#not sure why there’s that blurred out rectangle in the top of the screen… if it wasn’t there I’d make gifs

[northwestofinsanity]

A higher quality version of this 1980 live version of “Pulling Mussels (From The Shell)”, and an incomplete version of “There At The Top”

[kaplanwrites]

02.7.Other Side.

sound: The other side by UNKLE, Tom Smith

***

Kon knows when he fucked up this relationship (started to fuck it up more and more). 

He supposes, he also knows why he did this - as an unconscious protest to the unfairness of life, of the circumstances. To Tim’s decisions. 

Mostly out of his own frustration to being unable to protest the pound of a replacement Tim made all for himself, but who somehow became an anchor for the both of them(the sum of them). 

(Somehow on the shitty end of his mulish egoism, as always, Tim ended up being.  )

Jeez, is he an asshole.

It’s no wonder that as he earnestly tries to make this pretend-family real, more than simply real: strong, lasting. Romantic. (oh God he’s so fucked. Everything he fucked, in the end, is just himself over). Tim is being difficult. 

The kid is in the heart of it, but it is not about him, right now it’s about Tim and making Tim understand how he is making Kon feel.

Frustrated. Angry. Miserable.

Fucked.

Tired and sorry, and stuck in front of the wall that Tim’s self-loathing is. (“Self”, though? Tim was never the one to doubt himself, he's the most driven and sure person Kon knows. So is it just, “loathing”? Is it “Kon-loathing”?)

(But then again, Tim was confident. He also was cheeky, and an ass, and Kon’s best friend and confidant, and now he’s… kinda pushed a stop button on all of those things).

It’s like they coexist simultaneously in the same and parallel place together, it’s like Tim can hear him only if making a conscious effort (which he is not always trying to make. Or, to be fair, has time to).

See, Kon understands that things should be unfucked, and then they start to fuck. It also happens unconsciously (for him at least, but, he thought that they started to fuck to make it all better, but all they achieved - is fucking it up better). For all that he wants Tim to open up, he doesn’t really want to know why he did it. His peaceful rest lays on trusting Tim not to have a malicious cause for it. 

For the first month, Kon thinks this arrangement to be blissfully awesome, then entertaining and convenient. As he starts to stay in Tim’s bedroom for nights, he starts to see cracks in Tim’s facade.

(He knows, that when he’s not contemplating Tim’s disassembly drilling metaphorical  (and wanting to blast very real ones so badly) holes in the ceiling, he is being watched. He also knows it’s the only time Tim looks at him directly now (after they started to fuck(this up)).

He wants to feel loved again like he was - for years now, he realizes, and isn’t it an asshole thing to wish? The worth in the want, isn’t it?

 This whole cohabitation started off as weird, but now they push to unhealthy. Then again, he suspects, maybe “fuckbuddy relationships with your best friend who nursed your child to life while you were dead” have very shaky foundations for “normal”.

Also, he’d never was able to do fuck all to shift Tim from his path, but together, oh, they’ve always been synergetic. Hence, fuck-up of cosmic proportions. Fast. Brutal.

He dreams of his cheeky snobby overthinking Robin.

He lies in bed and thinks about tearing the gorgeous sharp man lying next to him apart and finding his old chum wonderboy inside. Cradling him to the chest and reassuring that everything will be back to normal. Eventually. Sometime later.

(sometimes he resorts to pushing his forehead into Tim’s jaw, putting a tentative hand on his shoulder) (sometimes Tim doesn’t pull back)

Sometimes he thinks that if they’ve started to fuck back in Metropolis, it wouldn’t be that much of an issue right now. At all. This whole…

Then again, Kon doesn’t think Tim is that shallow of a person to think that Kon will chase the first convenient skirt when Kon will get bored with him.

Then again, Kon didn’t think that he will be that shallow of a person to treat this whole… this. As friends with benefits.

(With the benefit of doubt size of Manhattan.)

He tries to speak, but every time he opens his mouth, he finds words… lacking.

(‘Hey man. Back a couple of months ago, when we fought about your fuckbuddy who wasn’t me? Remember that? So I’ve figured it wasn’t that I was just horny, I was really jealous of this dude. Weird, huh?)

Sometimes (when they’re angry) it’s for the best.

The Kid awful lots of time was more about words than deeds, now Kon mostly resorts just giving everything Tim needs.

If that needs to be spreading out on top of still hot bike, balanced only by Tim’s hand in his hair and spared scraps of TTK, well, it’s worth it.

(For all it looks like Tim punishes him for being careless, his second hand strokes Kon’s outstretched thigh, soothingly, and Kon lets go. Lets them both feel it).

---

Kon keeps his stretched and primed canvases on the wall next to the windows in his room; white and greyish rectangles hanging on nails in odd angles form unsettling ghost gallery around the window frame.

Tim usually doesn’t spare much thought to them, but faint acrylic smell wafts from the open window, and it catches his attention.

There are no new paintings in the room. The easel stands empty, all pots seem to be shut. 

Tim smells paint as he looks for a new brush on shelves; smells it as he turns to leave after he finds one that will tech cleaning job done. Stops.

He stares at empty queen-sized mattress negligently pushed towards the wall, to make more space in the centre of the room. It stands right in front of the door uncovered - Kon was gathering laundry a couple of days ago. It makes the bed look barren and unnecessary. There’s an empty shopper bag with receipts for paints and condoms on it, the latest lie now in his nightstand. Tim chews on his lips.  

The smell itself is nothing of a notice: it could be any of the rags thrown around the room, but something tugs on Tim’s mind, brings him to the windowsill.

There’s that one canvas peculiarly hanged near ceiling facing away from the room, obviously darker than others. It would be a hard job to put it this way if you don’t have a TTK, Tim guesses.

He contemplates how exactly hard it could be to get it down and back up again.

He wants to think that he didn’t mean to climb the windowsill.

He takes first look on the painting as he grabs it from the hook, and almost flops down to the sill from his precarious position hanging from the window frame.

Tim is fascinated by the vividness of the painting: maroon backdrop seamlessly merges with shadows around the sole figure on painting creating vertigo of strokes and dots,  almost like the bird-eye view of a night city.  

Startled,  Tim recognizes himself on painting,  bare-chested and barefaced,  but very unmistakably Red Robin.

Man on painting poised over the viewer reaching over the upper right side of the canvas, eyes either hooded in bliss or slit in anger,  with multicoloured strokes proclaiming sweat over his chest.

He remembers a red streak of blood on his cheek,  remembers the anger and anguish of the night Kon was knocked out on a team-up with JL Dark. Remembers vindictive way he fucked into pliant body splayed on his bike,  barely into the garage after a long night. The way Kon’s dazed eyes never left his.

The way he later tugged both comforter and Tim over the spread of bed, murmuring ‘Cold’ into the back of Tim’s head. The way he felt (not normal. human. cool) on Tim’s back.

Tim figures that the voodoo sucked the sunlight charge out of Kon, and kicks him out of the bed first thing in the morning to park with Eli. He looks wrought and miserable leaving, but when hours later he returns, perked up and with two more kids in tow, Tim is relieved to learn that he was right.

He’s not particularly clingy that day, but he touches Tim more. A handclap on the shoulder. A brush of fingers as he passes Tim’s laptop charger. He goes to fly some more, leaving kids to distract Tim from work and destroy the living room.

During the dinner he pushes his bare feet under Tim’s, twine them together. Looks at Tim.

(he’s running a fever again, and Tim’s feet are cold. It is convenient (it is a relief)).

Smiles.

---

As Tim turns the light off in his office, he realizes that the cityscape outside his window looks almost like the background of that painting.

He’s already too late but really wants to take this photo now.

He finds the drone in the lowest drawer of Yves’ worktable, contemplates flying it through the labs to the roof. Nobody will bat an eye about it (it says something about his department, but he’s not sure what exactly). Thinks about the half-dead battery in the drone.

When it’s finally outside, paired with his cellphone and poised at the right side of the roof,  Tim activates it; lowers it down to the right floor,  makes a couple of sweeps to and fro until he sees himself through the drone's cam.

He toggles with controls a bit and pushes drone back and forth until he catches frame right and sees the reflection of city lights clearly behind the drone - in front of Tim.

Momentarily distracted by this dichotomy,  simultaneously seeing this landscape both in the window and mirrored on his cell’s screen.

He gets rid of the tie and opens the collar,  puts his right palm to the glass just over his right shoulder.

It's not right.

It’s too crystal, too precise, and although he likes that in his photographies, it’s not like that painting at all. He can see the drone in reflection,  for one,  and his face - tense and annoyed, for another.

Warning of low battery, peacefully blinking in the upper right corner turns angry red and the drone begins it's slow descend to fickle safety of the solid ground.

Tim pushes forward,  tries to catch a couple of shots more. Transfers everything drone shot to the cloud.

Pages security to retrieve the drone sometime during the night.

He swipes through photos in the elevator, and luckily finds what he looks for. There's one accidental shot where he's slightly off-centre, with tightly pinched eyebrow looking down to descending drone. His palm cut in half by the border of the frame, and the cityscape is a blur of lights, highlighting his face with a soft glow.

It’s perfect,  but he still tweaks a bit with colours. Deepening shadows, pulling contrasts. Making sloppy seem intentional.

His phone buzzes with an inquiry from Kon if he should tuck the kid in.

He sets home, sending a photo instead of an answer from the car.

***

Years later both painting and printed-out photo hangs in Kon’s studio in the new house.

flies drone

takes dozens of pictures

they’re pretty but not it

than battery dies and the drone takes last shot before descending down to its sure death

and the picture has blurred lights in the reflection, and Tim’s brow pinched in concern as he looks at descending drone

and it’s perfect

[sparklingpax]

Y E S id LOVE to see how you draw The Boi!!

I think you’re referring to when I posted about asking if anyone wanted me to put out a tutorial about anything so....ok! :D

Your wish is my command~

///

Uhh so for y’all other artists or people who might also see this, disclaimer again that I’m not  a professional so pls pls pls dont come at me if you see mistakes...which there are mistakes...like I’m 99.9% sure some of this isn’t really “symmetrical” or its warped weirdly because I Suck at perspective and I’m still learning! :’) 

The point of this tutorial thing is just to show my general process of how I draw Optimus (a headshot of him, just his head and neck, to be specific; his body is another, longer story o//o’’) and others’ execution of it can definitely vary. I mostly just showed the steps in which I completed the different parts of his helm. 

