#ohhh this is such neat art

[just-null]

Just curious, have you read a Noritoshi x reader fanfic on Quotev titled Body is one, mind is a million?? It is SO. GOOD. SO. GOOD.

^^^real image of me reading that fic in every chapter

Anon, I need to make out with you rn. Why was this gem hidden from me. Tysm for telling me about this, i will think of nothing else.

heres the link if you want to read it for yourself!

[my rabid ramblings and fanboying under the cut]

FORGIVE ME FOR THE PERSON ILL BECOME ONCE I FINISH READING THIS ALL. IM GONNA TRY SO HARD NOT TO MAKE THIS MY PERSONALITY.

I read the first chapter and intro, and I'm already hooked. Stoic and PINING NORITOSHI??? + TEASING GN READER?????????? I COULD FEEL THE PINING FIRST CHAP IN IM FUCKING DONE.

dude, you have no idea how badly I needed this in my veins. it's so tough finding fics that I like, and this one is so //PUNCHES MYSELF.. man if i tweak how i write for Noritoshi bc of this fic, i'll die. tysm to the writers out there.

IM GONNA GO DELUSIONAL BRO OH MY GOD AFJEK the way Kuzure (the author) wrote Noritoshi to be annoyed by you but grow to love you. its. ITS MY FAVORITE TROPE.. kuzure........ i have to add you to the wall of heros..

[aru-art]

Black dahlias aren't truly black, but rather a very deep shade of crimson. Historically, they represented a warning of treachery and sadness.

Sprouting annually in late spring, these perennials are known to come back time and time again even after succumbing to the harshest winters... 🌱

(blank found here!)

sketch absolutely always has to look better than the final thing doesn't it

[lavenoon]

More Neon and Eclipse from New Horizons by @zelda7999 <333

[moe-broey]

I don't really consider this a spoiler/might not even take this route anyway, but. Sharena Engage active wear color palette. Choose.

Also factoring in my notes from when I flipped through all the chara's outfits to find The Pattern

Okay NOW you can Choose

Another thing you can consider is having the shoes be all one color/Not having the second color stripe accent. I noticed some characters wouldn't have that as part of their palettes! Seemed arbitrary which ones would and which ones wouldn't!

[lesbianraskolnikov]

i wanted to joke about an archive of crime and punishment art but actually..

[gemharvest]

"okay I'm just going in to this wiki for some sprites so I can have a reference" biggest lie my adhd ass can tell myself

[lesbiantvfish]

trick or treat

39/40

Trick roll:false

It is a treat!

Hie, I hope Jax is a acceptable treat ✌️

my first tadc fanart and it’s the grinning sniler. The smiling grinner knows the digital worlds his dinner

[ria-starstruck]

just realized knight lady ocs exist 2 be posed gracefully dramatically elegantly holding swords looking placidly into the distance

[spiral-of-stars]

Here is the reference for Sunpaw, Pestopaw’s best friend! He’s just a silly little sweet boy full of sunshine (haha). Also anxiety. So much anxiety. He is spoiled rotten and coddled by his dads, but encouraged to do better and be braver by Pestopaw and Abyssdream. Despite being a warrior apprentice, he spends a lot of time in the Druid’s den.

[naffeclipse]

Hey it’s been a hot minute! Still haven’t gotten around to ur fanfic, But! When I was looking at past art I found the harpy!yn I did for u and got hit hard with the “I could do Better” inspo so I got this :)!

Slightly more masc this round, pretty happy with it ngl :) (figuring out a color pattern for the torso was surprisingly more difficult than I thought it’d be) also lines r less crunchy! Found a good work around :)!

Also here’s it without the black coloration as it’s easier to see the sketchwork

Okkk byeee :3!!

