#or simplyfy it a bit

[uraandri]

i don't think any of you realize just how funny timočka buna was. imagine managing to secure serbian independence from the ottoman empire, imagine managing to become the first serbian king since 1371. and somehow still managing to be such a shitty ruler that in 1883., out of fear that people might rebel against you, you order them to give up their weapons and the people rebel against you because of that. who else had the range

[moo-savr]

belated 100th for Flying Scotsmen holy shit he's that old

[geiba]

sooooo this is what i've been working on for the past few weeks

i would have been done way earlier but a bunch of work decided to pile up on me, but it's just gonna get easier from here with the holidays coming up, so more art, yay :D also, i think this is gonna be my style from here on out. i might experiment a bit more, but in general i want to move on to focusing a bit more on drawing better expressions, poses, and chibis, as well as simplyfying my style a bit for doodle purposes

[poupeesdecirque]

WiP - Staff for Bookman Jr

I failed to see this during Ch. 252 and only noticed with the Ch 253 release that he has a staff. As dolls always pose better with props I decided to create his little staff.

I used two wooden sticks as base and sculpted the handle/decorations with apoxy. I miss sculpting, I hope I will soon have the mind to start with the two bigger modding projects.

Here are some close ups. Because of the scale I simplyfied the design a bit.

After painting the wood it was time for gold :D

And here we are! Done by 03/11/24.

This was a quick and fun project I worked on between other projects.

[karsisdoingart]

sharing you the update the color palettes before i work on the refsheets

i tried to simplyfy some of the color patterns and not over complicate on the designs

with the baddies : Ellery and Devan ( the troublemakers' dads ) , im prou

and ft Corine and Torox's dads , Mimosa zegmer and Okon

and a headshot for Tomomi ( PJ's Gf ) new design and made her main matcha color scales a bit more vibrant. , i struggled with chosing a pallete for her horns and i ended up liking this one combination , i think it combines well with her matcha colors

[themonotonysyndrome]

Basically, I put people to sleep( way too simplyfied)

I can put people into an Imaginary Space of whatever their most desired environment is, and while they're in their head enjoying this paradise for them, their body is just... there. Oh yeah, if I die, anyone who's in Imaginary Space is stuck there, forever.

Their body is also just a puppet now, I can get their body to do whatever tf I want.

Way too overpowered but I don't have any use for it so I don't use it often. ( I've only used it 4 times lol)

So something in between Epel's UM and Malleus'!

Also, it has a bit of Erik's Dreamwalker flavour in it. I LOVE IT!

What were the 4 reasons you had to use your UM?

I would use mine at the earliest inconvenience XD Oh, Riddle is holding a dorm meeting? Going ghost! Ace and Deuce fucked up? Suddenly, I phase through walls to escape.

[vitaliadev]

2024.06.23, 11:48pm

So I'm finally free to work on my entry for Bluebeard jam.

I couldn't ignore that my magnum opus has quite substantial lore inspired by bluebeard (not intentional and it for many years didn't click lol). I had other ideas, but my conclusion is it's better to finally deal with the elephant in the room that I keep ignoring. I couldn't come up with a good entry project to introduce my magnum opus with, but brainstorming for the jam today helped me to figure it out.

It will be a simple first person walking sim. Lore is already established very long time ago, I just picked from whose POV this particular project will be told and how much of the lore is revealed to the player. It was always my problem: i have more than a decade of lore, but i was pondering which part to start with to keep the mystery for the rest of that massive story at places where i want to keep the mystery.

I finally came up with a relatively fresh take (i haven't considered that perspective and that time frame deeply before, i just was aware there was an event along these lines).

So, I didn't have to do much research on Bluebeard and some other quick ideas i had will be in my ideas folder for something else.

I guess i partially got stuck on going with magnum opus bit because i already did 2 branching adventure stories in a row and i am a bit tired, they already fill in the space and brainstorm themselves on the background. But I have my lovely magnum opus that i don't need to work on much, lore wise.

