#it's coming. it's COMING. i've got all the end points and major beats sketched out!!

[dreamcrow]

ohohoh, how about last snow ?

(wip folder title meme)

last snow is my first fic set after bellroc and skrael's chapters of minor arcana—full on early-days horrible roommates. remember "skrael...has a habit of making himself other people's problem"? that comes from this story. 😂 this story is about. where does bellroc go after burning their house down? how does skrael—who we last saw 1600 miles (!), as the wind flies, from bellroc's horrible depression cave—actually meet them? it's about...two monsters being depressed out of their gourds. and also, maybe eventually, remembering a little of what it means to be a person.

it's also a lot about "what does the universal translator charm actually sound like before skrael figures out how to make the magic work," bc i am. unfathomably gay about languages:

and also also a little bit about skrael being kind of a terrible cook, because this headcanon has become inexplicably dear to me dfjhfdh

[genericpuff]

How long do you plan making rekindled? I loved Lo at some point, But now I cant get enough of your version!! And I wanted to know how did you come up with the darker back stories for Rekindled?

I have a semi-detailed skeleton of the plot with basically every story beat planned out, but I can't definitively say how long it will be as I haven't actually scripted every single episode out yet.

Not to mention a lot of the time my scripts will change from their original versions, by the time I get to an episode I've planned ahead for I've either thought of new ways to do it or don't like how it's paced so I change it. Case in point, there was a specific scene I had planned for the next episode and then wound up not liking the pacing because it was too fast so I moved it to several episodes away and restructured everything on the fly, took a whole new text document and scrapping sketches to figure shit out LOL I actually do have up until Episode 70ish scripted out in my documents with like, actual notes and dialogue for each episode, but I already have sooo many of those crossed out now because of how much I've had to tweak and change as time has gone on. This is why I plan ahead well in advance though, so that if I do need to make those changes, I can make them long before the episodes are even due to be drawn (and believe me, they get changed during the sketching phases too LOL).

What I can confirm for certain is that the current 'arc' we're in right now is definitely the bulk of the story. And that's not to say there isn't any content afterwards, more like the pacing just gets completely turned on its head in the last 30-40% of it where shit gets N U T S and just can't go back to the same energy that it was in the beginning. Without spoiling, there's a certain 'turning point' in the plot and everything after it isn't quite as long as the stint of story we're in now. This is mostly because the arc we're currently in is still establishing a bunch of stuff like the Underworld Corp, Persephone's schooling, etc. and once that turning point hits, it's basically all character development and focusing on the consequences of everything setup in the first arc.

I guess if I had to illustrate it, the story progression in the end will look something like this?

It's basically just this slow and chill climb that, once it hits that sharp peak, doesn't ever return to normal levels LMAO So I guess enjoy this part of the story while you can because it's the chillest it'll ever be w(°ｏ°)w And boy, I am EXCITED for that peak, but we have a long way to go before we get there. As for how long, well, I'm hoping I'll be able to have Rekindled's story wrapped up in the next 2 years, tops. Just depends on how the update schedule goes, and assuming the plans I have put down for the plotting don't change in any major way. I don't have as much of the latter half of the story actually scripted out yet so for all I know it could wind up being way longer than anticipated, but right now I have a pretty good sense of how the story beats will play out in relation to each other.

So it's kind of a wait and see thing, at least until I have every episode scripted out, and even then I won't be 100% sure because things are always being tweaked and fixed and changed on the fly! I'm guessing it won't go much longer than 170 episodes, give or take, but that's a very very VERY rough estimate.

Regardless, Rekindled still has a lot more story to tell, and I'm hoping y'all enjoy the ride with me <3

As for the darker backstories, y'all don't even know yet. Like... I've got stuff planned. Stuff that even Banshriek (my BG assistant) doesn't know about. Stuff that I keep buried very deep in Rekindled's episode documents that won't see the light of day until they have to be ripped out of the deep dark trenches of the characters' own buried secrets, and by that point, the toothpaste will be out of the tube, there will be no going back. So, again... enjoy it while it lasts. Because I don't pull my punches. And maybe even you won't be able to look at me the same way again once the final blow has been dealt.

Sleep well.

