#have tempted to make a redraw of this because reasons

[lacrimasaintegabriel]

CROSSFIRE REDRAW

[leconcombrerit]

This thing had been rotting in my files for a year (minus three weeks but that's basically a year). It was a redraw of one of my first ever pieces for this fandom, and I still find it quite okay if a little stiff in places, so I thought I might as well share it since I don't draw that much anymore.

And then I had second thoughts, which obviously led to me posting it anyway, as you can see, but I realized I've almost made it a point not to draw anything related to Sasi anymore. As in at all. I can't, and I don't want to, and even sharing old art feels a bit 'meh'. It's too directly linked to my long going art block.

What I mean by that is that if I took all the followers I have out there and asked them what they know me or initially followed me for, you might have a fair amount of Lis 2 and the occasional Desert Bluffs afficionados, but you'd get an overwhelming majority of Sanders Sides. Sanders Sides fashion posts even. I was by no means famous for it or anything, but at my small artist scale, it was the biggest success I had.

And it makes it much harder to go back to it at all now. One, because I don't give a damn about the show anymore. Two, because I haven't been properly obsessing over anything in a while (there was a series early this year but given the actual emotional distress I get thinking about it I'm ruling it out). I haven't had real engagement from my own brain, nor real engagement from a broad audience -which makes sense, I'm not posting for anything that will reach a broad audience. But it takes its toll regardless.

Even when I finally finished writing a long fic, I couldn't help but feel 'all this for what ? Ten people or so and two hundreds have dropped it ?'. Which is a bad way to think about stuff you write for your own enjoyment but, you know, the brain gets happy with external validation even if you pretend really hard you don't care.

And so it feels tempting to go back to the golden goose just the time to get the creative juice pumping back, and I try, and I always end up frustrated and angry and feeling even less like making art that before. I'm not having fun with Sasi. Like an old friend you have nothing to say to and yet you have so much to say otherwise, so you get a bit frustrated, you know ? Not sure I'm making much sense, but that's how it feels. I want to have something like that again, but it won't be with Sanders Sides, and I somehow just want if off my radar.

It was left hanging, then lost its spark, and then I stopped caring altogether and I most likely won't even watch the finale when it does come out. I'm over it. I wish I wasn't though, because it does feel like the artistic spark won't come back all on its own this time, and the buzzing community made it so much easier to bounce back and do shit when your brain got wired all wrong.

It sounds like I'm just bawling after love and likes and stuff, and I guess that's part of it, in a way ? Like I'm in no place to do things for myself, and seeing the one thing I used to use to get back in the flow giving me a bored sense of dread doesn't feel too great.

Yet this drawing is still good ! I find it good ! I don't remember everything, but I can tell from the looks of it that I spent a while on it ! It's nice ! I should celebrate that. So I'm sharing it. I think it will be the last piece of Sasi I ever share, though. I'm not watching the finale when it comes out. I don't care about it. I'll just keep doodling my OCs and characters from cool books every once in a while. I'll write little things.

I just really, really need to stop trying to go back to it when it's clearly not working and not even for good reasons. It was a fun ride though ! So yeah. Basically. A whole ass rant for a one year old piece of art. I'm in my bi-annual depresso mood, nothing too surprising there.

[beartitled]

Can you do some more comics with Francis mosses

I can, but the problem is

That I’m pretty much out of ideas and I’m progressively getting tired of tnmn fandom

Ppl who look at my tags probably noticed that 😓

More of my thoughts under read more for curious ppl

(short answer maybe I will do more, but I desperately need a break from tnmn)

! Just a general warning: this came out kinda long + sort of venty

Originally I planned to do 1 comic drop and move on, but got stuck bc ppl liked tnmn comics and kept asking for more (and still do-)

Generally I don’t mind doing more if the ideas are there, but I want to address this: I’m tired

I know blowing up is usually a good thing and I appreciate people enjoying my stuff

But it’s exhausting to see that tnmn is the only type of content which is relevant, to the point that my own projects or stuff I enjoy are just kinda.. ignored

It’s fair – again my blog is heavily fandom based

(+Tsp were and still is kinda the focus)

But with tnmn fandom it’s a bit… different

Maybe I’m biased and it’s just my negative experience with tiktok comments

Remember this art?

cleaning up transphobic comments was.. um tough

Again, I get that you can’t be in that neat bubble completely sheltered from negativity

Humans are just assholes by nature really/j

So I was expecting the backlash, but not that much

I think maybe tsp fandom spoiled me a bit (in a good way), bc I got a feeling that everyone in tsp was positive of any lgbt+ headcanons and just generally more supportive

(don’t get me wrong, there ARE problems in tsp community too, taking narrators design controversy into account as one of the examples)

Obviously every fandom always has it’s own issues, show me at least one fandom that didn’t have some sort of meaningless controversy or some sort of problematic people in it

It happens

But it leaves a bad taste in your mouth sometimes

And for me personally it only added to not so pleasant experience

The thing I also noticed, when I interacted with other fandoms

Ppl wrote positive stuff first and foremost, not really asking for anything

Here it’s just “hey more. I want more. Do more. Do this character. Do this. Do more.”

The only reason I kept doing more, because likes, reblogs, views – these comics get a ton of attention

there is a audience to please alright

But this thing comes with a pressure tho

and it shows

so let me illustrate

This bookcase

Is my shame

Because I was so rushing, I just copied and colour corrected this bookcase from my diploma comic and pasted it here in hopes for the best

💥IT LOOKS HORRIBLE OKAY💥

Usually it’s normal to take materials used in other projects

the not so normal part is

to leave it like that because your stress reducing tea doesn’t work and you don’t really have time to redraw it

my m en ta l s t a t e i s f i n e ah ah h ah ah

Ok but jokes aside: it’s really tempting, to just abandon everything and produce content like some sort of content farm

But I don’t want to, I’m forcing myself and it makes my art worse

Yes it’s subtle, new people won’t even see this

But I’m not improving

And I don’t enjoy just anxiously popping out comics because everyone keeps asking

I can give it my all to something when I’m passionate, but just “hey I’m getting attention” is not the best motivator

Attention like that does get to my head, I know that I will probably give in again and do more, bc I will compare my posts engagement

But what’s the point of recognition, when you feel.. so numb about it…

Sorry for a mountain of text and thank you for ppl who actually took their time to read it

It’s been building up for a while and I feel like people need to know the reason why I’m not so enthusiastic about making “more”

I’m not necessarily completely abandoning this fandom

I still plan to do ask/suggestions event for STP (I’m just making sure I can dedicate my time to it, that’s why it’s taking so long) and I can add tnmn to the mix

Like STP+tnmn kind of deal

But for now – I need a break

At least for a little bit

[britcision]

Thinking about how people keep pushing AI as a “well not everyone can [creative skill]” and I just… I don’t understand how they don’t see the problem with that

Because no one’s born good at drawing, or writing, or building 3D models

The whole point of having creative skills is that you need to learn how to do them. By doing them badly, often for quite a while, until you’ve tried enough things to work out what you like

And being able to word a prompt to an AI to actually get what you want is certainly a skill, and it’s certainly creative, but you’re never going to learn to draw, or write, or whatever else you’re bemoaning if you just want to push a button and get a result

And sure, it’s not like we’re going to completely run out of creatives; people with moral fibre are still going to avoid using the blatant theft that is generative AI, and will still be actually creating their own things and building skills

But if you advertise your AI and intentionally sell it to people as “hey don’t learn to draw you can just poke this button and say it’s close enough”… you’re actively discouraging people from actually trying anything

Your first attempts at any art aren’t going to look like a master’s. You’re going to be unsatisfied with your own skills over and over again, usually right before you make a drastic improvement

That’s just how creation works

And giving up and trying to make an AI do it for you instead of keeping trying and actually learning and building new skills is going to kill a lot of peoples’ creativity

It’s okay if you can’t draw as well as you’d like to. It’s okay if you can’t write a beautiful novel on the first try, or even the little oneshot you really want.

You’re going to make a lot of things that are bad, and a lot of things that are meh, and a lot of things you’ll be embarrassed you made in another ten years. Because you need to make all of those things before you can make something great, and because you need to understand that everything you think was bad and meh was pretty damn good for a beginner, and some of it will be great, and in another fifteen years you’ll see that too.

You will not become a better artist by switching to AI because it’s “easier”. You will not become a better writer by writing prompts instead of stories.

Every time you’re tempted because “the AI’s will look better than anything I make”, you are the only reason that statement is true. You might redraw your old pieces every year just to see how far you’ve come, or bury them never to be seen again, but you’re the only person limiting your creativity.

