#but this i feel is more refined...

[capnhanbers]

you're a bitter kind

i love you so

(from chapter 141, more words under cut)

I'M SO SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG...i've been lost in the gamer zone, but also this has been one of the absolute hardest chapters to write so far, because i took a difficult structure (dives) and made it even more difficult by combining it with action!!! it took a lot of thought and tweaking to make it work, from a technical and conceptual standpoint.

the only constant throughout it all has been that song. Tenenbaum by the paper kites. it's one of the oldest "kiddo" songs and it completely drove me through this chapter and this art. call them radiant, call them mother's eyes...... don my clothing robes of ancient white..... like this is the song they share with az, just like Nothing Arrived by the Villagers is the song they share with frisk.

i hope it comes together for you readers like it SOMEHOW, IMPOSSIBLY, came together for me!!! these scenes were years in the making!!!

[sodapopbuoy]

weird bird!

[peri-bytes]

wereramb design i was toying with last night...

[iceclew]

"Stop grieving already... I told you I'll be back..."

Quick. Get that out there before I start to hate it!!!!

I took a sketch from one of my upcoming doodle pages. Since I liked it I thought I might as well refine it. The blue/orange hue is so satisfying for my eyes, I almost love the non coloured version more...

Drawing shadows with lines at an almost meditating pace did the trick for me again i guess.. I could kinda relax while doing this, which is basically a big as goal achieved on it's own right now...

I am so tempted to critic the shit out of it again.. BUT I'm not gonna do that.. I will not let my fucking brain ruin this hobby for me again..

Not. this. time.

[suzilla-dies-and-goes-to-hell]

experimenting with different brushes

[randomness-is-my-order]

“everyone in mdzs is morally grey” is not the amazingly nuanced take some people think it is. infact, it’s the opposite. assigning one single kind of morality to the entire cast of characters (who are richly diverse in personality, background, personal principles and their actions) IS the simplified, flattened version of perspective that they are trying to fight. pivoting so hard against the grain, you end up with an even worse understanding of canon. the characters in mdzs belong to a whole spectrum of morality and that is the point. if everyone was morally grey, the books wouldn’t make half the impact that they did, especially when it came to social commentary.

[kwillow]

Your art is jaw-droppingly stunning. Can I ask, how do you render things so beautifully? Can you give any tips? Especially with colored lineart.

Aww thank you so much, that's so sweet of you to say. <:3

I don't think I can give much advice on rendering; I've always been highly dependent on line-art to portray form and any attempt at lighting more complex than "shade with one layer of a desaturated color on multiply" frightens me.

BUT I can share what I do with line coloring!

This is a drawing I've done both with and without the coloring on the lines, to show the difference it makes.

In general, the color of the lines is just a darker shade of the color surrounding it. The more defined I want a feature, the darker the hue.

The interior lines, everything that goes on inside the outermost line-art, is where I put most of my attention. I separate the lines into tiers of importance and color accordingly, with the most important things getting darker (and often thicker) line-art.

Here's a cropped image of Ambroys holding a very expensive future murder weapon to try and show what I mean. The big circles are the base color of his dumb face and ludicrous glove, and the smaller circles are the color of the line-art for each of his features.

The hierarchy tends to go like this:

Important Features: eyes, mouths, hands, forearms, anything that I want to be emphasized or needs to be very clear, etc. gets dark line-art. This separates these features from the rest of the image and makes them pop.

Secondary Forms: joints, noses, the edge of bangs over the face, the lines between fingers, big wrinkles on evil old bastards, cravats etc. get medium line-art. These forms are meant to be distinct from what surrounds them (fingers shouldn't look melted together, the hair is not part of the forehead) but giving them dark line-art would draw attention from the important parts (for example, Ambroys' punchable grin), so they get slightly darker line-art to make the forms clear but not distracting.

Fiddly Little Details: fabric folds, flesh creases, strands of hair, seams in clothing, etc. These add texture, but I don't want them to be making everything look like a mess of scribbles. So these have light line-art, relative to the base color, to allow them to blend more than the important features.

Sometimes I'll make the line color more saturated or a slightly different hue (cooler or warmer), but it depends on the image and how much skill I randomly roll in color usage that day. It just looks more interesting than just going over the lines with a low-opacity brush of the base color.