:)

[kiiyome-art]

I've been thinking a lot about destiny lately, and how I want to go about writing and drawing out my warlock, Vienna's, story, now that the light and dark saga is coming to a close. I was a bit late to the destiny scene, all things considered, and between my creative struggles and (trying) to be a functional human being, I've not created as much as id have liked to. So come along with me on my little rant as I think allowed my thoughts, if you feel so inclined.^^

There's still so much I want to write, and stories to tell within the destiny universe.

I started playing the game during season of the plunder, when my friends introduced me to it, and we became a glorious fireteam! I was drawn to the pretty warlock space magic immediately, and thus, Vienna was born. ( Though I've since become a hunter main, she's still my favorite blorbo. )

I quickly fell in love with the story and it's characters, dug deep into the lore and since then, her story has gone through a LOT of changes. I try to stick close to the canon story for the most part, in my universe Vienna is the young wolf who was risen in D1, and has since gone through most of what we see throughout the dlcs and seasons past then, I'll probably elaborate on that further at one point.

Most of my drawings that I've posted here are fun little doodles, occasional quips between characters, and overall "for fun" stuff. The majority of what I've thought up for Vienna has been confined to my own head and the rare rants to my friends. And now with final shape being so close, I feel myself pressured to know, and write down, everything that I can. Which, realistically, is silly.

I had plans to make a three minute animatic of Vienna during forsaken since it was a MASSIVE turning point for her, have it out by final shape, then make an entirely NEW animatic based off OF final shape, mostly inspired by Caydes return. Whilst I had mapped out most of it and gotten some rough sketches down, I didn't even begin on the actual project. Could I have? Probably. Do i feel guilty about it? Yes. Will those projects still happen? Hopefully.

I know for all you creatives out there that might be reading this, the feeling of having plans, and not being able to carry through with them, or it not turning out how you wanted, is a shitty feeling, not foreign to ANY of us.

I felt myself compelled to write this in the first place because I know that, well, I'm not alone.

There's many creatives out there feeling the same pressure to get stuff done as I am, even if we don't say it. We want to have everything figured out, to create something wonderful, with the final shape feeling like "the end" of destiny as we know it and all. So this is me calling out to whoever might be listening; be nicer to yourself.

You have all the time in the world to create that animation, paint that painting, write that story. Just because final shape is "an ending," doesn't mean you can't still work on and have fun with the story beats you have in mind prior to Final Shape. No ones gunna call it silly, were all equally starved for content here. And who knows, once we all know how final shape ends, it might inspire you and help your story flow together better.

I'll try my best to tag my posts relating to Vienna and her fireteam with time stamps from now on, as I tend to jump all over the place and it could get really confusing really fast. The TLDR of it all;

Don't feel guilty about unfinished projects. Final shape isn't the end, dont let it be, and dont feel confined to just creating content relating to post final shape.

That's all! I appreciate you reading if you got this far, and im excited to see the amazing things the Destiny corner of tumblr will come up with next.

See you starside! ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ

[idonthaveanyurlideas]

sorry if this has been asked before but i'd love to know your process for creating animatics. not only are they so incredibly fluid and perfect to the music but they're COLORED! absolutely inspiring. i'd love to know what you do for planning and editing, basically how to put an animatic together in general. i use procreate to make art but other than that i'm completely clueless on how to make animatics

ooooh okay i would LOVE to tell you!!!! So first things first I will say that my animatic process is probably not the most like. Efficient way to do it. I'm not an artistic expert and I'm very self-taught so this is just what I've come up with over the years with the resources I had.

This has ended up VERY long so I'm sticking a read more in

All that to say I have two main programs that I use, one to draw (Medibang Paint Pro) and one to put the frames together for my animatics (Davinci Resolve). These days, I have both of these programs on my laptop so I have everything on one device. Before I had my current laptop, I used Medibang Paint on my iPad and iMovie on my laptop, but the overall process is basically the same.

So. I have five main stages of making an animatic once I have a song and a character/narrative in mind.

Stage 0 is arguably the most important stage, which is deciding it's something I for real want to do. Making an animatic is a big commitment, so it has to be something im 100% on board with or I'll get bored before I finish it. So usually when I hear a song and I think "oh I can apply that to x character" I'll have to listen to that song on repeat for at least a few weeks just to iron out the story in my head, decide what moment I'm going to put with each lyric, basically plot out the narrative internally.

