#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

[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

[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

[moo-savr]

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

[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

[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.

[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.

[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) 

[city-pumpkin]

My therapist said to keep talking about things that I don't know what decision to make. What to think. What I need. And I do, every day a little bit, to different people. I feel myself getting a little better, slowly, bit by bit. I'm in no way even approaching being okay. But I only cried once today. I'll take that. I ate a full lunch with a friend and a can of beans for dinner before going out. I'll take that as a positive too.

I'm not drinking. I heard break ups consist of eating less than you should and drinking more than you should. The eating part I'm dealing with, can't help it much tho. The drinking part is different. I got drunker than I would have liked the other night despite only having half a drink and then stopping when I noticed that was too much already. I don't like the feeling of alcohol. Ever since I dealt with derealization it feels like way too similar of a feeling for me to enjoy the feeling of getting tipsy even. Knowing your brain just absolutely detached you from all reality and there is nothing you can do about it and everything feels uncomfortably unreal like a hallucination or unsettling dream you can't escape isn't something I feel like inviting on purpose. But I'm kind of glad. It makes being good to myself and focusing on getting better instead of simply escaping via something ultimately self destructive so much easier.

I feel like I'm putting myself back together, one tiny snippet every day. I won't be done for a while but today I'm hopeful that I will be alright.

A friend told me today that you choose to love somebody. I'll have to think on that concept. It feels very simplyfied. I'm pretty sure if I could choose my feelings I'd have chosen to be happily in love. No question, in the blink of an eye. But there is more to that statement. It feels like it needs to sit in the back of my mind for a bit and get looked at occasionally. I'll have to think on this more.