#really old sketch from the previews

[kadaverzart]

[alabasterpickles]

I MISSED YOUR HADES AND PERSEPHONE ART SO MUCH!! ❤️❤️ I love Disney Hades so much so I adore the fact that you draw him so accurately. Your version of Persephone is definitely one of my fav, if not my fav and she fits so much into the Hercules movie style. If you are taking requests (if not that's okay and if you do then take your time) I would love to see Hades and Persephone interacting ith children, like maybe a daughter? Who looks beautiful and gentle like her mother but actually has her father personality 😭 Thank you for giving us such great art 💞

Thank you!! I know this is probably from a while ago but, you made my night, honestly!! ❤️❤️

So the good news is, they have a whole gaggle of kiddos in development — and two girls! So when I get some free time (hopefully closer to December) I’ll definitely do some drawings of them all interacting!

In the meantime here’s a little preview of some post-story married life looks and some really old sketches of three of their kids (I’m adding a twin to the last one)

[hwangism143]

off - limits (preview)

synopsis: hwang hyunjin was multiple things to you: incredible. god-like. everything. but most of all, he was off-limits. that is, until, you both are forced to share a room at a beach getaway. sounds perfectly romantic, right? except for your fear of the ocean and his recent break-up.

pairing: non-idol!hyunjin x fem!reader

genre: best friends brother trope, one room trope, angst, fluff

warnings: mentions of alcohol, swearing, mentions of death, nightmares, graphic description of nearly drowning (more warnings will be added to the main fic)

word count (preview): 968 words

release date: 03/05/24

a/n: finally! my first over 10k word fic lol. this was requested to me by @scarlet789 and i immediately started working on it. you can send in an ask or reply below if you wish to be added to the taglist for this fic, coming out nest friday!

preview down below

"Hmm," Hyunjin hummed in contemplation to something you had said, "You know, I always liked your company more then Hyun-jee's. Don't tell her though." He had mischievous look in his eyes and a smirk on his lips, eliciting a laugh from within you and bringing back a memory you had forgotten.

You were still slightly awed by the fact that the Hwang Hyun-jee invited you to spend summer with her. At a ski lodge. A fricking ski lodge! The shocking revelation that you could be considered cool enough to hang out with her and her brother were the thoughts in your head as you stared at the copy of Emma in your hands, pretending to read the text.

Beside you, you could hear the steady scratching of pencil against paper, interrupted only by the symphony of an eraser rubbing against the sheet. This little orchestra playing next to you was evidence of Hyunjin's existence, an art in itself if anyone asked you.

"You should teach me French," he asks you out of the blue, "For when if leave to go to Paris."

You look at him inquisitively. He told you that he got accepted into art school in Paris a few days ago. You did feel sad about the fact that he was going, but deep down you knew very well that practically, after this summer your interactions with Hyunjin would be few and far in between.

"You have Hyun-jee, she can teach you. If, that is, you can put up with her," you retort teasingly.

Hyunjin gives you a sly smirk, "That's exactly why I was asking you. I think I'll like your style of teaching better. And so, I want you to please, please, please teach me French."

You had no idea where this sudden newfound confidence to flirt with Hyunjin had bloomed within you but, oh well, you only live once. "Do you want me teaching you, or just me in general?"

"Ah," he said shaking his head regretfully with a smile, "Even though you have only known me for a few weeks, you already know me too well."

Butterflies ignite in your stomach, although you're pretty sure he was just playing along with you. You wonder what he's sketching, his bottom lip caught between his teeth and his eyes set in concentration. Even though you have a feeling it isn't, you sincerely hope it's you.

You don't know that your hopeful assumption was true.

A tightening in you chest starts to grow when the topic shifts to love. Earlier, talking to Hyunjin about love used to come as easy walking on your two feet. Now, it just hurts. He asked you if you were seeing someone. You promptly replied in the negative. You asked him if he was seeing someone. He reflected your answer back onto you.

But what did it really mean? You were always going to be bound in this life by that unspoken oath you made to Hyun-jee all those years ago. It wasn't even about love anymore, it was about not breaking another person's trust, a person who you held closer to your heart than most of your family.

You started thinking though. What was the point of hiding your feelings, old or not, from Hyunjin any longer? It wasn't like you could act on it, but you may as well have told him. Maybe then a huge weight from your chest would be released and you wouldn't be shackled by commitments, things you felt you owed to both of them.

"I don't think you know this but," your expression suddenly changed, "I used to have the biggest crush on you that summer."

"Used to?" At this point, Hyunjin is sitting up straight, eyeing you curiously. You roll your eyes and give him a playful slap on his arm. His expression, however, turns into one of regret. You begin to feel remorseful about telling him, paranoia settling in and molding itself into the fabric of who you were.

"That's a shame," he says quietly.

The air changes, charged with something you can't quite place. Hyunjin hols eye contact with you, unsaid words coursing through them. You never really believed in the phrase 'the eye is the window to the soul', but right now, you were terrified of whatever the hell your eyes were revealing to him right now. Hyunjin then proceeds to utter something, something so capable of infusing you with poisoned hope, that it takes your breath away.

"I think I would have loved loving you."

Time has stopped. Feelings of desperation, annihilation and most importantly, temptation, cascade in a whirlpool inside you. It had been years. This was wrong. This was the universe dangling temptation in front of you, urging you to just take a bite. Rebelliously, you wondered, what if you were selfish for one? Why were you feeling this way now?

"I think I would have loved being loved by you," you choke out. Hyunjin's hand laces through yours and gives it a little squeeze in response.

That is when it dawns on you that Hyunjin is as confined in this matter as you, if not more. Hyun-jee is his sister for God's sake; whatever guilt you felt in wanting him, he must have felt tenfold in wanting you. You know exactly what the little squeeze he gave you signifies: It will pass. If it cannot be, it will cease.

And you know it's true because you and Hyunjin can never be 'us' or 'we' as long as you were present in this reality. You wished there was a universe somewhere, a parallel reality when Hyunjin and you were considered of one breath because to breath you would need him like oxygen.

Judging by his expression, he must have been drifting in thought about that too.

[genericpuff]

lmao so RS just confirmed she STILL does not, in fact, have a buffer.

FAST PASS SPOILERS AHEAD

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

To kick this off, let's be real, 2 weeks is NOT enough time to build up a reasonable buffer.

When she took that 2 week break after the wedding episode went up, I knew 1 of 2 things was going to happen:

She was going to piss away the entire break on social media not getting anything done

Even if she DID get anything done and a reasonable buffer of more than 3-5 episodes built up, the episodes likely wouldn't be very high quality as you can't turn out shitloads of decent quality panels like that in just 2 weeks.

