#in my sketch 1 i also copied the characters in the bottom right of the flower banner

[dailybaizhu]

baizhu in the Room Tm

156: room....

[bakuhatsufallinlove]

Hope you’re well. Do you know how much extra content volumes usually have compared to the number of weekly pages? Apparently we’re getting 60 extra pages. Is that a lot more than normal?

Hello! Thanks for the well wishes.

You've come to the right person, because I'm a weirdo who has done a ridiculous amount of research on Shueisha's tankōban releases and how they differ from WSJ serialization, so I have a good idea about how some of those pages are going to be used. I'm also gonna compare what we know about this final volume to those of other series.

Strap in for the spreadsheets and data party, pal!

First, here's a look at a selection of MHA volumes.

EDIT: These numbers come from Shueisha's official listings of the volumes and their table of contents, cross-verified with the MHA fanwiki's chapter page counts, some of my own physical copies, and online fan scans.

As you can see, roughly 20 pages is typical. 58 seems wild in comparison. I wanted to know what those 20 pages were usually used for.

So, I went through my copy of volume 37 and did a breakdown of its contents.

Now lemme explain some things:

Every tankōban will have between 4-6 pages for legal disclaimers ("this is a work of fiction", etc.), table of contents, and copyright information.

A "door" is a printing term for what one might call the volume title page or chapter title page (example in link). Not all chapters have "doors," most have their titles integrated into the first page, like so:

The vast majority of tankōban have page counts that are divisible by four. This is related to the physical mechanics of printing and binding books, so it is unusual to find ones outside this format. Volume 11 is an outlier in this regard with 210 pages; in fact, the English language release cut those two surplus pages.

Tankōban may have dust jackets. MHA tankōban with dust jackets often have a second, internal "sketch cover" and a final page promoting the next volume. These are not included in page counts, and are thus not included in my breakdown.

Manga is of course read right-to-left; this means if you hold a tankōban open, odd-numbered pages will be on the left side and even-numbered pages will be on the right.

In professional publishing, chapters are structured so their first page of actual story content is on the left. Page planning, which is taught to new artists and enforced by editors, involves the odd-numbered page ending on some sort of "pull." Basically, page 2 might be drawn to lead your eye across the book, but page 3 has to make you want to turn the page and find out what happens next.

Basically everything published in Weekly Shonen Jump has chapters with an odd-number of pages, so it'll have 15, 17, 19, or 21 pages, instead of 16, 18, 20, or 22. This allows the chapter to both begin and end on the lefthand side; even-numbered pages before and after the chapters separate the different series with promotional ads.

What we think of as bonus material is mostly what I personally call adjustment pages: in order for every chapter to still begin and end on the odd-numbered page in the tankōban, they must be separated by at least one page that fills the even-numbered gap.

Sketches, quotes, doors, all that extra stuff is really just there to make the structure of the tankōban a little more appealing to the reader. In my breakdown, "adjust" refers to an even-numbered page that is totally blank except for a MHA logo in the bottom corner.

So, 4-6 pages for legal stuff and at least 1 page separating each chapter (typically 8-12), plus a few pages of extra art like character pages or chapter doors, you can see why we end up with roughly 20 pages more than the total of the chapter pages combined.

With this information, let's imagine what Volume 42 might look like.

In this estimate, I just guessed it would have the same pattern of extras as Volume 37, since we know the final volume will have the results of the last WSJ popularity poll. This totals 146 pages, so basically, even accounting for the inter-chapter sketches, that's 38 pages of new, unknown content!

I've seen people guessing that the final volume will include the 2008 one-shot Horikoshi used as the basis for My Hero Academia, but I can basically guarantee you that won't happen, because when it was published in Akamaru Jump (which is now called Jump GIGA), it was 47 pages long. Yes, I went and found a Japanese blog post from January 2008 to verify this page count.

126 chapter pages + 4 legal pages + 8 adjustment pages between chapters + 4 pages for popularity poll + 47 one-shot pages = 189 pages, 5 pages too many. They would have to remove the adjustment pages to make it work, which totally fucks the flow of the manga.

Furthermore, the word used in the WSJ ad to describe the bonus material for the final volume (描き下ろし) specifically refers to drawings newly made for a special purpose. They simply would not use this to refer to a previously published manga being included.

For comparison, I researched the tankōban releases for a number of other WSJ series.

Dr. Stone and Mashle's final volumes were basically identical to their regular volumes in terms of extras and content. I also researched The Prince of Tennis and Naruto as older comparisons, but I couldn't find information exact enough to warrant inclusion, but what I saw more or less matched Dr. Stone and Mashle.

As you can see, Demon Slayer is the weird one here, and it's obvious why. The series ended during the first few months of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Gotouge mentioned having a family member they needed to care for; a lot of people felt these issues contributed to Gotouge not being able to end the series as they had originally intended.

Demon Slayer chapters were typically 19 pages, but the last two chapters were 26 pages and 24 pages, uncommonly even-numbered. If you look at the final chapters and the epilogue in the tankōban, just numbers-wise, the ending could have been four 19-page chapters. But for whatever reason, that wasn't how it went down during serialization.

It's worth noting that the pages added to the tankōban do not change the ending, they merely provided greater emotional closure.

Side note but if anyone's gonna try and bring up Attack on Titan, I'm just gonna point out that AOT was a monthly manga published by Kodansha, a different company entirely. I imagine they have their own approach to marketing tankōban or special releases. You also have to consider the tastes and intentions of the creator, and hot take but I have absolutely no fucking positive opinions on that dude or his work, so it was no surprise to me that anything he added just made the ending worse.

TL;DR: Yes, it's a lot more than regular volumes! Content-wise, we'll probably get beautiful new illustrations and some revised page art that add details which improve pacing or themes. We might get a few extra chapter pages where a single serialized page gets turned into a big double-page spread, like we saw for Katsuki's fight with AFO.

There could be a couple new panels that bring more closure to things that were hinted at in the final chapters, who knows.

The only thing I personally want is a true bkdk handhold.

I'd love a double-page spread of Izuku taking Katsuki's hand and beaming up at him. Just insert it right there at the end before we see them all scampering off to make the world a better place. That would do my heart good.

[yumeka-sxf]

Spy x Family Exhibition Pamphlet

I got my copy of the Spy x Family exhibition pamphlet! I wanted to make HD scans of some of the notable pages and try to translate if I can.

First off is this great "Main Character Correlation Chart" (sorry for my amateur editing, all I have is MS Paint!)

I love how Bond has a different "bofu" (woof) for Loid and Yor!

Several of the pages show the creation process of the manga, starting with rough sketches to final drafts, using chapter 1 as an example. There were a lot of pages for this, so I just scanned the ones that showed the end of the chapter.

Probably the most interesting pages of the pamphlet are the early character designs/concept sketches. Most of these have already been shared by @sy-on-boy on her post here, but I thought it'd be cool to have them in HD! Unfortunately, even with higher quality images it's very difficult to decipher Endo's handwriting. I could make out just a few words here and there, and Google Lens is very unreliable when the writing isn't clear.

The first page has early concepts for the Forger family, Loid, Anya, the WISE logo, and the Eden uniform.

Things to note are that "Oscar" was a working name for Loid, as was "Yolanda" for Yor. What's also interesting is that a beta version of Franky is shown along with the Forgers. Unfortunately I can't make out the notes about him, but I think this has significance because of a sketch on the next page...

Most of the next page shows concept designs for Yor, with a section for Bond and Yor's coworkers on the bottom.

However, what's really intriguing is the sketch in the upper right of the whole family, titled 疑似家族 (pseudo family).

Once again, a Franky-looking character is with them, and he has the title "Uncle" (叔父) Was an uncle originally going to be part of the main Forgers? Was he actually related to Loid or Yor, or if that character did eventually become Franky, maybe he would just pretend to be Loid's brother? I can also make out the word "otaku" (オタク) in the notes for this character as well as "enjoying life" (人生を楽しんでる) Also in the notes for beta Yor it looks like 最強 (the best/strongest) and バカ (idiot/dummy) All I can make out for Loid's notes are 孤独 (loneliness) I think? And what's up with the older and more sinister looking Anya? She really looks like Ashe there. But these are all just early concept designs/notes so I wouldn't take them too seriously.

The next page titled "East and West During the Cold War" has concept designs for Franky, Yuri, Fiona (referred to as a female WISE spy), a male WISE spy, Melinda, and various assassins from the cruise arc.

The first interesting thing to point out is the notes next to the very crudely drawn woman at the bottom of Yuri's concept designs. It says "Yuri's girlfriend?"(ユーリの 彼女?) though I can't make out clearly what the rest of it says. For the Franky designs, I could make out "tsukkomi or boke". So it looks like at some point Endo was deciding whether to make him more of a tsukkomi (straight man) or boke (wise guy) personality. There's also mention of giving him a high IQ (IQ高い). Also, the fact that the sketches include Melinda and the cruise arc assassins gives the impression that Endo had ideas for these story elements very early on.

But the character relationship chart in the lower left is really intriguing.

