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threewaysdivided · 11 months

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I just wanted to say: I love your art and especially your banner rn by talos! also your fic as well thank you for creating everything that you do for people, it’s awesome!

Second: what’s something that you’ve been chewing on lately, story wise? What character conflict, or plot point can you tell me about (that doesn’t spoil too much of course)? I wanna hear your thoughts about the characters you write and your head-cannons on them too! Just spit some word vomit at me!

Thank you!

My current banner art is actually a crop of the first paired piece I ever did to go with my Deathly Weapons fic. (Specifically Chapter 11, which I still have a soft spot for since it’s one of earliest chapters that really let me lean into scratching the thing-I-haven’t-seen-too-often-in-fanfic itch.)

I recently got my hands on a discounted Wacom (my digital art process got tanked a few years ago when my poor art-compatible hybrid tablet-laptop was tragically taken from us by a cracked motherboard) so I’m looking forward to getting into a faster art workflow again and maybe putting some new pieces out more easily. I’d like to do more comic art pieces for the Chapter 18 mission, and there’s a silly little concept drawing for the planned Mission 5 that might be new-blog-banner material if it turns out nicely. We’ll have to see how that goes.

As for what I’ve been chewing on story-wise lately… I’ve sort of been all over the place. I’m still on burnout recovery so I’ve been letting myself move non-sequentially, working on the bits my brain feels like focussing on rather than trying to force creativity where the juice isn’t flowing. (One of the things about being my type of writing-nerd is that “self-indulgent” for me means a story with plenty of material to analyse, which is very fun as a reader but has created a lot of work for myself as the writer. As mentioned in another post, I have a full-blown TV-show-style story-bible for this one.)

Recently, my authorial ping-pong-ing has been going into a fair bit of spoiler territory. There are some chunks of the Act III endgame plan which are underdeveloped in the specifics of what the big-boss bad-guys’ plan is, whether I want to involve the Anti-Ecto Acts more, and the logistics of both the counter-strategy our heroes are planning to use and how to make its more action-heavy parts look cool in writing. When I’m not doing that I’ve been focussing a lot on the upcoming Wally-centric chapters, which are a set I’ve been wanting to keep schtum about since there’s a small potential spoiler mixed in and I don’t want to risk giving the game up or pre-setting people’s expectations before they have a chance to blind read (even if a few people have already made some close guesses in the comments). It puts me in a bit of an odd-spot right now because the chapters I’m drafting are an immediate spoiler, the later sections I’m working on are a major spoiler and there’s a good chance that a lot of the character stuff going on in the middle won’t make a whole lot of coherent sense without prior context because of how I like to layer foreshadowing/development.

That said, Wally-centric chapters mean Wally thoughts, and of those I have plenty to share:

First of all, I want to establish that I really do like Wally as a character. The DW chapter set comprising Flashpoints through to Equilibrium is going to explore and develop some of his flaws and insecurities, which means he isn’t going to be looking his best, but it’s not meant to be a Ron The Death Eater situation. He’s just a complex person, and taking him warts and all means sometimes you have to get up close and personal on the warts.

Something that I’m maybe a bit over-conscious of when reviewing my DW story notes is worrying about letting Wally slide into just being punching-bag joke-fodder. Wally is quippy, irreverent, a little tactless and prone to being a bit of an impulsive goober who sometimes gets possessed by teenage boner-brain, which makes him easy to fall back on as a default source of incidental levity (whether cracking the joke or being the punchline). Because I’m now writing an 8-character ensemble where most non-focal characters only get a few lines per conversation, it’s easy for characters to slide into being defined by their strongest surface level trait(s)… and something I worry about with Wally is that his availability as a source of jokes runs the risk of Flanderisation into a disposable Scrappy/ Flirty Comic Relief, which isn’t his character. Wally is actually really important – not just for his scientific book-smarts but for his perceptiveness, earnestness and ability to function as one of the emotional barometers for the squad – so I always have it in the back of my mind to make sure I include enough moments that actually demonstrate those qualities and the other characters’ appreciation of them/ their friendship, so that it counterbalances the more light-hearted goofery.

I think he’s walking the same tightrope as Sokka from Avatar: the Last Airbender – yes, he tends to take the L more often than the others for comedy purposes and sometimes he gets stuck with supremely dumb side-plots for the sake of tonal balance, but to claim that it’s the entirety of his characterisation really misses the point by a wide mile.

On that note, I actually really like the decision YJ!Animated decided to go with in its first and only season (ahem) in giving Wally a normal and functional family background. I know that’s not the typical background for his comics counterparts (and no shade on other fan-writers who want to write AUs exploring the abuse dynamic, those are really interesting stories) but I think it was a smart deviation for the purposes of a large ensemble, and offered a fair bit of potential for cast-balance. It lets him serve an important role as the normal one – not only as an easy window into what the current lives of ordinary middle-class civilians look like (which is good because ordinary people are who our heroes are donning the masks to protect) but also as a touch-stone for the others, most of whom either come from different cultures or from very atypical backgrounds. Even if we discount the Impure Atlantean with military training, the ostracised White Martian and the Half-Alien clone-weapon, the other members of this line-up are an orphaned circus acrobat adopted by a billionaire, a girl from a dangerously dysfunctional criminal household where she was forced to fight her sibling, and a fledgling sorceress raised by an overprotective single Dad. The others might intellectually understand what a “normal” childhood and family look like but they don’t necessarily know it as intuitively and intimately as Wally does. That normality gives Wally the potential to be a more stable foundation for the others, a source of emotional contrast and of a necessary wholesome mundanity. That is a good thing for the Team to have. I think it also speaks volumes to the heart of his character. For this Wally, the Flash and heroism weren’t an escape from a bad personal situation. His life was actually pretty comfy and privileged - he didn’t experience a brutal wakeup to the injustices of the world or some other personal call to action. This is a Wally who opted into the game because he loves the players and sincerely believes in their values and mission. And while that might mean he has a more romanticised idea of what heroism entails – and will probably face some rough shocks down the line as that rosy vision runs into those more brutal realities – it also means he brings a sincere hopefulness to the job that is less hardened than a lot of his roughed-up, pre-jaded peers. Underneath the teen sarcasm and surface-level lancer/smart-guy traits, this Wally has as much power to be a stealth-Heart as any of his Flash!counterparts.

Something else I find interesting when using Wally is how a lot of his strengths and flaws feed into each other – and I think this alternate backstory is part of it. For all of his good heart Wally can come off as insensitive, and I think some of that could be read as a product of living a more charmed life. I think he’s susceptible to a thing that a lot of real people do – universalising their own personal experience as the default – and that while he is canonically a geek and somewhat genre-savvy about hero cliches, he’s a geek about in-universe media so he probably doesn’t think to apply those tropes to “real people” like himself or his colleagues. While this Wally is a skeptic, he’s not a cynic, and I think he might forget how much of an outlier he is in a world where things like living parents and loving parents are often mutually exclusive. He’s smart enough to connect dots but there’s a little blind-spot where he simply might not think to until one of the others jabs an elbow into his ribs, because his default view on humanity is in some ways a little kinder than typical due to that small but still significant amount of privilege.

At the same time, Wally is also someone who has probably run into (or watched his mentor run into) a lamp-post at high-speed at least once in his career. He contains multitudes and among those multitudes is an endless capacity for some absolute Looney-Tunes nonsense, which the world is 100% better off for having.

I love him, your honour.

#striking the balance between silly and genuine with Wally is a challenge but you gotta have both #young justice: deathly weapons #YJ:DW Meta #young justice #young justice (animated)#Young Justice Season 1 #Wally West #Kid Flash #DC Comics #potatoeofwisdom #3WD Answers

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meruz · 3 years

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Aforementioned long ask post please excuse me while i try to figure out tumblr's new text editor. I’ll get into the art meme questions first and then the rest at the end.

Ok first of all thank you all for sending in questions! Giving me an excuse to talk hehe. I’ll address these in number order. Here’s a link to the ask meme for reference but also I’ll restate the question for ease of reading.

1. When did you get into art?

Super cliche answer but I don’t remember a time where I WASN’T the weird art kid! I started keeping a dedicated sketchbook when I was about 12? But here’s a page from my kindergarten journal about what I want to be when I grow up.

