#two last points aren't really my jam tbh

[eri-pl]

re: tags:

#also redeeming sauron through the power of love and that one ship I don't ship (with some handwaving away of númenor if necessary)#/#“late numenor” is the only one of those Tolkien would tolerate ;D#<- is this a hidden compliment Eri

Númenor happenned after making of the rings, so I'm not sure why it would need handwaving.

I'm not sure how big of a compliment this is, not everyone's goal is to be tolerable by Tolkien (obviously), so it's more like "you achieved that goal, others didn't necessarily care about achieving it". But yes, it counts as a compliment.

“People leaving mandos illegally” is funny but — that's not how it works… I mean I respect people's right to write what they want, but it just doesn't work for me because my canon hurts too much. Also, the Feanorians leaving Mandos/Void by sheer stubbornness/Elrond. It is a thing, I think.

If I had more writing audacity than I have and more than I probably should have— ok, I probably shouldn't pester you with fic ideas doing the as you called it 'straight line"?

I love the variety of the fics in the Silm fandom, including:

The Witch-King Goes To Hell (And We Are Very Very Very Clear About It)

Sauron Is Smol, Sad And Learns Knitting

The Hobbits Find a Silmaril And Somehow It's Wholesome And Noone Dies (I think this is a whole genre)

Maglor Was Sad: Technically A Crossover ("Maglor Is Sad" is a whole Ao3 tag)

Late Númenor. Just Late Númenor.

The Hilarious Divorce Of [a ship i don't ship but still love the fic] (there are at least 2 of those but one is more hilarious)

[awiola]

Normal update, winter XXIV

BUT IT'S NOT WINTER ANYMORE HA! Happy after-equinox to y'all. I planned to write the update in march and it's still technically march but, like, y'know, it's the first day of spring so it feels kind of late, ig? Not that it really matters here and I drew Morana on fire so all is good.

This is not completely [un]related but I'm trying to complete the 'draw sth for 100 days straight' challenge and rn it's going okay though I have to admit I'm being a lazy ass. But hey, a bad sketch a day is still a drawing. Not sure if that's the reason I wasn't able to complete my easter sketch dump but knowing me it wouldn't be finished anyway so whatever ig. AND YES, I WILL DRAW FATHER DAKI ON TIME. I planned to do it when I was drawing Agatha for thug in PE's style but oh well... You'll see both ot these pics on the first of april.

Also, like, in case anyone was interested, I finally decided to learn how to adult and might open comms this year? I tell myself I'll open them since, like, 2020 so yeah. Maybe. I think I will, tho.

Current game stuff

Mushroom game... Yeah... It exists and I technically haven't dropped it but yeah... Yeah... Tbh I even hid the link from my page but it's still public and all... But yeah... It goes into the "finally finish it in 2024, you stupid fuck" list - which, incidentally, is a mouthful so from now on it's gonna be "24 >:C" - together with Enmity and all.

Remember the golem game? Yeah, we don't see its non human form but I did technically draw it. Humanoids are, like, so last decade. It's called Sorcerer's golem and because I was not the lead, we managed to nicely finish it on time ✨ [Unrelated but I wonder what happened to the old unicode emotes, I need to look into it]. There's not really a lot I have to say here, tbh. It's short, it's wholesome, I'm totally not gonna go almost fully lineless again. I almost died and it was only two sprites. Never again proceeds to do that again later anyway.