THESE OUR GORGEOUS!! OHHH I LOVE THE NEW DESIGN! I do have a soft spot for your old one because it's just so lovely but I love how this adds more creature to their figure and makes them so cool! The one without the black colors looks like a really cool albino Harpy!Y/N and I just think that's a neat thought hehe

Thank you so much for sharing, babe! <3

[bananafire11]

So, I may or may have not made a Kaufmo design for your au, I'm so sorry but the brainrot for your au was too strong 😔

Before Caine:

- Tells actual funny jokes

- Very sweet, yet very sassy

- Likes to wear a bell on his hat

Kaufmo used to have a very plush like body (not a normal plush tho, more like those dolls with porcelain faces and hands with sand inside) and had a very fruit like scent on his avatar, Jax may have or may have not tried to take a bite outta him. It only ended up with Jax being scolded by Kaufmo and Ragatha lol

After Caine:

- Bigger

- Aggressive 12/7

- Tells crude jokes

- Wears a shock collar

Kaufmo's insides are now filled with colorful butterflies, it's room has lots of plants and flowers that it's butterflies can feed off of. The eyes may look like they're always looking into different directions, but they will always longer on those Kaufmo considers as "toys". It's voice sounds like a broken radio trying to play an old symphony inside an school hall's. The butterflies tend to fly a lot with those Kaufmo considers friends, it's not good but it's also not bad. Has to wear a shock collar because it kept trying to consume Caine.

Dude. IM SO BLOWN AWAY. I LOVE THIS DESIGN AND THE NOTES!!

Having his hat turn into a sort of stinger or sythe thing is amazing; and the EYES. Ohhh the eyes i love that, a little callback to abstracting in canon. AND THE BUTTERFLY THING?? HELLO THATS SO NEAT. Butterfly's will actually feed on dead things so!! There could be some creepy potential there i think. Thank you SO much for this i really needed the boost for an idea when it comes to Kaufmo. I'm taking this and RUNNING

Also, your art style is so yummmy. All of the pupils being different shapes is such a nice little detail too,,, and the Before Caine is so cute. The rosy cheeks AWWWH.

[milgram-tournament]

MILGRAM Best Song Tournament, Round 2, Match 3 MAGIC vs. MEME

Propaganda for both options under the cut!

Propaganda for MAGIC:

MAGIC MY BELOVED MAGIC!!! Its one of the best MVs in the entire series, even including T2. Magic is visually stunning and has some fantastic art direction but also is very clever in how it conveys its themes and ideas. Magic doesn't really hide anything from you, not really. It's all symbolic but it Tells You Things. It shows you the abuse, it shows you the cat. There's a fun little relationship going on here where, In Magic. Amane's pain and suffering isn't taken seriously by the people around her and the Audience we are discouraged to take it at face value due to the fictionalized nature of Magic. It's so cool. I'm so fond of the song as well, it's one of the best in the series purely cause of the Layers in it. The implications of this Inability to be good is seeped into Magic. Amane knows this isn't reality, Magic knows it's a show, she watches it at the end. And it's so Sad to me that even in her fictionalized happy world she Cannot be a good girl. It's a standard completely out of reach for her and that idea is just conveyed so well visually.

Im not even talking about the goddamn cat yet- the cat symbolism goes Deep. That cat is HER it has the same wounds Amane has in Purge March. I- I cant talk about the intertextuality of Purge March and Magic here this is Magic propaganda only- I- there's so much good stuff to Magic. I Re watched it over and over again. It has some the Best Writing and Visual Communication in Milgram and I will Die on this Hill.

---

shoutout to magic for having pretty props AND being vague as fuck about the crime! diversity win!

seriously though amane looks SO cute in it! the mv has such a pretty and colorful style and even with that it's able to show the horrors of what amane went through.

adding onto my last point. that scene where the cat is hyperventilating and you see the camera shaking???? that scene where the mascots find amane helping the cat and they're all standing over her? CHILLS. im repeating myself but the fact that they were able to portray the awful things amane went through in a genuinely emotional way while still keeping the cute cartoon look is soo impressive

there are SO many layers to itill the entire cartoony style making it look like a tv show… utilizing the cartoony effects and bright colors to show amane downplaying her own pain… the transformation after she gets punished barely changing anything to show just how manipulated she was from the start… ueueueue

