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twinleafroyalty · 2 years

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1, 6, 7 for the munday meme!

MEME FOR ROLEPLAY MUNS // ACCEPTING

1. What is your favourite trope to RP?

Forbidden relationships... but I’ve already talked about that way back in the depths of my blog, so instead I’ll share a close second. I really enjoy writing two-faced characters - ones with hidden motivations.

One of my favourite characters I’ve written was ORAS Tabitha. He was the one villain I didn’t struggle with writing - as I have a bit of a habit of making villains too ‘soft’, admittedly - and I really want to muse him again at one point. I characterized him as being outwardly quite friendly, even if he was smug or snarky sometimes - but secretly he wanted to overthrow his boss for his own gain. It was probably the most fun I had playing a villain, and I would really like to touch this trope more often!

6. Name 3 things you love most about your muse.

Ah, this is a tough one to answer so you are going to get kind of sucky answers for this because I really don’t know what else to say here. Oops.

I... like his humour. Honestly, his humour is entirely me pushing dad jokes onto him - I don’t think he makes any in canon actually - but I think it makes him very fun to write. I can slip in fun little puns into almost any thread, and I always look forwards to seeing how I can use dumb jokes with him.

I like how versatile he is. I think I’ve hit a sweet spot where he isn’t fully comedy relief but he also isn’t fully a grumpy old man. He can be used in more serious situations without it feeling like I’m forcing it, while he can also partake in crack interactions or more lighthearted threads without it feeling ham-fisted.

I like... how far he has come in his development. He started off as a crack muse, and over the past 2 years he’s developed into the most complex character I have ever written - and I love that about him. It gives me a feeling of pride, to be honest.

7. What is one overrated roleplay trend?

I really hope I don’t offend anyone with this section...

Roleplay themes where the lightest thing on the page is a mid-tone gray, and the darkest thing is a... mid-tone gray, and then sometimes there will be an extremely saturated accent colour along with it. It’s an aesthetic that I see very often that I think is both overrated and harmful.

I’m going to talk more about this under the cut.

Basically, themes that look like this. This aesthetic is very common, I’ve noticed.

My right eye has 20/50 vision and an astigmatism. My left eye is a bit better, but not great. If I close my left eye, I can barely read what I am typing right now. This means that my left eye has to overcompensate for what my right eye struggles with, leading to eye strain quite quickly - and that is especially true on low contrast themes.

With both eyes open, I can see my screen fairly well, but I have to strain my eyes to be able to see even fully legible text. For anything that has extremely low contrast or is hard to read? Well... this is what I see when I look at that theme.

I cannot read this.

The combination of gray-on-gray ( or light gray-on-white, or dark-gray on black, or whatever other low-contrast scheme ) with the extra effort I need to put in to read anything makes the strain too much to handle. I know that people don’t mean to make their blogs hard to read, and that there is no ill will behind it, but I implore people to try to make the effort to make your blogs easy to read. This is a hobby based around reading and writing, it shouldn’t be hard for me to read what you write!

Anyways, I beg people to check their blogs’ contrast using this page here.

Now. Pure white text on a white background has 1:1 contrast ratio - pure black on white has a 21:1 contrast ratio.

A bit of Googling has told me that the ideal bare minimum contrast for web design is...

fonts having a ratio of 4.5:1 (regular fonts)

fonts having a ratio of 3:1 (bold fonts (>18px) + large fonts (>24px))

graphical elements having a 3:1 ratio (this one is harder to determine)

This is considered the absolute minimum for perfectly sighted users to be able to read without difficulty. If your blog doesn’t meet that minimum, people are going to struggle to read your posts. Even if it did meet that minimum, a 7:1 and 4.5:1 ratio is desired for each group of fonts respectively - that way it will be more legible to people have have poorer eyesight.

If your blog uses only the colours in my little psd example image, it will fail even in the absolute minimum. The colours on this mock-up got something like a 2.5:1 ratio for the regular text and a 1.4:1 on the bold text. I don’t understand why these types of graphics are so common when even perfectly-sighted people will struggle with them!

I actually got curious and checked my theme as I was writing this. My posts have a 12:1 ratio, with some spots having an 8:1 ratio ( italics + my description ). I also adjusted some colours on my blog which weren’t quite meeting those standards ( bold italics + the little clicky thing to open my links - they both met the minimum but I wanted them to be better! ) and my eyes are already thanking me for it.

If you have a theme with low contrast, I promise you that adjusting your font colour or your background colour will go a long way in making your blog easy to read.

#exclusive interview! ✦ answered asks #unovasrose

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walker-journal · 3 years

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Legend of the Vermilion Bird (Adam +Leah)

Characters: Leah Ramirez (Phoenix- Julie), Adam Walker (Hunter-Tapir)

Location: Just outside the Vural Property

Timing: Shortly before the events of And From the Ashes

Summary: After killing a Torple, Adam consults a wary Leah about the nature of phoenixes

Content Warning: Woerm gore

The forest road was alive with the subtle rustling and animal calls of spring as Adam skinned a large Torple that’d shuffled onto the Vural’s property, instinctually drawn by the taste of spellcraft that practically saturated the area. The Hunter supposed such predators were a hazard of having so much mojo concentrated in one place. Being a muggle himself, Adam wasn’t in much danger from these lumbering magic-eating worms, but the Hunter felt it behooved him to quietly take care of threats to his significant other’s family.

The Torple looked like the big-mouthed lovechild of a naked mole-rat and an earthworm with massive human teeth. Even seated on a hefty moss-covered rock, Adam was barely taller than the corpulent segmented creature. It’s webbed limbs were spindly in comparison to its body while its enormous yet unsettlingly humanoid mouth made it a wonder the Torple could move at all. It jaws were immovable once latched on, but it was the thick glistening layer of magic negating mucus covering the magivore that made Adam preemptively take a machete to it outside the boundary of his hostesses’ wards, lest its mere presence unravel them.

Adam worked a curved ulu knife down the dead Torples’ sides, scraping the anti-magic slime off with the skinning blade and scooping it into nearby barrels. He vaguely felt Leah’s approach before he heard her footsteps, the icy-heat of her paranormal presence growing stronger as she approached. Once he caught sight of the familiar face, the Hunter took his hand off the handle of a hidden blade and got back to scraping Torple slime.

