#had a Lot of fun with photo editing tools :3

[erstwhilesparrow]

hey seriously the electric zine maker is great. i made a thing!

[bohemian-nights]

Hey, can I ask you how do you make your gifs?

It took a lot of trial and error, but here is what I have learned(so far cause I'm very much still going through it):

1. Photoshop vs Photopea

To make your gifs you can either use Photoshop or Photopea. I started off with Photpea because it’s cloud-based and doesn’t take up any space on your computer, but I've since moved onto Photoshop. Most of the tutorials you’ll find will use photoshop. So if you need help or want to learn a new skill it will be much easier to find that help if you are using Photoshop.

Photoshop

👆🏽They have ones out there for mac if you search for them on here, but I happen to have a Windows PC so this is the one I use🤷🏽‍♀️

Photopea

2. Downloading videos

I get most of my videos from either YouTube or torrent sites which have a wide selection of shows and movies for you to download.

Watch So Much

👆🏽Is my favorite torrent site. You can also stream shows and movies on their site well.

YTS

👆🏽Is another torrent site I use, but they only have movies on there.

Qbittorrent

👆🏽Lets you download torrents. I should note that If you torrent you'll need a VPN. Literally do not try and download any content from HBO or Disney without a VPN, because at least here in America, they will email you threatening to disconnect your internet😅

For VPN’s do not use the free ones. They don’t work. I’ve personally used NordVPN, but there are other ones out there like Surfshark, or ProtonVPN.

4k downloader

👆🏽Lets you download most things off of YouTube(as well as a couple other sites like TikTok). I say most things because they will not let you download those free movies(ex. Twilight) YouTube itself uploads onto its platform.

Occasionally someone will upload an old movie onto a private channel which you can download with no problems, but anything new or recent you won’t find on there.

You do not have to use a VPN to download videos from YouTube.

3. Resources:

Whatever you're trying to gif will probably be on the long side. So you're either going to need to trim it down to make a 2-3 second clip that you can then use to make your gif, or you can screencap your video.

Screencaping allows you to take a shot of each individual frame* which you can then use to make your gifs out of.

*I like to use anywhere between 40-90 frames per gif.

VLC

👆🏽This is a video player that lets you play your videos and create screencaps from them.

👆🏽This is a great post on how to screencap using VLC.

KMPlayer

👆🏽Is another video player/screencapping software, but I found their interface to be overly complicated

Clipchamp

👆🏽This lets you trim down your videos to create those 2-3-second clips. There are better video editing tools out there(like DaVinci Resolve), but if you have Windows for what it's worth, it’s simple and gets the job done 🤷🏽‍♀️

rPiracy

👆🏽Has links for torrents and things of that nature.

👆🏽This is a great post on how to make a basic gif using Photoshop.

👆🏽This is a great post on how to make a basic gif using Photopea.

👆🏽This user has a lot of tutorials so when you're ready to move onto more complicated gif making, use them as a resource.

4. Lastly, have patience with yourself.

GIF making is time-consuming and as I stated it takes practice. So don't sweat it too much and have fun🎉

[artofjim]

5 Years of Drawing: Part 1

Originally posted on ko-fi.com/artofjim

July marks 5 years since I started learning art and drawing every day.  As they say, time flies when you're having fun, and time has really flown!   I want to use this blog post to reflect on some things I've learned, look at some old work and compare it to current, and emphasize my gratitude for all of the support I've received in the last half decade.  This is a long one so I'm breaking it into 3, but it should give you a ton of insight into my journey as an artist that brought me here today, and hopefully help you carve out your own path!

Before July of 2018, I would occasionally get it in my head that I wanted to draw.  This would be prompted by seeing some cool art online, or needing a way to pass the time on trips.  I'd spend money on new sketchbooks and tools, and doodle for a weekend in them.  That would be that, and my sketchbooks would sit until the next time I felt like drawing again, which was no more than a few times a year.  I had a little natural talent at copying proportion and detail, but there was no methodology to my picturemaking and I relied heavily on replicating others' art.  Because of the inconsistent schedule and lack of interest in learning,  I usually say I started drawing after all of that.  Here's some sketches from before 2018.

This is a direct rip of Nate Van Dyke, with a couple additions of my own. 2014?  I learned about ink and decided that was the only medium I wanted to work in.

Around the same time. Every artist has been here at some point, I think. I found some photo portraits of homeless people on pinterest probably and took it upon myself to draw them. Lots to unpack there but we should move on (please we must move on oh God). Again, I wasn't trying to learn, I was just copying photos and other art with no rhyme or reason to it, and very rarely.  I just loved that kick when people would look at it and say it was good.

2018

In 2018 I was working in Tacoma and there was a great little book store called Culpepper's across the street.  Jerry Culpepper had ran that store for decades, and had no great love for comics.  As a result, anytime he got graphic novels in, he'd hide them in an unorganized shelf and price them way, way down.  This was also true of artbooks, but I wasn't interested in those (yet). Jerry and I had an amicable relationship, with him busting my chops about the coffee shop I worked at being too expensive, and myself ironically bringing him free drip on my breaks.  I remember him going into great detail explaining how "Black Panther was absolute shit! Waste of my time seeing that film!"  I probably went in there once a week and dug around, spending tip money on anything that looked interesting while Jerry peered down at the titles with a furrowed brow.  My love for comics started at this time, and some of the first graphic novels I bought were from Jerry Culpepper. The League of Extraordinary Gentleman and A Small Killing, both written by Alan Moore, and drawn by Kevin O'Neill and Oscar Zarate, respectively (a great place to start, if you ask me!).

Still have them!  Jerry always priced books with pencil on the first page.  He'd usually charge me at least 30% less than this, and shave off sales-tax if  I paid cash.

I bought so many comics and bothered Jerry so often that he started giving me stuff for free (again, he had no interest for comics and was intent on filling his store with civil war history and first edition antiques). I'd pay $20 and walk out of there with an armful of graphic novels, video game concept art, Japanese editions of collected Ukiyo-E plates, published artist sketchbooks, and all sorts of odd things I wouldn't normally look for. That's the beauty of local used book stores, you cannot predict what's waiting in there for you.   Those early Culpepper finds were, and still are, very influential to me. I dig through my bookshelf for them regularly.  I think it's very important for creatives to have a personal, physical collection of things that inspire and interest them, because they will bury into your style way more than temporary online influences.

"Culpepper Books: here you'll find a man struggling to get the hell home with as much money and few books as possible before he retires" -Jerry, during his last week of business when I asked him for a caption

In late-2019, Jerry Culpepper got an offer to end his lease early from a big developer and decided to retire right as the pandemic started to hit, which was definitely the right decision for him.  While writing this, I searched his name to see if I could find his online collection, and learned that he passed away in 2022 at the age of 70.  Here is his obituary if you'd like to learn more about my old friend at the bookstore who impacted my life more than I could have realized at the time. https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/tribnet/name/gerald-culpepper-obituary?id=32332566

My last purchase from Jerry

Now that I was reading comics a lot, I became hip to Jim Lee, comic art superstar of the early 90s known for his work on X-Men, Punisher: War Journal, and countless other titles soon after.  Jim Lee streams on Twitch, and one day in July I popped in to watch purely out of curiosity and ended up following along with his live tutorial drawing Wolverine. There's a recording of this tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wxoH_eZgrw I had never had drawing explained to me in the analogous way that Jim Lee did.  Much of the concepts he was demonstrating are very fundamental no-brainers to me nowadays, but back then, despite drawing off and on my whole life, I had never been exposed to them.  I specifically remember him relating the teeth to a can of soup, and the triceps muscles to parallel canoes.  This was mind blowing to me, and sparked an obsession that is still roaring to this day. Here's my results from drawing along with Jim Lee that day.

A little heavyhanded on the spot blacks there, Jimbo...

Even though the idea of using simple forms like soup cans and canoes had been demonstrated so brilliantly by Jim Lee, I immediately went back to my old ways of rote copying.  Only now, I was doing it for a few hours a day.  I also started streaming art on Twitch during this time, and I'm amazed anyone watched because I was completely directionless.I was reading a lot of Frank Miller and the interest in ink was renewed, and I would just copy things straight out of comics, line-by-line.  I didn't have the tools or direction to study in a more meaningful way, so I just copied and copied and copied, with no real improvement besides hand-eye coordination, and my ability to copy from image to paper.Jim Lee had also mentioned Bridgman, and I found a copy of his big book at Culpepper's and copied a few pages (poorly) before giving up. 

Notes?? Why would I write down anything from the book?  This is drawing!!  Sarcasm aside, this was the extent of it.  Whatever concepts I pulled from it, I didn't cement with mileage so it was all for not.  Granted, Bridgman is not beginner friendly at all.

I also took part in Inktober for the first time in 2018, and actually attempted concept creation.  I knew I was bad at drawing heads, so I decided I would twist every prompt into a helmet of some kind.  Strange method.  You can view the completed pieces here, if you really want to: https://www.instagram.com/p/BokqcKngdlz/

2019

In 2019, I began to become invested in history, and really enjoyed drawing historical garb.  Japan especially grabbed my interest, and I bought tons of books about it from Jerry.  I'm surprised I didn't try to copy more Japanese  art, especially Hokusai's ink sketches.  I was filling sketchbooks regularly by now, still just copying for the most part, and getting a little better at it!  When I look back at those sketchbooks now, there's a  common "Jim" thread present even if I wasn't being very original.  I want to point out that I don't think there's anything wrong with copying references, ever, but especially as a beginner artist.  The way I was doing it, though, was from a limited perspective: drawing straight to final linework and not considering anything but the 2-d image.  I wish I had pursued fundamentals more, and varied my tools, but I just didn't have exposure to those things.  I was still wielding a brush pen like a club on every drawing, and using expensive markers that bled through the page.

I learned about Karl Kopinski, and some of the other star artists from Super Ani, and didn't know about all of the mileage and proper practice between where I was and where they were, so I tried to just do what they were doing. Of course, KK appealed to my interest in historical costume, and I copied a bunch of his drawings in my sketchbooks. I also dug into Sergio Toppi, attracted to his painterly hatching and masterful ink compositions, and learned about Moebius. I picked up a Final Fantasy 1-7 artbook for $10 (thanks Jerry) with tons of drawings by Yoshitaka Amano in it, and tried to match his watercolors with my bleeding Copic markers. Because there was no method to my drawings beyond copying mark-by-mark, there was an element of luck involved that decided the success of each drawing. The artmaking journey, then, was just chasing that next lucky winner drawing, which is not sustainable long term! Sure, I might get lucky more often as I copied more accurately, but I wouldn't know why, and I had no lens to understand what made an image work.

Toppi copy

One of the lucky drawings

Kopinski copy

Amano copies.  Notice the difference in quality between the Toppi samurai above and these; this is the element of luck I'm referring to.  There was no repeatable process, just diving into the final lines and gambling on it.

Beyond that, I wanted to create, not replicate.  I would watch Karl Kopinski, Kim Jung Gi, and Peter Han create worlds on the spot, with no reference, and have no idea how to accomplish that.  I figured it was my poor visualization ability holding me back.  All I thought mattered was drawing a lot, and drawing a variety of things.  I would stream on Twitch and take requests to draw anything anyone wanted for ten minutes.  I drew 20 different outfits from the Camp-themed Met Gala.  I drew video game characters, Power Rangers, cartoons, and Kermit the Frog smoking a blunt.  Occasionally, I'd try to draw people and places from life. 

My first ever POV sketch

I knew that clothing was something academics studied,  so I "studied" some drapery as well! All that meant for me was copying, line by line, a few reference photos.  I downloaded Autodesk Sketchbook, a free drawing program, and tried my hand at digital art.   If I wasn't just attempting photocopying, I did try my hand at some imaginative work, with a degree of realistic rendering. Here's those paintings, just so we can compare to my current paintings later.

I would paint over Bill Sienkewicz sketches, this is one of those

This funny little fellow is a Japanese God, Fukurokuju. The drapery is looking especially mushy.

In mid-2019, I decided I would challenge myself to making a comic for Inktober.  I was very naive, but still took a lot of time planning for it before October started.  I scripted out the pages, did some character "designs," and even  worked on turnarounds.  My thought was that if I took the time to figure out what a character would look like from any angle, I could just use that as reference when I needed it.  This is true, and how animators do it,  but I created this sheet by smashing together references and finding an image for every expression and angle I could need.  I also sculpted the main character's head so I could use it as reference.  I had not rediscovered the power of "form" yet, despite Jim Lee's great tutorial that started all of this, and the literal sculpted 3d form sitting on my desk.

Here's a few pages of my Inktober comic, Dog Days.  I made it 13 pages in and burned out super hard, since I was working full-time still and spending at least 8 hours a day on the pages.  The cyst on my wrist got massive and I was not sleeping at all.  I took a break for a few days to go on a trip and just never came back to it.  Surprisingly, I haven't ever experienced a burnout since then.

If you're interested in checking out the other 11 pages, they're available to Ko-Fi Members for $4.50/month, along with my other comics.

For my first comic, I am extremely proud of that work.  There's a sort of energy that is now inhibited by experience and judgment.  I was fearless and committed to every page, because I had no idea how long it would take me or what challenges I might face.  I  don't think I will or should ever finish it, because I cannot replicate that vibe.

I returned to drawing a few weeks after the burnout and dove back into Japanese historical drawings, becoming obsessed with the photos of Felice Beato, who brought photography to Japan right as it modernized.  Some coworkers of mine were my first ever commissioners, asking for some work relevant to what I was already studying.  The first was a family portrait taken in the early 1900s.  The second was a 6 panel piece on the history of Taiko drumming.  I think they spent more on the frame then what I charged them for the piece, which is hilarious to me now.   I also experimented with some blacklight ink and collage, which was a nice change from all the inking I did in October. 

I did these on expensive Awagami rice paper with ultra-archival Noodler's fountain pen ink.  I was fooling myself into thinking that expensive materials were necessary for any sort of "professional" work, and that they would elevate it.  In the end, it just made the process nerve-wracking and left no margin for error.

I will continue with years 2020 and 2021 in my next post to keep this one from getting any longer!  Follow my Ko-Fi to get  notified via email when that comes out, or tune into my social media: https://linktr.ee/artofjim

If you'd like to support my art career and get some goodies in return, become a Ko-Fi Member in exchange for art in the mail every 6 months, monthly giveaways, access to my comics, discounts in my shop, and more.  Starts at $4.50/month, goes up for better rewards. https://ko-fi.com/artofjim/tiers  Thank you to all of my members, past and current, for enabling me to pursue my greatest interest in life more comfortably. 

[babygirlaffirmations]

11-19-23

Things to journal about yesterday

DND - sexy time and naps: sucking Master's cock. Distracting him and making him moan during. Laying down and having 10-15 cummies by his foot. Feeling content with mischief and taking a nap. ❤️ The cheeky process. Master starts removing his pants without me even needing to say anything. I cheekily slide the kneeling pad over. Then put down my phone on the table. And remove my glasses.