Which I’d also like to add that I’m an Idiot and forgot to record my screen so instead I took photos of the different compeleted steps after drawing the whole thing O//////o’’ but anyway......I do still hope this maybe sorta helps....^^’’ 

///

1.) Sketching; I like to draw a human head actually (same goes for body; I’ll start with a human form as the sketch and then do a second sketch of the armor over it before I start lining; and those dont include other sketches I do over those to clean them up....^^’’)

2.) Cleaner, More Specific sketch; This is the last sketch before lineart where I place things and color the lines so I get an idea of what the final product might look like...if I end up doing it right! I try to place everything that should be in the final, so before this are other sketches....but this is the last one. Ok. Moving on--

3.) Crest; this can move around a lot while lining the rest of the helm as you may find you’ve centered it incorrectly...or at least...that’s what happens to me...but nonetheless, I begin with the crest~

And a note about how I make it: I use the line tool to make the shape, duplicate the shape, make that one smaller, fill it in completely, then take the eraser and turn the canvas so I can erase in the lines. When you finish, it’ll look like a grill of sorts (is that the term??? O///O’’) and it saves the trouble of extra lineart,,,idk call me lazy but it looks good in the end,,,, ^^’’

4.) Top of his helm; When I draw this the first time, I close up the bottoms so I can clean them up later when I draw the other parts of his head, but as I said above, by this point I’d already finished the drawing so that’s why it looks like that, but basically, that blue part of his helmet goes next! :D I also try to do extra lines as I go along so I don’t forget later...^^’’

5.) Add in the audio receptors + Side face-plate things!! Preferably, start with the receptors, then do the side thingies. And for the grill on those, take your line tool and draw in a rectangle that follows the shape at the top but is straight on the bottom and fill it in. Then, erase the same amount of times on each side to create the same look~ Obviously, be neater than me...since this example here is kinda lopsided....but I suppose you probably get the idea.. :’3 

6.) Draw in the blue plating on his face, then the chin on a separate layer below, and on yet another layer, add the tiny blue things at the bottom. Clean up the chin lines that cross into the blue plating spaces, and that should give you this step! If that,,,makes any sense? If my rambles make it confusing, just look at the final result here and compelete the three components on three separate layers so it’s easier for you. Also, when you’re done with that, combine the side blue plating and the chin bits so you have less layers to go through in the end...if you wanna...

7.) As for the antennae things, use the line tool for sure, and erase or change the brush size up so you can play with line-weight...and again call me lazy but you can combine them when you’re done cleaning them up (again, I reccommend putting each one of these on a separate layer first so you can clean them up individually and then combine to one) and duplicate the layer for the other side. For front view, literally just flip it so it’s symmetrical, for 3-quarter, you might need to use your “transform” (hahah lol) tool to fix it a bit. Or just draw the new side in, either way, that completes step 7.

8.) Neck!! Now this wasn’t a more “serious drawing” or anything, so I kinda made a neck shape and drew in random cables and lines so it looks complicated but it’s actually not....tbh when you do draw him, you can kind of do that because ultimately, the shades of black used to color his neck area are dark enough to conceal what exactly was drawn in there so it’s not the most important thing in the world...since you’ll see there’s lining in there but it’s too hard to make out what exactly....basically, from afar, having all this “complication” will give the look that he has a complex neck area, with all these cables and wires and it looks alien! And that’s exactly what you should go for without needing to make it too hard for yourself. I remember someone told me once that in a lot of art, especially art displayed on social media or that kind of thing, you wanna focus on details but not too much; always do a double-take to see what it looks like as a thumbnail so you won’t end up stressing over every tiny miniscule detail. Idk but it seems like good advice~ 

9.) Eyes/mouth; For the eyes the only thing I wanna say is that I make a shape and fill it in. I know he has other little details surrounding his optics, but for the sake of showing you how I do this in my lil style, I like to simplify it by just making the shape and filling it in, then duplicating the layer and “gaussian blurr-ing” it so it has a softer look. The mouth is...the mouth. Do with it what you shall~

10.) Optics! The blue part! The most fun part in my opinion! I actually have a more “complicated” (not really lol) version of his eyes which I use if I’m going to color the piece or do something more “serious,” so this here’s the simplified version. Like I said with his eyes, I like to keep it simple when it comes to his eyes, since idk it just...looks good to me ^^’’ I take the pen tool and draw in two circles, ovals, whatever the shape is supposed to be. I do not use the circle tool because it feels a little.....stiff..? Idk ^^’’ But anyway, then I duplicate the layer, gaussian blur, and combine both. Another thing I like to do is change the first layer (the one that didn’t get the blur) from “normal” to “Add (Glow)” ((as it’s written in Clip Studio settings, that is)) and mess with that a little, THEN combine these layers. The last part is adding your shine bits; just take your white pen and go wild, and if you wanna, do the whole “duplicate, blur, combine” thing with the shine bits as well; it adds to the look~ 

And ofc, take away the sketch layer (but don’t delete it, just in case you need it! ^w^)

I have another process for coloring....but I didn’t include it since it’s fairly simple ^^’’

Unless you wanna see that too....but for now.....I hope you could get something out of this tutorial here! Sorry it was so long!! 

I also just realized I forgot his eyebrows, but you can add those in along with the eyes/mouth step if you don’t forget like I did...idk, for this particular look it seems not to take so much away from the drawing but....I should have remembered ahh--

Anyway! Thanks so much for asking!! And thanks to all of y’all for reading/looking through all this!! <3 

See ya around~

-Kuni :D 

[l-sincline]

Cybernetics- Cyberpunk!Sonic AU- Chapter 8

Amy Rose has been working tirelessly at her broken down booth for as long as she can imagine. Ever since Tails left their work to join forces with the revered hero of Mobius, ‘The Blue Blur’, she’s grown lonely and desperate to make her life exciting. A strange customer comes in one day asking her to fix his cyborg arm, what she didn’t know was that he would be the catalyst for a brand new life.

AO3 Tags:

Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Amy Rose/Shadow the Hedgehog, Minor or Background Relationship(s), Amy Rose (Sonic the Hedgehog), Shadow the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog, Miles “Tails” Prower, Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik, Rouge the Bat, Whisper the Wolf, Cream the Rabbit, Knuckles the Echidna, Badnik (Sonic the Hedgehog), E-123 Omega, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Cyberpunk, Angst, Slow Burn, Partners in Crime

AO3 Link

Previous/Next

Bugs buzzed monotonously by her ear, body truly screaming at her to stop moving and lay down now.

“We’re almost there.” He’d promised quite a few times.

She’d at one point exasperatedly asked how he made this trek. He pointed out that he had the chip, and that also when he chose not to use the chip, he had the shoes. Amy supposed she’d have to figure something out. But until then, she was stuck feeling like death while the sun slowly left them less and less light. Her feet felt about ready to fall off, and at this point she wouldn’t be opposed to it, then she would have to lay down and take a break until her feet got replaced by cyborg parts. Unfortunately, unless there was a saw around here, she got the feeling that though they hurt, her feet were firmly attached to the rest of her for many years to come. She stopped when she bumped her head on Shadow’s shoulder blade on accident, not realizing that he had stopped. She looked up and saw him glancing back at her, silently pointing to the building ahead of them. The outside looked just as old as the rest of the buildings, vines and moss grew up the side, but the difference would be that this building had no cracks, no holes, and even had glass in the windows. The thick vines had been pushed away to grow around the doorway, which held a black, steel door.

“This is it?” She whispered. Shadow nodded and beckoned her to follow once more, stepping up to the door and opening up the scanner attached to it, allowing it to scan his face. Once it had, she heard the soft clicking of the mechanism allowing it to unlock, and soon she was following him inside.

The inside was clean, fixed up just like he’d said. The floor was tiled and a round, maroon carpet sat in the middle of it. To the right was a couch with two love seats and a coffee table, as well as a large ProjScreen attached to the wall, the furniture sat on top of a rectangle rug that was the same color as the round one. To the left there was kitchen, complete with an island and any appliances one would need to cook as well as a fridge- she had no idea how they got any power out here, but she’d ask about that later. Lights dotted the ceiling to make up for the lack of windows on the first floor, and in the middle of the back wall there was a staircase leading up. Amy looked over to see Shadow had taken off his cloak and hung it on a hook on the wall.

“Shadow! Watch out!” A voice cried from the steps, and Amy found herself being tackled and pinned to the ground. She cried out in pain, she wasn’t sure how much more of a beating her body was to take today, but she hoped it wasn’t much more as clenched her teeth and squinted in pain.

“Rouge! She’s no danger- get off.” He demanded exasperatedly.

‘Rouge’s weight left her and she opened her eyes, taking Shadows hand that he offered and allowing herself to be pulled up. Then, she looked over to see who exactly ‘Rouge’ was.

She was... an Android. White metal, bright blue, glowing eyes. Equipped with fake lashes and makeup. Two wings protruded from her back and her ears gave away that she was modeled to look like a bat mobian. She currently wore a robe- it looked soft, and it was pink, matching slippers she wore on her feet. Aside from all that, she was much curvier than your typical Android would be, at least from what Amy had seen before.

“Rouge, this is Amy. She’s coming on board as our mechanic.” Shadow introduced her. Amy held out a hand.

“It’s nice to meet you...” She spoke softly, and cautiously, not wanting to incite any more anger from the Android woman. Rouge was silent, studying her up and down. Judging her. Amy couldn’t tell what the Android was thinking- it was strange, Androids tended to be easier to read because they weren’t actually mobians.

“I like your pants.” She said suddenly, crouching down to grasp one of the straps. “They’re practical and yet, very stylish.” Rouge observed before standing back up to look at Amy. Her facial expression didn’t give much away, but her body language told Amy that for now, Rouge would leave her be.

Amy let out a breath of relief as Rouge turned to look at Shadow.

“Does that mean Omega can finally be fixed...?” She asked hopefully.

“I do believe so.” He replied.

“Omega?” Amy wondered aloud.

“Don’t worry about it for now, you need to rest up, you’ve been smacked around a bit more than I think you’re used to today.” Shadow nodded to Rouge, and the bat android stepped forward and lifted Amy’s bag from her shoulder.

“I’ll take this to your room and get everything ready for you.” She explained before turning and spreading her wings, flying up the stairs. Shadow chuckled.

“What’s funny?” Amy asked.

“I think she’s excited to have another girl in the house.”

She ‘ooh’ed quietly, following Shadow as he walked over to the kitchen.

“Sit.” He gestured to one of the stools that sat at the island. Amy sat down gingerly and put her hands in her lap, watching him open the fridge and stare at it absentmindedly. She couldn’t imagine it was easy to get food out here, but then she remembered his teleporting trick and supposed that it was quite possible that he... went grocery shopping? That would be a funny sight to see. He shut the fridge door and leaned down to the freezer door, pulling it open and selecting something from it before tossing it on the table. He pulled out a toaster from next to the fridge and plugged it in before getting to work on unwrapping the food while beginning to speak to her once more.

“The room won’t be great, but you can start to get your own stuff to put in there once you... adjust to our living style.” He explained, popping what she now saw were frozen waffles into the toaster. “ProjScreen- on.” He called, louder than he had been talking to her previously, and she shifted slightly to turn and watch the ProjScreen as he continued to shuffle around in the kitchen. What she saw made her stomach turn.

“-from what we can see, this woman and her partner made a complete fool of the Blue Blur.” The female cat gossip show anchor chided.

“While we up here in the neon city aren’t exactly big fans of any criminal, watching these two lay waste to the Blue Blur is exceptionally funny.” The male deer replied, partially to the camera. The woman laughed.

“As part of our ‘down with the Blue Blur’ campaign, I just want to play that absolutely humiliating clip again!” She cried joyfully, clapping her hands together before turning in her chair to watch the screen behind them.

