at him. “I’m doing his Alan now,” he said, and Other-Gordon whined dramatically. Other-Scott shifted his weight against the table slightly and rolled his eyes fondly.

“You should have known Virg would do that,” he said. “And aren’t you the one that keeps saying Scott’s just like me?”

Other-Gordon grumbled.

“I didn’t expect that to mean he’d be able to fall in so seamlessly with one of Virgil’s schemes,” he huffed.

“Sorry,” Scott shrugged, entirely unrepentant. Other-Gordon had spent enough time analysing him that catching him out felt a lot like a victory. From the way amber eyes narrowed, the younger man was well aware of that.

“So,” Other-Virgil said, offering him a rough sketch of Other-Alan. “How much younger do I need to go?”

Scott swallowed. “Fifteen,” he said, and was entirely unsurprised when he saw Other-Scott jerk out of the corner of his eye. “And you might want to make him a little more… smiley.” Other-Virgil had drawn a neutral expression, which was at least less antagonistic than Scott had actually seen Other-Alan wearing so far, but for his Alan it just felt wrong.

“Younger and happier,” Other-Virgil repeated, taking the eraser to the sketch and all but redoing the entire outline. “And with a Gordon-like hairstyle.”

What came out of his pencil the second time looked a lot closer, more like a base that Scott could make minor adjustments to than the initial sketch had done.

“He’s fifteen?” Other-Scott asked, and Scott braced himself for the upcoming explosion. “He’s not a part of International Rescue yet, I assume.”

Scott didn’t answer him, watching Other-Virgil tidy up the sketch before pointing out a line that needed amending.

“He’s not part of International Rescue?” Other-Scott repeated after a few moments, disbelief colouring his voice. “At fifteen? He oughtn’t even have all the licenses by fifteen, surely?”

Scott sighed, and pointed out another line that needed changing. “Alan’s been a fully fledged member of IR for a year,” he admitted. “He’s got all the licenses he needs.”

“He’s what?” Other-Scott demanded. Other-Virgil’s pencil stopped, and Scott found himself scrutinised by three pairs of eyes. “But- how does a fourteen year old get an astronaut’s license? You’re not telling me he’s Thunderbird Three’s primary pilot in your universe?”

“Youngest astronaut in history,” Scott said, letting the pride he always felt whenever he remembered that fact bleed into his voice and carefully keeping the accompanying panic back. “John was primary pilot for a while, but he’s always been happiest in Thunderbird Five, and Thunderbird Five really needed a monitor. Alan proved himself on the sims and we needed a pilot for Thunderbird Three.”

“You couldn’t do it?” Other-Scott asked.

Scott chuckled humourlessly, remembering the hollow guilt that had welled up inside whenever he’d even considered going to space without any of his brothers. That didn’t bear mentioning, however, and there was another, stricter, reason why it hadn’t been possible. “I’m Alan’s legal guardian. I couldn’t leave him to go off into space for days or weeks on rescues.” Or an unknown amount of time in another universe, but he hadn’t had a choice on that front.

“So your solution was to send him off into space?” Other-Virgil asked dubiously, inadvertently cutting off what Scott suspected was about to be a too-accurate remark from Other-Gordon. Scott shrugged.

“If he’s in orbit, it’s only a day and he’s in range of Thunderbird Five,” he said. “If he’s leaving orbit, someone – usually me – goes with him.”

“Gee,” Other-Gordon whistled, apparently deciding to keep whatever observation he’d made to himself after all. “Our Alan’s young enough to send out there. I can’t imagine him piloting Thunderbird Three as a teenager.”

“He’s a natural,” Scott said, glancing down at the half-finished sketch, currently sitting somewhere between Alan and Other-Alan in appearance. “If he couldn’t do it, I wouldn’t let him, no matter how old he was.”

“I don’t doubt that,” Other-Gordon said, emphatically enough that his brothers looked at him in surprise. Other-Gordon didn’t acknowledge them, however, and Scott found himself under another heavy yet understanding look. No doubt the other man was remembering their conversation in the car about limits. “I said it before: I bet you’re just as much of a smother hen as this fella is.” He jabbed a thumb in Other-Scott’s direction and got a lacklustre hey! of protest. “I’m sure you do a swell job of looking after him.”

A hand landed on his shoulder and he jumped a little. It was Other-Virgil, who was looking at him in some concern. “Do you want to take five?” the man asked, gesturing at the half-finished sketch. Scott shook his head.

“I’m good,” he said, peering at the paper again. Other-Gordon made an aborted noise that could well have been resigned disapproval. “His bangs go the other way.”

“You fellas have mighty different hairstyles,” Other-Virgil muttered, but dutifully began erasing the lines before pausing to shoo away his inquisitive brothers. “Are you done teaching Gordon a lesson already, Scott?”

“Not at all,” the older man said. “Come on, Gordon, if you still think you can win.”

“One day,” the ginger mumbled rebelliously, before moving back to the table to set up another game. Both his brothers laughed, and Scott found himself joining in.

Alan proved almost as difficult as Gordon to get right, with Other-Virgil again finding the hair the most complicated to get right, but a couple more games behind them later, Scott’s youngest brother was beaming out of the paper at him, wide-eyed in adoration and looking even younger than he was. It wasn’t the best expression for supporting his case that Alan was perfectly capable of handling a rocket and the responsibilities that came along with that, but it was quintessentially Alan in its essence nonetheless.

“That’s him,” he confirmed, and Other-Virgil surveyed the sketch for several moments in silence before his brothers once again tried their luck at seeing a completed sketch.

“I told you fellas,” Other-Virgil said firmly, closing the sketchbook against their curious glances. “Not until they’re coloured.”

“Whatever you fellas are up to will have to wait.” Scott’s eyes snapped to the doorway, where Other-Alan was standing, arms crossed and looking just as displeased as he had in every encounter he’d had with the young man so far. “Kyrano’s finished making dinner, so it’s time to wash up.”

“Right you are, then,” Other-Virgil said. “I’ll get these stowed in my room and we can finish after dinner?” He offered the suggestion as a question to Scott, who saw no reason to disagree and nodded.

“Sounds good to me,” he said.

“What are you fellas doing, anyway?” Other-Alan asked suspiciously.

“It seems that we don’t look like his brothers, even though he might as well be Scott’s twin,” Other-Gordon explained, putting his cue in the wall holder. Other-Scott did the same, before stashing the balls away as well. “Virgil’s drawing them for us so we know what we’re looking for just in case they fell through somewhere.”

“Didn’t John say they’d come through here if anywhere?” Other-Alan pointed out, still standing in the doorway and watching as his brothers tidied up. Scott found his way to his feet and waited for them to finish.

“Yes, but this is an unprecedented event, Alan,” Other-Virgil replied, walking over to him. Scott followed. “John’s still got Thunderbird Five looking out for them in case he’s wrong, and we’ll all be looking out as well. It stands to reason we should know exactly who we’re looking for.”

“Well, I suppose,” the blond said. Other-Virgil patted him on the shoulder a couple of times.

“Well, I’m off to put this in my room,” he said. “I’ll be down for dinner in one minute.” Then he left, leaving Scott standing with Other-Alan by the doorway, waiting for Other-Scott and Other-Gordon to finish packing up their game.

“So, what are you going to be doing until Brains and John find a way to get you home?” Other-Alan asked him. “Are you just going to laze about the villa?”

Scott raised an eyebrow at him. “Not if I have any say in the matter,” he said bluntly. “I’m not a fan of lazing around.”

Other-Gordon choked back a laugh at that, and Scott narrowed his eyes at him.

“Use your head, Al,” the ginger interjected. “We’ve got some of the best planes in the world here; you think the fella’s going to be content keeping his feet on the ground? He took a fancy to your Tiger Moth down in the hangars ‘til I told him Scott’s not allowed to touch it.”

“I haven’t seen a Tiger Moth in years,” Scott defended himself.

“Yeah, well, you’re not touching her either,” Other-Alan told him firmly. “No Scotts are getting their hands on that baby.”

