#my attempt at kind of rendering them in my style..

[froqpi-art]

i like to think that vinyl is a menace to dj sometimes

[hotsugarbyglassanimals]

even though i feel like i can confidently tell when a piece of art is generative A/I, i really don't feel inclined or really even justified calling someone out for it due to the precedent it sets - especially when artists who DO make their own pieces get caught in the crossfire for being inexperienced or making the choice to be more free-form when it comes to character design / consistency...

[vetyr]

hi, i ireally love your work and i don't know if you've answered this before but, what kinds of studies do you do or how did you learn color theory? i wanna get better at rendering and anatomy but im having trouble TT TT

Hi! Long answer alert. Once a chatterbox, always a chatterbox.

When I started actively learning how to draw about 10 1/2 years ago, I exclusively did graphite studies in sketchbooks. Here's a few examples—I mostly stuck to doing line drawings to drill basic shapes/contours and proportions into my brain. The more rendered sketches helped me practice edge control & basic values, and they were REALLY good for learning the actual 3D structure behind what I was drawing.

I'd use reference images that I grabbed from fitness forums, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and some NSFW places, but you could find adequate ref material from figure drawing sites like Line of Action. LoA has refs for people (you can filter by clothed/unclothed, age, & gender), animals, expressions, hands/feet, and a few other useful things as well. Love them.

Learning how to render digitally was a similar story; it helped a lot that I had a pretty strong foundation for value/anatomy going in. I basically didn't touch color at all for ~2 years (except for a few attempts at bad digital or acrylic paint studies), which may not have been the best idea. I learned color from a lot of trial and error, honestly, and I'm pretty sure this process involved a lot of imitation—there were a number of digital/traditional painters whose styles I really wanted to emulate (notably their edge control, color choices, value distributions, and shape design), so I kiiind of did a mixture of that + my own experimentation.

For example, I really found Benjamin Björklund's style appealing, especially his softened/lost edges & vibrant pops of saturated color, so here's a study I did from some photograph that I'm *pretty* sure was painted with him in mind.

Learning how to detail was definitely a slow process, and like all the aforementioned things (anatomy/color/edge control/values/etc.) I'm still figuring it out. Focusing on edge control first (that is, deciding on where to place hard/soft edges for emphasizing/de-emphasizing certain areas of the image) is super useful, because you can honestly fool a viewer into thinking there's more detail in a piece than there actually is if you're very economical about where you place your hard edges.

The most important part, to me, is probably just doing this stuff over and over again. You're likely not going to see improvement in a few weeks or even a few months, so don't fret about not getting the exact results you want and just keep studying + making art. I like to think about learning art as a process where you *need* to fail and make crappy art/studies—there's literally no way around it—so you might as well fail right now. See, by making bad art you're actually moving forward—isn't that a fun prospect!!

It's useful to have a folder with art you admire, especially if you can dissect the pieces and understand why you like them so much. You can study those aspects (like, you can redraw or repaint that person's work) and break down whether this is art that you just like to look at, or if it's the kind of art that you want to *make.* There's a LOT of art out there that I love looking at, probably tens of thousands of styles/mediums, but there's a very narrow range that I want to make myself.

I've mentioned it in some ask reply in the past, but I really do think looking at other artist's work is such a cheat code for improving your own skills—the other artist does the work to filter reality/ideas for you, and this sort of allows you to contact the subject matter more directly. I can think of so many examples where an artist I admired exaggerated, like, the way sunlight rested on a face and created that orange fringe around its edge, or the greys/dull blues in a wheat field, or the bright indigo in a cast shadow, or the red along the outside of a person's eye, and it just clicked for me that this was a very available & observable aspect of reality, which had up until that point gone completely unnoticed! If you're really perceptive about the art you look at, it's shocking how much it can teach you about how to see the world (in this particular case I mean this literally, in that the art I looked at fully changed the way I visually processed the world, but of course it has had a strong effect on my worldviews/relationships/beliefs).

Thanks so much for sending in a question (& for reading, if you got this far)! I read every single ask I receive, including the kind words & compliments, which I genuinely always appreciate. Best of luck with learning, my friend :)

[nn-ee-zz]

I don’t really have a lot to ask I just want to say I love your art style! It kind of reminds me of like Eldritch Horror meets Celestial Divinity type of thing so with that said I was wondering on how you came to this type of art style you do and how long did it take you to experiment until you found the style that you wanted? Sorry if that sounds kinda confusing 😅 thanks for taking the time to read this and have a good rest of your day!

Thank you! I did not found my artstyle, my artstyle found me. Here is a timeline of my digital art/illustration journey

2014 - The beginning

I finally took my tablet and bit the bullet that was digital art. I remember specifically forcing myself to draw (because it was not fun) because I wanted to learn digital art no matter what it took.

2016 - Experimental

Boldness seems to have dominated this phase, not because of the themes but because I rendered without any under sketch (example above of how the first draft looked like vs the end)

2017 - The breakthrough

It was only from here that digital art began feeling RIGHT. The most important things I've learned were how to render texture variation (especially softer things like hair and fur) and how to color a drawing from greyscale. I was slowly settling onto my desired artstyle

2019 - Happy accident

We were tasked to design characters based on chess pieces during college. 1 week deadline. With the mindset that no one will see my designs except my teacher and I, I did things boldly and rendered them (trad ink plus digital shading) to emphasize shape and design, rather than texture variation.

I began mixing traditional lineart with digital rendering.

2020 - Fallen from heaven

My friend and I decided to attempt to design angels based on widely popular tumblr emoji mashups. It was the first time I colored one of my character design drawings, using similar methods to the ones I've learned in 2017.

2017 - 2024

I cannot name nor describe my artstyle nowadays. I haven't seen many people with something similar either. I use what I've learned in all my phases; the spontaneous boldness of 2016, the texture variation of 2017, the sharp shapes and design mindset of 2019, the mix of traditional and digital from 2020. It all melted together and keeps evolving.

The way I approached art changed too. I was so worried about making things beautiful and technically outstanding when today I only worry about making things interesting and readable.

[blueathn]

Obligatory coffee shop au art

Close-ups and ramblings under the cut because I spent waaay too long on this

Welcome to my brain soup.

Disclaimer, I didn’t really plan this piece and just kept adding concepts as I went, so it’s kind of all over the place. It’s more a big patchwork of dumb ideas I got excited over, rather than a well thought-out drawing, but I like it as it is! It feels like my brain did when I was reading htn :]

1. The whole concept behind this is just "Vintage coffee ad but make it the griddlehark coffee shop au". I was aiming for cheerful but also not quite right, in a very stock photo kind of way if that makes sense. Gideon is smiling but she is not a willing participant in this. Also that coffee is cold.

I - very predictably - took inspiration from Leyendecker’s work, since his ads and posters are the first that come to my mind when I think "vintage ad", and also because I do feel like his painting technique is close to how I naturally paint. This is not meant to be a study of his style tho, I didn’t try to break it down on more than a very superficial level.

2. 3. Nothing special to say, just Gideon’s arms (her perfect biceps are hidden from view lest they cause a riot in the cafeteria). Also arm hair. I feel like it’s becoming a recurring feature in my art lol

4. I debated whether or not to add a foam skull on the coffee then ultimately decided against it. That’s one skull too many, and honestly Gideon neither has the skill nor the patience to attempt one. Let’s be real, if they let her have access to the pitcher she’d make tits. So here is your tits-free coffee, courtesy of the Cohort photoshop editors.

5. Isaac, sporting the Fourth’s blue not only in dress but also in his questionnable choice of eye makeup. They have matching haircut only so Jeanne can showcase how much better it looks on her.

6. This is where I finally have something clever-ish to say. Thoughts ! I have them ! Sometimes. So. Harrow. You can’t see it but she has a nose piercing as well - this is relevant to spreading my agenda that Harrow is full of bone (piercings, that is). Sue me, I forgot that they let her keep her face paint in this scene. Onto the actual thought process.

This is where Abigail interrupts the scene, before Harrow can catch a glimpse of barista!Gideon. Her interruption is shown by the unfinished look of this panel : the sketch lines peeking through (in a reddish hue, to mimic sanguine, the red chalk that artists used to draw sketches and studies - and also because the contrast of the colors makes it pop better against her skin) + the rendering is messier from the neck and down.

Abigail is blocking half of Harrow from view - I wanted to have her hide Harrow’s eyes and thus line of sight entirely, but I feared Harrow wouldn’t be as recognizable with more than half her face hidden, frowny eyebrows and all.

Abigail herself is meant to look out of place here, without taking too much attention away from Gideon. I drew her in a much simpler style, using a more monochromatic palette and cell shading, to contrast against the rest of the gang, where I used a lot more color variation and a more detailed & textured painting style.

That’s about all I have on this, if you got this far thank you! Your support is much appreciated. If you liked this drawing I’d be overjoyed if you reblogged it and left your thoughts in the tags/notes! I’m always happy when I read them, even just a "#nice" makes my day.

[toodelusionalforreality]

Absolution

Azriel x Reader(N)

Summary: Two lovers separated out of necessity finally reunite, only for a brief tryst.

A/N: This is an experimental piece of work. I'm testing a writing style, so feedback is welcome. It's an extended universe for a plot I was working with details tbd but doesn't involve much plot here. So it should be an easy read. This is my first ever Tumblr publish and it's scary!! So be kind. Hope you enjoy!

Word count: ~4.5k

Warning: NSFW, 18+ SMUT, f!receiving, m!receiving(barely), sappy start+spicy middle+angsty end (i guess), voice kink, p in v. Mentions of OC other than reader[not enough editing/proofreading/formatting]

Azriel stepped into the room desperately holding on to the moment, afraid Crone Mother would change her mind. N sat on the balcony—like every evening, on the floor, her legs crossed, her hands clasped in her lap. The curtains came alive with the touch of a gentle breeze to guard her from him. Her sheer dress melded with her body under the radiance of the fading sun, her skin aglow as if made of stars and gold. Summer flowers adorned her hair, tucked into the braid that unravelled after the day’s practices.

His shadows peeked over his shoulders and swarmed his hands buzzing with excitement. With each silent step, he prayed he didn’t break her trance. He settled before her—bringing his knees to his chest, he rested his elbows on them, and his wings tucked tight to his body.

The hue of the setting sun made everything heavenly about her—soft, ethereal. Wisps of hair teasing her cheeks, the knowing smile on her lips, the slight flutter of her eyelids under his stare. A sigh escaped Azriel’s lips. It was a worthless attempt to hide his presence from her, the one who held the sight. 

Azriel wasn’t a fool to waste the mercy bestowed upon him after months of longing to be close to his beloved. He stretched on the floor, his head finding its rightful place in her lap, and wrapped his arms around her waist. Her scent and warmth made their bond burn brighter and he sighed in contentment.

After long minutes, N rested her palm on his head. Her fingers carded through his hair, and her nails scratched his scalp the way he liked. A thumb teased the shell of his ear and his wings responded with a sudden tremor.

Azriel smiled. He buried his face into her thigh. Air shifted around them as her body answered to his touches and breaths. Despite the need clawing in his chest, he chose to wait a few minutes, to savour the comfort of her simple touch.

N broke the silence. ‘How was your day?’ Her voice was as sweet as ever.

