#tried to use a nice and saturated color palette

[disposal-blueeee]

ah. yes. this guy

he lives in my mind rent free so i just really had to draw him

(again)

i could spend hours just rambling about how much i love him i'm fuckibg tired

idk the thought of him just wearing cool stuff wouldn't leave my mind and one day i was just sketching things this is the result XP

jake by zarla-s

[jadetheblueartist]

Hi Jade!

For the Evil Art Style challenge:

When doing traditional art, your style is all sharp points, hard lines, and a 'hatching-style' of shading.

With digital art, you use pencil-like brushes for the thick outlines and smaller, more delicate details. Your colors are very solid with minimal shading and tend to be very cohesive as a palette.

--

I love how genuine your art feels and how passionate you are about creating!!

You inspire me to keep drawing and posting! <3<3<3

-Berry

OHMIGOSH BRO THIS WAS SO NICE I did this traditional one just for you so hopefully it’s beautifully evil (I tried blending the little bit of shading but idk) I’m feeling very UwU today hehehe

And then for the digital I tried combining the stuff you said and the stuff @banana-pancake5 said and the result make my eyes bleed from the colors 😭 so yeah a little warning for super saturated colors

This is my dog and I love him but I’m glad he’s not this bright

This was really fun (and insightful ^^) so thanks for helping me out

[kelocitta]

Hello! I love your use of geometric shapes and saturated colors in your illustrations. Which artists influence your work?

Honestly while I can name a lot of artists who serve as some sort of inspiration for things like creature design or color, I can't really place ones for specifically the geometric aspect! I'm sure there are some out there, but I think a large part of specifically that is probably just me personally liking balanced/clean/symmetric stuff along with most of my sketch papers growing up being gridline paper, so doing sharp geometric shapes was common. I also tend to think of my lineless art as similar to layered paper art, which has to be physically cut out. Its sort of one of the reasons I reuse colors often? Like you'd reuse the same piece of paper

Color wise I pull a lot from my friends, save a lot of art I think does interesting stuff with colors, etc. Generally I might skip through a couple artworks for a good "starter" color or a palette I like and go from there, adjusting it for personal preference. All the parts are drawn in little individual bits, so I can change them all independently. So often I have colors in mind at the beginning, but don't actually pick them till the very end. Here's some pieces to show how that gets fiddled with

And if you go back far enough, everything starts as a yucky mash of whatever colors made it easiest to tell one piece from another with zero regards to palette

I just really like bright saturated colors and honestly just kinda feel it out from there. Sometimes that's making it brighter sometimes that's making it a little more washed out. Sometimes I decide what I was going for doesn't actually look as nice as I thought. It's sort of hard to name inspirations directly because so much of what I do I do effectively by feeling, and I have piss poor memory so naming exacts is real hard. If I tried to list people whos art I think about a lot we'd be here all day. I know a lot of my recent stuff has had more direct inspo from Boxheadpaint who has just amazing shape language (but almost the exact opposite of 'geometric' but I try and match their vibe a lot when I'm trying to draw a little looser and less stiff. Also looooove how they texture stuff)

[your-bigender-big-brother]

Just curious what you think about while making label flags, because i have no idea where to start with how i want to represent something in a flag :/

I've started to use colors that simply look nice and that represent less gendered things when I create my flags nowadays.

When I first started, I wanted flag colors to be far more obvious. A lot of my male-related flags used blues and teals, for example. Now I branch out more, seeing teal as something that can represent androgyny or abinarity. This is more of my personal view of colors and what they mean in relation to my own experiences.

Sometimes flag colors can represent concepts rather than genders. When making maverine flags, I don't see orange as representing not-blue (male) and not-pink (female.) Instead, orange is representative of individuality. I might use red to represent personal inner conviction, like a fire burning within someone. If I'm making an abinary flag, I enjoy green, yellow, and teal simply because I vibe with those colors together - teal is definitely MY color and represents the abinary side of my identity. A lot of my xenogender flags use purple and pink to represent galaxies because when I think xenogender, I think of space. I try not to think "Well, purple is usually an androgynous color or a color for nonbinary while pink is usually used for femininity, so I better not use it."

I think starting in a familiar place is a good start. Come up with labels that are related to your gender experience and experiment with colors that you like, colors that feel like they represent you. I've seen all kinds of interesting color preferences from people who request flags from me. They'll ask me to make them, say, a new maverique flag, but they might prefer I use a lot of blue and purple because those colors feel maverique to them. It makes for some very interesting flags.

Experimenting with color combinations is also something I'm recently getting into. Instead of very bright and saturated colors, I've been tinkering with muted colors. Natural colors. Combinations you don't normally see (like with my recent flag redesigns - the maverique and nonbinary flags have an interesting palette I've never tried before.)

My overall advice is to try something you rarely ever see in flags and put your own personal spin on them.

- 💙💚

[spacestationvampire]

the way you color things makes me want to commit crimes. any coloring tips for a baby digital artist who doesn’t know how to do the computer things good?

AUGH apologies for taking so long, i was in the middle of writing this answer and the whole thing was deleted as soon as i switched to another tab on my phone, and then the draft didn't save the second time i tried to write it. jfc at least i had it written out in my notes app the second time. anyway, thank you thank you thank you!! this was very nice to recieve, i love getting asks ❤️

i'm not versed in the arts of drawing on a computer, either, so i can't give tips in regards to specific programs (said in chronic procreate user voice) but i can certainly give universal advice keep in mind that i'm not professionally taught in the slightest so i lack much of the vocabulary to describe my methods, and remember that my word is not law!

in case of confusion, everything has been explained. i've added a cut because it got needlessly long. i've also added visual guides for certain tips, and image descriptions for each one

to be honest, much of what i do when picking colors is done with the help of gradient maps (more on that later) but when choosing my base colors i follow these rules:

1. you don't have to cell shade with purple + multiply and an add layer. that's the voice of lavendertowne attempting to take control of your body. stamp it out. (/j i love her)

2. bright, vivid colors!

3. instead of shifting just the brightness and saturation when picking colors to shade, shift the hue, too! in the first image, we can see that the circle is dull and boring. in comparison, the second image pops!

4. so, how does this work?

without getting too much into color theory--because while i've studied it before, i don't trust myself to articulate it properly without making a fool of myself--it's all about how colors interact with each other. for example, a beige circle looks lighter when surrounded by a dark background rather than just plain white.

in the same vein, surrounding greys/desaturated colors with warm colors makes them look blue, and vice versa.

