#remake of a drawing I did back in like 2020

[keenzipper]

HOPES AND DREAMS

[sirenspells]

This event will be history, and I'll be great too

I don't want what you have, I want to be you

[enigma020]

If you have time can you pls draw asriel x fuko fire or papyrus x red from noveltale

I GOTCHU bud! :D

Okay, Exhibit No. 1:

NOVEL!Papyrus X NOVEL!Red/Lara!

By far, one of the COOLEST concept designs I’ve ever made for NOVEL!Papyrus, by the way. One of my favorite designs for a character since it’s a combined mix of both Pre-Noveltale Papyrus’ sentry armor and Noveltale Papyrus’ Royal Guard armor. I mean, JUST LOOK AT THAT BLASTER HELM AIN’T THAT COOL? :D NOVEL!Red/Lara’s design, on the other hand, was inspired by Epictale’s Red/Lara and the original Undertale Red.

Their ship dynamic was simple. Back in either 2018 or 2019, when I first saw and watched Undertale Red, I had this thought. What if Red/Lara, a Royal Guard, trained Papyrus, a sentry, in secret and developed during training? And at the time, Zachary still had the role of the second fallen human adopted by Gaster and was a member of the Bone Brothers. Given the opportunity to do so, I chose to let Zachary help arrange some stuff so that the two could actually form a really close connection, eventually giving better character growth between the two. Now, those thoughts alone were a stupid reason to ship the two still, I know- But a few months, if not an entire year later, I came across a BUNCH of fanart of the two in the internet, making me realize that the thought might actually not matter at all since a lot of people were shipping em too-

And then 2020 came, I finally, FINALLY got myself a Tumblr account and found Yugo’s Tumblr, I continued to read their Epictale comics, specifically the remake and oh boy I GOT REAL HOOKED AGAIN LIKE HOW I FIRST DID WHEN I SAW THE OLD ONE IN LIKE GOOGLE BACK WHEN I WAS A FIRST YEAR HIGHSCHOOL BOY :D- and then I continued working on how to improve on character growth for the two. And just right before I cancelled the AU, I did plan to make it so that Papyrus was a Royal Trainee and Red/Lara was a Royal Guard, trained by Undyne and gets along with the Royal Hounds (The dogs) like in the original Undertale Red lore.

The final idea was that she would assist him through both Snowdin and Waterfall Patrols, often helping her with hers as well. And then they develop through time and then- y’all get the point-

Anyway, ONTO EXHIBIT 2, also known as the last exhibit for today:

NOVEL!Asriel Dreemurr X NOVEL!Fuku Fire!

Their concept was simple. It all came from three crucial thoughts. (There were more, but let’s focus on just the three crucial ones-)

“What if Asriel and Chara lived?” “How would Asriel’s childhood life had gone if he had survived with Chara.” “What would’ve Asriel’s relationship be with Fuku if they had met?” Now of course, I made headcanons for that-

Basically, two childhood best friends who developed while growing up, bonus that they both have the same magic, fire magic. Chara would’ve been there to witness it all happen, being the first person to see the two develop a very deep friendship, and eventually develop feelings for one another and they would’ve also been there to help Asriel in finally getting him to tell her that he likes her and to make him realize that she likes him too.

In the earlier version of Pre-Noveltale, AKA Histale, Zachary would’ve been the second human ally for the Royal family. He would’ve been one of Asriel’s best friends too who’d try to find Asriel a girlfriend while growing up together in the underground.

Not gonna lie, I bet the kid would be real happy if he knew that, even though I cancelled it in the end, Asriel finally got one after 8 years of the AU’s development 🥹

[natlacentral]

Kiawentiio grew up loving ‘Avatar: The Last Airbender,’ and now she’s bringing the cartoon to life: ‘I did my best’

Kiawentiio is starring in a Netflix show. It's a sentence she's still processing.

"Growing up as a little native girl on my reservation, I never thought that this was something I’d even be able to do," she tells TODAY.com. "It was completely out of reach in my mind. So when I got the role, when we were filming and even now, it’s hard to wrap my head around the fact that it’s all real."

Kiawentiio, a 17-year-old actor and singer from the Mohawk people, plays Katara, a beloved character from “Avatar: The Last Airbender,” in Netflix's live-action remake. The show hit the streaming platform Feb. 22 and quickly soared to No. 1 on Netflix's list of top TV shows in the U.S.

Before this, Kiawentiio appeared in "Beans" and guest-starred in Season Three of "Anne with an E." Now, she's adapting a cult classic cartoon and faces a fandom that's hesitant to trust a remake, still sensitive about the previous attempt, a film released in 2010.

"Avatar: The Last Airbender" ran for three seasons on Nickelodeon, from 2005 to 2008. The show achieved worldwide success and a cult following that only grew once the show was added to Netflix in May 2020. Like the live-action show, it became the most popular show in the U.S. on the streaming platform within days.

In a world full of "benders," people who can manipulate one of four elements — water, earth, fire and air — a group of friends embark on an adventure to save the world from impending war and destruction.

The story begins as Katara and her brother Sokka (played in the new live action by Ian Ousley) find a boy named Aang (Gordon Cormier) frozen in an iceberg. Aang turns out to be the long-hidden "Avatar," a bender with power over all four elements who's been promised to bring stability to the world.

Kiawentiio is a longtime fan of the original series and never thought she'd get to play one of the characters she grew up watching.

"The fact that I do get to play her, I cherish these moments, even the rough ones," she says. "When we were filming, there was a lot that I was trying to deal with at the same time. But even in all those moments, I do my best to stay grateful because of how lucky and blessed I actually am to to be in this situation."

Friendship is a core component to the series, and Kiawentiio says the focus on community in the show translated to set. She says she first met the rest of the cast at a boot camp, and was initially intimidated by some of the others — including Dallas Liu, who plays one of the main antagonists, Zuko. But the cast quickly found a close bond that she says will last long after production wrapped.

"With playing Katara, meeting the other cast members and becoming family with them, that is something that we are locked in for life," she says. "We’ve talked about this before, we’re gonna be at each other’s weddings type thing. I’m so grateful to have that, a second family formed for ever."

The whole cast had the difficult task of portraying existing, beloved characters, in addition to trying to translate a two-dimensional character to the screen.

“To have other people who are going through the exact same thing that you’re going through, it really strengthens our bond as a crew." she says.

There will always be differences watching something live action compared to a cartoon, Kiawentiio notes — but they can actually be for the better.

“So much more emotion comes, I mean, just seeing an actual face compared to a drawing of a face is so different on its own. So I’d like to think that the emotion of Katara and her backstory is more amplified or zoomed in on,” she says.

Another difference stemmed from turning a cartoon world into a physical set — which as a fan of the original show, Kiawentiio calls surreal.

In the original cartoon, the core trio travel across terrains, cities and oceans on the back of Aang’s flying pet bison, Appa. 

“All these new things that kept coming up, it was just crazy to see it unfold in front of me,” she says. “And for that to be my job, that’s just incredible. Especially as a fan of the show, I was really almost in tears once a week, or more than once a week if we’re being honest.”

