#don't know what happened with my style in this one! it's a lot more cartoony. or something. it feels like it at least

[ruvviks]

vitali my best friend vitali

[ikimaru]

when and how did you find your art style? has it changed much over time?

I'm gonna go on a tangent here bc it's pretty interesting for me to look back on aksjd

I don't think it was really linear in a point A to point B kinda way, I still got it more or less where I wanted it to but I can't say it felt streamlined

my first fandom was pokemon anime, so I was 100% set on learning that style first bc that was fun to me, instead of learning basics or anything I went right in and learned how to draw humans in that style, then I got into Death Note so I had to learn an entirely different style bc the previous one didn't help at all, I didn't stick with it very long tho because THEN I got into vocaloid and various anime and more colorful characters so it was pretty much the huge eyes - dot nose style for a while

*then* I got tumblr and this site was very.. overwhelmingly cartoon-oriented so I quickly took an interest in cartoony styles and learned the style which I used between 2011-2016 pretty much, I think that was the first one where I could be like "it's mine" bc I was actively figuring out things I liked and putting my spin on them and it was so fun

but by the time I got into vld I wanted it to be more more complex so I was focusing more on learning lighting, anatomy and making the faces less cartoony annd I really wish I tackled the style of faces differently and I didn't end up hating drawing for several years in the process without even realizing it BUT Anyway

with gnshn last year is when I finally started compiling all the things I liked about drawing again from past styles and also new things so I can all combine it together at last, which is something I haven't done in huh 6(??)+ years.. ughhh lmao I really had to stop and be like "what do I WANT my art to look like?" and I'm still working on it

but yeah basically, it IS a lot more streamlined if you pick tutorials and go like that's a good™️ style to learn and go from there, instead of learning/unlearning things over and over like I did, I don't regret learning the previous styles tho, each of them were what I wanted out of it at the time, but there was a learning curve every single time

anyway your art path is your own whether you choose to get better in the faster way possible or do detours or something else, once you have a set of things that feel personal to you in how you draw them and you can comfortably use that to draw whatever u want to, you'll just know, it doesn't have to happen asap c:

[flawseer]

Mail Call #1

Responding to messages from @iusedtobemenowimnot @salveofthesandwonks @jrbfrkjbgfk @asleepinglaurel @ironnokana97b @kittykatchao

Link to post in question

I am very happy that you enjoy my content, thank you. The "Pantaloons" was actually not a typo or auto-correct though. Pantala is just a very funny and corruptible name.

Other candidates for least accurate way to refer to the place would be "Pancake Town", "Pantyhose", and "Pantlion" (if any folks over there like to bury themselves in the sand).

Mike Holmes' WoF style is very cozy and relaxing to work with. I'm not getting it exactly right, but then again the deviations and imperfections are what add variety.

It also happens that I read the comics before I went into the books, so the style kind of stuck with me. The dragons in the story are very expressive and animated, so a relatively cartoony and fluid style suits them. At least that's what I think.

I have not drawn Whiteout yet, but I am interested in doing so. If I ever get around to continuing my 3000 AS series of drawings, she will be in it, likely grouped with Darkstalker, Prince Arctic, and Foeslayer.

This might be a bit of a cop-out answer, but the best way I can think of to get into a style is to look at a lot of references. The comics are full of good material in that regard. Look for panels of dragons in flight, or standing around, get a feel for the shapes their bodies are constructed from, etc.. Identify the quirks of that style, then try to incorporate them into your drawing process.

That's my very general advice. I don't know how helpful or applicable it is. For something more detailed I might need a more specific question.

I have to stress though--and listen closely because I can only say it this one time: One thing that is absolutely, imperatively, critically important to keep in mind is--

...

[ask-the-totally-real-peppino]

Looks at Pep's profile on toyhouse:

Oooh, interesting stuff here! Also lots of sadness in the links! More thoughts below:

<"–and even being rescued himself in a few situations.">

<"- he and Porto helped me home when I was struggling to move, let alone keeping my form together -">

<"Porto, and Bello, found me when I wasn't in the best place, and very vulnerable">

My first thought was imagining Pep in 'Sopping Wet Creature' form being in either Porto or Bello's arms, but it's more likely him having a panic attack and both of them helping him get home.

<"but I realised what they needed, and I gave it to them - I still have that scar... I didn't even know I could get new scars...">

Wait, what do you mean new scars? And hmmm, clones don't really have blood (at least not like regular blood), but given what we currently know (or at least theorize) about Pep, perhaps he was the only one that could've helped Mirtillo.

(On a related note: Mirtillo being purple and considered to be Pep's baby. And a certain picture with a baby wearing purple. I'm not saying they're the same, just that maybe there's some subconscious connections here. Maybe the loss hits harder because he has lost his child before. It's twice now that he was taken away from his family.)

Also the dramatic irony of having an idea of what exactly happened to his family hurts! And every single one of Pep's links being one-sided thoughts! I'm over here making myself sadder theorizing that the last parts of each one are the exact thoughts he had while searching for them! That even though he was able to see the world outside the tower, he couldn't fully enjoy that freedom because in the back of his mind he's thinking that he failed them, that he was too weak and couldn't protect them–

He hopes that maybe, just maybe, he could find them. To be able to hug them again, hold them all in his arms and never let go. He would never ever lose them again.

Okay, I'm done for now.

On happier thoughts, Happy 1 year to this askblog! (It's March 1st where I am) Thank you for sharing this story with us! We appreciate all the love and care you bring with your designs and writing.

Always remember to take your time and have fun with it! Take care of yourself, Bean.

(Shy Theorist)

(AUGH, Shy Theorist Anon, must you sucker punch me right in the heart on this joyous occasion!!! (silly/lighthearted)

But you bring up various points! And I will provide context for others where applicable, like right now;

[Pep's updated reference on toyhou.se] and the [links where he shares his thoughts on his fambily members]

First point about [Porto] and [Bello] rescuing Pep I actually hope to touch on soon! Well, 'soon' as in 'within the next few story posts' - when they will actually be up is yet to be determined jfgksgd - but you're not too far off hehe

Second point about Pep getting a new scar - this is a little confusing since I don't draw scars in my cartoony style (for some reason that I do not remember) - unless it's like [Halloumi's] missing eye scar, which is just a big 'X' - but a lot of the characters do have visible scarring!