ALSO ALSO ALSO THE SCENE AT THE END WITH AMANE STARING AT THE SCENE? OHHH ITS SO GOOD it adds such a feeling of dread and reminds you on top of this whole thing that all of this is truly horrifying! something is going on here!

this song is so catchy it gets stuck in my head CONSTANTLY

"Dear wise one, Am I worthy? Is it ok to spoil myself?" AMANE... UEUEUUEUE

the little ding sound effects in the instrumental?????

amanes voice is ADORABLE

THE INSTRUMENTAL IN THAT PART WHERE SHES HELPING THE CAT HAS THAT GODLY TYPE SOUND YOUD TYPICALLY ASSOCIATE WITH CHURCHES AND STUFF AND I DONT KNOW HOW TO EXPLAIN IT PROPERLY BUT JUST RELISTEN TO IT AND YOU WILL KNOW WHAT I MEAN. ITS SUCH A NEAT DETAIL

i could go on about this mv for days but i am not a theorist unfortunately. just. magic sweep

Propaganda for MEME:

"MeMe is fantastic because it plays off the audience’s assumptions about Mikoto as a character and tells a “double story”. There’s layers to it and it’s deliberately deceptive in the way it presents the events out of order. Even the instrumentals themselves tell a story. The shift from piano in the second chorus climax is so good - and the way they combine in the last chorus, plus the addition of a violin culminates the song perfectly."

---

"For propaganda: I love meme so much because even the music alone tells as whole story. It goes from heavy metal to calm to heavy metal to calm and that happens a few times and then there’s an epic and creepy intermission with an amazing guitar and a scary of sound of Mikoto’s heavy breathing. And then the psychedelic music and BAM the final chorus. The final chorus of meme just gives me the absolute chills. Like it’s the calmer chorus we see earlier but with epic symphonic metal and an amazing build up and climax like it’s perfectly encapsulates a story through music alone I just love it so much. Also it’s literally called meme lmao."

---

"I could go on about the motifs in MeMe - like identity loss, living and dying, dreaming etc. It's a song, more than with any other character, about the inner self and what hides from the surface. Of the fear that comes with one's identity and place in the world being challenged and crumbling. The intricate designs on the tarot cards have so much depth to them"

[skeletoninthemelonland]

Ooh! I didn't know you were at uni that's so neat :DD I'm starting animation next year :) what are you studying :DDD (if you don't mind me asking i get that that could be like? Identifiable information? In some ways?)

OHHH that is awesome! I heard animation can be very difficult depending on the assignment/class, but it's also very fun :o

I'm studying to become a biologist. I'm not sure what path I'm choosing, but I know that after getting a job I'll manage to go to uni again and study Visual Arts (??? maybe)

[blabberoo]

You know, it makes sense why so many people love your art.

Just speaking from my own experience, I’m only really familiar with Hyper Light Drifter, and tangentially familiar with Dead Cells. I scrolled through your work because I really like how you handle line weight and color. I stuck around because I enjoy your writing style and the story concepts you come up with for these characters. You put genuine thought into the interactions you’re creating and that’s what makes it interesting.

Hell the first time I said “Goddamn” aloud when looking at you art was that line from V1 asking the Drifter if there was an afterlife, correcting itself, and specifically asking if the Drifter has an afterlife waiting for him.

That’s a raw ass line! The concept of a murder robot that knows for a fact the afterlife is real but not if you personally get one? Terrifying concept! Love it!

This was also literally the first time I’d ever heard of Ultrakill. Neat game, I dig the premise.

My point being, you come up with some really damn interesting concepts and then have the skills to execute those ideas.

I have almost no idea what’s going on otherwise, but I’m a fan of the silly bits regardless.

I am also super curious what your digital art process looks like

OHHH???? 🥺🥺🥺🥺

Man. I am. Speechless. This is insane. This truly means a lot. Im really happy that you liked all of that and the character interactions. I've always thought of headcanons for these characters with their personalities and how their respective environment shaped them, and ive always loved it when I see their personalities interact and clash with one another.

