#i drew all this in nearly no time

[scaewolf]

M.A.L.E.U. - Characters Pt.1

------

(I put all of this together within 15 hours Lord have Mercy)

Name: Gene Miles | (He/Him) Asexual,Panromantic

Age: 25

Race: Monan'

Magic Focus: Temperature Magic, preferred higher temperatures | 6th Sense (lifeforce detection)

Summary: Gene is the Leader of Unit 5A, with His Teams focus on Tracking down and First contact with Targets.

With 19 He was involved in a Freak accident that Destroyed His right Body half. Part of His Body is now supported by an Endo-Skeleton, which Supports His movements and General physical Stability.

He Is related with Lucia Miles and engaged with Sidun Martáine.

Personality/Traits: At Work He Is a very disciplined, Task focused leader, known for getting Shit done. In conflicts He can get cruel and stoic If provoked. In His private Life He Is soft spoken, understanding and Loving.

He enjoys Poetry and Apple cakes.

He Is very Spiritual and Nature Loving.

Important fact(s): Due to His 6th Sense, that cannot be suppressed without Meds, He struggles with Insomnia, exhaustion, restlessness. Due to the 6th Sense and His Endo-Skeleton in Combination Staying in one Position gets painful very fast for him. So you will never See Him sit still.

Name: Lucia Miles | (She/her) Demisexual, Aromantic

Age: appearance ~ 18, actual age 28

Race: Monan'

Magic Focus: Temperature Magic, prefers Heat | foreign Body Manipulation (aka controlling others via reducing their senses or causing physical exhaustment)

Summary: Lucia Miles is the Leader of Unit 5B, with her Teams focus on Observation and de-escalation, aswell as emergency Backup.

Due to some Experiments in her past she struggles with her Skill of absorbing the lifeforce of recently deceased people. That causes her personality to fracture. She slowly looses Touch with reality with every human fragment her Soul adopts.

After the Death of a teammate she gets into necromantic experimentation herself.

Personality/Traits: Lucia is completely Emotion based. She can get hot headed and emotional on a Wink but Manages to keep outbursts under Control while she is at Work. In private Life she is lonely and melancholic. She is forced to enjoy her own company, which Is No good company.

She Likes fancy Dresses and prefers hot environments.

She loves fire works and would Love to visit a desert one day.

Due to her fracturing personality she Is very labil and Tends to get into hyperfixations to keep herself rooted.

Important fact(s): Due to her ability to attract the lifeforce of Others, it Takes a Long Time for her to feel physical exhaustion. She can use her magical abilities for a Long Time before she runs Out too.

That comes of the Cost of her sanity tho, since she Not only Takes in the lifeforce of Others but she also partially adopts Memories and emotions attached to It.

Name: Sidun Martáine | (He/Him) Homosexual, homoromantic

Age: 24

Race: Human

Magic Focus: -

Summary: Sidun is an orphan. When He Had to leave the orphanage with 15 He soon involves himself in the Korean Mafia, the "Bonghwang". In one of their Safe Houses He found His passion for cooking.

With 18 He Lands himself in prison for a few months. After He gets released He meets Gene who Turns His Life upside down.

After cutting the ties to the Mafia, Sidun Takes on an apprenticeship as a Chef and finished This with Bravour. He now works in a Common Restaurant.

He Is engaged with Gene for a few months now.

Personality/Traits: He Is a very silent Person and hates to be the Center of Attention. Sidun only speaks Few words, If at all, with persons that are Not closely related with him. He rarely shows his emotions and keeps to himself.

In private, especially with His Partner, He Is very Loving. Acts of service being His Love language. He can also become very protective and Dangerous If His friends and Family are in danger.

Thus He can also Channel a cruel personality.

He loves Cats (especially Strays) and appreciates good food and new recipes.

He dislikes the food Made by Gene very much. And goes so far as to ban him from His kitchen.

Important fact(s): Even though He settled on the domestic Life, He wouldn't hestitate to get Back into criminal Activities for the Sake of His Family. Or for Revenge.

Due to being convicted He Is banned from owning pets and moving in with other people for 5 years. (There are also other Rules but those affect him The Most)

Name: Blaiden Miles | (She/They/He) Bisexual, Biromantic (both sapphic leaning)

Age: 30

Race: Monan'

Magic Focus: own body Manipulation (aka physical enhancement for strenght, dexterity and The 5 senses

Summary: Blaiden Miles is the new identity Lucia Takes on after her mental breakdown. After she got cured of the disease that caused her to loose Touch with reality, she fled to overseas to escape her path.

Making new Friends she slowly builds a new identity, until she is ready to Go Back Home and face her past.

Personality/Traits:

Blaiden is very extroverted. Easily finding Friends that align with her dark humor. Due to a Lot of mixed Memories she often confuses Things and she can come Off as clumsy in her daily Life.

