#i had to draw the entire bg of that one frame

[iztea]

How do you get the ideas for your backgrounds?

mmm ideas.... sometimes i draw the background directly from a photo reference (the happy case) so there's not a lot for me to change and i can have a rather peaceful painting process

othertimes, the BG is tied to the subject/concept/scene I'm thinking of, so it only makes sense that i have that as the background

for example, for this fem skk art, i knew i wanted to have chuu kneeling in a crater after destroying a city so drawing that background was just a logical follow-up because i already had the entire idea in mind

Here, I wanted to have Akiangel sit on a building, watching over the city. The ominous sign with "the day of salvation" and crow came later after I found this picture on Pinterest, so they helped further develop the concept, but the main idea was there and so on

The third background option happens when my painting doesn't depict a certain irl scene or landscape, nor do i have any particular references i can use. In that situation, I first and foremost think about the general composition, the shapes, how they flow with each other, how I can tie them to my main theme and what sort of symbolism or little easter eggs i can throw in there just to keep it fresh and interesting for the viewer ( aka the person reading this aha ;;) :-* )

For this piece, i started with a big circle for the background, and then I started breaking it up in pleasing, cloud-like shapes and swirls that constantly keep your eye moving around the picture (i mean hopefully lol). The composition was inspired by a) Dazai's Mayoi card ofc, that trad Eastern illustration style with the circle and then branches of trees, and also .. kazuha's splash art ok i admit it bshsj

for this one, the roses came much, much later. Again, I added that sort of golden arcade to better frame the focal point or the main subject of the scene which was ofc her face and/or outfit. Then, since it still felt rather empty, awkward, and directionless, I tried finding a pleasing, spiral line that would compliment the already existing shapes and that would, again, move your eye all around the composition. I figured since her outfit already had those small roses stuffed in her belt, those curvy lines could become some bloody, spikey roses and boom! here are the theme and elements for you: blacks-roses-blood-deadly-sharp-gold etc. I then had her crush some of those roses in her right (ik it's the left hand shut up) hand to balance out the busier left side

and a last example, sometimes I draw multiple character poses in one piece and they sort of become my background. Yet I still have some blank spaces left so i gotta figure out a way to fill them out. Here, since the pose where he's all curled up was inspired by the TDIPUD light novel, i drew him as a "corpse" in a pool of blood, and contrasted it with some nice flowery-ish patterns and swirls that sort of come from within that bloody mess ( someone also mentioned it looks like a womb which I found very interesting as well ). The cats also helped fill out the space. On the left side, i added that swirly black sun that drips into three squares that gradually fill up with straight blackness and raindrops falling below inspired by the "a conviction that the sun will never rise again" line. I don't think I should go into detail with the symbolism cause it's pretty obvious and not that deep so i won't but yeah, and that's my BG all filled up!

I do this with most of my BGs, it's mostly just abstract shapes; I'm very fixated on making the overall composition look okay and for the piece to send a message ( most of the time ), so i don't think of backgrounds as a separate entity, they are part of an already existing idea, generally speaking.

This kinda turned into a composition discussion midway......... sorry about that....... To be completely honest with you, I have plenty of BG ideas, they kinda just spawn in my brain so i'm not exactly lacking in that department. Having to draw them and finding refs is the hard part for me

[despazito]

Idk in my idyllic world the use of ai could improve animation workflow and catapult junior level artists into creative leads roles faster if there's less menial work to be done.

We could have artists still in charge of creative decisions and drawing vis dev while the computer assists with the most labour intensive steps of making shows or movies.

For simpler shows for instance it would be neat I think if you could run your storyboard through a script and have the machine import all relevant assets staged to the best of its abilities instead of manually having to drag props and rigs into your shot and scaling everything before you can even begin to animate (does that tech exist already? Probably).

Like nowadays we already have animation programs where you can set deformer limitations.

i could imagine a possible future where software includes or does subscription services to ai trained on work by artists who got paid to draw or animate template motions or anatomy references. something like generating smart bones could become an automated feature. i can maybe even foresee tech that can look at a character model or design sheet you've drawn and generate a rig for it. in all these scenarios you would have to correct stuff and tune things to your liking, but it gives a considerable head start to the work.

More dynamic shots could be made on smaller budgets if we gave ai props or backgrounds and said "give me this but rotated a little" instead of drawing the same damn chair from 10 angles as a prop artist, I refuse to believe anyone's passion in life is to make prop turnarounds or clean up inbetweens.

what if you had an ai that was trained on drawings of heads at every angle, animals in every angle, a slew of expressions and mouth shapes, then gave it a character ref drawn from a few angles and bam it makes the vtuber rig for you.

this still leaves space for original art and would still require a skilled creative to make something look it's best, that could be a gig. more animators could potentially begin their own smaller studios if cartoons are way easier to make. if anyone could potentially make their own movie in the future, charge people to do it right! no computer can replace a human knowledgeable in film or drawing to guide it in the right direction. without creative people at a production's core, i think the future of ai film is just a very, very, sophisticated version of goanimate than can also do art theft.

this could become the weird futuristic version of "i wrote this children's book can you illustrate it for me?" but instead your mom's friend wants to commission a show pilot they wrote a screenplay for.

When animation was drawn on cels we had entire painting departments whose job it was to paint each individual frame by literal numbers, and it was tedious!! Now we have the paint bucket tool for digital coloring, and software like Toonboom lets you color in one frame then generate the coloring for the proceeding frames. We still have a colour and painting department, it's just different work now. but now we also have people making full color cartoons from their basements because Flash was released for personal computers with said digital tech along with computer generated motion tweening for animation!!