I think Rachel really just needs to acknowledge and take ownership of the fact that she is not good at managing herself, her time, or her team. When she started LO in the Originals section, she even admitted to not having a very strong buffer.

Now yes, in her defense, she hadn't fully transitioned to drawing LO full time when she started, but even still, she seems to treat her FastPass episodes as her buffer rather than creating an actual buffer.

A buffer is not "well I still have 3 episodes locked to the general public" or "I have the next couple episodes sketched up".

A proper buffer is "I have the next several episodes finished and exported and ready for their respective release dates." This ensures that they aren't racing to meet deadlines during the release period after pre-production (which is a surefire way to screw yourself over or write yourself into a corner) and that if anything happens in real life that prevents them from working on future episodes, they can still put out new episodes because they have a cushion of episodes still waiting to be released. Webtoons typically recommends its creators have anywhere from 9-15 episodes of buffer ready by the end of the pre-production phase. That usually means 3 free episodes, 3 FastPass episodes, and at minimum, 9 more episodes sitting on the backend, adding up to a minimum of 15 episodes. It sounds like a lot, but when many WT series run for 40+ episodes per season, 15 is a small number. Especially for a comic like LO which had 90 episodes in its S2 run and 116 in its first season. S3 of LO is already 37 episodes in.

She's also basically admitted to just writing as she goes in the past because most people working on their webtoons in productions like these have at least a decent skeleton of a story going on that they don't have to write as they draw. Writer's block doesn't happen in webcomics unless you're writing as you're going, same as how it doesn't typically happen in animated movies because you should already have a basis to work off of before you start the brunt of the visual work that needs a narrative structure to exist.

Now, all that aside, the reason I'm bringing this up again (as I've talked about her buffer range before) is because I've once again been proven that Rachel doesn't have a shred of a real buffer.

And the smoking gun this time was the horse.

This stupid fucking horse.

Now, besides the fact that we're a little sus this is meant to be an in-comic jab at all the criticism of LO pointing out how Persephone always looks like an MLP character-

-but that pony toy drawing didn't make its first appearance in Episode 241, it made its first appearance on Instagram. Not as a preview for episode 241 or as an official LO drawing, in her own words, 'just a pony'.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rachel Smythe (@usedbandaid)

As always, this is still just an estimation based on what goes out in LO and what Rachel posts to her IG/Twitter, but this pretty much tells me her buffer is STILL only 1-2 weeks ahead of time, because that pony drawing time lapse was posted two weeks ago. When we checked the actual timestamp of the post the day the episode it showed up in went up (Episode 241) it was ten days old.

Not to mention, the timestamps on those reddit posts? A month old. Granted, we had been making MLP jokes in the ULO/antiLO community prior to that, but the fact that this "my pretty pony" gimmick came out so soon after someone did literal art of Persephone crossed over with MLP, it really just furthers the suspicion (in addition to shitloads of other instances) that Rachel is snooping in on these crit communities to try and "clap back" at them through her comic. Which is something she'd only be able to do with a limited buffer anyways as it allows her to change things on the fly in response to criticism or whatever hurt her feelings that week.

That said, I won't be certain of this 1-2 week buffer estimation until we see when cowboy hat Hades shows up.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Rachel Smythe (@usedbandaid)

I'm calling it now - it will be showing up in this week's episode which goes up April 22nd.

Place your bets, folks.

[j4m3s-b4k3r]

MONKEYBONE

Here are some pre-production drawings done for MONKEYBONE, a film directed by Henry Selick. I worked on the film very briefly, perhaps only a week or two, helping with story beat boards. It was a fun gig, in part due to the location in The Presidio.

Nowadays The Presidio is one of the jewels of San Francisco - a truly beautiful parkland for residents to play in - but when I first arrived in San Francisco, it was still a functioning military base. It was already known that it would soon close, however. So discussion about what was next for the site bubbled for the first few years that I lived here. Would it become low income housing? Or yet another swanky property development, as seemed likely. Who else but big money could pay for the cleanup required after the military had left so many toxic cooties (asbestos etc) behind? 

Anyway, while such things were being decided, some of the abandoned buildings would be rented out for short term projects, one being an animated/live action comedy, that was in pre-production circa 1998 (adapted from a graphic novel - DARKTOWN  by Kaja Blackley & Vanessa Chong). I worked on MONKEYBONE in the early, eager, happy, anything-is-possible phase. It may have been so early that our work was merely a proposal, before a ‘green light’. 

Henry himself was in a great spirits, now that he was out of the shadow of Tim Burton, and Chris Columbus was his exec producer. Many of the crew were Henry’s old cronies from Nightmare Before Christmas, such as production designer Bill Boes. He’d already built models of some of the sets & locations, and these were great reference. With a tiny lipstick camera we could shoot the models from all kinds of angles, and this was enormously helpful, allowing myself & Lawrence Marvitt to bang out panels relatively quickly, under the guidance of Mike Cachuela.

Many things had not yet been decided on, such as casting. The protagonist in my sketches here was based on Nicolas Cage, but of course Brendan Fraser got the role of of Stu. Other roles were played by Rose McGowan, Dave Foley, Bob Odenkirk, John Turturro, Whoopi Goldberg, Chris Kattan and even Breaking Bad’s Giancarlo Esposito. The final film really had an amazing cast.

The Presidio was not yet full of dining options, but our workspace wasn’t far from the Presidio gates, where we’d have lunch at Liverpool Lil’s, a great little pub (that has recently burned down, sadly). I also remember a really fun swanky dinner (I forget now where) with the entire tiny pre-pro crew, where Henry was in a jovial mood and writer Sam Hamm was too. Both hilariously regaling us with their Hollywood horror stories (and comparing their scars inflicted by Tim Burton). Best of all, someone else picked up the exorbitant check! (I think it was Sam Hamm?)

Years after my brief stint on MONKEYBONE I got an invite to a preview screening in early 2001. The film was madcap, weird, & even disturbing at times. Much of what I’d thought would be animated was actually handled with costumed humans in the final film, surprisingly. But it was exciting to have worked on a feature film that actually got made. This was a period where I worked on many great projects that collapsed before making it to the screen. I remember enjoying it until the very end, when I saw that I hadn't got a credit (I hadn't worked on it long enough apparently). In the lobby after the screening, there were a lot of concerned/worried/disappointed faces. Whereas I was bummed that my name was was not in the credits, many people seemed unhappy that their names were.

Ha ha!