Zoo - zoo lanterns. Very pretty. Was sad Master wasn't present in the beginning due to texting. But we got a cute photo together and it was gorgeous. We got overwhelmed together and it went by fast.

Permanent bracelet - Master taking the tool and putting on the bracelet that doesn't come off. Around the same time as contract. Gorgeous. Matches my collar in a different color. Another sign of his ownership over me.

Contract- contract is officially signed. Officially under contract to my amazing Master.

Monster under the covers- First time playing monster under the covers with Daddy. I loved it. He started touching my princess parts under the cover. Told him to tell Daddy when the monster attacks and to be quiet. Daddy asked if the monster had gotten inside me as he fingered me. I giggled and said no. And we both laughed really hard. Clearly the monster was inside. So Daddy had to use his cock to fight the monster. I told Daddy he had to breed me for the monster to be gone for good. Was so hot. Hoping to make a fet writing about this one. Delicious.

Burger date- Took Daddy for his first date at habit Burger. Was cute. Got to snuggle together in the booth for a bit while he caught up on my fetlife writings and Tumblr journals.

Up movie date in bed- Daddy introduced me to one of his fav movies, UP. It was cute. Sad. Hilarious. I loved it. I asked for a pause before the end of the movie. And then Daddy gave me like 20 cummies. Asked for Daddy's cock to fuck me. He wasn't in the headspace. Completely okay. But now I'm lusting for him to fuck my pussy again extra. 🤤🥴

Watching true and the rainbow kingdom- we watched the spooky special episode together. It was really cute.

Things to journal about today:

Sadness in packing and waking up- we always prepack most of the stuff the night before due to 7am wakeup those days. Was sad packing. Doing last sleep in his arms. Last cuffs he did where he could grab the chain and make me a whimper and made my pussy tingle. And say Mine if he desires. Doing last walk through. Last Master dressing his babygirl for a while.

Cute hair braids- Master braiding my hair at the class site. Two small braids. And one big braid. Butterfly hair piece semi close to the bottom. And 3 tiny butterfly clips. Yellow, green, and pink.

Yogi- cute time with Daddy showing me the YouTube channel I'll be using for my new obedience daily habit. And us both doing it horribly. Looking at his butt. It was fun. Silly older Daddy. 😉

Bonding in the classroom with data entry- sitting on my pet bed on the ground at his feet while he played a game. Did data entry. And then we did a quick update to his fetlife profile. Master gave me I think 3 verbal cummies today in person. And one was as I hugged him behind while he sat in the chair. And he held my hands to his chest during.

Daddy hugging me tights- big crunchy Daddy hugs and snuggles in the morning half asleep. And in my apartment before he left. I already miss his sweet messy bed head. Looking over at his cute face occasionally in the middle of the nights.

Big sads- lots of panic attacks today. Editing this at 11:11. Just made 11:11 pm wish just now. He left me at about 1:30. Last time was closer to 4. Was a bit sad about that. But we had class not show up today and got extra time for data entry and stuff. And another empty class before where we drove to it and had the hard talk. Did pros and cons list etc. And read that chapter of Kushiel's dart and Master explained it to me a bit while he did contract rough draft.

Target adventure with toys and food- bought 2 minis for me. Food for us to eat in the car in the parking lot before he left. Introduced him to Oreo cakesters and we split a pack. Also dino teether that's also a fidget. Excited for that one. Got to hold his hand. Had the weirdest cummies on the way to target. I think 11. But most I was cumming but overwhelmed knowing he was leaving soon so I was crying. Seeing Daddy lick and suck his fingers after he gives me cummies and finger fucks my pussy is always so hot. Daddy and I need more kissies. He's such a good hot sexy kisser. Takes my breath away. And gives me butterflies.

Last Starbucks and Starbucks brefast- Daddy had a coffee and two ham and cheese breakfast sandwiches. I got one for squeezy baby food. A muffin. And a bagel I couldn't make myself eat.

Going home in Daddy's sweater- mwahaha. Victory. Haven't taken it off yet. Just sniffed just now. Daddy scented and feeleded.

15 cummies today. 290 total. Holy fuck.

[briarquartz]

hi! sorry if you've been asked this before, but i was wondering- what did you do to get the monster high figures to stand up when doing the stopmotion out of touch video? i've tried to do stopmotion before, but i was stumped when it comes to getting them to stand and move around on two feet as cleanly as you did in the video. do you use clear stands and edit them out in post or do you have another technique? hope you have a good day btw, the video was v cute!!

Hi! Thank you for a really flattering and nice ask, it really made my evening! Unfortunately, I don't know how to do stop motion, I just rearranged some clips from the video below. Someone(s) professional at (or hired by) Mattel did the stop motion. They're not credited in the description or the end of the video, sadly. It's indeed very good, Twyla is best girl.

The clear stands are a very clever idea, anon! I suspect there are indeed some kind of special stands used here, probably something like this from kineticarmatures dot com. I suspect they hide the gray block under whatever surface the doll is supposed to walk on, and then take pictures from the front so the handle can't be seen.

You know how people on social media only post the best selfie and don't show the 20 other pictures they took, trying to find the most flattering angle and stuff? You don't owe anyone "perfection" when you're doing something for fun. Don't worry about the stands being visible in your stuff.

On the topic of editing stuff out, I do know little bit about it: I've used GIMP for a long while. It's a free photo editor you can download to your computer. With it, you can delete any background while leaving the doll untouched. Then you can replace the background with something else.

If you really want to go extra, you can cover the bits by the hips holding the doll upright by painting over them with the same color as the shirt/dress etc or using the clone tool (also pssst always add or edit on a separate layer. In the below video she can't just erase the darker blue and leave the color of the sky that's really there, cause she's doing it all on the same layer. If she had a copy of the plane layer, after adding the second plane, she could delete everything else, revealing the original photo, and have a neater result).

BUT.

Don't feel you have to do any of this extra stuff, I'm only adding these videos just in case it would be helpful. If you're making a video that's 24 frames per second, you're editing 24 pictures for 1 sec of animation, assuming there's movement in each frame and you're not using duplicates. Even if you only move the hand, take it and paste it onto an already edited picture, that's still A LOT of work.

Would it even be worth it? Will editing take the fun out of taking the photos so you can watch your dolls move? Maybe you just want to edit out the plastic by the hips if it bothers you, and leave everything else as is, so it looks like your dolls are moving on your table or interacting with your stuff.

All that matters is you're having fun doing it. You're not Mattel, publishing a professional music video. Don't hold yourself to the same standards. As long as you're happy with the animation (or at least feel you improved, even if the end result isn't quite what you wanted).

I hope you have a good day too, anon. <3

[fightingdragonswithwho]

How do you go about making your gifs? And where do you download the content safely? Hoping for some help :) but no pressure to explain!!

hi, anon! no worries at all, happy to help if i can!! :)

putting a quick rundown of everything below and hoping i managed to make this somewhat clear and organised!

for downloads, i always use torrents and i try to always use at least 1080p in terms of quality! i’ve been using torrents for so long now and never had any real trouble, but i always try to download them from sites dedicated to shows/movies torrents, just so i know them and that they are safe to use: i usually check these two: (x) (x) You can search the movie or show there and see if they have links in their directory!

Moving on to the actually gifmaking (this will all sound very confusing at first, but it gets a lot easier as it goes!), i use Photopea to make my gifs, which is an online tool that basically has the same features as Photoshop and works pretty well! this tutorial was a true blessing for me when i started making gifs and i basically still follow everything that is in it, since it outlines the whole process from screencapping the frames for the gifs using KMPlayer to actually making the gif on photopea. this tutorial is also amazing, especially to know more or less how Photopea works.

This is what Photopea looks like to give an overall idea for all the steps i'll mention below, which are a little more specific to how i started doing gifs once i had some more practice:

once the gif is cropped and resized according to the tutorials i linked above, i can explain the process how i personally have been doing lately! i always start by using double sharpening (go to Filter at the top bar >Sharpen > Smart Sharpen) and it tends to be around the values below:

once i have the gif set up, cropped and with the sharpening settings applied, i might go in with a little bit of the reduce noise option (Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise) - i screenshoted the values below, just for reference!

these settings can be really different for different shows (editing Criminal Minds or Stranger Things is very different because the quality in ST is waaayyyy better so the values might vary a lot accordingly, but i wanted to give an overall idea!)

after that, i start working on the coloring process. this one is very much trial and error because it really depends on the show but here are the editing layers i usually use in case you wanna play around with these:

these can all be found under Layer > New Adjustment Layer and then you can select the one you want from the list!

sometimes i might use Color Balance or Photo Filter from that list too, to really adjust the coloring. For example, for shows like A League of Their Own that have a little bit of a yellow filter, i usually add the Photo Filter Layer to correct the color a little. Here's an example below of the before and after the PhotoFilter:

and i’m linking some more useful tutorials, including for coloring, that go into a bit more detail and that i followed a lot when i was starting: x and x.

aaaand i'm done (sorry for rambling so much!) and i'm sorry if this is all a little confusing, i tried giving an overall idea on everything, but please feel free to reach out if there’s anything in specific you’d like to know and i’ll do my best to explain! i’m still learning a lot of stuff myself, but it’s truly a try and error process, especially with coloring, but it can be really fun!

feel free to reach out if you need anything, for questions or for any links to shows/movies! thank you for the question and wishing you an amazing day! <3

[helbramstrauma]

What do we do when you don't want to write but your brain tells you, you have to before you can go to sleep. Time to write a headcannon for a character I have already written headcannons for. Now without further ado I present

Even More Feitan Relationship Headcanons

It has been a while since I've actually done a general Headcanons for him and I'm pretty sure the last one has something about him terrorizing geese.

Anyway, his giving love language is gift giving, but his receiving love language is Acts of Service.

Whenever he is tasked with taking something he will always pick up a souvenir. Value does not matter to him, it could be something as small as a bookmark or a priceless vase, really just whatever reminds him of you.

On the same note, he will bring something of yours when he goes on trips. He doesn't ask though, because he thinks it would be an awkward conversation.

You've probably caught on though. It is weird that your favorite shirt, book, perfume ect. Go missing when he leaves and magically reappear when he comes back.

He hates photos, he does not want to be in them ever. However he probably has like one photo of you two together from like 5 years ago that he carries everywhere.

Acts of Service. It doesn't have to be anything big, maybe organizing his torture tools, cooking, cleaning blood off the floor, or starting the coffee machine for him.

But in all seriousness, growing up Feitan had to do everything himself, so someone doing anything for him makes him feel appreciated.

You simply give him that sense of home he never had

It doesn't matter if your cooking is garbage, he's had worse growing up, he'll adore it.

He doesn't like going out much at all. But when you do it is at night, or simply a car ride to get take out.

His ideal date is solving those murder mystery podcasts.

He isn't outwardly possessive/jealous but it is in the little things.

For instant the bed is in the corner of the room and he has you sleep on the inside. He says it's because he gets up in the middle of the night a lot. But deep down it is because he doesn't want you to leave.

On the topic of sleeping, I feel like he is big on conversation.

Conversation being a loose turn, because he is an insomniac he likes to listens to your little rambles. It helps him get comfortable enough to sleep.

Also he strictly has photos of you that you hate and photos of you sleeping.

Is taking pictures of people sleeping weird? Objectively, yes. But I feel like if you fall asleep on someone it is fair game.

Feitan has an interesting lifestyle, and I'm not even talking about the killing part, he moves around a lot and doesn't stay in one place. So keeping up with other personal relationships would be difficult. He would absolutely accommodate that, it may not be super consistent but you'll probably see those people a couple times a year.

Bookshop dates? Bookshop dates.

I feel like you would actually pay for the books too. He wants to support the author's.

I get the vibe that he loves to travel, you will probably travel the world with him. Either on official phantom troupe business, personal vendetta's or just for leisure.

What started out as a joke slowly became a tradition. When you were traveling with Feitan you saw a place offer laser tag, and you poked fun at the odd similarities to his job. But now no matter where you go, you must play laser tag.

He, obviously, is very good at laser tag, and he will not go easy on you or any strangers that might be part of the game. A child could be wearing a birthday hat and crying, there will be no comfort just winning.

Also escape rooms. He is not a huge fan of them, as heisting is a regular event for him. BUT he loves seeing you struggle through the puzzle. He would never let the time run out though!

All in all, this is pretty good for 3-ish am. Now to attempt to edit this.

[leverage-commentary]

Leverage Season 2, Episode 14, The Three Strikes Job, Audio Commentary Transcript

Dean: Hi I'm Dean Devlin, Executive Producer and Director of this episode.

John: John Rogers, Executive Producer, Writer of this episode.

Chris: Chris Downey, Executive Producer, and this is the Three Strikes Job.

John: This is the first half of the big season finale which we like to do. And we are meeting our favorite recurring character Detective Bonanno, played by our friend Mr. Blanche, right?

Dean: Yes, Robert Blanche.

Chris: Robert Blanche.

John: Fantastic find; local actor. And it was interesting because really as we had come to- first time dealing with split season, first time Sophies not around, we had to- you know, we really hunted around for the character we would be emotionally anchored to for the season finale; you don't want it to be a random vic. And- cause last year was the whole Nate arc- 

Chris: Right.

John: And having- Robert having established his character made him really beloved, made it easier.

Dean: And we've never really done a pre-opening like this that's quite this violent.

John: Yes.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: So it was a little bit out of our tool box, but yet we tried to do it in a way that it didn't seem like a completely different show.

John: This is the edited version. In the original version, a toddler wanders through the field of fire and is brutally mowed down.

[Laughter]

John: I'm glad we cut that out, that was weird.

Dean: That wasn't good.

John: Just seemed odd.

Dean: Especially when the toddler pulled out a gun and-

John: And was doing the [unintelligible] the dubs were cool though. I liked those.

[Laughter]

John: So this is Sonny at the toll booth; there's no two ways around this.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

John: How tough was this to shoot?

Dean: You know, it was actually pretty easy. We had about six cameras shooting simultaneously; we did it 3 different times and moved the camera each time. And this van you may recognize from Beantown Bailout-

John: Yes

Dean: Which also got shot up. So whenever we need to shoot up a car, that’s the car.

Chris: And did we add-? Or did we-

Dean: Now here’s the interesting thing-

John: We putty it in.

Chris: We putty it in? Oh.

Dean: The actor was not available this day to shoot. So that’s a different actor made up to look like Robert Blanche.

Chris: Oh wow, that’s great.

John: That's great. So our local Portland actor has a double? A stand in? 

Dean: Has a double. [Laughs]

John: Wow, that's great. Oh, she's fantastic. And now this is- again, one of these sorts of things where we’re trying to anchor all of Nate Ford’s emotional cues. And you actually tried to shoot this identically, if I remember correctly.

Dean: That's right. We wanted to try and match the look and feel of the hospital scene from the pilot, but just skewed enough so that we know we’re someplace else.

John: Paul Blackthorne's name. And this was a lot of fun. This was a big giant episode concept.

