#trying to figure a way to draw digitally without spending much time on it

[logicpng]

learning to draw the sillies

[entiqua]

I love your artstyle!! Do you have any tips for drawing?

thank you so much! i'm really happy you like it!!💗 as for tips, what i would say would change drastically depending on what kind you're looking for, but some very general ones:

draw what you love and want to see most, regardless of whether anyone else wants to see it. if you don't enjoy what you're drawing it'll never come out as good or genuine as something your whole heart and soul is in. i mean you'd think this would be a no-brainer but sometimes i've had to sit back and ask myself 'if no one was ever going to see this except me, would i actually spend time drawing this?' and i was surprised by the answer

that said, it is also completely valid if your motivation for drawing is to draw for other people! there have been plenty of times where i was too artblocked to draw my own ideas but was still able to draw commissions or gifts and enjoyed it simply because making other people happy with my art makes me happy.

don't get too caught up in having a consistent art style. in my experience this 1000% hinders you

having your sense of anatomy degrade over time without you noticing because you keep drawing the same types of characters is a very real thing! if this is a concern to you be sure to draw a variety

follow a billion artists that you like the art of and you will have endless inspiration injected directly into your brain every time you open social media

my favourite practical tip for those who draw at a desk: keep a small mirror next to you at all times. absolute game changer for quickly referencing hands

if you're drawing digitally, make the canvas huge! in my experience this lets you draw messier/faster and you can't tell at all when you zoom out. if you tend to get stuck spending unnecessary amounts of time micromanaging pixels (me💀) keep it zoomed out while drawing

related to the above point, messy drawings can have far more expressiveness in them than neat and polished drawings. nowadays i never do lineart and go straight from 'barebones stickman pose' to 'varying-levels-of-coherent sketch' and use that as my lineart. sweet freedom from the sketch-looks-better-than-the-lineart phenomenon

if your goal is to improve, then you really do have to scrutinize your art, figure out what you're not satisfied with, and commit the time to focusing on it. 'practice makes perfect' kinda rubs me the wrong way because of how much i've seen it interpreted as 'just draw everyday and you'll magically improve' but genuinely it won't get you very far if you don't actively think hard about what you're trying to improve and take the steps to do it. is this a hot take idk. also hand in hand with this, not every artist is trying to improve and you shouldn't feel bad for this! maybe you just wanna make a little headshot doodle of your fave blorbo and that's your only drawing goal ever. awesome. maybe you know your art has flaws but it's passable enough to convey what you want and you're perfectly satisfied with that. (this is the stage i'm usually at). also awesome!

don't hesitate to draw something because you think it's out of your skill level. the worst that can happen if you draw it is that it comes out terribly but you learned something and can always redraw it better in the future. the worst that WILL happen if you don't draw it is that you'll never draw it. and then it will sit in the back of your brain haunting you for years. it's not like i'm speaking from experience or anything aha

look up 'hand stretches for artists' and do them if you draw a lot unless you wish to summon the wrath of the carpal tunnel demons

of course, these may not necessarily work for you, and most importantly(!) these are coming from the perspective of someone who is primarily a hobbyist. some of this won't be practical for people who need to build an audience, maintain a consistent style for work, etc. these are just things that have personally helped me over many years of drawing :)

[egophiliac]

Hello! Sorry to bother but do you have any digital art tips? I’m quite new to it and any tips, tricks or advice would be helpful! Your coloring style is very beautiful and I love it a lot!

thank you! 💚💚💚 sorry this is a bit late, hopefully there's still something helpful in it!

(also, it got pretty long, sorry!)

I think the biggest thing is to just take things slow -- digital art feels different than drawing traditionally, and it's SUPER easy to get overwhelmed by the billions of cool features that the digital world offers. (I say, as someone who spends a lot of time downloading cool brushes and textures...and then never using them ever.) there is a ton of really cool stuff you can do digitally, but because there's so much, I think it's really important to take time to figure out what is and isn't working for you. spend some time doodling without any intent to do a finished piece, figure out how you like to hold (or not hold) your tablet, what keyboard shortcuts you end up using a lot (and therefore might want to map to your pen/tablet buttons for quicker use)...that kind of thing!

everyone's workflow and preferred program and style are different, so it's hard to give hard-and-fast general advice. but the things that I think of as the essentials for learning digital art programs, and what I think of as a good order to focus on learning them in (although YMMV, especially depending on what kind of art you're doing):

brush customization (e.g. flow, opacity, softness)

layers and layer masks

selections and transformations (e.g. scale, rotate, flip horizontal/vertical, skew) (skew is underrated and I will die on that hill)

blending modes (e.g. multiply, screen)

adjustments/adjustment layers (e.g. hue/saturation, curves)

and I think most stuff after that is gravy! often very good gravy though! but yeah, as overall advice I recommend just taking things one little bit at a time, spending some time just drawing and messing around with each feature and what you can do with it. whether or not you end up incorporating any of it into your workflow, it's always good to try things out and just see how they feel! :D

and just so there is at least a little more concrete helpfulness in here, here's a few more specific things that I think are super important to keep in mind!

use! your! tablet/pen buttons! I mentioned this earlier, but they are extremely useful for keyboard shortcuts that you use often! most programs will also let you create new shortcuts for other things -- personally, I use the magic wand tool to fill in big color blocks a lot, so I made shortcuts for 'expand selection' and 'fill' and then mapped them to my tablet buttons.

flop your work horizontally often! when you're working on something, you get used to the way it looks, so seeing it mirrored is a quick way to see it with fresh eyes! in my experience, it often feels like this:

(a common thing is to find that everything is sort of 'leaning' too much one way, which is where skew really comes in handy!) (seriously, I love skew, it is my savior)

if you're working with color, keep a hue/saturation adjustment layer (or a layer filled with black or white and set to Color) on top and toggle it on occasionally to check your values! a lot of people who know a lot more about color than me (and are better at putting it into words) have written about why values are so important, so all I'll say is that the rule of thumb is that your image should still be readable in greyscale:

there are some exceptions and grey areas (do ho ho), but it's a good general rule to keep in mind! (some programs also have a colorblind mode, so you can check to see how your work will look to someone with colorblindness!)

and finally, here's some digital art programs I recommend, if you're still looking for a good one!

free: krita, FireAlpaca

paid: ClipStudio, Procreate (iOS/iPad only)

[wulvert]

I hope this isn’t one of those impossible to answer questions but, how did you start drawing/stay motivated?? I’ve wanted to make comics/ just draw in general for awhile but my art always looks BADDDD and seeing people (like my bf for example) be great at art and even going to university for it it’s like…. Huhhggugugufufgguugufufufuufufufufuueuwuaaaaaaaaa- and demotivates me a little, yk??

i started drawing bc i wanted to draw warrior cats

staying motivated is different for everyone, for me, NOW I really want to be able to draw my ocs fast and efficiently, im the only one who can draw my ocs because im the only one who knows them so i must do it, and i want to draw them well so I must improve. This may not work for everyone but I am an insanely jealous person, I covet so hard. obvs we covet what we see every day, so following artists I'm jealous of makes me want to get better, and to get better i must keep drawing so one day i can be like twitter user #42. I guess that's finding inspiration. maybe FIND INSPIRATION!!! is a nicer recommendation than become ENVIOUS. sorry. follow your inspirations.

Making drawing not a painful gut wrenching experience is incredibly important, personally I like to get something DONE, i want to fail FAST and move onto the next thing, I rarely sketch and i do thick non intricate line art to accommodate this, if i was forcing myself to do insanely rendered portraits every day i would stop drawing, i dont like it or find it fun! maybe once in a blue moon is a good time.

Doing figure drawings is genuinely the biggest game changer, not even to get better at art, obviously it does that but as a side effect it makes drawing so much easier, if i want to draw a full body now It is not a battle, i can just do that, even if it is wonky i can complete it without struggling on a sketch for three hours. I think improving your fundamentals makes drawing more fun and less like a slog to get through. I started trying to do figure drawing every day a couple months ago, i dont always manage but i try to get it most days of the week & now the way i feel about drawing has flipped entirely, the amount of art i post has like quadrupled since september.

Feeling bad about your art is normal! I have never felt happy with mine, i know i cant draw faces very well and i avoid feet but I will get there one day if i keep it up, im focusing my reference drawing on faces atm! I am the happiest with it i have ever been just because im having fun with it for the first time in a long time but I still have a long way to go. Keeping it up is hard but it is worth it if its something you enjoy :) Finding method that you enjoy drawing with takes a long time, It took me years to figure out i just do not like using pen pressure at all whatsoever & since then digital drawing has become a lot less physically painful for my hand lol.

also making comics just helps a lot. you dont have time to make everything perfect, you just have to keep drawing and getting better. u will hate all your old pages eventually it genuinely rules.

I hope this doesnt read as BECOME ENVIOUS AND SPIT OUT DRAWINGS FAST WITH NO REGARD FOR QUALITY bc that isnt what i mean, i just mean streamlining my process helped me find what i like to focus on in my art which is shape and colour, and learning how to make shapes better helped me have more fun. I like quality and spending time perfecting things i just like spending time on the things i care about! & now im trying to branch out into other non illustration stuff im just having a good time.

soz this is long i hope it answered ur question in some form

[returnofahsoka]

I don't know what you want to do with digital art so this is just broad advice, but here are my tips!

Most drawing softwares or websites give you a white background. Change that to a muted, softer, color so that your eyes don't work as much. It doesn't need to be a dark color or even a grey, even just something around this area will do wonder for your eyes:

You can always put it back in white to check that your colors look good when you're finished, just don't hurt your eyes with your screen.

2. Speaking of screen, remember all those tips about how to work at a computer without hurting your back or your neck? Use them here too. One of the perks of drawing digitally is being able to just zoom in instead of getting the face closer to the drawing, I know that's not easy to get used to but trust me good posture is important.

3. You don't need any paying software or subscription, except if you absolutely need a very specific one, which most people never do. Digital art is one of the areas where the open source community works the most, there's tons of free software and material (and tutorials! there's tutorials for everything!) everywhere! My favorite is Krita because I like its options and tools (although I keep using the same handful ^^), but even something as basic as Paint can work well, depending on what tools you expect your software to give you. If you need Photoshop, you probably heard of Photopea already, I can confirm it also works really well.

4. Drawing time! If you have a tablet that has buttons, I really recommend spending a few minutes looking through a tutorial to attach your software's keyboard shortcuts to the buttons. Personally I have buttons for: switching between pen and eraser, zooming in, zooming out, rotating the image to the left, rotating the image to the right, and grabbing the image to move it. Also the basic Ctrl+Z. I'm planning to add the fill tool on the last button soon.

5. More tablet tips: your hand will probably not glide well on the surface of it. People usually buy a drawing glove for that, I still haven't taken the time to do that so I use a bit of fabric instead. Even just the end of your sleeve will result in smoother lines on the screen.

