#had a LOT of fun trying to simplify the design down

[chrisrin]

ONE MORE RE-DESIGN BEFORE I SLEEP, THE PRICK OF ALL TIME!!!!

[emilypearsonart]

Character Design Tips and Advice

So I made a thread on Twitter last week about character design, and a lot of people seemed to find it helpful, so if it’s at all helpful here too I’m going to try and replicate it. 

If you’re a character designer and want to add your own advice on top of this, PLEASE feel free, this is just basics. 

I’m going to use my own art for this. 

First off, it's preferable if poses are in 3/4 view, even for the back view. This gives as much information as possible, you tend to see as much of a figure as possible. 

Front-views tend to show none of the sides, so if you want to do that, a side and/or backview is usually necessary. 

Usually it's best to keep to 3 colors. One of them usually being an accent color. This doesn’t include hair/skin/eye color unless they’re an unnatural tone. 

This first image is before I learned this rule, and the colors were very busy. 

The second here is after limiting the colors.  You can have multiple values of the same color(light blue and dark blue only count as 1) but it’s best to not have them shift in hue.

Think of the characters as having a triangle, square, and circle hierarchy. Every concept is made of these shapes. Triangles are usually associated with evil, edgy or dangerous characters. Circle with soft or friendly characters, square with strong sturdy characters.

Usually one design will have a majority of two shapes so it can look like 80% circle, 20% square OR 60% triangle, 40% square etc. For example, this character is maybe 80% circle, 20% square, gives off a friendly and sturdy feeling.

You can also use these shapes to move your eye to a focal point in a concept(dryad girl) here I had a lot of triangle shapes pointing down to draw your eye through the design and give it unity!

Going off that, using focal points using contrast in color, detail density, textures can help a lot too. This character is extremely busy and noisy, your eye has a hard time resting anywhere.

This one, the detail is mostly on the face and chest, and since the accent color is also there, your eyes are drawn to those spots.

Focus on the silhouette. Is your character recognizable or unique in their silhouette alone? Think of games like Overwatch, League of Legends, Apex how all those characters are recognizable just from their silhouettes. 

Depending on the tone/client sometimes more grounded, realistic character designs are preferable. Games like Last of Us, Uncharted, Tomb Raider all have great designs, but focus more on realism and storytelling over heroics.

Overall think of character design as something that provides information. It's less about making a drawing that's super detailed or with interesting lighting, but it's about making a reference for someone else(or yourself!) 

Think of what this will be used for. If it’s for a 3D modeler, what information will they need to understand the design for multiple angles, what details need to be clarified? 

If it’s for comics, what are touchstones you can use to make this character stand out and be recognized in every panel? How can you simplify it to be drawn 100 different times? 

Have fun!

[ssalballoon]

i wanna get better at art but dont know how to start ^^' whats a good way to get into studying anatomy and improving as an artist? tysm 💗 love your art soso much

more art converts 😼 yay!!

i think these asks were sent by different people but they're pretty related + a lot of my advice is the same! so i'll answer these together under the cut (it's so long oh gosh)

ok first of all i'm very flattered that people are asking me for art advice but i'm really not the most equipped person to ask TTOTT I've never been deliberately studious with my art so I feel bad offering advice when I've mostly gotten by with just drawing fanart and ocs a lot... my rate of improvement has therefore been slow, but I've still had an enjoyable learning experience so perhaps from that angle my input may help! i'll mainly refer you to external resources that have helped me

For anatomy + drawing humans:

1) I know I'm not diligent enough to sit down and study muscles, so instead I make it more enjoyable by drawing my favorite characters in a pose that targets the muscles I want to practice! (i default to drawing ppl naked because of this lol) This isn't the most efficient, but it serves as good motivation to get practice in. (honestly a lot of my general art advice has the undercurrent of becoming so obsessed with characters to drive your motivation to draw even when artblocked/ struggling with doubts!)

2) I want to refer you to Sinix's Anatomy playlist! Although Sinix focuses more on digital painting, he gives simplified anatomy breakdowns that include how muscles change shape under different movements/poses, which is crucial for natural human posing. the static anatomy diagrams from Google don't really help for that

3) What's just as important as anatomy is gestures! (especially important if you're used to drawing non-human objects I think!) Making figures look like they have flow to them will sell the "naturalness"(?) to your anatomy. If you have in person life drawing sessions accessible near you I'd recommend trying those out, or if you prefer trying it digitally there's this website!

This helps you not only get a sense of human proportions, but also natural posing! I'd limit the time taken to draw the poses from like 10 seconds to 1 minute(?) for quick gestures, and maybe 1 minute to 5mins(for now!! typically they go much longer) to study human proportions. I'd say don't spend a lot of time on them, repetition is more important!

4) I've also picked up on useful anatomy tidbits from artists online! Looking at how practiced/ professional artists stylize a body helps me focus on what the essential details are to convey a particular form (looking up "human muscles" and being hit with anatomy diagrams full of all the smallest details can be overwhelming! what do you even focus on?! so these educated simplifications really help me) Like Emilio Dekure's work! Look how simplified these figures are, and yet contain all the essential information to convey the sense of accurate form (even though it's highly exaggerated!)

(shamefully admits I've never studied from actual anatomy books so I can't recommend anything in that sense TTOTT)

For general improvement:

1) I highly recommend Sinix's Design Theory playlist and Paintover Pals! (+ his channel in general) You don't have to put them immediately into practice, but I think these are good fundamental lessons to just listen to and have them in the back of your mind to revisit another day. Plus these videos are just fun and very approachable! Design theory fundamentals are essential to creating appeal and directing a viewer's attention, and critiquing others' work/ seeing his suggestions are a good way to practice noticing areas of improvement+ solutions yourself!

2) If you prefer a more formal teaching resource, the Drawabox YouTube course covers all the basic fundamentals of drawing in short lessons. But honestly if I were starting out, this would be a little intimidating for me (and even now it still is! I haven't done all of them) But even if you don't watch them, the titles should give you an idea of the basic concepts that are valuable to pick up. I think it would be nice to keep in mind and revisit once in a while as you learn!

(One lesson I do encourage you to watch is the line control one! A confident continuous line conveys motion and flow much better compared to discontinuous frayed lines which I think is good to practice early by drawing from the wrist and shoulder)

3) As a universal piece of advice: Please please please use references! Use a reference for literally everything, observing is how we learn! You'll find that a lot of things you thought you knew what they looked like are inaccurate by memory alone. Also, trace! This is solely for your practice, tracing then freehanding has helped me grasp proportions when I was struggling! (of course don't post these online if you traced from art)

I've found that being able to compile references into easy to access boards has been very helpful in encouraging me to use references more. For PC, I think they use PureRef (free/pay what you want), and for iPad I use VizRef. VizRef is a one time purchase (which was definitely worth the $3.99 USD price imo)

4) On that note, try building up the habit to observe from media + real life and make purposeful comments about what you see! Like hey, when I bend my knee, the muscles/fat in my thighs and calves bulge outwards, I should draw that next time. Purposeful observation carries over to your overall visual library, and it's a little thing that adds up over time

5) For motivation, get into media you really enjoy, or make your own characters! The way I started art more seriously was by drawing fanart + OCs from anime that I liked ^^ For OCs it really encourages you to draw more because you're the primary creator of their art! Also you gotta see a lot of good art to make good art! Watching visually appealing media (like animation with appealing stylization/simplification) can passively help you learn just by observation.

ok wow I could go on but this is already a lot of information TTOTT my main aim for this reply is basically: don't let anything discourage you from learning to draw!! drawing is so fun and brings me a lot of joy ^^ practicing often will of course help you improve, and the way to incentivize that is by having fun with it! i hope this could help!💞

[chaikachi]

Rosegarden, Cinderella, and Fairytale Romance

0r Why I Will Eat My Glass Slipper if Oscar and Ruby Don't Dance by the End of the Show

-

Part of Ruby's arc in v9 is realizing that the ideals and dreams she had as a (younger) child are too ambitious and unrealistic. That life, huntresses, herself… they can't be like the fairytales.

It is a very big lesson to learn but, much like all things in RWBY, there is a push for nuance. Weiss and Blake even have called out in show that those storybook morals are too simplistic or black and white. Ruby is overwhelmed and breaking under the weight of her burdens and is being given the opportunity to either keep trudging on until it destroys her, or leave all of it behind.

But what about a secret hidden third option? Can she not leave Ruby Rose behind, not become someone entirely new, but rather… Choose to be the version of Ruby Rose she wants to be on purpose? And not as a result of other people's pressures or expectations that she's internalized for too long?

The point I'm trying to make here is that she can admit that holding herself to the impossible standard of an untouchable hero that always wins in the end isn't sustainable, but still find the intersection of fairytale and reality.

Now how does this tie in to RG? For that, I want to talk about two things:

The other canon romance plots in show

One of Ruby's smaller/more subtle 'allusions'

Of the three other big relationships in the show, each one's confession seems to fall into a very specific 'theme' (I understand I am generalizing/simplifying a bit but bare with me):

Arkos is rooted in tragedy: Pyrrha's death

2. Renora is rooted in reality: A two volume long conflict that ends in them acknowledging their feelings, talking it out, and agreeing to be patient with each other.