The screen showed a projection from the angle of what seemed to be a surveillance camera. It was a slow-mo shot of her rolling and shoving herself off the Blue Blur, immediately followed by Shadow’s cyborg hand appearing on screen and hitting the Blue Blur square in the back, sending him tumbling forward and scraping on the ground. Thank god the camera panned towards the blue hedgehog instead of her and Shadow, or else there’d be video proof of them just disappearing. But instead it zoomed in on the Blue Blur, who struggled to get up before collapsing. The video cut off just as Tail’s feet came in frame.

“Now that is just too funny!” The cat woman cried again, smile wide on her face.

“I have to agree with you there- but now we have to get to the more interesting topic- who was that woman?” He asked enthusiastically as a grainy, zoomed in projection of her face from when she was falling came up behind them.

“Now, thanks to some intelligence we do know she ran a shop in the outer ring, but the real question is how did she get wrapped up in all this drama? I mean, Mobius’ most famous vigilante scooping her up and trying to take her away from the mystery cyborg man- what do you think happened?” She questioned her cohost.

Amy grimaced, they were making it out to be some sort of romantic triangle from what she could tell, and before she could hear what the deer had to say, Shadow cut in.

“ProjScreen- off.” He called out. “Sorry, I don’t know why Rouge watches that crap. It was probably uncomfortable to see your face like that.” He apologized gruffly as she turned back around, watching him slide a plate across to her.

“It’s fine.” She reassured, “It was honestly kind of interesting to see how they talked about me- us. They... liked that we knocked down the Blue Blur.”

“Of course they did.” He snorted. “Inner ring folk hate him.” Amy shrugged in response, not knowing what more to say on the topic.

“So, what have you made for me, chef?”

“Toaster waffles with peanut butter on them for protein, plus some apple slices for some good sugar and vitamin intake. Just something to get you through the night, there’ll be something better in the morning.”

“Thank you.” She smiled slightly, glad to be digging in to the food. The waffles were a bit stale and the apples were a bit mushy, but it was better than what she usually ate, so she continued to munch on it happily as Shadow walked over to the living room half of the bottom floor. By the time she was finishing up, she heard Rouge land on the tile at the bottom of the stairs.

“Your room is ready.”

Amy looked over with a tired smile, standing and putting the plate by the sink she had spotted earlier before walking over to Rouge.

“Thank you... for all this.” She turned back to Shadow before stepping up the stairs. “I know this is weird... for both of us, but thank you for giving me this chance and keeping me from getting arrested.” He merely grunted in response and Amy assumed that was the best she was going to get and followed Rouge up the stairs.

They went up two floors before stepping out of the stairs and into a hallway, Rouge passed one door on the left before coming to one slightly past it on the right and pushing it open.

“Here you go, call me if you need anything- I’m a floor down.” She explained as Amy stepped in the room, closing the door behind the pink hedgehog. Amy could hear her slippered feet walking away.

Too tired to care about what the room looked like, Amy leaned against the wall and unlaced her boots, kicking them off before walking over to and collapsing in the bed. She let out a deep sigh before almost immediately falling asleep, too exhausted physically and mentally to even consider what her day had been.

[tacitwhisky]

Fic: Tipsy in a Push Up Bra, pt 4

Jon x Sansa - Tipsy high school Sansa in a red push up bra. What could go wrong? / Part 1 / A03 Link

It’s Christmas Eve when Sansa wears the push up bra again.

It isn’t something she plans. She’d been careful picking her outfit for a day with the family, more careful than she had been for that night at Margaery’s: skinny jeans again, but in place of the tank top she goes with a sleeveless top she found on sale, a red cardigan over it, and a plaid scarf looped around her neck. It’s closer to how she used to dress back in the old house, before the crash, before she came to live with Lysa. And it’s why when Sansa looks in the mirror she pauses for a long moment until Lysa shouts something from outside her door, then quickly strips off the top and fits the push up bra under it, replaces the scarf with a thin black choker.

She regrets getting rid of the scarf as soon as she steps outside, but she’s timed it so she’s only left to stand shivering at the foot of Lysa’s driveway for a few minutes before Jon’s battered Chevy pulls up. He frowns at the chatter of her teeth as she opens the passenger side door and slips inside. “I could’ve parked.” He says.

Sansa shrugs and cups her hands around the warmth gusting from the air vents on the passenger side, relishes the tingle through her fingers. Jon has only a vague idea of the horror that is Lysa, and Sansa’s stomach squirms with embarrassment at the thought of him meeting her. She changes the subject with a rosy cheeked grin. “How much did the tires cost you?”

“Too much.” Jon shakes his head and shifts gears. “They’ll get us there ok though.”

Sansa settles deeper into the seat as Jon pulls out of Lysa’s neighborhood, nervous energy thrumming through her. It’s the first time she’s seen Jon since that night weeks ago at Margaery’s party, and she is all too aware of the shape of him in the corner of her vision, the easy way he leans forward and flicks on the wipers as droplets begin to spatter the windshield. You’re going to embarrass yourself, a part of Sansa hisses, and she glances away out the window and to the grey sky whipping by overhead.

The cold had come on early in the week, a chill creeping in from the east coast, and she hadn’t looked forward to riding the train. She tells herself that the feeling that shivered through her when she first saw Jon’s text a few days before offering to give her a ride up to her family was relief and refuses to question it more than that, because she wasn’t that girl anymore, had sworn she never would be again.

Arya always invites me, he’d texted, but I never feel like it’s my place. She says Bran’s inviting a couple of his friends though… It’s not the first time they’ve texted. All day after Jon had dropped her off after Margaery's party Sansa had told herself she wasn’t going to text him, a ball knotting in her gut each time she glanced at her phone’s screen and remembered how she’d embarrassed herself. But the day had worn on, and by ten Sansa couldn’t keep her fingers away from her phone any longer. Thank you, she’d tapped out, instantly regretting it as a little green check mark popped into existence beside the words.

It’d felt like hours but was probably about thirty seconds before her phone chirped. Don’t mention it, he’d texted back, and Sansa had heaved an internal sigh of relief. That was it. They stumbled into each other, she’d embarrassed herself, and now it was done. He would go back to being a stranger from another life, and she could just be the weird clingy girl he’d had to help that one time. And if the feeling that was welling in her chest was something other than relief then she’d swallow that down like she had so much else. She’d tossed her phone facedown on her pillow and tried to focus on the homework spread over her duvet that needed to be done by morning if she didn’t want a B in algebra.

But then her phone chirped, and Sansa’s heart leapt into her throat as she flipped it over. Theon won’t shut up about the girl he hooked up with, it read. She’d worried at her lip with her teeth, a hundred different replies flitting through her mind as she stared down at the phone screen, then eventually typed: guess we’re lucky he didn’t come back with her last night. It wasn’t funny, wasn’t witty, and she’d hated it as soon as she tapped send, but Jon responded a minute later and it was easier after that.

She’s texted with guys since Joffrey but this was different, giddy and exciting in a way it wasn’t with them. Don’t be pathetic, she’d tried to tell herself. Jon would never look at a dumb high schooler like her, and she’d sworn to never be that girl again, the one that threw herself at guys, let them do whatever they wanted to her like she had with Joffrey: but it’s hard not to, hard not to look over each new text a few times to make the most of the giddy thump in her stomach before responding. She’s never been more acutely grateful that the person she’s texting can’t see her face, because if Jon could see hers she’d shrivel and die. They’d spent the night going back and forth until Sansa had fallen asleep with the rectangle of her phone screen shining on the pillow next to her.

“You sure you’re good to ride the train on the way back tomorrow?” Jon asks, startling Sansa in her seat. “It being Christmas.”

Last year a guy who was twice her age had sat next to Sansa the whole ride, close enough for her to smell his rancid breath, eyes sliding over her in a way that made her skin crawl. But Jon doesn’t need to know that. “I’ll be fine.” She pats the overnight bag she’d slung under her seat when she slipped into the car. “I’ve got earphones.”

“You may need them sooner than that.” Jon frowns at the old radio set in the dashboard and leans forward to fiddle with it. Sansa bats his hand away, tries to ignore the tingle through her fingers as they bump his. Don’t be pathetic. “You can stay the night, you know,” she tells him, voice carefully careless as she takes over. “I’ll talk to my mom about it.”

Jon gives her a sidelong look. “Your mom hates me. Really, it’s ok. I know Christmas morning is a thing. I’ll drive back tonight, and I already picked up an extra shift at work for tomorrow.”

Sansa bites her lip as she manages to tease out a trickle of pop music from the worn dial of the radio. Christmas morning is a thing. It had been in the Stark household ever since Sansa was old enough to totter down the stairs as a child. Once she was older she’d always taken special pride in getting up before her siblings and helping her mother heat up steaming mugs of hot chocolate as Robb and Arya and eventually Bran and Rickon came yawning down the stairs. Her father had always been last, and his face would wrinkle in a smile when he saw her. He’d draw her into a one armed hug and kiss the crown of her head as he took his mug. Thanks, sweetheart, he’d say in his warm, gravelly voice. You’re already all grown up, aren’t you?

And even though that girl is long gone, for a moment Sansa can again smell hot chocolate, feel the rough warmth of her father’s arm drawing her snug, and it’s like a knife is carving white-hot through her chest, splitting her breastbone in two, and she can’t shrink from it, can’t run, can’t-

“What about your mom?” Sansa blurts, voice tight in a way she prays Jon won’t notice. “Won’t you miss her if you’re working?”

“I talked her into going skiing with some girlfriends of hers.” Jon shrugs. “I want her to have something of her own. She gave up a lot raising me.”

“It was just the two of you, right?”

“Yeah.” A smile tugs at Jon’s lips. “We used to get that we were brother and sister all the time. It used to irritate me so much, though I can’t remember why now.”

There’s something steady and warm in Jon’s voice, and Sansa latches onto it as she leans back in her seat. “Maybe you wanted them to know. Didn’t want to plaster over what happened with your dad.”

Jon tilts his head to the side and gives her a strange look. “When did you get so wise?”

A pang swells in Sansa’s chest fat as a red balloon ready to pop. She hadn’t been horrible to Jon as a child: that would’ve taken acknowledging his existence in the first place, and the most she’d ever done was feel embarrassed about the weird kid Robb brought with him everywhere. It makes her want to shrivel how shallow she’d been, how self involved, how little she’d known just how hard life could truly be. Would it really have cost her so much to be friendly to Jon? To smile at him now and then without turning up her nose?

They talk for the rest of the drive, an easy back and forth with the radio crackling out pop tunes in the background. Sometimes Sansa dials the sound up when it’s a song she likes (to which Jon will dutifully groan in protest), but for the most part it’s just him and her and the murmur of rain and tires outside. It’s nice, nicer than Sansa wants to admit, the longest she’s talked to anyone in months and leaves her strangely warm and prickly at once, like a cat with its fur ruffled.

It’s drizzling as Jon pulls into the driveway of her mother’s house. It’s smaller than the old house, with a tall oak in the front and an unevenly trimmed lawn. “Arya’s handiwork,” Jon says pointing it out, “she’s constantly whining about it.”