I'm not sure how accurate these translations are so take them with a grain of salt, but they do make sense to me. But I have to wonder why Anya and Becky are connected to Desmond. For Becky, it could be because her family has ties to the Desmonds, but why Anya? Could the "mysterious institute/lab" she comes from have ties to Desmond too? Again, these could just be early concepts from ideas that Endo is no longer using, so best not to take them literally. Also, the lack of Shopkeeper/Garden in the character relationship charts, the concept art, and the exhibition overall, really does portray them as a "mysterious organization" that Endo perhaps didn't plan out until later in the series' development and is still trying to figure out. But as far as this sketch, I have to say that despite how terribly crudely drawn all their little heads are, it's easy to identify every character...proof of Endo's top notch character design skills!

Another sketch that stands out is on the same page...

It's a very rough drawing of what appears to be either Loid holding Yor or Yor holding Loid with Anya next to them. But honestly it's such a rough drawing it could be any other parents+child. All I can make out of the text directly above is "My wife is stressed!? At this rate..." And the drawing next to it also appears to be two parents and maybe two children? I also have no clue what the "WJ4C 9/20, etc" at the top means. Very mysterious sketch, lol.

The next page has Eden related concepts, including Becky, Damian, George, and various teachers. The drawings in the bottom section appear to be an alternate/abbreviated version of how the Forgers met.

Pretty funny that an image of Franky is covering what's supposed to be a sketch of Demetrius. The text from Franky says "I can't show you this information yet" which is pretty solid proof that Demetrius will make an appearance in the series eventually. There's also nicknames for Damian and Demetrius in the notes - "Dami" and "Demi."

Some notes on the Eden page says there's 2,000 students in the school, with 13 grades divided into 8 classes/houses. The chart on the left is a list of teacher names and their classes, all of which are given names of colors. None of the teacher names have been used so far in the series.

And all that's on the last page of sketches is a continuation of the previous page with the early concept of how the Forgers started (it honestly looks pretty cute, wish it wasn't just rough sketches). And the following section looks like drafts Endo did for promotional material.

The final pages of the pamphlet are the new extra mission chapter which I already fully translated here.

And that's all I'm going to share for now from the pamphlet! I could spend more time trying to decipher the concept art notes but it was giving me a headache after a while, lol. But if anyone wants to try translating them, go ahead (I have higher quality png files of all the scans if needed...they were too big for Tumblr). And again, these sketches are just trial and error pre-serialization ideas that don't necessarily reflect Endo's final vision for the series, so I wouldn't dwell on them much other than for fun theorizing.

The pamphlet does have other interesting information, including an interview with Endo, a timeline of his work on Spy x Family and other manga, and his notes about random things from the series. So I might return to translating the pamphlet at a later date when I have time/motivation.

[snowzapped]

So... The 10yr old Grandpa PC is now bootlooping. Probably turning senile and yelling at the cloud if it could.

Our guess is the graphics card finally giving up. I still have to take it to the shop tomorrow since it's a holiday today. That being said, I may need to build a new pc. I'll salvage what I can from the old one (ssd, hdd, probably the psu) but I need to get a new graphics card, motherboard and processor since mine is 10yrs old and the new stuff aren't that great paired with older tech and if I'm getting a better gpu, might as well get good processing power. Hopefully, it will last another 10yrs.

But I don't have enough money. So if anyone wants to commission me, now would be the time. As long as you're willing to wait a bit. If anyone wants to buy the SteveTony coloring book, send tips on kofi, I would be very grateful. And if you want to consider supporting me on patreon, I thank you so very much. Lowest tier is $1. You get everything the highest tier has.

I am stuck right now. I'm a freelancer and the pc is my only source of income. I will make pencil sketches for $5 dollars. Send me a kofi and your request. I will be very happy.

I can't copy paste all the stuff on mobile but here's the commission link. And the rest of the links are also at the bottom of that post. Coloring book is pinned on my tumblr.

Thanks so much and wish me luck! 😄

[golby-moon]

made a thingy for the @spnfolklorebang and dumped uh a lot of art on it. I now never wanna see and/or draw snow again (good thing it's July ig fghjfhfg)

so first up is the banner, in which I reuse the putting credits on trees thing because I'm very original with banners (at least it wasn't a desk this time gdfgdf). for some reason that sign with the title gives me Club Penguin vibes and I have no idea why, though I'm thinking idk maybe the colors? also look at me forcing myself to get better at drawing forests using that greyed out outline-less object method

drawing the Impala is Hard no matter the angle so I actually used a reference for once yay. just now realizing Dean might be too small but ehh. for this one, I really wanted to emphasize the fact that Cas isn't there at this point in the fic so I drew a lot of empty space in the Impala as opposed to zooming in on Dean and relieving myself of the burden of drawing more Vehicle. also this is my first time drawing snow like that how's it look. also also what no I totally didn't distort various sections of the banner to make the trees in the background what are you talking about

(bonus sketch but I originally just had the Impala all frosty like this and idk I was still somewhat fond of this version even if the fic had the Impala more snow-covered. looking at this now, the frost looks more like salt from the road than anything though :/)

oh no look away it's my attempt at drawing people squatting down ,_, (never a good thing though neither is me trying to shade stuff). nah but I actually found references of Dean and Cas squatting shockingly easily and tried to copy those. still doesn't look quite right imo but an attempt was made so that they could actually see the tiny prints in the snow which I think came out suspiciously well considering. the weird section of snow on the bottom right is supposed to be a slushy sort of river that's partially melted but not really so I tried to make it look kinda melted. also am I the only one who never realized until now that we never saw any of the main characters wearing any sort of winter clothes? they're up to their ears in flannel but don't have a coat or a warm hat??

bonus art piece thingy featuring Phillippe LeChat (the familiar from That One spn episode, since my boy Phillippe is featured in the fic). houses never come out looking quite right and the roof is a disaster but an attempt was made and yeah I did give him huge anime-ish eyes I don't make the rules

the fic this is made for is called "Full Snow Moon" by @mbqnoyolo

(07/06/24)]

[abeinginsand]

3E from outfit set 2 for taylor?

I went a bit overboard haha. Taylor is one of my favorite characters so always happy to draw him and thought the outfit was pretty. Thank you for requesting! (Also Scary helped him with the little bit of makeup in the selfie sketch) Outfit set 1, Outfit set 2 Image description in Alt and copied below:

A colored sketchpage of Taylor in a black strapless crop top and black skirt with a blue translucent coat over top and black thigh high boots. He is shown jumping in the air with both hands in the devil horns pose and kicking his left leg forward while the right leg points down. The top center drawing shows the teen leaning against a cabinet and posing with a sword over his shoulder and three decorative knives on the wall. The top right has a copy of the art meme outfit reference. The bottom left scene is Taylor taking a selfie while sitting with his go bag and fold up cane. He is grinning with braces and one fang visible and his phone case has a monokuma danganronpa sticker on it. Taylor has on blue eye shadow and has used makeup to shape the moles under each eye like hearts. There are also extra hearts below the moles. The last sketch shows Taylor spinning around in his skirt with a happy smile. Sparkles surround him in this scene and the sword one while the selfie one is surrounded in flowers. Most of the sketches include Taylor's blue star shaped earrings or blue hoop or stud earrings.

[waterbat95]

In 2019, I posted a poll asking what my watchers wanted to see me draw more of. In a follow-up poll, a redesign for Kopa won the vote. I started the sketch shortly after, but I never got around to finishing it. After 3 1/2 years, I'm pleased to present the finished reference sheet! Kopa's built and colored a bit more like Nala while still having some traits from Simba (redder for the mane, darker upper-eye area, outer ear rims as a cub, and his underbelly stopping at his chest instead of going up his neck like Nala, Kiara, and Kion's. I like the idea of Kopa having two mane colors, so that returned from my OG design for him (which can be seen here: https://www.deviantart.com/13batsco.....Kopa-530149886). In my current AU, Kopa is younger than his two siblings, and his longing to be important like them turns into envy and frustration when he's unable to get a spot on (Kiara's daughter) Thuraya's Lion Guard. (He's also a brat and a bully, thanks to Simba spoiling him after Nala's death.) What color suits envy? Green! (Not just because of Scar, mind you.) To get his eyes, I mixed Simba and Nala's eyes' RGB values in a bit of a different way: instead of keeping it consistent, I made the R and G values closer to Nala's while having the B be closer to Simba's. Here are the differences: Simba Kopa Nala R 174 77 64 G 23 135 137 B 10 54 143 Color placements: (left to right, top to bottom) 1. Main pelt 2. Secondary pelt 3. Upper eye area 4. Lower eye area 5. Inner ear 6. Darker mane color 7. Lighter mane color 8. Nose 9. Outer ear rims (cub only)/Nose ridge (adult only) 10. Eyebrows 11. Iris 12. Sclera (yellow in eye) You are welcome to use this design for Kopa, but only if it's for Kopa. Please don't use it for your own character! Simba, Nala, Kiara, Kion, and Kopa © Disney Kopa (original that appeared in the Six New Adventures book series) © Alex Simmons This Kopa design and Thuraya made by me, 13BatScorpion95/WaterBat95 STOP: You are not allowed to trace or copy this art or claim the character as your own!

[bryan360]

Here’s my note before I’ll get started….

