#having a consistent art style is for the weak

[mikartwheat]

These guys again...

[prokopetz]

On the one hand, it's true that the way Dungeons & Dragons defines terms like "sorcerer" and "warlock" and "wizard" is really only relevant to Dungeons & Dragons and its associated media – indeed, how these terms are used isn't even consistent between editions of D&D! – and trying to apply them in other contexts is rarely productive.

On the other hand, it's not true that these sorts of fine-grained taxonomies of types of magic are strictly a D&D-ism and never occur elsewhere. That folks make this argument is typically a symptom of being unfamiliar with Dungeons & Dragons' source material. D&D's main inspirations are American literary sword and sorcery fantasy spanning roughly the 1930s through the early 1980s, and fine-grained taxonomies of magic users absolutely do appear in these sources; they just aren't anything like as consistent as the folks who try to cram everything into the sorcerer/warlock/wizard model would prefer.

For example, in Lyndon Hardy's "Five Magics" series, the five types of magical practitioners are:

Alchemists: Drawing forth the hidden virtues of common materials to craft magic potions; limited by the fact that the outcomes of their formulas are partially random.

Magicians: Crafting enchanted items through complex manufacturing procedures; limited by the fact that each step in the procedure must be performed perfectly with no margin for error.

Sorcerers: Speaking verbal formulas to basically hack other people's minds, permitting illusion-craft and mind control; limited by the fact that the exercise of their art eventually kills them.

Thaumaturges: Shaping matter by manipulating miniature models; limited by the need to draw on outside sources like fires or flywheels to make up the resulting kinetic energy deficit.

Wizards: Summoning and binding demons from other dimensions; limited by the fact that the binding ritual exposes them to mental domination by the summoned demon if their will is weak.

"Warlock", meanwhile, isn't a type of practitioner, but does appear as pejorative term for a wizard who's lost a contest of wills with one of their own summoned demons.

Conversely, Lawrence Watt-Evans' "Legends of Ethshar" series includes such types of magic-users as:

Sorcerers: Channelling power through metal talismans to produce fixed effects; in the time of the novels, talisman-craft is largely a lost art, and most sorcerers use found or inherited talismans.

Theurges: Summoning gods; the setting's gods have no interest in human worship, but are bound not to interfere in the mortal world unless summoned, and are thus amenable to cutting deals.

Warlocks: Wielding X-Men style psychokinesis by virtue of their attunement to the telepathic whispers emanating from the wreckage of a crashed alien starship. (They're the edgy ones!)

Witches: Producing improvisational effects mostly related to healing, telepathy, precognition, and minor telekinesis by drawing on their own internal energy.

Wizards: Drawing down the infinite power of Chaos and shaping it with complex rituals. Basically D&D wizards, albeit with a much greater propensity for exploding.

You'll note that both taxonomies include something called a "sorcerer", something called a "warlock", and something called a "wizard", but what those terms mean in their respective contexts agrees neither with the Dungeons & Dragons definitions, nor with each other.

(Admittedly, these examples are from the 1980s, and are thus not free of D&D's influence; I picked them because they both happened to use all three of the terms in question in ways that are at odds with how D&D uses them. You can find similar taxonomies of magic use in earlier works, but I would have had to use many more examples to offer multiple competing definitions of each of "sorcerer", "warlock" and "wizard", and this post is already long enough!)

So basically what I'm saying is giving people a hard time about using these terms "wrong" – particularly if your objection is that they're not using them in a way that's congruent with however D&D's flavour of the week uses them – makes you a dick, but simply having this sort of taxonomy has a rich history within the genre. Wizard phylogeny is a time-honoured tradition!

[new-momb]

Part 2/4

I returned! What a miracle.

Quick side note before starting: I have no consistent art style, so please don't expect one from now on lol (Maybe the real art style is the friends we make along the way)

Okay, so, it's been like a week or so since the landing, idk, I wasn't there. Anyway, J just got across their first victim, yeeey. So, who's gonna kill it? As the leader, J should be the first one to pew pew, right?

WRONG! The weak should always go first, after all, and since N is the only one who can be pushed without crying, who could be more perfect for the task than him? (ignore his trembling, it's normal)

He takes his time and J, as the good leader she is, encourages him with a kind shoulder squeeze, because that's what coworkers are for!

But N doesn't respond, and no matter what she does, his shaking can only get worse (Bro, it's just killing someone, relax)

The gun gets fired eventually.

(damn, someone has good aim for some reason)

And- oh, wow, J just decided to push N behind and steal his first kill. Badass.

...I don't think she looks happy about it, though.

Oof, okay, that's all. See you in another week or so, idk, depends on the motivation. Byee.

[kociakarma]

Hiii I really love your art and was wondering if you wouldnt mind showing what kind of brushes you use for your recent drawings thank you so much and i look forward to your future arts!

Of course! I've answered this a few times before but have never really tagged it properly, and I also realised that I've never actually explained what I use each brush for so I'll do that now!:

I'm gonna go through each of these brushes in order (and if i remember correctly, I'll link the top two since they arent default CSP brushes). (NOTE: almost all of these brushes have anti-aliasing turned off so that it can look more crispy and pixely!!! there is one exception to this that I will get into)

For this brush, I exclusively use it for sketching, it's advertised for inking digital manga panels, but with how the pen pressure is I feel like it adds form to my sketches

This brush, Sleuth-y Pen, is what I use mostly for MSPFA panels, mostly for lining, but sometimes for sketching too if I'm having a hard time with my usual sketching pen. It's really good if you want to replicate the homestuck style, and good for broad strokes on smaller canvases. The only issue is that the brush isn't great for that style if you use it on a larger canvas (ideally you would want 650 x 450) and can be especially messy if you're trying to get smaller details, such as open mouths, and certain facial details. I use another brush for that, which I will get into soon.

