#if it don't look like him i'm so sorry lmao

[starheavenly]

hiii!!! loving your locket comics!!!!!! just wanted to ask a few questions about your process, if you dont mind :D

whats your general process like?

do you do thumbnails, how do they look like?

roughly how long does it take you to complete a comic panel or page?

how detailed are your sketches? do you do multiple?

do you have any specific techniques for lineart?

do you typically use references for your comics?

generally, how much effort and focus do you put into your comics?

do you have any advice for drawing comics?

sorry for for the absolute bombardment of questions, lmao. just really enjoy your art and comics and very interested in the behind the scenes!! feel free to skip any questions (or this whole ask) well wishes and salutations!!! :D

Hello! I'm so glad you enjoy my comics, and I totally don't mind breaking down the process!

For a normal comic page, I would likely actually write a script since it's much easier to keep track of dialogue and actions. But since these are short, I just write it into my thumbnails.

Step 1: Thumbnails. Easily one of my favorite parts, since I get to throw all my ideas down. I do these comics on a 2-panel grid, so I don't have to worry about actual paneling, and it allows me to focus more on the setup of each shot. Think of it like storyboarding!

Step 2: Add cleaner thumbs if needed. I actually made 3D models of Deadlock and Ratchet's chest in Blockbench, so I often trace them to save myself some time! (It might look insane, but I promise, for me, it's not.)

Step 3: Lettering! I actually like to get the lettering out of the way right away since it can take a while. Ever since I started treating lettering as its own form of art, my skills have gotten better, but it also takes much longer.

Step 4: Clean sketch! I'm just now finding out that people think I’m doing lineart for these? I am not… these are all just clean sketches. Maybe doing the blackwork gives the illusion of lineart?

Step 5: Color! Most of these comics are in black and white to save time, but it also lets me focus on values and shot framing again. I add my glow overlay to the eyes, and boom, done!

Roughly how long does it take you to complete a comic panel or page?

It really depends on how complicated the panels are. I like to step out of my comfort zone. I know the Grimlock and Misfire one took longer because of how many panels there were and the fact that I was drawing characters I’d never drawn before, but I’d say it usually takes around 5-8 hours for a whole page.

Do you typically use references for your comics?

I'm literally the reference GOD- we all know this. But yes, I love using references and doing character studies. I have yet to do a study on LL Drift, but I have a few references of him that I’ve made.

Generally, how much effort and focus do you put into your comics?

I mean, I wouldn't say I don't put in a lot of effort? I put in enough. I don't know… there's a point in the clean sketch process where you can kind of just turn off your brain. I'm passionate about comics, but we can all agree there's a point in a drawing where you just zone out.

Do you have any advice for drawing comics?

I think being able to balance dialogue and visuals is super important. I don't know if you guys have picked up a graphic novel from Barnes & Noble recently, but if you open a page, you'll see a character sitting with the biggest bubble you've ever seen, filled with paragraphs of text. While I get it—being a novel as much as it's graphic—I personally like to visualize emotions more. If it means adding two more panels to make an interesting dialogue setup, I don't mind doing it. Another thing to remember is that not all panels need to have details or 100% effort. Sometimes you need to simplify and move on, and that's okay! Those two extra panels that are giving you a better stage setup might be the ones that need fewer details and less time. I would consider my comic page work and my 4-panel work very different. One is about paneling, setup, and visuals, while the other is very much like storyboarding. Both are skills you learn with practice and study.

[starberry-cupcake]

SHORT STORY + BONUSES (read it like when gollum says bagginses) INTERMISSION!!! Today we'll take some time to dive into the Harrow bonuses and a couple of short stories, one of which I should have read before, but such is life.

previously, in the tlt universe:

I finished harrowcita del 9

Bonus 1: BoE google doc for the soldiers

differently from the other recaps, I did these while I was reading them, not when I finished reading a whole chapter/story

so maybe the thoughts are more rambly than usual

sorry about that

ANYWAY I have to give it to the BoE folks, they've got a lot to deal with over here

they're like the audience, coming into this blind

and have to try to understand how necromancers operate on the fly

'bullet to the head but don't be too confident on that' seems to be the most useful tidbit

it's like a resident evil gameplay

BoE is in resident evil, gideon is in survivor and harrow is in a gothic pulp novel

the advice for engaging lyctors is "avoid them at all costs"

I keep spelling it BoA instead of BoE because of her

blood of adam? blood of awake me up when september ends? idk

Pronounciation guide (aka I do what I want, but apparently pronounce nonagesimus like the author)

dr reverend emperor john chose the name gaius for himself, it wasn't his real name

gaius sounds like gallo, the spanish name for gallus gallus domesticus, which in english would translate to cock and alludes to the fact that he is a dick

agustine is pronounced like in english and not like in spanish (agustín), I have been pronouncing that one right but I could have called him agustín all this time

cassiopeia was a queen but we already knew that

sixth house, ceramics, cooking, checks every one of my boxes

"CRIS-ta-bell. Rather than “crees”."

