#i rarely ever use the full page for sketching but i really like the results they look good :D

[keeps-ache]

i have been BETRAYED. i've been thrown to the grappling arms of damnation and i've found that the exit was merely a dim recollection of another place !!

#just me hi #my grandma called and my mother handed me the phone with a devious-azz look on her face and in my groggy innocence i asked 'hello? what?' #and my grandma asked me to sing for her over the phone i think i'll just turn myself into a puddle and ddddiiiieee Hfbvhsf #i'm being extra melodramatic because i just woke up and thaz just how it eez lmaoo #but like MAN i got no heads up i'm going to explode vfhsfhvs #i'm fine w/ just doing whatever but don't Askkkk meeee now i'm all jittery and Mannnn #AUHHH i was off-pitch and wobbly and pitchy i'm going to live in a muddy little ditch forever hbvfhs #she liked it which is nice but I DIDN'T FHSHF #'you're a performer' tell that to these NERVES !!! #i was sleeeeeepinnnngg is there no compassion for the snoozing auuauahaufhuhbfvhsbgh #SOB. #putting my mother + sister on the list for that one. traitors traitors all of them hbvhsfh #diabolical behavior. completely insidious. can't beleeb they done this to me #genuinely couldn't even tap out of it cuz i was Sleepy and had no brain. RIP one more fool hfhsh #//aside from the beTRAYAL and other suchenings. what is up man hfhsfhv #i drew some sick p1nk space stuff in my sketchbook which is just a shame bc i can't colour it and i can't show it to anybody Hfvbh #i rarely ever use the full page for sketching but i really like the results they look good :D #nobody knows who Fate is i think but if you do i finally have a settled design for her hfvhs :DD #the dress is needing work.. you are NOT going out like that miss lady ma'am hvfshfb #/wondering about the medium for this project too #comic would work best for me bc well. it takes two things i like to do and mushes them into a delightful mess loll :> #//there has been a sudden shift in my brain chemicals and now i'm going to play a game hhfsh :333 #toodles noodles !!

[abookisafriend]

breakfast of champions, by kurt vonnegut: four out of five expletives

if you've ever wanted a novel where the author compulsively tells you the penis sizes of all the male characters, boy have i got the book for you.

breakfast of champions is a social criticism book with a side dish of breaking the fourth wall. it builds up the author's kilgore trout mythology and skewers modern life in a surreal fashion.

the book is about the events of a few days in a mid-sized u.s. city where a science fiction author and a car dealer having his first manic episode head toward each other on a collision course. along the way, vonnegut cracks open the town where the car dealer lives and explores its relationships and failings. in this book, vonnegut delivers his writing philosophy -- somewhere around page 209 -- which is that stories that focus on a handful of heroes give us a skewed view of the world, and that he tries to give us the wide, chaotic lens of reality … because our stories can undermine our minds … as they do in the case of the car dealer. of course, the car dealer has the added extremity of mania, but the concept applies in general. nobody is entirely sane, after all.

i want to add that the depiction of mania is really well informed. the episode of violence that occurs is extreme, but the general idea of it is spot on. i don't know where vonnegut got his impressions of mania, but it's like he's lived it.

one down side of the book is that vonnegut tackles racism by depicting it in a way that's going to be hard for some people to endure. he puts the stink right on the page, and not everyone is going to want to read the n word that many times, even if vonnegut is making the point that the people who speak that way are in the wrong. like, we get it. the other down side is that, and i find this to be true of a lot of vonnegut's work, the setting never really comes into full color. the rooms and vistas and backgrounds of the various scenes are rarely fleshed out, and as a result my imagination and impression of the book is of sketched characters on a background of aged paper. i like what vonnegut does with his stories, but he lacks something in style that leaves his work always (to me) short of real transcendance. thus: four out of five expletives … but it's a good four. i don't think that this book is as well written as slaughterhouse five, but i think it might be more important.

#book review #book reviews #review #reviews #non-genre fiction #breakfast of champions #kurt vonnegut

[et-dah]

The Demon Brothers: Creative Outlets Headcanons

they are all immortals and when you've lived longer than you can remember, you're bound to find a creative outlet to destress, alleviate boredom, or you know, to just have fun!

Lucifer

He’s a busy demon. If he’s not working, he's sleeping, or cleaning up one of his brother’s messes, so he doesn't have that much time to just relax and explore his creative sides. 

That said though, it doesn’t mean he has no hobbies at all.