People make art with typewriters, and by throwing things at a canvas, and write single scenes and cracky one shots and snippets and round robins

Trust me, every artist you’ve ever admired knows exactly how hard, and frustrating, and time consuming it is to try and get an image from your brain into the outside world. And how many times you want to give up, or feel like you failed.

Your favourite artist has trashed a thousand pieces you would love to have seen because they weren’t good enough, or didn’t work out the way they wanted

(Yes, artists, the WIP folder gathering dust counts unless you go work on it right now)

A lot of creative efforts don’t see the light of day, and every single one goes into every single piece that does get shared

I’d love to be better at drawing! To be faster, have a better grasp at proportions and perspective and honestly to have more patience for shading and such instead of just grabbing the blur tool because it’s close enough

But those skills are underdeveloped, and are going to stay that way because the time it’d take to get good at drawing would be time I could spend writing, and that is where the demons in my soul got their hooks in first

So now, after twenty years of near-continuous work, I can write very quickly, very fluidly, and damn well… and don’t have the patience or time to try and push the same inspirations into a medium I’m less good at

(I do occasionally become possessed by an image strongly enough that I draw it anyway. I do this knowing going in that it’s going to be far from perfect, but it’ll be the best I’ve got right now)

(Also reading art tutorials and tips from great artists for 20 years does also help even if you don’t practice and I have the doodles to prove it)

And if I want a visual reference for a character… I use HeroForge to make one myself, because there are a billion creative tools that offer so much more control than just “prompt an AI until it works”

They’re not perfect, but they’re the best I can do

And if I keep doing it, and keep building those skills, that best is gonna get better and better

I’m getting better at drawing the more I give in to moments of inspiration

It’s going to take much longer, since I’m not doing it every single day (every year is still questionable), but it’ll still happen as I keep doing it

The only thing stopping everyone else from doing exactly the same is the refusal to try… and giving up on themselves and just using AI instead of trying something different

[astralartefact]

My Entry for the DOD3 10th Anniversary Countdown! featuring Five P. Sullivan and uncensored Four Wazowski

I had a lot of fun with the process so I put together some of my sketches and thoughts below the cut!

I still wonder if we would have gotten a promotional Intoner Idol Unit if DoD3 came out a few years later... Because the Intoners are definitely at least Idol-adjacent (i know i know they're directly based on Madoka so it's actually a magical girl thing - trust me, i know) but those purely promotional short lived Idol Units (like in Girlish Number if anybody remembers that anime) weren't really a thing until years later... Were we robbed...? I mean SaitoP probably would have just had Gems Company do it so who knows.

But also I think in that case they might actually have went with the original DoD4 Pitch so they could make the intoners an actual Idol Unit in-game and tie it more directly into the story... (I still would love to see what the DoD4 pitch would have looked like in practice. really keeps me up at night.)

Anyways. All that to say that's why they're an Idol Unit.

Since I love when Idol Albums go hard on a theme I decided on a parade/marching band theme relatively quickly in the spirit of commemorating and celebrating this milestone. The outfit designs are heavily inspired by X's outfit from Caligula 2. Which I haven't played but the music is good. (Also, Zero's thing is supposed to be a whistle nestled in a flower not the Pokémon Glimmet)

Also I made Idol signatures for them bc that's my secret passion

Btw I'm not really into the -zaka46s of the Idol World but I was really tempted to just redraw some of the Sakurazaka Covers for this because some of those (specifically some of the alternate Nobody's Fault and Ban covers) are very Drakengard 3 coded.

Because those also always seem to have at least 5 alternates for the same release I was also thinking about doing 2 additional alternate covers (the one above was originally going to be an alternate just with 5+4+1=10) and i even sketched an idea i had for the original main one out:

but i don't know, i don't hate it, but i didn't feel it either. Maybe it was the horrible realization that i would have to draw multiple instruments, maybe it was how badly I fucked up one's arm in the sketch but I just... didn't want to continue it so I changed plans and ended up with what you saw above.

Btw I wanted to Mike Wazowski Four from the very beginning that was going to happen regardless because that's a) what she deserves and 2) it was Five's day and that's exactly what Five would dol!!! Like I love Four, she's one of my favorite Intoners, but you always have to portray Four at least a little bit pathetic. That's her entire thing! (I think it ended up looking more like I'm holding her face hostage until 19/12 like it's an patreon exclusive instead of looking like one of those stickers japanese cd packaging often have, but eh I still think it's funny)

I also think Utahime 5 is a better sounding name than Utahime 6 but I crumbled to the pressure of knowing that somebody would complain about it.

Anyways. The inspiration for the version I arrived at was actually Bish's Zutto Music Video (specifically the shot at 2:46) and wouldn't you know it Bish is also pretty Drakengard 3 coded and since I love that shot and it's kind of Five's vibe especially with the Yellow Shopping Cart I just based the entire thing on it - it just fit an album with her as the center really well and if there is one thing that I like more than out there themes for an Idol Album/Single it's when they also have out there centers - so I guess I got lucky getting Day 5 so I had even more reason to center this piece around Five!

Anyways, Happy 10th Birthday Drakengard 3! I love you <3 Thanks to the other artist for their great works (it's been great waking up and seeing 2 new pieces of DoD3 Art every day!!!) and of course also to the organizers of the Countdown for doing the hard work of putting this together!!! Also, I love these girls. I do think about them more often that I should, even after all of these years.

[mia-solastasia]

Anatase: Diamond Dog Sona [Jun 28 2015]

This piece is outdated, made for a defunct project. The information bellow is also obsolete musings.

I would like to describe to you the achievement I've made with this, and why this is. This is a lot of overthinking, by the way.

Any depiction of myself is ridiculously important to me. It doesn't matter if it's for MLP or Pokemon or my own original projects. I work hard to ensure I get the best depiction possible. Sometimes I focus too much on the negative and uglify things more than I should, so I have to try to balance that out with positive. But at the same time, I don't want to merely show in a 'sona what I want to be, but who I am. I'd honestly rather she have red eyes or some more interesting color rather than brown, and I was truly tempted to go through with it. My streak lately has been on stylizing and prettifying the bumps in my appearance. (Mostly my hair, which has gradually gotten less curly in my depiction and now depicts me with bangs I don't actually have in real life and would likely find a pain in the ass) Not just because I dislike them, but because it's sometimes necessary for my sanity in creating the art. Simplifying things like hairstyle to make it easier to draw is just as much of a concern. Not only that, but I don't want to prefer the appearance of any other character and come to prefer the too much to represent me. I tend to be extremely fickle in that regard. Something has to be pretty enough to represent me as well, and I won't accept things bellow a certain very unpredictable level of aesthetics.

So a balance must be achieved. Between depicting myself as I am physically, and depicting beauty that is easier for me to draw and something I want to attach myself to. One thing I'll probably never try to go as far as is to remove the color of my hair and eyes. These traits are recognizable, and whilst I think they're so plain and ordinary, they stand out in a sea of people trying to be special with crazy colors. Also, it matches the color scheme a lot better.

Why a Diamond Dog anyway though?

At first, I tried redrawing yet another redesign of my ponysona. I liked it at first, but then... something felt wrong. I've drawn so many ponies over the years and it just seemed... like even though I think ponies are really pretty, my appearance could not be applied to one properly to both appeal to my beauty and be semi-accurate. I struggled with a lot of thoughts of color schemes, accessories, and most of all, hair-style. Whilst I like ponies in accessories, they honestly look better with very few. However, distinguishing me requires several accessories that are red, as I was not willing to make the main body red so as not to kill my eyes.

o I went somewhere completely different. I thought about other species in Equestria that might fit me, and this was the best I could get to. A bit flimsy due to the fact that they've only been depicted in one episode as a bunch of Diamond-stealing rogues and ruffians, but the concept was sound enough. A canine-like creature with gigantic pawlike hands and a penchant for the crystalline and jewels. I have identified with canines a lot over the years and haven't quite shaken that yet, and also think they're more fitting than an equine (even an extremely stylized cartoon equine) after doing some re-thinking. And I have a penchant and flare for crystals and gems. Also, the large hands fit me as I am very VERY hand-oriented, and I could not imagine life with the hooves of a pony, to be honest. I love being a biped with hands. It seems like unicorn magic just wouldn't be the same as the sensation and fine control of a pen in my hand to do my art.

Also, Diamond Dogs wear clothes and accessories by default. Also very fitting.