Sure enough, the film was a financial & critical flop and has low score to this very day (despite a tiny subset of viewers who still love it, and look back on it fondly). I learned that there had been much tussling along the way to the screen. Perhaps the guy who'd done Home Alone was not the right choice to ‘mentor’ Henry? Did things go sideways after Rupert Murdoch fired Bill Mechanic? Or was it merely typical studio meddling? My guess is it was another case of AOTA: all of the above.

Henry himself sums up MONKEYBONE this way:

"I have two thoughts: it never would have been a big hit. It certainly would have done better if they advertised it a little... I would still like to do a Director's Cut because there's a lot of cool stuff that was removed... my main lesson learned is, I don't really do well in the live-action universe... I love my world of stop-motion... I went down a slippery slope to make Monkeybone, but the film that came out it's not my vision of what the film could've been, and I just don't thrive in that.”

Not long after I worked there, the fate of The Presidio was finally decided when George Lucas’ proposal to develop The Letterman hospital into a media centre was accepted in 1999. And it became the mixed-use space SF residents play in today.

----

Just last weekend, we spent a day in The Presidio, enjoying its restaurants & bars and exploring the new Tunnel Tops park. As we strolled around, I tried to figure out which of The Presidio's many buildings we worked in in 1998, but couldn't pin it down (of course, the Letterman hospital complex was levelled to build what became ILM/Lucasfilm, so perhaps the buildings we worked in are gone).

[0hmanit]

hey thanks for the info here! just to ask-- there don't seem to be many tracks on JP's soundcloud from what i saw (unless im looking in the wrong place) and i only saw RW_6 on there. were those tracks formerly on the site and were since deleted? just wanna make sure before i add them to the post lol

If you ended up at primate_scrapbook it should be the page, If not, just go to the most notable upload which is 'The sound of Rain World preview'. As it's name suggests it plays some tracks from the game as a preview for the OST. James posted the supposed names for the tracks using time stamps.

There is also a track called Blank sketch 4 which I didn't include because it's probably just the file's name lol

Funny enough back than when I used Soundcloud regularly I always loved to listen to The sound of Rain World preview and never realized how it's a really old upload that could be related to the lingo Alpha.

[fanterfane]

Welcome to the Star Pride! (Sketch)

Here's a thing I've been working on with OccPixTFs (https://www.deviantart.com/occpixtfs)! Fayne beefcake lionification/twinning into Pix's OC Leo! Fayne had never really been a fan of old console games... Especially from consoles older than he was by more than a third of his lifespan. He'd just never understood the appeal of them, with their strange 8-bit graphics and esoteric genres. But when the local game shop closed down they had a closing sale where everything had to go, he had some spare time so figured he might as well give it a chance! The store owner seemed especially keen on getting rid of a specific Sega Genesis and a game for it named Star Pride Voyagers... (https://www.deviantart.com/occpixtfs/art/Star-Pride-Voyagers-199X-Mockup-Pixel-Art-959597243) He gave Fayne such a discount that he got the cartridge AND the console for just 20 bucks! What a steal!! It was honestly too good to be true... He took it home and with some effort, removed it from it's unassuming packaging. It was wrapped in a way that made it seem like they wanted to keep whatever was inside in, rather than keep it safe from whatever was outside... Which was strange to him but Fayne tried not to overthink it like he usually does. When he launched the game and dusted off the old console, the ginger boy was hit with a loud intro, narrated by a campy sounding macho lion! Sitting down, Fayne prepared for a blast from a past he'd never seen before! "Welcome to Star Pride Voyagers! We can see you're new here, but you've got the courage and power of a lionhearted Captain~! After this Training Tutorial, you'll be an ace pilot in no time!" Played the crispy ancient audio from his speakers... Sending a chill up the boy's spine. It was a strange intro, for sure. But Fayne wasn't worried at all until the console started crackling, and he felt static in the air. Then, he started to grow... and grow... and then bluish fur appeared on his skin and he knew he was in for it! Fayne had heard before that a group of lions is a pride, but he definitely wasn't ready to experience a lion's pride firsthand! Now he just needed to find his flightsuit...and his ship, for that matter~ This is probably one of the gayest things I've ever drawn. It took a lot of willpower for me to get myself to make a true male on male transformation/corruption piece with a masculine framing, but it worked out in the end! Tell me what you think. Is it too far for your tastes? Or are you happy to explore new things? I for one am excited to learn more about masculinity and gender in a positive way!! Originally finished in September 2023!

If you like the art I make and have decided that you want to support me and help create more of it, please consider joining my Patreon at www.patreon.com/FanterFane for all of these benefits and more!

Preview all completed art at least two weeks or more before it's publicly posted!

View early sketches of all the things I'm working on! (On Discord)

Vote in monthly Patreon-only polls!

Participate in semi-monthly Patreon Sketch Request Streams!

Access to the Patreon-only section of my discord server!

Commission discounts!

And my eternal gratitude!

Alternatively, if Patreon isn't your style, you can also support me via a tip on ko-fi.com/fanterfane, or by subscribing on fanterfane.fanbox.cc!

[sketchmre]

do you have a favorite piece of venture maidens fanart you've drawn???

This is a great question! Honestly, I've been wanting to make a environmental piece with whimsy, food, and fashion, for like.. 2 years? when thats done it will probably be my favorite piece LMAO but for the time being? let me go through my venture maidens folder

read more break because im going to be going on and on

This applies to most aspects of my life, but I don't really have a top "favorite" thing in most areas! I mean, Madoka Magica Rebellion is my favorite movie (very closely rivaled by Coraline), but that's an outlier. In every other case, I have a collection of my favorites with one coming out on top depending on how I'm feeling that day.

It's also influenced by eras, I think. I don't want to compare my most recent art to my venture maiden 2020 art, because I've improved and will prefer my newer style. However, there's still a sense of nostalgia and homeliness to some of my old art that can bring it above the rest, you know?

Going through my venture maiden campaign 1 folder, here's probably my favorites:

These two are from 9/3/20 ("sawYEAH.png") and 11/23/22 ("arent you tired of being nice.png"). I think Sawyeh's relatively simple design has always lend itself well to gesture drawing, especially with the relatively simple silhouette shape. Theyre just fun :) I like them a lot.

I don't know if I'd rank a lot of my campaign 1 art among my favorites, not because I think less of the campaign but because a lot of that time period was me feeling my way into an art style. I see it as the time period after I started feeling confident in my art, but before I kind of became the "unique facial features and color jitter" artist.

For fun (and food), here's some of my unposted campaign 1 stuff.

10/23/20 and 10/27/20 (gidget and vlad, back when i was drawing in paint tool sai!)