He plays the piano. He used to play it every morning, back when he’s still in the Celestial Realm, when he’d taught Lilith how to play the piano every morning and she’d sat besides him as his fingers moved across the keys slower so she could copy him. 

Nowadays, playing the piano feels very nostalgic and bittersweet, but you’ll hear soft, bittersweet melodies drift from the music room once in a while.

He also composes his own music, but that's an even rarer occurrence. The last time he created a new music piece was centuries ago. 

(Ever since MC came to Devildom though, he's been itching to write music for them.)

Practices calligraphy for fun. He has a whole set of brushes and ink and lettering pens. His handwriting is already beautiful but his calligraphy is even more amazing.

Another thing he does is gardening. He's got a great eye for landscape architecture, he's the reason why the house's backyard is pretty. 

He plants decorative plants and likes to cross breed flowers so the House of Lamentation's backyard is full of pretty shrubs and unfamiliar flowers. 

He is usually joined by Beel as he is the other brother that finds gardening very relaxing.

Mammon

He definitely shows his creativity by coming up with the most absurdly brilliant, out-of-the-box, original schemes to make money.

Mammon can draw, like really good. His drawings are very realistic. He prefers to use traditional media: charcoal pencils, graphite sticks, blenders, erasers, drawing pens, brushes, and maybe some watercolors.

He usually does architecture sketches.

But if you check his drawers, you’ll find several sketchbooks of his brothers in different candid poses. MC alone has taken up three whole sketchbooks. Mammon makes sure MC doesn’t see those sketches though.

Crashes Asmo’s Art Day regularly, claiming that if Levi’s invited then the Great Mammon should be too. Asmo and Levi always complains but they let him stay anyway.

Mammon also has a natural talent on jewelry making and metalwork. He makes jewelry from buttons, beads, pearls, diamonds, and crystals. From small pendants to elaborate neckpieces, simple anklets to ornate hairpins. 

Mammon has made metal bookmarks for Satan because the book lover always misplaces his bookmarks or destroys them in fits of rage when he doesn't like a book's ending.

He sculpts wood. It takes him months to finish one small piece because he only does it when he's really, really bored, he prefers to make his much more profitable jewelry. 

He keeps all of his sculptures in his room, small and detailed pieces of wood engraving of Devildom native animals lining up on one of the shelves.

Leviathan

This is canon but he draws! He doesn't think he's very good at it, but he really enjoys it. 

Unlike Mammon who likes to draw with his charcoal pencils and drawing pens, Levi prefers to draw digitally. He still switch to traditional media now and then though.

Has a monthly scheduled “Art Day�� where he and Asmo hang out together, Levi draws with his sketchbook or his drawing tablet and Asmo paints. They basically just gossip and hype each other’s art.

Dabbles in making short animations but feels like it’s just not something for him. He makes short comics though.

He wants to be able to make his own video game someday though. Maybe after he learns programming.

He makes the most detailed cosplay outfits for his own cosplays. He sews really good and patches his brothers clothes when they ask. Where do you think Asmo learns how to sew his own clothes from?

Really good at dancing and he really likes it too. He's a natural at it. From the most intricate traditional Devildom dances to freestyle dancing. He can make new moves on the spot and can copy any moves from one look.

He’s a shy baby though, you’ll rarely see him dance when he’s sober.

Except when he’s playing DDR (Demons Dance Revolution). Then, it’s like he’s the most confident demon in Devildom.

Satan

Satan writes poetry when inspiration strikes him. He has also written short stories but he always comes back to creating beautiful poems. He’s got a way with words.

Photography is something he has only recently taken interest in but he has a great eye for taking breathtaking shots. 

Has become the family’s go-to photographer.

“Satan, take a picture of me and Mammon!” “Satan, take our picture, quick!” “Satan, help me get a picture for my Devilgram!”

He’s the reason Asmo’s Devilgram pictures always look like they’re taken professionally in a photo studio or something.

Satan loves art, likes to stroll through museums and stare at paintings for hours, but has little talent in creating them. Even so, he still likes to paint even if he's not good at it. 

Sometimes he just wants to slap paint on a canvas and make a colorful mess. It's fun. 

He joins Art Day every other month.

Another thing he does is knitting! It relaxes him. It gives him something to focus at when he's angry (um, angrier than usual), just to give his hands something to do that doesn't involve breaking anything. The simple patterns he makes are easy enough that they don't frustrate him. 

