#planning panel layouts in my head

[arrowpunk]

One of these days I will figure out the secret to turning my brain off to go to sleep when it is in Project Mode and then it's Over for you fools

[wickworks]

Lancer Tactics dialogue layout crisis of faith

(from this month's backer update)

Every so often, I'll run into something in development that eats away at me until it pushes me to a crisis of faith and I have a breakdown, burn down a bunch of work, and build something better from the ashes. These are moments of transformation and we're almost always able to come out the other side with something much better than what we started with.

This all sounds very dramatic until you take a step back and see the issue in question is just, like, the layout of a menu. But if medieval priests were able to have schisms over angels on pins I can have strong feelings about graphic design, dammit!

This month's episode revolved around how we're doing character dialogue. For reference the plan was to do a standard 4-slot visual-novel talking heads layout. I call it a 4-slot because there's usually four positions that characters can stand; two on the left, two on the right:

I had it ingame, and it was working. But... something felt off. Do you see the difference between every one of the above examples and this?

It's all about perspective, baby.

Answer: all the character art in those examples are drawn at a slight angle so they can be flipped back and forth to be made like they're looking at each other.

Trying to do this with the perspective we chose early — straight on — makes for a chorus line of weirdos who are looking directly into your soul as they ostensibly chat with each other. Credulity is strained; the illusion of these puppets interacting in the same space is paper-thin.

(I was skeptical of choosing this perspective for this reason, but we ultimately went with it to make the customizable assets in the portrait maker easier to fit together)

We tried a bunch of different layouts, but they all at least one of these problems:

they'd stare into your soul while ostensibly directing comments elsewhere.

they felt like text messages; this would be fine if that's what we were going for, but we wanted something that could represent face-to-face conversations. (Tactical Breach Wizards was able to pull this style off because they had little 3D dioramas to go along with it)

or, most damning of all, they felt like zoom calls.

So, my heart aflutter and spirit in want, I spent a day doing a research dive into various dialogue layouts (bless the Game UI Database!) to see if any other games had managed to pull this character art perspective off. I ended up with this massive non-chronological taxonomic tree:

(fullsize here)

The type of layout that particularly caught my eye was this style where each character had their own little box. These layouts borrow a concept from comic books called "closure" where the space and time between characters are left blank. Freed from the constraints of trying to simulate a single space, these layouts allow the reader to fill in the blanks with something that feels more true-to-life than anything we'd be able to render ourselves.

I was especially impressed with the dynamism of Tales of Symphonia and The World Ends With You; rather than sticking to single slots they would animate the entire panels moving around to indicate motion an relative position of characters.

So we threw out the old code and copied them. Here's what we've come up with:

We'll be able to have portraits interact, like smacking each other (I felt like a kid hitting two action figures together, lol)

We can also apply effects like princess-leia-holograms and full-screen "lighting" effects like warning banners:

Carpenter and I came up with a number of arrangements that the portraits can smoothly transition between:

I've also implemented support for choices during a dialogue, potentially leading to branching paths.

Overall, I feel SO much better about this system than our initial designs. It might feel a little more cartoony, but I think we're making a cartoony game so that's not a problem.

Whew. We bit a lot off to chew with this project. I feel like I just made a second visual novel game engine inside of the first. Fingers crossed that it all ends up worth it.

[archandshri]

28th June ‘24 - [arch] One Page Limitation??? - My process for Traffic Zine #5

Hello All!

A couple months ago, I got accepted to @trafficzine, a digital anthology of pieces by a large group of artists and writers based on the most recent season of the Life Series. I made this piece back in April, but thankfully I kept some notes of my process. 

Heads up - this contains spoilers for Secret Life :D

We were able to choose our own prompt from a list! For this project, I wanted to push my comic making - especially how to communicate a lot of information in a small space. I went through and watched a few clips from the series to see which prompt would fit a comic and settled on Scott’s death.

As usual, I began by getting some reference images and going ham on some big paper. This gets me excited about the project and helps generate ideas. I go for whatever interests me in terms of medium and subject matter, but I try to use a process that doesn’t let me control too much (in this case brush and ink)

initial sketches for fun and vibes :D

During this, I also took the time to transcribe the scene - I wanted to use the dialogue directly, and see how much I could fit into the single page that I was allowed for the zine.

In these early planning stages I make sure to do warm-up sketches to remind myself of the energy I want to communicate. This also keeps things fun and fresh so I'm not ONLY thinking about page composition and making things 'good'. (the expectation for it to be 'good' kills a project prove me wrong)

Dialogue from the clip + warm up sketches

Next up, I started to plan what panels I have on the page. At this stage, some panels might just be a box with some words, and some may have a sketch if I have a clear composition in mind. This stage is mostly for pacing and plot, so instead of focusing on what the panel and page will look like, I will think about:

what will happen in the panel

it's purpose and

what it will communicate

Sometimes I'll illustrate a string of panels that tell the story and fit them on a page after - but this depends on the project and my confidence with the size of it.

After messing around with these and coming up with a pretty clear direction, I draw a bunch of boxes to see how the panels could sit nicely together. At this stage I might realise I have too many panels, and need to cut a few or come up with a creative solution. Nothing is set in stone at this point.

sketching panel layouts

Now begins the fun! I decide on the layout I prefer and I can start putting planned compositions into the boxes. I often do this digitally, or a digital editing process will be involved.

Once planned, I print these out to do a more refined sketch over. I find that my traditional drawings have a lot more life and character to them than digital ones, so I try to keep the majority of the process traditional, with passes of scanning and digital editing.

I tried a version with her looking out at the distance - ready to face the oncoming battle. But it still felt off. So I turned to my slides to ask myself some questions!!

I tried to think of more things that were working - but I really felt like it was lacking a lot. I was going for this slower emotional feeling because that came more naturally to me, but it just wasn't working for this image. The original clip is quite rushed and chaotic - which would be harder to communicate in a comic format but the challenge interested me. Either way, I knew I wasn't happy with this direction so... i decided to start from scratch! Back to the drawing board!!!

In the previous version, I had cut out a lot of the dialogue, but I decided to go back to the original clip and use AS MUCH as possible. Since passing the bow was my favourite part of that first composition, I really wanted to lean into it as the emotional height and final goodbye before Scott's death. It's a moment to slow down and absorb the vibes :D

I made a list of panels along with their descriptions to refer to when trying to figure out the order of panels. there were SO MANY and it was VERY CONFUSING when they were too small to read.

These thumbnails were super small and would not have made sense without my list, I swear.

I printed this tiny thumbnail out at A4, so I could sketch over it and get a clearer sense of flow. Then began a loooong process of printing out tiny photocopies and rearranging the panels to be legible. It was a difficult balance of communicating busyness while making sure the hierarchy/reading order made sense.

After some tweaking, i printed out an A3 copy to draw my panel borders and text.

Doing this on a separate piece of paper means I don't have to worry so much about messing up the text or borders when drawing the characters. This allows me to be more free and expressive with my illustration.

Woah! Quick trip back in time!! During the thumbnailing process I drew these warm up sketches! I looooved the way the linework came out. I drew this on an A3 piece of paper - and the shocked Gem would, in theory, be one of the smallest panels. So I decided to do a crazy thing.

I touched up the sketch digitally, compiling some of my favourite warm up sketches, some traditional sketches made for the panels, and filling the rest in digitally. Then I printed this image out in QUATERS at A3!! This meant the final sketch layer, printed out was A1!! (aka very large, considering the final file would be at A4, about 8x smaller)

I did this so I could get fairly small detailed lines with my pencil while being quite expressive and firm with my mark-making. Slowly, I dlined all of the panels traditionally and scanned them in. Then I assembled the finished linework on Photoshop, along with the text and panel borders and got to colouring :D

final linework :D

For colouring, I played a little bit with halftone but I found the texture made it feel a bit too busy - the panels are already doing enough. Because of this, I also decided to use a limited colour palette. Here are some images of the colouring process, which I won't go into today.

I'm really happy with how this came out - I think it captures the chaos of the moment, while taking time to linger on the emotion of it. Keeping that bow moment really made it, I think.

I think the last panel is still quite weak. Earlier in the process there was a low-angle shot of Gem about to kill Scott which may have been more powerful, but I think I was struggling with my actual drawing skill when it comes to perspective. A lot of learning how to draw, and in particular with comics, is about knowing where your skills are at, how to utilise them best and how to test and push them.

I'm glad that I started again, instead of finishing that composition I wasn't happy with. It was a tough project but I learnt sooooo much from it, and it's been essential skill-building for.... the current comic I'm working on (stay tuned!!! :0) Thanks for reading this incredibly long post! Go check out @trafficzine and look at all the other cool art Cool vibes and silly men,

Archie :D

[wishingstarinajar]

I was hit with a sudden wave of inspiration to make a comic, and its a lot harder then it looks. XD so i was wondering if you had any tips and/or ticks for making comics.

specifically with the layout of the panels and were to put speech bubbles so they dont cover too much of the scene but it still stays readable.

Ooh, fun! Hope it works out for you. I'm still figuring it all out myself but I can try and share a few nuggets of "wisdom"... if I can call them that x'D

First up; rough it. When I come up with a comic idea, I usually plan it out in my head before I attempt to put it down on the canvas. When I finally start roughly sketching the panels, it's loose; nothing is set in stone.

Sometimes, it takes some shuffling, readjusting, removing, adding and whatnot to get the layout I want on a page or across a few pages. At times, I'm just sliding around small sketches like puzzle pieces until they fit on a page.

Don't feel too bad if you have to axe or alter a panel you had in mind; sometimes you gotta "kill your darlings" to get something better. If something isn't working out, put it to the side and try something different, no matter how annoying it is.

As you can (probably) see below, the rough sketch version of this comic page has three panels that were tossed out and replaced with a single different panel. Though, the first panel's dialogue in the rough sketch ("your spark") was moved to the comic's previous page for a better flow of dialogue between pages.

When it comes to speech bubbles, you at times have to accept that a speech bubble is going to cover up some of your art and the characters in a panel. There is only so much you can fit in there. But you can try maneuvering around this by keeping the speech bubbles in mind while you're roughing the panels.

Don't add too much dialogue in a single bubble. A character is allowed to have several speech bubbles in a single panel, or even across a few panels. Some bubbles can even be merged together as seen below.

(Blast from the past with this older comic of mine xD)

And well, sometimes the art already tells enough so wordy dialogue might not even be necessary.

If you don't want to add dialogue and speech bubbles to your sketches while you're working on stuff, be sure to have it written down elsewhere. I often find myself forgetting parts of the dialogue x'D

Panels also don't need to be linear. They can overlap for dynamic effect. Heck, even characters and/or objects can be drawn outside the constrictions of a panel's frame, and the same goes for speech bubbles as seen above and below.