The three of them having to deal with death in such a different way is such an interesting concept to me and i inhale that dynamic.

What I also aimed to achieve when I make these comics is that even people outside of it would enjoy these characters and their dynamic :D because I really just do love writing a story about them.

Thank you so much!! You made me ramble about these guys hahhaaha

Also, not much really happens during art process because my attention span is sometimes too short to make a much proper art Lmaoo. I mostly use 2 layers, for the very sketchy lineart and flat colors. And i sometimes add airbrush for lighting or mood. 👍

[meanscarletdeceiver]

Wilbert's Worst

Right, so I really was open to having my mind changed on The Worst One but nobody’s argument has budged me.

I was going to write a complete, balanced essay on The Worst W. Awdry Book, but I’m a) mired in the research phase (hey if anyone knows someone with an encyclopedic knowledge of Tom and Jerry hit me up, for real) and b) right now I wanna talk about the characters and their Beloved Dynamics instead. 

So I'm just gonna get this out of the way so I can post the poll and move on to answering fun asks and watching Tom and Jerry in peace. Behold: a salty and unbalanced review.

Wilbert’s biggest failure of a children’s storybook? 

Henry the Green Engine 

Ohhh… because of the, uh, ra —?

Because of the racism, yes!

Oh. You do know that since 1972 they’ve republished it without the n-slur? 

Good for them. Two things: 

1. I know it used to be there, I’m never able to read it without knowing it was there in the first edition.

2. I consistently try, when ranking the books, to consider them in the context in which they came out. Because of this, I don’t like using “things that happened later” (like a new character never being properly used again or whatever) against the book. This helps me evaluate the author’s successes and failures against what they were trying to achieve when they wrote it vs what I would most want (blorbo content). It helps me not bring to bear the whole weight of fanon and fandom on a text that should be able to stand or fall on its own. Tl;dr I try to read the books like a guy who picked it up in 1951, or whatever. 

And yeah, if I’d bought this when it came out it would have had the slur. I’m going to judge it accordingly. 

Look, racism is bad, no argument, but does that mean the book as a whole must be condemned? 

Yeah, I think the slur and the “aaaand suddenly, blackface! heeheehee” bullshit fuck over the entire book, game over. Go directly to jail, do not collect $200. 

The Railway Series is not a work of high art or deep thorny complex literature. The books are meant for children — small children, at that. Children small enough to get bedtime stories read to them. The main goal of each book (especially this early on — you do have to manage secondary priorities like “pleasing the long-time fanbase” the longer you go, but right now we’re only 6 books into the series) is to create a happy imaginary world to enhance childhoods and family lives… to impart to other parents and kids a similar cosy happiness to that the author and his own kids enjoyed when he was workshopping/drafting the stories for them. When we say “children’s book” we really do mean little’uns — these average 1.25 full-color illustrations per page!

And these books sold in large numbers. This means it’s a certainty that somewhere in 1951 there was a Black family who owned the whole series, who went out to the shops, whose kid was like “ooh! Henry gets a book, neat…,” who like everyone else enjoyed the wild ride of Henry’s inspection and coal and wreck and rebuild… only to get verbally spat on one page from the end. 

Real mood-killer there. Epic fail, as the cool kids used to say in my youth. 

All right, fine, cool kids never said that. Anyway, statistically speaking there was certainly even more than one family that got that experience. Not to mention the non-Black families who even in 1951 were like “... wtf? i’d smack my kid if they ever said a word like that around me, geez. no.” Just a lot of people who had the light the book was kindling in them snuffed out all at once. 

You can actually be totally racist and your book not commit creative suicide on the penultimate page! Awdry flubbed his job of 'bestselling books-for-six-year-olds' here. Creative failure. Unforced error. Automatic zero. 

But times were different then, you have to consider it in the context of the time. 