(DON’T YOU EVER COPY FROM MINE OR MY FRIEND’S WORK, CHARACTERS, AND STUFF IF ONE OF YOU ARE IMPOSTERS WHO HAD HABITS OF PLAGIARISM! I WILL BLOCK YOU FROM MY BLOG IF I SEE YOUR POST WITH MINE OR MY FRIEND’S ORIGINAL WORK BEING EDITED ALL OVER! I’LL EVEN SHARE IT ONTO MY BLOG SO IF EVERYONE WILL SEE THAT YOU TRYING TO COPY MINE OR MY FRIEND’S THINGS FOR NO GOOD REASON WHATSOEVER! That will be all….I mean it.)

The Puppy Duo from Pibby - Doodle Sketch Art

Hey guys! I’m coming back at least during the last week of 🍀March to share my art post you’ve seen for today. Although not my upcoming Animal OC’s Bio that I’m working on for example, but as another fanart of sorts for Adult Swim’s “would be” upcoming show to keep an eye for official news.

If you wanted to see my previous art posts for Pibby, then please click some links down below for your interests. ⬇️

Pibby Before Apocalypse (Nov. 30th, 2021) - Link Here #1

Tumblr Exclusive (Dec. 28th, 2021) - Link Here #2

Tumblr Exclusive (Jan. 13th, 2022) - Link Here #3

Separate Cartoon Worlds (Mar. 13, 2022) - Link Here #4

⬆️ 1st and 2nd Images

As you can see this is a doodle sketch that I’m gonna explain through details a bit, but just wanted to know how much time and effort for these two pups in working designs. Although last time toincluded them from my previous posts was not bad. Still hoping I would continue working on their designs a bit better from what they actually look like on trailer. It took me to get started back in March. 21st, 2022 til the 27th day that you can see the date I’ve added in the bottom right during my progress.

⬆️ 3rd Image

This is the first one I’m going with for their appearances straight up nicely and in color. 👍

⬆️ 4th Image

Meanwhile doing their eye expressions I’ve gotten; at least when making their reactions whether happy, sad, or angry.

⬆️ 5th Image

Thought I wanted to include this of what if these two getting a “Ducktales” style reboot; especially changing their personality to fit in the modern setting. It looks not bad that I used to watch the 2017 version of Ducktales before thinking it was a good thing. It happens few years that I’m skeptical about watching it like it’ll be good or not, but it was all in my head. 😅

⬆️ 6th Image

Now going back is working their actual final designs; mostly their faces and some ears that I’m hoping this is what they actually look like from watching the trailer. I worked hard a bit to drawn the exact looks to do sideways. After getting through this though, I’m hoping this what I prefer when doing their appearances. Looks good huh?

⬆️ 7th Image

Having them to teach learning stuff with Pibby and Bun Bun would be a nice thing if it wasn’t to go around in crazy situation when surviving the apocalypse.

⬆️ 8th Image

Walking and talking to each other, but just wish I could drawn them walking on four legs like normal dogs that we seen other characters in cartoons doing it.

⬆️ 9th Image

Finally here’s the last one as a remake from last year and some changes. Still searching of what supposed to be their third sibling that also appeared from the trailer, but hard to find out if he’s digging some bones or not. It’s been not to figure this one out, but still....😔

Anyways, hope you guys like this doodle sketch I’ve made for this week to share. Can’t help it if I would to continue making better designs until now. 😅

Unnamed Dog Characters (Both Pink and Green), Pibby and Bun Bun - Pibby (also known as Come and Learn with Pibby! and Learning with Pibby: Apocalypse (TBA) created by Dodge Greenlay; produced company by Cartoon Network Studios/Williams Street and distributed by Warner Bros. Television

[xenoblademisadventures]

Also here's a dump of other sketches with my thoughts process. Long post, so everything’s under the cut.

The Mythra:

I really liked my first idea so I stuck with it. My thought process was I wanted to emphasize that she's mecha anime and therefore out of place (she already has a mech). Pants are a reference to Alvis's illegal shoes. She’s wearing a crop top because Mythra reads as the type of person who would enjoy wearing a crop top to me. She has giant gauntlet things on her arms because they look cool. I gave her two giant braids because anime (and I’ve noticed a trend of tsundere characters often having two strands of hair going outwards for some reason? And I figured “might as well copy+pasta lol). Her left eye is partially covered by hair, which is supposed to represent her feeling distant or partially isolated from the rest of the world. It’s also a character design trend sometimes used in villain characters, which I thought would fit Mythra since she’s worried about her power being used for evil in 2 and is being constantly compared to Malos in Torna. I kept the choker from the base design because it looks cool and also relates to how she’s constantly constraining herself.

I also wanted to make her buff because she’s a warrior who wields a giant fucking sword, she should be buff (like, the fight scenes involving her in Torna DLC looked a bit awkward because Mythra was swinging a giant sword around one-handed like it was nothing while also having very shrimpy arms). 

Overall, I wanted Mythra to feel very alien and distant to the rest of the world. If I were to continue iterating on this, I’d probably look at some of Elma’s armor (mim and alien) for reference because doing that would allow for Mythra to look disconnected from the Xenoblade 2 cast but still feel like a Xenoblade character.

Side note: I assumed that the Aegis shape Core Crystal was a requirement. If I had the option to remove it, I probably would. It doesn’t look bad, but if the goal was to connect the Aegises with the Monado, I don’t like that Alvis’s key had to be retconned for that to function.

The Pyras:

A consistent theme here between the designs was the pants. I wanted Alvis's illegal pants to be a running theme among the Aegises because they are stupid and illegal and I like them. They also look like the most vaguely scifi part of his actual outfit, so I figured giving them a shared article of clothing would be a nice way to visually connect the five character designs (Pyra, Mythra, Pneuma, Alvis, and Malos), and I wanted to keep the vaguely mecha theme going. You can see in Pyra 6 that I was tired and just drew Pyra in Alvis's attire. 

I wanted Pyra to look like a mecha design covered up by something that more closely fits the aesthetic used in Xenoblade 1. So not quite mecha, not quite 1. The idea was that Pyra was trying to look more like a common person in order to appear less threatening. If she despises and fears her power, I don’t think she’d want to wear an outfit that embraces it. Putting her in more casual clothing would also contrast with Mythra and better communicate that Mythra is significantly stronger than Pyra. But all that said, putting her in full casual clothing might undercut the emotion Rex and Pyra’s first meeting was meant to invoke (of being like “oh wow, a legendary ancient weapon). And designing her to still look mecha would still be saying that “even though Pyra doesn’t want to be the Aegis, she is still the Aegis and cannot escape her power.” Which is why quite a few designs lean into the mecha aesthetic. The exact balance between mecha and casual clothing was the main thing I struggled with on this design. The final design is the one that more or less struck the balance I was hoping for.

A few of the designs are vaguely sexualized. Specifically Pyras 1, 4, and 7 all have tiny boob windows. If I were to finalize 7, I’d remove the boob window because it looks a bit awkward and I think a belt (similar to Elma’s underboob belt) would look better, but my thought process there was “do I want Pyra to be comfortable?” I don’t want to go over the top with the revealing clothing, but making Pyra wear slightly revealing clothing that she probably wouldn’t want to be wearing could help drive the point that she’s a combination of all the traits Mythra was criticized for lacking. It’s not pleasant or comfortable letting others dictate your entire existence through repeated harassment and Pyra already very heavily acts like the sexist ideas of what a woman should be, so giving her a tiny boob window could help emphasize that point. The main reason I’m saying I’d change it if I iterated on 7 is because I don’t think it compliments the design particularly well.

Another thing that stuck between each version of Pyra’s design was that her left eye is completely covered by hair. I did this for a few reasons: it would follow up on the symbolism of Mythra’s design partially covering her left eye, it would give Pyra a slight air of mystery, and it would faintly reference Alvis’s design (I want the designs to hint at each other but I don’t want it to be super obvious). The earrings were also kept between designs because they were in Mythra’s design and I wanted that to get carried over because it’s a little bit extra cohesion between the two designs. 

I wanted was to use Pyra's hair to help represented Mythra binding herself. Mythra has two braids that are loosely flowing, so she's already semi bound. If I were to start drawing Pneuma, I think I'd want her hair to not be tied at all (maybe a similar style to KOS-MOS and Elly as a reference, maybe not?) or I'd just put her in really long dreadlocks or something because hair go brr. One idea I had was to just have one big braided ponytail, but another idea was to try and tie the hair up (which is what I was going for in Pyra 2). I couldn't find a way to do that in a way I particularly liked, so single big ponytail is the way I went.

You can probably see that there were a lot of ideas thrown at a wall here, so I’ll go over some noteworthy facets of each designs.

Pyra 1 had a key on her chest, it was meant to be reference to Alvis. It didn’t stay in other designs because the reference felt too obvious. The first two designs also had a giant X on her chest, it was meant to look like the outfit was binding her, but I don’t particularly care for it. Pyra 2′s pants had weird patterns on them because I was trying to visually make them look a bit distinguished from Mythra’s while still keeping the same idea, but I don’t really care for them. I also don’t like how Pyra 2 is just wearing a T Shirt. I’m not really sure what I was going for with Pyra 3. She kind of looks like Glimmer in the She-Ra reboot, which wasn’t intentional. Pyra 4 leans more into the mecha than any other Pyra. She kind of looks like a ballerina but not really. I was focusing mostly on making her look a lot like Mythra, but I feel that this design has a lot of similar issues to what I have with Pyra’s actual design where it’s sexy and looks cool, but doesn’t really fit the character. Pyra 5 looks like a heroforge character (or maybe like something that fit Mass Effect’s aesthetic if I’m being generous?). I feel that this one also doesn’t fit her character particularly well. Pyra 6 was a bit of an overcorrection and I ended up just drawing Pyra in Alvis’s outfit. And Pyra 7 is the one I actually went with.