Critics of live-action remakes often point to both the lack of new aspects to the story they bring, as well as some seemingly unnecessary differences from the original story. 

The series is the second attempt at a live-action remake of "Avatar: The Last Airbender." The first was M. Night Shyamalan's 2010 movie, "The Last Airbender," that released to overwhelmingly negative reviews. The film has a 5% score on Rotten Tomatoes, and Roger Ebert, who gave the film a half star out of four, wrote that the film "is an agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented."

The live-action precedent set up Netflix's new series in a unique spot, where returning fans are simultaneously hoping for a more accurate remake while tentatively extending their trust.

Kiawentiio says balancing the appeal to both old and new fans was a through line during production.

“That was in all of our minds — how to appeal to existing fans from the original show and also bring in new fans that have never seen the show before,” she says. 

It's a weighty task for a young actor.

“For me, in the back of my mind was always ‘I’m just doing my best.’ As a person, you can do only as much as you can," she shares. "But I am open to opinions, and I know there’s going to be a whole variety of different opinions. And I did my best that I could at the time.”

Buzz around the eight-episode first season of "Avatar: The Last Airbender" continues to grow. Kiawentiio is looking to relish in any quiet she can find.

"As of right now, I’m trying to enjoy whatever quiet that I can," she says. "It’s hard for me to plan stuff because I don’t know where I’m going to be then. But I’m just trying to soak up the nice quiet, and I’ll be there when I’ll be there.”

[likeabxrdinflight]

so as we all know, the live action atla airs tomorrow. knowing me, I'll end up binging the whole thing in one, two days tops.

I think the majority of my followers on this platform followed me back in 2020, when the animated show dropped on netflix and saw a sudden resurgence in popularity. so most of you know me as a fan, and it's not exactly a secret. I adore the animated show. It's somewhere in my top ten favorite tv series of all time. it might even be the top, I've never actually sat down and thought about it that deeply, but if I did, atla very well could be number one.

it's not a perfect show, far from it. it has flaws. everything does. but I was there with atla from literally day one. I remember back in 2005, all the tv ads for this cool, anime-esque nickelodeon show that was gonna air soon. I memorized the date and time of the premiere. I made damn sure I wasn't gonna miss it. my 12-year-old ass forced my little brother to surrender the remote for that hour and refused to let him touch it. turns out I didn't need to, because we both got invested right away. and I tuned in for every new episode from that day on. even if I was at a friend's house, I made sure we watched if a new episode of atla was airing. I was that insane about this show.

I can remember making up fake bending routines in my parents' living room (usually firebending lol). in the summers I'd pretend to be a waterbender in the swimming pool. some of my earliest drawings are of katara, aang, and zuko, and then later azula. I remember when the blue spirit first aired and presenting my brother with the "zuko will definitely become aang's friend and teach him firebending" manifesto. he was not convinced. I was devastated by the season two finale, and so vindicated by season three. I remember how long the 2008 writer's strike felt when it delayed the second half of season three. and I remember when the finale finally aired- by this point I was now 15- and just the rollercoaster of emotions that was for me as a teenager. I remember not wanting it to be over, delving into the online fandom and discovering all the different ships, fanart, fanfics, and video edits (and drama). I learned how to use windows movie maker and pirate the episodes just because I wanted to join in on the fun. I wrote a not good zutara fic that I never finished. I put my shitty little azula videos on youtube. I've been in and out of this fandom ever since.

so to say I have a lot of love for the animated series would be an understatement. when I think of the media that defined my childhood, there's really five things that first come to mind- harry potter, pokemon, anime more broadly (special shout out to yugioh and sailor moon), disney, and atla.

I say this all to establish that there is zero chance the live action adaptation could ever overtake the animated original for me. I will always love it more, it will always be the more special version of this story. I was exactly aang's age when that first episode aired. there's no replacing something like that. when I think of this story and these characters, I think I will always default to the animated version.

that said, I really am feeling optimistic about the live action adaptation. I'm frequently skeptical of these kinds of projects, especially the disney remake trend, but there's a couple reasons I feel pretty okay with the adaptation of atla. one is that there has been a recent uptick in popularity of the original. it's a good time to re-visit this story, people are interested, and it can only serve to get even more people to watch the original given both will now be on netflix. two is that I'm very encouraged to see that both in front of and behind the camera, asian and indigenous people are taking center stage. I don't think we can discount the importance of that. third, everything I've seen about this show that's not a panicked hot take on twitter or a headline pulled out of context is fairly encouraging. I mostly like what I've heard from the cast and showrunners in interviews. several reviews of the first episode's premiere have been broadly positive, most importantly to me, from actual fans who attended.

I do have some reservations. I'm not totally sold on the visual aesthetic, with the somewhat darker color palette and the contrasting saturation of the costumes. for this first season, I'm easily most concerned about how katara is going to be written. I want them to make changes and tell the story differently, but I do worry they won't find the right balance. too much change to central character arcs could deleteriously impact the story. and I will always be concerned about the portrayal of azula.

I also have mixed feelings about the sexism thing- I'm not necessarily pressed that they might tone down sokka's or even pakku's overt sexism, and frankly the "girls can fight too!" version of feminism is kind of tired in 2024. I also know several indigenous people have spoken up about how the water tribe's being sexist was not a great look. but I am concerned that, in toning this aspect down, they might inadvertently neuter katara's character arc or remove some of her best moments. I have to question how this change will impact suki as well. ironically I'm not as worried about sokka, his sexism was a minimal part of his overall character arc- but it's impact on the women around him was much more meaningful. that's what I'm more concerned about.

I've also heard that the first episode suffers from a glut of exposition that was felt necessary for new viewers but returning fans will likely find tiresome. and naturally I'm worried some things will look goofy, fail to translate from cartoon to live action well, or that some of the heart and charm of the original will get lost in translation. so yeah, there's concerns.

but generally speaking I'm more excited than not. if the show has as much love put into it as the cast and crew interviews seem to indicate, then I think revisiting this world and these characters in a new way with a new generation at the helm will be a lot of fun. the nostalgia market is definitely oversaturated right now, you can certainly argue this didn't need to exist, but I'm not going to pretend I'm not interested to see what they do with this. especially when we already got such a bad live action version- it's not like this is a new idea for atla as a franchise. there's a precedent already set for trying it again. so I'm going in with an open mind. let's see what they do- it's not like it's ever going to replace the original. it can't.

...also I think the tag I'm going to use is "natla spoilers". I've been tagging "atla live action" but I think I'm gonna switch over to "natla" primarily from now on. and believe me, I will be sharing my thoughts.

[karakulialiny]

Imma taking part in Linktober once again!

This time, I decided to draw the entries in the sketchbook, just like two years ago, because traditional art is quicker, while it takes me days to create digital drawings. Plus, digital art makes me very exhausted.

About the entry itself, it's simply a remake of my drawing from 2020, but without Kyle.