Junior animator and junior bg painter or prop artist roles will probably face an overhaul where more work can be done with less people. But the utopian outcome would be these junior artists can sooner take up lead or supervisor positions where they get to execute their own ideas instead of someone else's. more shows or movies could be produced with less crew for less money, slashing costs when deciding what to greenlight or to take a risk on new talent. The problem is capitalism would make it suck because it only cares about exploiting workers for those cheapest costs possible and forego the necessary human crew required to make the difference between machine-assisted productions and pure ai generated slop

[lico-arts]

Quick update + A little treat!

Hello! I won't be very active during July because of ArtFight and a few illustrations i have planned (on top of my job, send help), so to make up for the upcoming lack of content, here's some insight on how i animate my Twst Chibis :)

(shoutout to the person who sent an ask about this topic! idk if i misclicked or if you took it down yourself, but it made me really happy to be asked and i spent 4 hours writing this as an answer, so i'm posting anyway lol)

Rigging & Animation talk below the cut, feel free to scroll by if you were just here for the update (and have a great day 👋)

I'll be taking Mafuyu as the exemple here, because he's the most complete one i made so far.

Firstly, here's some WIPs i saved showing off his faces and hair bones

Basically i went ahead and made an entire rig for him, since i know i'm eventually going to come back and make him more reactions and outfits. I started from scratch so it took a while, but at least now i have a nice base ready to go!

The original sketch was made on CSP, then the model itself and animation were made on Toon Boom because i haven't learned to use Live 2D yet.

Great thing about that is that it ended up being fully vectorized, which is always a plus if i ever need to resize him.

Here's a zoom (or huh, as close up in as my screen will allow) on all the elements, and their hierarchy. From the left are the elements that show up on top of everything (pearls, hair, head & face), to the ones that are behind everything on the right (cardigan back, braid, shadow):

It's kinda tricky to describe but all elements have their individual pegs (the green bits), which then get linked up additionally and in groups, so for example if i start selecting from the hand and go up, it goes:

Hand -> Hand + Forearm -> Hand + Forearm + Upper arm -> Both Arms + Torso + Head + Hair -> Upper Body + Pelvis + Both Legs

Once the model was done it was onto animating!

No secrets here, i really just tried my best to match the rhythm of how the in-game models move, what movements came back regularly etc... So typically: the heads often bop up and down in a specific way when they laugh or look up, the entire body stretches slightly when they jump or get startled, things like that.

I keep thinking that technically i shouldn't have animated the bangs because the in-game models have pretty limited hair animations, but hhh it felt too important to skip for Mafuyu (and mostly i was just having fun lol).

Just for fun, here's what most of my timeline looks like for the idle animation:

I'm confident that the og animations are fully tweened, so i did that too. But ofc with some adjustments to the timing so it doesn't look stiff. Since everything is on ones I didn't have the patience to go back and modify frames by hand lol.

It was especially tricky to figure out how to make the elbows look good, because of the pattern on his cardigan. I had to redraw the arms like 4 times to have them work in all positions. I spent many minutes looking at in-game models that had checkered sleeves (White Rabbit Deuce ended up being my main reference) to analyse how they made theirs work. I could've bothered making a clipping texture that I could warp to match the movement of the arm but,,, that probably would've killed my motivation entirely, i was determined to make this look good, but not THAT much lmao

The bangs, braid and cardigan were the only elements that i animated with bones and warps, for everything else i just used basic pegs to rotate and stretch the limbs

After that i just threw a Ramshackle themed bg behind him and gifed him up, and Voilà!

Random/fun facts, because why not:

The shoes took me 4 hours to make, because im really not used to drawing with vector tools, all those details made it hell lol

His proportions are mostly based off of Ruggie's model :)

I think that about covers it! I tried going into details without being boring, so hopefully it's still understandable, and maybe even interesting for curious folks 🤞

If you made it all the way here, holy shit thank you!!

[nightabyssart]

akechi goro joins a phantom thieves study meeting

my headcanon: akechi makes passive aggressive powerpoint presentations and doodles a lot of the images himself

thanks guys for all the love you showed on my last video! i treasure all of your wonderful comments!!!

original audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UFtp_8HAJA

programs used: Clip Studio Paint Ex Audacity 

[godkilller]

@izzabizz139

I wanna hear you rant about the Gin vs Hitsugaya anime fight bc I love seeing your pov and you clearly write better than whoever extended that scene :) pretty please

          out of character.  DON’T ENABLE ME SO MUCH !!  No but I cackled when I first saw this ask because oh my god, clearly you saw a taste of my annoyance about the anime adaptation -- no, adaptation implies it was accurate, I’ll say the anime’s take was “inspired by” the manga’s quick run-in. I’ll start by saying this moment is supposed to be a bit important considering, via the audience’s point of view, THIS IS THE FIRST WE SEE OF TWO CAPTAIN-RANKED SHINIGAMI CLASHING. The only other captain-involved fight we’ve seen thus far in the manga is Kenpachi  ( who is an outlier and should not be counted... no, I joke... but, still, Ichigo was not an equal to him, his sword was sliced through like butter. )  The whole reason I enjoyed this encounter between Toshiro and Gin was simply this; it wasn’t some fancy multi-chaptered fight. IN THE MANGA, THERE ARE ONLY TWO BLOWS MADE. One, by Toshiro, to begin the fight. The second, to end it, is Gin’s strike.