Dean: One of the things you have to understand is- you gotta know when we do these two-part season finales, they're really shot like a movie, cause you shoot them all at the same time. And this one is, as you will see - far more ambitious than what we did in season one. Yet because it’s at the end of a very tough season where the writers actually ended earlier than normal; we only have four days to prepare to shoot this two-part season finale.

John: Yeah. We actually started prepping off outlines.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And then I think I turned in the first half? First half first? Second half- 

Dean: Yeah.

John: I think I kept in order at least. And then, you know, turn them each in. And by that point, nicely enough, the Portland crew was such a well oiled machine that they knew what they wanted. Also, we had learned by this point to really try to find anchor locations. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: To build and tie our acts around. So knowing that we were gonna do the baseball scam, they knew they could start processing all that was needed.

Dean: This is also the first time in season two that we brought back this recurring nightmare of him reliving the death of his son. The idea was that he had to some degree resolved it at the end of season one, but yet it’s still there just below the surface, and then suddenly kicking in to the end of season two it comes back up again.

John: And it was really the last trigger. If you’ve been watching the arc all the way through, we’ve been playing with his control issues and the fact that he's drinking again, and that feeling of helplessness has triggered him back into his addictive behavior. I mean, he’s already kind of bathing in his addictive behavior at this point in the previous episodes, but this is what really pushes him over the edge.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Also normally we like to have fun kick in pretty early after the opening scene, but yet this- because we're trying to set up a larger emotional arc in this two-part season finale. We have an emotional opening with Bonanno getting shot, then we have another emotional beat where he’s reminded of his son, and here another emotional beat where he’s trying to connect with Sophie and his frustration of not being able to reunite with her is bubbling. So we really actually took a long time on this before we let the fun kick in, which is not usual.

John: Because we were really gonna screw with Nate Ford in these two episodes, and you really feel like you just can't, ‘Oh, remember that stuff you should have noticed in previous episodes? That’s why he's doing this.’ We really needed to reset it.

Chris: One of the reasons that I think this plays so well is that if you watch them back to back, which I'm so glad they were broadcast that way on TNT, is that this scene here really pays off in part two.

Dean: Yeah.

Chris: And it’s- you know, it's a little ways to go if you have to wait a week between them. 

John: Yeah.

Chris: But now it really plays like a movie.

Dean: And big kudos to Jeri Ryan because she had- she only had a few episodes to create an arc, and really everything she did in the previous episodes come together in these last two. 

John: Yeah.

Dean: She’s really part of the team by now.

John: Yeah. And that bit where she drinks his booze in order to get it away from him was actually the first physical bit we ever pitched talking about the character. We were trying to figure out a way to differentiate between Sophie and Tara, and the idea where Sophie is a little more sensitive, a little more coddling...

Chris: More empathetic.

John: More empathetic, yeah. Tara will just basically drink you out of your own problems. 

Chris: Right.

John: This was a tough day. Mainly because Tim really dug in on this.

Dean: Yeah.

John: This rage- this was a tough day. You know, he’s angry. And you can hear him- 

Chris: Yeah.

John: And you can- he really- this was a small set for them to be screaming at each other on. It was really nice.

Dean: Yeah. And it really helped the other actors as you’ll see just in the way they are reacting. I mean, you see Christian is really messed up by this. 

John: Yeah.

Dean: And it was a great way to-

John: Yeah cause one of his best friends in the world is sitting eight feet from him screaming at his face. 

Dean: Yeah.

John: I mean, you know. And yeah, they're all really digging in on the idea that Nate Ford has gone off the rails. 

Dean: But once they jump in, then the fun begins again. 

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: And now we start to get into that rhythm of, ‘Ok.’

Chris: You can see his little look on his face right here is the cue for the fun on Hardison.

John: Yeah. As soon as- yeah, as soon as the sarcastic ‘these guys are goons’ face comes up.

[Laughter]

Dean: Now by the way, those goons faces on the board are actually people who work here at post production at Electric.

[Laughter]

John: So don't be alarmed if you see them at your local bank or supermarket.

Chris: And I'll call out another couple of people whose faces are on this, too, you two guys a little later.

John: Oh yeah, we’re a little later. Exactly. This was also fun because this was something we kind of picked up on if you watch the second season episodes. A little bit more of detective Nate Ford. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: You know, he was a guy who hunted bad guys.

Dean: Right.

John: And we put him back in the context a couple times this season of hunting bad guys. You know, and this one in particular he figures out exactly the situation in which case they should pursue. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: Good crime scene photos. Big shout out to Derek.

Chris: Gruesome, yeah.

John: Gruesome, yeah. Nice.

Dean: But because we shot this scene before we had shot the scene with Bonanno getting shot-

John: We had no footage, that’s right.

Dean: We had no footage, so we had to make up fake crime scene photos and hoped that they would somehow-

Chris: Derek had those crime scene photos pretty easily, don’t you think?

John: That was a little disturbing.

[Laughter]

John: ‘I just went out and did it in a back alley in Chicago.’ This is also fun because this is one of the few times we’ve had Hardison of all people go, ‘I don't want to do this one. This one seems like a bad idea.’

Chris: Yeah. Now look at this shot.

Dean: Now this actor here- those of you who may have seen my film Flyboys, he was one of the pilots in Flyboys. And he did me a solid and came and did this little guest spot. And this is Richard Kind, who I had not worked with since Stargate-

John: Wow.

Dean: -and has been a family friend forever, and I think one of our most underrated actors in this country.

Chris: Yeah, I mean, it's the kind of part you typically don't see him in. I mean he plays kind of a nebbish-y guy. 

John: Yeah.

Chris: And boy, did he just bring a gravitas and a menace and really built a whole backstory to his character. 

John: Well let's talk about it- that’s where this story comes from. We really wanted to do our city of industry, corrupt east coast port town. I grew up near Boston, you grew up in New York- 

Chris: Yeah.

John: -and, you know, this is very much based around that, sort of, north of Boston, Route 1 type of town. 

Dean: Right.

John: And so getting an east coast actor, just a guy who could bring you that kind of New York power family vibe made a difference. And he showed up- he loved the script, showed up with three ideas. Three lines of dialogue, in three scenes that gave this character backstory, depth, and pathos. It’s like, ‘Wow, that’s a very good actor.’

Chris: And what the fact to do is Brad Culpepper the Third. I mean that he was from a long line-

John: Yes. And he dug in on that and he found something that just made you, you know-

Dean: He also came up with this concept that he wasn’t in it for the money, he was in it for the power and the legacy. 

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Which is an interesting distinction.

John: Yeah, exactly. There is- he really dug in on the evil speech of evil. The idea that he is not a bad guy in his own head in any way shape or form. This was- what hotel was this? Was this the Governor?

Dean: This was the Governor Hotel. 

John: They really did us a solid this episode, they did a fantastic job.

Dean: We ended up shooting three different episodes at the Governor, and then they were our host for the Leverage convention.

John: Oh, also the wrap party.

Chris: Which was fantastic.

John: I don't remember that much.

Chris: The Leverage convention, which was awesome.

John: I can't believe you people missed it.

[Laughter]

John: We’re gonna assume nothing horrible happens. The horrible irony of when we try to recall these DVDs. 

Chris: Oh, no, please.

[Laughter]

John: Lovely little- this was a great neighborhood; they put up with us. And this was a lot of fun, whenever you can play the annoyed brother vibe between the two of them.

Dean: Oh, I could watch it all day long.

John: Yeah. This was also the night we found out we got picked up for a third season.

Dean: That’s right.

Chris: Oh yeah, that’s right.

John: This is fun, that’s Beth in the rig on the ledge. If you go to my blog, you’ll see the pictures of her doing this. It’s insane. There's just no way we should be allowing her to be on the edge.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

John: That’s city hall, by the way, in Portland. That’s city hall.

Dean: That is, that is.

Chris: They let you just jump off the roof in city hall?

John: You know what- if you're in Portland, show up, ask, and they'll let you. I'm sure there will be no repercussions to me saying that. And this is kind of fun, Paul Blackthorne as the shadowy character that you kind of touch on. And this is all based on- his character’s actually based on a guy down in Florida-

Dean: Yes.

John: -who got an arms deal with the US government, who was like a bar guy.

Chris: Yeah, he was kinda like a party kid. 

John: Yeah, who somehow got a 300 million dollar contract with the US government selling recycled arms from Eastern-

Chris: Recycled arms from Eastern Europe, yeah.

John: That’s Beth on the rappelling line. Remember that? We shot that.

Dean: And I’ll tell you, this is an example of how Beth, even alone, just completely captures your imagination. She has no one else to act with here except for our AD off camera reading dialogue, and yet she's completely engaged in the story, in the character.

John: Yeah, this was a lot- this was- actually you wrote this whole chunk.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Oh, here's another great local guest star.

John: Yeah. And that was another thing that Portland gave us. There's a lot of great local theater guys, a lot of local great actors who can really land a joke.

Dean: Yeah, it was so surprising.

Chris: I love that he has the ice tea, it's such a great-

[Laughter]

Chris: Such a great touch.

John: I like- and also the sort of- I don't know if it’s the weird veiled hostility between Hardison and Eliot gets turned outward whenever they run one of these cons- 

Dean: Right.

John: -but that guy is going to be the subject of their rage at each other. This guy was really great. 

[Laughter]

Chris: And this is a crime lab bit. I mean, let’s be honest, there are eight different CSIs on; we wanted to have a little fun.

John: Yes. We were kind of making fun of the CSI- the whole idea that CSI shows up at your house. I had my house broken into, they didn’t show up.

[Laughter]

Chris: The fact that the beat cop could be-

John: Bossed around by-

Chris: Bossed around by CSI guys was born out of those shows

John: And this, by the way, the bit with the balloons, was Richard. 

Dean: Great.

John: Just awkward, just trying to shift it, trying to ground it. And again, this- what amazes me when we got into the research of it, was how cheap it was to buy these guys. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: I mean really- like $10,000 gets you somebody's kid in city politics.

Dean: That's true.

Chris: The promise of a job when you're out of the office. You know, I mean, that's what brought down the Illinois governor.

John: Yeah, that's right. That’s right. And that's what is kinda fun is we do- oh, I love this bit.

Dean: Comedy frame.

John: Comedy frame! What is this? A locked off comedy frame.

Dean: Exactly.

John: Locked off frame, two people come in facing each other-

Dean: And I love this little smile right there on Christian’s face .

[Laughter]

Dean: He was just enjoying the bit until he realized, ‘Oh wait, I have to perform in the bit.’

John: Is that on the X? Is that- how did you get the RED so low?

Dean: Oh we just put it right on the floor on a sandbag. 

John: Oh that's good. 

[Laughter]

John: Thanks to these nice folks for letting us trash their home, by the way.

Dean: Yes. And for those of you who may have noticed in the wide angles, just the little numbers on the evidence things on the floors.

John: Yes, that they’ve scattered all over the ground. Yeah no set-dec did a great job.

Dean: You can see the numbers in the background.

Chris: Oh those are great!

John: And- and earning his pay-

[Laughter]

John: Nicely done.

Chris: That’s a nice little transition there.

John: It is a nice- almost like you put some thought into this.

Dean: And I swear I didn't. And this is our line producer’s wife .

John: Yeah.

Dean: Who also did a guest star in last year’s two-part season finale.

John: Last year’s finale! 

Chris: Oh, that’s right!

John: I like the idea she was on vacation in LA last year.

Dean: Exactly.

John: And now she’s back and involved in another Leverage scam. In my head it's the same person.

Dean: And this is an interesting scene for their arc, because, you know, Beth - Parker - really didn't trust Tara coming in.

John: Well she's not part of the family.

Dean: And only in this scene does she actually start to earn her trust, and they start to bond.

John: And we also wanted to reset the fact that, again, Parker is good in the short con. If you throw a surprise at her she doesn't handle it well, because talking to people doesn't even go well. Interestingly enough, she relates to people better in character than as Parker. 

Chris: Yes.

John: Yeah. And so until Tara gives her- so yes, the awkward- we really pulled up every political trope we could find. 

Chris: Oh, sure.

John: I think we sat down - adultery, pregnancy, corruption. Then we just went through the Times one day, just pulled up every scandal from that summer.

[Laughter]

John: And the 4-18 months. And there's actually a mayor’s conference, too.

Dean: That’s right.

John: We found out where the mayor’s conference was.

Chris: It's in Vegas. Sure that's where you would have the mayors conference, and that’s where he would meet her.

Dean: I like the little turn Parker makes here, after she’s been coached part way through it, now she gets it. So now she’s feeling comfortable doing it.

John: Now she understands, yeah.

Dean: And you can see her-

Chris: ‘Yeah, I'll just wait out there.’

John: And that is an actual office- that's a conference room at the city hall?

Dean: That sure is.

John: That we rappelled down into.

Dean: We had to use it as the mayor's office, cause the actual mayor's office was too small.

[Laughter]

John: That's right.

Chris: Oh, yeah.

John: Infamously the mayor took the smaller office in the city of Portland cause he just felt like he only needed that much work space.

Dean: That's right. Mayor Sam Adams who’s been incredibly helpful to this show, and we’re very grateful.

John: Yes. Very cool guy. I don't regret that duffle bag full of cash at all.

Chris: That is a great shot there.

John: That is a great shot. That really establishes that space. 

Chris: She’s- jeez.

John: She's beautiful, yes. I was referring to the setting, but-

Chris: Sorry, I was just-

John: Yes, Jeri Ryan was very beautiful, too.

Chris: I was just lost in Jeri Ryan.

John: It happens. And this is the great speech. And again, we listened to transcripts and looked at testimony. I mean if you look at Blagojevich-

Chris: Blagojevich, sure.

John: The remarkable bluntness with which they announce their terms and prices always amazes me.

Chris: Yeah. And it almost sounds like movie dialogue, but it’s not! It’s just the way they talk!

John: Yeah.

Dean: The evil speech of evil.

John: And we come up with evil speeches of evil, and then when you go find the real ones it's like, really? You said that? With a straight face? Alright. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: No, research is your friend. We really- you know, this is a remarkable static act with an awful lot going on. I never noticed that before.

Dean: Well I think- again, this is- when we separate our team into different locations, but yet having them communicate, it really gives a sense of energy to it. 

John: But we only have, like, three agendas.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, running it at any one time. This was a tight little shot. I remember this. This was- we were in that back bedroom, and trying to shoot. And then you had to- you had a totally different blocking, if I remember correctly.

Dean: Yeah, instead of being in the room with him, we decided we’d squeeze him through the doorway and make him feel like he’s in an even tighter space than he was by framing it that way. But it also gives a chance to use this hallway and bring in our guest performer.

John: Yeah. And the clue that travels over two different episodes. Hopefully, again, I'm glad that they aired these back to back because it would be tricky to-

Chris: Yes it’s- to track- there's a lot of stuff that this really did play like a movie.

Dean: And once again, we got to the-

John: Oh, the big smile.

Dean: -comedy frame.

John: Yes.

[Laughter]

John: That’s for all you young filmmakers out there, that is the comedy frame. And then the look- just the look of pity on his face. Yeah. 