‘Long. Excruciatingly long,’ sighed Azriel. ‘I started with your friends from the armoury today. Until your mother sent me to the gardens.’ He remembered the smile on the older woman’s face when she took him away from the others. A secretive, mischievous one. ‘She enjoys testing me a bit much. She made me tend to your roses.’

N laughed, the sound sending a shiver through him. ‘That must have been a vision. Maybe she’s exacting revenge for how you treated her back home.’

Azriel’s heart thudded in his chest. Home. No matter what Crone Mother said, N had one home. It was with him, in Night Court. ‘I think she’s forgotten all that. She’s more interested in stealing you from me.’ His arms tightened around her and his shadows whirled around them emphasising their master’s possessiveness, ‘But I don’t mind. As long as she lets me be with you for a while.’ His lips twitched. ‘Did you know everyone here addresses me as your mate?’

Another laugh broke through her lips, ‘They're not wrong.’

‘No, they are not.’ Azriel finally looked up. Her eyes were already on his face. ‘I’ve been called many names over centuries. Shadowsinger. Spymaster. But this one,’ he leaned up to her face, ‘I like the most. To be known as yours before they even know my name.’ He got to his knees and trailed a knuckle along her jaw. ‘I’d like that for the rest of my life.’ Their bond strummed a tune so loud that rendered him senseless. ‘I want to have a life with you. A home, a family. Anything you want, any way you want. As long as you want that too.’

‘You mean that.’ N stated as if she needed to reassure herself. She stared at him with a mask of impassivity on her face that almost rivalled his own as a spy. Then, she smiled. ‘But I’ll have you know there will be more tests from Crone Mother.’

'I’ll suffer anything for you,’ he murmured against her lips. ‘So that’s a yes?’ N nodded before her eyes sparkled with mirth. ‘What is it?’ His senses warned him, his shadows stood alert on his shoulders. 

‘Well, technically, we’re married.’

Silence fell between them. Azriel’s fingers left her skin.

‘What?’

N shrugged. ‘Do you remember the first time we duelled?’ Her voice was steady but her hesitance broke through at the sight of the male who sat frozen in front of her. ‘You made me bleed. You proved you were my equal. And, it all happened after the bond snapped for you.’

Azriel remembered that day. He had wanted to impress her. It was the day he felt the warmth of her breath on him for the first time. For days and nights to come, he relived those moments until his skin prickled with heat.

N’s unsure laughter died soon when he didn’t even blink. His shadows retreated. His end of their bond quietened, alarming her. 

Finally, he said, ‘All this time you were my wife?’

Her breath stuck to her throat. ‘According to our custom, yes.’

‘And you kept that a secret.’ His wings flared behind him to their full glory and his eyes narrowed. ‘What did we discuss about your secrets?’

N leaned back, ‘Was I supposed to tell you all this when I had your blade to your throat? I’m not sure you’d have been open to that conversation.’ Her voice reeked of confidence but Azriel saw the facade waning in her darkening eyes.

Memories flitted through his mind—visions of her from the instant he laid his eyes on her to the present. Every misfortune they endured, every second they spent in love, every. . . 

He stalked her on his knees, his hands on either side of her. He hissed, ‘You slept with those males after that.’ A sound escaped his throat, a rumble deep from his chest. ‘My wife slept with other males to spite me.’ 

N stared at his lips and swallowed thickly. She hurried back, her hands slipping on the smooth marble under her. 'Azriel,' she whined wincing at the way her body welcomed her impending doom.

Azriel inhaled sharply. ’You like that? When I call you my wife?’ He chuckled darkly. His lips whispered against hers, ‘Of all the things you kept from me, this is the worst. You’re not getting out of this easy this time.’

N pleaded with her eyes. Her breaths shuddered. ‘They are watching.’

‘Then they’ll know my actions are justified.’

Azriel dove for his kill but before his hands grasped her, she faded away. Her airy laughter echoed in his ears. She stood in the middle of the room—her hands gently clutching her skirt to free her feet, her braid coming undone over her shoulder, teeth sinking into her plump lip—a vision of devilry and seduction.

His eyes flashed up to hers with a glint. His shadows who wanted vengeance of their own circled his shoulders and arms with a frenzy. N was in trouble and she knew it. She turned to run only to be met with his hard chest emerging from a dark mist.

‘Did you really think you could get away?’ He caressed her cheek, ‘There’s no escape from me. You should know that by now.’

N slid her arms around his neck. ‘Back then, we barely knew each other. I didn’t want to scare you.’ She looked into his eyes. ‘I’m sorry.’ She sent every ounce of sincerity in her being through their bond, still he kept his end cloaked.

Azriel pulled his arms away. Dark amusement shone in his eyes. ‘As if a silly apology is going to save you.’

N smoothed her palms over his chest. ‘I know.’ Her lips brushed against his skin, littering his face with soft pecks. ‘I know,’ she kissed the corner of his lips, moving closer and closer to the centre as she breathed the words, ‘I’ll make it up to you. For every secret.’

Even as N pressed her body into his, Azriel stood unmoved with a cruel smirk on his lips and his hands by his side. Her fingers wandered over his sculpted torso before unbuttoning his shirt. The shadows on his shoulders swayed, watching, waiting. The regal female who made others quiver with fear grovelled for his forgiveness, and his wretched heart grew giddy with power and pride.

Azriel itched to grab her waist and bite her lips until she bled for him again. A true victory in this duel. He closed his eyes in a wasted effort to tame his thoughts. At the first touch of her cool fingers on his bare chest, he almost gave in. 

His eyes snapped open the moment N pulled her lips away. She dropped to her knees, her fingers dancing on his hips. Pressing a kiss below his navel, she inched her hands between his legs and fondled him with the heel of her palms. The warmth from her hands seeped through the cotton, which he was forced to wear upon their arrival, promising him the pleasure that awaited him.

In all the years with her, Azriel treated her lips as a relic–sacred and holy–a crown jewel in the trove that was her body. Something to be guarded, treasured, worshipped. He never had to take her mouth the way she offered to him to reach for the stars.

N smiled sweetly. The goddess who witnessed every vice and virtue under the sky knelt before him with love in her heart and devotion in her eyes.

Enchanted, Azriel watched her. His lips parted with a shaky breath. Their bond blazed with emotions he couldn’t name. At that moment, he knew there had never been nor ever will be a male more blessed than he was.

His scarred hand cradled her cheek tinged with a soft blush. She leaned in, closing her eyes, trapping his hand between her shoulder and face. She sighed. She kissed his wrist, his palm, his fingers. 

Azriel couldn’t decide which was in more pain—his heart or his cock. Both, mere toys in her hands. 

N grazed her lips against his clothed hardness and Azriel closed his eyes. His head fell back. A gasp escaped deep from his chest when her tongue soaked him through the fabric. He couldn't remember why he wanted to punish his sweet mate. He was close to breaking already and all she did was tease.

A sharp scrape of her teeth along his length had him bury his hand in her hair softer than the flowers that tumbled down her breast. He hissed in warning as his eyes held hers in a glare. 

‘I want you to look at me,’ she smiled. That damned smile that masked her every cruelty.

Too much time had passed since they felt each other’s skin. Months, almost a year of not seeing each other, not holding each other. And there she was ready to worship him with her entire being if only for a night until their time ran out. Every move of hers had his heart wring in pain, the desire through the bond overwhelming and consuming his soul.

His shadows swooped down and pulled her to him. Azriel crashed his lips onto hers before her feet rested on the ground and stole every little breath from her chest. His shadows brought them to her bed, delicate and soft fit for a queen, like her. 

He pried the cord that held her dress together below her breasts. His lips ventured south leaving a trail of red on her neck and chest while N rewarded him with her moans. Shadows, ever obedient, parted her dress to make way for their master’s hand to relish the smoothness of her skin. He caressed every inch of her body with his marred hands except where she ached for him the most. She pleaded and moaned, guiding his hand between her legs. 

‘You shouldn’t have lied to me,’ he growled, letting his canines scratch her jaw. ‘You know how I feel about secrets, don’t you?’ A sob left her lips as the back of his fingers teased her entrance with the barest of touch. ‘Is this what you call making up? Crying and moaning until your husband fucks you?’

N froze. Her eyes stared into his with unspoken emotion that radiated clearly in their bond instead. ‘Azriel, please.’ His hand came down hard between her legs. She arched her back beautifully for him as a silent gasp escaped her lips.

Azriel memorised every pull of her muscles. ‘You should’ve known better.’ He slipped his fingers in and out, barely past her entrance, coaxing moans out of her. Her wetness had his mouth water. He undid his pants enough to ease himself out and thrusted into her in a single move.

They were perfect for each other—masochists at heart, denying themselves release until the day for their reunion drew closer and closer. N reached a hand out and clawed at his chest. Her eyes widened and soon glazed with pleasure. Her lungs ached for air. Her body begged to escape the feral male whose only intention was to devour her body and soul. Yet, she wrapped her legs around him.

Azriel waited panting, his heart losing its rhythm, shirt clinging to his back. N tugged him closer with her heels on his ass. He growled, baring his teeth. He grabbed the back of her neck and pulled her to his chest. Her eyes fixated where his hips snapped against hers, where they were finally a whole. Each of her whimpers nudged him to quicken his pace.

He felt his release closing in. ‘Is this what you want?’ She looked up, mewling for him, her eyes burning with tears. Too soon. He pulled out of her weeping cunt and dove in with his tongue.

N cried out his name, sweeter than any melody she had ever sung for him. Her body slumped on the bed. She sought for leverage, her hands fisting the pillows. As she felt her fingers grasping at reality, shadows weaved around her wrist and pinned them above her head.

Azriel watched his mate’s body collapse and crash at his ministrations. He dug his fingers into her thighs tearing them open. Her bright eyes pinched shut before she met his crazed ones. With her chest glistening with sweat, her neck reddening, and her teeth sinking into her wet, swollen lips, she came.

Watching her body shiver with every lick of the evening breeze, Azriel rid himself of his clothes. He leaned down to kiss her lips, but she stared dazed. He laughed and nipped at the insides of her bicep, clearing the fog in her mind. Her arms flushed red as blood rushed back. Her fingers twitched and his shadows trickled along them. She came alive with whines when he slipped his fingers inside her.

Her desire came in waves through the bond. A groan rose from his chest, a guttural rumble. Even after his transgressions, she only wanted more, more of him. N clenched around his fingers at the sound. Azriel chuckled darkly into her ear. N curled into herself and clenched again. A renewed glint came to his eyes as he stared into hers. 

‘She likes my voice, does she now? I always wondered. . .’ He lowered himself between her legs again, his second haven, the first being her embrace. A series of soft ‘please’ escaped her but the lust in her eyes told a different story, the bond sang a different tune. And he chose to heed its calling.

He wrapped a hand around her thigh and pushed the other aside with his shoulder. He didn’t want to miss this one. It was no new knowledge. He always had his suspicions, years of practice in observing the unobserved. But to finally see it with his own eyes, he was desperate to witness it. He wanted it to be true, he prayed for it to be true. 

The room was filled with nothing but N’s silent pleas. Her wetness glistened in the last lights of dusk promising him an elixir crafted just for him. A fresh wave of arousal rolled over her body. Azriel hummed, breathing in the scent.