5. blue/grey shadows and warm lighting!! or the other way around. actually, you can use any color for shadows and lighting, depending on your light source. is it sunny outside, or are they beneath white light?

6. for color picking, i reccomend avoiding using the wheel, instead opting for the rgb sliders or the hue saturation brightness sliders if you're dumb like me. this allows for precision in the colors you pick, and accuracy when putting together color palettes.

7. and, finally, the actual computer stuff: gradient maps! i looove gradient maps.

as far as i'm aware, procreate and krita have the gradient map tool. ibispaint does not. i am not sure if firealpaca does.

i usually use gradient maps to make my coloring more cohesive, rather than just slapping them on a monochrome drawing (which is also a totally viable method for coloring, but you'll be less precise, as gmaps only recognize values). when using gradient maps, i prefer to duplicate my completed artwork, lower the opacity of the duplicate on top of it (usually between 25 and 50%, depending on how strong i want the effect to be), and use gradient maps on the duplicate.

this makes my colors all nice and pretty!

11. if you use krita, it can be hard to find the right colors to use for your gradient maps. never fear! i'm here to give you the default templates from procreate, as well as a couple of the ones i've made.

if you have any more questions, or you want me to get further into a specific topic, feel free to send me another ask

[jmeldog]

Made some little sprites for funsies

Color palette ramblings beneath the cut

Using the same palette I made before, but I did have to add one lighter shade of blue because I really couldn’t stand Cap with darker blues. I also adjusted the darkest blue to make it less saturated.

I’m really particular about colors tho lol. Another shade of blue is fine, but I couldn’t stand trying to add any more greens, purples, or reds for Momo or Bolts. Who knows how that works. Prolly cuz I focus my palette range on having a good yellow/orange/magenta gradient and nice blues. I can only have one (1) green for accent or else I throw up and die.

I did experiment with adding a more “pink” shade of light pink, but it was too similar in value to the salmon color so I didn’t like it. I tried implementing the hot pink on either Momo or Bolts, and it just didn’t turn out nicely. Oh well. Even as shading, the hot pink was too strong for Momo’s hair 😔

[obsidiancreates]

My Concepts For A TMNT 2012 Themed Makeup Collection

First off: Individual small eyeshadow palettes for each character. And I mean small, like, probably just 3 or 4 shades each.

So like, one shade the same color as their masks, one the color of their eye colors, and one the shade of green their skintone is. And I don't mean "Eh purple but like any shade of purple" I mean EXACT SHADE MATCH. So that gives us these nice little trio palettes, I would have them all be All Matte No Shimmers/Glitters, because...

Companion Palatte: Out The Sewers Like Lazer Beams

This is a larger palette, probably around 15 shades, 18 at the very most. It's made of colors taken from scene backgrounds, enemies color schemes, and other characters. Like a more saturated pinky-purple than Donnie's is named "Irmabot Highlights" and a neon pink named "Kick Some Kraang" and such. Obviously some dark navy blues and such to represent the common background color.

Other Companion Palette: Lean Green Ninja Team

This one is 15-18 shades as well and is based around the non-turtle main/ally characters. "Hajime" being a brown shade taken from Splinter's coat, for example, "Hey There Red" being a shade of orange like April's hair with a yellow shimmer to it like her shirt, "GOONGALA" being a high-inpact shimmer with a gunmetal gray base and lots of white shimmer (not just to match with his color scheme but also like, He Hits People Hard Enough To Make Them See TV Static As They Go Down). Things like that. This is a slightly more neutral based palette so it also includes like, the color of their shells and wrappings and such (we could also put these into the 4 palettes based on The Boys specifically, I just wanted to keep those as small and no-repeat-shades as possible).

Turtle Power Cream Color Corrector Palette/Wheel In A Shell Shape

Dude their colors are LITERALLY perfect for color correction. Orange/peachy tones cancel out blue tones like undereye darkness/dark spots left by bad breakouts, purple/lavender tones help brighten, green cancels out redness in the skin like angry breakouts or rosacea, blue is less of a color corrector though and more of a Shade Adjuster however including it means you could still mix it with a foundation that's too Warm to cool down the shade, just might work best with a cream foundation father than a liquid since you need to mix it in directly, not just apply product over it.

Anyway.

MAN I LOVE BEING A TURTLE! Blush

Same shade as those little amine-style blushy bits they get on their faces, and kind of that pattern? Like the little shape/style it is, in the actual pan. I just think it's be cute.

Makeup Tools Shaped Like Their Weapons

Brush with a Bo style handle and the actual bristles are gray and angled like the blade at the end. One of those things people use to block their crease from getting eyeshadow fallout shaped like Mikey's bladed part (I tried looking up the name but there were a few variations of that and I wasn't sure which was right), angled eyeliner/brow brush like Leo's blades, eyeliner pens shaped like Raph's Sai, and I'm thinking an actual hand fan that looks like April's tessan to help dry the face is you use setting spray during makeup.

I've been trying to come up with fun lipsticks but I can't think of anything rn I'll update later though if I come up with anything.

[whatthefuckisasweep]

How do you draw so good and how do I achieve it?

First of all, AAAAAAA thank you so much, this is so nice of you to say :, )

I always appreciate your nice comments on my work - and your art is great too. I love how quick you are with it, and how much you enjoy the process (you said you love coloring, and I admire that because I very much speed through it like "god, let me get this over with PLEASE" ahah). I also love just how much your style is squishy and fun, and you have a good sense of anatomy!

Secondly, I don't consider myself "so good" - but I can just let you know how I got here! I... just did what you're doing right now, which is draw a lot, and draw things I like to. And eventually, I got here where I still do that but at a bit of a higher level. Its like... by challenging myself through ideas that I wanted to do but didn't think I could (which forced me to look up things and use reference aids), and eventually I learned the ropes of new things very slowly.

I will be honest though I had help with my coloring style, I studied some artists that I liked and tried to get their color palettes down because coloring and lighting does not come natural to me. I tend to like warmer and saturated tones! So I went with that!

I hope that helps in some capacity :,]!!!!!!!!!!!!! you're doing great with this already!!! :D and once again thanks for this, it's very sweet of you

[pl0xm4st3r]

More thoughts on Persona 3 Reload below. This is gonna be a long one.