“We hear you, Alan,” Other-Scott said. “Now, come along, fellas. I, for one, don’t plan on being late to one of Kyrano’s feasts.” He pushed past them and headed into the hallway. His brothers and Scott followed, ducking into a small washroom to clean their hands before trailing through the kitchen to where the dining table was set up.

Chapter 14>>>

#thunderbirds are go #thunderbirds are go fanfiction #thunderbirds #thunderbirds fanfiction #tsari writes fanfiction #scott tracy #long way from home #virgil tracy #gordon tracy #alan tracy

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soyouareandrewdobson · 4 years ago

Text

Dobbear! SYAC: The Master Review 6

I am so going to ruin someone’s childhood with that now, but...

guys, it had to be done!

Dashing and daring…

Courageous and caring!

Faithful and friendly…

With stories to share!

Doesn’t at all apply to this one artist…

Lesbian obsessed and each nerddom’s nightmare!

Dobby BEAR!

Whinning here and there and everywhere!

Making claims that are beyond compare…

This is our Dobby-Bear!

Yeah, if you can’t guess, around now is the time I am going to put down the kids gloves and will really dig into why SYAC is garbage. And a huge factor into this, is in part Dobson’s self insert past 2012.

The existence of the blue bear as Dobson officially calls it (or Dobbear as most people call it) is in my opinion rather baffling already in terms of design choices.

I get e.g. that Dobson wanted to distance himself of his past humanoid self inserts as much as possible. But why of all things a bear?

The fact I am focused on that may sound weird, but hear me out for a bit. For starters, I know that Dobson likes western animation. And seeing how western animation has for the longest time been dominated by anthropomorphic animals, I can understand why he would redesign himself as a funny cartoon animal.

But there are at least three things that feel weird about it. First, Dobson had made it clear in the past that he hates furries. So him actually redesigning himself as an anthropomorphic animal is kinda weird

In fact, Dobson himself acknowledges that realization in one of his strips shortly after his fursona took over.

Second, of all the animals to choose from, why a bear? This question is in so far valid, as that bears are not necessarily one of the first to go animals, furries or western animators tend to go for when designing an anthro. And before any furries or anthro enthusiasts are calling me a hater, let me make one thing clear: I like anthropomorphic cartoon and comic characters too, and am okay with most furries. As long as you don’t have a diaper fetish, are a pedophile or hurt actual animals, you can do and enjoy whatever you like.

But I am also aware enough of furry culture to know, that bear based anthros are most of the time hyper sexualized and muscular, connecting them to how the term “bear” is used in real life gay culture. Which is okay, I think it is just a funny coincidence that Dobson choose an animal, that most furries associate with a life style that Dobson is deeply afraid of, even if he claims to be an LGBT ally.

And as stated earlier, bears are not necessarily the go to animals for animators.

Don’t get me wrong, we all know some cartoon bears like Winnie the Pooh, Yogi Bear, Poh and the main cast of TaleSpin (btw, Kit Cloudkicker fan for life). But lets be honest here; ducks, mice, rabbits, canines, felines, equines and any other “easily to domesticate” animal in the real world tends to make better for easily recognizable cartoon characters than something that can reach a size of 3 meters tops and weigh over 500 pounds.

Truth be told, the pool of cartoon bears is so small, these are the first two things that came to my mind when thinking what may have inspired the Dobbear

And wouldn’t you know? According to Dobson, the Carebears were supposedly the main inspiration for his design.

Unfortunately, this is also more or less the most I could find of Dobson addressing what went into the creation of the character.

Which kinda brings me also to the third issue as why I think the bear redesign is weird; It is too sudden.

One day Dobson draws himself as a shaved 20 something, the next day he is a fedora wearing Carebear clone, likely created and then rejected by Care Bear villain No Heart, as part of a plot to create a mole when conquering Care-A-Lot.

… and now I need to reevaluate my choices in life, that I was able to make such an elaborate Carebear joke.

It is just a change of design that in my opinion should have been addressed either outside of the comic or in context of it. Which it kinda is, but isn’t.

See, this is the first strip with the blue bear

And then only 13 strips or so later in something called “Continuity” is Dobson more or less willing to address the change…

And he does so in a passive aggressive manner, with Persistent Pam as a stand in for those asking him what is going on, while Dobson just dismissively continues working.

On one hand, you can argue that this is just the joke. The change happened, don’t bother with it, just enjoy what is still to come. And you know, I don’t want to make a rope out of everything Dobson ever posted, including that comic.

But then you have also to account for the fact, that Dobson would eventually associate himself with the blue bear so much, he made him his avatar and icon for his comics and online accounts. In fact, that one comic I posted WAY BACK in the first Master post of Dobson reminiscing how he started SYAC?

For reasons that are a bit confusing to me, he redrew himself (badly I have to add) as the blue bear in one of his earliest strips ever. The one where he belittles the manga fangirl for drawing manga. So I have to ask, what is going on here? Has Dobson increasingly decided to reset his past? Does he want to destroy any traces of his “human” self in his work to create the illusion to any new readers, that he never was as controversial of a person as he was and that there never was a need for him to reimagine and reinvent himself? Is this 1984? And how many of you realize that this paragraph is just me going conspiracy nuts for the sake of entertainment?

But still, it is kinda weird that he went to the bother of redrawing his human self in that one background sketch as a bear. Plus, I honestly think Dobson never even attempting to “explain” the change in the pages of his comics is a wasted opportunity for some decent jokes. Like every time Dobson tries to explain why he is a bear now, something interrupts him or we only get fragments of a story that if we put them together would be as ridiculous as the entirety of “Trapped in the Closet”.

I mean, the dumbest joke idea I have in mind is that Dobson went to build a bear to get a present for a family member. Instead he was build into a bear and later on successfully sued the company, which explains why he can afford to live despite not really working on comics anymore but lecture people badly about the evils of nerd culture.

So yeah, three major things about the design choice that more or less confuse me.

But here is the thing: Confusion is nothing compared to feeling genuine disdain for the design at hand. And compared to Dobson’s earlier human designs, Dobbear is just utterly unlikable.

A lot of that boils down to the following three facts:

1. From a certain point in time on (which I will cover in more detail later on) Dobson uses his bearsona primarily as a soapboxing mouth piece to talk about “politics” in nerd culture. Or at least what Dobson perceives as politics, coming off like a condescending jackass who believes among other things that white people are inherently incapable to identify with black people…

… or that comic book shops have radicalized nerd culture, essentially calling them terror cells.

Which btw are so inherently offensive to me, I promise I will cover these two separately. One even sooner than the other.

2. If Dobbear is not talking about politics, he will tend to be a smug asshole to other people (most of the time strawmen) or their interests in one way or another. Being e.g. used by Dobson to express his disdain for criticism…

or to mock legit criticism he had gotten by exaggerating things.

All while also tending to make his critics look like inherent assholes.

These two facts, combined with Dobson’s average erratic behavior online on platforms such as dA, twitter and tumblr over the years, pretty much assured such a close association between the two, that a separation between artist and creation was not possible anymore, condemning them.

And for the record; Dobson was always a bit of a whinner who liked to act as if he was a better nerd than the average comic book fan. Otherwise, we would have not e.g. gotten Danny and Spot out of it.

But as the years went by in the last decade, Dobson turned from someone in his mid 20s, desperate to be seen as a “quirky” and likable internet persona (like certain internet reviewers), into a virtue signaling, lesbian obsessed asshole who likely regrets his life choices.

… Like certain internet reviewers.

But seriously, Dobson turned into someone who would flip the lid at something as ridiculous as Cheeto flavored chicken fries…

While also being just the worst type of condescending nerd….

All while losing his mind about politics. Especially after Donald Trump became president

And just as Dobson became a radicalized left winged jackass who saw politics in everything he consumed, so did by default Dobbear, because Dobbear was not a character with his own personality, but a mouth piece.

Something I am about to get into detail in the near future. But till then, I want to cover in the next post the following third and final fact about Dobbear that really makes him unlikable to me: The fact he can’t be happy.