We just gotta hit them with the unsilly beam, like this;

And there they are! Although Pep's 'scars' are just markings to mimic Peppino's scars - except for one - while clones do not typically scar due to their healing/regeneration factor, it is possible

[Mirtillo] and [the baby in that 'certain' picture] both being purple babies might be intentional, or it might be bc I have a bias for purple, I'll never tell - but I do confirm they are not the same being, since Mirtillo has been depicted as a newborn clone (the 'gummy bear' stage) and clones made out of human cadavers do not have this stage

And yes!!! Pep doesn't know what happened to any of them, and he misses them all so much!!!

But they just might be closer than he thinks...

... Any way, thank you so much! Your kind words really mean a lot to me, and I always love hearing your thoughts and theories - even if I am a coy bastard about them sometimes, fkgfksdf

I know I keep saying that hopefully we get back to it, and I really mean it, but it in the meantime I just do what I can, and drop a few crumbs now and then hehe)

[billiejean485]

Some of you might remember that back in the day I used to love drawing Chat Noir a lot. However... what happened happened, and I lost all motivation for that. However, it's been coming back to me lately, especially ever since I started focusing on the concept art more. (Nathanaël Bronn is amazing man!)

So... I finally came round to share my artistic endeavor and a try to apply a more realistic style (with obvious fail). However... I know a cake is a cake to the fandom anyway, so here you go:

... One of the oldest attempts. Obvious lack of space between the eyes - something that I generally struggle with when drawing humans.

Then I thought I'd finally go back to drawing poses. Figuring this one out took too much, so I left it there for some other time.

This was the first one whose direction I started to like. So I kept pushing it.

FINALLY a pretty realistic one! But I still need to work out so much.

This one is more cartoony, and I probably pushed the expression too far. But oh well - gotta learn from your mistakes... (I still like how smug he looks though.)

After a longer pause I finally continue.

I think I hit the pose here, but when I started to draw in... I realized how little I know about anatomy. Back to the basics!

I thought: maybe I should try using a screenshot as a reference, and start going towards realism there. This was phase 1. I have yet to continue building upon it.

... Time flies by and I get the urge to just sketch poses again. So I start up an AI prompt generator I made for this purpose and, well... I get one to draw him in this ballet pose. How quaint.

I realize once again that I'm going to have one heck of a time if I start going into detail - and just with his head - so.... I go back to the drawing board.

Little study of his hair.

I still don't get it.

But I decide to wing it anyway and.... here's the result.

That's the last one for now y'all. I hope I'll manage to draw more. Although... figuring out how to draw him realistically is going to take me a heck of a lot of time. And practice. And study. Anatomy AND canon models.

So... wish me luck!

I hope you enjoyed these at least.

[pancake-breakfast]

At the behest of @sourcoatedsugar, I purchased Under the Air, a collection of short comics by the Father of Anime, Tezuka Osamu. I've kind of put off getting into Tezuka's stuff since I don't care much for the very cartoony style, but it seems the world is conspiring to make sure I don't brush him aside.

I loved Urasawa's Pluto manga, which was a retelling of one of Tezuka's plotlines from Astro Boy with a focus on a different character, and Tezuka frequently comes up whenever I happen to get into the history of animation (since he was heavily influenced by Fleisher Studios in general and Betty Boop in particular) and anime/manga (since he heavily influenced both genres). I have yet to manage to watch Dororo, but I'm enamored with the premise and the more recent adaptation is very high on my watch list. (Alas, it is locked behind the Amazon Prime paywall....)

To start, I'm kinda iffy on the translation of the title, though I don't want to be too critical because it's admittedly a difficult one to translate. Anyone who's studied the Japanese language has probably heard that it's a language of inferences. What this means (in part) is since Japanese has a VERY limited sound palette for a language, it has fewer word options than a lot of languages, and so it has both a lot of homophones (words that sound similar) and a lot of concepts that are conveyed via implication rather than specific words.

(English, on the other hand, is a very specific language with a very broad sound palette, and has specific words for almost everything.)

Anyway, the Japanese characters for the title are 空気の底 (kuuki no soko), which I'd literally translate more as "The Bottom of the Atmosphere." The problem with "under" is it implies something is located there or happening there while "the bottom of" just implies we're talking about a stratus of the atmosphere. The Japanese lacks the particle に (or maybe で) needed to suggest this is a location where things are happening.

But of course, "The Bottom of the Atmosphere" sounds odd in English. I guess if one wanted to go more poetic, they could go with something like, "Deep Air." But neither of those capture the meaning of the Japanese, since "The Bottom of the Atmosphere" is only one way it can be read. It can also be read as something like "Base Situations" or "The Kind of People Who Aren't Worth Notice."

If I were to guess, there's some layer of Buddhism influence in here that I'm missing, as well, that might be referring more specifically to the situations of the more "lowly" types of humans as separate from those of the enlightened. But I know very little about Buddhism.

So maybe a more accurate-to-the-spirit translation would be something like, "Worldly Things," as in English/Western-Christian culture, this can simply mean "stuff that takes place in the world around us" or it can mean "things that lack the enlightenment of heaven."

From a (very) quick skim and an actual reading of the first of the stories, that duality seems to capture more of the essence of the tales. And I think it would probably also be justified by the quote at the beginning of the book:

The water at the bottom of a fishbowl does not circulate. It grows murky with leftover food, droppings, and dirt. Perhaps our world is riddled with crime and tragedy in much the same way, buried under the vast air of the sky above. Do any of us not, during the fleeting spans of our lifetime, seek peace found in those clear skies, even if just for a bit?

Anyway, looking forward to getting into this further. It wouldn't be the first time good stories have trumped my qualms about an art style that's not quite too my taste.

[0heartangel0]

Many months ago (March-May), I played and beat Tactica. From when I hit 'start' to when the credits rolled, I had many thoughts on this game, and for a while, I was too afraid to share them. But after these past few months of ruminating, I've finally wracked up the courage to come out the closet to say:

I hate it. It's not good. It was frustrating from beginning to end. I don't even think the dlc will change my mind on things if I ever think of getting it.