This is actually a very early concept art for the fourth chapter of Hyrule Park. I wanted to add something of my own into BotW story, and it was a freaky mansion owned by my OC named Dina. I wanted to add something similar to these places from cartoons where everything is just… wrong. Like the characters entered the mind of someone insane. Back then, I didn’t really care about constructiveness and just added everything to the comic, whatever I wanted. Only later did I realize that it was necessary not only to insert certain moments into the narrative, but also to put meaning into them. This is especially true in the adventure genre, so it shouldn't be surprising that I've been working on this comic for five years now. Now, everything that happens in the mansion happens for a reason, but because of this I had to leave out some plot points, including Link and Kyle meeting older versions of themselves. So, that's why this remake doesn't include Kyle anymore. Because it's no longer related to Hyrule Park.

《{Last year] [Next drawing}

[revilleaj]

Art update & 3D Robodi model images

It has been quite a while since I've last really done anything online. I've been heavily burned out and tired constantly since at least December or so (I have done drawings in months prior, but I have never posted them publically). I still do not have a new computer, even though I have enough money (about £1k) to buy the parts or even an entire computer, but there are other factors in life that need more attention being put towards right now.

I'm still in the midst of trying to get a job (damn required experience and driving license listings!), and drawing right now is bottom priority. It feels like a chore and it's not fun when I have rusted from not drawing in so long (making so many mistakes really sets off my anger problems). I really do not like being pressured into trying to do things, and I have been experimenting with 3D, but only to an extent.

So, with that said, I am going to put making newer drawings on hold for an indefinite amount of time until I feel motivated enough to draw. I'm not done with art entirely and I never will be, but I think I really shouldn't pressure myself as if art is some kind of requirement in life. I've been also having drawing tablet issues, and I noticed there's a small crack in my Huion that I haven't been able to use almost ever since I had it (thankfully the thing still works, and the crack is near the top, only half getting on the drawing area).

I may also finally add some images to my empty DeviantArt account. As much as I do not like that website nor its community, I think it would work if I just put my favorite drawings I've worked on there, specifically ones up until the end of 2023. All of the really old and weaker art (mostly from 2018 and 2020, and anything from 2017) I won't be reposting, as they no longer reflect me, and have not done so for a very long time.

-----

Now, for the second topic of this post, and in a much better light; the 3D Robodi model. I'm sure I've talked about this years ago on Twitter. Back in 2020, when I was still in my first year of university, I worked on a 3D model of one of my characters named Robodi, using Cinema 4D. It was never finished, but I did learn quite a bit when working on it. Here's some newer screenshots of him, now that I've managed to pick back up an older version of C4D (I do not like the 2022 UI layout change):

This is the last version of the model to not be animated, from May 2020. The image is rendered using the Sketch & Toon shader with the Standard renderer. A few options were altered to remove unnecessary outlines.

The model in the renderer itself; right is the objects list, bottom are the materials (vertex colors and textures, some with C4D specific features).

The last ever version of this specific model from September 2021, with the FOV heavily reduced to improve the depth. A single black thin cube was added between the eyes to create a fake extra outline. A bit of a hacky effect; I did not know how to do inverted normals, in fact I don't think I knew that was how most computer games handled outlines.

The very first saved version of the model, in Cinema 4D's editor, made earlier in May 2020. The pieces have default names and are not parented, some materials are not added yet, and the shapes are noticeably bigger, especially the base of the head and the torso.

I once experimented with "realistic" materials and shading (including the dreadfully slow Global Illumination), which doesn't make the most sense for a cartoon character. Here you can see the unit plate on the back of his head, which I don't think I have ever shown before. The camera may look close here, but it's actually extremely far away with a very low FOV (dubbed Super-Telescope). Some textures are no longer in the project files, so this looks slightly off from how it did back in 2020.

In October 2021, I went back to the older May 2020 model and decided to try and remake it. I realized that using one mesh and extruding it works a lot better with the Sketch & Toon shader, as it does not create unnecessary outlines when the default shader options are left the way they are. The lines in the middle of the eyes and nose are from the shader, rather than a black material cube. Of course, it would be more wise to just duplicate each mesh, enlarge them and invert the normals while applying a pitch black texture to them. I abandoned the model shortly after the progress I made here, and I am not sure why. Maybe I was burned out and lost interest.

I should probably try to attempt making a 3D model of him again and some others, now that I know a lot more than I did nearly 4 years ago (yeah, can you believe it has also been nearly 6 years since my Reville character was created? Robodi was first created in mid-2019; almost 5 years ago! Good things take time and care). It will be a difficult task, but I'll make sure to export whatever I make to a .FBX model, so that it doesn't get lost to C4D licensing Hell. Hopefully, that would make the models work in Blender and such (the materials will have to be baked into textures however, instead of being separate C4D ones. At least .FBX doesn't use an external material file unlike .OBJ, which I and others have had issues with). Maybe I could use them for rotoscoping or somethin'.

Here's hoping to me eventually finding motivation, losing my tiredness, and getting a job with stable income alongside continuing to work on my passion projects, no matter how much time has past since the day I first thought of them. I want to keep doing things, not resting in bed most of my days. Too bad winter is freezing cold where I live, and I suffer from mild hypothermia...

[risunsky]

I was wondering how long it takes you to complete a drawing? Especially for some of the more complex/ detailed ones, how do you deal with not getting burnt out? Do you work on one piece until it’s complete or do you bounce around and work on multiple projects at once? Also I love your work. I think it’s so gorgeous and really powerfully conveys emotion 🖤

(sorry, it's a long answer again :x) My most complex drawings, such as the remake of the siege of La Rochelle or the one with winged Papa IV, took between 60 and 80 hours to complete. The Spillways one is probably a record-breaker because I had to start from the beginning several times.

It's also the time I need for a traditional A2 painting (like the one I'm planning to do this summer (wink wink) if the heat doesn't knock me out too much).

For simpler things like a portrait alone without background I try not to exceed 10 hours. Like Copia with his face hidden by his hat, or the one where he's holding a Grucifix. The one on the beach looks just as simple on paper and yet I think I spent more time on it, because I did some lineart to lay down certain details and I spent a lot of time refining the textures.

In any case, even for something very simple I rarely go under 6 hours, I consider myself a slow artist which isn't necessarily a problem, unless you want to make a living out of it.

- Avoiding burn-out is a difficult challenge. In 2020 I think I experienced it, it was my first A2 painting, there was a deadline, I was late and it was very important to me. I worked intensely on this big piece, I didn't do anything other than that, stopping only to eat and sleep. At the time I was having a great time, I was really enjoying myself, thinking I was experiencing the 'true passion of art' and I still have really good memories of that period of a few weeks. But once I'd finished I kinda fell apart, I was always tired, did an artblock for several months, it was difficult to get back to normal and it caused me problems for my job. It's thanks to doing ghost fanarts that I've managed to recover. I really don't recommend pushing yourself like that it's not healthy at all.

To avoid this happening again, I impose a schedule on myself. A break every 2 hours where I get up from my chair and walk around a bit. I don't work more than a certain number of hours a day (8~10) and I don't work at weekends. Well, that's the ideal, obviously it's hard to keep. When I get caught up in the enthusiasm of a project I have a bit of trouble controlling myself, it's like an obsession and nothing else matters.