When it comes to the exterior lines, I have two approaches. If I want a form to be bolder or stand out I tend to leave the outside lines around the form black or a very dark color. If I want something to look softer or blend into the surrounding image, or want the form to appear to glow, I color the outside lines closer to what colors surround the form or a brighter, paler color.

For example, all the characters here have nearly black exterior line-art. The background objects all have pale line-art, so they don't overwhelm the characters. Even objects in the mid-ground have slightly lighter line-art than the figures so that the eye is (hopefully) drawn to the characters instead of my labored attempt at drawing a cash register.

Or here, the parts of Ambroys that are en flambé have orange-red exterior line-art, while everything else has dark exterior line-art.

Like most things with my art, it's not hard to do, it just takes a long time. :P

And of course, this isn't the "right" way to color line-art! My art style is pretty cartoony, heavy on line-art and low on shading and very focused on silly characters making silly faces. A softer, more realistic, more rendered style, or one that is more graphic and focuses more on silhouette, would likely require a different approach. But regardless, I hope this ramble is helpful!

[soulsmadworld]

DAY 4 - Favourite Alt Hermit

NPC Grian anyone?

couldnt decide which was more tragic NPC or robot G so i just went with NPC

its been raining since last night so i wanted to go for something dramatic

had something more dramatic planned cuz i didnt wanna pick between EX, Hesknight and NPC but i realized thats a bit too ambitios for me for an everyday challange

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

not enough discussion about the gavins' complicated relationship with feminine-coded/beauty products, i don't think.

[mewguca]

Nya Significant Harassment

[faggottonystark]

They call me the fucking drawer. The redrawer. of my own draws. Ogs are both from 2019 ^_^

[eumetopia]

All I need to see is you

[fluffydeoxys]

OC stuff is dangerous wdym you just think about that guy and you feel things. You made that thing and it’s come such a long way like they’ve grown and fleshed out and you’re proud of them. And there’s an indescribable feeling of pride and tenderness and passion and fondness. That ☝️thingie is My Thing and I love them

[of-fandoms]

So I looked at the live action nadder and thought “not bad but also not great”

Then I looked at all the nadder designs we got over the years: the original, the animatronic and the live action. Specifically their heads

And that made me realize what I find so off-putting about the new one:

The mouth is less beak like, the horn on the nose is *massive* for some reason and the horns on stormfly‘s head are smaller and also just slightly curved. Which yeah, not a big deal, but it just...wasn't hitting the way the original design did for me. So I tried to make my own version of what I'd make the live action version look like (although this is just like a base concept, so not as spiky, or colored accurately and stuff; it's more about the general look):

I wanted to keep the beak but...gotta give it to the live action, it just didn't work out. I did like the bigger nose horn *however* i would have made it more similar to the animatronic's. I also would have kept the larger horns on the head, they make the dragon look far more imposing in my opinion. Also bigger nostrils. These are tracker class dragons for fucks sake, make them look like it! And something that annoys me on all of the live action designs: the teeth. I don't care if it's "unrealistic", these are dragons! All the dragons have these small teeth and i really wish they had kept at least some of them bigger, even if it's just for the look of it

[thethespacecoyote]

my thing with ford is that I feel like he has this high esteem for like...very specific parts of himself. Like his identity as the Author, the Man Who Will Kill Bill Cipher, a future Great Scientist, etc etc, those are the parts of him that he values and considers important

but Ford the man? just...himself? I think he doesn't value himself as just a person all that much. not to project but I think being bullied for specific physical traits as a kid sometimes results in this fractured sense of self. Where you focus on select parts of your identity, specific talents and things you are "good" at, but at the same time you still harbor a lot of unaddressed self-loathing and this increasing inability to understand why other people might love and value you.

thats why he prickles when stan saves him while risking everything...ford would never do that. if given the black and white choice he wouldn't pick clinging to his own life over giving it towards a greater purpose (which is why I feel the kill bill bit with the destabilizer was lowkey a suicide mission)

but of course stan would...and that's hard for ford to understand, especially after 30-40 years of isolation and estrangement.

[cowboy-robooty]

im not going to lie i have an illuminati type theory that fanfiction has gotten so fucking bad recently as yet another consequence of the pandemic