#not…actual character design for actual ears

[lightandfellowship]

I actually find the topic of "Nomura's evolving art style as he takes on more and more responsibility at Square (and subsequently has less time to Do Stuff)" really fascinating.

Like, If you compare his art from the KH1-DDD era to his current day art, I think there's a noticable difference to his approach: how many steps there are in his art process, how he chooses to finish a piece, and the shift from a clean digital style to a more organic traditional one.

He used to use very clean, black lineart; bold colors; and more instances of defined/hard shading for that digital, almost cell-shaded or vector kinda look. Nowadays he goes for a more sketchy + watercolor style with pencil lineart, broad washes of faded color, and color shading that's a bit more blended and simplified in places (relying more on the pencil shading to create distinct shadows), with the hard edges more often reserved for scattered, bright highlights. (He's made art like this in the past eras too, such as the KH main menu arts which all have a watercolor quality to them, but the lineart was a bit more defined then and less sketchy, and thus slightly different from his current stuff.)

I think the Dark Road key art is a very good example of his current art style. The sketchy, almost brown lineart. The watercolor quality that emerges where two colors meet and overlap. A little desaturated and earthy. Color shading that's very broad, soft, and loose, with sharp highlights here and there.

Both styles have their merits (I personally love this sketchy era of his), but I think it's pretty likely that he adopted this as his "main" art style in order to adapt to time crunch. He doesn't need to do time-consuming lineart and precise shading anymore; he can use the original sketch as the lineart instead. Heck, he can fill in a bunch of the shading via pencil during this sketching phase to save even more time, and then can paint in a more watercolor-y kind of way that allows him to color in quicker, broader strokes.

And then there's the occasional art mistake that has become a bit more frequent in recent years, by my estimation. Which I imagine, again, is due to running out of time to notice/fix those mistakes. Things like Ephemer's arms being a bit too long in this UX art, the Kingdom Key being slightly off-model in this anniversary art, or the ears on this Mickey Mouse symbol being two different sizes on this Utada album art.

(Which isn't to say that he hasn't made art mistakes in the previous eras, for example he initially got the colors of Riku's shirt mixed up in the Re:CoM cover art before fixing it, but I still think the mistakes were a bit less frequent back then.)

And like, hey. I draw, too. Amatuerishly, but I do. I don't blame Nomura for possibly needing to change his approach to making art in order to meet deadlines, nor do I blame him for these little art mistakes that ended up falling through the cracks. I imagine he simply doesn't have the time anymore now that his job has shifted from (primarily) being a character designer/illustrator to (primarily) being a director of multiple, simultaneous projects. Or maybe I'm totally wrong about this and his art evolution had nothing to do with time crunch, who knows. I think his current art style is gorgeous either way!

Anyway, I just think this is an interesting example of someone taking their art and adapting it to a difficult and highly limiting situation, experimenting with new things and finding the means to still make art even when you have less time to do. Also a great example that professionals are human and will make mistakes even in professional products, and it's not the end of the world, it just happens. If you ever obsess over a mistake in your art...maybe take solace in knowing that it happens to everyone. Even people who have been in their field for a very long time.

[tunglo]

I would so love to watch/read that! Here's my own little bit of personal history with it:

I went in from Gotham after getting a human/android fic prompt based on the game (after which I ended up watching a run through on Youtube in German, a language I hadn't done more than read an occasional news article in since high school, and that was my only actual engagement with the gameplay...), fully expecting to write Hank/Connor, but I just could not deal with Cole's death. Like, it's a cornerstone of Hank's story, but I can't bear to think about losing a child. (Parenthood ruined true crime for me too. Just gotta stick my fingers in my ears and find something where everyone was an adult instead...)

But! There were a few people trying out Gavin/RK900 instead and, now I'm back on my wireplay bullshit, so I figure I'll give that a go. For ages I had been thinking about writing some Paul/MX-43 (Almost Human) fic but, you know, you've gotta get a new characterisation right, work out how an MX would *think*, etc. Here, on the other hand, I can write basically the same dynamic with little to no restrictions on how I want to characterise, backstory, etc, etc.

At the time there were only a few pages of Reed900 fics on A03, and a lot of them were quite heavy BDSM stuff that just wasn't my thing. I like my characters to be kind of sickeningly, adoringly in love with each other after the obligatory enemy stage - so RK900 would have to drop the cold characterisation that had been gaining favour.