3. Bumbleby is rooted in a literal fairytale: A pocket dimension created specifically in the Ever After to push them into smooching (and y'know... confessing)

Rosegarden is currently in the tragedy stage. Constant separation over and over again leading up to Oscar being left in Remnant thinking she's dead and Ruby stuck in the Ever After not knowing how much time is passing back home and if he'll even be there when she gets back.

Reality we've seen for them a lot in how down to earth they are with each other. The constant quiet support. Oscar seeing past the pedestal, past the ideal, straight through to Ruby. Ruby seeing past the merge and seeing him fully as just Oscar.

But how do we tie the fairytale into it when Oscar isn't in Ever After to give them that storybook magic? Well, we go back to the earlier mentioned subtle allusion for Ruby: Cinderella.

NOW I KNOW WHAT YOU'RE THINKING. "But Chai!! We already have a very clear allusion to that character!!!"

Okay yes, but Ruby is a mirror to Cinder. We've seen it in their arcs as primary antagonists to each other, we've seen it in their costume designs with the parting of their hair and similar colour schemes. Cinder Fall, Ruby Rose (as in to rise). They are two sides of one coin.

Back at the dance in v2, Ruby arrives and is left alone by her friends. She isn't wearing glass slippers, but there is a whole lot of focus on how uncomfortable her shoes are.

She leaves the dance early after not having fun and runs into Cinder. And when the clock strikes midnight and the spell is broken? Cinder is at the dance in her pretty dress with Mercury and Ruby is back in the tower getting one of, if not the first big reality check(s) of the series.

This situation is teased by Oz in the episode prior with his little conversation with Ruby:

Ozpin: Not enjoying yourself? Ruby: Oh, no aha, everything's fine. I'm just not much of a... dance-y pantsy... dance-y girl. Ozpin: Well you can't spend your entire life on the battlefield, even if you may want to. Ruby: Yeah that lesson's been floating around a lot lately. Ozpin: If you think about it, fighting and dancing aren't so different. Two partners interlocked. Heh, although one wrong room on the ballroom merely leads to a swollen foot. Ruby:Or a twisted ankle Ozpin: It's not every day that friends are able to come together like this. Time has a way of testing our bonds. But it's nights like these that can help keep them stronger than ever. Nights like these are ones we'll never forget.

He teases that the dance is special. That Ruby should get to enjoy it because life has a funny way of creeping up quickly on these things. That these moments are rare and should be treasured... and he's proven right almost immediately.

Every other person in the cast got a dance - or something close to it - that night. Blake and Yang. Blake and Sun. Weiss lost her date 'cause Neptune's a goof, but they still got to sit down and talk. Jaune and Pyrrha had a moment on the balcony before he went to grab a dress and they all danced together. Ren and Nora. Penny even danced with one of her guards. Glynda and Ironwood too!!

But our hero didn't get one. All she got was a fight.

And see, this is where I think the 'fairytale' comes in. Ruby's had her reality check. Time and time and time again that fairytale spell has been broken. She is going through a metamorphosis throughout v9 to become a newly actualized version of herself, or at least find the start of the path that brings her there. But when she returns to Remnant what is waiting for her? More war. More fighting. More responsibility as being this symbol of hope and a leader for everyone. But part of her arc is learning to share her burdens with others. And the person that has consistently tried to do that with her without her asking for it, has been Oscar. Oscar, who is currently in Vacuo with who knows how much time passing wrestling with the knowledge that Ruby, the rest of her team, and Jaune are very likely dead. Oscar, who is now bearing the weight of this world saving mission without her there.

All I'm trying to say is that a celebration of sorts with a redemption dance, quite possibly in Vacuo, isn't entirely off the table. In fact I'd argue it's been teased since the very start, especially considering just how often they are posed as if they are asking each other to dance.

Also to go back to something Ozpin said "fighting and dancing aren't so different"... One of Oscar and Ruby's first scenes together, they are sparring in front of a sunset and they can't stop smiling at each other. They're just having so much fun with it.

Also their premiere moments in volumes 6, 7, and 9 are all RG in a fight of some kind. The first two Ruby is saving him from Grimm. The latter Ruby is being attacked by Neo's illusion of him. In volume 8, we don't get that. But we do get these two moments which also count for something (especially because dances and hugs are also quite similar in some ways):

There are going to be very high emotions when RWBYJ return to Remnant and what better way to celebrate that they are still alive than a party (and if not then, then after the war is over... but hopefully not THAT long). Where they can just 'dance and laugh and love… and just live'. Even for just a moment because who knows what the next will bring.

Ruby in v2 wasn't really a dance-y pantsy kind of girl... but post-v9 Ruby? She gets to choose the kind of girl she wants to be. Just the knight? Or maybe the princess too, even just for on day. And I think if anyone is going to offer her a chance to try it out, it's going to be her Little Prince.

-

I love these normal kids with their very normal knees a very normal amount. I love how their respective 'specialness' makes them the perfect match for each other because it means they can be 'normal' together. That is all ty for listening. RG canon okay byeeeeee~

[mysteriousdoll]

I’ve been working on redesigns for a while now, and here’s the first batch! Rather than doing them in a specific order, I had people on insta drop characters into an ask box and went down the line! This wound up being a really, really fun practice! Going with a chibi-ish style helped a lot in trying to just get the base idea down and worry about tiny details later on. Explanations/notes under the cut!

Edit: Changed Kork’s uniform to a deep navy blue as opposed to the original green after being informed of the ill origins of that green. Also changed Kyoko’s hair slightly

Reblogs are appreciated!! They help a lot!!

Notes on photos in text form...

Korekiyo - Cut hair shorter, emblem replaces armband, shirt no longer hanging out; tucked in.

Chihiro - Hair pin from Junko, Ibuki dyed her tipes, new ribbon from Taka

Mikan - Kokichi cut her hair (for her, dw), leggings for coverage, longer sleeves, non-slip shoes. (for reference, i asked my mom just to make sure... and mikan's outfit does not at all suit a nurse, so i gave her more coverage while still keeping the fit there in a certain fashion)

Ibuki - Pigtails!!, they actually wear (part of) the school uniform, dyed their romper, white and black hair like hers would not go well as the black would quickly bleed into such small streaks of white. So i had their bangs and two sections in the front white with pink and blue streaks, while the rest of her hair is black with pink and blue streaks. Her horns are completely fake and are just attached to a headband.

Mondo - Emblem on the right jacket breast, overall just simplified certain things and gave him longer hair.

Kyoko - Butchered CUT her hair, pants for their own comfort, bracelet is smaller in actuality, it was a gift from Taka shortly after she was taken in by the Ishimarus (it's a whole thing), they got sneakers because their boots wound up not working as something to wear for long periods of time.

Hajime - Scar from surgery is there, just not shown due to simplified style (and not at all because i forgot), pride flag button, Usami keychain from Chiaki.

Chiaki - She's chubbier now :), gave her HP's uniform top and ribbon, hair color brightened to be a bit more pink, shorts under her skirt, tries to eat things she shouldn't.

Hina - Heterochromia (she's afraid of straight people), barrette is now heart shaped, swim club leader, she's got a bra because... her back would hurt hello?, i'm sorry- her shoes were tacky imo so I changed them

Sonia - Glittery bow, emblem on left arm--student council, 'dress' based on beta design, boots act as Kaz defense

Nekomaru - Uniform sleeves always rip, baggier pants because... reasons.

Makoto - His hair almost makes sense!, bro is falling constantly, ONE jacket, no doubling up... bland, but not too bland

Taka - Public Morals Committee chairperson, student council president, debate club leader, taller collar, more gold accents, NO arm band--it's replaced with the eye shown next to him, got matching boots from Junko after their original boots were ruined by bullies

Celeste - Her and Taka do one another's eyebrows, hair is curly--drills still fake, beta fit is superior, bunny from Hifumi (they're actually close, an attempt to give her more humanization was made), monster high esc shoes (she wears her canon shoes to most events, but the monster high esc shoes mix tennis shoes and heels for ease of movement and comfort)

Gundham - Oldest Ishimaru sibling, leader of the animal raising committee, partially blind, less layers

Mahiru - Still has her camera, it was just excluded here to focus on her design, romper with flowy shorts, matching bracelets with Hiyoko

Regarding the Hopes Peak emblem; I thought it may be interesting to change up the way uniforms are implemented into it... In that, there are basic uniform options, but students are relatively allowed to wear what they wish provided it followed guidelines (example being Miu's uh.. garters?? I think that's what they are? they wouldn't be allowed), and had the Hopes Peak insignia somewhere on the outfit. Following that, while the insignia can be somewhat customized in that students could change the white to be a different color, but students who lead clubs, committees, student council, etc., have the black part replaced.

(Note: assuming Nidai doesn't directly manage any teams at HP, he does not have an insignia implying such; subject to change.)

