#i want to redraw this so bad because this was a VERY quick sketch

[snow-albedo]

Something something Diluc as Odysseus something something Venti as Aeolus

[cozyunoist]

what's the idea behind coercion not being ipso facto bad? how does this apply to the abolish schools discourse?

first off have to bracket this by saying i've never discussed coercion at length, because it doesn't tend to be used particularly formally, and because i'm allergic to the cats in the narko squat. but, to the point: there's no big idea behind it. that's just it—if you want to claim something is ipso facto bad, you have to do the moral legwork there; you have to own the edge cases. when you don't do this, you really mean something like 'X phenomenon in many cases causes Y phenomenon, where i find Y bad'. in the case of coercion, people don't tend to explain why it's bad very seriously, because it doesn't actually make any sense to claim that something ipso facto bad becomes un-bad when it's, like, legitimated through some procedure, and attempting to redraw the lines such that it’s only coercion when not legitimated in this fashion stretches credulity. but on the other hand nearly all of us are comfortable with *some* uses; we just try to bracket them in a way which makes them appear non-problematic.

a clearer example of what i’m talking about with more straightforward ramifications would be domination, because we can pick out a more definitive account to consider. we can basically read it as the capacity to affect the choice set of another party; at first blush this makes sense & leads us towards an account of freedom. the trouble is that i’m always in-principle in the position to affect the choice set of a third party, because even something as basic as a market transaction affects something like supply or price in a fashion that renders the choice fundamentally different. the ability to buy something at a dollar and the ability to buy something at a dollar and a penny are different choices, as is the ability to access a good for which one has to queue at t=1 or t=2. but, we don’t even have the conceptual capacity to talk about what it would mean for agents to only make ramification-less choices in this way. it’s ultimately purely specious. the classic example in the literature is that refusing to let a neighbour without a pool use your pool at odd hours of the day is dominating them, but if anything this undersells how badly domination overgeneralises.

i understand coercion and domination aren’t precisely the same, but they’ve been read together by domination theorists to the point where you can appreciate how applying force to change the calculus of the choices before someone is once again a species of this sort of power-over.

the overall way in which to situate my lack of care for concepts of coercion etc., though, comes in the fact i don’t think personal identity or metaphysical conceptions of the subject hold water, & so i find most conceits of autonomy & so on fall apart in much the same way. i’m not a rights-thinker, or a contract-thinker, or a duty-thinker, or other species of liberal.

it’s a neat question how that squares with the abolition of schools, because i do have the sort of gut moral sentiments that seem to comport with this philosophical position fairly awkwardly, though. another example that came to mind recently was my profound distaste for the whole voluntary-death moral panic. ultimately i do think it’s possible to square the circle, but it requires a deeper ethical sketch than i have space for here. to take a very quick stab: when we don’t find ourselves possessed of the idea that moral facts are out there to be discovered by clever metaphysicians, we’re forced to, well, ask questions, and make our peace with using language to do so. in other words, we listen! this is something that perfectionisms, whether of the hedonistic-utilitarian or aristotelian bent, do not.

my scepticism towards schools, aside from sheer horror at the idea of telling someone how i want to dispose of the next ten years of their life, is a scepticism towards knowing what kind of person you ought to develop into. i can help you develop into the kind of person that would bring you satisfaction, and i can tell you the requirements of those rules, but i would never presume to you know your good. because ultimately the aggregate social good i’m looking for comprise, along with everyone else’s, your evaluation of your life as a whole anyway!

[cb-works13]

A Character Info Dump, Featuring Oliver

Wanna feel good about your OC drawing/writing abilities? Redraw something.

(This is mostly just me dumping information about my characters, so if you like reading random things about people you’ve never heard of, you’re at the right place!)

In January, I drew the opinions my characters had about the others. They were quick sketches to just get general ideas on paper, stylized like it was a cutaway interview from a show like The Office. I was extremely proud of them. Just a couple of days ago, I was looking back on those and, in classic “my old art looks terrible” fashion, realized just how much I’ve developed them since, so I decided to take another stab and redo the idea. I started with Oliver.

Oliver used to be an extremely static, almost always chipper person. He was diving hard into the whole “my character flaw is that I care too much!” UGH. As I began digging deep into what he might stand for and how his past would shape his present, I realized that Oliver would have way more to say than just “I love X person! Y person seems like a jerk but he’s okay! Why does Z hate me???” Let’s dig in!

Oliver’s Opinion on Holly:

Take the first set of pictures above the intro. Oliver is talking about his little sister, Holly.

(Note: I’m typing out the paragraphs instead of just posting the pictures with the text because I can have bad handwriting and spelling, so doing this mitigates the number of potential mistakes I can/will make)

Originally, Oliver says, “What am I supposed to say? She’s my little sister! I love her. She’s adventurous and wide-eyed. I want to keep up with her energy, but I also have to protect her, you know?”

Great… what does that mean, exactly? It’s so straight forward and yet it tells me nothing. There’s no relationship Oliver has with his OWN SISTER other than “I love her and I’m a big brother!”

When I redrew it, I really wanted to hint at the underlying reasons why Oliver feels the way he does about his sister. He says, “Holly’s my little sister. She’s been a bundle of joy ever since she was born, and I love her to the moon and back. She’s curious, adventurous, and bubbly, and I hope I never have to see that change in her.”

Ooh, what does Oliver mean by not wanting “to see that change in her”? That sounds way more interesting than “I have to protect her!” Instead of Oliver being all about “protection” in the general, vague sense that most older siblings have for their younger siblings, there’s this idea that Oliver wants to preserve Holly the way she is right now- innocent, joyful, and happy.

Oliver’s Opinion on Roxanne:

Here is Oliver talking about Roxanne.

In the first one, Oliver says “Roxanne is one of the first close friends I ever made! She’s resourceful and smart. If there’s anyone I trust with not letting this mission collapse, it’s her.”

Very sweet. One issue. Roxanne is unbelievably stubborn, and she views her ideas as superior to everyone else because of the extreme amounts of planning she does for any situation she can think of. She’s incredibly smart, don’t get that mistaken, but her ideas are often outlandishly complicated and insane. Anyone should see that, including Oliver- especially when he’s known her for so long.

Oliver, while he can see the idea of being prepared for a lot as a good thing, cannot comprehend the concept that Roxanne can be ready for everything because of how his own life went. Oliver sees his powers as a hindrance- they are completely contingent on his emotions, meaning they will activate freely when he feels any particular way, and as an emotional person, that’s a pretty big issue that can affect him any time, anywhere. There’s little he can do about the ��be prepared” aspect, because his day can dramatically change if his crush walks into the room, if he hears a sad story, or if someone tells him a joke.

In addition, since Roxanne is a lifelong friend of Oliver, he’d be much less likely to sugarcoat things when it comes to talking about her, especially since there’s no romantic feelings between them, something that would usually cause someone to elevate the other person through rose-tinted glasses.

In the new drawing, Oliver says, “I REALLLY don’t think I can put this lightly, but she’s crazy. I know, I know, she’s a close friend. But as one of HER close friends, I can say that. I mean, she’s always crafting some new projects and plans for, I dunno, if an alien steals her microwave or something, but there’s no way she can be prepared for absolutely EVERYTHING. She’s crazy.”

Oliver’s Opinion on Flint:

Then there’s Oliver’s opinion on Flint.

The original drawing reads “Well, he’s not so bad, if you can get past the pretentious, obnoxious, and rude side of him. He can crack a few jokes. Occasionally.”

Flint probably has more of a superior complex than Roxanne, but his selfishness is rooted in the fact that he is both an extremely powerful rock alter (alters are the name for people born with abilities/powers) AND a child in an extremely rich and famous family. He believes he’s the best and expects everyone to believe as much.

Oliver can see how much Flint adds to the group and how much it means to have someone like him butt in- I mean, join the group, but he’s not star-struck like Flint’s adoring fans. Oliver wouldn’t say “oh he’s not so bad,” Flint’s a celebrity. The general public, including Oliver, is much more okay with speaking negatively about celebrities. Besides, he’s seen Flint’s reality TV show. It’s stupid.

“Gosh, he makes Roxanne look like a sober-minded scholar. I don’t even understand HOW Flint got on our team, but he does a good job balancing being the most obnoxious, pretentious sixteen year old I’ve ever met and reminding us he’s the most powerful alter in the group often enough so we don’t go insane. It’s nice not having to pay for gas, though…”

Reading the original paragraph, you’d think, “Wow, what a terrible person. Why would anyone keep this jerk around?” With the new paragraph, I wanted to showcase how Flint can have his cake and eat it too, being able to be the selfish jerk in the group and then turn around and remind people why he’s important in the first place. He knows how to talk (or bribe) his way through interactions, as seen in Oliver not understanding how Flint joined the group (the gang originally didn’t want Flint, they just wanted to exploit someone rich at a party for money. Flint overheard the group talking and declared himself part of the group so that he can add it to his resume) and Flint paying for things that would make their mission easier, like gas.