“Hey Library Warrior, could I have a minute? I need to ask you about something.”

Having Bea back in town felt like relief. When she died, Leah had been so caught off guard that she was always waiting for the other shoe to drop now that she was back to life. At any given moment, she expected another phone call from Nell or Felix or anyone telling her that it happened again, that there was no way to fix it this time. And New York felt so tauntingly far away, especially to someone who had barely ever left White Crest. And so the news that her best friend was coming back to town made the tension ease from her neck- had she been holding her shoulders that tight the whole time she’d been away?

Maybe she had been spending too much time at the Vural Sister’s house that weekend (to be fair, one-third of the sister trio would have said any time Leah spent there was too much, but that’s besides the point), but for the tension to truly escape her, she need some real, tangible time with her friend.

While Bea was busy inside cooking, Leah chose to explore the property outside, eager to soak up some sun and enjoy the chill of winter finally breaking. She grimaced when she happened upon Adam, and watched him with an unamused expression. It was kind of easy to ignore that he was a hunter, most of the time, but not when he was slicing something up right in front of her. She let out a breath when he called out to her, sitting on her hip.

“What’s up?”, she asked. She was sure he was just curious about a book, or something- maybe he lost his copy of Green Eggs and Ham.

“What is that there?” she asked, gesturing to the creature he was scraping. Damn her and her innate curiosity and thirst for knowledge.

“I need to ask you about Phoenixs,” Adam replied with the blunt directness that frequently came when one was focused on multiple tasks at once. “There is a fire chicken that’s gone supernova in a valley. Luce is like...a fire scientist but she isn’t sure what would make em go..” Adam made a sound in his throat evocative of an explosion. I was wondering if you’d heard of anything like that,” the Hunter asked of the Not-Spriggan.

Adam patted the enormous human-mouthed earthworm with a gloved hand as he scrapped more slime from the corpse into a bucket. “This is a Torple, they hunt people who do magic,” Adam supplied. “The Vural place is kinna a beacon with the Hogwarts stuff going on.”

Leah felt her eyebrows furrow at Adam’s statement- both at the boldness with which he said it, and the statement itself. She felt heat rise to her cheeks- did he know about her? Was the knife he held over the creature actually intended for her- her tears or information or life? But no, Nell wouldn’t let that happen, right? Nell would have at least warned her if he found out. She felt herself visibly relax when he explained more, swallowing before she responded. “Luce told me about this, but… what makes you think I know anything about phoenixes?”, she asked, trying to remain stoic and unblinking. “They’re just about the rarest known creatures- information is pretty rare on them.” The last time they spoke on the subject, Adam himself had thought phoenixes only ever spent time in their firestate, which was laughable, at best. “You want to explode them? I don’t think Luce is down with that idea. And neither am I, if you’re taking my help. You need to find a way to cure them, not kill them.” Killing the corrupted phoenix would be very, very easy. Adam could take notes from Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West, if he wanted to be cruel like hunters tended to be.

She pressed her lips together, unable to look at the slaughtered earthworm for too long. Torples. She’d heard of them, but not a ton. She’d have to see if they had anything written up on them when she went home later tonight. “Well- it’s good that you got it, then”, she said with an awkward nod, glancing at the bucket. “Is the slime useful, or something?”

“Because you’re like... a supernatural librarian lady,” Adam pointed out as if this somehow gave Leah some form of nerd-omniscience. “I figured that you’d be a person to ask about something that rare y’know?”

Leah seemed to misinterpreted his amazing sound effects. “Hey hey hey,” Adam exclaimed with a note of petulance, holding up his slimy free hand in a staying gesture. “Look, that Phoenix was already exploding when we found it ok,” he asserted with boyish pique. “What I mean is that I was wondering if you knew how we could switch them into I dunno... unexplode mode, like a song, some herbs they like, an off button, we’ll take anything.”

Adam went back to driving his blade into the annelid’s side, exposing the yellowish nerve cords beneath its ridged skin. “It interferes with magic,” he explained. “Honestly, because of how many damn Chickcharneys there are around here, I end up dunking alotta people in this slime to try and bounce the Chickcharney curse off them.” Adam chose not to mention the part where he’d erased a wizards wards with this slime and accidentally become an accessory to murder.

Leah let out a slow breath, watching Adam carefully. He wasn’t… wrong. But what were the ethical implications involved with helping a hunter learn about one of the rarest, most vulnerable species that existed?

What were they if she let someone like Adam try to figure it out on his own?

She rolled her eyes at his defense, but held her hands up in apology. “Sorry- I shouldn’t have jumped to conclusions.” Even though it was so hard not to with a hunter. She walked closer to him as she continued. “I told Luce that I have an idea of how the phoenix got so out of control, but up until now, I thought it was only a myth.” She paused- could she really trust him? When she thought about it, she wasn’t sure, but maybe it didn’t matter. What difference would it make if Luce and Adam were working together in this? One way or another, Adam was going to find out. Better it be out of the horse’s mouth.

“We call them corrupted- it means that their ashes were on corrupted ground when they were reborn. Sometimes the corruption happens right away, and other times the phoenix could be well into adulthood, with a life and a family before it happens. There are no warning signs, either. I don’t… I still haven’t found a cure in my research, but…” She took a deep breath before continuing, and her next words came out faster than she intended. “If this phoenix doesn’t survive…whatever you end up doing... the best way to help them in the next life is to keep their ashes somewhere safe and sacred.”

At that imagery, Leah couldn’t help but crack a smile. “Are you telling me you make a habit out of performing Torple Slime Baptisms, so to speak?”

The palpable feelings of otherness intensified as Leah got closer, there’d been a time when Adam would have immediately gone into fight or flight mode when his Hunter senses reacted. But in White Crest he’d had to acclimate. That conditioning was an asset when hunting alghoul out in the sticks, but here it could end up him going all kill-zone on a librarian.

