#your style inspired one of my third life animatics

[moonmeg]

Hey so I really love your art and your body poses ars always so fluent! I have a very simple style what is your suggestion for artists who want to change from cartoony to a more realistic style like yours? And how do you get your anatomy so good!!!Also if you have time or effort could you give a small showcase of where you started and where you are now and how you developed the style!?!?

-Small side note in Watching and dreaming what sene made you cry the most?

-Personally balled my eyes out when the collector started crying.Sorry for the long thread but what do you think happened to the collecotr?

-KEEP UP THE JAW DROPPING ART!!!❤️

Thank you so, so much!

The time skip made me so happy yet so emotional but I think when the collector started crying after Luz "died", yeah that might be the moment :')

I started developing my own style the way it is now with my entry into the Hamilton fandom. I've had a style before, that I drew Miraculous Ladybug fanart with and it looked something like this

I was 14 when I drew this. I was still heavily influenced by an anime art style despite me never having seen an anime at that point in my life.

With entering the Hamilton fandom, however, I found animatics. Szin was an artist that had an art style I looked at with 15/16 and said "I want that.". So I started copying some things from szin's artstyle that I really liked (the way they drew hair and noses specifically). Over time I discovered other artists that I had art-style envy over. That being caw-chan and ziksua predominantly. I think I adapted more from caw-chan and szin than from ziksua but I would lie if I said her art didn't have an impact on me.

So my art style developed year by year.

There are big time skips between these deawings but if you're interested in my Hamilton era search #hamilton on my tumblr and scroll through it a bit. Or if you go down the rabbit hole on pinterest just enough, you'll find old art to. Search "megpeggs" on pinterest for that.

During Hamilton times of course not only other artists inspired me but I also started looking up tutorials or art commentaries on YouTube. Videos where an artist genuinely critiques their viewers art proved most useful, because they show you how to improve the anatomy, what basic rules you can follow to get anatomy right etc. And of course, references and realistic portraits. (That last drawing was created with a reference.)

If you want a more realistic art style you need to study the realistic anatomy and know how to draw something realistic. For that you need a reference that you look at again and again, basically analyzing it and taking it apart to see how what looks and how you can best copy it on canvas.

Depending on complexity it of course is rather time consuming but it's a huge help. If you know how to draw something pretty damn realistic, you can easily cartoonify or simplify certain features. (Not saying I'm so great at realism but I'd say I'm not that bad at it either)

Enter Avatar era.

A show where you can bend elements and a show that is filled with quite a lot of fight scenes makes you want to do fanart that is as dynamic. So you sit there staring at pose references again. Or you take pictures of yourself doing these things. I can't say how much the ATLA and LOK art style influenced me because there barely is any resemblance between the show and my art but I do ghink it had at least a little impact on my art style.

It involved a lot of referencing and copying (important note: not tracing!) in my case. And that's really the most important tip I can give here. Studying and analyzing the reference picture you chose. How long and thick are limbs? How big are the hands? The torso? The neck? How much smaller or bigger does this limb look due to the perspective? Learn the rules before you break them.

Some examples:

Foreheads are bigger than they seem! Remember that your character needs to fit a brain in there.

You should be able to fit one third eye between the two eyes - that's the usual distance.

Eyes are on one height with where the ears begin.

The nose's end is on one height with the earlobe.

The distance from the outer corner of the left eye to the outer corner of the right eye is the same length as the neck (in thickness)

Remember that the neck supports the head. When drawing a side profile it should start at the back of the head and leave some room for a jaw.

Hands are big enough to cover your entire face.

Your elbow is on one height with your waist.

Your whole arm should reach from shoulders to about the middle of your thigh.

There's space between breasts and the neck. You have a collarbone there!

Natural breasts hang. They have weight to them and get pulled down by gravity.

There's bones and organs everywhere in your body and they need space too

Skin wrinkles Angle your arms or hand. You're not a Barbie, you've got wrinkles there on elbow and wrist.. Furrow your eyebrows. The skin on your forehead wrinkles.