Oliver’s Opinion on Vale:

Lastly, there’s Vale.

This is where I had to remind myself that Oliver’s a dude. Many, many of the guys I know don’t particularly care if someone really likes them or not, especially when it comes to other guys.

Originally, Oliver says, “I don’t know what I did wrong, but I feel like Vale doesn’t like me? He can feel however he wants, but I’d like to know if I did something to start us off on the wrong foot.”

EW. THIS IS SO CRINGE.

I understand people can behave like this (being overly concerned about how someone else feels about them), but Oliver sounds like he’s gushing over Vale like those girls in movies who brush their hair with their fingers as the guy walks past and go nuts if the guy looks at them. Not only is Oliver not interested in Vale (Oliver has a crush on a girl named Priscilla), but I couldn’t even get what I was trying to write about correct: being an introvert.

Both Oliver and Vale are introverted. Oliver tries to live every day as quietly as possible because of how expressive his powers are. He got laughed at by his classmates for years when his powers flared up, so keeping a low profile makes his life a little less stressful and embarrassing.

Vale keeps to himself for more private reasons, and it is true that Vale doesn’t like Oliver, but Oliver should only be able to recognize that Vale’s not big on interacting with anyone, including Oliver. Oliver only knows Vale within the context of this group, which means that Vale being reserved with Oliver is interpreted as a product of Vale’s overall characterization of being introverted, not an indication of how he feels about Oliver.

In the new version, Oliver says, “He’s quiet, and I totally get it. Between Roxanne and Flint constantly arguing, we would all need hearing aids if Vale or I joined in. He keeps to himself, but that doesn’t mean he won’t tell you that whatever you said was stupid- he’s really nailed the ‘disappointed look’… I tend to get those a lot.”

This now highlights Vale’s introversion and Oliver being able to relate to it. It also hints at Vale having more reservations towards Oliver (him getting more disappointed looks from Vale), but it’s mostly taken as a passing thought for Oliver rather than a huge concern.

How Oliver is Drawn:

Turning my focus to the art itself, it’s so incredibly satisfying to see Oliver actually express himself, rather than just standing there, morphing in shape, and having “mouth open” as part of his facial expression. As I get to know my characters more and more, I’m hoping to really refine what each of their mannerisms and expressions would be, and I really like how Oliver turned out in this.

The Conclusion:

Anyways, I hope there was something interesting you learned in there. I intend to do this for all of the main characters, but they shouldn’t be nearly as extensive as this one, simply because I got a bulk of the characterization descriptions for each of them here. But who knows?

Thanks for reading!

[blqgumi]

My Sister Is A Genie Visual Novel Dev Log#1

My Sister Is A Genie...  Visual Novel  Dev Log #1

Feel free to ask me questions and check out my Ko-fi because I also do updates on my visual novel there.

Dev Log #1

So I've been working on this visual novel that focuses on two sisters wishing for a better world. One sister is a genie and the other is the wish maker. It's my first time coding a game and making a visual novel. I've already made a lot of progress and had my little sister play-test the game for me. In its current version, it's very short.

I wrote down some improvements my sister had made a point of and now I'm at a stopping point because I don't know how or what to incorporate next. I just want to breakdown my thought process and explain what I already have.

What Have I Done So Far?

So  I made three different choices that the player can choose from. The three choices are all wishes the main character Chloe will wish for. The player now goes through each choice where there is an explanation of how that choice effect the world. What I see as a transition to an exchange between Chloe “the wisher” and Chyna “the genie”.  After this interaction Chloe will make a new wish and rinse, repeat. There will be a new transition and dialogue that coincides the wish. After all three wishes are made there is a final fourth wish option that appears. This final fourth wish is the good ending to the game.

 I have only 5/10 of the backgrounds completed. There are two that are being worked on but are incomplete and most of the character designs are incomplete as I have more reactions to create due to the additions I’m creating for the game. I have music in the game, no sound effects and a sketch of what I think I want the start screen to look like. I haven’t messed with the text UI or the text bar UI and I don’t plan to. I don’t intend to push myself too hard on this first project and just work with what I can.  In it’s current state, its a game that takes 5 minutes at the most to complete.

I didn’t realize how short it was until I let my sister play test it and it was a bit disappointing to realize how little was presented despite a month of work put into it. At the same time I feel re-energized to the project as I’ve had soem time a way from it. I never expected it to feel this long when creating it, but little by little I see the pieces come together and it feels nice to have something I took my time on. My hope is that I finish this game feeling proud of what I made and emboldened to make the next game. 

What I Want To Do Next?

I want to add more dialogue options that are connecting points to the three main wishes that involve a good and bad route. My sister pointed out that I had a good back and forth with the characters in one of three main wishes but that it needs to be consistent and reflect that in the other wishes. I agreed and went back to my original plan and build from there. 

I will have 3 main wishes and 1 extra fourth wish with only a good ending.

 Those three wishes will branch out into 3 different choice reactions, which are “double down”, “apology” and “anger”.

 These will branch off into 3 situations that will lead to a dead-end or a  new wish (leads back to the main 3 wishes).

What Am I Doing Now?

I am working on redrawing Chloe and Chyna so I have an actual character reference sheet and get used to redrawing them over and over again. I also have been redesigning their outfits to get a better feel for their personality and what would better fit into the game. 

I am also writing out the different scenes for the additional routes. It is proving to take more time to create than the drawings at this point. This part of the development is still in the planning stages as I haven’t changed the code at all as of yet. 

I also will be redrawing one scene and rethinking other scenes to fit the mood of that these additional scenes might imply.

Final Thoughts?

I honestly didn’t think this project would take as long as it has because it felt so quick when I finished coding and drawing is easy breezy for me but the task of drawing out so much in a short amount of time is near impossible. As I’m planning out more content for the game, I feel more tired and overwhelmed but how much more I still need to draw. I have a hard time being patience and allowing the work to get done when it needs to. This project isn’t for profit, I just wanted to make a visual novel because I can. So I want to at least enjoy the process while I can.

[twistedwonderlandimaginesblog]

Hi ! The requests are open right ? Can I have a scenario with Jade. He noticed that the reader regularly spies on him, especially when he is in is mermaid form. He thinks they have bad intentions but the reader is just trying to memorize his appearance in order to redraw it because they find him really beautiful like that. They're hiding because they're too shy to ask him if they can draw him. Thank you.

Jade Leech: 

Jade knew better than to mindlessly trust in the goodness of other people.

He noticed your staring problem from the very beginning, at first ignoring it as he thought it might just be a bad habit that would disappear on its own. As it continued on he considered saying something but took to meeting your gaze which is generally what made you turn your head away, being wary but still glancing his way every now and again as you continued to scribble away in that little sketchbook you always have on you. He wondered what type of information you might be getting from simply watching him but he couldn’t let the potential concern go. If he had to physically confront you, even if you didn’t look like you stood a chance, he’d do just that.

Jade still put it off even as he kept track of how often you watched him, how you wouldn’t do so when Floyd or Azul were around, how whenever he left you never looked back up from your notebook until it was time for your next class. The final straw had been when you were clearly spying on him in his mermaid form, hidden away like you often were when you wanted to watch him, trying to make yourself as small as possible. If you were this curious about him why not confront him directly? He knows most found him intimidating but he had never done anything to you specifically to make you this wary. He supposed it was finally time he acted on his suspicions.

You looked incredibly pale when you cornered him.

Jade had hypothesized that you weren’t a threat before but the conclusion was even more solidified when he confronted you on your odd spy-like behavior as you were practically cowering from him when all he’d done was greet you. You held the book between the two of you and he reached out to grab it, eyebrow raising in interest as you pulled it away from him and tightly to your chest.

“Might I ask what you’ve been writing down about me in there?” Jade’s tone stayed even and polite but it was never as simple as that when it came to him, even you who rarely interacted with anyone in Octavinelle knew that, “Just a quick peek, I promise.”

“I-It’s nothing bad,” You finally stuttered out, unable to meet his eye, “I just… like to draw and you’re very… You’re a good subject.”

You couldn’t tell this man to his face that he was beautiful, could you? You flipped to the page you think looks best before displaying it for Jade, who’s expression is now full of surprise at what he sees. He leaned down to take a closer look, seeming to observe your drawings of him with great interest, especially the one of his tail that took up the entire margin of the page. He thinks you have a great amount of skill and despite the odd way you’d gone about make him your subject, he was quite flattered that you were so interested in catching his likeness that you’d study him so often. He still planned on telling you it was best to not stare at him as much as you did, people would talk, but…

“I would gladly allow you to draw me in my free-time, if you’d like. Getting distracted during class or while I’m busy… I’m afraid I’ll have to ask for you to-“

“T-That’s fine! You’ll really let me draw you? And- And could you perhaps do it in mermaid form, too?”