My second use for the sleuthy pen is for lineart on larger canvases in my usual artstyle! It has a texture to it that I like, as I like having my art appear a little rough around the edges, and the issue regarding small details isn't nearly as prominent of a problem

Almost done! Now we have the G-pen, a default CSP brush! This used to be one of my top 2 pens, along with its counterpart "Real G-pen" but nowadays I use it for two things: clean-up during rendering (usually getting those smaller details done that the sleuthy pen has difficulty with) and for doing SOME MSPFA panels (Vast Error, for example)

As you can see here, Liaaam's face is a little smoother than the rest of him, that's because I use the G-pen for those details, to keep things a lot cleaner! As for my other use, Vast Error's style from my understanding is a lot more "smooth" and "clean" which is why I exclusively use the G-pen for it, you can also make a lot of thick, juicy brush strokes with it which I feel works really well for the hair and folds in the clothes!

Finally, the Real G-pen, another default. This one is very similar to the last, its only differences are that it's slightly sharper and ever so slightly more messy. It's almost like a medium between the sleuth-y pen, and the g-pen.

I'll be honest, I don't use this pen much anymore, BUT, I still consistently use it for one thing and one thing only: Friendsim sprites. If you want to make friendsim sprites I highly suggest this pen, and making sure it's set to "weak" antialiasing. If you want to go the extra mile, I like to use a lasso-fill tool to block out shadows in all of my art, although if I'm using a rougher brush I'll usually do that manually. There's also other brushes I've been using more for rendering full pieces, such as a "rake brush" and a "design pencil" with low pressure to get details like blush down without making it too intense. That's basically it! I'll link the brushes below if I can find them: sleuth-y pen textured pen rake brush

[artofmaquenda]

Maybe I’m multiple artists, each with their own passions. One adores cute and funny animal art, another paleo and scientific illustrations, while others call for folklore, horror, children’s books, ceramics, plushies, animations, or photography. Whoever whispers loudest guides my hands. It's both a blessing and a curse/weakness and strength: I don’t feel like I have a clear "brand" or consistent style. One day, it’s a mushroom penis, the next a silly opossum. This unpredictability makes it harder for people to know what to expect, but it's what keeps me going. 😊

[literary-illuminati]

2025 Book Review #10 – meat4meat (ed. Gray Levesque)

This is I think the first book I have ever read before it was published – as of posting the crowdfunding campaign is still ongoing! - so it’s a fun novelty to be able to say that I received an early copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. The book itself is also – well okay no, ‘fun’ is probably not actually the correct word, but it’s a body horror collection that succeeded at making me physically queasy at several points so it’s an unqualified artistic success in at least one dimension.

meat4meat is a short story horror anthology – specifically body horror, extra specifically body horror as written by trans and disabled authors (to quote the marketing copy, ‘by those who know it best’) – properly speaking it is an illustrated anthology, but that art wasn’t ready for inclusion in the copy I read, so I’ll stick to talking about the writing. Within the very vague remit the book sets out for itself, there’s no real unifying theme or much of a throughline between the eighteen stories included. They’re all very much short stories – I don’t think any were over twenty pages? - and flipping between them is a study in serial whiplash. Writing style, subject matter, thematic concerns and perspectives, even just conceptions of what ‘body horror’ means all vary drastically from story to story.

To be clear, I consider this a huge positive – it’s an anthology that really lives up to the potential of the medium, and makes an honest effort of capturing the diversity of perspective that’s pretty clearly part of the artistic project here. It also just keeps the reading experience from ever dragging or getting monotonous – if I do not vibe with one author (as is inevitable with these things), there’s a dozen and change others with entirely different takes on the subject. Even if it is somewhat grating to have one story use different paragraph breaks and spacing from the next.

I’m on record as often being pretty annoyed with how ‘horror’ as a genre label is used in books these days – which is to say how often it ends up being life-affirming tales of togetherness and found family but cast from the universal monsters catalogue – so for the sake of consistency I should really praise meat for really living up to the genre label. Even the stories happily framed from the perspective of something monstrously inhuman and happy about it are more than fucked up enough to still be compelling reading.

I’m also very much on record as thinkingthat horror is far better suited to short stories than novels; the extra length of which seems to bring a pressure towards explaining things and giving neat, validating endings on the one hand and on dragging out the tension past what the reveal can sustain on the other. This book’s an excellent case study of that – most of the stories are bare handfuls of scenes, hitting a particular beat or bit of imagery with as much force as they can; very nearly all of them can be summed up as ‘something really fucked up happens to someone’. Triumphantly happy and reassuring endings are thin on the ground, extended denouncements nonexistent. If anything, there are a couple stories that probably could have used a bit more space to breathe – ending up feeling more like imagery without the connective tissue or context to really make it land – but that’s just the natural tradeoff of the format forcing focus and writing economy.