I'm gonna start with the gameplay because everything I know about game design comes from watching videos. So I am a dilettante at best, and my opinions pretty much come down to "did it feel good to play?" And God, did this game feel good to play. I've seen some criticisms about the shift mechanic and how it trivializes difficulty, and the capacity for very high damage even on the highest difficulty. I played on normal, so I can't speak on that, but this comes down my fundamental philosophy on difficulty in games. To grossly oversimplify, games rely on mechanics and story to keep players engaged. Difficulty falls under mechanics here, and great games will use both to give players a good time. But you can sacrifice one if you make up for another. Some visual novels and almost no gameplay, and almost no one is playing Mario for the story, to give two extremes. As such, I think Persona 3 is more than engaging enough on a story and characterization front to make up for a rather easy time.

I think the boss fights are where the combat suffers, because I don't feel any inclination to use interesting strategies. It's just buff, debuff, and attack. The one time I used an interesting strategy was after I died to the Hermit, and decided to switch up my team, bringing Shinji, Ken, and Aigis. I kept Aigis' weakness safe with Makarakarn, buffed with her and MC, and then just let loose. Every time I tried using a status, it would be blocked (which also made Mitsuru feel limited in her usefulness, since that's her Theurgy characteristic), so I just stopped trying. I find it weird that resistances to status effects aren't included in Fuuka's scans. Also, the Monad Corridors provide opportunities for interesting strategies, but unless you want to die once to scout or consult a guide, it's really unlikely that such strategies will work. All that said though, I think the combat and gameplay was engaging enough. It just relied on being a power-fantasy often, between chaining 1-Mores and Theurgy skills. And even then, I did have tense moments while traversing Tartarus, so it's not like difficulty was completely absent.

All in all, though, the game was immensely fun, and holy crap, everything felt so satisfying to navigate. Menuing was instant and load times were practically non-existent. I can attribute some of that to playing on PC (mine has decent hardware), but even older games aren't as instantly responsive as this one was. This leads me into design. Every aspect of this games design is gorgeous and cool as hell to me. I've seen a lot of praise for it already, and with Metaphor on the way from Atlus, it seems they've picked up after P5 that people love stylish menus and want to continue that. That said, I do have incredibly slight reservations about it, precisely because P5 did it first. Everything being off-kilter fits with the game being about rebels, and P3 doesn't share that identity. However, asymmetric design doesn't have to be restricted to only being a thematic reinforcement; it can also just look cool because. I actually think P3R does a good job of retaining the look of OG P3. It had pretty standard, inoffensive menus, and it's primary way of making it look cool was through the color palette. P3R manages to retain the streamlined blockiness of the original while introducing asymmetric elements in a nice balance. For instance, compare how the date looks in Persona 5 as compared to P3R. I won't harp on it too much longer, because I could pick a ton of details to focus on (I will bring up the Theurgy menu though. So cool). The game is also just overall gorgeous. The models, sprites, animations, effects, everything is great. It's notably more saturated than the original, which I thought was an interesting decision, but ultimately it doesn't affect me either way. I think it suits the overall art direction, but had it been different then a desaturated palette would've worked fine.

The voice acting is great and I think suits each of the characters very well. Since I played a bit of P3P, it took some getting used to Yukari and Junpei's voices (since I was used to Michelle Ruff and Vic Mignogna). I've gone back and listened to some of the original dialogue and I frankly think some of the voice acting from back then was bad. Fuuka and Aigis especially sound very awkward. That was intentional for Aigis, but even then, it sounded to me like someone doing a robot voice poorly, and I can't quite place what's off about it to me. In any case, I think her new voice is a marked improvement, and I like that she still manages to make her sound like a robot because, while she has no problem with inflection anymore, she always speaks quietly and extremely evenly. It's the evenness of her speech that gives the robot vibe this time around, I feel. Also, Ken actually sounds like a kid, which I appreciate. As someone who wasn't really familiar with the original cast, I think they nailed the casting this time, no character's voice felt off.

Speaking of the cast, though, I love the characters so much, every one of them, in the main cast, at least. I enjoyed a great deal of the social links as well. Ignoring the ones with party members for now, I think my favorites were the ones with Maiko, Hayase, and Akinari. Although I'm looking over the list now to refresh my memory, and it's really hard to pick favorites on this. Akinari's is peak, of course. I think I went into it with too high of expectations, because my friend told me if I did any, I had to do his and that it's the best in the game. Ignoring those with party members, I agree that it's the best, but my expectations were placed too high. In any case, it's an incredibly touching story with an excellent message. I didn't end up doing Yuko's, Hiraga's, or Bebe's all the way through, but I almost finished Yuko's and got a few ranks in to the others. As for the main cast, I could be here forever if I got into every character. This post has gotten long enough as is so I think I'll make a separate one giving my thoughts on each member of SEES, Strega, and Ryoji. I think I'll also discuss the plot and themes in that post as well, or I might separate it again.

[slapegg]

Some Thoughts About... Popful Mail

Some Thoughts About... Popful Mail (PC-88 EGG Console re-release, 2024)

Popful Mail is one of my top 5 favorite games so I was very excited to see it come to the Switch. Very quickly tampered by it being the PC-Engine version, not the Sega CD one. Or even that SNES version. Or even the PC-98 version... But still! A chance to play Popful Mail again! It was one of the first games I got for my Sega CD and I love it to this day. I mean, if you look at Lust or my other demon characters and wonder why they have such long ears, it’s a healthy mix of Popful Mail and Shining Force/Yoshitaka Tamaki’s art.

Just to reiterate! This is the PC-88 release. It is not the (fantastic) Sega CD one. The game is in Japanese. Just about everything. Popful Mail isn’t the most story-based of games, but you’re going to miss out on all the dialogue. And the menus. And the stores. An overlay explaining the shops would be nice or just stick a translated picture in the instructions. I remembered enough of the Sega CD one to find the heal option and buying items at least shows a picture of what you’re buying, but some of the options don’t make sense to me. There’s a PC-Engine 98 walkthrough on GameFAQs and that was most useful, but there are enough differences between the 98 and 88 versions that it’s not perfect.

There’s a point where you have to “swap disks” to continue and for some reason that’s not automated in the overlay and the message is in Japanese. So you go to the disk change menu in the EGG overlay and there are way more options than you think there would be. There’s a “2” in the Japanese message so you try switching to disk 2 and nothing happens. So it’s just trial and error swapping thing around. If you swap disks in both drives and load the visual disk, the game progresses! BUUUT! After the cutscene, the game just goes black with no message, English or Japanese. I tried every combination of disks but couldn’t get it to progress. So I reloaded my previous save and ignored the “2” in the message and only swapped to the visual disc, and then after the cutscene, NOW swapped it to the “2”disc, and it worked! There is absolutely no reason this should not be automated or be in the EGG instruction manual. This was just a straight up garbage process. I could understand leaving it how it is for history’s sake, but to not have a translated step-by-step guide in the EGG instruction manual is just laziness, incompetence, or being so cheap that you won’t spring for an extra three sentences of translation work.

