#just exploring the poses and assigning characters to them lol

[saeiken]

pose practice w the volleyball boys :>

[pinazee]

Rob-a-bye Baby

Finally some focus on Chief Vick! Kirsten nelson did a great job on the first real ep where she gets to play a more substantial role. (“Head detective my ass” always makes me chuckle) i only wish it had been more. She was more of an obstacle than part of the plot, though i guess technically her character kind of grew at the end. She does admit she was overreacting with Shawn but this realization was done off screen. I’d have loved to see her try to run over her husband, and having a little breakdown. Something that gave her more depth. I want to know who she is as a person. Was she a runner who wanted to get back into it so she can finally have some time for herself? Does she struggle with who she wants to be as a mother? Was the baby even planned? Was she concerned it would affect her job, or her ability to do her job? Idk, just something that added a bit more color to her character tapestry. I think theres a lot to explore here is all.

Perhaps im biased, but i feel like Shawns reaction is a bit out of character. Like yeah, he’d find it a boring assignment but i also think he’d understand how important it is to the Chief and take it seriously. Plus, Gus is right, she gives them cases, it’s pretty important for their business that they remain on her good side. And in the end he didn’t help her at all. The nephew just came back and that was the resolution. i think i would’ve preferred if Shawn had been struggling to find them too. Like every nanny he came across he could find something wrong with them because Chief Vick deserves the best. Or he had a nanny picked out all along, she just couldn’t start right away but he somehow needed the excuse to look into the nanny burglary ring? Idk. I guess its not really that big a deal. Perhaps it was to introduce a flaw in Shawns character. Like they were saying he needs the thrills to make the job worthwhile. Which is fine, i think that aligns with his overall character. In fact, i wouldn’t be surprised if he fucked somethings up later just to bump up the challenge for shits and giggles (which is such a weird phrase btw). I just think in this one specific case, he would have handled it with a bit more care.

Gus’s blimp dance! He’s so excited! After the last ep, i just want him to be happy

I just wanted to point out the lady who plays ada was in a movie called Wolfcop. Theres an actual movie called Wolfcop.

Chief Vick’s power pose is so strong, it possesses her when she sleeps haha

Did she just spit her pastry out on the ground??

This always makes me chuckle because, like, why? Why would they have them go down those hill lol

I think this is another case of Juliet getting way too into undercover work. I don’t think thats any of her actual wedding or birth plans even if the show made it look like such.

Im so confused why they were at a pet store instead of a pawn shop. What did that guy sell to him? How did the pet shop guy know it was stolen? Unrelated, but it was a nice touch that Shawn immediately spoke in a way the pet shop guy understood, even if it was just for the haha’s.

Gus’s nickname Schmuel Cohen is a real dude! Why does Shawn have the name of the composer of the Israeli national anthem locked and loaded?? The guy died in 1940. When/ how would he know that???

Awww poor Tim!

Juliet agreeing pivots and divots is fun to say lol

I wish they could have expanded on Nanny Henry! Like he was going to refuse to keep helping out but Chief Vick broke out her mommy voice and also kind of pleaded with him for help. Then we could have gotten some scenes of them, maybe talking about the past, or Henry asking her to look out for Shawn since he doesn’t have the police as part of his squad and therefore no backup, which Chief Vick explains that he’s practically a member anyways and would be treated as such, not only because of who his dad is but because he’s practically one of her own anyways, so of course she has his back.

[jelloapocalypse]

Hi jello! First off, I adore epithet erased, so thank you!!! Second off, for the characters, have you decided if any of them are LGBTQ+? How do you feel about the LGBT headcanons?(ie Giovanni is trans, literally anything involving percy and zora lol) Anyway, thank you for this wonderful show and these fantastic characters! I’m rooting for u to get the 2nd season greenlit!!!! Much love and keep bein awesome! ♥️

Okay yeah, I’ll tackle this exceedingly dangerous question.