They’ve both barely stepped out of the car before the front door of the house flies open and a dark haired blur is streaking down the steps and launching itself at Jon. Jon laughs and rocks back as Arya throws her arms around him. He steadies himself and wraps her tiny frame in a tight hug. “Careful or you’re going to crack my ribs.”

“You’re such a butthead.” The fierceness of Arya’s voice is muffled by her face pressed into Jon’s chest, and she pulls away with a bashful grin and punches his shoulder. “You never come.”

Jon grins back and something childish twinges in Sansa’s chest at the expression, the fond way he’s looking down at Arya like he’d die for her on a pin drop. They’ve always been like this. You just always thought you were better than them. Sansa reaches back into the car and slings her bag over one shoulder. “Mom inside?”

“Hey Sansa,” Arya says without looking at her, still grinning up at Jon. “Yeah, she’s doing cooking stuff.”

Sansa purses her lips, but tries to ignore the prick of irritation. She closes the car and starts up the path to the front door, Jon and Arya falling in behind her, Arya already beginning to chatter about her soccer team.

Sansa mounts the steps and pushes open the door, and suddenly it’s like there’s a knife lodged in her chest again. It shouldn’t hurt, but it does, a sudden and violent ache. This isn’t the old house, isn’t her home, the one where her father would smile and hug her hello, where Robb would call her little sister: but that only makes it worse, like this is some version of the world where neither of ever existed to begin with.

From around the corner Bran wheels into view, tall and lanky in his chair. “Hey, Sansa. How was the ride?”

“Good.” Sansa leans down and hugs him, tries to push down the clawing ache threatening to drag her down. She tries to think of something to add, but it’s been such a long time since they spoke that she doesn’t know what to say. “Mom says you’re inviting friends this year?”

“Yeah, Meera and Jojen.” Bran gives Jon a pleading look as he steps though the door. “Can you talk Arya and Rickon into not teasing Meera too much that she’s the first girl I’ve invited over?”

Jon grins and shakes his head. “I would if I could, but I’ve been a guest enough times to know teasing is a Stark family tradition.”

“Jon!” Shrieks a new voice, and Rickon slams into Jon’s legs. Jon laughs and musses Rickon’s hair as he falls back onto the couch. A smile plays at Sansa’s lips as she drops her bag behind the table. She should be jealous she supposes, but it’s a relief in a way not to be the center of attention like she was last year. It had been a long pair of days filled with awkward silences with her mother and passive aggressive spats with Arya. Sansa crosses to the door where Catelyn has emerged from the kitchen, a thin layer of flour dusting the same auburn hair Sansa had before she dyed it.

“Hey sweetheart,” her mother says absentmindedly. Her lips thin as she catches sight of Jon wrestling with Rickon, a line forming between her brows, and Sansa can feel something bitter already beginning to well under her mother’s tongue. She’d never liked Jon: not when Robb first brought him tagging along one day, not when he’d hang out after school, not after the crash. “Arya said you’ve already started on dinner,” Sansa breaks in before whatever’s on her mother’s tongue can find words.

Catelyn glances towards her and frowns faintly as her eyes tick over her clothes. The bra isn’t as ridiculous under her current top as it had been under the tank top at Margaery’s party, but Sansa still stares at her mother, silently daring her to comment on it. Catelyn’s lips purse as if she’s going to say something, but seems to think better of it at the last second. “You don’t need a minute to settle in?”

Sansa shakes her head and slips past her into the kitchen, away from where Arya has piled on top of Jon and Rickon. “What are you working on?”

She doesn’t see Jon for the next hour as she works beside her mother slicing pecans and mashing potatoes for dinner. As a child Sansa had loved nothing more than working with her mother, but that was before, and this is now: twice she asks about Sansa’s hair, and twice Sansa has to shrug as though she can’t remember why she dyed it. She tells her about school, about the teachers of hers she can remember the names of, about her progress on the Vale High transfer scholarship, but the list of safe topics is a little shorter each time they see each other and after only an hour silence has begun to seep into the hollows of their conversation.

They put the chicken in to roast, and as her mother changes clothes Sansa pours herself a cup of cider and sits on the couch with her legs folded under her. The drizzle from earlier has turned into a full blown storm, rain beating the roof like a drum. It gives the house a cozy feel like the kind she’d loved growing up, rainy afternoons that were a chance to curl up with a book warm and safe against the gale outside.

She’s sipping the cider and checking her phone when Jon emerges from Arya’s room and flops onto the couch opposite her. “What?” He asks after a minute as she watches him with a faint quirk of her lips over the rim of her glass. Sansa shrugs, the shoulder of her cardigan slipping down as she does. “You look different.”

“You too.” Jon’s eyes fall to the bare curve of her shoulder. His eyes flick up to her face guiltily. “You look… happier.”

Sansa slips the cardigan back up and gives him a shy, defiant smile. “What’s not to be happy about?”

The corner of Jon’s own lips quirk in answer, and Sansa wonders why she never noticed when she was young just how handsome he is. He’s not what she wanted when she was growing up: not some pretty boy with dreamy hair like Joffrey, but now that she’s older she finds it impossible not to notice the scruff shadowing his jaw, the broadness of his shoulders, the faint pearl line of a scar above his eye from the crash she hadn’t noticed at Margaery’s. It’s not breathtaking like in bad romance novels, but Sansa’s chest is tight and she can’t but be utterly and helplessly aware of how little space there really is between them, how easy it would be just to lean forward despite how she swore after Joffrey she’d never be that girl again, the girl that let a guy do whatever he wanted with her, the girl that-

“Why are you two sitting together?” Arya breaks in loudly. At some point she’s come into the room and is now standing in front of the couch looking back and forth between the two of them with a frown. “Why are you two talking?”

“Hush,” Sansa snaps glancing away from Jon, instantly irritated in the way that only Arya can make her. Don’t be pathetic. “We can talk. We’re adults.”

“No you’re not. Jon is an adult. You’re still in high school.”

Sansa flushes. The cider left in her cup nearly sloshes over as she sets it down too fast and stands abruptly. “I need to check on the chicken,” she says, and refuses to meet Jon’s questioning look as she leaves the room.

A03 Link

[multi-fandom-writers]

(Written by Admin Jad)

"Finished!" yelled Edward as he placed the last domino piece in its position. Mikey and Kaz - who were both playing video games at the time - turned to face Edward.

"Wow, Ed." Kaz said half-heartedly, followed by sarcasm. "That's amazing... " He removed his headphones from his ears. The headphones left a red mark around his ears, just neighbor the sideburns of his blonde hair.

"Behold, my art!" said Ed as he tipped the first piece over. The domino pieces spread around Ed's bedroom started tipping over in a chain reaction. The ebony colored plastic rectangles made a satisfying 'tick' noise with each peace that fell over. When the final piece was finally knocked over, Ed turned to face his two friends, hoping for some praise. But the two already returned their attention to the screen. "You could at least pretend to be interested!" Ed stood up and stomped his foot.

"Sorry," Mikey said. "I don't lie." He laughed and high-fived Kaz.

"Nothing personal, Ed, we're just not -" Kaz wanted to stand up and place a hand on Ed's shoulder. However, his legs - which fell asleep - failed him. He started tipping over. He tried to hang on to Mikey, but he ended up dragging him down with him. As a last resort, he grabbed on to Ed. The three of them tumbled to the floor, and over the painful pile of dominoes. A series of cursing filled the room.

"Why did you pull us down with you?!" yelled Ed. He rubbed his back in pain. The other two did the same.

"If I fall, we all do! First rule of the Bro Code!" he explained.

Mikey raised a finger. "Isn't the first rule: bros before -" He didn't finish that sentence. The bedroom door was kicked open. An angry woman holding a bar of soap held her hands at her waist. Her face held an angry and stern expression.

"M-mom!" stuttered Ed.

"There will be no cursing in this house!" For the remainder of the evening, the three teens had their mouths scrubbed with a bar of soap over and over.

<~>

"From now on, we're hanging out at my place." said Kaz as soon as he boarded the school bus. He spoke without context, so everyone except Mikey and Ed were confused.

"You got dominoes?" asked Ed, perking up at the voice of his friend. Kaz rolled his eyes and sat next to the pair at the very back of the bus. The three vividly discussed video games and anime throughout the bus ride, occasionally yelling some unintelligible words.

They arrived at the school, suddenly overcome with a feeling of dread and remorse. They fought the urge to leave. A banner hanged over the green double doors. 'School Pep Week!" it read, accompanied by the picture of a roaring lion; the school's mascot.

Coming inside, the three saw flyers taped to every locker in sight, with cheerleaders parading through the halls. "This is dumb." said Mikey. "And useless." He fiddled with a fidget spinner in his left hand, which completely undermined his entire argument.

While ridiculing the school event, a leg shot out from behind a corner, tripping Ed in the process. He landed flat on his face. "Oops. Sorry about that Eddy." said a voice. A tall individual, nearly twice the size of Ed, appeared. He wore a red letterman jacket in addition to a menacing grin.

"Ed, you're bleeding!" warned Mikey. He pointed to the blood slowly streaming from Ed's nostrils. The tall individual saw this as an opportunity. He took out a crumpled napkin from his pants pocket and wiped the blood off Ed's nose. He then proceeded to shove it up the nostril, making Ed yelp in pain. The yelp of pain alerted another individual just around the corner.

"Simon Evans!" yelled the principal. "For the love of God All Mighty, stop it with these shenanigans or so help me, I'll have you expelled!" he warned.

"Won't happen again, sir." said Simon. A cold sweat ran across his cheek. Once the authority figure was out of sight, Simon shoved Ed into the wall. "See you around, Eddy." Even when entering the sea of students, the letterman still stood out.

"You ok?" asked Kaz, offering a clean napkin. Ed gladly took it, discarding the blood-covered one.

"No," he complained. "I'm not."

"You really shouldn't let him bully you like that."

"What am I supposed to do? The dude is twice my size. The principle may act strict but he won't expel his star quarterback. What can I do?"

"Yolo it, I guess." He chuckled. Upon entering homeroom, Ed immediately noticed something was off. For once, there was no paper files, no chalk, and no grading book on the teacher's desk. Ed knew the teacher wasn't absent, for he saw her not a few minutes ago in front of the teacher's lounge.

He took his seat in the second-to-last row and dropped his bag at his side. He entered his dreamscape; started imagining and re-imagining arguments that would never happen. The national anthem blared through the class speaker, for which they all stood. Once the last lyric was chanted, the principal's blurred voice replaced the silence. "Students: First of all, I would like to congratulate our football team for making it to nationals." The class cheered. "And because of that wonderful accomplishment, a pep rally will be held for the entirety of the day. Thank your class representatives and pep committee for that decision."

Books and loose pieces of paper were thrown into the air in celebration. Students shot up from their seats and started dancing. "Sit back down!" yelled the Math teacher. "You lot are two lessons behind schedule! You're going to study for half the day!" And so they did.

The lunch bell rang. The students rushed outside the classrooms, escaping from the torment of education. "Get back here!" the teacher called after them. "The bell doesn't dismiss you! I do!" She was ignored.