what is the difference oh my god is there a difference there

pyrrah is achilles's drag name, which is cool

valancy and cyrus were like this

I'm still gonna call the mithraeum mithrandir whatnot the emperor's bolthole, it's in the sacred text

the nonniad is in dactylic enneameter, which is a ninth version of greek epics (which are hexameters) and it's making me send my ancient greek professor from uni good vibes wherever he is

Glossary

we know more about the beasts now, or have more ordered info, the gist of it is this

so the RBs are only the nine OGs from the nine planets of dominicus that the emperor fucked up

those are the ones that can go from the river to the physical world and viceversa

the other minor beasts can only exist in the river

I still think this is all the emperor's and the lyctors's fault for starting this nonsense and killing planets for power and whatnot

so yeah, Consequences of your Actions, johnny boy

the heralds, as we had established, are kind of like borg, responding to the RBs

necromancers kinda go mad at all this as if they were looking at cthulhu

I wanted to google what the two first verses of wake's name were but the first results that pop up are tlt sources and I'm not looking into that, in case of spoilers

I've already come this far without massive spoilers, I'm not gonna risk that now

what quotes would you like to have as a name if you were one of these folks?

If I could choose three, I'd probably pick: Yo tengo el corazón como la espuma / das Leben Sie nicht vergessen hat, daß es Sie in der Hand hält / Quieto en la tierra y sentir que mis pies tienen raíz

probably un monceau d’idées et un monceau de douleurs would be another contender considered

idk how that'd be shortened though, maybe espie because espuma

house quiz was book 1, boe name assignment is book 2

The Mysterious Study of Doctor [tumblr keeps blocking my post and I'm gonna try to avoid this word to see if this is it]

ANYWAY, SIXTH HOUSE TIME

from the blurb I can tell that:

1) all this time I thought Dr S was like a funny nickname someone had given palmolive for being correspondence-horny lmao

2) is this the magnus institute???

3) "Enter Palamedes Sextus and Camilla Hect, age thirteen" we're gonna look at some baby picturessss

"Every thirteen-year-old necromancer in the Sixth House is gifted."

"I was born with four kids in my generation eligible to produce children with me. Palamedes had two"

maybe that's why he went for a correspondence gf

camilla describing that's she's the best and me just going

this thing of 'being attractive' as a category would get me demoted at the sixth, though

but working in data, I can do that

I am really liking archivist zeta

there's something that was sealed for a lot of years and now is unsealed and that's very exciting!!!!

lost media!!!!

so many stairs would be a problem for me, but there's lost media at the end of the tunnel

archivist zeta: don't touch anything

palmolive: including the bone hands?

archivist zeta: the what now

apparently the hands are younger than the time the room has been sealed

with the forms being color-coded, I'm starting to think this is less magnus institute and more office of incident assessment and response 

them making references to other houses remind me that other houses socialized, seeing everything from the ninth made me feel like everyone was isolated all the time lol

add to my list of sixth house love the fact that we have murder mysteries now too

gotta love the sixth house

kinda ominous the hand bones now that we know what we know, of camilla carrying palmolive as a tamagotchi in a bone hand after harrow changed the skull

palmolive and camilla age 13 are a whole other book I would have devoured at age 13 myself btw

giving me his dark materials vibes

there was a skeleton in the air vents above the hands

camilla says she's gonna start taking measuring tape with her alongside everything else and I also can relate to going places with 25 million things, just in case

palmolive steals pens, apparently

I've used this meme for palmolive before but it still fits

the skeleton was possessed by the dr himself, he got kinda stuck on his way there after the fifth person tried to call him and got his hands into his study through skeleton shenaningans

palmolive needs to touch something in order to prove the "why" and everyone votes in favor, because he's on a roll

the cool wooden orb that was in the desk was a cool wooden puzzle, like the Karakuri Creation Group ones

man, I love those

the dr solving a puzzle after his death and coming back to prove it is me with some niche puzzles I used to have a sideblog for

don't ask me

there was paper inside and everyone got outside super fast and started congratulating each other (hello????? you did nothing????) and shaking camilla's and palmolive's hands

they don't wanna give palmolive multiple points for solving a several hundread years old mystery, which isn't fair tbh

"Don’t expire in a fit of hubris." oofffffffff

the paper had letters, which palmolive thinks are love letters

with his years of experience on pining letters

the one at the ends says "Tomorrow you will become a Lyctor and finally go where I can’t follow"

is this about cassie??? aka cassiopeia????