6. Many pens are pressure-sensitive! If yours is too, you can always begin by using one of the most basic pencils in the software that don't have pressure sensitivity, and work your way up to other pencils once your hand learned how to draw this new way. There can be other settings like angle of the pencil tip or speed, but those also take time to get used to and most people find them less intuitive. But do experiment with what you've got! You should be able to change the size of the pencils, and every other setting too, so if you like some aspect of a pencil but not another, you can just disable that other one xd

7. If you're not drawing with a tablet but with a mouse... Well I take my hat off to you.

8. This one's not specific to digital art, but I find that taking a few minutes to just draw lines and circles and waves works really well to get the hand and arm used to working in a new position. I do that every time I draw for warmup, but whenever I'm at another desk I really notice how much my hand needs it to get used to the new angle. You already know how to draw, your limb(s) just need to work on the neural pathways to become familiar with the new position(s). Thankfully cerebral plasticity works fast!

thank you!!

this is all such useful advice! i'm planning on getting into digital art again (my previous forays have been historically... not too successful) bc my laptop has a touch screen, i got a digital pen and krita is free xdd. it took a bit of fiddling around to find the settings and the brushes i wanted and i still haven't figured out where the ctrl+z is but eh, we're getting there. it's so different to traditional art though omg. but it does give very satisfying results i'll have to give that. thank you again, i will keep trying!!!!!!

[hryniewiecki]

up drawing everyone's favorite character (work in progress)

the idea is based on a Polish socialist realism poster thing - for now it only says 'REMEMBER' with the rest cut out, but I'll obviously translate the slogan if I finish the drawing (then you'll find out what it is that you shouldn't forget about) I wanted to do this for a very long time, because I can't get over how Jayce looks exactly like the type of idealized men that the socialist propaganda posters would depict, and I find it extremely funny not only that, but also the slogans that were used back when Polish People's Republic was a thing are now hilarious

I also can't unsee how he kinda looks like or has the same weird, kinda cursed(?) energy as Alex the Lion from Madagascar, so that's what I used for his head for now (it is also great at conveying all of the feelings I was feeling when spending hours on the drawing) I've had a 4 months break from art and (as always) ended up setting the bar way too high, so this will most likely take forever I hate how I have no idea what I'm doing, but instead of actually learning I'll be wasting hours trying to figure things out on my own and getting angry with myself, because everything takes so much time and still doesn't look any good - I really wish I could work on my skill consistently and learn like a normal person, maybe then I wouldn't be so far behind despite (theoretically) doing digital art for half of my life

anyway, that's probably how my posts are going to look like for the most part, because I need a place to ramble (I have no one to talk to), which I used to do a lot on insta story; still figuring out how to do this on Tumblr without scaring people off with walls of text

[dunyun-rings]

Sorry I worded the ask weirdly and I overthought it so I'll ask it again in a way you might feel better about answering publicly lol: how long does it take you to do your works? Like your color wheel nausica for example? I'm new to digital art and I feel like it takes me way longer to draw stuff than on paper. I'm sure I'm just not used to it but I also don't know what I should be expecting of myself, if that makes any sense.

Your question definitely makes sense!

First of all you shouldn’t beat yourself up for needing time to adjust to a new media. To give you an idea of how long it took me to adjust to it: I grew up drawing on paper with graphite/color pencils with no serious dabbles in digital art until the very tail end of high school (2013). Then when I first started using Sai and Photoshop (the first like 3 years) I would draw with pencil and paper and then color digitally. Coloring and editing my art that way made me familiar enough with the programs that I felt like hey screw it, let’s just try drawing straight in Photoshop. So I finally started doing that around 2016 and was very slow at completing drawings that way at first. I feel like I actually finally got into the groove of drawing quickly in PS around 2018.

So anyway the point of that ramble is that skills take time to develop, and you may need to adjust to a different way of going about things if they aren’t working for you. For instance I think it’s totally viable to color traditional line art digitally and not redo the lines. Whatever gets you to make a foot of progress is worth exploring in my opinion.

To answer your actual question: the amount of time I spend on a piece varies with how much detail is in it. I would say that for any full color humanoid figure it takes me about 30 min to 6 hours of work (30 min being very simple chibi-type things or like, small animals lol), without counting the time I spend setting up the canvas, collecting references, planning the composition, etc. Full illustrations with backgrounds are usually between 5-11 hours because I have to be a bit more deliberate about how I go about it.

Hopefully this is helpful to you! Keep drawing and stay cool 😎

[thefloatingstone]

Do you have any advice for someone with stupid hands learning to draw?

Draw badly but at least draw. Find a wet sopping beast of a man and draw him 50 times doing the most self indulgent things ever because even if your skills aren't that good yet, just drawing something self indulgent as hell will make you happy about it.

Not sure what you mean by stupid hands as in are you just a little clumsy or if you have something that might make holding a pen difficult so I won't go into a spiel of "look at art tutorials" because if you struggle manipulating the pen on a physical level then being told to "just look at tutorials" could be frustrating.

I'm really bad at being loose with my drawings. I try and have a little too much control over what I draw. This is great for detail and makes me a mutant who can instinctively draw hand poses well without even trying, but it means I spend a long time on any drawing, even "doodles" because my brain just can't with being loose.

However, there are artists on here who will make very short messy drawings or comics which simply exist to communicate an idea or situation and those can get 10k notes. So being super detailed and intricate is not necessarily a goal.

Figure out what you ENJOY drawing, and then adjust and absorb styles and techniques that are fun for you, and eventually it'll come together with time. if you like drawing detail, look at polished illustrations. if you like colour, look at ways to apply digital (or traditional) paints, colours and mixes. If you like sketching, then just sketch and don't bother trying to refine it under some idea that "you have to". If you like being loose because you like spontaneity in your art, then draw loose and don't try and structure it afterwards if you hate doing that.

If you want to develop a unqiue art style, absorb art and media from varied different places. And don't stress if you don't have an anime art style but you saw something in an anime drawing that you liked. just adapt what you like into your own art. With time, a style will develop on its own.

This is very vague and blanket-statement-y but I hope it at least gives you a starting point.

[hikapoi]

This is from the Artists Asks List. You can just pick the ones you're interested in answering if this is too much lol.

1, 9, 12, 15, and 25

I've answered #25 over here! (= 1. Do you prefer traditional drawing, or digital?

AHHHHH this is such a good question.. I always want to say a real pencil in my hand is the way to go even after all these years doing digital art but last year I don't think I did any traditional art at all... It honestly makes me so sad that the only time I do any traditional work is during Inktober or Sketchvember.. when the months roll by I just think, "ah darnit another year goes where I only do traditional work as part of a game." Man I just think traditional is when I'm at ease and most relaxed bc I can just feel fluid if I'm drawing for fun, but with digital you can really clean things up to look really good. A part of the reason I enjoy doing the yearly holiday cards when I ACTUALLY SEND ANY is that it's a time I can do special traditional art for my friends to make them really happy. I think I'm good at digital art but am even better with traditional, but I don't think I can say that anymore if I haven't really touched a pencil in recent years. It might be the opposite now, my traditional work lacks the precision and finesse of my digital work but since I have art supplies I PAID for and HAVE TO USE I have a tendency to experiment with traditional media more. I am STILL buying loads of art supplies to this date..

9. How much time do you spend drawing on an average day?

HNGNGHGH it really depends.. Ah, average day? Hmmm when I'm on fire I might say at least 2 hours a day, whether it's to work on a quick doodle or to continue a more time-consuming piece. There are days where I might spend 4-6 hours. The craziest for me for one day might be 8 hours-- with or without breaks in between.

12. Is it okay for people to ask you about your process?

YEAH ABSOLUTELY ALWAYS it's no secret. I always did the circle/stick man base but when I really got into One Punch Man in 2012 or so when Murata-sensei was streaming, I noticed he skipped that step and went straight to defining muscles, limbs, faces, etc. I thought DANG if I could do that I could draw SO MUCH FASTER and SO MUCH MORE!! It was horrible at first and I hated a lot of my art while I was trying out this new thing but now I'd say I'm fairly decent and it does get me to do more art faster.

Anyway! My process is to start with a pose idea. The timing on this varies, but I usually thumbnail with little stick figures until something sticks. If there is one I like I might blow it up or redraw it on a larger scale. I always start with the face shape and eyes first. It helps me get a good idea on how to frame the hair. I cannot feel I am drawing the character until I get this right. I'll then detail until I color. I skip a line art step most of the time because I clean my sketches along the way ((I KNOW, RISA)). If it's a piece I'm serious about being a "best" I might seriously do a line art layer but I usually have trouble because I can never find a comfortable inking pen AND I feel line art makes my art suddenly stiff. I used to never color but I try to do it as much as I can because I have always admired my friends for their bold colors and I told myself that that's my own personal goal to have more colored work.

15. How long does an average piece take you to complete?

If it's a fairly simple/rushed drawing that is semi-refined that can take me about 2-4 hours? I can get a lot done in just 1 hour as well thanks to all those Mob Psycho 100 60 min challenges. But if I just take my time drawing something that I don't particularly hate I'd say 2 hours is a good average. For a more detailed one with backgrounds or groups or lots of detail, that could take me at least 8 hours of actually drawing. The hours spent into references/getting ideas/thinking of a background add to an illustration's turnaround time even if I am not actually moving a pen.

Thank you for your interest in me! I hope maybe I've said something interesting!

These questions are from this art meme if you want to do it too: https://hikapoi.tumblr.com/post/708522112589119488/artist-asks

[stoptellinglieslois]

Principal of pleasure part 23

Clark and Dick continue talking at the park and discuss their desire and their relationship.

Superman x Dick pairing

Dick

We sat at this bench for sometime talking about various topics about are sexual interest, He really told me that Queen convince him that he wanted to be treated in that way and in anyway shape or form he did not hurt him on purpose or had any evil or nefarious intent.

And I understood that completely. "We've been sitting here for a while do you want to go somewhere." Kal said. "Ok where should we go then." He stared at me for a moment his head cocked to the side. "I could fly us to the cabin and we could spend some time there for a while." The cabin where we first made love there and where all hell broke loose.

"I don't know Kal the last time we were there I left there not happy."

"Well this time it won't be that way we will make it better and we will make it good this time."

"I don't know."

"Come on you don't trust me now because I told you all those things about Arrow."

"No no it's just that we should try to figure out other solutions on how to be alone together."

"Exactly the cabins are a great place to be alone." he insisted.

I thought about it and I caved in to him, Because I didn't know where to go right now. "Ok you win let's go." We got up from the bench and walked towards a wooded area no one was around and he picked me up and we lifted up into the sky.

We flew so fast and before I knew it we where at the cabin Kal deposed me on the ground where there was snow now has grass, Trees and greenery all around us birds chirping the sound of late summer over took what was once snowy and cold it was late evening and it's best for us just to go inside.

Kal rubbed my shoulders and guided me towards the cabin, He fumbled his pocket for the key found them turned the knob and we went into the small house.

I walked in and sat on the small kitchen table it was simple and I pulled up a chair the kitchen set had only two chairs. I looked up at Kal who was not joining me in the kitchen but busying himself in the small place fixing and adjusting the place at high speed. "Can I get some coffee Kal please." I adjusted the chair it was a little woobly he stopped cleaning. "Sure hang on." He stopped doing things at high speed and walked up to the wooden counter and opened the tap poured water in the small metal kettle.

and busy himself opening up the cabinets for two mugs. "Any sugar in your coffee." Kal back was turned and called out to me not looking back at me. "One sugar." I replied still looking at his strong back muscle form in each movement I would admire his physique without him knowing I was looking.