2. What art-related sites have you ever signed up for?

LOL this is a weird question. Not sure why so many people want to know. Anyways I definitely had a dA. more than one dA account. I used to browse oekakis when I was a kid but I think I was only signed up to some small ones that internet friends owned. What else...? Mangabullet,Tegakie, Paintberri, iscribble back when that was a thing, instagram if that COUNTs, I used to post art on livejournal and dreamwidth too. Patreon, I guess. Gumroad, inprnt, bigcartel, storenvy all for selling stuff.

In terms of resources.. I have a schoolism account that I’m sharing with friends. Used to take classes on coursera for free. I signed up to textures.com for work recently haha. I can’t remember if I ever had an account on posemaniacs. Did they have accounts...? I definitely used to visit all the time.

3. Show us your oldest piece of art you have on hand.

Alright here’s me actually logging into my old deviantart account. These are from September 2008 So I was 13 years old. I don’t have a deviantart account from before then because 13 was the required age for having an account and I didn’t want to lie about my age because I wanted people to be impressed by how young yet clearly incredible at art I was LOL.

4. What defines your artistic style?

You guys are probably more equipped to answer this than me but uh... I wanna say... Focus on colors. And... a slightly heavy hand? Like confident... not always well-considered mark making HAH...

Also I think I have a pretty healthy mix of american comics/manga influences. I feel like people who are into american comics always think my art is too manga and people who are into anime/manga always think my art is too american. And I’m taking that as a good sign.

5. Do you practice other styles/have you tried other styles in the past?

I like to think I switch it up a bunch! I mean, these are pretty different, right?

I think I’ve mentioned this before but one thing I really took away from art school is that, for an illustrator at least, art style shouldn’t be consistent. Your greatest weapon is changing the aspects of your style based on the task, the emotions and message you want to illustrate etc. So depending on the project I’m working on, the fandom I’m drawing for, whether I want something to be funny or serious or dramatic, I’ll change things about my style all the time.

One thing I don’t rly post on here is really tight polished work and that’s because I do that for my day job haha. If you’re not paying me... I’m probably not gonna color in the lines.

6. What levels of artistic education have you had?

I have a whole ass diploma LOL. Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. from the Rhode Island School of Design. And I had a great college experience tbh. Besides the student loans. If any of you guys are thinking about art school feel free to e-mail or message me questions or concerns, I’ll be happy to help. Be as honest as I can be.

7. Show us at least one picture you drew or sketched recently that you did not put on a public site.

heres the wandavision kids. Uhh what else do I have...I feel like I’m rummaging for loose change here...

assorted valentines prep doodles

8. What is your favourite piece that you have done?

Well, obviously this is gonna change all the time and generally it’s gonna be my most recent piece LOL. So yeah, why the hell not. I’ll say it’s this one. I have a pretty short memory which I count as a blessing for an artist. I don’t dwell that long on older work and it keeps me moving forward.

10. What do you like most about your art?

I like that it’s something that only I would make! I had this thought fairly recently and I wrote it down in my sketchbook, it’s pretty cheesy and rambling but it felt revolutionary at the time:

So yeah. I like my art best when it’s the most me and for me. And I like it least when it feels like I’m just making something for social media or for other people’s expectations or whatever.

14. What do you like drawing the most?

Kids in baggy clothing are like my go-to LOL idk if that’s obvious. but also I like being challenged so lately I’ve really loved drawing multi-character compositions, environments, weird angles, etc.

oh i LOVE drawing the underside of shoes lol. And bandages. People that are kinda beat up.. I think it comes from getting a bunch of cuts all the time. I’m always patching myself up and I want to patch characters up too.

15. What do you like drawing the least?

mmm I try to find something to like in every drawing but lets see... I don’t like doing commissions of people’s dogs. Just because it’s normally like... a family friend and my mom volunteered me without my consent and I don’t even really know what they’re expecting me to draw and I don’t even get to meet the dog. Also I’m not that great at dog anatomy. Trying to learn though.

18. What is your purpose for drawing?

This could have a million answers! Uhhh to GIT GOOD??? But also to express myself... and also to make money... I mean it depends on what the drawing IS. I draw fanart mostly to connect to people in the fandom so if you ever see me drawing fanart please take it as like an open invitation to talk to me about the character haha.

20. How would you rank your art? (poor, mediocre, good, etc.)

Good!!! I have a lot of self-confidence primarily born out of ignorance and a short attention span. If I don’t think too hard about how many other artists are mindblowingly unfathombly good... its easy to think I’m good too! LOL

In all seriousness though, I think the opinion a person has of their art is like a crazy balancing act, right? Like you have to think you suck enough to want to get better but also you have to think you’re good enough to not want to give up. I think we’re all walking that line, I know I am! But also I’m a glass half-full type of person so. Most of the time I feel good about it.

22. List at least one of your “artspirations.”

This is a good question because I’ve been trying and failing to put together one of those “influence map” memes for like a full month now. What’s giving me a hard time is I feel like none of these are actually really obvious “““influences”““ in my art? Like it’s hard to see a lot of them in the work I make...? But idk maybe you guys’ll see what I can’t.

And these are just a couple! God there’s so many more. I could talk about other artists for ages, from all different genres of art. Daumier, Rockwell like every illustrator out there, Dana Gibson, Alex Toth, Hiroshi Yoshida, a lot of the Brandywine School. Lots of current working artists too, Karl Kerschl, frikkin Masashi Kishimoto lol, Jake Wyatt, Richie Pope, Edouard Caplain, Matt Cook, Sachin Teng, - lots of big internet artists, Sophie Li, Freddy Carrasco, Milliofish, Angela Sung... like all my friends from art school too. I could just keep going but I’ll stop for now lol.

24. Do you have a shameful art past? (recolour sprite comics, tracing art, etc.)

I mean if that’s how we’re defining shameful?? sure LOL. It’s not sprite comics but I used to do pokemon sprite recolors all the time. And I used to trace manga panels and color them... Granted this was all when I was like under 12 yrs old so it’s not even embarrassing. Can you really call it shameful when a 7 year old wets the bed or whatever? Not really. In fact some of these are cool as fuck. Look

25. Draw a picture!

Man I’m so tired now but here.

I used to get a lot of compliments for drawing people smiling lol but I don’t think I’ve drawn a lot of smiling lately.. here’s proof I’ve still got it.

OK MEME DONE. onto the rest.

I read this ask first thing when i opened my computer in the morning and it made me really emotional.. I’m so glad my sketches could help you!!

I think a lot of artists on social media talk about the struggle of making art but imo not enough people talk about the joy! Like I know it’s corny but. I really meant what I said at the beginning of that sketchbook about re-contextualizing art around process and progress > product and perfection. I think its super important..! The strength of messy, unfinished, and energetic art! For the feeling of it, for the love it!

That's crazy!!! I hope you like 'em. The whole line of x-books is really good rn imo.

Hi! I totally have the answer for digital stuff on my faq lol. But in terms of drawing on paper.. it varies! I tend to use sketchbooking and any on-paper doodling I do as a way to loosen up/warm-up or experiment. But right now my go-to aresenal is:

from top > bottom

- kuretake no.55 doublesided brush pen

- tombow fudenosuke

- muji 0.38 ballpoint

- medium size poscas

- grey tombow double brush pens

- good ol bic mechanical pencil

not EXACTly sure which inking you referring to from my sketchbook but if I had to take a guess it'd probably be the kuretake no55. That's been my main inker, lately. Great for sketching with the thin end too.

You can print out and eat my art if you like. Just please don't mass produce or re-sell. <3

Thanks! I've come to accept that my art is always gonna be sort of gestural and painty naturally. It's getting it to tighten up enough to be legible that's hard lol...

uh yeah lol I agree actually. I think yolei is great.

I assume these asks are related? LOL

1) Yeah totally true. I love David.

2) I don’t take requests, sorry! But if you want to commission me to draw Legion i would be MORE than happy to. Just e-mail me at [email protected].