An interesting little fun fact here... well, to me... some of these actually called back to the beta designs! Mainly, with Sonia and Celeste! Admittedly a few characters got little to no changes, mostly because I just found that their designs already fit pretty well. Others, such as Taka, Makoto, or Mahiru, took the basic idea of their outfits and spruced them up. I'm not entirely sure when I originally implemented the Amy Rose rings on Taka's sleeves, but I felt it added a bit more of a dynamic pallet to his design. Or like, Makoto, a mix of simplification and sprucing up... I've never enjoyed the excessive layers he's got (lookin at you, gundham), wearing his school jacket over his hoodie always seemed... strange to me. So I figured with the change to HP dress code (considering these students don't even wear the uniform in school modes or anything), it allowed for him to just wear the hoodie with a HP insignia embroidered onto it. He's also got bandages given his canonically clumsy nature. Mahiru is someone else whose design I like but I wanted to change up somewhat, so I changed her dress to a romper with a flared bottom and a flannel pattern.

If you've got any questions regarding changes, feel free to ask!

[skylermadness]

Coming In Clutch (Clutch the Opossum TF/PMC)

(Original Date of Upload: February 21, 2024)

Yeah, I'm finally deciding to queue and upload my newer TFs.

Original Description:

Story commission. Truthfully ever since I was introduced to Clutch a long while back I have been wanting to write a TF into him. He has a very specific vibe and design that I absolutely adore. I just never really had the motivation to write said TF, at least until now! I don't really have much of a commentary for how this story went, it was a pretty standard writing outlet as are most of my usual writing endeavors. Still was very fun to do though! Now if only lasers actually worked like that...

   The cleaning of one's home has always been deemed a less than exciting task for many people. Gavin was one of those people. Considering the sheer intensity of labor needed, tasks such as maintenance of one’s abode have always been fairly daunting. Matters were not made better either seeing as it felt like it's been two hours and all Gavin felt like he accomplished was dusting and reorganizing his room a bit followed by thirty minutes of dealing with the hallway outside of it.

   Well, that second part may not have been fully true. Technically it was two minutes of staring down the hallway wondering what should be done, twenty three minutes getting distracted by checking his phone, and five minutes inspecting a closet at the hallway’s end that he couldn't recall having been there before. Although considering the door's width it’s no surprise he'd disregard such a thing for all his time living here.

   The closet itself was rather small on the inside. It looked more like some random spot where one would stick their cleaning supplies. Gavin didn't find cleaning supplies inside it though. Instead he found three sealed boxes stacked atop each other, and leaning on them was what he had initially assumed to be some kind of cane. Seeing as the cane was the only thing not in the confines of cardboard (and because he didn't want to go back to his room to get a box cutter), that was the first thing inside the closet he decided to grab.

   As far as canes go, the one he had found himself holding was rather strange looking. It had looked less like a cane and more like a gun of some kind, especially since it seemed to almost be modeled after a rifle. Albeit it was definitely a lot more simplified than a normal firearm would usually be. 

   “Maybe this thing was owned by one of the previous owners…?” Gavin reasoned to himself as some sort of explanation for why the cane had been in a random inconspicuous closet. 

   By now he had also resorted to staring at the object in his hands, one hand grasping the cane’s muzzle and feeling out the odd smoothness of what he had presumed to be wood. Although he couldn't tell the make of the thing at all, and the longer he kept hold of it the more he had this feeling that there was a lot more to it than what could be perceived. He hadn't realized that he had unconsciously begun curling the fingers of his other hand around the upper portion of the cane, the part of it that had mimicked a gun’s grip. At least he didn't notice until he heard a soft click emanate from the weird object.

   Gavin only had a second to register his left hand had grasped the region enough to pull the trigger. “Wha-”

   A sound that could only be described as one akin to a sci-fi blaster then pierced the air as a laser beam had been fired from the cane’s tip. The sudden firing of the now apparent weapon prompted Gavin to drop it, the young man now moving his focus to where the damned object had fired to try and assess the damage. There was no damage however and instead the crimson beam of light had fired off into the wall opposite to the closet he had been inspecting, bounced off of the wall at a ninety degree angle and into the ceiling, and then bounced again off that to the next wall. He spent a few seconds feeling a mixture of awe and concern as he watched the laser just ricochet around the hallway at high speed like some kind of dangerous DVD player screensaver before realizing at some point it was bound to hit him.

   Unfortunately that realization came a little too late as the beam had bounced off the ceiling again at an angle that put its trajectory towards a segment of wall that was directly opposite of Gavin. By the time he realized he should find cover he had only turned around at enough of an angle for the laser to get a clear shot right into his chest.

   …Except it seemed to just straight up disappear into his body upon collision. The only sign of it ever hitting him came in the form of a sudden force knocking him into the boxes that were still in the closet.

   “Urgh,” he groaned out. He had already taken note that despite collapsing into the boxes, he had also landed on his rear. And as Gavin began running a hand through his usually messy hair, he looked down at his chest to inspect the damages. He was surprised to find that there was no sign of physical harm. No hole in his chest, no burning in the red fabric of his shirt. It was as if nothing had even happened.

   “What the hell was that…?” Gavin asked himself, him now shakily starting to get back up. There was an odd dizziness that struck him though, the young man beginning to use the closet door as a crutch to keep him from collapsing back into the boxes again. Although as one of his hands began grasping onto the doorknob something he hadn't yet noticed was beginning to make itself prevalent.

   Well, it was actually happening to both of his hands. A strange discoloration that was beginning to etch into his skin by having its sandy beige tone shift into a lighter, practically pale shade of peach. At the same time it also seemed as if his fingernails were in the process of extending as well, the tips of each one growing sharper as they got lengthier. It didn't take long for each nail to attain an almost claw-like feel to them, only further accentuated by them growing roughly half an inch over the tips of his fingers themselves.

   While the shifts in his skin tone extended beyond his fingers and onto his hands proper, an even more peculiar change had formulated on his wrists. Strands of deep green fuzz began to grow out from his skin, short at first but quickly lengthening to become fur-like in consistency. It wasn't isolated at his wrists either as the fur was quick to rush down onto his hands, soft fluff rapidly encapsulating the back of both of them. An equal amount would even trail across his palms, a pelage of deep green hastily getting developed in that region. The growth would only come to an end at the base of his fingers and leave that part of his hands peach-toned and furless.

   The same couldn't be said for his arms however. The forest of fur was quickly rushing up each limb. Both forearms were encapsulated with ease by this quickly developing coat of fluff, clearly visible due to the short sleeves of his shirt. After a few seconds it would also grow onto and beyond his elbows before making its way towards the upper half of his arms. The fur would only continuously move upwards and envelope his relatively skinny limbs at its rather rapid rate. Although soon enough the clarity of his changes would become shrouded as the growing pelt finally passed beneath the sleeves of his shirt. Although the transformation was still progressing within that region judging by the feeling of the fur beginning to prevent the fabric from touching the skin of his shoulders.

   Gavin groaned again as he placed his unoccupied hand onto his forehead, the young man now feeling a bit of a headache form in his skull. However as he felt his hand graze the skin of his forehead he instantly took notice of the furry feeling that having it touch him caused. 

   “Whuh-” he lowered the hand into his vision, and his eyes then widened at the sight of his now fluffy palm. “I-is that fur!?”

   His gaze then went to the hand that was still grasping onto the doorknob. It was also furry, and now he was noticing the claws as well. 

   “The hell’s happenin- augh-” Gavin quickly brought the hand back up to his forehead. Why did dizziness always have to be mixed with headaches?

   The spread of his pelage only continued. Once the deep green completely enshrouded the area around his shoulders the fur finally spilled out onto his torso. This was also where a major change in coloration to his fluff took place as the shade of green drastically brightened to a much lighter shade. This new, vivid coloration spread across his torso and back in a similar pace as it had his arms. His chest, typically scarce in the department of body hair, had quickly become the centerpiece for the convening of fur. Like two crashing waves the light green, the fur made its way from the apex of his thoracic region to completely covering his pectorals. From there they would then combine right at the middle of his chest, signaled by a small tuft of fur noticeably poking out from that middle area.

   From there the fur proceeded to cascade downwards and onto his abdominal region. It continuously sprouted out of him, his belly and sides concurrently being consumed by the brightly colored fluff. By now the fur had also already taken over the surface area of Gavin’s back, and from there an odd feeling of pressure etched in and between the vertebrae of his spine before moving to the rest of his body. After a few more seconds his clothing started feeling a bit baggier, alongside his peripheral vision catching sight of the closet door's panels seemingly inching upwards little by little.

   Despite the headache wracking his skull Gavin still took notice of all of this, which had also resulted in him quickly bringing down a hand in order to hold his shorts up. A cursory glance downwards had proven the floor was steadily getting closer bit by bit as well.

   “I-I’m shrinking too?!” he exclaimed, said exclamation quickly being followed by a fit of coughs. “Urgh, my-my voice…”

   A slight tingle had begun coursing through his throat as the fur was now ever so slowly crawling up it. This seemed to prompt some kind of alteration in his voice, an almost aged tone etching into it. And despite it only just beginning to change there even seemed to be a shift in cadence within it, one that placed his voice in a weird middle ground between refined and sleazy.