Speaking of imagery – the book advertises itself as a body horror anthology, and it is not lying. There are several stories I would really recommend skipping if you have a weak stomach (which is, in this context, high praise). There’s also several stories that do take a more symbolic or oblique tack when discussing the ruin and gore they make of the human body (a couple of them are some of my favourites in the whole book), but I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the most memorable by far are the gleefully, explicitly vulgar and carnal ones. Here meant in the most literal sense of being fixated on the mess and meat of your body, the way parts of you can swell and suppurate and rot and burst before your eyes (though there are one or two that leave you acutely aware the only difference between horror and niche erotica is framing and perspective).

The anthology is themed around trans and disabled authors, and it’s really very interesting how different stories lean into that. Some are very literally and directly about e.g. the misery and desperate hope of looking for a doctor who can help you until you’re willing to look past every red flag from one who says they will, others are far more symbolic or metaphorical (or else simply aren’t stories I would have though to view through that lens if they were in any other book). There is little (though not no) body horror in the sense of shocking and gory violence or something directly inflicted upon you by an obvious outside force. Instead it’s the horror of the body being usurped or broken from within, horrifying parasitism, some invisible injury or lack making it impossible to do what is expected of you, or a terrifying transformation that’s only dimly understood as it’s lived through that predominate. There are, unsurprisingly, quite a few stories that are in one way or another about the horror of pregnancy, of some disease or failing leaving you so disgusting as to be exiled from conventional society, or both.

While there isn’t much of a unifying subject or throughline between all the stories in the book, the organization and ordering of them actually does a very good job highlighting similarities between specific pairs or small sets of them. One story that is in some sense about or preoccupied with pregnancy or disfigurement or parasitism or romantic connection will be followed by another with an entirely different setting, plot and subject matter which is still very interested in the same theme. It works very well to give the book a sense of cohesion and structure, and makes some of the stories feel like much more than the sum of their parts.

This is definitely a book for a very specific audience – the kind who will read a first story that starts with strange pupating growths breaking across the narrators chest being described in careful and loving detail, and happily power through as it mostly just escalates from there. But for that audience, I absolutely recommend giving this a try.

In which case, the crowdfunding campaign is still active until March 11th – you can back it here.

[sideswipesjetpack]

i cant ask from my sideblog but its meee

talk to me abt webs and irn tell me all their little secrets !!! Whats their storyyy

i wanna draw them

OUGHHHHH HIIIIII!!! EHEHEHEHE

GASPPPPPPPP @aghostsnail GET YOUR ASS OVER HERRRREEEE

WOULD LOVEEEEE IF YOU DREW THEM OH M GEEE THEYD BE SO CUTESY IN YKUR STYLE DUDE AAHHHHHHHHH @ US IMMEDIATELYYYYYYU IF YKU DO PRETTY PLEASE 🗣️🗣️

Anyway, lore 😈😈

ILL KEEP IT SHORT AND SWEET!! As we’re still working out the lore mostly mwahaha but trust snails cooking HARDD for webb lore 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️✍️🔥😈😈 🗣️🗣️

So essentially, Irns from junkeon he resided on a desolate scrap pile floating alone through space during his adult life but prior to that he was in the pits.. ooo new lore drop.. anyway

Thus irn really struggled to fit in and meld in, major sideswipe fanboy ofc, he found a poster of the guy (no idea how to read his name at the time) and became obsessed with his gorgeous bright colours, and his overall coolness i mean cmon it’s the sideswipe

Irns a scrappy little guy, essentially the DIY king (literally) he loves Looking pretty, and ofc a mechanic ✍️🔥🔥 borderline medic but he’s never trained officially, everything he fixes he’s done on himself to know it works and or how to do it (with FEWWW exceptions ie solar panel wings.. mwahaha)

Webb lore.. is cooking greatly so I shan’t spoil TOOO much, but but he is a scientist, the James webb telescope? Thats him he’s built for long distance journeys through the coldness of space he requires little energon output (he’s built different ong he’s too cool) taking pictures of the surrounding stars, planets etc etc mapping out different sectors 🗣️🗣️

As to how they met by chance IRN found webb within a stasis like state, at first he was gonna take some supplies but quickly realised the big guy was alive by the weak ‘em field projecting, so he got to work and gradually started making repairs enough so he can transform back to bot mode again, who knows how long he’s been like that, days, weeks, vorns, centuries? More? No one except the stars know,

There trope consists of strangers->friends->lovers, major slowburn as their bond flourished through their travels through space 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️ Webbs a pacifist, so irn keeps him safe through their journey, either with repairs or from space pirates 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️ or any other rogues…

Irns completely infatuated he’s never met a bot like webb, a huge satellite with probably a shit ton of destructive capabilities yet is a gentle spark, one he’s quickly come to adore who he’s ready to either kill for, or die for, he’s always awed that the big guy actually reciprocates, (Webbs the prettiest bot irns ever seen, and he knows pretty)

BUT YEAH THERES SOME MORE CONDENSED?? Lore, eheheh subject to tweeks here and there but this is the rough layout we’ve got going on 🗣️🗣️

(They have matching fuzzy dice in the others colour palette 😈✍️🔥🔥)

Bonus doodles mwahaha….

