#not a huge change though

[wysteriaisapenguin]

Percy and Harold’s helpful guide on how to talk to short people!

[chloesimaginationthings]

Michael Afton knows the FNAF Mimic’s secret..

[cracklewink]

some sketches of my guy

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

MDZS Disco Elysium AU part 2 - Psyche Skills

Part 1 - Part 3

[thenewgirl76]

Jazz and Jason have been dating for two and a half weeks now. And in this timeframe Danny still hasn't warmed up to the former Crime Lord. Not even when Jason makes the decision to share his vigilante i.d. with Danny.

As a last ditch effort Jazz leaves Danny in her boyfriend's care while she completes her college semester. She's eager to get back to their shared apartment once finals are over, more so when Jason tells her on the phone both he and Danny have a surprise waiting for her.

To say that she was woefully unprepared for what this surprise that awaited her at home turned out to be would be quite the understatement. As never in her wildest dreams did she expect to be met with her little brother having gone through yet another just as drastic though much less extreme change.

*while halfway through the door*

Jazz: So, what's this about you two having a surprise for me?

*smirking slyly*

Jason: Danny! Jazz is home!

*apartment practically shakes from the heavy thud of footsteps, followed by the appearance of a behemoth of a seventeen year old*

Danny: Jazzy, you're finally back!

*after sweeping her into a bear hug*

Danny: Ok, I admit it. I was wrong about him. From here on out I'm completely on board! When you guys get married, can I be the best.... Uh, Jazz? You okay there?

*quivering with horror while struggling to face Jason, still trapped in Danny's arms*

Jazz: WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY LITTLE BROTHER?!

[turtleblogatlast]

AU starts here!

Previous | Next

Coming face to face with an inevitability you’ve been avoiding for so long is a harrowing thing.

[inkyu]

I remember sketching this out and just giving up on it X.X

but I was in the mood to draw some some June Egbert (very rare feeling) and decided to finish this :P

Er uh also I don't give this permission out a lot but if you want to edit this image to your headcanons/what you think June n Dave look like, I don't mind for this one just as long as you give credit back to me sjhbgfhjdbdf

also I can't decide on an official design for any of the homestucks, their characters are so customizable I have many many different designs for them in mind

[supemaeve]

You enjoying this?

[feral-lore-creature]

I find it interesting that, in The Cutie Re-Mark part 2 episode, the guards tense when hearing Celestia's name.

Nightmare: Nopony in my kingdom but me should posses magic powerful enough to change time.

Spike: Your kingdom?

Nightmare: Who else?

Spike: Um- Celestia, of course!

The fucking guards:

So mostly likely conversations such as these have happened in the past, and the guards have all thoroughly learned the lesson to not bring up the scary night lady's banished sister.

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

Hiii, do you have any tips for drafting out embroidery patterns? I've got one in mind, but drafting it out and color picking is so nerve-wracking!!

[Hi!!!! this got kinda really long so I'm gonna crop it under a read more. And I honestly don't have any real training/instruction in fiber arts so this is just how I do things, and probably others do them very differently!]

Haha so my fandom embroideries are VERY different from my non-fandom personal pieces in this respect. For non-fandom things i just kind of throw myself in like WAHOO FREEFORM LETS GO and go for a kind of messy colorful approach that ends up as things like this:

Versus my fandom stuff is way more structured and designed to fill space, be very precise, etc. So for those I do go in with a digital mock up of the design I make in photoshop, that I then color in, and then as my last step translate to thread colors.

For my Dragon Age series. this has been because I'm specifically trying to mimic the stained-glass style of art you see in parts of the game like the dialogue wheels, some icons, windows, etc. The icons in particular were really easy to copy into embroidery because they already come in handy circles:

This is mostly because I have desperately wanted to pick up stained glass work as a hobby for like 6 years now. As in once every 3-6 months I put everything I'd need to start doing it into an online shopping cart and look at the price total and then sadly close the window because I just don't actually have any space I could do it in (I live in a 2bed apartment so i have no garage or yard or anywhere it wouldn't make everything else a mess or be a hazard). The day after one of those events I impulse bought and completed a floral embroidery kit from the craft store and kinda was like... ok, well, I did this once how hard can it be to use this medium to mimic the hobby I wish I could be doing? Plus, it's only like 60 cents per color! I can afford that! So I took the first design I wanted to do, the romance icon, and basically redrew it sloppily in photoshop, then freehand-copied the design onto fabric and stitched it the next day:

I learned a lot from this piece and changed my approach a little. Here you can see I tried shading in the parallel direction to my thread, which looked messy and added texture, so now I shade horizontally to my thread direction instead.