Ed quietly took his lunch to the stairwell, where peace and quite rained supreme. "What'cha got there, Eddy?" asked Simon, leaning over Ed's shoulder. Ed jolted upwards, dropping his lunch in the process. "You almost got me in trouble today." he said as he took a few steps forward. "Almost." He pushed Ed into the corner. He forcefully placed his hand on Ed's face. "This time, take what you have coming for you, quietly." A heavy blow landed on Ed's cheek. Then another on his stomach. Then another. And another. Ed waved his arms in anger, but hit nothing.

Simon grabbed both hands and pinned Ed to the wall. In a last-ditch attempt, Ed kicked Simon in the unmentionables. Simon flinched. Ed saw an opportunity and rammed into Simon. He tumbled over. Fell on the stairs, then laid motionless on the tiled floor. Ed sat in the corner of the staircase. He saw a pool of blood forming around Simon.

His heart raced. His breathing became shorter and inconsistent. His screeching echoed throughout the halls, yet unheard to others over the noise of their own chatter. Ed trembled in his corner. He drove his head in between his knees in search of refuge. He found none.

Then he ran. Ran down the stairs, tripping over Simon's body. He continued to scamper through the halls, sprinted uphill through the streets which lead to his believed sanctuary; his house.

He thanked his lucky stars that none of his parents were home. He slammed the door of his bedroom and retreated underneath his bed sheets. He was trembling with such intensity that the bed itself shook. After what seemed like an eternity for him, but only ten minutes in the real world, police sirens disturbed the silence in the neighborhood. Ed held his bed sheets tighter. He was relieved when the sirens became distant. He let out a breath he didn't know he was holding.

Eventually, the exhaustion - both mental and physical - caught up to him, and he was overtaken by sleep. "Ed? Ed honey, wake up." said a soft as it gently woke Ed. Though his vision hasn't focused, he recognized the comforting face of his own mother. "Dinner is ready in ten." she said as her hand slightly pinched his cheek, giving it a pinkish tint.

Memories of today's events flooded his mind. He stifled the urge to scream at the top of his lungs. His phone, which was on his bedside, had a beeping red light on the top right corner, meaning he just received an important message.

From his friends: 'where are you?!' From Candy Crush: 'Your energy has refilled.' And from the local news: 'Murder at public high school'.

A wave of nausea washed over him. He stumbled over to the bathroom and leaned over the toilet bowl.    After an excruciating session of vomiting, he managed to calm himself down. But it didn't last for long. The squeaking of car breaks was audible outside.

   Intreeged, Ed peeked through the curtains and immediately regretted it. Two police cruisers were parked in front of his own home.

   They knocked on the wooden front door, loudly. Ed quietly made his way downstairs, making as little noise as possible. He made sure he wasn't visible to anyone who might be watching through the windows. He slowly closed the back door behind him.

   His mother - who was in the kitchen at the time - walked towards the front door. She looked through the peephole, had a moment of confusion, then opened the door.

   "Can I help you officer?" she asked, still lost on what was happening.    "Evenin' Mr.s Breker. Is your son home?" asked the officer.

   "He's upstairs in his room. Why do you need to know?"

   "Eh, there's no easy way to say this but..." The officer scratched the back of his neck. "Your son is the main suspect of the murder of Simon Evans." She froze.

   "It ain't April Fools! My son is scared of butterflies! He ain't about to murder someone twice his size!"    "Ma'am, we have a warrant to take him into questioning." Mr.s Breker stepped aside and ushered them upstairs. "He didn't do nothin'." She repeated.

   Not even a minute later, the officer came rushing back downstairs. "He's not here!"

<~>

   A rapid series of knocks sounded on Kaz's front door. Annoyed, he angrily stomped towards the doors. "What?!" He yelled the moment he opened it. His emerald eyes widened. "Ed! Where were you?! Everything went to shit after you disappeared!" Ed barged into Kaz's home in a rush.

   "The cops are after me, man!" He said nervously as he tried to hold his composure.

   "The cops are not after you, man. Chill out. They're after whoever... killed.... Simon." His eyes widened in realization. "Ed... Did you...?" he said hesitantly. Ed slowly nodded. Kaz took a step backward. "I think you should go..." Kaz said quietly.

   "There's nowhere to go. You're the only person that can help me."

   "Ed, if the cops find it that I was hiding you, they'll arrest me!"

   "But what about what you said? 'If I fall, we all do'?!"

   "We're not like your fucking dominoes, Ed! You act as if your fate matters to us. Well, guess what? It doesn't! You will fall, and you will fall alone!" Kaz pushed Ed out the front door. Ed tumbled over on and fell on the grass. He held back the tears as he disappeared into the night.

    Overnight, fifteen-year-old Edward Breker had completely disappeared. Or rather, that's what everyone thought.

Nearly a week after Ed's disappearance, the wall phone at Kaz's residence rang.

"Hello?" answers Kaz.

"Kaz." said a panting voice.

"Ed?" he exclaimed. "H-how's it goin' man?" He stuttered.

"I'm skipping town. Tonight."

"R-really? Where are you goin'?"

  "I can't say. But hey, listen. Let's meet up at the Spot. All three of us.   "Why do you want to meet there?"    "One last hangout, I guess."

"S-sure... I'll call Mikey and we'll bring some Mountain Dew, I guess."    Kaz hung up. He turned and faced the officer who was listening to the conversation. "It's him." He said. "He wants me to meet him at the Cliffside." The officer dialed a number on his flip phone and held the phone to his ear.

   "We got 'em."

<~>

   Kaz and Mikey walked through the Red-Wood forest, with a six-pack of Mountain Dew in hand. From a distance, they saw Ed's ragged figure sitting on a piece of land outstretched from the rest of the cliff overlooking the sea.

    The Spot.

   "Ed." They called out to him. His head turned in a fast, robotic manner, as if he was possessed. He brandished a smile at the sight of his two friends. They sat next to him, and each opened up a bottle of Dew.

   "Been a while since we all came here." Said Kaz, followed by a sip.

   "It really has." replied Ed.

   "Ed." Mikey said as he put a hand on Ed's shoulder. Ed immediately flinched but then calmed down. "Did you really kill Simon." Ed reluctantly but surely nodded his head.

   "I did." Kaz and Mikey turned and faced each other. They nodded. The sound of heavy footsteps crushing the fallen leaves was loud enough for Ed to hear. He jolted up from his place and focused his attention at the source of the noise.

Flashlights cut through the darkness of the night. The barks of the K-9 units were audible.

  Heartbroken, Ed faced his friends. Kaz raised his shirt, revealing a communication device strapped to his stomach. "I'm sorry, man. They forced us to do it."

   Half a dozen officers had their guns trained on Ed. "Freeze!" Ed relaxed his body. He raised his hands upwards. Two officers approached him.

   "Do I at least get to say goodbye?" he asked. The commanding officer on site motioned him to do whatever.

   Ed hugged his two friends, an arm around each of them.

   "NO homo!" They all yelled in unison, followed by a series of laughs.

"One more thing." said Ed. His arms still enveloped his two friends.

   "Which is?"

   "If I fall, we all do!" He yelled as he leaned his weight over the side of the outreach. His two friends were dragged along with him. They fell into free fall until meeting their fate at the hand of the jagged rocks below.

[pogueman]

The New Samsung Galaxy does 28 things the iPhone doesn't

The Samsung Galaxy S8 (and the larger S8+) give you more screen in less phone. (Image: B. Gaskin)

Every spring, Samsung introduces a new Galaxy phone; every fall, Apple (AAPL) counterpunches with a new iPhone.

At the moment, we find ourselves in mid-cycle: Samsung has just released its Galaxy S8, and the iPhone 8 is still a summer away.

The S8 is a gorgeous phone. It’s a hardware masterpiece, it’s getting rave reviews, and—hey!—so far, nobody’s battery has exploded.

It’s also so crammed with features, it’s amazing the thing doesn’t weigh 20 pounds. That’s the Samsung way: Pile on features to see what sticks. Unfortunately, some of it’s garbage.

So here, as a public service, is a peculiar kind of review: A master list of features that the new Samsung has and the iPhone doesn’t—along with an assessment of which ones are actually useful.

1. The wraparound screen

Samsung’s S8 design goal was, “the most screen in the smallest space.” And sure enough: the side margins of the screen are gone completely—the screen image actually begins to curve around the side edges—and the top and bottom margins have been halved.

The result: Samsung’s screen shows 40% more than the iPhone 7’s—but the phones are the same width. (The screen is 5.8 inches diagonal on the S8, vs. 4.7 on the iPhone.)

That’s a little misleading, of course—the Samsung gets some of that extra screen area by being taller than the iPhone (.4 inches taller). In other words, it’s a weird shape—tall and skinny—that leaves you with black bars beside your videos.

Here’s what else is misleading: Samsung advertises a resolution of 2960 by 1440 pixels—much higher than the iPhone’s 1334 by 750. But in hopes of saving battery life, Samsung hides much of that high-res goodness. Out of the box, the phone comes set to 1080p resolution—only one-quarter of its potential sharpness. You have to fiddle with Settings if you want all the clarity you paid for.

But no question: it’s great to have so much screen. And such a great screen! Bright, colorful, gorgeous OLED.

Usefulness grade: A

2. Edge display

On the right edge, you can set up something called the Edge display. It’s a vertical bar, hugging the curved edge, that you can swipe inward to reveal a skinny pane of icons. You choose which icons appear here—favorite apps, speed-dial icons for your friends, news, and so on. Because this bar is available from within any app, it’s like an ever-present dock. Once you try it, you’ll use it constantly. It spares you all the trips to the Home screens. It’s really great.

This skinny bar at the edge of the screen gives you instant access to favorite apps and people.

Usefulness: A+

3. Video enhancer

The S8’s Video Enhancer mode gooses the contrast and brightness in video apps like Netflix (NFLX) and YouTube (GOOG, GOOGL). Honestly? Without seeing two S8’s side-by-side, it’s hard to see a difference. (It comes turned off, because it’s a battery drainer.)

Usefulness: B+

4. Gigabit LTE

The S8 and S8+ are the first phones that can tap into Gigabit LTE—a cellular network that’s supposed to give you much faster internet speeds.

It probably won’t affect you. Only T-Mobile (TMUS) has started upgrading its network to Gigabit LTE, and only in 300 towns. Sprint (S), Verizon (VZ), and AT&T (T) say they’re working on it.

(Gigabit LTE isn’t the same thing—nor as fast—as 5G, which will take a few more years to arrive.)

Usefulness: B

5. Iris recognition

You can now unlock your S8 by gazing into its camera lens; it recognizes the irises of your eyes, even if you have glasses on.

Most people don’t wind up using this feature, though, because it requires that you bring the phone up to eye level and hold it about 10 inches from your face; it’s just goofy and awkward. It also doesn’t work in bright sunlight.

Unlocking the phone with your irises is awkward, but handy when you have gloves on.

Unfortunately, the alternative secure unlocking method—your fingerprint—is a total disaster. Samsung put the fingerprint scanner on the back of the phone, directly beside the camera, so you get finger grease on the lens every time you unlock it. (The phone even warns you as much: “Be careful not to smudge the camera lens,” it says when you set up your fingerprints.)