#syac #Andrew Dobson #dobbear #tom preston #so...you are a cartoonist #review #master review #webcomic #comics

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puppy-phum · 4 years ago

Note

am gonna be so bold and ask three characters for the meme:

- nam sunho (my country)

- chacha (jatn)

- hei xiazi (because i wanna hear more about this boy)

have fun 💞

wow ok this was such a delight! i’m so happy you ended up asking for three bc this gives me such amazing variety ;; there are so many characters i love and have loved throughout the years and am happy to take this trip down the memory lane~

(placing under a cut obviously bc three characters at once makes this a damn novel. also, a spoiler warning for my country and sand sea!)

Nam Seonho – My Country: The New Age

How I feel about this character

Oh boy. It’s been a hot minute since I watched My Country, as you know. I still remember how I messed up the beginning and actually skipped the whole first episode, so I think I kind of… Didn’t get to see Nam Seonho being more carefree? Yes, I saw them all in the kite flying scene which still breaks me to this day, but I didn’t see him and Hwi being absolute disasters together (in the funny way). So, because of this, I think my first feelings with him were annoyance and maybe even distaste. I am a bit prejudiced like that. Especially when he got compared to someone like Seo Hwi.

Despite my first thoughts about him, Nam Seonho very quickly grew on me. I hated to see him make all those mistakes and bad choices just because he had decided that all the people he loved hating him was easier than letting go of his own wish for revenge. He was a very complicated character because of this, and I very much enjoyed that conflict within him. He tried very hard to be bad and cruel and horrible (and succeeded to some length) but underneath, he was still kind and loving and just so very, very hurt. I understood his wish to avenge his mother. I understood his hate towards his father (as we both did, that man can burn in hell). I understood why he chose to do all those things he did and still wish he didn’t have to. That there had been another way. That he could’ve trusted Hwi and work with him instead of taking this lonely path by himself. But then again, I know they both were fighting against powers that were bigger than them, against powers they wanted to protect the other from, and there were many occasions where they didn’t have any other choice but to take the worst option out of all the bad options available. My Country broke my heart with that and I still can’t be mad at it because it made all those punches so perfectly.

Simply put: I love him, but I also hate him. I am angry at him for doing all these things, for being so damn selfish, but I understand why. He is good underneath all the bad. He is so broken underneath all that grace. He deserves to think more highly of himself, and I wish he could’ve regarded himself as someone to be loved instead of someone to be left behind. He has done horrible things, some of those for solely his own benefit, but I think he still deserves forgiveness in the end. He is dear to me and watching him grow and get at least some brief glimpses of happiness made my heart swell.

All the people I ship romantically with this character

There is none other than Hwi. I can’t really ship Seonho to anyone else despite the drama trying that very badly. I never felt he would’ve worked with Hui Jae and his thing with Yeon also felt more like a bond between siblings. I also know he had a strong bond with his… second in command? Companion who he saved? Frenemy?? Sungrok but I felt like that didn’t go over there either. And hey, why change something that works? He and Hwi were meant to be, somehow. I can see it as something one sided and painful and breaking and desperate, something fragile that was never made to exist, but I can see it as something reciprocated too, something discovered and learned and gently blooming. They could work either way, either Hwi never learning about Seonho’s deeper feelings and just going away with Hui Jae, or them colliding in the middle of everything and deciding they can’t let go. It’s canon anyway that they were bonded from the beginning. I can’t remember any exact lines from the drama, but they kept saying that they were tied and I think it really works no matter what the feelings between them are.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Oh boy. Seonho didn’t really make that many friends throughout the drama because he just kept pushing people away and being a dick, but I did adore how he came to trust and care about Sungrok. They started off as enemies, Sungrok just threatening to kill Seonho any chance he got and Seonho giving back the same amount, but then they just slowly bonded? And Sungrok came to admire Seonho, and then, in the end, sacrificed a lot for him. They worked, and I was happy that Seonho had at least someone by his side. That he allowed that for himself. Also, I just enjoyed some of their banter a lot because Sungrok really gave Seonho some reality checks out there which he needed, that idiot. And the death scene still haunts me to this day, okay. Seonho after such a loss, once again, was just… So horrible to watch. He lost so much and gained so little. It was cruel that he had to lose his only self made friend too.

My unpopular opinion about this character

I have no idea what people think about Nam Seonho in general? I think my love for him is already an unpopular opinion :’D That I’m willing to understand him and forgive him might already feel strange to some. He just… We’ve gone through this, right? I have a type when it comes to characters I love and relate to. It’s angry, annoying, and broken. Nam Seonho is all three and that’s why he just makes my heart ache. He is loved despite his flaws. Hwi cares about him despite all the wrongs he’s done. He is, in some sense, still redeemable and deserving of better things.

I don’t know what else to say about him? There might be more if I remembered more of the drama in general. It’s just been a long while and I’ve basically relieved all of that through fics alone. Which we have too little of. I am so sad. They would deserve many, many words written about them sigh. Maybe one day I could rewatch this heartbreak fest too, right? Would you join me if I did?

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

As I said, I don’t really remember all the twists and things that got said or done in that show. I feel like it was very much complete. At least nothing has bothered me enough to remain in my mind. Of course, I wish the ending was different and that they were given proper happiness but I am not mad about that ending. It worked. It was some type of peace for them. Seonho figured out his most important thing in the world, his reason to live at all, and then got to die in Hwi’s arms. I don’t think there’s anything better for him, knowing who he is and what he’s done. I don’t know if either of them could’ve lived on with all the burden they would’ve had to carry after their life choices. So, I very much have to say that there is nothing I would change. Maybe if I rewatched I would think differently but for now, this is all I have.

Zhang Chacha – The Journey Across the Night

How I feel about this character

The first feeling I have for Chacha is happiness. She just made me so deeply happy all the time when I saw her in JAtN, with all of her craziness and flirting and smiles and adorable expressions. She was a delight and I adore her.

Another feeling (or feelings) would be warmth and fondness. She was so very real in that drama. She was very human. I loved how strong she was, how strongly she reacted to everything and how demanding she was with other people. She knew what she deserved from others and treated others the same way she wanted them to treat her. She was complicated but in a very loving way. She made me cry so much. She was so unafraid and so trusting despite getting her trust betrayed. She was so accepting. She was just… Everything. I can’t even give words for how amazing she was.

One strong feeling I have for her is also pride. She has gone through so much, since she was very young, and still, she manages to stand there. Still, she manages to smile and laugh and be very open with people (even if she hides certain parts very carefully). I loved that about her, how there was this balance between things she wished to tell and things she didn’t want to talk about. She had somehow found this perfect line to her intimacy with people. And then it was amazing to follow how she slowly redrew those lines with Shi Cheng and Li Jia. Those two of course had to push a bit, came a bit too close for her comfort, but in the end, she learned to trust them with her secrets. She learned that these people don’t change their opinion of her just because of her mother. It was amazing to follow the main trio’s joined growing process. And Chacha somehow felt like she was the most competent out of all of them, Li Jia probably falling to the bottom instead and Shi Cheng hanging somewhere in between, but it was somehow so comforting to watch her stumble too. To find herself again. To reach outside of the lines she had come to know within her life. (And because of all of this growth, I can’t even put to words how much I love JAtN.)

All the people I ship romantically with this character

You pretty much know this already but Li Jia of course. And then Shi Cheng (or A-Cheng I guess?) too because I am still mesmerized with the thought of having them become a trio. They would work so well like that. They balance each other out. They’re such a mess but they ground each other in this messy world. Everything is simple when it’s the three of them and I adore that for them. They would love each other so well. They would be so happy and would continue to grow. Also, I just love it how different Chacha’s relationship with both of the boys is because that leaves such interesting options for their romance.

My non-romantic OTP for this character

To be honest, the main trio falls in here too. I adore them as friends, first and foremost. They just work so well like that! I love how they keep helping each other when it comes to understanding all of them. I love the friendship between A-Cheng and Chacha because they bicker, but they are so supportive of each other too. A-Cheng would fight the whole world for Chacha. Chacha would punch A-Cheng in the face when he needs a reality check. They love Li Jia so fiercely, both of them, and Li Jia loves them back the same amount. It’s wonderful to watch.