loved the camilla and palmolive murder mystery dinner

As Yet Unsent

this is judith's diary and this is how I imagine she looked while writing it and judging people

judith assisted the BoE with her own healing but it's kinda tough when you're also handcuffed and with your eyes covered and whatnot

judith is still in the emperor's side

I don't blame her, she hasn't met the man

yandere twin has met him and still saved him so, I can't judge judith too much

there's a corpse that isn't rotting

promising stuff

there's a commander called We Suffer

they're wearing masks and camilla is being "converted" to their cause

and she didn't even meet the man, but apparently BoE had contact with the sixth house at some point in the past

cassie?????? is this you??????? who knows

sixth house though, earning more points

also, camilla says that palmolive would want to find out what they know and, you know what, fair

I would too

camilla is also good at chess, because she's good at everything

they're playing ceiling chess like in queen's gambit

judith thinks about martita, who will soon do some awesome things next to mati nonnius

judith is also marinating the fact that everyone was fooled by the twinsies and the fact that regina george twin has no necromancy

she also complains about her being too emotional and prone to trust people

every point regina george twin makes about BoE sounds pretty solid to me tbh

the more I see, the more I think the emperor is a dick, like his name implies

judith argues with regina george twin a lot but also notices that her ears go pink when she's impassioned so...why are you noticing that judith????

how did you notice that???? *smirks knowingly*

judith has to deal with the limitations of medical care when you don't have a bunch of people who do body magic stuff

so she's dealing with recovery in a slow way and with machines plugged to her

it's hard for her because she was from the house where necros are also very able to do physical stuff

camilla is giving her strongly worded positive reinforcement

regina george twin and judith have a lot of moments that go from flirty to fighting

I can't keep using smirk reactions images so (¬‿¬)

regina george twin is also being trained to be rambo barbie and I think that suits her

"In a different time I would have found ways to apologise to Palamedes Sextus, whom I at the very least critically misjudged"

palmolive always getting the indirect compliments my goodness

he's so popular

"The princess has by turns tried to charm Camilla, play with Camilla, flirt with Camilla, and cajole Camilla. Camilla is currently unmoved"

nobody's good enough for her, regina george twin, move along

regina george twin is also being kinda aphobic towards judith's response on her being uninterested to romance camilla

I don't think judith is aro at all but that doesn't mean we have to be assholes about it, regina george twin, thank you

judith and regina george twin think BoE is wrong about necros having orgies and I'm here like

so, apparently, judith propositioned martita because she was pretty much obsessed with her

and martita said no

and she thinks camilla is holding onto tamgagotchi palmolive out of some sense of not wanting to let go of him

unaware of the fact that he's in his river loft waiting for his bones to be womanhandled by harrowcita

also, the BoE has an old ship that judith wasn't helpful with, so they don't really have much patience with her

regina george twin and judith keep flirting in that intense tlt way

I'm starting to think regina george twin has a big crush on judith and I'm here for the dynamics of that

"It said, Ugh! Then it said, Eugh!" is this mercygirl??? it sounds like mercygirl to me

and fixing someone's insides as if they were cleaning a sewing machine also sounds very mercygirl

mercygirl is also curious about this body that doesn't rot and I wanna know what it is because I want so bad for it to be gideon-related but I can't let myself hope

also, she gave them the coordinates to find harrow in the cool planet

"And Camilla said, The Warden and I know they can die like anyone else" 👀

"The corpse of the Ninth House cavalier is as pristine as when Camilla Hect convinced them to take it on board"

YESSSSSSS

YEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

MY HOPES WEREN'T UNWARRANTED

LET'S GOOOOOOOOO

GIDEON ARMS INTACT BABYYYYYYYY

regina george twin proposes necro-cav marriage to judith and judith says no because no relationship here can be straightforward

"Why would I ever knowingly take Coronabeth Tridentarius’s, having desired her already for twelve long, stupid, fruitless years?!"

DRAMAAAAA

AND THAT'S IT!!!! FINALLY!!! This took me a lot longer than I wanted it too but I enjoyed the stories ♥ See you in the next one!!

[serafisolaris]

repose

[scoliosisgoblin]

Which version of Rick is your fav?

it's so hard for me to choose tbh. HOWEVER, I'd say Evil Rick

then I'd say it's C-137 and Memory Rick

I love how pathetic™ Evil Rick really is tbh. love that he's being controlled by his Morty. can you guess who my favorite Morty is?

[warning-heckboop]

"Why did you make Peri mad at Dev instead of wanting to forgive him?" dunno. Vibes I guess

[crossbackpoke-check]

Why I Am Not Coming In To Work Today [abridged], Jess Zimmerman

part one | part two

[pardonmydelays]

the funniest thing that always happens to me is that every time we have a customer who doesn't speak polish and they ask me if i speak english i'm like "no, i don't think i do" only to realize a few minutes later that i do, in fact, speak english

[romanticatheartt]

If I had the ability to led on a grown ass man (without even doing much) for 5 centuries I'd be proud as fuck, lemme tell ya...