‘So pretty,’ he exhaled. His eyes took in every flutter that invited him back. ‘You like being praised, don’t you?’ N moaned fighting against the shadows that held her hostage. Azriel pulled her close by her hip and inhaled—loud and deep—his nose almost touching her. 

‘Always wet for me, eager for me.’ His voice softened, his taunts dying as if his anger was meant for N and not her cunt, ‘I missed you so much. I can tell you missed me too,’ he pressed his lips to her thigh, his eyes unwavering, ‘by the way you wrapped around me, by the way you swallowed me.’ His cock throbbed at his own words. 

He rasped, ‘Look at you, teasing me. Do you want a kiss?’ He flattened a hand on her abdomen, his fingers stroking deliberate patterns. ‘My tongue, my fingers? Hmm?’ Her hip jerked up for more and he pressed a kiss to the arch above her clit.

'Azriel, please. I want more.'

‘So wanton, so needy.’ A wisp of shadow licked her entrance once and N closed her eyes. Her hips moved in tandem as if she could materialise what she needed out of thin air. ‘So beautiful.’ Azriel grazed a thumb along the junction where her leg met her hip. N fell back with a groan.

‘You want me, don’t you? You never lie to me,’ another kiss to her thigh, ‘You can’t lie. Unlike N,’ his eyes finally caught her desperate ones. For a moment, he almost felt tyrannical to let the wicked smile pull at his lips. N threw her head back and circled her hips again.

‘That’s it, pretty. Show me how you’d fuck me. Show me how beautiful you are.’ His tongue trailed a line alongside his thumb, ‘Come for me.’

Her legs went taut around his shoulders. Her toes dug into his back next to where his wing emerged from. When her stomach sank in, Azriel shoved two fingers inside and held it there as she unravelled with a choked moan. 

Pure, perverse pride filled his chest as his mate bucked and thrashed at the impact. Azriel was sick—sick at heart, sick in his desires. He never denied it. But it hardly felt a sickness with N trembling with his fingers inside.

Having lived through the horrors he did and committed unspeakable sins over his lifetime, Azriel knew there was no absolution for him. Nor that he cared. He already had his heaven, right there, in front of him, basking in the afterglow of pure pleasure.

He nuzzled his nose into her thigh to steal a little more warmth from her exhausted body. He brushed his cheek against her, closing his eyes, savouring the moment before his primal need destroyed the only person he loved the most. He hummed satisfied, pressing the lightest of kisses to her skin, his pathetic attempt to atone for the wicked he unleashed upon her. His heart should cower in shame and guilt, yet it swelled with love and hunger.

His name, whispered once, tore his attention from his perverted thoughts. He never cared for what he was called. But in her sweet voice, a sacred chant uttered in the confines of their chamber, he liked no word more than his own name. His shadows answered her call, smoothed over her sweat-covered body apologising for their master’s sadism, burning her skin with their delicate coolness. Some mercy, for they were no better than him.

Azriel brushed a thumb along her cheek gathering her tears away, a tender kiss placed in their stead. He smiled like a gentle lover. He parted her lips with his fingers soaked in her essence and slid them past her teeth.

With hooded eyes, N looked up at the male who sought the remnants of her soul clinging to her body and sucked on the tips. Her tongue rivalled the wetness between her legs. She was a true seductress.

Azriel lapped at his fingers and the lips sheathing them alike, tasting her whole at once, embracing the insanity he fought to stave off for so long. Even when he slipped his fingers out of her mouth, even when he pressed his body onto hers, even when he lined himself to her welcoming heat, he didn’t break the kiss like her lips were his only tether to reality.

N stilled beneath him. Another tear slipped from the corner of her beautiful eyes. Azriel was cruel, but he was capable of loving his mate right. He wrapped a hand around her shoulder and smoothed a palm over her hip. He inched in slowly into her pulsing cunt, ‘Give me one more, love. Just one. For me?’ 

His mate, ever merciful, nodded. The adoration that flowed through the golden string between their hearts reflected in her eyes. ‘Please,’ she said breathlessly, ‘please, Azriel. I want to touch you.’

The one whose dangerous hands slit throats of the most feral of males and females with grace asked to touch him so sweetly. How could he deny anything to her?

His shadows didn’t wait for his instructions. They released her arms and slid over to the skin their master left unattended, staking their claim on her body. Azriel reined them back only to lose control again. She made him jealous of his own shadows, ones meant to serve him, ones who forgot their place around her.

A long sigh pulled his focus back to her. Too exhausted to hold him like she always did, N ran her hands along his sides. ‘I missed you.’

‘I missed you too.’ Azriel lifted her thigh higher and wrapped it around his waist ripping a whine from her throat. He did miss her. He missed everything about her. Her raw devotion to him, her pure heart, her unconditional love.

As he moved deeper and deeper still, he felt it. The echo of a song he knew too well, one of love and longing that kept them connected through the times of separation. Beyond the familiarity of its thrum, he recognised something else.

Like catching a flicker of light after being lost in the dark for long. Like the first time he gained control of the darkness he was born with. Like the first time he tasted his freedom. In her arms, everything made sense. His breaths strained.

Tears flowed freely from her eyes. ‘I missed you,’ There was a tremor in her voice. Azriel soothed her with his own declarations but she shook her head, ‘Don’t make me leave you again. Please, I can’t live like this anymore. I can’t, not without you.’

Azriel always believed he loved her more than she could love him in her lifetime. His petty display of jealousy and temper, a proof of his love. What an arrogant fool. His heart ached for failing to truly see his beloved’s feelings for him, how deep it ran in her veins, how it destroyed her while it breathed life into him.

He pulled her close, enveloping her in his comfort, and his wings draped around them.

‘Promise me, Azriel.’ She closed her eyes, ‘Please.’

‘I’m here now,’ he caressed her cheek. He left kisses on her forehead, eyes, cheeks, and finally on her lips. ‘I’m here. I’m with you, love. I’m here.’ And at those words, N let go one last time leading him to his release.

Azriel left his shaking mate in the bed with a kiss when he came back to his senses to draw a bath. He stood by the door of her bathroom and watched his shadows tickle the skin below her ear. A light chuckle escaped her lips as more chased her hand. It was a sight he was used to and missed dearly.

N smiled at him as he carried her in his arms. Her body shivered at the first touch as Azriel lowered her into the tub. She tugged at his wrist, and he joined in. She leaned her back into his chest and closed her eyes. The water washed her exhaustion away while his hands massaged her tender flesh. Her eyes struggled to stay open and she sank deeper against him. As he dried her tenderly after, she watched him with an easy smile.

Azriel carried her out to the bedroom and paused. Fresh sheets lined her bed. Sweet fragrance of jasmine lingered in the air. Lit candles stood on windows and her desk. Moonlight streamed past the drawn curtains. His shadows failed to notice, too lost in her as he was.

‘I told you they were watching,’ N said, her voice quiet and tired. 

He eased her into the bed and pulled a blanket over her legs. He traced the marks of red on her stomach and between her breasts, marring her pristine skin—still a masterpiece—complete, perfect. ‘Do you think they’ll let me near you again after seeing what I’ve done?’ He couldn’t stop the smile that cruelly tugged at his mouth.

N groaned, throwing a hand over her eyes. ‘I’m pretty sure Mother Aarzu is already dissecting how you wrecked me for her next seduction lesson.’ 

‘Well then,’ Azriel laid beside her and pulled her to his chest, ‘I’m willing to contribute more to these lessons. They sound very necessary.’

She glared from behind her hand. ‘Mock all you want but your brothers are worse. I bet Rhysand was listening to your thoughts the whole time. And they are already planning on ways to taunt you.’

Azriel lifted a brow. He opened his mouth to defend his ability to guard his thoughts when his brother’s laughter echoed in his mind. ‘Your shields are pathetic when she’s around. They went down the moment her lips were on you.’ N flinched in his arms and he knew his brother invaded her mind as well for his next words, ‘Thanks for the show. Quite an. . .inspiration.’

N scoffed, ‘I don’t know why we do it behind closed doors.’ Her words had his mind conjure ideas already. A frown appeared between her brows. She looked at him sharply when she felt a hardness pressing into her hip, ‘We’re not doing that.’

Azriel laughed aloud. Something he hadn’t done in a while after he sent his mate away. ‘Anything my wife wants,’ he teased. He cradled her face against his chest and kissed her eye. ‘Anything you want.’

[meiguicha]

Maladroit Admirer - Rongguo

Danheng x Reader - University AU

Becoming entranced with the most plain looking guy in your tutorial classes leads to a series of very bad, not good fumbles

//So so so so enamoured with the idea of just NPC looking Danheng, short little thingy that I had to get out. Poem is  寄人 by 张泌.

别梦依依到谢家， 小廊回合曲阑斜。

˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗

You don’t think there’s a difference between a crush and love at this point because being in university and adamantly staring at what might be the most boring looking man in this entire sea of people certainly can’t just be a momentary attraction. Short dark hair, dark eyes, decent fashion style and in a business unit, he wasn’t anything special, and yet you just couldn’t, for the life of you couldn’t, take your damned eyes off him. 

It was ridiculous, you’ve never even spoken to him, looked at him in the eyes even, but here your heart was, pounding against your ribs begging for more. Every time you walk into that horrifically cold room, freezing your shoulders off because if you brought a jacket you’d be sweating from the journey, you see him already there at some table you won’t sit at because you’re afraid of him. Because you’re a nervous wreck and you know that if you had to talk to him during discussion, all you’d do is hum and agree and have no opinion on your own. Which, you’d like to keep some part of your dignity still, so no thank you. 

There has been no man, woman even, that has rendered you so stupid. It must be some kind of witchcraft, there was no other explanation for the grip this man had on you. 

You try your best, your absolute best, to focus on the question ahead of you, not like it was actually hard. However, seeing as you were in a small table of three, had an ethics question and you were hyper-aware of every action you made because of that damned man, you certainly weren’t at your peak performance today. 

With your table’s assigned question out of the way, the two of them went on to discuss the rest, or rather you and the person next to you since you two were the only ones who attempted the exercise. The discussion didn’t go bad, merely boring and strained seeing as you’ve never actually talked to anyone in this class, so when the exact same person asked to see your graphs. You, of course, took that as a very bad chance to make a joke. 

“Just to warn you, I bullshitted my graphs, so if they’re wrong don’t blame me,” You joked, raising your hands in mock-guile.

Somehow, some-god-forsaken-how, despite being in a room speaking at a normal conversational level surrounded by other people talking, everyone heard you. And everyone is staring at you. Great, absolutely great. Ducking your head, you pretend to type something else on your computer. You can only pray that you never see anyone in this class ever again, or have to talk to them (which wasn’t going to happen but you could pretend).

Out of the corner of your eye, you notice his eyes glancing between you and the rest of his table, a kind of vacant stare if you will. Your ears grow hot at this revelation, he must think you’re a total idiot, or a buffoon, whichever one because you might as well be all the ways you could refer to someone as stupid. How you longed to return to the cold dark earth, maybe you wouldn’t say things that made you sound like some brainless highschooler. 

By the time the tutorial ends, you’ve already debated ending it all at least three times. With your computer and singular pencil packed up, you absentmindedly head towards the exit, weaving through strewn chairs and the awkwardly placed tables. It is then you notice a familiar someone’s form standing at the door. 

Your eyes slowly shift up and who else could it be but the very man who rendered your brain mush, holding the door open and gesturing for you to go. 