Rarely ever finishes his knitting though, you'll just find this 5 meters long knitted fabric in one corner of his room with the ends coming undone because he calms himself down enough to stop knitting.

Asmodeus

Regularly designs, cut, and sew his own clothes. 

Has a lot of sketchbooks full of drawings of flowy dresses and stylish coats and many aesthetically pleasing shirts. 

He has started his own clothing line and sometimes collaborate with Majolish. 

But for the most part, he designs clothes for himself and himself only, he doesn't want anyone else to wear clothes as fabolous as his.

Nail art? Nail art. 

Asmo paints all of the brothers nails and sometimes he'll persuade one of them to let him do a complete manicure, with glitter polish and shiny studs and all. 

Yes, even Lucifer. You just never see the results because Lucifer wears his gloves almost all the time.

Asmo creates beautiful makeup art. He doesn't really like a lot of makeup on his own face though, so his brothers' faces are his canvases.

He also has a great eye for interior decorating and flower arranging. He restyles his room every month.

Not many people know it but he paints. And he's very good at it. He has done a painting of each brother, the paintings can be seen on the walls of the House of Lamentation's hallways. 

Art Day with Levi (and sometimes Satan or Belphie) is spent with him in front of canvases, chatting with his brothers, paint splatters on his hands. It's the only day that he doesn't mind looking a little messy.

Beelzebub

He cooks, of course!  And bakes too!

It's one of the times he’s willing to wait to eat because cooking the ingredients first rather than just straight up eating them will make the foods taste better. 

Half of the food in the kitchen are his creations. Anything he can make on his own from scratch, he will; jams, ice cream, sauces, juices, bread, chips, etc. 

Likes to experiment and always do something different than the original recipes. 

He garnishes his cooking like it’s something you order from a five star restaurant.

Beel is another demon who has a green thumb. He likes taking care of plants and doesn't mind getting a bit dirty doing it so gardening is another hobby of his. 

If Lucifer plants ornamental plants, Beel grows useful plants like herbs and vegetables and small fruits. He's also good at topiary.

Always has an idea for a DIY project. 

His creations is scattered all over the House of Lamentation. Belphie's drawer divider is made out of yogurt cups. Broken drawer knobs recycled into Asmo's jewelry organizer. The coat rack. The bathroom towel holder. 

Even Lucifer's hanging Demonus rack is handmade by Beel when he's bored one weekend, with Mammon's help for the engraving decorations along the sides of the rack. Beel's got a bit of Bob the Builder in him.

He is very good at singing. His voice is clear and he has a broad vocal range. Has been caught unconsciously humming in class many times.

Has definitely sang Belphie to sleep.

Belphegor

Does his pranks counts as a creative outlet though?😂 Between him and Satan, Belphie's ideas are the most creative and out of the box, resulting on some of the best pranks they did.

Belphie does origami. It's relaxing, easy enough to learn, and doesn't take much effort and energy to do it. 

Has stacks of origami papers in his room: standard origami paper, foil paper, traditional Washi ones, the leather-like Momigami paper, all kinds of paper. 

He especially loves to make little origami stars and keeps them in glass jars in his room.

Belphie also has adult coloring books. 

And kids coloring books.

Coloring is relaxing to him. It's very calming to just lay down and fills a page with pretty colors for a while. It's not a tiring way to destress, he can color without moving from his bed, and it feels satisfying when he finishes a whole page. 

He sometimes joins Art Day if he's not too lazy to move. Still prefers to color alone where it's quiet though.

He also journals. It's another thing he can do that is inexpensive and not energy consuming. He writes about anything that comes to his mind, his thoughts, his ideas, memories. 

Definitely keeps a dream journal.

Also I headcanon that as the Avatar of Sloth, sleep and dreams are some of the things he can manipulate. He enjoys creating dreams; the worldbuilding, the story, the details. He can be really creative when it comes to making them, spinning the most vivid and imaginative dreams. 

They’re not necessarily good dreams though. After all, he is still a demon, his dreams will most likely mess up your mind than make you smile in your sleep.

#obey me #obey me swd #obey me shall we date #obey me headcanons #obey me lucifer #obey me mammon #obey me leviathan #obey me satan #obey me asmodeus #obey me beelzebub #obey me belphegor #rol writes

[sweetest-honeybee]

New Commission Pages!

(EDIT: Full Body digital paintings are now available! Backgrounds are now NOT a fixed price! And a couple new examples have been used to portray the end result!)