Adam paused his gory worm skinning and listened to Leah as she spoke. He noticed the use of the word ‘we’ but kept silent and impassive during the explanation. It turned out that Luce had already tapped Leah on this matter, which was unsurprising. But while he’d hadn’t doubted that she was knowledgeable, Adam’d already suspected that Ramirez wasn’t your average bibliophile, but she knew even legends of the legend.

“We ….as in the Maine librarian’s union?” Adam’s question was playfully phrased. There were many species, secret societies, and so on that did not appreciate their ways being pried into, and Adam didn’t want to start shit with the one person who seemed to have solid intel on Chernobyl phoenix.

“I would rather they survive,” Adam assured. “At the end of the day I’ll do what it takes to protect civilians, but from what you’ve said it sounds like this is some demon radiation juju that they didn’t have any say in.”

Adam inhaled. “But, if it does come to that, has your research given you any idea of a holy place that’d work for keeping the ashes safe? Maybe some place sacred to uh...I don’t know if Phoenixes worship any gods,” he admitted. “But maybe somewhere that means alot to their culture?”

The unexpected jocularity of the question, from Leah especially, took Adam openly off-guard, teasing a sheepish smile from him. “Uh yeah actually,” he admitted while scrapping some more slime off the giant mage-eater worm into a bucket. “It’s not glamorous and the clients always hate it, but the Torple-dunkage sometimes works for really minor stuff like that.”

Leah blanched, blinking at Adam’s question. Had she been so careless to say we? “I uh… we as in, me. Of course. Me,us. And the other people who are interested in supernatural history.” She swallowed, unsure if Adam were picking up on her status as a phoenix or her status as a scribe. Possibly both, right? This close, he had to be having those creepy senses that she wasn’t as human as she appeared. Either way, it was bad news.

“I’d rather that too, but I don’t think it’s unrealistic to prepare for the worst, either.” Something Adam said struck a chord in Leah, and she couldn’t stop herself before she commented. “I mean, that’s true of most supernatural creatures though, isn’t it? Born or bitten, werewolves, zombies, and vampires didn’t have a say in. Do you grant them the same courtesy when they’re out of control?”

“I know a few places that could work”, she said, crossing her arms over her chest. Whether she would tell Adam unless he absolutely needed them- that was another story. “Not necessarily a culture to be had per say. Because of their rarity and ability to blend in, it’s not often a phoenix ever meets another like them in their lifetime.” She and her family were so incredibly lucky to have each other to love; to grow and learn from when they were the most vulnerable. “I...know a family that would take care of the baby once they’re reborn, too, so-... if it comes to that, it’ll be all covered.”

Leah let herself get a good look at the creature, taking as many mental notes as she could to write down later. Sometimes Adam wasn’t as bad as he seemed. “I think most people would be pissed if you dunked them into a baby pool of slime and sludge. I certainly would.”

“It depends,” Adam answered without any attempt at dissemblance. “Gotta measure their life against the lives of those they’d kill when outta control,” the Hunter continued as he got down from the rock he’d been perched on to move his flaying blade to the Torple’s lower portion. “Most humans just get ripped in half if they meet a vamp that's gone all hunger frenzy, but I was born strong enough to match them,” he reasoned. “In the ideal scenario I wrestle the vamp or whatever off the civilian and get them to snap out of it.”

Adam took the long strip of worm skin over to a tree and slung it over one of the branches to dry in the sunshine. “But uh, reality doesn’t give ideal scenarios most of the time y’know? Sometimes you have to make a split-second judgement or alotta people die,” the Hunter admitted. “ But yeah, I guess the best answer I can give you is that I try.”

“That uh...sounds pretty lonely, being all human torchy and not having anything to relate to what the hell is going on,” Adam admitted, as he walked back to the Torple corpse. “Do you do the supernatural foster care stuff alot Leah?”

Adam rolled his eyes amiably at the resistance to necessary alien-worm slime dunking. “Hey Chick-a-Curses are worse though. Like all of their hexes are bad, but the one your head twists backwards...gah! I either have to bribe a witch to visit their hospital room and decurse them, or I have to sneak in and pour worm slime over some poor bastard in a hospital bed and hope it works.”

“Most vamps get stabbed if they meet an egotistical hunter”, Leah countered immediately. “I appreciate your attempt to be civil in the way you handle things, but I don’t find the same to be true for most hunters.” She couldn’t help but get into these debates with the hunters in her life, and if she were being honest, she didn’t really tire of them, either.

“It’s not all bad. I know you assumed at first that they’re literal chickens, but like I said- phoenixes spend most of their time looking like humans. And while a lot of them end up growing up not knowing what they are until they sneeze some smoke or look for a reason feathers are popping out of their foreheads, they’re not lost for companionship. I’ve even heard tell of families who are able to stay together throughout their cyclical lives, raising each other generation after generation. This is incredibly rare, of course.”

She blanched at Adam’s next question, opening her mouth and closing it. She thought of the golden goose egg, still safely incubating in her basement, surely ready to hatch at any moment. “I… how did you know I meant myself?”

Leah couldn’t help but laugh at his anecdotes, no matter how much she wanted to disavow them for being those of a hunter. “That doesn’t sound like a fun way to wake up- are witches so untrustworthy of you that they don’t trust that your slime is for good?”

Adam rolled his eyes with a smirk. “Y’know, if I made the same argument in reverse about ‘most vamps’ being violent and evil you’d call me out for generalizing and being a bigot Ramirez,” he pointed out.

Adam decided not to point out the fact that statistically the deaths on humans at the hands of vampires were uncountable orders of magnitude greater than vampires dying to Hunters. But frankly, it was pretty fucking obvious that Leah considered one supernatural life precious, but human lives were just numbers to her, devoid of emotional significance unless she knew them personally.

It’s pointless to argue with people like that.

“You don’t know ‘most Hunters’ Leah, not even close,” Adam pointed out bluntly, “Look Ramirez you hate people like me for reasons that are obviously personal. I’m fine with that.” the footballer said with a shrug of his broad shoulders, as if he felt this truce of hate sufficient. “It’s chill.