At Work she is very focused and calculating, But still Cares a Lot about her teammates. Always Putting their Wellbeing upon the Mission.

She loves learning new Things, especially about languages and technology.

Important fact(s): Blaiden still has a deep rooted Love for Lucias Family, But she does Not think that she is allowed to Claim this Family as her own. Even though It's the Same Body, she thinks that the "original" Lucia is Long gone. Thus the Name Change.

Name: Kristan Crockett | (He/Him) Bisexual/Biromantic

Age: 22

Race: Monan'

Magic Focus: Body Manipulation (foreign (5 Sense Block) aswell as own (Focus on strenght)

Summary: He Is Part of Unit 5B and works under Lucia Miles. Kristan grew Up in a rich Family with a Lot of influence and He Always Had a Drive to Change Something in the World. To have some Kind of Impact.

While working with Unit 5 He finds Friends and gains a new Outlook on Life due to the diverse Background of His teammates.

Unbeknownst to Them, he is involved with the Terror Organisation they are supposed to Work against.

Personality/Traits: Kristan is a very Open Person. Often joking around with His friends, and making Smoking Buddies. He loves to Talk about philosophical topics and enjoys debates.

He Is also careful to Not Overshare and keeps His Family Business To himself.

He loves Traditions and knows a Lot about History. Always Sharing little funfacts about Monan' Tempels the Team Visits.

Important fact(s): Kristan was the Organisator behind one of the recent terrorist Attacks and helped some of the attackers to flee while He was on duty.

He still respects the Team even If they are working against His cause, so It Takes a while for him to execute His plan on openly betraying them.

Name: Lillian Eavs | (She/They) Demisexual/Demiromantic

Age: 18

Race: Monan'

Magic Focus: Own Body Manipulation (Focus on Dexterity and Speed) | self healing

Summary: Lilly has been living in the country for the past 8 years and grew Up with the growing influence of the M.A.L.E.U. Units. With a Drive to also become a powerful protector, she signs Up with 16 and gets through Basic training with her Goal to Join Unit 5.

Just for her to Miss the group and getting assigned to Unit 8 instead.

She still tries to befriend the group and gives Them Hints about her theory of a necromancer on the run.

As soon as her theory proves to be right, she becomes a Honorary member of the Team and joins in on their efforts to end the Corpse snatcher.

Personality/Traits: Lilly is very outgoing and cheerful. She is a very "half Glass full" Person and Always tries to be optimistic. She is curious and loves to get involved with everything she can get her hands on.

She even Manages to Take on Lucia alone for a while.

At Work she can be distracted easily, but she Manages to pull together in critical Situations.

She loves everything sweet and cute. She Also enjoys trying Out new Things in her daily Life at Random. (Like food, new Hobbies, spontaneous travels,...)

Important fact(s): She is the First one to get behind Lucias descend into Madness and volumteers to Take the rage upon herself so her Family and friends do Not get Trapped in the ensuing fire Exchange.

[grey-viridian]

DTIYS for @tizeline

Congrats on 10k!!! (love your artstyle btw sooo soft and beautiful i wanna look at your art all day!)

The original outfit was perfect but I still felt like something was missing...

[siyuri]

Ef's moment of respite at the bottom of the Mariana Trench from amazing story Falling Falling Stars by @not-poignant

[moeblob]

It has been. A Day (tm).

[all-my-ocs-are-evil]

Grojband, but as a band from an early 2000s shoujo manga

[almondcroissantsandink]

a perfidious gentleman with a sinister (?) agenda

[bonetrousledbones]

btw in case anybody's wondering what i've been working on as of late i've mostly been redesigning this guy for the 4th time because sometimes good ideas are bad

[random-lil-illing]

my girl just wanted some coffee :(

[crypticmoth-art]

I got a new pen display today! So I’m going to attempt to line and colour this sketch tonight while I finish watching Frankenstein.

[beneathsilverstars]

ACCIDENTALLY DELETED ONE OF MY LINE ART LAYERS SCREAMING CRYING THROWING UP

[ask-the-totally-real-peppino]

oh no sorry you had a bad day. hope it gets better soon

have a cookie 🍪

(Thank you! I am doing much better today!

[whatudottu]

Ever since I talked about a universal language, or at least about common languages used in the interplanetary (though given we have examples from the Andromeda system, it could also be intergalactic) community, I have been contemplating number systems. Not exactly a universal one no, but certainly what the counting systems of some of the smarter species of Ben 10.

And who else none other than the cerebrocrustaceans that I have been headcanoning so much about for the privilege!

I remember watching a video about creating a number system (part of a series about making a conlang because :P) and at the time I had misremembered what the 'best' number system was and thought 'well what if the one thing cerebrocrustaceans and galvans agree on (rivalry or not) is their numbers'. Turns out, it's a hot fucking debate in the numbers community between base 6 (senary/seximal) and base 12 (duodecimal/dozenal), and the video made a compromise for base 16 (hexadecimal).