Kal put the kettle on the small stove on low and he sat down across from me.

He sighed. "Well what would you like to do tonight I'll do whatever you want, however you want." Wow Kal voice had warm and low timber to his voice which it called out to me and turned me on telling me to come out that the coast was clear we didn't need to hide.

I stared at him he looked at me knowing he would trigger me to come out now stop playing the hero.

I got up and sat on his lap. "Right now let's get some coffee in me first." Kal started feeling me up nuzzling my neck large hands all over me. "Do you want something else in you right now tell me what you want me in you." I let him paw me and he lifted me up and carried me to bed.

He put me down on the bed and he was on top of me. "What should we do Dick tell me." As he kissed me fervently he started unbuckling his belt quickly and unzipping his pants and then started to undo my pants.

"Fuck me Kal I want you to fuck me." He wasted no time opening the draw and pulled out a bottle of lube and poured a generous amount on his hand.

With his lube up fingers he inserted two digits inside of my opening as he worked my ass.

I was panting so much as I wrapped my legs around his waist and I started humping and giving him a clue to pull out his fingers, And he slowly entered me.

As he thrust into me the bed creaked frequently every time we moved. "Kal I think....ah the bed will cave ...yes from under us." I panted out. "It's ok I could fix it." he said sweat gleamed in his forehead.

As he was inside of me I heard a buzz on my stomach I didn't take off my hoodie my cell is in my pocket. "Kal my cell ring." I stared up at him his blue eyes went wide but he didn't stop though. "Should I pick it up." I said my heart is racing.

"What if it's your wife."

"I'm not picking it up if it's Barbara." As Kal still was doing me my cell stopped ringing and started ringing again. "Fine I'll pick it up." I pulled out my cell and answered it without looking at the screen ID.

"Dick." Bruce's deep baritone dark voice came into my ear like an electric shock went through my body and I frantically waved my cell in front of Kal's face.

"Bruce." I murmured to Kal stayed still inside of me his square jaw twitched, We both quietly breathed and stayed still not moving. "Dick are you there." I had to respond to him. "Yes." I said refusing not to let my voice betray me.

"Bruce can I call you back." At that moment Kal decided to slam inside of me.

"Why?" Because I'm being impaled by a huge cock that's why Kal went faster in his pace inside of me picking up momentum. "I'm busy." I 'm praying for the life of me He does not hear anything out of the ordinary.

"Too busy to talk to me your father." Oh he threw that at me trying to guilt trip me.

"I could call you back B."

"Are you alone." I had to get rid of him Kal was not stopping he kept pressing the buttons that drove me crazy I needed to hang up. "Yes." Kal hit that spot. "I'll call you." I ended the call.

I dropped the phone on the floor Kal spilled himself inside of me I came all over my hoodie at the same time.

"Oh god Kal he's snooping on me I can feel it."

"He doesn't know a thing even if he's snooping let him snoop he'll never find me." Kal panting and ruffling my hair a smug smile on his face.

"Why are you smiling."

"Because it was good what we just did and I don't regret it."

My phone buzzed again.

End of part 23 next is part 24

Thank you for reading

[comicaurora]

How would you say is the way to write a morally unique / blue and orange morality character without letting a writers own moral code leak into their characterisation?

I understand that most of the time, the protagonists of a story are likely meant to portray the virtues of a moral code and the antagonists are meant to portray the reverse or absence of that code, but whenever I try to work out a morally weird character into a story I make up, I keep seeing conspicuous little pieces of the normal morality mixed in so the character doesn’t feel quite right, so the blue and orange character starts seeming more white/black and orange.

I know this is because of my own moral biases and I was wondering if you had any particular thoughts on it, or if this problem is just me and it’s not something that’s you’ve encountered as an obstacle in your own writing?

(Also, I freaking love this comic and your art style, it inspired me to start learning drawing and digital art this year. Since I’m in Australia, the pages upload around dinner time so I get to spend the days they come out looking forward to them!)

I love this question!

I think it's probably impossible to completely separate an author's core moral compass from the stories they tell, since an author's self-awareness only runs so deep and there will always be things about themself and their worldview they aren't actively aware of, and thus can't consciously leave out of their work. But I think this is more of a problem in heroes that the author is trying to make good people, since that'll naturally follow from their idea of what "goodness" means. I do think it's possible to construct individual characters that operate on very different rules than the author does, and the trick to that is figuring out what internal axioms they operate on, if "right and wrong" aren't applicable.

To simplify, most real people have desires they pursue, and a gradient zone surrounding the space of things they won't willingly do that starts with "things they might do but won't enjoy" and escalates until it reaches the center point of "things they absolutely will not do." Separate from this dichotomy of "want vs don't want", most people also have something approximating a moral code, "should vs shouldn't". Despite cultural attempts to standardize, everyone's code is different. If we wanted to imagine a cartesian coordinate system showing this person's internal judgment of any possible action, the X axis could be "desire" and the Y axis could be "morality", and the (0,0) point could be complete neutrality - an action they neither like nor dislike, that they consider neither good nor bad.

"Blue and Orange Morality" is the term typically used to describe characters who do not have a black-and-white moral code anywhere in their brain. They don't have things that are Right and things that are Wrong - they operate on a completely different axis. Most commonly, Blue And Orange Morality applies to characters who are entirely driven by the "want vs don't want" axis; their actions are not colored by an external code, but only by their personal drives and desires. However, this is not the only way to write this character. Sometimes, Blue And Orange Morality takes the form of a Y-axis that is something completely different than "morality". Someone with a really, really strong honor code might approach Blue And Orange Morality if they gauge all their actions based solely on how much honor it will gain or lose them; characters embroiled in games of status and power might have a similar internal compass, where the morality of their actions doesn't factor into their decision-making because they're too busy calculating how much clout it'll gain or lose them. A glamour-obsessed fairy creature might weigh all actions based on the drama it will reap them.

A character who operates under Blue And Orange Morality might have a moral compass somewhere in there, but they typically believe whatever other axis they operate on is more important and relevant. Power play stories like Game of Thrones seem to highlight that doing the right thing is a good way to die horribly. Immortal beings often lose their attachment to their moral compass as they age and perhaps become jaded, doubting the long-term good of acts of heroism after seeing so many hopeful efforts fail and be forgotten; or maybe they become detached, not malicious but generally uninvested.

I write a lot of characters that are, for various reasons, disconnected from the people around them.

Some, like Kendal, operate on a moral code that I personally agree with, but this is almost the only axis he currently operates on, as personal drive isn't something he recognizes within himself, producing a different kind of Blue And Orange Morality where he works so strictly on Right Vs Wrong that it puts him at odds with the people around him. Others, like Tynan, understand morality enough to know that it's an exploitable weakness in other people, but operate only on the want-vs-don't-want spectrum - Tynan wants to be feared because he likes what that belief turned him into, and hurting people helps him get that. Beings like The Collector were once mortal, with presumably a standard moral code associated with that state, but she experienced a world-shattering eldritch existential crisis that instilled in her a new axis that completely superseded her existing drives: a being vaster than comprehension and older than the world desperately wanted to be free, and she will make that happen. Anything that serves that is good; anything that hinders that is bad. Nothing else matters, because everything else is so much smaller than the mind she briefly touched. She has no need or intention to be purposefully cruel, but cruelty happens because her ultimate goal will unmake the world and her process to get there involves a lot of vivisection.

Tahraim is an interesting case. I won't say too much, but his primary axis really is "interest". Anything old, overdone or stagnant doesn't interest him; he pursues innovation and transmutation, the process by which things become better and more efficient. He has the patience of immortality and clearly takes joy in talking to people and seeing new things, but he is essentially what happens when a craftsman becomes boiled down to his absolute essentials. The pure joy of creation and improvement, the sweet enthusiasm of concentrating fully and entirely on making something - uninterrupted by mortal concerns like food, pain and time. While morality can be assigned to his actions, it holds very little weight for him.

[fortheloveofexy]

What advice would you give to beginner artists/those trying to get back into art about resources or techniques? Specifically figure drawing because YIKES

Oh my darling Lev, I'd be happy to tell you what I've learned!

Okay, so some of this advice is going to be especially geared towards digital art, but the first thing I will say right now is that traditional art is great for learning the fundamentals. If you're completely new to art, I would recommend starting with traditional first.

Traditional is especially good for figure drawing bc you can work with really fast, loose shapes. I like to do timed sketches, where I spend 15 minutes drawing a figure in pencil or charcoal and try to get as much form in as I can. The goal is to work light and quick; don't get caught up in the details or erasing mistakes, just get the basic shape down. Do this regularly, at least once a week. You'll be amazed at how much you improve.

But, whichever medium you choose, here is some general advice:

Use references. I cannot stress this enough; references are essential for nearly every artist. Do not shy away from using them because you think it might make your work "less original". Most, if not all, professional artists use references in some form. It saves time, it saves your wrist, and it still hones your skills. Do not suffer needlessly drawing every single thing from memory when you can use a reference.

On that note - tracing is not a bad word. Tracing, outside of the art world, has a terrible reputation, and this is because it is often abused by people who don't know how to use it properly. Tracing can be a great way to improve your skills, save you time and save your wrist, provided you do it correctly.

A few tips for how to use tracing the right way - don't trace another artist's work. Trace stock images or photos you have taken instead.

Also, don't trace an image line-for-line exactly - instead, loosely sketch over the image you are tracing, mapping out general shapes and form, then draw in your own lines without the reference image and make any adjustments and changes. This way you're still improving your skills and your understanding of proportion/perspective, and the drawing will look more natural. Badly done tracings are very obvious and have a specific "look" to them that most people will be able to pick out. Well-done tracing is nigh undetectable.

Finally - while tracing is a useful and valuable way to improve, it should never function as a replacement for the fundamental skills. You still need to practice free-handing. Tracing is not a replacement for those skills - it's just another tool in your arsenal.

Even professional artists use tracing at times. Muralists, painters, even some of the most well-known artists in history used methods of tracing in their great works.

Now, for the more digital art-specific stuff:

I mostly use Procreate (which is only a $10 one-time fee on the app store) but that requires having an iPad and Apple Pen. So here are some alternatives:

Wacom offers drawing tablets that are less than $100 and come with a 2-year Clip Studio Paint subscription - a well known program that many artists use and some even prefer to Procreate. You can use Wacom tablets with basically any PC.

Krita is a free drawing program that also works well. It's a bit more simplistic than CSP and Procreate from what I've heard but it's a create way to get started with digital art if you've never tried it before.

There are literally hundreds of options out there for digital art programs to use, so I won't list them all here. But if other artists have rec's, please feel free to list them in the replies.

[beels-burger-babe]

Hi! I saw that requests are open, if it's not a problem could i request Satan reacting to MC coming to him with new books every time they hang out because they want him to read them out loud since they have a short attention span? Like, Satan would be reading said book while MC is drawing or doing something else.