[Laughter]

John: And the badge on the- there's no reason the CSI guys should have a badge on a shield. Chris just loves the badge on the shield- the badge on a chain. 

Dean: Exactly.

Chris: He likes that.

John: He really likes that look. If he can be doing like a 1970s- if he could be doing the British version of Life on Mars, he’d be the happiest man alive.

Dean: Oh yeah.

[Laughter]

Chris: Now I got a question for you. So was- now we had a Maltese Falcon joke, just one line in-

Dean: The previous episode.

Chris: -the previous episode. Did that give you the idea for the Maltese Falcon? Who came up with the Maltese Falcon bit?

John: No, you know it was- it was literally, I was trying to figure out, ‘What's the MacGuffin? What’s the maltese falcon? You know what, it'd be actually kind of fun to just call it that.’

Chris: Just the Maltese Falcon, OK.

John: Cause it’s so famous now, it's a little meta. And, you know, the fact that it would be called something rather than a shorthand for something- 

Chris: Right.

John: Cause we use that in the writers room all the time.

Chris: Yeah, we do.

John: The maltese falcon, what's the thing? Macguffin, Hitchcock famously defined it as. And this is Nate deciding to bail on the pitch and making- and this is tough. He’s basically processing offscreen dialogue and acting like he’s coming to a decision. 

Dean: I love Richard’s reaction to it, it's like ‘What?’

John: We just went for the whole-

Chris: ‘You just paid all this money, you don't want to engage in graft with me?’

John: Behind though-

Dean: Even out of focus he's stealing the scene.

John: I know. He's really upstaging the hell out of- out of focus. Look how far back he is. Aaand you're back. 

[Laughter]

John: And we've announced our agenda.

Chris: We've announced our agenda, we know our- and here we go.

Dean: Now this place was great, this ballpark. We wanted to shoot here all year and hadn’t really found a way to do it.

John: And that's why I give full props to Chris, is cuz I had the crime story back half of this done, and I could not figure out what the con on the mayor was. And you had fallen in love with this location you had seen- you were like-

Chris: This was great, I had gone to a game here.

John: We can finally pay off this location. And that’s- again, that's an advantage of being a city where you get to know- cause the baseball con was always a half an episode.

Chris: Right.

John: And we could never quite get it to be a whole. And then it was like, ‘Oh, we need half an episode. Boom.’

Chris: Well also there's a lot of public corruption around building ballparks, and we did a little research that minor league ballparks bring 30 million dollars into the local economy.

John: That was great. The day we did research and found out it was just a flat 30 million for almost every ballpark, it’s like, that’s just a great number.

Chris: Yup.

Dean: And by the way, I think some of the best special effects we’ve ever done are in this two-part season finale, but I don't think you'd even notice it. For instance all these shots in the ballpark, we had to erase and change all the signage-

John: Oh, that’s right.

Dean: -because we didn't have permission. And then later, we had to put in the crowds that were reacting. So there are amazing special effects in this, but they are so real you didn’t even know.

John: That’s right. Utterly seamless. If you see them, we screwed up. Yeah, and this particularly since those aren’t lockoff, the camera is moving, you know, the character is wiping in front of it, yeah.

Dean: And again, I love what David is doing in this scene, he is just channeling Smithers.

John: Yes.

[Laughter]

John: And there’s Paul Blackthorne, he’s really doing the job for us as evil European dude. He has a large black car- 

Chris: Yeah.

John: He's got a halfway rolled down window. We know what his job is in the story, we know what his job is in the narrative. 

[Laughter]

John: But what I love here is the fact that Richard there's just so dismissive. I mean the body language here besides- Why is this a good shot? Because you don’t have to turn around to get both of them.

Dean: Exactly.

John: He’s very casually powerful. 

Dean: Right.

John: This is a man who’s used to the world running the way he wants it to run.

Chris: Right, in this little burg of Bellbridge.

John: Yes.

Dean: And this is such a terrific location, and we were there early in the morning, got this great light. I was so excited to shoot this. 

Chris: And they have a nice-

John: Story shcmory. Pictures.

Chris: They have a nice rapport here, too. They have this kind of easy going, you know, banter.

Dean: You know, so much of this episode- these episodes, was wish fulfillment. We wanted to be in that ballpark all year, we wanted to get near the water under the bridges...

Chris: Yes.

John: You also- in case you're skipping through the commentaries, you’ll notice this happens in Bellbridge, Massachusetts. Bellbridge is the corrupt town in Chris’s episode, Order 23.

Chris: Yes, yeah.

John: We decided to create just one imaginary Massachusetts city we could crap on for an entire season.

Chris: Yes.

John: Just to make sure we had clearances, and we always knew- 

Dean: Exactly.

John: So please, if you're from a real Bellbridge, don’t be angry. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: Yeah, their rhythm here is lovely. They are partners by this point, in a very different way. And the fact that Jeri has established that over six episodes is pretty cool. How tough is it to shoot in a ballpark, my friend?

Dean: Well some of this we actually stole footage at a real- during a real game, but the rest was very easy because they were so cooperative. I mean, this is the actual locker room and they let us have it for the day, and gave us equipment and were-

Chris: And those are the- are those the uniforms?

Dean: Just terrific. Those are the actual uniforms. The ‘P’ is actually for Portland. 

[Laughter]

Dean: But in our show it’s-

Chris: Palmerstown.

John: And I love the fact it's actually the Portland Beavers, because if we come up with a comedy mascot we couldn't have beat beavers.

Dean: No.

John: And by the way the Portland Beaver? Good guy.

Dean: Very good guy.

John: Very good guy. Really cool. We hung out, everything.

Chris: Oh apologies to Crash Davis here, but boy does he do- he does-

John: Oh he's so digging in.

Chris: Does a great Bull Durham.

John: Really digging up. This is- we went back and forth- are we doing Major League or Bull Durham here?

Chris: It's pretty Bull Durham here. 

John: It’s pretty Bull Durham.

Chris: The journeyman catcher who shows up unannounced, it’s- 

John: Yeah, and also the idea that these- you know, talking to a lot of these guys who play this level ball, the precarious nature of their lives- I mean the guys who are kind of on rota from a major league team make a lot of money. 

Chris: Yeah.

John: The guys who are journeymanning this out, a lot of them have day jobs, man.

Dean: What I love about this is that Eliot himself doesn’t like baseball. Because we’ve already established what a big, giant sports fan he is. 

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: About how excited he was about all the sports channels in- both season one and season two.

John: But it's hockey- and it’s always hockey and football. And interestingly, we gave him your problem with baseball.

Dean: Exactly.

Chris: Yes we did, it really worked great.

John: I love baseball and I'm like, ‘I have no idea what he wouldn't like.’ And you said, I don’t like-’ Oh.

Chris: Oh, and John did a beautiful job directing this.

John: This is my directing debut right here 

[Laughter]

Chris: Mark it down folks.

John: Japanese power drink commercial. Because it really was one of those things I had in mind and it's like, ‘Alright describe it. You know what? I can't describe it, I'll just shoot this.’

Chris: I think I originally wrote it as it’s like a car- like a local car ad. 

John: Yeah.

Chris: Oh my god, how great is this Japanese sports drink commercial?

John: Also, again, you're lucky to have Chris Kane because a lot of actors wouldn't do the comedy beat in the commercial.

[Laughter]

Dean: Nails it.

John: He nails it. Look at the big smile! 

Dean: And he enjoys it!

John: Look at that, having a good time.

[Laughter]

Dean: But he hates baseball, and then he comes in here and the minute he cracks that bat you just see- you know, heroin to the junkie.

Chris: He really did- he gave it a real arc, you know. 

John: And also, I like the fact that this is the first time he uses a baseball bat for what it's actually meant for.

Dean: Right.

[Laughter]

John: He's been beating people up with baseball bats for like 20 years, and never really hit a ball with one before. Also, by the way, cool digital ball.

Chris: Oh watch this.

Dean: Exactly.

John: There you go.

Chris: Oh that is great.

Dean: I'm telling you some of our best digital effects-

Chris: That’s fantastic.

John: Oh look at that look.

Dean: And the second one- watch the indentation on the pad on the wall when the ball hits it. Small thing for effects artists, but really lovely, just oh that little indentation.

John: Oh that’s nice, the shadow. And there we are.

Chris: Oh there you go folks, there's Dean and John.

Dean: Oh dear, oh dear.

John: We’re also doing the voices here on the radio shows. On the DVD there should be about nine takes of this scene. Because the two of them, at one point it got very weird and sexual with her speaking Spanish, and Hardison getting all ramped up.

[Laughter]

John: It- this was definitely one of the ones where you just, like, park the camera and let the two of them go.

Dean: Yeah.

John: Yeah.

[Laughter]

John: Interesting, one of the challenges of shooting the greenscreens is color temperature.

Dean: Yes.

John: We actually had a little bit of trouble with this shot because- most people don’t understand, there’s a lot of different greens that go on green screens. It was not dead right, doing the special effects goes from easy to unspeakable.

Dean: Exactly, and so this one had- a lot of work had to go into being able to see what was on the screen.

John: Ironically, a lot of this was harder to see than the incredibly complex crowds and baseball stuff.

Dean: The stands, exactly.

John: This was a lot of fun. Outside real city hall, outside Portland city hall, at a coffee shop across the street at some ungodly hour of the morning.

Dean: Yeah, this was the first thing we shot that day.

John: And again, this is- it was interesting how originally there was an entire subplot where, how they’d been lured there, how the mayor- and you don’t need it.

Chris: Yeah. This is much better.

John: Yeah.

Dean: He just sees them, he walks across the street.

Chris: Yes.

John: We even took that bit out. We originally had him see them.

Dean: I love the really, really bad heist.

[Laughter]

John: The bad lift.

Dean: Smithers stumbles into the table.

John: And Kind just drops the look there a little bit.

Chris: A little disgust right there.

Dean: Just a little squint.

[Laughter]

John: And the turnaway when it’s like, ‘Oh horrible lift.’ They don’t even have to- they both know what happened, they both know it was unspeakable. 

Dean: Well, you know, amateurs to pros, you know?

John: And this was fun, these are based on real blueprints.

Chris: Yeah, real blueprints for-

Dean: This was that other shot was the beginning of the day. This was the last shot of the day, and we’d run out of time. So I had to shoot this all in one shot.

John: Oh this is a one-er!

Chris: This is a one-er, take a look at that.

Dean: This is a very hard steadicam shot. While it’s not that impressive of a shot, it's a very difficult shot.

John: And also-

Dean: Cause you’re doing all the coverage with one camera.

John: And you're banging focus like crazy.

Chris: You’re getting a lot of information, right.

John: And also the actors can’t mess up.

Dean: That’s right.

John: At no point can they stop, can they drop a line, can they, you know.

Dean: The only thing we did is one little reverse at the very end on David’s character. But as you can see all of this-

John: To give you a cut, or?

Dean: Just to give us a cut in case we needed to combine.

Chris: It’s interesting how great these end of day one-ers come out.

Dean: Yeah.

Chris: And they're born of necessity.

Dean: That’s what so interesting about television is, you know, it really forces you to be creative.

John: Yeah. Oh there you go, I see what you did.

Chris: Oh here's the ballpark.

Dean: Now this is a mixture of stuff that we staged and stuff that we stole during an actual ballgame. But all the-

Chris: The actual ballgame you shot before, I think, the script was written.

John: I think I sent the outline saying we would be at the ballpark. And so Dean had to come up with a shot list based on basically our friendship- 

Chris: This is great.

John: -figuring out what I would probably put in the script.

Dean: These are all real things there. 

John: Yeah.

Dean: That we shot. Now all the crowds, though, we added digitally.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

Dean: So in all these wide shots when you see these full crowds, they had about- there was a scattered amount of people. In all the shots where it’s full, that’s us.

John: Yeah.

Chris: That’s great.

Dean: For all these shots here. And of course all the signage is changed digitally.

John: And Kane went down, caught a couple pitches, and actually on the shot we have him hit, he actually connected, put it on the warning track. It was a good day for Chris Kane.

Chris: That’s a beautiful shot, too, there; love that.

John: That's a beautiful one, yeah.

Dean: And this actor is actually a state senator.

[Laughter]

Dean: Who had helped pass the legislation for us to-

John: I actually think we’re the bad guys at this point. Seriously, we’re doing an episode about graft and corruption and- 

Dean: Well the hilarious thing is, he wanted to play the corrupt mayor.

John: I know. And we were like ‘You know dude, that's probably not the best idea for you to play the corrupt mayor.’

Chris: I can see the campaign commercials.

Dean: All those crowds, digital. 

Chris: Wow, that’s great.

Dean: I mean that's really something.

John: And look at that, through a moving shot.

Dean: And then all the signage behind them is changed as well.

John: And that’s our-

Dean: And if you notice, that’s Hardison’s orange drink on the sign.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

John: Oh my god, that's right.

Chris: And to do with- with a moving camera is very difficult.

Dean: Very difficult.

John: And this is a conference on the mound from both Major League and Bull Durham.

Dean: And the pitcher is actually our second AD.

John: Kyle, yeah.

Dean: Yeah.

John: That's right, you give him a nice hero shot here, too.

Chris: Oh, that's a great shot of Kyle.

John: I also love- This helps lock in the arc where he’s like, ‘I'm now fully committed to winning baseball as much as I am to winning fights.’

Dean: Exactly.

John: No this was a lot of- and this is a lot of fun. This was- it's amazing what you can do with implication.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, just put two people in the same geography and let the characters draw their own conclusions. 

Chris: Yeah, let them do the math.

John: A lot of time you'll try to oversell the con, and what you have to remember is people create narrative about the world around them, you know?

Dean: Oh and I love this bit.

John: Yeah this is a lot of fun, the stuntie really took a hit. And down!

Chris: Oh, oh, oh!

[Laughter]

John: I love he does kind of the -

Dean: Notice that the ref is cross eyed; he's a real ref! 

[Laughter]

Dean: That is not something that- I didn't ask him to act cross eyed.

John: I love this- that dude is dead. That dude is dead. He’s plainly just- he's not getting up. Right now they're asking people to leave the park quietly.

Chris: I think he did that in one or two takes, I mean, he just got it.

Dean: Yeah.

John: He just- it was a beautiful fall.

Dean: By the way, this is another one-er and this is a very difficult scene to light for television where you don't have that much time. And our DP was really creative in the way he made the sun blazing through the back to light up pretty much the entire set.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Now was it easier because you're working with the RED camera for something like this? Available light...

Dean: The RED helps, but at the end of the day it’s about your DP and your gaffer, and we really have, really, two of the best guys in the business.

John: And again, this is also- so much help to be able to do the research on this. Where it’s like, ‘Well, how could he possibly communicate in code how much money-?’ No, he would write it down and give it to him.

Dean: Right.

John: That's what they do, apparently, I had no idea. 

[Laughter]

Dean: Right.

Chris: Yeah.

John: Or they'll just say it, unaware. And this yeah, this was a lot of fun, because also- Richard really found the idea that he was supposed to help Nate feel overconfident. 

Dean: Right.

John: You know, he's supposed to play into it a little easy. And he's- now he's totally into it.