1/2/21, 1/5/21, 6/18/21 || 1/6/21 (put out of order because i like this image composition more).

Here's some 2020 (and 2019, apparently?) photoshop files! I like some more than others. None of them have previews since they're photoshop files, so I'm opening them blind in krita. Note the layers/colors may seem off, it's probably because the clipping masks and editing layers break between programs.

8/12/19, 8/21/20, 8/31/20 || 9/5/20 || 10/23/20, 10/23/20, 10/28/20 || 11/4/20

From 10/21/20, technically in 2020 but close to 2021. I think it's unique because it starts to show a shift to more.. unique concepts, I guess? It was of a water elemental who uses an ice mask to mimic having a face. It's cool, I should revisit it.

3/17/21, 3/18/21

I think that's pretty much it for the art while campaign 1 was going on. Here's some post-campaign 1 stuff from 2023 that maybeee got put on the discord?

8/16/23, 8/25/23.

GREAT now I'm moving on to campaign 2.

My favorite? My favorite piece of artwork so far? It's of a one-off npc, the garlic princess. I was studying old strawberry shortcake designs for her. It was a lot of fun.

9/10/23

My other favorites? Probably any art of Tandy

1/2/23 || 1/2/23

I also really enjoy these unfinished sketches: the first being a wildes-influenced lu, inspired by butterflies and gemstones; the second being Toni and a Wyrd sister ("thats no angel.png"); the third being halloween outfit designs; and the fourth being aoife and toni going clubbing in the wildes;

7/11/21, 10/11/22, 9/2/23 || 1/26/24

As for unposted sketches? Oh boy, I've got a lot more for this campaign. So much that I have reached the image limit per post, whoops. I'll add them in a reblog.

[fluffykitty149]

I hope it's just an misunderstood from me but why do I feel like Williamson is kinda self inserting on Damian? I wasn't thinking at the beginning like that but sometimes with the things he write makes me wonder about it

That’s actually really insightful! I can’t say for certain whether this is true but the way he’s changing Damian’s character around is definitely raising speculation.

I definitely think Damian should have fought those idiots. Like the second that blond kid grabbed his notebook he should have grabbed that guy’s arm. I know there’s an artist’s rule of never seeing a person’s sketch book but writers are equally as protective. Especially since notebooks contain outlines, concepts, and beta stages that should never see the light of day.

For me it’s too soon to tell Williamson’s intentions with the story. Not a fan of the preview of the second issue but I’m hoping his writing will pull through as the series goes on. (Ngl wish Damian would snap at Bruce for all the BS in Gotham wars)

My belief as to why he’s changing Damian so much (other than projecting) is because he’s trying to break Damian out of his old label of being nothing more than a heartless violent person. Writers in the past have definitely done a crap ton of damage to his character and while Robin (2021) felt like Williamson trying to fix those decisions, Batman and Robin (2023) feels like he’s trying to prevent it from happening again by giving him new stuff.

I get that he’s trying, but a lot of us wish his interpretation of Damian growing up stuck closer to what other writers have already given him. He has friends. Plenty of them! And he has pets that he adores. And yeah you can keep the manga stuff because it’s kinda cute in it’s own way but don’t forget that Damian is an artist as well. Also can we bring back his music skills? Pretty sure he plays the violin.

I’m hoping Williamson doesn’t forget the things that already made Damian a great character and I’m hoping that as the comic goes on he remembers to add these things in. (Also where are Mara and Nika? Dude you were literally the last writer to give him friends and reunite him with his cousin so it’d be really embarrassing if you didn’t use them)

[kogarashi-art]

It's the last previews for Falling Into Darkness!

Important note before I go into some details on the pictures: I will, in general, not be doing this for other fanfics I post. The main reason I did this series of illustrations was as something of a treat for finally crossposting this 10-20-year-old story to my AO3 account. I don't really plan to draw a ton of illustrations for other fics I do.

That being said, I may do occasional images that will be posted with future stories on AO3 (I have a quick one for the first chapter of the next fic I plan on posting, for one), and if I do other fanart, related to a fic or not, I still plan to post art here.

But I'm glad for all the kind comments and everyone enjoying this series of illustrations with me. :D You guys are awesome.

With that, description-stuff (including more behind-the-scenes than usual) below the cut. 'Tis long; be forewarned.

First up, arguably the easiest illustration to do in the whole set. It's a silhouette, so the foreground wasn't really an issue (other than trying to get the edge glow just right, and I still don't think I quite managed but I'm definitely telling myself not to mess with it any further). The background was already painted for the second illustration in the whole set:

I just fixed up the paths and the treetops and added a little lookout stand to the building on the right, now that Sonic and Sally weren't blocking those spots. After all, it's supposed to be the same view anyway, so I figured I'd make it easy on myself and not have to completely repaint the scene.

The second image employs some little cheats here and there. Here's the original sketch from my sketchbook for comparison:

Very loose, lacking detail. Straight lines are more like suggestions. The robots are spiky blobs. I have a literal note next to a stick figure and a hollow shape telling me to get some references. There's the barest hint of the alcoves the robots are standing in.

I didn't show this level of behind-the-scenes off with other illustrations in this series (though I suppose if anyone's ever interested, I could do a process post about how I worked on these), but one of the first things I did with this series of illustrations was sift through the roughly fifty individual sketches I'd drawn to illustrate various parts of the story (not counting redraws of portions), ranging from vague shapes to much more detailed drawings, to narrow it down to the ones I was actually going to finish for this project. I ended up with 27 total images, including the two I'm previewing today, focusing on having at least one but no more than three images per chapter.

Once I'd determined which sketches, like the above, were going to become a finished piece, I then went through each and every one of them in Photoshop with a sketch pencil brush and filled out the sketches to a point where I could reliably ink them. That meant things like swapping out figures that didn't work with redraws of them or making size adjustments, like so:

The first image is the second illustration, and you can see I redid Sonic because his initial pose didn't work. The redraw was actually a pose of him I did to draw his post-Mobianization robotic elements from the end of the story, but the stance was actually good for what I needed, so I Photoshopped it in and then sketched the rest of the replacement drawing digitally. The second image is Sally watching Knuckles walk away, and you can see that I changed her left arm, and also reproportioned her body prior to inking (bigger head, smaller body).

And for pieces like the final one in this illustration series, I sketched in all the details that were missing from the initial sketch (which, as I said, was pretty barebones; in my defense, it was the last one I drew, and by that point I was pretty tired of drawing robot hedgehogs so Sonic was something of a stick figure in most of the last chapters' sketches).