Despite the slip into harsh words, Adam continued to listen patiently to the talk of phoenixes, families, and cycles of rebirth. It was all pretty surreal honestly. What would it be like to be with his family across a thousand lives over and over?

He wouldn’t know. Adam had grown up being raised with the knowledge that every moment with his family was precious, that he needed to learn how to survive on his own before they fell one by one in the line of duty.

Adam hacked into the Torple with an unnecessary force as his chest constricted.

“Do they line...remember each other each rebirth? Or are they all new different people each time?”

Leah’s unexpected motion of surprise caused Adam’s attention to flick to her instinctively, but her following question dispelled the moment of tenseness. “I didn’t,” he admitted. “I more meant that you seemed to already have homes in mind as if you were a supernatural social worker or somethin.”

“You….really down to be a fire mom Leah?”

Adam considered Leah’s question for a moment. “I think that magic, like all resources, should be used for the betterment of society,” Adam said, hinting at a certain level of utopianism behind the memes and crass commentary. “But I can’t force everyone to think that way. If I’m going to bug a busy sorceress to leave her research to cure some rando she doesn’t know, I need to be able to pay her. Just how it is.’

Leah rolled her eyes, crossing her arms over her chest. Adam was ignoring the fact that the violence that came from vampires was out of their control, and many of the deaths that came from them were for a need to survive. Hunters, however, had plenty of control over what they did, and though there were a few gentle ones like Adam or Kaden, most would do what they did for sport, if given the chance.

“Neither do you”, she shot back. And he’d never had to fear them, either. She’d read countless stories about the atrocities they’d committed, and so excuse her if she didn’t trust a hunter as far as she could through them.

Again, his questions about phoenixes gave her pause. Was this information relevant? “It depends”, she explained. “Not always concrete memories that you or I might have from last week or last year, but it’s more like… glimpses or feelings. Sometimes even that doesn’t pop up right away, either. Most phoenixes end up with a touchstone through most of their lives to help them connect.” The touchstones didn’t always work. She felt an invisible buzzing pull from the stone around her neck, taunting and teasing.

She blanched at his elaboration, embarrassed that she’d assumed so quickly. She didn’t hate the idea of that type of job, if she were being honest- supernatural social work sounded extremely fulfilling. “Maybe I am on the side”, she teased.

“If it came down to it, yes. But even if I couldn’t, there are arrangements I could make, if I’m being completely transparent. Do you think you’d do the same thing, if you needed to?”

“I agree- but sometimes an idea like that is hard, because the idea of a better society can be so subjective and even divisive, you know? What you and I think might be wonderful isn’t going to be the same as Joe who works at Excalibur.” It was true, Excalibur Joe had told her more than once that he thought the world would be better off without traffic lights. “That’s not to say I don’t think betterment can happen- it’s just that the hard part is figuring out exactly what that betterment is for everyone.”

“You're right,” Adam allowed with the rueful triumph of someone who felt pain after a headbutt but took satisfaction in his opponent getting the worst of it.

“Hmmm that sucks,” Adam mused as Leah explained firebird memories. “Guess that��s why we haven’t just solved all history questions with a few Phoenix interviews,” he reasoned.

Adam was quiet for a time as he flayed off more worm skin and yellow cutaneous tissues. “Maybe that’s better though,” he admitted after a while. “Dealing with one lifetime of going through shit is hard enough to deal with,” said the young man who trained and exercised himself to exhaustion in order to sleep. “Having to remember like other lives of horrible crap too? Don't think I could deal with it, i’d completely lose it.”

Well ok, lose it sooner than most Hunters, Adam admitted to himself, knowing that after a time the human brain can only see so much before you start to break inside.

“I think you’d do good at it,” Adam noted, meeting Leah’s joke with earnestness. “A foster advocate for kids i mean.”

“Mhm. My parents adopted Hunters who were orphaned or whatnot, and I’d do the same,” Adam explained, to the question of whether he’d adopt as if there were only one answer. “Whether I take in kids or am a father, I’ll teach em how to survive,” said the Hunter, something in his tone suggesting this grim promise was the purest expression of parental love.

“People are never going to agree on betterment,” asserted the young man born into a world of war with a shrug. “We just gotta decide what parts of our ideal world we have to get by force,” and when talking things out is better,” said Adam.

Leah had her mouth open, ready and willing to argue more, when Adam said that she was right. She closed her mouth, sending him a resolute nod. She sure was. If only it were this easy to convince Kaden.

“Maybe, but I think it’s more the fact that they’re so rare. Knowledge about them might even be scarce on purpose, in order to protect them.” Did Adam know about the healing tears? Would he understand why they needed protection? “Perhaps every life doesn’t have to be horrible, though. It must be torture to know you’ve lived, say… three or four lifetimes before but have no idea about everything you learned throughout them”.

She smiled sheepishly at his compliment, pressing her lips together in earnest. “Thank you”, she started. “It means a lot.”

Adam raising children into more hunters was decidedly not what Leah was talking about, but his comments about his parents intrigued her. “You had a lot of adopted siblings growing up, then?” She didn’t want to delve into what he might have meant by ‘teach them how to survive’.

“I guess I just wonder who gets to decide”, she mused, turning back toward the house as she heard her name called in the distance. “My ideal would be to not have to do it by force, but I suppose that’s why Luce insists I’m an optimist.” She let out a breath, pressing her lips together in a smile. “Did you have any other questions… about phoenixes?”

Adam nodded. “I mean I have alot of family in general like siblings, cousins, so on. As a kid it didn’t make much difference which ones had my blood or not. Some little Hunters were adopted fully, others just came to live with us and be trained for a few years,” the Hunter shrugged, indicating perhaps that his household had been a lively place full of both laughter and endless preparations for war.

“That’s always the trick huh,” Adam affirmed with a grimace. “With Democracy you just get mob rule and decisions made without long term planning. With some elite body you get corruption and unaccountability,” the frat boy noted with a salience his professors would never hear him express in class. “I don’t think anybody’s solved that question yet.”

Adam glanced toward the house and looked back to Leah, brown eyes intent for a time, hands dripping with the slime and blood of the massive witcheater.