You have a lot of freedom when it comes to creating the layout of your comic. Too many panels? Add another page or extend the canvas (vertically)! Want to make small comics with only two to three panels? Go for it! Don't want solid frame lines? You don't even have to draw frames if you don't want to!

It's all trial and error, especially when you're a rookie. Just have fun with it, don't take it too seriously, and experiment.

[traegorn]

Going from Script to Page

(originally posted to my personal blog)

So the big difference between Peregrine Lake and my earlier comics is, obviously, that I'm not the one drawing it. When I was doing my earlier comics, I never wrote down what I was planning, I just had it in my head and would translate it directly to the page. At most I'd write one sentence lines about strips so I could plot out pacing. I did a few thumbnails early on to figure out page layouts, but more often than not the pages didn't exist in any form until I wrote them. That obviously isn't a way we can work for this comic. I can't sit there over Ethan's ( @wistfolie ) shoulder while they draw, since that would be weird and we don't live in the same city. So I do what comic writers have been doing for quite some time. I write scripts. That's where every page for Peregrine Lake starts. Then, if Ethan needs any clarification on a description or has an alternate suggestion for a setting or scene, we talk about it. But again, we start by my writing a script. So I thought it might be fun to take a look at a recent installment and compare the final art to the initial script I wrote. Our example is the October 22nd page titled "Greg." It is, unsurprisingly, the first page where we see the final of our four main characters. I love this page, but let's see the initial script:

Panel 1 Greg emerges from the curtained doorway. Tall panel. If this were television or film, we'd smear some Vaseline on the lens for the best gooey soft focus shot we could get. God damn, we want everyone seeing this to want a piece of Greg. Like take a second slice home in a take out box and eat it while watching Netflix. Let's make this far more detailed than any other panel. Let's get people to demand we print this man on body pillows. Panel 2 Close up of Bev's face. She wants to just lay Greg down and cover him in butter. Bev: (tiny ass words, whispering to self) Yeah... not talking good. Panel 3 Greg leans on the counter towards Lynn, Bev is... "reacting" quietly, but no one's paying her any attention Greg: Hey Lynn, Bob hasn't gotten me those antique iron nails yet. I said I'd call when they come in. Lynn: Thanks, but not what I'm here for. I may have an... off the books job for you Greg: How off the books Panel 4 Close up of Lynn. Lynn is very serious. Lynn: Off the books off the books. Greg, this is my new friend Bev. Panel 5 Back to a shot of the three of them, Greg turns to Bev smiling Greg: Hi! Nice to meet you. Bev: (tiny words) Hello tall man

Yep. That is... that is pretty close to what we got. We moved some of the dialogue around to fit better with the art (moving some of Greg's stuff to panel one from panel three), but overall we stick pretty true to it. Ethan read my ridiculous descriptions and understood the assignment. And yeah, I think it's safe to assume at least some of our audience wants a piece of Greg now.

[dark-elf-writes]

DM: Two guards stand in front of a large window panel, each wearing shinra trooper gear. Their helmets have been knocked astray from the earlier encounter so when you look in their eyes you can tell there’s-

Aerith player cackling: lust! They just saw blondie over here practically finger his bike’s clutch, it’s gotta be lust.

Cloud player: …I throw my sword at them.

DM: A-are you sure? When they saw you their weapons lowered just a little and you can tell they probably won’t attack you.

Cloud player: I. Throw. My. Sword.

DM whose plan to hint that cloud wasn’t actually a SOLDIER by having the troopers recognize him immediately backfired: Just roll •_•

Cloud: nat 20

DM: we’ll fuck. Tell me what you’re going to do.

Cloud player: I throw my sword between the two guards but as it’s passing by them the camera zooms in on the blade cutting a little bit of hair off both off the guards before it slams into the glass making little pieces of glass shatter onto the highway bellow.

DM: okay…I hate to ask this, but is that it?

Cloud player: nay, nay my friend. Because you see, you just fell for my trap. By saying “okay” to my description of what happened you just solidified the layout of the building-

DM: oh fuck

Tifa player: oh fuck!

Cloud: -which means there’s now canonically a street right below us and we can simply drive out the now broken window :)

The DM slamming his head on the table as he once again activates Cloud’s player’s trap card to allow him to do something over the top and physics breaking again to reassert that he is in fact the main character.

[causeitsagame]

Fic: The Cat in the Box (2/?)

Summary: After someone truly dies, Hajime takes it as his responsibility to keep everyone else alive. With an unexpected discovery, he realizes he can go even further than that. Warnings: Character death, obviously. (There will actually be a lot of character death, but most of it won't stick.) Ships: Assume basically everything. But like in the warnings section, most of them won't stick. I'm shameless and will focus the most on my favorite characters, though. Notes: Well, this took a while! I didn't expect my work life to explode right after writing the last chapter, but these things happen. Before the AU nonsense begins, I obviously needed a long conversation between Hajime and Fuyuhiko. Obviously.

-----

As Hajime soon discovered, universe-spanning technology was very slightly tricky to figure out.

"C'mon," Kazuichi wheedled. He'd promised to stay quiet inside the small facility room that Hajime had claimed for this work. Naturally, he'd broken that promise. "Let me take a look at it? Please?"

Ignoring him, Hajime leaned closer to the device. The closest comparison that came to mind was a spark plug, if that plug was nearly a meter tall, glossy white, and festooned with readout panels and gold wire connectors. Oh, now that he'd gotten close enough to really study it, he noticed something interesting. Gold wasn't just found in those ribbon wire connectors, but was inlaid into the surface itself. Though the narrow gold lines were oddly shaped, their design still looked purposeful.

"Come on," Kazuichi repeated, now close enough for Hajime to feel his breath as he leaned forward.

Hajime's hand shot out and gripped Kazuichi's wrist before he could make contact. "Don't. I need to understand it, first."

Kazuichi stepped back and gestured to himself in a show of protest. "Hey! Ultimate Mechanic, here! I know what I'm doing!"

The low itch that had driven Hajime to pick up this computer now wanted everyone else out of the room. Especially the man whose first instinct at seeing any interesting device was to dismantle it. "Explain quantum physics, then."

Kazuichi moved his beanie and scratched his head. "Uh, I… could probably figure it out. Just give me a minute."

Abruptly, Hajime realized what the gold lines running across the device's surface reminded him of. Folding his arms, he archly added, "And explain the use of kintsugi."

"Kint… kintsugi? It's… uh… probably to… lubricate the—hey!"

As Kazuichi fumbled through his uncertain response, Hajime began steering him to the door. "I promise, I will let you look at this later. But I need to handle it right now," he said, and closed Kazuichi outside.

Now that he'd put the name to it, those inlaid golden lines running across the surface really did look like kintsugi pottery. Hajime knew how to use that technique, of course: collect the shards from broken pottery and rejoin them with liquid gold. It was a delicate process, but with the gleaming golden veins it added, resulted in a piece of art that could look even more beautiful than the original work.

But while kintsugi pottery had irregular chunks joined by golden repairs, this computer case's lines were rigidly geometric and clearly planned. With such precision, the golden lines were so thin that Hajime had been able to overlook them until just now, right up close in this well-lit room. Hmm. Did the organization of the pieces indicate how to use this machine, or was it the layout of the golden lines themselves, or…

Some time later, Hajime realized someone was standing behind him. "I told you: you can play with this once I've gotten it figured out."

"Thanks for the offer, but I'll pass."

That wasn't Kazuichi. Hajime felt himself struggle up from analysis mode like a deep sea diver returning to the surface: slowly, and dazzled by the bright light waiting for him up top. He blinked a few times until he could focus on the face in front of him: Fuyuhiko. For some reason, Fuyuhiko was here. "Oh, uh, hey. What's up?"

Fuyuhiko's thumb gestured backward over his shoulder. "I thought you'd want an update on how those special drugs went."

The drugs? The drugs for Nagito, right. Hajime pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, suddenly realizing how long he'd been focused on those tiny lines. He needed a few hard blinks to (mostly) clear his vision. "Right, thanks for letting me know. How's Nagito doing?"

Fuyuhiko didn't respond for long enough that Hajime began to worry. When he did speak, his too-careful tone worsened that concern."Well, Mikan did get one of those vials into Nagito. It seemed like some pretty serious business. She needed to use an IV line instead of a syringe."

Hajime nodded impatiently. "That makes sense; these were drugs of last resort. By definition, they're serious business. But how's he doing?"

Fuyuhiko paused again before answering. "An hour or so after she got it into him, they both decided to have her hit him with a dose of knockout drugs. It sounds like the plan is to keep him out for a while. However long that ends up being."

Anesthesia? What on earth? The bizarre explanation was enough to make Hajime rise from where he sat. "That's… what happened, then? Seriously, is Nagito okay?"

With a few quick jerks, Fuyuhiko folded his arms across his chest. His good eye flashed with deeper annoyance than usual, and he'd ripped off the eyepatch that usually covered his scarred one. That likely indicated a bad enough mood that even the thin tension of elastic over his skull was too much to handle. "'Okay?' Is that something you give a shit about, now?"

Hajime's frown deepened. "Huh? The whole reason we ran that mission was to help Nagito. Of course I care if he's okay."

One of Fuyuhiko's arms unfolded, and he whipped that hand forward to poke Hajime in the chest. The strike was precise, and landed hard. "Do you give a shit about whether everyone is okay, now?"

Ah. Well, that move might have ruined some stitches. Hajime didn't bother to hold back a wince as he rubbed the spot where Fuyuhiko had poked him. It was right where he'd taken a grazing gunshot in the facility assault, and Hajime was unsurprised to see pinprick spots of blood staining his fresh shirt. "We don't have an infinite supply of clothes, y'know."

"Clothes aren't the fucking point, Hinata. I'm still pissed about you throwing yourself into the line of fire. Peko told me everything that went down in that building." Fuyuhiko's finger threatened to repeat its violent point on one of Hajime's many other shallow wounds. "You're officially off field duty. You're only running support tasks, now."

Unwilling to argue with one of their self-appointed mission directors, Hajime clarified, "So, I can't go onto the field?"

"Right. Not until I give you permission, and that's not coming any damn time soon! And that permission's gotta come from me, you got it? Not Sonia! She wasn't there when you pulled that dumbfuck move!"

Hajime nodded. "Got it. So, all I can do is stay on the sidelines and do… tech support?"

Fuyuhiko's frown deepened over the pushback he wasn't getting. "Uh. Yeah. Right."

That sounded perfect. All Hajime wanted to do for the foreseeable future was work with the quantum computer until he'd teased apart its very last secrets. "Great, sounds perfect. You've got it. But really, is Nagito okay?"