And here's where one of the cheats comes into play. I drew one robot hedgehog. Specifically the one you see the most of, near the tip of Robotnik's cape by the drafting table. I drew it on its own layer in Potoshop, then copied and pasted it into all of the other holding bays, erasing parts that wouldn't be visible as I went along. I also went and found those references I needed for Robotnik and Snively and drew the two of them properly.

And then, because I much prefer physical pen-to-paper inking over digital (my tablet is not one of the fancy screen ones, and I've yet to really get comfortable digitally inking with it, despite owning it for nigh on twenty years), I colored all of the sketches red, assembled them in groups on letter-sized images, and printed them out onto cardstock (my preferred medium when I'm going to be traditionally inking). I inked them with my various inking pens (some Sakura Microns, some Faber-Castell PITT pens), scanned each sheet back into my computer, and cleaned up the lines in Photoshop (the reason for the red printout was to make it a bit smoother removing the sketch from the inked lines, though it wasn't as clean as I would've liked; oh well).

That left us with the above. Because I inked them each by hand individually, the robots don't look copy-pasted, because it was the underlying sketch that had been, not the ink work. The tables and holding bays also have straighter lines thanks to using a proper ruler for those (though I didn't concern myself too much with things like perspective and right angles), and after drawing the straight line, I went back freehand over spots to give them a bit of that hand-inked wobble.

From there it was a matter of laying down the flats in Photoshop, then shading, adding effects, etc. I like the cold yellow light I've got on the robots, and the overall shading on the yellow cape. Also that sense of satisfaction when I called this one done, because it was the last one. Huzzah.

I'll see you on Monday for the last chapter!

[delta-orionis]

Tuesday Again No Problem 2/27/24

There isn’t too much to report this week, because I’ve been a bit busy lately. Regardless…

Listening

This song by Essenger came up in my Discover Weekly recently and it’s become quite an earworm for me:

And I have to admit that the lyrics remind me of a certain rotting iterator:

Very melodramatic, I know. But Five Pebbles is very melodramatic, so I think it suits him.

Reading

Fallow week, unless the Rain World wiki counts. Sorry, no Ancillary Justice this week. :(

Watching

Earlier this week, I watched Philosophy Tube’s newest video about city planning (and it’s a lot more interesting than it sounds):

I was able the guess the video’s twist because I listen to a lot of Trashfuture and Well There’s Your Problem, but I won’t spoil it.

Both this video, and the WTYP episode about Vehicular Cycling (which both feature Not Just Bikes) do a good job of breaking down why modern cities in places like the US absolutely suck to live in if you’re not wealthy and don’t own a car. It’s the kind of thing that makes you look at your city’s basic infrastructure differently.

Speaking of WTYP, their newest bonus episode about the fashion industry was pretty interesting as well.

I’ll only post the preview for obvious reasons, but the whole thing is a whopping 4 hours long. Delicious.

Playing

Fallow week. :(

Making

I did find a bit of time to draw a little a few days ago.

I’ve been meaning to draw Five Pebbles for a while, and I’d like to line and color this sketch sometime soon.

And finally, due to shall we say… recent events… I decided to begin the process of backing up my tumblr blogs. I have no intention of leaving tumblr and I doubt this website is going anywhere, but just in case the unthinkable happens, I’d like to at least have a personal copy of all of my posts.

I used Tumblr-Utils to make a local copy of my SOMA archive blog, and I’d like to move on to my main blog next. It was surprisingly easy to set up, but that’s mostly because I already had Python installed on my computer. I’m going to store the copies on my external hard drive so hopefully they’ll be safe.

I guess there isn’t really a point to all of this, I’m mostly doing it for the sake of sentimentality. To be honest, I’m not too attached to my old posts (I’ve already nuked a large chunk of the posts on my blog from when I was a teenager….), but I’d at least like to have a copy of the more recent ones.

…

I’m happy I was able to find the time to do a few leisurely things this past week, but man, I am exhausted. Next week won’t be quite as hectic for me, I hope.

[aggravateddurian]

Boy golly, I've just come back to tumblr and...

It's WIP Wednesday Whenever, my dudes (gender neutral, of course)!

Thank you to the following who tagged me: @wanderingaldecaldo, @chevvy-yates, @olath124 and last but not least, @ouroboros-hideout.

Judy and Val have arrived to serve cunt. Night City, you have been warned...

Where Has Durian Been?

Firstly, I've been on a bit of a tumblr hiatus. There's something screwy with my feed that means I'm not seeing everyone's new stuff (some people yes, but for others it's weeks, even months old). I stopped posting for a bit in the hopes it was something on my end. Alas, it appears not to be so.

I have elected to therefore charge ahead and just post anyway.

Yet Another Valerie Ocampo-Gonzalez Lore Rewrite/Character Respec

I've recently become very interested in netrunners, and in a move that I feel fits Val's established backstory well, she's becoming one.

Vik is surprised to find that not only has Val had two girlfriends in one year (she has relationship dramas that are often not her fault) but they have the same haircut! Clearly she has a type...

As some may be aware, I recently began writing The President's Lady, a Myers x Vega 'V' Hawse AU fic. I made some changes to Val's speciality and abilities.

Val has moved from being a Solo with a strong techie background to a netrunner. In a lore post coming up soon, Val goes on the net by the handle 's33lynx' (a play on the word 'lynx' and 'c-link', the latter being the official name for the interface plug on the back of netrunners' heads, and the former her favourite type of cat). She loses the Apogee Sandevistan for Class III netrunning hardware.

Otherwise, there's no major change in her character.

(also, if you know how to do tattoos for the VTK texture system and would be interested in a commission or request, hit me up, I have cool ideas for Val's tattoos that I've drawn sketches of, but no real idea of how to make them appear on Val's body because I ain't really a visual artist. I know my strengths, I'm a writer, not a visual artist haha)

Val's Pussy... cat, I mean cat!!!

xBaebsae released a Nibbles replacer mod about a year ago. I mentioned Val is a cat person and owned a ginger cat.

This is Pumpkin, Val's cat. In both appearances of Val (Brother's Shadow and Chorus) she's Val's cat, and both times, she's a gift from Melanie Foster. In Brother's Shadow, Melanie, of course, ghosts Val for unspecified reasons, so Val keeps Pumpkin. Pumpkin (or more appropriately, calabaza) is Judy's pet name for Val, so there's also that, I guess.

Writing Projects Continue

I am continuing to write Chapter 4 of Brother's Shadow. It's gone through the wringer as my perfectionism has once again claimed another victim. Rest assured that if you're interested in that story, it will come out before Christmas.