That’s if you can unlock it—the scanner is a tall rectangle (not a circle, as on the iPhone), and you have to cover the entire thing to make it work. A design disaster all the way around.

Usefulness: C

6. Face recognition

The Galaxy can also unlock itself by recognizing your face. It’s fast, and doesn’t involve holding the phone like you’re trying to mind-meld with it.

Unfortunately, face recognition is neither reliable (it often doesn’t work) nor secure; for example, Samsung doesn’t consider it secure enough to use for Samsung Pay. People report being able to fool it with a photo.

You can’t use both iris and face recognition; you must choose one or the other.

Usefulness: B

7. Longer battery lifetime

Samsung says that the new S8 battery will last longer—not in hours per charge, but in overall lifetime of usefulness. After a year, the battery will maintain 95% of its charging capacity—up from 80%, on the Galaxy S7.

There’s no way to test Samsung’s claim without waiting a year or two, so we’ll have to take their word for it.

Usefulness: B+

8. Portrait mode

The S8’s main camera hasn’t been improved since the S7 came along—it’s a wicked great camera—but its software has.

For example, when you’re photographing a face, you can turn on a Portrait mode, which simulates the blurry-background effect you usually see only in pro photos.

This is not an optical effect; it’s basically a filter, and the phone sometimes gets it wrong. The blurring sometimes spills into your person. (On the iPhone 7 Plus, the similar Portrait feature relies on the phone’s two camera lenses, and is therefore more reliable.)

What’s cool, though, is that you can adjust the blur after shooting the picture. You can even blur the foreground, leaving the background sharp.

The S8’s blurring feature can soften focus of either the background or foreground, although the results can look phony.

Usefulness: B+

9. Snapchat-style overlays

The Camera app can now add goofy, Snapchat-style animated costumes to your head. They’re pretty awful. Stick to Snapchat (SNAP) or MSQRD.

Usefulness: D

10. “Virtual” photos

Within the Camera app, there’s a new option: You can walk around an object, “filming” it. Later, you can “play it back” by swiveling the phone around in space, changing your angle on the subject. Convenient if you’re shopping for sculptures, I guess.

The Camera app is full of tricks, like Snapchat-style video overlays (left) and 3-D walkarounds of objects (right).

Usefulness: C

11. HDR certified

The S8 is the first smartphone with an HDR-compatible screen. That’s high dynamic range, and it means that, if you can find an HDR movie to watch, you’ll see it with more vivid colors and a greater range of brights to darks.

So far, there’s not much to watch. Netlix’s HDR movies don’t yet play on the S8 (and would require a more expensive streaming plan if they did). Amazon Prime’s HDR movies do, but there are only a handful of them.

Usefulness: D

12. Enhanced front-facing camera

The camera above the screen now captures 8-megapixel photos with an f/1.7 lens, and can autofocus now. Good stuff, though not an earth-shattering improvement over the iPhone 7’s front camera (7 megapixels, f/2.2 aperture).

Usefulness: B

13. Bluetooth 5

Bluetooth 5 has four times the range and twice the data rates of Bluetooth 4—but you get those benefits only if you’ve upgraded your Bluetooth stuff (speakers, Fitbits, headphones, etc.) to Bluetooth 5 gear.

Even now, though, the S8 lets you pair with two existing Bluetooth headphones, so you and a friend can listen simultaneously.

Usefulness: B+

14. Split screen

The S8 introduces “multi window,” a feature that lets you split the screen between two apps, side-by-side (or top-and-bottom). At that point, you can adjust their relative sizes, or copy between them.

Two apps, one screen.

It’s slick, but getting there takes some learning—and, unfortunately, it’s available only in some apps.

Usefulness: B–

15. Bixby voice control

Bixby is Samsung’s version of Siri or Google Assistant. It’s so important, it gets its own dedicated button on the left edge of the phone—which you can’t reassign to another function.

Which is too bad, because at the moment, Bixby doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t take spoken questions, like Siri or Assistant does. Samsung says that’s coming soon. (Meanwhile, you can always use Google Assistant, which is still there.)

Samsung says that once Bixby is activated, it’ll be much smarter than Siri or Assistant—that you’ll be able to give it far more complex commands. For example, if you’re looking at a map, you can say, “Capture this and send it to mom.”

Samsung also says, though, that apps must be rewritten to respond to Bixby commands—and only 10 apps will be controllable in this way when Bixby goes live.

Usefulness: Unknown

16. Bixby Home

A second feature, confusingly also called Bixby, is a nearly perfect copycat of Google Now: A scrolling list of “cards” that present information you might find useful right now, based on the time and your location: weather, appointments, headlines. Why is it necessary for a phone to have two copies of the same thing?

Bixby Home is a fairly pointless duplicate of Google Now.

That’s always been a downside of Samsung’s phones, which already come with two photo apps, two web browsers, and so on. Why bother duplicating Google’s good work?

Usefulness: D

17. Bixby Vision

Yes, there’s a third feature called Bixby. This one is built into the Camera app. You can point the phone at a landmark and see details about it, supplied by Foursquare; at a product to get shopping information, supplied by Amazon (AMZN); at any image to be shown similar ones, from Pinterest; at a wine-bottle label for ratings and details, from Vivino; or at foreign-language writing for a translation, supplied by Google Translate.

The best feature of the long-dead Amazon Fire phone lives on.

Last week, Google announced that the same feature is coming to Android. So once again, you’ll have two identical versions of the same feature.

Usefuness: B

18. Samsung Health

This new, surprisingly complete app automatically tracks your steps, workouts, and (if you have a Samsung smartwatch that you wear at night) sleep; it also offers places to manually record your weight, food, blood glucose, water, caffeine, and so on.

In a novel twist, the app also lets you have an instant video conference with an actual, board-certified doctor for $60 (courtesy of American Well), which your insurance may or may not cover—great for getting immediate help or refilling a prescription.

Usefulness: A–, if you’re into that sort of thing

19. Dex Station

For $150, you can buy a special dock that lets you connect your phone to a big monitor, mouse, and keyboard. Your phone becomes the CPU of a PC!

The long-dead Motorola Atrix lives on in the Dex.

Unfortunately, many apps don’t work right on the big screen, and there’s the whole question of, “Why?”

Usefulness: C

Older Features

Many of Galaxy’s features aren’t new in the S8, but are still unmatched by the iPhone. A few examples:

20. Cool gestures

The Galaxy phone is the shortcut lover’s idea of heaven. You can turn on all kinds of super cool gesture-based shortcuts, like these:

Swipe the fingerprint reader to open Notifications

Smart Stay (the screen stays on as long as you’re looking at it)

Press the Power button twice to fire up the camera

Wipe the edge of your hand across the screen to take a screenshot (which you can then annotate or crop)

Direct Call (hold the phone to ear to auto-dial the person whose card is on screen)

Smart Alert (when you pick up the phone, it vibrates if notifications are waiting)

Easy Mute (silence the ringer by placing the phone face down—in a meeting, say)

Send an SOS to designated contacts (press the Power button three times)

Answer a call by pressing the Volume Up key

During video playback, drag up/down for volume adjustments, left/right for brightness. Double-tap to pause.

These gestures erase a lot of the fussiness of trying to get things done on a tiny, no-mouse device.

Usefulness: A+

21. Quicker charging

The S8’s quick-charging technology (unchanged since last year’s model) gives you a full charge in about 1.5 hours, as long as the screen isn’t on. That’s about half the time of an iPhone 7 Plus.

Usefulness: A+

22. “Wireless” pad charger

You can charge your S8 by setting it onto a Qi charging pad (under $15). It takes twice as long to charge that way, but saves you the plugging and unplugging of a cable. Grab and go.

Rumor has it that the iPhone 8 will offer “wireless” charging, too.

Usefulness: A

23. Samsung Pay

Loop Pay was a phone dongle that could trick a credit-card reader into thinking that you’d actually swiped a card through it. In 2015, Samsung bought Loop and built its technology into its Galaxy phones.

(Here’s my review.)

It’s hard to believe. You wave the phone near the card-reader slot, up to a couple of inches away, and — beep! — you’ve just paid.

This is nothing like Apple Pay and Android Pay, which work only at checkout terminals that have been upgraded to work with them. In the big picture, there just aren’t very many places to use Apple Pay and Android Pay.

But Samsung Pay works almost everywhere that fine credit cards are swiped—90% of all checkout counters.

Usefulness: A

24. Always-on screen

The phone’s screen never goes fully dark. When it’s “asleep,” you still see the current time, battery charge, and notification summaries.

The S8’s screen is almost never fully dark.

“Won’t that eat the battery up?” Yes, a few percent; you can turn the feature off if you like. But it’s kind of handy, especially if you use your phone as a watch.

Usefulness: A

25. Smart Unlock

This is an Android feature, not a Samsung feature, but it’s cool: You can set things up so that as long as the phone is in a certain place (like your home), within range of a certain Bluetooth device (like your Fitbit [FIT]), or on your person (based on your body motion), it won’t keep locking. You won’t need a password, fingerprint, or whatever to unlock it.

Obviously, you won’t turn this on if you work at, you know, the NSA. But when you’re alone at home, why shouldn’t you enjoy a little convenience?

Usefulness: A

26. Headphone jack

Yep. Samsung managed to create a waterproof phone without sacrificing the headphone jack. So much for Apple’s “courage.”

Usefulness: A

27. Expansion slot

You can outfit your S8 with a tiny micro SD card for additional storage—lucky, since there’s only one S8 model (with 64 gigs of memory). The memory-card thing isn’t quite as good as built-in storage, because the phone treats it as an external drive, and it’s up to you to manage which data and apps get stored in which place, and some apps can’t be on the card. But for photo and video storage—awesome.

Usefulness: A–

The counterpunch

Of course, the iPhone has a long list of its own exclusives, like stereo speakers, a pressure-sensitive screen (press harder for more options), an optical zoom on the camera (on the Plus), built-in storage options up to 256 gigabytes, and twice the storage (128 gb) for the same price.

Above all, there’s the software—iOS 10—and the Apple ecosystem. Apple’s gotten more feature-happy of late, but it’s still the world leader in simplicity and coherence. You would never catch Apple bloating up your screens with duplicate apps and junkware. Apple’s apps are far more consistent in design and operation. You’ve got the Apple Stores to visit for on-the-spot fixes and help. You’ve got the glorious flexibility of sending iMessages instead of short, limited texts.

And then there’s the tight integration between Macs and iPhones. You know: Copy some text on your phone, paste it one second later on your laptop. Read a web article on the subway on your phone, sit down at your Mac at home to see the same site. That kind of thing.

In a way, then, all of these comparison articles (including this one) are missing a key point. They’re interesting for monitoring the state of the art, but they shouldn’t be called, “Which one should you buy?” Moving from the Apple ecosystem to the Google/Samsung ecosystem, or vice versa is a big, expensive hassle that not many people undertake. You have to re-buy all your apps. You have to buy all new chargers. You have to do a lot of relearning.