So enthusiastic, Jade couldn’t help but smile at how cute you were acting. He certainly wouldn’t mind spending some extra time with you if he could manage to get reactions like this out of you. He wasn’t ashamed of his mermaid form either so having you sketch it would be no skin off his bones though he’d have to keep it a secret from Azul as the stingy businessman might try to make some profit from this.

“I think we could come to make a deal…” Jade watched as you flinched, realizing he should’ve chosen different words, “With me. I promise I’m far more lenient with my personal dealings.”

You didn’t know if he was telling the truth but with a charming smile like that, how could you say no?

[moonlit-imagines]

Headcanons for the Avengers’ days off

Avengers x reader

warnings: stabbing mention lmao, guns

a/n:

prompt: anonymous: “can we have a y/n just chilling with all the avengers?”

over the years, it was hard to have a peaceful day off, but sometimes that was the priority

each avenger had a preference on what they liked to spend their free time on

but we all know that there’s never a true stress-free day when it comes to your team

most of you preferred sleeping in, but not cap or sam, it was 6:00am sharp for them

you had begged tony to soundproof this place, but noooo

“it’s just not practical, what if someone’s being stabbed? what if we cant hear them yelling for help?”

so you could hear the clattering of the kitchen and buried your face into your pillow

sooner or later you’d roll out of bed and find breakfast had been cooked for the whole team

“‘morning, y/n! we made eggs, toast, bacon, waffles, and cut up some fruit! here’s your plate and here’s some juice”

“oh, wow, smells great”

it could’ve been worse, at least there were no coffee grounds in the disposal so you didn’t have to hear tony complain

speaking of tony, he emerged from the hallway in his silk robe with bags under his eyes

“well, i dont know about you guys, but i slept great!”

“how many hours of sleep did you get, tony?”

“you know, like...two”

sooner or later, the rest of the avengers had been woken up and everyone gathered in the living room to watch the news and talk about their plans

“can we watch something other than the news? i’d honestly be down to watch spongebob, anyone else?” -rhodey

you were in charge of the remote

“hell yeah, i thought you’d never ask”

this full group of adults peacefully watching nickelodeon together until everyone was finished

now there was a pile of dishes in the sink and a very dirty kitchen but everyone just kind of forgot about it and went on to other things

so what relaxed the avengers?

well, most of them liked to train, but they had other hobbies too

like steve, he liked to draw (every once in a while he showed you his sketches and they’re honestly really good?? especially the redraw of a monkey in the ‘40s)

sometimes he even asked you to model poses for him

“just another minute, y/n, you’re doing great”

*you standing on one shaking leg in a kick position*

steve made u draw with him

“it’s therapeutic”

you left your art in his room and now it’s hung up on the fridge

and then there was tony, who was working on some new inventions that you were a bit worried about

you snuck past the lab, but FRIDAY told him that you were near

“y/n! come help me with this really quick!”

“damn, so close”

“can you try this on and shoot it at that target over there?”

“why cant you do this?”

“because your body is able to ‘take the heat’ or whatever that dumb catchphrase you have is”

luckily it worked, but “not good enough” and you ended up helping tony hold the thing in place while he worked

“so, how’s your day off going so far? do anything fun?”

“hung out with steve while he was working on some sketches”

“so i’m going to take that as a ‘no’”

tony relieving you of your duties so that you could roam the compound once more

hearing wanda play guitar!! you loved hearing her play!

“knock knock”

“come in”

you laid in her bed for a while and listened to her soothing voice, it made up for tony’s lab assistant thing

“do you know what’s for lunch?”

“i think today’s special is ‘serve yourself’”

you and wanda went off to the kitchen to make macaroni and cheese (because why not??? im about to make my own mac and cheese)

(also u made tony a pb&j bc u knew damn well he wasn’t coming out of that lab for a while) (u gave him lightly salted chips too bc he needs to cut down on his sodium)

“tony, eat lunch”

“aww, for me? you shouldn’t have”

yall think wanda watches shameless?? bc i kinda do and these are my headcanons so she watches shameless

“we’re more unstable than the gallaghers, they should make a show about us”

she almost choked on her mac and cheeseeee

“keeping up with the avengers”

“‘tony, what the fuck is up with your wifi, you have this big-ass compound and you can’t afford a wifi box out here?’”

“‘it’s not about affording, it’s about radiation’”

“‘you’re gonna die anyway! you understand that, right? die with a good snapchat going through!’”

nearly pissing yourself laughing

but vision asked wanda a favor and you wandered off to another part of the compound

ah, yes, the training room

clint, nat, sam, and rhodey were all in here; it was target practice day

“y/n, grab a gun and get over here!”

“a gun? let’s teach y/n some archery”

“nobody wants to learn archery, clint”

“what? you said you wanted to”

“yeah, but you never taught me”

“well, i can teach you right now”

“fine, let’s go!”

red-wing flew very close to your head

“watch out, y/n!” -sam

“dude, you’re gonna kill them” -rhodey

“seems like now is a bad time?”

everyone was just kind of bickering as per usual, you were just a teeny bit bored

but sam agreed to a round of hand-to-hand combat that really relaxed you

no, really, the best stress reliever is a peaceful fight between your roommates

you were kinda glad it wasn’t nat you were fighting because she’d probably put you on the mat twice a minute

soon, each of you worked up a sweat and you went to your private bathroom to take a shower

there was always hot water at the avengers compound, so that was a comforting thought

after you were out, you got dressed into some cozy pajamas and walked out to the kitchen, where wanda and vision were making dinner

a few avengers were already out on the couches, just watching the tv

you joined them and suggested that they should all watch a movie tonight

“what kind of movie?”

“i dont know? hot tub time machine?”

everyone agreed

and side eyed steve when sebastian stan popped up on screen

“guys, i really dont see the resemblance! cant we just watch the movie?”

“are you blind??”

“his 90 year old eyes deceive him”

it was a good dinner

“sam, you stink”

“i havent taken a shower yet”

what a loving family

[curiosity-killed]

#ShowYourProcess

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES — When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

ty for the tag @sketchyscribbles ! and also ajksdh props for picking the hardest pic I could do this for lmao 

tagging (if you want to but no pressure ofc!)

@tricksterkat209​ with this piece

@lookforanewangle​ with this piece

@littlewhitetie​ with this piece

Process for this yanqing piece under the cut bc whoo boy we wordy

Planning:

In general, except for bigger pieces, there isn’t...a whole lot of planning....ever. This one was a break from working on a large, detailed painting and the result of talking with @apaladinagain about yanqing AU thoughts so it was pretty quick and mostly just a kind of visual note-taking for myself.

I don’t have any of the WIP files/layers because I clean out my WIP folder at the end of each year but based on memory and knowing myself, the initial sketch would’ve looked something like this (this is done with my trackpad and a sore wrist but honestly...probably not that far off. my sketches are uh rough):

Creating:

I work in Paint Tool SAI (but like. a slightly fucked up version. idk why but it’s been janky since I got it ANYWAY) with a Huion tablet. My usual process is a little weird but goes:

rough sketch — usually a very rough scribble of where heads are and other important features (in this case, the lotus and fire) on a canvas around ~1500 px on the short side

clean sketch — the actual base of the piece, where I fully draw out all elements of it (except fingernails lol) and also set the composition. On this one, the original sketch was flipped, which felt much more stagnant, so I flipped the canvas in order to have more visual interest/direction. I also wanted to be more intentional about placement of hands so that each of them should roughly correspond to the upper dantian (Wen Qing’s right hand), middle (Wen Qing’s left, with the flame), and lower dantian (Yanli’s hands with the lotus). I don’t totally remember the thought process behind this but I do remember looking at a lot of pixelated diagrams. as u do. this part’s usually on a slightly larger canvas (~2500 px short side)

lines — I use a custom brush I made a long time back but it’s basically set up to emulate like...a micron pen? might be the closest feel to it so smooth, slightly softer edgers, etc., and I always size up the canvas so that the shortest side is at least 6000 px so that I can downsize and have extra crisp lines

colors — block in colors roughly to get a sense of color composition (for bigger pieces, I often do a rough version of this before I go into lining it), then clean them up so they’re all within the lines. Once all the main color bodies (so like: skin, base color of each set of robes, etc.) are in, I always go in and add facial details first (blush, nail colors, eyes, lips, etc.) mostly out of habit and also as a treat to myself bc it’s one of the easiest ways to start seeing the piece come together

details — after that, it is clipping layer central! in this one, I think (based on squinting at it lol) each robe has at least 2 clipping layers for details such as the difference colored collars on Jiang Yanli’s and the pattern on Wen Qing’s sleeves. I tend to organize layers by color so like the dark red on Wen Qing’s robes would be one layer and the ombre pattern would be a separate one. This is also when I do any rendering, usually, which there isn’t much of here but would include the details on the lotus

shading — pretty basic multiple layer here. I p much always use desaturated blues and purples for shading unless it’s for effect. 