After a few more mute, visibly frustrated seconds, Fuyuhiko relented and nodded. "Yeah, mostly. From what Mikan said, that stuff hit him like a combination of—"

"In practice, like a combination of multiple corticosteroids and a near cousin to a chemotherapy regimen," Hajime finished. Feeling that Fuyuhiko hadn't fully understood the drug supply he'd located, Hajime further explained, "With aggressive properties to reduce problematic tissue, while simultaneously sending the body's reparative functions into overdrive to—hopefully—recover and repair existing damage. It's about the only shot he's got left, so if it's not working…"

"No, for what it's worth, I think it's working," Fuyuhiko admitted. "But it left the guy feeling like his body was being ripped apart and put back together again. From the sound of it, it hit him a hell of a lot worse than anyone knew to expect. And it's not like the guy can't handle some serious pain, so…"

After a moment, Hajime uncomfortably concluded, "You mentioned that Mikan put Nagito into an induced coma, at least for a little while. Did… did the medicine leave him feeling that bad?"

"…Yeah." Fuyuhiko stared at nothing in particular as that sank in: Nagito's only salvation, which they'd worked so hard to get, felt more like damnation. "He, uh… how often is Nagito going to need this shit, anyway?"

The underlying meaning of that question ached. These drugs were the only chance Nagito had to stay alive. But every time he took them, his life would apparently become so agonizing that chemical oblivion was the only solution. How long would Nagito need to be unconscious before his body tolerated each new dose? Twelve hours? A day? A week?

"How often?" Fuyuhiko repeated.

"Every month," Hajime admitted. This cycle would need to happen every month.

Sighing, Fuyuhiko pinched the bridge of his nose. "Fuck. Is this really the only…?"

Hajime sighed, too. "Yeah. Unless we take over one of the top hospitals left somewhere and have its research staff work on him for six months straight… yeah. We're pretty much out of options."

"And I'm betting a hospital wouldn't roll out the red carpet for us any time soon," Fuyuhiko darkly concluded. He stayed silent for a while before adding, "I wouldn't do it."

"Take over a hospital?" Hajime wondered, befuddled.

"Take that medicine. Live a half-life like that, needing to be put under until I stop puking my guts out each month. I'd end it all, first." Despite those bitter words, Fuyuhiko's tone wasn't cold, but certain. Confident, even. "And I wouldn't let you risk yourself for me, in the first place. It'd be better to just end it."

Though the tone wasn't cold, Hajime felt frozen where he stood. "We are not giving up on anyone," he spat like he was talking to a stranger. Was this his Fuyuhiko, or a flickering shadow of the Remnant who'd sent his family's legacy against the meat grinder of the Japanese military? They'd thought the worst memories of Despair had been faced and grimly, painfully handled, but would more bubble up, even after so long? "And Nagito did say that we shouldn't risk ourselves for him, and I'm the one who said there was no question about it! So if you try to—"

"For fuck's sake," Fuyuhiko said, with wry humor that finally sounded more like him. "I didn't say to stop what you're doing, Hajime. I just said that I'd take myself off the board before I dealt with that shit. Me. For myself, not for anyone else."

"Oh." Hajime paused, then admitted, "Yeah, I guess you do like to go for the big dramatic sacrifice moves."

"Watch it." Fuyuhiko glared at him through his narrowed eye before continuing. "And if anyone's a fan of 'big dramatic sacrifice moves,' it's Nagito."

It wasn't hard for Hajime to anticipate the question he was about to be asked: how'd you convince that guy that he 'deserved' a risky mission for his sake in the first place? And that was a fair question. Nagito still acted like there was a separator between him and the rest of the group; between his self-appointed 'worthy' versus 'unworthy.' And Nagito, of course, remained unworthy, even after so long. "Yeah, he didn't want us going on that mission. Not for his sake."

Fuyuhiko's eyebrows raised, prompting a finish to that explanation.

"I lied that it was for my own sake," Hajime admitted. "That I wanted to see if I my talents could fix his medical issues. You know, with all of that…" His mouth twisted with the label a group of self-important monsters had given to him. "Ultimate Hope."

Fuyuhiko studied him. "Bullshit."

"No, really. I don't think Nagito totally believed me, but it worked well enough as an excuse that he gave in and said yes."

"I didn't mean that. That 'bullshit' was that when you said it was for your sake, that you lied." Seeing Hajime's confusion, Fuyuhiko continued, "That was no lie. It's just like I said before the mission: you still think Nekomaru was your fault. You can't take feeling that again, not so soon."

Hajime stayed silent for a while. "Yeah, and?"

"And… and nothing, I guess. I just don't want you lying to yourself about something. Especially something this big." Sympathy began to creep into Fuyuhiko's voice, mingled with real concern. "The only way we all got through, y'know… everything was by owning up to it, and moving on as best we could. That means it could be dangerous if you get too deep inside your own brain and don't come up for air."

When Hajime didn't reply, Fuyuhiko eventually continued, "Kazuichi whined about you kicking him out. He thinks this… whatever it is looked interesting. Are you sure it wouldn't be better if you let him in, instead of sitting in here alone?"

"I… look. I will, eventually! But this is like nothing I've ever seen before, and Kazuichi's first impulse is always to dig into something's components and see how they all piece together. I need to start with a lighter touch, is all."

Fuyuhiko's lips thinned. "Fine. What is that thing, anyway? The Imposter went quiet about it, and no one else knows why you've closed yourself in here." His eye flicked to the side and surveyed the computer, quickly but with keen attention. "It looks like an expensive piece of garbage."

Hajime laid a protective hand on what he'd come to think of as his computer. Yes, some of the elemental plugs had clearly been jury-rigged, but for a prototype, it looked damn good. "It's, uh."

"Uh?"

"If I tell you this, will you promise not to run off and tell Kazuichi? That's gotta be why the Imposter kept quiet."

"Sure, fine," Fuyuhiko impatiently sighed. "So?"

"As near as I can tell, it's a quantum computer that functions by…" Hajime hesitated, bit his lower lip, and continued, "That functions by accessing additional processing capabilities in…"

"Yeah? In what?"

"In other dimensions." Seeing Fuyuhiko frown in continued confusion, Hajime added, "Other realities. Timelines. Whatever you call it, it doesn't just run in our own dimension."

"That's… what the hell?"

Inspiration struck, and Hajime snapped his fingers and leaned back down to the computer. His fingers trailed lightly over the thin gold lines wrapping its surface. Perhaps his mental label of a kintsugi process had been more insightful than he first thought. Using gold to join multiple pieces back together? Maybe… "Look, let me explain it this way: what did you have for breakfast this morning?"

"I skipped it."

Hajime frowned at Fuyuhiko.

"What? Teruteru was pissing me off."

"He always pisses you off, but you still need to eat breakfast." Hajime held up his hands. "Never mind. Fine, you skipped breakfast. But tomorrow, you might decide that you're hungry enough to deal with him, right?"

"Sure. Whatever."

"Okay… well, in some other version of today, you decided to deal with Teruteru instead of skipping breakfast." His point didn't yet appear to be made, and Hajime considered it for a moment more. "How else to put this… before we ran the mission, you told me that you were ready to call it off. You could have decided to do that, right? You could have been too worried about letting me go on the field, or that I was putting Peko at too much risk?"

Fuyuhiko nodded. "Sure. It was a close call; I was ready to pull you all back."

"What would have happened if you had?"

"Well… I guess Nagito wouldn't be on all those knockout drugs, but he'd still be dying. And you wouldn't have that pile of trash on the counter, there."

Hajime sighed. It wasn't a pile of trash. It did look like a weird spark plug, sure, but a graceful, glossy white one that Apple would price like an automobile. "Right, exactly. Well, some branches of theoretical physics—stop looking bored, this is important."

"I'm not bored, I'm impatient. Get to the damn point."

"Right. Under certain theories, for each time we make a decision this way and not that way, a parallel dimension is created. Sometimes, the changes are small, like whether you skipped breakfast or grabbed some food. Sometimes, the changes are huge, like whether we save Nagito and get that computer."

Dubious, and making no attempt to hide it, Fuyuhiko clarified, "So under this bullshit theory, there's supposedly a whole new dimension created for every decision? Made by everyone? You might as well say that—"

"That there's an infinite number of possible dimensions," Hajime concluded with satisfaction. And in many of them, the conditions would be in place for one of these quantum computers to be built. Not all of them would ever be simultaneously in use; not when the word 'infinite' was part of the equation.

That, then, explained the kintsugi design on the computer's surface. The disparate pieces it joined together weren't really the glossy shards on a computer cover, but connections to the same machine in other dimensions. Any individual unit, like this one, only had a few hundred connection areas. But if each unit had a slightly different array of connections, then the potential number of processors was… unlimited.

That had surely been the intention of the designers. A supercomputer with unlimited processing power was a world-changing goal, all on its own. But with Hajime able to bring together multiple theoretical perspectives like no one else on the planet could, he could see an even bigger use for the machine in front of them.

Fuyuhiko took a while to reply. When he did, he sounded as cautious as Hajime had felt when he heard Fuyuhiko sound so casually dismissive about those last-resort drugs. They all knew to keep watch for the return of very dangerous habits. "And what're you planning to do with all of those other places, huh?"

Hajime started tracing golden paths over the machine's surface. Where did this map lead, exactly? "Somewhere, based on some combination of decisions and circumstances and dumb luck…"

"…Yeah?"

"Somewhere… maybe in a lot of somewheres… Nekomaru is still alive."

Fuyuhiko's eye closed, and he sighed. "And there it is."

"Don't give me that! If you knew you could save someone… if what you needed to do it was sitting right there on the counter, you'd do it!" Hajime gestured toward the closed door, and all of the people beyond it. Out there was Peko and the Imposter, who'd eventually bring Akane back into the fold of running their dangerous missions. Nagito, currently comatose with painful medical issues that could only be managed, not fixed. Ibuki, who'd come within seconds of choking to death while her struggles almost went unnoticed. "And I can do it! This is what I'm supposed to do, Fuyuhiko! Its what I was—"

Silence hung heavy after Hajime cut off. Levelly, Fuyuhiko finished, "Made for?"

Hajime grimaced. Yeah, he'd recognized the uncomfortable phrasing a few words too late.

Silence returned. This time, it stayed long enough that Hajime began to focus on the thrum-thrum-thrum of the overhead fan. An irregularity was barely audible, too quiet for even Kazuichi to notice during his visit, but Hajime should probably adjust a screw to correct its balance.

"I'm calling this mission," Fuyuhiko sighed, and broke eye contact.

Hajime blinked. "Huh?"

