Wip Wednesday
My AO3 comment box has blown up! My heartfelt thanks to @tafferling and @turbo-toast , I will reply as soon as I can. I should be working, you’re all gonna get me fired from my new job! 😂
I’m tagging my lovely beta @kalliesa , who might be a little jealous that after all this time she’s not the one reading new stuff from Absolution after a goddamn year hiatus.
Tbf, it’s been a hell of a year, and since nobody seemed to be actively reading the Abby, it’s easy to forget that people read it at all, and my attention wandered off elsewhere (Starfield, mostly 👀 lol, which reminds me, I’m tagging the whole of The Coemancer Crew in this post too, I’d love to see what you’re all working on, but no pressure!)
Do not underestimate the power of commenting on a fic that looks as though it may have been abandoned. They rarely are, it’s just the authors are people, and people’s attention spans tend to wander, especially if they think they’re in a boat on their own.
Without further ado, here’s a very rough (unbeta-read) snippet of Chapter 17: Their Law.
(and you know when a chapter is inspired by The Prodigy, it’s going to be action-packed).
Shouting, grasping, pulling and shoving, the Cerberus soldiers burst through the doors, dragging Sebastian and Tegan from their cells at gunpoint. They forced them to their knees in the main holding area, alongside all the other C-Sec detainees.
“Dad, what’s going on?” Faith asked through their connection.
“Honey, it’s Cerberus,” said Sebastian.
“And some fucker must have told them we were here,” added Tegan.
“Why ARE you here?” But she knew, oh, she knew. They were her parents, after all. And they were alive!
A combination of relief and irritation flooded the connection from all sides, “Honey,” Sebastian didn't need to finish the sentence.
“I’m not going back,” she stated defiantly.
“Can we talk about this later?”, asked Tegan, “so good to hear you, possum.”
“I-”
A single gunshot made them all jump.
Two Cerberus operatives moved methodically down the line, they scanned each human prisoner, then shot them in the back of the head.
They didn’t pause to scan the aliens.
One after the other each prisoner fell to the floor. It sent the rest into a frenzy, they pleaded for their lives, for their gods. The smell of fresh urine further assaulted the senses.
“Please, why do you have to kill us?” The next prisoner asked. Another single gunshot rang out, and he died without an answer.
The soldiers moved onto the next, more screaming, another dull beep on the scanner followed by a further gunshot.
There was just one human and a baterian between Cerberus and Tegan, “Seb.” He warned.
“I know,” said Sebastian, he could feel Tegan’s rising terror, coupled with his own. But he could also see the back of their own heads from Faith’s perspective, as she swung over the ledge two stories above. A glass roof was all that separated them.
“There are six,” he told her. “Four grunts, one officer, and a phantom”, he looked around as best he could, marking their positions. “They’re all wearing civilian grade, standard issue, full Cerberus armour and helmets, which means-“
“Which means they’re using tech to see. Even without the cloak I am a ghost to them.”
“Exactly, sweetheart-“
Another gunshot. The batarian was dead.
The two Cerberus operatives stepped across placing Tegan between them, the gun was inches from the back of his head.
“Seb.”
“I know.”
A different kind of beep emitted from the handheld scanner, and the Cerberus operative laughed, “Well, well. So, the rumours were true. You’re Tegan O’Hara. Which means you must be,” the scanner beeped brightly again, “Sebastian Crosse. It’s your lucky day, you’ve won yourself a little chat with the Illusive Man. Now, where is that little alien bitch of yours?”
Sebastian began to physically shake. After days of solitary confinement, intense questioning, he felt like a coiled spring, wound too tight. He tried to hold on to his composure, closed his eyes briefly and he knew Faith had let go, she was falling, he could feel the cold wind in her hair…
He’d never felt such rage, but could not help smiling up at the doomed Cerberus operative, “I think you’re about to find out.”
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Hello! I’ve been looking through some of your art and I absolutely LOVE it. I was wondering, how do you color, especially with warmer tones. Thank you so much!
Waaah, thank you! :D
I’m not the best with tutorials, so pardon the messy explanation, but a lot of my coloring sorta just boils down to a mix of referencing pictures and relying on values.
Here’s a little example:
This one has colors I picked from Van Gogh’s Pine Trees Against a Red Sky with Setting Sun.
When coloring, I usually choose a “main” color that dictates the mood/overall look of the drawing. In backgrounds, it’ll be the color of the sky or leaves or just a color that dominates the overall setting. If you’re using a neutral color for the background or just focusing on a character, it helps to give that character a thematic color or palette. This helps to tie everything together.
I then choose colors that are monochromatic with the “main” ones, usually colors that are one or two shades away. Don’t be afraid to get weird with it though. I mostly chose colors that are yellowish-orange adjacent. I try to keep my color pallet limited, so occasionally I’ll use the same shade for different things.
Then I go for contrasting accent colors. These are usually colder tones, slightly opposite of the main. So, like, for a mainly red drawing, I’ll choose teal, orange and blue. This one has oranges and greens. Only choose a few of these, because these are supposed to be accents. They make things pop and break up monotony.
Now, the important part of making things feel warm is saturation:
Colder tones are simply desaturated in comparison to warmer ones.
The picture on the left, the green is in reality more of a yellowish-green, but desaturating the color makes it more green in comparison while still keeping the warm tone.
There’s more of a coherent method to this, but honestly I just play around with the colors and compare it to the “main” one. A lot of colors are contextual, meaning that you don’t need to necessarily get blue, just blue-ish.
Same can apply for coloring cold tones too!
Like I said, messy explanation; it’s mostly just how I do things and the result of having a lot of references around, but hope this helps!
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