effects — glow baby glow! this is where i had to google “How to Paint Fire” bc it’s been 8 million years and then spent forever airbrushing on luminosity and overlay layers. also added a luminosity effect to the lotus for the shigs. Also added an overlay layer for the highlights from the fire here

signature — pls don’t ask me how many times i redraw my signature for each picture. it’s embarrassing. i’ve had the same signature, with slight variation, for like 10 years and yet. orz

fussing — on very rare occasions, this translates to me actually checking for errors and making sure I haven’t forgotten anything but most generally, this involves me staring unblinking at my screen as I slide the saturation and hue bars back and forth and contemplate whether I should start exclusively drawing at 100% saturation. in this piece, the background was originally a lovely deep blue but at this stage I decided to turn it green both for the contrast with all the red and for a hint of unease/eeriness coming from a highly saturated green + the donghua’s use of green ghost fires for yllz!wwx — basically hinting at Bad Shit Comin’. I have regretted that decision every time I’ve seen this piece since then :| it was such a nice blue...

Sharing:

At this point, I spend 15 minutes staring into the middle distance trying to come up with any sort of caption and then just throw down whatever I think of and post it on tumblr. titling fics? easy peesy lemon squeezy. captioning art? terrible death suffering time.

if i think abt it, i’ll post to instagram (unless i am defeated by the cropping curse) but i didn’t with this one...presumably bc I am p meh about it (the blue!! the blue ;____;)? but also possibly bc i just forgot

[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!

[jazzy-mcdurf]

I'm an artist, and I need help.

For as long as I can remember, I've been drawing. I've loved cartoons for a veeery long time, but I started drawing my own characters around 9-10 years ago. My art style has improved significantly, so much so that it's very close to how I want it.

However, I have some problems. For one, I haven't finished a drawing in like 3-4 years. I can barely finish sketches now. Part of the problem is that I think too far into the future. I know my art will improve later on, so I start thinking that whatever I draw now won't hold up, and it'll just look bad in comparison to my latest work. With that logic, I think "what's the point?". I don't want to keep old art, it'll blemish my record as an artist. I've already thrown away some old traces of my beginner art so that I don't have to look at it.

Another problem is the drawing process itself. I start out sketching by using a series of quick strokes and then erasing the jagged edges. It makes drawing a very slow process for me, even slower than usual. I'll often stop halfway because I feel like I'm not drawing the image in my head fast enough. I eventually get tired of thinking it so long, so I move on to something else. Even if I do finish it, I'll have already lost the mental focus to do the line art afterwards.

Speaking of line art, that's another thing. I "draw" line art by using vector line tools. They allow me to create a line and morph it however I want, eliminating the hassle of redrawing things over and over. The problem is I'm too reliant on it. I've used it for a few years, and as a result, my fine motor skills haven't actually improved at all. Whenever I genuinely try to draw a line, it's just as bad quality as it was years ago! It's really discouraging to see I'm that far behind in my progress.

I want to change the way I draw. I want to sketch faster and I want to have control over the lines I draw. I know I'll need a lot of practice to get there, but I feel like it's too late. I'm 19 now, and I've been drawing seriously for like 10 years!

If I change now, I'll be back at square 1. All that time will have been a waste, and I'll be even further away from starting that comic series I've been dreaming about. But if I don’t change, I'll keep having these problems and use cheap art tricks to look like a better artist than I am. I won't have any confidence in my abilities this way, and I'll ultimately be unhappy.

Please help, I need advice. My future could really depend on it.

[abovebelowemilycywinski]

Game Idea Front Cover

For today I wanted to make a front cover for my game, I wanted to make a cute image of all of the four girl characters I have created for the game idea. I wanted them to all act like friends and look friendly on the front cover. as if they were greeting the main character.

I wanted to do a quick sketch of them in a classroom, I wanted all of these poses to show off their personalities, and I wanted the short character with space buns to do a peace sign because she is the type of character to be an airhead so I feel like she would do that hand gesture just because that is what she has seen people do online. 

I want the purple hair character to be sitting slightly on the desk, she is a chill character so I feel she would sit in a way that would make her comfortable and look cool.

I wanted to make the brown hair girl have a cool pose, she is quite a sporty and athletic person so she would sit that way. She doesn't care if the way she acts isn't like how most girls act, she likes to be herself because it's the most comfortable for her.

The blond hair girl is quite smart but is always adjusting her glasses, she can get quite self-conscious with her glasses because she feels like she is doing the classic smart person with glasses trope however she hates her glasses because her family doesn't like the fact that her eyes aren't perfect and she needs help to see, this is why she is working very hard to be as smart as she can, to impress her parents and tell them that she can do a lot of things even though she is born with bad eyesight. She could wear contact lenses however that won't help the situation, she wants to be proud that she is born the way she is and if she tries to hide it, that's not loving herself and won't prove anything to her parents.

During the sketches, I have changed quite a few things, for example, the short girl used to have her hand out which you can slightly see in the first image. Sadly I took it away because it didn't look that great. I also changed how the blond-haired girl wears her glasses which I am now happy with the result. The reason at the end, the blond haired girl isn't holding her glasses, is because I didn't want to redraw the arm so I decided that I will fix it when I put it into Procreate.

I am very happy with the result so far and I can't wait to see the end result.

02/10/2022

[captainquestionart]

hey my man, amazin work on act omega- the team behind it is wonderful!! im lookin to make a fanventure myself, could you give any tips as to pixelling in gg and how to edit images? you know like basically any recoloured, edited clusterfuck of an image in homestuck that hussie does (planets, for example) + how you tilt to have them at different angles? sorry if this sounds like a loooot and you can completely ignore this ask(!), but im just clueless and motivated, my guy

Thank you for asking! I never get asks and I’m always glad to help with any questions like these.

…Anyway, the team behind Act Omega is definitely wonderful, take it from me. My job is typically to do all sorts of sprites/ sprite edits (like the ones in the [S] Resume animation) and I draw the characters and/or backgrounds for panels often enough, so I can definitely give you some tips on those things.

Most editing effects like the ones you asked about aren’t really my domain - a lot of them are done in Photoshop by (among others) our amazing art director @joyfulldreams (she’s seriously great go follow her please), so I asked her for some additional tips.

(This is probably going to turn out long enough to be annoying to scroll past, so I’m putting it all under a read more.)

First off, I have to clear up that when it comes to editing the typical Homestuck sprites (like the ones in [S]:Resume), GraphicsGale hasn’t been my main tool.

The first thing I did for Act Omega was drawing some talksprites (for Tumblr asks, mine were never actually used). I used to do that in Gale, but as soon as I tried it using Paint Tool SAI’s aliased brush (Legacy Pen) instead, I decided that was more comfortable. Most of my work for Resume, redrawing sprites from Collide we couldn’t find elsewhere, was done that way too.Pros of using SAI (and probably Photoshop too? Not 100% sure) for sprites compared to Gale include:

The layers are much, much easier and more intuitive to use than Gale’s. To me Gale’s layers kinda suck and using them is always a pain.

Using a sketch is easier too, and you can make it semi-transparent

Gale doesn’t really do pen pressure, which is most important in talksprites but still can be helpful for the regular sprites too.

That said, when I had to make entirely new animations (like the one above), I had to use GraphicsGale, with its handy preview feature, and it is perfectly possible to use only Gale for everything. Rotating things also had to be done in Gale and then manually cleaned up a little, since SAI will turn anything you try to transform into an ugly anti-aliased mess.

So, bottom line is, I personally prefer to use Gale and SAI in combination, but that’s not strictly necessary. If you’re going full-on Gale (and now I’m gonna assume you haven’t used it too much before), here’s

A few quick practical tips on using Gale I wish I had figured out earlier:

The default settings of Gale include a 1 pixel brush and a 3 pixel brush, but no 2 pixel brush. Since pen pressure won’t save you here, that’s inconvenient. The less you need to go back and painstakingly correct your lines to be the right size, the better. You’ll want to make that brush yourself by opening a new file in Gale, 32x32 pixels, and 1 bit (2 colours). Make it look like this and save it as a bitmap (BMP) image: 

And then find this option:

and put your bitmap in there. Gale will recognize that as a custom 2px brush.