Of course, I had to do some... guesswork and modification to make a Diamond Dog fit my specifications of beauty whilst keeping the design looking like it would reasonably be fitting of a female. In case you're unsatisfied with that though, she comes from a different clan of dogs than the Diamond Dogs, so some differences in their appearances make sense. (More on that later, as I said.)

And the design is symbolic of how I feel in the brony community. Just kind of like I'm a part of it, but I'm still pretty damn different from a lot of others I see. I'm not a pony at heart, and I don't feel like I'm a huge fan of the show, but I'm still here, making this art, and caring about what's going on in the community and show. The ponies keep drawing me back in, even though I'm essentially a different species, and I guess that's because there's just something about them I can't resist. It's perfect.

Overall, I have unintentionally hit a cord with this design. A very strongly resonating cord. Unlike any ponsona I've ever had or even the Valstaens I've tried to design, something about this feels... correct. It feels right.

I hit all the right marks and created something that will be easy to redraw whilst still appealing to me immensely. I think part of the reason is because this style and this particular design reminds me of one of my most played and cherished games, Final Fantasy IX. It fits its aesthetic very well.

Honestly, I'm contemplating switching my default style to a more chibi-ish style or something similar to my MLP style except with shading. I think part of the reason it resonates with me so much is because this wasn't even that hard to draw, and other than many distractions along the way, it didn't take long to complete on its own. It flowed naturally, something that hasn't happened with my attempts at my "real" art style in a while. I guess I should just consider MLP my default style. Just kind of give it up, and let it happen. I enjoy drawing in MLP-style. It's immensely appealing, and whilst it sometimes takes me a long time to imitate vector quality lines (if I get too obsessed, like I do sometimes), the way it looks is just not only really good, but it's... something I can manage without wanting to tear my head off. I think I'll stick with this. And I'll probably base my Valstaen heavily on this design. I already had a design for her before, but it's probably going to be changed now that I've let this happen.

This piece is just so beautiful to me. Not because it has the biggest amount of effort, or my best anatomy, or even my most dynamic pose. But because of how it resonates with me. I look at it, and that feels just like me. And that is not something I've managed to achieve in a long time, and not ever to quite this intensity. I can't explain it. It it just my best work because out of all my works, this one comes from my heart, and this one says what's in my heart because it wasn't a slog or a huge effort. This flowed from my fingertips so effortlessly and wasn't something I constantly revised, but something that I drew on the first try, fixed up a bit, and then went straight to coloring. That is very rare for my depictions of myself. All that sounds stupid, I realize. It doesn't have to make sense to you. All that matters is that it is, and I'm happy about that.

[nohiketoosmall]

rearranging my whole morph guide just so i can put in a section on scaleless. it was hard to fit BEL, BEL+piebald bug eyes and small eyes together on the issues page anyways so now im going to shift to a section explaining secondary impacts and mainly cosmetic abnormalities (bug eyes, small eyes, duckbill, some kinking), issues not relevant to pet keepers (fertility problems, xlinked), and a second page probably just for scaleless + wobblers that can be focused on special care snakes.

im not sure wheere to put the albinos rn, maybe on the same page as wobblers but i feel like people will be bothered by that; its just that they should receive minimal lighting. that said, many kinked snakes cant survive at all but the ones that make it to be pets do okay from what ive heard, but kinks are also something that just happens from my understanding, not a morph related like wobblers. ive also heard it said they need smaller meals sometimes so maybe will note that, or just say "may" need special care

now that im going to split the combo page from combo + issues to just combos, i need to figure out what to do with the rest of it. these are the only combos with unique names i found i wanted to put in so far:

the other most common names you see are bee and spinner but those are both spider morph so im putting those on the wobbler page for clarity. the reason i had part 1 of issues on this page is that some combos have issues the usual forms dont have (super lesser BELs, and super lesser BEL + piebalds)

i might reuse some of the visuals from the other pages and put them on the combos page, so people can see pin + pastel = lemonblast

of course, then i might be tempted to redraw pinstripes fact first because im not a fan of how i stylized it. and im ALREADY considering fully redrawing clown:

gah... so many decisions. so many layers in this file also.

[tamarakkoarchive]

Shin Megami Tensei II livetweet thread (6/8)

oh geez

he was sooooo easy he didn't dodge even once. and i'm pretty sure i reached him the earliest i could since i visited this place just a while ago. smt2 matador was still a little virgin

~

smt2 is slightly harder than smt1 but i think it's mainly because you don't have much money to spend on better equipment (i'd rather only spend it for summoning since mag dries super fast so you'd prefer to only have your demons out for important battles) and you can't... use guns on auto. yeah don't ask me. but tbqh i've been pretty fine even with these things so lol

~

HMMMM okay i got my prediction wrong. i got misguided into thinking zayin wasn't law because at first he was a blind follower then realized he doesn't condone fascism but he actually never switched alignments

when i started this game i was tempted to detail everything that was happening but the plot structure is a lot harder to figure out so i'm constantly under the impression things are not what they seem. i'm actually surprised by how much i'm getting wrong

I FINALLY REACHED THE FULL REVEAL SCENE AND WHEW it's no wonder i barely knew anything about this game because you just can't explain aleph's background and the way his companions behave without spoiling the whole ass plot and there's... a lot

~

the absolute unit is here

idk if it's just the fantranslation but it seems they didn't make dick jokes in his debut

~

hiroko learning teleport almost nearing lvl60... :) yeah fuck you too girl

we had no other partners aside beth to compare here but fuck it, i can't stop thinking how the heroines in the snes games suck at learning actual shit we need fast compared to all your male companions wtf

~

big walltext because 4 screenshots aren't enough to put the whole context so you guys can understand me losing my fucking mind over the twist

HE'S JUST LIKE KNUCKLES'S FATHER IN THE SONIC COMICS, I'M SHITTING MYSELF

amazing

so THAT was the reason this mf stayed alive the most

now he's ready to go to a disco

the shadows on his eyes look so much like sunglasses in the sprite. dude is literally the cooler daniel meme

while the earliest kaneko artwork circa mt2 is where his stuff objectively could look better in redraws, i honestly think his smt/smt2 drawings in general all look better in his old style instead of when he tried to remake them using the nocturne shading for the psx ports

like, the nocturne shading is INCREDIBLE and looks amazing in games like digital devil saga or the raidou ones but they just don't fit the mood of 90's smt

~

sometimes i sulk a little when remembering of smt4a's faults but then i see stuff like that ntr brainwashing scene or aleph doing this shit in front of his now-aware-mother and then i sigh in relief

i think i lost the count of how many fucking blondies are in this game. lucifer, hiroko, that governor, the abyss npcs, the fairy that hit a spell on hiroko, the fairy that is fucking daleth, now the lake nymph-LIKE ENOUGH!!!

~

guys i tried to face lucifer two times and....... after all those games, right in very late smt2, it finally happened. i think i'm underleveled for a boss

like he can't kill me but i'm on the exactly same boat. i use everything i have but the fucker has so much hp all my mp drains out like poof. it just becames an eternal battle where no one can kill no one and it goes on until i give up

[stxleslyds]

I didn't realize how often I thought about this fandom until I started churning out asks on a daily basis.

Knowing DC's creative trends/talent in 1988/89, what do you think would have happened if fans voted for Jason's survival? From released alternative comic pages, Jason still gets blown up but survives.

Do you think they had a plan for him to become Hush (like the Death in the Family interactive "movie" implies)? Would he get a personality change through amnesia? Or would the comics have retired him to fade into obscurity?

WHAT IF…? BUT JASON TODD SURVIVES.

Hi friend! Thank you for the ask! This should be interesting.

But before I give my answer, let’s take a look at those pages where Jason had actually survived Joker’s attack.

From the second page we only can see one panel but some who have seen the entire, unreleased, page have said this about it:

“The full page reveals more, including the arrival of Dick Grayson to Jason’s hospital room, although a pencilled note in the margins says to strike him, and redraw the panels in favour of having Alfred in the scene instead. Dick rushed over as soon as he heard, and offered Bruce his help in tracking down the Joker.

In the published version of Batman #428, the same page depicts Jason’s funeral, where Alfred asks Bruce if he should get in touch with Dick Grayson. In both pages, Batman says roughly the same thing: “I’ll handle this by myself. No help from now on... that’s the way I want it.””

This makes me feel like Jason having survived or not the Joker’s attack would have resulted in the same outcome within Bruce. Dick shows up at the hospital to check on Jason and offers his help in tracking Joker to Bruce but Bruce doesn’t want his help because from that moment on “he works alone”.