I have adhd and reading books that are not digital is a nightmare for me, so him reading out loud would be pretty relaxing.

Btw it's up to you if you wanna do headcanons or a oneshot!

ABSOLUTELY!!! So this is actually my first request and I'm super excited because as someone who also has ADHD I can totally relate! I hope you like it!

Too Still, Too Quiet

GN!MC with ADHD Summary: Satan notices that MC seems to have a hard time hanging out with him; he's determined to get to the bottom of the issue and find a solution.

After living in the House of Lamentation for nearly a year, you've grown accustomed to the many quirks that came with living with the seven Lords of the Devildom. You had gotten close to the brothers, and as they picked up on your symptoms for your ADHD, they each found their own ways of being helpful. Lucifer had always known, as it was written on your file, and made a point of sending you subtle reminders throughout the day to keep you organized and on task. He brushed it off saying that it merely prevented him from having to go after you later on if you forgot or did something incorrectly.  Mammon was no stranger to having a hard time prioritizing and staying focused and took pride in lending you some of the different tools he used to fidget with. After all, his human deserved the best, and you couldn’t get any better than using something that belonged to the great Mammon. Leviathan’s room provided a relaxing atmosphere with just enough stimulation to keep your brain satisfied enough to focus on your school work and tasks. The sounds of the aquarium provided a fantastic back ground noise, and Levi always took caution in wearing his headphones when he gamed if you were working in his room to not add to the distractions around you.  Asmodeus had a good eye for when you were growing too frustrated by the regular chaos that tended to fill the House of Lamentation and would pull you aside to his room for some self-care to help calm you down. There was nothing like a head message and face mask from Asmo as he happily gossiped about the latest drama in The Fall to help ground you.  Beelzebub, on the other hand, was great at noticing when you were starting to grow restless. In those moments, he’d not-so-subtly state that he was heading to the gym and it’d sure be nice if he had someone to join in before very obviously making eye contact with you. At first you had a hard time figuring out a good balance between a work out that satisfied Beel while also not killing you. But now the two of you easily worked with each other until you were both sweating, smiling, and happy. He also made sure to remind you to eat through out the day whenever you went to a round of hyper-fixation on something. Belphegore wasn’t particularly helpful when it came to your forgetful spells or disorganization as, being the Avatar of Sloth, he would normally encourage such behavior. Instead, he did what he did best, and helped put your wandering mind to ease whenever you were trying to sleep.  The only person, and not for a lack of trying, that you just couldn’t seem to find a flow with was Satan. 

He was too quiet and organized for you to be able to stand being around him for long periods of time. You had tried hanging out with him a couple of times, but after a few minutes of him silently reading or him explaining whichever text he was currently studying, you would grow restless and distracted.  Which brought you to your current situation.  Satan had invited you to come relax in his room with him, as the rest of his brothers were dealing with the aftermath of their most recent dilemma. It wasn’t so bad at first, some light conversation here, some banter there, but soon your mind started to wander off to the spines of the endless books around you as you pondered on what might be inside them.  “MC?”  Your attention snapped back onto Satan, who stood frowning at you. You blushed and scratched the back of your neck. “Oh, I’m sorry. I got a little distracted. What were you saying?”  Satan sighed as his frown deepened.  “I’ve noticed that tends to happen a lot with you. Not that there’s anything wrong with that!” He quickly amended raising his hands in defense. “But it seems particularly bad when you’re with me. You get quite jittery and I don’t think you’ve ever stayed in my room longer than ten minutes,” for a second his eyes almost looked sad as he looked over at you, “Is it something I’m doing? Do I make you uncomfortable?”  “No! Satan, no, it’s not you I promise!” You quickly reassured moving closer to him. “It’s just well I have a hard time staying still and focusing on things and when it gets too quiet it bothers me because then my brain is like hyper fixating on the smallest noises in the room, even though I’m supposed to be focusing on what you’re saying or my work, and it’s like, is that a page a turning or a something scratching at the door and then I start wondering about what kind of things could be in here and-”  “MC.” Satan cut off, though he didn’t seem annoyed. In fact, his eyes now gleamed with a sense of understanding. “Do you happen to have ADHD?”  “Yeah, I thought you all knew? Lucifer told all of you when I arrived right? That’s why everyone is so-” you moved your hand in a vague gesture that even you weren’t entirely sure what it was meant to symbolize.  Satan huffed and shook his head. “Lucifer did no such thing. I imagine he would’ve told us if it came to be a big enough problem. But you know him. He takes pride in being the only one to know certain things. “  You frowned and tilted your head in confusion. “But then what about the others? They’ve all been helping me out for months now.”  Satan placed a hand under his chin in thought, “They most likely took note of individual symptoms and decided to help. Belphegore, and possibly even Leviathan and Asmodeus may have put two and two together, but the rest probably think you’re just forgetful or that you’re restless,” he smiled reassuringly at you, “but that’s besides the point. Now that I know, I can help make you feel more at ease when you’re with me. What’s the main issue that you-” “It’s too quiet!” You quickly cut off, causing Satan to raise an eyebrow. “When we’re in here relaxing and you’re just reading and I’m supposed to be reading too, it’s too quiet. I try to focus on the book, but my mind keeps jumping around to other things. And I want to read all those books you’ve recommended to me, I really do, but I start feeling bored after a little while and next thing I know I jumping sentences without noticing and then I’ve gone an entire chapter with no recollection of what I’ve just read because I wasn’t really paying attention to the words at all I was just flipping pages without realizing it, so I have to go back and re-read the whole thing all over again!” You throw your hands in the air in frustration. “Is exhausting and makes me feel dumb, so I get up and do something else instead.”  Satan nodded, taking in every word carefully. “Well first of all,” you yelped as he flicked your forehead.  “Ouch! What was that for?!”  The demon smirked and crossed his arms over his chest. “For calling yourself dumb. Just because you have more difficulty with literature than others, does not mean you’re dumb. You simply require a different reading strategy than what most consider “usual”, and I believe I have a solution that would suit both of us,” you perked up at his words. “I recommended those books to you because I greatly enjoyed them myself. How about, when you’re here, you can choose a book you want to read, and I will read it out loud for you? That should help, yes?”  A light airy warmth filled your chest at just how accommodating Satan was willing to be. “But what about the books that you were reading?”  The demon shrugged, “I can always read them in my spare time.” He moved closer to take your hands into his, silently demanding your full attention. “I want to spend more time with you and get to know you better. I want you to be comfortable and be able to be yourself when you’re around me without feeling stressed. This is honestly the least I could do for you, MC.”  Blushed rushed to your cheeks as you felt your heart flutter in your chest. You awkwardly cleared your throat and took your hands back, rubbing them on your legs as you noted how clammy they were. “I think I-I would like that a lot” The grin on Satan’s face widened as he took one of your hands and lead you deeper into the bookshelves of his room. “Splendid! Then why don’t we get try right away? Take you pick, MC, I will be your narrator for the evening and for as long as you wish.”  ***** I hope this was something along the lines of what you were looking for! It is a little short, but I hope you like it. Thank you so much for the request, I loved it! Requests are OPEN and I would definitely love to complete some more if anyone has any ideas or prompts that they’d like me to complete. Just send in an ask and, if I feel comfortable with it, I’ll do my best to make a fic for it!

[waheelawhisperer]

So I saw a thread on reddit discussing how the Beacon Academy teachers stacked up against the rest of the cast earlier, and while it was full of, uh... interesting takes, it did get me thinking. RWBY doesn't exactly fit into the same strict powerscaling as a lot of other anime/animesque action-oriented shows, but I do think it's possible to separate characters into broad tiers, which is what I'm going to spend this post doing. I'll be analyzing characters based on their performance against human (or at least intelligent humanoid) opponents, so characters like the Hound, Salem, and Penny (who, while she is very much human, don't get me wrong, also has specific combat attributes afforded by her robot body and was initially conceived at least partially as a weapon) still count. Obviously, a lot of things go into a fight beyond pure power levels, so for the purposes of this post, my default assumption is going to be that any character mentioned will be facing a hypothetical opponent in a one-on-one duel where the environment does not specifically favor either fighter, the characters have full access to their respective toolkits, and no outside factors like luck or teammates will influence the fight. I'll also be assuming that no one gets the jump on anyone else unless their fighting styles specifically revolve around ambushing unprepared opponents. I will be drawing my evidence mostly from the following sources: what we actually see in the show (including trailers and character shorts), what we're told in the show (also including trailers and character shorts), and what's listed in the various supplemental materials, including, but not limited to, the official companion book, the Myers novels, and the Amity Arena mobile game card information. As a result, this post will contain spoilers, so read at your own risk. Bear in mind that I don't have access to all supplementary material and thus may miss something from, idk, a livestream that took place five and a half years ago or whatever.

Characters will be listed in rough order within a given tier, but realistically, I feel like any characters I place within the same tier are close enough in combat effectiveness that I could see fights between them going either way, barring specific matchup advantages (e.g. Pyrrha having an advantage against characters that rely on metal equipment).

EX:

Salem

This tier is for the absolute bullshit, namely our Big Bad. Her absurd healing factor alone is enough to let her win basically every matchup purely through attrition, and just in case you thought you could "win" by just tying her to a post and leaving to go do something else, she also comes equipped with actual, literal magic* (an advantage very few people in the world of RWBY have access to, and by "very few" I mean the current number is in the single digits) and is strong enough to overpower both Yang and Hazel, both of whom are at or near the top of RWBY's scale when it comes to purely physical strength, in direct physical combat. She restrains Yang with one arm while Yang uses her whole body to resist and then throws her at another protagonist, all with minimal effort, and then promptly trounces Hazel a moment later, treating the fight almost like an amusing diversion until the very end. It takes a magic nuke to even slow her down, and all a weapon capable of destroying a giant flying sperm whale the size of several city blocks does is... force her to spend some time regenerating. On top of that, Salem can control the Grimm, giving her extra usage in teamfights and an environmental advantage throughout much of Remnant, though I didn't factor that nearly as heavily into my analysis.

The Gods probably also fit into this tier, but since the narrative presents them as capable of doing whatever the hell they want to, without any real, meaningful restrictions, I figured it wasn't worth the bother to try doing any real analysis.

*There are a number of powers in RWBY that function in a similar fashion to magic, but those have defined in-universe rules and limitations. Aura (essentially a soul-powered forcefield) protects its user from damage, heals minor wounds, and reduces the impact of extreme climate. It can be projected through tools and equipment and is, essentially, the resource that allows characters to use other powers, like Semblances and Dust. Semblances are unique manifestations of a character's soul, fueled by Aura, and provide the characters with their individualized power sets. Powers granted by Semblances vary widely, and include anything from super speed to telekinesis to the ability to sense the emotions of others. Dust, on the other hand, is RWBY's generic elemental magic.

S

Raven (with Maiden powers)/Hazel/Raven (without Maiden powers)/Qrow/Tyrian/Clover/Professor Goodwitch/Theodore

Basically, these guys are Remnant's elite. All of them have years of experience and some of the most dramatic feats in the series. You don't take them down without bringing either one of the other characters in this tier or ganging up on them with other high-level fighters.