So, i know what happens in the game I am aobut to make, locations and basic interaction that i need to do. I have roughly 10 more days, or 50 hours to build a realistic walking sim in Unreal Engine based on what i came up with today. Gladly, there is nothing much to do, just build the environment and do relatively simple interactions. I haven't done before certain moments, but i have enoguh time to figure it out.

Player needs to explore and complete the mission and that's it.

Of course, as usually it goes with my ideas, you can layer on a ton over it, especially with magnum opus project that has a lot of stuff going on at that location at different times. but that's not important now. And compared to my other ideas for the entry project (way before bluebeard jam), this project will not exactly spoil things, mystery will still eb there, it is a good opening scene in a way (tohugh can also be a cheap trick like "you msut be wondering how i got there", if i fail storytelling it well).

Tomorrow I will plan the technicalities and compare my assets with what i may need. My emphasis for this project is to build realistic environment with a very bare interactivity. Ideally i want a mission with submissions, but if i won't be able to program it fast, i will simplyfy this to soemthing that i can do at the allocated time (1-2 days for barebones).

[grendelsmom]

10-12!

10. What was your favorite new release of the year?

I actually only read one book that was released this year - Yellowface from R.F. Kuang. My friend read it for her English lit reading group and lend it to me. I actually really enjoyed. In part because I had the added bonus of my friend's annotations and I also really enjoyed discussing it with her. I think Kuang managed to write the narrator in way that you almost don't notice her development, because you get sucked into her view of the world and her story and then it just suddenly hits you. I think the book falls a bit short in it's critic and analysis of the publishing industry when it comes to class and social capital, but it was still a very enjoyable read.

11. What was your favorite book that has been out for a while, but you just now read?

I loved, loved, loved Altes Land (lit. Old Country) by Dörte Hansen. It interweaves the story of Vera, who came to the Northern German region called Altes Land in the late 40s as a child fleeing from the Eastern Prussian area, and Anne, her half-sister's daughter who leaves the big city with her son after she finds out her husband is cheating on her. Not only did it hit very close to home (my own family history is very similiar to that of Vera), but inbetween critically analysing the romantisation of "country living", the dying out of local cultural traditions and languages (the low German language has been slowly fading out since before I was born), she somehow also manages to write really compellingly about trauma and how it is passed on between generations. It was really beautiful.

12. Any books that disappointed you?

It doesn't feel entirely fair to call it a disapointment, but my roommate loved Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi and lend me her copy and I just couldn't get myself to enjoy it. I think it was mostly because I didn't manage to warm up to the writing style. It felt rather simplyfied to me - the feeling is very hard to describe - it was very minimalistic and simple and not in a way I personally enjoy.

It might also be the fact that I've been getting a bit more into German literature again this year and gotten used to German grammar and sentence structure - so to my "German-fied" ears Kawaguchi's style sounds very unsual.

[mineko-mairhiel]

I'm so proud of my lastest painting <3 with the pink/gold accent I made with the watercolor paint I MADE MYSELF

[hikingofthenoldor]

How predictable was it that I find most of the main actors in The lost Pirate Kingdom kinda hot? Some more, some less but overall...! The shabby-chic pirate look is such a good look on pretty much everyone.

[localspaceangel]

so i was going to draw a bunch of human ver. of my fr dragons (bc i love a lot of them but i can’t actually draw a dragon), but i ended up just focusing too much on one and now im tired (which is something that happens way too often ,_,”)

ANYWAYS heres my sweet spooky boy macabre, fitting for the halloween season :D

edit: oh also, here’s his page if u want to take a look: http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=lair&id=256799&tab=dragon&did=43132786

[youeverfeelcursed]

On The Narrative of The Last of Us 2 (1 of 2?)

I am impressed by how many people are hating on this game and its narrative when I’m finding it how amazing its written even though it broke my heart in so many pieces I’m not sure I’ll be able to stick them together for a while. Reading most of the arguments against the game it feels like people are simplyfying the story of both game to worrisome levels.