Rexes:

Rex 1 was more of a warm-up than anything. I put him in a vest and some pants. The hookshot and x marking were things I completely forgot about until last minute, which is why they look tacked on. He has a belt with some items in it. I wanted to give him scraffly hair and freckles to better emphasize that he’s just some kid. I don’t really like this design. I feel like if I polished it up, it would still have a lot of the benefits to base Rex while not getting as many people complaining about his pants, but the design is overall a huge “meh.”

With Rex 2, I decided to actually look up what scuba gear looks like. This design ended up emphasizing primarily that Rex has a lot of expertise in salvaging and that he’s a kid with humble origins. His strap on was based on a scuba outfit, same with the shoes. He’s also wearing pull-ups with giant pockets. I felt those imply humble origins because pull-ups get associated with rural settings. The giant pockets imply that he works with machinery. That’s also why his hair’s tied back. If you long hair and you work with machinery, that’s supposed to be tied back so that it doesn’t get caught in anything. I also gave him glasses because we need more characters with glasses. 

The character’s meant to be 15 and I feel that this looks closer to 15 than 12. If I were to make future iterations of this design, I’d try to lean more into making him look 15 because he doesn’t look 15 enough to me. I’d do this by giving him acne.

He has gloves because he’ll be using a sword and it’s generally not good to scrape up your palm while using one of those. His hook-shot also now takes up his entire arm because that’s heavy equipment. I haven’t figured out how the wire is supposed to be stored without having it fuck up his arm. But the hook itself is now in a little hook cubby. I think I’d want to make the bottom of the shoes look heavier than they are since they don’t currently look great for walking around the bottom of the ocean. 

Still, I’m very happy with this Rex. I mostly draw anime girls, so I’m happy with the number of things I feel I’ve gotten right with Rex 2.

Nims and a Dahlia:

I’m a bit unsure of what I want from the Blade designs. I decided to design around their element, their rough personalities, them needing a core crystal, and their element. I also want them to look like they could also exist in the same universe and maybe not look very human? That was, at least, my thought process when drawing Nim, though that thought process was not consistently held, like, at all. A lot of my Blade redesigns don’t look very good because I didn’t have a very good idea towards what I should even be aiming for. The Blades have very generic personalities and overall feel so disconnected from the world that I’d probably just scrap every existing Blade in their entirety and replace them different characters who are better established. Like, maybe because this Blade was born from the Gormott Titan, they look like Gormotti or part giraff as a result and are more likely to have the earth element? And how many hands they’ve been through and the personalities of their previous drivers stack up to subtly influence their appearance? Like, a Blade from Gormott that ended up in Uraya for 10 lifetimes might be an earth-type cat-person with fins or something? Or maybe the more developed a Blade is, the less it resembles a human? But doing that would require writing a lot more lore per individual Blade than is actually provided. But just having something to better frame the Blades as something other than “random (mostly) anime girls that you pick up along the way” would be necessary to give them good designs.

Anyways, with Nim, I figured giving her a Saytr like appearance would be good. She has a strong association with animals and nature, which, for me, translates to “naked.” Alongside that, I looked up Nymphs and they’re also usually depicted as naked women. I also completely disregarded to the two foxes on her shoulders. They were put into Nim 1 as an afterthought. 

Nim 1 is the only Nim that isn’t plus-sized because I figured “why not have some different body types among the blades?” A lot of my redesigns for Pyra and Mythra try to keep their body type more or less in tact less because I think it’s the best body type for them and more to spite the idea that them having big boobs is the reason that they’re oversexualized. Like, they are comically big, but they’re only sexualized because of how much attention the camera and design draws to them. But, that’s a side tangent. I made Nim overweight because I like drawing overweight women. Nim 1 gets the vibes of “naked lady” while Nim 2 has the vibes of “big fluffy friend” while Nim 3 is somewhat of a compromise. If I were to make a final design for her out of these, I’d definitely try and fuse some aspects of Nims 2 and 3.

Nim 3 has vines on her arms because Nymphs get depicted with vines quite a bit. The main reason Nim 2 is wearing a sun dress is because I stepped back and thought “wait, maybe some people would have an issue with a naked anime lady running around.” Nim 2 also has a transition between furry legs and no fur legs. 

I didn’t really have any ideas for Dahlia. I saw someone draw a version of Dahlia based off Elsa from Frozen and I thought that might be fun to draw. I don’t really have any further thoughts on this.

Praxises:

This is sort of where I was at the point where I realized that if I wanted to redesign the blades, I’d need to figure out some unifying theme for them all. I was thinking “maybe blades could try and visually represent different aspects of being human?” This idea was only really used on Praxis and wasn’t very strongly represented. I was kind of tired when I drew Praxis 1 and Praxis 2 was a bit of a warm-up sketch. 

Neither of these designs are particularly good. I wanted Praxis to be wearing those 90s bubbly arm and leg warmers because she has a bubbly personality and is a water type. I don’t know why Praxis 2 is a cowgirl. 

Zenobias:

Zenobia 1 is based a bit a wrestler because she has wrestler vibes. I see her as the type of person who would do Dark Souls no armor run on the dance pad. My other thought process was “let me google the word ‘zenobia’ and see what crops up” and I saw something about a Syrian empress but I decided to do zero research, so I have no idea if what I drew was offensive towards muslims. She has a scarf tho because wind.

Zenobia 2 is based on a picture of that empress lady. I don’t think it follows her character in-game particularly well though. 

Two (Blade) Nias:

Neither Nia is particularly finished. The main requirements were that this Nia has to look like a Blade, a catgirl, and like something were she’d be able to hide the Blade parts, but not comfortably. I’m at a bit of a loss here. I think the formal wear used in her base-game design is not the way to go. The outfit just doesn’t feel like it matches her brash and snarky personality, like, at all. The first outfit was trying to throw random ideas but nothing was coming up and that’s what happened with the other. Though, Nia 2 gets bonus points for looking like a cats 2019 character. I was sketching out what parts of her body should be covered, but I don’t think I’d want to go with crop-top and skirt because Mythra already has a crop top. The tail is also debatable since I figured if I kept that, how Nia hides the tail could be a fun part of her driver outfit. I also didn’t really like how Driver Nia and Blade Nia have different hair and ear lengths. It bothered me more here than with the original Pyra/Mythra designs because Nia isn’t the Aegis, I don’t think she should be allowed to material and dematerialize her clothing, hair, and ears like that. I do kind of like the idea of giving her paws since those are things that can be easily hidden by shoes. Giving her spotted skin isn’t a bad idea but it’s not as high on the “keep” scale as the paws are (which aren’t super high in the first place).

Overall, it’s probably a bit anticlimactic to end on some lame designs, but that’s how it goes, I guess. If I were to redesign more of the Blades (or finish the Blade redesigns I started), I’d need to figure out what running themes I want from the Blade designs. I think maybe focusing on the human designs first and working from there could be a way to go. Unsure. 

[thesumlax]

Posting increasingly shittier-looking content once in a blue moon as usual, yay!  Anyway, I`ve had enough dreams to assemble another page of these, and now I`ve got an opportunity to scan some haphazard sketches, so, as usual, top to bottom, left to right:

1) There was a some kind of page with six pictures of monsters, of which I only vaguely remembered two. This dream might have also taken place in the world of Monster Hunter - or not, the setting was in constant flux, sort of. Anyway, here on the right we have a "spotted bearshark" - nothing like a bear or a shark, really, and I`m not even sure if it was actually spotted, but it was probably blue. On the left is an "oceanic kitten" - some kind of swampy-green cat-penguin that couldn`t even walk, but was apparently a great flier, and a swarm of these scared away even the most powerful monsters and hunters alike. 2) All I know about these two is that they`re a cartoon protagonist duo. The buff lizard girl may be an amalgamation of several dream beings that I misremembered, IDK. 3) What my subconscious considers an elf, apparently. Not sure how his face is supposed to work, and I know absolutely nothing about his armor/clothing, but I remember him being a nice shade of pink. He was singlehandedly waging a revenge-motivated war against a race of "orcs" (they were called something else, but whatever, I forgot that word) - beings of similar body plan, but redder and pointier. They had a crippling weakness in that killing their sole queen would make them go extinct, so that elf better be stopped! 4) Now this was a rare one - an actual nightmare, kind of. I even submitted it to Bogleech`s Nightmare Menagerie 2021, so I`ll just copy my description from there: It starts as some sort of simple, 2D, probably pixel-art video game – which I guess I am playing, though I can`t see myself at the computer or anything, the game is the whole dream. Nonetheless, I associate myself with the player character – some sort of simple, unsegmented yellow worm with little eyespots – look at some terrestrial nemerteans and you get the picture. The only thing it can do is spit a little webbing or goo. It crawls through a winding, but completely linear corridor of brown dirt and equally brown (though sometimes not) ribs and skull interspersed through it (ostensibly human ones, though sometimes the skulls are just weird bone lumps with circular orifices). The only obstacles here are strange double-ended spikes that rotate in the middle of the corridor, which must be locked in a transverse position for the worm`s head to pass through them (the rest of the worm does not seem to be affected by the spikes). At the end (bottom?) of the corridor is a bigger pile of those weird bones, and puling it apart (with the worm`s webs, I suppose) reveals the monster. It`s another, bigger worm (exciting, I know) – this one is segmented, with either some markings on its back or the organs showing through skin. Something like a semi-transparent tapeworm with a planarian`s head. Now I (the player character worm) must run from it backwards through the corridor, and the only thing that can hurt it (not that there are any consequences to it later) are the rotating spikes locked in the same transverse position that allowed me to pass through them unharmed. Finally I emerge from a hole in the ground, and it`s now the “real life” – I`m somewhere at the highway near the place I grew up in (it`s a decent-sized village, or maybe a town by American standards, near the city of Barnaul, Russia), and also my mother is there. It still retains the aspects of game – apart from the fact I`m still the worm (now actually in first person), there are some characters I can only describe as videogame NPCs and I must navigate a short labyrinth of tiny walls in order to proceed (thankfully, a can crawl over the walls now that I`m 3D). The monster worm emerges soon after, scaring away the NPCs, but it`s much slower than me, so I flee through the village towards my parents` house. It`s placed differently from what I remember, and in place of the garage they`re building a new house – starting with a roof placed directly onto the foundations, so it must be lifted constantly to build the walls. Also all the neighbors are replaced with my relatives. I look for places to hide and eventually find one in the basement of the unfinished house, as the neighbor-relatives alert me that the enemy worm is approaching. From its back, it extends multiple noose-shaped tendrils of wispy cloud-like substance high into the sky, trying to locate me via electroreception. In the end, the weather grows cold and wet for some reason, and the monster worm is anticlimactically defeated by spraying it with water until it freezes and can be shattered into pieces. I get to keep its head, which is surprisingly snakelike, impaled onto a huge needle (I’m still a worm, though I managed to grow hands somewhere along the way apparently). 5) This is the oldest one here, and one I remember surprisingly well. This creature was an alien species hunted by humans for valuable pelts and chelicerae. It was huge and metallic in composition, and the humans were only allowed to use melee weapons, which was not a good time to say the least. Naturally, some people decided to do some poaching with a powerful armed drone... and were immediately arrested by a squad of even stronger police drones coming out of nowhere. It turns out the aliens had their own well-hidden civilization, and the individuals being hunted lost their minds due to a certain disease. This is because they need to consume "metallorganic embryos" sucked from some kind of massive superorganism, but there`s a deficit of those due to overpopulation, and that causes them to irreversibly turn into mindless feral animals. Fortunately, an artificial replacement can be made from human automobiles, so they arranged a deal with the human government. Apparently this species is fine with sick individuals being hunted like beasts, but only if it`s honorable melee.

[poptimus-prime]

Here is what the kids call my highly disorganized, half-baked list of stuff that could have been done with Jack to make him a better character.

@yeetmetothehell I am sorry if you are disappointed by my ideas.

“Optimus was more like...Jack.” OK…so show us that.

In my opinion...Jack seems like he was intended to be written to be almost a parallel to Orion’s journey to becoming Optimus Prime, at least how he is used in the plot. Jack is described as “smart and responsible”, which can also be read as “hardworking and responsible” and really this can be achieved in narratively using a few points, IMO:

Long hours in his room/the library studying outside of work and school. 

Filling out the background of the garage more with sketches/print outs of motorcycle blueprints (to keep the idea that Jack really wants a motorcycle and show hints of extreme dedication, but they’re kept in the garage rather than his room to metaphorically show that distance he’s put between himself and what he wants)

“Man of the House”/”Grew up too fast” (This will be discussed more later but TL;DR “I’ll handle the electric bill this month, Mom”)

Somewhat fragile work/school/life balance that Jack somehow perfectly maintained before meeting the team

Orion was very physically passive. Jack seems to be intended to be written as passive but it comes off as an apathetic reluctance that Orion doesn’t possess (Orion may not believe in violence but he clearly wasn’t unwilling to communicate his thoughts; it’s how he got the title of Prime in the first place.) However, Orion had to learn to become more outspoken over time probably, so we can keep him as being aloof/reluctant at the start of the series.

“Man of the House”/”Grew up too Fast”

It’s no secret Jack came from a nonconventional home; June is very explicitly portrayed as a single mother with a dad nowhere in the picture. However the situation surrounding Mr. Darby is unknown. The way June talks about it makes me personally feel like Jack’s dad either ran out or divorced June and doesn’t bother with his kid. Dysfunction in the family really just goddamn changes you TBH. (can confirm bc hi, I come from a dysfunctional home) Sometimes you just grow up super fast. Jack probably spent his childhood missing his mom as she worked shifts at the hospital and seeing how lonely and hurt she was. He maybe went out and got a job the first day he could and helps with smaller bills (“I’ll handle the electric bill this month.”), or maybe other expenses like groceries and his own phone bill. June probably makes enough to comfortably support her and her son, especially given her job and the cost of living in rural ass desert Nevada. But Jack still does this anyways--it’s how he copes with his issues after what happened with his dad. Doubling down and trying to be what he thinks is the bigger man because his dad couldn’t be fucked. 

This would make the disruption him letting the bots into his life creates more staggering; June doesn’t expect her son to pay bills, but the sudden change in behavior (skipping out on work) would be a cause for concern because sudden shifts like that are Usually Signs that Something is Very Wrong. Especially because Jack is usually responsible and open with his mom; he would have told her if he was gonna cut hours at work, theoretically.

Jack feels like he has to constantly put his own wants aside to contribute to his household. Even if June doesn’t force this expectation upon him, it’s a feeling that he will have, especially if he watched his dad just abandon him and June. Maybe he has resentment towards his dad for this and that is causing some anger he’s keeping tightly under wraps? And maybe the bots give him an excuse to do something he actually wants to do for once or some excitement in his life and that’s why he goes along with it? Lots of options, people!

Clothing Choices: The Hoodie™

You are going to have to deal with me being a whore for costuming choices and what they can mean. The show has a problem with the humans wearing the same shit every time they’re on screen and I’d love to rant about all of them (yeah yeah I get it saving money) but I’m focusing on Jack right now. Give Jack a hoodie 2020. A grey one or some other dull and drab color. And make him actually always wear the hood (except like in scenes where he is working bc workplace dress codes obviously) As time progresses, the drab hoodie is changed to a more vibrant color, but he still always has the hood over his head. And then, at a pivotal moment, the boy takes the hood off. (You could even throw in Miko cracking a joke about Jack actually having hair if you really wanted TBH.) Why this? The narrative is that Jack is constantly holding himself under wraps because of his self-imposed responsibilities. As he starts to become more into his own, he decides to express himself more with brighter colors, but still has some reservations. When he takes the hoodie off, that’s when he’s fully realized himself in this process and thus completes the parallel.

Actually make him interact with Optimus in a meaningful manner.

Arcee can still be his guardian in the field and I think working on strengthening their relationship is vital. But also, if you’re gonna make Jack the confidante holding the key to Vector Sigma, there actually has to be...meaningful interaction. Optimus asking Jack what he’s so engrossed in reading and Jack explaining the book he’s got with passion before shutting himself up and saying “it’s kinda dumb though” or something. And Optimus just responds “I don’t think it’s dumb, tell me more.” Coaxing him towards more self-discovery and expression. Optimus maybe sees more of his old self in Jack and starts attempting to be a quasi-paternal figure without really thinking about it because he is, after all, Dadimus. Jack maybe lashes out about how he doesn’t need Optimus to be his dad and that makes the space between them tense for a while. Eventually Jack comes to apologize and maybe there’s an important Talk.. Just a few ideas I will expand on later. I feel like forgiveness and lack thereof is a good theme--I know I was held back for a long time because of how convoluted the concept of forgiveness is with family.

The Character Arc

 So, what would Jack’s character development throughout the events of season 1 be? My basic idea for a Jack arc that mirrors Orion’s self-realization and coming into Prime-hood without being a carbon copy is essentially: 

Jack is portrayed as a responsible, hardworking, studious teenager who constantly turns down chances for fun and excitement to handle his responsibilities. Has clear dreams for after high school and for his own personal life; but he’s constantly contemplating and changing his mind about whether he will or not because he’s extremely dedicated to helping his mom and all that. However, he still gets super curious about Arcee and gets swept up by her in the Vehicon chase, and he still has whispers of courage and protects Raf during the altercation. He first tries to ditch Team Prime because he’s concerned about his responsibilities, but eventually returns because he’s drawn to the opportunity to finally go buck wild for once in his life (even if he spends his time being hesitant about everything.) His hesitancy and dedication to severe self-imposed responsibility is a result of his inability to move on from what his dad did to him and his mom; he’s under the impression that he 1) Has to forgive someone to move on, and thus 2) He cannot move on because his dad isn’t there to bother to say sorry and take on his position as Dad. In essence, he becomes less the character telling Miko to stop and more the character being pushed by Miko to be more adventurous. In lulls in action, Optimus starts to take interest in him when he notices his constant hesitance to express himself and is just being dragged along rather than going willingly. Has a conversation with him about a book Jack’s reading, which Jack attempts to shut down because it’s “dumb and childish,” but Optimus urges him to continue. The idea that June knows about Arcee as a bike and Jack explaining that he bought a motorcycle as a fixer-upper for dirt cheap can stay. (He probably still is saving up for his motorcycle.)