And for their tag! If you wanna scroll back to see all their art it’s “Irn & Webb silliness” I’ll tag it in this 🙂‍↕️🙂‍↕️

[autisticandroids]

i've been seeing ai takes that i actually agree with and have been saying for months get notes so i want to throw my hat into the ring.

so i think there are two main distinct problems with "ai," which exist kind of in opposition to each other. the first happens when ai is good at what it's supposed to do, and the second happens when it's bad at it.

the first is well-exemplified by ai visual art. now, there are a lot of arguments about the quality of ai visual art, about how it's soulless, or cliche, or whatever, and to those i say: do you think ai art is going to be replacing monet and picasso? do you think those pieces are going in museums? no. they are going to be replacing soulless dreck like corporate logos, the sprites for low-rent edugames, and book covers with that stupid cartoon art style made in canva. the kind of art that everyone thinks of as soulless and worthless anyway. the kind of art that keeps people with art degrees actually employed.

this is a problem of automation. while ai art certainly has its flaws and failings, the main issue with it is that it's good enough to replace crap art that no one does by choice. which is a problem of capitalism. in a society where people don't have to sell their labor to survive, machines performing labor more efficiently so humans don't have to is a boon! this is i think more obviously true for, like, manufacturing than for art - nobody wants to be the guy putting eyelets in shoes all day, and everybody needs shoes, whereas a lot of people want to draw their whole lives, and nobody needs visual art (not the way they need shoes) - but i think that it's still true that in a perfect world, ai art would be a net boon, because giving people without the skill to actually draw the ability to visualize the things they see inside their head is... good? wider access to beauty and the ability to create it is good? it's not necessary, it's not vital, but it is cool. the issue is that we live in a society where that also takes food out of people's mouths.

but the second problem is the much scarier one, imo, and it's what happens when ai is bad. in the current discourse, that's exemplified by chatgpt and other large language models. as much hand-wringing as there has been about chatgpt replacing writers, it's much worse at imitating human-written text than, say, midjourney is at imitating human-made art. it can imitate style well, which means that it can successfully replace text that has no meaningful semantic content - cover letters, online ads, clickbait articles, the kind of stuff that says nothing and exists to exist. but because it can't evaluate what's true, or even keep straight what it said thirty seconds ago, it can't meaningfully replace a human writer. it will honestly probably never be able to unless they change how they train it, because the way LLMs work is so antithetical to how language and writing actually works.

the issue is that people think it can. which means they use it to do stuff it's not equipped for. at best, what you end up with is a lot of very poorly written children's books selling on amazon for $3. this is a shitty scam, but is mostly harmless. the behind the bastards episode on this has a pretty solid description of what that looks like right now, although they also do a lot of pretty pointless fearmongering about the death of art and the death of media literacy and saving the children. (incidentally, the "comics" described demonstrate the ways in which ai art has the same weaknesses as ai text - both are incapable of consistency or narrative. it's just that visual art doesn't necessarily need those things to be useful as art, and text (often) does). like, overall, the existence of these kids book scams are bad? but they're a gnat bite.

to find the worst case scenario of LLM misuse, you don't even have to leave the amazon kindle section. you don't even have to stop looking at scam books. all you have to do is change from looking at kids books to foraging guides. i'm not exaggerating when i say that in terms of texts whose factuality has direct consequences, foraging guides are up there with building safety regulations. if a foraging guide has incorrect information in it, people who use that foraging guide will die. that's all there is to it. there is no antidote to amanita phalloides poisoning, only supportive care, and even if you survive, you will need a liver transplant.

the problem here is that sometimes it's important for text to be factually accurate. openart isn't marketed as photographic software, and even though people do use it to lie, they have also been using photoshop to do that for decades, and before that it was scissors and paintbrushes. chatgpt and its ilk are sometimes marketed as fact-finding software, search engine assistants and writing assistants. and this is dangerous. because while people have been lying intentionally for decades, the level of misinformation potentially provided by chatgpt is unprecedented. and then there are people like the foraging book scammers who aren't lying on purpose, but rather not caring about the truth content of their output. obviously this happens in real life - the kids book scam i mentioned earlier is just an update of a non-ai scam involving ghostwriters - but it's much easier to pull off, and unlike lying for personal gain, which will always happen no matter how difficult it is, lying out of laziness is motivated by, well, the ease of the lie.* if it takes fifteen minutes and a chatgpt account to pump out fake foraging books for a quick buck, people will do it.

*also part of this is how easy it is to make things look like high effort professional content - people who are lying out of laziness often do it in ways that are obviously identifiable, and LLMs might make it easier to pass basic professionalism scans.

and honestly i don't think LLMs are the biggest problem that machine learning/ai creates here. while the ai foraging books are, well, really, really bad, most of the problem content generated by chatgpt is more on the level of scam children's books. the entire time that the internet has been shitting itself about ai art and LLM's i've been pulling my hair out about the kinds of priorities people have, because corporations have been using ai to sort the resumes of job applicants for years, and it turns out the ai is racist. there are all sorts of ways machine learning algorithms have been integrated into daily life over the past decade: predictive policing, self-driving cars, and even the youtube algorithm. and all of these are much more dangerous (in most cases) than chatgpt. it makes me insane that just because ai art and LLMs happen to touch on things that most internet users are familiar with the working of, people are freaking out about it because it's the death of art or whatever, when they should have been freaking out about the robot telling the cops to kick people's faces in.

(not to mention the environmental impact of all this crap.)

[wordsnstuff]

Hello! How are you? I have a question:

Should I focus on what I'm good or what I'm bad at in writing? I like to think that I can write poetic stuff rather well, but I can't write dialouges to save my life. So should I just focus on writing the stuff I'm good at and ignore the rest or should I focus on getting better at dialouges and such?