Now, before you raise those pitchforks, I'm not saying you should also hate it alongside me. If you like it, that's okay, and all the power to you to do so. I'm just here to go into too much detail as to why I personally don't have the same opinion. Much like my last big post, I'll be doing this in parts because I have a LOT to say. So, strap in, 'cause

PERSONA 5 TACTICA IS NOT GREAT: A VERY ODDLY-CONSTRUCTED RANT

Pt. 1: The Positives

Okay, I'm not gonna be entirely negative here. There are a couple of good things, believe it or not.

For starters, the art is very good. I know some people might not like it for how it not only strays away from the original's art style, but is made to be more cartoony, but to that I say that that's a rather close-minded way of looking at it. In its own right, it at least has an identity of its own outside of the original, and the cartoonish art style gives way for more expression on the characters, both face-wise and pose-wise. Each still of the characters breathes life into them, and there's even some unique ones depending on the circumstances of the scene.

There's even some moments of full art pieces, and they're gorgeous:

I heard some people compare the art style to that of Persona Q's, but I'd say it's more on the lines with Panty And Stocking's, and I love its art style!

The cutscenes.....well, it depends on which ones you're talking about. Most of the 2d ones are good, but some are dragged down by not-so-good blocking and camera work, especially one in particular (don't worry, we'll get to that one...). The 3d cutscenes...aren't great. My biggest gripe with them are how the mouths move, which looks so weird and awkward, and you notice it from the very first cutscene (skip to when Yusuke and Futaba start talking). The shading and lighting also seem off, but I think that's just me.

Oh, right. Positives. Positives! POSITIVES!

Uh...OKAY! As much as I don't like the vast majority of the characters in this game (I'll elaborate on this in the next post), three of them are handled really well: Futaba, Yusuke, and (surprisingly enough) Lavenza.

Futaba still reigns supreme as p5's best girl (and by 'best girl' I mean out of the PT girls, she's the most entertaining and interesting one. To me), and retains her usual quips and personality. But not just that. Out of all the PT, she has the best chemistry with Toshiro. Not only does she have the most/best banter and talks with him, but they even have the most emotional interactions together.

Before fighting Yoshiki, Futaba tries reassuring him that his mother did love him, due to her own experience of the brain tricking her into thinking hers didn't love her, either. However, she dances around even talking about her own mother, and is super awkward the whole time.

This makes sense, considering the game takes place about 6-7 months after she joined the PT, so she'd still be very socially awkward. It's also a big contrast to Strikers, taking place about a whole year since her joining + having recently started attending high-school, so she's shown to be much better with communication by then.

Another good interaction is after Toshiro finds out the truth behind what happened to Eri Natsuhara (God, that name...), and gets super depressed, requesting the thieves just leave him behind to die. Futaba then does what I wish I could do, which is slap him across the face. She then tells him that she knows what it's like wanting to die, thinking you're the cause of someone else's misfortunes, but if she climbed out of that, he can too. She later makes him coffee with Yusuke, who reveals to Toshiro that she needed help with it, much to her embarrassment.

As bizarre as it is, I do love their chemistry, and I love how Futaba's handled in this game because of it.

Yusuke is rather bizarre for me, because (and I must be honest), he's a character I don't focus on much in comparison to the rest of the Thieves in P5. That isn't to say he's a bad character by any means; he's great! It's just, while he has his funny moments, I always found Ryuji as the character to give me the most laughs. He has his emotional moments, but characters like Futaba I would resonate with more.

But in Tactica, my God, is he entertaining. Out of every character, he has given me the most laughs (aside from maybe Lavenza, but we ain't there, yet), and still stays true to his character. His most notable moments are in Kingdom 2. For instance, when the gang are trying to save a bunch of citizens while acting like Samurai/Geisha, picking team Samurai will result in Ann using her terrible acting skills to get a drunk aizen to cough up the information, only for him to obviously be confused with the way she's acting. Yusuke then uses this opportunity by claiming that Ann's just drunk, and needs somewhere to lie down. Oh, the place where those citizens are is the perfect spot! Where was it, again?

The aizen falls for it, and tells them where it is. But just as he's sobering up, and is about to report them, Yusuke knocks him out, saying:

Love this scene! (And yes, I know this scene is optional, for you can choose to go with the geisha group instead (Haru, Makoto, and Erina), but I preferred to go with the bois + Ann (and can I just go off on a tangent to say having Ann be a Samurai is so smart and refreshing? As a character that's always depicted very feminine, seeing her in more masculine garb is really fun and great. Also, she's adorable in the getup)).

Later on, in order to get inside Yoshiki's palace, Toshiro devises a plan to dress all the townsfolk as the Phantom Thieves as distraction. The real kicker is that Yusuke was the one to come up with the designs to them, much to everyone's horror:

So, in conclusion, Yusuke's great. Love him.

As for Lavenza, wow, did she get an upgrade! I might go as far to say she's the only character to get improved upon in this game. For most of the first game, she's split into Caroline and Justine, and we're only properly introduced to her by the end, where she serves her purpose as help for the final battle + exposition (I hear she gets more in Royal, but only played Vanilla, so can't exactly comment). However, she's given more screen time in Strikers, which would've helped to expand on her character.

EEEEeexcept she's instead left there to exposit on how there's an impending doom + fusions. That's it. The most memorable scene she has is right after Zenkichi awakens to his Persona, where she drags you into the Velvet Room to explain to you what the Apostle Arcana is (I don't think she does this for The Hope Arcana, which makes this scene more unnecessary and ironically hilarious).

So it was a huge shock when she popped up in Tactica, exuding a personality that was merely hinted to us when she was split into two people. And a welcomed shock, at that, because this personality is fun and downright entertaining.

For one, she is full-on chaotic. With the current state of the Velvet Room, she takes advantage by modifying and testing it out through....violent methods:

She even dresses to match with the theme of it being an armory/forge, wearing a blacksmith's apron and welding mask.

Her hammering down the melted-together gears that form the newly-fused Persona is really cute and more energetic than that of a traditional Velvet Room fusion. Also, the fusion accident cutscene is something that has to be seen. You won't regret it.

She even makes guns for you-

Well-

Not for free, anyway.

Yes, she still reprises her role as the exposition-dumper, but they at least gave her more of a character that might make you more interested in listening to said exposition.

Also, she almost runs over Ryuji with a train:

(Let's play a game: who'd kill someone the quickest: Haru when driving a car, or Lavenza driving the Velvet Express?).