          I want you to know that I’ve rewatched this specifically to answer this ask, and only due to this, as I wouldn’t have ever sought it out otherwise. HONOR MY SACRIFICE.

          Read more for length. I’m merciful.

          In the anime, they monologue at each other, and it’s mostly a combination of Toshiro making three separate death threats  ( he starts this off by saying “I’ll kill you before Hinamori arrives” and then goes on rewording it each time, and then also repeats the death-threat he gave Gin prior to this conflict about “I’ll kill you if Hinamori bleeds” )  and then also Gin and Izuru talking about how truly powerful and amazing Toshiro is -- no, this isn’t me being bitter or petty, I literally shit you not, Gin has a line that is legit “AS EXPECTED FROM HITSUGAYA TOSHIRO, CAPTAIN OF THE TENTH DIVISION, A CHILD PRODIGY OF TH' SORT THAT ONLY COMES ALONG ONLY ONCE EVERY FEW CENTURIES. HOW VEEEERY DANGEROUS. YOU’RE SERIOUS, AIN’T YA?” like don’t get me wrong, love a good sarcastic little shit comment like that, but the amount of times the anime pumps Toshiro up like he’s their shinest new cash cow ( and he is, at this point, it is not even 50 episodes into the series and they’ve realized everyone likes him and he’s jumped to high ranks in popularity polls... earning him filler spotlights, and eventually his very own non-canon movie )  so everything coming out of Gin’s mouth feels like more bullshit than necessary. Izuru’s already literally monologued, internally, how powerful and amazing Toshiro is anyways. Why this ?

          Not to mention that, prior to saying that long-winded shit, Gin’s haori changed length three times  ( and once it was longer than his entire body by several feet, and no not in a ‘to show motion’ way )  and most importantly Shinso was drawn, consistently, at katana-length for the duration of their little spat where the following, too, happened: Gin frog-leaps after doing a backflip, Toshiro gives Gin two (2) haircuts, Gin ruins some floorboards and gives Toshiro at least one splinter in his arm, Toshiro whilst wearing socks lands on Shinso’s blunt edge and pushes the sword down with his footsie because that’s how that works, there’s another backflip somewhere in there that Gin doesn’t need to be doing, twirl, twirl, and ballet, Gin’s face elongates until his chin is bigger than his face, Gin spends ten+ seconds purely dodging very close strikes to his face as Toshiro is the only one making breathy growly and ‘tsuuaaah’ sounds, there is a brief moment of no gravity as Toshiro keeps hacking at Gin midair and Gin blocks it over and over again but they still stay in the air but they’re not standing or jumping or using reiatsu they’re just like, momentum-locked I don’t fucking know, Gin frowny faces as he blocks because like somehow this kid who doesn’t even have more reiatsu than him, whose arm strength should not be an issue, is like. making him nervous?? as sword sparks fly. if you know me at all you know I hate when they fuckin’ firework sparkler-ify swords clashing.

          Anyways, all of this happens whilst Shinso is the wrong length and Gin’s hair is getting purpler by the second and this entire thing is somehow a big jack-off to Toshiro’s immense strength even though he’s screaming and wailing at Gin like a child and Gin’s just a vessel at this point to Enhance Toshiro, which, fine, okay, but at least be more accurate with it god damn. ANYWAYS,

          THEY JOUST. They literally run at each other, swords centered, and run past / to the side of one another. Jousting. “Cause that’s how that works. No slashes, no cutting motion. Just swords centered, because the animators were like “no worries guys I know swordfighting basics that’s a legit pose” yeah it is WHEN STATIONARY. Not rUNNING IT DOWN.

          And then Gin’s sleeve is cut, somehow, from the Jousting, because wow Toshiro wow wow wowowowow, and then Toshiro comes back and starts wailing at Gin again and Gin blocks it, again, and it’s all very annoyingly repetitive, and Gin’s frowning and sparks are flying and Gin’s using Shinso, the katana-length wakizashi I guess, with two hands because like I said, the animators knew basics and basics are “katana are used two-handed” like. Okay, you’re not wrong, but I cannot stress this enough: SHINSO IS NOT A KATANA. It’s shorter and meant to be used single-handed!!!! sTop!!! So then Gin rips off the tattered part of his sleeve and throws it at Toshiro, who swipes it away from his face using his Zanpakuto because that’s intelligent and a piece of cloth was definitely threatening enough to use your sword to bat it away  ( btw, Hitsugaya wasn’t holding his sword with two hands at this precise moment, so he could have just... used his other hand )  and then Gin goes in for the classic “stabby stabby rapidly at you while the animation gets a little breather because we repeat this cycle a few times with flashy bgs and phew money made” ... WE ARE FOUR MINUTES AND THIRTY SECONDS INTO THIS FIGHT BY THE WAY. Gin does this for seventeen (17) agonizing seconds straight. Yes, I counted. That was sixteen and a half too many seconds for me, personally.

          Toshiro somehow lassos Shinso whilst Gin is stabby stabby-ing with Hyourinmaru’s chain component. I say component like it’s somehow some type of beauty guru’s lipstick holder, but really am I that wrong ? When else has he ever used this feature ? Anyways, he lassos Shinso because yeehaw I guess, god I’m falling apart at this point can y’all tell????? I need a drink.

          and so, because now Toshiro has Gin’s sword somehow trapped with chain even though it’s just looped around it, he backflips over Gin for a cool trickshot, no blow issued, just vibes, and Gin uses a big brain moment to tug Shinso and the chains slide off. okay now what. We’re past five minutes into this fight, nonstop.