Another one is Sharp. Their friendship is just so soft. They have grown up together and Sharp is like an older brother and a dad to Chacha and I love that for them. And then Chacha is this huge support and help to Sharp too, his closest connection amongst people. Chacha is so protective of him. She takes zero shit when it comes to the people she loves because it doesn’t matter to her who they are and how society sees them. And just. I don’t even know what to say about Chacha and Sharp. I loved how they understood each other even without any words and then did all these random things instead. The stairs jumping thing was so amazing and broke me so badly. They showed how deeply certain people can affect who you become in the future. It’s a relationship I wish I had for myself.

My unpopular opinion about this character

Oh no. To be honest, I don’t know if I have anything but love for Chacha. She is one of those very few female characters I actually like. One of the few I can even relate to, on some level. She was well written. She felt consistent and fleshed out. She had complexity and her own character outside of the romance which is usually the part that irks me if it’s not handled well. She was not just “the girl”, she was her own self and had her own story to tell and her own problems and her own flaws and decisions and mind. She was good. I have nothing else to say.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

God I can’t say this here because you haven’t finished the drama yet :’D I don’t want to spoil anything. Come ask me about it once you’re finished okay?

Hei Xiazi - Daomu Biji

How I feel about this character

Wow I feel like I come here to dig out my heart to present all these thoughts to you. But I don’t complain. Hei Xiazi, Hei Yanjing, Hei-ye – he’s an enigma, okay. I am not sure how to grasp him. He gives me different feelings in every adaptation where I see him, a little like Pangzi who I talked about while answering the other asks. But for Hei Xiazi, it’s also a bit different? He fits so differently into every story. So let me try to unpack all of that.

In Reboot, Hei Xiazi gets probably the biggest role between all the three adaptations I count him as part of (in Explore With the Note we see him maybe thrice and that doesn’t give much to think about so I exclude that. Though I love it how obviously he flirts with Xiao Hua even there lol). He was this funky secret agent type of guy there. He went to places and did stuff and fought people and maybe exploded something. He had his own romance story going on in that one and it, surprisingly enough, made me emotional. It intrigued me because Hei Xiazi is this deep mystery no one seems to know (not even NPSS probably) and Chuchu was slowly figuring him out? I liked that. I liked seeing that soft side of him and maybe the most serious side we ever get to see of him? It was kind of amusing how lost he was before that young woman.

My second meeting with him was in Sand Sea. I wasn’t that sure about the actor in that one, but he managed to give Hei Xiazi this very… Dramatic feeling? After Reboot’s epicness and somewhat lightness on his part, it was kind of a shock how shabby and gruesome and almost cruel he could be. Sand Sea in general seems to bring out darker sides of all the main characters, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised, but that still shocked me. Hei Yanjing being cynical! And snarky! And almost evil! He felt so cold in that one. I started to realize that he also has all these burdens to carry. That he also has pains we don’t know about. That he has all this past hurt we aren’t privy to. It made me want to wiggle my fingers inside the tiny cracks I could see in him (especially through his relationship with Su Wan) and pry him apart. He fascinated me but unfortunately, was left to the shadows at the end.

And then Ultimate Note happened! And I was so cynical about how he looked, how Liu Yuning made him look, that I wasn’t sure how seriously I could take him. I was so prepared to like him less than I had because Reboot’s version still felt like the best one. But, surprise surprise, I came to love him. I adore Liu Yuning’s version of him because he’s just so silly and confident and unapologetic and doesn’t really care what others think about him when he can survive without them anyway. I was a bit horrified with the strong humor aspect they gave him with his money craziness but that also worked in the end? I grew so fond of him.

So, my feelings for him are a mess and go in many directions but I do like him as a character. I love it that Xiaoge has this other immortal around himself who is so different. I love it that he is a complete mystery (and so I can put my hands on him as I wish). I love it that he’s full of these cracky jokes. I love how cool he is but how he also manages to be the most uncool person out there. Maybe that’s his charm. (All the leather totally isn’t the other charming thing about him, nope.)

All the people I ship romantically with this character

Oh boy. Like I said, I did enjoy him with Chuchu in Reboot. They worked in some sense, or at least it was kind of interesting to follow their very… random romance? Hei Xiazi really was so lost with her and it was so amusing when usually he’s so sure of himself. It was puppy love and never led anywhere but it was sweet nonetheless.

But then? After Ultimate Note? Is there anything else but Heihua? Not really. I like those two together because they’re such polar opposites but somehow manage to complete each other. For Hei Xiazi, Xiao Hua is someone who is his match and won’t fall behind no matter where he goes (that is his biggest concern when it comes to Chuchu who is just a normal person and not a tomb robber). Who he can tease without worrying about crossing some type of line. Who understands secrets and not being able to talk about certain things. Who understands death and loss and pain. And for Xiao Hua, Hei Xiazi is someone who will take him as he is. Who doesn’t care that he’s the head of one of the Mystic Nine families. Who allows him to be his cynical and calculative and neat freak self. Who makes him smile. They’re amazing. I hope we can watch Ultimate Note together at some point and you can see them being chaotic gays together :’D

My non-romantic OTP for this character

Ah, I feel like Hei Xiazi is very similar to Pangzi when it comes to this too because he just knows everybody. He’s just worked with so many people throughout the years that he has connections everywhere. And I don’t even know how tight those connections are in reality? He feels a bit like a ghost, just drifting in and out of people’s lives. He doesn’t stay. He doesn’t have anything permanent to come back to. He just does his job to whoever is paying him the most and then moves on. It makes me kind of sad but also suits him.

But from what I’ve seen him now, I have some relationships I love to see him in. The first one is with the Iron Triangle because he feels like this silly uncle, especially to Wu Xie? One more uncle for that boy haha. Then with Pangzi they are really very similar and get along great because of that (Reboot is a delight with this). And with Xiaoge it’s just so funny to see him continue his joking XD He’s the only one who I know can tease Xiaoge and get away with it. They are some type of friends? I’m not sure if they know their relationship even themselves but it warms my heart.

Then there’s him with Su Wan! I was very doubtful about that relationship once I first heard about it. Su Wan is such a soft and gentle and naive boy, I couldn’t imagine him being with someone like Hei Yanjing. But wow, they work so well? Su Wan adores his Hei-ye. He just wants to make his master proud! And even if Hei Xiazi is very annoyed by Su Wan and cynical about him at first, Su Wan really surprises him. He’s very smart and capable and learns quickly. He clicks with Hei Xiazi and somehow ends up honing some of his sharper edges, especially after all the darkness he’s obviously met before the events of Sand Sea (man has been stuck on a desert for ages?? No wonder he’s a bit done with everything). It’s so cool :o Probably the best duo if I consider all the parent/guardian/teacher relationships our boys acquire in Sand Sea (Yang Hao and Huo Daofu are such a shit show and then Li Cu and Wu Xie are just way too questionable and in need of so much therapy oh boy). I love them. I’m so excited to write about them :’D

My unpopular opinion about this character

As always, I have no idea what opinions there are regarding Hei Xiazi. I don’t think I have even given him so much thought that I would be able to give any opinions. I am still just euphoric about the fact that I’ve come to love him. I’m so happy Liu Yuning loves him too. He’s a secret I’m keen on solving. He’s cool. I hope there was more content about him. I am so excited about my standees!!! Sorry, I really don’t have much to say here haha

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

If I could get one thing (because let’s be honest, at this point I would love a whole side series for Hei Yanjing because I am just so intrigued), that would be more of him in Sand Sea. Especially at the end of it? Because after falling for Heihua, I just keep thinking about that brief glance and nod he and Xiao Hua share across their battlefield. They never talk there and I wish they did. I wish I could see that. I wish I could hear Hei Xiazi talking about Xiao Hua’s damn fake funeral with him. They have a bond between them, I wish we could see more of it! But for now, I guess I need to make do with writing that myself hmph

thank you so much for sending me this ask! i’m sorry it took a while to answer but you know me the best so i’m sure you will forgive me. i had fun and i hope you enjoyed reading all of this ^^ ♥

#wow this is long #a damn novel #but i love all of them!!#thank you #gonna tag this also as #my country: the new age #the journey across the night #dmbj #hei xiazi

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kornyo · 5 years ago

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Hello, my name is korny and some of you know me as a former beta, then sweet elite’s former clothing artist, that also (singlehandedly) drew the animated mini-game with momo and the little coffee and coin icons. I never had a proper introduction which is why probably most of you see me for the first time now.