I would show more examples, but Tumblr is mean, and won't allow me to have more than 30 images per post (the reason why I made my Shibuya Arc Zenkichi rant into 4 part posts in the first place). Just know that Lavenza is cute and unhinged, and is the best she's ever been in this game.

The other thing I like about this game is....is....uhhhhh....OH!

The voice acting's great as usual, including the voices for the new characters!

Leeana Albanese gives an energetic and spunky performance as Erina, while MacLeod Andrew's delivers a more serious, yet goofy performance as Toshiro. The casting director (can't find the credit for that) made the right calls for their newly-required cast!

And.....and..........AAAANNNNDDDD I like the secondary Persona mechanic! Not only does it allow you to further modify your other party member's Personas, but Joker can finally keep Arsene for the entire game, instead of fusing him for the first hour or so! YAY!!!

There's also......also.........also.................

Okay, I got nothing else. That's all of the positives I could think of for this section. Everything else is just a bunch of cons.

Mourn this part of the discussion, because we're not seeing anything else positive (maybe some decent bits at most, but that's about it for me). Let the negativity begin!

Pt. 2

Pt. 3

Pt. 4

Pt. 4.5

[golden--doodler]

This sounds a bit sad, but I'm someone who used to have absolutely zero faith in my artistic abilities. I've been writing my entire life, and haven't had too many self-confidence issues with that (well, I've gotten down on myself about my writing before, but I've gotten a lot better about that). I've always known I have the ability to write, as I've been doing it almost my entire life.

But drawing was a different story. I used to always tell myself "Ha! I just need to stick to writing. I'll never be able to draw. Are you kidding? Look at all of these talented artists. And look at these gorgeous realistic anatomy they can do!! I'll never be able to do that. I have no artistic ability whatsoever. It's just not my thing."

That was really my first mistake, comparing myself to other artists, and judging my ability to draw before I even tried. But another thing that really lowered my confidence in my artistic abilities was this one moment in my English class my Sophomore year of high school. We had this assignment to make a short comic based on the story The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allen Poe. I'm sure everyone knows that story. I did mine, and forgot to sign it at first, and my teacher saw. He was always a harsh grader, but he held up my paper, not knowing it was mine, and called it Kindergarten work. In front of the entire class. Needless to say, I was mortified. I immediately redid the assignment, losing almost all of my faith in my own artistic abilities.

But something changed when the Pandemic hit. I got an iPad, which made digital drawing so much easier and more fun. And I just had a lot of time on my hands because of lockdowns. And I thought to myself: Huh. Well, maybe I don't have to draw realistically. Maybe I can practice my drawing skills more by drawing more cartoony art.

And that's exactly what I did. And now I'm proud to say I'm actually confident in my art now!! I sort of have my own style now, which has definitely evolved over the years. I guess that's just what can happen when you practice and try to push aside the self-doubt festering in the back of your mind. It wasn't always easy, but I kept trying to encourage myself instead of just putting myself down.

Now I can proudly say that I've gotten paid for my art, and my clients were all thrilled with the results so far. And I can't wait to keep drawing for people and making them happy. I think I've definitely come a long way from so-called "Kindergarten work".

[alicenpai]

Have you answered Q21 and 30 yet? Would love to hear your thoughts on those :o

21. Art styles nothing like your own but you like anyways

hi chiko!

I think I tried so many different styles over the years, and bc of art school I can probably draw in cartoony or anime styles pretty alright, so I won't pick any kind of animation adjacent styles for this one!

Edward Gorey, Ronald Searle

Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyendecker

Dean Cornwall, Mead Schaeffer

30. What piece of yours do you think is underrated

this one is tough! as I haven't been drawing a lot of full pieces/posting very very sporadically this year.

like what is considered "underrated"? is it notes? funny enough I think before the pandemic my art used to get more notes, so, would someone consider my recent works "underrated" in that sense? it's tricky. 🤔 I know it's easy to blame the algorithm but there are so many factors at play that we cannot qualitatively control for. being on the right platform at the right time, drawing for the right fandom at the right time, catering to a suitable audience, how you format the post (like do you show closeups or just post the full illust or crop your art? do you just post a video instead??), and a suitable caption (e.g. something witty, relatable, funny, or just something basic like emojis or just 1 word)

for me I consider a work "underrated" or underperforming (I think is a better word for it), is if the drawing is not interesting enough that nothing is said about it. either about either subject matter or artistic techniques. for me connecting to others through art is so integral to the artist experience. if a post gets 1000 notes but it gets 0 comments, then i consider it a failure. if something gets 100 notes but it gets many comments, i would consider it the opposite of "underrated'.

like would original drawings be more underrated than fanart? 🤔 people have trouble connecting to ocs since they don't know the source material, so often those kinds of posts would get less notes or less comments. just interesting things to think about.

it's easy to go into the archive and look at the older stuff that possibly didn't get seen around as much, but i'll try to pull some more recent pieces.

I think this 6 fanarts did badly in comparison to other works because the trend appeared in 2020 but I wasn't able to complete this that year ^__T and the trend didn't come back in 2021... guess I'm not a trend setter..................... sighs 😔 haha

I do want to try this kind of fanart compilation again though! I'm bad at drawing under pressure though so I would have to come up with my own prompts...

this Kekkai Sensen x Trigun piece! I think the crossover alienated fans of both series bc you had to enjoy both T__T and I also didn't draw characters from either series interacting so I don't think it ended up that interesting? bc I wanted to make this a diptych (it's clear that there's a middle divide now that I mention it) but the triptych didn't end up happening!

besides both being created by Yasuhiro Nightow, I haven't come across that many fans who are fans of both, actually...? it's not in the case where the author's work is more or less similar in tone (or same universe), like Baccano x Durarara, Pandora Hearts x Vanitas no Carte, Higurashi x Umineko. I think something like trigun x cowboy bebop would have worked better because people are always unfortunately comparing the two hahahaha.

[venacoeurva]

If you don’t mind answering, how did you develop your art style? Do you have any major inspirations or medias that influenced it? Just asking because I really love your style, it’s practically my dream style!