          SOUNDS LIKE A GOOD TIME FOR GIN TO PAUSE AND APPRECIATE TOSHIRO AGAIN! “I see, I shouldn’t have underestimated you, HItsugaya Toshiro” I’m starting to have a feeling Gin’s VA was told to just wing these lines because the amount of times he fills silences / Gin’s mouth movements with Toshiro’s long-ass name is astounding, he’s definitely drawing blanks here but he sure as hell knows one thing: that damn ice-boy’s name. He continues by saying “I suppose I’ll end up regretting it afterwards.”

          Toshiro says that’s not enough, and it’s really dramatic and cool. His eyes even glow all icy and blue and pretty, like his flowy reiatsu. Aesthetic points were gifted entirely to Toshiro’s animations in this scene. Gin was finished in MS Paint and each new scene they had to draw Shinso from memory and try to remember what hue of purple his hair was at gunpoint. Toshiro lets off a big wave of reiatsu and then it vanishes, and he jumps up reaaaally high. like this guy’s flying. his eyes arent glowing anymore that’s sad. Bring Back Glowing Eyes For Strong Shinigami 2k21.

          Toshiro releases his Shikai, and it’s badass, the sky darkens, Izuru looks distinctly more worried than usual, and Gin’s frowning with his teeth out like Bugs Bunny’s having a bad day, all is right in the world. Toshiro and his released Shikai have a nice moment for the Pics, and a big epic freeze frame blur moment happens with it all coiled and swirling around him. Wrow!  ( click the ‘wrow’ it’s a link to my exact reaction )  Izuru narrates for the third time about how powerful Toshiro is, his reiatsu, his Zanpakuto being a deity who is only unlocked every few centuries. The strongest ice-type sword. Pardon the pun, but that’s... you could say, so cool.

          It can even control the weather. So hey, next time it’s rainy, cold, icy, or snowing and you’re unhappy, it’s time to direct a big fuck you at Toshiro.

          Gin dodges the first dragon, and blocks the second with Shinso because blocking water and ice with a sword makes sense right? This actually takes a solid amount of seconds as Gin cuts through the entire length of this ice dragon noodle. Things dissipate, and pause, too, to really drag this out. Surprisingly, this reveals that Gin’s made a boo-boo, his left arm’s frozen, which doesn’t even mean anything because Gin is right-handed, and Toshiro teleports himself behind Gin in true fighty fashion.

          We have arrived at seven minutes and just under twenty seconds of this fight, and Gin turns, DOES THE UNTHINKABLE, gasp! He opens his eyes. His red, dull, evil, gray-eyebrowed with purple hair eyes, and shoots Shinso through its hideout spot behind his haori. This nearly takes off Toshiro’s eye and upwards of his head, but the little guy dives down fast. The rest happens in slow motion, supposedly, because it takes an eternity and people talk entire full sentences in its span of time.

          Gin asks Toshiro if he’s sure he’d like to dodge that  ( it’s a little late for that ) and says that Momo’ll die if he does. SHINSO SCRAPING ALONG AGAINST HYOURINMARU STRANGELY MAKES NOT A SINGLE SOUND. Mute. Even though before they had no problem animating and adding sounds to them smacking blades earlier. There are soundless sparks though, so there’s that. Yay. Can you tell how exhausted this’s made me? I need a nap.

          Shinso is already more than halfway towards Momo, still unconscious, she most definitely has a serious concussion via Toshiro backhanding her midair consider she’s been unconscious for longer than ten minutes. Toshiro has time to get up off the floor where he dropped to dodge, realize with a shocked gasp, turn, shout her name, and watch as Rangiku arrives in a random glow of gold which never happens ever again and blocks the attack with Haineko. Haineko almost cracks on the impact, and continues growing in damage as Rangiku holds Shinso there, implying that she’s stopped it from reaching one-hundred sword’s lengths to pierce Momo. Yes I’m including that implication / note in here because we love to see Rangiku succeeding in life and being Not-Helpless, all while potentially damaging Haineko severely if it wasn’t able to hold him off. Yikes, Gin!

          Rangiku threatens to join the fight if he doesn’t withdraw his sword. Gin smiles, withdraws it, and then Shunpos away.

          Whatta mess. Oh, and the anime fight was pretty fucked up, too.

          This is a long post, but here’s the manga version:

Toshiro leaps into the air,

This is where the fight actually starts between them:

And end. 

Five pages. Two blows. Does not equate to ten minutes of non-stop fighting and monologues. Sometimes, and I mean this in the most unbiased way possible, less is more.

[yoitscro]

First thought: Homestuck^2 should've just been called Beyond Canon, and more people should call it that. 

The 2 was put on for chuckles; HS trending the day it was announced with it being a sequel spoke enough about how such a thing shant be underestimated, and why Homestuck is ABSOLUTELY more than just our small twitter crowd (and the scrap of us still on tumblr). I say that because remembering the Beyond Canon part slightly reassures me about the fact that this is a fanwork that will do some weird shit, and things I don't agree with, but isn't something that I have to subscribe to enjoying all the way with how I engage with Homestuck.

Homestuck 2 is not the canon continuation. Homestuck 2: Beyond Canon, is an OFFICIAL continuation.

Not having it on such an important stool and as the only content we all are only allowed to digest should come from both people who obsessively dislike it, and people who defensively support it. If a character says they kick babies then I can say, hey that's weird, maybe not great writing, but I can pretend they don't in my content, and i dont have to send threats or call people cishet white men for it! and, it's an absolutely great thing that we were all encouraged to create our own ideas without anyone who's influenced us to do so squinting their eyes when we actually go through with it. Glad I don't have to put this story up to the expectations of being a sequel to a 11 year, worldwide IP that's shooketh the internet landscape since it's merely optional, Death of the Author persists, and ideas aren't just dominated and revolved around the perspective of a 1% in this entire fanbase.