Dean: I love how cross eyed the ref is, that's so great. I mean, the umpire, that's just so great.

John: Boom! That was a good solid hit. That's- Chris Kane put it on the warning track ladies and gentlemen.

Dean: And if you listen carefully in the background, you can hear the crowd chanting ‘Roy, Roy.’

[Laughter]

John: Oh he's become a hometown hero in roughly two weeks. What's the next shot up? Oh there we go, back at McRorys.

Chris: Now- now we're back.

John: Now this is one of our lovely roundy- and oh, this is great. One of our roundy-rounds where we just basically- script kids, when you want to communicate pipe and reset, the way to do it is have somebody not give a crap about the pipe that you're talking about. 

[Laughter]

John: He has his own agenda, it makes it instantly amusing.

Chris: Somebody comes in irritated.

Dean: And boy did he knock this out of the park. 

Chris: Yeah, yeah.

Dean: Kane, who didn’t care- I mean Eliot, who didn't care about baseball at all, is so proud of himself and he's so mad they didn't share his moment of glory.

John: His joy. They named a sandwich after him. Also, that’s a nice beat that they all chose. It’s like, you know, alright, you gotta give it up. That's a nice moment; boom, boom, and the fistbump.

Chris: You got a sandwich named after him.

Dean: Eliot has a hoage? No a reuben.

[Laughter]

John: I also like- I had not noticed before because I was kind of- Nate’s taking a phone call and I was watching it for that beat, the, sort of, fun that Jeri Ryan’s playing there, it's like, ‘OK, I'm part of the family now, this is genuinely amusing.’ 

Dean: Now this is a fun reveal shot. 

John: One of the cross cuts that I gave you again as your birthday gift. Moving in opposite directions?

Dean: Moving in opposite directions so that they are always looking at each other screen direction wise.

Chris: Right, right.

John: Cause we know awful things happen when you cross the lines.

Dean: If you cross the line, cities fall.

[Laughter]

Chris: No, but I mean, when you do phone calls that's an important thing to do.

Dean: For me I think so. I’m old school.

John: What I love is the fact that he starts the incredibly confident powerful guy that we know. And by the end of this swing around, Richard lets himself just kind of look- just 

Dean: Now he's-

Chris: Nice reveal there.

John: Yeah, and nice reveal on that blown out window. And now he's just a pawn, he's just a broken little man, you know. And that's very- the last shot is plainly Nixon. 

[Laughter]

John: It’s plainly like- what's that famous shot of Nixon at 2am in the oval office?

Dean: Right.

John: It’s that look at him. And he did all that in one take, conveying pipe to Nate.

Dean: And now we switch to our handheld, because our guys are in trouble. And I love how much Nate is overcompensating. Whenever Nate’s overcompensating, you know something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. 

John: And his addiction is taking over. Be it booze or control.

Dean: And in this case, both.

John: Yes. He's not really got his head on in this particular case. Yeah, everyone's arguing with him, everyone- and this is another great thing, when Nate spins out you don’t ever have a problem with the plot, because the problem with the plot is the point of the plot. 

Chris: Right.

John: Like with, ‘That doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense.’ Exactly! Tell that to Nate!

Chris: Yeah.

John: It's important for him to know.

Dean: Our editor did- Brian Gonosey, did a very interesting choice here from cutting from Nate to Nate. Which we almost never do, and it gives it, kind of, strange, nervous energy.

Chris: Well you're kinda-

John: It's claustrophobic.

Chris: You get the sense of people's eyes on him.

Jon: Right.

Chris: A lot of people looking at him.

Dean: But it’s not- again, that kind of cut we don't normally do on the show, and it really makes this a nervous scene.

John: Yeah, you’re going-

Dean: Nate to Nate to Nate to Nate.

John: Yeah, cause you're hopping- Jeri to Parker, you're seeing him plead his case. Jeri to Beth, Jeri to Beth, you know, you're seeing him through their eyes. And then back to the reactions where they know, yeah.

Dean: Something’s wrong.

John: And each one of them is making a very specific decision at that point.

Dean: Again, this port- these guys were so great to let us shoot there.

John: Oh man.

Dean: Gave us such wonderful access.

John: That’s the real port, that's not stock, baby, that’s-

Dean: That’s right, that’s the real deal.

John: And- and a lot of fun doing the TSA stuff, doing the Homeland Security stuff. The research on this was as horrifying as you'd imagine. Most of this is security theater, your ports are not secure, sleep tight America. 

Dean: And this actor was also discovered in that same improv group that we found the actor from the doctor episode.

Chris: Oh that’s interesting.

Dean: The Order 23.

Chris: John, you made a good point about how Order 23 pays off. A question about Order 23, about security at the courthouse. 

John: Yes, in Order 23 there's a beat like ‘How do they get the gun in there?’ And it’s because the courthouse has not been refurbished, because the budget on the town-

Dean: Right.

John: The city is so poor. And that's also why he felt confident hiding the money there. 

Chris: Right, right.

John: That pays off here in the- you find out the reason there's no money for the city is the mayor has grifted it all.

Dean: Right.

Chris: All the security money that he got, federal anti-terrorism money went into his own pocket.

Dean: And I love how Eliot is now playing a celebrity.

[Laughter]

Dean: And he's so proud that he's a celebrity.

John: And we also flipped roles for once, cause Hardison is usually not the one who’s annoyed, it’s-

Dean: Right.

Chris: Yeah, no it's true, he is.

John: It's really he’s- and it’s really both, ‘Get back on the job,’ and, ‘I'm not the center of attention.’

Chris: Yes.

Dean: These two are magical together.

John: Yeah, that's a great- this is a great noir set up.

Dean: Yeah, even with the black car in the distance, which is a bit of red herring.

Chris: Look at this shot, I mean this is a movie shot.

John: Beautiful. Now how do we- was this at night? Or were we during the day here on this?

Dean: This was at the end of the day, so we actually spilled into night and had to light it to keep it looking like this. And that's an actual oil tanker that they allowed us to shoot at.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Wow.

John: And then that- this walkway is actually exactly where we just located it. It's directly below the docks. And it really was- a lot of the fun was walking around the location going, ‘OK, this scene can happen here, this scene can happen here.’ And we didn't get too poisoned shooting in this warehouse. We all had funny coughs for about a week, but we were OK.

Dean: They warned us about spiders and raccoons under this- 

John: Yeah.

Dean: So we were looking for eight-legged raccoons at some point.

John: At some point we were very worried there would be a horrible combination.

Chris: Oh really? Wow, I missed this part.

John: Well you weren't up here for shooting at the oil tanker, getting poisoned by fumes.

Chris: Yeah, yeah. I looked at the schedule and went, ‘What’s the day you hang out in the baseball park?’

John: I noticed that. You came for the baseball park-

Chris: ‘Oh, I’ll come for that.’

John: You really didn't hang out with us in the oil tanker hold. Yeah, black lung kicking in. 

[Laughter]

John: This is a great cross cutting by Brian, this kind of- what he's doing is he's finding some- finding an odd rhythm here. It's not danger, it's unease.

Dean: Right.

John: You know, every shot is a little too short, it's a little too- yeah. And again, sort of end of day shooting, everything in the warehouse from the moment they walk in- like they get to the oil barrel, through the end of the episode pretty much, you did in a one-er. 

Dean: Yup.

John: One direction one way, one direction the other.

Dean: Your easy bake oven reference is awesome. I don't know how many people under the age of 40 are gonna get it, but god I love that reference.

John: Who under 40 watches television anyway? 

Chris: I appreciate it so much. Made me laugh so hard.

John: They've still got those. I got one for my niece.

Chris: With the one little bulb that actually makes the cake. 

John: Who knew? I love, Parker is constantly finding crates full of guns.

[Laughter]

John: I'm fairly sure she could open a gift with purchase from Neiman Marcus and it would have guns in it.

Chris: And by the way, kudos to you to find- when we put this thing together, to find the transition between corrupt mayor and arms deal in the docks. I mean, the thing was built around certain setpieces.

John: Yeah. And also it sort of made sense these- when you research, the amount of legal arms dealing that goes on in the states is magnificent. 

Chris: Right, right.

John: And when you find out these guys run these things out of Boston, New York, Miami, you know.

Chris: Right.

John: It's got to be somewhere.

Dean: And this is one of the rare times where our team is really losing at the end of an episode.

John: Oh yeah, they’ve got to lose. They really- they have- and this was interesting, because it really was one of those times where we sat back and said, ‘In what version of this show are our guys the bad guys that get caught?’

Dean: Right.

John: Just write this section of this show like that show. Like we're writing NCIS or we’re writing CSI or something. And really put our guys in the dead seat. And man he just radiates rage.

Chris: Yeah.

John: And it's not just because Richard Kind is a bad guy, it's because he's lost control.

Chris: Yeah.

John: You know, that is Nate Ford in a world he doesn't want to live in.

Dean: Now we got them in this impossible situation, and- but we can’t end the show without a little bit of fun. 

John: Yeah.

Dean: And the win within the loss here is, I think, is truly inspired.

John: Oh yeah, managing to get them out of there. 

Dean: Yeah.

John: That was a lot of fun. I can't remember where the idea from- the idea of the multiple exits came from. We were playing around in another episode with ambiguity, somebody- signal of, like, time and ambiguity, and that held over, because you use all the parts of the animal, and that hung out and that's of course-

Chris: That's Katie O’Grady.

John: Katie O’Grady.

Chris: She’s a terrific Portland actress. She runs an acting school up there. 

John: Yup, yup. And she really came in as kind of one off, and it’s- after two episodes it’s like, ‘Yeah, I could see this character coming back. I could see this fed,’ you know. A lot of Portland actors did that. A lot of Portland actors turned one day into a recurring role. 

Dean: Yeah.

John: The- and just barely buying him enough time. And that's the important thing here, is that each character is finding a little piece of the solution. That was the fun of this episode is, there's a famous fighter pilot saying which is, ‘Stay alive for the next 10 seconds.’ That's all you have to do. In the next 10 seconds, your wingman will get the guy, or the guy will get out of position, and that's all they are trying to do for this section of this script.

Chris: Yeah.

Dean: Thers a great turn here where he reveals that he was somehow part of this attempted assassination of one of the family- the extended family. 

John: Yeah.

Dean: And the rage that comes out of Nate is everything that’s built up over the entire year. 

John: And what's really interesting is, because you shot this all in one piece- this is not split up into takes, this built in real time.

Dean: That's right.

John: You know, this really builds from that confession- and I was out of position the first time he did the wrench, and I was like ‘What the hell just happened? Did Tim just crush Richard Kind’s head?’

Chris: It's his friend! They're friends!

[Laughter]

John: Yeah, they're friends, but the wrench wasn't in the script. Tim just picked up the wrench!

Dean: Right.

Chris: He just picked up a wrench. And we were like, ‘Is that a rubber prop wrench?’

Dean: I love her character is like, ‘Then just kill him.’ I mean, she has no moral position on this, she just wants to get out alive.

John: Yeah, this- like we were talking the other day, where Sophie still exchanges Christmas cards with people she's ripped off, Tara Cole has walked out of a lot of burning buildings with metal suitcases full of bloodstained cash. 

Dean: And never looked back.

John: And never looked back. And in that moment she is absolutely serious. If you're gonna kill this guy, get it done. You know, but she’s not gonna coddle him.

Dean: Now this may be one of my favorite bits that you guys have ever come up with, and it starts with a great turn.

John: It’s like- you know why? Cause it’s a locked off comedy frame, my friend.

Chris: That is.

Dean: Locked off comedy frame. But it's one of the oldest gags in television. 

John: It is.

Dean: Is that slow turn look.

Chris: The turn look.

John: And then the turn reveal, and this- 

Chris: ‘Oh no. Oh no, you're not gonna do it. Oh no, no way, Jose.’

[Laughter]

Dean: And once again, Aldis Hodge showing why he is a truly, truly special talent. This part is not written.

John: No.

Dean: This part is just him going- 

John: The printed page ends with, ‘They turn and look at the van.’

Dean: Right.

Chris: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

John: Yes and- 

Dean: All of this is him being brilliant.

John: And that means also that Beth and Chris had to find the timing to when they were both gonna turn.

Dean: Right.

John: And that's the thing is, they work together a lot, now they've got a lot of, sort of, physical cues from each other. But yeah, this is all him, this is all him going off. And this is born of 207 when we shot him and Will Wheaton versus each other; they spent the whole day in the van alternating. And so Aldis was making a joke about the fact he has a very weird relationship with that van, cause he's in it and nobody else is.

Dean: And he even brought back in the fact that everyone teases him that the van smells.

John: Yes, exactly.

Chris: That the van smells, we made that a recurring thing.

John: So that's become a recurring thing and it was really- it was really the actors discussion of his character that led to the bit. 

Dean: Now a lot of people may miss this-

John: Oh this is my favorite bit-

Dean: -but just watch Parker when the doors shut.

John: Yup.

Dean: Because Parker is so close to Aldis she gives a kiss goodbye and leaves the little lip print.

[Laughter]

John: I never noticed that before. 

Chris: Oh she did, she leaves the lip print, that’s great.

John: Not in the script. 

Dean: One of my favorite camera moves right here. ‘Aaaaand, let’s begin.’

[Laughter]

John: There is- definitely been working together long enough now that we know- and now that jazz music is in the background, we’re up and running.

Chris: There you go.

Dean: It all kicks in. And again, how Richard was able to now change from that dark to humorous. Literally turning on a dime.

John: And this is him-

Chris: Oh there's so many speeches he made saying goodbye.

John: This is him doing the- that is Kirk saying goodbye to Spock.

[Laughter]

John: By the way, from the Wrath of Kahn, that is the speech he's doing right there.

Dean: And we- my favorite digital effect.

John: No van, no van there.

Dean: All painted.

Chris: Oh that’s great.

John: ‘I’ll miss you.’ No and that was- but of course, again, you were blowing stuff up at a dock.

[Laughter]

John: Without any real permission or notifying the authorities. It’s really I think I'd be disappointed now if you called ahead. 

Dean: That’s right.

John: And this is the reveal, and this was really tricky, trying to figure out the timeframe, how they could get around, how quickly they get around.

Dean: So we had to use the bomb as the time signature.

John: Yeah.

Chris: Right.

John: Because the- when we got there originally, this was structured slightly differently, but the exits in the physical locations didn't match. But that’s why TV is great, you have a writer on set-

Dean: Exactly.

John: So you can actually have the director walk around with you and go, ‘This isn't gonna work.’ ‘Sure it will.’ ‘No it won't, fix it.’

[Laughter]

Chris: Well I think originally the thing went inside the- 

John: Yes, yeah. And we couldn't do that, and you couldn't see the blow, and then you had to blow all three doors simultaneously if you did it, and it would've been madness. And Katie's look of rage there is magnificent. 

Chris: That’s great, as the car goes by.

John: It really- ‘I am an angry, angry fed.’ And this is also one of the times when we don’t let Nate off the hook.

Dean: Right.

John: You know and Aldis is genuinely- yeah.