Some time after, or maybe during, I can't really remember, I heard of Queer Vampire Jam and ofc had to join because I wouldn't be me if I managed to stop myself from joining yet another jam. It just so happened I both felt like shit and read something from my SF gods at the time so I commited this open ended 3k long story and it's, like, really obvious how I felt and what I was reading but then I decided to go yolo and publish it anyway, especially since I got an editor and made laby draw for me. Just had to publish it at that point. Enough about that, though - let's see what is it all about. Vani vani, because Tas tatum was deemed too lame of a name is a story about a [queer obviously] vampire who's kinda dead inside and it shows. I did say it was obvious I felt like shit. I'm not sure if it ended up being too edgy or not... I mean, I made it really obvious it's, like gestures vaguely y'know? I don't wanna spell it out but, like, the theme and everything there was so obvious I'll be disappointed in you if you didn't get it based on the pun title [the other two layers of puns there aren't as obvious] and the page/thumbnail. Unless, of course, you never heard about it at all which might be the case for people from other continents, I wouldn't know. I realise that doesn't say a lot about the contents but I mean, it's more of a progress update, I'm not actually trying to market anything here lol So whatever. It might be the only game ever where I put a whole nsfw scene of a sexual nature... Or it might just be the beginning of my unsexy h scene adventures. I even asked others how to make it as unsexy as possible and I hope I succeed. Going into gore or kink migh be sexy for some but boredom? Probably to no one who actually reads it. And, as is the case with my other personal games, not a lot of people read them. So I think I succeed at that. It's just the beginning of my SF adventures, though. Be prepared.

Now for the thing that might interest the potential reader the most because I saw the statistics and I bet all the follows are alse due to that - Impostor Syndrome. I know the page is pretty much silent but we are working on this. The common route received a lot of notes to make it longer, more cohesive, funnier and possibly better for all the gremlins that wanted a troll mode. Or at least that was the plan. Route wise we had something but after some consideration, it had to be basically scrapped. I won't go into all the details here as for why, but the rewriting of the outline is proceeding. Slowly cause it's kinda hard to find the best time to talk when you have multiple people from different timezones to consider but I think it's looking good. There's a sliiight possibility it might be a bit less vanilla than, like, your typical sfw otome but I don't think any vanilla lover would think it's too much or anything. Not nearly kinky enough for that. I think labelling it as having a soft dom MC might even be false advertising. Maybe. Hell if I know, I suck at tags. But yeah, it's proceeding. Obviously it won't be out during winter but I do think it will be finished this year. Most likely.

From other game stuff... I might have a monster type project made with Ameena for you. Or I might not. The designs are done but is anything gonna come out of them? We'll see. Leaving the possibility open.

I helped Doibats [who I helped with Cool Days before] with some art. This time it's an rpg, currently still in development. The cool art direction is still there so I think it would be worth a play when it's out. I think I'm more of a guest artist than an actual member of the team, though lol But yeah, check it out when it's done, I'll link it then.

Yet another game where I didn't do much - The Villainess Just Wants To Eat!! had its full, official release 🎉 Congrats to the team [check out their gui, btw]. I was mostly helping with this or that due to the usual jam team stuff that happens but yeah. Syd wrote afterstories for the charas, too. They're technically linked on the game's page, too, but you can read them on her tumblr, too.

I kind of forgot to mention, which also ties with my next point, but she hosted the Ossan jam again which I planned to join with my nano project about Wedding crashers but I overestimated my ability to write energetic chaos so... umm... Well, it's not dropped and while it won't get done in time for nano, I think I'll manage before Ossan jam ends. It started as a loose idea that kinda parodied romcoms and then the protag became an AAA battery but also aplatonic and then I got some concepts from tea[? - dunno how they want to be called 'officially' and this one seemed safe but?] and yeah. I'm trying to work on this, though. Even though I feel so stupid attempting to write an anthropologist. Should've stuck to writing mostly what you know like with Vani vani, eehhh... Wish me luck o3o

The last thing, or two, probably, is more of a... forecast? I happened to help with the editing of a certain 18+ otome game but I'm not on the team or anything so I can't really tell you more since I don't know how much should I reveal to the potential player but from what I've seen, the development goes well since they started making it for nano and might actually be finished before Otome jam ends so I'll link it then.

The other thing is that in an unspecified future I might have a yet another AAA battery protagonist, this time replacing the MC of an otome isekai story. I'm not sure how much I'll help with [maybe just editing, maybe we'd become a two person team, who knows] but it has a hight possibility of being developed eventually. No set dates or anything, though.

Pariiish noootiiiceees

Remember Tentacle jam and Insect [adjacent] jam? They're still happening, I'm just being lazy setting the pages up. The working date is from around the middle of august to the middle of october due to all the other jams happening at the time. I think it's the final date, though. It's come to my attention there's also the Monstrous Desires jam that also shares the timeframe almost perfectly so, y'know, why not make a game that lets you join all three of them? Just a thought.

