#i also forgot to take screenshots of the final product whoops

[ancenth]

Prism family Such Colorful Lives Legacy!

I'm gonna put this under a cut because it's long, but basically since I'm starting posting my SCL legacy on gen 7 (accidentally wrote 6 on the poll whoops) Sadly no screenshots since I wasn't really taking pictures since I was just playing on my laptop :')

I found the rules here, and tweaked it however I felt like for my own play through, which I'll get into below

Gen 1 — Rosa 🌹

The founder of the legacy! She had a very standard generation where she completed all required tasks, got married and had kids, and didn't do much else. She married Darrel Charm, and had twin spellcaster babies; Clementine and Nova. Lived in San Myshuno for this gen.

Gen 2 — Clementine 🍊

I love and adore her and she's actually still kicking around the save! She's a highest rank spellcaster who took a potion of immortality to be with her vampire wife (Evie Delgato) forever :) (and also because I get extremely attached to my gen 2 heirs and I didn't want her to die). She completed the snow globe collection as a teenager before moving to Del Sol Valley. She had her first two kids, Sol (Granddaughter of Makoa and Lilliana), and Amber (daughter of Kiyoshi) who were both spellcasters, before marrying her wife, Evie, and eventually having a little vampire baby named Alba :)

Gen 3 — Sol ☀️

This was the first generation where I started to change the generational goals; namely I'd done the politician career 10000x so I swapped it out for the Law career, in the judge branch, which then had me swap to max research and debate instead of charisma. I also swapped the "donate to every charity" rule to a "volunteer every Saturday with the whole family" rule. She married Aurelio Robles, lived in San Sequoia, and had one daughter, Ivy.

Gen 4 — Ivy 🌿

I did a TOOOONNN of the kid stuff from growing together with Ivy, which was really fun! I think I did almost all of the kid aspirations with her?? Her generation did follow the actual challenge goals. Her ex-wife was Daniela Banuelos, a random townie who cheated on her with some guy named Troy, and had a kid named Dana. Ivy and Daniela had twins, River and Lake. I think her house was my favorite; she lived in this renovated cottage in Henford-on-Bagley that she built up over time and had a giant garden :)

Gen 5 — Lake 🐟

Also followed the actual goals of the generation for her! She married a mermaid. I forgot to mention that every single heir since Clementine has been a spellcaster lol. Lake ended up having 3 kids because for some reason her, Ivy, and Sol all have essentially the same face, so I kept trying until the game finally gave me someone who se genetics actually show the other parent. So first there was Violet, a spellcaster who married her high school sweetheart and immediately had triplets, and then a fourth child for good measure. After Violet was Lilac, also a spellcaster! And finally came our heir, Lavender, who broke the spellcaster streak and is a mermaid!

Gen 6 — Lavender 🪻

This gen was weird for me because I got super used to having spells like scrubberoo and delicioso, and now all I could do was make it thunder sometimes. I also changed this one up, since I've done a bunch of the original goals a bunch! The aspiration was swapped to Strangerville Mystery, career to Military, and swapped the bookworm trait for Adventurous. I still had her marry a scientist (who she met in Strangerville), and still get abducted and impregnated by aliens! Maybe it was a little cruel of me to make a mermaid live in Strangerville but I gave her a lil pool at least.

And then I'll be posting gen 7! I'll make a separate post introducing the family and generation goals (they are completely overhauled from the legacy rules). The gen 7 heir is starting in high school, because I guess Lavender was just too productive and got things done really fast.

[literallyjustscrollingthatisit]

The Process For "Heart Behind The Strings"

Unlike with my first drawing, since I'd already gotten pretty used to the brushes, the first session was a lot more productive. I remember the hair took me a while to flesh out the way I wanted it which is pretty consistent even now. Hair is usually my favorite part to do and I like to really take my time with it.

Session two was not nearly as productive but hey, the hand with the sword is in! Hands have always been the bane of my existence... they're so hard to draw! I definitely used a reference for both hands in this drawing. It should be noted that for a while, I didn't really do "first drafts" and liked to get each stage done and just move on. This is consistent up until the literal last drawing I did where I experimented with rough outlines for positioning. Who knows if I'll stick with it! Being consistent is not really my strongsuit.