Chapter 3 of The President's Lady is also coming out by the end of tomorrow. Those who have me on Discord have already seen a preview, but if you're not one of those people, have a look:

Myers grinned as she placed her chin on V’s shoulder, “I can relate to that loneliness. It’s easier to talk about with someone who’s experienced it.” V nodded, “Yeah.” Myers’ hands began to explore beyond Vega’s arms, towards her hips, “If I’m out of line…” Vega felt… odd. The President… Rosalind was her boss… but at the same time, Rosalind was the only other person who really knew how Vega felt. She didn’t really want her to stop exploring. All Vega could do was smile, and follow Myers’ hands, “Glad to see we’re on the same wavelength.” The door creaked. Vega’s smile faded as Myers’ hands quickly retreated from Vega’s body. Reed stomped into the room. Myers clasped her hands as she turned to face him, “Solomon.” Reed eyed the pair of ladies. He seemed somewhat suspicious as he held up a sealed shard container, “The report, Madame President."

There are now two new projects in the pipeline. The first is The Alpha Bitch of Dogtown, a story about my femV character Vega becoming the leader of BARGHEST and Dogtown after allying with Colonel Hansen in an alternate ending to Phantom Liberty.

After being dumped by Judy (it's Vega's canon event for Judy to leave/move on from her due to various reasons), she falls in love with Bennett, who she then dumps and exiles from Dogtown after he is revealed to betray her, and she falls in love with another BARGHEST soldier who she has grown close to.

It forms part of Chorus Timelines, an AU where basically any time something begins to rot my brain, a new timeline is created where said brainrot occurs. Vega goes through a lot, I feel sorry for her.

The second is an as-yet untitled Rogue x V fic, based on an idea I developed spontaneously on Discord. I thank @merlgeim and @awwwokay for planting the seed of brainrot in my mind. Basically, Rogue falls for V(ega) after Johnny and Rogue go on their movie date, and Johnny is beside himself over it all. Queue funny interactions with Johnny about how V stole his girl.

Virtual Photography

My VP is in a moment where I come up with cool ideas, I snap them, and they either become photo stories or illustrations for future chapters of my fics. I have a few non-specific ideas that will get put through, including another Val x Judy photo story set in 2077.

I've kinda based it around one idea, and that's putting V (Val's half-brother) to rest in the columbarium after he is presumably killed at the Crystal Palace. It's the last act she does before she and Judy leave Night City with the Aldecaldos, and a capstone to the tumultuous relationship she and V have had, with Vince's final epitaph.

"See ya, V. Save a seat for me next to mom at the big bar in the sky."

What I intend to be the last words of Valerie to V in Brother's Shadow. How we get there? We'll have to find out as I develop Brother's Shadow.

Other Random Stuff

I've decided that at some point, Val and Songbird can meet and be very normal about how similar their hair is.

...

That's about it. I would like to tag: @merlgeim, @awwwokay, @ratsstick and @byberbunk2069.

Thank you to everyone who follows and supports my horrific brainrot content, and enables my continued spiral into fanfic shenanigans. Please continue to tag me, comment and/or dm me.

Cheers.

[gentlebliss]

Hi apologies if youve answered this before- what is your workflow for creating tumblr themes? mostly i want to know what editor you use, how you're previewing your codes (if you aren't just coding from the built in theme editor), and how you start a base theme... do you copy in a base for the block/post elements? or just do it on scratch depending on the theme ? sorry if this is a weirdly worded question. i really like coding but im having trouble figuring out how to transfer that to tumblr themes

Oh, goody! When I'm starting to code a theme, I tend to sketch out the idea I have so that I don't lose it and can more easily visualize it. This isn't something you necessarily need to do, but I find it to be helpful.

I just use the Tumblr theme editor while making a theme for Tumblr. It is really the best way to do so, as well as saving your progress and opening the blog view up and looking around (since sometimes things can appear differently in editor VS live). I often do just copy the post/block elements in, and then I edit them to my needs from there and work around them (since things are often stylized differently theme to theme for me; for example, the footer and tags). I use my own base codes that I've made for myself, so I already have them set up generally the way I want and need them to be. If you have never coded a Tumblr theme, you are free to take what you need for the posts from my own work or just from using the theme documentation page.

When it comes to custom features, I also usually use them from old themes if they are really lengthy and I don't remember them offhand, i.e. stuff like rainbow gradient links I definitely don't remember off the top of my head and copy in from my previous work. However, stuff like setting up the posts, sidebar/header, positioning DIVS, and things like backgrounds and colors is slick as whistle now. But it never hurts to look up something fancy you want to do, and it never hurts to reference other people's work, either.

I 'unno if that's exactly helpful to you but I hope you enjoy coding Tumblr themes and that it doesn't give you too hard of a time!

[kasienda]

love remains for the wip ask game? sounds painful 😭 but in a good way?

I’m stoked to start sharing this one hopefully soon! But was trying to finish the pregnancy fic first.

In this one, Marinette gave up the box under battlefield conditions and lost all her memory. I’m playing with the essence of a person and identity formation. If Marinette has the same strengths and skills and personality, but different formative experiences what changes? What stays the same? I also assumed she lost her recall memory, but not her procedural memory or subconscious and that’s been fun to play with.

It developed into this weird thing where she’s learning about her old self and is not sure she measures up or not sure she wants to be that person sometimes. She falls in love with Chat who won’t let anything happen because he knows she was in love with another boy, but doesn’t know who, which really really posses her off.

…

Preview:

Six Days Since Marinette Lost Her Memory

Marinette stood in the center of her own room. The pink walls were adorned with sketches and photos, and other unfamiliar souvenirs of her life. Her eyes jumped curiously from a hand made purse to a bowler hat decorated with a feather to a cork board covered in pictures of her friends.

She loved her room. Which made sense, she supposed. She had theoretically been the one to decorate it, but she didn’t remember decorating it. And now, the room was like a cave filled with treasure. Because each little piece of it held a secret - some part of herself that meant something to her, a clue to what her life had been like before…

Before she had woken up in the arms of a boy wearing a magic black catsuit. His heartbroken sobs had caused something in her chest to twist painfully. She hadn’t understood why then, but from that very first moment she knew she had wanted to make things better for him.

She had no idea how to do that now that she understood what she had lost. Sixteen years worth of memories.

The echoes of which were papered onto the walls and notebooks of her room just waiting to be rediscovered.

No one else seemed to share her excitement. Like Chat Noir, her parents had been devastated. She hadn’t known what to do in the face of their grief. She hadn’t known how to comfort or assure them.

They had brought her to the hospital where she had spent four excruciating days being poked and prodded, scanned, interviewed, and asked to fill out questionnaires and surveys until they all blurred together.