This stage is a bit different for every animatic. For some of them, like the Snackrifice as an example, I heard the song for the very first time and went: i know EXACTLY how this is going to go and then I went home and started planning it out immediately. Others, like Aequitas Aug, I had the song as a vague "oh this is Coin vibes" for months before Expansion Era ended and I finally knew I had all the material I would need for a full cohesive narrative. And then a bit longer to really decide "okay so the redactions are going to be at this point, the semicentennial will be at This moment" and so on.

I have a whole playlist full of songs that I COULD make into animatics that I vibe to on a regular basis, basically marinating them until I have enough content and ideas to start actually planning them out into an animatic.

Stage 1 is scripting it out: I write out all the lyrics of the song, count up how many beats correspond to each line, and plan out what I'm going to do with each section. As an example here's a portion of my script for Miguel's first animatic Autoignition. As you can see my script is often pretty loose and jokey at myself, because I already kinda know what I want it to look like by the time I start scripting it, this is just to get it down for pacing and to fill in any gaps.

[Image ID: Screenshot of white writing on a dark background. There are eight lines, alternating between bolded writing to signify planned action, and regular writing to signify the lyrics of the song Everybody Loves Me by OneRepublic. Line 1, in bold: Uh oh Zack is fallin into fire and hell and disintegrating ur gonna earn that content warning. Line 2, regular: And you don't have to make a Line 3: Miguel left alone at edge of Solarium :) fire everywhere :) big f Line 4: Sound 'Cause they got what you Line 5: Miguel falls to her knees for a moment, stunned. Line 6: Need. What you need Line 7: Then he runs away Line 8: Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh /end ID]

Stage 2 I do my actual draft. I do every frame as a very quick sketch. This stage is where I put all my frames into Divinci Resolve and match it all up to the beats of the song. I work out my timings, I figure out if I need to add/delete frames somewhere. The majority of the fiddly work happens here in terms of lining it all up to the music. All the frames look about as basic as this lmao the idea is Quick and To the point so i get can idea of what I'm working with. Very often I'll have figures in this draft stage where, as an example, I know I'll need to put players from the Flowers or the Dale from a certain point in time, but I haven't decided exactly who yet, so they're just vague humanoid blobs.

[Image ID: A very basic sketch with black lines on a white background, showing two figures facing away from the camera with loose lines showing the ground exploding in the distance. /end ID]

Stage 3 is Lineart, and this stage takes the longest because I'm actually doing the proper drawings for everything. I don't do colouring yet, because this stage takes so Long and I prefer to do my colouring all in one go so I can keep it consistent. it also allows me to catch any errors that I might make in my Lineart because I get to go over it again when I colour. This is where I make my final decisions on who all the extra characters are that show up that don't Really need to be there.

When it comes to deciding Who Gets To Appear in the Animatic, there are a few tiers.

Characters that NEED to be there for plot/emotional reasons (think like Nagomi Mcdaniel appearing in Alaynabella because Layna switched with her for the Shadows)

Characters that I want to put in there for theme reasons (think Luis Acevedo in Hall Stars, I included them as a cameo because they were later incinerated and the whole animatic was about incinerated players)

Characters that I like/my friends like (Esme and Howell making appearances at the start of Aequitas Aug)

Characters that are just easier to draw, depending on how many times I have to draw them and how tired I am at the time (when in doubt, I tend to default to humanoid characters with reasonably simple designs. If I'm like 400 frames in on Aequitas Aug and I have to choose between horse person Winnie Hess and regular human Eizabeth Guerra to help represent the Breath Mints getting got, I'm gonna go with Eizabeth even if Winnie is technically more iconic and recognisable.)

[Image ID: Lineart of a digital drawing showing Miguel James and Zack Sanders as humans, facing away from the camera and looking towards the ground exploding in the distance. Miguel is kneeling on the ground while Zack is standing. /end ID]

And so of course Stage 4 is Colour. I add in the colours, any lighting effects, all the extra fun bits.