Everything I listed here is something you can go check out on your own body and it should be correct. Of course this is just the usual way anatomy is like - exceptions are found everywhere.

If my art style is something you look up to, as weird as it sounds, study it. Look at the way I draw things and try to copy them and incorporate them into your own style.

It's also important you go out of your comfort zone.

With TDAAC I couldn't name what exactly changed or developed in my art style more but I do know I started to hide hands less and challenge myself to actually draw that hand pose, staring at references from pinterest or my own hands doing that pose.

Art is a matter of learning and studying. It's time consuming, it's nerve-wreking, you may sit there and ask yourself why the hell you decided to do art but it's worth it all.

I'd recommend keeping your old art around somewhere. Over the years you can then always go back to it and compare it to your current art and see just how much you grew as artist. And that is something that definitely comes. The more you draw, the more you learn. It's not witchcraft, even if it might seem like it sometimes.

I'll add some more art of mine in a reblog, since tumblr only allows me to add 10 images.

[bdoubleowo]

Let me introduce you to.

The Flowchart:

However it’s slightly out of date as two new hermits have joined this season, geminitay and pearlescentmoon. Who are both lovely but I don’t know well enough yet haha.

But there’s no real. Continuity across seasons aside from some jokes and maybe some things but it’s definitely not expected to watch all the seasons, or even all the hermits. That’s @/hermette-historian’s job (Thank you Wynnie <3)

You can start with any season, or even if you’re brave, mid season. This season has been really good so far, and that’s what everyone’s talking about/is what’s getting new content so I’d recommend that, but it could be fun to go back in time and watch the Civil War and the Turf War, or other shenanigans from past seasons.

Also you’ve GOTTA watch 3rd Life. It has a lot more roleplaying and factions than Hermitcraft has, and it was delightfully chaotic and weirdly moving. It’s nowhere near as long as a hermitcraft season, the winning player only having 8 20-30 minute episodes, so it’s easy to watch. It has a bunch of Hermits, but also some non-hermits like Scott Smajor, Mr Gaming, Inthelittlewood, Smallishbeans, BigB and Skizzleman if you happen to know any of them. It’s my favorite and I’ll never shut up about it probably ever

The hermitcraft fandom is actually in it's post-toxicity chill arc right now from my experience? A couple years ago it was really bad but now we're all just vibing.

Ohhhh funky! How do you recommend I start it? According to YouTube there’s,,,,,,8 seasons?

[interact-if]

Day 10, 1/2 of A/PI Heritage Month featured authors interview! The amazing Crysil, everyone!

Crysil, author of Dual Chroma

A/PI Heritage Month Featured Author

A thousand years ago dark magic destroyed half the world. Now the Ashen Lord rises again to destroy the rest.As Prince Keldran’s adviser, your council will be indispensable in saving the world from ashen creatures that once again threaten his empire. But the Galens’s family’s past is more entwined with the Ashen than historians admit – and Keldran’s destiny is darker still. Will you help him save the world or allow it to be destroyed so that a new one can be reborn upon its ashes?

(INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT!)

Q1: First of all, introduce us to your project! What is it about?

Dual Chroma is an epic fantasy VN focused on political intrigue and romance. You play as a royal advisor descended from a legendary sorceress to determine the fate of the empire. It has a role-play system where you can determine your personality based on choices and an rpg battle system to further involve you in the world of Aradal.

Here is our synopsis:

“A thousand years ago dark magic destroyed half the world. Now the Ashen Lord rises again to destroy the rest. As Prince Keldran’s adviser, your council will be indispensable in saving the world from ashen creatures that once again threaten his empire. But the Galens’s family’s past is more entwined with the Ashen than historians admit – and Keldran’s destiny is darker still. Will you help him save the world or allow it to be destroyed so that a new one can be reborn upon its ashes?”

Q2: If it’s not too spoilery, what are you most excited about your project?