The neurologists found nothing wrong with her. Other than the missing memories of course. There was no apparent cause of her amnesia. In fact, her memory loss didn’t line up with the usual progressions and symptoms of any known type of amnesia. It was almost as if she hadn’t actually experienced any neurological disease or injury at all. It was more like her mind had just been erased. And with unprecedented symptoms and no discernible cause, the doctors had been unable to say whether her memory would return or not.

Which had upset her parents all over again.

But not her.

Which was puzzling. It seemed like she should be upset that she had lost all of her life. But she only felt a curiosity towards the events that came before her memory began. She was curious! It was her life.

But she wasn’t sad. Or angry. Or anything like that.

Perhaps it was because she didn’t know what she had lost. And they all did. How could she miss what she couldn’t remember?

She grabbed her new sketchbook and a pencil from her desk and headed downstairs to the kitchen. She opened a cabinet and pulled out a tin filled with jasmine tea, and then set a tea kettle to heat on the stove. She moved to a different cupboard and unerringly pulled out a jar of honey.

It was strange. She had realized the day before that as long as she didn’t think about it, she knew where everything was. She could find craft supplies in her drawers and boxes. She could thread her sewing machine and apparently stitch actual clothes together. But if anyone asked her if she had something or where something was she couldn’t answer.

After adding a spoonful of honey to her empty tea cup, she took a seat at the table. She opened her sketchbook, apparently one of many that she owned, to a blank page. Within minutes she was blocking out her father’s face, a face that still filled her with warmth and security. Even though everything she knew about him she had learned only that week.

Most of her sketchbooks were filled with designs for hats and dresses. She didn’t feel any connection to those. They were pretty enough she supposed, but ever since she had woken up for the first time as far as she knew, she had only felt inspired to draw faces.

Faces seemed to hold something familiar. She still didn’t recall anything, but she felt something.

…

Thanks for the ask @thelibraryloser ! I genuinely think you’re going to love this one!!

[poupeesdecirque]

Travel Blog, Connichi 2023!

Part 1 - Thursday & Friday

As the Connichi moved from Kassel to Wiesbaden it was quite a trip for me, double the travel distance, a city I don't know and lots of stuff to happen.

I decided to write about my trip there for myself to cover some events, give some insights and share the memories. Includes phone snapshots, some sketches for situations I was in aaaand maybe some previews for photoshootings ;>

Thursday: arrival, food, traveling

Friday: First con day, cospay, food, mental health stuff

Thursday, 31. August 2023

As said I had to travel to Wiesbaden, I went by car. The road on its own was mainly highway but before I got to the highway I got stuck in traffic for almost 1 hour. After 5 hours of traveling alone on bad mental health I arrived in Wiesbaden before my friends did and waited for them

Apparently I looked rather pitiful and was approached by some weirdo who tried to give me candy and cigarettes and was super offended by me telling them off. I'm not used to people trying to prey on me but urgh, that was creepy af.

After my friends arrived I ordered my first Starbucks (it was an almond chai latte) as I didn't have anything to eat aside my breakfast that day.

We walked around in the city a bit and ended up in the indian restaurant I had researched before and I had some really delicious paneer with Naan bread and a Mango Cheesecake.

But ... Diamy and I decided to go for "medium" spicy and I underestimated it... I .... cried :'D

We later on found a super cute bakery and @adragonstale and I were totally in awe about the pastries they had.

I'm glad my friends arrived the same day, they really saved my mood.

Friday, 1. September 2023 - First Convention day

As the first day starts later on I decided to get out into the city as past!Allen and put on the Nea wig later on.

We walked a bit through the city, did some window shopping and I was able to share my wisdom about food and nutrition, I am such a nerd about it. Also sightseeing and just being casual about everything.

After that we decided to get changed and get into our convention attire.

The con itself... dunno. I was missing a whole bunch of publishers as there was only two bigger ones and 1-2 smaller ones, the other big ones weren't there, the Matsuri was lovelessly showed behind a construction fence, the artist alley was bigger, yes, but badly ventilated on friday that even I - who is freezing all the time - felt like I would be melting on the spot. Merch room was not even tempting for me I rushed through it, the other rooms were.. well... indoor photo shoot corners, workshops and all that. The invited guests all no names to me, therefore I skipped on the program. You didn't even have any anime series or movies airing at the con (which was a usual thing before) you had to leave the con and pay extra if you wanted to see old anime movies. Well. It wasn't my cup of tea aside the fact I think the building has no personality, I don't like those soulless new constructed modern styled bricks of congress halls. Yes you had the option to book photo spots in two older buildings BUT the slots were taken super fast and it was one location on Saturday, the other on the Sunday and .. well.. in Kassel you had a ton of old buildings you could visit. Wiesbaden has some nice spots too but things like the park being full of duck poop, drug addicts and garbage to begin with didn't help much.

During the con I .. somehow spiraled into the the now called "Anxiety Chihuahua" state. I met some D.gray-man cosplayers and was actually recognized as Nea BUT got told there would be a group meeting the day after and that it was for an existing group (not noticing it was ... my ... group ... ) and my head was all like "oh god now WHAT IF" and that made me sweaty, anxious and my mood in the end was horrible. To explain that: in my cosplay past I was part of some groups but in the end was ignored or replaced by people who were thinner or prettier than me, even when we had special outfits and the other cosplayer didn't have those outfits or even when I went to a certain event for that exact group ... it's past wounds. As my mental health was already a bit cracked it was easy for me to snap and get down.

I was super awkward and ran around like crazy, almost yelled at that one group that they were super cool and that i adore their costumes and just loudly said that I am just a fool and will be gone now. On the next day they told me they saw me earlier but I was too fast to approach. Uhm, yeah. Hyper anxiety clown here. Of course I didn't take much photos with any Cosplayers as I was too nervous which didn't help as I wanted some memories of course.

In the end it got that bad that as we went out for food that day I just stood there "I don't want any, I hate everything"; but I had 30k steps done and just a few snacks therefore... I needed something. Too little food and water makes the brain sad too and I think that added to my anxiety getting worse.

In the end we stopped at a small thai restaurant and my friends had to order for me as I totally refused everything. I knew it was my health being bad and I told them "just order a thing, I will pay. Just no bread". And @adragonstale got me tofu curry with rice (instead of bread) it was warm comforting food. Thank you again. I felt really better after that.

Even that much better that we did some photos of me as Nea!

And we discovered Wiesbaden has a wild population of parrots, they nearly flew into my face while we took pics.

I went back to my car after that and arrived in time for the Matsuri fireworks.