It’s still an action-adventure game but it used a bump combat system. So weird! Instead of slashing a sword, fighting is just jumping over enemies and hitting them from behind. Attacking from the front either has the enemy block the attack, do damage to you as well, or shoot you with a projectile. Just smashing into them from the back makes some of the early bosses easier than regular enemies with projectile attacks. The bump system actually makes Mail terrible for the majority of the game. In the Sega CD version, I used Mail for all but a few fights. In this version, Tatto is the star of the show where you’ll spend stages in a row never switching off of him because of how much enemies spam projectiles or how most bosses fight you from a distance.

Lining up shots from the back is made more difficult by the how limited the color palette is. The graphics are hard on the eyes. The backgrounds are super busy and just as saturated as the main characters while being the same colors, plus it kind of blurs when you walk. So yeah, it’s a rough play and I stuck to very short play sessions.

The music is still awesome. It’s similar to the Sega CD’s but just different enough to be fun in its own right.

The changes the Sega CD version made are interesting. In this version, Mail can toss daggers up and down! The wedding ring sidequest is gone so you never fight the leader of the Badger Gang, but that same lady now leads you to freeing Slicky from the cave-in. Muttonhead has an evil Gaw! Your health refills when on the world map! You’re not allowed to change characters during boss fights! The boomerang is governed by a mechanic where you have to hold the attack button down to send it and it returns when you let go (making it almost useless). The economy balancing is... well, it’s actually pretty close to how Working Designs re-did the Sega CD version. Everything is crazy expensive and you die in just a few hits so the game is super grindy and unfair.

In short, if this was the first/only version of Popful Mail I ever played, I wouldn’t have any reverence for the series. This game is just frustrating, grindy, and the fetch quests are tedious even if you can understand the language. This is a neat historical piece but it is not a fun game to play.

To be honest, I couldn’t force myself to finish the game. I got up to the boss of the ice world (world 4 of 5) and it’s one of the most poorly made fights I have ever played in a video game. The boss’s attacks move too fast for how bad the controls are and how small the gameplay window is and each attack drains your health so you die in a few hits. It took me multiple deaths to even realize why one attack was almost instantly killing me even when I dodged it (it leaves a like 3 pixel tall trail behind the shot that is blue on a blue background on top of blue ground). The boss spends most of the fight invulnerable and only opens up for like two seconds, which is barely enough time to hit it and can line up with the other shots it’s firing so you lose half your health to take off two percent of the boss’s health. And to top all that off, you’re dealing with ice physics while trying to fight it. It’s not a hard fight; it’s a poorly made unfair fight that has no redeeming factors or entertainment. In the Sega CD version, this fight is a slog, but it’s entirely doable and certainly doesn’t feel unfair. It’s simply not worth beating that boss to see the end of the game. The EGG Console overlay has a weird “scene select” option that lets you jump to specific points in the game and one of them is right after the ice world, so I gave the last world a try, but the bosses remain absolute trash. I forced myself to beat the Golem boss in 5-1, but once I got to the Fright Knight in 5-2, I just put the game down again and gave up. The boss itself isn’t difficult, it’s that the boss is designed to take advantage of the worst part of the controls and camera so you’re fighting the game rather than the enemy. And, yet again, the boss has an insane amount of health, kills you three hits, and spends most of the fight invincible. I had to look up online how to even hurt the boss. So thanks, Youtube, and for showing me the end of the PC-E version of Popful Mail. At least in the PC-98 version, Mail’s fight against the Overlord actually looks more interesting than the Sega CD’s, but I’m bummed out I never got to experience it.

Whatever EGG’s porting overlay is, it has an option to speed up or slow down how the game runs, so that’s neat. It has a rewind feature, but instead of it being the normal “hold down to rewind”, pressing the button jumps you back a little bit, so you have to keep pressing it until you get where you want to be. But it doesn’t seem to jump you back the same distance each time you press the button. There’s no precision to it, but it kind of gets you there as long as you’re willing to go way farther back than you intended.

The rerelease includes a gallery with some fun art I hadn’t seen before. Buuut they didn’t translate the text or notes so it feels super low effort.

The game is only $7, so it’s hard to gripe about some missing features, no matter how basic/needed they may seem (outside of that disc swap menu translation), but man this is just a lousy version of a great game. The PC-98 version looks bad but still a lot better than this one, so why wasn’t that one ported instead? Maybe the EGG engine only does PC-88 games? I dunno. Maybe interest in this version is enough to push Sega/Falcom to just pay for a new translation and VO for the Sega CD version so people can play the best version of a great game. The Sega Genesis Mini 2 had Popful Mail, but only in Japan, so the English-speaking world is really missing out. And now I’m mad again that Shining Force CD is also trapped on the Mini 2 instead of also releasing it as a stand-alone game!

[kieuecaprie]

So, I finished Splatoon 3 Side Order. I did EVERYTHING possible on it. I collected all the color chips, I completed all the palettes, I bought all the things I could get from there and... I feel less than satisfied? That doesn't sound right, I was looking forward to it! Why do I feel this way?

So, in this post, I'm going to try and articulate my grey-and-gray feelings about a DLC about grayscaling and color into a silly little blog post online and see if I'm not alone in feeling that way.

You've already read the teal deer by the way, I'm not putting one under the read more. Oh, and major spoiler warning about literally everything in Side Order. I'd recommend having cleared at least one successful run before you even THINK about reading on.

So, let's get the good bits out of the way first, the story? Sure, it's very bare on the surface but the buildup to Marina Agitando and, subsequently, Order itself in about four runs (one successful tutorial run, two failed runs, one successful normal run) was great. The characters, as usual, were great, it was nice to see Acht in the flesh and it was nice to catch up with Pearl and Marina, the only lesbian couple in Splatoon and I say this in the most affectionate manner possible because I find it hilarious how Nintendo decided to just lean into it.

The memes aren't lying, this really is a DLC about a lesbian couple in an elevator hanging out with their mute possibly-enby friend who had a tussle with Agent 3 once upon a time and an enby DJ who chills in the elevator because they had an injury in the matrix.

The stakes aren't quite as high as, say, the annhilation of all inkfish kind like Octo Expansion and Rise of the Mammalians, the stakes here are that Order wants to grayscale everything and force everyone to live in a world where nothing changes because they feel like that's what everyone wants. At least, that's what Marina initially wanted until pesky Eight and Pearl came along and RUINED IT.