But it gave me a basic approach for turning the Tarot cards or DA Keep tiles (or any other art!) into embroidery patterns, which I couldn't copy as directly into this really smooth stained-glass style. There's a basic process I follow when doing these conversions that generally follows the same order, which I'll go through below.

STEP 1: SHAPES

The first thing I do is pick the shape of my display frame which is usually a circle, but could be an oval or rectangle too, since I hang the finished pieces on my wall to have nice way to show them off. I like to fill the whole space so knowing the size and shape of what I want the finished project to look like is a good goal for me. Since I am doing fandom pieces I want to be recognizable, I do stick pretty close to the "original" character design/art, but you can absolutely change as much as you want and freehand draw your own interpretation instead. If you're doing original art just substitute the below composition notes with "sketch out roughly what you want it to look like". I personally do my pattern drafting digitally as I find it easier, but you can do this part by hand too.

First, I keep the reference image I'm working off of open next to me while I work, and draw in the shape of my frame (here, a circle). If I'm adding in the little border to be fancy, I add a second inner circle. I keep these as their own top layer so I always know I'm working within the final "frame" and don't spend time designing any section that will fall outside it. Then I will take copies of the reference image and knock the layers down to 25-50% opacity, and start moving them around underneath the 'frame' layer until I like the way their positioning looks as a composition. Sometimes elements of a card I want to include don't all fit in, so I'll chop the section out and add an additional layer to throw in (like the background circle things in the Hermit design below). Or I'll just freehand things like adding much bigger diamonds behind Solas in my Hierophant design because I did NOT want to do 1000 tiny ones. Then once I'm satisfied with the general composition, I'll use the plain ol circular brush tool to trace out the major shapes of each element. I try to keep in mind that I can't go too small, and curvy lines are more difficult to fill in than straight ones. I usually do a rough messy version first, make it mostly transparent, and then a cleaner and more precise one over that.

(you can see parts of the rough one on the left and the fully 'cleaned up' on the right for the Hierophant design)

Now: depending on what you are doing next with the pattern, this might be where you stop and start coloring. If you are planning to freehand your design or just trace it onto fabric (or even print it onto fabric here), there's no need to do more than this kind of lineart! However, if you are working digitally and want to create a scalable vector so you can print it at different sizes, you can use the pen tool in photoshop to trace your design and make a "work path" of the lineart. However, another note: THIS PART IS VERY FRUSTRATING AND TEDIOUS BECAUSE THE PEN TOOL WAS CREATED BY THE DEVIL TO TORMENT US. It is so so so easy to accidentally delete a line or even the whole path and not notice later on. Ask me how I know 😭 Anyway I'm not going to include a pen tool tutorial because I don't even know how to use it well and have to google or watch videos every other time I try to use it. But if you can muddle through it gets you some really clean lines that eventually look like this:

With the work path selected, you can select the brush tool/size/color and use the "stroke path" option to create lineart of the vector. Then you can save this as a transparent png file for use at different sizes and for printing and it looks so nice and clean! one of the big benefits to this is that you get really fine lines that are easier to be precise with stitching on. This is extra perfect if you are printing the design directly onto your fabric (which you can do with an at-home inkjet printer for designs under 8inches wide, as long as you stick a piece of stabilizer on the back of your fabric and cut it down to printer sheet size--this is what I do and can make another post about that process if people want haha), or if you are printing onto transfer paper like you can buy at craft stores.

This is where I end the lineart for my designs. After I have this, I move on to the next phase, which is...

STEP 2: COLOR

For interpreting my designs into thread, I start by thinking of it as flat colors first. You can't "shade" as easily with threads as you can with things like paint or brushes in digital art (though you can A Little, which I will get into), so to start color planning I pick the "main" color each section will be in the piece.

For the existing icons this was simple--I kept the same sections as the original designs, so for each I just color picked or eyeballed the color in photoshop and colored it in (but you could do this on paper with pencils, markers, whatever as well--they don't need to match your threads exactly and usually won't, it's just to give you an easy reference to follow as you go). For the tarot cards which were more complicated in coloration, I just did my best and went with what looked good next to each other, even if it was a little off the original art. It will be off more later anyway when you have to pick threads so don't stress it too much honestly. I will often make layers with different color options and turn them on/off for direct comparison to try to determine what I think looks best as well, like below where I was debating between more blue/desaturated for the background or brighter colors.