I was super beat that day after two quite exhausting days and hoped the main day would be better as the two prior. It was about time to debut Allen, and to face my fear with the group meeting and my past cosplay trauma.

Lil concluding car selfie aka what if Nea would steal Allen's glasses.

[toddlazarski]

“Sherman’s Showcase”

The A.V. Club

There is no laughter more hollow, no handclap or whoop more soulless, than that ignited by a traffic signal. To understand the applause sign is to consider a dated, insulting notion that we, the audience, maybe don’t really know how to watch, consume, appreciate. And yet it remains an integral part of the late-night talk show rigmarole wherein a man in a suit reads topical jokes from out-of-sight cue cards as America puts on its jammies. Even new takes on the formula abide the old slight to the idea of a present, subjective assembly. Maybe by now, in the late-night game, we’ve all just grown tired. In the wake of the end of the shows of Trevor Noah, James Corden, and Samantha Bee, The New York Times recently asked “Is There a Future for Late-Night Talk Shows?” It seems, with declining interest and the ascendance of streaming, with a growing reluctance to hear tired jokes about gas prices and the vice president from a soundstage in Rockefeller Center, it may be time to lay the old dog to pasture. How? Sherman’s Showcase seems to ask. Well, skewer it to smithereens, apparently.

At the opening of each episode, yes, a suited man stands, ridiculous phallic Bob Barker microphone in hand, dark shades and immaculate beard immovable, a lounge singer’s smug suavity, preacher’s aloof charm, deep throaty voice assured and practiced, the air of a confident and consummate emcee to lead one toward nighttime delights. But then, for instance, he might go into a quick and breathless tangent: “I can’t wait to start the show, but before we get there allow me to summarize the plot of Mulholland Drive. You see, she shoots herself. Great movie.”  

Such is the course and absurd tenor for most of the show, as it evolves or devolves or dissolves or aimlessly winds its way toward some unholy amalgamation of asides, backstage glimpses, interviews, live music performances, music videos, previews, movie trailers, animation, award shows, game shows, commercials, even a video game - "there was 16 minutes of text back and forth before the game even started." It is all vaguely, conceptually sketch comedy, sure, in spirit, but strung together with an uncannily and uniquely propulsive bump. 

The man at the center of it all, Sherman McDaniels himself, is Bashir Salahuddin. His sidekick, Dutch Shepherd, is played by Diallo Riddle. The real life duo met at Harvard before embarking on a union of writing and video projects, landing as writers for Jimmy Fallon, creating the cult Comedy Central show South Side, and eventually birthing Sherman, which premiered in 2019. This latest iteration of their creative offspring is pitched as a kind of offbeat parody on Soul Train, American Bandstand, Solid Gold, some other 70’s show you’ve likely heard Questlove reminisce about. But it actually feels more in common with the work of Christopher Guest, I Think You Should Leave, and some freaky fever dream of a sativa-baked In Living Color writer’s room where the editor has gone on vacation.  

Season two is a continuation of the team’s well-honed brand of quick-hitting, time-hopping narration, giving a 360-degree view of a beloved musical variety show. For this go they’ve brought back John Legend as producer, occasional guest, and, from the sound of it, probable co-songwriter. Guests also include Issa Rae and Chance the Rapper, and everything remains very much in the IFC brand of “Slightly Off,” in the faux-serious vain of Portlandia, and not unlike a completely problematic step-sibling of Documentary Now. We have straight-faced commitment to musical numbers like “Epulets Fall in Love” and “I Love You, Sike;”  an overlong and artful treatment of a Wes Anderson twee fest, in the trailer for Forty Acres and a Blimp (“coming soon to theaters in Cannes, Silver Lake, and most of Brooklyn”); simple silliness (“Cognac, you my only friend,” takes a sip, “that is not cognac”); and coy zingery: a voiceover announcing a past show’s guests welcomes “the face of hope and change in the Democratic Party, John Edwards!”   

Like with any assorted sketch show, like a book of poems or a big league slugger where half-the-time success equals greatness, not every effort works. One of the earliest bits here, a trailer for a flick wherein Mary J. Blige attempts a heist to take down P. Diddy, won’t let go of its search for a tag or a throughline, and comes off like clumsy and warmed-over SNL. But even in flatness is shown real willingness to gamble, to try, there is a stretching and a belief, bordering dangerously, deliciously on recklessness. At times the writers treat the audience with so much trust it almost feels like indifference. Especially in trailers for the likes of Not Passing. The kernel of the idea can almost be seen, framed in late-night smoke and soundtracked by thigh slaps  — what if we take Passing, and, do the opposite!? Similarly, consider, That’s The Spirit. An African soccer phenom’s father is a ghost, who is a soccer ball. As his mother prepares him to have a new sibling, the poor boy can’t stop asking her how his ghost soccer ball father conceived a new child. A tag line promises “A story of forgiveness.” 

On paper this shouldn’t jive with a strangely poetic black-and-white segment on the perspective of the show’s security guard: “in reality nothing is secured, security is a fiction, a pantomime.” Nor should that gel with an old animated Sherman-penned series, Dumpster Buddies, featuring his friend “Obese Maurice,” which we see as he discusses on an expose-style Frost/Nixon-esque interview. But everything moves and flows with such assurance, style, a slinky and soulful rat-a-tat tempo that inevitably leads back to a song and dance routine far better than it has any right or need to be.  

Salahuddin, the center of nearly every bit, the eye of the hurricane, is a forceful revelation. Part caricature and part chum, delusional but familiar, it’s hard not to think of Danny McBride in The Righteous Gemstones or anything else, with that always-semi-disbelieving head cocked slightly back, an overcooked swagger turned so high, so ridiculous, it becomes something benignly, lovably goofy. In the digressions, the deviations, wondrous casual remarks, there is such a sense of timing, such laughable machismo, it is easy to almost feel the need to lean forward, to catch the next line, to not be able to look away from the somehow hip awkwardness. In a George Clinton parody, Sherman states, “God wanted a style of music that involved way too many people, so he invented funk.” And so Sherman, the show, moves, with a party atmosphere and large contingent of creators moving and shaking and offering something at once neurotic, silly, feel good, and singularly smart. It is also a line indicative of the writerly attention given to almost everything Sherman says. There is not a moment of dead air, not a second without something like realizing that, to Sherman, five plus six is 12, because he “always rounds up.” Of its time, the end product feels almost like scrollable sketch comedy—if something doesn’t work for you there’s surely something, something else, coming right behind. Something else in a steady, heady funk, set entirely to its own beat. Something delicious because you don’t know quite how to process it and nobody is giving a clue.