There's also the fact that my interest in a project fades easily. I need to do as much as possible in one go so I don't risk giving up before it's finished. For commission I can work on several projects at once, jumping from one to another alternately, but I really prefer to be able to concentrate on one thing at a time. The more projects I have in the queue, the more scattered my mind becomes and I don't work well in that state.

Thank you so much for your interest! 🖤🖤

[captainfightingflower]

ALRIGHT! ENOUGH YIPPY YAPPING ON MY END!! I’m never gonna get these things to see the light of day if i just put them off. So here we go: EVERY (Jackbox Games) ILLUSTRATION AND SKETCH I AM STILL PROUD OF THAT I HAVEN’T POSTED PUBLICLY (With dates included according to their properties) MASTERPOST! [MAY OR MAY NOT UPDATE!]

Nothing violently inappropriate, but i did draw The Wheel in a non-revealing maid outfit at some point as well as M. Bubbles eating a heart they ripped out of the wall, but nothing that’ll give grandma a heart attack...except for maybe Cookie Masterson getting tricked into reading the Ẓ̷̛̞͚͗̋̌ạ̵̢̨̬̿͐͂͘͠ḻ̴̯̲́͒g̸̰͌͛ȯ̵̙́ incantation, that one’s pretty intense!

The Trivia Murder Party victims but as grotesque monsters (Date: 28th of November, 2020)

Fun fact: i ended up sculpting both Sloth & Envy’s designs out of clay during art class, no i do not have them.

This comic featuring Cookie Masterson i never finished, but it’s really funny like this so i’m posting it anyways (Date: 31st of December, 2020) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

Greed attempting to steal one of the Murder Hotel’s lamps (Date: 30th of January, 2021) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

Realistic fullbodies of Skippy, Gus & Sparkles (Date: 31st of January, 2021)

The Keeper reading out the definition of CBT (Date: 15th of February, 2021) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

Creepy Voice, however it’s referencing the end of the proper You Don’t Know Jack: Full Stream trailer (Date: 2nd of April, 2021) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

Cookie Masterson getting tricked into reading the Ẓ̷̛̞͚͗̋̌ạ̵̢̨̬̿͐͂͘͠ḻ̴̯̲́͒g̸̰͌͛ȯ̵̙́ incantation (Date: 24th of May, 2021) [DESIGN OUTDATED] {WARNING: VIOLENT}

FUN FACT: the power went out on a sunny day and made me lose the original file, but i was able to remake the comic using a snapshot i sent to a friend! Also: the pencil brush used to make this comic no longer exists on Photopea by default, which sucks absolute BALLS because it was a dope ass pencil brush i haven’t been able to fully replace!

Buzz Lippman falling unconscious based on a Tumblr post about him (Date: 30th of September, 2021) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

My Jackbox host designs that coincidentally look like other characters (Date: 17th of October, 2021) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

Mayonnaise multi-tasking, bringing his child home from school while exiting a pet door (Date: 19th of November, 2021)

I also have a doodle of him stretching like a cat and him eating a rat, but i’m not proud of those so i’m not showing.

Sketches of food for my redux of my first Wattpad story: Jackbox Culinary (Date: 10th of February, 2022)

Redraw of that kid annoying a girl with a trumpet, but with Creepy Voice annoying Cookie Masterson with bagpipes (Date: 10th of February, 2022) [DESIGNS OUTDATED]

L’averne Caverne pondering her orb & a redraw of that Cars comic where Lighting McQueen states that it’s nice to be back in Radiator Springs, but with The Wheel of Enormous Proportions preparing to answer the winner’s question (Date: 2nd of March, 2022)

There’s also a sketch of [REDACTED] dragging The Screamer to the Plinko by the legs while she screams in terror, but his legs always bothered me so i’m not posting.

The Job Job Heart by Jackbox Games (Date: 17th of March, 2022)

The funny explanation as to why my interp of The Wheel of Enormous Proportions suddenly got jacked (Date: 1st of April, 2022)

Octoputtz crying in the fetal position (Date: 5th of May, 2022)

What happens when people stream Quiplash (Date: 22nd of May, 2022)

This drawing of The Wheel of Enormous Proportions in a Victorian English maid outfit that i drew exclusively because i thought it would be funny to put a God in servants clothing {and also because The Wheel makes me feel things i don’t like admitting} and a drawing of it holding a Peep in it’s grasp to mildly prank a friend (Date: 23rd of May, 2022)

There’s also another bust doodle of The Wheel, but that one looks off so i’m not posting it.

Rue Meringue & [REDACTED] swapping clothes due to how similar their outfits’ silhouette resembles (Date: 3rd of June, 2022)

Rue Meringue but with proper freckles (Date: 4th of June, 2022)

FUN FACT: This was originally going to be apart of a series of drawings where i draw characters who’s freckles are represented only via 3 dots on their cheeks and then drawing them with more realistic freckles, however this never got realized and i stopped at Rue.

Cookie Masterson being repackaged (Date: 29th of August, 2022) [DESIGN OUTDATED]

Redraw of that comic where a grown man dresses up as a thirsty little flower but it’s The Wheel of Enormous Proportions again (Date: 23rd of October, 2022)

Realistic headshot of Greg (Date: 25th of March, 2023)

Redraw of that image of a woman looking at a man’s particularly perky pectorals that i drew to practice muscles, but it’s M. Bubz & The Wheel (Date: Actually today! But was most likely not going to see the light of day otherwise, so consider this a cheeky bonus!)

FUN FACT: I HAVE MORE, but i haven’t taken photos of them yet, so they can’t be included here as all of their dates would be labeled as “today”, which isn’t in the spirit of this masterpost, but trust me: they are equally as fun as whatever these things i showed you are.

Maybe i should really start posting these things more often...i mean some of these are REALLY good, even today compared to my improved artistic abilities. It’s a real shame that i was...and sometimes still am embarrassed to post these when i really do still like them! So i’m biting the bullet and seeing how they do.

[british-bigfoot]

What's up next?

Okay, I wanted to talk about what I had planned up next and what's going on for the rest of the year in terms of uploads and a little bit about life in general. The rest of the year is pretty packed for me, work's got me doing the Okie Cokie since I'm in and out during the entirety of December and I'm looking to spend a bit more time with my family, so it's going to take me a bit longer to finish the next illustration(s).

This is on top of me wanting to work on more animations, with the current one I'm working on sizing up to be a big one. I've made a storyboard for it so far that I didn't want to share initially as I ripped a bunch of sounds off of Freesounds for the soundscape, but I'm not a sound designer and I credited everyone so I'm not too sure why I felt bad about it. Anyway, if you want to see the storyboard you can watch it here (it's more Thafnine fan art):

Now let's talk about the next illustration, well, illustrations. I've already said this a few times, but the next illustrations will be of Pink Monkey from Ape Escape and will be a remake of the old piece I did *checks notes* in 2020?! Has it really been that long? Well, instead of doing one drawing that can be flipped either way, I'm instead going to do two drawings: one of her usual look, and the one where she's pissed. I'm looking forward to it, but that will be the last Ape Escape piece I do for now and I will be shifting back to Splatsouls for a bit (cause boy do I have ideas!).