“Thanks Ramirez, I think I have what I need,” said the Hunter with the soft finality of someone who’d just come to a decision. “....sorry for keeping ya,”

#And From the Ashes #Torple #Phoenix #phoenixleah #chatzy #Adam #Leah

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utanoprinces · 4 years

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I’ve been meaning to ask this for awhile but I’m a shy bean...how the hecc do you shade and blend so nicely??? I cannot Digital Art to save my Life😔

Aw shucks that’s a lovely compliment! No need to be shy though as I am also just a scared cat behind a computer _(┐「ε:)_

Honestly, these are two very big questions, so I’ll try to break them up into something that’s fairly digestible as best as possible?? I’m not great at explanations always lolol Under a cut to save space!

I’ll do blending first since that one’s pretty straightforward, but basically you wanna really get to know the tools of whatever program you’re using, whether it’s PS or Clip Studio or SAI. I use SAI! Because personally I find its brush stabilizer the most useful + also the blending diversity/effects in it are phenomenal. Anyway, get to know the differences between hard brushes and soft brushes

and also familiarize yourself with how brushes blend. This will take some experimentation so I say just find some colors you like and go ham trying all your brushes out at different sizes and pressures and see what you feel works best for you! As far as blending goes for me, I typically use a hard brush to lay down a solid base of color, then a medium brush to had some shading and highlights

Then just… go absolutely buck wild swapping between the basic pen tool (hardest brush), the medium brush I used (lmk if u want the settings), and finally either the default blur or watercolor brush, all while eye-dropping colors from overlap areas. Also, moving in brush strokes that follow the direction of whatever you’re shading helps too, so for hair, follow the shape of how it’s falling, or for skin follow along with the planes of the face

This is really loose, but you get the idea. The best shading is a mix of hard shadows + soft shadows! So play around with that too. Harder shadows will typically be in more creased/receded areas, like under the jaw or in the crease of the eyes, while softer shadows will fall along the sides of the face (to portray depth) or under the lips.

Okay now for the topic of shading, which is actually kinda a monster to unpack. So much goes into like…stylization, color choices, lighting, etc and it all varies from artist to artist.

Hmm…. Some basics to keep in mind are varying the temperature of the colors you use to shade + highlight. I’m actually really horrible at explaining this but there’s this book by James Gurney called Color and Light and it basically taught me everything I know outside of just looking at other artists’ work and pointing and saying “hey I like that and will now do that too” ad infinitum, so if you can get your hands on a copy from a library or whatever, do so! Anyway, the bottom lines I try to follow are

If the highlights are warm, make the shadows cool and vice versa

Play with saturation/shades to see what works well for your style. I tend to like making my shadows pretty vivid colors since I’ve been inspired by the utapri art style a lot, but there are plenty of ways to make shading interesting to the eye.

Another thing to keep in mind for Radical Shading TipsTM is surface texture! Harder shadows and highlights will make things look shinier and smoother, while more diffused shadows and highlights will make a surface look softer/fuzzier.

I hope that helps! That’s the general overview but by all means feel free to ask more as you like/need

#Anonymous #maeposting #replies #art tutorial #tutorial #drawing tutorial #excuse my atrocious handwriting

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smokeybrand · 3 years

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Smokey brand Movie Reviews: An Unmitigated Disaster

I’m starved for new content and Raya is a few days off so i gotta settle for f*cking Tom and Jerry. I am not looking forward to this and i have no faith i will enjoy it, but I'm going to try and stomach it because i haven’t seen anything “new” since Judas and the Black Messiah. I know that’s not much of a gap but it feels like an eternity. I’m starved for popcorn, blockbuster, nonsense. I miss the cinema. I miss the theatrics, the pomp and circumstance. HBOmax is ding us a service with the say-and-date release of their 2021 schedule but it’s like pulling eye teeth waiting on good content. All of the sh*t released so far as been mixed with Messiah being the only thing worthwhile. Later this month, we’ll be getting Goji and the Snyder Cut, Mortal Kombat in April, on top of the stuff coming out of the MCU, so sh*t is ramping up but right now. There is salvation on the horizon so i might as well let this thing happen to me, i guess.

The Good

The animations is pretty decent. Like, it’s pretty fluid and really takes advantage of the tech available to make it every bit it can be.

The cast is pretty legit. Chloe Moretz, Michael Pena, Ken Jeong, Colin Jost, and many others. Solid f*cking ensemble, definitely funny people. That’s all i got because...

The Bad

All of the performances are terrible. They’re just the goddamn worst! Everyone is hamming it up, being WAY over the top, and it’s just f*cking exhausting. None of this is funny, all of it stupid. But that’s Tom and Jerry in a nutshell.

The interaction of the animated characters and the real world is mad awkward, especially considering how seamlessly CG is incorporated in modern film. you’d thing, in a world where Thanos is a tangible thing but is completely computer generated, you’d think you’d be able to integrate this old school, pen and ink, animation, much better. F*cking Who Framed Roger Rabbit looks better than this and that thing came out thirty-three years ago

This thing is saturated in rap music. Tom and Jerry. The opening f*cking scene showcases a group of pigeons, rhyming to A Tribe Called Quest! What the f*ck, man? How ridiculous is that? Watching Tom and Jerry abuse each other scored to Don’t Sweat the Technique is my entire f*cking nightmare.

The sight gags and slapstick are depressingly predictable. This probably has a lot to do with the ample amount of cartoons i consume but every joke that involved Tom and Jerry’s violently abusive relationship is completely telegraphed. Thee are no surprises in this flick.

There are also no laughs. I didn’t even chuckle watching this thing. I heard that people felt second hand embarrassment because the comedy they went for was that of the awkward nature but i was just too disgusted with everything onscreen to even crack a smile. Legit had a grimace the entirety of this film.

The plot is stupid. It’s trash. Literally bare bones, cliche misunderstandings, to hang a bunch of opportunities for cartoon shenanigan and cringe humor. I’m talking fat jokes and violence. That’s it. Usually, i wouldn’t be this much of a ticker about this the of stuff because of the target audience for a movie like this, but it’s hard not to when every minute of this thing is abject mediocrity.