AUs and “what-if”s I don’t mind because I think those are interesting explorations of what would change in a story if specific aspects of a character (in this case sexuality/gender) were different. I think that’s neat, and it poses interesting questions without ignoring the original text of the work.

A headcanon, to me, is somebody saying “Yeah, I’m just going to go ahead and  cherry-pick only the bits of canon that I want to be true while ignoring the work as a whole.” That creates a bad reading. I hate it when people do this regardless of whether it’s my work or not

That’s not to say that headcanons are never a good call, but when it comes to character sexuality and gender, I always think it’s weird to mentally assign someone a sexuality or gender that they canonically aren’t. It feels weird and regressive to me. You don’t get to decide what you want a character’s gender or sexuality. The character does. I’ve gotten flak for this stance before, but  I think “headcanoning” any character as any sexuality they aren’t is equally weird, no matter which way you do it. It’s weird to think of a straight character as bi, a bi character as gay, a gay character as ace, an ace character as straight, etc. All bad.

On the subject of Epithet though:

Something like Zora x Percy I don’t mind too much. It’s mostly harmless.

Zora is canonically bisexual and I write Percy as ace (maybe aro too? I’d have to talk to her original player about that).

Because Percy is ace nothing sexual would ever happen between her and Zora. 

Because of their position in the story and who they are as people Percy would never be interested pursuing a friendship with Zora, let alone a romantic relationship with her.

I know what kind of girls Zora is into and it ain’t Percy.

But! I can see—in an AU— some of those comics of Zora flirting with Percy at a bar actually happening, and I think they’re pretty cute.

Molly being non-binary is one I see a lot. That one’s also harmless. There’s nothing in the text to counter it, so okay that’s fair game.

Giovanni being trans though.

Uh.

Kinda hate that one, if I’m being honest!

Not because I don’t want trans representation, but specifically because of the reason I saw people making Trans Giovanni their “headcanon”, which was: “Giovanni likes feminine things! He crafts and cooks and has motherly traits! I bet he was assigned-female at birth!”

SUPER weird, regressive, and sexist take there, guys!

Giovanni is a cis male. The whole point of Giovanni is that he’s a teenage boy who is comfortable and open with his own femininity, which is something I wish I saw more in media. He’s emotionally intelligent. He wants people to talk about their feelings. He paints his nails. He’s the team mom. He’s a guy, and he’s cool with all of that. He’s not “secretly trans because he has traditionally feminine traits”. What? What even?

I dunno that’s just bothered me since day one.

[bigskydreaming]

That sounds pretty cool, if you are fine with it, or if you feel like it, would you elaborate one of this scenarios? It doesn't have to be right now, just if you feel like it, i just loooove your opinions on dick grayson as a character, they are just perfect, to me at least, because you know your own version of him and its amazing! So, like i said, would you write a little about mind controlled dick grayson if it doesn't bother you uu

LOL, thanks - I have a few different headcanon type things along those lines, but most of them are about the aftermath of existing instances rather than additional scenarios of Dick being mind controlled.

For instance, my personal view of the BIGGEST (and almost completely untouched) repercussions of the Spyral mission for Dick is all the stuff it might have brought back up from the Brother Blood stuff in the early days of the New Teen Titans. When he was being controlled and manipulated without his knowledge by the Church of Blood.

Because in order to even do the Spyral mission at all, at Bruce’s behest.....going undercover with the organization meant Dick HAD to let them put the Hypnos implants in him. There was literally no way around it, it was a fundamental part of the mission. They were standard issue for all Spyral operatives....

And as Dick only found out later, coming as a complete surprise to him, and thus something that Bruce himself had to be unaware of before sending Dick in - part of the reason the Hypnos implants were standard issue for all Spyral operatives was not JUST the advantages the implants gave their operatives in the field. The implants were ALSO a backdoor for Matron and other higher-ups in the organization like Agent Zero, to basically....shut down the operative with a word, knock them out - a failsafe that essentially made all their operatives unable to pose a threat to them, or powerless against them in case they turned traitor (or like Dick, had other allegiances from the start).