The longest portion, after Optimus starts interacting with Jack on a level of bonding and gently coaxing him to be himself— Jack becomes more outspoken and he’s shown as curious, analytical, quick witted, and has a deep sense of justice. Being young and craving a childhood lost to his trauma and self-imposed obligations to help his mom with running the household, he suddenly starts spending more time at the base pursuing hobbies and going on missions rather than studying and work, which concerns June. She tries to press Jack, and is met with what can be described as typical teenage headbutting that gets progressively worse. She grounds Jack after the fight, MECH takes her, the rescue happens. (That makes sense to stay in this narrative IMO.) Around this time, Optimus has effectively started becoming Jack’s own Alpha Trion—teaching him things that he’s picked up that he may feel apply to Jack. Jack interprets one of these lessons as Optimus trying to be “dad” and he’s not having it. Makes it VERY clear that he does not need a dad (“didn’t need one before and sure as fuck don’t need one now”) and definitely snaps at Optimus, which then pushes his progress in the arc closer to the end. He eventually comes back to apologize, and Optimus forgives him. He and Optimus have a heart-to-heart about one of the hardest lessons Optimus has had to learn—how to let go of the past without forgiving those who have hurt you and refuse to make amends, so that you may determine your own future. It’s very clear he’s talking about Megatron, even though he never says his name. Jack takes this lesson to heart.

His final bit of development before the hood removal thing probably happens during the events of “Rock Bottom” and reinforces that hard lesson, right when he’s faced with the option to off Megatron. Maybe there’s some taunting about how Optimus preaches softness and forgiveness too much when Jack refuses to kill him. Jack gets angry, and he’s about to fucking do it. But then he stops, takes a breath, and says “Optimus doesn’t preach forgiveness, he preaches moving on from those who refuse to move on themselves. He will never forgive you, but he’s learned to live on despite what you’ve done.” Soon after this, when Megatron comes to the base, Jack takes off his hood, stares Megatron right in the face, and says “This is not forgiveness, Megatron. Don’t you forget that.” Later, when Optimus gives him the key, he tells him something along the lines of “you have grown since we’ve met, Jack, and even though there is still a long way for you to go...” he hands Jack the key. “...Remember that even I am a work in progress.”

Anyways this is again, half-baked. And needs lots of polishing. But it’s something.

[veryvincible]

how do you draw faces? mine look okay in sketches but lining them ruins them 😢

I may not be the best person to ask, given that I’m a self taught artist in the same way someone who watches a lot of Synesthesia videos might be a self taught pianist. I can certainly pick up a pen and draw, but I’m not super well versed in terminology or, uh, really anything specific that might be of help to you. I’ve just been doing it for so long that my hands know how to do it. I will respectfully tag @ghosthan here, though, and if she’s willing to give some advice of her own (and possibly correct some advice I’m giving you, if any of it is not up to par), she’s more than welcome to. She is the Art School friend.

But, since you’re here, here’s my basic process:

I’d suggest using a lot of reference images if you’ve got a particular look in mind, especially as someone who’s not super practiced with faces. This is especially helpful for angles that might seem unfamiliar to you. I’ve kind of collected all the knowledge there is to collect from my usual references (Steve, Tony, and Tiberius), so I don’t have to do much searching when I draw them, but when I pick up a new character, I tend to scroll through images of people that match their age, race, etc. to see what vibe I’m going for.

For our purposes, I’ll just pull up the reference I used to solidify my 616 Tony. I don’t think this is a perfect faceclaim by any means, and there are a lot of changes I tend to make with his face shape and facial structure overall (mostly jaw, cheekbone, and nose changes), but. Here’s David Gandy, tumblr’s favorite.

I usually do this part by eye, to the point where I’m not actually sure whether or not this is how you’re supposed to do it anymore, but breaking the face with three lines and comparing the widths of the sections you get as a result is very helpful for proportions.

Kiiind of like this? I know some people are very particular about where these lines are supposed to be (like, where they fall on the eyes, nose, and mouth) and what the circle is supposed to be focused on (I’ve heard someone say it should be from the top of the skull to the bottom of the nose?), but as a general guide, my rough sketch when I’m looking at a reference kind of resembles this minus the lines. I just start the circle at the top of the skull and try not to make it much wider than the ears, then adjust later on to accommodate the rest of the skull.

So, this is kind of rough, and I can explain how I do it by eye if it’ll help, but.

As you can see, the middle of the nose here kind of splits the face (from the forehead to the jaw) in half, at least on Gandy. By eye, I’d take more care to notice the bottom of the nose as well as the middle to create kind of a diamond shape in my sketch (we’ll get to that in a minute), as well as the top and bottom lines of the lips, but that’s more intuitive.

So, you can kind of place placeholders for everything here, and I’ll go more into detail about how I do individual facial features, but.

This is basically the most bare bones one of my sketches will get. I put in little lines for the cheekbones, and I start sketching in some basic features. I sharpened the jaw as well, because I like a Tony with a sharp jaw. :)

For the eye shape, I basically get down the shape of the eyeball we see+the inner corner of the eye.  Then you can focus a little more on studying the eyelids, the wrinkles, etc. And then I added in a little iris+pupil, which is... you know, circles.

The nose is pretty simple. You get down the ball and the little shapes above the nostrils (nostril houses..?), and then you start to build the bridge off of that. Some people’s noses don’t have very pronounced bridges, so you don’t have to bring it up that high. I’ve drawn some noses that just kind of fizzled out at the top of the ball (and then defined the very slight bridge later on in coloring/shading).

The last bit is just erasing most of that circle and then stylizing the bridge/ball a bit.

Excuse the rough, rough erasing here, but this is basically the deal for lips. You can squash/stretch/whatever the circles as needed to match the face shape you’re going for, and you can add some fun shines if that pleases you. Lips, I mostly play by ear, but this is the method I used when I was first starting out.

Speaking of ears. I would help you with those if I had any idea how. I feel like I use a reference every single time I draw an ear. Sometimes, I just scribble whatever the fuck into the lines and just let it happen. This was one of those times. My bad.

So, you just take what you’ve done there and plop them onto the sketch (I usually lower the first rough sketch’s opacity and then make the neater sketch over it, as opposed to having a rough sketch that I then try to line-- it’s not that time consuming once rough sketches come more naturally to you), and:

You get something like this! Some details have been changed (bridge of his nose, lip shape), but all of these were small modifications that worked to personalize the reference. I tend to do my face very cleanly the first time to get all the details right, and sometimes this works so well that I can just copy+paste everything inside the face and color it black for the finished lineart. This isn’t a must or anything, but it’s my preference. Even if you’re rougher than this, sticking to lines that you’re pretty confident will be placed similarly in the final lineart can help a lot with finalizing the portrait. 

Add some facial hair, some hair, and more details, and... There he is! The reference was used more for a general “feeling” of a face and proper proportioning than anything else, and then you can switch up facial features, push things up or down, and sharpen or round out whatever you’d like to make the character look more identifiable. If you sketch like this, your lineart might be a lot easier to work with. Or you could just use this as your lineart, color it in messily, and pretend the whole thing was intentional from the start.

A few last notes that I’ve learned from actual professional/educated artists, and then you’re in @ghosthan’s ghost hands:

1) You should always be able to draw a straight line across the nose from the corner of one eye to the corner of the other. This doesn’t necessarily mean a horizontal line on your page, it just means that it’s perpendicular to the line you’d draw vertically down the face if you were to half it. To make this clearer, I’ll do the same on some stock photos.

No matter what angle the character’s at or how their head is tilted, if both eyes are showing, I’m pretty sure they follow this rule.

2) The pupil is usually centered in the center of the iris, and it’s also usually showing in full. Yes, that middle circle in there is supposed to be a pupil. I know. I draw them funny. (There are some anatomical mistakes here made in how I moved the iris along the eye, as it’s important to remember that the eye is a sphere and the iris will move around it, as opposed to the iris moving up/down/left/right on a flat plane). The biggest mistake artists make with this is that they’ll move the pupil to the side of the iris that the iris is pointed toward; if the eye is looking left, the iris will be to the left (correct) and the pupil will be to the left of the iris (less correct). A lot of people cut off the top half of the pupil when stylizing eyes as well, which is... I mean, again, it’s just slightly less correct. Honestly, I’ve seen some art styles where these “mistakes” worked fine, and I don’t really think your art style has to be perfectly anatomically correct with every single tiny detail of the pupils and iris and whatnot, if you’re not submitting it to any critics or competitions or w/e. But if you would like this information, here you go. I have it.