This is going to be a long text, and obviously, it’s going to be FULL of spoilers so: SPOILERS AHEAD.

Let’s start by going back a bit and into the Last of Us.

Naughty Dog and the importance of being human: The Redemption of Joel

I think before we start we need to talk about the most important detail of The Last of Us franchise - onwards TLoU -  and that is that its never been about zombies, or survival, or Joel or Ellie but about humanity, or better yet, about what is being human and what makes us human. It doesn’t matter if its Part 1 or Part 2 but keep in mind that this concept is the driving force of this story, subtly hiding in our protagonists and their friends stories. You wont find easy blacks or whites in their storytelling, because being human is not that simple.

Now that we have that clear, keep in your mind too the word monster.

With TLoU - Part 1, we get in the skin of Joel Miller, an assholish smuggler based in Boston. From the beginning we can see that Joel is not a good person and through the whole game is heavily implied that he’s been less that nice to humans to survive. The player can “easily” forgive these flaws of him because we can empathize with the lost of his daughter during The Outbreak but even if we empathize we can’t just ignore that Joel is not a hero, he’s just a broken survivor.

Many people think that TLoU is all about the connection of Joel and Ellie, but in the end it’s all about Joel and his “redemption”, his coming back up from being a murderer, a smuggler, a shitty person to a human with feelings again, with so many feelings he makes the worst decision for the survival of humanity: he saves Ellie. He saves Ellie because he cares, because he learnt to care so much  that he put his own selfishness above humanity’s well being. He’s battled thousand of zombies along the way but we know they are mostly not aware of their actions anymore, they can’t choose to hurt people, they just do it because it’s what they do but Joel made a conscious decision. A horrible decision.

And after, he lies to Ellie. He takes the chance of deciding about her own life only because he desires to keep her alive. And this is what it is about, how beautiful can it be to be human, and how horrible can it turn into.

TLoU Part 2, the death of Joel and the descent of Ellie.

We begin Part 2 with Joel narrating what happened in the hospital to a flabbergasted Tommy. I’m not sure how most people felt during this sequence but during it I felt shitty for actually being happy that he saved Ellie, which was alleviated by Tommy’s acceptance of it (”I can’t say I’d have done different”). I’m not sure if I were to be Tommy I would have reacted the same way, but props to him for forgiving his brother.

So times passes and we land on Ellie. This is where everything begins.

The transformation of Ellie is like a trainwreck, you know it’s going to end badly but you cannot stop looking.

When we get control of Ellie we get our old Ellie back, maybe a little less cheerful but it’s normal, she’s already 18 and she’s been hit hard by life, multiple times. Still we can see that underneath all that tough and grumpy behaviour (I mean seriously, she’s just like Joel) there’s the Ellie we loved from the first part.

Up to the point Joel is killed.

Oh how I fucking hated that moment and it’s not because it felt stupid - it truly didn’t to me - but because I was at the same time expecting it, and not expecting it. Because that’s how death gets to you and I found the setting horribly marvelous.

Many people think that his dead was stupid, that he didn’t go in a grand way but just simply got his face smashed by Abby. I hated it, because the whole scene I was like Ellie hoping for Joel to pull through and save himself, I couldn’t believe he would die in the first 3 hours of the game!! Naughty Dog what the fuck!?

But you know. That’s it. That’s the point. Things come and go and most of the time we don’t really expect what happens. And it’s traumatizing, it’s unbelievable, it’s shitty. But it’s life. One night I was saying goodnight to my dad, the next day he was dead. It happens. Death is not grand, death is not heroic most of the time, it just is.

And that’s the feeling that they manage to convey, that it’s not real. We are feeling the same feelings as Ellie, thinking that somehow, in some crazy way he’ll be back to come back. But he won’t. There’s a grave. And yet the feeling is there. If Joel’s death had been shown differently, we - as players - could find some closure, but this way? This way we are stuck. Just like Ellie.