If you want to make your images have a transparent background, make sure you tick that box in the options of the frame, not the layer (the little ellipsis button next to each Frame thumbnail -see below). Gale still has no way of telling if your BG is transparent or just white, so I recommend always working with a different color as a background. That way you can tell from the animation preview - if the BG looks white there, it’s transparent. Also make sure these settings apply to every frame by changing “current frame” to “all frames”.

If you want to change the opacity of something (like, say, god tier wings on a troll), you need to save the image as a .png first and tick the box “With Alpha Channel” underneath…

     …then open the image again. Only then will the transparency slider above the palette sliders actually work. You can also use the thick blue pencil button:

    …to set your pencil tool to opacity mode, which will make anything you draw over into the opacity set by the slider.

Now for some more Homestuck-specific tips:

You’re probably better off making sprites in separate parts (a layer for the head, one for the body, one for the arm(s)… from the start. It’ll save you a lot of trouble when you need to animate them. In fact, it might not be a bad idea to also put all of those parts into a neat spritesheet so you don’t have to look too far when you need to reuse something.

(I didn’t see this one all the way through because there was too much to do but you get the idea)

If you don’t already, make sure you have a big folder of references from Homestuck, both panels and sprites, just so you know how The Huss would have done it. That might be more important for Act Omega since we’re trying so very hard to be as close to canon as humanly possible, but it’ll be very handy regardless.

What else is there… well, I could say some more stuff about the art style itself but I figure if you want to start a fanventure you’ll probably have the basics of that stuff down already.

Now, for what Joy had to say about editing images:“Say you need for example a scene on Prospit or Derse, then the process goes like this:1. Find an image (or images) on google that are generally of italian cities and cathedrals. A lot of iconic “Derse and Prospit” images actually come from pictures of the roof of the Milan cathedral, but generally you should get the gist with the Florence skyline and by cobbling together a bunch of cathedral images. 2. You want to use Photoshop tools like the magic wand or selection tool to cut out the sky and anything else that isn’t the actual building. Usually anyway depending on the image. If you have a picture with a bunch of tourists you could just crop them out or use the clone stamp tool to make them disappear oooooo.3. Turn the entire image grayscale, and (optional at this point but you might want to do it eventually) bump up the brightness and contrast. 4. Then you want to eye-drop pick from a canon Derse or Prospit image the light and dark Derse/Prospit colors. For prospit its like a bright saturated yellow and a more dark orange color? You can actually play around with the two colors you use to vary contrast and stuff if you’re putting together a bit scene. 5. Copy the cathedral layer and lock the opacity, put it above the original layer, and fill it with the solid light color. Set the layer mode to overlay.6. Do this again but with the darker color, and put it below the original layer.7. Lower the opacity of the original layer. It should start to look how hussie makes it look.8. Sometimes to give it an additional rough pixellated look, I’ll go to image>adjustments>posturize and play around with it. It gives the image some of that gif-ified look.But basically when it comes to hussie-fying images these are some of the basic main principles you want to keep in mind. The posturize effect, using overlay layers, and finding images and mashing them together creatively.

Also another key thing to note is that when you resize or transform things, there are different transformation MODES. In order to transform pixellated stuff, you want to use Nearest Neighbor. That will preserve sharp edges, but sometimes it can distort things and make it look weird. In situations like that Hussie often uses Bilinear instead, and then sharpens the transformed part. He usually ONLY does this when he is making things smaller or rotating them, not to enlarge anything, because then the blurred/sharpened-ness of it becomes way more obvious.This is honestly the best advice I can give. A lot of it is kind of fucking around with blending modes and layers until you get the right LOOK lol.”

(-Joyfulldreams 2017, give her a round of applause)

…So that’s pretty much some general technique pointers. I’ll post them publicly in case anyone else would like to know.I hope I haven’t just been stating the obvious here, wasn’t entirely sure what I could say that would really directly be helpful, but in any case, if you have any more specific questions you think I might be able to help with, please feel free to send me a PM.

[labeckinator]

Snow Boarding Hitomi - A Progression Series

This is just to showcase what I was doing and how I was recreating this redraw. I’m something of a ham and enjoy talking about what I do and how I do it.

Long winded post under cut.

Lately I had realized I had fallen into a bad habit with drawing in that I wasn’t drawing very loose. I noticed in previous pictures I had a tendency to try and lock things down too early on. For this picture I took it as an opportunity to practice loosening up.  There’s a post about that here.

Probably not totally successful with the “looseness” bit but I still established a nicely drawn pose by which to work from.

For this picture I also was busy scouting the world wide web for reference pictures. 

Reference is probably the main thing I don’t use often enough, but it really does make things easier and poses more believable when I do.  Another good habit I need to work on forming.

Below I turned the opacity down on the initial sketch and went on a new layer to clean it up a bit and add some detail.

I also took it as an opportunity to correct some proportions (mainly in the shoulder).  My original reference was male, but the character I’m drawing is female.  Women tend to have smaller shoulders than men (with some exceptions to that rule), and Hitomi, while athletic, still has a smaller build compared to a man.

I don’t like to have my characters hanging out in space.  So I dropped in a quick background sketch.  At this stage I can still make adjustments to either bg or character pretty easily with minimal effort.

One thing that I have learned since 2002 is that it doesn’t hurt to really scrutinize your drawing at this stage before you start really laying down all the finer details and polish.  I’ve done drawings where I have to change stuff when I’m almost done and that sucks (sometimes I still make that mistake).

Turned off the loose sketch layer to take a look at what I have.  

Made some minor adjustments to the legs and some small pattern changes.  Threw a design on the board.  Since this is Escaflowne-inspired, I felt it would be cool to give a nod to the Fanelian crest.  

Overall at this point I’m happy with the way it’s working.  This could change and I may want to change it later (or find more things to fix) - but while I mull that over, I think it’s time to go back to the background.

I frequently make note layers in my psd or clip files just to keep track of things I think of or need to change, but can’t execute on it at the moment.

I dropped the opacity on Hitomi and the background sketch so I can focus on detailing the background without losing the central figure.

For the background I went back over adding some detail to where I wanted things so they would be more pronounced when I made my next pass, which will be to block it out in color.  I had some trees in the background you could see so I better detailed those, and for the trees further back, I just scribbled in some indications as to where those would be.  I also wanted to pronounce some of the detail of the valley as well as cement the mountain peaks in.  I also wanted to ensure that if I didn’t have to, I didn’t draw anything where Hitomi is.

I usually drop in a layer for the sky.  

Using the lasso tool I traced around elements within the background I had drawn to fill with a base color.  The lasso tool is good for creating the hard edges for mountains, rocks, etc.  It’s also something I noticed quite a few artists who paint these beautiful landscapes do. Example of a very talented artist demonstrating that here.

Throwing some clouds in.  Mostly done in Clip Studio with the Smooth Watercolor brush, just layering color on top and then using the same brush to blur out the hard edges. You can do some similar effects with the basic photoshop brushes (I used photoshop for years and had to find a way to make clouds), just reduce the opacity and hardness of the brush to your preference.  I never found custom cloud brushes for ps for my liking (that were free anyway), so I can’t recommend any.

I turned off the bg sketch to get a better look at the background. I tilted Hitomi a bit to make it look more like she is coming off the hill side on the left.  I also realized a few things: 

Need some more variation in the peaks and also to bring them lower to give a better impression for being up high. 

The central figure is a bit too large.  I scaled down Hitomi and tilted the sketch slightly.  Still not quite working for me.  I think I’ll probably move her up a bit as well.

The nice thing about working digitally is that you can deviate from your original sketch pretty easily.  I usually take an opportunity each project to experiment a little.

Example:

The original blocked out background took less than 10 min to throw together (even with the clouds).  Wanted to see what different mountains and clouds would look like.

It’s important to remember when working from a sketch (especially in the digital medium):

Anyway, back to my redraw.

Having sorted out some of the background I went back to ink Hitomi.

I then went ahead and added some color to Hitomi. 

You may have also noticed in the second picture that Hitomi has some added details to her outfit not seen previously in the inked w/o color pic.  And that was because I wanted to make the outfit a bit more interesting.

Having colored the character, I bounced back over to the background to give it some more details.

I also felt it was time to revisit my notes layer.  I wanted to add some more things as well as remind myself of what I needed to do.

While I meander a lot between figure and background, I tend to leave any and all effects until last.  This is due to how I want the layering to work and makes it easier for me to work in that way.

Added some shadows and some details to the valley below.

The treeline needs more polish for the area nearest to the viewer, but it’s starting to look more like the valley instead of a greenish blob in the picture before.

Highlights and goggles applied.

It’s very bright and colorful, but I don’t know that I like this look.  I can still keep the base colors I gave Hitomi and try an under painting approach.  I can still keep all those colors I painted earlier, but for now I’ll turn that layer off.