Chris: Yeah, he managed to transition from the fun of saying goodbye to the van, to actual rage.

Dean: Genuinely pissed off. And now another bit of John Rogers directing on this episode is the car getting away.

Chris: Nice!

John: The car- yeah, this is-

Dean: Right here, here we go and then look at this nice power slide.

Chris: Oh, good job.

John: I caught the reflection in the side of the car that was suction cup bounce and they actually hold on. You didn't give me the wet down one.

Dean: And this is my favorite reveal of a character ever.

John: I have no idea how you did this! Did you lower him by rope? How does he get in the shot?

[Laughter]

Chris: Well he comes in-

John: And we’re coming around, this is all a one-er and… he… is… there.

[Laughter]

John: He just- it is one of those things where, much like- 

Chris: How would he fit inside?

Dean: [Mimicking Mark Sheppard] There's no one else that can make an entrance-

John: Quite like Mark Sheppard.

Dean: -like Mark Sheppard.

[Laughter]

John: And by the way, we decided to make him- because we were cooking up a threat, and- we’ll actually continue talking about this in the next episode...

Chris: In the next episode.

Dean: Please stay tuned for the second part of this. 

Chris: Stay tuned.

Dean: But this was a lot of fun, and thank you for listening to the first half. Stay tuned for part two.

[perrypixel]

1, 5, 9, 13, 29, 21, 26, 32, 33, 42, 49

What are your top 3 favorite sets you’ve made

darklands gifset - all the darklands gifsets SLAPS

return of human jim - soft baby baby boy uwu

chat blanc - the colors are immaculate. I peaked here and it's all downhill from here

5. What is your favorite movie/TV show to gif

Any 2D show, cuz i have more control over the colors than with 3D ones.

9. What/who inspired you to start making gifs

Idk. I saw a post about how to install photoshop and I was like 'why not' and then I went digging for gif tutorials and they seemed fun to do.

13. Where or from whom did you learn how to gif

From several gif tutorials! I used zue's @bananagreste gif tutorials and some from other resource blogs like @completeresources

29. Have you ever posted a set, realized you made a mistake later but it was already too late

LMAO THIS ONE. But i didn't care enough to change it. But a lot of them do.

21. PSDs or original coloring for each gif

I can do both but I definitely prefer original coloring

26. How many un posted sets are in your drafts right now

Four. I'm getting ready for goldenlight week.

32. What is your favorite tool/adjustment layer in Photoshop

Selective coloring or photo filters my most beloved <3

33. Do you like to/can you make edits and graphics too or only gifs

Yeah, I've definitely made graphics and icons. Most recently I made the prompt list for @goldenlightweek2022

42. How is your gif folder organized? Is it organized at all?

It's barely organized. I have my edits folder where all my gifs and psds are saved and I have the icons folder for my icons and I order it by most recent

49. How much would you say you’ve improved since you first started giffing

A LOT. Like look at these two images. I had no concept of resolution and dimension

gifmaker asks!

[theinternetisfulloftrash]

Maybe pitchforks and torches is a bit much, mostly because we care about you too much to employ violence, but I'm definitely checking your page once a day to see if any FAFLA update has happened 😏 (not just for your fun posts and answers) xx

<3 <3 <3 <3

Oh boy... It would be right and valid for a small mob to have formed on my doorstep at this point. I'll be honest. I've gotten pretty slack on the update schedule ;)

There's just a lot that goes into updates now. Back when I started working on this fic, I had like 5 followers, no one was really reading the damn thing. I was writing for just me and didn't have any expectations to live up to? Now, I feel like I have to do it justice because there are people legitimately invested. It's like a sense of duty to perform. I'm glad it has love. It's really freakin' cool that people give a shit at all about what I'm doing over here (writing and otherwise). I am confused every day why you guys are here and why more of you keep showing up.

I feel really lucky to have found a dope corner of the internet to hang out in, and I really appreciate all of you guys so, so much.

Update is coming, and because I'm such an asshole, I've included a little teaser of the new chapter below the cut

Anon referencing my tags on THIS post and is being sweet and thoughtful while quietly letting me know that if I hold out much longer on the FAFLA content, they're reaching for the tools of the rioter trade ;)

THIS IS JUST A TEASE AND IT'S NOT NECESSARILY AT THE BEGINNING OF THE CHAPTER. I LOVE YOU GUYS!

He didn't even turn the lights on before he flopped down on the bed in his room. He just laid there with his shoes on staring up at the ceiling. All he could think about was how much he hated the internet and social media, and about wishing he could go back and do anything and everything to keep that special moment private.

He dug his phone out of his pocket and stared at a screen full of notifications. His publicist, his manager, his friends, all of them had seen it, and all of them had questions. He tapped out an annoyed reply to his publicist that he copied and pasted to Liz:

'I had dinner with someone and a sever took our fucking picture and decided it was a good idea to post it to fucking Twitter. I'm not fucking happy about it and I don't really give a shit about perception or optics, so don't start with that shit. I don't want to talk about it. Just do what you can to suppress it. Right now I just want to protect what's left of her privacy.'

He opened a message from Sarah that was just a bunch of heart emojis. He loved her. She always knew exactly what to say, even when it was nothing at all. He texted back a single heart.

Tyler had texted him as well:

T-Pose: I'm sorry man. I know how important your privacy is to you. Call me later if you want.

The messages from his friends were a lot less accusatory than the ones he'd just read and it softened him a bit.

Dylan: Thanks Ty.

He sighed and reluctantly opened his Twitter app. Time to assess the full extent of the damage. His mentions were always a minefield, but he clicked them anyway. The usual fan edits and general 'ti amo' posts were littered with screen captures and crops of the same photo. The photo of them. He scrolled for too long reading what everyone had to say about something that they shouldn't have even seen until he wanted to scream. Then, he went to the page of the original poster and clicked on her tweet.

Served Dylan O'Brien at work the other night! 🤗🤩

And there it was. The picture. God. He wished she'd taken any other photo. That night he'd been trying to hide, played coy and made a mystery of himself. He'd invited this. It was his fault. He tapped on the picture and despite his frustration, he couldn't help but smile. Ameila was smiling in the beautifully inviting way that she always did, and she was smiling at him. He pinched to zoom in on her and felt his anger cool, disappointment and sadness beginning to meld with it into a turbulent feeling of regret and loss.

[castawavy]

hello, hope you had a good day and enjoyed your cookies hehe .i tried searching your tags for editing replies but nothing popped up and the resources page also didn't help me so asking directly do you use a ps action set or could you list your editing steps cuz your gameplay editing is so subtle yet so beautiful and aesthetic thank you in advance <3

hi there!!! thank u, I ate too many cookies if I’m honest but it was worth it! <3 thx for checking my tags I appreciate it, you are correct though I haven’t actually answered any editing questions yet so you are the first! 

also thank you so much for the compliments! 💕

for my subtle gameplay editing my goal is usually to cut down the time it takes to edit, just so I can sit back and enjoy my game a little whilst also posting on tmblr!

I’ll answer under a cut!

1. Taking Screenshots

I always try to be very careful with my screenshots and their composition, just because the better your base the easier it makes editing. I use reshade in game, and I only turn it on when I’m taking screenshots, but I use the zoom in camera feature that hides the UI! You probably already know but just in case you didn’t know, when you’re using that camera you can use Q and E to move up and down, so you can get the perfect framing you desire pretty easily!

2. Photo Adjustments

Once I find a screenshot I’m happy with I open it up in Photoshop, this will be a PS tutorial since that’s what I use:

My first step is always to adjust my image, and I usually start with curves, you might not want to though, but there are a lot of adjustments there you can play around with. After I do curves I always mess with brightness/contrast then call it a day (as simple as that if I’m honest)!

3. Editing

This is where things get a little more complex, and also please bear in mind that I have a drawing tablet it is EXTREMELY helpful and does a lot of the work for me, I am basically cheating compared to those of you who don’t have a tablet so don’t get discouraged if these steps are challenging with a track pad that being said there are some cheap screenless tablets online and if this is a hobby you really enjoy I strongly recommend investing in it!

As you can see above, my edited screenshot is a lot brighter than my first pic and I achieved this using overlays! on the menu there on the right you should see a pull down that looks like this:

make a new layer and change it to overlay, and then take a soft brush (or any brush you prefer stylistically) and begin to draw an outline around your sim, use any colour you want but overlay works best with lighter colours! Play around tho it’s really fun to see how the overlay layer works!

the outline basically just helps my sims stand out a little against the background! but you can see I didn’t outline her whole body, just certain areas I felt blended a little, or where definition was lost!

I still want my image brighter though, so I then make another overlay layer, and take a tool from the left instead (our intention here is to make a screenshot more vibrant I guess!)

This might be a bucket symbol in your PS by default but switch over to the Gradient Tool instead, and a new menu should appear at the top:

as you can see I have my gradient set to move from colour to transparent, and Radial Gradient selected as opposed to linear, this just gives the gradient a nice soft edge which I like, but I have used Linear in the past (so it just depends on what you are doing) I then pick a colour I like, select the gradient tool and drag my mouse from point A to B to brighten the section of sky I want lighter:

4. Finishing Touches

Now that I have my image brighter and a little sharper looking I now need to add a few finishing touches so I create yet another overlay layer, take a soft brush, lower the opacity of that brush and go over my sims jewellery/eyes just to brighten them a little. This makes them look more ‘shiny’ and I love doing it for necklaces/earrings! I might also sometimes create a dust overlay affect myself but drawinf tiny dots/squiggles (but you can also find dust overlay PSDs online!)

and that’s pretty much it for my gameplay editing I like to keep it pretty simple compared to my edits (those I normally do a lot more adjusting/layers etc. but if you’re looking for simple editing overlays are your best friend)! One thing I didn’t mention is that I sometimes edit hair on to my sims, but I stopped doing this so much for gameplay because I’m lazy. If you do want to edit hair tho just do it before you do anything else! and do it on a regular layer just above the image. There are plenty of hair brushes available online!

[hayjeon]

Tips on creating fun fanfic headers!

i had so much fun writing the fanfic writing tips yesterday and i got a few more questions about header-making, and so i decided to make one more of these! i hope these tips help somebody out there! hope you enjoy :) 

p.s. these tips won’t require any hard editing skills or photoshop skills, nor any expensive tablets/apps! 

typically i spend around ~5-10 min creating one header, and that’s either after i think of/finish a fic. i have so much fun doing it and sharing it with you that i figured i’d share how i do it! 

why headers? 

as I talked about in my fic tips, one of the most eye-catching things about fics are headers. when i’m scrolling through a rec page, my home page, a tag, or even someone’s masterlist, i’m immediately drawn to well-made headers. that’s what captures my attention, and then i’m more drawn in by the content. so, you can say that headers is your own version of an ad for your own fic, or an extension of it (like the cover of a novel!) 

if you were writing your own book, imagine how much time you’d spend figuring out what you wanted your cover to look like. i try to have as much fun and invest as much time making my own headers because it’s just the cherry on top to my finished product :) 

disclaimer: BUT HEADERS ARE NOT NECESSARY/DO OR DIE! if you don’t feel like you want to do this, then keep writing! its ok! this is just a suggestion. i’ve seen plenty of well-written fics without headers at all, so don’t beat yourself up over not having one/not wanting to do one. this is truly just a fun, extra kind of thing, and only keep reading if you want to learn how i do it! :) 

tips for people who don’t want to make headers: if you still want something to make your fic stand out, use gifs! i use them in my drabbles a lot! this will at least give ur fic a lil boost! 

how to find pictures

I typically use unsplash, which is a free website in which photographers upload their HQ pics for free use. the pics are really high quality, typically stock photos, and don’t have any logos on them like other ones on google. unfortunately, you won’t find any pics of the members or anything, but you’ll find beautiful stock photos of typical scenes like “ocean scene” or “desert scene.” I found the stock photo for cut me open (shown below) on that site by just looking up “medical” or “doctor”. 

i used to use google a lot and just use keywords like “desert scene HQ” and edit the search settings to deliver HQ pics, and a minimum # of pixels, but unplash is definitely better in terms of quality, more aesthetic photos, and no logos/watermarks. 

on some occasions, i will screenshot some scenes of youtube videos, turning up the quality to 1080p or 4k and zooming in so that the pixelation is as crisp as possible, and then editing it later to look good (which i’ll explain in a second!) 

the above photo was a scene from the specific characters from the drama, “100 Days My Prince” that I screenshotted from a youtube video that TvN uploaded, recapping the drama. I cropped it just right so that their faces were left out, which i’ll also mention soon! 

things to look for when picking pictures: 

you want the picture to reflect a specific motif/theme from your fic! if its a moody fic, then try to find a moody scene that you can edit with filters/lighting to look even moodier; or if the characters’ jobs are a big portion of the fic (like cut me open/doctor theme) try to look for stock photos with that shown very clearly!

make sure its high quality: tumblr really dumbs down the quality of the photo when uploading it, so try your best to find something with a lot of pixels in it so that when you start editing, you don’t sacrifice too much of the quality already

try to look for something simple/clean: a picture with too much subject (ie. people in the background, or too much detail) may end up taking away from the main point of your header, which is your title. so find pics without too much clutter! 

try to make sure its landscape: which will help during editing to save some of the quality better. 

editing your pictures

now that you have a specific photo you want to use, now its time to edit! I use VSCO CAM (free app) and my own apple photos cropping tool for faster crops. 

crop/adjust: if your picture is too large/wide, crop it to at least a 16:9 ratio. i’d say aim for skinnier if you can, so that you don’t take up too much space (especially if you’re planning to add headers to your masterlist). also crop out any faces, any clutter, any unnecessary details, so you have a nice, clean slate to work on when adding text. 

contrast/sharpen/clarity/white balance/etc.: i’m not gonna give you a lesson on photography, but i’ll tell you I learned like 80% of everything that i know just by fiddling with it on VSCO! So just try it out and play with the app, see what you can make of it. i’d say a rule of thumb to follow is that you want happier fics with a brighter tone, and moodier/angsty fics with a darker tone so that it can reflect the nature of the fic further, without saying anything! 

if you wanna be extra af like me, then go a step further and photoshop your pics. this one is a good example; when i screenshotted this scene from another youtube video for my fic One Year My Love part 2, i was specifically looking for a scene that would showcase the ornate/regal details of their clothing/environment in contrast to part 1′s modest clothing/scene (the first header in this post). 

i found this scene, but actually, this scene portrays the Crown Prince and the Princess, not y/n. So, the actors weren’t smiling at all! They were actually frowning at eachother in this scene, to portray the tension between the two characters and their marriage. 

So, I took the extra step, adjusting the pic with VSCO so that their shoulders/chins were at the same level, cropped off their faces up until their lips, and then used the adobe photoshop free app to photoshop their lips to be SMILING at eachother!!!! subtle, but important! 

call me crazy for taking that much time but i’m so proud of how it turned out and i loved every second of making this one. that way, this scene makes it portray the happy ending for Jungkook and y/n! 

adding text to your header

you can use any app out there, but i really like Font Candy! I actually ended up buying the 2$ version of this and never regretted it, but you can actually find a lot of their basic fonts on the free version; I tend to use the fonts: OSTRICH SANS, BEBAS, TREND, and INTRO the most! these are pretty clean-looking, block letters that look good whenever i put them as my titles. 