‼️Line art and color is no longer an option‼️

‼️Payment happens after an approved sketch‼️

Everything is updated and I now have new, much more recent, examples of my drawings and other commissions I’ve done for people included in those examples. (If you need more examples, I’d be happy to send you some!)

Quick note, I can do more heavily detailed and mecha included commissions, I just need an extremely proper reference of what I’m doing. I’m not very tech savvy lol so keep it in mind. So ignore the note that I wouldn’t do it on the Will Not Do portion.

BUT I did add that I’m now including the glitch effects and minor animation effects as an extra small charge if that’s something you’d like to add to your commission :D

Fun fact! 9 times out of 10, commission turnaround time is anywhere within 1.5-6 hours! (More detailed commissions subject to take longer) Rarely do I really ever try to keep the client waiting for more than 2-3 days and faster responses ensure a much faster done commission. However, life events can get in the way sometimes. But usually turnaround time is hella quick. Just ask my last few clients :)

Slots are upped to 5 slots now as well completely :) Not that I expect anything, but sometimes I get a little busier randomly lol

Here’s the example of the minor animation effects and glitch effects. 👇🏻👇🏻

#commissions #commission prices

[what-big-teeth]

Admire (Male Naga ; Fic Raffle)

And done! @glugenash​ requested a meet-cute between a male reader and a naga of any gender. I decided to go with a male naga and let my imagination take hold to make this wonderful idea even cuter. I hope you all enjoy this fic! Male Reader (POV) x Male Monster If there’s one place you can truly relax while curling up with a good book, it’s the library.

Ever since you moved into town for a better job opportunity, you attempted to combat the new stressors that turned up as a result. Exercise, meditation, doing the bare minimum on the weekends. Nothing could compare to the public library and its innate charm. This is why you’re seated at your favorite table.

Tucked into one of the historical building’s many corners beside a large window, there’s always just enough sunlight to happily bask in and use while reading. These simple reasons—and the woodsy, vanillin scent of the surrounding book collection—are why you’ve decided to revisit an old series. Something about embracing a nostalgic memory at your table alleviates your pent-up stress like nothing else.

Which is why the sensation of being watched feels so foreign.

You’ve attempted to look around as discreetly as possible. But your eyes haven’t encountered anything out of the ordinary. Just the usual, book-lined shelves and wooden lectern holding an old, massive dictionary.

Still, you can’t fully shake the feeling. Your gut has rarely led you astray, which is why you keep glancing around. After a fleeting moment, you think you see a dark shape shrink away behind a nearby shelf. You stand up, intent on finding out who your odd observer is. But an insistent buzzing from your jeans pocket breaks your focus. Knowing that your library hasn’t made the full transition to a ‘loud facility’ yet, you step away from your spot, leaving your book behind to take the call outside.

Unsurprisingly, it’s work. Or rather, your boss. One of your co-workers has taken ill suddenly, and he needs you to fill in for her shift until he recovers. There’ll be extra pay as compensation, which helps to sweeten the deal. But when your boss mentions the project your co-worker has been toiling over for the last few weeks, you silently wince. You honestly would rather not take on the extra work, but the extra money would really help.

Your boss says your name in a questioning manner. Looks like you accidentally zoned out.

“Sure thing,” you say with a forced, cheerful tone. You can already feel the mounting stress that’ll have you on edge. With a final, merry “thanks!” and farewell, the call ends. This new development calls for some extra self-care.

You head back inside the library, making your way over to the built-in cafe. It’s a welcomed new addition, especially since they make some of the best, homebrew tea and pastries you’ve ever had. With your cup of honeyed chamomile and warmed confection in hand, you return to your sunshine laden table.

Your book is in its usual spot, but it’s been closed with a tasseled bookmark keeping track of your place. You didn’t pick up one while greeting Jason at the circulation desk. After mentally marking which page you left off on, you untuck it from between the pages. The design is, well, it’s amazing. Hand drawn swirls of complimentary colors balance each other out while being lined with careful, fine-tipped black lines. And the tassel is uniquely soft to the touch, the threads feeling similar to silk. You’re so drawn to the workmanship of the bookmark that you almost overlook the neatly folded piece of paper on the table.