I don’t know if you’ve seen my meta about how and why I view Dick’s greatest fear as being the cause of his loved ones’ deaths or suffering, or being used against them to be the cause of this.....but imagine you’re Dick Grayson, and your hands down greatest fear is being completely hijacked, without agency, a passenger in your own body, as your enemy turns you against your mission, your allies, your family, whatever.

And then you find out that the Hypnos implants that you willingly allowed them to put in you, not knowing they served as any kind of Trojan horse that gave the people you were there to take down a secret kind of control over you, the very kind you fear more than anything given your specific history with this sort of thing....

Like, you find out in the worst possible way, when Matron uses them to basically turn off your brain with just a WORD, that from the moment you let them put these things in you in order to go undercover as one of their operatives....you’ve been totally at their mercy without even knowing it, even as you worked against them. You had no idea that they held the edge over you the whole time, had no way to even be on guard against the possibility....because you went into this only knowing the information Bruce had to give you, and this wasn’t in it.

(And then of course, it gets worse, when the Hypnos implants are revealed to be Luthor Corp tech, and with a FURTHER backdoor feature only HE knows about, that gives him the ability to completely hijack the movements of people with the implants in them. Again - Luthor. The artist formerly known as Dick’s murderer, which led to him being on this mission in the first place).

Anyway, that’s the most damaging fallout from the Spyral mission IMO, that’s rarely if ever touched on - the fact that in the aftermath of Dick’s trauma and death, he went on this mission that he never wanted to go on in the first place, at least trusting that Bruce’s reasons for wanting him to go on it were sound.....and implicitly putting his trust in Bruce (as he had so many times before), to not send him into anything he couldn’t handle, or without crucial information.

Which of course Bruce did, because his reasons for sending Dick on this mission WEREN’T sound. They were as much emotional as they were practical, born of his own issues and his own inability to handle Dick dying in front of him while he was powerless to do anything about it, or to be the one to revive him, and he was IMO almost driven to send Dick far away from the target he saw him as having painted on him due to his unmasking, as long as he was known to be alive and in Gotham....and also far enough away that he was kinda out of sight, out of mind, for Bruce, and as such, Bruce didn’t have to be constantly haunted by the reminder of how powerless he’d been to save or help his son.

IMO there’s no mistaking that Bruce’s behavior in all of this was both extraordinarily shitty writing AND at the same time compliant with previous shitty behavior of his (born both of similarly shitty writing AND just....examination of his worse tendencies). So for me its a fine line between over-vilifying Bruce for what I think was the writers not paying their due diligence to the reality and implications of how they were writing him.....but at the same time, not apologizing for his behavior, especially given that its not THAT far off the mark of tendencies that had been written into him before this point.

So for me, the way I reconcile that and find anything useful to take away from this story, its to distill it down to specific lasting repercussions/implications for Dick, that are paired to something that can kinda be....learned by the characters from this story, something they could take away from these events and use to BETTER themselves and their relationships.

And for me, I come away with two things here:

1) Whether you write about the Spyral mission and aftermath and include the canon exactly as it happened, or you tone down Bruce’s behavior or rewrite that to be not quite as egregious....a useful dynamic to focus on IMO, as an example, is the idea that while Bruce’s basic motivation was most likely an inability to cope in a healthy way with watching his son die and being unable to do anything about it.....that doesn’t mean that out of all of this, that PART, the death, was the worst of it for Dick himself. Yeah, I emphasize the fact that Dick did actually DIE and this was traumatic as hell, because its so often glossed over....but even with that, I tend to think that given his history with being controlled, stripped of his agency, etc....its all of that, that was likely more damaging to him, more lasting. The fact that he HAD been here before, so to speak, and here he was in this exact kind of situation he hated and feared so much, ALL OVER AGAIN....and not because of anything he WANTED to do, or would have done if he’d had any real choice in it at all, but solely because Bruce, his dad, the person who is SUPPOSED to protect and comfort and care for him....pushed him into it, despite and over his protests.