"Whatever you're doing… whatever you're thinking of doing… don't. That's an order."

Hajime fought down an initial, sharper reply. He wasn't sure exactly what words would have come out, but knew he'd regret them. "Fuyuhiko, this isn't a mission. You're not handling any planning and logistics, here. And so you don't get to tell me that."

"What I just heard is that someone who's spending time alone, getting obsessed with theories that only he understands, thinks he has access to… to fuckin' infinity." Fuyuhiko still wouldn't meet Hajime's eyes. "One of the things we've all gotta prioritize is keeping a handle on ourselves. Whatever you're doing, it's a bad idea."

Hajime's jaw set. "Keeping everyone safe is my job, and that's what I'm going to do."

"Hajime…" Fuyuhiko shifted his weight, looking more uncomfortable than he ever normally showed. The two of them were supposed to be on the same team, understanding each other like few others did. But that all meant that when they did argue, they knew exactly where to aim. "Sure, I can believe that Kazuichi would wreck your computer. You're right, he loves to tear things apart. But the Imposter has been keeping quiet about this thing, just like you hoped. You'd be fine if they came in here while you worked, right?"

"The Imposter?" A sigh of annoyance escaped Hajime. "They don't know about software, there'd be no point. I'd just be distracted."

"When you were explaining all those dimensions and shit to me, I saw you suddenly get inspired over something. I wasn't a distraction."

"I had just figured out why all of that gold is inlaid on the surface," Hajime admitted.

"Right. Hajime is better when he works with other people. If you can't stand being around people while you work, then I'm gonna worry that someone else is the one really digging into all of this quantum bullshit. So if you're staring at goddamn infinity, and you want to work alone… I'm calling this."

The overhead fan continued its thrum-thrum-thrum. Hajime really did need to fix that. "Yeah. Fine. The Imposter can be in here. They understood the basics, anyway, so they'd be good for me to bounce ideas off of."

"Fine," Fuyuhiko sighed, and ran a hand over his hair. He'd just recently cut it as short as it ever went, and he didn't seem to consciously recognize how much he touched it when the trim was fresh. "Research your damn computer a little more… but Hajime?"

"Yeah?"

"Nagito's the priority, remember. See if you can learn something from somewhere else that makes his life a little less shitty. Because… people die. It happens. We deal with it. But afterward, it's more important to focus on who's still here."

Hajime nodded slowly.

Fuyuhiko looked at him sidelong. "…You're about to pull something."

"Well." Shrugging, Hajime pointed out, "A priority is what you focus on. It doesn't have to be the only thing you do." Nagito had a problem, but he wasn't the only one. Nekomaru was dead, and it was Hajime's job to fix things.

"For fuck's sake! So what if there there is another Nekomaru out there? His heart would be about to give out too, yeah?" They'd both done the unforgivable as Remnants, but even before that, Fuyuhiko had never known a life without death surrounding him. It was no wonder that he could mourn, and then grimly let life continue.

Hajime flinched. He, on the other hand, still felt untrained with death. "I… I don't know. I don't know! But think of Akane. Wouldn't it be better for her to have the chance to say goodbye, instead of finding his dead body?"

Fuyuhiko's lips thinned, and he said nothing.

Hajime risked taking a slow step forward. "And if a Nekomaru is out there, somewhere…"

"…Yeah?"

"If I could find a Nekomaru… if Akane could say goodbye to him… maybe I could find a Natsumi, too."

Every line of Fuyuhiko's frame went rigid, and for a breath, it seemed like Hajime had made a terrible misstep. A moment later, Fuyuhiko looked away and the fists he'd instinctively clenched went limp. He stayed silent for a few more seconds, staring at the wall with unfocused eyes, and bit his lower lip.

Wouldn't it be better to have the chance to say goodbye, instead of finding a dead body?

"Nagito's the priority," Fuyuhiko muttered. The words came out thick and rough until he swallowed hard. "Just keep that in mind. I'll go find the Imposter and send them in. And if you ever start flying solo with this again, Hajime… I'm calling it."

Hajime nodded, then promised, "I can do this."

Fuyuhiko still wouldn't meet his gaze. "I'm not telling Akane what you're working on. I can… I can take it, if you don't get it done. In fact, I'm betting on it, since this all still sounds like a load of horseshit. But she'd get her hopes up."

"I can do this," Hajime repeated, hitting each word hard. Because I fix things.

[oh-hey-its-blue]

Break of Dawn: Chapter 1 (Astarion x Tiefling! Tav)

A/N: Ahhhh okay first ever fic posted here. Yes, it's 5k words. I only somewhat promise future chapters won't be so long, but idk we'll see. This is a fic idea I've had bouncing around for awhile and I've finally gotten around to writing it! My inbox is always open for feedback, especially if you notice any weird formatting errors since I'm not super familiar with tumblr's layout yet. I hope you all enjoy the first chapter of my special little baby :)

Summary: Tav, a cleric of Lathander, finds herself as the unfortunate recipient of a mindflayer tadpole with limited time to cure herself. She finds help in a group of fellow infected and mildly insane individuals, including a vampire who takes every opportunity to drive her up the wall. A vampire she's totally not falling in love with. Between cults, the literal gods of death, and the looming threat of turning into a mindflayer, Tav has to navigate both the end of the world and her increasingly complicated feelings for a creature she's pretty sure she's sworn to kill.

What could possibly go wrong?

Warnings: None in this chapter I don't think? But expect a lot of smut, trauma, and canon-typical violence down the line.

Dividers from @saradika

It was the headache that woke her. The pounding, throbbing pain in the front of her skull that threatened to seep into her veins and drain her strength. Tav shook her head, attempting to clear the dull ache, but only succeeded in making herself exceptionally dizzy. She was upright, that much she could tell, but it didn’t feel like she was propped against a wall or a bedpost. The surface against her back felt oddly…wet? Fleshy, almost. Tav could feel her horns scraping into something unsettlingly soft. Gods above, she hoped she wasn’t in a bathroom. That would be a new low for her, waking up in some muggy stall with who-knows-what seeping into her clothes. Every twitch of her fingers and toes brought a new wave of subtle nausea into her bones. 

Where was she?

The last thing Tav remembered was the ratty pub in Daggerford, stuffed elbow-to-elbow with farmers so drunk they couldn’t even bring themselves to care about the strange tiefling in their midst nursing a bottle of the sourest wine this side of the Dalelands. The clerics at the Morninglow Tower, the only Lathandarian monastery in the area and her main reason for stopping in Daggerford in the first place, had assured her that the Happy Cow was the best inn the city had to offer, but if her frazzled mind could remember anything, it was the swill in her glass and the grouchy halfling behind the bar.  

Why was she in Daggerford again?

The more Tav sat, trying to remember and simultaneously suppress the urge to vomit, the more the details came back to her. A summons to Baldur’s Gate, one that had been dispatched to the Dawnmaster of her monastery from a group of Selunites just outside of Rivington. Something about an increase in activity from a suspected group of Sharrans nestled within the Gate, a fear that the fanatics of the Nightsinger were planning something. A cry for help to any nearby allies of the Moonmaiden, a cry that reached as far north as Waterdeep, just for insurance in the event of an open conflict. Her Dawnmaster had selected her and only her to make the long journey south. Handpicked amongst hundreds to go alone to the Gate with little explanation why. A test of faith, she was told, despite her record of loyalty to Lathander. It was that loyalty that drove her to leave the safety of the Spires and go anyways, that made her push past the doubt, with little more than a traveler’s pack and questions about what exactly she was getting into.

Tav’s eyes were blurry when she opened them and she barely got a moment to assess the thick glass panel in front of her before it lifted away suddenly. She had a heartbeat to throw her arms out to catch her fall, though it did little to stop the shock and pain arching from her head down to the tip of her tail. She laid there on the ground, in a heap, trying to catch her breath, and was able to string enough of a thought together to realize it was probably the least dignified position she had ever been in.

Morninglord, help her.

Tav pushed herself onto her elbows and gave her surroundings a gander. The room was large and domed, with arcing metal ribs supporting the ceiling. Or what was left of it. Because, as she quickly realized from both the heat and her clearing vision, the room was positively ablaze. A shudder ran down her spine as she attempted to make out details past the gray smoke. Her scars prickled, and she had to double check to make sure she wasn’t on fire.

More memories. The thick air in the tavern, sweaty arms and faces and hands intruding into her personal space. The foul wine in her throat. The need to fill her lungs with something that wasn’t flavored with dwarf musk. Cool night air against her skin when she’d stumbled out of the pub, pulling her robes against her body, the breeze filling her chest. Flashes of suspicious looks from the locals on the streets, like she was a proper devil and not just a tiefling. Another breath in her lungs, soothing the burn that the tavern air had left on her throat.

Then there was screaming.

Quick, high-pitched. A moment to spin and try and assess the situation. Something black, blacker than the night sky, against the horizon, moving towards the city. A writhe of tentacles against the stars, a prayer to Lathander to lend her strength for what was to come, and then…nothing. She remembered heat against her skin, light against her eyes, and now she was laying in a burning room with the biggest headache of her life.       

Had her drink been spiked?

No, because now she remembers the mindflayers. Great ugly beasts looming outside the pod she’d just faceplanted out of. A bit of green skin a few pods down from hers, something small and pulsating in one of the illithid’s taloned hands. Then, the mindflayer rounding on her, holding up a wriggling worm with a circular mouth and too many teeth. She remembers the terror and the pain as the larva was held up to her eye. The ache as it found its target and slithered its way into her skull.

She took her studies at the monastery seriously. Lathander valued a sharp mind, and while he mostly called his followers to hunt undead monstrosities, she made it a point to familiarize herself with all manner of beasts and devils. Mindflayers were a rare threat, mostly occupying themselves with the Outer Planes in their eternal grapple against the gith, but they were important enough for the temple library to have a whole section dedicated to illithid and their ilk. She knew what had happened—what the squirming tadpole pushing into her brain meant about her current condition—and she knew her days were now decidedly numbered.

There was a pulse inside her head, a wriggle behind her eye, and Tav wished it had just been vampires instead. At least then the silver dust in her pocket and the holy water against her hip would have done her some good. With a groan, she rose to her feet, careful to keep her tail above the hot metal floor, and stumbled past the burning remains of the room around her, unhooking her mace from her back as she did. She noticed a few splayed mindflayer corpses, tentacles like wet pipes against her ankles as she slipped past, and wondered again what had caused the destruction. Tav was almost certain she was either in one of their colonies or on a ship, and the thought occurred to her that it was entirely likely she had been sucked into the middle of the war between the illithids and the gith. It was simply a question of which subset of the gith population she would potentially have to deal with in an escape. Githzerai were dangerous but reasonable and could maybe be swayed to help if Tav proved she was no threat. The githyanki were a different story, and she hoped she wasn’t bearing witness to one of their raiding parties, but she got the sneaking suspicion that her luck was poor on that front. Their red dragons would certainly explain the fire.