I didn’t plan on publicly making a statement, but it has been brought to my attention that the se management said rude and nasty things that – most importantly – are just plain bullshit and I cannot let this be said without a proper response.

If you click this link you will find a google doc with various screenshots, showing what exactly has been going on that made me (& cecile) finally leave the team. I made the doc and the screens a few days prior to leaving (April 2019) and already shared it with all the betas and some staff back then, but also some people on tumblr who have come into my dms asking me to clarify what happened. I feel the right time has come to share this link with the public, although it might be a little confusing to understand for some.

Now, what bothers me the most about serenas ugly behaviour from the past few days is the topic of “’lazy’ cecile”. I’d like to clarify that this entire post is MY opinion, and was written because *I* am angry about this, I was not forced to write this whatsoever by Cecile or anyone else. I’ve kept my mouth shut so far bc I could not be bothered, but this is where I draw the line.

“Lazy Cecile” has been something even BEFORE my beta days (which started in January 2018). Serena used (and still does, as you can see in her latest posts) to call Cecile “lazy” a lot jokingly, but saying it that often didn’t make it funny anymore, and it certainly isn’t a nice thing to say to a good friend. She continued to say it even after Cecile approached her not to.

To add, Cecile is - if not THE - most hardworking person that ever participated in the production of the game. While juggling a full-time job, she also drew AND redrew ALL the sprites, for a short time also drew ALL the illustrations WITH customization (2 genders x 3 three different hairstyles), AND new backgrounds because An already left the team. And that’s just the art she did! She also took part in writing large chunks in almost every chapter, even writing an entire big ass chapter 7 ON HER OWN, which she now has posted on her blog @retconomics (which Serena in response tried to make us afraid by telling us how merciful she is by not suing us for copyright. Your case wouldn’t be that strong honey LMAO not without a contract anyway 😉 ). ALL WHILE WORKING A FULL DAY JOB AND GETTING A DOG, WHICH ALSO REQUIRES A LOT OF ATTENTION. Meanwhile, it took Serena several months to almost a YEAR now, guessing from the release date, to write chapter 6 and it wasn’t a rare case for her to magically loose the file or it getting corrupted. So please tell me how the fuck cecile is lazy? In any fucking way?

Her time schedule was very demanding, so of course we had to cheat a little bit, which brings me to my next point: professionalism. Serena claims that Cecile was very unprofessional, “cutting corners” and her art “unpolished” and “not up to par”. In her example of ‘proper’ professionalism, serena used this image:

Illustrating how the new artist does things better and more polished.

This is where I call huge, MAJOR bullshit.

I have worked on the sprites with cecile. Due to the tight deadline Serena has given us, Cecile would give me the rough sprites and I would finish them & look for any spots that were smudges/did not have clear edges or full transparency. Wanna know how these files looked like?

Hm! Absolutely no fucking different! The expressions were all on one layer, unlike in the example above, but as Serena said: she didn’t say anything against that. That was because Serena wanted to pump content out, which, fair enough, and she needed everyone in the team to “set priorities”, as she said. And adding so much customization was NOT a priority at that time and she knows it.

However, if it DID bug her that much, it’s her own fault if she won’t say “hey Cecile, could you put all the brows on one single layer, all the mouths etc”. And if her excuse is that Cecile lacked the time, I could’ve done it just as easily, as I worked on the sprites anyway and did not have the huge workload cecile had at that time. If the manager is unhappy with their product, they should say something, otherwise nothing will happen. So, if Serena was unhappy with the ‘lack’ of expressions (lets be real tho, 5 expressions isn’t lacking at all)? Her fault.

“Not to mention, all of the sprites will be polished and the artstyle will finally be consistent throughout the entire game (something that our old artist really struggled with at times). Also, both Alita and Ariel are awesome at what they do, take growth and sustainability seriously, and constantly look for ways to improve and build onto the world of Sweet Elite.” Taken from here (x).

Ah, yes. You want consistency and yet hired two artists with two very different styles, and even *advertised* it as something good. Also, if somebody improves art wise, they rarely stay the same way. Art is FLUID. Art CHANGES, especially while improving. And if ceciles art was so unprofessional looking and unpolished for you serena, why didn’t you just tell her to stop drawing? Why not “get rid of the garbage” sooner? Would have saved both you and cecile the clownery that has happened and is going on right now.

(taken from here)

Also calling Cecile a weakness while she literally held the weight of the entire game on her shoulders while having to provide so much art and writing while you failed to write even one chapter during all that? You’re pettier than you care to admit.

I literally could go on and on about this, but this is already 1k words, so im gonna wrap this up. But I am so mad about this “boo hoo there is a narrative spun against me ☹” “I was creatively constricted by my cowriters” (also bullshit lmao, but another topic). You’re just a big liar and an awful person overall, and don’t get me started on your boyfriend.

While you’re getting “rid of the garbage”, please also remove MY minigame which I was forced to make while I was collecting money for my dog, and pay me 100€. You can have the clothes as I actually *agreed* on doing that for no money. 25€ for all the coffee and coin icons would be appropriate as well.

Now, as a former fan thats been on this journey since 2015, I am very dissapointed in how this game is developing. You’re taking this game into a direction you promised not to - not diverse, full of clichés, mainstream. As a fan, this broke my heart. A lot.

I hope you learn that your actions have consequences and that I will NOT be quiet if you decide to spit some lies again.

#sweet elite #se-serena #long post

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protectwoc · 4 years ago

Note

for the ask game! dawn and porcelain

i’m going to assume you mean fawn because I couldn’t find a color under “dawn” but i’m also blind so feel free to correct me!

porcelain: an tv show you used to love

i used to be obsessed with once upon a time. my family watched it every sunday for its entire runtime and while i maintain that the first three seasons fucking slap, it transformed very quickly into hate-watching for us. still fun tho.

fawn: any interesting family stories?

almost everyone in my family has a weird story related to their name. my dad’s birth name is a diminutive of a real name even though they don’t sound v similar (think peggy vs. margaret) and when he went to go live w his grandmother for a time she was like “that’s not a real name lmao” and she just... changed it and THEN she made him go by her surname so even though his birth certificate says “peggy smith” all his diplomas and shit say “margaret sanders”.

also my mom’s name is not v common (verging on weird) and she got it because when she was born she was like the first grandchild to be born on either sides of her family and everybody wanted to be involved. particularly this one weird drunk uncle/not an uncle/we don’t actually know how/if he’s related to us. but everybody wanted to name the kid and so my grandparents had everybody write a name down and they put it in a hat and drew one. and her name came out and they were like “fuck, redo” and then they redrew and it came out AGAIN. and then when it came out a third time they were like “guess its God’s will or whatever” and that’s how she got named.

also my grandmother got her name because she fell through a building.

#raetalks

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escherenigmart · 5 years ago

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Inktober 2019 Retrospective

This is mostly for my own benefit. Fair warning, I slipped into “self assessment at work” mode, so the language is a bit odd. A reminder, I have no formal art training, but do have formal engineering training.

So read on if you want my thoughts on my own work. Or, y’know look away.

Summary

My goal was to “finish” Inktober, posting 31 fully inked drawings over the course of the month. A secondary goal was to use and practice with the shiny new Copic markers my dearly beloved, @godsdamnednamethieves, gifted me back in September.

I achieved both these objectives, and while there were some rough patches, and many nights where I stayed up far later then I should have, I’d say it went fairly well. It was helped that I took a week-long “staycation” in the middle of the month.

That said, there is clearly room for improvement in my art, time-management, and process. It is my next objective, moving forward, to incorporate what I have learned, about my self-discipline, art, and tools, into a stable plan that promotes growth.

Onto specific issues.