That said.

As an OFFICIAL continuation versus a canon one, HS2 is ok. It certainly has that fanfiction vibe, and a story it wants to tell. I can't really tell what that story is since we have like, 10 sub plots rn though. There's not a real a clear indicator on where the focus of main conflict is that connects all these stories together.

I thought that the prose in replacement of Vriska's battle was jarring, but not teeerribly surprising for the format HS2 is going for. It's more so using drawings to compliment text versus Homestuck's usual of panels being side by side with visual importance, or even itself being the one compliment. It sorta feels weird tho that it brought old fans back in with art just for them to get sneered at when they get a bit upset that there won't be main staples of art known to progress the story forward. 

Also people who mock people for “having to read homestuck” knowing there’s language barriers and struggling focus from those who’ve been use to something that was never so dense, are ridiculous.

Personally this could be solved by knowing how old flashes worked, having way more artists on the team, maybe even an art director if not already, and noting that we're not asking for the next Cascade. Rome wasn't built in a day, but Rose Ride sure was, and Homestuck’s animation is absolutely not the same as a 12-24 framed 12 minute cartoon. That, or just snuff the illustrative art as a whole since it's very clear on where the focus is.

I’m sure you’re not here trying to see my opinions on how the outer workings are though, versus plot.

Uuuuh, let's see. Yiffy's still a name I don't care to use until I eventually get tired of any of my art that do not show up in tags. This is fine and not as offensive as people are saying it is. Minors who want to cosplay this character don't have to call themselves this character. Not wanting to be one letter away from accidentally entering a very NSFW space of twitter is fine. Also the lot of people call Tavros, Tavvy.

I hope Kanaya's anger at being cucked is actually seen versus being implied through fan guesses and another character having to say she was.

Roxy needs to be more of an involved character. Where are they during all this?

Jane should have a mention of her relations to HIC being a main/bad influence on her current parallels to Alternian dictatorship.

The PRE-RETCON GROUP should have a fun one-shot update for fans who like them, since they oughta be around if they fell through the ghost hole. Most of them. The sprites that aren't Jasprosesprite should also show up too, since they're around.

Aaaaaand I think we should be extra careful going into the future when it comes to the alien rebellion. It's weird that a lot of the writers are white and toy around with concepts that can be a not so great parallel to racism. Currently not great timing rn! If the characters are going to remain aracial, but with them still doing not much to reference other non-white earth cultures or getting new hair cuts that have different textures (looking at you, Rose), we shant make the species with actual biological benefits a racism commentary. the xeno joke at least had a play on words. If any writer has happened upon this then a, please don't get mad at me again haha, and b, consider having more black writers or directional assistance on your squad. You know who they are.

In the future. I casually want the ghost from the Dream Bubbles to be shown since it's a big elephant in the room to not have a single one of them in the bg despite a load of them appearing from the ghost whole. Don't gotta give them speaking lines, especially the dancestors. I personally don't know if I want that right now.

I also hope in the future that we don't get HS content that is only going to revolve around HS2, if it's optional enough to engage with without being the only option. That's why PQ could ended a bit better for me, and why I hope it's not the main thing that's keeping Hiveswap on the backburner. I don't think it's farfetched to consider that multiple HS content could come from more than just one team; to relieve work load, but to also strengthen the idea that Homestuck can be a various amount of perspectives when it comes to the ideas fans have. The most dedicated fans leading the direction of the story is not just a handful of them. If anything, at least acknowledge the massive ass fan projects going on once in awhile to showcase the different avenues.

"Hey Cro, you sure have bitched about this alot. Do you have anything good to say? Why don't you stop reading if you hate it so much!"

Not every comment needs to be golden, love. Again, some of these decisions I eck at, but ultimately they're just words on a computer that I'm not holding anyone at gun point to do, and I'm curious to see how the story handles itself going forward, since again, it's just a fanwork. Sometimes I wish to not only see where the plot goes, but to see a writer's craft in action.

Good Things:

The Art. Again, please have more artists. It'd help so much, especially since the main one is also double timing for VE. That said, HS2 sticks out to me because of the way the color composition is used. Aside from hair and other tiny things, I haven't seen black used a lot, which makes colors pop. It's really nice to look at. I hope we get more sharper styles of character in the future, since it builds on nostalgia and makes the trolls feel much less like they're from Repiton, but I can deal with it for the most part. I also like that one panel where the omega kids and vriska are talking in the dark room, and based on where they're standing, the text aligns. Tasty as hell.

Meat and Candy still do hold neat logic in the direction the stories go. Candy, while it could be more tasteless in some areas, is chaotic and too much of a good thing. Meat is having something a little more straightforward, though I'm not sure quite yet where it's going. I always found Candy to be the part of the epilogue that actually entertained me the most, from how much of a surreal Robot Chicken skit at 3am it felt. Sometimes the jokes slapped real nice and made me wonder, going in, how is this monkeys paw gonna play out and, hopefully, make people laugh or smirk like they got a good roast at themself?

The slightly episodic feel of each update is what I wanted from the Epilogues, so it's interesting to see that play out when it comes to switching different perspectives.

The bonus updates get points for featuring characters that a lot of us have been wanting to see for ages.