I usually like to get the sketching done before I even touch color. However, the front hand was giving me so much trouble that I switched to color because I got so frustrated. But on the brightside: I finally figured out how to screenshot properly so the quality from here on out is better! (Took me an embarrassingly long time.)

The front hand has arrived! It took me way too long to draw this in but the reference helped a lot! It appears I forgot to turn off my guidelines on Kris's face and armor when I took this screenshot... whoops. The other primary addition is the scarf changing a bit. Scarfs and capes are my other favorite thing to draw. They're abnormally fun to outline for some reason.

The flat color has been laid out (except for the armor). And apparently some shading on the underside of the scarf. Also I noticed the background color keeps changing in between. Sometimes I change the color so it's easier on my eyes but then forget to change it back for the screenshot.

Almost everything is colored and shaded by this point! Except the scarf is not fully colored with the stripes yet for some reason. This session also introduced the sweat on the left side (our left) of Kris's face. It's pretty hard to see since it's so small and even harder on the actual one since this isn't the final size of the piece!

The stripes on the scarf have arrived! You'll also notice Kris's body and the back plate are different! The body shape felt off somehow so I changed it here to the one in the final! On another note, you might notice that the shading sometimes looks weird on my drawings. Shading and lighting are still something I'm in the process of learning (and I wasn't taking classes at all during most of these drawings!) so that's why it looks off. I try to look at references or for hair I have a way I like to shade it on top of that.

With Kris complete I moved on to the soul and the gray hands in the back. I'm pretty sure I basically drew one hand then copy and pasted it onto the other side (flipped it too of course). Like I said earlier: hands are hard! I think I liked the black background and just ran with it. It also helped to make the hands kind of just come out of nowhere but still implied to be tied to the soul in some way.

And it's a wrap! On another note: I made a new post on my main blog that may have an alternative version coming to this one later.... (maybe)

Next time, I'll be taking you through "To The Punishment Shack!" That one is actually rather short with only three sessions.

[lia-nikiforov]

Fall 2016 Anime: Last impressions

What, me? Posting something that’s not Yuri on Ice? Did I wander to the wrong blog? Oh right, this isn’t supposed to be a Yuri on Ice blog to begin with, oops.

After a very shitty semester and my Mom’s and sister’s vacations messing up with my anime watching schedule (plus a shitty vicious cycle of not watching anime to work on thesis-not working on thesis because stressed from not watching anime), I finally finished catching up with Fall anime, barely on time before Winter begins (I know some winter shows have premiered already, but none that interest me. Rakugo’s on today though!!!!). So here’s a rundown of the best and worst of this most fruitful Fall season. If there’s a gif it means I forgot to take a screenshot of the last episode whoops.  (worst to best my dears, you know how this goes)

Dropped:

Shuumatsu no Izetta: I really tried. Even after the stupidity of episode 4 put me to sleep, I tried to give it a second shot, but episode 6 was literally everything that is wrong with modern anime and ugh, please release me from this hell. Of course having a strong female character was too progressive for a yuribait show, you just had to make her have insecurities about her normal-sized boobs (vs everyone’s ginormous) and dedicate 25 entire minutes to show that she’s actually a real girly girl that likes pie. Ugh. And I didn’t even mention how stupid the “Izetta’s secret might be revealed” plot element was. That was some garbage writing if I ever saw one. Most of what I’ve read after dropping it seems to indicate it was the best choice

3gatsu no Lion: I’m confused with this show. The production values make it very attractive to watch. There is a harsh and interesting story and character drama happening. Episode 5 was particularly great, and some of the storytelling devices are implemented brilliantly. But for some reason I can’t bring myself to care? I don’t know. The more I see the three sisters, the more the scenes with them bore me to death. I found the idea of watching episode 6 terribly not-compelling so I decided to put it in the back burner and wait out. Maybe I’m just incompatible with this mangaka (I really hate HachiKuro). People seem to be loving it, so maybe I’ll give it another shot at a later date.