To start I drop in a base color.  The whole painting is very blue, so I went with a blue/gray case color.

Then I created a new layer to put highlights and shadows on (which is me just applying either white or black wherever I think there is a highlight or shadow).

I turned back on color layer and changed it from normal to overlay.  It feels like it’s headed in the right direction to me, but the whole thing looks a little too blue, particularly for the shadows.  I can change that by changing the base color of the under painting.

Color wise this feels a bit too warm.  The nice thing about working in layers like this with an under painting is how easy it is to change it.

After squaring away the under painting, I added the snow effect coming off of the snowboard.  It’s on two layers.  The first layer just some yellow/white/blue to give the snow some light and shade, then hit with a motion blur.  The second layer are the visible chunks of snow that would trail and fall off.

This is almost done.  Need to add some atmospheric effects and some lighting to the goggles.

And done.  Sky needed a little something, so I added Gaea and the Moon.  I sort like to think that those who come back to Earth from Gaea can see it whenever they wish (probably also due to Hitomi’s connection to Van?)  But if you, the viewer, really want, Hitomi could be snowboarding on Gaea instead.

The original redraw post (with the original 2002 pic) here.

[trainerv]

Astroforce

More on the Astroforce because someone @saki-noir was curious and I really needed to work more on them, anyhow. It’s kinda long with individual facts on each one, so I’m putting it under the cut. Subject to edits.

The Astroforce are five earth-made trains under Astrotrain’s command and care.

-At least 2 out of 3 of their alt modes were possibly based off of train models that, in reality, had been retired long before the 1980’s, when the first 2 season of G1 took place. This in mind, I imagine that the trains Astro had used to make the Astroforce were either off in a corner somewhere, waiting to be turned into scrap metal, were being preserved or were completely forgotten. With this in combination with the water damaged caused by the flood left the five a complete disaster when brought in. Dirty, damaged and uncared for, there was little hope for actually bringing them online. Then, the Decepticons found the key to vector sigma (the episode The Key to Vector Sigma part 1 actual premiered only a few episodes after Triple Takeover). Once it successfully brought the Stunticons to life from regular cars, it was used on the Astroforce because Megatron wouldn’t pass up the chance to have something Optimus doesn’t. Their bodies were still in terrible shape, but it was a start.

-While work was being done on the Stunticons on Earth, they were moved to the head Cybertron base and put under Technis’ care.  It took a lot of time to get them functioning “properly” – even now they still show numerous defects and parts of them were completely outdated, but can’t be replaced without overhauling their entire frames. Plans are being made to give them proper Cybertronian bodies, but this will take some time. Until then, they are given frequent check-ups. It is done before the 20 year gap between seasons 2 and 3. Possibilities of a combiner have been thrown on the table.

-None of the members of the force have any real memory of their “lives” as actual trains. Their first memory, albeit as drones, was of Astrotrain and, in a way, they sort of imprinted on him. They follow him around and really only listened to him, at first. They can communicate with each other via a sort of Morse code that consists of blinking their lights and whistle-blowing.

-They’re much smaller than Cybertronian train-based transformers typically are, given that they’re from earth. Their robot modes are based only of the first one or two cars of their original train forms, as the rest were needed for spare parts to make some repairs or were too damaged to work with. New cargo holds for energon/weapon storage are attached to them when making rounds.

-They share their own room and enjoy a big cuddle pile when recharging Astrotrain included whether he likes it or not, telling stories of their individual jobs, and playing board games together. Some of Trackside’s stories may or may not be slightly not true

Injector is the only steam engine of the crew, her alt possibly being based off a DRG 01 1102 or possibly some form of Pendolino model (though I don’t think there are any close enough in design that were built at the time).

-She’s considered the oldest of the 5 given that she was the first to be brought online. She was frightened and overwhelmed and didn’t know who those strange people poking her where and why they were asking her all these questions. She panicked and hid behind Astrotrain, the only familiar bot in the room. After being “ordered” to let the doctors do whatever they need to do, she was more docile, though visibly nervous; her answers to questions were simple head nods or shakes and a ‘mhmm’ or ‘mm mm’. Once she was cleared, she returned to Astrotrain’s side and waited quietly for the others. Seeing them be as calm as they were by comparison, she felt embarrassed and promised to be a better example next time.

-Her boiler was the most damaged part of her (it wasn’t in the best of shape to begin with and the flood and years of not being used didn’t help) and had to be replaced with a new one. While still able to consume energon, her body is still fully capable of running solely on coal and water. Her steam engine makes her the warmest and the center of nighttime cuddle piles.

-The dual antennae on the side of her helm are very sensitive to vibration and she hates having them touched. They can make only minor movements.

-When angry or flustered, she’ll blow steam out of her chimney. She’s very sensitive about it. Don’t laugh! It’s not funny! She also has a habit of holding people’s hands when nervous.

-The metal making up her body isn’t particularly durable and needs to be checked on often, so she spends almost as much time in the med bay as Switchman does.

-What looks like a visor is actually a part of her face and can’t just be removed, though she has two optic scanners behind it, like a regular face would. She has the best vision and is capable of seeing little details and movements that might go unnoticed by others.

-She feels sympathy for any abandoned trains or other vehicles she sees. While she can’t take every one home and get them fixed up like she was, she does quick sketches of how they look then redraws them all fixed up when she has the time later. She keeps them in a little secret drawer and lets no one see them.

-Given her ability to run on alternative fuels, she’s spent the most time on the tracks of the 5. It also helps that she is the fastest. She – and sometimes the others – helps bring energon from mines to bases on earth.

Switchman was the second. Possible Alt: ETR 401 [which had actually been in use at the time] or the M-10000 [which would be the oldest model on here]

-He was much calmer than Injector was when brought online, though opted to stay close to her and Astrotrain. He watched curiously as the doctors worked on the others, though he’d pretend not to be when asked if he wanted to get a better look.

-During his stay in the med bay, an issue with his back strut was found, causing him to occasionally slouch and minor pain. A brace was put on to help it, but he finds it uncomfortable and hard to transformer with, so he’ll loosen it or will take it off completely when he’s out. He’s slightly taller than Rail Grinder when standing straight.

-Like Injector, he’s actually very insecure. The others can run and jump and do things so easily, and he’s in the back, having trouble doing sometimes the simplest physical tasks given his bad back. He uses most of his energy trying to stay up straight and ignore the pain, but he tires himself out quickly.

-He finds himself fascinated by how things work, and will watch curiously as other do things. 

-Being the passive type who prefers to watch and listen, he tends to remember the little things people say and do. Example, he knows that when Injector’s antennae stick up and/or twitch, she’s about to have one of her anxiety attacks and will hold her hand to calm her down. If one of the others is closer, he’ll signal them to do it.

-He enjoys movie nights with a few of the other cons. He’s fond of film noir and mystery movies. He usually figures out who-done-it before long, but enjoys them none the less. He also has a small collection of mystery novels.

-He can and will sleep just about anywhere. Don’t underestimate his ability to find a nice groove or hole in the middle of a battlefield to rest in. He’s also the best cuddler. Watch out when he gets tired.

-I’m aware he’s the only one without a headlight. I have no excuse. I forgot it.

Rail Grinder is the third and has the same alt mode as Switchman.

-Rail Grinder was the calmest, letting the doctors do whatever to him. Nothing bad happened to Switchman and Injector, so what did he have to worry about? 

-The doctors weren’t too fond of having him around, though, given he wouldn’t stop touching everything and asking questions. He almost took off one of the nurse’s hands messing with a laser scalpel.

-Testing showed most of his body is surprisingly sturdy; however, the joints are very weak. Too much heavy physical activity at once can result in, at worst case, the breaking of a joint and the possible loss of a limb. A bit of rest during work and constant maintenance is all that’s really needed prevents this until his new body is ready.

-He stays with the Cybertron crew going around and helping everyone in the base. He hangs around with the grunts and “drones” (like the vehicons), mostly, having a good chat and doing menial tasks, like unloading energon cubes. He can carry quite a lot, as it turns out, and likes to paint things on the vehicons to help tell them apart.

-Second to Switchman, he spends the least amount of time in alt mode.

- He’s a curious child and can’t help himself from doing whatever his impulses tell him to. The world is new and there’s so much to explore and do. While his enthusiasm for life and living is much more subdued than the likes of High Rail, he’s made a habit out of trying everything at least once. Often the two will go out and find trouble to get into something interesting to do or he’ll partner with Trackside on one of her schemes.

- His catchphrases ‘it’ll be fine’ and ‘I got this’ have gotten him and others into more trouble than you’d believe. He’s not the master of everything he believes he is, but he tries. He doesn’t always succeed, but, still, he tries.