Because by focusing on this, you can address the reality that as they’ve been written for the last...who knows how long....the Batfamily doesn’t really even KNOW each other. They don’t KNOW each other’s greatest fears, strengths and weaknesses, underlying motivations and personal goals. They tend to base everything off of their ASSUMPTIONS about each other, and as I’ve outlined here....that can be incredibly damaging, for instance when you have Bruce literally hurting his son because he’s CONVINCED himself its the best thing for Dick, he’s only doing it to protect him like he couldn’t protect him from being killed....but then, because he doesn’t truly know Dick at this point as well as he thinks he does, and because he isn’t LISTENING to him and what he wants and doesn’t want....Bruce ends up pushing him into a situation that I would argue Dick probably hates and fears even MORE than physical danger or being in danger of being killed.

Also, I’m always going to point out the constant barrage of sexual harassment, inappropriate touches and scrutiny and innuendo Dick was subjected to by Dr. Netz as part of his regular ‘check-ups’ while at Spyral - which given Dick’s history of sexual assault and harassment like, should not be discounted IMO - and again, this is all stuff that Dick was basically forced into by virtue of needing to keep his cover for this assignment, that he’d never asked for or wanted, and had very little control over from the start, let alone freedom to call it off if things got to the point where he no longer felt safe or in control - like, I’m never going to imagine a Bruce who would CONSCIOUSLY put any of his children in a situation where they had to ‘choose’ to be regularly sexually harassed/assaulted for the sake of the mission, and like, EXPECT them to make that choice for the mission, because no. But at the same time, there’s no getting around that whether they addressed it on the page or not, that was EXACTLY the situation Dick was forced into by this mission.

Which brings me to the second thing I come away with from this story:

2) As I said, a big thing to focus on with this story IMO is to use it to highlight how little the Batfamily knows about each other by this point, and thus how often they tend to make choices regarding the others that are completely opposite of what the others would WANT them to choose or do on their behalf...and then like...address that, with fic. Fix that with fic. Use fic to have them realize this, explore this, LEARN from this....

BUT, ALSO....the other crucial takeaway is that all of this only really happened...Dick only ended up in the incredibly compromised and vulnerable position he was in with Spyral, Matron, Dr. Netz, Agent Zero, Luthor, etc....

Because....he went into this with only the intel Bruce had to give him....and Bruce just flat out didn’t have as much intel as he thought he did, clearly. He didn’t have the necessary details to know that he was sending his recently-traumatized-son into the lions’ den with FAR less control of the situation than EITHER of them thought.....and no real way to HELP Dick COMPENSATE for this once this was made clear to him. Dick had to figure out how to handle all of this on his own, and the fact that he was able to is a testament to him, NOT validation of Bruce being sure that he could handle anything unexpected that came up during this mission....because the kind of stuff we’re talking about, Dick shouldn’t HAVE to handle without warning, help, or back-up.

So, the thing I try to emphasize here, that can be applied across SO many stories, across SO many timelines or events, is just....

BRUCE CAN BE WRONG.

And that’s so, so crucial, and yet so rarely referenced outside of like.....Bruce being placed morally opposite various of his children about certain arguments. The idea that Bruce is just....fallible, that he can and does make mistakes, does not have all the information at times, draws the wrong conclusions at times...THAT is something that I think is so much more....in need of scrutiny, than just blasting Bruce for how shitty he was during this story over all. Because the real danger IMO isn’t just any one story, but how across so many stories, both canon and fic, its just taken for granted that Bruce’s information is right, Bruce’s plan is the right one, Bruce’s conclusion is the most empirically accurate. 