   His pelt of fur had continued growing downwards as well. Strangely the fur that had grown around the base of his spine had grown to be a bit thicker than that on the rest of his body, alongside seemingly adopting a spikier appearance. Peculiarities mounted up as a small pressure formed at his spine’s base as well, which was quickly alleviated thanks to his legwear being airy enough to give no resistance to what would be formed. Soon enough, growing from above his rear, was a tail. Furless with the same pale pink as what had developed in his fingers, and as the appendage grew longer it was noticeable that it had a faint striped appearance not unlike that of a rodent’s tail. Also like a rodent’s tail it would grow to be relatively lengthy in comparison to the rest of his body.

   While his tail grew, so did the surface area of his green pelage. Although now that it had reached his legs it had shifted back into the same dark green tone that it had on his arms. Just more and more fur rushing down his thighs and past his knees. The fluff covering the crus of his legs remained unimpressive, at least up until the very bottom where it bordered his ankles. Much like the fur surrounding his tail, the fur at the bottom of his legs would develop a lengthier and spiked appearance that had made it go a little bit over the top portion of his shoes.

   Gavin continued to keep one hand on the doorknob to stabilize himself while the other remained holding up his pants. A weird feeling had also begun to enter his mind, his prior concern steadily fading the longer he looked down at his shrinking form.

   “Actually… I might actually be liking this,” he stated with a smirk. His shrinking came to a halt by this point, Gavin being reduced to a little over three feet in height. His throat had also been consumed by fur as well, the bright greens now making their way to envelop his still unchanged head. 

   A pushing sensation had then manifested in the lower half of his face, followed by the region physically pushing out a bit. A slightly animalistic muzzle was being extended, and alongside it his nose was granted a pink tone as it was concurrently reshaped and repositioned to naturally be at the tip of his new muzzle. A few of his teeth had also begun to poke out from between his lips, noticeably sharper than they had used to be. One had even seemed to be in the process of gaining a golden coloration to it as it sharpened.

   The development of his muzzle had started to cause his glasses to get knocked off-balance. At the same time as fuzz creeped up the sides of his neck it would rapidly reach his ears. Both of them would end up getting covered in dark green as they began to lengthen, and that would cause the temples of his glasses to be further pushed away. This got exacerbated as the lengthening ears slowly moved up to the top of his head. This was something his eyewear would be completely unable to compensate for so they just unceremoniously dropped off his muzzle and onto the ground. His ears eventually settled atop his head, longer and more akin to that of a marsupial’s. The right one even pierced itself before an earring spontaneously atomized into the new piercing.

   Meanwhile even more fur was now surrounding the muzzle’s base. Shades of light green rapidly sprouted around his face, overtaking his jawline and causing the small patch of facial hair on his chin to change to mix with the fur. Five tufts of dark green fur also grew out at the border of the bottom of his muzzle, these tufts developing a spiked and pointed style that had a distinctly beard-like appearance that mixed well with the spiked mane he had grown from his jawline. Soon enough the remainder of his face would be consumed by the light green fur. Fluff circled around his changing eyes, the shape of them in the process of transforming to be more marquise-shaped while they enlarged. His eyebrows had also gotten thicker while recoloring to a darker green instead. 

   His hair was all that remained, brown follicles quickly being consumed by light green as the messy appearance was shortened and realigned to mix well with the smoothness of his fur. This became quite apparent with the hair-turning-fur around the nape of his neck, it shuffling and restyling into a spiked style that when mixed with the rest of his fur would give him a slicked back style. There had also seemed to be a single stripe of dark green that stretched from the middle, starting from his head's apex and ending at the back of it.

   The last major tangible change would then set into his still extremely baggy clothing. His t-shirt finally shrunk down to better fit his form as the red tone of it was bleached to a clean white. The short sleeves of the shirt proceeded to extend down his arms and after a few seconds settled at his wrists. Diamond-shaped, golden cufflinks then manifested at the ends of the longer sleeves. Meanwhile a split began running down the shirt, fastened together by a single golden button. As the split formed the neck of the shirt lengthened and folded into a suit’s collar, and on each side of the split manifested a pocket. Thin black stripes then ran vertically across the now clean white jacket to give it a pinstripe appearance. 

   The clothes on the lower half of his body endured less interesting changes. Especially his shorts which seemed to just sink into and get assimilated into the fur that was on his legs. His shoes were lucky enough to be resized though, their brown leather being overtaken by white like his shirt had. The only other major change came to the strings of his footwear which collectively merged into a single strap that held the fancier looking shoes closed by a golden buckle. The shifts in his clothing then ended with a golden necktie that materialized beneath the suit jacket.

   The man (well, he looked like some kind of fancy anthropomorphic possum now) seemed unphased by just about everything that had happened now. He just blinked a few times, a black void overtook the sclera of his eyes while his pupils became a stark white. This was all accompanied by a strange shift that had been occurring within his brain this whole time, his mentality seemingly in the process of shifting to fit his new form. The dizziness had subsided by this point and Gavin(?) lost the need to cling onto the door. Instead he ended up using that hand to run a paw through his scalp fur. 

   “A peculiar series of events, but…” he stretched the hand out in front of him and took a nice, long look at his fuzzy hand and the sleeve of his suit. “…definitely not unwanted~”

   There was a weird sense of calm composure that pulsed through his brain now. All of his concerns had melted away, replaced with a strange enjoyment (familiarity) with this body. The refined aura had exuded, the clear collectedness he possessed, a very specific appearance that would make others lower their guard. There was a particularly dangerous level of confidence that had been given to him. That and an intriguingly different view on his sense of self…

   “Clutch…” he muttered. The word, name, felt oddly fitting. He smiled, nodding in approval to himself. “Quite the fitting name now, I think. Now then…”

   His gaze drifted downwards to the laser cane he had dropped from the earlier misfire. Bending down, he picked it up with one hand at the cane’s grip and held onto it as one normally would a cane. Then, with a sly smirk, he asked himself…

   “What to do now~”

[reimenaashelyee]

The World in Deeper Inspection UPDATE Read: (Chapter 1: Pages 1 to 4)

About the comic

TWIDI IS BACK! To celebrate its 10th anniversary since launch, I'm remaking the first chapter and posting pages every Friday, accompanied by my thoughts on the original pages and a breakdown of what I've changed or improved.

Analysis under the cut.

PAGE 1 and 2

It’s March 31st, 2023… exactly 10 years since I posted the very first page of TWIDI!! I haven’t done much to celebrate TWIDI’s anniversaries the past few years (due to general Busyness – yes, yes, check out the forever “TWIDI isn’t dead” sign up on the front page), but the official 10th anniversary is a special unignorable event.

Initially I wanted to make a simple remaster of Chapter 1 – better copyediting, fixing egregious lettering and art errors, alongside a retrospective author’s note… then long-time reader Caracan suggested, why not do a full remake? That’d be fun to see. And I agree – it would be fun to see! I’ve grown my craft and sensibility as comics artist since TWIDI’s debut, and I was so curious to see how 28 Year Old Me would interpret the material that 18 Year Old me produced.

So yep!

This first page used to be so cool-looking to my 18 Year Old eyes… I can definitely see what I was trying to go for, but wasn’t quite able to reach then.

A thumbnail from 2013, with notes to myself regarding the composition. In my mind I wanted the wolves to have a James Jeanesque rendering – I was really into his Fables covers back then (still am tbh).

For the remake, I leaned further into the graphic-designiness of the composition: every element had to sweep the reader’s gaze down onto our protagonist. The wolves are expanded to actually take up half the spread and simplified down to only white lines. The trees and sky are shaped like teeth pointing down to Grimsley. The intent was to evoke a sense of claustrophobia, of the wolves catching up to Grims and driving him into a corner.

Small improvements: the energy and line of action are clearer with the new running pose. Definitely a better silhouette. And a lot more angularity with the limbs which adds to the sense of movement.

PAGE 3 and 4

This spread is one of the most drastic rehauls in the remake. Here’s the original for comparison

It’s not very good! (Sorry @ 18 Year Old Me) I remember struggling real hard with the dynamicism required out of this sequence…

Fortunately after 1000s of double-page compositions and 10 years of practice, I’ve finally cracked this once-difficult composition.

This new page does away with the concept of grids or caring about whether anything is read linearly. The sequence is supposed to evoke chaos and panic as everything is happening everywhere all at once, so it doesn’t really matter if everything can be read or arranged in a neat grid. That was the problem with the original spread: it was too beholden to the grid.

(You can see how in the original, each page was (top row: left to right; bottom row: left to right))

The new page is like this:

The page is horizontally railroaded. The main action sweeps from top left to bottom right.

The AWOOO sfx is the anchor which leads the eye from left to right. As the eye travels it may glance up or down at the panels – there’s no real need to pay attention to them; hopefully the improved clarity of Grimsley’s emotional and body acting + me actually depicting the wolf biting his neck + the spiky graphic design elements instantly conveys that he’s in trouble without much or any processing.

The newest panel – the pink grass and canine paws – is a call back for later when we catch up to this in media res.

[bethanythebogwitch]

I've been going over my thoughts on all the aquatic Digimon. Previous posts here: all fish, all mermaids, and aquatics part 1. Since I've gone over the aquatics with a default evolution line, today I'll just go over all rookie/child, champion/adult, and armor level mons that I haven't already discussed.