On the surface, the gameplay seems cool too. You pick out a color chip per floor that augments your weapon and you really can make the most batshit insane builds you can think of. Want a splattershot that pours out ink at insane speeds like an aerospray with none of the downsides? With the right chips, you can! Want to make a Grizzco Blaster but better in every single way? There's chips for that too. Want to pretend to be a TF2 bot and snipe everything out of existence? There's chips for your Charger that will absolutely let you do that.

The music is, as it should be, pretty great, even if the DLC as a whole is half-baked and flat in some places (we'll get to that in a bit, I'm not done praising the DLC yet), ranging from the music that plays on each floor to the boss themes to the final boss itself, it's so good!

So why do I feel empty inside? Is it because of the roguelite gameplay? No, I've had plenty of fun with roguelites and roguelikes, I literally have fun playing Gunfire Reborn and hell, I even give Baldi's Basics Plus a fair shake and that game's not even done yet! Go Mecha Ball is fun, Whisker Squadron Survivor is also fun (although right now it feels awful with the elite bosses...), RoboQuest, Barony, hell if you want to stretch, there's Lethal Company. Sure, I don't have as much patience for the genre as I used to these days but that doesn't mean they don't bring me joy. So what is it?

Well... for starters, while the story mode is great, clearing it fairly quickly made it all feel jarring. Again, I wasn't expecting it to be as grand as Octo Expansion but it definitely felt way less impactful. You get to the top and face off against Order who tries everything to resist your attempts to stop it only to then pull out a trap card and start pulling everyone into the Memverse, then your vibe wakes you, Pearl, Marina, and Acht back up and you collect the saturated color chips that it was holding captive and blast it with, you guessed it, a Killer Wail but with COLORS. And then it turns into a small widdle octopus thing and it starts having a widdle tantwum and you go to the real world and that's it.

All the build-up for the climax of the story happens in that one floor and is immediately let go. Okay, fine, I'll take dealing with Smollusk for the next dozen attempts up the tower, especially since it seems like it's developing a personality everytime you go up there going from a stuck-up order fanatic to someone who just wants to have fun... but nothing ever changes.

For every unique palette up to and including Eight's, which has the gimmick of restricting chip slots based on how many hacks you have active, you only get some new dialogue after floor 29 and a new cutscene before the exact same boss, no new patterns and only one new song. Nothing changes about Overlorder besides the subtitle and it dies the exact same way, breaking the portals to break its barrier to then break it down, do this two more times and you win. There's no variance to this.

Speaking of variety, it starts to set in VERY quickly that there isn't as much variety as you'd actually think. Okay, well, it's fine having a roguelite with setpiece levels, Go Mecha Ball, for instance, tends to have the samey feel to the levels but it felt fun to woosh through. But here? You go in, do the objective, get out. The length of time you spend in there is heavily dependent on your weapon, chip loadout, and enemy spawns. Level layouts are varied for the first few runs, everything is new and fresh but quickly wear out after a while, having only two or three variants for each (and there's some that I'm sure only have the one!).

And the objectives are straightforward but it feels like they don't do too much to spice it up. There's a few levels where they actually try to do it such as the one portal level where you can stand back, splat the top spinners that come your way, and then yeeting it at the portals to break them, or the infinity-ball level where you yeet it into a ramp and hope you get a hole in one or another infinity-ball level where you literally are Sisyphus! Or a Splat Zones one where you have a Sisyphusean task of painting the other zone because the sprinkling enemies made it over and just took over said zone and now you splatted them and now there's more back on the other side and ARGH.

However, it does make the more generic levels feel more... well... generic. The only saving grace is that they usually are built around not being around for too long but it does make a run blur together after a while.

And on top of variety, wanna talk about how there's only three unique bosses? Outside of Marina Agitando, who only appears in the ten floor tutorial, and Overlorder? Sure, they're all unique in their own ways and certainly something I haven't exactly seen in either S1/S2/S3 campaigns and OE, Parallel Canon is the most interesting one since they draw from your pallette and can screw you over with your own build if you let them.

But there's only three bosses and you only fight two plus Overlorder per run. I would've liked to see at least a few more, hell, get Octostomp in here, everybody loves Octostomp, right?

Okay, finally, how about the rewards? Well, you get gear to wear, that's great, you get weapon replicas (Order Brella makes me upset because Side Order Brella has Sprinkler/Ink Storm and the replica carries Sprinkler/Triple Inkstrike), you get locker decorations, you get stickers and banners and badges, oh my. Very good! I like this, I like having more options to express myself and I like more weapons because that's one more weapon I can use to farm for silver Sheldon Tickets (I know they're Weapon Licenses but whatever...).

So, surely there's something really cool for the completionists out there? Surely there's something on the same level as Inner Agent 3, perhaps the most hype (and only) superboss in the Splatoon serie? Surely there's something cool for clearing all the palettes, including Eight's? Is there anything for doing that?

You get... one more piece of altered dialogue with Smollusk and an Octoshot.

That's it. That's all you get.

For suffering through nine weapons worth of palettes and then agonizing over one more that boasts a tougher restriction of chip slots being restricted based on your number of active hacks, that is what you get? No superboss, no change in the final boss, nothing, just the same routine like you've been doing the past eight palettes...

I'm sorry but am I wrong for expecting something more? Am I wrong for expecting something really cool? Am I wrong for expecting Side Order to deliver a satisfying finale after having effectively hamstringing the quality of the seasonal updates for a good portion of Splatoon 3's active service life?

Okay... maybe something will unlock after I buy everything from Cypher right? Right?

Nope.

Sheldrone 2.0.

Literally fucking Sheldrone but you use 100 Prlz instead of 999 Power Eggs. And it pulls from a prize pool made up of, I'd wager, tickets, coins, and items from the shop since you could only buy one of each from it.

And the Chip Collection grants you more badges, cool. But there's nothing for reaching 100%, there's no grand fight with another Agent 3, there's no alterations, no extra modes, no dialogue acknowledging your feat, nothing.

It's depressing. It's upsetting spending a year and some change waiting for a DLC and being wowed by it within the first few hours only to peel it back and find that the shiny silver that adorns it is more or less tin foil with a few traces of actual silver here and there.

I want to like this DLC, I really do. But I can't bring myself to fully commit to liking it...

The whole DLC feels half-baked and it's depressing to see it like this. Once the hype simmers down, all that you're left with is an empty room with a bunch of confetti that you now have to clean up.