When he and Dick or Jason or any of the others are in conflict about how to go about doing something, or what specifically needs doing....there’s a tendency to default to “well he’s Batman,” and ASSUME his position as the correct one due to his age and experience and innate Batman-ness.....and that by contrast, Dick or Jason or whomever is just being difficult, or immature or irresponsible or wrong-headed....reckless or impulsive or being ruled by their emotions, instead of cold hard logic, like Bruce is operating off of.

And I would argue that more than anything else, the largely-unexamined elements of the Spyral mission are case in point for how that’s just flat out not always true, and dangerous to assume is always going to be true given that we have SO many canon instances of Bruce being ruled by emotion rather than logic, and from that drawing conclusions or going with information that flat out...isn’t the right one.

And as shown here....that’s what’s so often at one of his children’s expense. Batman can be wrong. Bruce is just a man, he’s fallible, he can be blinded by his own emotions. Dick and the others are sometimes right, when he’s not. 

And they should ALWAYS be upheld as knowing better than him when it comes to their own personal experiences, especially the adult kids....and flat out, there’s no excuse for Bruce delivering his son into one of his worst nightmare scenarios in order to cope with HIS emotions about Dick’s trauma/death even moreso than to truly help Dick....since IMO, the situation Dick ended up in was nothing but a recipe for MORE trauma, rather than any kind of help with the stuff that had just happened to him.

And the only way to truly address that, push back against that kind of story, is just to examine in story that like.....this time, Bruce was wrong. His motivations were wrong, his intel was wrong, his plan was wrong, and his decision to override what his son WANTED and not listen to his protests....was, bottom line, wrong.

And Dick was the only one to pay any kind of actual price for it. 

Soooooo....lol, its not ultimately about the mind control at all, despite the fact that your ask is what started me down this train of thought, BUT the mind control is still so fundamentally essential to it, because of Dick’s history with it AND his focus on self-autonomy and agency.

Which to me, is always gonna be far angstier than the mind control itself. Because living with the aftermath like....there’s no actual cure or off-switch to that, unlike with the mind control itself.

(Related headcanon: I headcanon that after Dick was truly back from Spyral, he went and got full body scans every couple months from STAR Labs, Cyborg, random other hero affiliates, etc....just to reassure himself that the implants were truly gone, because he didn’t fully trust that they were or that he’d even know if someone lied to him about them being gone....so he’s not satisfied until he’s double, triple, even quadruple checked for himself. 

This IMO goes back to how during the Brother Blood stuff, he was literally brainwashed by the cult on three different occasions, with him still having been brainwashed after the second one, even after everyone told him the conditioning was really gone and he was all good - but they’d missed stuff, a deeper layer, and so....its not even about whether or not Dick trusts whomever is telling him his conditioning/implants/whatever are all gone and safely removed....its that he doesn’t trust that they’re necessarily RIGHT, no matter how confident they are, and since he’s ultimately the one facing the consequences of them being WRONG, if it turns out they are.

IMO, this is an area where Dick is likely almost if not completely obsessive....having regular rituals of checking, double checking, triple checking that he’s alone in his own head, that his body is clear of all foreign agents, that there’s nothing hidden about him or his body or his psyche, just waiting to activate and turn him against his friends and family...because his body is his weapon, but he can only truly trust it, trust himself with it, when he’s reassured it - he - isn’t in danger of becoming someone else’s weapon on a moment’s notice.

[titus-su]

Practice Media 1 - RED versus BLUE. . 'The Last Hope'

Practice Media 1 have the topic ‘Red vs Blue’ and it is very broad and interesting topic.

For the first two days, I focus on brainstorming what is 'red vs blue' and what I want to explore with this assignment.

After spend days thinking about it and do some rough sketches.... I got the idea that I want to emphasize the 'VS' content between red vs blue. I want to create epic scene with two different elements, good vs bad which is I pick as red later and some aggression towards blue (good).