With that said though, I've been doing a lot of fan art lately and I don't really want to be known for constantly making fan art. I haven't really helped myself with this cause I keep having ideas for fan art that get me really pumped, but at the same time, I've got a lot of original ideas that I want to share with you guys. This doesn't mean that I'm going to stop doing fan art (like I said, I've got a lot of ideas), but from this point, you can probably expect to see some more sketches and pieces based on my own original work in between bigger illustrations (that I'm going to start taking a bit more time on). So, I hope you guys look forward to it!

That's about it for now, at the time of writing I'm currently very tired from working in retail and dealing with Black Friday sales. I have one day left, and then things should calm down a bit until Christmas. Pray for me. See you guys in the next one!

[simru-region]

I’m re-drawing my legendary giants, which I first did back in January 2020. I never liked them, and I’ve spent all the time in between trying to remake them in different styles, but I’ve ultimately gone back to the original designs.

I’m two done, with the most difficult one left to conceptualise. Hopefully though I’ll be done in a few days. I'll also be posting them with a new background style too.

[yeowninefive]

My 2022 Art Retrospective

It’s been, uh, quite a year. I’m honestly not sure where to start; because I feel like as much as I want to focus on the more critical elements of my year, they’re largely surrounded by a lot of good things.

I’ll try to start off by focusing on my art goals I outlined for this year back in 2021: drawing more fanart, returning to animation, drawing more complex environments/backgrounds, adapting more of the stories/scripts I had tried my hand at writing so far into a comic/illustration format, and doing direct collaborations / art trades.

Fanart: Mixed bag, but leaning towards positive. Just a little bit more fanart compared to last year; but including gift art, it;s. I also feel that when the year first started, I was on pace on delivering a decent rate of fan art (at least one for each month), but I do think as I focused on two OC-related projects (Pandy and the Commodities/Playbill Commodities; Deuwood in Another World), that fell by the wayside. So going into 2023, ratcheting up the fanart is the one goal I’d like to achieve for next year. I feel this would be especially important, because at least on deviantArt, two of the fanarts I made this year (The Great Pet Race on Sesame Street and Save the Last Dance) ended up as among my most viewed and most favorite artwork on that site.

Animation: Small baby steps taken forward. I posted at least three distinct animations (three separate ones, four total—one completed animation, one WIP, and both the WIP and final for a third animation). Not a lot, but it’s still a step up from the complete dry spell that was 2021. I think they each serve as a decent showcase of various techniques I’ve gotten from learning animation over the course of this year. My goal going into 2023 is that I’m able to somehow streamline my approach to animation to produce more animations, namely with them being short but being fairly polished and focused on particular techniques. I actually have a handful of animation concepts that are on the shelf; and I hope to get them completed over the course of the year, alongside some new concepts.

Backgrounds/environments: A step back from 2021—environments were largely non-existent; and the few I did make are still simplified compared to the environments I made back in 2021, or even 2020. With that said, I think it also shows where my focus in art has shifted from when I first started (which was largely my concept art for potential videogame environments) to where I am now (which is largely original characters created by me and others). So for 2023 I’m not really invested in keeping detailed backgrounds/environments as a priority. I have a few environment/background artworks I would like to complete, but they really are works that I only return to work on in a blue moon. I imagine that if I do get some produced, it will largely be as a bonus element. In its place; I think I’d to substitute it with a new goal for 2023—the new year is going to officially mark ten years of my online artist career. So to commemorate that, I’d like to start doing a handful of remakes of my older art over the years; to showcase my current art skills and how my art has evolved over time.

Comics/stories: I’m sorry to say nope, nada, zilch. Beyond one entry (The Great Pet Race comic, which as aforementioned was popular on deviantArt); I never got around to completing any others. There was even one comic concept I wanted to do to commemorate the launch of the Sonic 2 Movie that I’ve honestly just sat on, unfortunately. (Maybe I can get around to it for the one-year anniversary of the film’s release, maybe?) My only real explanation/excuse for this is that I was more pre-occupied with my previously-mentioned OC projects. It’s also not for a lack of ideas or a lack of trying—I have a bunch of concepts I’ve written down over the past year, a bunch of others from previous years I haven’t done yet; and I’ve even started on a couple. I think delivering on these concepts (and then some) is what I’ll pin as my biggest art priority for 2023.

Art trades/collaborations: Another one where I’ve largely struck out on. I consider this an odd miss, given the large amount of artwork I’ve done that feature other creators’ original characters (and how popular those works have been around tumblr and Twitter). This is something I think I should be easily able to deliver on going into 2023, but I’m not hedging my bets on it exactly. Like with the backgrounds/environments, I would plug this as a lower priority goal to achieve. I’d even substitute this with another goal in that I’d like to try and dip my finger into art commissions, and possibly even request some for myself. I’ve mainly shied away from taking commission requests, because of concerns with time management; when I first started with digital art, I did various avatar requests that ultimately got completed over the course of a couple of years. A more recent series of commissions I did in 2020 wasn’t as bad but still took place over the course of several weeks. In my context of my art commissions, they’re also done just for fun and for free. I’ve thought about it a couple of times, but for now, I don’t think I’m ready or particularly invested in doing art commissions as a profession/for money.

With all of my goals from 2022 examined and used to outline my goals for 2023, I think this just leaves how exactly was my art output this year, outside of comparisons to my goals. In terms of output, for the third time running; I’ve managed to outdo myself once more. 2022 saw me publishing roughly seventy different drawings (with a few animations) included, nearly eighty overall when including alternate versions of the artwork. I also do feel that some of the small springs of popularity my art garnered in 2021 helped paid certain dividends for this year. As I mentioned earlier, particular pieces I posted garnered a decent amount of popularity across the three sites I post my art on (deviantArt, Twitter, and tumblr), and a handful of them garnered some small followings on dA and Twitter. Tumblr was admittedly more a mixed experience in that I feel only a select handful of my art really garnered any traction; even though it was the platform where some of my art actually hit 100 interactions (likes/reblogs/retweets/etc., not views) for the first time ever anywhere.  And much like with last year, the gift art I made featuring other people’s OCs were broadly my most popular works; though other art I made (certain fanart and art of my OCs) were also liked quite a bit at certain places.

Beyond my art goals, I’ve been mainly thinking about changing my strategy of posting art going into 2023. As some of you who have been following me may know, I’ve been thinking about setting up shop on another social media platform; especially in light of…certain management changes that have happened with Twitter (which is a shame, as Twitter is the site I’d say my art gets the most consistent engagement. deviantArt’s flirtation with AI art and their bungled attempt to default everybody’s art into AI datasets did not help matters either). I actually almost had a fourth one up and running at Instagram a few weeks back, but was incredibly bothered with certain policies they had that I promptly had second thoughts. (I’ve cooled off a bit since then, to not completely rule that place out.) I’m still looking into other sites to try and expand my reach—regular candidates I’ve been considering are cohost, Newgrounds, and Pillowfort; hopefully I’ll finally commit to one of those options later into the new year.