-He’s one of the few mechs, if there are any, who can handle gross, squishy, human gore (he doesn’t enjoy it, but can stomach it) and stuff and loves horror movies, black/dark comedies especially. No one gives him the remote at movie night, anymore; not after the Zombieland incident. He also enjoys slapstick and likes most comedies in general. He’s a big fan of Groucho Marx and the Three Stooges.

High Rail is the fourth. Her and Trackside’s alt mode are based off of the Pioneer Zephyr. [I’m retconning some things from my 8-facts post]

-High Rail was the most eager to get out of the med bay and get to living, upon hearing all the great things being explained to her and the others. It took a while to get her to stop bouncing and sit still for her checkup. Once cleared, she practically ran out of the med bay. She wouldn’t stop asking questions – much to everyone’s annoyance – and ran ahead of the group, touching everything they passed and greeting they met. No one knows where this energy came from, but it’s there.

-While her vision is less than perfect, the sensory organs hidden under the series of finials under her helm are highly sensitive. She can hear even the faintest of whispers from several feet away. She’s highly aware of other’s EM fields and can become overwhelmed when around too many other mechs. When this happens, the finials clench up to lessen the effects. Conversely, when under-stimulated, they’ll puff up in an attempt to pick up any sort of feedback. It’s pretty adorable. She, like Switchman, can tell when Injector is going to have one of her attacks, but is much less subtle about the matter and will try to talk to her to calm her.

-In fact, subtle is one of the many things High Rail is not. She wears her emotions on her figurative sleeves and doesn’t understand when people try to hide them or when they can’t tell how others are feeling as well as she can, sometimes forgetting her own hypersensitivity to others’ emf is an anomaly.

-She’s not particularly sensitive about her single optic, but will become offended if it’s mentioned as being anything odd or unusual and, naturally, her siblings will defend her. There’s nothing wrong with her face at all; she’s beautiful and they will fight you.

-She spends the most amount of time in alt mode of the five. Usually she’s seen alongside (or just behind) Injector on deliveries around earth if she’s not racing Trackside to see who’s faster. So far, Trackside has her beat 10-13. She wants her new body to be faster than ever.

-She’s the only one who knows of Injector’s hobby and has tried, more than once, to get her to show the others and while out on her own routes, will takes pictures of broken down vehicles for Injector to draw. She also takes photos of other things that capture her interest while she’s at it.

-She strongly dislikes high grade as the resulting overcharge messes with her senses and confuses her.

-She’s a sucker for sappy ‘kids’ movies and anything that pulls at the heartstrings.

Trackside is the youngest of the crew, but only by so much, so don’t mention it. She shares her alt mode with High Rail.

-Trackside was very vocal of her dislike of being touched and questioned by the doctors and would complain and push them away before being told to knock-it-off. She put on a fake smile and begrudgingly let them work. Once finished, she was more than happy to get away, but not before swiping a few extra treats that are usually given to the good little bots after checkups. She shared some with the others, but not all of it.

-Her body is surprisingly sturdy, but can cease up from time to time, causing her joints to tighten and making movement difficult. Constant lubrication and bolt loosening are required.

-Her large, flat optics aren’t just for show. Similar to Injector’s, they’re very adept at picking up movement. This – combined with her quick reflex and fast processor –makes her great at both firing projectiles and taking out moving targets. Of course, she uses this more for firing paint balls at people via slingshot than doing anything on a battlefield.

-Meeting Uncles Blitzwing and Octane for the first time, she questioned whether or not she had “to pretend to like these ones, too”, though she claims she was only joking and does she look like the type to lie?

-Of the five, she’s probably the most cunning, or, at the very least, the most likely to take advantage of any given situation. If it means getting something she wants, she’s more than willing to play dirty and doesn’t get why her siblings (who know her well enough not to be caught in her lies) don’t more often. Sure, she’s the cute one, but they’re not too bad. She tends to stick closer to Octane after having once assisted him in one of his lies and being called his ‘favorite’.

-Unlike her favorite uncle, though, she’s not afraid to be out on the battle field; in fact, of the 5, she’s the most likely to deck someone in the jaw for insulting her family. Only she can do that. She also has an interest in baseball and has a killer swing, something most anyone who knows her well enough, knows not to be on the wrong end of.

-She is a member of a Deception sports club, one that started up recently. A few of the cons had gotten into earth sports after having seen them on tv or while out on earth and decided it would be fun to give a few a try. It’s more a way to boost morale and practice team-building, something the cons could use.

-Trackside’s name comes from the actual term, Trackside, but is also a play on the phrase “side track”/”side-tracked”; fitting given her tendency to distract others while pulling pranks. I’ll be honest, that was an accident, but it works, so…

[ironninjacreator-blog]

Blog #4 - Interdisciplinary Work

During my studies of a Bachelor of Animation, I was told to do some work for another group of students, outside our Trimester level. We all set up what we were working on across two classes and were asked to check out what everyone else was doing and pick whatever looked cool to you. What no one informed me of was that the team we worked with had to be from another artistic discipline (web design, game design, audio engineering, or film… not animation) halfway through the trimester as I was happily working with another animation team, I was suddenly told to split from the team, and check out a game development team. Since the secondary animation team was horribly understaffed I felt bad about it and tried to work with three teams for about a week, while thinking up what to do with the game dev team, eventually I broke off from the animation team.

Long story short, the game dev team quickly realised that character designer/ animator me wasn’t going to draw good spaceships, so they told me: Draw some aliens. So I did.

Here is a quick stock of alien sketches I did for the game dev team.

So before I was asked to draw aliens, I took a crack at drawing a spaceship, I promised it would in fact just be a metal chicken, and I’m sure I did indeed deliver a metal chicken. I recall a lecturer from my Tafe days showing me the works of Feng Zhu, who taught art students, and drew vehicles inspired by the animal kingdom, mostly fish. So… I drew a chicken, because I like chickens.

Understandably, I couldn’t go far with my brazenly absurd and above all…well, bad spaceships.

So, when I got the note that I should shift to character design instead I breathed a sigh of relief, then sighed again for disappointment, as this was still very much a science fiction game, and drawing monsters tends to be rather different from drawing monsters… and my strengths are in drawing humans, animals, furries and monsters. Aliens would be difficult step, but hey, at least I’m drawing something organic, can’t complain.

So back in Tafe, I was running with a group making a cartoony sci fi platformer, and I’d drawn astronauts, T-Rexes and common Greymen. So I thought I might as well throw in a grey to start off with.

As I’d been spending months writing essays and blogs and building things in 3DsMax, it had been an unreasonably long time since I’d actually drawn something, seeing as Greys are rather neutral humanoids, they are a good alien to experiment with how you are going to play with proportions for a given set of characters. These guys were scrapped pretty quickly, but I have no problem with that.

So after I’d drawn the greys, I thought “bugs are sci fi, right?” and totally was not thinking of the movie I saw that weekend and drew two entirely random bugs. I was trying to determine if the bugs in the game would be centaurian (hexapeds with two arms and four legs) or four-armed bipeds.  I like my bugs nice and chunky, so I drew the limbs a little thicker. My wasp I feel doesn’t look particularly exciting. So I moved on to other bugs.

Recalling that some people are terrified of moths and butterflies, I thought I try drawing a vicious moth-man. Had I bothered to look up moth-man legends I might have actually drawn something scary, but instead I came up with this hilariously bad joke of a moth alien.

So I came to the conclusion that if I was going to draw a decent bug-alien, I would have to make it something big and strong and tough. So I thought of beetles, they’re tough, and pretty huge. I drew out the form being mostly triangular, with a greatly exaggerated upper body; and found out I prefer four-armed Biped aliens to centaurian bugs. Since I am not an entomologist, I just threw in all the insect mouth-parts I could think of on a human-skull-shaped head and gave it horn-like antennae. In order to further exaggerate the ludicrously tiny legs, I just left him with actual beetle legs, which don’t really look like they have feet. I made the abdomen rather small, and mostly for balancing purposes, and just threw a bunch of spikes on him where I felt they were needed. Strangely the whole dev team liked all of my bugs, but the War Beetle was definitely the best loved.

Reptilians are a given, after greys and bugs, and apparently before Lion-Men, according to my alien conspiracy friends. This one is a standard grunt, mostly modelled off Ratchet and Clank robots and a certain Ratchet Deadlocked skin called W3rm. What isn’t from the game wasn’t playing last weekend is that he is in fact bearded dragon, holding a crappy gun, because I just can’t draw guns at the moment. Swords? No problem. Guns… problem. I tried to draw him in an IDGAF bad-boy pose… I don’t think it worked; however the dev team liked it.