Thank you--I'd say my biggest influences for the cartoony style were Gorillaz, JTHM and Zim, HiNaBN, a boatload of the style diversity in the early 10's homestuck fandom on here (joined in '11, it was one of the few fandoms that I saw actively go outside of realistic or anime style and deviating from the canon style on a large scale), Nomura's kh/ff art styles, TWEWY, and a misc. variety of the kind of thick-lined art styles common in the early to late 00s. There are way more, but I can't think of them off the top of my head. I'm sure the goofy proportions of polygonal games from growing up did something, too.

My more geometric fancy style is inspired by the art deco movement, various ancient civilization's artwork and manuscripts with a harder emphasis on geometric cleanness than they typically had, hatching in general but especially the type you see in old Colonial American prints/art and money that add volume, and Alphonse Mucha's works, especially. I feel like the prominence of the brows flowing into the bridge of the nose is kind of a big tell for some of these lmao. That's gotta be my biggest takeaway by far

As for style development, it mostly happened naturally. I started going in a direction and worked a little harder on the dreaded staples everyone hates being told to work on (anatomy, lighting, perspective, etc.). I don't think it's necessary, but for me I needed to know the rules before I bent and broke them. Took a lot of practice with figuring out what would work, especially in regards to musculature, body and facial diversity, and characters being able to emote fully.

[silver-linings3]

revisiting dreams/a dream idea

okay for context. sometimes i have a dream or a series of dreams in the past that i wake up without the memory of (not useful but it happens a lot given that i barely remember any dreams). anyway so, the plus side of this means that i can 'revisit' dreams that i don't completely remember having but will regain the memories of all the past dreams during the 'revisit'. The downside of the revisits is that i don't ever (as far as i know) ever get to return to that universe ever again.

last night's one has been the first in a couple of months (if anyone's interested i can talk about it later or maybe i willl anyway). the summary is kind of hard to describe because it's like a murder mystery except there's no murder and it's more of an arg hunt type thing. Think Cicada 3301, leaving their qr codes across countries in the 2010s. But the thing with this is that it's linked to this one website for the town/towns which is run by a group of kids, who everyone thinks is behind all this shit. for some reason, i know they aren't.

anyway, i was only back for part of my dream last night/ this morning and it was sort of like i was in the future of that dream, which is what also happened last time. and in the time in between the original and the revisit the 'clues' had either stopped turning up or people had chosen to ignore them.

the premise of these clues changes quite a bit, there's supposed to be a specific way to find them and they're in different places. sometimes it's a book code, sometimes its as easy as reading letters and putting them in the right order and sometimes they're really difficult to solve. At least a few of them have some disturbing words nearby in,,, like fridge magnet letter but if they stuck to walls. like the big clunky fridge magnets. maybe i'll find a pic later. last night's one was slaughter. don't know what that was about and don't want to know.

another general point that an area is part of a clue is that it will have a little spray paint or doodle of a specific animal. don't know if it was the same in the original but this one was a green owl. think duolingo green and i can't really remember the owl but it wasn't cartoony, it was really subtle.

i had to wake up before anything really happened but i solved that clue and it opened up something else/revealed some items or something (kind of video game style). i got a walkie talkie and some other things that i can't remember but were like survival type things maybe (a torch, etc.).

the follow up move was going to be using the walkie talkie to talk to the person(?) behind the entire thing(?) to find the next clue to go to and solve. (this one was in an alley way for some reason)

i think the reason i was doing it was to find out who was truly behind as i somehow knew it wasn't the kids (my friends?) behind the website, which was an orange and green coloured, tourist-style website.

the only real reason i'm telling you is because i know i won't return and i want to remember.

TL;DR: some sort of irl arg mystery following someone finding clues in random areas signified by a duolingo-green owl mark that has links to a website, made by kids who have nothing to do with it.

[bearpillowmonster]

Prince of Persia (2008)

This is actually the first PoP game that I bought because, well-

Just look at it. It appealed to me most, he's got what looks like a cybernetic hand, a blue and red head scarf keeping some sort of mystery about him, nice balance between grit and cartoon. And really even the gameplay, a big wide open world, and the girl stays right along side you. It was the makings of something great, but then...I played it.

I don't even know if it was two hours. I just felt like I had enough, like I had seen everything it had to offer already and here's why:

STORY

Background information first. The game has a decent story with the Prince looking for this donkey that has a bunch of treasure alluding for an adventure that happened off screen when he comes across Elika who is being chased and one thing leads to another and she releases darkness out of a tree. Ok, maybe that doesn't sound too great but it's more character based. The struggle between her and her father is interesting as you see the darkness overtake him, which gives you all the reason to bring an end to this madness. You see flashbacks of her because she doesn't really want to talk about what's going on or give you context so it's fed to you little by little, she's not even interested in the Prince, she just sees him as beneficial to her journey and over time the two grow fond of each other, which is how it should be.

The cartoony nature lets for a variety of unique animations, like her climbing on your back when you're climbing up vines, doing a little twirl when you switch positions, catch each other when they fall and just overall a ton of fun stuff that makes up for the fact that you can't play as her. Unfortunately, the Prince really just makes jokes, he isn't given much, they made him too pun-oriented as even Nolan North was confused by it but whatever, it's a disconnect. So what's the issue here?

THE PREMISE

Well, you have to get your fair share of light orbs- wait an effing second-

Yeah, that but it's the whole game. Like there aren't even enemies to keep you busy really. It splits the map up into sections where you climb these huge towers and trek landscapes to get to what amounts to a fountain, you fight a boss at the fountain, unlock it, and poof, light appears so you backtrack through the level (which does have varying paths but you definitely backtrack) in order to collect the orbs. There're little dark blobs that block your way sometimes and platforms can indeed have an enemy every now and then but it's not rewarding for anything, you don't get light, you don't get currency, you don't get anything, they're just another obstacle, not anything special, just a random nuisance.

COMBAT

The combat is a lot different, it has a sort of fighting game element where it locks you in a battlefield, and you skirt around each other like Contest of Champions. It's not "bad" but it can be annoying because of the control scheme. I learned it over time but it basically creates its own buttons. Red glove. What does it refer to? What did you map that button to? Grey glove, uh, block? Sword is obvious. But it doesn't show you the buttons, just the symbols and it's not much more in depth than that. I played this on PC and honestly those colors resemble the Xbox control style, the PS3 version has the actual buttons (and I don't have an Xbox controller so I had to fight with my PS4 controller to figure it out) but I think it helped that I played with a controller this time around because I used a keyboard and mouse on that dropped playthrough.