So instead of like... going based on that, I went with the next step; fingers!

Except... cerebrocrustaceans have uh... less fingers than humans (or even galvans). Sure, maybe if their number system is so low it can actually contribute into a literal billion digit IQ using the power of a base 2 (binary, of course) number system, using the 'on/off' of an open and closed claw to count but- 2 claws, 2 hands, that only counts up to 4. So I thought 'okay, what else would they use to count?' and looked at their teeth, counting from there; it didn't end up working, the tooth count was inconsistent between screenshots even though Brainstorm specifically held the same expression.

Then one day, in the middle of the night, as I was trying to figure out how to count with the babylonian number system (count to 12 on one hand counting the joints of your 4 fingers with your thumb, hold up a finger on the other to signify how many twelves you've counted up to 60);

What if I just give cerebrocrustaceans and extra joint on their claws (which technically they do have based on animation but it isn't shown because animation-friendly) and have they count the fronts and backs of their claw per claw (though I didn't understand the babylonian counting system previous since I kinda combined it with binary which I did know how to count).

Behold! A diagram!

We will address the 69 shaped elephant in the room later.

Let's bring in the close-ups for the discussion!

Including 0 (which would be an open claw in the same way a closed fist for a human is 0) the cerebrocrustacean number system using this diagram ends up being a base 9 (nonary) system, an odd-numbered system that I am not going to get into because I am only using hands as our counting origin. While functionally in decimal (because I practiced counting this way to stress test the system) you can count from 1-80 (each section on the tens claw corresponding to a multiple of 9 ending at 72), but with the fact that you can count up to 8 in each claw in a nonary system, it's actually counting up to the equivalent of 99 with only hands alone. Considering that the limitations of claws is that there isn't a vast landscape to count with, cerebrocrustaceans make do by counting each section of a claw twice, once from it's inner side and another on it's outer side going from, using the tip to count by touching the corresponding number.

The order from 1-8 is counted first in the (typically) right claw by the pollex (the inner claw) on the inner edge of the pincer (the outer claw) from bottom to top. Then the pincer bends to allow for the pollex to reach the outer edge, tapping the top claw then the bottom claw. Then the pincer follows the same steps to the pollex, counting from inside bottom to top, then outside top to bottom. The pincer has a little more reach being the larger of the two claws, but the pollex folds more because it has more mobility.

As a nonary system, there is no 9 and instead the 'nine' in this instance is 10, which is counted in the same order as 1-8 but done in the (typically) left claw, mimicking binary in how it accents the units of the right claw by adding an additional ten relevant to the corresponding claw.

Admittedly I had no rhyme or reason to display these claws in the order that they're in, but if cerebrocrustacean number systems are written in the same way it's counted then technically inside out, right to left, would probably be a pretty cool and also pretty hostile way to convey numbers (hah, reference to heavy out-grouping biases).

The main goal of the claw positions is to make at least an easily distinguishable set of numbers that don't blur (too much) between each other if you kinda look at it from silhouette alone. Not sure how successful I was but it isn't the actual numbers in written form themselves, so it's a different ball-park and more of a visualisation of the dexterity used to count.

And now- gotteem!

A funny thing about making a counting system and like, actually practicing how it feels and how to actually count, is that you sometimes stumble into comedy gold and get a 69 on the decimal 69 (if you twist your hands around to mimic it at least) plus just hitting you with an almost perfect 👌👌just made me want to actually visualise this. Well... I was gonna visualise it anyway since it helps to provide an example on how cerebrocrustacean's count with claws but like- yeagh I don't care that odd-numbered bases are not optimal I'm keeping the nonary system for this joke alone (not actually but it's a bonus)!

Anyway- don't ask me how they do math and have a good time counting to 76!

[eriathalia]

How to mess with a picture that I actually liked:

picking gold leaf over gold paint and then having it stick everywhere it's not supposed to T_T

The splashes were an attempt to tie things in...and kinda made it worse. *siiiigh*

Still, to all fellow artists out there:

Don't give up. And keep your old stuff.

Even if you are not 100% happy with the result, you will still see improvement and growth.

Trust me on that (see under the cut)

Even if I could have done better, I can say there has been some drastic improvement in my skill. (At least imo)

Found this old pice the other day:

Not awful, but still a massive contrast.

[gethoce]

hey sorry. weird question but. how do you draw sir arthur's armor? i've been trying to learn how to draw him and i just dont understand how it works. like. you know how a regular knight could like lift his mask up to talk face to face with another person. how would arthur even do that? sorry i know you're busy, i just saw you draw him a lot (and other GSA members, which we need more of tbh) and thought i would ask. thank you so much

Argh, Sir Arthur's armor is something I have had so many difficulties with myself. I used this chance to draw a new reference for him.