3) Identify the hairline, then draw your hair in sections before adding detail. I didn’t learn this one from an art school source (I picked it up naturally, just from photo/comic panel studies), but this is art school friend approved, so! Apparently, a lot of beginner artists struggle a lot with rendering believable hair. These sketches are by no means flawless, but the gist is there: cut it up into sections, draw those first, then fill in the details afterward. It’ll give you a more cohesive looking style and make it easier for you to fiddle with the hairstyle as you go along.

That’s all I have for now! I know this is nowhere near fully comprehensive (and it doesn’t cover a lot of angles, nor coloring, nor... okay, a lot’s missing), but here’s how I generally go about fully sketching a straight-on face.

If you have any more questions, please let me know! Or you can ask @ghosthan directly and get actual art school advice.

[pluto-art]

The more episodes I revisit, the more I come to love this little guy. Took me a while to warm up to Brain, but, blast it all, he has a bit of a tragic backstory and a good heart underneath all those nails and I’m a sucker for that character type.

To explain some of the poses: Top left corner - Copied from a screenshot. Could’ve pushed the pose (or at least the stretched arm), but I wanted to copy the pose exactly.

Bottom left corner - Based on this fan fiction: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8372889/1/Brain-Meets-Brawn-An-Alternate-Ending . Wanted to capture the feeling of him waking up paranoid. The green shadow was an experiment that I ended up not liking, but it kind of fits the subject matter....

Middle - In the Halloween episode, we find out that Brain is versed in rhythmic gymnastics, of all things. Was going for a loose gesture drawing and ended up simply coloring on top of the first pose I drew. Came out a bit more feminine than intended, but it’s freakin’ rhythmic gymnastics. Ha.

Far right middle - Also a reference to the Halloween episode. Pinky sells his soul to the devil in exchange for Brain getting the world. Brain ends up feeling guilty about this and goes back to rescue Pinky under the guise that he simply wants him back so as he can show him where the food pellets are. After loosing a challenge to reclaim his friend and thinking he’s lost Pinky forever, Pinky wishes Brain well in the hopes that he’ll find the pellets, to which Brain replies morosely, “Yes... The... food pellets.... That’s all I really wanted....”. Oh, Brain....

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The date up there is wrong, of course. I think I finished the basic sketches on the eleventh, hence that date being there...? I have this thing where, once I’ve dated a piece or batch of sketches, I generally don’t touch it thereafter, so it’s weird that I would do this.

Was listening to songs by Seal while completing this. Put me back in a real nostalgic place. Used to lounge in my dad’s huge, comfy chair in his studio while listening to the likes of Michael Jackson, Seal, Miles Davis, and more playing on his cd player as dad animated away. Probably one of the warmest memories of childhood I have. Good times.

[figmentforms]

Loooong overdue Q&A,and Announcements!

Lots of the questions are from many many months ago. Sorry about that! I’m super behind on everything because my life got so crazy for a while there and I’m still catching up! If interested in details about my life, I wrote more in depth about it at the bottom of this post!

Announcements:

❄ Comic updates should start to be weekly again now that things are finally settling down in my life! :D

❄ I found some copies of my comics to sell! If interested in a printed copy of AToTR Volume 1 or Volume 2, Check out my Etsy store here! https://www.etsy.com/shop/GildedPixel

***From the last round of comic selling, a few got sent back to me because something went wrong with the address. Unfortunately i have no idea who didn’t get theirs because of the aforementioned chaos. If you still haven’t gotten your order from like... half a year ago, please just let me know and I’ll send you your order again.

❄ Apparently tumblr is having some uh… “serious technical difficulties”. If it goes belly up, all my comics are free to see on my Patreon. Only the newest comic each week is locked for only patrons to view, but it unlocks when the next one comes out each week. https://www.patreon.com/LorIllustration

❄ A new update to the Youtube dub of my comic is up on Starbot Dubs!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZuLjHvERxA

If you haven’t see the previous 5 parts, they’re all here as one video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTAEM9PFPVY

And Now for Q&A!!!

I am so grateful for this letter and for the many other letters of support I was sent over the past couple months. It really helped me get through the low times and I’ll always appreciate it that you and many others took the time to send me words of encouragement, empathy, and advice. Thank you so much! 

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Thank you! AND I WOULD BE SO HONORED PLEASE DO!!!!!!!!! :D :D :D

Thank you! My best advice for anatomy would be to focus on two things: look  online for skeletal and muscle anatomy illustrations. Knowing the hardware under the skin helps SO much! Also do lots of life drawings. Draw anyone willing to sit still long enough for you! The more you do it, the easier it will get and the more you will develop your own style!

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For the most part, I draw around the word bubbles! Then the next priority is to draw what needs to be shown to communicate the point of the panels. Usually in the super early stages it’s just characters that are sketched in, but sometimes elements of the setting are just as important, like a doorway or establishing the setting for a new scene! I hope that helps!

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LOL she would be SO tempted, but wouldn’t resort to anything like that unless it was over something extremely important that also happened to be an emergency. Ganondorf however would have no problem with it because he has a different, much more Direct, style of governing. XD

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Rinku is indeed Link!

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Absolutely the second one. XD

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TaDaaa!!!! XD

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Super good question! For the most part all the rooms are just laid out as I need them to communicate a comic clearly. The exception is if I already have drawn a room, I try to keep it the same. The throne room, Specific bedrooms, ect. But I don’t have a castle layout set in stone or anything. lol I will eventually have to do that at some point though.

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I strongly considered having this be a story arc at one point but it got dropped! Short answer is, Yes. He would eventually try to do that. But would find that Impa had already secretly killed him years ago and never told Zelda.

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Oh he totally does that all the time!!!  Just not important to the story so it’s not shown!

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YUP!!! XD

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Someday, totally, but I haven’t even caught up with the ones I started last spring!!! *I suddenly experience a mighty wave of shame*

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Awww! That’s a really sweet idea!!!! She would totally take his name and he would be so darn proud!

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Oh HECK YEAH!!!!

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Possibly! But if so, it will be in the next reincarnation arc!

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At a later point, I think! if I have time to develop it and not stagnate the story too terribly much!

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Thank you! And Tingle? At some point, YES. Mask salesman? Not sure yet! maybe!

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That's beautiful!!! Was it a fic??? That’s an incredibly cool idea!

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That’s adorable. Eventually they would have to dance together at a royal ball. Ganondorf is a bit more graceful than Zelda, but they would manage. Would be cute as heck too because Zelda would be a little shy and Ganondorf would urge her to be more confident... and maybe rile up her competitive nature by saying he’s better at it than her.

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Update on my life!

Leaving my old life and my ex last August was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, but it was the right choice and I’m so much happier now. Things are finally getting stable now! I was only planning to stay with my aunt Jan in Ohio for a short while, but she recently got some serious health problems so I’ll be staying with her for several months more to help take care of her. And even though I wasn’t looking for a new relationship so soon after leaving my troubled marriage, I randomly met someone a few weeks ago that just amazed me with how universally kind he is and with how much we have in common! His name is Mark and he works as an army nurse with a forward surgical team attached to a special operations joint task force. He just got deployed to Afghanistan to go and patch people up, and if all goes well he will be back home in late summer. I never thought soul mates were really a thing, but if they are, I think he’s mine! As for my dog Oscar, he’s continued to grow and be a happy giant puppy! He’s going to be a full year old at the end of December! He’s almost 60 pounds now!!!

On the less than great side, I’ve had no luck finding an art-related job, so I’m going to be switching my career goals over to becoming an art teacher. But honestly, I think teaching will be a much more emotionally fulfilling career, so even though that wasn’t my original plan, I’m excited to start to chase that new dream!

Thank you all so much for your continued kindness and support for both for my work and for me as a human. You all are a big part of why I had the confidence and self worth to leave a bad situation and I will always be grateful to you all for that. Thank you for helping me reach this new better life! 

[mothraballs]

Sketchbooks From Over The Last Seven Years

I have a box of sketchbooks and random sketches that I’ve been adding to since I was about 12.  Today I went through it all and I decided I’d make a post about it because. idk. why not I guess? So obviously its not every page of every book but like if anyone wants to go through about 7 years of bad sketchbooks and loose sketches and doodles its under the cut. Some nudity

.Going through this sucked a little because like who in the world ever wants to go through their middle school art??? Its hard not to get rid of that stuff because like not only does it suck but it makes me remember middle school and things like anime club and like. ew. But it’s nice to see how much less I suck at this, even if i’m not nearly as talented as I’d like to be. It also makes me sad to think of art i’ve lost, even if it was bad. I don’t have pretty much anything that I did digitally from like age 13-16 because I either deleted it or lost it when a computer broke because i didnt back that up since I didnt think id care but l kinda wish I still had some of that stuff, just like to compare improvement over such a big time period.

 I wanted to find some of my actual finished art to post with this, but I couldn’t find it today, so it’s only sketchbook stuff (but I dont finish a lot of things anyway lol). Maybe I’ll make another post comparing old things I actually finished with new stuff once I can find it because I know it’s around here somewhere anyway heres sketchbooks!!