You get the rapid press sometimes but it's not necessarily how fast you press it, it's how early you start. And like sumo wrestling, getting too close to the edge for either of you will lock you in a heated quick time event to launch the other over the edge.

Perhaps one of the divisive parts though is that you don't "die". It's like this, falling will just have Elika catch you and put you at the last platform. Fighting, you're given a chance to save yourself with a quick-time event and even if you fail, the enemy just heals themself a little.

Then you have the "hub" of sorts which leads to the temple but traveling this empty wasteland takes a while because of your walk speed. I don't mind it in the confinement of these areas with the structures but when there's nothing there and you're just trekking...speed it up. Luckily if you unlock the fountain then you can fast travel.

They even have cool traversal methods that you learn by taking so many light orbs back to the temple (in the hub) but they're not free abilities, they're limited to where the spaces are.

The "power plates" eww, that's their official name? You couldn't say like "Ephereal Tiles" or some sort of lore based jargon like spirit energy emits from them, juicing you up with power for a short burst? Spirit Burst?

And you have what amounts to this huge wide open and lush background painstakingly created with breathtakingly beautiful places that you can't wait to explore but you barely even notice them. Like you probably see this picture and think what fun is in store for that place and what set-piece it might hold but the camera pits you against these wood and stone structures and that's about it, the rest goes relatively unnoticed, you don't go and walk around these places at all like you'd expect.

WHAT BROUGHT ME BACK

This.

A three hour video but a well made one at that. He mentioned that it's enjoyable playing as a side gig, just something to turn music on and play like it's Minecraft parkour and so I lodged that in the back of my brain and here I am, with a new approach and a new opinion on a game that I thought I'd never return to.

So I'm done complaining because I did indeed keep coming back to it and enjoying myself by viewing it from a movement standpoint. And yeah, it's not the best use of its appealing assets but I still found something in it.

[sigmastolen]

Good News Everybody, It's Time For My Opinion!

ok so i finished reading the graphic novel of the visitor the other day and i have many, many more opinions about it than i did about the invasion, possibly bc i read the book first this time instead of afterwards--

ok so we Have To address the Sameface. every single child character has the same face. sometimes the adult women have it, too. in the invasion, where tobias was still human, i had trouble differentiating him and rachel because they both had long blond hair. in this one, i had trouble differentiating rachel vs. melissa vs. jordan. their faces look exactly the same because all the kids' faces look the same and they all make the exact same facial expressions and they all have more-or-less similar physical builds and yeah some of these blond kids have freckles or are slightly different shades of blond but he doesn't even do different eye colors. this is A Problem. and it's not entirely due to grine's ability, because other books of his feature more diversity in character designs -- but those books are a little more cartoony, and i think the realistic style they've chosen for this series does him no favors. it restricts the character design, it restricts the expressiveness of the humans and the animals, and it probably restricts other comics storytelling devices as well.

he's making a good go of it with the animals but speaking as a Cat Lady, i think he could have made rachel-as-fluffer more expressive, even while maintaining the more realistic style. people who aren't Cat People in general don't understand how expressive cats can be, i think -- there's this public perception that they're aloof and flat and it's so far from the truth. (i also feel like you can see him getting better at drawing cats as the book goes on lol whoops)

grine is, however, doing a great job with the body horror of morphing. every book talks about how gross it is, but these graphic novels are the first time i've really felt that come through.

i don't remember if either the invasion or the visitor are outliers in terms of the action vs. thinky balance, or again if i just didn't notice bc of my reading order with the invasion, but the visitor in prose spends a lot of time with rachel just in her head, thinking and observing and having feelings and it really lost that in adaptation. if i didn't know from the book that the shrew was terrified and fleeing and also wanting to eat maggots, i would have no idea from the panels of a close-up shrew appearing to be just chillin' -- you don't get the shrew horror until the 2-page spread of the nightmare. and speaking of the nightmare, there's barely a hint of rachel's guilt for lying to jordan and mistrusting her. if i didn't know rachel thought it was weird and creepy that mrs. chapman was mechanically chopping vegetables in utter silence, i would have no idea. i was confused in the gn when rachel accused tobias of snitching on her to cassie because when this supposedly happens on-panel, cassie is giving rachel a look and tobias just happens to be also sitting there, but in rachel's narration in the book there's like a whole paragraph about how she can tell tobias is thought-speaking to cassie privately. and this is an adaptation choice, because this problem could be solved by thought bubbles or narration boxes to give the characters literally any level of interiority, instead of having to rely on dialog and the aforementioned restricted expressiveness to get across what is originally a lot of complex thought. he ends up using thought bubbles on literally two pages of 202 and i'm sure it's because those two scenes would be literally incomprehensible without the thought bubbles helping the reader interpret what's happening, but you know what? it would be nice to have that throughout -- it would aid comprehension and it would make for richer storytelling. i'm halfway into the encounter now and that story is even more interior because of tobias's isolation; i hope grine et al. make some different adaptation decisions, because the approach in the visitor will prove unsustainable.

ok now some fun things:

i like this joke because it reminds me of henrietta pussycat from mister rogers' neighborhood

i don't remember this joke from the visitor, was it unused material from the invasion? either way, thanks for that, marco. (although i do think the speech bubble placement could be improved -- if jake says "what's your point" in the first panel instead of the second, the joke and his reaction face land better)

this is a great sight gag

lol relatable

i'm sorry but grine uses this kind of angle -- from behind rachel -- a lot in the last fight and the little x reminds me of that tweet

[cxsmicvega]

decided this is going under a cut bc its triggering af for peeps. Btw as I talk about this realize when I mention opposition I don't mean fucking nazis I mean people who may have made a slightly rough take due to lack of knowledge on the subject. That's it.

so tw for cult tactics, p3dophilia mentions, abuse, and manipulation

Like ok, this is the model I have seen used a lot so Imma go point by point here so y'all know I ain't being fucking dramatic

So starting with behavior

Control of physical environment

While not quite physical, the shit you put on your blog had to be rigidly controlled. One wrong move, one slip up, and you were just fucking done. You draw something a lil spicy but your art style is cartoony? Get called a p3do. Tried to correct misinformation, even in a way that still actively went against the person you were attacking? Harassment. It was hell. I remember even my own partner at the time doing it and dictating what I would post bc he was similarly deep in the shit.