Hopefully this isn't unpopular, but I think the tension of Yiffy's introduction was nicely composed and written (ignoring some of the things I wish for Jane). It leaves you with enough want to see what'll happen next time. You could also say that despite her growling and making a lot of noise, it's not actually bad writing: I see it as the audience being forced to see her in the same perspective that Jane see's her; a dog. Upon no context we're seeing the same thing while knowing things are obviously off, and once we see this character in a new environment where their personality shines, it'll have a bigger impact her own character being humanized. So I like that.

Okay, I think that's all I got. I improv wrote most of this; hopefully I won't be taken out of context since I don’t think that HS2′s writing should ultimately be a judgement of the writers as people, nor treated as if they should hold the same unhealthy work environment that Andrew forced himself to do when writing the og comic. And I'm still like, donating to the patreon and everything, lol.

[runs away]

edit: i was going to put the cw as another positive thing for the comic...but...yeaaaah.

[inkwellfire]

Do you have advice for comic backgrounds without a setting? For a completely random example, the last one I did had a grey background, and I feel like there's something better to do there (unless I'm overthinking again), but I really don't feel like making a defined setting for this particular part. I'm not entirely sure what the other options are/how to make them work best?

It entirely depends on what you feels works emotionally/visually for the most part!

You could have it be a simple white/black/solid color, Very good for just having characters being the focal point and they don’t have to exactly go somewhere or interact with anything.

However, if you need a prop or something they can just float in the space. This tends to work best if your props are ‘the background’ itself or have some form of grounding line, rather than something that would be on something.- unless the characters are already holding it and will be holding it for the duration of the pages they are seen in. -Although, I imagine you could make it work if you want to have a character pick up an item or something, it might just break some of the suspension of disbelief if an item just appears out of seemingly nowhere. (but you can also use that to your advantage and make everything almost more surreal- blankness is a space. And sometimes it’s fun to draw attention to it.)

Just make sure it works for your lighting/colors if you choose to do that! It’s the easiest way to avoid drawing a detailed bg and it’ll be easy enough to understand.

you can also create a gradient/vauge lines to create a background, like this:

Since I wanted emphasis that it was night/dark in this picture, but a solid black/blue or purple bg didn’t appeal to me, and I knew the characters were in a desert w/ some ruins around them, but didn't want to draw it in the same detail as the characters, I made a rather abstract background, not unlike what I’d use for a sketch, and then focused on creating the lighting affect I wanted. 

You can use texture or light effects to create that kinda feeling you’re looking for.  (Textures work especially great if you have a general idea of where they are, but not specifically. perhaps you put them in a forest, you give us the texture of leaves. Or, should they be in a room with a carpet you could give the texture of it under the characters feet and let that texture fade to the undefined ‘edge’ of the room/horizon line.)

You can just purely use gradients to get an effect of being in a space

or vague brushstrokes of movements or to just kind of emphasis the characters or emotions you’re looking for. (a very easy way to create a ‘magical’ feeling to things.)

Remember it doesn’t all have to have the same sort of background throughout the whole comic- if a character is very emotional you can switch the color from white to another solid color, you can break from the framed panels to a free panel or to shape angles or soft curves- maybe using the panels to create that sense of space that a more defined background gives.

So to summarize, for the most part, abstraction is a good way to go w/ less defined settings. Focus on the emotions you want to elicit, the sort of visual appeal you’d hope for and how it draws the eye across the page, and kinda just go from there! And I’m sure there’s more options!! These are just the ones I employ the most often and know how to use- maybe you find something that works better for you!

[abundantchewtoys]

Homestuck^2 Bonus re: Catnapped, part 1

I wonder what Cat is being napped here. It seems as if it's got to be one of the sprites, whose fate has been left unclear throughout the Epilogues. So, what, do GCATavrosprite and Jasprosesprite^2 move to the forefront to publicly oppose Jane, to fill the gap left by Karkat, Dave, Kanaya and Jade leaving Earth?

And how is Jake going to behave I wonder? Meat Dirk did a number on his head AND he's still slated to be Jane's first mantoy, whether he likes it or not.

---

Page 1

Ah, winter. And the Human kingdom has its own version of the White House - it isn't the original one from B2, as we saw on Candy Earth C it was overgrown. Unless in the 16 years since her election, Jane moved the capital elsewhere. But I don't think that's likely.

... Yup, Jake's definitely not all there any more. It definitely begs explaining though: why did he choose to stay behind with Jane? Maybe he only realized nothing on Earth C would seem fulfilling without his friends, until it was too late.

And a fair point is made here - Jake and Jane are the only remaining Creators left on Earth C. Neither Sprites nor Dad Crocker can lay claim on that title. The populace is in the dark about this though, potentially being kept there on purpose by the Crocker administration.

---

Page 2

... The Compact? What the heck is that. Leave it to Jake to mumble through such a solemn and official speech.

...

Dirk.

Dirk what?

... Oh god, Brain Ghost Dirk, here, too?

... Pfffffffff. That's 16 years before his appearance on Candy Earth C, hahah. This opens the door for Jake to be informed of "circumstantially simultaneous" goings-on in both the timelines!!

... But, uh, so, is BG Dirk going to rile Jake up into becoming a spy in this timeline, too?

---

Page 3

Pffff, a troll businessman in the audience? That's an opportunist piece of work, since he should know Jane doesn't mean too well for his kind.

That flag in the background is interesting, does the Human Kingdom have Stars 'n Stripes? With only 4 stripes and 4 stars, perhaps?

And yeah, Jake asks "Are you real?" Not really.