Mor probably...

[tardis--dreams]

We get a new colleague in December and i looked him up and he's so heavily und unconcealed right winged i feel nauseous. I mean he's Extremely right-winged. Climate change denier, corona denier, racist, anti gender equality, anti queer, everything. And i didn't try to dig up dirt or anything. It's literally the first thing you find if you just google his name

[umemiyan]

not to be on my nanami haterism again but i think he would probably make the children cry, why is he winning the poll 💀 i hope y'all are the ones who are good with kids in that scenario lmfao i'm sorry

[moongothic]

On the train of your last ask, what are your thoughts on dragons sexuality?

Personally I think he’s Demi something (more attracted to personality than looks or gender)

Honestly because we don't know that much about the guy it's kind of hard for me to form an opinion, and if Crocodad Real then we're going to find out his orientation eventually (since we gotta find out if that was a contributing factor to the Dragodile Divorce (assuming they're divorced)) so I'm kind of okay with not forming any headcanons, since the headcanon could get thrown out the window

If anything, what interests me is how Dragon's orientation could impact the story-- like when I've discussed the Dragodile Divorce I have mainly focused on speculating how Crocodile would've felt about it, but how Dragon felt about that is interesting too

Because if he's straight then yeah that probably contributed to The Divorce, but how did Dragon feel about it? Learning that the love of his life is now happier than ever before after transitioning and being happy for him, while also losing the version of Crocodile that he fallen in love to begin with? No longer feeling thet draw to him because of the thing that has brought him so much joy and comfort? Knowing that even if they did take down the WG the family Dragon had hoped to have would never come to be, because their relationship would now end? And that it would be on some level his fault, because he's not attracted to Crocodile anymore?

Like even if Dragon took things well and the divorce happened "on good terms", it would've been sad for Dragon too.

But then there's a slightly juicier option, because what if Dragon was bi, but the Divorce happened under unpleasant circumstances (be it Dragon lashing out or things getting violent because he couldn't recognize Crocodile) and he didn't figure it out until it was too late?

Because you'd still have Dragon going through some if not all of those previously mentioned feelings, of having to come to terms with the version of his significant other whom he had fallen in love with no longer existed, the family had pictured in his mind would never become a thing, that those things were be kind of his fault and that he had hurt Crocodile deeply in the process. But then he'd be looking at some news article of Crocodile's most recent heroic stunt, seeing his handsome face with that usual, unbothered expression, and realizing he still loved him? That he still wanted to be with him, wished they were together, even now that Crocodile was a far more handsome man than he was? And then the realization that he's bi hitting him like a fucking truck But it's too late. The divorce already happened. He already hurt Crocodile too deeply. Knowing Croc, he had probably already moved on. There was no fixing it, the relationship was over. At least for now, trying to go see Croc could be dangerous due to the WG and not wanting to risk the WG finding out about them and The Kid and Croc would probably be furious if Dragon even risked that at this point, after what he had done. Oh, and then Crocodile killed thousands of innocent people attempting to usurp a country by manufacturing a civil war. Something Dragon can't forgive. (Not to mention, hearing he had been taken down by their own son... Oof)

But what if despite all that, and not knowing the full circumstances behind what had happened (like the fact that Crocodile didn't know who the hell Luffy was), Dragon still loved Crocodile? What then?

[xbraveheartx]

So I know the quality sucks and we don't get any better quality to compare, but I just wanted to point out that, yes. Baby Carlo has freckles. Very few of them. But you can see the ones he had since he was a wee young lad standing out in his painting.

Go ahead and go into the game and stand in front of the portrait. Compare their faces. I'll wait c:

Here's a full/clean version of his portrait if you want to stare at it

So anyways like I was saying before--

[scoliosisgoblin]

Charlie with the man they were always supposed to be with because I'm finally learning how to draw him

[sanji-screenshots]

I'm FINALLY through with Dressrosa which means I'll be seeing our main man again soon, but now I'm thinking about how long I'm going to be in Whole Cake Island... like it took me a (relatively) long time to get through Dressrosa and Sanji wasn't even there for most of it! With WCI I'm going to be pausing every 5 minutes to get screenshots! Lord help me, I'm going to be stuck there for the rest of my life...

[machabre]

too many of my favs can be categorized into "unhinged psycho, soldier/ranger, robot/cyborg, monster" or a combination of those

[emirrea]

Not Takemikazuchi looking like he just had his gay awakening even though he's been hanging out with Kiun for 1200 years

How did it take you that long to realise your shinki is the most beautiful being to have ever existed?!?