Touken Ranbu Hanamaru: This was my biggest disappointment of the season because episode 2 was so good. It tickled all my rekijo bones in the best way. But then it just… nothing ever happened? Also the way all the sword boys gush about how much they love the (invisible but obviously audience-proxy) “Master” is way too transparent and took me out of whatever little interesting character dynamics might be going on. What could be an interesting theme –the swordboys having regrets about not protecting their past owners and being tempted to fix it- is wasted in a “it’s okay, I have a new master now!”. Even with my fujoshi goggles there was little of interest because the boys were so infatuated with the Master I couldn’t even enjoy any of it. Held out until episode 9 and just couldn’t be arsed for more. Maybe the more serious ufotable show will be better?

Nanbaka: I don’t know what went wrong with this mangaka that suddenly decided to turn a perfectly fine comedy into a Very Serious battle shonen thing? Especially mid-arc? The New Year tournament had revitalized the show, I was having a load of fun with it, but then it suddenly turned all dark and serious and nonsensical? The only thing tempting me to go back for the last three episodes is Hajime, he’s a champ. But yeah, the shift in tone was too drastic and kind of spoiled the show for me because I was loving it exactly as it was. It didn’t need the drama. Some people seem to be liking the new direction but ehhhh… idk. If I have time.

The worst:

17. DAYS: It was hard to choose which of these two was gonna be the poop prize winner, but in the end, given how much I struggled to even sit through the last couple of episodes, I guess DAYS takes it. Honestly seldom have I seen a show so infuriatingly ruined by “protagonist no jutsu” i.e. things just happen because a dude is the main character. Kimishita scored three completely bananas goals in that game (bless his heart I love him), but Tsukushi gets all the credit for earning the free kicks and second balls and shit and he’s the one credited as the “hero” of the game. It’s amazing that such an insufferable protagonist is part of a show with an otherwise endearing supporting cast. Now will my love for Mizuki and Kimishita be enough to pull me into watching season 2? Tune in some time next year to find out! (spoiler: most likely no unless it comes out on a boring season)

16.Mahou Shoujo Ikusei Keikaku: I called this show the winner of the “Showed its cards too early Award” since episode one, but boy I didn’t expect it to continue doing the exact same thing over and over through its entire run. At some point it became a very unsurprising formula of showing a character’s tragic backstory at the start of the episode to fabricate last minute sympathy to make up for lack of proper characterization, only to have the character in question murdered in increasingly distasteful ways. I always knew best girl Top Speed wasn’t long for this world, but the way they handled it was gratuitously vicious. Couple that with a barrage of villains, none of which were remotely compelling or had any interesting motivations, a poor man’s Kyubey, a protagonist that is even more infuriatingly passive than Madoka herself (at least in this aspect, MahoIku surpassed its intellectual mother), and a resolution that basically says this whole thing served no purpose whatsoever and you’re left with just a feeling that you could’ve done something better with your life. I never expected grandeur from this show, and in fact I guess it turned out to be about as bad as I could’ve expected it to be, but that doesn’t really erase how terribly dissatisfying the ending was. I guess that’s one weakness that Dark Magical Girl shows have yet to overcome. 

Normally a “the meh” section would be here, but I dropped all those shows for lack of entertainment and time, so we’re skipping straight to

The okay

(I liked these shows but none of them changed my life and I was severely tempted to drop them at least once)

15.Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans: I have rather complicated feelings about this show. The writing has improved immensely since the second half of S1 and they’re doing a fascinating job at working the different shades of moral grey. Mika’s sick relationship with Orga continues to keep me on my toes. But with only 12 episodes left I’m still not entirely sure of where this is going, and most importantly, it stinks of tragedy and there seems to be a general lack of joy in both characters and story, so I always go to watch it with little enthusiasm and maybe a bit of anxiety.