That would lead to the same exact actions that happened with Jason dead. Bruce goes after Joker on his own and leaves up to fate if he dies or not (although he said that his issues with Joker never truly end, Batman (1940) #429),

And if Bruce pushes Dick away then we could also be having a scene like the one from The New Titans (1988) #55, where Bruce implies that Jason getting hurt was Dick’s fault for having moved on from Robin himself. If that happens then Dick would blame Bruce for putting Jason in danger way too soon and their fight will end up with Bruce kicking Dick out of the manor.

-

So, to answer your question, what would have happened if fans voted for Jason’s survival?

I think that DC would have turned Jason into another reason why Bruce thinks that all he could ever be is Batman. It would have made Bruce dark, moody and sad just like DC wanted, all darkness and no light.

Jason wouldn’t be dead but he wouldn’t be truly alive and they would use that to fuel the angst that surrounds Batman.

It is a very sad thing, but I actually think that Jason surviving the attack wouldn’t have had any impact on his own story, Jason’s suffering/death were set up to make Batman want to work alone again. I just don’t see DC back in the day working on Jason’s recovery (physical and mental), I see them leaving Jason comatose and as a reminder of one of Batman’s “failures”. Maybe in a distant future Jason could have woken up with amnesia and they could have done something with him then but I really don’t know how they could make that story work or if Jason would end up working as an ally or enemy of Batman.

Much like you said in the ask, I think that DC would have let the character of Jason Todd fade away,

-

Because that is a really sad answer, I decided to come up with other scenarios where I would give ideas of what I would have liked to see DC do, and what I would have done if I had existed back in the day!

What I would have liked to see DC do:

After setting the fact that Jason was left in a coma at the hospital after Joker’s attack, I think DC should have had Bruce making some extreme decisions. With Jason alive but not really there I think that DC could have made work a plot point that they tried to pull off with Jason dead.

In a comic event called ‘Underworld Unleashed’ the demon Neron offered bringing Jason back to life if Bruce gave him his soul in exchange. But with Jason alive I think that Bruce would have actually been even more tempted to take the offer if it meant that by giving his soul away, he could wake Jason up from the coma he was in. Then there could have been an event with magic users that made it possible so Bruce got his soul back or something. DC could have also had Jason have amnesia after Neron wakes him up so we would have a soulless Batman and amnesiac Jason trying to make their father/son relationship work (or not).

Another idea is Bruce making a different extreme decision where he asks Talia to help him find a Lazarus Pit to try his luck with Jason. Because Jason was in a coma and not dead the Pit would have actually worked (the Lazarus Pit cannot bring people back from the dead!). I imagine that if it worked then Bruce would owe Talia or Ra’s a favour, and that could make an interesting story, mostly if Jason Todd ends up mad at Bruce because he didn’t kill the Joker after he tried to kill him. (I do love chaos).

Maybe Jason could even join the LoA to make Bruce’s life difficult. He wouldn’t become the Red Hood but Jason becoming an assassin after all that could have been the perfect recipe for complete chaos and I love that. I think DC could make it work, this last part of the idea is kinda inspired by Young Justice's Jason Todd.

What I would have done if I wrote for DC at the time:

I would have taken Jason away from Bruce! I would have Dick appear out of nowhere and I would have him take Jason with him back to the Titans Tower so they can both be far away from Bruce (at least for a little while).

If this idea sounds familiar it might be because you read another ��What if…?” post that I made about what I thought would happen if Jason hadn’t been found by Batman that night when Jason was stealing the Batmobile’s tires. I will link that post here!

This time Dick would obviously be taking Jason with him at a different time and he would actually try to train Jason a little bit more but Dick would also have Jason work on his trauma and then Jason would decide to leave the vigilante/hero life behind. But not completely because I still believe that Jason would still want to save people. He would also be very protective of his brother/best friend Dick Grayson, also known as Nightwing.

I just think that Dick could have handled the situation a lot better than Bruce, he would have made sure that Jason felt like him not being Robin anymore wasn’t because he was a failure but because he can help people in other ways. He would have made him go to therapy and would have been more willing to share his own experiences with him.

I would have Jason studying to become a paramedic again (a different kind of hero) and this time he could also practice on the Titans when they got hurt in battle, if he did that then he could end up being an excellent medic for all superheroes!

I mean, in the Titans there are humans, aliens, metas, amazons and atlanteans. Jason could actually become DC’s very own version of Marvel’s ‘Night Nurse’. I don’t know, I love that idea and I think @hood-ex would like it too!

I just love the idea of Jason and Dick becoming each other's family. The Titans would also become Jason's family but he would be very protective of Dick. I just feel like Jason would have seen the whole thing (of Dick taking him to live together) as a fresh start after such a horrible experience.

I love Red Hood but I also love the idea of Jason becoming something completely different from that and this is one of my favourite ideas!

-

Oh! Before I forget, I think that the idea of Jason becoming Hush in the ‘Death in the Family’ movie comes directly from the fact that Jason “was” Hush for a second in the Batman: Hush comic. That was revealed to us in UtRH, Jason gave the real Hush all the information that he needed to get under Batman’s skin. And then when “Hush” captured Tim and he showed his face that was actually Jason who then changed places with Clayface to confuse Bruce more.

So, yeah, I don’t think DC had planned on making Jason become Hush.

Thank you so much for the ask! I hope the answer was good and that you have a fantastic week!

[theholeyness]

Your brush strokes feel so precise while also flowy, not restricting at all! how do you do it?? :D

This is easy, let me teach you (^^ )

Having to do lines over and over again can take up a lot of time, so it's important to be able to make accurate lines! The first thing I do after opening a new canvas is to check my eye-hand-monitor coordination. I use a screen-less tablet but those exercises are applicable to traditional painting as well. Here's how to do it: Quickly* draw a line straight down across your tablet, if the line on your canvas goes perfectly down, you're good. If it is skewed left or right, rotate your tablet a little and try again until it goes straight downwards. *The lines should be quick for a few reasons: 1.) a "real" painting will be made out of thousands of brushstrokes, you don't want to think about every single line. 2.) quick lines are not as shaky and therefore more elegant. 3.) the faster you paint, the more you can paint.

It's important to check that you can accurately and repeatedly hit the same spot on your canvas regardless of the direction of your brushstrokes. Imagine or draw a point on your canvas. Draw a vertical, horizontal and diagonal lines that will meet in that point. Try it in three or four places on your canvas for good results.

Checking the length of your stokes: Quickly draw a square, with the intention of not erasing any edges outside the square. Getting this done correctly should help you get an idea of how the length of your brushstrokes drawn across the tablet corresponds to the lengths of your lines on the screen.

If you get those right, it should be easy to get your lines to look good! Please try it out! <(￣︶￣)> About flowy lines... You can enhance your linework using brushes that have settings such as brush size or opacity changing with pen pressure and/or velocity. (make sure your tablet is properly set up for these. I use an older Wacom tablet, so my advice is to make notice of the "tip feel" setting) but the most important thing.... I think we've all had this thought while working over a sketch we really liked, "the more effort I put into it, the more tired this picture feels!", gradually straying away from the original idea, losing motivation to work and throwing the file into the wip folder, never to open it again..! orz

The solution is to make meaningful lines! Paint with intention! That is, you don't want to make lines which you will have to redraw later. The exceptions would be... if your idea changes during the process or if you forgot to include something in the sketch. Then, you should, naturally, edit your picture... haha.......

Here, I made an example using my sketch, (the original sketch + final pic are above) and, below, a "bad" sketch I edited just now,

Things I would personally see as mistakes: 1.) Zig-zaggy lines that don't go in direction with the form. 2.) Filling in parts that will not be black with black. Tempting to do to see how the contrast will turn out later. Will have to be repainted. 3.) Filling in big black spaces with black. Unless it's a void, it will have to be shaded later. There is no need to do black before other colors. 4.) Adding a lot of cluttering lines that disrupt the flow make it easy to get lost later. 5.) Black shadows that obscure form. Since the picture is not going to be black and white, it's too strong and heavy. Steals attention off more important things.

Why these things that are not necessary, is because after you're overall satisfied with your sketch you can easily make a layer under it (in my case one under and one above the sketch) and do a color test with minimal shadows. This is an important step that tells you if the final picture will look good. And it takes only a minute!

(this is what mine looked like ↓)

If you have a good foundation to work on, cleaning up becomes easy and you maintain the energy of the sketch!

I'm happy you like my art. ❤ I hope this helps!