The next room was in less disarray, the flames having smoldered out to leave ash in their wake, and Tav noticed a large tear in the far wall, framed by daylight streaming in from the outside. Her heart leapt at her sign of freedom, but an uneasy shiver went through her at the sight of the tables lining the walls, topped by corpses. She gritted her teeth and sent a silent prayer to the less fortunate of the mindflayers’ abductees, followed by a reassurance to herself that she would not be joining them. On her way towards the makeshift exit, she bent and rummaged through the robes of a fallen mindflayer, gathering the assorted coins and gemstones she found, and hoped the souls of the victims appreciated her pettiness towards their killers.

As she straightened up to continue forward, the sound of something skittering, not unlike a rat inside a wall, drew her attention. Tav watched as a trio of creatures resembling brains on four legs pushed past a fallen piece of metal and scurried back the way she had come. She recognized them as intellect devourers, aberrations that served in the collective illithid hivemind. Her eyes followed the creatures as they left and couldn’t decide if she was more surprised or grateful that they hadn’t noticed her. Tav simply shook her head, deciding it didn’t matter, and made her way towards the exit.

The hope that had sprung in her heart at the chance of escape was squashed, however, when Tav managed to push through the wreckage and make her way to the gap in the ship’s hull. It became clear that, although there was heat radiating into the room from the opening, it did not come from a familiar sun. Instead, Tav saw only a scarlet horizon, the ground rushing past far below, and swarms of winged imps and devils thrashing in the air. There was a tingle down her spine, like her infernal heritage recognized the bloody skies of the Hells, and Tav cursed her increasingly sour luck. Of all the places she could have wound up, Baator would not have been high on her list. What she had done to get so far off track from her mission, Lathander only knew.

Tav was starting to wonder how she was ever going to escape the Hells and a burning illithid ship—because it had to be a ship, given how far she was off the ground and the speed at which they were moving—when she watched as, from underneath the vessel, a flash of crimson cut against the sky. A red dragon, flames billowing from its gaping jaws, curved against the shape of the aircraft, directed by the speck of a gith rider against its back. In her shock, she nearly dropped her mace—not helped by her sweaty palms—and Tav held her empty hand up to block the burn of the fire when the beast let loose a column of flame to beat back a horde of devils swarming the ship. She knew for a fact now that this had to be a githyanki raiding party, tracking an illithid vessel across the planes atop the backs of their red dragons. Tav was just unlucky enough to be caught in the middle with an unwelcome stowaway tagging along for the ride.

Before Tav could come up with a plan to escape the current predicament, an arc of silver crested over her head as a figure leapt from above, and she suddenly found herself face to face with a gith woman, dark hair and green skin made even more sharp against the red sky, covered in ash from head to toe. And while Tav only knew of the githyanki from her studies, she did not need books to identify the rage in the woman’s eyes and the greatsword the gith was pointing at her throat.

“Abomination,” the woman growled, leveling her blade until the tip was grazing the dip between Tav’s collarbones. “This is your end!"

Tav was just raising her hands to explain as fast as she could that she posed the warrior no threat when a sudden discomfort split her skull, almost like it was emanating outwards from the tadpole lodged in her brain. Tav did not recall closing her eyes, but it was like she was now in a dream, or recalling some distant memory that was not her own, as she watched the scales of a red dragon undulate over solid muscle, the glint of sunlight off a silver sword. Her ears were filled with the sound of clanging steel, her shoulders dipped beneath the weight of heavy armor. As quick as they came, the visions dissipated, and Tav blinked away the fogginess to see the gith woman clutching her skull, and Tav realized with a jolt that she had just taken a peek inside the woman’s mind, witnessed her memories, which likely meant the connection had been two way. The soldier drew her brows as she shook her head against an apparent pain, before looking up and meeting Tav’s gaze again.

“What…what is this?” she hissed, more to herself than to Tav. A dozen emotions crossed the gith’s face—confusion, discomfort, anger—before settling on what Tav hoped was happiness. “You are no thrall,” the warrior said. Tav watched as, thankfully, the woman lowered her blade and sheathed it against her back. “Vlaakith blesses me this day!”

Tav kept her hands raised, ready to channel Lathander’s dawn if needed, but took a cautious step towards the gith as she said, “A thrall? Like a mindflayer’s servant?”

One of the gith’s eyebrows raised, clearly surprised Tav was at least familiar with illithid.

“The very same. We are fortunate we retain our senses.”

“But I’m infected,” Tav said, and she suddenly remembered the look she’d gotten from inside her pod. Green skin a few spaces down and a flash of dark hair. She realized it must’ve been the woman before her that had been imprisoned, as well. Tav drew her brows together. “And so are you, aren’t you? Given that look I just got inside your head.”

The gith scoffed and tossed her hair over her shoulder. She started to turn like she intended to walk away.

“Yes, we both carry ghaik tadpoles. But for now, we have our wits, and I intend to keep them.” She glanced over, eyes trailing up and down Tav’s figure, before continuing. “You are a cleric, yes? An experienced one, from what your memories told me. You may have your uses. Come, we must make haste to the helm.”

The gith did not wait for a reply as she began to walk away. Tav stood, slightly dumbfounded, and watched the gith make confident strides down the wrecked platform they stood on.

“Wait!” she called when her brain finally caught up with what was going on. The gith stopped and turned, irritation spiking her gaze when she saw that Tav had not moved. “That’s it, then? We just team up and move on like we weren't in each other's minds?"

The warrior huffed, saying something in her language under her breath.

“What just happened to us will not matter if we die on this ship. I intend to escape and make my way back to my people. Your best hope of survival is to follow me. Unless your god commands you to burn to a crisp here?”

Deep in the Hells, Tav’s connection to Lathander was flimsy, but she could hazard a guess that he did not, in fact, want her to die here. And for as much as she would love to not owe her life to a bloodthirsty githyanki, Tav had enough common sense to know her options were slim at best. So, with a huff, she tightened her grip on her mace and followed the gith.

“I’m Tav, by the way,” she called up to the woman. She received no response. Tav sighed. “Nice to meet you, too.”

The next room crawled with around half a dozen invading imps, the tiny beasts gnawing at the corpses of both illithid and the poor souls that had been abducted, but their attention was quickly drawn when Tav and the gith made their way in. Tav had barely blinked before the warrior had notched an arrow into her longbow and sent it flying into the neck of one of the imps, and Tav managed to eliminate another with a burst of holy flame from the tips of her fingers. The remaining imps screeched and began to flap towards them, but failed to do any damage before the two of them brought them down with a mix of arrows, steel, and magic.

“You are quite adequate in battle,” the gith remarked as she pulled her arrows from the twisted corpses. “Perhaps our odds are not so poor.”

Tav bent to collect a crossbow from one of the imps, figuring a ranged weapon would come in handy, and replied, “You aren’t too bad yourself.” What was meant to be a compliment was clearly received differently when the gith’s expression somehow got sourer, her eyes squinting in a harsh glare.

“I am githyanki. If you think I cannot handle imps, then you are more uneducated than I thought.”

Tav opened and closed her mouth, attempting to stutter out that she had meant no offence, but the gith had already moved on to the next room. With a sigh, Tav followed, wishing more than ever it had just been vampires instead.

By the time Tav caught up to the soldier, the woman had nearly spanned the entire length of the room, which Tav noticed was empty save from a ring of what looked to be stretchers in the center, each holding an unresponsive body, and a pod against the far wall. Upon closer inspection, Tav’s heart dropped when she realized there was someone inside. She jogged up to the prisoner and saw the vague features of a woman inside banging against the glass. 

“Hey!” the woman yelled, fingers clawing at the walls of her prison. “Hey, get me out of here!"

“Don’t worry,” Tav replied as she began to look over the pod for any sort of latch that might open it, “I’m not leaving you behind.” She turned to look at the gith, who was already at the far end of the room. “Help me out here!” she called.             

The gith turned, her eyes narrowing when she saw what Tav was doing.

“I do not intend to stop for every prisoner we come across. We must reach the helm if we hope to escape.” Tav scowled.

“The more help, the better,” she responded. “I’m not abandoning anyone.”

The gith scoffed and said something in a language Tav did not know and walked back over to where she was now pouring over the panel next to the pod.  

“Do you truly mean to die for a stranger?” the gith growled. Tav ran her hands over the console, picking at the depths of her memories to recall any illithid sigils she might know.

“Nobody is dying today,” Tav said. With a huff, she resigned herself to the fact that she was a poor student of illithid script and had no clue what any of the symbols meant. She thought about asking the gith, but already knew the soldier would likely be no help. Tav felt the humming of magic around the console, and she winced when the tadpole in her brain seemed to squirm in response. That caused a thought to pop into her head, and she focused her mental energy on the worm. If anything could help her understand the mindflayers’ language, it was one of their young.

It was like grabbing a fish in a river the way the tadpole slipped about her mind’s grasp, but at last she got a hold on the parasite and forced it to yield. With what felt like a click inside her mind, the tadpole obeyed, and the console in front of her roared to life. Tav’s next thought was how she was supposed to use the panel to open the pod, but it was like the mere idea itself made the console obey, and the pod suddenly snapped open. Tav had just enough time to step in front and catch the woman inside before she had a similar landing against the floor like Tav experienced earlier.   

The pair stumbled, but Tav helped the woman right herself. She was taller, with dark hair braided down her back and deep green eyes framed by a scar across the bridge of her nose beneath a blunt fringe. Tav noticed the tips of pointed ears poking from her hair, but the woman did not have the typical angular features of a full elf, meaning she must only be half elven. Her silver armor was covered in soot, but it was clear that beneath the dirt her plate was well cared for.

Tav lifted her arms and let the woman step back. The half-elf shook her head, black hair swinging about her face as she raised a hand to her forehead.

“Thank you,” she said. “I thought that damned thing was going to be my coffin."

Tav only had time for a nod before a now-familiar pain burst behind Tav’s eyes, and once again she found herself in someone else’s brain. Unlike the gith, the half-elf’s memories were like murky water, swirling around inside her mind without any clear features. The only thing Tav picked up on with clarity was a spark of suspicion—aimed at the gith standing beside her. Just as quick as their minds linked, the connection snapped.

The half-elf drew her brows together, confusion marring her features.

“It’s the tadpole,” Tav said before the woman could voice her obvious question. “You’re infected with one, same as we are.” She gestured to the gith, who did not even look remotely happy at the turn of events. “They let our minds connect.”           