<33333333333333333333333333

#ask #anonymous

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mrfutureboy · 3 years

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I would like to know when you started drawing and where your passion for fanart started 😊

Oh FUCK dude i did not see this i’m so fucking sorry this is so late 😭 damn you, tumblr, for not fucking notifying me!! Anyway buckle up this is gonna be much longer than you asked for <3

Honestly ive kinda been drawing all my life! I hope that doesnt sound dumb cuz obviously almost everyone drew pictures when they were kids, but i know that it’s been a consistent hobby for me since i was little. By the time i was in 3rd grade I was hoarding notebooks to draw in. Cuz that’s something fun about me: i had a real huge habit of drawing in things that werent sketchbooks. Through middle school and beyond I did buy/receive sketchbooks, but I started out with various kinds of notebooks. One I had from like 2nd grade was like a hardcover, stationary-type notebook that I drew cats in lol, and I have 2 velvet lisa frank notebooks from 3rd grade. In high school and college I had a really bad habit of drawing in the margins on my notes and on handouts the teacher/professor would give. Those classes where the prof just prints out all the notes beforehand and gives them to you to follow along? Oh man, I spent so many classes barely listening while I drew on them! I also used to draw on my physics homework and tests and sometimes I even got extra credit for them (thank you jeff :D). I actually have a folder of various drawings I’ve kept from that 8yr time period and a lot of them are on classwork 😂

Obviously, I’ve been doing a lot of digital art lately, which I’m sure is what u were more curious about rather than the shit about drawing on my homework. I got a surface pro as a graduation gift in 2016 bc prior to that i had a wacom tablet and a janky ass laptop, so the gift was kinda a 2-in-1: i can do schoolwork AND art easily! i like digital art a lot and honestly im still learning new things abt it every time i draw. I use Leonardo currently (i’ll skip that story) but I started out doing digital art on sketchfu WITHOUT the wacom tablet in maaaaybe 2012??? 2011??? does anyone on this site remember sketchfu? Honestly couldnt even tell u how i found that site hahah the internet was just full of wonders back in the day. RIP sketchfu. Once i got the tablet tho some time later i used sketchfu still (i think) but also gimp and krita i believe.

Oh i suppose I should mention that i took art all four years of highschool and also minored in it in college! So it’s something i did academically as well as for fun. I keep thinking about going to art school for realsies but idk. I’m already $$$ in debt from my first degree i dont feel like adding to that 😅😓

Ok now for the second part of your question: I’ve also pretty much always done fan art! Ive never really been one for OC’s, EXCEPT for the self-insert superhero double life “comics” i wrote about a poodle named Sassy when i was in third grade. And then the knock off “comics” i wrote at a later time which honestly it was weird that i did a knock off of my own thing rather than just adding them to the original or making it a spin off with at least one of the og characters. Cuz it wasnt a spin off!! But anyway there wasnt really much to any of these characters; i just needed vessels to get my weird ideas out.

So anyway yeah most of what ive ever drawn has been fan art or self portraits, because its just easier for me to take characters that already exist and bend them to my will (artistically). Well excluding art assignments in school i guess because i would usually have to draw something specific and therefore not something self indulgent. But yeah ive drawn for lots of fandoms like the earliest i remember is warrior cats. Then theres things like pokemon and warriors and random other books i read thru middle school (i used to read a LOT but now im practically illiterate); spn, sherlock, and marvel through high school; and then marvel and bttf thru the end of hs and beyond. Idk i also have always loved looking at other peoples fan art and so im like “shit i wanna do that too!”. Tho i will say marvel was my biggest fandom and the one i had the longest interest in, so that was probably where the passion REALLY came from cuz I was drawing marvel stuff for such a long time (tho not posting shdjsk u have to trust me), but ive been doing fan art forever :)

(Of course, a lot of the fan art i was making prior to recently was drawn in lined notebooks or on homework sheets or what have you, and I wasn’t posting really any of it, but i was still making it and a good chunk of it still exists. Oh i should also mention most of it was with pencils or ballpoint pens like i wasnt doing anything too fancy. There was some digital art in the highschool-college time frame but it also really wasnt…much. Honestly i barely posted any of it here but I know some of it’s on deviantart)

I cant pinpoint the exact time I started getting more “serious” about my art in general, but i know the first pandemic lockdown gave me more free time and i was less stressed about schoolwork so i just kinda had a good outlet. (Tho i will say that prior, I had been in a life drawing club for a short while, and i had also been working on a personal sketchbook project that had me pretty ~inspired~ to do art. Also i watched twin peaks around this time and it inspired a lot of Feelings and i was making funky collages and other art pieced that were sometimes related to that. Some of those are on deviantart)

Honestly I think the Big thing with my digital art was coincidentally getting back into BTTF the summer of the 35th anniversary bc the fandom here was THRIVING and i was like “oh shit wait i want to contribute!” But as i kept drawing i kept wanting to improve and that leads us to right now where im constantly trying new things (whether subtle or obvious) and challenging myself to do full body drawings with different poses, and doing screencap redraws and what have you for various reasons (backgrounds, proportions, pose, etc)

So yeah :) Basically I’ve been doing fan art forever (I didnt even get into all the mediums ive tried but that’s another conversation bc this is already so long and convoluted) and it’s kinda coincidental that ive suddenly really gotten back into it and have improved dramatically in such a short time. Thank you so much @rovermcfly for the ask and again im really sorry you had to wait so long for a response! Stupid tumblr

#rovermcfly #signed sealed delivered #THANK U SM I HOPE U ENJOY KY RAMBLING :)#id love to ramble more if theres anything else u’d like to hear about my art journey :) bc i know this is all over the place lmfao #i will say some periods of life were a bit more inspired than others and thats bc i like will not draw if im too stressed #bc likely if im too stressed im too tired. see: a few weeks ago when that job was draining my life force

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hazelenergy · 4 years

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How I Digitally Paint like a Scenic Artist/Designer

Aka: how I did this and put my degree to good use.

LONG POST WARNING

Step 1: Research.

First off, get to your image search. If you are going to be using Google, you may want to type “-pinterest” in the search to eliminate the countless boards.

I had to figure out clothing that is vaguely late 1800s. I found a multitude of reference images that were fancier clothes- but I wanted to find images of clothing for kindred across all social classes. Photographs from the era and paintings are your friend. They will more accurately showcase what was worn.

After Fashion research comes location research. The 1890s in America is known for the rapid industrialization. Factories were getting bigger and work days were getting longer. But, I wanted the moonlight to be cascading into the place, illuminating the scene. This means I needed to find a structure that had skylights or let sunlight in. And the best images I found? Slaughterhouses. Fitting, huh?

The same rule for fashion still stands- if you can find photographs or paintings from the era- they’re better. There are tons of places still standing today from the 1800s. But today, they look WAY different. Ya know, Abandoned! So just be sure to take this into consideration if you search “abandoned slaughterhouses” or go trespassing like I did.

Lastly, pose research. Finding the poses for a fight scene can be tedious. So, I enlisted some help from a few fight choreographers and stunt men. You can record their fights and play them back at quarter or half speed. You can also get a mirror and flop on the floor a bunch. I did both. This lets you see the action/motion lines you are going to replicate in the drawing. Heres how we initially did fina’s pose:

And sometimes you have to go back and get a clean shot. I ended up using this pose for the axe.

Step 2: Set up and Background!

When you open a new file, set it to the dimensions and resolution you want. I was working at 600. Usually, I’m working at 300-350. You can always reduce resolution. Its hard to prevent fuzzy lines if you increase it later.

I cannot stress the following enough:

You work background to foreground. Big Shapes and areas to little shapes. Work your way forward. What this means is you need to fill in as much space as possible first. Then build your details. I prefer working as follows: Big Solid tones, Soft shadows, Dark Shadows, Highlights, then final blend. Once you finish this, put an overlay on top. This knocks everything back and helps create the illusion of depth. See this at work with the video below or here

Step 3: Figure Drawings + Composition

Utilize that research and images you collected to pose your characters. I create subfolders for each set of figures. Organization is important here. This will help keep you on the right layer and prevent the eternal digital artist struggle of “Fuck that was on the wrong layer!”

Even after you move on to lineart and shading, Keep the sketch layer as a reference. You may need to see what youre original notes/ figures looked like as you do the lineart and shade. Don’t be afraid to move them around and alter the composition rn. You want to be able to make changes. Make notes! Detail light sources!

I’m about to through out some art jargon:

You want to think about asymmetric balance. The easiest way to achieve this in an eye-pleasing manner is to use the Fibonacci spiral. Yeah. This boi:

Place your figures and actions in a similar sequence to the spiral and the viewer’s eye tends to naturally follow it. This is sometimes called the Golden Ratio in the art world.

Doesn’t need to be perfectly on the spiral. You can break it- but its an excellent tool to plan how things move in the piece.

Step 4: Lineart

Once you got things sketched- its time to do the lineart. I’m using clip studio paint’s standard brushes. Nothing fancy. I often switch between the G-pen and the For Effect Liner. Mapping and Turnip are for thicker lines.

Usually I set these pens to a specific thickness depending on where I’m drawing.