You barely meet his eyes, bowing your head and quickly scurrying off, at least not before blurting out a quick “Thank you.”

With the speed of a falcon, your footsteps scamper off, hefting your heavy tote bag you now wonder why you brought. Tucking your earphones in, you try your best at nonchalance and it works, for about six steps until the tip of your shoe catches against some crack in the path and you have to walk off the even more public embarrassment. 

In the distance, he watches you trip on your own feet and your shoe almost gets stuck on the carpeted pathway. An amused breath escapes him and he wonders what exactly about you is so endearing to him. Danheng swears he has never met someone as oddly appealing even with your little fumbles, and by now he’s given up trying to figure it out. 

He’ll find some way to approach you later, when his palms aren’t trying to sweat the skin off of them and his head isn’t going at a thousand thoughts per second. He only hopes you didn’t notice his continuous staring, or the fact that his hand slipped and missed the first time he tried to grab the door handle.

˗ˏˋ ♡ ˎˊ˗

多情只有春庭月，犹为离人照落花。

[runawaycarouselhorse]

Our pure-hearted, all-loving hero... he can be a little brat (especially back in OS/early in his journey, when he was much more of a hot-blooded boy hero), but his heart's worth its weight in solid gold and he grows into such a kind, patient character with strong ideals, which is why Hero of Ideals suits him best (even the movie manga opted to adapt that version of the movie, rather than the one where Ash is Hero of Truth, and expanded on it!)

[I hope you have "long post" and "image heavy" muted if you need to, because this post's a doozy and given tumblr, if my blog's ever deleted, posts with read mores will be rendered inaccessible forever, so I don't like to make them!]

A lot of people complained about how young Ash looked in BW! (and complained even more about Sun & Moon's very divisive art style... and we wound up seeing great growth for his love of a whole region, and achieved a goal integral to achieving his dreams), but from the first episode of BW!, my first impression was of how mature and calm Ash is with Iris and Trip in regards to their initially abrasive and varingly aloof personalities.

Iris was friendlier and more excitable, more childlike, but Ash took her barbs in stride and patiently waited for her to open up about her dreams (she keeps it secret in the first episode, using that cute, childish word "naisho" instead of saying it's a secret "himitsu"--the same childish word she uses when asked about what Kairyuu/Dragonite told her in their reunion episode) and background (we don't know she ran away from the academy or what her hometown was like until season 2!)

The way Ash handled Tory (who was a traumatized, younger child--and Ash wanted to fight him at first, before understanding him!), Lucario (also traumatized, insulted Ash and Pikachu's bond--Ash fought him and fell off a hill, wrestling with him, before he saw Lucario's memory of being "abandoned" and broke down in tears, apologizing for what he said when he didn't know anything...), Chimchar (a traumatized Pokemon, Ash was patient, kind, and loving to him, even when he lashed out while out of control due to Blaze, which he previously could only use to save his life...), etc., is very different from how he handled Iris (who was bullied subtly by being completely ostracized, no one would sit or eat or play with her at the academy, she was so depressed, she stopped eating--this is canon and not lingered on, but she plainly says it and that her dorm mother making her food that would remind her of home, just berries skewered on a stick, "saved her") and even Trip.

(By the way, Ash apologizing to Lucario, in tears of regret over what he said to Lucario when he didn't understand him is when I first started to truly love and respect Ash's character and growth! Before that, I really was only a big fan of the TRio.)

By contrast to those rockier beginnings with other kids, Ash was patient and encouraging with Trip, even while Trip purposefully kept him and everyone else (even his Pokemon who loved him, as Alder said...) at bay and rejected all his attempts at friendship, before he got the answers he needed from Alder and slowly stopped shutting others out. He had every right to lash out at Trip for making fun of him, but kept trying to befriend him and showed interest in his journey and growth.

(Trip was also his youngest main rival at that point, even if he is a very book-smart child prodigy type who was an excellent battler from the start, he still fell apart in front of unexpected, unorthodox techniques like Bell/Bianca and Satoshi/Ash's out-of-the-box strategies.)

Naturally, there's also his very patient and encouraging bond with Lillie, who also had her trauma-induced fear of Pokemon (much like Tory!) and dissociative amnesia, the early loss of her father in infancy, and the distance between her and her mother (too wrapped-up in work and her obsession with Ultra Beasts to notice her own child's trauma and falling behind her peers...) to overcome, but the focus of this post is BW! I already write a lot about Lillie, she's another favourite of mine. <3

It's worth noting, too, that Pikachu was Ash's first "problem Pokemon"... even if it's usually the Fire types who are traumatized, Pikachu has abandonment issues like Chimchar and Tepig did. Pikachu famously hates being inside a pokeball and Ash always repesects this boundary and becomes very, very upset in XY when he believed Pikachu was forced into a pokeball... the pokeball factory episode was, otherwise, a very light-hearted episode, but Pikachu's boundaries and possible trauma is taken seriously.

This scene mirrors a similar breakdown Alain has when he finds out all he's done, under the impression he was protecting his loved ones, was aiding Lysandre's genocidal plans... both smash their fists into hard surfaces, blaming themselves for failing to protect loved ones.

In a very early Kanto episode, Sparks Fly for Magnemite, we learn Pikachu has abandonment issues so bad, he doesn't want to be separated from Ash for even an overnight stay in the Pokemon Center. It seems Pikachu (fortunately) quickly become much more secure in his bond with Ash and no longer fears being separated for medical treatment, but this is very, very sad and telling!

Although we never delve very deeply into that for most of the series... (an early magazine scan has Ookido-hakase/Professor Oak theorize Pikachu's previous trainer abandoned it), we were finally given some answers late in series!

In the AU movie, Pikachu says* his reason for not going into the pokeball: "It's because I always want to be with you." ;O;

... unless this is a dream or hallucination, given Ash is on the verge of unconsciousness when it happens--but if we really want to believe it happened, maybe his latent Aura post-cognition abailities kicked in and he understood Pikachu's feelings, like when Victini slept in his lap, crying, and Ash saw Victini's dream of his past.

As for the main series canon, in the first episode of Pocket Monsters 2019 (Pokemon Journeys), we learn Ash's Pikachu was a lone, possibly orphaned, Pichu, who was briefly raised by a Kangaskhan, carried in her pouch with her child, until he grew too heavy and quietly left at night (without saying goodbye) to live by his own strength, evolving into Pikachu as he did so.

If Lusamine not taking Lillie's (because they're irrational or not logical) feelings seriously gave her a complex where she always needed to claim her stances are "logical" even when they're based in emotion... I wonder what it tells us that "child prodigy" Trip defaulting to blaming his loss to Alder on him doing something wrong or being inherently lacking ("What did I do wrong? What do I lack?"), because he doesn't ever consider a simple difference in experience is all it is... that Alder's many years of wisdom and Pokemon training give him an advantage over rookie trainer Trip, who's shown to be averse to being called a "child" (Iris ropes him into battling Ash twice by calling him a kid), because he always has to prove he's an adult. He thinks there's something inherently "lacking" in him or "wrong" about his method if he doesn't achieve.

All of that is canon, but if you further analyze his character, Trip has a superiority complex, which is very often a defense mechanism to mask feelings of inferiority. He canonically places a lot of worth in the image he projects and constantly puts down others. Add that to being a child prodigy and his preoccupation with proving he's an adult (but doesn't bat an eyelid at someone calling him "unjust" for his violent methods in the Venipede episode, like he's already accepted being a terrible person, because he thinks striving for peace like idealistic Ash is "naive"--Trip has a very cynical view of adults, yet thinks of himself as such...)

Trip only cares to be seen as strong and mature, not good (he's not even surprised to be called bad, he's already accepted it, he doesn't care), and if he fails, he blames his lack of knowledge or his inherent nature as lacking.

Because his self-worth is in being a genius and being better than the rest, so he seeks outside validation, namely Alder's, who Trip behaves so jealously about, Alder canonically compares him to a fickle-hearted woman (well, he messes up the phrase 'Onna-gokoro to haru no sora.' "A woman's heart is as fickle as the sky of spring" because he was hitting on Junsa-san/Officer Jenny earlier, so he says "fickle as Junsa-san"... Freudian slip. ^^;;;;)

Trip, when asked what he was battling for, what he wanted to prove... he said it was to prove his strength to Alder.

That's all he wanted! To prove his strength and be acknowledged by his hero. Alder even asks him if he likes him. Adeku frankly asks it in the Japanese version, but the dub dances around with "do you have any admiration for a man such as myself"--which Trip doesn't answer verbally, although he really doesn't have to, because the scene makes it clear and is a lens that clarifies all his past behaviour.

That's all Trip wants: love and acknowledgement. Which he believed he could only get by becoming stronger, smarter, and more mature as fast as possible, likely taking Alder's to be some stronger and grow up quickly too literally, as head animator Iwane said, Shootie was just "a little too grown-up."

It takes a long, long time for Trip to unlearn prioritizing battles over anything else and to embrace childhood (which hey, is one of the main themes of BW!), because it's a precious time which we can never return to... so, Alder's current idealogy is to enjoy life, make friends, love Pokemon, and not dwell on the past. Ash's approach to being a Pokemon Champion and Master is the same.

Alder's introductory episode made it very clear he and Ash are very, very similar characters... and we see this again in Journeys, in the kind of advice Champion Ash gives younger kids. Ash and Alder have a similar wisdom they'd like to impart, I know, it's funny calling Ash wise, but he has high emotional intelligence and is incredibly wise in that respect for his age... it took Alder many, many long years to arrive at the same conclusion Ash reached.

Ash's Japanese name, Satoshi, means "Wisdom." (Another cute detail: Ash's little brother, Lei, whose Hawaiian name means a "Garland of Flowers-- in Japanese, would be pronounced as Rei, which also means "Wisdom." Lei likely has a name chosen to have meaning in both Hawaiian and Japanese. ^^)

Bonus shout-out to Ash, Iris, and Cilan all protecting Keldeo until he finds the courage to face his fears, correct his mistakes, and save his friends...

Ash is a very good friend, AG, DP, and BW! are all part of his development into the kinder character he became today. Some people might miss how rude he was to his friends in OS, but he can still playfully dish it out, he's just calmer and more sure of himself, so less likely to sweat the small stuff and recognizes when someone, whether Pokemon or trainer, just needs time and patience.

[wordsandrobots]

'Real' robot? No thanks

I shan't be wasting time hang-wringing over the idea of a Gundam show from the point of view of the setting's antagonists. This is a well-worn and perfectly legitimate approach, and in any case, Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) goes out of its way to emphasise the humanity of the Principality of Zeon's soldiers. There are scouts who bend their orders to aid to civilians, wannabe special-forces who take the time to gawk at the teen prodigy who thwarted their attempt to blow up the Gundam, pilots who jump ship rather than go down with their mobile suits, and injured grunts who cling to family pictures while bleeding out in the desert. Even the actual *villains* of Gundam 79 – the Zabi family and their hangers-on – are generally presented as functioning people with loves and motivations beyond conquest. Only Gihren is utterly without morals. You know, the guy who took being compared to Hitler as a compliment? Garma, Degwin, Dozle, and even Kycilia all have moments of humanity, in spite of their reprehensible actions.