---

Page 4

Brain ghost daughter. Maybe BG Dirk should meet Callie Ohpeee? :P

---

Page 5

Pffff, valid point. If you want to get people riled up about the neoliberal austerity measures Jane is going to take, they first have to understand what that even means. Someone REALLY should have put it in layman's terms to Jake.

Hah, that BG Dirk would have set off on a Strider-esque siloloquy. Jake's brain is quite thorough with some details.

It's strange that it would take this long for BG Dirk to coalesce on Candy Earth C though. Maybe we'll get to learn why it's not taken so long on Meat Earth C. ... Maybe it's because on Meat Earth C, Jake got uprooted a lot sooner.

---

Page 6

Yes, that is it. Jake's already starting to doubt backing Jane, so that's why BG Dirk has reared his head now.

---

Page 7

Pffffffffff. Jasprosesprite^2 interrupts her speech, just as Jane was going to go on another painful tangent. Hahahah, that visual though. Now only Jade hasn't had a case of the old eye-glasses. Jane also has a case of the 8^y SBaHJ mouth.

... Actually, now that I think about it. Does the catnap maybe mean that Jane is put to sleep???

---

Page 8

Pffffffffff.

So, that troll was actually her vice-president? Can't believe she'd have him as a running mate, so he feels to me to be a stick figure propped up to show how "tolerant" Jane is.

It appears her administration has, in her absence, made the disappearance of the other Creators public and framed her disappearance to be related. Politics. So the Mayor negotiated a pact between the Four Kingdoms at their inception. Mas-ter-fff- -ffuuuuuuuck. I just realized. This draws a parallel between WV and PS, who had to cheat to negotiate a pact between the four kingdoms of the imaginary realm! Hahahah. No-one out-democracies the Mayor, though!

Now that Jane is gone though, I wonder what the VP is going to end up doing. And I wonder what plans her kidnappers have with Jane. I mean, I can't see her being willing to listen to anyone... Except, just maybe, the Nannasprites??? Dear god, what if the rebellion on Meat Earth C is led entirely by all the sprites, and Nannasprite is/are actually the leader(s)? This way, all that research Nanna Egbert did about the batterwitch on B1 could actually lead to something.

"No Creators were available for comment" Aka Jake was still busy sleeping off his hangover. Funnily enough, it's called a "tomcat" in Dutch, hahah.

So, for some reason, it appears that Earth C has followed the same calendar as the old B universe. This so that events align I guess, and everyone's birthdays still fall on the same dates and their ages are more easy to track.

But that begs the question, what happened 2021 years ago on Earth C that everyone counts from there? Or have they just switched to the Creator Calendar when everyone arrived? Also possible. As for the office of president on Earth C, it seems that for a long while, there was no office of president. But since then, 20 different presidents have come and gone. And since it's a life term... maybe something over 800 years ago, the office was created?

So the ceremony actually took place at a memorial White House. It's named in honour of Barack Obama, hahah. That must be due to Dave. But it's probably a prop, since the OG White House should by all accounts still be buried in the jungle somewhere, like on Candy Earth C.

[windandwater]

11 questions. @crocordile​ tagged me!

1. What was the last picture you took with your phone/camera that you liked? Can you post it?

With my actual camera was this photo of Brighton Beach, and I did post it! On my phone, a picture of Central park at lunch for my instagram story, and, uh, it wasn’t that good. I have better photos of the park honestly. My phone camera blows.

2. What’s the last meme you enjoyed, and a meme you can’t stand?

I’m going to answer the second question first because I fucking hate the distracted boyfriend meme. holy shit I haven’t hated a meme this much in so long. I was annoyed by the recent spongebob one but not nearly as much as this one. I can’t even explain why, it just...ugh I can’t.

Last one I enjoyed, I dunno. I liked Babadook the LGBT Icon. That one was fun. But I forget these things so quickly and most of them irritate me at least a little, so, I don’t have very many positive answers here whoooooops.

3. Give me a song and what it makes you think of, or what you like about it

I have a whole tag/post series about this! If there’s one that catches your eye (this goes for anyone) I would be happy to tell the story behind why a specific song makes me viscerally remember a place or time. But! I will part the curtain and tell you a post/story that’s germinating in my head, and another story that’s just very sweet.

1: The Beatles - Let It Be is a song I found later in life, and adored right away. I can’t listen to it and be stressed--can anyone? I love to listen to it musically, the chord progression and vocals are so simple and beautiful. But once, while listening, I laid down on my bed and closed my eyes and as I listened, I thought about all of the beautiful places I’ve been, things I’ve seen, times when I felt at peace. Next to a stream in the woods, looking at the stars, walking through a campground in the pouring rain. I love doing that to this day and I would love to do a Let It Be + everywhere post with some of my photos, but I’m not sure it would get across the mood as intensely as I want it to--so I’m still working on the idea.

2: Jerry Garcia (/the Grateful Dead) - Bird Song is really lovely in a lot of ways, but it’s an extra-special and very sweet memory for me. I listened to the Dead a lot growing up, because of my dad. They’ve been my favorite band for my entire life, and every single song that I love has significance in my life. My dad is not always the most emotionally demonstrative person (and honestly, neither am I, when it comes to being vulnerable and sincere) but when I was very small, he used to pick me up and dance with me to this song. I don’t think he ever did that for any other song, and as a rule he doesn’t dance. So it always makes me think of him and being a kid and feeling loved and safe.