Leaning into strengths vs focusing on improvement...

I'm very well! Thank you for asking.

I think that this is an important conversation to have with yourself as any sort of artist, and I don't believe that it needs to end with a choice between practicing a skill you could improve at or the sticking to what you're good at.

A writer's brain is a muscle, and as you gain experience honing technical proficiency, you become more informed as to what strengths and weaknesses are apparent in your work. The first step is to examine how you approach different parts of the development of a story. Take the time to observe how you personally think through the process of writing dialogue and how that differs from your process writing poetic prose. Harmony between different parts of your writing process will make writing easier and lead to a more consistent style and quality. Your aim is to bring one skill to the level of another, so until you understand why prose comes more naturally to you, it will be challenging to identify why dialogue doesn't.

Perhaps dialogue requires you to exercise imagination in a way that isn't as consistent with the way you process the world around you. For me, dialogue can be challenging because my inner monologue centers observation and my thoughts occur to me in a more abstract way, leading me to be more adept at skills like articulating metaphors. However, this way of thinking makes it challenging to frame my ideas literally, as you must do to imagine a scenario and then predict a chain of events or interactions between elements. Identifying how your imagination functions organically will help you understand where your ideas come from and why certain ways of expressing them come more easily.

I think it's important to incorporate experimentation and practice into the routine of any art medium that you aim to improve at. Designating specific time to stretch the muscles, experiment with a new exercise, and broaden your skillset will always have a positive effect on your work overall, and when you identify a weaker area it's even easier to focus your time and energy to practice that. Alongside any large project, there should be a separate area for practice and play, because regardless of how skilled or passionate one is, there is always room to learn something new and expand one's ability.

I highly recommend installing time in your writing routine for specifically practicing the skill you are least confident in without pressure to contribute that practice to your primary project. Utilize whatever exercises motivate you. Personally, I like the idea of selecting a simple writing prompt and challenging yourself to write a scene entirely composed of dialogue, but you might prefer to set a short timer and try to imagine and record an organic, simple, and believable conversation between two people about something like choosing a paint color for a kitchen.

Always make time to better your craft. It will always deliver results.

Best of luck,

x Kate

-

Masterlist . Ko-Fi . Patreon

[mintmint2]

Idk what to put here

Apologies in advance—I like vomiting out rants of every single thought I’ve ever had for the past 19 years so if you don’t wanna mentally narrate out this giant wall of text or if you’re just here for the small doodles of your characters, feel free to just skip down to the small tiny insignificant sketches I made! This is really just a giant newsletter of what I’ve been doing these past 3 months.

(Something I would like to add is pretty please don’t reblog this, I want this to be like only a small circle of people to see, if you have something to say you can leave a comment!!!)

((Edit: nvm yall it seems everybody reblogged it😭😭))

My project. I’ve been working on my project for 3 months. 400 hours.🙂

Okay, so, for these past 3 months I’ve been aggressively relearning how to animate using the most basic animation app to exist. And what I mean by “relearning”, I mean diving headfirst into the animation studio with little to no prior knowledge of animation other than animation memes and some.. other.. stuff. And with that limited information, I managed to crank out a low-quality, crappy, mediocre 10+ minute prologue that I hate and it sucks and I hate I ha. I honestly had no idea what I was doing—I walked into animating with a giant lollipop and a propeller hat, and I came out as a 40 year old man with depression, but now armed with stacks of newfound knowledge about animating, so it wasn’t for nothing!! Seriously, drawing every day for 5+ hours is no joke; I genuinely thought this project would take like 1.5 or 2 months max with how simple I made it… but turns out drawing thousands of rendered individual frames with a bunch of other tiny prickly problems tripping you over is actually pretty time consuming even if it sucks😔.

But at least now that I’ve experienced the gruelling process of animating a several minute video first-hand, I was able to figure out my strengths/weaknesses in art and how I could exploit them, things that take a long time, things to avoid, and things to look out for. Even though I think my added skills in this department can be helpful in the future, it’s still super time consuming, which I think kinda ties nicely in my more major topic!???

I’m doing a MEGA art style change, I’ve rubbernecked at a lot of olden cartoons and decided I wanted to shift towards those art styles with no rendering and the characters are like kinda chibi in a way—you know, that kind of style. But this isn’t just me wanting to copy my favourite cartoon shows though; I looked into the pros and cons of a simpler art style and the pros outweigh the cons by a landslide

I obviously am not a good artist and I’ve struggled with things like consistency, pacing and proportions, if I can just break down all my characters into shapes and add rules to how to draw them + stylized anatomy, I think It’ll help with making characters NOT look like a grown 40 year old women in one scene, a child in the other, and a teenage drunken boy in the next.

I literally can’t imagine drawing fight scenes either with full body anatomy that isn’t simple shapes, drawing a running cycle or a character doing parkour that lasts literally only 2 seconds is hard enough for my skill set. Don’t make me have to draw them engaging in a full-blown battle with each other, it’ll be even worse if the characters start shrinking every frame but I don’t notice till it’s too late.