I will say that my previous post's analogy on how Digimon evolution works was not at all helpful, so I'll try again. Digimon evolution is branched, where each stage has multiple possible next stages that do not necessarily need to have a thematic connection to prior stages. Stages are not mutually exclusive and separate Digimon can evolve into the same thing. Digimon can also evolve backwards and not to the same thing they started as. For example, an Agumon (little dinosaur) can evolve into Centaurumon (centaur), then evolved back down to a Patamon (winged hamster). The animes usually simplify things from the games and virtual pets by giving their Digimon characters much more linear and thematically consistent evolution lines. I may do an intro to Digimon post some day.

Starting with rookie/child levels we have an old mon that hasn't been used much: Gizamon. It's been around for a long time, but rarely gets any attention and as far as I can tell, has never gotten a spotlight, even as a monster of the week. That's too bad, it's a neat little critter. It's a marine mammal, but has the body shape and jumping ability of a frog.

Next up is Crabmon (Ganimon in Japanese). People compare Pokemon and Digimon a lot, but one comparison I haven't seen is that they both made a monster that's literally just a crab. Crabmon and Kingler are both fiddler crabs too, with one much bigger claw. I like it and there are a few crustaceans of higher level that I think could be a good pre-evo for. Crabmon also has a x-antibody variant.

Crabmon

Crabmon X

The last of this level is Sangomon, a very new Digimon. I love it so much, it's a little staghorn coral monster with polyps for arms. It's so cute and such a creative way of making coral as a monster. I wish it has a full through-like of coral reef evolutions. If I had to pick any of the rookie/child Digimon form this series as a partner, it honestly might be this one.

Moving onto the champion/adult level is Ebidramon. Ebi means shrimp and dramon indicates that the Digimon is draconic, so it's a shrimp dragon. It clearly isn't fond of shrimp being used as a synonym for tiny as it will attack those who make fun of it.

Next is Gesomon, which clearly takes ofter humboldt squids as its very violent and scary. It attacks those who enter its territory, but won't bother those outside of it. It's also very intelligent and cunning, which is very appropriate for a squid. I really like Gesomon, I think it's a great choice for an evil aquatic line. Gesomon has an x-antibody variant which is incredibly ugly and not in a good way. Its ugly in an "I don't want to look at this any more" way.

Gesomon

Gesomon X

The last aquation at this level is the excellent Octomon. I don't like any of the octopus Pkemon very much and Digimon deliverd for me. It's a kleptomanian who wears a pot for a head much like how a coconut octopus lives inside coconuts and other hard objects. The crown came from a sunked treasure chest and that gun squirts ink. Weirdly enough, the little gold barnacles on it are identified as another Digimon called Fujitsumon and Octomon's reference book entry is the only place Fujitsumon has ever been mentioned.

Next up is the armor level, which lies outside the normal evolution levels. It was introduces fro the anime Digimon Adventure 02 and outside of media related to that show, armor Digimon are often treated as being synonymous to the champion/adult level.

First is Archelomon, a sea turtle with knives for flippers. Digimon has had much more ridiculous designs, but for some reason this one seems over the top for me.

Next is Depthmon, who absolutely should have been in the mermaid post but I forgot about it. I really like this guy, a merman wearing a diving suit. The suit lets it dive way deeper into the ocean than most Digimon because it can endure incredibly high pressure. Armor Digimon are the result of a Digimon evolving with an object called a Digimental that represents some virtue like courage. The anime only used a few combinations and a lot of the official armor Digimon are the result of filling out the other matches. For example, in the show, Veemon/V-Mon used the Digimentals of courage and friendship to become Flamedramon and Raidramon respectively. Depthmon is one of the unseen combinations, Veemon plus the Digimental of sincerity (reliability in the dub). The unseen combinations don't get nearly as much attention as the ones that did appear in the anime, which is a shame because some of them, like Depthmon, are pretty cool.

Next is Orcamon and I absolutely love this goofy beast. An Orca life guard is such an exceptionally silly concept executed quite well. It actively rescues other Digimon that are lost at sea. Orcamon seems like a good friend. What's even better is that it was designed by a fan as part of a contest. That fan has some great ideas.

Next is Submarimon, which I probably could have justified in the fish post. Its a fish-shaped submarine of course, but that harpoon nose also makes me think of sawfish. This is one of the armor Digimon that appeared in the anime where it was a bit underutilized due to being strictly aquatic. Fortunately the writers seem to have agreed because it got to appear in some of the other anime seasons as an ally.

Finally we have Tylomon, which is a tyloaurus, a type of prehistoric marine reptile. I like marine reptiles like mosasaurs, so Tylomon is pretty cool to me. It also has an x-antibody variant which is a classic overdesigned form. It's kind of weird that some of the more obscure armor Digimon got x-antibody forms befrore the ones that showed up in the anime, but I'm all for more obscure mons getting more attention.

Tylomon

Tylomon X

That's it for today. Next post will finish up the aquatic Digimon with the ultimate/perfect and mega/ultimate levels

[worldismyne]

First designs of the cousins. I had to doodle them in something closer to my style first and then roll it back. The two step-sister are inspired by "forgotten" fairytale siblings of princesses (Rose Red from the original Snow White and Clarice from Beauty and the Beast). With the intended vibe of being old fashioned and unappealing as potential "friends".

Clarice was going to be older than Bella too, but I fell in love with her looking like a literal pawn and I thought it'd be funny to force Finn to interact with a literally child without Harv around as a buffer. She was going to be the nice one, trying to tell Finn what was really going on, only for Finn to not understand a word she said. But Coffee said it was fairly similar to how the Princess is used in the comics. In the end, her role got reduced to just being 5 and feral.

Then I got to work trying to simplify Bella and Rose's designs. Rose had 15th-16th century French gowns and Bella's got 16th-17th inspirations to help further differentiate them and to make Bella really stand out. Though all 3 have gold in their outfits.

I had a clear idea of Bella's personality and vibe. She was this copy-cat fae that mirrored back at Finn what he didn't like about himself. Once Coffee suggested drawing her in the old art style (from the first few pages) her hyperactivity full galvanized and I fell in love with her.

Rose was initially supposed to be the main antagonist (A spin-down off Harv) This bossy "evil" step-sister that was trying to protect the family. But Senna ended up fufilling that role, and once I realized Rose was the most likely to invite the exiled fam in to break the curse; she became tragically sweet? Like, outside of her rivalry with Bella, she's a kind person. Though all these magical close calls have made her skittish. She ended up being useful in showing the other extreme to Finn's personality, the learned helplessness he fights on a daily basis.

(Rose and her Bear-Prince)

I had a lot of fun making these gals. They may make an apperance waaay down the line, idk yet.

[ingo-in-places-he-shouldnt-be]

Happy 2000-- er... 2400 followers! I suppose this is what I get for overestimating how long it would take me to do two full bodies and 14 busts which I wound up cropping anyway lol.

Bonus commentary under the cut!

Link to the version with no commentary (x)

So first off, this was a considerable challenge for me since I don't normally draw in an anime style, and I think that shows. There were a lot of wonky proportions that I ended up having to go back and sort of fix in post. Irida, Rei, and Akari were especially bad-- my own sister told me that Rei looked like "a cross between a Victorian orphan and a frog". I decided to redraw all three of them, but since I drew them on a smaller canvas, I think it messed with the resolution a little when I shrank them down. I'm not sure anyone would notice if they weren't looking for it, but I've been staring at this for so long that I can't unsee it.

Next was the brilliant decision to put Emmet, Elesa, and Drayden on a light background. They initially faded right in, so I went back over some of the outlines to make them more readable; I had also tried putting the whole Unova set on a darker background, but found that it drew too much attention and unbalanced the piece.

On to the good things!

I adore how Melli and Zisu turned out. I don't know what it was, but my art game was on point that day.

I also had a lot of fun trying out different motifs. I knew from the outset that I wanted to play around with the duality of black/white, the duality of past/future, and the idea of making the whole disk resemble a PokéBall. The center design had me stumped for a while; I had initially used screenshots of the Highlands and Gear Station as placeholders during my planning stage, but around halfway through I decided that would be too busy and changed it to a simple railway track design instead. Then I decided I didn't like that either, and at the last minute I went back to a simplified version of my original concept. I think the stylized Coronet mountain range and subway train work nicely.

Other trivia:

During my planning phase, I used everyone's official art as placeholders-- except for Zisu, who for some reason I couldn't find any for. I used a screenshot for her placeholder, and referenced her TCG card for the final drawing.

Emmet being the only character drawn from a head on angle was deliberate. I wanted to subtly highlight his importance while still being able to place a key Pokémon in the center of both groups.

I drew all of my initial sketches on paper, lined and colored in Clip Studio, and compiled/edited everything in GIMP. I am a chaos gremlin and I will not apologize.

The reason I settled on a Station of Awakening as a follower celebration is threefold: The first is that I was hanging out with some good friends, and we wound up playing Melody of Memory. I forget exactly how it came up, but it was definitely a joke at the time as I do recall saying that it would take me forever... which it did, lol. The second reason is that I later realized that my first post on the blog (after the original "Ingo shouldn't be in old timey Hisui" (x) post) was Kingdom Hearts themed (x). The circle of stupidity is complete! And finally, I'm old enough to remember when making one of these for your blorbo was The Big Fandom Thing ™ that everyone did, and I wanted to indulge in a bit of nostalgia.