[toastedbuckwheat]

Hello! May I ask how you draw? I'm currently learning how to myself and would be highly interested into a step to step process by you! Like from sketch to the done thing (no color necessary)

Hello there!

I dunno how I feel about showing how I work/giving advice to someone who’s learning (and I say it as a pro artist who went through years of traditional art education) because when I do the illustrations you see here on my tumblr I BREAK THE RULES you’d learn though life drawing routine, and give in to bad habits, and my methods are rather unplanned and chaotic which makes it difficult to pinpoint significant stages. But I used my portable potato to take some photos during working on my last piece, so I’ll throw it here with a bit of an explanation of what’s going on.

Before I begin - and because you’re about to look at a mess of a WIP - I’d like to give you some general advice that generally makes life easier when you draw (again, things that I learned in traditional arts education - another artist might advise you the complete opposite, dunno!)

Work holistically. Forget them satisfying-to-look-at clips on instagram showing someone produce a hyperrealistic portrait starting from an eye, with each and every element emerging being finished before they proceed to another part. It takes a lot of talent, yes, but these are ppl redrawing a photo in a kind of a mechanical manner. Most artists don’t work this way. Especially if you’re working without a reference, or if you’re doing a life drawing - your process will be layering and changing and finding what works best to give an impression of what you’re drawing rather than reproduce the exact image, and your artwork is likely to look messy most of the time.That said: don’t start with the details. Don’t spend too much time on a particular part while neglecting others. Your goal is to keep the whole piece at the same level of ‘finished’ (even though it’s unfinished - do I make sense?) before you’re confident that everything is where it should be and proceed to the details. So sketch out the composition first. See how things fit, what’s the dynamics. You’ll save yourself from limbs sticking out from the frame, odd proportions etc etc.

Because it’s a game of relationships between different parts of the picture/scene. I ask you not to worry about finishing a single element before laying out the rest because you’ll find that said element will look different once the other part appears! For instance - you might think that the colour you picked for a character’s hair is already very dark. But once you’re done with the night sky background, you’ll find that it’s in fact too light, and doesn’t work well with the cold palette. You’ll have to revisit different parts of the image as you go to balance these relationships and make the picture work as a whole.

Give an impression of something being there without actually drawing it ‘properly’- because details are hard, mate. You’ll see that my lineart usually has hardly any, and my colouring is large unrefined stains, but the finished thing looks convincing. Like, fuck, I can never focus on how Crowley’s eyes are really shaped. So I just turn them into large glowing yellow ellipses crossed by a line, and heard no protests so far.

Don’t panic if you messed up (you probably didn’t anyway). It might turn out to be a completely unnoticeable mistake - because, remember, things work together to balance each other, so another finished off prominent element will probably drown that badly placed line that looked so visible and out of place a second ago. 

It might not look good before it’s finished. I’m mostly immune to it after years of drawing, and my recent illustrations all follow a specific method (ykno, my sunset glow effects and all that) so I can kinda predict the next stage. But I do my linearts on a specially picked crap paper, I don’t bother erasing the smudged graphite, and it looks messy af until I make the background white in Photoshop. Conclusion: you might have a moment of doubt as you work through a piece, but try to break through it - I often suddenly start to like what I cursed a minute before! - and try to finish it even if it’s meant to be bad. This way, looking through your past pieces, you’ll see the progress. And trust me, I can’t even look at my art from literally three months ago. It’s normal.

Now, pics! The sketches are paler in real life, but I increased the contrast a little so you can see something.

1. Laying out the composition! 

I wanted to just show them kissing, but I got carried away due to some Art Nouveau inspiration. As you might have noticed, most of my illustrations are quite self-contained (ykno - they look like a sticker on a plain background). So I wanted a tight swirl bordered by Aziraphale’s wings creating a sort of rounded, yin-yang like bubble around them. Consequently I made the whole composition revolve around their heads. 

2. Adding more details to the sketch. It’s messy af. It will be messy until I’m done. It’s fine.

3. These are the fineliners I use for the linearts! They are made by Uni-ball and come in light and dark grey. I also sometimes use the guy on the left - ‘Touch’ sign pen by Pentel, when I want more brush-like, wider strokes. I work in grey because when I scan it and do my usual boring trick with sunlight highlights - which is an Overlay mode layer in Photoshop - the highlights ‘burn out’ the lines too and make them vanish a little, and the lighting effect gets more striking. I also like to use the light grey ones to make something look pencil-y without actually using pencil, because pencil fucking smudges.

4. It smudges! So because I am right handed, I start inking from the right hand side, no matter how tempted I am to do their faces first.

5. You can see the composition directions here. I made it intuitively, but ofc some ppl actually use grids etc to lay out their drawings.

6. See how pale ans thin the lineart was at first? I kept adjusting it as new inked parts were appearing. It starts to look nice and consistent now! 

7. Finished lineart? There are some mistakes which I later corrected in PS. Notice that Aziraphale’s face has hardly any details on it - I tried to make the drawing suggest his expression rather than risk overdoing it. 

8. Photoshop time!! You can totally do what I did here even if you don’t have a graphic tablet. I used Curves tool to enhance the lineart, then Quick Selection Tool to select the background around around my sticker-like piece and filled it white (on a new layer ofc). I keep this white layer on top of the layer order so it works as a mask as I colour. I decided I did not like the hatching shading underneath Aziraphale’s halo, so I erased it with a Stamp tool (because I wanna keep the textured grey fill my crap paper naturally gives me!). It’s done roughly but won’t be visible once the thing is coloured. 

9. And the reason why I keep the grey shade instead of easily getting rid of it by using Curves/Levels is because when I set this layer to Multiply mode and colour underneath, it gives me this nice desaturated look like from an old cheap paper comic page. It works as a natural filter! But of course I can’t do bright colours this way, so all my glowing highlights happen ABOVE the lineart layer - on a separate layer in Overlay mode! 

Finished thing here!

_____

Commission infoBuy Me a Coffee - help me with my transitioning expenses!Prints and stickers and things on my Redbubble!

[callophelia-ailingamnemonic]

Y’ALL I JUST FOUND A TREASURE TROVE OF CRINGY OLD ART

I almost forgot it existed, and I wished it never did.

What I am about to show you comes from a few years ago and will scar you for ife, it’s that ugly.

The drawing you’re about to see are of my early Fandomstuck days were I wanted to incorporate them into Tarot Cards

‘Cuz I love tarot cards

But by god they are so freaking ugly.

Anywho let’s start!

First up is my design for the Dreamtalia Sub-Fandom as the Fool. Dreamtalia is a Hetalia fangame by KyoKoon64 and had this whole thing with tarot cards, so I thought it was suitable for him to be here. Not many other reasons why he’s here, he doesn’t really fit the definition of ‘The Fool’ but like, meh. The pose is ‘eh’ at best and the design ugly AF.

I should redraw the boi later or something idk

Next is the Harry Potter Fandom as the Magician. I thought it was cool at first. Still hate it now tho lmao.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t really know anything about Harry Potter and literally just chose them because ‘Witches and Wizards’. Problem is, as far as I know, the Harry Potter Fandom doesn’t really fit with the definition behind ‘the Magician’ ://

I guess the pose isn’t too bad tho.

Third is the BBC Sherlock Holmes Fandom as the High Priestess.

Pretty self-explanatory,

But tbh, I never actually saw Sherlock Holmes either so idk :PP

I was hoping to make the drawing look cool by having their head zoomed in through a magnifying glass, but it’s just ugly, especially his hair :’))

Moving on,

Fourth is the Nyotalia Sub-Fandom as the Empress, and I guess by this y’all can probably tell this was during my Hetalia days.

Now time for the criticism, I never noticed until now, but her face is weird and the crown is too big >:((

I hate it.

Fifth is another Hetalia AU, 2P! Hetalia as the Emperor.

Yeah, I hated this two, but hey, at least the background looks kinda cool.

Lmao I’m running out of things to say :’))

Sixth is the Supernatural Fandom as the Heirophant.

Yeah I haven’t watched Supernatural either.

Seventh is the DRAMAtical Murder Fandom as the Lovers

I was also having a DMMD phase back then.

Clear is my son, I would die for him.

This design is also really ugly.

Eighth is the Five Nights At Freddy’s Fandom for the Chariot.

I love Fnaf OuO

And even though there was a canon Fandomstuck design for Fnaf, I humanized them ‘cuz I love humanizing crap and this specific design was based off of Pole-Bear’s designs, cuz I think their designs were one of the most popular at the time :PP

Ninth is the Persona Fandom for Strength.