Then I read a Hank/Connor fic (cos that was still overwhelmingly the main ship), I can't remember who by, that was genderswap with the idea that Connor's face was fixed into a polite smile and the resulting restrictions that placed on her.

That! That was the answer. RK900 just had extreme resting bitch face. He's not created to be public facing, it really doesn't matter to Cyberlife whether he can express emotion or not. The more android the better, in my book.

Re. the name. Nines was already widely used (this was late July 2018) but I didn't particularly like it. The designation was nine hundred. It was early enough that I didn't feel compelled to use it though, especially as what I wanted to write wasn't going to fit with much of the existing fic, so I shortened to RK instead.

I didn't really expect to get much response because, like I say, the 'norm' for the ship seemed to be pushing in a different direction and, more to the point, I'm essentially playing in a sandpit with OCs. But, to my delight, my Tumblr inbox quickly filled up with all kinds of prompts for me to write and I churned out nearly 200k before exhausting it and moving onto the next thing.

I was already on that when the first short film was announced, but I had to come back to watch that and the follow ups. It was so wild to see how much the general characterisation, etc, had changed since the beginning. I feel like, if he had the ability, the ruthless RK900 I started reading about would be sick at the thought of the character he became - even if I infinitely preferred it! xD

I need someone to make a 3+ hour video essay about the history Reed900

The origins, where it came from

The first art, fic, other fan content made for it

The most popular head-canons, Nines getting a name, different interpretations of the personalities

How the most agreed upon quality of Gavin Reed, loving coffee, comes from a scene, where the importance of him asking coffee is minuscule and it is not even confirmed that he even likes it, and it leading to the other super popular head-canon of him having insomnia

The mods and modding community

The most influential fics

The comics, and the shear amount of dubbed vids of them on youtube

The movie, the short film and the behind the scenes stuff for it. Neil Newbon engaging with the cast

It becoming the top DBH ship, with basically nonexistent characters

[crowngamer901]

My Splatoon OCs' GrandFest outfits: The Concepts and the Final Models

(I’m looking at the last three with the names and I’m realizing how bad my hand-writing looks lol)

(Also I have no clue how long of a post Tumblr will allow me to make so this may be broken up into multiple posts/reblogs)

So a while back, everyone was designing GrandFest outfits for their OCs. Me, being a Blender user, was like "WHOA THAT'S SUCH A COOL IDEA I WANT TO JOIN IN!!!!" but obviously I have no modeling-from-scratch skills yet. The only thing I know how to do in Blender is how to attach Splatoon 2 clothing to a Splatoon 3 model and how to use Edit Mode to cut away pieces from a model.

BUT I WAS DETERMINED TO DO SOMETHING REGARDLESS OF MY ART SKILLS

So I quickly rendered the first render with Autumn (who wears a custom hairstyle of Haircut + Megalobraid here), Jewel, Derek, Monica, and Hunter - my agents - with the intent of just making outfits for them. I saved the aforementioned render to my iPad, opened Procreate, and began drawing. I wasn’t really going for any kind of theme for any of the outfits, and wanted to do some really custom clothing that didn’t exist in-game. I did, however, take inspiration from some of the clothing that already existed but that was about it.

It took two days to finish (as you can tell by Jewel and Derek having one date and Autumn, Monica, and Hunter having a different date) but it was fun! So fun, in fact, that I decided to make more outfits. 10 MORE OUTFITS, IN FACT. But that comes later, as one day I got bored and decided to actually attempt to model the outfits in Blender! And that was also fun! Yeah, it took the whole day but more importantly it was fun! So fun, in fact, that it only pushed me to make those 10 more outfits. So now we have everyone else’s outfit concepts (with actual existing clothing in mind), and the resulting Blender versions.

BEHOLD!

Jewel/Agent 3 (with a bonus bald pic showing her earrings)

Derek/Agent 5 and Kelly, with their matching rings (I LOVE THIS SHIP SO MUCH)

Found family brother-sister duo of I-Wei and Priscilla

Autumn/Agent 4 (with her usual hair) and Monica/Agent 8 with matching glasses

Hunter/Neo Agent 3 and Stitches, the two shortest characters in the line-up

Alecs, Kimberly, Ezra, and Morgan

And last but not least, Jeremy and Kaden

(Everyone's expressions in these screenshots match the ones I picked for the drawings)

I am SO HYPED to actually render everyone in their outfits but first I gotta go texture the GrandFest venues *cries*

Happy to answer any questions you might have about their outfits (like what clothing I used for everyone)

[void-tiger]

Mild pet peeve:

Why do animal ears look weird just stuck on humanoid character heads, to the point sometimes they get human ears anyway by accident? Because animal ears aren’t actually stuck to animals’ foreheads, ya walnut!