But clearly, the Galaxy S8’s hardware is a beast. A huge leap beyond the iPhone 7. So the ultimate experience would be the hardware features of the Galaxy S8, running the software and ecosystem of the iPhone.

Well, who knows? If the rumors are right, we’ll be getting something like that in the iPhone 8.

More from David Pogue:

Inside the World’s Greatest Scavenger Hunt: Part 1    •  Part 2   •   Part 3  •  Part 4  •  Part 5

The most important announcements from Google’s big developer’s conference

Google Home’s mastermind has no intention of losing to Amazon

Now I get it: Ransomware

Google exec explains how Google Assistant just got smarter

Amazon’s Alexa calling is like a Jetsons version of the home phone

David Pogue, tech columnist for Yahoo Finance, welcomes nontoxic comments in the comments section below. On the web, he’s davidpogue.com. On Twitter, he’s @pogue. On email, he’s poguester@yahoo.com. You can read all his articles here, or you can sign up to get his columns by email. 

[etechwire-blog]

The best free screen capture software 2018

New Post has been published on https://www.etechwire.com/the-best-free-screen-capture-software-2018/

The best free screen capture software 2018

There’s no need to use multiple programs to capture, edit and annotate screen grabs – this free screen capture software can do it all.

Snapping a screengrab is rarely as simple as just taking a picture of your desktop. There’s a reason behind every screenshot – whether it’s posterity, demonstration or preservation – which means each particular case needs something special.

That’s why we’ve selected our top five tools for doing more with your screenshots, like adding annotations and fancy adornments, using custom hotkeys, or even accurately capturing specific screen regions without the need to resort to additional software to get the job done. The days of hitting the Print Screen key and pasting your shots into Microsoft Paint are over.

How do I take screen captures on a Mac?

We’ve covered Windows apps almost exclusively here, but don’t feel left out if you’re using a different operating system. On macOS, there’s no need for a separate screenshot tool – you can do everything with keyboard shortcuts. [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[3] captures the whole screen, [Ctrl]+[Shift]+[4] captures a region, and there are many other edge cases described on Apple’s support pages.

Screenshot Captor is a real overachiever, with extra webcam and document-scanning tools, plus a host of editing options

1. Screenshot Captor

Screen capture software that does much more than the basics with webcam support, annotations and editing

Huge choice of capture options

Built-in editing tools

Highly customizable

Quirky interface

Screenshot Captor seems to have ideas a little above its station. Far from just being a screenshot app – and, rest easy, it does do that – it’ll grab images from your webcam, and it even includes a full suite of scanning tools to make sure your documents look their best.

But those advanced features don’t stop there. Ever wanted to capture the contents of a scrolling window? It’ll do that automatically, and even trim the margins for you. Need to capture a screen region of a fixed size? Piece of cake. Splicing areas out of screenshots, annotating, interfacing with advanced image editors, blurring areas you don’t want seen? It’s all here.

If there’s a downside, Screenshot Captor little esoteric in terms of its general interface, but the important bits are all well explained and easy to grasp. It’s donationware, so while it’s free to use, make sure you chip a little bit into the pot if Screenshot Captor is something you use regularly.

With SnapDraw Free, there’s no need for a separate image editor – it can annotate, crop and edit images captured from your screen or webcam in any way you see fit

2. SnapDraw Free

A screen capture tool with great post-processing effects

Excellent editing tools

Lots of capture options

FTP and email sharing

If you’re capturing screenshots for something that needs to be well presented – a user manual, perhaps – it pays to put in a little effort. Or at least you would if SnapDraw Free didn’t do absolutely everything for you: borders, backgrounds and even awesome-looking fading reflections are all available by simply clicking a check box. What’s more, you can dig down when it comes to capturing, taking shots of everything from multiple monitors at once all the way down to a single object within a window.

It’s not quite a fire-and-forget screenshot tool, but that’s not a negative. There are ton of annotation features, you can layer individually captured windows and elements on top of a single screenshot, and there are even 3D transformation tools available to give your shots some action.

Oh, and you can even automatically upload your images to an FTP server or email them. That’s a lot of features.

Gadwin PrintScreen is simple to use, and so convenient you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it

3. Gadwin PrintScreen

An install-and-ignore screenshot tool that’s easily extendable

Customizable export options

Simple controls

No editing tools

Gadwin PrintScreen is the screenshot app we regularly turn to here at TechRadar, and for good reason. It’s streamlined and extremely convenient, sitting quietly in the system tray until you need it.

When you do, it’s either bound to a hotkey of your choice – handy if you need the mouse cursor in shot – or accessible from a handy auto-hiding control panel that disappears when you fire off a screenshot, capture a window, or snip a rectangular area.

Annotation and image editing is sadly locked away in its paid-for Professional edition (US$24.95, about £18.94, AU$33.35), but Gadwin Printscreen doesn’t leave you entirely stranded; it can automatically add shadows or watermarks to your images, save them in a number of formats, resize them automatically, or run an image editor of your choice immediately after capture.

The latter ability means you can effectively extend its abilities – point it at Microsoft Paint for rudimentary sketching and cropping, or a more powerful free image editor if you wish.

PC gaming platform and marketplace Steam has its own screen capture tool that works with any game you’re playing

4. Steam

Capturing games – any games – made easy and free

Can capture non-Steam games

Works with hardware acceleration

Only for games

Don’t be too baffled. Yes, Steam is primarily a way of buying and downloading games. But it also applies its own overlay when you’re playing games, one which (among other things) allows you to take screenshots.

If you’ve ever tried to take game shots using Windows’ built-in tools (or even some of the other software we’ve listed here) you’ll know why this is important – the advanced graphics modes that games apply usually leave you with a grey image and the moment completely lost.

You’re not restricted only to games available through Steam, either – just about everything you own can be added to your Steam library manually, and as long as you launch it through Steam you’ll get the benefit of its overlay, which defaults to using [F12] as a screenshot key.

Shots are usually saved to an obscure folder which differs for each game, so check up on them through Steam’s View > Screenshots menu, then right-click and select ‘Show on disk’ to find out where they are.

Windows has its own built-in screen capture tool. It has fewer features than the downloadable alternatives, but might be all you need for simple tasks

5. Windows Snipping Tool

The built-in grabber you might not even know about

Built into Windows

Simple annotation tools

Limited customization

Included with the majority of Windows systems since the XP days, the Snipping Tool is an oft-ignored app tucked away in the deepest recesses of the Start menu.

It’s simple, but it has the power to take useful screen captures. Not only can you grab fullscreen images, rectangles and the current active window, it’s also capable of performing free-form snips: drag your mouse around the area on screen you’re interested in highlighting and it’ll bring in only those pixels within your sketch.

You can scribble on your shots with rudimentary pen and highlighter tools, set a delay on captures if you need to set something specific up, but that’s literally it: the Snipping Tool is very, very basic when it comes down to it, and most of the time you’ll be better off using Windows’ built-in screenshot tools unless you want to capture a very specific region.

[evemap]

Evaluation

When we were given this brief I wasn’t as worried about completing it as the storyboard because I thought I could have more fun with it instead of it just being something I knew I would find difficult. It gave me more of a chance to learn a bit more about motion graphics which is one of the main reasons I chose this course. I’ve been really interested in learning about it for a while so it was a really good opportunity to attempt the motion graphics side using tutorials online and asking for help from lecturers so that I could get a bit more experience in it. I was slightly nervous at starting because of my lack of experience in After Effects and Illustrator and at some points I would feel a bit demotivated to carry on because I would get stuck on how to carry out an idea I had in my head yet I carried on and I’m really happy with the end result because it looks how I wanted it to and some parts even turned out better than I thought like the end comp with the lightbulb draining out and my initials being revealed so i’m overall happy.

After struggling with ideas for a bit and trying to decide between two I finally decided on the motion graphics idea mainly for the reason I mentioned above but also because I think the style would turn out a lot better. I think my final video does have a nice consistent style which I think would’ve been more difficult with the other idea. I also thought the motion graphics wouldn’t take too long to do so I could try and finish it quickly however this was not the case at all, I had to learn a lot of new things which did take time but I think it definitely paid off in the end because now I’ve learnt that skill and so I’m making some progress in After Effects. Although I’ve also learnt that I still need to practice ball bouncing in After Effects using the velocity tools, I don’t know why I find it so difficult to adjust them but I can never get it perfect.

After looking through my research I discovered the kind of style I liked which was using basic shapes to create expressions and objects in a simple way, cutting everything down to the important elements. For example the object transitions videos were really helpful in showing me that the overall transition works better if the objects were simplified down completely to the absolute essentials for example a phone could just be two rectangles inside each other and this would make the transition a lot easier. I didn’t use a lot of object transitions in my video mainly just the lightbulb comp which I think turned out quite nice but if I had time to improve it then I would’ve eased the velocities a lot more and made the shapes fit together slightly better.

What I found helpful for this project was making the list of all of my interests and doing the little drawings of them because it helped me to visualise the things I like to give me some ideas of how to create the animated persona. Another thing that was useful that I should continue doing for the rest of my future projects is making a storyboard of how I wanted the objects to transition into the next shot. This was useful because I could spend time thinking solely about what I wanted the objects to do. I needed to have this time to just focus on the timeline because then I could just focus on creating it instead of having to do both at the same time trying to plan what I’m doing whilst I’m doing it.

For the video, the list of interests I wanted to include was quite long so I didn’t manage to include everything about my personality that I wanted in the 20 second time frame. I wanted to include more about the creative side of my personality like photography and also the media side like films and TV but I couldn’t think of a smooth transition into the rest of the objects. The interests I ended up using included table tennis because it’s one of my favourite sports and I thought it wasn’t something that everyone else will have in their animated persona, the Staffordshire knot to represent where I came from as Stafford is my home I wanted to show that it’s something I care about, pasta because it’s one of my favourite foods it was either that or pie but pasta is a lot easier to transition and the end which was just a lightbulb draining it’s light out to represent my struggle with generating ideas. I quite like the ending, I included the idea that I got from researching motion graphics videos - adding my signature at the end. I think it was important for this project to include a nice little personal touch that I don’t think a lot of people will use.

I also made a lot of subtle references in the video that only a finite group of people would get because I wanted it to be a bit cryptic. One of the references was the spaghetti, as well as being my favourite food it is a little reference to one of my favourite TV shows, ‘It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’, the quote ‘What’s your spaghetti policy?’ is sort of an ongoing joke. Another reference is the intro where I cover the 'V’ in 'EVE’ so it looks like EE. One of my favourite bands is called Everything Everything and they use the name EE for short so I like how that turned out. I could've made this more obvious by including music notes on the sides which I'm annoyed I didn't have time to include. This would also show my love for music. Another reference is the font for EVE which I mentioned in my process was to represent my love for film and TV by using the Netflix font because I didn’t couldn’t fit in the pictograms I wanted to for that it kind of made up for it. Also, I kind of wanted my initials at the end to be animated so that the video ended like an old TV screen when you turn it off where it does a little flash in the centre. This didn’t turn out very obvious so it’s only a very slight reference.