I still need to watch a playthrough of Persona 3 :’DD

Tenth is another Hetalia Fangame, Hetaoni for the Hermit :PP

I should say something here, but I’m lazy.

FINALLY, the last one I made before I got bored was the Detroit Become Human Fandom for the Wheel of Fortune

Never got around to scanning it, cuz it was ugly like all the others.

Not gonna lie doh, I do feel a little nostalgic looking at these and I’m tempted to sort all the fandoms I’m familiar with to certain Tarot Cards

Cuz

I have no self-control :))

[onepunchmiss]

OPM s2e7 Live blog

“The S Class Heroes”

IM SCREAMING ALREADY I ONLY READ THE EPISODE TITLE ALRIGHT OK SO IT BEGINS TODAY, MY DEATH guys I am so pumped for the S Class focus thats about to begin with this episode like from here on out they become main players in the series and asfdbfhirksvfjkevfsnjkvfnjek how is it legal for ONE SERIES to contain SO MANY FAVES. Anywayyy Before I get started I’m actually wondering- this is the 7th episode of the second season… do we know how many episodes the season is supposed to run for? S1 only had 12 i think. I’m… I’m not even close to ready for it ending. Now that they’ve introduced Orochi, I’m not even sure where a good break in the plot would be?? Random concerns aside, lets get to the episode. As always, I’m watching this as someone who has read the manga and web comic to date

OROCHI IS PINK HE IS HOT PINK THATS ALL I HAVE TO SAY BEFORE THE TITLE SEQUENCE HITS ME LIKE A GUT PUNCH EVERY SINGLE TIME AND I STILL PAUSE IT AT ZOMBIEMAN OK off to a great start woo

Oh thank god we’re starting with the tournament I can stop quite literally holding my breath. Alright its Choze time. I’m actually excited for him to do things, his face has been nothing but terrifying thus far and hes one of those characters that are just fun to hate unapologetically. I love over-the-top Nazi stand-ins for that reason tbh

OH FUCK OH GOD I LOVE HIM also GAROU hiya welcome back I know it’s only been 2 weeks but i missed you so much thank you for gracing my screen for 5 seconds OH HECK the dramatic music and beginning of the internal monologue just being blatantly REJECTED caught me off guard I cackled AH WAIT WAIT

EYESIGHT DOGMAN ASDFGHK MY BABY IS COMING IM DEAD IM FUKKIN DEAD ALREADY I MISSED HIS CUTE VOICE hey no wait that was very quick?? I must withhold my bias, we’re at the point now where I have SCRUTINIZED every single panel of the manga over and over because of all of my faves, so even the smallest differences will be glaring to me. As much as I want all the action to be drawn out as it is in the manga, I know that’s never been how the anime has rolled. I must bite my tongue.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA THE ONLY TIME WE’LL EVER SEE HIM AND YET!!! oof i had to pause for 2 minutes to chill out and actually type. I. I just. juST. BOI ARE YOU OK WHERE ARE YOU ARE YOU WELL AND WHY DO YOU LOOK LIKE G4 tell me your secrets

WAIT COME BACK i dont give 2 SHITS about sweet mast HECKK

speaking of whom get off my screen u creep I have a personal bone to pick with u disrespecting the bae as you will

[SCREAMING]

Oh god this whole scene is so EXCITING and TERRIFYING child emperor’s face as Pig God just eats her, speaking of which -QUIT CUTTING BACK TO THAT TERRIFYING IMAGERY ASDFGHJ  

YES THEY KEPT IT YES YES YES YESYEYSYEYS YOU DONT UNDERSTAND how much Ive been looking FORWARD to that little scene??? im crying how is it possible to work myself up so much of this please help

ok ok back to the tournament give my heart a break phew Hey Choze if you’re genes are so superior then where are your eyebrows????? You dont pull it off HALF as well as Z does. Jeez everything about this guy is so absurd I can’t help but laugh irl the damn DNA helix rolling across the screen dude just stop you’re embarrassing yourself

although you DO know how to strike a pose. change ur name to Poze. Wait no. Your name is now GMO Corn I lied.

AGAIN GETTIN ME WITH THE WEIRD COLORS Hundred Eyes Octopuss is red and blue OK SURE

DEATH GATLING DEATH GATLING ASDFGHJKL guys I cant look at Narcisstoic oh no “no you’ll do no good”

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA I WASNT EXPECTING THIS THIS EPISODE BUT I SHOULD HAVE I WASNT PREPARED I paused it I’m afraid to push play he’s not on the screen yet i can still turn back and make it out alive -

                    Behold.                                     the moment   I          died        

I actually have this thing with eye gore and seeing it in motion fucked me up I had to skip 10 seconds but anyway FUCK he’s so SPARKLY and PRETTY

Noting also the music there totally gave me flashbacks to the Darkmatter Thieves invasion for a split second and that sequence in general was really well done I like how they emphasized the suckers sticking to the concrete and everything- it have the monster a lot of weight imo. Of course the studio would be fools to not give Tatsumaki the the utmost respect like that sooo

SPARKLY and PRETTY and TEMPTING FATE YOU FOOL yo I was so excited to this scene but I feel like they didn’t make his response angry enough it’s funnier when it so uncharacteristically mad I might do a redraw with the face he makes in the manga………….. FUKKIN was smiley face man just yelling noises to cover flashy’s voice???? FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF

OH MY FUCK WE’RE GETTING MONSTER CELLS THIS EPISODE. OH MY HECK WE’RE COVERING MUCH MORE GROUND THAN I THOUGHT WE’RE ONLY HALF WAY THROUGH THE EP

plot progression plot progression plo t p r ogr e ss i on hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh Kamikaze being the badass that he is i lov

SPEAKING OF LOVES LOOKY LOOK God i love those three Okamaitachi is a WIFE and IAI is a BAE HEY WAIT let them speak come back they said words i want voices!!!!!!!  this is going so fast??? Oh my god I was absolutely not expecting to get the Suiryu fight this episode holy crap holy crap?? Ok but I’m getting pumped the music is hype “trying to hide his nervousness by looking like a doofus” “this is how I always look” Oh saitama why do they do this to you. Jeez as much as I love everyone else I forget how much I miss him. 

Oh and he’s getting his hopes up again sweetheart no

This is so good I’m hardly pausing to type my thoughts I’m too invested AND NOW ALSO IM DIGGING THIS MUSIC this is good v good yes and there goes Saitama being a genuinely good person offended by this jackass Saitama is too good for this world

His voice… I love him sm. aaaaaaaaaaaaaand its over. hmmmmmmmmmmmm so I have a guess as to what the post credits scene will be but let’s just see

YUP I KNEW IT cause we skipped it last week and now that we’ve introduced the monster cells it was only logical Genos no bby stop getting completely obliterated mannnnnnnnn

In all, no real complaints??? My children?? Have began to appear finally??? I just wish they literally went word for word shot for d\shot with Drive Knight if only because I’m STARVED for DK content in general. But based on the pacing of this week’s episode, will definitely cover a lot of ground and be pretty intense. I should be less, uh, screaming? Next week too. I’m exhausted from spazzing every 10 seconds hah. Well, I just skimmed the manga again and there might be some but yeah I think I can calm down for maybe 2 weeks. maybe. take a wild guess who should show up right around that time. ANYWAY Thanks for reading see yall next weeeeekkkkk

[thechekhov]

how would you recommend an artist make themselves better known on tumblr and in general? ive been drawing and painting almost my whole life but its hard to get people to notice me, any advice? thank you, you're my fave artist

Thank you so much! That makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside…

As for your questions… hmm… it’s for sure a good one. 

I’m going to get a bit… strategical on that one. Hope you don’t mind this approach. 

Tumblr and real life are definitely alike in a lot of aspects, while in others they’re polar opposites. For the sake of keeping things neatly shelved, I’m going to focus on tumblr in this post.

＊*☆HOW TO GET ART NOTICED ON TUMBLR☆*＊

by chekhov

1. We have to understand how the tumblr sharing system works. 

I know this sounds a bit too obvious. I mean, we all know HOW. It’s by reblogging! 

I know that there’s a BIG opinion on tumblr that we should share and reblog art as much as possible to help artists get noticed. And that’s TRUE. It’s absolutely correct.

One thing I don’t agree with on that front is the guilt-tripping factor of it all. Like somehow people are responsible for the downfall of less popular artists because they didn’t reblog stuff enough. People are really quick to point at their followers and say “I GOT 100 OF Y’ALL HERE AND ONLY 3 ARE REBLOGGING ANYTHING”. 