My background figures are lined at 0.05 thickness, the midground is .1 to .2, Fina is .3 and the foreground is .4. I set my stabilization high to help keep my lines smooth. Stabilization 100 means there’s a significant delay between where the pen is and the cursor. I like the stabilization to be at 20 for freehanding and at 50 ish for outlining. Dont become completely reliant on the stabilization though. Good and smooth lineart is drawn from the arm not the wrist. Your range of motion is severely limited if you only move your wrist. Practice moving from your elbow and you’ll be surprised how much smoother your lines get.

Once I finish lining the figures, I usually go around it with an outline. This does three things:

1. Solidifies the figure and cleans lineart for paint bucket tool. More on that in the next step.

2. Its a stylistic choice. Helps give it that comic book feel with a heavy outline.

3. Pushes figures forward or back in the composition. Thicker outline helps denote that a figure is farther forward than another. My background figures have no outline to push them away

Step 5: Digitally coloring

For each figure you are going to select outside the lineart.

Create a new layer under the lineart

Invert the selection. Paint bucket. You should now have a solid shape of the figure under the lineart. Do not deselect.

Create a new layer above the one color. Title it solid colors. Paint in thick, solid tones. I like to use the mapping pen and turnip pen to color in my solid tones: skin, clothing, hair, etc.

After that, deselect. Create a multiply layer if you can. If your program does not have a multiplier function, Pick a tone you want to use for shadows and lower the opacity (usually 30-40% I like to use lavenders or blue tones). It will not be as vibrant, but you can edit it in post. Select off of the solid colors layer. I like to start with skin tones. Use the airbrush tool to create soft shadows. You don’t want to create harsh lines on this layer.

Then repeat this process with harsh lines.

Then knock it all back with an overlay. If you dont have the ability to create an overlay, you can again drop a solid color and lower the opacity, but you’ll have to mess with the color balance/ brightness/contrast to let all the hard work come through.

You’re going to repeat this for every single figure. Here’s a few color theory tips though.

Your overlay colors should be darker (not more vibrant) in the foreground and lighter (avoid using pure white) in the background. This helps with the depth of the piece. Things closer tend to be darker (not always true, depends on lighting)

You can choose to use color theory to aid your shadows. Instead of choosing black or grey for shadows, choose a complimentary color. I used a lot of green for this piece, I used red for really dark shadows. Its not that black drains color- its just loses some depth if not used carefully.

Keep your colors consistent. Helps unify the piece. You can strategically break the consistency to draw focus. For example, Fina is the only figure with a true blue overlay. This helps her stand out from the other figures who have reds and greens.

Step 6: Touch Ups and Final Renderings

Now comes the most tedious part. If you’re like me, your computer fans have been whirring for the last few hours trying to render this monster of a file. If you havent already, SAVE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THINGS GOOD

These are the last four layers I have for the entire piece. Here, I am trying to create effective and believable lighting. This kind of work I have only been able to achieve in clip studio or photoshop. You can do it with normal layers, but choose your colors CAREFULLY. Stay away from pure white. Carefully utilize your knowledge of light and shadow to create soft highlights. Harsh lines tend to be a stylistic choice for me. The final layer, subtract, dulls out harsh red tones. I used this as a final overlay to help put everyone and everything in the scene. Without it, things are a little too green and skin tones are a little too blushed for vampires.

The challenge here is I want to tone down the red, but not lose the vibrancy of the blood. So, shift it to a blue. This also helped reinforce the “nighttime” effect. Its only a slight change.

Final thoughts:

Whenever you finish something, its important to reflect.

1. I am so FUCKING PROUD OF MYSELF. This is easily one of the most complicated pieces I’ve done in a while- and I’ve made 16′ tall faux stained glass. Brag. Let yourself feel awesome cuz you just made something awesome.

2. I timed myself on the piece. I could have easily spent another 7 hours on it. But its important to know when to stop messing with it. Partially for budget reasons but also when you get down to the details you can make yourself go insane. Theres also a ton of detail work I lost cuz of overlays or its just too small to notice. Fina’s face? hard to see cuz its not close enough.

3. I needed to take frequent breaks for this piece. That was good. Resting and stretching was very important. That is one of the reasons why I was able to work so fast.

4. I started doing more digital art in April 2020. I have to say, practice makes perfect. I practice drawing and digital painting for at least 3 hours a day.

That discipline has allowed me to improve so rapidly. So- I don’t wanna hear shit about I can’t possibly get this good! Or I couldn’t even draw a stick figure! BULLSHIT. You can. Get yourself some free software like Krita or Autodesk sketchbook and start playing!

And thats what I got! Thanks for coming with me on this long post!

#digital art #my art #okay to reblog #how to #long post

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domesticangel · 5 years

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here’s a big ol dump of art thats been sitting in my folders for anywhere between 1-3 years that at this point ill probably never finish to accompany some Really Long rambling under the cut

im a junior in college now (””should be”” a senior/whatever that means/since i took a gap year but) but when i was in my like....sophomore-senior years of high school i drew like.....every. freaking. day. like literally i feel like i would draw like, 1 or 2 fully fleshed out, give-all-my-attention to type drawings every single day of my life, and i always had so much fun doing it.

after having a while to self-reflect though ive concluded theres kind of some layers to this. because i figure theres at least a little romanticization of the past going on, because i KNOW i wasn't a very happy person in high school; in fact, mental health wise, late high school into my freshman year of college was probably my very lowest point. i did lack motivation at these points, but not for drawing; i kind of put off school work and college prep, which wasn't good, but drew like HELL every single day, and pretty much all of it was fan art. thats one of the main differences between me then and me now; i used to dedicate so much of my time and energy to “fandom” and the media i was into, and it totally fueled my desire to draw, whereas now, i obviously still enjoy different series, but... my life doesn't really revolve around them like it used to.

the way i see it, i think i definitely used to use media and fandom participation as a form of escapism, but not really the good kind... i think it was more of a maladaptive obsession i failed to keep in check that i know for a fact really got in the way of my schoolwork, and i only doubled down when it came time to apply to colleges, because of course that stressed me out and scared me; during times like that, which was almost always due to my mental health issues at the time, i clung to fandom because its what brought me comfort and kind of shielded me from my responsibilities.

either way, that obsession with whatever media i was into at any given time is also what i think gave me that desire to draw all the time that i miss so much. i think being THAT invested in something is what actually gave me the constant desire to create, and being able to create something and feel accomplished in something without having to face anything uncertain or scary kept me totally hooked. so its weird trying to parse how i feel about that time period in my life.

on one hand, my mental health has gotten SO much better. obviously ive matured a lot since high school, so over time ive learned about much better coping mechanisms and ideas about mental health, ive gotten on a medication that works for me, and ive really gotten into my major so I'm really enjoying school as well. and obviously this is progress that i would never, ever, just want to give up or throw away. however, its also this progress that seems to have inadvertently influenced how often i draw, because I'm no longer fully diving into media/fandom because i dont need that escapism anymore, and therefore i don't have this like, feverish, obsession-fueled desire to draw like i used to. its kind of a double edged sword i guess and something i don't have a clear answer to.

i also think another factor i can't ignore is that i used to have a very large following in a lot of fandoms on tumblr, and if i remember correctly before i deleted my old tumblr i had around 12,000 followers that i had accumulated over probably the course of about 5 years. so that meant that my fan art got a LOT of attention. not to sound like hur-de-blur-social-media-is-evil but like at least in my personal experience, i kind of taught myself to think, “your art is only worth something if it gains a huge, instantaneous reaction, and peoples’ reaction to your art is the ONLY thing that decides its value.” and thinking like that really has hurt how i feel about my art over time! often times, after deleting my tumblr, i would find myself thinking, “well whats the point in doing any art, because nobodys going to see it anyway” so i honestly didn't draw or feel anything for art for a long, long time. in that time i channeled my feelings and energy into much more harmful activities, and i really could've used art at the time, but it had become such a worthless concept in my head since i could no longer associate it with immediate praise and attention.