Rigid rules

This goes back to the above point. You had to be so fucking careful to not even toe the line on the rules put in place. If you voiced support for hated tumblr person of the day at all get ready for some fucking awful shit in your inbox, hell even from your own damn friends. If you tried to sympathize with anyone on the "otherside" (ie be like "yeah it's fucked what they're doing, I just feel fucking bad for em") you were a fucking monster and just as bad as them. I experienced this so heavily first hand it was unreal.

Rewards and punishments

This one is a bit vague but bear with me. Rewards were def more social based. Say the right things, hate the right person, you got praise and love and notes and people defending you. The moment you stepped out of line? You were basically abandoned. Harassed by random people for daring to step out of line and then told you deserve it. I didn't experience this first hand because I was far too terrified to step out of line (my now ex made sure of that) but I saw it happen to my friends. It was hell.

Dependence and obedience

I was heavily dependent on the culture when I was stuck in it. I was traumatized, otherwise alone, and a teenager. I had no one but the friends I had made online and therefore I was obedient. I was good. Because stepping out of line meant losing the only support network I had. The only person I felt I had any connection to irl was my ex and he was similarly in deep.

Information

Deception

Ok I don't think I have to explain how deceptive and blatantly wrong most callout posts were. Like if you have seen them in any capacity you are FULLY aware of how bad it was. To tl;dr it as best I can, there was a 90% chance every callout post you ever saw was insanely exaggerated to make the actions of the called out worse than they were. All manner of understanding thrown out the window, any consideration that maybe someone was just in a bad place not even looked at. It was fucking BAD

Propaganda

It was a very us or them mentality at the time, propaganda for anyone on "the other side" being basically fucking satan. Idk how else to explain it because I was in so deep I didn't recognize it, and now its so far in the past I don't remember specifics. I know it was there though. Hopefully someone can explain better than I.

Discourages access to outside sources of information

If you did your research and came back with a nuanced point instead of a vehemently anti-whatever one, yeah no kiss your shit goodbye. Hell even using other fucking websites was shamed heavily because either A. the people there were stupid or B. the people there were bigots. Like the whole userbase. Somehow. Which makes no sense but ok.

Insider/outsider doctrine

I don't feel I have a proper grasp on what this means, so Imma skip it for now.

Thought

All/nothing good/evil us/them dogma

OH BOY THAT WAS FUCKING RAMPANT AS ALL HELL LOL. I keep repeating the same points it feels like, but again it was very much any "incorrect" take or neutral opinion on those who were "evil" led to some seriously fucked shit. Every post talked about any form of opposition like they were the fucking enemy. If you thought x way you were an evil person who deserved to die. And remember, this wasn't about fucking nazis or bigots. It was about some probably teenager who didn't have dysphoria despite being trans or something. Some stupid bullshit like that.

Encourages only "good and proper" thoughts

I do not think i need to explain after everything else I have said.

Thought stripping techniques

This goes back to the abuse mentioned in the behavior section. Any thought not like the rest of the group was shunned and demonized. You were not allowed to have nuance, you were not allowed to think differently, because otherwise you were punished for doing so. Even now I have trouble sharing more nuanced opinions out of fear.

Emotional

Feeling as if you were chosen or special

Due to the nature of call outs, if you managed to make a successful one you were endlessly praised. Told you were correct and so amazing for pointed all those issues (that were definitely more nuanced than you made it look). You were made to feel special, like you were doing a good deed, doing something right by putting down these awful people in your community. It was fucked.

Guilt/Manipulation

Again I really don't think I need to explain this much with everything else I have gone over. I would be repeating points I have already said.

Emotion blocking techniques

If you felt sympathy, empathy, anything like that for the opposition it was shut down so fucking fast. You were told you were too empathetic, that you were hyper empathetic and letting it get the best of you. That you needed to do better, to be better. That you needed to shut those emotions away because they were getting in the way of doing what was right. I literally identified as an empath for a long ass time because I thought having basic fucking empathy for people wasn't normal. Which is very wrong, I'm insanely low empathy. Fun facts of the fucking day.

Phobia indoctrination

Oldschool cancel culture played on a very specific fear a lot of traumatized people have, that we are actually terrible fucking people. It played on the fear that you were bad, broken, wrong, all to goad you into harming others because you don't want to be bad right? you want to be a good person, and good people do this. Bad people are the ones who oppose this. Bad people are the ones who are against this kind of thing. But no, you're good. You're a good fucking person so tell this traumatized 15 year old that they're a fucked up monster for correcting misinformation on this post about some random politician.

That's what it was like, that's what you did. It played on that nagging fear of being a bad person because we wanted so desperately to be good. And it ended with us hurting people in the process.

-----------

I think that sums up everything decently, I was kinda shocked I went on for this long and that I was right on the fucking money lol. I have missed one point, just the one, and everything else fucking tracks perfectly. That shit was a god damn cult where we worshipped the suffering of others to build ourselves up as good people.

If you suffered from that shit too, you ain't alone dude. I am still working through those issues myself and it SUCKS. I didn't think I would be so on the money, but hey, what can ya do. Something to bring up in therapy whenever I can do that again.

Thanks for reading, be safe, I love you!!

there's been a lot of talk about cults n shit around RQ's (because well.....) but while I'm at it can I like, mention how cult-like oldschool call out post cancel culture tumblr was??? Because I am genuinely still recovering from how much that shit traumatized me ngl

[1863-project]

I feel that Emmet would never chose to do evil, except in situations where its explicitly not evil!

Examples of what I mean: Education. Gotta reenact a completely fictional train robbery, then someone needs to be the robber. Or education on what happens if you are unsafe on the trains. Which I imagine are a series of badly acted videos in which both showcase why not to do various unsafe things.

(That said I also feel half of it would derail into an excuse for the Dead horse trope of tying someone to the railroad tracks. How often do you get an excuse for that?! Also the twins probably switch between who is the 'villain' of each educational segment. )

Yeah, that's the thing - what you’re talking about is normal, and cartoony, and funny. The post I reblogged was specifically about people doing ableist things with him due to him being the more obviously autistic coded of the two of them. The tl;dr is that since 2010 people have taken this character with neurodivergent traits and decided this meant he was unhinged in a way that actually really hurts autistic people who see themselves in him.