However, there are silver linings to this DLC, the characters, as I've said, were great and while they have less proper interactions that I would've liked, it's nice to catch up with Off the Hook again, it's nice learning a tiny bit about Acht's past life and it's nice to see Marina's efforts to fixing the sanitized Octolings left in the Deep Sea Metro.

The music, as it does, is full of bangers from start to finish. The Acid Hues and Ebb and Flow mixes were, of course, amazing and the finale to the story felt great.

The setting was also pretty interesting, albeit underutilized. And the reward of being able to go to Inkopolis Square, thereby finishing the trifecta of hub worlds, and seeing how it changed from Splatoon 2 was a sight to behold!

Again, Side Order is not a perfect DLC, it's just an okay DLC that has a lot to be desired. People can have fun with it but I'm not going to ignore the glaring flaws because I felt like it could do SO MUCH better.

[curioscurio]

I hope you don't mind I weight in, I saw the drama at a latine encanto group. Of course I can't speak for all of us, but latines are (usually) mixed af, our families look like the Madrigales, we are used to seeing all skin shades under all lights and us changing "shade". Under a blue/night light my sister goes from light brown to looking really white, and I go from brown to a pale less saturated brown, some lights even make me really white looking. That what is maybe is causing the disconnect in our sides in how we see the issue, for us skin color changing is everyday stuff meanwhile the values is kept it's okay (Pepa being the lightest, Felix y Antonio the darkest, brownish, (and/or pinkish, bluish, etc depending of the palette) hues for almost everyone else). And I hope my wording does not fail me here but please remember latines are white too, our family lines have been mixed for some of us for more than 400 years, most of the our soft(? curly hair comes from the Arab influence in the Spaniards and then the Arab immigration to LATAM. Thanks for trying to help our representation but we usually find more important that our ethnic features are represented than if the skin color looks different (lighter or darker) because a palette. I just wanted to explain how the other side of the fandom saw this (albeit the user from tw was being really rude instead to trying to explain), I hope it didn't come of as rude, it was never my intention. Have a nice day!

Hello! This definitely isn't rude at all, and I apreciate you taking the time to type out and explain this to me! Also, may I ask if Latines is the preferred neutral term? I've heard mixed feelings on people regarding the term Latinx

This is a very thoughtful explanation, and really has helped me understand a little better on why everyone was so pissed off.

However, I know that no matter what, the damage is done and my intentions or the context of the post doesn't really matter anymore. That's just how the internet works lol. I've already tried defending myself but I can't change the minds of ppl who don't want to change their minds about me, so I'll just leave them to it.

Loke im noticing that the more I try and explain my side, the deeper a hole I'm probably digging? so I may as well take the advice and shut up about it, and save my breath 🙃

[bunsblr]

Tu... torial? Pt. 3

Welcome back to part 3 of my tutorial for anon. In this I will go over perhaps my favourite part - the face. Did you used doodle eyes in your notebook when you were in school? This has the same energy.

This is where things get a little harder to explain because it involves a lot of drawing. I hope you get the general idea though.

Open this in dashboard for best view of the screenshots.

Disclaimer: I have no formal training for any kind of graphics stuff, I work in an office as a receptionist - I serve coffee for a living. I am absolutely self taught and while I consider myself pretty comfortable with photoshop, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t about a gazillion of other things that can be done that I have no idea about. There are people far superior than me in the Sims community. This is just how I do it, with techniques I have picked up through the years. Some things I go over in these will be pretty basic, some things a little more unorthodox. Disclaimer 2: My edits take time. This is what I do to relax, one edit takes several hours for me. Sometimes days :))) Disclaimer 3: My photoshop is in Swedish, which is my first language. I tried my best to find the English translations for every step that I do.

Tools used: The Sims 4, Adobe Photoshop 2020, One by Wacom Pen Tablet (very basic and unfancy).

I start by adding a new empty layer in my Sim layer group, above my base Sim layer.

I use the smudge tool (I always keep my smudge tool on Strength around 30%) on the Sim layer to smudge and soften the eye whites a bit. I only redraw my sim's eyes if I'm changing the direction that they´re lookin, otherwise I just refine the existing eyes. In this case I didn't want her eyes quite as far left as they were. On my Details layer, I use the brush tool, hard small brush with opacity around 70-80%, and start drawing the eyes a little bit further to the right.

I realized I wanted the eye whites to be even whiter, so I added a new layer inbetween the Sim layer and the Details layer. Using a soft brush with lower opacity (29%) I go over the eye whites. The lower opacity allows me to build up the color by going over multiple times, creating a better blend. I then merge this new layer with the Details layer because there’s no reason for having these on separate layers going forward.

I turn the opacity of the brush tool back up and continue to draw the eyes. At this point they're looking rather creepy...

But looking much better after some added dots of “shine” with a white color (not full on white, slightly muddier)

I turn down the opacity of the brush again, take a soft brush and a dark grey color and go around the whole eye to add some shadow.

Turn up the opacity of the brush again (I know it’s a lot of back and forth with this, it’s just how I work) and work around the eyes. I clean up the make up and add some lashes. I also add some dept to the eyebrows using a slightly darker color than the existing strands and draw in some new ones here and there.

Time to clean up the nose (eeeew). I start with the Smudge tool on the sim layer, strength around 15-20%, and smudge the pixels a little.

On the details layer, I clean up the nose further by drawing in the nostrils a bit, and even out the colors around and on the nose, picking up color with the eyedrop tool and going over with a low opacity brush wherever I think the color is a little uneven.

With the lips I sharpen the shape, add some highlights on the top of the lipline, clean up the corners of the mouth, redraw the teeth and add those squiggly circles on the top and bottom lip. They look a bit weird up close but zoomed out it will look glosssssy :) I pick up existing colors on the lip with the eyedrop tool and work with both lower opacity soft brushes and higher opacity hard brushes here.

Now I feel happy with the face details. Here is a comparison of the face before and after. A little bit cleaner and smoother now!

Time to throw some shade. I always start under the chin (because for some reason that's the most fun). I create a new layer in the Sim group, name it shadows, and I use the pen tool again and make a path along the jawline, sectioning off the neck from the face. I went over the basics of using the pen tool in pt 1. This is.…may be an unortodox way to do it. I'm sure a lot of people would see this as an unecessary tricky step. It is however my favorite way of doing it.

I made two paths for this first work area. Meaning I first made a full path on the neck above the necklace, closed that path and then started a new one below the necklace to include the chest area where the skin is showing (separating it from the clothes). When both my paths were closed I pressed ctrl + Enter to turn them both into selections at the same time. As you can see I didn’t bother following the “edge” of the sim, you will see why later.