I’ve also been considering different approaches in direction to the new accounts I make—when I initially opened my IG account, it was with the intention of using it as a “second-run/second-tier” art account; where I only post my more popular artworks there, after their “original run” in other areas. Truth be told, I’ve also been considering this for my Tumblr art account as well in light of how most of my art performed this recent year; leaving dA and Twitter (as long as the latter’s still up) as my “first-run” art accounts. It’s bittersweet in that tumblr’s always been my initial outlet for my art after dA (which I use as my comprehensive art archive); but I feel that it by and large feels too overlooked to give it the same amount of investment/attention as I normally do. If nothing else, maybe I’ll rely more on scheduled reblogs at certain times for posting art. I’ll cap this off with the final note that while “first-run/second-run” accounts have been my main idea for future art accounts, I’ve been considering other ideas.

…whew! I think we can leave it here, I honestly had to condense this down quite a bit. As always, to any readers who was willing to pull up a seat and coast through my stream of reflective consciousness. I offer you my personal thanks. And of course, going into the new year;I hope you have a great New Years’ Eve/New Years’ Day, and the rest of 2023 is just as good if not even better!

[fallout-lou-begas]

Happy One Year Anniversary to It Keeps Right On a-Hurtin’!

(well not quite but there’s nothing wrong with celebrating a little early, right?)

Issue #1 of @ikroah came out June 15, 2020: a line-for-line adaptation of the opening cutscene of Fallout: New Vegas that I originally drew on a whim for practice, but then recontextualized as the launch issue of what has now become an honest-to-god webcomic. And one year later we’re already into the second volume of the series!

To celebrate, and to look back at all the issues from Volume 1 that I completed last year, I’ve made omake-style gag strips for every issue in The Death of Agnes Sands. These were super fun to put together and if I manage to stay on pace then you can absolutely look forward to omakes for Volume 2 at this time again next year. I don’t really get a chance to do comedy much in IKROAH itself, so this was a really fun exercise.

Also! A reminder that IKROAH is still in production, sorry for the prolonged hiatus everyone but some medical issues came up with a guest artist. The artist is okay, don’t worry! And IKROAH will be back on track soon enough. Sorry for the wait buts thanks for being patient everybody!

Also also! Credit where credit is due, @mcnostril did a similar comic about Doc Mitchell’s pushiness with the vault suit; to be honest I just wanted to draw Agnes going “nuhhhh” pathetically like that. And the third omake is a remake of a joke from Regular Show. This one.

[doctorsiren]

A drawing I did for this comic I had made originally back in 6th grade

The 1st drawing is around 2016/2017-ish?? The 2nd one is around 2018-ish, and the 3rd one was in 2020

Here’s a page with the original (2015), the remake (2017??) and then the redraw (2020)

Here’s another one of the remake (2017?0 and the redraw (2020)

I apparently drew on the actual original page for this one, so I don’t have a picture of what it used to look like, but here’s the redraw done on that original paper that I did in 2020

[afuntimepartyy]

No way hatsune miku???!??!?

[HI QUICK DISCLAIMER. THIS IS RELATIVELY OLD ART I MADE, this is not my current state of progress in my path of drawing, and thus some things wont look the best as it one of many pieces to help get me out of comfort zone back in 2021!! with that! onto the art!] horror warning below the read more!!

(This is the full thing of the bear!! you can see it on the reflections of stuff like the water and walls though, this is just the full imagery of them! )  Anyways this is a remake of a piece i did in 2020 for a beartober thing?(if you remember it, hi!!!!!!!)  it was for my first day of the October challenge where you drew bear characters and while i fell behind due to primarily drawing on my phone (and it was collapsing due to storage at that rate) I kept up for MOST of the month i think!! and im still proud of it, it was fun. I ALSO love some of the pieces the months prompts came up with!! made me go out of my comfort zone and all sorts of things, but it was about a game I really liked so you KNOW I had to.  so heres this!! I think the prompt for the original piece was survivor? very unsure on the manner, but regardless I still really like how the remake turned out! even if it was made almost a year ago now in a few months, I may even remake it again some day, but for now? i like it still and while i would change a lot im not super upset with it :D 

THE ORIGINAL DRAWING BELOW!!!

(really old stuff beware BWAHAH)

[leupagus]

“Police Response Slowed. The Community Stepped In.”

X

In Minneapolis this summer, 911 response times increased as officers left the force. Instead of asking for more police, some residents reimagined public safety for themselves.

By Sarah Holder, Rachael Dottle, and Marie Patino, 

October 30, 2020, 11:14 AM EDT; Updated on October 30, 2020, 1:17 PM EDT                                       

Every night for the past several months, pairs of bicyclists in high-visibility vests fanned across Minneapolis’s Powderhorn neighborhood after sunset, and stayed out until 2 or 3 in the morning. They were there to keep watch over the neighborhood, but they don’t have any affiliation with the police or city government. Instead they’re residents of the community, there to de-escalate or monitor incidents they hear about by scanning their social media and group chats.

The team, which calls itself the Powderhorn Safety Collective, is one of a handful of ad hoc community safety groups that have emerged in the city’s south side after a police officer killed George Floyd in May. They’re taking an unconventional approach to answering the question echoing in cities across the country: What would a community that was less reliant on police look like?

Minneapolis City Council members started asking that question in earnest this June, pledging to dismantle the existing police department and start from the ground up. Activists, reformers and abolitionists have been exploring the path to a police-free future for decades. But in the Ninth Ward, says Pouya Najmaie, an environmental lobbyist and a founding member of the Powderhorn Safety Collective, creating an alternative to traditional law enforcement wasn’t a thought experiment. It was a necessity.

For many Black and brown Minneapolitans, calling 911 had never been an impulse, and watching Floyd die under the knee of an Minneapolis Police Department officer further eroded trust in the institution. This summer, however, residents also observed that even for those who did call 911, the police were responding more slowly. In some cases, it seemed they might not be responding at all. “People are very distrustful that [police] can actually do their job, and they're just not doing their job,” said Oluchi Omeoga, an organizer with Minnesota’s Black Visions Collective, a queer-led group that’s become a leading voice in the movement to remake policing in Minneapolis. “It's both, and.” A Bloomberg CityLab analysis puts numbers to that emerging dynamic. In June, the average time it took for the police to assign a unit to 911 calls — the first step to dispatching officers — had slowed by 88% across all five precincts compared to the average from 2019 to early 2020. By August, it was still about 40% slower than before May. A previous CityLab report found that traffic stops were down 80% from the period before May 25, the day of George Floyd’s death. Not all these trends appear destined to stick. As protests die down, the colder winter months arrive, and the calls to disband the police department soften, response times have begun recalibrating back to pre-May levels. But the department may end the year with at least one longer-term change in resources: There are about 130 fewer officers than there were a year ago, Police Chief Medaria Arradondo told MPR News. Many of them are retiring early, and more are likely in the process of leaving; hundreds have reportedly applied for medical leave, citing post-traumatic stress disorder. An MPD spokesperson said there were 830 sworn officers as of Oct. 15, but didn’t respond to any other requests for comment. Locals have debated any number of reasons why such a slowdown in 911 response time might be happening, from an act of political retaliation in the face of scrutiny, to a reflection of depleted morale, to the aforementioned lack of personnel. Whatever the reasons, with rates for some violent crimes spiking in the city amid economic devastation from Covid-19, the trend illuminates another dimension of police accountability: Just as over-policing can have disproportionate adverse consequences for Black people, the impacts of withholding police response from communities can be harmful, too. “Despite our name, we have always considered lack of police service to be the flip side of police brutality, and sometimes just as damaging,” says Dave Bicking, an organizer with Minneapolis’s Communities United Against Police Brutality.