i forgot a lot of important things about art, most importantly, how it could be fulfilling to just ME and that that was ok. i forgot that drawing regularly would help me improve, or give me something to focus on when i felt down, or give me the power to create something when i felt like i messed up everything else around me, or just make me happy because i thought of something i wanted to put on paper and then just put it on paper. and thats one of the main reasons i created this tumblr; i want to kind of rekindle that passion i had for art, but this time, without the maladaptive obsessions and without the need for approval from everyone around me. and i know this isn't a unique struggle; i know lots of artists who share their work online get discouraged by how little attention their work gets after they put so much time and effort into it, and like them, i don't have an answer as to how to “fix” this feeling either. but i can at least try. i want to prove to myself that the time i spent feeling hopeful and happy about something i created justifies its entire existence regardless of now many notes it gets, whether its OCs, fan art, digital, traditional, whatever. i just want to learn how to draw because it makes me happy.

that said, finding the motivation can be hard. however, i think I'm sometimes a little too hard on myself. I'm on winter break right now, and ive kind of defaulted to thinking “you haven't drawn enough, you've wasted so much time wishing the motivation fairy would visit you and make you draw that you haven't put in the time and effort needed to make yourself do it, youre pissing away every chance you have.” but when i think about it, i don't think thats true.

ive spent a lot of time thinking about OCs recently, which is kind of wild, because i haven't had the desire to make OCs in probably literally ten freakin years, so thats honestly huge for me--i actually really WANT to make original content despite the fact that i know it won't get as much attention as fan art, and i want to just do it for me, because i want to get it out. ive done a whole character sheet and I'm working on another! and sure, it didn't take me half a day like it maybe used to would've, but what does that matter? i thought, hey, i wanna get this out, and i got it out, and thats good enough for me. ive even written up storyboards in case i wanna ever make some small comics about my OCs just for fun, which is exciting cause ive never done it before. ive also been working on a commission for a close friend who wanted me to design her a fursona, and not only has it been a really fun process, but its the first commission ive done in a really, really long time, and it feels really rewarding. on top of that, I'm working on a painting for my dad as a late christmas present, and its my first really ambitious traditional piece in a while, so thats been pretty exciting too. and sure, ive done some fan art, but it feels like its coming from a better place; its less “please assign me value” and more just, really feeling something for the characters and wanting to try to connect with other people who feel something for those characters as well.

so, while it seems challenging, i also need to remind myself not to be blind to my own progress. i think i am doing better, and feeling better about art even if sometimes it feels like i spend way more time thinking about doing art instead of actually doing it. i think thats probably normal, and i think i can keep heading in the right direction.

ANYWAY this got really long but sometimes typing out how i feel about something and then reading it back helps me understand my own head a little better, so thats ok

#art #theres some scattered tf2 stuff in here but its mostly old tf2 ocs so

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ff7central · 6 years

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Creator Spotlight: Waifujuju

Mod Miri here, with the first in our series of Creator Spotlights. This time the random number generator has summoned for us artist @waifujuju. I’ve gotten a few commissions from Juju, and have been following her for a while. (I even have some of her motivational art on my cubicle wall at work.)

Want to be on a future spotlight? Sign up on the FF7Central directory to get in on the list: https://goo.gl/forms/u0h5rJXmgv40zX9m2

Miri: Which of your works is the most memorable to you? I don’t necessarily mean favourite or best work, it could be the work that taught you the most making it or that holds a special reason in its creation.

Juju: Probably my comic of Cloud put to the lyrics of Halsey's "Control." It took a super long time throughout a period of struggling but it turned out really well despite everything! It's an idea I've had for a long while and it was great to finally put it into action. Plus, it was fantastic practice for composition and panelling! ( http://waifujuju.tumblr.com/post/149415194224/cloud-weekday-4-lyrics-control-by-halsey )

Miri: Comments on the reblog, or in the tags. Do you have a preference?

Juju: I love the comments I get either way, but the ones in tags tend to be more fun since people seem to like to scream in the tags! My favorite tags are ones where people who reblog my art just type in all caps or say something like "good job op."

Miri: Who is your favourite character from the FFVII setting? What do you love about them?

Juju: Cloud Strife for sure! I could write an essay on all the ways I love his character and all the intricacies of his character but I'll just leave it with I love his personality and character growth! He's a really outstanding protagonist who inspires a lot of strength and endurance.

Miri: Favourite media to work in?

Juju: I mostly work with traditional and digital art! Digital is a lot of fun to experiment with lighting and colors, though I've lately been trying out watercolor pencils!

Miri: Inquiring minds have asked if you have any tips for dealing with art block/slump.

Juju: When I hit an art block I mostly just try to draw through it, as asinine as that sounds. I take requests from friends and followers to see if I can pave my way through the slump and still try to make something that might not make me happy, but may make the receiver happy. Otherwise, I let myself doodle. It's very freeing and refreshing to just draw whatever and see where it goes, without worrying about if it's good or bad!

Miri: Is there a character/idea you haven’t gotten to yet that you really want to do?

Juju: I have tons of AUs that I really wanna draw out eventually! Mostly comics about Zack and Cloud on the run or another song-based comic! Otherwise, I want to try to draw the Turks or Avalanche as a big group family more! (Miri: yessss, more Turks!)

Miri: Any remake thoughts or hopes you’d like to talk about?

Juju: I'm extremely excited for the remake! I know there's a lot of uncertainties regarding the quality and how much it will stick to the original plot, but I'm super excited for new fans to come in with all their new ideas and experiences! I'm also hoping that the remake will carry some of the original game's cooky charms along for the ride!

Miri: Throw a headcannon at us that you’d like to see more of.

Juju: I personally think Yuffie and Cloud would get along fantastically after the events of the game. I would love to think they play pranks on Vincent or Cid together and go on materia expeditions!

Miri: Favourite party idea when playing FFVII? They don’t have to actually work, so much as you like the idea of them together as a fighting party.

Juju: My usual team is Cloud, Yuffie, and Vincent! I really enjoy their dynamic, especially when Vincent gets snarky. Plus, their skillsets really balance each other out! Otherwise, I really dig Cloud, Red XIII, and Barrett!

Miri: Do you have a favourite/easiest character to draw? Or a character you tend to draw when you need some comforting/relaxing art time?

Juju: Cloud is very obviously my favorite and I draw him all the time! Although, it definitely took me time to learn how to draw his hair. Cloud's a very good subject for both fluff and vent art! If he's not my favorite, than I probably enjoy drawing Aeris and Yuffie the most! They're both very expressive and fun to draw in sillier poses!

Miri: Are you open for commissions right now? Drop your link.

Juju: I am! My prices and regulations are right here: waifujuju.tumblr.com/tagged/daily-reblog

Miri: Anything you’d like to say to the community?

Juju: Thank you so much for being such a fantastic and welcoming community! I started my daily art blog around 3 years ago so that I can get involved with the community and provide some of my silly art and it's been such an enjoyable time! I've met some absolutely amazing people within this fandom and here's hoping to meeting even more when the remake comes out!

Miri: Here’s a few pieces I picked out (with some help from friends) to share with everyone

Sefikura Week (mini comic): http://waifujuju.tumblr.com/post/170139131820/sefikura-week-day-1-showing-up-unexpectedly

Cloud and Reno: http://waifujuju.tumblr.com/post/162534369760/my-part-of-an-art-trade-for-kayoli

Post AC Puppet Cloud (mini comic): http://waifujuju.tumblr.com/post/157924191625/ok-so-i-saw-your-sefikura-with-cloud-getting

Cloud and Jenova (fic art): http://waifujuju.tumblr.com/post/155347625170/the-failures-have-arrived-a-lil-something-for

Cloud and Jenova (phone wallpaper): http://waifujuju.tumblr.com/post/120313055050/phoneipod-background-for-ravenclawkohai-hope

Cloud and Vincent Immortal AU: http://waifujuju.tumblr.com/post/170928796070/immortal-cloud-and-puppet-cloud-have-taken-over-my

Motivational Seph: http://waifujuju.tumblr.com/post/161110269275/hey-juju-can-you-maybe-draw-a-small-motivational

Cloud “Copycat” Animation: http://waifujuju.tumblr.com/post/171708583560/i-cant-remember-who-i-am-everythings-a-blur

#blogging #creator spotlight #waifujuju #community

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kegisaroused · 6 years

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The Last Jedi

I have a lot of thoughts. A lot of them are not good. Thoughts are under the cut in no particular order. Probably a little rambling/incomplete maybe I’ll write something more put together later IDK

MAJOR HUGE SPOILERS OBVIOUSLY

Okay so first, stuff I actually liked:

-Luke seeing the two suns in his last moments. One of the few moments with Luke’s character that didn’t feel totally off.

-Luke handing Leia the bauble from the falcon and the old love theme stabbing me right through the goddamn heart.