1951 U.K. was not the nadir of multiracial equality or Black power, but jfc. I can assure you that over 99% of children’s books published that year in the Anglosphere managed to not use the n-slur. 

All right, all right. That was bad. But this feels off-topic. If you had never known about what used to be “Henry’s Sneeze,” would you still rank the entire book as dead last in the Wilbert Awdry corpus? 

Not dead last, but it is not a strong book. “Coal” and “The Flying Kipper” are super-interesting as material for Henry, but after that the book kind of falls off a cliff; the intrigue drops dramatically. The railway incidents chosen to make stories of are all solid choices, but it was not only “Sneeze” where Awdry’s handling of the material feels clumsy and weird. (And I’m not even talking here of the “heehee blackface — ain’t i a stinker?” gag in “Sneeze.”) 

But… “The Flying Kipper”? C’mon. It’s a superb story and no book that contains it can be the absolute worst in the series. 

“TFK” remains easily the best single TVS episode ever – but a lot of that is down to Britt and David’s artistry and judgment. 

Don’t get me wrong, a full-on railway wreck makes interesting material. But I don’t think the book does nearly as much with it as it could (and I’m trying sooooo hard here to forget about the amazing TVS adaptation, as I think it REALLY shows Awdry up. Even so, the storytelling here is surprisingly tepid and low-stakes). I get that Awdry probably wanted to lean into the comic angle and not make Henry’s condition afterwards seem too grave, in order to ensure the material wasn’t too dark for his young audience? (*mutters* again, a level of tender consideration for his readers’ youth that went right out the window when it came to small Black kids, evidently coz he couldn’t imagine that they read) Understandable, laudable — but if he outright refuses* to make the wreck too dramatic or scary then, well, then the wreck isn’t real scary or dramatic. And it can’t save the rest of the book from its flaws. 

*For all I know it could have been the publishers who insisted that the wreck be made preschooler-safe, that’s possible (although it’s also consistent with Awdry’s brand of humor and his overall low degree of emotionalism in his writing). Either way, though, the end result book is what it is and it will be judged accordingly. 

In addition to not being as exciting as many remember... @trainsupessandhuntresses asked me once if I thought some of Awdry's stories were "mean-spirited." I had to assent vigorously. And a surprisingly high proportion of those "mean" moments are in Henry the Green Engine? For some reason? It’s not just the racism. Awdry was not in the game to give Henry a deserved happy ending, he’d wanted to kill him off (the fuck?) and when his publishers prevented him (I don’t say this often, especially since I love how salty the Awdrys get about their publishers, but this in case good job, publishers!!) he wrote “TFK” with the primary motivation of giving Henry a new engine basis. Any soft or hearty emotions we get out of the deal are a side-effect — the only emotion that was fueling Awdry as he wrote this was spite, spite and a weird resentment towards his poor, long-suffering, invaluable illustrator. (I don’t blame Awdry for being frustrated that the engine illustrations were continually inaccurate or confusing, but I do think it’s weird to read all this great Henry material knowing that it was written with such poor grace.) 

So his ‘happy Henry’ stuff feels perfunctory; his Percy interlude is just brutal (why did you have to drag Percy into Henry’s book purely to give him a fuck-up, a scolding, and a messy dunce cap?); Gordon’s savaging of Henry for being too happy after recovering from a near-death experience is such an incredibly low point for Gordon that it’s hard for me to accept it as canon (there’s being proud, boastful, and self-absorbed, and then there’s being the straight-up raccoon dumpster fire Gordon is in that scene). Oh, and I think “call the police [local constabulary, doesn’t bear firearms]” woulda probably a less reckless way of dealing with the rock-throwing youths than the sneeze of hot locomotive ashes, which of course the Fat Controller doesn’t like, that shit coulda been real dangerous! Mind, there are small rays of kindness throughout that do get me (the interactions between Henry and his crew feeling to me the least perfunctory and most heartfelt), but this is overall such a mean-spirited book. God. It starts off with such a gentle story (almost a non-story, if you’re in it purely for the “railway incidents” game and not character drama), but in short order the vibes just sorta suck. At least in other RWS books, when the vibes are off, they’re usually off near the beginning and then improve by the end. This one gets worse as it goes on. Oof. Don’t like that. 