I figured he'd remove the bottom half of his "mask" rather than the helmet part above to show his face since that reveals more. I've seen people leave out the part of his armor that covers his lower body, but I chose to just pokeball him. The few canon references there are sadly make it very difficult to figure out how his armor really looks like, so everyone has a slightly different interpretation of it.

[threewaysdivided]

Hobson Heckled into Historical Haute-Couture

Continuing the Dan Jones & Dragons gala parade with Hobson, the Flower Crowns' oft-harried Halfling Warlock (played by the ever-wholesome Dan Floyd). Is he trying to massage away the realisation that letting his literally-half-brained patron choose his gala attire might have been a mistake? Is Valse giving him a headache over something else entirely? Did he use Detect Magic in a room full of powerful items and accidentally flash-bang himself? Yes.

More Flower Crowns Gala Outfits: Morenthal | Gelnek

As always, design talk under the cut:

But before that, a short story: I've been following Dan's content on Youtube for... oh jeez, that sure is almost a decade now, both on his current New Frame Plus/Playframe channels and back when he was the primary founder and narrator for EC. His old games education videos helped me get one of my earliest jobs in project work and introduced me to a bunch of media production concepts (like scope management) that would go on to inform some of my own storytelling analysis posts. It was a startling little moment of artistic ouroboros to realise I was mentally running through key points from Dan's own Pose Design 101 video as I was drawing his DnD character. Never expected things to come full-circle like that, but if you're seeing this, Dan: here's to you 🫡 If you're not Dan and haven't already, do go check out his stuff - it's all super well-produced, informative, funny and he's just an overall stand-up guy.

Now: onto the tiny little nerd and his passé party attire

This was a really fun costuming challenge, with a bunch of interesting curveballs thrown in the mix. Unlike the rest of the Flower Crowns, Hobson didn't choose his own party outfit: it was picked out by his patron after Valse kibbitzed him into giving up and letting a heroism-obsessed Fey call the shots. Dan cited Valse as having the fashion sense of Stede Bonnet-as-depicted-in-OFMD, briefing a vaguely 19th century-style outfit that had frilled sleeves and 'would have looked gaudy even when it was in fashion a century earlier'.

Actually dating his outfit was the first challenge. D&D settings are kind of an anachronistic uchronia, with classic swords-and-sorcery fantasy campaigns potentially pulling inspiration points from anywhere across the Arthurian era up to pre-war modernity. Which leads to the question: how do you make something seem dated in a setting where most everything looks vaguely ye-olde-fantasy? The other challenge was that, IRL, the 19th century (i.e Victorian era) was when menswear started taking on a lot of the shapes that would eventually become modern suit and top-'n'-tails fashion. Since Trilby was already going to be wearing classic top-'n'-tails formalwear, I decided to set Hobson's style earlier in the 1800s-1820s and pull in some 18th century Stede Bonnet flourishes to visually set them apart. This article provided some great reference images, and once I hit on the figured silk waistcoat I knew I had a potential starting point.

Colour-wise, I stuck with the burgundy-and-gold palette the Dans gave Hobson in his official gala stream art, since those looked good together and matched up with Dan J's tendency to draw Hobson wearing greens/earth-tones and Valse in reds/jewel-tones. The combination is a lot more colourful and richly saturated than is typical for this style of Victorian-adjacent clothes, which felt appropriate for Valse's gaudy tastes.

Fabric-wise, I figured a fun way to gaudy things up even further would be to lean into the silks and satins that were fashionable at the time, but make all of his outfit shimmery rather than just a single feature piece. As a bonus, silk and satin clothes tend be hot, inelastic and have horribly itchy seams if worn unlined, which felt like exactly the kind of thing Valse's all-form-no-function sensibilities would inflict upon the small, long-suffering fellow. Both these fabrics also have a habit of behaving hideously and ripping themselves apart when worn wet, which makes this a great outfit to, say, accidentally fight an Aboleth in. Poor Hobson.

Some other details, just for fun: 1. Hobson's sketch layers include a drawing of his un-removable cursed left bracer. He's pulled the frilly, puffy sleeve over it but you might spot hints of the shape and the gem if you squint. 2. The reference waistcoat I used had floral embroidery on it. Had this actually been a Hobson outfit, I would have converted them to his garland flower (Forget-Me-Nots), but since it was a Valse pick I decided to make them Senaliesse chrysanthemums; a flower given out to friends of the Feywild's Summer Court as a sign of protection and favour. (It also adds extra layers to Pocket mistaking Hobson for a denizen of the Fey, which is fun).

Close crop on the details because I'm very happy with how they turned out:

[cuteniaarts]

Behold, my latest and most enamouring new obsession:

Malina, Lady of the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe. As if Red Lotus child OCs weren’t niche enough