So yes, of course there are people fighting for Zeon because it's their job, because they believe the promise of spacenoid independence, because they buy into newtype theory, or simply because circumstances force them to. That's the kind of story Gundam is: the tragedy of people enduring a war driven by forces above their heads and beyond their control, who are just trying to make it home alive. If you don't get that, or that the Federation is squarely in the position of 'lesser evil but still a callous nation state doing dubious things to secure victory' from episode one, I don't know what to tell you. You've missed the point. I'm sorry, you just have.

There is nothing wrong with the premise 'wouldn't fighting against the Gundam be like living in a horror movie?' Indeed, I will go further: that is a good premise for a story.

But Netflix's Mobile Suit Gundam: Requiem for Vengeance is not a good story. It is, at best, a serviceable one, trotting from A to B with enough narrative cohesion and character beats to string the set-pieces together. By and large it manages an inoffensive momentum, unfolding a predictable sequence of events with reasonable competency. If I was not hugely entertained, I was not especially put off, either. They even remembered to turn on the contrast for the nighttime battles.

The biggest innovation displayed here is that this production was rendered in Unreal Engine as full CGI, eschewing Gundam's conventional animation style. In my view, that's also the key to its biggest problems. Let's take a quick spoiler break and I'll try to unpack what I mean.

I guess go watch the show before proceeding?

OK, so, there was a point in the middle of Requiem for Vengeance when I found myself questioning the physics of beam sabers. I'd never thought before about why what is essentially a burning stream of energy can be blocked by a bit of metal with a super-heated edge, or indeed by another such stream, because within the animation style usually used to depict such things, they are clearly physical in their interaction with the world. As solid as lightsabers and therefore as capable of acting like real swords.

But Requiem makes the decision to depict the Gundam's saber as, essentially, the jet from a blowtorch. Because that's what this *is*, isn't it? A narrow fountain of plasma? So it looks like fire, you can see the Zaku's heat-hawk through the Gundam's blade, and suddenly I'm wondering – how does that work? Why does the axe stop it instead of passing through? How does this obviously non-physical blade react as if it were a physical object?

There are any number of technobabble reasons you might give for how this works. Forcefields! It's probably forcefields. But what struck me was the beat of 'huh' I experienced, where I asked something I'd never previously *needed* to, even though it always existed as a legitimate question of the sci-fi mumbo-jumbo being deployed, and how that was a direct result of stylistic choices made when the Gundam was reinterpreted through the lens of CGI 'realism'.

Ah, yes. Realism. That elusive quality chased by film-makers and game-developers the world over. Or, specifically chased by a lot of big, mainstream studios who've decided it is vitally important the supernatural and the superscientific be placed within what is recognisably the real world.

In terms of such codifying modern works as 2008's Iron Man, this is primarily about papering over the stitching between what is filmed using actors and what is painted in later. In theory, something rendered entirely by computer does not have to worry about this. However, as many a 'triple-A' computer game has proven, the aspiration towards photographic quality remain. Characters and objects are honed so as to mimic the appearance and texture of real people and objects, with greater verisimilitude to life being a near-universally unquestioned goal.

I won't argue this doesn't have merit as a technical exercise. The results can be impressive. What I will say is: realism is worthless if it removes interest, and useless if it sacrifices coherence. The beam saber example is an instance of what I mean by the latter. Within Gundam 79, we apprehend immediately that the saber and the heat-hawk are of a kind, possessing an energised glow that is nevertheless opaque and physical. Within Requiem's portrayal, however, they no longer adhere to a visual language in which their interaction make sense. You cannot block an axe with a blowtorch flame. A minor illustration, yes, but it captures the tension created by transposing such elements into a more 'realistic' style.

Another may be found in the treatment of Zeon's various military vehicles. These are a bizarre selection of sci-fi objet d'art, from the aerodynamically questionable Dopp fighter jets to Magella tanks that can launch their turrets into open flight. They are strikingly weird designs that make little sense yet function perfectly inside their context. Where another, earlier anime would have had them belong to an alien species, Gundam is the show that pioneered 'what if the bad guys were human too' for the mecha genre, so they merely represent a design logic alien to the Earth Federation, which favours bold, blocky shapes more closely based on extant military hardware.

In Requiem, the Zeonic weirdness is deliberately muted. The Dopps are streamlined, literally flattened into a more traditional jet fighter profile. One Magella does attempt to launch its turret only to be blown apart before it can rise more than a couple of feet. Otherwise, they're just treated as ordinary tanks. And it's easy to see what the artists were doing here: "let's take these weird 70s designs and make them look like real tanks/jets." The result, unfortunately, is a dilution of the clear distinction between Zeon and Federation tech.

If you've watching the original Gundam and its sequels, you'll know how easy it is to tell at a glance which side something belongs to. Looking at them in stills, it is still reasonably clear these are meant to be Zeon vehicles. But in motion, it often took me a good few seconds to be sure I wasn't seeing their Federation equivalents. Visual interest doesn't exist purely for its own sake, after all; it serves to clarify the action. Plus, it seems to me that trying to downplay the wilder aspects of these designs actually draws attention towards those aspects. The Zeonic alienness has its own explanatory power; reducing it raises more questions, not fewer.

Lest you think me some terrible killjoy who doesn't like fun, I'm actually incredibly sympathetic to 'realistic' overhauls of classic designs. Have you seen what I spent years doing for the Daleks? Aesthetic overhauls aren't something I object to, nor do I think 'realism' as practised by the MCU and triple-A game developers is intrinsically a waste of time. What I am trying to demonstrate is Requiem's relation to its source material. It posits a story taking place exactly contemporaneously with episode 25 of Gundam 79, portraying the Battle of Odessa, the great Federation push-back that ejects Zeon forces from Earth. This is what was happening 'just off screen', depicted in a style actively at odds with that of the original

But not entirely at odds with it. Which brings us to another problem: an unwillingness to commit fully to the new style.

The big twist in Requiem episode 4 is that after being chased down by the Gundam and just barely managing to drive it off, Captain Iria Solari of the Red Wolf mobile suit squadron is recruited to go capture an example of the Federation's new mass-produced GM 'suit, so Zeon can identify its weaknesses. The hunted get to become the hunter, infiltrating a Federation base and attempting to hijack a couple of GMs, only for the Gundam to scupper things. All well and good. Not a bad swerve. Enables some useful developments.

Except this plan is delivered into the plot by a Zeon major general who appears to have stepped in from a different production entirely. Specifically, from Mobile Suit Gundam: The 08th MS Team, because this is none other than Major General Yuri Kellerne, he of the Wolverine haircut and unfortunate disagreements with certain scientific officers (that is, it is unfortunate he should have disagreed with a man possessing so few qualms about massacring his own side).

It is truly surreal to have a character who looks like he actually belongs in a Gundam show enter the scene. I was quite impressed prior to this with the depiction of another character, Major Ronet, who captures the essence of a villain-of-the-week Zeon officer using Requiem's style. He looks entirely of a piece with the rest, while still being recognisably a certain type of character.

Kellerne though? For fuck's sake, he's got a full-blown anime bouffant. Juxtaposed with Solari's achingly realistic design, it's just – bad. This is bad. It's a stylistic clash that makes it impossible to take these scenes seriously. Not because either style is problematic on its own, but because they cannot work together.

It's worth pausing to consider Kellerne's native entry in the franchise, because 08th MS represents an older trend of revisiting the original setting. Starting with Mobile Suit Gundam 0080: War in the Pocket, this saw the release of OVAs with a superior quality of animation and a more ground-level take on events of the Zeon/Federation war. In many respects, Requiem is positioned as the successor to these series, as Kellerne's cameo makes overt.

The thing is, War in the Pocket, Mobile Suit Gundam 0083: Stardust Memory and 08th MS are all animes. Yes, they render the action with greater fidelity than Gundam 79. But they don't restyle it the way Requiem attempts to. The Dopp fighter is a great example of this. Compare the 08th MS version to the original and you will see that it merely adds extra layers of detail. It doesn't make it make more sense. Likewise for the character models. They look better than Gundam 79, by certain metrics. They still follow conventional anime aesthetics. You can't drop a design from this line of shows straight into a 'realistic' depiction and expect that to work.

Why does any of this matter? None of these issues exceed the threshold of nit-picking. OK, they're mildly distracting, but is there really a huge problem here?

Well, first, there is a philosophical underpinning to the drive for 'realism' we ought to grapple with, namely the idea only live-action and live-action-alike 'count'. I confess to having little time for this line of thought: the stylistic 'realism' discussed up to now matters far less than emotional or experiential realism. That is to say, whether something presents itself using stick-figures or a hyper-photographic style is not as important as whether it can convey the stakes, pathos, and other meat of a story. Art presents a plethora of options for communicating a message. Deciding one is intrinsically more valuable than the rest is a woefully narrow view of creativity. Traditional, non-realistic animation can be as emotionally arresting as any live performance. Why, therefore, should it be necessary to adapt it into a life-like style?

Second, there is the incomplete commitment to 'realism' that plagues Requiem and, I would argue, the entire concept of approaching works such as Gundam in this manner. Sure, stylistic 'realism' isn't about being strictly 'realistic'. It's about achieving a specific texture to the unreality that is functionally indistinguishable from that of the real elements. Yet doesn't the inclusion of a 17.5m-tall humanoid robot suits automatically grant you a get-out-of-realism-free card? If you have something that wild in play, why go to the effort of making it look like a real-world object? And if you're going to arbitrarily throw out the pretence for the sake of gratuitous continuity, what's the point of trying to begin with?

This circles close to what Requiem is, materially. If I use the phrase 'official fan-fiction', I hope you'll understand that's not necessarily derogatory. What I mean is something primarily homaging and reflecting a pre-existing work, rather than more straightforwardly building off it. 'Fan-fic' because it is bounded by what is already there; 'official' because it has the backing of corporate ownership and thus is positioned as more than merely people playing with the toys they enjoy. It's a category of derivative works into which I'd put previous projects such as Gundam Unicorn's animated adaptation – ring-fenced by an established canon, whatever their individual merits.

General Kellerne's stylistically disruptive presence is one example of the short-comings of such an approach. His design looks that way out of deference to 08th MS Team, whether or not it fits next to the other visuals (a side-effect of trying to cram him into Requiem's style is that he appears off-model anyway!).

Another is the plot. We might grant that doing Gundam-by-the-numbers is a self-contained introduction to the series' themes for a novice, but there isn't anything here those of us who've watched the anime(s) haven't seen a dozen times over. Even Solari's pocket-watch feels borrowed from 08th MS.

Now, credit where it's due: Requiem does not downplay the newtype angle. The psychic powers built up to over the course of Gundam 79 and made central to its sequels are usually the first thing ejected when the franchise tries to be more 'serious' and 'gritty'. It was a pleasant surprise to see them embraced. Solari is explicitly a newtype, with all the corresponding traits (supernaturally good pilot, able to sense threats, experiences predictive flashes etc). This is neatly used to establish some of the philosophy behind Zeon's cause, since most of our characters are already aware of newtype theory (humans moving to space tap into skills not previously needed) by dint of being on the side that uses this as justification for invading the Earth.