Tools

For Inktober 2019, I used three sketchbooks, Pilot’s “color eno” mechanical colored pencils, gummy erasers (I’ve had them so long I don’t know the brand), my Copic Multiliners, and my Copic Sketch markers.

Sketchbooks:

Adhesive pinding, flip-on-short edge. This was the book I started on, and has been my primary sketchbook this year. The pages were already tearing out infrequently, but once I got started in Inktober this accelerated and many pages tore out. Would not recommend.

Slightly yellow paper, bound with thread in smaller numbers. For Inktober I just used this to keep sketch ideas and play with layouts, and did not put any “final” illustrations in it. It lays flat on the scanner, and no pages have torn out. I’ve been very happy with this style of book, and plan to continue with this style for my future sketchbooks.

Hard-bound thick paper, thread-bound and glued to the hardback. About a week into October I ordered a new sketchbook, and ordered this one. Thick paper, holds the colored ink well, looks nice. Does not easily lay flat for scanning or drawing, though this was mitigated by leaving more margins.

The colored pencils worked well enough, though I quickly discovered that colored pencils and Copic markers do not play well together. This led to me refining my technique and relying less on detailed pencil sketches before I began inking. Need to order more light blue lead, as that is the color I go through fastest by far.

Multiliners are still a hit-and-miss. My 0.3 multi-liner from the B-2 pack had the nib fall out, and from what I can tell that style of marker/pen/whatever can not have the nib replaced. My 0.3 Multiliner SP wound up being my work horse pen, though I also used my 0.1 Multiliner for fine detail, and my 0.8 and 1.0 for borders and some lettering. Oddly, before my 0.3 multliner failed me for the last time, it was reliably giving narrower lines from the 0.3 multiliner SP. I don’t know if this was just a lead-up to the nib-failure, or if there’s a bigger difference between the SP and the pens from teh B-2 pack. But even beyond that, the SP feels nicer in my hand, and was more reliable. When I need new pens, I’ll probably bite the bullet and get more of the SP variety.

Copic Sketch markers. This was mostly a learning experience, figuring out what works, what doesn’t, how to use them, and so-on. Overall I’m very happy, but I’m still very bad at choosing colors. I repeatedly went to my husband to make color choices for me, often to great effect. So if you like my color choices, give him the credit. If you think my color choices are awful, give me the blame. A few things that bothered me were that I noticed some of my drawing picking up little splotches or dots far away from where I was working. This is particularly notable on the “Warrior of the Beach” picture. My theory is that either I’m getting ink on my hand, then transferring it to the page when I rest it, or that when I’m putting caps on/pulling caps off, I’m sending little droplets of ink flying.

A few of my markers gave me a little trouble, but I’m not sure if it’s just because I don’t know what I’m doing or because I really did use W1 and C1 that much. I need to get a small scale so I can see if they’re actually low on ink or if I’m just a noob.

Process

The days where I was most happy with my work was when I had an idea, toyed with layout in my sketchbook, and then redrew the whole thing. When I was least happy was often when I floundered about with no ideas, and then tried to draw something, anything, around 9 pm.

What this means (to me) is that I’m still relying too much on “inspiration” rather then discipline, which is a long-term problem.

Beyond that,taking the time/luxury of a full sketch (in a different book) to plan layout, workshopping text with the hubby, and splitting up inking from coloring (by hours or days) improved the quality of my work. Even still, some of the pieces I’m very happy with had little to no planning.

For example, “Ripe” was done with basically no planning. After deciding to do a dude doing pull-ups, I started on the text on the bottom with a ruler. About half-way through drawing the dude I decided to make it Dave. At some point I hit the “clever” idea of making it an immovable rod instead of a mundane pull-up bar. And then I cursed myself, because I came up with a better text layout, “Immovable Rod, Ripe Bod”, but it was too late to use it.

The Art Itself

The big part.

Some days I was very happy. Some days I floundered (can you guess which category my “pattern” piece falls into?). Overall though, I think I showed improvement, both in line-work and color-work, over the month. That said, “Mindless” and “Bait” still make me very happy.

I also realized that I strangely enjoy text. Whether it was using little banners, comic-style speech and narration boxes, borders and fancy fonts, it was a lot of fun and helped contextualize the pieces. Incorporating text is definitely something I want to continue to do.

Playing around with layouts, borders, framing was also unexpectedly fun. The later pieces where I restricted my “work area” with borders I think turned out much better for the limitation, with the framing devices often helping tell the story. In comparison, pieces like “Overgrown” or the early “freeze” and “build”, don’t have a firm ending, and felt lacking to me.

Flaws: hands, feet, and legs in general. And as much as I enjoyed playing with layouts and borders, I can’t use that as an excuse to not draw feet and more complicated leg positions. I clearly need to spend more time doing simple figure sketches, both whole-body and specific body parts.

Conclusion

Inktober was great, if time permits, I’ll probably do it again next year. But probably not the “full marathon”, dropping down to “half marathon” so I don’t stay up quite so late.

Also, I need to do a nicer illustration of Xanadeux. She’s only got that one panel. She needs more love.

#Retrospective

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ailuroscorvus · 5 years ago

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So, if you’ve been reading my tags, you might have noticed me talking a bit about the fact I got back into drawing recently. Since then I’ve been aiming to do three sketches every day and yesterday I got a calendar and stickers with the intention of setting up a reward thing for every day I did just that. And since I’d messaged my sibling the first day of my daily sketches I was able to go back and mark when I’d started up until I got the calendar. And I noticed I’d been able to keep up with the whole daily sketches thing for a month. So in celebration, I’m showing them all off here.

first page! I was so proud of myself. when I started I actually didn’t have an eraser which was a bit annoying lol. I got one by the third day though, so the dunsparce was my first picture where I could clean it up a bit. also I was using Pokemon Go as my main reference for pokemon (and sometimes XY), but I didn’t know how to take pictures of pokemon in it until the horsea pic lol.

around this time I acquired some markers with the intention of finishing up at least some of my pictures (I prefer finishing them up on my computer, but my tablet needs a new cord, so for now I can’t do that) but I found they bled through my pages more than I liked so I haven’t really used them since. So my pics will remain unfinished until I can get a new tablet cord (which might actually be soonish, since I’ve figured out what cord I need. just need to find the time to get one)

around this time I realized that I could use Let’s Go as reference for first gen pokemon and started using that for pokemon I didn’t have in Go yet. also redrew Castform which let me see how much I’d improved. this was also the two week mark of how long I’d been doing my daily drawings, and I remember how happy I was to realize that.

I started getting more confidant at this point, and made a point of drawing some pokemon designs I’d been a bit intimidated by before (like the nidorans, poochyena, charmander, and to an extent ekans). didn’t want to do that constantly though since I knew I often have issues if I tackle stuff too difficult for me, since that often led to me deciding my art sucked and I should just quit in the past. I’ve been able to avoid that so far currently thankfully, even when I’m not entirely happy with how my sketches come out. I guess I’m just getting better at reminding myself that even if the drawing didn’t turn out how I wanted, the most important part is that I’m having fun with it ^^

not as much challenging myself here, in part because I saw my nephew around now and while I love him dearly, being around him can be rather tiring and that tends to carry over to the day afterwards too.

oh hey, I finally started drawing non-pokemon stuff lol. part of that was PMD RTDX being announced, and I was stuck on that for a few days (starting with the skitty and chikorita, ending with the makuhita) part of it was me seeing advice on how to draw straight lines and wanting to test it, and another part was me getting back into neko atsume.

also a few drawings I know I made while that last page was being worked on, but I’m not completely sure when (I know it was after the skitty and chikorita drawing, since the first one is meant to be my RTDX hero in her human form and was done on the same day as them)

they were drawn on a seperate page since I wanted to be able to keep track of my daily sketches and since I was doing a set amount every day, I could do so by counting them (probably won’t do that from now on since I have the calendar). the first drawing of Kay was really good for my confidence in drawing humans, since it helped remind me that I don’t have to make my pictures of humans realistic/serious to look nice ^^

and my most recent page! the crow was an experiment/study for me (wanted to figure out more about how feathers work. since drawing wings can be pretty fun, and I have a race I’ve created that I’ll need to know how to draw feathers to depict them well) and I think it turned out pretty okay. also starting at the espeon, I started using pokemon models I downloaded on my computer as my main references. also the drawing of a human here is that first one I used a pose reference for, which I really think helped a lot with how well she came out ^^

so anyways, that’s all I’ve done so far! it’s nice to have an excuse to look back and see my improvement in just a month. I’ll try to keep it up and get even better ^^