“Yes, that much is obvious,” the half-elf replied. Her gaze turned to the gith, and her expression pinched to match the anger on the warrior’s face. “I was not aware Lathander’s clerics kept such strange company."

Tav’s immediate question—how did the woman know she worshipped the Morninglord? —was squashed before she embarrassed herself. The woman had just been inside her head and Tav’s faith was the most important thing she kept in there. Obviously a peek in her skull would show that. Instead, Tav shrugged.

“Strange times require strange company. Besides, we’ll have to fight our way off this ship and an extra sword is always good.” The half-elf raised an eyebrow, but her shoulders relaxed slightly.

“I suppose you have a point there.” She turned to look at Tav. “I’m Shadowheart. And you are?"

Tav grinned at the novelty of knowing at least one of her companion’s names.

“Tav. It’s a pleasure.”

The gith suddenly scoffed.

“Are we done with pleasantries? The longer we dawdle the slimmer our chances of escape become.” She didn’t wait for an answer before she made her way back towards the exit.

Shadowheart glared at the gith’s back but said, “She’s right. Lead the way.”

They began to follow where the gith had gone, but Shadowheart suddenly stopped at gripped at her sides like she was feeling for something. She turned back, and Tav watched as she rummaged about inside her pod before pulling something small out and tucking it into one of her pockets, but it was too dark for her to get a good look.

“Everything okay?” Tav asked. Shadowheart laughed dryly.

“I’m trapped on a mindflayer ship with a parasite in my head surrounded by devils and burning wreckage.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and began walking towards the exit the gith had already pushed through. “I’m having the time of my life."

Tav couldn’t help but chuckle and followed close behind.     

The two found the gith standing in front of a closed door, the fleshy material that seemed to line the whole ship pulled into a pinwheel. The soldier turned when they entered and rested a hand on her sword.                

“The helm should be beyond this door. Once inside, do as I say.” 

Shadowheart’s expression darkened. “Who put you in charge?” she snapped. The gith looked like she was about to bite back, so Tav stepped between the two and held out her hands.   

“Now is not the time for arguing. What’s important is that we make it off this ship.” She turned to Shadowheart. “I don’t like it, either, but githyanki are experts on mindflayers. If she says this is how we get out, it’s in our best interests to cooperate.”

“For an istik,” the gith said through a self-satisfied smile, “you are surprisingly competent.”

Tav blinked. “Thank you?”

Shadowheart huffed and shoved past them both. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Tav had hoped that the only thing that stood between them and freedom would be another swarm of imps, but as they entered the helm of the ship, she was instead immediately reminded that they were still in an active warzone. Mindflayers and devils clashed, tentacles and wings thrashing as each side tried to gain an advantage over the other. Imps and hellboars batted hoards of intellect devourers back, all while the flames licking against the walls climbed higher and higher.

Tav watched as one of the mindflayers wrapped its tentacles around the head of a cambion soldier, and blood sprayed when the illithid dug its teeth into the devil. The creature let the fiend drop and suddenly turned to face them. From the corner of her eye, she watched Shadowheart and the gith ready their weapons, but all three flinched when their tadpoles wriggled about as a voice not belonging to any of them ripped into their heads.     

“Thralls,” the voice boomed, sounding like it came from everywhere around them, “connect the transponders. Take control of the ship.”

Tav watched the mindflayer raise one long-fingered hand and pointed to the front of the room, where a tangled mass of blue tentacles squirmed over a console similar to the one that had opened Shadowheart’s pod. With a jolt, she realized it was the illithid speaking to them, giving orders through the tadpole.   

The gith grunted and raised her sword. “Do as it says. While it thinks we are under its control, we have a chance at escape.”

“It won’t be easy getting to that console,” Shadowheart said. “We’ll need to be—"

She was cut off suddenly as the gith surged forward, sword arcing downwards through a pair of imps that had swarmed an intellect devourer. They watched as the soldier pushed through the fiends before her, grappling with devils like it was nothing.

“—careful,” Shadowheart finished. She turned and looked at Tav, giving a slight shrug as she said, “Guess we follow her, then?”

Tav mirrored her shrug, and they followed the gith into the fray.       

It was tough work pushing to the back of the room. For every imp or cambion that fell from a burst of holy radiance, another devil entered her vision with a raised sword. If it hadn’t been for well-timed arrows from the gith or Shadowheart’s own divine fire, Tav was certain her fortunes would’ve gone sour. In the back of her mind, she made a note to ask who Shadowheart’s patron was. Tav recognized the work of another cleric but couldn’t put her finger on the origin of her magic. It wasn’t the holy fervor her own Lathanderian magic possessed, and wasn’t familiar like the magic of Selunites she’d met in the past, but she figured, so long as it was keeping devils off her back, whichever god was fueling Shadowheart’s spells had Tav’s thanks.

Tav didn’t know how long they had been fending off Avernus’s forces before she looked up and saw an opening. The gith had felled a cambion that had been blocking the way to the helm, but her attention had been diverted by a pair of hellboars. Tav took her chance and broke into a sprint, narrowly dodging the body of a mindflayer that was thrown her way by a cambion before Shadowheart brought it down with a bolt of sickly green necrotic magic. Tav only had a moment to ponder over that—perhaps she was a cleric of Kelemvor? —as she slid to a halt in front of the console.

She let the tadpole guide her hands, following its instincts on which tentacles to grab, but a sudden blast of heat above her drew her attention away. Tav looked up to find the gaze of a great red dragon, its head having pushed past a gap in the ship’s roof. Distantly, she heard the gith yell something, but Tav couldn’t make out the words as she ducked to avoid another column of fire. Her scars prickled against the flames, and she had to push down the hint of panic and rely on her infernal heritage to keep her skin safe from the fire.

The ship suddenly tilted, and Tav’s feet fell from under her as her balance shifted with the new angle. She watched the dragon retreat and forced herself back up, but only had a moment to right herself when another great shudder passed through the ship. As fast as she could, Tav brought together two spindly tentacles. The parasite squirmed about her brain, and she watched through the windows as Avernus’s skyline blurred. She blinked, and where the hellfire had once been there were now stars. She realized they had to be back in the Material Plane, but still very high above ground.

“Again!” she heard the gith yell.

Tav looked over her shoulder to see the soldier now grappling with the mindflayer that had given them orders earlier. Shadowheart was closer to the middle of the room standing off against a trio of imps and a cambion. She met the gith’s eyes and the warrior yelled something about taking control of the ship, but the words were lost in the roil of combat. Tav didn’t need the details, though: she knew they were in a losing fight and were running out of time. So, with a prayer to Lathander she hoped he could hear, she grasped the tentacles again and brought them back together.  

The vessel shuddered again, and Tav lost her grip as the whole ship seemed to invert on itself. Her feet scrambled for purchase but did little good, and she could do nothing but gasp when the room went sideways. In a heartbeat she was suddenly against the far wall, then falling forwards again. She watched the metal siding of the ship splinter and tumble away and she knew that while they may no longer be crashing in the Hells, they were still crashing regardless.

Another yank of gravity and Tav was scrambling for purchase against the floor. She slid back the way she’d come, towards the nose of the ship, and she caught a glimpse of Shadowheart falling through a new hole in the side of the craft. Tav didn’t even have the energy to call out. She could only hope Shadowheart’s god was kind enough to spare her from the fall.

The ship tilted, and Tav realized with a lurch that she was now sliding towards the same gap that Shadowheart had just been flung out of. She only had a moment to grasp the jagged wall to avoid a similar tumble. The wind lashed against her cheeks, sending her hair flying about her face, and it was through the strands that she met the gaze of a mindflayer, slumped against the opposite side of the gash and holding its side. Its eyes were cold and unblinking, and Tav got the distinct sensation of something prodding against the back of her head, but the feeling broke when a piece of debris suddenly hit the side of her skull. It was so abrupt that Tav had no time to regain her slack grip, and before she knew it she felt the wind now pummeling her from all angles.

It took an embarrassing amount of time for her to realize that she was falling. With how her luck had been, Tav wasn’t even surprised. She could only hope that, when she inevitably met the ground, Lathander would spare her a bit of good fortune and keep her from breaking her neck.

Her last thought before things went white was that she really, really just wished it had been vampires instead.

[floofrights]

Hi. As someone who hopes to one day start my own webcomic, I'm fascinated by how your deleted scenes archive features almost complete art that follows a widly different route that that of the final narrative. It's a bit mindblowing to me, honestly.

If I may ask, how does your process work? Do you follow the conventional script -> sketch -> final art workflow and just take "kill your darlings" to heart regardless of which step you're in, or do you use the art itself as part of your writing (and consequently rewriting) process?

My process is very unconventional and also very flawed in a lot of ways. But it's the process that works for me. Sometimes.

(This is gonna be really long by the way and also it's probably gonna be wonky and messy so be warned lol)

When it comes to making a chilli issue, and just most of my comics in general, I don't write scripts. Would making comics be a lot easier if I did? Probably. Certainly. Absolutely. But it's not my process. At some point I'd like to start writing scripts before I work on an issue, but it always just felt easier not to.

Instead of a script, I write a very rough outline in my sketchbook, with notes so illegible only I could read them. I often deviate from these notes as I'm making pages however. Sometimes I'm about to hit a story beat and I decide it can be done in a slightly different way, so I do that instead. But I don't differ too much from these notes. For the most part.

When it comes to dialogue, it's very on the fly. I may have specific character quotes in my head when I'm planning out an issue, but most of it is only written in the moment when I'm actually making the page.

In terms of art, Chilli has a very "simple" style, and that was on purpose. I used to draw final lineart in my webcomics, and I found it very tedious. What I'd often find is I'd like the undersketch of a panel more than the final art. So when I started making Chilli, I just used the undersketch AS the final lineart, and I developed and refined that style as time went on.

When actually making an issue, I start off by figuring out the panel layout of a page. Sometimes this can be edited as I work on a page, but this is where I visualize the panels ahead of time. Once the border is done, I begin to draw the lineart. Sometimes I make a rough undersketch for a panel if it's particularly complicated, but usually I don't do that.

Once the lineart's done, I go back and give a thick outline to all the characters, and any other elements in panel, to make them pop from the background. It also makes it easier to color the page. Because the coloring process in Chilli is so simple, I often just use the paint bucket tool.

Now for dialogue! Again, this is usually only written at this point in the process. Even if I know what HAS to be said, HOW I say it can be tricky to figure out. Once the dialogue's done, I create the speech bubbles, and then boom! Finished page.

On an average day, I can draw four pages of an issue, but this is far from my limit. If i really wanted to, I could make 5-6 pages a day, but my wrist would absolutely not like that lmao.