Every gag you’ve ever seen in a Tom and Jerry cartoon makes it into this movie. From the crushed fingers in the window to the elaborate Rube Goldberg machine the never works. You’ve seen these things before. You’ve seen this movie before. There’s is no originality about this flick at all.

Tim Story directed this and he did a bad job but, looking back on dude’s catalog, he’s no Hitchcock. Still, i can’t agree with any of the choices he made here for this flick. Like, i get that this is, at it’s core, a kid’s flick, but come on? If this is the “vision” dude has for a franchise that’s been a thing for over eighty years, then dud should probably take some time off because he is creatively exhausted.

The writing is terrible. It is, the single worst thing about this movie and is the main reason why everything else is so goddamn bad. A bad script makes for a bad film and that is no more apparent that with this movie.

The Verdict

I hated this movie so goddamn much. Everything about it is just SO bad. The performances, the direction, the script; All of it is bad. Now, i get that i am definitely not the audience for this and i actively dislike Tom and Jerry as a franchise, but this movie is a bad movie removed from all of that. Kids might like this but they would have to be real young, like, three or four years old. A first grader would probably be too sophisticated for this version of Tom and Jerry. I definitely know i was.

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writingguide003-blog · 5 years

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'A total blast': our writers pick their favorite summer blockbusters ever

New Post has been published on https://writingguideto.com/must-see/a-total-blast-our-writers-pick-their-favorite-summer-blockbusters-ever/

'A total blast': our writers pick their favorite summer blockbusters ever

As the season heats up on the big screen, Guardian writers look back on their picks from the past with killer sharks, mournful crime-fighters and time-traveling teens

Face/Off (1997)

Photograph: Allstar/Cinetext/PARAMOUNT

Madman bomber Nicolas Cage stole John Travoltas dead sons life. So gloomy FBI agent Travolta steals Cages face. When Cage steals his face and his wife and freedom John Woos Face/Off becomes the biggest, wackiest and most operatic summer blockbuster in history, a gonzo combustion that flings everything from pigeons to peaches at the screen.

Hong Kong cineastes might applaud a script with roots in the ancient Sichuan opera genre Bian Lian, where performers swap masks like magic. Popcorn-munchers, of which I am front row center, are here to watch whack job Cage and soulful Travolta, two actors who love to go full-ham, play each other and go deep inside their iconographies. Call it hamception. Or just call it a crazy swing that hits a home run as Cavolta and Trage battling it out in a warehouse, a speedboat and, of course, a church. As Cage-as-Travolta gloats to Travolta-as-Cage, Isnt this religious? The eternal battle between good and evil, saint and sinners but youre still not having any fun! Maybe hes not, but we sure are. Bravo, bravo. AN

Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Photograph: David James/Publicity image from film company

Theres been an increasing sense of desperation clinging to the majority of roles picked by Tom Cruise in recent years. Outside of the still shockingly entertaining Mission: Impossible series, he was miscast in the barely serviceable Jack Reacher and its maddeningly unnecessary sequel, his awards-aiming American Made was throwaway and his franchise-starting The Mummy was a franchise-killer. But four summers ago, he picked the right horse just maybe at the wrong time.

Because despite how deliriously fun Edge of Tomorrow was in the summer of 2014, audiences didnt show the requisite enthusiasm. It was a moderate success (enough to warrant a long-gestating sequel) but it should have packed them in, its combination of charm, invention and sheer thrills making it one of the most objectively successful blockbuster experiences in memory. The nifty plot device (Cruise must relive a day of dying while battling aliens over and over again) allowed for some dark gallows humor and a frenetic pace that kept us all giddily on edge while it also contained a dazzling action star turn from Emily Blunt whose fearless Full Metal Bitch wrestled the film away from Cruise. Blame its relative failure on the bland title? Cruise fatigue? Blockbuster over-saturation? Then find a digital copy to watch and rewatch and repeat. BL

Back to the Future (1985)

Photograph: Allstar/UNIVERSAL/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

Back to the Future very nearly wasnt a summer blockbuster. The reshoots required after Eric Stoltz was booted off, then the fact Michael J Foxs Family Ties commitments meant he could only shoot at night all meant filming didnt wrap until late April. Robert Zemeckis and Steven Spielberg duly pencilled in an August / September release.

But then people started seeing it. Test scores were off the scale. Said producer Frank Marshall: Id never seen a preview like that. The audience went up to the ceiling. So they bagsied the best spot the year had to offer 3 July hired a squad of sound editors to work round the clock and two print editors with instructions to get properly choppy. They did, and those big trims tightened yet further one of the tautest screenplays (by Bob Gale) cinema has ever seen. The only bit of fat they left was the Johnny B Goode scene: sure, it didnt advance the story, but the kids at those test screenings knew we were gonna love it. Back to the Future is a pure shot of summer cinema: grand, ambitious, insanely entertaining. Deadpool, Avengers, take note: a blockbuster can be smart as hell so long as it wears it lightly. In the end, by the way, the film spent 11 weeks at number 1 at the US box office. Thats essentially the whole summer. CS

Teminator 2: Judgment Day (1991)

Photograph: Allstar/TRISTAR/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

The first film I ever saw at the cinema was The Rocketeer. We drove into Bradford city centre, bought our tickets at the Odeon and sat through the 1991 tale which followed the fortunes of a stunt pilot, a rocket pack and a Nazi agent played by Timothy Dalton who sounded like he was from Bury rather than Berlin. The way into the multiplex there was a huge poster for Terminator 2: Judgment Day. Arnie sat on a Harley with a shotgun cocked and ready. My dad was a huge fan of the original but he still couldnt swing taking a seven-year-old to see it. It wasnt until I borrowed a VHS copy that I finally got to see what was behind that image. Skynet, dipshits, T-1000s, a nuclear holocaust and a motorbike chases on the LA river.

Blockbusters dont usually have that edge: theres a more brazen mainstream appeal. But Judgment Day was and still is an exception. It did huge numbers at the box office (more than $500m), was a rare sequel that was arguably better than the original and introduced really odd bits of Spanish idiom into the Bradford schoolyard lexicon. I probably would have been scarred for life watching it as a seven-year-old, but as a teenager it gave me a story I doubt Ill ever get tired of revisiting. LB

The Dark Knight (2008)

Photograph: Allstar/WARNER BROS.