A Minneapolis Star-Tribune analysis of rising crime rates found that while the trend has been observed citywide, “in terms of raw numbers, the increase in violence that intensified after the unrest over the police killing of George Floyd is exacting a heavier toll on neighborhoods already suffering the effects of trauma, poverty and lack of access to adequate health care.” Slowed response times have happened before; so have crime spikes that disproportionately affect already-burdened neighborhoods. What’s different this year, in this city, is how the community and the reform-minded council have reacted to the reports of insufficient police service. The mayor has released a proposal for next year’s budget ahead of a December vote, and demands to substantially reduce funding for the department are not reflected. Several members of the city council have walked back earlier sweeping pledges to disband the department. But as calls grow to divert some non-violent incidents from the police to crisis intervention teams or mental health responders, the department’s disengagement has also been taken as more evidence that the public safety models that exist aren’t working — and as motivation to create new ones, faster. “Previously, I would get really angry calls that say, hey, why aren't you funding the police more?” said Steve Fletcher, a Minneapolis Council member who represents the city’s Third Ward and has proposed reforms unpopular with the police department in the past. “And now the calls I'm getting are much more reflective of the moment we’re in, I think, where they’re saying: ‘What are we paying them for at all? They’re saying they can’t help, they’re saying they don’t have a strategy. Why the hell do we have them?’”

For some residents, the city’s response hasn’t been fast enough. And they’re starting to fill what they see as a void on their own.

‘The phones could ring forever’

In January, before the pandemic threw a wrench in daily activities, Minneapolis police would take an average of 23 minutes to arrive at the scene after responding to the average 911 call. Priority 1 calls, which concern the most urgent issues — shots fired, threats to life or assaults, along with suspicious vehicles or domestic disturbances — took the shortest, at 10 minutes, and Priority 3 calls, like parking problems, road hazards, loud music and thefts reported after the fact took the longest on average, at 40 minutes.

On May 25, it took one minute for the call about Floyd’s alleged forged bill to be assigned to a unit, and four minutes for the officers to arrive at the scene. After that day, police started taking a lot longer to arrive when called.

CityLab data shows that average response times this summer went up about 40% from January to more than 14 minutes for the most urgent calls, Priority 1. They also went up 43% for Priority 2, and 28%, to about a 51-minute response time, for Priority 3.

This slowdown was especially apparent in the city’s 3rd Precinct, where Floyd was killed.

Source: Minneapolis Police Department

During the same period, the volume of 911 calls has risen only marginally, and doesn’t match the spike in response times Minneapolis saw in June and July. That suggests that the police were not experiencing an increase in demand for their services commensurate to their more sluggish response. Aside from volumes of calls, there were other factors: The precinct's headquarters, which serves several wards including 8 and 9, was burned down completely and relocated to a downtown convention center farther away from the neighborhoods it was meant to serve. With potentially hundreds of fewer officers and a frayed relationship with citizens, the department was under greater strain.

“They’re getting worn out. They’ve been working non-stop with limited resources,” Minneapolis Police Federation President Bob Kroll told the Minnesota Reformer this summer.

“My own sense is that this isn’t retaliation as much as it is just everybody’s humanity in this moment,” said council member Linea Palmisano, who represents Ward 13, the southwest corner of Minneapolis. She’s advocated for more mental health support and coaching for police officers who she says have experienced trauma. As the head of the city’s budget committee, Palmisano will also have a say in department funding this winter and has said that more resources, not fewer, will be needed for reform.

Some say changed policing in the zone was intentional. Reports from residents and local news have described the area around the Floyd memorial as a “no-go zone,” where police appear to be unwilling to engage — and unwelcome by many residents.

Especially in cases of enforcing minor infractions, “not every decision to not engage in something is a bad decision,” said council member Fletcher. But even in dangerous instances, residents say something changed.

“In the period directly after George Floyd was killed, during the uprising, the service from 911 was essentially nonexistent,” said Bicking. “People had the feeling that everybody must have just gone home. The phones could ring forever, you could call 20 times and never get an answer.”

‘No Man’s Land’

Minneapolis’s Eighth and Ninth Wards have been ground zero for the city’s season of change. Their border is marked by the corner of 38th and Chicago, where a clerk working at a store called in a forged $20 bill, and where then-Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds on May 25. Now a memorial to Floyd, the intersection draws visitors from across the city and country, who come to pay tribute to his memory.

Over the summer, the area felt like “a disaster zone,” said Alondra Cano, the city council member who represents the Ninth Ward. Lake Street, a thoroughfare that bisects the district, was overtaken by peaceful protesters marching for Black lives, but also by fire and chaos. New reporting from the Minneapolis Star Tribune indicates that some of the destruction was caused by far-right agitators, like the Boogaloo Boys. Residents felt abandoned. “There weren't any firefighters that were readily available. And there weren't any police that were readily available,” said Cano. “A lot of residents took it upon themselves to put out fires and to engage with folks who might be doing some harm out on the street.”

Members of Agape in downtown Minneapolis, after they were called to help respond to looting. Steve Floyd

It was out of that “no-man’s land” that five resident-led safety groups were born, she said, each covering different Ninth Ward neighborhoods, none of them officially designated by the city. In the months following the height of the protests, the groups got more organized and centralized. There’s the Little Earth Protectors, a group of American Indians who patrol the neighborhood around their federally-subsidized housing complex in the East Phillips neighborhood, and the Rock Steady Alliance, which Najmaie describes as a citywide coalition of racial justice activists and harm reduction workers who emerged to provide aid at protests. Agape, a group of 25 to 30 men, many of whom are former gang members, post up near the George Floyd memorial and respond to issues in the 40-block radius around it; they sometimes combine efforts with the Brown Berets, a group of Hispanic and Latino residents. The Powderhorn Safety Collective is run by a loose group of neighbors living in the Powderhorn Park neighborhood, a diverse but majority-white enclave historically home to leftists, artists and working class folks. They patrol the Powderhorn neighborhood by bike and on foot.

The demographics, tactics and territories of each collective vary, but a shared mission appears to unite them: to take elements of public safety out of the hands of the police, and into the hands of the community.