Just like the beginning of the end of Ellie. Because the next part is all about losing yourself. We can see it in tiny details like Ellie’s hair. In Jackson, she’s got a tight bun, controlled and when she and Dina are getting to Detroit, part of that bun is loose as an analogy of her slow demise, how she slowly loses control. It’s also represented by the weather, with one of the most ruthless scenes happening during the huge storm of Detroit: Mel’s death. 

It would be easy to just blame this turning into a monster on Joel’s death, but there’s multiple factors affecting Ellie during this time, apart from the trauma from watching Joel be killed in front of her own eyes. 

The first one is that she was forced to miss the chance of being useful, useful as a cure for the whole world, for her life to have meaning. It must be really hard to love someone so much - Joel - and hate them at the same time, and plus to all of that, you dont get the chance to forgive them because it was ripped from your own hands.

Next is what she deems as a betrayal from Dina, her pregnancy. This is where the queer theme comes strong, because who hasn’t been in a situation in which we feel we will lose our loved one to the straight ex? The feeling of being powerless specially because Jesse is her friend. She loves him, she loves them both. But it’s obvious she doesn’t feel worthy of Dina, and when the pregnancy comes, it just pulls at her strings. She starts to go alone on missions, reckless crazy missions distancing herself from both of them to the point she crashes hard and makes Nora talk. 

Ellie much to our liking and hate, grew up under the care of Joel, a sweet and wonderful man with his own troubles but a great problem of sharing his feelings, something I feel was passed to Ellie. She doesn’t speak of her feelings, she keeps them inside until they break her apart, so this descent wasn’t caused by just one simple happening, it was a collective of shitty feelings. And we could argue, “but its obvious Dina likes her!”. Well yeah, it’s obvious to us, but for someone that lost so much so fast, how obvious can it be?

Finding Abby is not just about revenge, is about having control over her life. That’s something she can do, she can find Abby kill her and get revenge for Joel. It keeps her grounded while slowly plummeling her into turning a monster. Because sometimes we hold onto the most stupid things just for the sake of being grounded, even if that thing destroys what’s left of us.

I know many people were angry at how a LGTB+ was treated but I personally don’t think this demise would be as hardcore if it had been a straight white girl. If this representation is good or bad its up to everyone’s opinion but I personally think Naughty Dog did a good job in here. I know people are tired of traumatic stories, but there’s a lot to chew in this game to just reduce it to “sad gay story”. For the instance, Ellie is consciously destroying her own life, personally I think because she felt she should be dead plus everything mentioned beforehand. When she leaves Jesse behind to go get Abby instead of saving Tommy that’s the point of no return.

Well, there’s more to unravel but I feel this post is long enough already and we still have Dina, Tommy, Jesse and Abby to talk about. So I’ll take a breather and keep writing later. Sorry for typos and keep safe.

[halfusek]

1) I have a theory regarding what happens in Abomination. As you had explained, both timelines, both in Real World and Story World were connected until the break in Story World occurs with the death of S!Thomas, but there are some details that I consider important to understand the reason why Magenta did that. You mentioned that that death altered what was going to happen in the future in Story World, what if it happened... But what if S!Joey did it on purpose to avoid the same fate as

Hey ho hello there! Thank you for submitting this theory, it definitely isn’t a nuisance to me, I absolutely love it when people dive so deep into my story and have so many thoughts about it, I’m flattered! :D

And while it’s an interesting theory, I’ll tell you right off the bat that Magenta doesn’t really have that kind of insight to the reader’s mind nor mine. The 4th wall breaks indeed are supposed to be meta but it also was kind of a jab at the real Joey in that moment from him. There is no input from me as a “character” in the story, as Abomination was supposed to be a theory turned into a comic all along I’m only including there events which I have thought to be possible to be canon [with exceptions for a few “OCs” I had to make - random employees to fullfill other roles].