As in the source material, newtypes serve as a metaphor for the potential of each new generation. Solari was a talented violinist before the war, able to play near-impossible melodies, and this ability has been conscripted in much the same way OG protagonist Amuro Ray's mechanical genius was turned to murder. Equally, the central tragedy in Requiem resolves into newtype-on-newtype violence, as the pilot of the Gundam relentlessly hunting the Zeon soldiers is revealed to be a frightened teenager, paralleling both Solari's son, to whom she is fighting to return, and Solari herself, as someone struggling for their life in a war-zone.

I watching this straight after binging the original Gundam series (I'd previously seen the more refined compilation movies) and was struck there by how brief Amuro's interaction with fellow newtype Lalah Sune is prior to inadvertently killing her in battle. Then I remembered that's the point. These are two people sharing an identical potential for transforming the world, made opponents by circumstance, who understand one another immediately and intimately in the exact instant it is too late to matter. Amuro's cry that he has done something awful he cannot take back is not overlooking the other deaths he's responsible for; rather it is admitting the unique horror of lost possibility.

Following an encounter on the Federation base, Solari recognises the boy pursuing her is equally scared and out of his depth and thus attempts to talk him down. She even succeeds, reaching substitute!Amuro (hey look another traumatised child soldier who executes wild violence in a berserker-like fashion using a hyper-advanced military prototype; what are the odds?) and evoking his sympathy with her status as a mother (characterisation I'd be more annoyed by if Solari wasn't presented functionally identical to the trope of a father desiring to return to his family).

Then, immediately after saving Solari from being crushed by falling spaceship debris, substitute!Amuro is fatally stabbed in the back by another Zeon soldier.

Here we reach the crux of my dislike for Requiem. It has already muddied the clean Federation/Zeon divide and Gundam's internal physics in service of its chosen style, then compromised that style anyway in the name of slavishness to canonicity. Now, during what is position as the emotional climax, it openly rejects the visual language of newtypes.

Solari's powers are portrayed using vocally-stated unease and emotional connection to other individuals (as is standard), and a pair of dream sequences – one prophetic with respect to the Gundam pilot, another tying into newtypes' ability to draw in the souls of those who die around them. Performing at a darkened opera house, Solari's red dress slowly washes outwards, becoming a bloody wave as the audience is revealed to consist of the dead Zeon soldiers she failed to save. It's an arresting visual, as is the fiery descent into her own pocket watch (a souvenir from her dead husband, who was also conscripted into the war) that marks the earlier dream. We also see a brief shot of the Gundam staring straight back at her as she senses its presence on a distant battlefield. These are all effectively done and I genuinely enjoyed them.

Crucially, however, Requiem does not deploy the kind of over-layering that Gundam 79, Zeta Gundam, ZZ Gundam and the other follow-ups use to show the deep connections developed by newtypes. In the animes, in addition to visions and flashes of awareness, we have full-on mind-to-mind communication where people converse across voids of colour and light. Newtypes appear in ghostly form, too, interacting with the living during and after their deaths. There are also the obligatory glowing auras, cuing the viewer into supernatural happenings.

Requiem's 'realistic' style seemingly does not permit such things to occur in the waking world. That is to say, there is no reason you couldn't depict the standard newtype visuals in CGI, but this show opts not to. If I were to hazard a guess, given the restriction of overt psychedelia to dream sequences and what they did to the Zenoic designs, I would say the aritsts thought it would look silly.

The problem is, how do you then portray newtype connections? In the scene where Solari convinces substitute!Amuro to stop, we get a couple of cutaways to the kid in his cockpit, superposing with his Gundam's movements. That is a great decision, since the point of the newtype visuals is the characters looking past the armour and understanding the person within (not always a good thing, since antagonism can exist despite the link, but the central conceit is always to grasp the essence of somebody else). In these brief moments, we see, as Solari does, the human being, not the mechanical monster.

But the boy's subsequent death is just… the Gundam gets stabbed and keels over, and Solari is grief-stricken. That's it. No manifested ghost, psychic trauma conveyed by voice lines alone, a total absence in this crucial, heart-rending instant of substitute!Amuro's humanity. Just the destruction of property. The death of the monster, not the scared child.

If there had been one additional cutaway to the boy in the cockpit, I think this could have worked. A single shot of him looking at Solari in the second before being stabbed in the back. Something, anything, to imply the connection crucial to this scene. I am honestly baffled as to why it's not there. I feel I'm looking at a picture where a couple of critical numbers weren't coloured in.

To be clear, I don't personally care for the newtype concept as executed in the 'Universal Century' Gundam shows. I'm not annoyed by this because I'm wedded to the idea or the visual conceits. I'm annoyed by the incompetence of failing to land an obvious, even required emotional beat. The finale of Requiem for Vengeance is built around Solari confronting substitute!Amuro. She risks her chance to join the Zeon retreat from Earth – and thus of reuniting with her son – to help take down Federation forces endangering the departing space capsules. She then compounds this by attempting to convince the Gundam pilot to let everyone go, and ultimately abandons any possibility of returning home out of grief over his death. This is a life-changing encounter for her, as is normal for newtypes pushed into fighting each other.

In my opinion, the show does not sell that anywhere near as well as it could have. Further, it betrays the very concept of the newtype connection by leaving substitute!Amuro to be represented by his Gundam rather than his actual self in his final moments. There are cases where other newtypes meet such abrupt ends. Quess' death in Char's Counterattack springs immediately to mind. But that is a moment of a profound lack of communication, which is not what's happening here.

Animes such as the original Gundam shows can move seamlessly between high technology and visual metaphors for empathy without underselling either one. That they are not attempting to look 'real' provides the advantage of absolute coherence. Beam sabers, flying tanks, psychic powers – there are no joins to airbrush away. Everything is unreal, so everything fits together. A switch in medium and style creates the challenge of reinterpreting those disparate elements so they remain coherent. Ultimately, while Requiem for Vengeance has a good try at pulling everything across, it fails, not just at creating 'realism', but at capturing the conceptual depth of what it is assaying.

Being official fan-fic of the Battle of Odessa – being, essentially, 'the Gundam story' in miniature – invites unfavourable comparison with the original work. Unshackled from that, I suspect it could have done more to establish its own visuals, remove incongruities and find better means of conveying its emotional core. As it stands, I have to wonder if there's any sound argument for live-action-alike Gundam. Even the dream sequences don't provide something unique to this style. You could do the same in traditional animation and trivially push it further. So what, precisely, is gained by telling this story this way?

That's the question Requiem for Vengeance has left me pondering. And hey, if you want to answer with 'but it looks cool', fair enough. I'm writing way too much about my personal gripes with a perfectly passable piece of gratuitous mecha porn, simply because I found a more interesting complaint to make than “why the fuck didn't they hire somebody who knew how do facial animations?”

As for Captain Solari, she closing-monologues herself to Africa to join a Zeon remnant group and fight to give children a future without war. Never quite been sure how mecha pilots in these things envision that working, if I'm honest. Oh, and, uh, I guess nobody tell her that if she survives the next seventeen years, there's a decent chance she's going on a suicide run against the Federation spearheaded by a traumatised teenager strapped into a murder machine.

That might put a slight damper on what Netflix's music captions assure me is a heroic ending.

[A note to check you read all the way to the end: obviously the screenshot from Cucuruz Doan's Island shows CGI mobile suit models. But that's CGI aping traditional anime, rather than an attempt at realism. This is why I've been careful to talk about style, not medium.]

[dokidokitsuna]

Slowly, I think I’m getting a handle on this…I tried studying the character art from my favorite dead MMORPG, Maple Story 2, and I think it helped me find a style for the shading and rendering that’s more dramatic but still sort of cartoony.

Plus, I’ve been doing a bit of script writing, which always helps me figure things out. ^^ So please enjoy the additional work I’ve done on these character concepts.

-Between these two, Magolor definitely needed the most work: you can tell because I basically drew a full character design sheet, which is something I almost never do because I don’t like repetition. XP But it doesn’t feel repetitive when I’m totally lost to begin with. ^^; I think I got a little too abstract that first time I drew him, so my focus here was to figure out the specific shape of his body and rebuild outward from there. In stark contrast to my usual Magolor designs, he’s very tall and muscular, with an imposing silhouette (especially with his cape on). Yes, he IS hiding something under all those purple bandages, but we won’t talk about it today. ;)

-I also like that his outfit gets darker the further inside you go, from the solid white cape and glittering chains, to the silver armor and gray scarves, to the skintight navy blue fit underneath. Symbolism??? Perhaps~

-Blade’s design was already pretty solid, so I just adjusted her cape a little, and then dove straight into the Rainbow Malady concept art. ^^ Phase 1 has her sprout a second eye and wings on one side of her face. Her head catches fire, as the power of the Rainbow Sword attempts to ‘burn away the darkness’. In this phase, Blade is already in a lot of pain, but remains fully conscious and can even speak, when she isn’t coughing up multicolored blood. She can recover from this on her own with a day of rest. Phase 2 is much more serious, forcing her organs outside of her body, and growing star-shaped welts over the rest of her skin. At this point, she can no longer recover without Magolor’s help-- essentially, he uses magic to shove all her organs back where they belong and stitch up the open wounds. It’s like setting a bone after it’s broken-- just as painful as the injury itself (if not more), but necessary for proper healing…which takes about a week.  Phase 3 is the last and worst, transforming her arms into elongated wings and her whole body into burning plasma, on top of all the issues from Phase 2. Thankfully, she can’t really remain conscious in this phase-- she’s usually delirious from fever, blood loss, and her brain literally burning away. ^^; Storywise, she needs about a month to recover from this, so she doesn’t use it too often…of course, as the 'player', you can put her through it as many times as you want. =T

-Fun fact, I guess: So the primary love language between these two characters is food. ^^ I was musing about what I could do with a protagonist arc centered around worsening illness (which is…surprisingly rare), and I thought, “so what do you do for sick people? You put them to bed, you manage their symptoms, you clean and comfort them…and most importantly, you feed them.” And then ^that little doodle basically came to me in a dream, and from there evolved the idea of Magolor showing kindness to Blade by cooking for her.

Most of the time, the little affection Magolor shows to Blade is…basically performative. Think of it like a hammy supervillain petting their cat-- it’s more of a character stim than anything else. ^^; The way Magolor talks to Blade (and especially the way he talks about her…) makes it clear that the hand-holding and headpats don’t mean much.

But on the other hand, giving Blade food and watching her cutely devour it, especially during the times when she’s bed-ridden and he doesn’t see her as often…I like to think that might genuinely endear her to him a little, enough to make it a sort of stand-out gesture. Like, if he strokes her forehead when she’s sick, that’s whatever; but when he spends 5 hours making a Maxim tomato consommé for her to eat, that’s him trying to say he cares. Maybe it’s just a tiny bit, maybe it’s just in that moment, but a small part of him truly wants her to be happy.

[flameraven]

The Dragon Prince - Progress Shots

Thought it would be fun to show how this picture came together (since it was a little bit of a struggle)

Started out doing some rough concept art and thumbnail sketches to figure out the layout. At first I was planning for a more European-style dragon until I was inspired to do something more BOTW-style.

I took the thumbnail I liked best and enlarged it, and then started working on getting the basic shapes roughed in. This was actually my second attempt, I had first tried to use a reference photo of a totally different type of rocks and it just wasn't working so I scrapped it entirely. You can also see Crowley's tail changed from the original thumbnail to make the composition flow better. I had also planned him to have antlers and a fluffy mane like the BOTW dragons but it made the silhouette too hard to read so that got scrapped too.