My colouring is USUALLY pretty basic, to save time and effort. For colours that I tend to reuse a lot (typically sunbeams uniforms and the main colours for the various beams) I have them saved in my paint app so I can access them easily. For other players I've drawn before I usually have to bring up one of my previous drawings to reference the colours. Backgrounds are the bane of my existence and as thus are usually kept as simple as possible, and lighting is typically something I use sparingly. Basically, I take as many shortcuts as I possibly can to save my sanity.

[Image ID: The above picture but with basic colour. The background is a pale orange. There are some lighting effects on the explosion. /end ID]

And voila! Off to Youtube. Like I said above, I'm sure this isn't the quote unquote 'Best' way to do it. But it works for me, and doing it in these stages give me a fun little progress video to look back on when I'm slogging through the lineart stage.

It's definitely really tedious at times, and keeping up the motivation to do hundreds of frames three times in a row can be really difficult (especially with a full time job) but it's definitely sooooo exciting when I finally finish. I publish all the draft and lineart videos on youtube as well as unlisted videos, and its always fun to look back on them to see the difference between the draft and the final finished product.

Most of all though, it took me AGES to get to the point of animatic making where I am now. My very first animatics for Dimension 20 were SO different to what I do now, and I was very lucky for a while to have a lot of free time to focus on doing it a lot. My VERY first animatic wasn't even set to a song. It was from a Fantasy High clip, and i never got past the draft stage for it.

The other part of animatic making that I had to start taking really seriously was character design credit. For Quite a while, I did not include credits for designs of players that I did not create. It wasn't until Aequitas Aug (which had an OBSCENE number of players) that I realised what a massive oversight that was. Nowadays I have a big spreadsheet that lists every Blaseball player that has ever appeared in my animatics and the creator of the design that I used/riffed off of if I could narrow it down to one or two. For some players its trickier, often because their design was consistent over multiple artists or I couldn't be sure what the origin was, but I do my best to be as accurate as possible. If you're looking to make some blaseball animatics, I totally encourage you to do so, but I would advise getting on top of credits sooner rather than later! It's so much easier to add in new characters and their designers now as I find them rather than trying to backtrack and remember exactly which picture on the wiki I took inspiration from, along with it being a lot more respectful to all the other amazing artists in the fandom.

Overall, animatics are a lot of effort, but they're soooo worth it. If you have any more questions please feel free to ask me, I love to talk about my animatics and my process.

[maneaterwithtail]

I disagree at least one aspect.

How about this I've been thinking about introducing a character who is male and uses a traditional form of Viking magic that was noted to make or require men to act or appear as women this is Even tied into certain myths about Odin and how he was presented.

This however would understandably change both the history presentation and what have you of the Asgard in Marvel Comics. This is very important because if we want ad and more gay characters then we by necessity add in the entire identity of being gay. And with that gay subculture, gay history, and gay politics. All of which is going to be relevant in one degree or another to their life. And some of this stuff isn't directly political just so much as it's so in congruous from common assumption that it's going to be in contrast and conflict to both the established narratives of the fiction and the expectations of the audience

This is going to be necessary point. A need for this Single Character to be a gateway to Gay Culture or gay lifestyle where previously none existed for the world.

But this isn't just a burden it's also an opportunity I mean how have or how do the Asgard and Marvel Comics handle people being gay? In fact because of how gay has been erased in our society and how it by its own existence undermines a lot of social narratives kind of requires a more nuanced and complex way of viewing the world just to bring up even if the basic idea is very simple to get across - the idea of someone preferring their own gender in terms of romantic Pursuits. But that often has a knock-on effect with the number of people who we know for one thing also actually being gay. And this isn't just surface-level sketches. I mean remember finding Mary Poppins? The author of that book was a lesbian but in a supposed true story biopic this wasn't depicted. Erasure is a phenom a gay character contends

This is kind of the problem with increased representation it by necessity means disturbing pre-established narratives. Unfortunately this likely means your character is going to be or highly defined by their own Identity or have to import a lot of pre under stood identity politics or social narratives just by being a focus of distinction.