Plus, I pretty much grew up with cartoons too, so I also just feel more connected and motivated when it comes to characters that look like Steven Universe or chibi-styled in general, it makes me wanna draw them more and reduces burnout a lot. (Seriously though, I hate shading SO MUCH. I wanna draw the next frame already stop making me go back and fix this pixel of value that wasn’t added and somehow you can still see it a mile away💔 and wouldn’t you know it I’ve lost my sanity and begun racing through / deleting scenes to make it go by faster, which ruins the pacing and everything alongside it)

Do you want some concepts? No clothing folds and allat. Sorry I was too exhausted to make full drawings… actually a lot of my actual sketches for these people are all in my sketchbook, got like 19 pages worth of all y’all’s oc’s but it’s too awkward positioning my camera to snap a pic of it

I’m learning how to do fast paced figure drawing. (Trying), and the crew isn’t here because everybody in that crew is getting a redesign and sans is having a identity crisis too

Another thing is; I’m going to be taking a break after this 400 hour grind session, no I’m not being lazy and I really DO wanna go back to dragging my finger across the screen till it bleeds (because it’s an unhealthy addiction at this point) but I NEED planning and practice.

A lot of stuff has changed since I’ve started—plot, character designs, story… I also finally started tackling architecture, designing rooms and the houses based on both the characters logic and practical functionality, cause making a background with just one giant blob of equal paint is a bit… boring. And I’m practicing art too, my art has changed quite a lot ever since I started paying less attention to small details and instead on form and movement within the lines.

I’ve got so many ideas swimming in my head I need to test out and more. I don’t have a teacher and I’m too lazy to find tutorials so I’m doing this the trial and error way. Test literally everything, cancel out the ineffective and keep the best. I need time to figure out stuff and I think it’s working because not only has my entire art kinda improved in a way, I have been able to get a truck ton of plot down and how I want everything to end and everything.

The last thing I wanna add because it’s a problem I also need to fix… holy guacamole, I NEED to improve on my story boarding and pacing—I kinda blame that on myself for cutting out/rushing scenes to get it done but goodness does the plot fly by. Like how the chocolate did the lab/true-lab scene and waterfall scene all fit in 2 minutes?? I chose the opportunity to animate less over the writing and characters itself, literally feel so ashamed after that💔 insanity and mind rot of drawing for hours really does catch up to you eventually though. The results were cringy anyways so

Yeah okay I have like a TON more of stuff to write down here as problems I need to fix, but I’ve been writing for too long and this post is getting stuffed with too much words it’s gonna overflow and shatter. Basically I’ve learned a lot of stuff from this, I’m aiming to improve in every category, even if I don’t, I gotta make some sort of progress.

So uh… that’s it, I guess? I’ll update every once in a while… nah, watch me vanish for another twenty years. That doesn’t mean I’m not still here though, I’m watching every post you guys are making and documenting every fact and detail about your characters. 👀

Sorry for the length and weirdness of this rant

I forgot to mention—I made my very own/first persona. I call them MintMail cause they’re a mailman…I don’t… really know what to do with them.. uh, I’ll probably feed them sometime tomorrow

Ohhhh boy, time to tag the people I sketched. (Guys I promise I’m not tagging you just so you can read this)

Trickster belongs to @yourloveaton !

Nems belongs to @bloobluee !

Virux belongs to @bunrux !

Sanu is mine.

Magi is also mine.

Trans belongs to @ken-tfc / @fivebecomesnone and @youregonnahavetime !

Dionysus belongs to @javaxzun !

[utilitycaster]

What do you mean (from your latest post) that you think that many actual play failures are failures of ambition?

Usually, when an actual play show doesn't click for me, it's because the GM or players aimed very high or tried to push the boundaries (of the medium or system) and it didn't quite land right. It's a pretty new medium, and while I've been very openly disparaging of how much many writers in the AP space focus overmuch on novelty over consistent quality, I do think these failures are important! I think it's good to play with what the medium can be! I just think that sometimes, it does indeed fail.

Examples off the top of my head:

Too much plot for allotted length: EXU Prime was fun to watch but I think this plot really needed to be a 16-20 episode season, not an 8 episode one, which meant that we never really learned Myr'atta's motivation or the deal with Ted until years later in the real world despite that being the core plot. Similar issues have come up with various D20 seasons; I think running a one- or two- session story isn't too hard to do, or running a longform campaign isn't too hard to do, but 8 or 10 or 20 episodes can be really difficult to plan for properly, and a lot of people overfill.

Trying to bend the system too far: I wrote a long-ass post I cannot find about this for a few D20 seasons as well (notably Neverafter) and I've fallen off of WBN for a few reasons but in part because it really increasingly feels like D&D is the wrong system - the classes of D&D support the worldbuilding, but the pace and style and magic system of D&D increasingly feel like they and the narrative are in conflict.

Trying to fit in An Important Message: the infamous Rusty Quill Gaming Everything Changes [now make a monumental decision we have not once explored in 7 real world years of telling this story, in the last half of the last episode] is a big one here. This is not unique to AP (this is why Battlestar Galactica's ending is widely panned) but I think the nature of actual play makes it more likely because to some extent you as the GM must relinquish a good degree of control.

Not realizing what you need to plan for: ultimately, in my opinion, the failure of Campaign 3. I don't think the problem is that Matt wanted to bring everything together across multiple campaigns; I don't think this is a cheap setup with a pre-determined outcome (though I could be proven wrong); I think the problem is that there needed to be a much more stringent character creation process and on-rails early plot to actually get from point A to point B in a way that felt natural within the story.