Raven with the power of the Spring Maiden is probably the strongest human or near-human character we've seen in the show, to the point where her one serious fight ended with her dunking on another Maiden after getting caught by surprise. In her one significant on-screen fight, she's only ever at a major disadvantage once, when hit by an ability designed specifically to counter/steal the Maiden powers, and even then her Aura runs out at the same time Cinder's does, despite the fact that she was previously facing another S-tier fighter while Cinder took on a group of teenagers. In fact, she doesn't seem overly respectful of Cinder in general during their fight, stopping to lecture her while Cinder's obviously vulnerable and having a literal "mine is bigger than yours" contest in the middle of the fight. Raven's fast, smart, adaptable, and willing to make use of the environment, making her a formidable fighter even without the Spring Maiden's powers. Her Semblance (the ability to open portals to people she has an emotional bond with) isn't overly useful in a duel, but it's great in teamfights, allowing her and her allies to reposition at will.

Hazel's next on the list. He's not really all that technically skilled relative to the others on this list (in fact, as a purely technical fighter, he's probably the lowest character on this list and arguably lower than a number of other fighters in lower tiers), but he's also eight feet tall and impervious to pain, so it evens out. Hazel is what you get when you take the stat stick to its logical extreme: in terms of pure baseline physical strength and durability, he beats out probably every (human) character we've seen so far, and on top of that, he has the reach that comes with being 8 feet tall and a Semblance that allows him to block out pain, which in turn lets him inject Dust directly into his body, something noted in-universe to be excruciatingly painful and dangerous under normal circumstances. He also recharges his Aura faster than any other character in the show, meaning that you need a lot of burst damage to put him down. Hazel's favorite spells are Fist and Fireball, and he likes to cast them both at the same time.

In terms of feats, Hazel is somewhat difficult to quantify because we don't see him fight too much outside of the battle of Haven, which was, in general, poorly plotted, managed, and choreographed, outside of a few decent moments. That said, he kicks the crap out of Ren and Nora and knocks Qrow around a bit, so I've slotted him above the Branwen twins, but realistically I could probably make a case for putting him anywhere in this pool. He does get impaled by one of Weiss's summons and just kinda... walks it off, so props to him for that, I guess, though Ozpin seems to have the advantage against him after he takes over for Oscar. Hazel and Tyrian also kill a bunch of Mistral's Huntsmen, which indicates that both of them are pretty strong, but all of it happened offscreen, so we don't know whether they just won straight fights, ganged up on their opponents, ambushed them, etc.

Qrow is the best point of comparison to use for this tier, given that he's the one we see fight the most often. The narrative frequently makes the point that he's an elite Huntsman (member of Team STRQ, noted to be exceptional during their time at Beacon, the best Huntsman Academy on Remnant; one of Ozpin's elite operatives; Tyrian, Salem's hitman, is excited to fight him; only person besides Ruby to use a weapon that's extremely dangerous and difficult to master, etc). I ranked Raven (Maidenless) above him because she's said in Volume 5 to be roughly as strong as he is and gains a brief advantage over him with the use of kicks at Haven, but these two are really, really close. I put Qrow above Tyrian and Clover because he was the one who consistently had the advantage, however slight, in their fights. During their fight in Volume 4, Tyrian is the one on the defensive more often than not, and Qrow is the only one who gains a significant advantage before Auras are broken (the sequence where he shows off his hand-to-hand ability). Sure, Qrow has help in this fight whereas Tyrian doesn't, but his Semblance means that he's arguably better off without it. In his fight with Clover, Qrow's advantage during the sequence between him and Clover before Tyrian joins is hardly decisive, but he does land a kick and a couple scythe hits vs. Clover's singular punch, despite having just facetanked a plane crash that Clover was able to avoid. He's also the one putting in most of the work in the Qrow/Clover/Robyn 3-v-1 against Tyrian, while Clover and Robyn mostly play support roles, striking from afar or binding up Tyrian so Qrow can get a hit in. Finally, Qrow gets points for having one of the most versatile weapons in the series. Between the sword, scythe, tonfa, and gun configurations, Harbinger gives him an option for any range and makes his combat style extremely flexible.

Tyrian, for his part, is a serial killer who killed multiple Huntsmen within Mistral and was apprehended by a joint operation between Mistrali and Atlesian authorities. It's worth noting that the Huntsman who helped arrest him, F. Pickerel, insisted that additional security precautions be implemented even after his capture and was later found dead after Tyrian escaped. On-screen, he's been built up as Qrow's rival, fighting against him 3 times in total and killing someone close to him. As best I can tell from their fights, he's slightly weaker than Qrow and slightly stronger than Clover, though the difference is minimal in any direction and the evidence is hardly conclusive. In fact, I could probably argue that Clover is the stronger of the two based on the Qrow vs. Clover vs. Tyrian fight at the end of Volume 7, though it's worth noting that Tyrian had had the crap beaten out of him previously and had, like Qrow, facetanked a plane crash prior to the fight. Also, Tyrian was the one Salem assigned to hunt down the Spring Maiden, though it's not clear whether he was meant to simply locate her and then phone the gank squad or if his assignment was to just straight up waste her. Either way, it implies that he's at least powerful enough to survive a fight vs. someone with a broken powerset.

Clover is built up throughout volume 7 as Qrow's equal and Atlas's best Huntsman, and his feats throughout the volume certainly seem to bear that out, though there's not a whole lot of data to work with compared to some of the other characters. His final fight of the volume shows that he can go toe-to-toe with both Qrow and Tyrian in a duel, though he actually seemed to have a better showing when the two teamed up against him, putting both of them briefly on the defensive at different points despite repeated attempts to flank him. Clover's also very good in teamfights, the range of his fishing rod... thing... allowing him to restrict opponents' movement and pull them off balance, creating openings for his allies.

Professor Goodwitch has one of the most broken Semblances in the show, capable of large-scale destruction (according to the CFVY books, she can lift large chunks of buildings) unequaled by really anyone we've seen without Maiden powers or some other form of magic. She fights evenly with half-Maiden Cinder in volume 1, defeats the generic mooks even more easily than most of the other notable characters, and is the combat instructor before the Fall of Beacon, which by anime rules means she's also one of, if not the strongest teacher in the school. She hasn't really gotten a big marquee fight like some of the others on this list, but from what the narrative tells us and what little we see in the early volumes, she's clearly a top-tier Huntress.

Basically everything we know about Theodore comes from the CFVY books and his existence has been mentioned, like, once in the show proper and maybe once or twice in Amity Arena, so I can't really go into too much detail, but he's referred to as "the strongest headmaster" or something along those lines, so I've tentatively placed him here.

A

Winter (with Maiden powers)/Cinder (with Maiden powers)/Penny (with Maiden powers)/Winter (without Maiden powers)/Cinder (without Maiden powers)/The Hound/Elm/Taiyang/Ironwood/Maria (young)/Neo/Pyrrha/Penny (without Maiden powers)

This tier represents high-level, experienced fighters that are close to the top of the power scale that haven't quite reached the elite tier yet, but could potentially get there fairly quickly and is where I start to get a bit less confident of my placements. Characters in this tier can be trusted with highly dangerous, challenging, and important missions and typically have gotten at least one good fight designed to show the audience what a badass they are.

The Maidens top the ranks, and honestly I wasn't sure whether to put them at the top of A or the bottom of S, since I think they can go either way, just based on how absurdly broken the Maiden powers are compared to every other power set available in RWBY. All three are competent fighters, but I put Winter above the other two due to her excellent showings against Qrow and Ironwood (during their first fight). Qrow is clearly a cut above Winter during their fight, though Winter is actually the one who lands more meaningful hits, so I didn't rank her in S Tier, but she gets a number of fights against high-quality opponents and acquits herself well in all of them, despite frequently fighting under adverse conditions. Winter hard carries the Ironwood Gank Squad in Volume 8 (seriously, after she joins that fight, she sets up every meaningful event: Nora's hammer blow, setting up everything Oscar does, and then hitting Ironwood with whatever the hell that freaking anime finisher was), is referred to by Watts as "Ironwood's top fighter" (admittedly, after Clover's death), and seems to have a slight advantage over Cinder in the extremely brief Maidenbowl at the end of Volume 8. She does struggle pretty hard against Cinder in V7, though it's worth noting that she was engaging in utterly Maidenless behavior at the time and that the fight started in an enclosed corridor, not really the place you want to fight someone who can throw fireballs, and Cinder caught both her and Penny with an explosion when Winter was trying to close the door. Winter makes very limited use of glyphs during that fight, presumably to avoid risking harm to Penny or Fria, and we see Cinder display a slight advantage in purely melee combat. After that, Cinder takes the battle outside, where Winter is at a distinct disadvantage due to the fact that she can't freaking fly (without use of a summon). Winter also later survives fighting Cinder in melee despite her Aura being depleted, even though Cinder has both her Aura and her Maiden powers, though she gets the crap kicked out of her in the process. My reading of her fights is that Winter would beat Cinder in a fight where neither has a Maiden advantage and the terrain/circumstances allow both of them to use their entire toolkits, so I've put Winter higher on the tier list, especially given the fact that her Semblance is actually like 3 different Semblances in a trench coat.

I would like to emphasize that it is my belief that No Bitches Winter/Cinder are still the best "normal" fighters on this list, given that Winter is, again, "Ironwood's best fighter," and Cinder is clearly intended as her rival throughout the Atlas storyline. I'm not entirely sure how either one of them stacks up against the Hound, which is clearly intended to be a major threat as long as there isn't a convenient statue nearby, but frankly, I feel like the fact that they both have ranged options is enough to put them above it on the list. As for the Hound itself, it has the advantage every time it shows up against the heroes and requires groups of people working together to put it down, but we don't actually see it fight against top-tier competition and it's treated more like an arc villain for the first half of Volume 8 than a significant long-term threat, meant to present the possibility of Grimm Summer and others like her rather than establish itself as a major villain in its own right. I put Elm over the rest of the Ace Ops because her Amity Arena card description says that she's "an excellent agent with a peerless track record" and "the pillar of the team and only second in performance to Clover". She also has to go below Winter, so this is where she wound up.

Taiyang is honestly kinda hard to place. Team STRQ has been hyped to hell and back and Tai trained Yang, but we haven't really seen him fight outside of, like, 1 spar with Yang. If I had more to go on, I'd probably put him up there with Qrow and Raven, but Ruby's dialogue at the beginning of Volume 3 implies that he's been spending more time teaching and less time actively fighting than either of the Branwen twins, though that same dialogue also attributes a great deal of Yang's skill and development as a fighter to him, and he is also positioned as a mentor figure to Yang in Volume 4, so clearly there's something there.