Also, the last page is sooooo lame. I suspect the publisher strong-armed Awdry into writing most of it so that at least the slur wasn’t on the last page of the book... and if Awdry had any idea of how much he’d just empowered Henry and all his fans in this book he shouldn’t have found it hard to find 50 extra words to sum things up. As it was, he’s just filling space and running out the clock, lol. Lame wrap-up. Boring. As usual when it comes to every little thing about this book, Britt and David closed this up better (mind, their closer – “He had taught Gordon and silly boys a lesson, with a whistle and a sneeze” – also sucked. But at least it was blessedly short.)

Didn’t you once list HtGE on a list of your favorite Wilbert Awdry books? 

I did list it as one of the books that “at one time or another” have been my favorite in the series. Unfortunately in the case of HtGE, that was back when I really couldn’t read a story that I knew from the TVS without mentally substituting the adaptation into my brain as I read… largely overriding the actual text. Plus, everything I knew from TVS as a kid kind of automatically got a halo effect. Plus, I was super into Henry’s arc. 

The first time I read HtGE after calming down and actually reading all the books as books... massive disappointment. There is such a gap there between what I'd thought the book said (all our incredible fanon work overanalyzing and headcanoning Henry and building this beautiful fantasy arc about disability!) vs. what it actually said (limp and careless writing, mean vibes, airbrushed n-slur, bad aftertaste). 

I do think there is some stuff about the development of Awdry’s storytelling technique here that is interesting (again, Tom and Jerry superfans reading this, please shoot me a message!) but it doesn’t counteract everything else. 

At least we’re over the racism stuff? 

Nah, I’m not over it, actually. 

[unoriginal-and-dumb]

heello do you have any tips for noobie artists? ur art is just so very neat to me :) plz never stop arting

Never do what I do unless it is drawing all the time

Use references!! Always use them!!! Seriously please use references never let a stupid little rat in your ear take that away from you, they are always so valuable

If you see art you like, don’t be afraid to basically try recreating the same exact thing. All you have to do is not claim it as youre own, and better yet don’t post it online! It’s for practice, people don’t need to see practice in the end it’s only for you

Tracing is NOT wrong. I’m tired of people saying ohhh tracing is bad don’t do it ITS LITERALLY NOT!!!! Just don’t trace over someone else’s work/images and claim it as your own it’s that easy. If youre struggling with hands take photos of your hands and trace over it! Break them down into simple forms until you have an understanding of them in a meaningful way!

Do some studies of specific things. Struggling with leg anatomy? Draw a page full of legs, just push and pull and scribble and see what works, study images and see how you can reproduce it or stylize it

Never feel like you need to find your own art style immediately, that task is practically impossible. Everything comes from something, be inspired by others take little art bits from styles you like and only then can you create your own style!! (I mean dawg my style can be broken down into adventure time, owl house, invader zim, gooseworx, eddsworld, sr pelo, a few others im probably forgetting)

Don’t worry about broadcasting your work, not everyone needs to know all that you draw, the internet can be a hateful place and it really does suck a lot but also try not to rely on strangers online for support on everything you do, I know it is hard and that approval feel good I cannot deny it but remember to keep some stuff for yourself, a little treat where nobody can criticize you :)

Try to draw everyday! Or having a sketchbook where you make it a goal to completely fill 2 pages a week, and if that’s too much then just some doodles! Art takes a lot of constant practice, and there’s really nothing more fun than just having a little sketchbook with you where you draw random stuff all the time. When I was doing that I would make 2 page mini invader zim comics

I feel like a bit of a hypocrite because I do maybe 1 of these things but i know they are really good, I have done them before and they were super helpful! But in the end I think the best you could do is just keep at it! Don’t let people get you down, do your own thing, break rules if you want, it’s all art and art is AWESOME!!!!!!!