The summer of 2008 was a busy one: Barack Obama emerged from a contentious democratic primary to become the first ever black presidential nominee of a major party. The dam fortifying the entire global financial system was about to burst. China hosted its first ever Summer Olympics. But somehow, and not exactly to my credit, what I remember most from that summer is the uncanny, ridiculously over-the-top publicity blitzkrieg that preceded the release of The Dark Knight, which has since emerged as not just an all-time great summer blockbuster, but an all-time great American film, period.

There were faux-political billboards that read I believe in Harvey Dent; a weirdly nondescript website of the same name; Joker playing cards dispersed throughout comic book stores, which led fans to another website where the DA was defaced with clown makeup. Dentmobiles, Gotham City voter registration cards, a pop-up local news channel: the marketing campaign might have seemed excessive had the movie not so convincingly topped it. Ten years later, as films like Deadpool and Avengers: Infinity War try to reach those same heights of virality, The Dark Knight remains the measuring stick by which every superhero movie, and superhero villain, is measured. JN

Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)

Photograph: Jasin Boland/AP

In many ways, Fury Road is summer: arid, scorching, bright enough to be squinted at. The driving force behind all the high-impact driving is scarcity of water, the essence of life in a desert where death practically rises up from the burning sand. Even in the air-conditioned comfort of a multiplex auditorium in Washington DCs Chinatown, watching George Millers psychotic motor opera left this critic sweaty and parched. My world is fire and blood, warns the weary Max Rockatansky (Tom Hardy) in the scripts opening lines. Staggering out of a theater into the oppressive rays of the sun, it sure can feel that way.

Millers masterpiece fits into the summer blockbuster canon in a less literal capacity as well, striking its ideal balance of dazzling technical spectacle and massively-scaled emotional catharsis. There was plenty of breathless praise to go around upon this films 2015 release, much of it for the feats of practical-effects daring, but the hysterical extremes of feeling cemented its status as a modern classic. I cant deny that Ive watched the polecat sequence upwards of a dozen times, but Millers film truly comes alive in Furiosas howl of desperation, and in Maxs noble disappearance into the throng. CB

Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

Its the music, its the giant boulder, its the Old Testament mysticism, its the whip, its the Cairo Swordsman, its Harrison Fords crooked smile, its the bad dates, its Karen Allen drinking a sherpa under the table, its the melted faces and exploding heads. Its all these things plus having the good fortune of seeing this at the cinema at a very young age, therefore watching most of it through my terrified fingers. (Indy tells Marion to keep her eyes shut during the cosmic spooky ending; way ahead of you there!)

The modern blockbuster as we know it was created by Steven Spielberg with Jaws and George Lucas with Star Wars, so the hype was unmatched when the two collaborated in 1981 with Raiders of the Lost Ark. As a kid I had no idea this was a loving homage to cliffhanger serials from the 30s and 40s, I took it as pure adventure. The seven-and-a-half minute desert truck chase (I dont know, Im making thus up as I go) is probably the best action sequence in all of cinema (John Woos Hard Boiled does not have a horse, sorry), but watching as an adult one notices a lot of sophisticated humor, too. (Indy being too exhausted to make love to Marion, for example, is something that didnt connect when I was six.)

Its strange to think I watched these cartoon Nazis on VHS with my grandparents who had escaped the Holocaust, and no one benefits when you do the math to figure out how young Marion was when, as Indy puts it, you knew what you were doing. But for thrills, laughs and propulsive camerawork (though a little mild Orientalism), nothing tops this one. JH

Independence Day (1996)

Photograph: Everett/REX/Shutterstock

Short of actually calling their film Summer Blockbuster, rarely can a films height-of-summer release date been so central to a films raison detre. This being the mid-90s, when po-mo and self-referentiality was all the rage, brazenly hooking your tentpole film to 4 July was seen as a pretty smart idea.

Fortunately, all the ducks did line up in a row for ID4: a game-changing performance from Will Smith, Jeff Goldblum at (arguably) his funniest, a rousingly Clintoneque president in Bill Pullman and most importantly in that run-up to the millennium physical destruction on a gigantic scale. Much comment at the time was expended on the laser obliteration of the White House (an early shot from the Tea Party/Maga crowd?), but I personally cherish director Roland Emmerichs signature move of detonating cars in somersault formation. Like many other huge-budget films then and since, Independence Day was basically a tooled-up retread of cheap-as-chips format of earlier decades though who these days would roll such expensive dice on what is essentially an original script, with no comic book or toy branding as a forerunner? We shall never see its like again. AP

Aliens (1986)

Photograph: Allstar/20 CENTURY FOX/Sportsphoto Ltd./Allstar

An Aliens summer is one for moviegoers who prefer to sit in in darkened rooms when the sun is shining; the brutal confines of the fiery power plant make an excellent subliminal ad for air conditioning. In 1986, James Cameron took Ridley Scotts elegant, iconic horror template and turned it into an all-out action blockbuster, forcing Ripley once again to face down her nemeses in a breathless fug of claustrophobia, sweat and fear. Its relentlessly stressful and unbelievably thrilling.

I first saw Aliens many years after its initial release. Owing to its sizeable and long-lasting legacy, it was at once immediately familiar, yet also brisk and brutally fresh. I understood that it was a classic, but I wasnt prepared for just how good it is, for the pitch-perfect management of tension, the pace that never really lets up, the emotional pull. The maternal undertow of Ripleys protection of Newt, and the alien mirror of that, adds a level of heart unusual in most blockbusters, and her frustration at being a woman whose authority must be earned again and again, and then proven again and again, remains grimly relevant, 30 years on. Its also a total blast. Now get away from her, you bitch. RN

Jaws (1975)

Photograph: Fotos International/Getty Images

It is the great summer blockbuster ancestor the film that in 1975 more or less invented the concept of the event movie. And unlike all those other summer blockbusters, Steven Spielbergs Jaws is actually about the summer; it is explicitly about the institution of the summer vacation, into which the movie was being sold as part of the seasonal entertainment. It is about the sun, the sand, the beach, the ocean and the entirely justified fear of being eaten alive by an enormous shark with the appetite of a serial killer and the cunning of a U-boat commander. And more than that: it is about that most contemporary of political phenomena: the coverup, the town authorities at a seaside resort putting vacationers at risk by not warning them about the shark. The Jaws mayor has become comic shorthand for the craven and pusillanimous politician.