-Finn and Poe having very few actual interactions and still managing to be gay as hell.

-I love the Porgs and the Crait foxes fuck all y’all.

-I also liked Rose a lot and would love to see her actually get better character development. Her tasering Finn was fantastic.

-Rose and Finn’s little side jaunt has me so torn because despite it being totally out of place and gimmicky it also had some of the better character interactions/development in the whole movie? Not that that’s saying much

-Luke basically trying to get Rey to leave by purposefully being as much of a creepy old weirdo as possible.

-R2 playing Leia’s original message. MY HEART.

-Laura Dern ramming the cruiser into the First Order at hyperspeed was really fucking cool.

-Yoda being Yoda (when he WAS Yoda, but that’s for the next section)

-Leia using the force FOR ONCE (though the how was real stupid, but again... next section)

-Rey being happy to see Finn having a bond with Rose and smiling at it rather than being jealous or something stupid like that.

-Rey NOT giving Kylo another chance at the end. Like... mmkay buddy I tried but you made the wrong choice I’m shutting the door in your face now BYE.

-That said, I was really afraid of the stuff between Rey and Kylo because the shippers with spoilers had been making it seem like the romance angle was REALLY played up but... it wasn’t? At all? Don’t get me wrong, it doesn’t shut down that angle but the nature of their connection felt ambiguous. The music cues did not indicate a romance, and Snoke straight up SAYS that Kylo’s conflict and draw to Rey was something he was putting into his head so that he’d bring Rey to him. I also feel like Daisy and Adams acting choices were emphatically NOT hinting at a romantic dynamic. I was afraid the shirtless scene was gonna be some sort of awkward flustered Rey and instead it was her just being genuinely annoyed like STFU and put a fucking shirt on.

Now... on to THE BAD:

-The pacing. HOOOOLY HELL THE PACING. This movie was paced so badly. It felt simultaneously like it went on forever, but also moved so fast there was never breathing room. It felt manic and confused. Also the whole movie seems to take place over the course of like... a day.

-EVERYONE was out of character at least half the time. Everyone either pulled shit that didn’t make sense for them to drive the plot or they completely rolled back their character development to rehash shit. TFA already dealt with Finn needing to stop running from his problems, why is he immediately trying to run away again? His attempted heroic sacrifice at the end would have been a good character moment... if we hadn’t already HAD that moment in the last movie. Poe was reduced to the “reckless hothead” archetype and not only had to learn a lesson that not only didn’t make sense for him, but he had to learn it twice. In the same movie.

-The CGI gimmicks. It was treading pretty damn far into prequel territory with the unnecessary CGI animals where practical effects would have not only sufficed but felt much more organic.

-I’m so happy they finally let Leia use the force but her floating herself back into the ship was SO STUPID LOOKING. I wanted to laugh and I am 100% sure that was not the intent. Carrie Fisher did not die for this.

-Fake Luke at the end was stupid because it was immediately obvious. He was digitally edited to look younger, he was using a lightsaber that WE JUST SAW GET DESTROYED instead of the lightsaber he actually HAS, it was just... dumb.

-Speaking of dumb: Luke’s entire motivation was stupid and made absolutely zero sense if you know anything about Luke Skywalker. You’re talking about the only person in the galaxy who believed Darth Vader could be redeemed. Like... that’s literally the WHOLE POINT OF HIS STORY IN THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY. You’re gonna have me believe that Luke Fucking Skywalker was so easily scared by the dark side that he (even for a SECOND) contemplated killing a teenager? No, no, no fuck right off with that shit. If anything it should have been REY who thought Kylo was an irredeemable monster and Luke convincing her to give him a chance. Even if in the end he throws away that chance. You can still make the point of “maybe not everyone can be saved” without committing character assassination on Luke. Like what the hell even was that.

-The dialogue was so clunky a lot of the time. Yoda for example: there were moments where he was perfect (him smacking Luke in the face and being like YEP FUCK IT BURN THE TREE WHO NEEDS IT were very in character actions) but a lot of his dialogue felt like someone doing a bad Yoda impression (important note: I’m referring here to his actual written lines, not the voice acting). Also his puppet was really weird looking I don’t know why but it did not look right at all.

-Some of the jokes also felt very forced and unnecessary. Star Wars needs levity, but the tonal balance was just off and there were a lot of jokes that felt very shoved into scenes that did not need jokes.

-I didn’t buy the Finn/Rose romance. I don’t actually have a problem with that ship at all. Finn/Poe is obviously my preference but lets be real I’m not holding my breath and I’d be 100% fine if Finn/Rose is where they went. But it wasn’t developed at all? They had a couple bonding moments yeah and were definitely becoming good friends, but not nearly enough to make me believe THEY’RE IN LURVE. It was like they somehow thought her sacrifice couldn’t be meaningful if it was just about saving a friend instead of saving GUY I WANNA MACK ON which is kinda bullshit.

-There was a continuous trend of showing HEY LOOK WE HAVE FEMALE CHARACTERS. LOOK AT ALL THESE LADY PILOTS AND GUNNERS only to kill them off immediately. Paige’s death I didn’t overly have a problem with as there was at least a reason and a point to it with her being Rose’s sister, and she was given a moment to shine and a heroic sacrifice at least, but with all the background characters it felt like they were so determined to be all LOOK WE HAVE GIRLS that we saw more girls die than guys.

-Also are Poe’s whole squad from the last movie just supposed to be dead now? Like... they got their own comic and everything and are fairly popular side characters. Are you really going to just say they’re all dead?

-The fight choreography was really lacking. Luke fighting Kylo at the end could have been so cool but it was 90% stupid CGI and just felt silly. Especially comparing it to the Rey and Kylo (I refuse to type their names with a slash because seriously MISS ME WITH THAT SHIT) fight from the end of TFA which was so well done and just... ugh. Also Finn’s fight with Phasma was very anticlimactic and she was so underused.

-Finn and Rose’s side trip was completely pointless. Which is annoying because like I mentioned before it had some of the better character moments in a character-less movie, but it was literally pointless. I get that they wanted to set up some sort moral ambiguity or juxtaposition (OOOH THE ARMS DEALERS SELL TO BOTH SIDES SO IT’S A GREY AREA. OOOH THE POOR PEOPLE AND THE ANIMALS SUFFER FOR RICH PEOPLE’S ENTERTAINMENT. AM I DOING THIS RIGHT? IS THIS HEAVY HANDED ENOUGH?), but even if they had their hearts set on doing that (despite not needing to at all) there are a million other ways they could have done it without completely derailing the plot. Especially since in the end the plan didn’t even WORK an actually made things worse because if they never brought the stupid slicer on board the original plan would have worked and most of the resistance would have gotten away just fine. The slicer character himself was pointless and one dimensional.

-What is the First Order doing? They made sense in TFA because they were a fringe group who had been laying low and underselling their strength while they prepared to attack and overthrow the New Republic. But what are they doing now? Did they seize control and establish a new capital planet? Did they install a new governing body since they literally KILLED ALL OF THEM? What is their end goal? What is their motivation? There’s nothing there and there needs to be.

-Why on god’s green earth didn’t Laura Dern just TELL POE THE PLAN? Why was she being needlessly cryptic and withholding? She wasn’t protecting anyone by withholding information and was actually making herself look really bad and incompetant for no reason? She didn’t even say she HAD a plan. It was so stupid and made no sense.

-Which leads me to a larger overall problem: the characters were not driving the story, the story was driving the characters. The characters did things because they had to to make the plot happen, rather than the plot happening because the characters did what they would naturally do. As a result almost all the characters felt incredibly stiff and there was pretty much no meaningful character development.

-The movie wrote its self into a corner. I get that they wanted to push it into a more unsure ending ESB type situation but they went too far. The rebellion was in an unsteady place at the end of ESB but they still had, you know... a fleet? More than 10 people? They were also extremely inconsistent scene to scene with the number of resistance fighters left alive. They act like they’ve got almost nobody left, but then they have enough people to man the trenches on Crait? And a lot of those people clearly escaped back into the base but then when they’re escaping to the Falcon there’s like 5 of them? Am I supposed to believe that the 8 year old Rose gave a ring too is the savior of the resistance? None of it seemed to be done with any forethought to the future of the story.

-Where the hell is the rest of the Galaxy? I’ve never watched a Star Wars film that felt so isolated. Even with Rose and Finn’s B plot the galaxy felt empty and unpopulated.