Ironwood is also somewhat difficult to place, given that his main big fight is with Watts, who is... not primarily a combatant, but the fight does take place in an arena where Watts has all the advantages and Ironwood still comes out ahead, despite the fact that Watts outmaneuvers him with the Hard-Light barrier at the end. His Volume 3 fights make it clear that he's a skilled, powerful, and experienced Huntsman, but nothing I've seen from him makes me think that he's on the level of Qrow or the other S-tier characters. His fight with Winter (both Round 1 and Round 2) are hard to get much useful data out of because the first one involves the heroes rolling up with a 6-man gank squad and the second involves both of them fighting while beat to hell (Winter is busy doing her best Commander Shepard impression if Shepard spent all her time in a body brace, has been in combat essentially since the moment she recovered enough to walk without passing out, and hasn't had proper rest since the dinner party in Volume 7, while Ironwood's Aura was already broken once within the past few hours and he opened up the invasion by first flaying the skin off his own arm and then straight-up chopping it off, so neither of them are really in peak condition at that point). Every fight Ironwood's in makes it clear that he's a major threat in close quarters, and Due Process makes him surprisingly maneuverable, but he isn't as versatile as some of the other characters. Ironwood is relatively straightforward and practical by RWBY/anime standards, which fits with his characterization as a soldier, but this comes with pros and cons. The lack of flash that characterizes RWBY combat in general means he leaves fewer exploitable openings in his form (his mindset is another story) and his sheer determination means he's still in a fight as long as he can move, but he also makes minimal use of Dust and his Semblance doesn't really add another dimension to his fighting style, it just makes him better at what he already does and comes with some nasty weaknesses (e.g. tunnel vision) on top of that. Ironwood also drops a minimum of 1 tier whenever he brings out the Gun^3, because sticking 2 guns inside another gun to make a bigger gun is both entirely on brand for Volume 8 Ironwood and the stupidest possible interpretation of the "it's also a gun" meme to ever make it into canon.

The narrative sets Maria up as the premier Huntress of her generation, but a common theme in RWBY is the new blood surpassing the old guard (Qrow mentions Team RWBY being stronger than Team STRQ at the same age, Maria points out that many members of the group have become stronger than she was already, etc.) and Maria struggled a bit against Tock and her gang, who didn't really look like they were on the level of the highest-end fighters in current RWBY during the one time we saw them fight. Taking all that into consideration, I put Young Maria in this tier, but I'll admit the data points are limited and my opinion could potentially be swayed.

Next up, Neo, who, unlike many other characters, actually has a number of significant data points to work with. She opens up by trouncing Yang, who we've already seen punch a robot through a concrete pillar by that point, and then immediately flees from Raven in terror, which tells us that she's: A) a serious badass who's above Team RWBY's Beacon-era level by a fair margin, and B) clearly below the Qrow-tier characters. Later on, we see her take out a whole ship full of soldiers and Ruby's clearly outmatched during their brief clash on top of that airship, but Neo had Roman for backup in that instance. She also had a clear advantage during her rematch with Ruby throughout the fight, effortlessly handles JNOR with the exception of that one punch Oscar lands on her after taking several seconds to run the length of a hallway, and fights evenly against an unarmed Cinder in Volume 6, though it's clear to me that Cinder is holding back during that fight. I think Neo's fairly placed at the lower end of this tier, as we consistently see her win vs. characters placed lower and struggle against characters placed higher. It's also worth taking into account the way she gets cocky and takes her time to savor a kill, which has bitten her in the ass no less than 3 times so far (twice against Ruby and once against Yang).

Pyrrha is in this tier based on the combination of demonstrable strength/skill, experience, and a Semblance that gives her a massive matchup advantage against nearly every other character in the series. That said, she's no slouch without it, since she managed to win the Mistral Regional Tournament 4 years in a row and graduated top of her class at Sanctum Academy with such minimal use of her Semblance that its properties weren't widely known despite her being enough of a celebrity to have her face on a cereal box. In addition, her Amity Arena card bios describe her as "A gifted warrior born and raised for greatness" and "an accomplished marksman", something Rifle Pyrrha's bio notes is often overlooked. She's also noticeably willing to fight without weapons at all, given her tendency to work in throws, either unarmed or assisted by her weapon (see her fights vs. Cinder and CRDL). Not only will she dazzle you with her swordplay and marksmanship, she'll just yeet you across the damn arena if she feels like it.

In terms of on-screen feats, Pyrrha qualifies for the Vytal Festival as a first-year student (and makes it to the singles rounds), defeats Team CRDL (themselves strong enough to both qualify for the Vytal Festival and make it to the doubles round) in a 4-v-1 spar without noticeable difficulty, and fights evenly with Penny with minimal use of her Semblance (and, of course, literally rips Penny to pieces once Emerald makes things worse on purpose). She also holds her own against Cinder for a while at the end of Volume 3. While that fight ultimately goes against her, she makes a credible showing and demonstrates what her Semblance is capable when she really cuts loose. Frankly, I've put her here based mostly on her actual stats and technical fighting ability, rather than the power of her Semblance, and I think she could move up in this tier fairly readily if we'd gotten a good example of her fighting without hiding her abilities that wasn't against a Maiden.

Penny was designed as a weapon and her 1.0 version fights evenly against Pyrrha, regularly wrecks airships, and curbstomps whichever mostly-forgettable members of Team CRDL she ends up fighting in the Vytal Festival Tournament. Her 2.0 version is even stronger, adding flight (which is a massive tactical advantage all by itself) and bigger laser beams, and, most importantly, bigger hair. On top of that, she comes with a top-of-the-line sensor suite that lets her avoid sneak attacks on at least 2 occasions (her fight with Cinder in Amity Colosseum and when the Happy Huntresses are sneaking up on the truck she's guarding), and, as a robot with a soul, gets all the benefits of Aura with the additional bonus of the ability to repair or replace any damaged non-critical body parts without too much difficulty. She's also designated the official protector of Mantle, and is apparently at least good enough at fending off frequent Grimm incursions over a wide area that Mantle's populace views her in a positive manner.

B

Harriet/Adam/Yang/Vine/Marrow/Oobleck/Port/Robyn/Vernal/Mercury

This tier is for the fighters who are strong, but are clearly presented as having either a lower ceiling or more room to grow than the ones who should already be considered elite in some capacity. The remaining Ace-Ops are all in this tier and are more-or-less interchangeable in terms of placement, though I gave Harriet the nod over Vine due to Vine being the first member of the team to fall at the end of Volume 7, whereas Harriet generally makes her opponents work for it, and Vine the nod over Marrow due purely to experience, since Marrow's the newbie of the group. That said, I'm not exactly married to these rankings, seeing as the Ace-Ops in general have pretty forgettable showings and have a fairly mediocre win/loss record due to being positioned against the heroes on the few occasions where they actually get to fight human opponents instead of Grimm.

I'm sure some people (the ones who haven't been paying attention to the show) will probably be surprised to see Yang this high, but I'm firmly convinced that she's one of those "naturally talented with room to grow" fighters that simply lacks the experience against intelligent humanoid opponents to maximize her potential at this point in the story. Her fight versus Neo makes it clear that she isn't truly elite yet, but she's clearly the best of Team RWBY, given that she's the one they picked to advance to the singles rounds of the Vytal Festival Tournament, consistently does the bulk of the work in teamfights (to the point where Blake's entire fucking fighting style is just "support Yang" at this point despite Blake being a legitimately talented fighter in her own right. More on that later...), and has the best overall win/loss record of any of her teammates. Certain segments of the fandom like to call her the dumb brute force fighter (I have my own theories regarding the reasons why, but I'm not going to go into them here. It's certainly not because these people are good at breaking down fights or have a strong understanding of pattern recognition, strategy, or tactics), but she's actually very technically skilled and tactically adept, on top of having a very powerful Semblance and being hella maneuverable compared to your average tank/bruiser. I could write a whole-ass post (and probably will) on how Yang is far, far smarter and more skilled than even some of her supporters give her credit for, but this post is longer than a Kal'tsit monologue as it is, so that's a problem for future me.

I put the teachers in this tier because during the point where they're relevant to the show, they're clearly presented as stronger than the students, given that Port and Oobleck clear out an arena full of Grimm that were giving even strong students trouble and Oobleck wastes a bunch of Paladins, whereas basically all the named students had to bust their asses to take down 2 Paladins at Beacon and the one in Painting the Town needed all 4 of Team RWBY to defeat. That said, we don't have a whole lot of data and these two were nearly non-factors after the narrative departed Beacon, so I'm not entirely sure how they stack up now. I think Yang, at least, is stronger than they are at this point, but I'm not 100% sure about her teammates.

Vernal is here mainly because she performs some Kobe-level dunks on Weiss during the Battle of Haven, but she does precisely fuck-all otherwise, and Weiss literally fights as stupidly as possible the entire time, so idk how useful any of that is. The fact that she's Raven's clear second-in-command in the Social Darwinist Bandit Collective implies some level of competence, but the bandits are such ass at doing anything useful that she doesn't exactly have to clear a high bar to earn the position. I think she's meant to be fairly good in-universe, but also close to her ceiling, and I could easily justify dropping her to the tier below.

Robyn is an odd one and hard to properly rank, to be honest. She's so heavily specialized for long-range combat that her effectiveness goes up exponentially when paired with a tank (case in point: the utter destruction of Tyrian and the brief shot of her fighting alongside Qrow vs. the droids in Volume 8. She stays very close to him in Volume 8 specifically and lets both his body and the reach of his scythe protect her from anything closing while she takes the mooks apart, while in the fight vs. Tyrian, she picks her moments carefully and is damn near always positioned so that her tank line is in position to intercept Tyrian if he tries to go after her*, pulling off Doublelift Lucian jukes and bouncing her skillshots off her own allies, thus demonstrating within a singular fight that she has more actual testicles than every other ADC main in history despite being a woman), but she's repeatedly shown to be vulnerable in melee in comparison and thus isn't someone I'd view as particularly effective in duels. That said, her brief skirmish with Yang and Blake shows that she's competent enough in melee to adequately defend herself against a couple of strong opponents who, to be fair, were trying not to seriously hurt her. I'd go more in-depth about that skirmish specifically, but 2 minutes of googling gave me one video that was lower quality than the average line of Fate/Stay Night hentai prose and a bunch of clickbait videos and reddit posts whining about how Ironwood deserved better and I'm too lazy to actually find and watch the episode on Rooster Teeth's website.

*When she isn't, it's because her tanks are actively CCing the enemy, so she's as safe as she can realistically be as long as she doesn't walk into melee.

Finally, Mercury was trained by a notorious assassin and then killed that assassin, which is presumably a pretty solid baseline, and then on top of that is specifically recruited as the muscle for Cinder's group and fights well enough versus Yang that he came very close to beating her during the Vytal Festival tournament. My interpretation of the fight is that it was a legit victory for Yang, since Emerald could easily have pulled the same trick if Yang lost to obtain a very similar effect and Mercury has an "oh, shit, I'd better take this seriously" moment when Yang almost wins by ring-out, but I don't know whether it's ever confirmed that Mercury outright threw or not, so I could easily be wrong. On top of that, he absolutely handled Coco and Yatsuhashi, two students who are implied to be pretty damn strong themselves.