I love this app too cause you can easily control the spacing between letters to make them take up more space, add shadows, or even make them contrast their background using the overlay feature; like this one i made for wildest dreams (see how the text changes depending on what part of the photo its on? amazing! it’s literally with a click of a button!!)

And i’ll always add “written by HAYJEON” or “by HAYEJON”, space it out, and add it somewhere underneath as my own branding.

orrrrrr 

if you want to be more creative, you can even go a step further and use whatever you have on hand to enhance whatever you’re trying to portray. 

for this one, i ended up finding this amazing photo on unsplash and i thought it would do a create job of portraying the “movie-set” quality of what wildest dreams is going to be about. this stock photo had someone else’s names on it, so i used my ipad, and used instagram to just erase the existing writing with the color of the background, and then wrote in my own title and url with my own handwriting/apple pen!!! 

i thought this was pretty cool because it’s like wildest dreams is its own movie/has its own movie set, which, once it’s out, you guys will see that it’s supposed to be! 

saving/uploading

this is pretty easy/obvious, but i figured i’d mention it. all the apps i mentioned are available on the appstore, and they will save directly to your photos. after doing that, i’ll just upload them into a special folder i have on my google drive so that when i’m finished writing a fic on tumblr using my laptop, i can easily download the photos without sacrificing quality. easy! 

and that way, i can save them forever; even if i have to delete them from my computer, i can always redownload them! 

side note: making text separators

i just recently started doing this, but ever since tumblr took down their text separators, i’ve just been cropping the bottom like 5-10 pixels of the header to use as my text separators! (with my laptop)

i saw some other writer doing it and thought that it looked better than what i had used previously (a cropped photo of a random line i found on google); i found that doing this tied my fics together a little better and just looked better aesthetically; 

so there it is! hope you enjoyed! :) i would love to see what other tips you guys have been using, feel free to send me an ask or reply to this post; and if you end up using any of my tips, please let me know! I love to hear from you guys all the time <3 

lots of love, especially during these times, 

hay <3 

[cosplayinamerica]

COSPLAY THEME PAGE : ShareMyCosplay.com

Tell us about ShareMyCosplay, what was the genesis of the ShareMyCosplay? 

Share My Cosplay has gone through quite the journey to get to what you see today. I can still remember the day that I came up with the idea that would eventually lead to Share My Cosplay. I was eating lunch with a few friends at my day job. A friend of mine showed me a cosplay of Jessica Nigri as Pikachu, and because I worked in IT,  for some reason had an idea of doing a website related to cosplay. The actual website took a while to set up, but I started off slowly, with an initial launch on social media. We launched with Tumblr and Twitter, slowly building an audience. Then eventually a little bit later adding Facebook, and eventually much later introducing Instagram into the “family’. Eventually we added the website and have been going strong since then. We’ve of course made tons of adjustments over the years, and most recently started adding content on YouTube. It’s been a great ride so far, and hopefully it will continue.

What was your first experience with cosplay as well as the convention scene?

Like a lot of people who are into gaming and comic books, I was aware of cosplay, but didn’t really know much about it. It was only after looking into the idea of starting a site that I really got to know what goes on behind the scenes. It was meeting and talking to people in the scene that made me realize what an amazing community of people are involved. That is why I have continued the site for so long. As our social media following grew, I got to know more and more of the cosplayers, and was so happy I was able to use what I had created to help them gain more exposure. Share My Cosplay exists as a place where all cosplayers can have their work properly showcased.

As for conventions. While I live in the capital city of Canada, Ottawa is a relatively small city of one million people. Conventions have only really made it big in the last 5 years or so and before that were never a really big thing. I had travelled to other cities within Canada for some conventions, but those were mainly toy based conventions, so there would just be a handful of devoted cosplayers hanging out. It wasn’t until much later, when conventions started to take off, that our city got it’s own “Comic-con”. Then things exploded quickly. When our first Ottawa Comic-con launched, I was there day one, and the lineup was out of the building and wrapped around the whole building. I think it took a couple of hours to actually get into the convention floor. I could only assume it was similar to something like entering SDCC, but on a much smaller scale.

So while that has been a staple in our city for the last 10 years, I’ve also been traveling to Montreal Comic-con, which is a little bigger. Since there are maybe fewer conventions in Canada, people seem to come from great distances to show off the cosplays they had worked out. The dream has always been to try and get to SDCC, but that hasn’t happened yet. Travel is so expensive from Canada.

So for the short term I had set my sights on visiting NYCC, which is a “quick” drive from my area of Canada. However like all plans, they fell through. I had plans to go to NYCC and E3 in 2020, but of course those fell through because of what happened around the world. I miss conventions. One because they are such a great way to meet and interact with the cosplayers, and two, it’s one of the primary places we get content to share on our site and pages. So that has been lacking for us recently. Fingers crossed things will get back to normal soon.

How has cosplay changed over the years in your perspective?

Like everything you get to know, it evolves and grows over time. Being knee deep in cosplay all the time (my inbox once had 100+gb of cosplay submissions), I have certainly seen it change over the years. Obviously cosplays have become more elaborate in construction. Things like LEDs are so cheap now, I always find it amazing when people incorporate them into a costume. So the cosplay builds just get bigger and better every year. Also I find the resources on the internet have gotten better. Cosplayers are now able to find more detailed pictures of what they want to create, giving them a way better idea of what and how they will do it for a certain character.

Another thing that has changed, are the absolutely stunning Cosplay edits you’ll see on social media. So why the cosplay photographers have always been an integral part of the equation (we try hard to tag them when people include their details on submissions), the level that the editing on pictures has changed over the years is dramatic. You’ll often see the time-lapsed photo creations on Social, and they are just mesmerizing to watch. People put so much time into creating these worlds to help elevate the cosplay to the next level. That has certainly changed over the years. That being said, we still love regular shots of cosplay too, the amount of photographers that specialize in cosplay has jumped a lot too.

In general, it seems cosplay has evolved from a simple hobby where you could throw something together to wear to a weekend convention, to a full time gig where people spend months on at a time for each one of their creations.

How has ShareMyCosplay changed over the years?

In my eyes SMC has evolved greatly over the years. As the editor there have been two major changes, and I think it has improved the way we do things. The first thing would be, when we first started I used to go “collect” the cosplay that we shared. So I had to either go find it, or reach out to people. I spent a lot of time tracking down cosplay to share, that I personally thought was cool or very creative. As you can imagine this took a lot of time. So this has changed dramatically over the past 3 -  5 years. Now I’m happy to say that we are 99.9% based on submissions from users. So while there is less than 1% of content that we do go out and ask for, it is basically all based on what people send us to share. So that is why you see such a great variety of cosplay content on our pages. There is a downside to this in a way, as compared to some other pages out there that only feature certain types of cosplayers, some people enjoy that a bit more and those pages can have more of a following then we do. However we are really happy with the content we put out. 

Then the second big change, that has certainly led to better content for our pages, is the introduction of automation. When SMC first started, I had to do everything manually. Like I would be on Twitter or my phone doing everything live, and sharing items. It took up a lot of my time, and greatly affected my personal life. At times I think I must have been crazy, as this is a free service that we provide, and I was putting hours into each day. Now of course things have changed and the Social Media aspect of SMC is way easier to manage. Facebook, Twitter and Instagram all have official tools available that allow you to schedule your posts. So you can easily take an hour or 2 and work on several days of a week at the same time, or if you were really organized, schedule the whole week. So I’ve learned to embrace this a bit more and learn the ins and outs of it. This leads to a more constant stream of content that our followers seem to enjoy. Which seems to lead to more engagement from our followers.

What’s the best part / worst part of running a cosplay theme page? 

The best part has obviously been meeting & interacting with the community throughout the years. We do our best to present a positive place where everyone can share their cosplay creations. We’ve been invited to some really cool events over the years, and our team has been able to go to a lot of conventions all over the world. It’s been a fun ride.

The worst part for me personally, is that while our team has grown and shrank over the years, I do most of the work by myself. Sharemycosplay.com is run by a single person, me. Also for the most part there is a single person doing all of the social media. So I do my best to have content up all of the time, but sometimes life gets in the way. We’ve put a few calls out for people that might want to help with content creation for the site, but sometimes it’s hard to attract people interested in helping. Right now I’d love a few writers that could write articles that I could wrap around cosplay posts for the page. We will have to see how that turns out.

What future plans do you have for ShareMyCosplay?

I’m always looking to expand Sharemycosplay.com with new content. During the pandemic I’ve been off my normal schedule so unfortunately updates have been a bit slow, but hoping to get back to things. With conventions off the table for now for the most part, I’m trying to move in different directions. I’ve recently tried to put more effort into YouTube, but even that has been impacted by the Pandemic, so I’ve leaned more on gaming content. That is going to change as I’ve started a new initiative that I just launched on our page a few days ago called “CosplaySELF''. Basically we are looking to have cosplayers interview themselves, and us edit the footage into the “episodes' ' featuring 3 cosplayers. Hopefully those will start to be live very soon. We are already into the editing phase and hope to have the first episode live soon, over on our YouTube page. Keep your eyes peeled. Hopefully, as long as people show interest, this is something we will continue to create and upload on a regular schedule.

Is there anything that wasn’t covered you like to talk about?

 Lastly I want to thank you for taking the time to include Share My Cosplay in this interview. It really means a lot when someone else in the community that you respect, takes a moment out of their busy life to recognize the work you’ve done. There have been times in the past where I have considered possibly giving up doing SMC, but getting some recognition really helps put things in perspective and allows me to continue on. Hopefully Share My Cosplay will continue to grow over the coming years, and continue as a great tool for all cosplayers to use.

https://www.sharemycosplay.com/

[sadviper]

2020 Creator Wrap: Favorite Works

Rules: It’s time to love yourselves! Choose your 5 (or so) favorite works you created in the past year (fics, art, edits, etc.) and link them below to reflect on the amazing things you brought into the world in 2020. Tag as many writers/artists/etc. as you want (fan or original) so we can spread the love and link each other to awesome works!

Succumbing to peer pressure, haha, thank you @rain-hat, @smylealong, @ibelongtomousse, @macgyver-sheriff, @avauntus for tagging me~

It seems the common refrain is that this was the year everyone exploded into massive creative productivity after years of nothing, which is the exact same story for myself. I had read all the strategies of course: write 5 min a day, 1 sketch a day, don’t think about quality, do *something* just to keep the spark alive, etc etc, but it just got worse and worse. Honestly, I had been feeling so dire about it that I had made up my mind to stop trying anymore, because it was so depressing to try and fail so many times that it was much better to not hope at all.

Buuuuut.....then quarantine and telework happened, and woooah, guess what, all I needed was LOTS of time and space to myself where I’m not wasting it in an office checking emails and doing random training to fill all the downtime!!!

Much thanks to the serendipity that had me stumbling into @rain-hat , reading her early JY/KSR fics, and her encouraging me to go ahead and write that office yearly budget oneshot for TKEM (who writes BUDGET fics?? Who reads them???? lol). That’s not in my list here because it was very new and awkward, it was definitely the ball that got everything rolling.

Cut for super long-winded rambling:

1) Before There Was Zero (TKEM)

This was my first big fanfic in my life, and my most popular, and it absolutely gushed out of me in this massive torrent of *I MUST WRITE* where I would walk around at lunchtime giggling to myself, and type on my phone as I went, or wake up at 1am to scrawl something in a notebook in the dark because I couldn’t stop the words from coming. (How I miss that feeling now! ;__;) Actually, it also is the 2nd fully complete long-form story I had ever completed as well, so...lots of milestones here.

Looking back, it clearly was the product of my years of bottled up silence, where I stewed and dragged myself to the office every day wondering if I was going to calcify in a bureaucracy for the rest of my life (yes). But even as an office drone, I learned a lot of valuable lessons in how to manage, what leadership actually is at the worker bee level, the types of games white-collar workers play, and how to be a decent co-worker (and by extension, a decent human being--I don’t believe it’s possible to separate work life and private life. All your personas are you). It wasn’t all a waste after all!

Somehow I connected my day-to-day to the faceless, long-suffering Royal guardsmen in TKEM, headed by the utterly gorgeous, devastating, thoroughly underutilized, comedic prop military action star Jo Yeong, and thought--yeah! :D

2) Nil Desperandum (TKEM)

My biggest fic by far, full novel length at this point, massive in scope, I don’t even know how I came up with it based on the 10 collective seconds of screen time that Jeong Tae-ra and tyrant Jin got as a joke, but I was clearly still on that dam-gushing-pent-up-creative-high because this idea was fighting me when I was in the middle of writing “Before There Was Zero”.

I actually figured out the title while watching “Call the Midwives” where one of the peppy, indefatigable British nurses said to never despair, and I thought, yes, that’s it. All the horrible things I put my tyrantverse characters through, it was only so that when I save them at the end, it will be completely worth it. It’s a bit more violent (nothing beyond My Country levels tho) and quite emotionally dark, but I also tried to inject a lot of friendship, humor, and love into it as well, because there must always be hope.

For My Country fandom friends who didn’t realize, the tyrant!Yeong in this fic is essentially modernAU!Seon-ho, and I lifted Sung-rok entirely from My Country to be tyrant!Yeong’s second-in-command and loyal-superstar-extraordinaire. Writing them in this modern AU, and seeing the positive reception to Sung-rok’s grouchy, dogged devotion was the start of my love spiral for Sung-rok. <3 <3

3) The Veritable Records of King Taejo (My Country)

Going to cheat and lump 3 fics (soon to be 4) into one link. I rested a little bit after “Nil Desperandum” because I had completely emptied myself out at that point, just a husk of an author shell. Then I started poking out oneshots! Each one got progressively harder to write, lol, the creative gas tank was running out of juice, so I had to really start figuring out new strategies as a writer to keep going. One magic tool was coercing recruiting @rain-hat to beta for me, and WOW, THE BEST???? Who would’ve thought it’d be FUN to be edited!!! <3 Due to her efforts, I could avoid the “no beta we die like Liaodong” tag, hahaha.

I grew up watching cop shows, lawyer shows, monster-of-the-day shows, endless procedurals-- so I was super miffed that the drama would imply that Seon-ho spent YEARS just single-mindedly chasing private armies??! No! I want more family and friends development for this sad, dramatic whump child! I want him to be smarter than the show, inherently brilliant despite the stupid he descends into, and be recognized as such by the people who do recognize his value! And I want them all to be happy with no pointless death!

Also, the 4th WIP is now a Sung-rok lovefest written as an ode to his awesomeness, has stretched to 47K+ words, and is being an absolute royal pain to finish. ;__; All the ease and creative fervor from earlier? GONE. I’m a lone salmon flopping upstream on a ladder. I might get eaten before I finish laying my eggs. Any one have tips to get over this?