Now personally I think superhero comics are not well suited for this because a core of their appeal is action as opposed to drama or Romance. Having a coming-of-age drama deal with the fact that one or two or all of your characters are not straight or cisgendered is completely easy. After all the change of identity as you come to yourself as a large part of coming-of-age drama, so learning that you have an attraction to the same gender or that you may have be different gender expression easily slots into the beats and expectations of that

Unfortunately action-based conflicts don't exactly allow or are not well suited for dealing with struggles with being a minority even if you're past the hardships that are so going to inform where your character ended up in life. Not every person who's gay has trouble with their parents. But it's at the very least a very common and unique circumstance. There's going to be history there.

there's going to be weight there and it's such a large part of the gay identity that a large part of gay identity literature and politics centers around this reality. For instance part of the reason why intersectionality in terms of social justice or socialism has such a gay bent is because the implication that you can rely on traditional support structures such as church or family is not something that can be safely assumed if you've been gay for the last 50 years. There have been active campaigns to get rid of support network and infrastructure for gay communities. Or just dismissal so subject to crime and abuse. And traditional mainstream ones have actively excluded them such as the conflicts with the Salvation Army or other homeless shelters.

This is despite the fact that if you were a teenager and homeless chances are it's because you are LGBT and you've been kicked out of your home. This is especially important as you try to tackle social issues as a means of conflict and superheroes have been doing that longer than we've been recasting this character or that character as gay or black.

Finally there's just the fun in world-building what kind of gay community exists in a world where Captain America has been real since World War II. Has there been for instance at Revival of pagan beliefs with the onset of Thor? What kind has there been in what relationship do the asgardians have with it? They started to address some of this in one of the reboots of Thor but admittedly that was how they conflicted with conservative Christians in the Midwest. How do the actual Pagan face revivals that have been happening in Scandinavian countries intersect with the arrival of the MCU asgardians not least of which they don't fit the traditions and faith but may have inspired them or rip them off

These are all interesting plot threads but they grow from drama and not action. So I think in some ways superhero comics are trying to transition from action to more alternative Fantastical dramas. And considering that's been a big draw in terms of television and movies from Game of Thrones to Supernatural to God knows what else such as the Hunger Games Twilight The Vampire Diaries

and finally yeah some traditions do need to be attacked. The idea that everyone is straight except for a few crazy people who are gay who we should ignore at all times... it's probably at the heart of a lot of abuse. Whereas assuming queer Theory as a foundational truth meaning that not everyone is straight and gender and sexuality don't work as they have been traditionally thought of it's probably an okay thing especially as it's something that's understood to be the reality of the current zeitgeist as well as the audience.

Even people who consider themselves straight likely have had one or two phases of bisexuality or experimenting with gender. At the very least it's easier because everyone can pick a female Avatar. Or activities that are associated with being feminine are thought of as more gender-neutral such as fashion makeup romance or what have you

at the very least tapping into this thing that the young which is a major part of comics, it can't always just be to old people and how they see the world, it's important to give that a chance. especially as sexuality and gender identity are actual character traits whereas race is a bit more superficial unless we're talking about Heritage or more along the lines of ethnicity. for instance take Kamala Khan, for the most part I think she's a good character. Now there are bit pieces where things feel a little on-the-nose but it is very much aimed at a younger audience that comes from an ethnically diverse neighborhood they probably want someone to address the racial tensions that they've grown up with not least of which have been the issues with how Muslims are perceived and how their own culture and traditions have a plurality under a dome that's often reacted to hostilely

Finally some of its just adjustment both for the fans and the authors. I mean how did you really feel about Miles Morales when he first started? how did people react to him? you needed time to adjust to the idea that Peter got killed off and replaced with this guy who was very deliberately something of a token hire. and Brian Michael Bendis needed time to actually write a distinct character with his own feel and interesting ideas

finally listen to the music that kids are listening to ,read the web comics that they follow, or the Twitter discussions that they do and especially the manga that they're following and how they discuss it. I really do think that if we want Comics to remain they're going to have to change and one of those changes are going to have to be how they can appeal more to modern audiences, females, and yes trans

And some of this is going to require the characters in the world that they inhabit change in terms of assumption and presentation. There need to be gay and trans people as a community in a society that's so obvious that it's something that you discussing kindergarten without it being treated as exposing them to porn