#my art

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crescentmoonrider · 5 years ago

Text

some details from my recent comic (mostly environment)

also, stuff that hit the cutting room floor and isn’t present in the actual thing

[link to the comic, it’s 5 pages of kekkai sensen noir AU]

so, as some might have noticed (and as i said in the tags of the comic i think), i paid A Lot of attention to the details and environments in this comic. so i thought i’d explain some of the stuff i had in mind while drawing

surprisingly, i have nothing of importance to say about the brick wall (on page 1) i spent over 5 hours on - aside from it being bricks bc, well, new york, man

or, as the artistic director for the bbb anime Kimura Shinji said : “the most emblematic buildings in new york are from the time when art déco was “in”” and “the image of the 70s new york was the one that satisfied me most [in terms of mood]”

(ive got loads of interviews with the anime staff that came with the dvds i bought, though in french, but if anyone is interested i could translate some of them)

anyway that’s what i looked up for reference. 70s streets, emblematic new york architecture (meaning bricks and side stairs or whatever these things are called), some noir movies back alleys to fit the theme of the AU, and four new york taxi photos for a result that is

... yeah

details i do have loads to talk about though !

this poster (on page 2) is based on an actual ad for the city of new york, featuring the empire state building

so why did i choose to put this element in daniel’s office ? obviously, the setting is hellsalem’s lot right ? why keep an ad of a city that basically doesn’t exist anymore - plus, what kind of person keeps an ad of their own city ?

(also, side note, is- is the huge building that we see tumbling down at the start of the Collapse in the anime. is it the empire state ?? did the empire state get scraped from new york/hellsalem’s horizon right as Mr. Kimura said he based his backgrounds on this kind of architecture ?)

anyway, this poster was my way of slowly building up the... let’s say static state daniel is in, in this AU. page 3 mentions “The constant numbness that’s been following [him] for the past three years.” and that was my attempt at introducing this idea environmentally

this daniel refuses to move past the disappearance of marcus, refuses to accept it, and that form of denial kind of leads him to get. stuck in place - or maybe stuck in time, leading me to

this glass of water (page 2 still)

how long has this glass been sitting here ? who knows. a while, certainly, if the way it’s sweating is any indication

how long has daniel been standing looking at nothing through that window, stuck inside his thoughts, until reality calls him back whenever a client walks in ?

how many times has it happened ?

on the same desk, we have... quite a few pictures

(yes i put effort into this detail explanation, yes i redrew the pictures for this one)

(also i realize i put the pencil on the left side out of habit, so i guess daniel is now left-handed. ooops ?)

on the center of the desk, we can see... Leonardo Watch ? yup, that’s him, he has a file dedicated to him, and daniel apparently followed him around enough to get 4 pictures taken on various occasions, and one mugshot he got.... somewhere

daniel is, in fact, not working on a case relating to leo. officially. alright, so, i haven’t figured out the way everything fits together, but daniel’s search into his brother’s disappearance lead him places, among which research into Things You Can’t See, and as such, the eyes of the gods

pictures 1-3 are just leo in various situations (meeting up with nej, eating at diane’s dinner, waiting for his train)

picture 4 shows leo on a bench, obviously interacting with.... someone ? who cannot be seen. even though leo clearly has his arm over their. shoulder, probably. daniel annotated the picture by hand, circling the empty space at leo’s side, and adding the commentary “doesn’t appear on photos?”, indicating that whoever was there could, in fact, be seen by human eyes

(leo, what the fuck kind of friends are you making in this AU)

on the right side of the desk, literally put aside, is a file full of daniel’s official work. and a picture related to his most current case

not explicit, or even implicit, but probably a fun fact, this one file is just. a collection of investigations into one Zapp Renfro’s many affairs, each investigation related to a different case

i’m not saying zapp keeps daniel fed through his many infidelities, but i’m not not saying it either

if they ever actually meet, daniel is either going to shout at zapp forever for being a garbage person, or he will thank him for all the easy work. or he might do both

so how did daniel take these pictures ? did he use a portable camera, like any old-fashioned detective would ? or did he go the modern way, and simply used his phone ?

the answer is neither

welcome to “i couldn’t fit this in the comic so just take it”, featuring daniel’s left eye ! my headcanons for his canon self vary from day to day (and also whether we’re talking manga or anime, since his design slightly differs), but in this AU, we’re going with a huge scar and an artificial eye

the eye is a product of beyondian technology. pure tech, no magic involved. it works as a covert camera, but mainly serves as, you know, an eye

sometimes daniel sees people with his right eye that the left one seems blind to, and something tells him he should probably not ask about it if he can avoid it

next page !

those who saw me post my progress in real time already know this one, but i still can’t get over the fact that i put research into a single shot of a small part of a watch. but i did

anyway the watch is an actual existing one. it’s a Boucheron “Epure”, steel with a white quadrant, and a black gator bracelet. you can look it up

and now we get to the One thing i really, really wanted to put in the comic, but had to refrain myself out of a desire to keep things not too cliché. i mean, shady client comes in, detective thinks to himself “the moment i saw him, i knew he was trouble” while dragging on his cigarette...

look, steven is heavily femme fatale (homme fatal ?) coded already, and is trying to look decent and Not like he murdered someone/is planning on murdering someone, because that’s precisely the problem he needs daniel’s help with. murder accusations

anyway he can not decently show up in a fur coat looking like some mafia boss

but BOY do i wish he would

#kekkai sensen #blood blockade battlefront #daniel law #steven a starphase #bbb noir AU #yumi's art #long post #so i guess i just exposed myself as That arrogant artist who cant shut up about how much they thought about their work eh #look its the first time i put this much effort into the details and environment of a comic #or even an illustration. hell i rarely do backgrounds at all really #so i kind of just want to ramble forever about this one #(maybe this way i wont have to think about whatever ill do next)#uh yeah also im sorry for not putting this under a read more i just couldnt figure out a good place to cut it

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foolsiwillshowthemall · 5 years ago

Photo

This was a last-minute prop that I designed and printed for my wife to take to DragonCon.

My wife is going to DragonCon this year, mostly to meet up with friends she knows from various online games including City of Heroes. She’s going to be attending a steampunk-themed ball, and also a City of Heroes seminar, and she asked me about two weeks before the convention if I could 3D print for her a Nemesis Staff, a weapon used by a steampunk-themed villain group in the game. It wasn’t completely out of nowhere, as I had mentioned in the past that I could probably make one, but it still only left me just over a week to design the prop and print all the parts.

There are tools for ripping 3D models from City of Heroes, but they’re complicated to work, and the resulting 3D files need a lot of cleaning up. Furthermore, from looking at the prop in the game I could see that I was going to have to redraw it from scratch anyway, so I decided to just freehand it using screenshots as a guide. This is a 15 year old MMORPG, and the 3D models are painfully low-poly and low-resolution to begin with. Most of the actual fine details are only hinted at, with barely-visible engraving at the limits of the low-resolution surface maps, and the mechanics of the game models don’t actually work anyway with the moving parts actually clipping through each other during the animation cycle.

Rather than try to precisely recreate the game prop, I decided to try and figure out what the nemesis staff should look like as a real object, which meant trying to reverse-engineer the intent of the original artists. Dark stripes on the sides of the hub and inside of the outer ring are implied to be gear teeth, so I redrew it as a planetary gear mechanism with working gear geometry. I wanted the outer ring and gears to be able to freely rotate, even though I didn’t have time to actually make it motorized. I ended up having to add a few additional support pieces to hold the gears and outer ring in place, as the model in the game doesn’t actually work and would fall apart if you built it in reality. The planet gears are basically just floating in place, and while I might have been able to make everything fit just by the shape and friction of the teeth I thought it safer to add frames to actually hold the planets in place. There’s also a support piece added into the arm to help secure the ring gear and keep it from shifting off-center.