4) First Translation of Woo Do Hwan Japanese Interviews

More firsts! So much thanks to @ibelongtomousse to inspiring and encouraging me to do some real translating after talking to her about her sublime TKEM fics and translations thereof, and @staidwaters from emerging from the Internet depths to boost/correct my neophyte efforts! I’m now chomping at the bit to do more, even though I may ultimately discover that these interviews have absolutely nothing interesting to say, lol. But my first priority is simply to get better at the language, and 2nd priority is to soak in the words (and photos) of Woo Do Hwan, hahahah. Also, as far as I can tell, no one is filling this niche, so I guess I’ll keep going??

5) Fanart!

I started drawing again! As a procrastination tactic from writing oneshots, but it still was really nice to see that I hadn’t lost the touch entirely. I feel like I’ve mentioned this here and there, but writing wasn’t my first interest--drawing was. Animals first, then people once I discovered anime/manga. I went all into drawing comics, only to face the hard reality that I didn’t know how to tell a story end-to-end. Hence how I started trying to write. Along the way, things happened--I got RSI and had to stop drawing/writing for awhile. I discovered that pictures are NOT worth a thousand words, esp when it comes to long-form comics; my preferred tools of trade (dip pens) ended up exacerbating my RSI problems; then once I got a handle on my RSI, I found I could type faster than I can ever draw, and so here I am. I saw what @convenientalias was doing with their My Country werewolf fic though, so I am excited to try that for my Sung-rok WIP? :D

I think I’m the last hold out among artist/writer friends in answering this wrap-up, hope you enjoyed reading!

[beauvilliers]

first of all, love your blog i’m a super big fan! second, can you please tell me how you made your icon? i’ll love you forever!

thank you so much darling!! i’ve never done an icon tutorial before, but i’ll leave one below if anyone else is interested 🥰 beware, it’s gonna be pretty long and image-heavy. unfortunately i can’t show you how i made my exact icon, since the copy i have of it is on my unfortunately still broken hard drive, but the process i use is pretty much identical for all my icons!

I’ll be showing you how to make this icon:

PART 1: FINDING IMAGES

I find pretty much all my pictures on gettyimages! You can just google them if you want, but I find that getty has the best image quality and also a wide variety of photos. (Also, if you’re making an icon of Tito, as I am for this tutorial, google images will just result in a lot of pics of Tito side by side to Anna Kendrick, which is not ideal for an icon). If the watermark is in the way then I just use this website to remove it. It decreases the quality slightly, but when you’re just making icons it’s not a big deal since they’re so small anyway.

I’ll be using this pic of Tito and I have already removed the watermark:

It can be kind of hard to find good pics of hockey players since they tend to make ridiculous faces constantly, so unless you’re making a Tyler Seguin icon (he’s always camera ready) it might take a few mins to find a good pic. I chose this one bc 1) I love Tito and 2) this isn’t a super awkward pic, like it’s clearly between play so while he’s attentive he doesn’t look strange and he’s not making a weird face.

PART 2: CUTTING OUT

I cut Tito out using the quick selection tool. Make sure to get all the little bits bc this tool can sometimes forget to highlight dark parts on their helmets or parts of letters or whatever, so just be observant.

I then right-click on my selection and click select and mask. This allows you to edit the selection and make the edges smoother and such. I pretty much just move the sliders around until I like the way the pic looks, there’s not a trick to it. These are my settings for that: 

So apply your settings and then right click on the picture and select layer via copy. This will leave an original layer so if you mess up you still have the original picture. So now the pic will look like this:

However, there are still some parts that I wanna touch up. To do this I just add a layer mask to the pic and I add a solid color layer beneath. The solid color layer just helps me see what I’m doing a bit better, and I always use some pink/red variant bc that’s just what’s easiest for me. You could also always use the eraser tool instead of a layer mask, but I prefer a layer mask bc it’s not permanent. 

So after adding the background layer, my pic looks like this:

and my layers look like this:

After making some small touch ups with the layer mask (mostly around the mouth & helmet strap), this is what it looks like:

PART 3: COLORING

The first thing I do is uncheck the pink layer. I don’t remove it all together bc I’ll be using it as the background later, but I just don’t want it to be visible right now. Then I add a curves layer. For this first curves layer I just select auto and let it do what it will.

Next I add a second curves layer. For this layer I use the white and black dropper tools to select the white-point and the black-point of the image. For the white point I select around his shoulder, and for the black-point I select the dark area of his hair. 

Next I add a third curves layer. I know this seems excessive, but I use each of them for different things and I find them all helpful. For this curves layer I select the downward arrow that says RBG and I adjust the red, green, and blue curves. Just grab the middle of the curve and drag it in either direction. I tend to increase reds, decrease greens, and increase blues. 

I know it looks like I did nothing but I promise I did! It also depends on the image, sometimes you don’t really need to use this last layer but I always do the same steps while making icons so I just add it anyway. 

Next I will add a levels layer. I just use the middle slider and increase it from somewhere between +1.05 and +1.15. 

Next I add a selective color layer and go to the blacks, where I increase them somewhere between +5 and +15. This adds dimension where some of the other layers have taken it away.

Then I add a gradient map, set it to soft light, and put the opacity somewhere between 10-15%. This also adds some more dimension.

Now moving onto actually playing with the colors and not just brightening the image! First I add a selective color layer. I like to keep hockey players faces somewhat pinkish, bc they are exerting themselves so I think that looks most natural, but Tito’s face is a little too red for my liking here. I edit his face using the red, yellow, and magenta colors.

Next I add another selective color layer and edit the blues/cyans. I like to keep the layer where I edit their faces and the layer where I edit their jerseys separate, but this is just a personal preference, you could do it all on the same layer if you wanted. 

One of my favorite “tricks” when editing hockey jerseys, especially ones that have a lot of white, is to add a new layer, change the layer type to color, and use a white brush to color in areas that should have no color to them (ie. the white of the jersey, helmet, etc). I just think this makes the icon look more clean.

There’s not too much of a difference, but you can tell that the bottom right corner of his jersey is not so pink anymore, and the helmet strap is white instead of yellow, and I also colored in the visor, which will be important later.

Now I’ll show you a few final coloring steps that I do to make the image really pop, in my opinion!

First I add another new layer and I use the eyedropper tool to select a skin color from Tito’s face. I ended up choosing #f6b9b0 here. Then I color over his face with this color and set the layer type to color.

Now I know it looks weird, which is why I then change the opacity to somewhere between 10% and 20%. 

This wasn’t super necessary for this pic because Tito’s skin looks pretty good here, but it helps to even out the skin tone and bc I do it on other icons I thought I would show it here.

Next I add blush! I add a new layer, and same as I used the eyedropper tool to select a skin color, I focus in on either a pink part of Tito’s face or his lips to find a good color. I ended up selecting #e6687e.

I then lower the hardness of the brush to zero, and click twice on Tito’s cheek.

Obviously this looks weird, so I change the opacity of the layer to soft light to create a kind of glow.

Next I move on to lips. Now for most players I do this bc their lips look pale or weird or whatever, but Tito has the most luscious lips in the league and so I wouldn’t normally do this for him specifically. However, since this is a tutorial I’ll show you anyway!

Exactly the same as the skin and the blush, I select a pink color from his lips. Here I used #df5c7c. Then I changed the layer to soft light and lowered the opacity to 50%.

Finally I added a vibrance layer to finish off my coloring!

(He looks a lot more red here than he does on photoshop, I promise.)

These are all my layers up to this point:

STEP 4: MAKING IT INTO AN ICON

Now we have a lovely edited picture of Tito, but we need to turn it into an icon! First I select all the layers I’ve shown above, right click, and select merge layers. This conglomerates all the layers into one layer, which is a lot easier to edit than like 12 different coloring layers. 

Now I finally cut my icon into the shape I want it. I know a lot of people do this at the beginning, but I like to save it for the end since I like to see all my coloring on it first.

So I click on the cut tool and make sure that the ratio is a square, and I pretty much just move it around until I find a position that I think looks good.

Next I will be adding the background! I once again use the eyedropper tool to find an orange from the letters on his jersey, and I ended up with #f8791c. I change the color layer that I had at the beginning to that color instead of that random pink one, so then it looks like this:

This looks pretty flat, so I add a gradient fill layer (not a gradient map) over the background and set it to a black and white gradient. I then toggle the angle so that the light looks like it’s shinning onto his face.

Then change the layer to soft light, so the background looks like this:

One small touch that I think really helps to bring the icon and background together is to color the visor on the helmet. I use the eyedropper to select an orange right by that part of the helmet, color the visor, then change that layer to color. I also decreased the opacity slightly to make it blend in better.

Honestly you could leave it like this, but I don’t really like square icons and so I’m going to turn it into a fun circle! Here are a bunch of icon templates that I really love!

Imma use this one:

First I merge my layers together. I merge the top two layers into my icon and then the bottom two into my background. I’ll explain why later.

Then I change the image size to 250x250px. I know this is big for an icon, but I like to be able to see what I’m doing. I also open the icon template above in photoshop and change it’s size to 250x250px. Add a layer mask to the background layer, and then copy the template over onto your icon.

Click on the template layer and click command + A (Mac) or ctrl+A (Windows) to select all, and then once that layer is selected press command/ctrl+C to copy it. Click on the white square of the layer mask and press alt.

Then press command/ctrl + V to paste the template in the layer mask.

Once you’ve done that you can delete the extra template layer at the top. You should have something like this:

Now the reason that I keep the Tito and the background separate is because I like to move the person around within the icon and position them where I think looks best. If I merged all the layers together I wouldn’t be able to do this, therefore I keep them separate. 

To actually put Tito in the bounds of the icon (if that makes sense), just add a clipping mask. Now I click command/ctrl + T to move him where I want him, and I also resize him a little along the way.

This is just a little trick, but do you see that part of the circle under Tito’s shoulder that is orange but should be white? To fix that I just color in a little bit of white on the icon.

Ta da! No more weird orange bit! The final step is to convert for smart filters and smart sharpen.

And that’s it!!! I know a lot of my icons come in different colors, but that’s mostly just me playing around with a combination of selective color, hue/saturation, and layer masks to change the colors around and I don’t think it’s super hard so I’m not going to explain it here bc this is long enough!

You can find this icon and all my other icons here!

[star-maiden]

2, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25!!! Lol!

Hey! Thank you for asking. ☺️ Ok! Here we go! I’ll try to keep this short and sweet, but no promises. 😁 (Post edit: I made a valiant effort at not writing a short novel with my responses. I’m not sure that I succeeded. Haha! Thank you so much for playing the tarot ask game! I enjoyed answering these!)

2. Where or how did you start learning Tarot?

I started teaching myself tarot when I was 12 years old after spotting a beautiful tarot deck in my local bookstore and begging my mother to buy it for me. She wasn’t too keen on the idea because she was convinced that tarot cards were going to invite evil into our home or something ridiculous like that. Eventually she caved after I kept pleading with her so much that other people were starting to stare at us. I was a bit of a brat, tbh. 😂 But it lead me to where I am today, so I can’t complain too much. Tarot has been a powerful tool in my life so far, much like a dear friend. Combined, I’ve been reading/studying tarot for about 15 years, but I’ve only read tarot professionally (for other people) for a little over 8 years.

19. Do you have any weird or interesting experience with tarot?

I can tell you about the time I was pretty sure the Tower card was following me. This happened awhile ago, in the Summer. In every reading I did, no matter if it was for myself or a client, the Tower card would show up. Even while using multiple decks, there it was. The Tower. Every time. You’d think I would have noticed this as something significant, but as it turns out, I am very good at ignoring things I’d rather not deal with. Later that Summer, we had terrible wildfires that swept through the mountains and my hometown. Nearly 900 homes and businesses lost. I still swear to this day that the Tower card had been a warning.

21. 5 things you have learned from practicing tarot (about yourself, people, tarot, etc)?

Oh, this is an interesting one. Let me see...I think I’ll try to get a good variety of answers here.

Tarot is both very structured and completely subjective at the same time. Because of this, no two readers will interpret the cards in the exact same way, even if they share the same foundation of meanings.

Many times, when people seek a tarot reading, they are looking for an affirmation or some words of confidence. They already know what to do, and so the reading simply reflects their truth back at them. This isn’t always the case of course, but I find that a good percentage of the folks I work with are this way. This is why I think it’s important for a tarot reader to have strong empathy skills. A reader should strive to deliver the truth of a reading, but always with kindness.

If you seek an answer to a question that fills you with fear, the only thing you will see in the cards is that fear staring back at you. Guidance must be divined from a still mind and calm demeanor. This is why it is sometimes said that a reader shouldn’t read for themselves. (You can read for yourself, for the record. But for more emotionally charged situations, you may need some mental distance).

If you ask the same question over and over again, too many times, then the cards will eventually not respond. The reading will become muddy and nothing will make sense. This is true for self-readings, as well as those who ask the same question of multiple readers. Getting a different perspective is ok, but typically you should wait at least a month before consulting the cards again ok the same topic. Longer if the issue at hand is slow moving.

I, and likely many other readers, change my interpretations based on the deck I am using. The images and symbolism of the cards can really influence my readings. Even if I am looking at the same cards from different decks, I will interpret them all a bit differently. For this reason, I have some decks that are dedicated to specific themes.

22. Message/Tips for beginners OR querents?

For beginners to tarot: Take some time to learn your foundation of meaning. Yes, you can read intuitively, but your readings will be stronger if you know the relationship between each card and their traditional meanings. Knowing the traditional meanings also gives you something to fall back on if you find it difficult to tap into your intuition on command. They can act as a jump start for your brain. There are all sorts of activities that aren’t rote memorization that can help you learn the traditional meanings. I’ll list some for question 24.

For querents/clients: The more information you share with your reader, the better the reading will be. If you tell us what you already know about your situation, then we can focus our attention on what you want to know. Tarot is more of an art than a science. I don’t really mind either way, but I’d hate for you to be disappointed if your reading is only about things you’re already well aware of.

23. Your tarot journal/grimoire

Oh dear. 🙈 Both my tarot journal AND grimoire are such a mess. I scribble and write in Spanglish so it’s hardly even legible. I have 2 tarot journals, over 300 pages each. I don’t know that I will share photos of my writing (since it’s awful), but maybe I can share pics of the actual journals themselves at a later date. I keep all my readings for clients in a big, spiral notebook though. I’d like to say that this one is more organized, but it really isn’t. I write while not looking because I’m focused on the cards.

24. Recommendation (tarot readers, websites, videos, books, etc)?

If you are learning tarot and are having a hard time memorizing meanings, try the Tarot Coloring Book by Theresa Reed. It’s fun, it walks you through the meaning behind the traditional symbolism of the RWS deck, and you will likely remember the cards a lot better. Even experienced readers would enjoy working with this book, I think. It’s a great refresher, and who doesn’t love a coloring book?

25. What other interests do you have?

I love to read! Not just witchy things, but novels and fan fiction as well. I have 3 floor to ceiling bookshelves in my home and they’re all full of books. I also enjoy meditation, and I work with crystals a lot.