I do wanna note I have regrets about the color selection, shapes, or shading in EVERY SINGLE ONE of my finished pieces. But no one else ever comments or probably even notices! One aspect of this hobby is just learning to be satisfied with what you've made and using what you learned to get closer to your preferences next time. I'm only going back and redoing some of my designs' colors because I want to make it easier for others to choose on the patterns I sell, more than I care for just for myself. Also since I'm doing this lineart/stained glass looking approach where I go over the distinct shapes with black thread at the end, it means I get these clear delineations between sections you might not necessarily have in your own pieces, and that's ok.

Ok right. Now while shading/coloring in detail is hard with thread, you CAN make whats essentially dithered gradients. "Dithering" in the concept of art means using 2 (or more) colors to give the impression of a third color, or to gently scale between the existing binary rather than a hard line. Think of it like blocky pixel art or gameboy game images. If you're doing needlepainting, you use really small stitches close together to get this effect, which translates to "smaller pixes"--if you look at the jellyfish in my first photos that's a very messy casual version of that. If you want a better example, I recommend looking at @ammocharis 's pieces like these in her pinned post, which are truly amazing! I simply do not have the patience myself 😂 For my stained glass style, I work only in very long straight stitches, so I can only shade in one direction and have to be a little more precise with it.

So for shading, I think about in each section which direction my threads might go. Then perpendicular to that direction I pick which side will be the light one and which the darker one. Sometimes I color this in on my pattern mockup, but sometimes I don't! Or I'll only do it for certain sections to make sure I don't forget. Like for my Tower design I only colored it as flats, and waited until I selected threads to decide how the shading would go. I am currently working on a smaller, simplified version of my Hierophant design and I did add shading digitally for that one just for fun. But it's not as important as having the flat color version you can use to quick-reference how you want your design to go while you're stitching. You might also notice I don't actually color my gold--I just throw in a stock image of gold foil for that layer so I can't confuse it with any of my yellow thread sections.

Here's a close up where you can kind of see what I mean by the "dithered" effect between colors--some are more obvious (like the red on the far left or middle orange) and others pretty subtle (dark grey to dark red on the wolf face):

Now, while I use single layers of satin stitches for this, and just alternate thread colors increasing/decreasing as I go, you can accomplish the same thing with short overlapping stitches like with needlepainting, or with clusters of french knots, or whatever else. But in GENERAL you are going to be able to trick people into seeing gradients out of dithering best when you are using the same type of stitch for that whole area. So if I was using multiple stitch types like having french knots, daisy chains, ladder stitching or whatever else for some sections, I would keep those to contrasting areas/colors. A fantastic example of using different layered types of stitching to create more intricate color/texture in an embroidery would be these incredible tarot card depictions by @hattedhedgehog, which I like even better than my own embroideries. Here's his take on the Tower card as well for comparison to mine (I'm so in love with it!!!).

But anyway, at this phase, your design is actually still digital--the above is just to explain how it translates later in the process. The next step is...

STEP 3: THREAD SELECTION

I will admit here I am not great at this part. I am constantly second guessing my thread colors, and can spend over an entire hour in the thread aisle at the craft store agonizing over choices. Really, I think this is just one of those things that takes practice and you get better at it over time. What I have had the best luck with is actually printing out a reference photo of my design/the original artwork and taking it with me. If you already have threads you can do this part at home too, but DMC alone has over 500 colors and I definitely don't even own half that so I like to torture myself by looking at them all together on the thread racks. Plus Anchor and Artiste and whatever other brands there are out there. One approach is to just sit there and pick out what you want for each section and line it all up together on top of your printout. Or in the case of my Tower I laid a bunch of options out on top of my template in the hoop to guess how they'd look in the frame.

For me since I am also doing this dither shading thing, I also need 2-3 colors per sections depending on its size. Sometimes it's easy and the threads have a color just a little darker or lighter right next to them in the numerical lineup! Other times, there is no good match, or it looks too far away to shade nicely, or I want one to be a warmer or cooler tone than the other... which means a lot of standing and fretting to myself over it. I actually take a lot of photos at this stage because it can be easier to see how they will look in the end from a photo than in person to me? Idk why. Plus then after they get scrambled in my bag I remember wtf order I meant for them to go in later. But as long as you're not preventing other customers from shopping themselves, you can spend as long as you want staring at thread in the embroidery aisle and they won't kick you out unless it's closing time, so take your time.