Trying to break production value records while neglecting story: With the caveat that I hated nearly every second of the hour of Kollok I watched, I have yet to see a review that talks about anything it does other than how good the production values are (*whisper* they're not even that good). Burrow's End had some really good aesthetic/filming choices and some really not good ones on top of having a story I found weak; the season of Candela Obscura I thought had the strongest story had no split-screen film edits. This could just be that my AP introduction was TAZ Balance followed by simultaneous C1 and early C2, but like...I've heard incredible actual play with no music and no fancy lighting and no sound effects and no official character art, and I've watched some heavily produced stuff that had the plot of a fucking Ed Wood movie and was utterly joyless to boot. Story first; accessibility production values (clean and clear sound, transcripts, making all speakers visible if you're a filmed production) second; anything else should ONLY come after that.

[cupidastrology]

𝐕𝐞𝐧𝐮𝐬 ︎ ♀︎ 𝐢𝐧 𝐋𝐞𝐨 ♌︎ 𝐭𝐡𝐫𝐨𝐮𝐠𝐡 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝟏𝟐 𝐇𝐨𝐮𝐬𝐞𝐬

Please do not repost or copy <3

This is a general post of how Venus ︎ ♀︎ in Leo behaves in each house of the tropical zodiac, this is not a transit post. Please apply natal venus ︎ ♀︎ and house position within interpretation.

All Birth Chart Readings are available to book.

( ★ _ <)

1st - confidence is shown through the physical appearance, stomach sensitivities and issues are prone to happen if careless in what you intake food wise, your insecurities manifest as stomach aches. many are either highly jealous of your position in life, style, look, and eyes, or worship your presence.

2nd - you are never ignored, the voice and opinion is always highly favored or hard to overlook by your peers. you may do well in a position of power, where you are speaking for others or defending them. focusing on possible exercise as your emotional outlet may influence others to walk your path.

3rd - your thoughts are focused, consistently tailored to your values, and may have large spending ventures when the check hits. its important to take note on your choices, which may involve much indulgence. being sure to have a clear mind on what you want is important before anyone else.

4th - you are private in your home manners but loud about the raw childhood you may have experienced. possible abilities to learn homemade remedies to better the look, style, and body that may want others to know your secrets to success physically. others are influenced by your humble demeanor and secrecy. you are able to do well in the world of real estate and interior design.

5th - dating is always full of drama but creativity is endless, you may do well in spaces of theatre, music, and drag. connecting with others in a artistic space is important and may help you to grow more in confidence. love can be seen through flings or start at parties or the club.

6th - the power in work and self care is prominent here, and is admired by your peers and family. you do well in taking care of others, and may focus on the well being of those you protect and defend constantly. your self care comes first and creation of new remedies or makeup styles make you otherworldly.

7th - romance is always heightened but can attract partners that want a piece of the confidence that you have. you are constantly attracting others into your world through networking, but generally you're a person with a lot of dominance and importance through daily life.

8th - money is consistently coming into your life, depending on the confidence and security that you hold towards yourself and your assets. to focus on your privacy can be difficult, especially due to many wanting to access you more than a romantic way. you attract long term romance and intimate people and relationships in your life, for once not easy to cut off when it becomes old and weak.

9th - you have high beliefs and spiritual understandings of the world around you, and this can help with finding strength and motivation in times of dread or worry. you connect with those that believe in a higher purpose, that focus on teaching others way of living, and may find power in the world of spellwork. powerful women in magic is attractive to you.

10th - you are both the powerful boss and the target to other competition in your life, especially when it comes to romance you connect or attract beings with a lot of status, motivation, confidence, and at times possessiveness. you are shown off, never to hide in the dark, and constantly with a lover that has big dreams to take actions towards in your life.

11th - friendships and travel may be a big deal with a possibility to find big time romance in your friendships and in your social meetups/parties. it is always fun to connect with others, and you do well in the world of fashion, art exhibits, or creations of the skin (skin care, makeup) that influences others to follow you.

12th - your love can continuously be tested, at times nonunderstanding of why what everyone does doesn't work for you. finding your own ways of motivation and confidence is important through much isolation, but also observing the confidence/security of others. to find yourself to see the root of another, but to observe the ideas you have that can become stronger through much time and patience. possessive partners can be a drag, and self creation can heal you here.

[abbyz-elda]

Get to Know Fanfic Authors

Thank you @amelias-calamity-quintet for the tag!!

1. How many works on AO3? 24

2. Total AO3 word count? 323,619

3. Top 5 fics by kudos:

A Link to the Stars - in collaboration with @coffebits

In Between - my first fic AND coming up on 1 year since I finished it!

To Become an Immortal Dragon

Vows of a Hero

Lyrics of Love

4. What fandoms do you write for? Just Legend of Zelda at the moment, though I have been tempted to expand more than a few times

5. Do you respond to comments? Yes! I might miss some here and there but I love reading and responding to comments and I have a special fondness for my consistent commenters and love to see them pop up

6. Fic with the angsty ending? In Between technically ends just seconds before the very first Tears of the Kingdom cutscene, so probably that one! I usually write very happy endings. Also one of my one-shots, Light Conversation, is basically just angst all the way through lol

7. Fic with the happiest ending? To Become an Immortal Dragon ends very softly with a lot of hope, but also Vows of a Hero ends in the same way so take your pic! Though I think the overall fluffiest ending is Lyrics of Love which ends in a proposal.

8. Do you get hate? I can't say that I have, I've gotten some "this isn't my style" comments but nothing worse than that!