The dev team was strangely insistent on my drawing an eldritch monstrosity inspired by a cephalopod. I frankly, do not understand this wave of interest in the works of H.P Lovecraft, I consider the man a racist jerk with serious mother issues. Plus I’ve never read anything of his as I just don’t have an interest in his stuff. So yeah, I drew some cephalopods with bat wings on their heads. That’s probably as close to drawing Cthulhu, Shubniggurath, shoggoths or any other abominations of R’yleh I don’t care to learn the names of. Understandably, the dev team didn’t pick either, because… well, look at them.

 When I informed the dev team that I’m not particularly great with aliens, I let them know that without a doubt I was going to draw a cyborg dragon. My only real concerns with this picture are that the not enough of him is robotic, particularly is right arm, jaw and wings. Also the silhouette isn’t very good, I doesn’t clearly show off his six limbs. However the dev team was quite entranced with him, likening him to Charizard of Pokémon fame.

Now for the final coloured versions of the top 3 characters the developers chose.

To be honest, I have no idea what I’m doing with colours, and I began with red for all of these guys, and used the Photoshop Hue and Saturation tool to change layer colours until I went through the rainbow, saving out .pngs, and picked out my favourite colours from there.

Red Army Ant

I redrew the arms, and shoved a gun in his hands, it shoots plasma. I’m not amazing with guns, but whatever, I gave it a shot (hehehehe…) I picked red colour, because ants are usually red or black in colour.

Dread Scarab War Beetle 

I call this colouration ‘dread scarab’ because red and black are scary. I wanted the viewer to feel as if the spikes are either poisonous, or covered in blood.

This guy I decided to redraw the cyber-dragon with a more dynamic pose, in order to show off the 6 robotic wings and make the arms easier to read. I felt that the war beetle was already super beefy, so I toned down the shoulder length. Then I made the tricked out gun and connected up a wire to a small machine by his heart. I completely forgot my initial ‘harlequin’ bionic setup, and put the other leg on the same size as the wholly robotic arm, but I still think it works. I also drew some crappy fire.

I hope you have enjoyed my concept art blog :) 

[fanfictionalltheway]

love in its different arts (chapter 3)

Ch3

Adrien is in the locker room with plagg eating the cheese quickly, he waited for the kwami to finish the cheese, and Adrien has to find ladybug and quick. Everyone was accounted for and most of them left for home, everyone think Adrien is at home but no he’s still at home, ‘if it’s not his pen then what, the pad, the hat, something, what is it?’ the been thinking where the akuma is. “I’m all charged!”

“Good now we can go and check ladybug” but before he said ‘transform’ this phone rang he looked and it was his farther “hello farther”

“Hello Adrien, I heard there was an attack at your school?” he asked.

“Yes there was”

“Why aren’t you home? Why didn’t you call Natalie?”

“Well I didn’t because I thought it wouldn’t be safe to go by car and some classes are still going?”

“But not yours, Natalie will be at the school in a little while” Adrien frown.

“okay farther” he hanged up “okay plagg new plane, eat the other half of the camembert in my bag while we are in the car then when we go in the bed room, we transform and we go fight Nathanael and save the day” said Adrien.

“yay more camembert” plagg fly right into the bag and started eating the camembert, Adrien walk down to the front of the school and saw Natalie and the ape like bodyguard waiting, he got in the silver car and drove off, during the way Adrien watch the streets seeing if the evillustrator might course trouble so he could turn back into chat noir, he did. Chloe got Nathanael so angary he started trashing roads, builds and historical parts of Paris, they had to take different routes and detours, Gabriel called a few times.

But for now his farther must think he is at home, being safe and doing homework, in his head. he hope ladybug is alright searching for the evillustrator, he hope Nathanael could turn back but now seeing how angry he is with Chloe, now he’s thinking he won’t calm down, he know how it is to be judged by everyone, many people love him up other modeling agency judge and other model do too, even though they are nice to him, they talked bad behind his back, one time he overheard three model from America talking smack about him, on how he’s too young for this and why he’s doing this?

“Adrien?” the blonde look at Natalie “we’re here” he look outside and see his house it took a long time to get home it’s nearly noon.

“Thank you” they walked inside as Adrien walked up the stairs he turned “I’m going to stay in my room, I going to catch up on some homework”

“Actually your farther home, the building got some damage and he’s home early for dinner too, he wants a family dinner, have a shower and get ready dinner is in an hour” Adrien walked up to his room/

“So are we going?”

“we can’t, my farther home, if he found out, he will ship me off to boarding school, ladybug got to waited for us, for now” then he walked to the bathroom for dinner.

------------------------------------------

Ladybug took Chloe home and surveys her home, helping people from the destruction, and even searching in his home, his mother told her his art is life to him since his farther works around the world, sending him different art books, and sketch books. Now she’s the top of the Eiffel tower at night, then her yoyo ringed he open it and saw chat noir “hay how are you?”

“Sorry ma’ lady but family matter, so where are you?”

“The Eiffel tower, any idea where the evillustrator is?” ladybug heard a clack she turned to see chat noir, climbing up over the railing.

“No idea, he might go back and see his crush?” said chat

Ladybug blushed but he might be right, the last time he did come to her place. “Maybe you’re right, I’m going to….” Before see get to get to finish she heard her miraculous beeping “go and recharge”

“Alright my princesses, before you go I must tell you something”

“What is it?”

“Remember at valentine day when I tried to tell you something” ladybug remember kissing him that day to get rid of a spell.

“Yes”

“Well, I don’t know why but I should tell you this….” He took a deep breath “I love you” ladybug blushed hard and turned, “what’s wrong?”

“I’m sorry chat but I love another” chat heart stop “I’m sorry but must go” she said with her earing beeping, ladybug throw her yoyo and swung building to building back to her house tikki fly to the bed.

“Are you going to wait her chat noir? He’s going to be distrusted” asked tikki

“I have too he’s coming, you can take a nap if you want, or cookies?” said marinette

“Well-being ladybug for almost all-day will tire a kwami out, be careful what you say to chat when he comes”

“Nap then, Well good night” tikki lay on her little bed marinette made for her. Marinette walked up to the roof with her sketch book and sat down, drawing. About five minutes later she saw a shadow she look up and there she saw him. The evillustrator.

“NATHANAEL!” she jumped, “what are you doing here?” he leaned on the railing.

“I came to apologize for destroying the school” he said “I know I hurt people but it’s just Chloe, that book was from my farther it was for my birthday, I just hope you of all people I know, you understand how Chloe torments are like, I…..” he took off his beret and pulled out a folded up purple paper, he unfold the paper, marinette eyed the paper, being so close to the akuma, but she is not ladybug at the moment, but now she know where the akuma is now “….wanted people to know I’m good at drawing, like you, I saw your dress, hats and other designs. When Chloe destroy my book, I just watch teachers, my mum, everyone say drawing is a waste of time, art is a waste of time, but I love it, and no one should tell me what I can and can’t do, even if hawk moth kill me because I didn’t take ladybug or chat noir miraculous” then he put the sheet of paper back in his hat and put it back on. Marinette watch the purple akuma ridden object.

“Why?” she asked “the last it you like this you didn’t want to hurt anyone and you even promise when I come”

“I know and also you………” he remember when she betrayed him, he anger boiled and his eyes almost look murderous but he took a deep breath and let it out “you know, with chat noir. Anyway I need your help”

“What is it?”

“I can’t control it, my angry, I don’t know way but right now I’m calm and collected but whenever I think or talk about Chloe, I get angry but I don’t want that, I want these powers, I love drawing. I can redraw the rainforest, fix building actually do some good with art but hawk moth. He can control me” said evillustrator, he stood proper and he walked to the other side of the small balcony.

“Evillustrator, I get people say you can’t do anything but, you are good, you are better than me, and I like you”

“I like you too” he said marinette blushed she stood up.

“Really?”

“Yes” evillustrator turned and walked up to the fashion designer, very close, face to face close. He brought hands to her face holding her cheeks, looking at her with a shin in his eyes, and a clam purple skin face, his lip tilt up looking in marinette sky blue eyes. Marinette heart beat hard as she took look into evillustrator green eyes.

“I love you” then they kissed, marinette heart and lungs stop working, her brain is screaming and in total panic and feels, the kiss itself it was amazing, it is warm, sweet and electrical, she doesn’t know way but she want it forever, because it feels perfect. They parted both taking a breather, the evillustrator smiled like one his drawings perfect. “You are amazing” before marinette get to say anything evillustrator let go “before you say anything I just want you to know, I really want to do anything for you. Anything” he set back and draw a large paradise bird (like the one that can’t fly) he jumped on and getting ready to take off but he turned back to her “I’m sorry, but like I said hawk moth will kill me if I don’t get his miraculous” he started to well “I’m sorry” then he took off, marinette lean over the railing watching the corrupted artist fly off into the distance.