Now, IN THEORY, you can sort of combine steps 2 and 3 by color-selecting from your threads and using that to color in the design. However I have tried this and it led to mixed success because the photoshop eyedropper brush simply isn't actually that exact (in my experience, it desaturates compared to what we actually see). And because then you have to have the threads on hand while you're coloring... which means you might buy ones you don't end up using if you don't like them. So I prefer to just use this as a refinement step where I pick threads based on the design colors, then will re-color the design a second time to match those threads more closely to be sure I like the effect.

I've even used this as a tool when I needed to adjust my color choices mid-project, by digitally coloring over over my WIP:

Or here's a design (but I haven't posted the finished piece yet bc it's a gift so shhh) I made with certain color tones initially, but after buying thread I re-did the color mockup to be more vibrant, because I liked those threads better in the store:

Once you have your thread, you can make yourself a little reference chart with the colors you intend noted on the sections you want them, like below:

(note: i didn't end up sticking to these colors because I ended up dying my own thread for several sections. And then forgot I made this entirely and picked new ones because I put the project down for a year between design and stitching. Sigh).

Or for my Solas pattern I did this in a really detailed way, which i am sorry but i have redacted because... i have it for sale now and don't wanna just give that away haha. But if you buy the pattern from my shop this is one of the files you'd get with it, for ease of reference. I do also include a text-only list of them as well.

Now I don't go to this much trouble for all my designs, just the ones I put up for sale (or plan to). You can also just make a text list of your color plans if you want. Though for fun I also have been using my scrap thread to make these little "color palette" keyrings for my finished pieces, so if I ever remake them or update their patterns I will know what the original colors were, plus I can compare what i used to other threads if I wanna change part of the design up. This step is absolutely not necessary and I'm just doing it because I'm selling the patterns now, but they are kinda fun to look at.

And don't forget.. if you start a section in a certain color and decide you don't like it, you can just cut the threads and pull them out! I did that with my original hierophant piece actually. I had an entirely different color for one row of diamonds i thought just clashed way too much with the others, so I used photoshop to paint over it with some alternate options until I found one I liked better. Then I cut away all the old threads and put in the new color. It can be a little harder to fill a piece the second time since the fabric will have stretched out a little, but as long as you're using a good stabilizer it usually doesn't move too much.

You can also just make test swatches on spare fabric to test before you add them to your real piece. I wish I'd done this for some color transitions that didn't end up looking the way I wanted, but I am simply too lazy most of the time. My exception is usually for metallic, satin, or sparkly threads, because I want to know how they feel while embroidering. But if you're really worried about a certain color or shade it's a good thing to remember you can just do.

SO yep, that's my general process for drafting patterns. I start with the shapes/design, then do my flat color version, then I pick my threads. Makes it sound easy and short when phrased like that :) But I can honestly spend 8-10 hours just on making the lineart and coloring it in. If I was better at art, probably this would be less, but I'm working with what I've got (not much) 😂 I think all aspects of this are also something that gets easier over time, but it will probably never look as bad as you worry when you start out. I think all my pieces look awkward and rough right up until I do the finishing steps and move them to the display frame sometimes.

I hope this was helpful and answered your questions!! Feel free to post/share your WIPs to ask for feedback or advice ever too :) I've only ever had people in the embroidery community on tumblr be encouraging and helpful to me, and I'm happy to answer any questions myself when I can or if parts of this were confusing

[kaiserouo]

wip?

them go on a road trip in 1999

[looking-to-rattle-the-stars]

So I'm reading The Hobbit right--been going a bit slow because of travel and being suddenly called into work--and I just finished Chapter 9.

I cannot stop thinking about the friendship disparity between Bilbo and the dwarves. It's driving me up a wall in all honesty. Cause like, even if Bilbo didn't fully see them as friends in the beginning, he always refers to them as his friends or the dwarves. And he always seems, despite their complaining and his brief moments of "God I wish I wasn't here with them and their ruckus", to hold a high level of respect for them. But the dwarves don't return such a favor. They don't even start to like him until Chapter 8! It was always "Oh they forgot about him." and complaints about how he shouldn't be accompanying them.