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My god, this thing became so long. Like half the length of my typical personal project orz I had to add all the Ps and BRs manually. Damn you, html shakes fist

Over.

[kritzenkriegen]

When I was finishing up this piece, I got a little overexcited and drafted out a bunch of — commentary, I guess is the best word, showing different shots and the process. Before it actually posted I decided to hold back, in case this flopped, but since it hasn't— time to be a bit unnormal.

Alternative Shots

Keep in mind that these aren't as polished as the original, 'cause the original is lighted very specifically for that pose and camera.

Here's Sniper with Red Spy instead of Blu, if that's more your jam

Here's a solo Sniper

Here's Spy face which I really liked tbh

And Snipes having a crisis

Lighting Breakdown

Sooo I maybe kinda have a degree in this stuff that I never used, and I haven't touched 3D work in two years. But when I started working in SFM on a whim it really rushed back. I love this stuff so I'ma infodump a bit.

There's 13 lights at work here —the "sun," a very minor "shack" light, 2 rim lights, and 9 fill lights, which include 4 lights that exclusively light up the characters' faces.

The "key" lights in this instance aren't typical key lights, and I'm not sure if the shack one even counts; usually key lights are what do the majority of the leg work, the strongest lights making the main elements visible. In this case though, I wanted the "sunlight" to be at that specific angle, only lighting the lower half of the characters, while the other, ambient lighting did most of the work. The shack light is just there to hint at itself and light up the environment a small bit.

Next element is the fill lighting, and here it's really more important than the key lights.

In real life, the reason we can ever see anything is mostly because of ambient light bouncing off every surface and casting light on everything else. When a sunbeam comes through your window and strikes your floor, it's not just your floor that's lit up — it's the walls, objects in the room, etc. that are reflecting that light all over the place. A program like SFM doesn't replicate those bouncing light rays, so you have to put them in yourself. For example, I put in some fill lights point up into the characters, to imitate the sunlight bouncing off both the ground outside and the floor of the shack.

Without fill lights, it's a dark and shadowy scene where you can barely make anything out.

A challenge here was lighting up the characters' faces while not having that light cast on the wall behind them. Faces are very important so they tend to get special lighting. In some programs I've used in the past you can choose whether light interacts with a certain object, but I don't think you can in SFM. So these lights had to be small and very specifically angled in order to not show on the wall.

Last but definitely not least is rim lighting, i.e. backlighting. Rim lighting helps give the scene definition.

In retrospect, my rim lights aren't very rimmy, and that's probably why some of the lighting seems off — I ran into a similar problem here as with the fill lighting, where the wall behind them put a big limitation on where I could put lights and at what angle.

But, still, rim lights make a huge difference — without them things look flat, and in my experience it's the step that really makes everything look more 'legitimate.'

Map lighting... So at the start I was fighting a losing battle with the lights that come prebaked into the map, which are used in the game itself. The in-game lighting hovers between functional and aesthetically pleasing, and it does its job well — but, it ultimately falls more on the functional side, and if you want total control over the lighting, it becomes a problem.

When I found a dark map to use that got rid of the in-game lights, there was an instant improvement towards the more 'dramatic' effect I want. Lesson learned!

Since then I've discovered that you can do this to any map without downloading a darkmap, but it does make the scene a lot harder to work with, so *weighs hands*

Now, finally... Something I really love to do and that keeps me motivated is comparing early renders and seeing the progression. When I'm feeling frustrated, it's encouraging to see that significant improvement is being made, even through the small adjustments.

Started from the bottom now we're here!

I'm not perfectly happy with this piece — the posing is a little stiff, it could use even more ambient lighting, Sniper's expression is eh — but I'm done picking at it! I'm proud of it as a first finished piece. And I'm very happy so many of you like it.

Steam Workshop Sources:

Dustbowl Dark Map

Light Limit Patch cause only 8 lights that cast shadows?? That's hilarious.

Evening Dust

I've got a dozen Heavy / Medic SFM wips lined up, but I wanted my first posted render to be a tribute to the ship I was obsessed with when I got into TF2 6 years ago <3