The most exciting part of the project is to bring the world and characters I’ve been developing since I was a kid to life. That said there are so many other things I’m excited about too, like the animatic fable-like series of CGs I will be working on for the opening and the future casting calls I will do for my characters. I actually cast Keldran recently and it’s just unreal to finally hear your character SPEAK and I can’t wait to have the same experience for the rest!

Q3: What inspired the current project you’re working on?

In one word, Keldran. He’s just such a fascinating character with a long history behind him and his family and circumstances just grew and grew until the base of the game was formed.

Q4: Do you pull from your own identity for inspiration? How has that been reflected in your work?

I’m half Asian and half European and it's funny because I think that really reflects in my art style. I have something between anime/manga and old master’s paintings like Michelangelo. You can also see how some of the game is inspired by Chinese imperial dynasties such as there being many princes and polygamy with the emperor and some of the characters tend to have this very Asian mindset. You’ll probably know who once you play. Quite a few elements in the game are also inspired by xianxia stories.

Q5: What’s been your experience so far? With writing, with the IF community…

I joined the if community quite recently so I haven’t had much chance to interact yet but everyone seems lovely and I hope to do so in the future once my workload settles down a bit more :)

My experience with writing has generally been really intense and I’ve had lots of ups and downs. Dual Chroma just kept expanding and now we’re looking at something between 100-200k words!!

Q6: Do you have any future projects in the works?

Yes I am actually directing another smaller visual novel for a game jam called Deliver Us From Evil. It’s a supernatural mystery where you play as a young guardian angel and you have to find out the source of the recent accumulation of dark energy on Earth. There will be two love interests (with a third one perhaps being available later as DLC), the Archangel Michael and a mysterious man known as Ace (you’ll learn who he really is once you play).

Apart from that I have a literal pile of other ideas that will hopefully slowly see the light of day :)

Q7: Finally, what piece of advice would you give to fellow authors?

There is one really important thing I wish I knew before I embarked on Dual Chroma: Manage Scope. Go for an MVP first, make sure to thoroughly analyze and create a plot outline and bulletproof it a bunch of times with different people before committing.

Also if it ever gets too much - give yourself a break. I’ve had some months where I was just creatively blocked and made no progress at all and that is completely okay.

Final thing - if you’re not feeling a certain character, don’t force yourself to write them just to have a higher number of LIs/ROs, it's perfectly fine to have less or to add more in later once you’ve got something finished <3

[kmittingarts]

I did a style challenge! I drew Hercules Mulligan from Hamilton as my character of basis ah

I would like to say that I copied these artists’ styles as an exercise and in no way take credit for developing these styles or owning them or calling them mine or anything. I only claim that I was the one to draw each of these pieces- not that the ideas and styles I based them on were mine. 

I had quite a bit of fun with this, and it really helped me learn a lot!

the first one is my style, even though my style changes all the time fhdskjafd

@crashandburrnart is the second one, and I love !?!? their style so much!?!? its so unique and beautiful and im emo the colors are always so well done and I love the trademark over-the-eyes

@terror-in-the-dream is the third one, and just golly im literally so gay for this style?? YOu have such a good grasp of colors and it was an honor to try and just replicate it fhghjgzy

@raythrill is the fourth one, and this was probably the most challenging style for me to replicate. Your art looks so good despite the fact that it seems you don’t use guidelines and I”m just like,,? HOW

@halpdevon is the fifth one, you are such a doll and your art is incredible and jeez im just gay for you in general , stay beautiful and hydrated love

@spibbles is the sixth one, HI YES I LOVEyou r art you’re so talented and you get a lot of shit here on tumblr and no we’ve never met before but you’re such an inspiration to me and I love your art and I love your animatics and I hope that you stay healthy and that you are happy in life and - anyways herc is so cute in your style but your style is cute in general so 

@eightmonkeys is the final seventh piece. I love your art so much, it’s so flowing and like,, you have a really good grasp of shapes and I love the way you draw freckles and I love the way you can maintain consistency and ALSO HIT ME up about Daveed Diggs and clipping. cause I love talking about. that. and nobody else seems to like it rip me