The Farandale Chronicles is one of my favorite series. If you’d like to read something similar, I’d like to suggest the Crystal of Might series, written by Malkus Morak.  — D

You re-read the note a few times. But no matter how much you attempt to place the neat handwriting, you can’t. There isn’t anything untoward about the suggestion, honestly. And the bookmark is an unexpected, if creative gift. Decision made, you replace the bookmark and head over to the Science Fiction section.

It doesn’t take long to find the suggested book and read the blurb on the jacket’s interior. You can’t deny that it sounds like something right up your alley. Even better, there are three more books in the series.

“Think I will try this out,” you mutter to yourself. “Thanks for the suggestion, D.”

You bundle the new book together with your old favorite, being cautious of your food, and fall in line before the circulation desk. It doesn’t take long for you to reach the front and greet the tawny, curly-haired minotaur behind the counter with a smile.

“How are things going, Jason?” He nods in reply, stalwart as ever as he carefully checks both books for possible damage before checking them out to you.

“Three weeks, as usual,” he murmurs with a deep voice. He gestures to the new book you’ve decided to read. “Should I put the sequel on hold for you?”

“That’d be great!”

After nimbly using the keyboard to complete your request, he hands both books to you with a gentle puff of air.

“Anything else I can help you with?”

Wetting your lips, you tug the handwritten note from between the cover and first page of Morak’s book.

“Would you happen to know whose handwriting this is?”

Jason gently takes the note from you, his warm brown eyes scanning the contents. With a small cough, he hands it back to you.

“Sorry, I don’t. But I’m glad they wrote on a slip of paper instead of damaging the book.”

You can’t help but chuckle. Ever since you met him, Jason’s always been a stickler for the rules when it comes to the library. Quiet yet firm. You pocket the note, being careful to not crease it any further.

“That’s fine,” you say. “It was worth a shot, anyway.”

“Be sure to finish your food while on site,” he says. “The Director is still leery about folks taking off with the cafe’s food.”

“Don’t worry,” you say, smiling. “There’s a bench outside that called to me when I stepped out earlier. Take care.”

As you leave with your new reading materials and food, you can’t stop the thrill of excitement that wells up inside you. Besides being a place of reprieve, you beloved library has provided an interesting mystery as well. And it’s one you intend to solve.

_______________________________________________

Like clockwork, you return the same day next week. Thankfully, your boss was kind enough to give you the weekend off after you took on your duties and that of your sick co-worker. It gives you just enough time to destress at the library. This time, you make a beeline for the cafe, ordering some calming tea and a new, but delectable looking pastry. Jason greets you at the circulation desk and checks out Molak’s second book to you. Once you’ve checked that your usual spot hasn’t been taken, you swiftly lay claim with your purchased items and settle in your seat.

After drinking your tea and eating your pastry, you find yourself feeling better. You open the hardback’s cover, highly interested in seeing what’ll happen to the protagonists next. But two slips of paper flutter out from the book, like before. The material is thicker this time around, similar to reinforced sketchbook paper. Your eyes widen as you realize why.

The subject of the drawing is someone you know too well. It’s you. The sketch depicts a past you sitting where you are now, looking content with a soft smile on your face as you read. Little details jump out as you take in the entirety of the work. The slight dents on the side of the old table you graze your hand over time and time again. The way you hold a book that you find immensely but surprisingly pleasing. The almost starstruck expression lighting up your features as you leave this world for another while reading…

Underneath, in familiar elegant writing, the caption reads ‘Entranced Beauty’. Heat wells up within your cheeks as you read the words over and over again. Your fingertip glides against the lettering as you pick up the other slip of paper from the carpeted floor.

There have been many times I’ve wanted to tell you how wonderful you look when you’re lost in your own world. But I’m afraid that, verbally, words fail me. At least this skill of mine can say more than what I could ever hope. For a while now, I’ve hoped I could be invited to come along with you as another book takes hold of your imagination. But I refuse to think that such lofty hopes can be achieved, considering what I am. I’m merely glad that my suggestion was pleasing to you, and I hope I can continue to provide doors for you to walk through when you need a break from this world.  — D

Your heart pounds loudly inside your chest and head as the heat in your cheeks spread throughout your whole body. All you can think about is discovering who your admirer is and meeting them face to face. After all, someone who can write and such sweet thoughts and draw so beautifully can’t be as bad as they think. With this thought as encouragement, you find Molak’s collection and take the third book of his series from the shelf. You wait in line behind a couple, a gorgon and gargoyle, as Jason helps them with their items. Once they’re taken care of, you step up to the circulation desk and set the book down.