A blockbuster nowadays means spectacular digital effects, but this film is from an analogue world. It bust the block through brilliant film-making and an inspired score from John Williams, summoning up the shark with a simple two-note theme which became the most famous musical expression of evil since Bernard Herrmanns shrieking violin stabs in Psycho took the place of actual knife-slashing. I still remember the excitement of the summer of 1975, and the queues around the block at the Empire, in Watford, round the corner from the football ground. The inspired brevity of the title meant the word was repeated over and over again to fill the marquee display: JAWS JAWS JAWS as if they were screaming it! PB

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/us

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athriftymom · 6 years

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New Post has been published on http://athriftymom.staging.wpengine.com/keto-diet-or-low-carb-diet-and-why-your-cravings-for-junk-food-go-away/

Keto Diet or low carb diet and why your cravings for junk food go away

*** DISCLAIMER – ALWAYS STUDY AND RESEARCH ANYTHING BEFORE TRYING. WITH DIETS AND HEALTH CHANGES ALWAYS CONSULT A MEDICAL PROFESSIONAL AND SEEK YOUR DOCTORS ADVICE WITH ANYTHING BEFORE YOU TRY IT. THE INFORMATION HERE IS MY OWN, RESULTS MAY VARY. ***

Carbohydrates and Sugars are highly addictive. They have been addictive since long before the Chinese started trading it on the silk road. Once the world got a hold of sugar the addiction and problems set it. At the time it was found to be the food of the gods along with chocolate. How convenient, lol. In ancient times a low carb diet was the norm, no one even knew what a carb was.

“Sugar stimulates brain pathways just as an opioid would, and sugar has been found to be habit-forming in people. Cravings induced by sugar are comparable to those induced by addictive drugs like cocaine and nicotine.” NY Times

So that late night craving for some ice cream or a candy bar or even that slice of cake is not just your belly speaking, it’s your brain. When the same chemical receptors that make you feel good when you are taking drugs like narcotics and nicotine also send signals that you need that sugar, it’s hard to resist.

When compared to the intake of healthy fats like natural butter and lard

So you can see in the data that as sugar use increase and healthy fat intake decreased then obesity skyrocketed.

“For instance, functional M.R.I. tests involving milkshakes demonstrate that it’s the sugar, not the fat, that people crave. Sugar is added to foods by an industry whose goal is to engineer products to be as irresistible and addictive as possible.” NY Times

So if sugar is addictive and we all have seen and heard and probably even experienced its affects like diabetes, heart disease, inflammation, high blood pressure to name just a few, then why is it still around? Why is sugar added to everything? It really wasn’t until manufacturing and marketing came into play in the turn of the last century that things really got out of hand. I watched this all about the same time I decided to go on a Keto Diet. It’s pretty interesting when lobbyist and industry marketing comes into play.

Watch Adam Ruins Everything – Low-Fat Foods Are Making You Fatter

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How do we get rid of the sugar

One of the biggest issues with maintaining a healthy diet is what is in reach. Can you go to the pantry or fridge and grab a soda or snack? If so you aren’t ready. Or if you are you are braver then I am. Getting rid of the unhealthy food in your home is key. But don’t just binge and eat it all. just get rid of it. Give it away to your local food bank or shelter. Give it to friends of the family or hand it all out to your children’s friends…insert evil grin..lol.

How Low Carb Diets lessen cravings

When you eat at a very expensive restaurant you will notice they use more healthy fats like animal fats and butters. This is one reason why your taste buds go crazy and you come away thinking that all tasted so good! Why is it that bacon taste better then ham? Bacon has a higher fat content! And think about your meals that you have. Do you feel full after eating a plate of veggies or after you have eaten a couple eggs and sausage? How soon after eating those meals did you go back to the fridge to get your next snack? Higher fat intake stimulates the production of leptin a chemical in our bodies that tells the brain that we are full and to stop eating. Where as sugar causes cravings and low blood sugar which stimulates the body to eat more.

How to start and what did I eat

You start by taking the first step. Make the mental change that you are going to go all in or nothing at all. Don’t go half way. Give a shot for a better life and a trimmer waistline. Now that you have removed the temptations, head to the store to stock up on the foods that are perfect for the diet.

What foods can you eat on a Keto Diet

Fats and Oils on a Keto Diet-

Saturated fats

Coconut Oil

Butter

Animal fats – my favorite was left over bacon fat that I stored in a jar

Lard

Monounsaturated Fats

Avocados

Olives

Nuts like Almonds, Cashews and Macadamia

Polyunsaturated Omega3’s

Fish

Seafood

Veggies on a Keto Diet

Leafy Greens – Lettuces like iceberg, romaine, any kid of leafy green

Kale

Radishes

Kohlrabi

Celery

Asparagus

Cucumbers

Squash

Stay away from veggies that are tubers and grow under ground. Those are high start which is a carbohydrates.

Meats and Proteins on Keto Diet

Try and lean towards higher fat meats. Getting your daily percentage of protein will not be hard to do. Getting enough fat in your diet is going to be tough. Red meat has more fat then chicken meat. So plan ahead. We made lots of meals with chicken because we already had a lot in the freezer. But when you add breading like Crackelings or Pork rinds crushed instead of traditional bread crumbs you gain where you lost. yes Pork rinds for breading is amazing. It does have a smell when you are preparing it but you cant smell or taste it once it is cooked.

Red Meat – beef

Other white meat like Pork, try and use the darker meat since it has more fat

Chicken, deer, elk and buffalo have low fat so plan ahead

Nuts

Cheeses – hard cheeses generally have less carbs

#A Thrifty Dad #Keto Diet

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