Roughing in colors and light sources as well as further refining the shapes of the rocks. The most important thing here was composition rather than realism. Colors were based off reference photos of the Grand Canyon at sunset. Geologically I don't think they're the same kind of rocks but the vibes were close enough.

I made several attempts at refining the clouds and could not get them to work so I gave up and drew a more detailed sketch + inks for Crowley and Aziraphale instead.

The rocks were giving me even more trouble than the clouds so besides adding in some more lighting I procrastinated on them and did the sky instead as well as roughed in shading for Crowley. X)

Starting in on rendering Crowley while I still tried to figure out wtf to do with the rocks, haha. I really put them off until the last minute. Eventually I basically took a large textured brush, did a neutral grey layer over the whole rock area, and then set it to Multiply. That really helped in giving the rocks texture without having to render all the details. I dug out more rock reference images and started laying in little lines for cracks based on those. Also putting more shadows under Crowley that I forgot before.

Final art! The last big step was in changing the rocks to the top right - the planes of light and shadow didn't make sense so I consolidated them to be less distracting. Still wasn't totally satisfied with the clouds, but I was running out of time and also thought my tablet had died, so I decided it was GOOD ENOUGH and that's all that matters.

[dannychai1617]

my art progress throughout 2024! each piece is from a different month. i tried to pick the ones that focused on people (or people-ish) as the subjects so i can compare them easier. some of these i've posted here, some i haven't.

i've been doing more digital again the past couple months, because i've missed the feeling of digitally painting and rendering details. it's hard to get that kind of thing traditionally, even though i feel i've improved a lot there, as well.

i think my biggest improvements have been in anatomy and stylization. it's always hard to balance those things. if i lean too hard in one direction, like you see in March (primarily stylization) or August (primarily realism), i can make a piece that's GOOD in that regard - but doesn't feel like my art. i don't feel like my own emotions are in them. combining them is the hardest part, like you can see my attempts on in most of the other months, where they aren't as aesthetically "pleasing" but you can still see my style in there somewhere. i think January, May, and June were the one's that suffered the most at this.

in these latest months on the bottom row, i've gotten much more confident combining those skills. each of those four pieces i think was the best i've done in each of their mediums so far (ipad with an apple pen, traditional with alcohol markers, phone with my finger, and tablet with a stylus). i've been branching out a lot, and bringing the things i've learned back to my digital pieces. i've also gathered the energy to dabble in new fandoms to fuel my spark (like COD, which i've never played but i've found a love for the characters).

i had a bit of an art rut all year but i'm finally breaking back out of it. i'm going to college next year (hurray!) so i hope to take that newfound confidence with me as i continue to grow as an artist, meet new people, and venture out into the world.

[priintiisor]

uhh kinda forgot to post this for a few days but anyways- for the 2 people who care to read all of this

the struggles of making neglected space

part 2: somehow i didn t die making it

part 1

so, when i make animatics (or in this case a pmv, whatever), i usually have the idea for a while before i have the time and motivation to actually draw all of it, but i also have shit memory, so usually i make a little "storyboard", not really a proper storyboard, mostly just little extremly messy sketches (usually no one else can tell what s meant to be happening in them), not even to work out the composition, just so i won t forget what i wanted to go over which part of the song.

neglected space technically had a storyboard, from all the way back in october 2023 when i originally started working on it. i made it in ms paint one night and it s absolutely wonderful. you can see it but good luck making anything out

the colors mostly don t mean anything. i was losing my mind a little bit. the shots are numbered cuz i tried to count them to see how insane i d go drawing it

as you can probably tell from the previous attempts at making it, the idea for this pmv was always pretty similar to how it ended up looking (my composition ideas are and have always been boring), but a few shots had changed from how i d originally planned them out in that storyboard so i wanted to make a new one. i didn t have the energy for that however, so i made a sort of script instead. much like my so called storyboards, the script was mostly nonsense (it was just meant for me to not forget what idea i had). here s some of my favorite lines from it

(the things written in italics are the song s lyrics)

and my absolute favorite,

saint. just saint. that was the script for the whole part with saint in it (i just had the shots in my head and this was all i needed to remember what goes on this part. but still it s funny)

usually, i draw my animatics in the order in which the shots will actually appear in it (and either i edit everything at the end of edit every few shots as i finish them). however, i knew that i wanted to make this thing beautiful and fully rendered and it is 4 and a half minutes long, and that s a lot of work. in some of my other animatics (for example, i think it s really obvious in the fall) you can kind of tell at which parts i started to get bored of working on it, and i didn t want this to happen with this one. so what i did is i slip it into parts- exactly the way that maps work, each part was between 10 and 20 seconds long, there were 21 of them in total- and i did those in a random order. i don t remember the order i ended up doing them in, all i can tell you is i did the first part (the first 4 shots, up to the one with the title in it) last, because i had drawn those 4 times already and i was TIRED of them lol

you can still kind of tell on which parts i was tired (like, i m so mad, srs is in this thing for ONE SHOT and it turned out so bad, but oh well) but it s not a big section of it, so it s not as obvious

as for actually drawing it. there wasn t a lot of planning for how the style of this was meant to look. in fact it originally wasn t going to be this detailed- the first shot i did is the one with artificer in underhang (the "the air in here ages me ungracefully" bit) and i think you can tell that one is slightly simpler than the rest. i just wanted it to be really pretty and it got out of hand.

thing is. i m not actually that great at drawing backgrounds. half of the reason the backgrounds in this pmv are so good is because i VERY heavily refrenced from the game, because fuck it, this game is beautiful and it s my fanart i do what i want. but yeah, all the background were drawn constantly at a screenshot, all the colors in those backgrounds are directly colorpicked from the game. i m pretty sure you could figure out exactly which rooms i refrenced in each shot. you could play rain world geoguessr with this thing if you wanted to- the only exception is the shot with rivulet on "where doorways with no doors stage a ballet of leaves", that shot is meant to be happening in the remains of the gate to outer expanse (idk if you can tell in the final thing, but oh well), i stole the colors from the furthest point of subterannean that rivulet can go to but i just made up what it looked like (it s meant to be bits of broken metal because i m pretty sure it s implied the gate just collapsed into outer expanse?? idk i m not a lore nerd, i thought it looked cool)

i made this thing in clip studio paint and paint tool sai, i used 2 different programs because each one has one brush that i really like so yeah i just changed between them. mostly the characters were drawn in csp, the backgrounds in sai and then i did whatever fancy blurring i wanted to do in csp

and now, this is called the struggles of making this thing, so time for me to complain about very specific things no one cares about

for some reason i decided that i wanted to have the lineart be slightly blurry. how i achieved that is copying the lineart layer (sometimes making it a different color) and blurring it. do you know how annoying it is to do that to EVERY SINGLE DRAWING. especially the shots that were a little bit animated and had like 6 different frames.

the compositions in this are very basic, partially because the game is 2d so i usually imagine shots of it in 2d, mostly because i am incapable of drawing things in perspecitive. the one shot of the underhang gate with survivor and monk fucking tortured me i spent like 3 hours just figuring out how it should work. also i realised that shot doesn t actually make a lot of sense because realistically there would be a wall blocking your view from the angle but shhhh

speaking of my struggles with perspective FUCK iterator puppet rooms. it s literally a box with a grid on it. AND sloped edges, just to make it worse. sometimes you can kinda bullshit perspective but it s LITERALLY JUST  A FUCKING GRID. fuck that. shoutouts to my sibling who did the lines on some of the shots for me cuz i was struggling. but at least i now have the funniest answer to "what is you least favorite room in rain world". the "save me the ache of slow decay" shot turned out really cool tho. idk what possesed me when i drew that one (it s one of my favorite lines of the song when it comes to how well it fits rw so i wanted that shot to look really cool, so i m glad it worked out)

also at some point my sibling asked me if i want them to do some of the backgrounds for me because, and i qoute, "i m pretty sure you are going to die otherwise" (they didn t, btw, i was almost done eith it at that point and just went naaahhh i got this)

i also really like how the shots for the part with saint turned out (if you couldn t tell by the fact i have one of them as my banner thing on tumblr lol). idk, the snow was fun to draw

when i was figuring out which shots go where in the final version i realised that i had every scug in it except gourmand, and i love gourmand, we couldn t not have them, so i put them in the weird black bg white lines flashback sequence

what i did NOT realise however, is that srs is in this for one shot and sos is in this for one shot and nsh isn t. (not counting inv and nightcat cuz they re not real) nsh is the only character that isn t in this. and i just think that s kind of funny. next animatic s gonna be about them to make up for it :] (unless i give up on that animatic. hopefully not. we will see)

i never got so burnt out while making this thing that i gave up on it (again, i was kinda doing it so detailed just because fuck it i can) but after i finished it i was like I AM NEVER DRAWING A BACKGROUND AGAIN.

also. i drew these little guys. so fuckin cute. like i m sorry to be admiring my own drawings but fr i was editing this thing a few months after i d drawn it and looking at my drawing of pebbles like why are you so small. who let you be so small.

and yeah i worked a lot on this thing. as i said i basically spent my entire summer drawing this. the rule was that i need to do 2 shots per day (i did some math at some point that if i did that i d have time to finish it. i m not that bad at math, but still kinda surprising it actually worked), and mostly i stuck to that. i really wanted to make this thing. i think there were like 3 weeks in total where i didn t do anything. i think a shot took me on average about 3 hours, counting breaks? so yeah this is truly what i did this summer

and then there is editing! which i definitely didn t put off for 2 months- ok to be fair in october i was working on the terrible things animatic cuz i wanted to get it done for halloween but still.

i actually quite enjoy editing. i use a free program called kdenlive that sometimes just decides it doesn t want to let you use an effect and sometimes refuses to render things properly but it s mostly pretty good

i recently discovered how to use blur and. the blur abuse in this one was real. the blur abuse shall continue into the future.

also, sometimes i edit entire animatics on a single file. but neglected space is 4 mimutes long and there s a lot of moving parts, and i don t trust either my laptop or my editing program to not crash, so i edited it in parts, rendered those, and then edited them together. it was kind of a pain, but probably less of a pain than if it had crashed like 20 times and messed up the rendering

also!! the subtitles. god the subtitles. so i wanted to have subtitles because this song s words are kinda hard to hear sometimes and they fit rain world so well and i wanted people to appreciate my artistic genius- but also because in my head it was meant to be that some characters are saying some of the lines. and. i can t really make that obvious because these fuckers don t have mouths (insert ihnmaims reference). but they do have canonical colors that they speak in!! so i can use that, that s cool!! (side tangent btw it kinda makes me mad that people sometimes use colors to represent the iterators but they use pink for pebbles and blue for moon, like 

i know that s more obvious and the blue might be confusing otherwise but please!!!! they have canonical colors!!! that they speak in in the broadcasts and it s the color of their overseers and the funny lights come on guys!! use them!!!) (side side tangent fun fact pebbles has like 3 different shades of blue, there s the overseer color, and then the broadcast color is weirdly a lot more greenish, and arguably the rot might also blue cuz that s his color but it s a lot darker for some reason. and then there s also purple rot cuz why not. i just think it s funny)

anyways so subtitles- now, my editing program technically can do subtitles (i used it for the terrible things animatic), but.. it doesn t let me make them fade out and overlap and stuff.. we can t have this, i need my subtitles to be cool.. so what did i do? i wrote them out in csp and i saved each and every line of those subtitles as a png and put it in. there are 111 pngs just for the subtitles.