C

Blake/Torchwick/Weiss/Nora/Ren/Emerald/Coco/Yatsuhashi/Sun/Ilia/Ruby/Sienna/Fox

This tier is for combatants who are honestly pretty damn good by the standards of Remnant at large and are clearly powerful relative to your average student and even some licensed Huntsmen, but are still a bit lower on the power scale relative to the experienced combatants who serve as major heroes and villains who represent the growth trajectory and potential of the protagonists. I'm going to go on a little bit of a tangent here to discuss how Team RWBY stacks up in comparison to both their age group and the population of Huntsmen in Remnant overall, using the Vytal Festival as an example. The show does a lot of work, both in the background and the foreground, to build Team RWBY up as a group of prodigies. Ruby gets into Beacon 2 years early, Weiss is apparently top of the class at the time of the Vytal Festival, Blake was going on combat missions before she was old enough to get a driver's license, and Yang, as l've already established, is a better fighter than any of the aforementioned three. Iirc one of the CFVY books specifically note that Team RWBY impressed the student body by taking down the giant Nevermore during initiation, and while my memory is fuzzy, that's entirely plausible to me, given the way we see the same types of Grimm that Team RWBY absolutely shred on a regular basis giving serious trouble to the "average" students during the Battle of Beacon, to the point where a number of those students straight-up die.

On top of that, Team RWBY qualifies for the Vytal Festival Tournament as first-year students. The tournament has only 32 slots (calculated based on the number of rounds we see on-screen) and is open to students of all age groups, meaning that Team RWBY not only managed to beat out students nearing graduation to qualify, but also reached the singles round in that stacked field. To give you an idea of what the "average" Huntsman/student level is like, consider the following fact: Team CRDL, who are a group of first-years who are presented as decidedly inferior to the protagonist group (Pyrrha trashes them in a 4-v-1, they run from an Ursa that fucking Jaune manages to kill after Pyrrha ghosts him through it, and they notably don't try to start shit with anyone they think will fight back), not only qualified for the tournament, they made it into the doubles stage. Yes, I know the real reason for their appearance was because someone needed to lose to Penny and they presumably already had the models, but in-universe, they have legitimate accomplishments. Later on, we see the protagonists consistently outperform actual licensed Huntsmen (e.g. Dee and Dudley, although it must be said that those two are down at the bottom of the barrel), so despite the way Team RWBY sometimes look weak in the Maya era, it's mostly because they're throwing hands with and alongside the absolute best fighters on Remnant.

Anyway, I put most of the remaining protagonists at the top of this tier. I view Blake as the best fighter in this group despite her absolutely atrocious showings in recent volumes because she: A) demonstrated some serious skill earlier in the series, like when she trounced Torchwick on the train, and B) at least successfully plays the support role very effectively and works fantastically with Yang. I have no actual proof of this, but I hypothesize that Blake's on-screen feats have suffered because the choreographers/animators have a hard time figuring out what to do with Gambol Shroud and don't use it as creatively as Monty did early on (watch the Black Trailer, she pulls the goddamn ribbon to fire the gun to redirect the blade, of all things. Early Blake was fucking wild). Even so, she has more serious combat experience than most of the others in this tier and is extremely slippery on top of that. Her physical strength is impressive enough to let her yeet Yang like a MLB fastball and swing around like goddamn catgirl Tarzan, and even her clones pack a punch when spiked with Dust.

Weiss has a fantastic toolkit, but hasn't been great at using it on screen because she's been the designated Renji for about half the series and has jobbed to hell and back starting as early as Volume 2. She's gotten better about this as she's gotten more real-world experience, culminating in her solo win vs. Marrow in Volume 7, and it's clear that she was the most sheltered of the main 4. Frankly, Weiss has the highest ceiling in teamfights out of anyone in this tier by a fair margin, given the absurd versatility of her Semblance and her aptitude for Dust manipulation, but she struggles a bit with conditioning early on and her lack of experience hurts her. Her performance has gone up as she settles into a support role, and I honestly think she's the fighter on her team with the most room to grow.

Ren and Nora seem clearly in the "really, genuinely talented and skilled, but weaker than RWBY" category, but their experience gives them a solid edge vs. most of the others in this tier, especially since unlike Coco and Yatsuhashi, who are talented and experienced themselves, they aren't specifically specialized for either range or melee.

Ruby's a bit lower than the other protagonists because she clearly optimized her build for fighting Grimm and consistently struggles against human opponents. Her lack of hand-to-hand combat skill is shown as a weakness in Volume 2 and then brought up again in Volume 5, and she's the only member of her team who doesn't outright defeat her opponent during the fight against the Ace-Ops at the end of Volume 7, but she successfully outsmarts Neo twice and is probably the best on her team at taking on Grimm, as well as the one with the best leadership skills.

Torchwick is high on the list because he fought well against Blake and Sun in Volume 1 and then smacked Ruby around in Volume 3, but Blake crushed him in their rematch and iirc he never even unlocked his Semblance. That said, he's apparently Vale's biggest criminal and a genuinely competent fighter, so I think this is an appropriate placement for him.

As for the rest, I kind of just lumped them together because they've all shown that they're better than the average student, but most of them have very few actual fights/screentime to go off of, and I was too tired to spend several minutes trying to figure out which minor character was slightly better at fighting than other minor characters.

D

Jaune/Ghira/Neptune/Scarlet/Sage/Team FNKI/Team CRDL/Team ABRN/Team BRNZ/Team NDGO/Albain brothers/Watts/Melanie/Miltia/Dee and Dudley

This is the tier for people who have combat training but aren't impressive enough to end up in a higher tier. Jaune has made great strides, but he isn't really exceptional yet, and Ghira is basically about as dangerous as you'd expect a 7-foot GigaChad beefcake with panther claws to be, but that's really not as big of a deal as it sounds in the world of RWBY. Really, anyone with some level of Huntsman training or combat experience that hasn't truly distinguished themselves should fit in here, and as such the tier has the highest range of variance since a whole ton of minor characters can fit inside it.

Mook Tier

Branwen Tribe/White Fang goons/Atlesian robots

Basically anyone who can be a threat to your average civilian who lacks training or Aura, but otherwise mostly exists to give the heroes or villains someone to beat up.

Civilians

The majority of Remnant's population, approximately as dangerous as any randomly selected group of people from Earth. Lacking in training or any kind of superpower.

There are a few characters I didn't rank on purpose, and probably several I forgot, but at this point it's late and I'm tired and I don't want to write much more, so I'm just going to go over Summer, Oscar/Ozpin, and Velvet and call it a night.

Summer should probably go in either A or S based on the fact that she's a member of Team STRQ and her family clearly considers her a great Huntress, but we know so little about her that giving any sort of accurate evaluation of her combat abilities is impossible.

Not really sure where to put Oscar/Ozpin since Ozpin's capabilities depend at least in part on his host body and drawing a line between Oscar and Ozpin is getting harder and harder as time goes on due to the nature of the merge, so I just left him out. If I absolutely had to commit to a ranking, I'd stick them in the EX tier and be done with it, but I admit that comes with problems, which is why I didn't do it.

Velvet is just straight-up impossible to rank because her combat effectiveness changes drastically based on what photographs she has available and thus what fighting styles she can effectively mimic, and I don't think we know a whole lot about her base capabilities, so I thought about her placement for about thirty seconds and then threw up my hands and gave up.

Anyway, this is my first big post on this website, so I hope the format is at least legible and hope that I didn't mess anything up this badly. Thanks for reading if you've stuck with it this long, and please feel free to dunk on my bad takes or just share your own if you want. I'm open to discussion, especially since I feel like a lot of these character placements were hard to pin down.

[ink-the-artist]

hey Ink! not here to ask you about art you didn't make this time, lol.

I finally did some experimenting with my colored pencils using some of your tips & tricks, and what I did looks pretty cool but HOO BOY did I underestimate how long it would take lmao. I only did like 2 little drawings, no backgrounds, and I started getting frustrated at it taking so long despite having fun doing it.

doing stuff like this will obviously take more time than what I usually do and I feel a bit silly for not realizing that lol. anyway, I was wondering if you had any tips for not getting frustrated, bored, or burned out? there's probably some basic stuff like "take breaks" but I figured I'd ask just in case you had other advice, lol. and maybe I'll be able to build up some drawing stamina too since I don't usually work on the same thing for long.

thanks for making those tutorials/guides btw! the thing about going over your sketch in a color and then erasing the graphite is really neat! fun to try and do more of a lineless style. :)

Oh man yeah, the time it takes to finish something was pretty much the reason I used to not like colored pencil at all for a while and part of what got me past that was just, starting to use less space on a paper. which sounds pretty obvious but my previous experience with colored pencil was having to use it on these big sheets of paper in my art classes and that was TEDIOUS (Ik this is also the reason so many people hate cross-hatching, because they only ever did it on big surfaces when taught it in an art class and they dont realize its not nearly so tedious if you shrink the surface down a bunch) Ik you mentioned that your drawings are little but you could try something even smaller and see if it helps, colored pencil is v good for detailed art so even a smaller drawing can look nice

also what I find most tedious in using colored pencil now is not how long it takes but whenever there's a lot of really boring coloring to do, like if there's a big space thats just one solid color that feels way more tedious to fill in than a space full of detail with different colors and shading etc, even though the second one takes longer. for me at least when the coloring isn't boring I actually enjoy taking the time and getting lost in the details

Try see if whatever you're drawing is actually best to do in colored pencil. if you're doing something with lots of flat color it might not look very different from if you used marker or colored it digitally, and you end up spending more time on it without getting any of the benefits of colored pencil in the end result. and similarly you could see if what you're drawing is best to do ONLY in colored pencil! you can color something with marker or watercolor first and then add all the texture and detail later in colored pencil. this usually really speeds things up and can be especially helpful if you're already comfortable with a different medium that you can just add colored pencil on top of

ok last thing is there's a LOT of different styles and ways of using colored pencil out there and some take much more or much less time than others. most of my colored pencil works posted here are done in a realism style that's more time consuming but some like the more colorful creature art (like Creature Activities or Leaving Milk Out For The Neighbors) have a style that take way less time. I def recommend looking at other artists who use colored pencil and seeing how they go about it because there's lots of different ways to do it! I don't know too many other artists that use a lot of colored pencil but one I really like is @hannahlockillustration ! if anyone else has any recommendations pls comment them

[sunshineandcybertronians]

Make Your Choice - Megatron x reader x Starscream (TFP)

Word count: 2,621 Warnings: angst, conflicting feelings, major character death A/n:  Finished this in one day 9/21/19 at 11:01 PM (holy heck, that was a long time ago). I read pages 140-144 in Transformers Exodus. I never thought I’d write something that’s even slightly Megatron x reader, but here I am. But this oneshot turned out good.

"Where is he?" You searched the dark corridor of Nemesis for a friend.

As a Decepticon you served under Megatron, and Starscream at times. You were lucky enough to be close to both of them. Although Decepticons would never admit to having friends, you called them this secretly.

You were kind to everyone, even those you didn't know. It hurt you to think of anyone in pain. The majority of the Decepticons knew this, and it was miraculously pardoned thus you were given tasks that required no violence. Perhaps it was your soft words and consideration that made this so, finding a soft spot in the seemingly merciless Megatron. Starscream also respected this when he was in control for about three years.