At times I had to guess whether the low-poly nature of some of the parts was intentional or not. The outer ring is implied to be a circle, so I redrew it as one, and printed those parts with a high level of faceting to try and get as close to a smooth circle as possible. On the other hand, the detailing on the planet gears strongly implies that they should be hexagons, not circles, so I kept them that shape. I also spent a while squinting at the pixel-level detailing, as there’s a lot of engraving and embossing implied on some of the surfaces, which I had to translate to actual 3D geometry for printing.

To simplify travel, we decided that rather than build an entire staff I would make a topper that would attach to my wife’s cane. Her walking cane has a knob that screws off the top, revealing a threaded rod that lets the cane be used as a tripod to mount a camera. I designed a piece that would screw on there instead, letting her still use the nemesis staff as a walking cane while still keeping most of the appeal of the prop. It’s not quite the same as the one in the game, but a lot easier to take on a plane flight, since she needs to bring the cane along anyway.

The resulting Nemesis Staff would be a bit smaller than the ones in the game, although it’s hard to say for sure since the in-game prop scales to your character model anyway. If I wanted to do this again for a more game-accurate prop, I’d probably scale everything up by 25% and also design a printed staff and the square piece that goes on the butt end of the staff as well.

When possible, I prefer to print in the final color that a part is going to be, rather than paint it. There were some nice shiny metallic filaments available that I’d been wanting to try out, so we overnighted them as I worked on the Solidworks designs. We used Silk metallic filament, in copper and gold, for nearly the entire part, with a few pieces in black and clear as well. The geometry is probably not ideal, but I was in a hurry while designing this. I tried to make everything fit together through friction pins as much as possible, with glue only being used as a final fixative to keep things from sliding apart. The end result was a prop that needed no painting, and only a little bit of cleanup on the finished parts.

It took about a week to print all the parts, and I had to leave my printer running nearly 24 hours a day to get it done in time. I even dusted off the old Monoprice Mini that I got for free a year ago and used it to print many of the smaller parts, mostly pins and spacers that weren’t cosmetically important. It should have come as a warning when the metallic filament came with a spare nozzle and a vial of nozzle cleaner needles. I had constant problems with print failures due to clogged nozzles, probably lost a good 15 hours of print time due to them. After several parts lost due to clogs I started just preemptively cleaning and flushing the extruder once or twice a day. Total print time came to about 130 hours, but that doesn’t include time lost from clogs that happened in mid-print.

The geometry is not quite ideal. There’s more friction on the planetary gears than I’d like, and it’s hard to rotate the ring gear. I was worried that it would fall apart when printed as a proper planetary gear arrangement should have at least three gears, so I added a frame to hold the planet gears in place and a brace in the fork to add additional support for the ring gear. The result was actually a lot more solid than I expected, and I really should have gone with more clearance on the gear tooth faces and other moving parts.

If I’d had a few more weeks to work on it, I would have tried to actually make it motorized, and add light and sound effects to make it act like the ones in the game. Maybe for next year.

#3d printed #cosplay prop #city of heroes #nemesis staff #dragoncon

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sidenotelife · 6 years ago

Text

How to choose a residency. Pt 3: Lifestyle

This is part 3 of a 4 part post describing how I am trying to differentiate between the 7 family medicine residency programs at which I interviewed. In the first 2 posts I described my long-term goals and how a residency program could help me attain those goals, and my short-term hopes in how I’m hoping a residency program could support me. Herein, I’ll be describing lifestyle but first let me address this diagram which I discussed previously:

Since I started writing this post my question has been whether these two poles are inversely related and really the answer is no. A place could both help me get to my long-term goals but also double as a place that I could enjoy for residency training. So I had to scrap this model and replace it with the pizza model:

I tried to include various aspects of my three broad categories of long-term value, short-term enjoyment, and lifestyle (which I will explain in this post). I then added in the scaling factor, so I rated my 8 factors on how important they are to me, and the more important sections got a larger portion of the slice of the pie:

So for instance if I rate a place 10/10 in OB training that gives the program more credit than if a place is rated 10/10 in addiction training.

I went ahead and rated my seven programs as seen below:

If anyone has any suggestions on how to rank the seven, let me know. But then this made me think, did I fill out the initial 8 factors right? If I really value the long-term vision of being a physician-scientist should I not be placing more emphasis on research? If I’m willing to invest more time into training by doing a fellowship should autonomy in clinical training matter so much? And this is what I keep getting back to - how much should I try to predict the job I want 10+ years from now? I really think I would enjoy the unopposed highly autonomous residency training programs, I just keep having concerns about the lack of research connections with this path.

I just redrew the circle with the 8 factors adjusted for a more long-term view. (Initial circle on left, possible updated circle on right):

So anyways, back to the original topic of ranking programs by lifestyle. What is lifestyle, anyways? I had never even heard about this phrase until I got to med school: “Yeah I’d love to be a surgeon but I couldn’t do the lifestyle,” “Well, cancer’s cool but I really want to do radiation oncology because of the lifestyle,” etc. I guess lifestyle can mean a different thing to a different person, but for me it’s some combination of these things:

So let’s start with the first item, the “proximity-to-mountains” factor. I don’t think I have a huge preference for beach vs mountains, although I don’t like to be sweaty so probably mountains might be better, but my wife keeps talking about proximity to the mountains. She says the mountains speak to her soul and I actually think it’s true even though it sounds a little idealistic. Worst case scenario if we move close to the mountains at least she can’t keep complaining about the mountains. Fortunately, this factor is fairly straightforward and easy to rank because it basically just comes down to georgraphy and the proximity of any given city I live in to the mountains. Sidenote - I think weather is underrated in happiness. Having lived in the Northeast for over ten years, I can say with confidence that this is why people are so damn grouchy in the Northeast with the possible exception that traffic is a second factor. And I’ve never lived there but I assume that’s why people love southern California so much.

Item #2 is traffic (lack of). It just stresses me out to drive in traffic. As an adult I’ve lived in two cities now, Portland, OR and Charleston, SC, and in both cities the traffic just stresses me out. Having to find a place to park stresses me out. And yeah, the traffic exists because these big cities have cool things to do, but when I’m a resident I don’t anticipate overflowing with so much cash that I’ll be eating out at the fancy Charleston restaurants all the time. I also, like, mostly like to stay at home and watch NBA on my tv. I also hate hate waiting at a bar to get a drink. They serve the same damn beer in every bar. So in this case I’d rather go low-density and live somewhere that I don’t have to wait in a long line to eat good food. Sidenote - one offshoot to this traffic factor is that I miss being able to bike to work. I think that is one of the most legit things about a city, and I’m pretty sure that’s the only way I’ll ever have

Item #3 is cost of living. This one is fairly straightforward, I want to live somewhere that we don’t live in a cramped one bedroom apartment, and I don’t want to waste my energy worrying about whether we can afford rent in a place.

Item #4 we’d like to live somewhere that we can develop relationships. The main factor I’m thinking about here is that it’s hard to meet people and make friends in small places. The other big thing I’m thinking about is, how important is it to choose a place for residency that I could at least imagine staying long-term. I’m tired of moving, and I’d like to move to a place where we feel like we can spread our roots and grow into the community of a place. But is that again thinking too much that I can predict the future? I don’t know, I don’t know but I think this thought takes a different level of importance given kids. More than anything else in life I just want my kids to be able to make and keep friends. I just think there is nothing better than spending time with your friends. I think it’s hard, not impossible but just a little more complicated to develop these sorts of relationships if you’re bouncing around so much when you’re growing up.

My inclination thus far is that it’s best for me to choose based on my long-term vision, which means choosing a place that offers good research connections and quality clinical training but also a place that I could forsee living for the next thirty years, somewhere that Katie and I could put down our roots and meet people and really live in a place. Anyways, in part 4 of 4 I’ll try to put it all together.

see you on the other side,

from ken

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