But there is of course a reason why story Joey is aware of, well, being in a story as there is a reason for him to act different than the real Joey! :D

Characters from the real world being now in the story world are more exaggerated, more “cartoony” as in the values that pop out most about them in reality, pop out here to the max. As for the story itself, their reality consist only of things relevant to the story. And finally, there’s this whole thing with the objectives these characters have and how they interpret them.

In a sense they are different characters. Especially those that haven’t died in real life.

But at the same time they are kind of the same person. Especially those that died in real life.

With a few exceptions here and there. :)

And this is where my answer is gonna get long with pictures attached and rambling so I’m gonna put the rest under the cut~

So, you know how there’s the Tombstone Picnic cartoon with it’s missing ending, right? As in - in the canon Bendy universe - when Bendy runs away from a skeleton and there’s a shadowy figure standing over him which he looks up and smiles and the screen goes black.

I’ve referrenced it a few times throughout the comic because it’s really important.

Like this old-ass panel comes from Part 2 and some events happening in it are Joey and Bendy watching the episode with Bendy getting uncomfortable about being imperfect - he looks at what’s supposed to be his arms and legs.

Generally parts 1-4 aren’t my proudest work art-wise nkjdf but there’s some things Very important to my little universe here.

I’d say especially pay attention to panel 101 in this batch.

Then, eons later, there’s part 33 and it’s one that got a few people confused that the comic is ending because this is the title I gave it when posted:

With the last panel of this part like this:

Because, technically, this is where the story of the real studio ends and is a turning point of the comic. So, in a way, it is the end. But not the end of the story.

What I assumed with the world of Bendy was that there are two worlds: the real one and the story one which is more like a cartoon. Not just because the story world looks cartoon, it even acts like one with repeating over and over again and not being able to change what’s been done in it [save for few details].

An ending of a very important cartoon episode is missing and never comes and that’s probably what is on the end reel that Henry plays when he comes around but playing the end doesn’t stop things from repeating, it simply puts an end to the current iteration of the cycle.

Back to the comic’s timeline - the story world is created.

I’m a silly goose, I know. :^)

Story Joey gets created and yeeted into the story world asmr - that’s panels from part 35 and it’s very short and weird. It’s not entirely meant to be taken literally.

It starts from little parallels between story Joey and story Henry - at least for how it is in my universe, they are both looping and starting from reading a letter from each other’s real life counterparts.

In the next part [36] this is what story Joey is looking at when he breaks the 4th wall and this is where the events start changing and he kills Thomas before he quits - generally part 36 is the “equivalent” of part 18 with some repeated panels and some a bit edited and these entirely new from the new timeline. But this is all for laying down the differences betwen real and story Joey off the bat.

You could say that real Joey “would do anything to make his dreams possible” but reastically speaking you’d expect a person to have some kind of brakes, that stop them from doing literally anything. Well, as story Joey is an exaggerated version of real Joey, those brakes kind of get done. He’s dead pan fixated on doing literally anything. And as real Joey on his way of moral decay accepted murder as a solution sometimes, story Joey kind of just doesn’t hesitate.

Another thing about parts 18 and 36 is the mention of Henry.

I haven’t gotten on it quite yet with the story Joey but what I’m gonna say is this: take real Joey’s obsession with blaming Henry for leaving mixed with leftover feelings he has for him and try to... simplyfy them and turn them Up.

Spoilers: it’s a mess.

OKAY BUT GOING BACK TO THE TOMBSTONE PICNIC WHICH IS REALLY WHAT MATTERS IN THIS RAMBLE-

In part 35 I lay down that I chose Joey to be the shadow in Tombstone Picnic.

At the time I took this decision I did it because I figured it just suits my version of the story better but honestly as of now I’m ever more convinced that it’s the case.

Because the reason why it being Henry would be cool is that if he was in a cartoon then he could be imprinted from this part of the reel - as this is apparently what’s needed in universe to print ink figures - so this is how in-game Henry would come to be.