9. Do you write smut? Nope!

10. Ever had a fic stolen? Not that I'm aware of but I guess I have a new fear unlocked

11. Have you ever co-written a fic? Yes! The plot, character arcs, and world building for A Link to the Stars are all written by coffebits and I simply write the scene-to-scene stuff based on her outline.

Also, I wrote Colds and Confessions with @hyylia for Zelinktines!

12. All time favorite ship? Definitely Zelink (as that's all that I write) but I have a special place in my heart for BotW Zelink and Skyward Sword Zelink. Also the Zelink in A Link to the Stars has me absolutely vibrating with excitement every time they look at each other

13. Writing strengths? I've been told my prose is very clear and accessible and that I write in a way that makes fics feel like page-turners so I guess that?

14. Writing weaknesses? Definitely overarching plots, I tend to be a pantser and sometimes it lends itself to me having to rewrite a lot of stuff to make the overall plot more coherent

15. First fandom you wrote for? I wrote a self-insert Harry Potter fanfic on wattpad when I was 13 lollll but this is my first foray into writing for fandom since then

16. Favorite Fic you’ve ever written? Ohhh definitely A Link to the Stars, the collaboration is so much fun and the art just makes me screech with excitement. Outside of that, I will always have a fondness for To Become an Immortal Dragon because it contains some of my favorite Zelink interactions I've ever written even though the angst is heavy hehe

I'll tag @hyylia @mailrebel and @summonerluna as well as anyone who wants to participate!

[whimpee]

by the by, the doodles and comments from my friends are kept there too just cause i didn't bother to take em out

i was dead for a while, i'm sorry.

anyways massive death note whiteboard posting + some rambling about it from me if you care enough to read, it's nothing impactful.

I actually have been really enjoying DN despite not really being interested in anime, currently catching up on the manga and stuff cause I really like the art style.

both the anime and manga have different strengths and weaknesses so consuming both has been kinda fun.

so anyways I have no where to really dump my neurotic thoughts about Death Note and so i'll make some notes (haha) for possible future things I may post about it. hopefully this interest will be consistent but I doubt it.

the interactions between the characters are by far my favorite thing about this show thing.

one thing that I want to touch on is my thoughts about ships because they seem kinda goofy in this fandom, I really don't really care for most of them much. however, I obviously have a lotta opinions. so, I find Lawlight (romantically) is funny as a joke and actually wish they could've been friends. I've never been into poly ships and so i don't quite like Misa x Light x L, speaking of Misa, she really deserved better. her obsessiveness was something that did influence the story I guess.

I'm a bit tired and my words will be a bit scrambled, I'll stop for now but hope that i will rise again with something better

[ssallamander]

need money, commissions open

i don’t have a consistent “full render/flats/line/sketch” pipeline, so prices will vary depending on the amount of detail and characters

price starts at 50$ usd unless it’s something very simple, but if you are from a country with weak currency i can make a discount, ‘tis fine.

payment is through Payoneer, maaaaybe through Paypal if that’s a dealbreaker (or you can donate to a non profit in my name if either option is unavailable)

do:

> original characters

> some gore/body horror

> anthro (sort of)

don’t:

> fanart (except moorcock)

> real people

> erotica/fetishes (neutral nudity is fine)

if you want to commission me, send me your request, references and an example of my work that you like the style of, and i will do my best to match :) (all my stuff is tagged #/art, should be easy to find)

[inafieldofstarflowers]

Top five reasons you (yes, you) should watch Star Wars Rebels:

Immaculate found family energy—these characters have a home together. They know each other’s strengths and weaknesses and support one another in achieving the things that are important to them, and their relationships drive the show in a way that feels incredibly genuine.

Character depth—Rebels genuinely has some of the best character development of any Star Wars property I’m familiar with. Each of the characters gets a chance to grow in some way, whether that’s gaining perspective of the world or understanding something new about themselves. They are well fleshed out and consistent. It’s also such a cool look into both what it meant to be a Jedi in the rebellion era, between iterations of the Jedi order, and what it meant to not be a Jedi but still fight in the rebellion. I love that Rebels tells both stories and doesn’t favor one or the other.

Quality Lore—Rebels has a clear trajectory: you get to watch the cast progress from being one of many isolated rebel cells to helping create a unified rebellion. And yet, the show never loses sight of its roots, and the heart of the show stays grounded on Lothal, the planet where it began, and Lothal becomes something of a symbol throughout the show. Also, in terms of broader Star Wars lore, SO many important items or people have their stories told—you get lots of nods to or arcs centered around the darksaber, the mortis gods, the rebellion, darth maul, and more, all of which enrich the experience of watching a lot of the other movies and shows.

Cool visuals—I know a lot of people are turned off by the animation style, especially the saber size, and wish it was like Clone Wars. But Rebels honestly has really beautiful art, and you see a variety of cool planets along the way (Lothal is especially pretty imo).

Compelling villains—This is big for me personally, because to me, Star Wars thrives most when it has a good villain—think Vader and Palpatine; think Maul and Pong Krell. And Rebels has multiple villains who are believably threatening and also work incredibly well in terms of adding to the plot.

Give Rebels a chance; it’s truly incredible, and also just so genuinely fun. Whether you’re a fan of TCW who was thrown by the animation or a fan who just watched Ahsoka and wants to learn more about these characters or a fan who hasn’t dipped into the tv shows, you should ABSOLUTELY watch it. I promise you get used to the sabers being animated differently, and that the characters continue to gain depth throughout.