14.Girlish Number:  This one turned out way better than I expected it to be, although perhaps for different reasons than most. Usually when I hatewatch something, it’s for the pleasant schadenfreude I get out of seeing something continue to fail miserably week after week (see Sailor Moon Crystal or Mayoiga). In that sense, I wasn’t hatewatching Girlish Number but boy was I getting schadenfreude about seeing the exploitative producer go on a downwards spiral and the shitty LN anime adaptation turning up a complete failure. But because this was the source of my enjoyment, the finale was, to say the least, dissatisfying. If the show had ended with Chitose getting a proper comeuppance and landing different jobs (in non-shitty-LN-anime) that forced her to climb her way back up instead of trying to have  sudden fabricated popularity, while Kuzu got his ass fired that would’ve been cool. But the “Oh I ended loving this production” ending was ehhhh. It felt the show ended going milquetoast on its criticism of the industry. Criticized the seiyuu idol units but still had the seiyuu sing the OP and ED criticized the cheap swimsuit fanservice but still had a swimsuit episode etc. I mean they went really damn hard on the industry, so it was weird and a little frustrating that they didn’t go the whole way, given how they’d already guaranteed to lose the buying audience anyway.

13.Udon no Kuni no Kiniro Kemari: It’s hard to explain what went wrong with this one because, if you asked me, I’d say I really liked it overall. But the key problem is perhaps that I adored the first two episodes so deeply and then somewhere in the middle it kind of floundered and went in a different direction than what I expected –which isn’t inherently bad, mind you- but it’s weird that there’s so little actual udon in the show when they’re in the title. The finale was good in idea, but I feel it failed to make the emotional landing, and that they capped it off to be a sort of commercial for Kagawa prefecture was just… weird. So uh, it was a good show but definitely didn’t live up to the promise of the first few episodes.

12.Uta no Prince-sama Legend Star:  For me, this and Magikyun are basically tied, because, although I have more love for Utapri due to how long it’s been around and how I’ve grown so endeared to the characters, I can’t say Magikyun did anything worse or better. But anyway Utapri! Revolutions had me losing a little of my love for the franchise, but Legend Star was really great! The music improved drastically and we got some truly neat character arcs. The Otoya arc was surprisingly good. It’s sad to see they’ve fully committed to shitty CG dancing though ): But oh well, the Quartet Night song was great and there’s even more anime coming because Broccoli does like printing money after all. Almost forgot to mention it, but Haruka is hardly relevant this season and I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or not, but I’ll also say I didn’t particularly miss her.

11.Magic-Kyun Renaissance:  I’ll say this about Magikyun, it was less dumb than I expected given the title. I mean it was super dumb, but it could’ve been dumber. It was also a lot of fun, had neat visuals and surprisingly good songs? I feel it could’ve ended in episode 9 because it doesn’t feel like the new resolution in ep 13 actually added anything of note to the story or the characters, but it was okay. It’s harmless dumb entertainment and that’s what I wanted it to be. 

The good

10.Flip Flappers:  It’s always great to see passion projects like this, even if they don’t always stick the landing. In the gayest anime season, FliFla gave us a lesbian visual spectacle that was among the best animated experiences of the year. While narratively it blooped a little in the last third and became a weird Eva-ish nightmare, it sorta kinda worked out at the end, although definitely didn’t live up to its initial dreamy potential. And it was very lesbian, although I feel it was lowkey creepy lesbian since Papika is somehow an adult??? I think they explained some things too much and left others glaringly unexplained. Some weird things happened in that production that hindered its potential, but it’s still a fascinating series to look at, even if you don’t dig the character dynamics (which are adorable but in the end didn’t do much for me). Could’ve done with 100% less creepy robot though     

9.Classicaloid: I’d call Classicaloid the Bungo Stray Dogs (season 1) of the Fall because while it wasn’t what I wanted or expected, it managed to grow on me. I was on the edge of dropping it because the wacky one-note humor wasn’t working for me at all, but with the introduction of Schubert and the slow drip of answers to our questions of what is even happening in this show, it became notoriously more fun. Definitely the strongest moments of the show are when we get to see the Classicaloids having flash backs to their past lives (the episode about Beethoven and his loss of hearing was particularly brilliant) and while I still mostly have no idea of where this is going at all, they’ve definitely got me hooked wanting to know what Bach is even planning.