I get it. It’s frustrating!

But the fact of the matter is, you can’t force people to reblog stuff. 

Instead, I recommend we harvest the power of the sharing we already have. We have to be smart about this. What I’m going to go into is a bit less concrete. We have to think about the PEOPLE who are doing the reblogging. 

Artists aren’t the ONLY ones with motivations for getting their stuff seen. And because they create media they are, for lack of a better word… a vendor! The buck STARTS with them, but it doesn’t stop with them. 

They have to also think about what the people are going to do with their product once it’s reblogged. Once someone buys from the vendor, they don’t just keep it forever. They distribute it to the others. And sometimes, those others distribute it again. We have to think about the bigger picture, and think about how FAR your art has the potential to go!

So, to get started we need to know… WHO are the ones buying from the vendor… and why?

What kind of rebloggers ARE there? 

I’m going to give my own opinion here, and feel free to disagree. But the 3 biggest rebloggers most important to the artist are these:

1. The Pleaser

Sounds sexy, right? In fact, the pleaser comes in many different forms. But essentially their goal is the same - they reblog stuff like aesthetic posts, and other pleasing things. They themselves tend to like a lot of stuff and reblog mostly beautiful photos, nice designs, and lots of fanart of whatever they’re into at the time. Comics and story-like posts are good here (although if they’re too long, people tend to lose interest.)

How to get reblogged by a Pleaser?

Appeal to their fandom, their interest, and make something that moves them. Pleasers are most active around the time when the new episode of their favorite show comes out, or when their favorite holiday comes around. Drawing fanart during its peak popularity will usually catch a Pleasers’ attention, as will drawing aesthetic Halloween posts around, well, Halloween. 

2. The Teaser

The Teaser is the class clown and the shitposter, and they reblog memes and jokes voraciously. In the Teaser’s audience are other teasers - and they also tend to be very generous rebloggers. The fact of the matter is - memes sell reblogs faster than any aesthetic art will. We’re social creatures and getting a laugh out of our followers is worth a LOT of fake internet points.

How do I get reblogged by the Teaser?

Memes. I mean, you knew this was coming, right? During the height of some new tumblr joke, people usually welcome any unusual spin, or any funny variation of an old joke. 

My meme redraws have consistently been popular and have ‘boomed’ very quickly. For example, this redraw of sapphire from Steven Universe doing ‘the scroll of truth’ jumped to 5k almost within a day. 

Many people peek at my page ‘for the lols’ but end up staying for the art, or because there’s another thing I post they’re interested in. Either way, memes are a gateway drug… to your blog. 

3. The Librarian

The Librarian is a bit more rare, but they’re still important, because they tend to reblog a lot. They’re a bit unusual in the sense that they do this for themselves, instead of for an audience. The blog of the librarian is mostly just a replacement for bookmarking interesting stuff. These people tend to reblog tutorials, reference posts, and things they want to read later on. 

How to get reblogged by a Librarian?

Make things that people want to keep around. Charts, references, tutorials. Chances are, the librarian will snag it up eventually. 

Of course, these 3 aren’t the ONLY type of tumblr blogger. In fact, many of them are a mix of these 3. But the main point is…

2. What do most of these (and other) people on tumblr have in common?

Just like you, many people (although not all) want to get their stuff SEEN. You might be creating the original product, but they choose whether or not to distribute it to their audience. 

Everyone is playing the same game, no matter which part of the chain they’re on.

You, as an artist, have the biggest responsibility to think about this long-term. Not only 1 reblog down the line. 

For example, let’s return to one of my meme-posts that I did about wrist pain (carpal tunnel). When I made this, I had a vague idea of who would consume it. Obviously… other artists. But the reason that this got so popular? Is not only because fellow artists follow me. It’s because the artists that follow me also have followers who are also, conveniently, artists. That’s why despite the fact that many people reblogged the post directly from me - even MORE of them reblogged it from @sergle​ (shoutout to sergle! u rock) who is also a popular artist and also has an audience who were prone to want to reblog the post.

See that orange dot? That’s me. See that bigger blue dot? That’s sergle. 

In a way, this is a game of chance. Will something you reblog be seen by someone with a large enough audience to keep it going? The thing is, we don’t know until it happens. And oftentime, the only way to achieve this is to keep trying. Stubbornly. 

But you can’t just headbutt the wall in the same place and hope it eventually crumbles. You have to look for a door. 

3. So what’s the door? 

Take a look at your art. Is it consumable BEYOND the surface level of your followers? 

Sometimes people get discouraged because their fanart is way more popular than their original art. Although I share their frustration, there’s a good reason for this, and your followers aren’t to blame.  

The thing is, fanart is consumable at deep reblog levels. If you post fanart, there’s a good chance that even 3-4 reblogs down the line, there’s going to be a person who sees it and thinks ‘hey, I know Steven Universe. My followers know Steven Universe. I’ll reblog this!’ Fandoms are efficient because they already have a lot of context for the consumption of the art. They have a story (humans love stories), they’re invested in it, they’re interested in it, and there’s a good chance that sharing more stuff about it will get them more interaction with their mutuals, even if they’re not consciously thinking about all this as they reblog. 

Unfortunately, that’s just not true for your original art. Many of us have beautiful, wonderful stories - but they’re not available to a wide audience. They’re not easily consumed, they’re not easily accessed (in comparison to being on netflix, for example). If you post a picture of your OC - maybe your immediate pool of followers who know that OC will reblog it. But their own followers who aren’t directly following you will not have any connection, emotional or otherwise, to that character. They simply don’t have a reason to care, and they don’t have any means to. Even if they visit your blog - will it be easy to find similar content? Have you got your links available on desktop AND mobile? Is it easy to find the beginning of your story? Is it free of mistakes and easy to read? 

Large companies that make shows or comics funnel tons of money into making their media consumable. There’s a LOT of effort that goes into advertising, too. You, as an independent artist, simply don’t have that kind of manpower. That’s not your fault - but it’s also not your followers’ fault. Why are they supposed to reblog things that their own followers will never understand and connect with? 

4. Back to square one: how do I get noticed? 

I’m gonna keep this short and sweet because I feel like I already took up a lot of your time. After everything I’ve said, hopefully this will make sense:

Make content that has a connection to your audience somehow. Make it relatable to their life. Make it relatable to what’s currently going on. Make it worth their while to look at it. 

Make content that’s easy to understand. Super detailed drawings, with nothing to focus on are difficult to digest. Simpler, sharper drawings that someone can understand within 3 seconds of looking at it are the most digestible of all. This isn’t a museum.

If you’re creating content that goes with a story, MAKE THE STORY. I know it’s tempting to create just a whole bunch of character sketch sheets and leave it at that, but you can’t complain about not getting an audience when your audience doesn’t have anything to consume in the first place. 

Make the story AVAILABLE. Organize your tags. Make sure those tags are easily accessible. People will never like 100% of your art, so many it easy for them to find what they WILL like. 

Don’t be afraid of fanart. Fanart gets you connected with people who like stories and content similar to yours. 

Don’t be afraid to follow and reblog people that you want to connect with. Don’t be afraid to make them stuff and @ them. 

Post your stuff to a LOT of places! Your audience is somewhere out there - probably not only on tumblr. You have to spread yourself thin sometimes, but make sure the account can all lead back to your main hub. 

And last but not least…

Critically re-evaluate your art at least once a year. (I’m personally working on this.) Just because you’ve been drawing for years, and just because your art might be incredible doesn’t mean it’s appealing to people. Sounds weird, right? But think about it - there’s TONS of people who are not that amazing at anatomy, or coloring… but they still have a huge audience, and people connect with their art. A lot of times, it’s because their art is straightforward and easy to read/understand. 

Ask a friend to critique your art. Ask them if they understand your work, or if it’s difficult to make out. Ask them what your work inspires in them. Ask them what they DO like about your work - and exaggerate that!

There’s a LOT that goes into art… no matter it’s a whole industry! Doing it all on your own is HARD and it’s a bit unthinkable how much artists have to do to compete with industries. But it’s not impossible, and it’s definitely worth it. :)

Hope I didn’t bore any of y’all who made it down this far. 

Thanks!

[wyvernseeker]

Here are my drawings of my character Magdaline Pazcha-Kollus and her weapons, the Megiddra (with it’s upgraded form) and the Cyber Angel.