This is from 7th grade, so I guess I was 12. It’s god fucking awful, complete with drawings of memes (which I will spare u from), slenderman fan art, and a weird message about my middle school bike, which I still have in my garage, being stolen, which it never was. And the brakes do work.

 why

  This one is also from when I was 12, but it’s only about 1/4 of the way full. 

i think i had a mental brakedown here lmao

@douche-mccoosh​ ‘s sexy page

This one was either from 7th-8th grade or just in 8th grade. Idk. Either way I was probably 13 years old. Just a warning: Mlp fan art starts here

1 (ONE) wolf

idk what this is supposed to be honestly

long forgotten OC

This one was also from when I was 13

I had this from age 13-14, I started drawing digitally a LOT more around age 14, so I guess I wasnt rly using my sketchbook as much

this was like straight copied from a piece I saw at an art magnet school I applied to (obviously I didnt get in lmfao) and I really did not understand how dark I needed to make the paper in some spots. And then I never finished it

A pony OC... she was a robot ok

I think I had this one age 14-15. The paper ended up being translucent so I stopped using it early on. Im kinda glad I didn’t fill it up because that actually might be kinda useful to me now

Sweet notes from @lmkno​  

This one wasn’t in the picture on the top bc I found it later. I think I might also be missing like 1 other one too tbh but oh well lol I think I had it when I was 15? really stopped drawing like a lot around this time, I wasn’t doing digital stuff either cuz my computer was broken at the time

This is also about when I stopped throwing away every single thing i drew on a loose piece of paper, so here’s some random sketches from the general timeframe

First sketches of my OCs Vonn, the fish man and Elliot, the girl with pigtails

Some of my art I’ve sorted correlating to the OC’s and the universe they belong in or whatever so here’s some OC’s that sort of came about around that time, some of the pictures are from when I was older though

Ginger

the TV head robot guy was named Seven

the guy with the fuckin,, circle head and weird face is Wolfgang, I still draw him a lot today but ive changed how he looks a  l o t

I had this age 15-16, so like 2014-15. Maybe early 2016? There’s a lot of blank pages and scribbled out things. I 

Wolfgang again

fukkin,,,, gaye ass furry roleplay oc

Sketches on loose paper from the time I think??? I honestly cant tell when all of these are from but they’re gonna go here.

first design of an OC named Eryl

A random D20 character

Eryl

Early drawings of an OC named Lucy Lucy Lucy Lucy Lucy Lucy Lucy Lucy Lucy aka Lucy Ninetimes

Lucy & Wolfgang

And heres more stuff I had sorted by OCs/universe or whatever

main OCs here are Pidgenfinger, with the blue or possibly stylistic black hair, and Chrissy, shes like. A mouse or something

main OCs here are Roland and Ansel, they were like siamese twins and then one of them died at birth and now this guy just has a ghost twin idk it was stupid

Finally we’re at the point that my phone started recognizing faces in my sketchbook. I had this one age 17, i might have started it like right before I turned 17?

Lucy & Wolfgang

Vonn and Elliot on the right side of the page

Pidgenfingersa

Roland & Ansel

Dont Starve fanart on the right

Elliot on the right

Lucy on the bottom left

Vonn & Elliot on this page too

Lucy & Wolfgang, this is dumb but w/e

Von, Elliot, and another OC, Eryl. The lady with horns never got a name

Random Sketches

Lucy

Wolfgang

I got this sketchbook a few months after id turned 18 if i remember correctly 

Lucy, but decapitated

Lucy

Lucy again

Lucy yet again

Lucy!!!!!!!!!!

Wolfgang

(and Lucy)

I got this sketchbok as a gift from my wonderful boyfriend @the-lost-professor​ early january of this year, so technically when I was 18, I’m now 19

Eryl on bottom right

Stuff I did for mermay

some random sketches

My current sketchbok ft. Tsu This one was also a gift from my boyfriend ♥ I got it late June of this year

Wolfgang

Lucy

Wolfgang

Lucy

Wolfgang and Leah, and OC that i made a long ass time go and I dont have the original picture but I redrew her

Wolfgangs and Lucys

Eryl on the left

The last thing I did for mermay, which I technically finished after may ended

Lucy

and the most recent page! With Lucy and Wolfgang on the right

uhhhhhhhhh

im really fucking hungry now and im gonna go eat bye

[nekob00]

10 Tips for Improving your art

10 tips for improving your art: I've seen a lot of people asking how to improve their art and the main response I see is "Practice, practice, practice." That's great- art is a skill learned over time, but the problem is that the answer is too broad. The fact is, everyone has trouble in different areas, and they need to practice in the areas that are giving them the hardest time. The answer I find myself giving out more often than not is "references, references, references". Telling someone to practice is fine, but giving a better way to practice is more helpful. The other issue is that sometimes we can't see the mistakes we're making in our art, and if someone is reaching out, they need direct feedback to take their art to the next level. When I see someone asking for help like that, I always take a look in their gallery before I even start to reply. Having said that, here is some generalized advice too, that might help. 1. As I mentioned before, references are your friend. There are tons of sites and groups (that I will list at the bottom) where you can find reference pictures. (I am not getting into copyright laws here, so any sites/groups I list will be vetted but be sure to check when searching on your own.) Reference pictures are helpful in virtually any aspect of drawing or painting- everything from figure drawing, to hands, to animals and backgrounds, and using them gives you a visual guide to follow. When looking at references, be critical of everything- study color variations in the shading and highlights, look at the way the light and shadows fall, the way the character or subject is captured- are they still or is there movement in the picture? Take time to just look at the picture for a minute or two before you even begin your piece. 2. If there are certain areas you have trouble with, a lot of people opt to avoid them. I have seen so many people (myself included!) hiding the hands, for instance. Don't. Don't do it! The only way to draw the hands, noses, mouths, eyes, etc better... is by drawing them. It's a simple fact- avoiding them will only hinder your progress. They look bad? They'll get better- it looks worse without them entirely. It may make you uncomfortable at first, but stepping out of your comfort zone and confronting the parts that give you the most trouble will be rewarding in the end. I promise. 3. Take breaks! I know that you're invested but believe me- working on a picture for hours at a time runs the risk of ruining it. Trust me. Breaks are your friend. You're having trouble getting something perfect? Take a little bit and come back to it. A refreshed perspective might help. The human mind can only fully devote attention to something for so long. I don't want to try and count just how many pieces I've ruined because I just couldn't tear myself away from it and throwing 10 hours of work down the drain to start over hurts a lot more than taking ten minutes to rest. 4. Does something look off with your picture? Invert it if you're using a digital program (flip horizontal, flip vertical, rotate it, move it around) or look at it in a mirror if you're using traditional mediums. The perspective flip resets your brain and you can see the mistakes easier. Sounds weird, but it really does work. It'll help you to spot proportions that are off or areas that just... don't look right. 5. Set time limits for practices and sketches! See how much detail you can get in 5 minutes, or faster. I know it sounds difficult- especially if you're working with figures, but it works! Try dropping the timer too. It's hard at first, but trying to get things done in a really quick time (1 or 2 minutes goes really fast) forces you to break things down into smaller shapes. When you're doing this, though, don't worry if the proportions are a little off. The idea is force your mind to look at things more simply. **6. The blur tool is not your friend! I see a lot of blurred shadows and I used to be so bad about doing it myself- shadows on skin have this gradient too them since faces and bodies don't have hard edges, but blurring the shadows is not the way to do it. It's super hard to not do it- I know... either blurring or blending too much but it makes it look too soft and muddies the picture. The key isn't to blur- it's all about the color blending. If you're having trouble getting the blending right- trust me, harder edged shadows looks better than overly blurry ones. (If you don't believe me, take a look at my two Vol'jin paintings... I used to be waaaaaaaaay too guilty of it. I speak from experience.) 7. Having trouble figuring out a technique for something? There are thousands of free tutorials all over the internet of different ways to do it! Speedpaints are also immensely helpful as well. 8. Study others' work. (Study, not copy). Looking at other peoples' work can help you devlop your own way of doing things, and also help you figure out your own style. Look at artists that have styles you enjoy and study how their works look. A lot of personal styles borrow aspects (subconsciously) from others because we're influenced by artists we look up to. 9. Give critiques. This one is helpful but there is a bit of a caviat here in that... some people don't appreciate unsolicited critiques on their work... so a good rule of thumb is to look for people that are asking for them. There are groups where people submit pieces specifically for critiques and helpful comments. Critiquing others' works helps you think more critically of your own. (I'll put a link at the bottom to a helpful journal about how to critique pieces). 10. Ask for critiques and be willing to accept constructive criticism. We have a tendency to get tunnel vision on pieces and it can be hard for us to see the mistakes we make in our works. It's really, really important to get outside perspectives on pieces. Ask friends to look them over- though be aware that a lot of our closest friends and family sometimes have a fear of hurting our feelings, or discouraging us, so they may sugarcoat things, or they may not feel qualified to critique it if they aren't an artist themselves. (My dad feels like he's not qualified to critique or criticize my work because he "can't draw stick figures" so everything looks great to him even if it isn't right.) **For example of what I meant on 6:

Original

New version

Helpful resources: ProjectComment dAPoses (check the descriptions of pictures and credit appropriately) Pose-Emporium (check the descriptions of pictures and credit appropriately) How to give Constructive Feedback reference.sketchdaily.net/en/ line-of-action.com/