And so day by day, I work through an issue, four pages at a time, until eventually, I have a finished draft! Does this mean the issue is finished? Nope!

Once a draft is complete, I do a mini "round of edits," where go through and make little changes fit to my liking. This could range from editing dialogue to make it less clunky, to redoing an entire panel. Once this round is finished, I set the issue aside. I don't work on it. I don't even look at it. I need it fresh out of my mind.

Eventually, usually about a couple weeks before it's released, I go through the issue and do an even bigger "round of edits," rewriting even more dialogue and redrawing even more panels. I do at least a few more rounds of edits until I'm finally satisfied, and that's when the issue's released.

Sometimes however, things can go horribly wrong.

Issue 12 was supposed to be a completely different issue. It was supposed to be the start of a new arc, but as I was making the issue, I just found myself unsatisfied and not that confident in the story I was setting up. So I scrapped that attempt halfway through, and instead began work on the issue 12 that would eventually release.

"Red Meat" in particular was a very troubling arc to make. I made probably about 300+ pages for that arc, and I ended up scrapping over a third of that. I did not do a good job at planning out the story for that arc, and it ended up biting me in the ass later when I realized I didn't like where the arc was headed.

Issues 25 & 26 were both drafted at this point, and I didn't like either of them, issue 26 specifically. The problems they had couldn't really be fixed in rounds of edits either, they were fundamental problems. If I wanted to fix them, I'd have to scrap a lot of what I'd already made.

So I did.

I redid a lot of issue 25, and I scrapped that version of issue 26 entirely. It was for the best ultimately, but in the moment it felt very demoralizing having to scrap so many finished pages.

Issue 27 also ended up being way too long (like almost 70 pages) so I had to cut a lot of (finished) pages in that one too to keep the pacing up. I cut out a lot of good stuff from that issue, but it was for the best. Even after those cuts the issue's still tied with issue 12 as the longest chilli issue.

What happened in Red Meat was a worst case scenario though, and going forward, im gonna make sure that something like that never happens again. Because, fuck. It didn't feel good scrapping those finished pages lol.

My process is very messy and slightly taxing, but it's the process I'm familiar with. I would not recommend doing what I do, especially if you've never made a webcomic before, but instead to try and develop your own method that works for you! Different processes work for different people

Thank you for your ask! Good luck on your webcomic journey, wherever it takes ya!

[chidoroki]

182 Days of TPN - Day 110

Chapter 110: “What I Can Do”

Their concerns are all valid. Both dads were indeed injured and sorta trapped for a little bit, but it’s far too risky to go back and check on them without knowing the status of the enemy. Poor Ray, always being the logical one and dealing out the hard truths no one wants to hear.

At least he feels bad for the outburst. Can’t really blame him for losing his cool either. Everyone’s emotions are a mess at the moment and we already know Ray doesn’t take loses well when it comes to family.

Sandy is such a sweetheart to the younger kids. (I wonder who actually made his little broccoli eyepatch though. it’s adorable.)

You would think I would be making a comment about the Seven Walls or Emma’s dilemma with these panels, but surprise, it’s actually gonna be about Ray. Listen, I dunno the exact layout of the tunnels or how close everyone is to one another right now, but Ray had to be yelling so loud if Emma was able to hear him from her spot next to Chris, a place where I assume she hasn’t moved from since they arrived underground. It’s just amusing to me since Ray is usually level headed and quieter than most of the other kids, even compared to Emma & Norman.

Precious child quite literally being that perfect ray of sunshine everyone needs and brightening the mood in these dark times.

Y’all are so lucky that call came through when it did and not a couple minutes after when Andrew & his men showed up.

So convenient that it was Lucas who was down there to answer the call too. If it was anyone from GF, they might’ve picked up on Norman’s voice.

For real though, even if someone couldn’t realize the difference between James & Norman’s voices, their way of speaking and their plans are very different. A bit surprised Lucas didn’t notice that since he happen to listen to both recordings, or maybe he did and we just never knew because.. well, very dramatic life changing reasons. Either way, I’m glad Emma figures out both WMs are different.

Someone tell me why this bastard gets plot armor and not either one of our bunker dads? Or literally any other human we love? like fucking hell, how can Andrew survive a close up explosion unlike Yuugo & Lucas and Isabella dies by being stabbed by a demon, especially when both Emma & Barbara suffer similar wounds and walk away relatively fine?? I just.. really hate this man okay.

Favorite panel/moment:

I can’t remember all the wholesome father & son moments of everyone off the top of my head, but they all probably belong to Lucas & Oliver and this one in particular is one of the best despite it being so heartbreaking.

[salami-dono]

DR. JESTER

I recreated a Sonic OC I made when I was 10. The layout of the model sheet is based on the IDW ones. :) They were very helpful. This reference took a long time to complete. I’m finally ready to introduce the evil Dr. Jester! (Most of what I write here will not be things I thought of when I was 10-12 years old.)

Here is a description of his appearance:

Dr. Jester is a robot hedgehog with a grey face and pastel pink quills. He stands at a rather tall 4 ft or 123 cm. The three quills adorning his head are tri-colored. The three colors are pink, white and pale turquoise. Peridot-colored eyes light up on a black screen. The color and shape of his eyes sometimes change depending on his mood. His original stumpy tail was replaced with a crocodile tail. It is the same pale turquoise as one of his jester quills and has magenta scutes. (There is no explanation for the new tail’s existence. It just looks cool.) His hands are black with grey palms. The joints of the fingers and thumbs are magenta.

He wears a white lab coat and white pants. An asymmetrical panel with three large buttons is connected to the collar with a magenta strip. He wears black safety boots with magenta accents. The soles are grey. The sides have screws, and the top part is white. 

The most time-consuming part of his design by far was choosing the color palette. The second and third things would be his quills and limbs. From the beginning, I wanted to use a light color for his body to match the greyscale of my old art. There isn’t a single drawing of Dr. Jester with color, nor did I leave any clues in my writing. I wanted pastel pink to work because it’s a nostalgic color. It reminds me of my pink baby blanket, my old room, pink pigs (my favorite animal when I was very young), and a pink dress—very early childhood memories.

Like all of my Sonic OCs, Dr. Jester hails from another universe. It’s more of a “perpendicular” universe to Sonic’s universe than a parallel one. Their universes interact in a way that doesn’t affect spacetime. Traveling there is as easy as entering a Special Stage. No one you know is there (and neither are you), but familiar personalities do exist in that universe. Similar locations also appear. Sonic’s Green Hill is their Emerald Hill. The idea of an alternate universe was based on a very early issue of the Archie comics that introduced the “Anti-Sonic.”

Dr. Jester is a villain of the same caliber as Dr. Eggman, or so he thinks. How did those two meet? That’s what I’d like to know… Dr. Jester referred to him as Dr. Robotnik the first time they were seen together before he learned he was going by the name “Eggman,” and Eggman called him an old friend. Eggman’s robots thought Dr. Jester was mean and unpleasant, but his robot underlings were much more friendly. They’re right.

Dr. Jester earned his name the same way Eggman did. The only difference is that Dr. Jester was called a jester since he was a kid. After a lifetime of torment, he made it his own! He’s proud of it, alright? It doesn’t matter what his real name is.

Just because he’s a robot, that doesn’t make him unemotional. Far from it! Dr. Jester is animated. He’s spiteful and cynical. Things like love and romance disgust him. He’s easily provoked and reacts strongly to insults. If his favorite robot left him, he’d be upset. Still, he smiles and laughs a lot. He’s jolly when things go his way. He enjoys puns, especially of the egg variety. Dr. Jester does not share Eggman’s short-sightedness regarding Sonic the Hedgehog with his own nemesis. When there is a plan, he sticks to it. He loves to trick others and dish out revenge whenever he can with a cold and calculated fury. Eggman is not exempt.

Of course, he also has an uglier, more dangerous side. He doesn’t care for the basic needs of living things: clean air, clean water, food and shelter. His operations threaten the health of the planet, and that endangers everyone. He’s been a robot for some time; he’s detached. It would be better if organic beings gave in and became robots. They could live forever, free from all biological constraints.

Before his mechanical transformation, Dr. Jester was once a living, breathing hedgehog. The process included a mind transfer, also called a soul/consciousness transfer, and therefore irreversible. It’s an alternate method of Robotization. (I can’t say Roboticization. lol) The power source of his robot body is a mystical gem I call the Fluorite Brain, the new home of his consciousness. A robot with a soul, that’s what he is. 

For some reason, it is difficult to replicate his level of awareness in other machines. That’s just a risk you’ll have to take when becoming a robot. What kind of person wants to become a robot anyway?

One of the most bizarre abilities of Dr. Jester’s mechanical body that I came across was that he could consume food and drink. I assume he had a habit of drinking coffee when he was alive. He could probably keep up with specific tasks for long periods, but he would get bored doing so. He sleeps to pass the time.

Surprisingly, he has some basic combat skills. He’s a slugger! His main attacks are paralyzing electric-shock punches and sweeps from his metal tail. The tail may be organic because I mentioned that it “turned into steel” before he used it. It’s a magical crocodile tail! Dr. Jester can wield the Chaos Emeralds as well. He used a pink one from his universe to hover in the air and deflect beams and missiles fired by the G.U.N. military. 

I was ecstatic to see him in action. I thought he was a wimp! He even defeated his nemesis in a one-on-one battle. I believe his true strengths are his elemental resistance and highly durable body. He does his best to avoid damage to his body. He will run away if he has to. He’s actually better at fleeing than fighting.

Dr. Jester is strong, but he has weaknesses. He is weak to the type of magic that controls electrical signals. It’s possible to take control of his mechanical body, but he is immune to mind control. He fears that magic. In the Archie comics, it’s called Magitek.

He’s also weak to kindness. He couldn’t understand why anyone would show him mercy, let alone his nemesis. In this specific scene, he was completely silent but I wonder what was going through his mind. What did they see in him? Humanity? Laughable. Is there goodness in that metal carapace? All of their problems could have been solved if they had just let him be destroyed with the Egg Carrier.

It was meant to be a humorous scene, but I noticed how strangely Dr. Jester acted during it.

Here is the line that seemingly ended Dr. Jester’s story—without context:

“Dr. Jester is long gone...”

He’s good at running away.

-

By the way, if you’re familiar with the character Dr. 0 (voiced by James Urbaniak) from Fallout: New Vegas, that’s the voice I think Dr. Jester would have. They have similar personalities, and he’s sort of a think tank himself.

[aghhtdraws]

22!!