Overall the whole thing felt like a bunch of unfinished thoughts slapped together into a story without a proper narrating structure. The whole movie seemed confused about where it was going and what it was doing.

I’m hoping JJ Abrams can reel it back in with Episode 9 because it’s really gonna upset me if TFA was a fluke and the rest of this is just gonna be Prequel Trilogy 2.0

#the last jedi #spoilers #tlj spoilers #star wars spoilers #rey #finn #poe #I'm really disappointed TBH #gonna go reread all the post-TFA fanfiction that was better than this movie

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blackgirlslit · 7 years

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A Quick Interview with author Sophia Chester

1. What's your name, age, and where are you from?

Sophia Chester, 32 and I'm from Cambridge, Maryland.

2. You've written and published two books so far. How did you get into writing?

I've always loved to write. Nothing gave me more pleasure when I was younger than to be given a free writing assignment in my language arts class. I wrote a lot when I was younger. But somewhere along the way, I lost confidence in my ability to write and I just stopped. But then in 2012 I decided to do NANOWRIMO for the first time. I wrote this fantasy short story that will never see the light of day. I was really surprised why the quality of my writing. I remember thinking “have I always been this good at writing?” Then I thought, what if I tried to write something better and also be a little bit more organized. I wonder what would happen?

3. Did you always know that you wanted to be a writer? Do you have other aspirations?

It was always a small dream of mine to be a writer. When I was little, I would look through the scholastic book fair pamphlet and wonder what it would be like to see my book listed in there next to the GooseBumps books. I'm old as dirt. This was the 90's before self publishing online was a thing. You had to snail mail your story to an editor or an agent and hope that they would give you a chance. Really those types of opportunities seemed so out of reach for me. Heck they still do and its 2017! As far as other goals, I'm pretty good at clerical work. I'm hoping that I can snag some sort of full time office job and then I can write on the side for fun.

4. Where do you draw your inspiration from when it comes to writing? Are there any authors in particular that inspired you?

I draw inspiration from many different things. I love the sci-fi space opera anime genre. I grew up watching Robotech/Macross which was my first entry into the space opera genre. I've watched a lot of anime over the years. Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon has to be my all time favorite anime title. Consuming all of these fantastic animated stories over the years has given me a lot of inspiration. This particular space opera series Legend Of The Galactic Heroes has been a huge help to me with putting the world that Cosmo lives in together.The Legend Of The Galactic Heroes is a political space opera series about these two feuding political factions that are fighting for there right to live in space. The show has a lot of long scenes where are people siting in chairs and doing a lot of info dumping. But it still a good show and it gave me a lot of inspiration.

About the Book

5. Both of your books take place in space. What made you choose the genre of sci-fi for your writing? Are you a big fan of sci-fi books/movies/comics?

After I wrote my messy NANOWRIMO short story I decided to give up on it and write something else. But originally while I was writing my NANOWRIMO short story I had binge watched the rebooted version of Battlestar Galactica. Then after I finished that, I decided to catch up on Mad Men. So here I was trying to think of what I wanted the setting for my story to be and I was stuck. I was in a big sci-fi mood after watching Battle Star Galactica and I was in a retro 1950's mood after watching Mad Men.

6. Your fist published book, Cosmic Callisto Caprica & the Missing Rings of Saturn is about an aspiring space detective that gets caught up in the journey of searching for her nanny Wendy, who disappears along with other women on the Titan spaceship. She also has to find the missing rings of Saturn. How did come up with such a unique plot? How long did it take you come up with a finished draft?

I just decided that with my next story, I would combine both of elements of Mad Men and Battlestar Galactica which came to be a 1950′s styled story in space! Then I had my second dilemma. What am I going to do with this interesting set up? Should I make the story contemporary? Should it be romantic? Then I started to list all of the options that I had for my story. I just became fixated with the option of turning my 1950's space themed story into a mystery. I said to myself “has anyone ever written something like this before and with a black female protagonist no less?” I just fell so deeply in love with this concept that I decided to go with it. I worked on The Missing Rings Of Saturn for about two years. My manuscript changed so much from 2013 to 2015. I got rid of some characters. I changed the names to a lot of the locations. But I finalized everything for my story by 2015.

7. Is the character Cosmo based on anybody you know or she a character that is based on yourself?

Cosmo is special. She is everything that I wanted in a black female protagonist. She's smart, beautiful, resourceful, and brave. Really when I was first coming up with Cosmo, I remember thinking to myself, “is she to much?” Is she too smart, too pretty and maybe too courageous. Then I remembered all of the white male protagonists whose stories I had consumed over the years. They were strong, dashing, and able to take on any situation and not once had I questioned there abilities. So, why should I questions Cosmo and her ability to solve mysteries in space?

8.In your other book "Rocket Romance" you have two different stories. One is about a martian visiting earth and falling for a human girl despite the intolerance of others around them. Is this story a symbol of how interracial dating is frowned upon, xenophobia, or about how people seem so keen to hate and isolate people who are different?

Honestly its about all of the above. I don't wanna spoil to much about the story.

9. The other story is about a couple named Kat and Leo having issues because of Kat's independent attitude and outgoing personality. The summary states that Leo may go off to find someone else who is "gentler and more feminine." Did you want the topic of gender roles in relationships to be something readers would think about and discuss after reading it?

I guess you could interpret the story that way. My main character is very rough around the edges. She’s not a dainty girl but life's circumstances has caused her to be more tough.

Last questions

10. Do you plan on writing any more books any time soon? Are you working on anything right now?

I’m currently working on the sequel to "The Missing Rings Of Saturn" right now.

11. Can you tell readers where they can contact you (tumblr/twitter) and where to find and purchase your books?

You can find me on facebook- Cosmic Callisto Caprica, Tumblr- sophiaslittleblog Twitter-SophiaTheAuthor Youtube-SophiaTheAuthor and both of my books are available for purchase in digital and in print on Amazon.

Thank you so much for doing this interview @sophiaslittleblog !

Followers, be sure to follow her and check out both of her books available in print and digital on amazon! Links and pictures are below!

https://www.amazon.com/Rocket-Romance-Sophia-Chester-ebook/dp/B06X6FJTKZ

https://www.amazon.com/Cosmic-Callisto-Caprica-Missing-Saturn-ebook/dp/B01CAIOB8G/ref=pd_sim_351_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=M0AXD8Q6GMXWXVWDJGB6

-Victoria

#blackgirlslit #interview #booklr #poc booklr #pocbooklr #sophia chester #cosmic castillo caprica & the missing rings of saturn #rocket romance

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faeuniblog · 7 years

Text

Script for Visual Essay

This is the script for my Visual essay for Overview of the Industry. This version will have my old edits and parts I've had to leave out. Parts that have been left out will look like this.

Hello there fellow melons, hope you’re ready to be entertained cause at least one of us is gonna have fun with this essay! I’m gonna be educating you guys on the joys that are the publishing industry!

Self-Published Vs Published!

-So, what is it to publishing something?

Publishing is the broadcasting of literature, music, and information and making it available to the general public.

- “So, Melon Sandy, I see you have your book there!

If you’re a writer that’s just written the best story ever, you’ll probably want to share said book with the world so you can make lots of money and be really famous!”

-“But almighty voice in the sky who sounds super amazing and cool, like it really sucks that this is a written visual essay and not an audio one, I here you cry!”

“How do I go about share my creation with the world?!”

-“Well, you have two options little Melon Sandy. You can go to Publishing Company or Self-Publish your work.”

Now let’s talks about what a Publisher is and does.

(draw like a picture of some cool printing machine or something)

Publishing Company – Basics, Pros and Cons.

If you decide to go with the Traditional method and get published by a big publisher, you’ll need to have your work accepted by a literary agent first. Once you get an agent, they will take care of selling your manuscript to the big publishers. By going through an agent you’ll be paid an upfront advance for your work. The advance could range from £1,000 to over £100,000. You also get royalties at around 3%-6%.

Having an agent take care of shit is nice, but its damn hard to get an agent to take your work and even then, there’s no reassurance that they’ll even be able to sell your manuscript to a publisher.

If you're lucky enough to get a publisher interested.

The publisher will take care of editorial, copyediting, and design work, as well as invest in sales and marketing. Depending on whether you’re with a small or large publisher, the budget on these things can range from £15,000 to £50,000.

-You, as the writer Melon Sandy, will not have to pay anything towards these costs!-

However, one down side is that Publisher might make you edit you story in ways you don’t agree with, so you do lose a bit of control over your work.