I eyedrop a color from a darker area of her skin, then I choose a darker, more saturated color in the palette that comes up.

I use a big soft brush with opacity around 30%. I start to build up the shadow under the chin, with more color right under the jawline and less further out. This is where my pen tool selection comes to good use, it keeps the jawline nice and sharp even though I'm using a soft brush to get the fading effect on other parts of the shadow. As we already decided, the light comes from the left in this picture, thus the chin shadow ends up to the right. I use a smaller brush to go around the clothing line, and under the necklace. The tighter the clothes, the smaller the shadow.

 I noticed the neck was lighter on the very side of the neck, and that interferes with my shadow. Now of course I could go over with the shadow color a couple of more times in that spot, but I prefer to correct the color on the base Sim layer instead for a more even result. So I hide the shadow layer, eyedrop the slightly darker area on the neck (and keep it this time).

It's important to keep the selection while I do this, so I don't paint over something else. You could put this on another layer and just erase if you accidentally go over something you're not supposed to, but since I already have the selection I can just put it on the base Sim layer. I brush over the area a couple of times until the color is how I want it.

While I am at it I also thought the chest area is a little too white and colorless. This often happens on my sim pictures if I’m using a sim with lighter skin. Again I eyedrop a darker color of the skin, but this time I choose a more vibrant version of the color to avoid muckyness when I go over the white.

I set the opacity of the brush to super low and then very carefully go over the whiter areas of the chest a couple of times, avoiding the areas where there are details such as collarbones or cleavage.

I make the Shadow layer visible again and deselect. Now you see how I have painted a little outside the skin area on the neck, because I didn’t follow the edge of the sim with my selection? I quickly fix that by holding Alt and grabbing the layer mask from the base Sim layer, and dropping it onto the Shadow layer.

Now these two layers have the same layer mask! And it's time to bring out the pen tool again, and make a path around the face.

With the face selected I start painting my face shadows. I put shadow on the side of the face that´s away from our imaginary light source.

I paint shadows under any hair that covers the face, and add a shadow on the side of the nose that´s facing away from the light. This usually takes me a couple of tries to get right, like this here wasn’t it...

I use a 30something % opacity on my brush and then 30something % opacity on a soft eraser brush and go back and forth with these until I get a nice blend.

Got the nose shadow looking decent, and add a little shadow in the eye… socket?… closest to the nose. I make sure that this doesn´t go over the eye itself and interferes with any colors there. I want to keep the eyes clear.

I deselect. Now we´ve got some little flaws here and there because my selection didn’t line up perfectly. I blend these with the smudge tool.

Better!

Looking fine gurl!

As I mentioned it’s a little hard to explain some steps, like the eyes and the lips, because it is just drawing until I like the result. I hope you find this useful though, and please send me an ask if you’re wondering about anything!

[xcziel]

ah hello ^^ I've been thinking that I'd love to send you a random pic to use in your pretty color palette posts if you feel like it and! got reminded today of my fave cheng yi photoshoot that absolutely blows me away :') so if you want, maybe you could make one for this? (and if not, just ignore this and look at his pretty face!! god he looks nice) have a very wonderful day 💕

He does look incredible, @vishcount ! Thank you for sending me such a fantastic pic to play with!

seriously, do please send me fandom pics, iwas not kidding when i asked for them before - i love nature and kitty pictures and landscapes, but fashion/media photos are a blast to work with too!

also, apologies for not blurring/covering the bazaar logo, but i couldn't get it look right and attempts just drew the eye more

since this image is composed of such vibrant contrasting colors i had to make some choices - mostly what was being pulled out were either muted shades or super bright hues: sixth row image you can see what i mean - it didn't even pick up a real red at all!

so, trying take into account your taste in edits, header, etc, i tried to sort of guess your preferred aesthetic and then handpicked most of the deeper saturated colors that made the shot pop to my eye. it very much wanted to have like mauve and gray, but i think the light gold really added a more eye-pleasing touch. if you'd like to see the version with neon bright red, aqua, and cornflower blue just let me know!

[satanfemme]

Nonbinary flag redesign

The original flag was created in 2014 so it’s had a lot of time to become the “official” nonbinary flag. Because of this I am in no way suggesting we must replace the old flag, I don’t even think I would have that power if I tried, I simply made this version for my own uses. HOWEVER, anyone is free to use this version of the flag, no need to credit me (unless you want to). so make all the icons/merch you want with this, if you feel inspired to do so. 

Additionally, if you want to use this post as a bouncing off point for your own redesign, feel free. Though I like this version better it still feels imperfect to me, and if you’ve got a helpful idea for further improvement I’d welcome it!

info about why I redesigned it/why this version is better imo under the cut:

original version for reference:

Reasons why I don’t like the old flag:

- the design feels unbalanced. Change the flag to greyscale and you’d see what I mean, the top two stripes are literally identical in brightness. One key aspect in good graphic design is keeping your design recognizable even in black and white, because our eyes notice contrast first, and then color. This is why the shades in the original feel off and unprofessional, imo.

-the colors just don’t go well together. Yellow and purple are complementary colors, meaning they are on opposite ends of the color wheel. In some compositions this could work, but here it just feels like the design isn’t uniform, like as if it’s just random colors thrown together with no thought put into the aesthetic. Honestly I think that might have literally been the case, with meaning prioritized over style.

Things about the old flag that I like/wanted to keep:

-The meanings of the stripes. If you have forgotten or were unaware, heres what the the stripes mean:      Yellow: genders outside of the binary      White: people with many/all genders      Purple: genders that are a mix of male and female      Black: people without gender I really like having all of these meanings in the flag, in order to include the full range of nonbinary experiences, and wanted to incorporate the old meaning into the new flag as well!

-The number of stripes. With as many pride flags as there are it’s important to keep each one recognizable. One big way to do that is by the number of stripes. The old nonbinary flag is recognized as having four stripes. I wanted to keep that in the new design as well, so it wouldn’t become too unrecognizable

Ok, bringing it all together: the changes I made and why:

-Switched the positions of the purple and “yellow” stripes. My thought process here was to switch the stripe order from: light, light, medium, dark, to: dark, light, medium, dark. What this does is create more contrast in the design by framing the lightest stripe with two darker stripes on either side. Additionally, keeping the very darkest stripes at the top and bottom of the flag frames the entire design, adding more balance. No more out of place black stripe at the bottom, now it actually fits the design! lol

-Changed the yellow to an orange hue. Orange isn’t a complementary color to purple, but it is a near-compliment. Anyone who’s worked with color will tell you that tho its difficult to get complimentary colors to look nice together, near-compliments almost always do. However, most importantly, orange can still fit the meaning of being outside the binary, so the original purpose of the stripe isn’t lost.