Thank you for this ask! What an interesting question :D

22. What's something you'd love to draw but haven't yet?

Hmm... I feel like of all things I haven't drawn, I'd definitely like to start on the ones I plan to draw! Like for one thing, all my unfinished and unstarted comics (both original and fancomics) but also, more generally, I'd like to draw more quiet scenes because I feel like those subtle and calm scenes can be really hard to do compared to action! I'm so used to practicing action that it would be interesting to practice more of the opposite as well haha :D

Also maybe talking scenes. Those are hard to picture for me in comics, but feel easier to imagine as animation (because of the one camera), so maybe I should practice more of those too.

These are old comics, but I'm reminded of these ancient fancomics from 2016. The sparring comic was fun to do (even if it looks old and unclear now) but in comparison, this talking-heads page from the same year feels more boring to look at, even if the planning was sorta the same (I was more focused on trying to figure out a good and easier way to letter and speechbubble the comic and left the layout really simple)

Maybe one thing I'd like to draw more, is just these looser and more energetic pages, like this newer comic from around 2020

more stuff like this, even if it's much sketchier, it feels more clear because the intention is stronger here than the older comics, where I often fumbled around with the lines a lot and redrew things as I kept looking for the "right line" instead of just going with the flow.

so i guess, lol, just more comics? more fancomics on day!!

uhhh, but these are all sorta things I've already tried drawing so.... of things I haven't drawn yet... yeah, maybe comics with non-human characters, like robots or aliens. or maybe something easier to draw, where the moments between the panels, the flow of the story become a bigger part than the drawings alone. that would be interesting to draw if I get there one day :P Maybe I should pick something more realistic haha! of general work, I'd definitely like to one day animate more animals. I actually have a dragon animation in the works right now that I'm still doodling along and thinking about.

of general fanart topics... I wanna draw Yamato from One Piece right now this past month!! I've been wanting draw him for a long time but just haven't found the moment to sit down yet, so I'm looking forward to it haha xD What a cool guy! I think he'll be fun to draw. I definitely put too many expectations on myself, even with fanart, so that's why I never finish or even start some drawings... I'm just imagining something bigger than I can draw at that moment!! but lol I'll definitely get over that hesitation now, I've been in the mood to draw much more as of late than before. I'll just think of the fun moments of drawing!!

What about you? you don't have to answer it, but I'm curious now xD

[cosmignon]

11, 16, 23! :)

11. Favorite comment you’ve ever recieved on your work?

Oh that's such a hard question bc I've gotten a lot of sweet comments over the years! But one that sticks in my head from recently is one of my regulars for my commissions commented that he's appreciated seeing my art improve over the years thru the comms themselves and it made me really happy! Like aw shucks, you liked my art enough then and continue to enjoy it more as I improve and grow?! Golly! Wow!!

16. What’s the most daunting part of your process? Ex, planning, sketching, lineart, rendering etc

Planning and composition can be so hard esp if I need to rope everyone into a background!! Once I've gotten past the sketch I can usually get on with things smooth sailing but oh the planning... for comic pages it's hard to get the panel layouts to look good, I still struggle with that a lot too.

23. Do you listen to music or watch shows while you work? If so, what’s your favourite?

Definitely lotta music and youtube vids and podcasts! There's definitely too many to list favorites properly!! but I'll just go through a small sampling of the more recent go to's

Dice Funk! I love Dice Funk theyre wrapping up their current season Rezubian this Sunday and I highly recommend that one it's a good goofy scifi adventure for ppl who like something of a star trek/spelljammer type setting. Ya Like Ilithids? come get em.

I've had AJR's new Album Maybe Man on loop. and by the album I mean Inertia and a handful of the other songs, tho they're all good!

I also continuously compile playlists for all my projects, like Runaway Drakaina, my DnD comic I'm chipping away at, concepts I'd like to work on someday... the RD playlist is 6 hours long and rn the most recent addition is Gone by Morning by Madilyn Mei

I have been slowly (slowly...) watching hbomberguy's donkey kong nightmare stream after seeing him share his side channel, like on and off when I want something really in the background. no paying attention head empty just listening to a man struggle with an old game while raising bonkers $$$ for a good cause

I like watching speedpaints where the artists really go into their process, ABDIllustrates and GinjaNinjaOwO are two big favs in that department! they inspire me a lot esp when it comes to character creation!

BobbyBroccoli got me to engage in a feature length documentary abt Nortel when I don't particularly care for the history of like... tech companies. so glowing endorsement he makes great docs abt tech/science related scandals

I could go on and on but we would be here All Day

[lovelywingsart]

Here's an update, I promise I am alive!!!

I actually just got done playing Resident Evil 4 Remake, as well as replaying Village for a 4th time to work out some more details for Metalworks!

- RE4R was AWESOME, and it's officially the second RE game I've finished!!! I really loved it even though I did need some help from friends, and I do plan on eventually playing the other games as well! 😊💙 My favorite character was Luis, and yes I shot Krouser in the face with a rocket launcher. If you know, you know.

- Despite it being my 4th playthrough of Village(which I hopped into last night immediately after finishing 4R), I actually noticed a few things I hadn't before, specifically in Donnas section, which of course led into a few new headcanons both for Donnas part AND Karls(mostly Emelia), and even RE8!Mica thanks to Donna. I actually took a bunch of screenshots when playing as well, because I have... plans. 👀 Screenshot 'rendering' plans, like the one I did a while ago for Emelia. 👀👀👀

- This requires its own section because I'm including pictures, BUT- I also took the chance while going through the factory to write out some details about Emelias part of the game!

I've been meaning to write it out with a bit more detail, and I'm actually ADDING detail to it to flesh it out a bit more; but once the initial meeting in the Foundry is fleshed out, y'all are getting a Metalworks Main Timeline story for the first time in fucking forever. I'll *eventually* work out the meeting in the Survival AU, because there are some massive differences (other than the obvious). But I worked through the initial meeting as well as placement and all (done while looking around the room in game and all), and a nice chunk for what would be her Mini-Boss fight. What I DONT have is, obviously, the inclusion of items and all you'd be able to pick up for the fight, or the placement of her own 'diary' except for the very last page you find. I ALSO didn't include the part with selling the crystals to Duke which I just noticed, but I'll add that in later!

I dont think I'll play Shadows of Rose again immediately since it's also pretty fresh in my brain, and its easier to watch a playthrough since it's a simple layout/story instead of 'so much detail that a YouTuber would typically skip over but I need'. I'll work more on that at a later time when I'm farther into the Survival AU and get done alot of other things I want to do!

**If I DO write fully for the DLC, it will most likely be, like, 2 stories. One for her meeting Rose and another for when they beat Miranda again. There isn't too much in between.

But... yeah!! There's my massive text wall update.

Uploading to Instagram has been paused for a bit and I've been suffering through a depressingly large bour of art block(and probably impostor syndrome), hence why I played Village. It definitely helped, and I have a bunch of ideas for warm up before other big things.

Dear Mother is one of those things, as I've been stuck in the middle of the sketch because I hit a blank when halfway done. 🙃 BUT I'm gonna do a few things beforehand while hopefully chipping away at it, and once I get over the little speed bump of a panel I should be good!

I hope yall are as excited as I am, I'm really hoping that my brain works out fully to actually do everything I want. Its been a cycle of 'on and off again' for a good few weeks... hence why I took a break to play Resi. I figured it might help me clear my head a little and give some new ideas.

Here's hoping it works!! 💙

[halloweeneva]

Okay so, while I was working on the leviathan comic (complete version here) I saved a version of the wip to make sure tumblr would cooperate with the comic layout I had in my head. Recently one of my friends convinced me to share it as an insight into my process so I’m going to walk you through some of it!

Warning: long post ahead

Starting with inspiration, the original poem was very evocative and really called to me. I do a lot of art of skeletons and hands and mythology and I knew those elements would play really well with the poem.

In all honesty I’m much more of a physical artist than a digital one, so all of my comics start with pencil and paper thumbnails to really help me nail down my ideas. (though as you can see, by the time I get to actually making things sometimes I lose or change elements as I go!)

Even in my original sketches I knew that I wanted the panel of the first background to be negative space and for the pillars to physically be the white of the page, basically making it so that the rest of the comic literally rests on top of them. (Note that the background of the comic begins and ends with a fade into white.)

Going into this I knew that I wanted to play with a limited warm and nonliteral color pallet, and that I wanted to play with breaking the comic boxes. I didn’t initially plan on using purple or blue at all, but it ended up being important to provide contrast (it’s hard to get some of those colors to show up when lettering) and to really emphasize the drowning/whalefall/leviathan imagery.

Red was an important color for this story, the original poem by @/narcissistcookbook used it to add a punch and I knew that I would need to use it in a similar way. it became a great contrast for my lovely skeleton hands and worked very well as flesh beneath the scratches on my big hand. My favorite though was using that initial inversion to turn the ribs red in the next panel. I really liked the fact that they weren’t white and I got to play with scale by fading the other side of the ribs so that they looked like an environment unto themselves. Then I pulled most of the red out so that the blue could really wash over the image and give the reader a minute to breathe, really emphasizing the quiet of being underwater. Then we get the crow eating flesh, the leviathan’s glowing red eye sockets, and the word Devoured. The restraint in the prior section is what really gives these elements such a punch, they’re the first things to draw your eye and the most important to understanding the image.

In the final page we also see the return of white, turning the bones of the leviathan back into pillars and bringing the comic full circle.

The whalefall section was improvised on the page and all of the elements evolved from the first very rough image shown below. I really liked the idea of showing the whole body that had previously only been seen as snapshots of certain parts. The yellow body was a bit too plain though and in noodling on the page I realized that I could use negative space and erase out parts of the body to add detail and emphasize how dead the body was. It started with the skull and then I realized I could use the same skeleton idea to emphasize the fingers/arm/rib elements right next to the text talking about it.

Once everything is 90% done, it gets very easy to spend hours on minor tweaks and I personally start to get bored. So my system is that even if it isn’t 100% polished I will declare it finished. There will always be little things that you could have changed or done better no matter how long you work on something, and critically, NO ONE is going to nitpick it except you and jerks who are just looking for an excuse to be rude. Art is not precious, it is not perfect, it is human. Imperfect art is a million times better than no art.

[geocyclist]

One of two side panels for a compost sifter in progress. Loose plans in my head based on materials that are on hand.

Verticals are pressure treated posts that were resawn and milled to be ~1” by 3.5”. All sawdust and shavings were swept and bagged separately since it can’t be composted.

Layout of white ash stickers milled to fit the groove made by a 3/4” router bit. Horizontal grooves routed at 90 degrees with mating verticals matched. The diagonal was brought together and routed together so that the angle will match.

Glued up with as many clamps as possible then the ends of the braces were trimmed and rounded.

Next is the sifter frame, then the actual sifter will be last. Each part is built relative to the previous one rather than hard design measurements.