They’re still on the SIDE of the head then “wrap around” upward! They are HUGE because they’re cone shaped (yes! even your floppy eared doggo! they’re coned under the floppy! They just have less cartilage!) or pod shaped (like a horse or rabbit) or circular (like a bear).

Start the base of the ears on the side of the head slightly above where the mandibles meet then work “outward” from there please I am begging.

Oh, and go scritch a cute kitty’s or doggo’s ears.

[scissorcraft]

post-canon siffrin design!!!! might change it up more of course but!!!! yeah!!!!

he does HAVE something to represent odile and bonnie too,,, it's not just his partners (romantic & queerplatonic), he's got his family too, i just don't know where to put them yet :) so for now assume he is carrying them in his multitude of pockets!!

[brainworms-all-night-long]

What a funny looking little fella that definitely doesn't have any ulterior motives by gaining your trust and absolute loyalty :]

[anonymouscheeses]

Fascinated x normal

"Do you need to throw up?"

"Nnnnyoe"

Random jmpscare doodle dump. Barely even doodles but like here ya go anyway 🥰

[blaithnne]

Oh so I’m supposed to choose one outfit for The Goldie O’Gilt? Get a fucking grip

Meet the Cast!

╰┈➤ Canon ☄. *. ⋆

→ Scrooge McDuff → Matilda McDuff → Hortense McDuff → Qalhata Duiker → Jack Duckworth → Bentina Beakley → LÙ Huifen (pre-caseflies) → LÙ Huifen (post-casefiles) → Ludwig Von Druska → Bradford Butcher

╰┈➤ OCs ☄. *. ⋆

→ Lucrais NicRiada

.ೃ࿐

[17mujipens]

i saw a video about the Queen in Dungeon Meshi and her skin colour. and people in the comments had all sorts of theories on why she and Flamela have such dark skin. and it made me realise that a lot of people haven’t seen this page of the Adventurers Bible:

[sundial-bee-scribbles]

a smile would be nice

[floralstorms]

Ummmm human form Prismo design! whee

[valhallavalgrace]

How are you adjusting to the whole Norse mythology situation?

LEO: I’ve mostly been bugging some of the older einherjar, and Hunding, a little bit, to figure this place out. Do you know how cool it is that some people have been here since the industrial revolution?? There's no way that I'm the first of my dad's kids to make it here. I just don't know who to talk to about it.

((Leo's coping mechanism re: Norse mythology is just hating himself more bc of course he doesn't belong in his own afterlife. but he won't admit that to anyone bc he doesn't know who can be vulnerable with.))

prev ask

[the-casbah-way]

(wip) jedediah from my new au

[pawnguild]

it's national hot dog day!!!

[deva-arts]

zomg... the girls! Sketched out! And a few characters I never showed designs for! haha! I keep thinking about the beach, so this is their swimwear.

I hope to make a full fledged drawing for all of them soon~ then the guys~~

Some newbies are: Aura (blue!) Katya (Gold!) and more of Verra (Green!) We'll eventually see more about them as I draw more things and doodles.

[anini--panini]

oc: Phoebe, Breton TESV Skyrim

Having a Skyrim/The Elder Scrolls oc means that you’ll end up casually writing k!dnapping on your character’s bio and have to roll with it 😓

Anyway Skyrim is actually my comfort game😭😭 i have been obsessed with it and the Elder Scrolls since forever sooo after 1000+ hrs of playing I felt it was about time I illustrated my tesv ocs, starting with the first one ever, Phoebe

Its kind of awkward cuz she started out as my self-insert for the game😓 now she kind of has her own identity tho

(Upset that i cant find a nice poncho/shawl mod ueue)

She’s my main mage DB that i usually pair with kaidan skyrim. she starts out as a prisoner in the Abandoned Prison and then escapes with him (as well as my other ocs that start their adventures there cuz I like to think all my playthroughs happen at the same time)

She introduces herself as a low noble from Highrock, but otherwise doesn’t talk much about who she was, or whether or not she plans to return.