8.Drifters: This might have gone even higher up the ranks if not for all the homophobic and sexist jokes ugh. But I guess it’s a testament to how entertaining it is that I watched it all through and would still watch the upcoming second season (or maybe it’s a testament to what a good job it did in tickling my very specific rekijo bone). The characterization of Nobunaga in particular is absolutely brilliant, and the little nuances in the interactions between characters of different time periods are fantastic. Cool action sequences and interesting strategizing and politicking. But I reckon this isn’t something that’s gonna sway the non-history buffs. Also ew the sexist and homophobic jokes. The show has great comedy without that, please don’t be so gross Hirano.

7.ALL OUT!!: It had a bit of a slow start, but once it started picking up with the practice matches and developing the team, it’s just gotten exponentially better! Especially since the addition of the coach. DAYS could learn a thing or two about how it isn’t necessary to make the inexperienced main character the sudden “hero” of the team to make for a compelling sports story. That said I still do not understand about 75% of how rugby works at all, but the endearing cast and the passionate games make up for it. Also the horrible hair. Definitely looking forward to where these kids will go in the second half.

The excellent

6.Fune wo Amu: This is a case of me one-sidedly having expectations that a show can’t live up to and thus I don’t enjoy it as much as I could. Which is no fault of the show itself and it is in fact one of the best anime of the season (arguably the year). It does fail on the entertainment department, but compensates with beautiful craftsmanship and a wonderful portrayal of human feelings and relationships. While it wounded up being Very Heterosexual (and the main couple develops in a rather cold and questionable manner, but hey, the wife wasn’t forced to give up her dreams to become a housewife. A+ for progress! ) the portrayal of Majime’s camaraderie with Nishioka (and Nishioka’s very great relationship with his gf!) was really the heart of the show, and just for that it’s absolutely worth the watch.

5.Natsume Yuujinchou Go: I think it’s rather telling to the quality of the season overall that Natsume Yuujinchou somehow fell just slightly above the middle of the pack. I do feel this season of Natsume was weaker than the previous ones, but to be honest I can’t quite pinpoint why. Maybe it didn’t feel like we reached a new milestone in Natsume’s development or in learning about Reiko –in fact, it feels we learned conspicuously little about Reiko this season-, although the final episode and the Touko episode were notable highlights. With a sixth season already in the works, I have little else to say other than, even when it’s not in top form, this is still among the best one could ever hope to get from anime

4.Bungo Stray Dogs 2: Remember how season 1 was good but not what I wanted it to be? Well, season 2 wasn’t exactly what I’d originally hope BSD would be about but it sure as fuck was fantastic! Starting with the flashback episodes to Dazai’s time in the Port Mafia and the story of Oda Sakunosuke, to the introduction of the American writers and the follow-up with Kyouka and Atsushi’s arcs as well as Akutagawa (!!!!) it was a genuinely amazing season that completely justifies watching the first one even if you weren’t entirely convinced about it at first. My only gripe is the lack of Kunikida, but this season showed that Dazai is the lynchpin of this series and he fulfills that role to perfection. I loved loved loved this season and I hope we get more of this series.

3.Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable: While it floundered a little in the second cour (seriously I was happy Shigechi died, he was an awful character), it picked itself right back up in the third and the battle against Kira –who is an astonishingly amazing villain- was just week after week of blood-pumping excitement and fun. Not every episode was perfect, but the package as a whole is fantastic. At moments it felt more like Kishibe Rohan’s Bizarre Adventure, but even that was okay because every member of the cast was so great. You can see the passion David Production has for this franchise, and I’m hoping they’ll continue adapting it. While Joseph is still Best JoJo, I think part 4, with its incredibly strong cast and creative set up might be my favorite arc so far.