When I came up with this character, I had first looked at the movie God’s Not Dead. While I utterly disliked the movie (due to how it makes all atheists to be evil and all Christians good and utterly makes Christians look terrible by doing this), I did like the character Kara (played by Cassidy Gifford) even if the movie didn’t develop her all that much and tried to make her the Eve tempting main character Josh away from God. Because of that, I decided to base a character off her, somewhat.

Keep in mind, what I have of Magdaline’s bio is not based off the bio of Kara’s actress. Anyways, here it is. Magdaline is a citizen of the theocracy of Ecclesia. Born and raised in Cathedral City, the capital of Ecclesia, Magdaline and her mother have face quite a bit of persecution from the citizens of the city who know that she is an illegitimate child. What is known by her mother Bethany and isn’t know to those people and even Magdaline herself is that Magdaline is the illegitimate daughter of Issactalis president Aurum Stadion, conceived years before he met his wife and love of his life Argenta (Aurum used to travel the world trying to learn more about cultures, met Bethany and thus Magdaline was conceived, though he didn’t know about her for years). Due to her illegitimate status being recorded in the dossiers of her, which are looked at by officials of the country for those who may pose a threat and undermine the theocracy, Magdaline and her mother have faced shunning all throughout Ecclesia due to word of mouth. 

When she became old enough she decided to join the peacekeeping force of Ecclesia, although she still faced scorn and derision, especially from the Supreme Leader Pius Eckhart and those close to him. While as a peacekeeper she fell in love and had a relationship with Abel Zephoram, although as he fell further and further into the thrall of Supreme Leader Eckhart their relationship fell into decline and disrepair before coming to an end. In addition to that, Magdaline learned ex-Ecclesia peacekeeper, family friend of her mother’s and her own personal mentor Radames Blaze was a member of the Movement Of Reforming Ecclesia which seeked to remove Supreme Leader Eckhart from power,  topple the theocracy of Ecclesia and instigate either a democracy or Republic in place of the theocracy, Magdaline opted to join with him whilst serving as an inside man (or woman) to the rebel fighters, having the desire to topple a system where people like her are punished for the circumstances of their birth as well as one that she saw inherently corrupt.

Magdaline was present during the terrorist attack orchestrated by Aurum Stadion during the World Festival when she was in attendance. During the commotion at the stadium where it took place, Aurum saw her and realized she looked like his old love Bethany Kollus and as a result sent an informant to gather info on Magdaline, which let him know she was his daughter. As a gift of sort for his illegitimate child, Aurum sent to her one of the first perfected models of laser blades made in Issactalis, which Magdaline christened ‘Cyber Angel’.

The first image in this post is the first drawing I did of Magdaline. I felt like giving her an outfit based off a nun but in hindsight I think the outfit doesn’t look too well designed, and as a result when I feel like redrawing her I’m gonna fix it alongside her hairstyle. As for the second drawing, that is what I envision Magdaline would look like in what I would dub “Season 4″ of my series. The reason the Cyber Angel is seen in this one and not the first was because I hadn’t come up with the idea of giving her a laser blade yet, though she does get it when she still has the nun-like outfit in my story during Season 1.

Personality-wise, Magdaline is someone who is driven, meticulous, calculating, somewhat manipulative, at times egocentric and most important of all compassionate, all of which due to her rather unenviable childhood. Due to her childhood and her time under Radames’ mentorship Magdaline has learned to be compassionate to those who go through rough times and have been dealt bad cards in their lives. However she can be calculating and manipulative in how she deals with people both allies and enemies. Also due to her experiences, she has a driven and meticulous personality, though at times she is capable of rolling with the punches, so to speak. As a defense mechanism she can be rather egocentric and prone to arrogance, which at times screws her up as well as what she plans.

Magdaline’s first name is so because on a Christian radio station my brother listened to one time, I heard someone who was calling the station for one of the programs was named Magdalene. However, I chose to replace the second-to-last E with an I because that’s how I thought it was spelled (silly me, right?) though I do intend to keep her name as such. Pazcha comes from the word for Easter, which in modern times is seen as when Jesus Christ was crucified only to rise from the dead three days later. Kollus is supposed to be a sort of play on the world colosseum, which is a synonym for stadium.

Magdaline’s weapons of choice are a magic gun called the Megiddra and also later on a laser blade called the Cyber Angel. Magic guns like the Megiddra are the one of the oldest types of magiteck weaponry in the setting of World Storiya. They are designed to look like flintlock pistols but are powered by a type of magic crystal which condenses mana into a hard, bullet-like form which can be fired, although it can’t be fired too much in one setting lest it overheat. Said crystals are injected through the bottom of the handle of the gun which opens up and can be closed. The Cyber Angel is a perfected magiteck laser blade weapon designed in Issactalis by Aurum Stadion and the Issactalis Magiteck Military Weapons Development  Team. This type of weapon also uses mana crystals to work, though unlike the magic guns solidifies mana into a type of plasma-like blade for use that is capable of cutting through metals with ease. Both weapons also have mythril in their construction to make them work easier due to the properties of the metal in question.

Never thought I’d have so much typed for a character in a side story (albeit one of the main players in the side story about Ecclesia). Anyways, like and reblog if you enjoyed the drawings and the long description.

[unavenged-robin]

Congratulations on hitting 2k followers!! For your open prompts could you do Damian and Dick with: “You’ve been asleep for the past twelve hours and I got a little worried.” Thanks and really congrats again that's a great number to hit. :D

Aw, thank you Dawn ♥ And here you go, tooth rotting fluff both because you deserve it and to atone for the previous angst :D

Dick woke up the exact moment the bedroom door opened, instincts kicking in even in the state of exhaustion he had currently driven himself into, but he kept quiet, waiting to see what the kid had in mind.

He had no doubt it was Damian either, because Alfred had no reasons to be this quiet or this insecure about entering Dick’s room, but he couldn’t think of a reason for the boy to come and wake him up, since there was no patrol scheduled for the next few nights and Dick couldn’t remember any other pressing engagement.

So he didn’t say anything, didn’t even open his eyes, only listened to the hushed sound of bare feet approaching his bed. He could feel Damian’s eyes on him, but there was no sense of urgency accompanying him, and the kid’s breathing was soft and regular and not hitched up as it would be after a nightmare.

Dick was tempted to spoke up out of curiosity at this point, but silence and sleep still sounded sweeter than any conversation. Beside, he was sure that Damian was going to call out his bluff any moment now.

Instead he felt the corner of the blanket being lifted up, then the mattress sank under Damian’s light weight, and a moment later the boy was curled up next to Dick, close enough that he could feel his warmth, but still not touching him. Since Damian hadn’t immediately demanded his attention like he would’ve if anything was wrong or if he needed something from him, Dick thought that maybe the kid had just got lonely and came to him for a little silent company.

And he was perfectly happy to have Damian there, to be close to him without having to talk or to move, be content only with each other’s presence. He was about to concede himself the only effort of stretching one arm across the bed to wrap around Damian’s waist and drag him closer to his chest, when he felt the boy’s fingers skim above his forehead to tuck back a strand of hair from Dick’s face.

It was a quick touch, very gentle, and it almost made him open his eyes. Good thing he didn’t, he discovered an instant later, when Damian’s fingertips slid down, carefully tracing the outlines of Dick’s face as if he were drawing it on a canvas. It was a little weird being on the receiving side of it, but Dick had done the same thing before, when Damian had been hurt or deeply asleep, and he knew the gesture was affectionate and even almost too tender for Damian’s standards, so he let himself relax under his little brother’s touch and let the boy keep redrawing his features with soft fingers and no words.

He was on the verge of falling asleep again, when Damian decided he was done with his new game and poked his cheek hard enough to make him wake up again.

“Hey”, Dick murmured, opening one eye.

Damian looked back at him with his usual scowl.

“You’ve been asleep for the past twelve hours”, the kid informed him, and he probably intended for it to sound like a stern reproach, but some softness had crept into his voice too, and he sounded more concerned than anything.

“And you got a little worried?”, Dick ventured with a sleepy smile, unable to help himself.

Damian clicked his tongue disapprovingly, but didn’t deny the charge - and if Dick had needed any confirmation that would be it.

“I’m fine, kiddo”, Dick reassured him. “Only a little overtired.”

Damian hummed and didn’t sounded very convinced by his words, so Dick shifted closer and wrapped an arm around him. Damian settled into his arms with the obligatory sigh of resignation, but didn’t complain when Dick tucked him under his chin, or about the kisses on his forehead.

“Another hour and then we’ll both get up, okay?”, he asked after a minute, as an afterthought, but he only received a soft snore in response.