BUT

Now DCTL has confirmed that regular humans can get inked and in BATDR trailers we met Audrey that kinda just looks like a cartoonified person which is very likely what happened to Henry. Also there’s this part in DCTL:

When Buddy Boris wakes up after being turned his Boris - cartoon - part of their mind is awoken. He sees a shadowy figure that seems dysproportional to him implying he sees someone with human-like proportions.

Then Buddy wakes up and he sees... Joey. 

To me the parallel is pretty straight-forward tbh  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But, of course, I decided for it to be Joey long before DCTL came out so I guess it’s just a cool thing to point out lol

The one thing with how I presented it in part 35 is that Joey wears the labcoat - technically he shouldn’t be wearing it, he should look like Joey usually looked like when the cartoon was made - in 1929. But not gonna lie it makes more sense for the shadowy figure to look like that with the coat included :P

And so story Joey takes away the ending by... literally ripping it away, tearing it from the reel. It’s kinda literal and kinda a metaphor.

The explanation for it is my main point here. Why I brought up that story characters are kinda different from real characters.

Because story Joey IS his own character. He’s been his own character since 1929. He’s literally a print of the cartoon. Right from the Tombstone Picnic reel.

Both he and THE END.

And here’s a little theory/headcanon - I’d like to think that cartoon reels/parts of them used for printing cartoon figures kind of just... get erased from the universe. It would explain why we never get to see that part of the cartoon and why things like that happen in the Handbook:

Ah, a convenient random splash of ink.

So, that’s why story Joey is literally ripping the end away from the cartoon world, because this part is being taken away. Forever.

And what happens with Henry ending the story is that he... imprints the ending itself.

The end is brought to life, and the end = death and welp to me it appears that Henry has the role of the “reaper” as he’s connected to maaaaaaanyyyy death themes, literally called to “be one to bring death” and can get a cool scythe.

Soooo story Joey isn’t just story version of the real Joey, he’s not just Joey 2.0.

He’s the shadowy figure and essentially - a toon.

That was the main thought of this ramble but as I’m on it I’ll throw more stuff linked to this:

In part 41 story Joey visits Bendy for the first time in the story world - real Joey did it right after Thomas tried to quit, but again, story Joey had different priorities.

And. Throwback. Remember part 2? Where Bendy and real Joey watched the Tombstone Picnic? The reason here it’s Tasty Trio Troubles is kinda because in part 40 Butcher Gang figures were created from Lacie, Shawn and Grant so this is like a follow-up. 

But back to part 2. Bendy was uncomfortable with his lack of limbs back then.

Parts 1-2 and 41 have a few panels that are intentionally drawn to look similiar or almost the same even, same with dialogue, like that:

Never trust me when I do that.

The reason is because-

I’m a clown. :o)

[linn-zy]

MARCH MADNESS Watercolor character comissions open.

LIKES AND SHARES ARE APPRECIATED FOLKS!

*Keep.in mind though that I mainly work with bright and pastel-color schemes, Not so much dark amd gloomy, bit I can do that too, to an extent.

*No gore or weapons (I might be able to draw a bow at best)

*No Animal or animalfaces (tail and ears are ok.) I mean...I can try, but it'll be very simplyfied most likely.

*Ponies can only be done if it's from a free based, I can't draw ponies on my own.

*Sexy can be achieved to an extent but no NSFW

*All sorts of couples, genders and skincolor welcome (except for Paedo*hilia, In*est and all that nasty stuff , no racist stuff.

(These are all examples on A4 size though, except for one)

[rvexillology]

England in the style of California

from /r/vexillology Top comment: I like it. Personally i would like to see the lion a bit more simplyfied but you did a great job

[minijenn]

I don’t know why, but something about Dipper’s sword arm feels...off, somehow. I’m not saying I don’t like the idea, but the design in the character sheet feels...weird. Maybe it’s the cross guard?

Mmm for me I think its probably all of the circutry lines as the one thing I wanna change about the design. Ideally I’d like to make his arm look actually more like Yellow’s arm ship, see?

So eventually, I think I’ll simplyfy the design a bit to look more like this and less sloppy (aka how i fucking draw it :P)