What I don’t like about my animated persona is the tempo of the whole thing, it was okay at the start but you can tell towards the end I just gradually start running out of time so the clips keep getting faster and faster which makes it a bit confusing. I also don’t like how abrupt some of the movements are because I didn’t have enough time to adjust them I wanted to hand in a finished product but I don’t think it’s the best I could possibly do I think I could improve it a lot with time. I’m definitely going to try and improve it in my spare time because I want to see if I can make it any better. I also don’t like the table tennis composition because I told myself I’d go back to the ball to fix the velocity so it was smoother but I didn’t have time. Also the bat movement isn’t very good because I wasn’t entirely sure how to use the 3D tool so it looks a bit messy. I’d also improve the zoom into the brain so it maybe has blurred edges when it zooms or use the 3D tool to improve it because it’s a bit too quick and comes out of nowhere. I also don’t like how I had to speed up the end because it all feels a bit rushed. The music isn’t as sound synced as I would like it to be but I could improve this easily I think.

Again for this project I struggled with time management. I really need to start getting on top of things because it’s very stressful having to do all nighters to finish the work. The thing is I think I have too much time and completely underestimate how long it will take to do so I just end up rushing things at the end. This really isn’t the best way to work because it means I can’t produce my best work because I have to hand in a worse version so I need to improve on this. I think it happened because I didn’t make the timetable like I said I would after the storyboard project so I wasn’t as set on doing work at certain times. Another frustrating thing was that I had to go into the uni to complete the work because I have a very bad laptop that doesn’t let me download software (this needs to be sorted) but because it closes at 10 it means I couldn’t stay up late working on the actual sequence which is all I wanted to do to get it done. I’m going to invest in a new laptop soon so that I can stay up late working because I feel a lot more productive at night.

The main thing I’ve taken from this project is actually the skills I’ve picked up from using the different types of software and tools within them. I had never used Illustrator or After Effects in this much depth before. I genuinely think this short project has helped me a lot as I think I’ve picked up a lot of useful tips and tricks and shortcuts that I will need to improve on in the future but I feel a lot better about the software and am more comfortable using it than before when I had no experience. It was also really fun to use and to try and teach myself the basics because I know this is the software we will be using in the future. I really liked how I could show my ideas in the way I wanted to. After watching so many motion graphics videos I thought it would be very complex but although some parts were difficult I still think after watching a professional motion graphics video that I could still have a good go at replicating it because I realised it’s all just manipulating shapes in a creative way really. Overall, I really enjoyed this project because I had fun making it and learning new things and I think the end result turned out a lot better than it could’ve been so I’m happy with the result although I know it could still be improved on a lot more.

[rtawngs20815]

Retouching Interiors in Lightroom and Photoshop: A Crash Course

Here’s a typical quick interior photography assignment for a Swiss brand called VIU Eyewear. They contacted me to create three images for their website/social networks. The only rule was to stay in the same style than their other images on their “Stores” page (something simple, white, and luminous with an emphasis on interior design). Here’s how I shot it and edited it.

Shooting

The location of the store is in Geneva, Switzerland. I took my Fujifilm X-Pro2 with two prime lenses—the XF 16mm f/1.4 and the XF 35mm f/1.4—as well as a Cullmann tripod with a Benro B4 ball head. For this kind of job, you don’t really need a zoom lens because you can move around and you work on a tripod anyway.

It is not a dedicated store, it’s a shop-in-shop, so I had to reflect that. That is why I also included in the frame parts of the surrounding shops (to show it’s inside another store). Here are some of the images I shot there, the ones in red are the final images, the blue ones just have a basic style and white balance applied.

Editing in Lightroom

Here’s one of the RAW image imported in Lightroom (compressed .RAF file, I don’t use DNG). As you can see the white balance is a bit wrong, I had my white balance on Kelvin at 3600K. But that’s not a big problem.

I set up my XF 16mm to f/11 on most images for two reasons: the first is that I wanted a bit of glow around the highlights (tiny sun stars); the second reason is that, on this particular lens, if you go beyond f/11 it starts to get soft at the edges.

I also had my exposure compensation set to -1EV in order not to blow the very bright highlights (using metering mode: multi) and I used a 2-second timer (to make sure there was no shake due to pressing the shutter button). Now, let’s look at what needs to be fixed in that first image…

Before starting to edit further my colors/tones/light etc… I always start by removing things I don’t need in the shot.

First thing and probably the most important, especially for interiors, is to fix your verticals (look at the column, it’s not straight). For this, I use the Transform tab under Develop in Lightroom or use DxO Viewpoint (standalone or Photoshop plugin). Once that’s done, you can start editing the rest.

Here I removed a bunch of things: the fire detectors, the speakers on the ceiling, scratches on the floor, and the electrical plates on the bottom right, for starters. Some of the displays also had defects and small metal plates (to put a glass panel). Before taking that shot, I also made sure that all the glasses were lined up correctly, that there was nothing on the table (removed flyers and a plant) and also that the seats were lined up under the table.

If you can fix it before taking the shot, do it.

To remove elements, I first start in Lightroom with the spot removal tool; for more complex things I move to Photoshop (more details later).

Tip: deactivate the noise reduction and sharpening when you edit your images in Lightroom because it slows everything down. Create one preset that applies the default sharpen/noise reduction and one preset that turns it off so you can quickly toggle it off/on.

Local Adjustments

As you can see, the role of the local adjustments I made was mainly to fix the darker parts of the image— to add light where there was not enough, without using flashes. Because I’m shooting at ISO 200, and because Fujifilm files are ISO-Invariant (read more about that here), I can easily push the exposure and shadows without creating too much noise.

Here are the settings of that image. Basic stuff: I fixed the WB and increased the exposure a bit, saved highlights and shadows, and reduced the orange/yellow color cast. In term of sharpening, I’m using Fujifilm RAF files so I don’t really need to change anything, no need for noise reduction (200 ISO). Also, I set my camera calibration to Classic chrome.

Editing in Photoshop

Now that I have a “proper” image, I export it as a 16bit TIFF file and open it in Photoshop. Actually, I export two files: the one you saw above (that still has a strong yellow tint) and another one with vibrance/saturation and yellow/orange toned down even further—an almost black and white version of my image.

Here’s the difference between those two images:

By having those two variations of the same image on two layers, I was able to bring back some of the “yellow and warm” tones from image 1 onto image 2.

Here’s an example, the display on the right. The first thing I did was to add a bit more light inside the top part of the display, but I also made a mask to bring back proper colors from the glasses. Notice how the glasses stand out more on the right image? That’s because they are more saturated.

Same thing with the wood floor and the chairs/table leg. I used the floor color from image 1 and applied it to image 2. These seem like small details, but when you look at the overall final image, they really make a difference.

All I had left to do was to change the TV screen (and its reflection in the mirror). The client provided me with this simple .jpeg file:

The first thing to do is to create a rectangle over the existing screen, approximately the same size/ratio than the screen size. Then you convert this rectangle into a smart object, double-click on it to open it then paste your image (the client .jpeg). After that, you can deform your smart object (the rectangle) using transform > perspective (or torsion, or free deform) to match the TV screen perspective and size.

If you need to change the image afterward on the screen you can still double click your smart object, paste another image and it will update. So for example if your client sends you another image to use, you don’t have to paste it, deform it again etc. It can be auto updated.

Below you’ll see the before and after. It’s not just a simple copy paste > deform. I made sure to keep the little imperfections around the screen, and I masked the reflections and the spotlight back in. Because without those imperfections and without those reflections it’s clearly visible that it’s a fake screen.

I also changed the contrast/lightness, blurred the screen a bit, and added noise (to match the original image).

I also made sure to correct the reflected image of the TV screen:

Tip: if possible, ask the people of the store to turn off the TV screens, this way you’ll have a black screen containing only the reflections of the spotlights/environment. By copy pasting that black screen on a new layer on top of your “fake” screen in soft light blending mode, you can easily add back the real reflections.

Final Images

Here are the final before and afters:

Exporting for the Web

I saved 1600px JPEG files to use on my portfolio and I wanted them to be extra sharp, like really crisp.

In Photoshop you can just do “save for the Web,” then put 1600px in the width and set the quality to “bicubic sharper.” In Lightroom, you can just export as JPEG and set “output sharpening” to “screen” and amount “low” or “standard” (I use “low” 99% of the time).

If you want something even sharper than this, you can use Intensify on a Mac. Set micro-sharpness to 100% and add some micro-contrast (they call it “pro contrast”). It won’t make a huge difference, but you’ll definitely have a more detailed image.

About the author: Samuel Zeller is a freelance photographer based in Geneva, Switzerland. He’s also a Fujifilm ambassador and the editor of Fujifeed magazine. You can find more of his work on his website or by following him on Facebook and Instagram. This post was also published here.

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[tomleegreen]

TRACKING, OH NO.

Okay ok so i know i wasnt meant to track any footage for my piece, im not 100% sure why as i wasnt told a reason, but there was one shot that needed tracking in order to work, even though it was on a tripod, and that was a screen replacement shot. 

pretty much i started off with this. 

theoretically, i should have put a blue screen on the phone so that i could have keyed it seperatly, but hey, we cant all win. so anyways, i worked around it.

so this shot had a lot of problems, and i didnt really think about it at the time, i just shot and must have thought i could edit it. 

originally i tried tracking the footage in after effects but placing a marker on each crosshair, but unfortunatly, the hand completely ruins everything in its way, including the markers, making the track pretty impossible. 

I watched a tutorial on how to do corner pin tracking user the tracker in after effects.

you see that in the video, it works perfectly, but he doesnt have the problem of anything obstructing the view. So anyways i tried it but as i knew, it didnt work.

i placed a marker on each cross and the played the track forward, but as soon as the hand came. 

as you can see, the markers dont know how to react and go all over the place, meaning its impossible to use, unless i wanted to do it manually ofcourse, but i just dont have the time for that. 

So i had to recruit to what i knew. 

MOCHA 

i trimed the clip to the legnth i needed and rendered it out to apple pro res, as mocha doesnt open MXF files, so i opened the footage. 

i then used the X-Spline tool to draw a mask around the phone. 

once i done this, i then had to, like after effects, place markers on each corner of the screen this time, instead of the crosshairs. 

after clicking ‘show planar surface’ it gave me a rectangle to align. 

I then had this. All i done now was let Mocha do its magic and track forwards. 

the difference with mocha? it uses all the data from the other markers to precisely keep any markers that are not in view, in pin point location, this is a screen grab from half ay through the track when the hand obstructs the view. 

PERFECT.

all i had to do now was export the tracking data to a null in after effects and then my screen replacement is done. 

i clicked export tracking data, and then

made sure that i click the option with motion blur, as my footage has a lot of blur in it. 

Then, after creating a new solid in after effects, i made sure that the marker was at the start of the comp.

and after pasting the data, da daaaaa.

screen replacement done. and thats how i done it. All i had to do now was key the original footage and place it on top of the screen and then the hand will be in front of the screen. 

the only thing i needed to fix now was the motion blur, as the key made it look blotchy. i used a technique geraint showed us, Pixel motion blur. 

i applied this to an adjustment layer on top of all of the footage and the result is a realistic motion blur.

screen replacement, Done.