Does mental illness sometimes make people violent or lose control? Of course, although it's important to note they're more likely to be victims of violence than the perpetrators. Should we inherently be villainizing mental illness because of this? ABSOLUTELY NOT. There are people who almost fetishize this, and it does nothing to erase the stigma of mental illness, especially for people who do lose control. I work in a public library, and a lot of my patrons are experiencing homelessness. Of those patrons, a lot of them are dealing with mental illness (and not just situational depression) - some have big scaries, like schizophrenia or bipolar, and a lot of homeless folks actually have personality disorders (one study put that rate at 92% of respondents). None of these people are inherently scary or unhinged or bad - they're just dealing with a lack of access to treatment. And none of them have ever made me feel threatened on the reference desk! In fact, they respond verrrry positively when you treat them like regular people, because guess what? They ARE regular people! They're just dehumanized so frequently that they're traumatized.

Furthermore, autism isn't a mental illness (although being autistic often leads to mental illness due to how we're treated by society), but we are disabled by society's standards. Some people don't like to call autism a disability, but the social model of disability more or less does mean we're disabled. We're also highly stigmatized, and that's what the "evil" portrayals are perpetuating. To neurotypicals, we're too blunt and direct, too straightforward, too honest. They think we're being rude, but to us, their more passive, indirect communication style often seems rude and manipulative. They see our awkwardness and our unfamiliarity with social rules and our difficulties with speaking their language and they demonize it. We're ostracized, and people speak of us as if we're a plague and we need to be eliminated. They pity our parents and call us our parents' worst nightmare (instead of, you know, having a stillborn, or having a kid develop cancer, or something actually horrible like that). Instead of the supports we need to thrive, we're given stigma and trauma.

So to see a character with traits like ours, thriving and happy, means the world to us. We don't get that very often. Portrayals of us in the media are often made to be objects of pity or something to laugh at. But seeing Ingo and Emmet, who are not explicitly stated to be autistic but have a lot of autistic traits (making them autistic-coded), being happy and leading fulfilling lives...that is incredibly important for autistic people to see. Our traits are not demonized or mocked here. These characters are allowed to just 'be,' and that is so incredibly important for us.

So to go into the tags and see all of this "villain" stuff, or portrayals where the more obviously autistic-coded twin is "deranged" or "unhinged," plays into the stereotypes people have about us and it really, really hurts, which is why I haven't been in the tags in months - I can't watch myself being dehumanized anymore. I've spent my whole life trying to find my place in a world that hates me. I was so happy to find characters who were just like me who were happy and successful and allowed to be themselves, and the fandom post-PLA ripped that extremely healing space from me and other autistic people.

Sorry for going on a long ramble again, but this has actively negatively impacted my mental health - knowing that’s how so many people still see me and people like me despite the progress we’ve made in the decade plus that I’ve been part of the autistic rights movement really cuts deep and makes me worry that fundamentally on some level I actually am a bad person.

[inkdemonapologist]

I'm struggling to find my style to draw people. I don't know if I want them to look cartoony or more life-like, especially for batim. How did you find your style?

TL;DR Version: How do you find your style? By letting yourself experiment, drawing for a while, and never locking yourself into one way of drawing something.

Longer Version: My honest answer to the question "how did you find your style," I think, is that I didn’t. I kinda bounced around trying out anything that I thought looked cool, and eventually people started telling me that I had a distinct style because all the little pieces I had stolen over time added up to something that was uniquely mine. I can’t stress to you enough that 90% of my artistic decisions started with “Ooo, I like the way that artist draws hands! [tries to draw them the same way]” and then it’d just change over time b/c I wouldn’t be able to perfectly replicate it and I’d tweak it to match what I think looks cool and I’d end up with my own version.

More thoughts:

There’s a reason so many artists say not to worry about style, but advice that’s just “don’t think about x” is pretty hard to actually act on, so I think the advice I might try to give is to try things that look interesting, and keep yourself open to whatever is fun for you.

Like…. you don’t have to only draw one way to end up with a style. Some people shift their stylisation for every project or every piece, and other people do have one really consistent look to their work, but usually when that happens for someone who is comfortable in their style, it’s because that person has discovered The Most Fun/Satisfying Way To Draw for them. The way you find that is by trying different styles or elements that look fun or cool and absorbing the bits that work or make sense to you.

You can draw cartoony people sometimes and life-like people other times, and you can work on improving whichever one happens to appeal to you in that moment. If you draw a bunch of lifelike batims but then wonder if maybe you shoulda drawn them all cartoony instead, you aren’t locked in — you can try drawing them all cartoony and seeing how they look and find out if you like drawing them that way. You can switch back and forth, make them realistic for one fanart and cartoony for another. You can always try out shifting your style, and then draw with that stylisation again sometimes if you like it, and never do it again if you don’t. I think it’s actually good practice to try things that interest you — you may not use it, but you might learn something that can apply to other styles of drawing.

The truth is, I think, that style is a lot more than we usually think of. We think of things like proportions, or the specific abstractions we choose, whether we use thick or thin lines, exactly what shape we make eyes — but those are all surface changes. When you draw a lot and try out different choices and different styles, then there will also be choices that maybe you don’t even know you’re making — aesthetics that look cool to you, ways you’ve learned to compensate for your weak points, elements you put a lot of love into because they’re fun. And honestly? A lot of that stuff will shine through even when you change the surface qualities. You can draw cartoony and realistic and both can look like “your style” if you’ve drawn in both aesthetics so often that your personal choices and preferences and how you’ve made that stylisation work for you show up in both. The way I handle lineart is a big part of my style normally, but the lineless colour palette challenges I did are still in “my style.” If I drew with more cartoony proportions, it would still be “my style.”

That said, I also think it’s okay to happen upon a style you like drawing in and just, stick with it forever if that’s what gives you joy. It’s just that trying to FORCE that to happen, trying to Pick One when there’s many different styles that appeal to you, might just make you feel more and more indecisive, whereas embracing and developing any styles that you find enjoyable or satisfying might be what gives you the building blocks you needed to give everything you draw your own personal flair.