The Powderhorn neighborhood was profiled in the New York Times in June for its residents’ pledge to “check their privilege” after Floyd’s killing. Part of their reckoning was choosing not to call 911 for incidents large and small, out of a fear that the police would inflict more violence on the communities they pledged to protect. When unhoused residents started building a tent encampment down the street, the community resisted the city’s initial push to evict them, instead assigning volunteers to offer food, support and security. Later, when several volunteers pulled out of the area, Najmaie and a few other neighbors decided to start informal patrols that became the Safety Collective, to “make the housed people feel safe, so that they will hopefully not be calling 911 on the unhoused,” he said. (At the end of July, the city removed the encampment.)

The homeless encampment at Powderhorn Park in July, which was later cleared by the city. Photographer: Aaron Lavinsky/Star Tribune via Getty Images

Since they started patrolling in July, Powderhorn volunteers receive reports of incidents through the app Discord, where their neighborhood group chat has had between 1,000 and 1,300 active members. They also proactively monitor activity through the Citizen app, which culls 911 logs for geo-located crimes-in-action, and another older-fashioned tool: the police scanner. Often, what they’re responding to is the sound of gunshots. Their intervention is “full-service,” Najmaie says: they arrive at the scene of the incident, assist in whatever way they can, and report back with updates.

Agape, another one of the patrol groups, formed after young men who lived near 38th and Chicago observed what they saw as opportunistic vendors and gang violence take over the George Floyd memorial, says Steve Floyd, who’s lived in the area for 40 years and acts as an adviser to Agape. “What happened when George Floyd was killed, it made them change their lives and find a different direction,” says Steve Floyd. The group members put up barricades, and started a security patrol.

They aim to “let people understand that we have to protect our own community even if police are not going to be here,” says Floyd, “and then how it would look if we didn’t have police.”

The group has gone through several trainings on mental health, mediation and de-escalation training, and by now they’ve become a visible presence in the neighborhood, there to break up assaults and relieve tension on the street. “A lot of us don’t wear bulletproof vests, and so it just has to depend on the situation,” said Floyd. “Most of the time we can intervene with our voice.”

The groups often work together. For altercations that Powderhorn residents feel unequipped to handle, they seek out other groups like Agape for reinforcement. But even for incidents when neighbors might want to call 911, Najmaie says it hasn’t always felt like a viable option. “During the uprisings, you probably had a 30% chance to 20% chance of any kind of police answering to anything,” said Najmaie. “By mid-summer, it was up to a 50% to 60% chance, if I was to guess, and then slowly rising. Now, we're at a much higher percent chance.”

Because the Powderhorn Safety Collective is embedded within the community, the collective will often show up before police squad cars do, Najmaie says. “Other times when they do show up, what we've noticed is a very quick drive by and if you're lucky, you'll get a searchlight,” he said. “And then that's it.”

A New Playbook

Fletcher believes that some individual officers have actually exaggerated the impression among residents that police are unresponsive. “I have a lot of instances of officers telling businesses, telling residents, ‘I don’t know if we’d be able to get to you if you called and something happened,’” Fletcher said. “That kind of building cynicism and building doubt and building fear has a political impact.”   The MPD did not respond to requests for comment on this allegation.

The time it takes for the police to answer Priority 1 calls did not slow as much as the total average did this summer, indicating that the most urgent calls continued to be answered in a timely fashion. This could be partially thanks to actions by the police department to recalibrate its work: After complaints, the department has triaged its depleted number of officers to prioritize answering 911 calls and pursue investigations of serious incidents.

“In these very challenging times of COVID, budget cuts and retirements, the MPD continues to evaluate and reallocate the resources that we currently have to best serve the City of Minneapolis, focusing on the core responsibilities of a police department; responding to 911 calls and investigations,” the MPD told CBS Minnesota in a statement.  

Using fears about unanswered 911 calls as a justification for increasing police resources has been a familiar playbook in Minneapolis in the lead-up to budget processes, said Fletcher and Bicking, the community activist. “It works to the advantage of the police department, as propaganda: you need us, and there aren't enough of us,” said Bicking. In fact, it’s a familiar playbook in many American cities.

This time, it’s not having the same effect as it used to in Minneapolis, says Fletcher.

“The answer used to be we need 200 more cops and now people are like, we need a whole new division that handles this a different way that’s a non-police approach, if policing is not solving the problem,” he said. “That’s a really important political shift and it’s a potentially really generative moment, because I think people are thinking more critically than they have.”

Andrea Jenkins, vice president of the Minneapolis City Council, during a meeting in which council members declared they would disband the police. Rhetoric on that plan has softened since. Photographer: Star Tribune via Getty Images/Star Tribune

The mayor’s proposed budget includes a suggested $2.5 million in funding for alternative violence prevention programs, and a 7.4% cut to the police — far smaller than proposed cuts to other departments. Many of the city council members who once vowed to abolish the police have since clarified that they’ll focus on systemic reforms — though not all of them agree on what those should look like.

But there are signs that the community safety monitors and the city's efforts may start to converge as both groups explore what future policing might look like.

As of September, there’s yet another group of community members patrolling some of the same neighborhoods in South Minneapolis, but these individuals are paid by a new city “violence interrupter” program with $1.1 million in funding. Participants and leadership in the Office of Violence Prevention program are clear that they do not want to replace police, but instead focus on long-term relationship building. In many cases, they use their community connections to try to defuse tensions before they turn violent.

“We don't want to wait for it to get worse to address it, when we can see the writing on the wall,” said Sasha Cotton, the director of the Office of Violence Prevention, referring to concerns about gun violence. Agape recently started conducting regular nighttime patrols alongside the violence interrupters.

At a meeting with the Office of Violence Prevention and city council members, several of the community safety groups gathered to discuss how they could support each other, and whether they could receive city resources to buy tools like walkie talkies. Cano has given Agape members access to an office on 37th and Chicago, which they use as a “safe house and hotspot,” says Floyd. Cotton, of the city’s Office of Violence Prevention, says “there’s more than enough work” to keep both city and civilian efforts busy so long as gun violence remains a top concern.

Still, there’s debate about whether the community groups that coalesced in the immediate aftermath of Floyd’s death are sustainable in their current form. “Nobody’s getting paid, there’s not a lot of structure, accountability,” said Fletcher. In one indication of potential safety risks, Cano said a member of the Little Earth Collective had been shot while out on patrol, bringing up questions of liability and insurance. (The group was not available for an interview before publication.)

Kaitlin Wolfgram-Gunderson of the Powderhorn Collective hangs signs in the neighborhood about a meeting to seek community feedback on the group’s model. Photographer: Emilie Richardson/Bloomberg

In the Powderhorn neighborhood, Najmaie says that even as the upheaval of the summer dissipates, and the group stops its nightly patrols for the coldest winter months, he wants the collective to live on. They’re readying for Election Day and night, and for potential protests in the lead-up to Inauguration Day. There’s a trial for Derek Chauvin coming up next year. Unrest aside, the mission statement of the Powderhorn Collective describes its end goal as something broader than safety or security: "strengthening the social fabric of the neighborhood."

“People need to be involved in their communities,” said Najmaie. “People need to feel like they have a stake in things, and that they can change things.”

   (Corrects the date of Floyd’s death in paragraph 16. )