Like, just to provide some quote examples (mainly for myself lol):

"Yes, lots,” said Bilbo, before he remembered not to give his friends away. “No none at all, not one,” he said immediately afterwards. (Pg. 35)

“What’s all this trouble? Who has been knocking my people about?” “It’s trolls!” said Bilbo from behind a tree. They had forgotten all about him. (Pg. 38)

“He wondered whether he ought not, now he had the magic ring, to go back into the horrible, horrible, tunnels and look for his friends. He had made up his mind that it was his duty, that he must turn back—and very miserable he felt about it—when he heard voices.” (Pg. 85)

The dwarves wanted to know why he had ever been brought at all, why he could not stick to his friends and come along with them, and why the wizard had not chosen someone with more sense. (Pg. 86)

“From which you can see that they had changed their opinion of Mr. Baggins very much, and had begun to have a great respect for him (as Gandalf said they would).” (Pg. 152)

“They all thought their own shares in the treasure would suffer seriously if the Wood-elves claimed part of it, and they all trusted Bilbo. Just as Gandalf had said would happen, you see.” (Pg. 162)

Like when they refer to themselves as Bilbo's friends it feels, at least to me, that they don't really see him as one. That they simply call him a friend because Gandalf is there and thinks highly of Bilbo. Or in like the way where they don't really see him as a friend they intend to keep, more of an acquaintance but saying "friend" is more polite/formal to do. Friend in the way where they are forced to be friends with each other but one thinks low of the other and therefore finds every opportunity to complain about it.

And then in Chapter 9 Thorin says to Bilbo, “A pretty fine burglar you make, it seems, when the time comes. I am sure we are all for ever at your service, whatever happens after this.” (Pg. 165) and I just crumple and fall over because I know how this story ends and what is to become of, at the very least, Thorin and his nephews. (I have been told that more of them die by LOTR, but I am unsure who!) And like perhaps you can argue that Balin had a bit more respect for him than the others, Bilbo does note how they get along a few times, but that is still 1/13. I am just head in hands.

And, since I already have a decent length post going, I cannot stop thinking about these quotes:

“There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something (or so Thorin said to the young dwarves). You certainly usually find something, if you look, but it is not always quite the something you were after.” (Pg. 55)

“But all night he dreamed of his own house and wandered in his sleep into all his different rooms looking for something that he could not find nor remember what it looked like.” (Pg. 104)

LIKE JUST OH MY GOD. KNOWING ABOUT THE RING AND HOW THE STORY ENDS AND I JUST THE THORIN QUOTE AND APPLYING IT TO BILBO AND THE ADVENTURE!!! Like I don't know how to express the words right now but... the idea that Bilbo wasn't looking for an adventure but he found one and it offered him a sense of connection unlike anything in the Shire and embraced the "Tookness" inside of him which inherently reconnects him with his mother. And the second quote, I just- I don't know a lot about the ring. But my best friend has lightly explained some of the implications as they appear in LOTR, and I just... Bilbo searching for the ring in his dreams. Although I do also think that the quote would more relate to my previous sentiments with the first quote, but I just wonder if his dream was like that because of being in possession of the ring I suppose. Anyways it's 3am so time to go get some sleep!

[arson-09]

i dont think ill ever recover from the pure tragedy that is Touya Todorokis story/life. Genuinely the ending did mental damage to me

[cryptid-fool]

i see your incredible spooky gothic detailed illustration takes on mirara and i raise you:

[starspilli]

Do you have any specific Apollo and Midnighter comics recs to start with?

steve orlando’s 2015 midnighter solo & 2017 midnighter / apollo series!! you don’t really need to have much background knowledge for them either

[cozymochi]

For the TWST ask meme (if you haven't answered these ones already and I missed it) Favorite NRC staff member? Is there any character who seems to follow you (i.e. they always seem to pop up when you're trying to summon someone else)?

13. Favorite NRC Staff Member

SAM!!! I tried practicing drawing him the other day because I never actually did. Mostly for like a really arbitrary reason regarding whether or not to follow his JP appearance. Elements were removed for a reason I’m sure, even if it was possibly a case of over-correcting (see use of the word “master” being danced around, but don’t quote me I am merely speculating, especially because there is no official explantation behind why and never will be- I can speculate all I wanna but I think I will just do my own digging on my own time), and on that end I kinda got left in an awkward position lol. A part of me was experimenting with a compromise of sorts, but we’ll see how that goes, assuming I do it at all.

Besides, there’s allure in having less to draw lmao

Don’t mind the terribly off model exercises, I was just getting a feel. BECAUSE I WANNA USE HIM he’s kind of a big obvious elephant in the room for anyone who like reaaally cares about my little MC (*cricket noises*) and I have answers, but I wanna go crazy properly. (Granted, I haven’t really drawn any of the staff rip. BUT UNLIKE SAM, I have no reasons. See? Im uncool.)

I still wanna know more about him. But I guess I’ll have to wait until mmmmmm around next year maybe for [JP SPOILERS REDACTED].

8. ANSWERED