Your book will be released both in physical and digital shops (such as Amazon and iTunes)

You probably won’t get a moving or TV deal but you stand a much higher chance by going with the traditional method. So, you get a load of support from a Publisher and Agent but in return you will have to give up a percentage of your earnings and control.

Edit: (The publisher may also tell you to remove, cut down or add content to your story if they see it as unfit, so you do lose a bit of control over your work.

Your book will receive national distribution for its physical version in physical stores while also being distributed digitally in online shops such as amazon and iTunes. )

(It’s unlikely you’ll get a movie or TV deal but they are more frequent for authors you used the traditional method. So, you get a load of support from a Publisher and Agent but in return you will have to give up a percentage of your earnings and control.)

Let’s look at J.K. Rowling as an example for publishing with a Company!

(Drawing of cool witch J.K. Rowling)

J.K. Rowling

J.K was rejected by the first literary agency she applied too, and to add insult to injury, they didn’t give back her folder! She would luckily be accepted by the next literary agency, Christopher Little. Little sent the manuscript to 12 different publishers (who all rejected it!) before finally ending up with Bloomsbury.

As when you go to a publisher, J.K was told to change the title of the US version from ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone’ to ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone’ as they didn’t think America’s would know what a ‘philosopher’ was would think it sounded boring.

Edit: (A notable change that J.K Rowling wasn’t happy about was the changing of the title ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone’ to ‘Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone’ in the US version.

It’s said that the publishers for the US version didn’t think America’s would know what a ‘philosopher’ was and think it’s boring; so they change it to ‘Sorceror’ which sounds much more exciting.)

-“Hopefully, Melan Sandy, you won’t have a much trouble getting you book published as J.K. Rowling did.”

Self-Publishing – Basics, Pros and Cons

If you decide to go with Self-Published, there are two types of self-publishing: Digital and Old-fashioned.

One of the great things about the modern day, is the internet! (woooop Internet!)

Anyone can be an artist or writer with the internet around. Amazon charges nothing for you to upload your work to its worldwide audience or you can just post your art and stories on websites like Tumblr.

By Self-publishing, you have complete creative control over your work, meaning it can be about anything with no one to stop you! And all the money you make, is your money, no sharing with a big company!

With online shops like Amazon, you won’t get a money advance like you would if you’ll with a publisher. Your book won’t be in bookshops and you’ll still have to face some costs like editorial and copyediting.

Remember, Amazon has over 5,000,000 e-books in its store and your book will simply be one of them, so it might be hard to get attention.

If you used Amazon, you will get no money advance like you would do if you’ve with a company but you can still make money, if only a little. Your book will not be in bookshops and you still have to face some costs for stuff such as editorial and copyediting work. Amazon has over 5,000,000 e-books in its store and your book will simply be one of them, so it may be hard to achieve sales.

With free websites like Tumblr, you’re not going to make any money unless you go to separate sources such as Patreon or ko-fi and you have basically no limitation on what your work is about.

An example of the Old-fashioned method would be making, printing and selling Zine, at conversions or online. A zine (short for magazine or fanzine) is a small self-published work made up of text and images and is usually reproduced via photocopier. They can be made be a single person, or a small group. An example of some popular zines are ‘Aint-Bad Magazine’, ‘Home Zine’ and ‘Record Culture Magazine’.

Example of people who have done shit is Self-Publishing

For Self-Published, I’m going to look at The Martian and Homestuck. (awesome drawings).

The Martian is a science fiction novel written by Andy Weir in 2011. Weir started writing the book in 2009, and was rebuffed by literary agents when trying to get prior books published. Weir decided to put the book online on his website in a serial format.

Fans of his book later requested him to make an Amazon Kindle version for 99 cents (the minimum allowable price he could set). The Kindle version sold 35,000 copies in three months, quickly rising to the top of Amazon’s best-selling science-fiction list.

Podium Publishing an audiobook publisher, signed for the audiobook rights in January 2013 and in March 2013 Weir sold the prints rights to Crown for over US$100,000. In March 2, 2014, the book debuted on the New York Times Best Seller list in twelfth position.

Homestuck is a webcomic written, illustrated and animated by Andrew Hussie and published on MS Paint Adventures. The comic is a combination of static images, animated GIFs, instant message logs and games made with Adobe Flash. Homestuck arguably has the largest fan community out there, which has said to reach in the millions. Unlike the other authors on this list, Homestuck never got involved with publishers, this may be because it’s the only one on my list that’s a comic. If you go almost any conversion, you are likely to find a Homestuck fan there either cosplaying or selling zines or art.

(gonna have to leave this part out for now)

Example of both publishing with a Publishing Company and Self-Publishing. (we are all in this together)

Introducing hard-core Beatrix Potter, who refused to put up with shit from anyone! (insert badass drawing of Beatrix Potter!!!)

‘Peter Rabbit’ was Self-Published! Beatrix Potter applied to a least six different publishing houses and with her book ‘The Adventures of Peter Rabbit’ but was rejected by all of them. Beatrix Potter then went on to printer 250 copies of her first book herself. It was printed with 41 black and white woodblock engraving and a colour frontispiece (yes I do in fact know what that complicated words mean!). The book was so successful that within the year, it had been picked up by one of the six publisher who had originally rejected it (HA).

Beatrix Potter stuck again with her next book ‘The Tailor of Gloucester’ after failing to reach an agreement with ‘Frederick Warne & Co’. So, Ms Potter got on her broom took the skies again and published 500 copies privately! (I AM thinking of the right person, right??). By the end of the year, Warne had given in, cementing their relationship with Potter, saving the publishing house from bankruptcy and creating the standard for how children’s book were marketed and sold!

(Reading from paper in hand image) Beatrix Potter later went on the serves fanatically loyal to the dark lor- (confused) okay I'm definitely reading into the wrong wiki! (angry! Paper turns over to show picture of Bellatrix Lestrange and Harry Potter)

Just to clarify, apart from her not being a Harry Potter character, she really did all the book stuff. She might have been a witch though, so I don’t wanna rule that out just in case.

(gonna leave this part out too)

~~Tangent Time!~~

You may be wondering why, as a comic’s student, I would be looking authors of written work rather than comic witters. I mean look at Homestuck, as I said before, it arguably has the largest fan community out there, but I don’t think you’ll find a novel version in real life.

This is partly because, for some reason, writers of ‘word’ books generally get more attention and success then comic writers. Other reason for Homestucks lack of physical novel might be the fact that Homestuck has a lot of animations, moving visuals, sounds and music, so I can imagine that might be had to put into a book format. (But it could be done! It just hasn’t.)

I could probably write an entire other essay on these points and I feel the need to acknowledge them, but I have neither the time nor energy to do so effectively (and I’m not a masochist)…so yeah…

~~Tangent Over~~

Both methods have their pros and cons and work.

Going straight for Publishing company can be really difficult, as they may not be interested in your work to begin with and you lose a fair amount of your creative control and profits. But is the support they give worth it?

Going for Self-Published can be cool because of all the control and full profits but you need to gain the attention from the public before a publisher will even look at you. Almost all Self-Published work end up with a publisher so is this just an extra, unnecessary step?

But hey, whatever way you choose, just go for it man. Should be fun.

Ending

“So Melon Sandy have you decided how you’re going to publish you awesome book?” (I turn to look at Sandy)

(There is a crushed Melon in the floor)

“Melon Sandy?” (Confused)

(It have bow like Melon Sandy)

(I look down to see a knife in my hand with Melon blood on it…)

(Camera movies to show my face. It is coved in Melon juice…)

References

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/mar/24/jk-rowling-tells-fans-twitter-loads-rejections-before-harry-potter-success

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/mar/25/jk-rowling-harry-potter-posts-letters-of-rejection-on-twitter

http://www.writersworkshop.co.uk/How-To-Get-Published.html

https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13059054-homestuck-book-one

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homestuck#frb-inline

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martian_(Weir_novel)

https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-18387,00.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._K._Rowling#Subsequent_Harry_Potter_publications

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter

https://www.patreon.com/

https://ko-fi.com/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrix_Potter

https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/dec/17/beatrix-potter-peter-rabbit-self-publishing

https://www.thecreativepenn.com/self-publishing-vs-traditional/

https://www.scribendi.com/advice/traditional_versus_self_publishing.en.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publishing

https://www.format.com/magazine/galleries/art/11-cool-artist-zines

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Printing_press

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zine

#Script for Visual Essay #Visual Essay

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