4. The last time you were pleasantly surprised

Every time I get on the subway expecting a shitshow and it all goes fine! but more hilariously, the time my bosses called me into their office at the end of the day to ask me to google pictures of ducks in toupees. I am nothing if not immediately down for ridiculous shit for no reason.

5. A physical book you have and love as an item

These days, I mainly buy physical books because I love them as items, so I have quite a few! Standouts are an anniversary edition (one of ‘em) of Calvin and Hobbes, and a beautifully old-fashioned bound copy of Much Ado About Nothing. I also have two of the illustrated Harry Potter books. I mainly read ebooks nowadays but those are some examples of books that just can’t be replicated properly on a screen, and I love them all the more for it.

6. Your phone’s bg and/or lockscreen?

Both are the same: the top photo in this post. I took it at the New York Botanical Garden, in the rose garden. It’s good because having icons over it doesn’t make my screen too busy, and it scrolls when I switch screens so it’s like I’m scrolling through a rose garden.

7. I know I always ask this one, but is there a gif or reaction image you like but that you haven’t been able to use yet? If not, just give me your current favorite gif.

there are so many but this is probably the one that makes me laugh the hardest even though I have the least use for it

8. One thing you would change in your favorite media thing (book, movie, show, video game, etc)

I mean, okay, I don’t have a favorite media, but it’s the same answer for all of them, I just want better representation. and I’m at the point where I’m done yelling at the ones who do it wrong and want to look for the ones that do it right.

That’s the big stuff. I have smaller quibbles with different things (Sam leaving Frodo in the RotK movie was fucking bullshit) (why the fuck did Remus and Tonks have to die, FUCK you) (*rolls out a giant parchment of “gay ships that should’ve been canon”*) (okay that last one is a big quibble) but I’d have to take them one at a time and currently I’m Tired so, onward to better things I guess.

9. A non-American movie you like 

I haven’t seen many--I don’t typically know where to start? But I adored Mystère à la Tour Eiffel, I am here all DAY for adorable interracial Victorian lesbians.

The only other one I can think of is Spirited Away, which of course was lovely. And I need to watch more Studio Ghibli films, I know this, I’ll get to it eventually!!

10. You’re transported to the setting of the last fic you read. How screwed are you?

Uhh not very? I’ve been reading just...Yuri on Ice fic. Set in canon. So most likely I’d be in Japan or Russia, except the rose-glasses non-homophobic YOI versions, and I’d be so completely fine with that. Unless I had to compete at the Grand Prix or something, which would, granted, be a problem.

(Ask me in a week or two when I’ve gone down a hole of TAZ fic, it’s gonna happen and it’s gonna be bad.)

11. stealing this from VV but it’s a great question: what’s the nearest art thing to you rn?

It’s an an ink painting/drawing of a very disturbing looking anglerfish, and I honestly think it’s better if you just try to imagine it. Also on that wall, from right to left:

right under the anglerfish, a silhouette of Aaron Burr with the words life doesn’t discriminate between the sinners and the saints

a garland of multicolored stars

a knitted jellyfish

a lamp with a colorful striped shade and a dinosaur at the base

a Ravenclaw banner

a framed collage of pictures of me and my best friends

(bonus question: what’s a fandom I have that you hate/blacklist/don’t get?)

I blacklist “Game of Thrones” and a bunch of character names from it (and desperately wish everyone would stop using “got” as a tag because that’s an actual word that I’m nervous to blacklist even as “#got”) but not really because I don’t like it, I just haven’t gotten into it and am trying not to learn too much about it in case I do pick it up someday, I don’t want to know too much. Also Dragon Age because I don’t play it and probably never will and I always start reading posts about it thinking I know what’s happening and getting wildly confused. But there’s nothing I hate! If there was I wouldn’t stick around lol.

[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.

[thegeminisage]

anyway i was thinking the other day about how when i did boss rush i wrote the entire script, then thumbnailed the entire thing, THEN designed frames for it, did sketches, etc

and with refuse i leave out the thumbnailing sketch, i just mentally pick out frames from the ~100 or so different sets i have sitting in a frames .psd

but even tho the art is worse, MUCH worse in boss rush, there are some paneling things i like a lot

i think maybe having to do a page a week made me lazy? or tired?or more likely to take shortcuts? and part of that is because for the past ~3 months i've been doing This One Conversation In The Living Room which is REALLY boring lol i'm gonna try to cut back on those as much as possible because they work fine in prose format but in comic format having to illustrate a conversation that is mostly exposition and almost got cut to begin with is like torture

anyway part of the reason i wanted to try a comic was because when i DO write prose i tend to see thing very visually and i wanted to try trnaslating those images in my head to reality so i could share them with other people

so i'm gonna make a .psd with like, little baby images that are comic page sized (the standard tumblr size is all images resized to 540px wide, and no image can be taller than 810px; i used to make my comic pages double that but that was too small so now they're triple that) ... so like maybe half the standard tumblr size, 270x405, maybe even a quarter of that - 135x202

and sit down and like REALLY visualize how i'd want it to look if it were a movie, or how i'd see it in my head if i were writing it in prose

and try to make my paneling more interesting and more fun

like i think backgrounds are great and fun to do and i’ve loved learning to do them, but having to do a hugely detailed bg for EVERY frame is not how it ought to be (and it’s slowing me down...), i wanna focus more on expressions and actions and cool "camera" work - backgrounds should more often than not serve a Purpose, i think?? and not just be there bc they “have” to be

and get back that little sparkle boss rush had that i think the last few months of refuse has really lacked (again, in part because of WHAT i was drawing, but i'll try to script for less of that too)

The Comics Learning Process Is Fun