[roadandruingame]

RAR Musings #11: Rebuilding A System

I engaged in a reddit thread discussing "killing your darlings" lately, where they wanted their game to be "simple and approachable", "narratively driven", and "introduce elements of mech games that enthusiasts enjoy, but to people who aren't enthusiasts."

"Killing Your Darlings" has blown up as a game design buzzphrase people use to appear more experienced and wise than they actually are. Often, it's a bid to appear better read, or "oh woe is me, who must relinquish my idea to the void. Good thing I'm above all that, professional designer that I am, that I can sacrifice my preferences and ideals for the greater good," but for a single tear rolling down the cheek, but in this case, it was a genuine argument about whether something would contribute to the final product well or not.

I don't personally define a game with equipment heat, energy costs, and random lookup tables for an assortment of weapons in a catalogue to be "simple and approachable" for non-mech enthusiasts, nor particularly necessary for a "narratively driven" game, but I'm more upset about "narrative game" getting slapped on a lot of different products that don't actually have mechanics for driving a narrative. The 'stress' mechanic that they were dropping would actually give definition to the characters of the game, if the game's narrative was about said characters, but by removing it in favor of player agency, it's just... it's just a game. Not a story.

I fought about it, and offered some alternatives. Rather than a negative mechanic that removes player agency, why not a Brave mechanic, granting extra rewards for engaging in risk? Why have all these different mech parts, why not just have Parts, if non-mech enthusiasts weren't going to care? Why not come up with mechanics that actually DO tell a narrative, rather than just relying on DND-make believe?

The more I thought about it, the more mad I got, not just at the designer, but at myself, and Road and Ruin.

I don't like the phrase, Killing Your Darlings, to begin with. It implies that your idea is so specific, so inherent to the engine you're designing for, that there's absolutely no salvaging it. A new species, that winks in and out of existence, a twinkle, before you snuff it out, never to be seen again. Why not figure out a way for it to be used! Or if it doesn't fit or overworks the product, shelve it! Use it on a different project! Don't let your dreams be memes! You're a designer, not a farmer with a lame horse!

But I had invested so much time, so much design work, and been so pleased with the elegance of Road and Ruin's core resolution mechanic, that after coming to terms with the fact that it was bulky, time-consuming, involved adding too many numbers, and ultimately wasn't actually very fun, I resisted any notion of changing it. Even later, when I DID change proficiency from affecting the minimum dice value of the d10s, into being a flat value added to the d10s, the system still involved adding anywhere from 2-5 random values between 1 and 10, and then the proficiency value besides.

So why was I so willing to tear into this objectively decent mech game, and do so much design work trying to come up with ways to simplify it, when I wasn't willing to entertain simplifying Road and Ruin for a more enjoyable experience and a wider audience?

_______________________

I woke up the other day with a sudden idea.

Road and Ruin's core skill resolution system might involve too much math hinging on too many variables, but what about the combat system?

It was another system I'd done some major work on over time, but unlike skill checks, only really involved one dice roll, and no math after. I started to think how I might actually make the combat system the core skill check system, thus unifying the game under one mechanic, and being a lot faster, and more fun besides.

The gist of it is, that when making an attack in combat, you'd roll a d4 (Piercing/Accurate), d8 (Slash/Scrape, edged contact), or d12 (Bashing/Touch, only contact is necessary), subtracting the target's armor, and +/- an amount based on who had the edge in weapon skill. A 1 or less is a miss, and above half is full damage, based on a flat value determined by the weapon's weight, minus any lacking Strength needed to swing it. Anything in between is a Glancing Blow for half damage. There's also the Special system as well, but I'll leave that for another post; the point was, I wanted combat to come away having inflicted SOME damage each attack, rather than none, but for there to be a real fear of both heavily armored units, as well as expert swordsmen.

But what if that was how skill checks worked? Currently, the system assumes an average 2d10, up to 5d10, adding (proficiency/10 x specialization/5), and looks for multiples of 10; that is, 10+ is 1 success, 20+ is 2 successes, 30+ is 3, with successes being measures of what a creature can easily, with training, and with specialization do, relative to a creature of it's size and shape. An adult human can toss paper into a can with a 1; a wolf might be able to open a latched door with a 2-3, or 25. Blessings/Curses and gear could modify this in multiple ways, such as preventing rolls below or above a certain threshold, or allowing the reroll of one or more die.

If skill checks were instead a sliding scale, using a single d10, difficulty could be calculated before the roll was even made, like the impact of 2 points of armor on an attack roll. By sliding the scale of success, even physically using a sliderule, results of (1 Fail/And, 234 Fail, 5 Fail/But, 6 Succeed/But, 789 Success, and 10 Success/And) are moved left and right, and the die is left with the final say. Specializations can reduce the threshold of Succeed/And, while greater consequences for failure move up the threshold of Fail/And.

If 10% increments are too much, (especially for disciplines where the likelyhood of crafting a masterwork item should be less than 10%), a d100 still offers a "one dice" solution, but on 1% increments. In that case, the threshold for masterwork can be "specialization x proficiencies", and anyone with even one specialization can make repeat attempts, so long as they have the time and resources, to continue chiseling away until they've finished their magnum opus, gaining +1% chance of masterwork each roll, whereas a legendary master completes such works on a 50% basis.

In terms of gear, supportive equipment can either reduce the Success/And threshold, the regular success threshold, or allow for a reroll 'save' when rolling a failure, such as in the case of climbing rope stopping a fall. But, in each case that the support is used, it suffers a level of damage, and the Fail/And threshold of the follow-up save increases. Past a certain point, using intact, but damaged rope ends up being more risky than it's worth, without it explicitly preventing use.

In the case of blessings and curses, they can allow rerolls, or just flat +1/-1 effects. What I'm really warming up to with this idea is how just about everything boils down to using the single die, but in a way that's still got a lot of tools to play with.

________________

Now some cons. I'd done a LOT of work on the earlier system, and designed lots of spells, such as the Revision magic, Lethologica, a spell that allows the reroll of any one die in proximity, both supportively or debilitatingly. This was a lot more balanced when you were rolling 2-5 dice per throw, but a single die? Massively overpowered. I'd rather not upgrade the cost of what was essentially a cantrip to a fifth-level spell, so I'm going to have to figure out how I'd get to keep it and make it work still. One solution might be forcing the use of the d100, and having Lethologica alter the result by a number of points in either direction, being used to help sway results, but not effortlessly overturn them. It allows for spell scaling, with more mana converting to a greater degree of sway, and still allows sway in either direction, helping to save near-failures and fail near-saves.

Another issue is the case of Monstrous/Mini. When I changed RAR from being a 10-scale attribute system to a 5-scale, I was bothered by how I'd account for three-story giants, pixies, and small-world scenarios. I'd developed Monstrous and Mini, x5 and /5 multipliers for stats that helped to massively scale up or down the effects of 1-5 of any given attribute. So, a creature with Monstrous Strength 3 would multiply the results of their 3d10 roll by 2. Monstrous 2 Strength 4 would get (4d10 x 3). Boss monsters could still get trash rolls (2+3+1 x 2 is just 12, doable on 2d10) but still get high effects on average. Miniscule, on the other hand, reduces the character's Size by a stage, having them struggle to pick up thimbles and defend against ants. This complete overhaul of the core skill check resolution system doesn't have "10 = 1 success" anymore, so multiplying the results doesn't really work; not that it did, because it was slow, and unfun.

A solution for this is... a lookup table. Kind of. The actual value of each of the stats, 1-5, are actually still quite valid for establishing standards. If a creature has reasonable stats to do what they're looking to do, they should roll, no problem. If their stat is lacking, they suffer a -1 for every stage they're missing, and if they exceed, +1 for every stage they're over. But for Monstrous/Mini, like... maybe it's +/- 5 in each direction? And if Fail would get pushed off the board, it stays at 1, causing a chance for failure of 10%? I mean, engaging in a mental mindclash with an illithid SHOULD be next to impossible with their Monstrous Intelligence, but just the chance that they roll a 1 is probably more fun than "you literally just can't do it".

The question here is, if players who are generating their own creatures have a solid understanding of what Monstrous/Miniscule creatures are actually DO, without getting to experience them in action first. And, since the game actually IS narrative in nature, I don't see an issue with placing impossible monsters in front of players that they're not actually supposed to defeat, really. But it feels weird to not be multiplying the outcome of dice anymore.

[mod2amaryllis]

hi mod! you are the person i know who knows and is most excited about fish, and my favorite way to learn is to ask people whose passion and delight i am already familiar with. i know this is stuff i could find digging around on yt or search engines but it is just less fun and often less informative. but ofc feel free not to answer if you don't have the time/energy etc!

i am coming to realize that i would really like fish (after attempting to convince my wife that he would like them and then they pointed out that it kind of sounded like *i* wanted the fish and well). but i am very chronically ill (spend most of my time laying down in bed) and also poor. i'm worried about not being able to take care of them well enough.

assuming i restrain myself (that is don't deep dive into habitat design or breeding or anything beyond just having some guys to spend time with while i'm stuck in bed) what are the daily, weekly, monthly things i'd have to make sure got taken care of? are there ways i can simplify or automate tasks while not sacrificing their care?