2.Haikyuu 3: vicky’s probably gonna hate me for this but If I’m honest, the Shiratorizawa match wasn’t my favorite in the manga. I love the development Tsukki got through it and I commend Furudate for how brilliantly he’s been working in making these characters grow in such satisfying ways. But Shiratorizawa, and Ushijima specially, is the epitome of OP rival and that’s something that’s never really worked for me. It felt like the Rakuzan game in Kurobas, there were moments in which it felt that it just never ended. And I was worried about how they were going to work it into ten episodes. I think it’s a testament to the anime team that they managed to make it not actually feel like 10 episodes, and that they’ve made this one of the most exciting matches to watch in all of Haikyuu. It was truly spectacular and I can’t wait for S4

THE BEST

1.Yuri!!! on ICE: Joke’s on you, this was a Yuri on Ice post all along!! Even if my conflicted feelings about the ending had been sourer and heavier, I would have no doubt that this is the best show of the season (and the year). It’s taken me a while, but after having chewed on my feelings for a couple of days (while fighting the denialists with all my might) I’m even more confident about it. I don’t even know what more praise I can rain on this beautiful, beautiful show that has literally saved me so many times during this really difficult trimester and I am ever so grateful to its creators for giving us such a beautiful gift in such dark times. Now please end our suffering and confirm a season 2, because just like Victor and Yuuri can’t live without each other (canon!) I can’t live without them anymore ;---;

What a strong season this was! A high note to end an otherwise shitty year! Thanks everyone for following this nonsense blog and I hope this new year brings us all more beautiful anime (and less menstrual cramps for me). Winter shows I’m watching premiere literally today so I’ll skip the “anticipation” rundown and go straight to my watchlist in a couple of weeks.  As always, I’ll be happy to hear which were your favorite and least favorite shows of the season, but I know y’all never answer to my questions ;----;

[literallyjustscrollingthatisit]

The Process For "Proceed"

These are going to be pretty long posts but I thought I'd include a bit of commentary in between each. Starting with this one... Honestly, I was just testing out my iPad since this was the first time I'd ever attempted drawing digitally before. It was a really rough sketch with no true detail and just a little bit of color testing. (The quality on the images is pretty rough since for a while I would just take a picture of my screen rather than screenshot. I stop doing this eventually!)

Once I got my bearings and tested out my brushes (I use ProCreate by the way!), I started actually going in with more details, mainly Noelle's hair. I also tried to make her cloak more cloak-like? I think it worked anyway. I had a reference image for both Noelle and the Vessel as far as poses go because at the time, I had no experience and had taken zero actual drawing classes. (I'm in two right now!)

Now Noelle was really coming together! The base color was put in and the rest of her body (specifically ears and antlers) were added. I usually like to do base color for all the characters before ever touching shading. I'm not really sure why. But I did add a bit of shading on the back of Noelle's cloak here so I guess I just contradicted myself!

Unlike Noelle, I ended up drawing and placing the base color on the Vessel in the same day! (I forgot to mention it earlier but I mark my progress with how much I've done by the end of the day. And said progress is very inconsistent.) I remember getting stuck on the Vessel's hair for a while since there is no concrete hairstyle for them as it's the player's decision based on the options you are given. I ended up picking a really basic design as a placeholder and then never changed it... (Whoops...)

Remember when I said my progress was inconsistent? Take this one for example. Leaping from the last progress update where I completed the Vessel all in one go, here I simply added Noelle's face. Though I will admit, it took a while to nail down her expression, specifically her mouth. I remember playing around with an open or closed mouth design before landing on this one since I thought it made her look anxious and scared. At the time, I didn't know how to properly make mouths so that's why it's not matching the perspective...

Aaaaaand here's the final product! The final day primary consisted of me figuring out the blending tool in order to shade Noelle's skin and hair. I finally switched the background to the final color and added the text box with the Soul. I couldn't figure out where to find Deltarune fonts or how to import it into ProCreate so you got stuck with my attempt at decent handwriting instead! At this time, I didn't sign my art so there's no signature on this piece. Later I signed with my name and then I recently switched to my logo!

Well, this is the format I'll be using for the process posts. It's very long form so feel free to just look at the images and completely ignore the walls of text. I've never done anything like this before so explaining my work is pretty hard... Hopefully I'll get better with that too!

Next time, we'll be following the process for "Heart Behind The Strings" which is yet another long one. (Longer than this one!)