It was very possible someone would question why you were a Decepticon with your nature being closer to an Autobot. This had occurred to you before, but you hoped to change the Decepticons. If everyone who was good left the Decepticons, there would be no chance of changing it to good in the future. Plus, most of your friends were on that side.

You looked through a doorway, he wasn't there either. "Where are you, Starscream?" You whispered to yourself. Well, you said friend earlier, but recently your feelings for him were becoming a little... different.

Since you finished some work sooner than you presumed, you now had free time that you intended to spend it with Starscream. Upon coming to a T in the halls, you paused to think of a plan. Snapping your fingers, you rushed in the direction of the medbay, to not waste another second of your time. Maybe Knockout knew where he was. Out of everyone he was the second closest to the second in command. While jogging, you remembered when you first started to develop feely for him.

Despite the fact you were kind-sparked, this didn't mean that you were not immune to frustration. At the point of time Megatron had just left on his journey through space, Starscream attacked a vehicon because he was dissatisfied with their lack of progress. For no good reason, out of anger.

"Hey!" You had barked at him, startling both him and the vehicons. "Don't do that. They did nothing to you."

He examined you with his red optics. A snarl and an un-amused expression decorated his faceplate as his tilted his helm back. Releasing the vehicon whilst shoving him away, he shifted his attention to you. He approached you, in attempt to intimidate you.

Your held your ground.

"And I believe you should be reminded of your place. You are a subordinate, who doesn't even have the fuel tank to draw energon. You don't tell me what to do."

"No! You listen!" When his servos flinched, you stepped forward to grab them to prevent him from attacking you. You shoved your faceplate near his, with barely any space apart. "They're on the same side as you. Don't hurt people for no reason. It's not nice." After your anger faded, you realized how close your face was. Energon rushed through you.

He smirked, which didn't help your flustered look. "Are you blushing, little femme?"

"No!" You stepped away.

You thought a little more and decided you wanted to clear something up before you left. "But you are a good leader. You just need to avoid letting your anger get the best of you. If you make emotional decisions, you might mess up your chance to succeed, like I know you can."

Shock filled his expression, his optics widening and eyebrows lifting at the thought you actually believed in him. He quickly regained his senses. "You mean like you did just now?" He showed teeth while displaying the irony.

You pursed your lips and averted your gaze to the ground. "Yes. Just like that," you mumbled.

And strangely enough, after that you had become very good friends with him and would have many conversations with him. Knockout would occasionally tease you for it.

Another example was before leaving Cybertron, when Megatron first learned of Dark Energon (unbeknownst to you and Megatron at the time, Starscream already knew of it long before and was attempting to learn more). He privately admitted to you, something you found shocking at the time, that he knew it was unwise to use the Dark Energon due to its unknown and most likely dangerous properties. Yet he felt it necessary to end the war. He, the gladiator, was tired of fighting. It nearly melted your spark and made you want to hug him in order to make him feel better. Then he said that maybe he would finally defeat the "treacherous Optimus Prime," which then caused you to want to call him an idiot since you knew Optimus never betrayed Megatron.

You had mixed emotions like that. If you wanted someone to be the best version of themselves and to be their friend, their flaws and evil mistakes made you upset for that same reason. This mostly fell under your emotions about Megatron or Starscream.

Your thoughts were put to an end when you reached your destination. Without missing a beat, you opened the door and marched right in.

"(Y/n)! Did you need repairs?" Knockout picked up one of the tools he was organizing.

"Hey, Knockout! No. I was wondering if you knew where Starscream was," you explained.

He chuckled, his finish reflecting what little light there was in the room. "Of course you came here to ask where your boyfriend was."

You stiffened. "He's not my boyfriend, we're just friends."

"You could've fooled me." The mech lifted his optic ridge, clearly not convinced.

"Do you know where he is?" You cut to the point again, wanting to leave the awkward conversation.

"I may," he answered wistfully, "but you may have to give me some more buffing solution as payment."

"But I just gave you some yesterday. In fact, I think you almost always get it from me, and I never ask for anything in return. By the time I get you more I'll have to go back to work."

"Just joking. He's heading to the energon supplies to check inventory." Knockout didn't even give you a glance as he picked up a buffer in the corner and spun the correct pad onto it. "Make sure you remember to propose to him."

"Knockout," you drew out his name in annoyance, almost out the door.

"Just kidding."

You rolled your eyes, mentally forgave him, and bolted to the direction of the energon stock. The clanging of your pedes hitting the floor slowed and came to a halt when the entrance was just on your right.

"Starscream?" You stuck your helm in and searched. Finally, your optics locked onto the thin seeker, with sharp features and expressive wings. He looked to you with surprise, his long digit hovering over the control panel that contained information on how much energon there was, how much was used in the previous month, and the chart of how much energon was found compared to other points throughout time on Earth.

"(Y/n)? Aren't you supposed to be organizing files right now?" He inquired.

"I was done early." You hopped into the room as the door slid closed behind you. It was now dark, except for the illumination from the energon. The way it dimly shown on him and cast shadows on the edges of his figure made him look even more attractive. You shifted and swatted away the thoughts in your head.

"So, what are you up to?"

"Nothing much," he groaned, waving his servo. "I was simply accessing the inventory to find if we had enough and needed to lower rations."

"Hmm. From what I read in reports, it's getting harder to find energon, but we found a good stock recently."

"Yes. I saw that on the chart." He nodded to the glowing screen.

Before you could stop yourself, you began admiring his wings. Then your gaze shifted to a part that wasn't quite as smooth as the rest.

"What's that scratch on your wing?" You exclaimed when you finally noticed it.

He bit his lip, looked to it, and shrugged. "I flew too low and my wing got clipped by a tree."

Studying the scrapes, you delicately traced your fingers on it. He winced in pain and reached to shove it away, but stopped when you flinched away on your own after seeing his reaction.

Letting, your servo fall softly onto the undamaged surface. His wings relaxed in please and a smile crept onto his face. You gently rubbed the spot below it and held his jaw with your other servo. He seemed to melt at your touch and closed his optics. His arms snaked their way around your waist.

His optics flickered open again and stared at you with an emotion you had never seen present in them before... love. Without thinking or even considering the consequences of it, you began to close the distance between your lips and his. However you were cut off when light filled the room coming from the door.

You both turned your heads to see who it was. The expectation was that it was just a vehicon, however it was anyone but a simple minion. It was Megatron himself.

You both stepped back. What was he doing there? He was probably either looking for you or Starscream. You passed some vehicons on the way, so he could have definitely inquired where you were from them, if you were indeed the one he was seeking to find.

When he noticed you and Starscream together, and not just that, but that you were having... erm, a moment, his face twisted from a hurt shocked to anger.

"What have we here?" He marched in, servos behind his back. The door closed, blocking the light once more. You weren't exactly sure why he was so furious, he had never been that mad at you before.

"Well," Starscream stumbled on his words and shrunk back. "You see-"

"Trying to steal yet another thing from me!" He exploded at the seeker. He took the second in command's neck in his hand and held him in the air.

"Megatron! What are you doing?!" It made no sense, why he was just suddenly deciding to kill Starscream. Had he tried to kill him recently? What did he mean 'steal'?

"What are you... Talking... About?" Starscream gasped with his legs dangling.

"(Y/n)," he turned to you. You flinched back, yet noticed how his voice was softer. "Be my sparkmate."

This thoroughly confused you and sent a chill through your frame. "What?! No."

A mix of despair, anger, and desperation showed on his faceplate.

Deciding to elaborate you started carefully, "Why? I thought we were just friends. I thought of us as just friends." You had nothing against him. You cared about him, but never thought of it in a different way. Perhaps you could have explained more, although in your baffled state, you couldn't get out much.

"Those years in space," the leader of the Decepticons began, "it was so lonely I once thought I would lose my mind. The only two things that kept me going and what made me able to live after every near-death experience are my desire to extinguish Optimus and to be with you. You somehow make everything better and chase away darkness and solitude." A blade launched from above his hand and he aimed it for the dangling Cybertronian in his hand. "I want you to always be by my side. Be my sparkmate, or Starscream dies."

You couldn't believe it, well, maybe you could considering how violent he was and how many other times he came close to killing Starscream. The Decepticon leader had even expressed fear you'd leave him for someone else before. Yet, you had assumed that it was platonic and never guessed this would happen.

"Please," you pleaded, "Don't terminate him. I know you have kindness in your spark, and it is not weakness, it is a virtue. Please. Starscream has always been useful to you. For me?" You held your servos together, your sad optics sparkled.

This seemed to make him consider, as he started to reflect your sadness then shook it away. Replaced with anger of how greatly you cared for his second in command that seemed to undermine everything he did. "No. Only if you become my sparkmate."

The seeker decided to take matters into his own servos and aimed the red missile on his arm while distracted. Megatron noticed and tore it and the other off and let then drop to the floor with Starscream wailing in pain.

You shook your head in horror, still in disbelief of what was happening. "Why are you doi-"

"I CAN'T LOSE YOU TO STARSCREAM!" He raised the sword. "And now he won't keep you from me anymore!"

"NO!" You screamed. Panic surged through you. This couldn't happen, you couldn't lose Starscream. You just couldn't. You didn't want him to die. If he were to die, you would never see or talk to him again, and it was something you could never afford.

Without thinking, you lunged forward and converted your servo to a blade. Only focusing on saving Starscream, you slashed at the one threatening his well-being.

Then time slowed. Your optics widened. You stumbled back with energon stained on the sharp edge. Megatron opened his mouth, yet nothing came out as his grip loosened and he fell to the ground. His helm nearly falling off of his body, with almost all severed off. Your mouth hung open watching the glowing blue liquid puddle onto the floor, seeming to form a lake. He gave the saddest look you've ever seen, making you want to scream as he seemed to stare right into your spark, before his scarlet optics flickered and the life faded from them.

Then the gravity of what you did. You stared at the blade, then your dead friend.

"NO! What am I doing? Why did I want to hurt you?!" You screamed. Switching back to your hand, feeling the energon drip into your parts, as you ran forward and held Megatron. You answered your own questioned, "It was to save Starscream, but why did you make me do that?! I didn't wanna hurt you. I'm supposed to be a friend, be nice. I just wanna... wanted to be your friend." You changed the word since Megatron was now no more. You wrapped your armed around him in a hug. Overcome by grief. Then anger resurfaced.

"Stupid head! Why do you have to be like this? Why do you have to be an evil overlord? I wanted to be friends. I care about you!" Then you sank back into sadness.

With a sigh, you attempt to pull yourself together. He was set to the side and you stood up, energon dripping off of you.

This whole time, Starscream, who had crawled away when he was first released, watched you. He really had no idea what to do or how to help you. All he knew was that you probably needed to be left alone at that moment, thus he stood there. Although he was flattered that you, as a pacifist, would kill to save him, he hated that you were unhappy. He waited until a few nanoklicks after you stood in silence.

"All hail Starscream?" He hesitantly questioned, his wings giving a shrug. He clearly didn't want to bother you in such an emotional state, although still desired to know if he'd be leading the Decepticons.

With a small smile creeping to your lips, you nodded while trying to move on from what happened. "Yes. All hail Starscream."