This is my draft, the title is 'The Last Hope'. it's a scene that show a girl haunted by evil entity(red) and the girl holding a flower of hope that held the power(blue) to repel evil power. This draft would make a guidelines for me to taking the render angle and character poses. I did not refine it further because I need to catch up to 3D and it is enough for me to understand. Expert says a good concept art is something can easily understand by others. Well... this concept basically is for me and I understand it very well so I can call this a brilliant concept! Lol *jokes

Next is the timeline. This is very important! It give me a 'mini' deadlines and push my self to understand what my goals with this assignment. As you can see, my goals is to render it in Unreal Engine 4 and try the particle system stuff!

This is my moodboard/references : 01 - 'A girl in prickly leaves' by Dmitry Zamulin 02 - some of Ayato Lin's 2020 sketches 03 - 'Unicorn' by Miti 04 - art by Kouji Tajima 05 - 'Paimon' & 'Bael' by Furio Tedeschi

So I used this as the inspiration and guidelines, I want to create stone/clay-ish texture for the girl and give the pedestal like reference 01. As for detailing the hair, reference 02 and 03 comes very handy. The undead use Kouji Tajima's work(04) as construction/blockout work, and Furio Tedeschi's(05) for armor design reference.

This is my blockout in Zbrush.

More blockout for the undead and posed manually in zbrush.

This is the refined version, I fix the form to have a better form & composition. I got some trouble with fixing the Trapezius & Teres Major (shoulder & back muscle), but managed to get it believable somehow with taking a photos of myself in front of mirror posed like that.

More detailed version of the Undead. I did not sculpt the back part because I don't need it since I have an idea about the composition I want to render (concept art comes handy!).

Final pose and test render in zbrush (left). Textured in susbtance painter (right). I managed to posed it and retopo it one by one. It doesn't have a good topology but it is quite fair enough to be exported to game engines. I spent days to quick retopo by zremesher and manually UV unwrap hundred pieces of them. This is tiresome but it has to be done. Texturing is quite fast actually.... I just give them some smart materials, and adjust the parameters. My friend Arnaud told me there's new feature called auto-UV. Maybe it can boost my workflow. I haven't try it but I will soon! (Thanks!)

Here is my final render in Unreal Engine 4, it have a lot of flaws!! I tried to add particles effect for the flower but It's kinda complicated and I don't have much time so I skipped it. I will explore it next time. The normals is also have some kind of newbie mistake, I noticed it late.... I need to export it as smooth normals in Maya. Render compression is also too high. But this is my first time setup lighting in Unreal, I kinda like it. It is just a simple lighting though. Also my first time using sequencer, it's super fun actually! ----------- Self Reflective ---------- - My goals to practice character sculpt achieved quite well, I learned a lot about making a 'dark fantasy' design which is not my speciality. - Learn unreal lighting basic is completed, need to step up to more advanced lighting setup - Particle fx exploration is quite horrible, I don't spend enough time make it visible. - Sequencer is well learned, and it is fun! My render quality is quite awful, but I already make some note of it and will fix it in meantime so I can render it properly later. - I learned not only the software & art skills, but the 'attitude' too.... I feel like much more confident and creative making an art now because I push my thinking process to next step that I usually not brave/confident enough to create/explore. *maybe thanks to deadlines too lol Thank you for reading! ___________________ References:

Dmitry Zamulin. (2019). A girl in prickly leaves. Available from: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/4b8rBW [Accessed: 15 October 2021] Ayato Lin. (2021). Some Sketches Of 2020. Available from: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/KrrP8G [Accessed: 15 October 2021] Miti. (2021). Unicorn. Available from: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/AqVvxm [Accessed: 15 October 2021] Kouji Tajima. (2014). Judgement. Available from: http://koujiart.blogspot.com/2014/02/judgement.html [Accessed: 15 October 2021] Furio Tedeschi. (2021). X Bael X. Available from: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/YeNLEd [Accessed: 15 October 2021] Furio Tedeschi. (2021). X Paimon X. Available from: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/d8EJxA [Accessed: 15 October 2021]