if there s any typos in the subtitles that s not on me, that s on my 3 friends who got to see it a few days before i posted it for not telling me

i maaaaayyyyy or may not have slightly changed some of the lyrics of the song in the subtitles- listen. from what i ve seen no one can agree on what the words in this song are. maybe there s official lyrics somewhere and i didn t look in the right places but istg there are just some lines where everyone says it s something different. mostly i just went with what i first thought it said

one notable thing however is that there is a line in the song that goes "slithers of wistful window gazes glint in borrowed light". i, for (probably obvious) reasons, first thought it said slivers, and i was like ah, works perfectly, it s sliver of straw. in my defense tho- i looked up what the word slither means in this context and.

so yeah i think i m allowed to change that one

so as i said i have a kind of stupid way of making animatics, i draw everything, then i save the parts as pngs and then i edit them together. there s probably better ways to do it but anyways. here is some numbers for you

unless i am failing at counting (very possible) in total this ended up having 85 shots. and other than the subtitles there are 443 pngs

the name of the folder where i kept all the files for this is called "another attempt at neglected space". obviously i had very high hopes i d actually finish it. other folder names include: "wooo", "kill me", "pngs (kill me p2)", "the wonderful world of pngs", "ruffles your whiskers are killing me", "kill me p3 (wait no saint don t-)", "for the last time, pngs", "yes" and the complementary "no", and "editing (god help me)"

so uhh.. i think that is all. thank you for reading my unhinged ramblings.

also this thing has like 5000 views on youtube now. that s insane. it s gotten recommended to me on my other account which i think is really funny. i was fully prepared for it to get like 20 views. i m so glad the people like it. every comment telling me about how it made them cry brings me indescribable joy, like yeah me too. i m just so happy people see the vision :')

as i said to my friends when they saw it,

also. i recorded almost the entire process of drawing this pmv. why did i do this? idk, i m insane, i thought we d established that. i want to speed it up and make it one giant speedpaint at some point. if i ever actually get around to doing that i might link it here. idk if anyone cares to see but i think it would be cool

[wewerebornsextuplets]

@flowerakatsuka I actually LOVE getting excuses to talk about this kind of stuff so ill be happy to elaborate!! under the cut in case this gets too long (which it probably will)

so full disclosure, there was a pretty long gap between when proto-kiru (then called yoshimi) was initially Designed and when i started to flesh her out as an actual oc. i actually wasn't into ososan at the time and it was more a challenge of "how would I design an ososan oc Now now that im not 15 anymore", and i didn't pick her up again until february of this year when my BTAS hyperfixation started to fizzle out. the first drafts for keiko (then named hibari, which i changed since it was a bit too similar to one of my long-time ocs hikari) were drawn the same day i picked up yoshimi again. so she was both a day-one character and Not at the same time!

please ignore the poor lighting on these pictures.

i had a pretty strong Idea for what i wanted from keiko in terms of appearance at the start and a basic concept for her (a bit more bookish + "nerdy" than other ososan girls we've seen thus far), but I had a pretty hard time applying it to the design sensibilities of ososan. her first outfit was basically just uehara-san's outfit, and i struggled with rendering her curlier hair in the ososan style which made it look more goopy and awkward. i also wasn't quite sure what to do with her face yet.

still, i translated what i thought would be my final sketches for her and (then) yoshimi to digital, and from here I started to develop their designs at roughly the same time, sort of balancing them out and trying to make sure they look good together. i was proud of them for maybe 3 days before I decided i hated how they looked.

granted, there were a LOT of reasons for this; for one, I was color picking yanas skin tone for kiru, which didn't work well at ALL because he's way paler than it looks. but more than that I wasn't really referencing features that actual ososan characters had? so they looked more like strange fun house mirror imitations of ososan characters than anything else

see what i mean? they don't look right at all. but if you look closely you can sort of see me figuring out keikos hair!

a lot of the refining process when it came to getting to where we are now was just... referencing actual ososan characters. trying to make them feel more believable and like they could actually exist alongside the current ensemble. it was honestly more about them looking right in the style than anything else, since i like to stay pretty canon compliant in terms of design when it comes to fandom ocs-- I find that the limitations make me more creative!

for keiko specifically my main inspirations were nyaa and osoko, though i referenced dobusu's hair pretty frequently as well since they have roughly the same hair texture. she was honestly a lot harder than kiru to balance out in this sense, since i had to make sure she didn't look Too generic compared to the other pretty girls in the canon cast (i.e totoko, homura, etc). her more eccentric fashion sense is also an attempt to remedy this because plot twist! she's a weirdo!

ippei however I had down from day one. he's always looked the same and always will. my perfect creation <3

[cy-cyborg]

Ok so the saga with my old PC continues and is only fueling my desire to get back into fanfiction lol because I found all of the files from my attempt at making a legend of spyro fan-game! I honestly thought they were lost, I'm so excited to see all this stuff again! This was the "logo" for the game (I know its nearly unreadable lol, so it says "The Legend of Cynder, Shadows of The Past". 14/15 year old me didn't seem to care much for readability, I think I'd just discovered photoshop's layer effects lol)

Here's a bunch of random stuff I found.

I'm defiantly going to do a redraw of that last one at some point. That was like, THE thing I remember being super proud of when I first did it. I think it was going to be part of the trailer my now-partner was putting together for the game lol.

Actually, a lot of these were actually just frames from animations, but either the files are either just corrupted, or high school me didn't know how to set fps and resolution properly in the output so I got a headache trying to watch them lol. It's probably the second one honestly. Also I remember my old laptop wasn't able to play back the animation because it would lag so much, so I just had to kind of...guess at timing, and that went about as well as you'd expect. It didn't help that blender used to have this bug where your audio would move around your timeline so it really was just random guessing. I'm amazed anything got done at all, let alone how far we actually got (that is to say, not far at all but we had something playable at least).

I also found the demo files and footage of the "game" running (running at 12fps but running)! I'm curious if they still work, I'll have to download an older version of blender to test them out!

There's actually a lot more but actually finding it is proving to be quite a challenge since this laptop seems to be the digital equivalent of an ADHD "doom box" - meaning nothing is sorted into folders that make even a remote lick of sense to me, it's all just kind of thrown in together lmao.

I wanted to post these though because even though I don't really do 3D stuff anymore, It still made me really happy to see how much progress I've made over the years and how far I've come. Also a few folks who worked on this project with me back on Deviantart have started finding me lol, so in case there's anyone else out there, hello! I'm not dead, I'm still around, I'm just a lot more (openly) queer now lmao.

Image descriptions:

[ID 1: A game title that reads "The Legend of Cynder, Shadows of the Past". The two lines, "the legend of" and "shadows of the past" are written in dark purple text. The purple material is supposed to look like liquid, but instead just looks hard to read. "Cynder" is writen in black, 3D text with red outlines, with the exception of the C. The "c" is modeled as a black tube instead of in a blocky style like the rest of the letters. The inside of the C has a red underbelly, and the bottom of the C ends in a tail, resembling Cynder's from the Legend of Spyro Series. There are 3 white spikes at the top of the C. /end ID]

[ID 2: a 3d render of 4 dragons around a christmas tree. A black dragon at the front, Cynder, is using her tail to hang tinsel, a pruple dragon, Spyro, on the left is reaching up into the branches of the tree. A blue dragon, Ignitus, is hovering behind the tree, his paws outstretched, implying he is placing the glowing star at the top. On his head is a silver dragon, Zerali, balancing on his horns. behind them is a series of floating islands. /End ID]

[ID 3: A render of Cynder with a darker colour pallet than the previous image and glowing yellow eyes, snarling at the camera, guarding a black gem. The sky in the background is blood red and the terrain is flat and barren. /End ID]

[ID 4: A render of an incomplete model of Terrador, a green dragon with brown horns and rocky shoulder decorations. He has no underbelly or wings. /end ID]

[ID 5: A render of a fan character named ekkosel, a blue, anthropomorphic dragonfly with an unsettling, uncanny face and green wings, T-posing. Her green wings are a blur /End ID]

[ID 6: two sketches of a anthropomorphic cheetah heads. One has long ears like a lynx and is labeled DotD design, the other has small, rounded ears like a cheetah usually has, labled TLoC design. /end ID]

[ID 7: A render of Zerali, the silver dragon from the second image, and ekkosel, from the 5th, playing together. In this image, we can see Zerali has a pinky-purple underbelly and shiny gold horns.]

[ID 8: A rendered scene showing a close up of blue ignitus with his eyes closed. He appears to be talking to Cynder, who is in the background, but blurry. The game's logo is visible in the bottom left of the image. /end ID]

[deebrisbyfish]

An Abandoned Homage...

So, it’s no secret that I LOVE making homages to my favorite cartoonists and comic artists for “Finding Dee”. I’ve done a bunch for strips that inspired me such as “Garfield”, “Peanuts”, “Calvin & Hobbes” and more. I’ve also done a few for different styles of comics, like the work of Mike Mignola, Walter Simonson and even Al Williamson. Those, however, are a little different. In those, the “model” for my cartoon avatar is basically still the way I draw it, with the rendering style of the artists I admire pasted over them. Those are kinda more… style OVERLAYS as opposed to direct style homages. And, it turns out, there’s a very good REASON for this. A reason that became abundantly clear with a strip idea that has since been abandoned. See the above piece… That was to be an homage to Frank Miller’s classic “Batman: The Dark Knight Returns”. It was a massively influential book on me and one I had a script for a strip that I wanted to homage. This was… to put it mildly… as far as I got. This was the 3rd attempt, with the first two having proportions MUCH closer to Miller's famous cover of issue #2 of DKR. Those I outright loathed seeing, so I altered the proportions more to my own model sheet, trying instead to just overlay the rough, craggly line style Miller used on the comic. This was coming out fine, but was causing me some AGRESSIVELY uncomfortable gender dysphoria drawing. I couldn't look at it without seeing the image I really try to NOT see when I look in the mirror, and not in a good way. It was making me hear every jerk and transphobe snickering in the back of my mind, and that is NOT a good or healthy thing. I poured over Miller’s work, and found a remarkably thin selection of women that weren’t his specific brand of hyper-sexualized cartooning or… well… women that looked like bloated tree trunks. There was not a lot of middle ground. I did not want to draw an entire comic strip where, in order to homage the Dark Knight Returns, I had to draw myself like a gnarled, knotted rhino-mutation. That would NOT do well with my sense of self-esteem. I mean, I’m not always kind to myself in cartoon form, but I’m not this:

Curse you, TCRI!!

Now, and I say this KNOWING it will be more controversial, this is the same reason I’ve yet to pull off a Jack Kirby homage. I could homage his stylistic quirks and rendering style, but to try and draw MYSELF like a Kirby woman would be… unsettling. The King drew a LOT of lovely ladies, but anyone that wasn’t a pin-up model started looking a smidge on the... rough side, too. So, if you’re wondering why I almost EXCLUSIVELY homage comic STRIP and cartoony artists when I do homages, this is a BIG part of why. I don’t mind drawing myself like a potato. I just don’t want that potato to look like it was grown in Chernobyl.