OR do you know of good places where people have already talked about this, or other people who love fish a lot and might wanna share their knowledge?

my partner is also suggesting a plant&snail tank instead of fish but i'm even less sure how to approach their care needs!

watching you get into fish reminded me of how much i love them (had some when i was young but was not primary caretaker). it's good to see you make creatures so happy.

well thank you for reading and i hope you are having a good weekend!

ahhh weeee haha fish ask fish ask

there's definitely ways to make mega low maintenance tanks! what you're going for is overfiltering, understocking, and planting as much as possible. I'll go over those points. this got mega long so i'll put it under a cut.

overfiltering basically means bumping your filter up a size. if you have a 10g tank, get a 20g filter. this will reduce how often you need to maintain that filter. I'd recommend sponge filters, they're by far the cheapest option and imo easiest to maintain. you'll need the sponge and an air pump. i see a lot of mega reduced amazon sales for the tetra whisper air pump. depending on how dirty it gets you're looking at every 2-3 months taking it out into a bucket of clean tank water and squeezing out the gunk.

in that vein, you wanna get as big a tank as you can. seems counterintuitive, but the more water you have, the more stability. the less maintenance. so if you wanted a 5g for a betta, consider getting a 10g. if you want a little 10g nano school, get a 20g long. if you want a 20g community, get a 40g breeder. whatever's gonna fit in your space. my best recommendation for tank size is 20g long, it gives you sooo many options without being massive. if you're in America the cheapest way to get a tank is wait for Petco to have their quarterly tank sale. otherwise look for something on the local market.

now onto understocking. basically pick animals that aren't gonna shit that much lol, and put in less than can technically fit in the tank. the snail tank is a definite fun option, as long as you're sticking with pest snails and fewer large snails (big snails have a big bioload, even bigger than most fish). a planted 10g with a variety of big snails (a mystery, a rabbit, a nerite, etc), pest snails, and a few amano shrimp, would be fun and extremely low maintenance. you'd even have the option of trying some fancy shrimp, tho they might breed like crazy. if you want a tank with fish instead, i recommend getting a school of a tiny species like chili rasbora, ember tetras, pygmy corys, basically anything that stays little so you can get as many as possible without a big bioload. for schooling/shoaling fish, the more the merrier. absolutely do not get live bearers. no guppies, no mollies, no platys. that's the opposite of low maintenance. shit machines that will multiply forever, don't do it.

now. you know i love my bettas, favorite fish, but i'm always hesitant to recommend them. they're wonderfully personable but the caveat is that it seems more and more they run into health problems as they get commercially overbred. it's luck of the draw. you might get an easy buddy who can survive anything, or you'll get a sicky. most of the time my bettas are super low maintenance and rewarding, but when they ARE sick, it's hard. it can be daily water changes and treatment for weeks, and sometimes even that doesn't help in the end.

so with that said, my dream low maintenance tank stocking would be 20g long with 4 amano shrimp, 1 mystery snail, 1 rabbit snail, 1 nerite snail, and a school of around 15 nano fish (I'd do either chili rasbora or celestial pearl danio cuz they prettyyy). OR i'd just have a centerpiece in that big old tank, like 1 betta for the whole tank or a pair of sparkling gouramis. fish choice is definitely too much to get into for this post lol.

now third point, planting the crap out of it. this is where things can get expensive. i really do recommend investing in this step at setup, but try to cut costs by buying from local sellers, or even seeing if people are giving cuttings away. the lowest maintenance plants are ones that don't require trimming, like crypts, buce, anubias; these plants are gorgeous but they don't filter water that well. faster growing stem plants and floaters will REALLY help to filter the water, but require more maintenance via trimming and replanting stems (monthly) or removing overgrown floaters (weekly). hornwort and guppy grass are great options for something fast growing that you can just chuck in a tank, no need to plant. what I'd most highly recommend for the sake of lowering maintenance is adding some pothos cuttings coming out of the water. terrestrial plants are much better at filtering water than aquatic plants because of their direct co2 exposure, and I've had the most success with pothos! i also love a spider plant in water.

some other money specific points. for substrate, you can use rinsed play sand and/or pea gravel from a hardware store, but you would need to add nutrients if you have things planted into the substrate. you can add root tabs (api root tabs cost about 8 bucks a pack, but you need to replenish them every few months) or a small layer of aquasoil at the bottom. (aqueon has a little bag of shrimp/plant soil on amazon for i think 12 bucks). and the one thing you shouldn't go cheap on is the heater. their failure is more dangerous than other hardware because they tend to fail ON, aka they cook the water. you wanna make sure you trust it. the cheapest heater i trust are the aqueon preset submersible heaters, also frequently on sale. or you can forgo the heater and commit to only "cold" temperature livestock; the snails and amano shrimp idea would be fine w/o a heater.

labor specific points, once it's cycled (which can take weeks, during which time you'll do literally nothing to the tank) and stocked, it'll depend on how fast those plants eat up your nitrates on how often you do water changes. for me, i do 25% every two weeks on my 20g. it could probably stand to have more since mine is pretty overstocked but fish are ok to sit in slightly higher nitrates as long as they're used to it. when testing, i do recommend the api master test kit. it's more expensive than strips but way more accurate and it's lasted me longer than 2 tubes of strips. if you don't want to buy the test kit, just do water changes as often as you can. every 2 weeks if possible, then you can try pushing to 3 weeks, or even monthly.

get a water siphon to make it as easy as possible. empty water into a bucket on wheels so nobody has to carry anything. you can also look into getting a submersible pump with a long enough tube that you can empty water directly into the nearest drain, then to refill with clean water put a bucket in the sink with tap water, put the submersible pump in that bucket, and run the tube back to your tank, adding dechlorinator directly to the tank beforehand. just be careful with this method if you have small animals at risk of being caught in the siphon.

also, some people with planted tanks don't do water changes AT ALL. they just top off as water evaporates. what i do some would consider overkill, but i'm so frequent with my water changes because i have really hard water and there's this thing called old tank syndrome that can happen if you only top off, and yeah that's this other whole spiel lmao BUT not doing water changes IS possible, people have success. just not me!

so monthly tasks; rinsing sponge filter every 2-3 months. weekly tasks; depends on how often you decide to do water changes. daily tasks; feeding, frequency varies depending on livestock, but i basically feed once a day. if you're going for a self contained ecosystem low maintenance dealio, feed as little as possible. i know of people who do this and sprinkle in food weekly or less. i don't have experience with automatic feeders, but i'm wary of them lol, they could be totally fine, idk. it's better imo to just feed infrequently than risk the auto feeder dumping too much food.

to wrap it up, i'll be real with you, setting up something that's as low maintenance as possible while working with budget constraints is hard (at least in my area). this hobby is notoriously expensive, especially when you're just starting out. you need to see what the local market is like. see if there's fish hobby groups in your area that can help you with spare supplies and plant trimmings. your partner's idea of a plant/snail tank might be the best place to start! as far as other resources, the fish subreddits have soooooooooooo much info.

[kemafili]

hi, i've been studying some of your sketches and i was wondering if you had any advice for drawing facial features? :> i know that's extremely broad but what i mean is, in a lot of your drawings, especially those where you're referencing actors (such as your drawings of ds9 characters and the iasip cast) you manage to stylize and exaggerate their features in a way that makes each individual look unique while still remaining extremely recognizable. especially for your drawings of mac, frank and dee, you've broken them down into simple shapes while perfectly maintaining their identities

do you have a process for that? i've been trying to push faces more and i've been referencing actors myself, but i have a hard time translating the shapes of the face and eyes into my own art, as well as reproducing it at different angles... thanks for your time

Hi! Thank you for such lovely words! My answer would seem very unprofessional since, if im being honest if im being raw and real right now i truly dont know exactly how i take the elements to make each of them unique, if i say what really REALLY helps me get them is knowing the character very well, once i know their personality its easier to choose one of the 3 mains shapes i enjoy which i always rely to when designing, circle, square and triangle, depending on which shape i choose for the character i will try and base nearly every shape possible surrounding that, this is mainly to keep in mind that i also dont design one character at the time, other thing that really helps me is comparing! If i design a bunch of characters like i did with sunny and ds9, i always make sure to go back to the other designs to see that i am not repeating a feature too many times, it ends up making me have to use different ways to convey a characters soul through it that really differs from other charas. I would say the 3 shapes is what helps me the most, knowing the character personality and other thing is just simply breaking down their features in comparison to others, but to be comepelty naked with you rn, sometimes i dont even look at references because if i have to REAAAAALLY simplify a character, i will go purely by vibe (example was the Damar and Kira drawings, i didnt used any references at all because i thought id over do it finding every single detail they have to implement), if a characters specifics stick with you purely by memory, then it totally means that it identifies them! Also just to appear more visual i will add the 3 examples you offered and how i visually see them different from each other when i drew them

Frank - circle

Dee - triangle

Mac - square

Overall, id say have fun with it! Dont stick too much on ALL their features, sometimes choosing main characteristics makes them pop instead of trying to imitate all their facial structure, i always put too much detail on their eyes, mouth and wrinkles, but what i truly enjoy the most that makes me feel that makes every face different is their nose! So just stretch them as much as you can until you go “hey , these people are different!”