-Changed the brightness/saturation of the stripes. This was in part to help out my first bullet point about contrast, but also so it’s no longer near-eyestrain, and the palette actually feels like it works together!

In conclusion:

imo the new flag is still recognizable as the nonbinary flag. The number of stripes and the colors are still reminiscent of the old flag, so there should be minimal confusion should the new flag be used. People will still see it as the nonbinary flag! However, by adjusting the colors slightly and switching around the placement of the stripes I feel that I’ve created something more aesthetically pleasing, and also more professional. Again, feel free to use this design, credit isn’t necessary (but it would be appreciated). And happy pride month!!

[bookcoversalt]

SERPENT & DOVE 2: ELECTRIC BOOGALOO (also blood and honey)

I originally covered (pun intended) SERPENT & DOVE in February 2019, and I wasn't complimentary. While the black and gold color scheme is appealing and there's a nice sense of depth and texture to the snake, beyond that, it is a hot mess. The rendering is plasticky, the imagery is mostly vague ~ AESTHETIC ~ nonsense, the whole thing has an off-center awkwardness, and what, for the love of god, is up with that midcentury typeface. An eagle-eyed blog reader even clocked weird crop mark.

Since then, I've been pointed to the online portfolio post of this cover by the designers, which has some very cool (and enlightening) process shots:

You may notice that this looks better than the actual cover! The serpent and dove figures actually share hierarchical dominance here as a single unit, and their overlap is dynamic and interesting as a focal point. So what happened? Since there's so little color in the comps, I have to assume that either it was originally intended to have a paler overall palette, or the question of color was intentionally punted down the line, but either way, this seems to have been created before the stark black and gold was decided upon. Because that's where we lose the dove completely.

She's also been pushed fully behind the snake, losing any sense of the interaction between them and making our general sense of depth and "physical" space sort of... confused. Knowing how design processes typically work, I would think they tried the dove in gold in that original lockup and for whatever reason, it didn't work: maybe it overwhelmed the cover with too much gold or maybe it interfered with readability too badly. This explains my original discomfort with the size of the snake and weird emptiness of the design between the dramatically spaced type: originally, it was supposed to be (more) filled, and it hasn't been adjusted for the loss of that element.

Full disclosure: the first time I made a post on this cover, I didn't even realize the dove was there. My eyeballs lost it in all the nondescript foliage and flourishes so badly that the meaning-making part of my brain didn't translate those shapes into a specific object. And I spend a lot of time looking at covers when I review them! So that's embarrassing for me, yes, but this is also a failing of the cover itself. Regardless of my other issues with it, I think it's really disappointing that the (interesting! relevant! aesthetique but in a good way!) visual focal point that the entire iterative process centered around ended up completely dismantled in favor of....... ugh, I dunno, the 1950s diner type? Pinterest board trimmings of leaves and sparkles, like turkey trimmings but even less appealing?

Because I didn't know the dove was there, I was, uh, confused when I first got asked about how EXTREMELY similar BLOOD & HONEY is, a sentiment I've heard a number of times now, because BLOOD & HONEY, shall we say, overcorrects on the "bird loss" front.

HELLO, SAM THE EAGLE. LET FREEDOM REIGN, BITCHES. MY COUNTRY TISSSSS OF THEEEEEE- 

[Edit: I have been informed that this is probably still a dove, not an eagle, based on the face, but i’m not changing this joke.]

First of all, yes, the red is Bad. The black background of S&D matches the dark coloring of the objects, thereby hiding some of those Rendering Sins and lending a sort of subtlety to the mishmash of Aesthetique Things. It's all out in the open here and no less of a hot mess. The highlights are blindingly shiny and feel arbitrary as hell, like every single spear and leaf is being lit independently of anything else, and the almost pure black shadows that contrast them make my eyeballs burn-- it looks like it's a color being reflected from somewhere, rather than native shadow, because of how metallic objects reflect light, but there's nothing here but a perfectly flat, untextured field of red. I appreciate the emphasized presence of the bird (I'm ASSUMING it's an eagle, but I haven't read it, so correct me if I'm wrong) from a hierarchy and space-filling standpoint, but it is goofy as shit, and I have no idea why its chest has been so aggressively lit and filtered that it looks nearly on fire with saturation.

The primary offense of S&D's cover, that it's a tangled mess of meaningless and poorly crafted flourishes meant to be aimlessly Fancy that ends up being kind of ugly in the process, has been cranked up and the knob broken off here. An "Oooh, shiny!" from a dumb character who is about to trigger a trap manifested through a hypertrendy YA goth lens.

The text is also Still Bad. Compare the font to the one the Fairyloot book box uses for the book:

Although this isn't rendered in the metallic style, which it would have to be to match, it has a dramatic blackletter quality that matches the edgy medieval tone of the story far better than. Whatever the hell this B is doing.

So round!!!! So friendly!!!! So Un-witch-hunt-ey!!!!

To be clear: no, B&H is not a full, exact recolor of the S&D cover-- most of the elements, though the same, are arranged differently, and that's a completely different bird and at least a nominally different snake.

However comma I see why people think it is, because someone got lazy with the bottom left lol.

There is a Behance post for this one, too, although there's noticeably no process work, because the process was quite clearly "do it again but slightly to the left," and that doesn't involve much iterating.

Here's the thing, though; I'm not convinced any of this matters, because the truth is that hot, high-contrast messes photograph well.

Particularly when paired with a moody setting or editing, the red that comes across as kind of a nightmare in the jpeg pops, and the Escherian snarl of detail becomes more a texture nonspecifically indicating luxury and romance than an object theoretically representing something concrete about a story. And I personally may not Love This For Us, but honestly, that's half of a book cover's job these days: look pretty and do nothing.

If there's something to be learned from BLOOD & HONEY's cover, it's that better or worse, instagram filters matter. (Also true of Shelby Maurin's immaculately aesthetically curated, goth-trendy personal brand, which has increasingly been mimicked by other authors since S&D listed, although the author-brand-as-book-marketing-tool has always been a thing to some degree). A book isn't just a book, it's a prop for the countless ongoing performances of book-consumption-as-identity done both for fun and for clout in this particular subculture. I'm not passing moral judgement, here-- anyone buying a new YA fantasy book, no matter what they want to do with it or what my feelings on the book itself are, is a win. But this is the industry moment we live in, and it's savvy of publishers to have it in mind in regards to marketing and design.

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