[shelandsorcery]

Astronomics Game Art : Designing Mining Equipment! Pt 2

Brainstorming and feedback loops One of the first steps of designing is always brainstorming -- sometimes this starts before research, sometimes I research first, and often I go back and forth, letting brainstorming push me to the limits of my current knowledge and then taking to the internet to open up new territory. For the equipment for Astronomics (demo on steam right now!), while the design team had a few key assets they were looking for, they were also still brainstorming and so we were all kind of discovering what the equipment part of the game could be as a whole.

For me, that brainstorming usually looks like a LOT of very rough drawings. I usually have my research sketches open nearby for reference, and I try and draw small enough that i can see all my brainstorming and seek out possibility spaces between ideas. Above is my first VERY rough brainstorming page, and on it you can see art from two passes - the softer, lighter drawings are the open-ended thinking; the darker clear lines are the second pass, where I start filtering, choosing which pieces to take to the rest of the team to start conversations with.

You can see how we would collect feedback above - i would write notes and do additional drawing on top of the submitted artwork as we went through things in screenshared video meetings, and then have these with me as I iterated further. One thing you might notice is that these are all drawn with straight lines -- Astronomics is a low-poly 3D style game, and it was fun to think about simplifying the shapes right from the beginning. While I didn't do all my drawing like this, it was a fast and quick way to get clean linework that had some connection to the style of the game long before we really knew anything about said style! Speaking of style... Next up, we had to make some big decisions. Astronomics has a lot of equipment with a big range of functions and scales and the most important thing was making sure it all read like equipment from the same manufacturer - that being CubeCorp, as you'll see in the demo. I narrowed it down to three possibilities:

I went in three directions -- "Star Wars" style, all panel lines and chamfered edges and a sense of overall complexity; "Safety" style, with safety bars and frames around everything, focusing otherwise on simple, chunky shapes; and "Modern" style, exploring simple silhouettes with hidden complexity. (none of these are official names for known styles, eg, the star wars style didn't actual aim for matching the style in those films particularly -- these names were more mnemonic devices to help me quickly sum up what I was thinking in a punchy way, and help my coworkers refer to the styles more easily in conversation while we discussed an debated direction together.) In the end, what we chose was mostly Safety-styled, but elements from both other directions made their way in too!

And here was my first sheet ft a pass on the drill, pump and vaccuum, containers for solids, liquids and gasses, a worker bot, a worker bot home, and a robust scanner machine. A few things we were thinking about: we wanted there to be a sense of a unit of size that everything fit into - CubeCorp, remember? - and so even our most complicated equipment needed to pack down into that cube. That meant that we were going to be animating equipment essentially unfolding, so I tried even at this stage to think about what that could mean for the drill and pump and vaccuum, and you can see packed and unpacked states up there for each design. They also were likely to be carried around by our little darling worker bots -- so everybody needed feet the bots could squeeze between to get underneath. Speaking of, they probably went through the most designs of everything, and what's in the demo does not appear in these pages at all, haha, but here, a few more passes:

In fact, you might not be able to find any of these exact designs in the demo -- that's just the nature of concept art in games! What the game needed then and what it needed later -- as the game design itself was developed -- well, it changed, as it often can! I think it can be easy from the outside to assume that everything anyone thought of was eventually brought to life, but that rarely ever happens. Concept art is a process, and so even if these designs didn't make it into the game, they were an important step along the path towards designs that did, and they taught us a lot about what we did and didn't want Astronomics to look like! Read the full article

[fantasy-anatomy-analyst]

dnd 5e cockatrice redesign

because the official art of the cockatrice in the 5e monster manual is not great. honestly, i looked at older dnd official art of the cockatrice and i think 4e had a pretty good one. turns out the 5e design is just the 3e version but with a lot of spikes added on. so here's my notes on the official art:

(image description: a faded image of the officialdnd 5e cokcatrice art, with red outlines and typed notes on its anatomy. The cockatrice resembles a scrawny velociraptor with a whip tail, bat wings, and a chicken-like face, with lots of extra spikes and random patches of feathers all over its body. Its feet each have a large backwards claw on one toe. further notes will be explained below. end description.)

My problems, in summary: too many spikes. The beak is jagged, the toes make little sense, the wings have way too many "fingers", one of which seems to branch out into more spikes along the edge. Also it's just so scrawny. I'm not going to get over the feet, why is it putting all its weight on a single toe and why are the larger claws turned backwards like that. It's clearly meant to take inspiration from the velociraptor claw, but they did it very weird.

Honestly, I do have another nitpick, and it's the visual composition. Just feels awkward to me. All the overlapping parts, the extreme number of jutting spikes, etc. It's so busy, I hate looking at it. Anyway, here's my fix! Simplifying the design and taking it back to a more classic look.

(image description: a digital painting of a cockatrice. It resembles a feathered velociraptor with a rooster-like head and bat-like wings. It is in the same running pose as the other one, but now the large claw on each foot is held upwards and two toes touch the ground firmly. The tail curves but looks more sturdy, now held in line with the spine and turning upward. the head has a large comb and wattle, and there are golden feathers sticking out of its back, contrasting with the light grey ones all over its body. end description.)

Monster designs do not need to look so unique that they become indecipherable. Sometimes it's better to keep things simple. What's a cockatrice? A small monster with a chicken's head and bat wings and a long reptilian tail. no need to go overboard adding weird spikes or trying to reinvent the velociraptor claw. Heck, with how varied chicken breeds are in real life, you could get real fun with the coloring and the style of the feathers and end up with some unique cockatrice designs without straying too far from the base concept. Like those chickens that are ultra black, even down to their internal organs and blood. that'd be neat.

[lumiidragon]

Do you have any tips for designing HTTYD OCs (dragons specifically)? I know it sounds like a vague question, but really any advice will work! Tysm!

Welp, when I'm designing, your dragon species of choice is obvious, haha~

Ok, so I can use an example!

My favorite gal, Roughwave (a lot of the other Fury Family cast I have are offspring, so I'm using a pre-determined base for those usually. Roughwave was one of the first ones I designed, so she was from scratch.). So for this example, I chose a night light!

When I design my dragons, I like to have a rough idea of what I wanna go for, even if it's not what I actually end up going for in the end.

I knew my theme for Roughwave was a "Skull Head" theme. Since she was going to be a night light, I wanted to keep a "canon" look to her. Pretty much, this translates to "I wanna design her in a way where she looks like she could actually be from the series and not an 'out there' OC". So I didn't want unrealistic features that night lights wouldn't have (horns, fur, other odd traits), but I still wanted her to stand out from being a Dart, Ruffrunner, and Pouncer copy.

Since the canon night lights are basically re-colors of night furies (no hate to them, of course!), I had the idea of giving Roughwave and her siblings, not only different styled markings, but different traits that light/night fury hybrids could have! With her, I chose to keep the same number of ear nubs, but remove the top set. I also had her have light fury-shaped dorsal fin and wings and add the night fury tail fins for both the tip and the base of the tail. Pretty much, I took light and night fury trails and pieced them together how I liked to give her more variety of her canon counterparts, but still have her stand out.

With the 'Skull Theme' I mentioned earlier, I decided to utilize this in her facial markings. I thought that making the entire dragon have skeleton-like markings would come off as a bit 'unnatural'-looking, so I simplified the design while still giving her the aesthetic. To do this, I chose to have black spots around her eyes and eight spots lining her lips to represent "skull teeth". Roughwave was also to be a 4th generation descendent of Toothless and the Light Fury (Luna), so I wanted to keep in mind that 3 generations of light fury genetics were added to her bloodline (Luna, Opal, and Shoal.) So I had her come off as more light fury-like with her traits and I wanted her markings to show that too. I opted for her to be mostly white to show that the black coloration was being bred out. I gave her a black throat trait to break up the white of her head with the white of her body to separate the two parts more and give her head the final piece it needed for that 'skull look'. I took the black down her dorsal fin to make her design a bit more streamline and to draw the eye down the entire dragon. Lastly, I added her shoulder spots and wing tip markings to give her a bit more individuality without going overboard.

With her, Flower, and Scamper, I wanted to keep their designs fairly simple, but still fun and something that would hopefully stand out from other OCs (not every oc has to be overly complicated and simple is better sometimes!).

So in the end, I really hope explaining Roughwave's designing process helped in some way??? But basically:

Think of what kind of dragon you're wanting to make.

Do you want your OC to look like it actually came from the media or do you want more artistic creativity (no answer is wrong, but there are no purple or rainbow night furies, so if you're wanting a more authentic-look, try keeping in mind what would be realistic for that species! Otherwise, go crazy~)

Think of a 'theme' for your oc before you start. Do you want a certain color theme? An aesthetic theme? Another type of theme? What are you going for with your dragon?

Play with the design. Feel free to use a free-use base for the species you're drawing for or make your own dragon base and try making a few variations of your OC if you think that might help. With every time you design the oc, take the traits you really like for it and use those in the next design variant until you eventually have something you like. I'll do this sometimes if I can't settle on a final.

Lastly, have fun with the process. OC designing is one of the most fun parts of having dragon OCs. I love designing OCs, which is why I have so many, haha~