“Find everything you were looking for?” he asks.

You’re tempted to say ‘yes’, but stop short.

“No,” you say. “I...I need your help.”

You show Jason the sketch and note, asking once again if he happens to know anything. After all, the note and sketch had to be put in place before you checked out the second book. And all holds are reserved behind the circulation desk for all patrons.

A strange silence falls between the two of you. It’s broken by Jason coughing into his closed fist as he averts his gaze.

“You do know something, don’t you?” you murmur.Jason glances your way before letting his eyes drop to the computer screen in front of him.

“I get it.” You pause to reign in your voice, surprised at the sudden loudness of it. “I understand you’re trying to protect D, especially because they feel like they can’t face me. But you know me, Jason. I won’t hurt them. I just want to meet them and tell them my appreciation.”

Once more, you bring out the sketch and place it on the circulation desk before you. “Please, help me.”

Jason’s gaze finds the sketch and settles on it. He finally lets out a soft huff of air then rubs the back of his neck with his hand.

“I didn’t realize how deeply D fell for you,” he says. “I thought it was just a crush. Alright. I’ll help you out. Not only do you deserve a happy ending, but so does D. Just...be gentle with him, alright? He’s been through a lot.”

“I will,” you say, letting your words carry your promise. “Thank you, Jason.”

“Don’t thank me just yet,” he mutters. “Gonna have to see how this goes, first. Alright, D always comes like clockwork on Wednesday evenings...”

You take Jason at his word and return to the library at the time and day he suggested. Sure, it involved rearranging your work schedule somewhat, but your now-well co-worker was more than happy to return the favor you showed her. Probably helps that she’s somewhat of a romantic and readily agreed after you explained the situation to her.With careful steps, you make your way towards your usual spot. The last few rays of the setting sun fall onto the table and the naga sitting at it.

The quiet breath you’re taking in stalls at the sight.

With rich, golden brown skin, you can’t help but wonder why D would think himself unattractive. More so thanks to his jet black hair, which is pulled back into a bun, and his matching scales. Even the slight creme of his underbelly, which you can barely make out due to his button-down shirt, is charming. Remembering Jason’s advice, you carefully approach the table as he remains lost in a book held in his clawed hands. It’s the third book in Molak’s fantasy series. You can’t help but smile at the realization.

“Excuse me,” you say.

D startles, tensing at your soft voice. His pupils dilate somewhat in reply as he looks at you. With him looking head on at you, you notice the scaled skin on the sides of his neck. A hood, like that of a cobra. He looks close to bolting right then and there, but you gently press on.

“By chance, are you D?”

D gulps down a few breaths of air.

“N-no, I’m…”

Your body intuitively moves, laying a gentle hand on his upper arm in what you hope is a soothing gesture.

“I want the same thing,” you say. “I want to let you into my world so that we can make one of our own. Together.”

The scaled hood at his neck flares somewhat, but you don’t feel any fear. If anything, you’re entranced. How can such a charming, handsome naga think he’s anything less? After a few tense moments, D finally relaxes then nods.

“I...I am D.”

He meets your gaze, and you almost feel yourself fall into the molten gold of his eyes.

“I didn’t want you to know because not too many people want anything to do with me. My lineage is from a King Cobra clan, which makes me venomous. And that tends to make others uncomfortable. I-I didn’t want you to feel the same, but I couldn’t hide how I felt about you after I first saw you a few months ago. Jason thought...he suggested I could let you know anonymously and I agreed. I thought that would be best. I’m just surprised you’d want to seek me out.”

You can’t help but smile while gently gripping D’s upper arm.

“You left me with an amazing mystery to solve. And as much as you want to know me, I found myself wanting to know the person behind the ‘D’ moniker. I still do, if that’s alright with you.”

D gives you a soft smile in return, which reveals a hint of his sharp fangs. They’re rather cute, just like the rest of him. He stands up and extends a hand towards you.

“Then, let me officially introduce myself. I’m Danilo.”

You take his hand and shake it while giving him your name. When he attempts to pull his hand away, you gently squeeze it. Danilo’s breath catches as you maneuver your fingers so they twine with his.

“B-by chance,” he nearly squeaks out, “do you like Filipino food? I know a place that serves dishes similar to what I grew up with back home.”

“I haven’t had it before,” you say, “but I’m excited to try it out. I hope you don’t mind acting as my culinary tour guide.”

Danilo gives you another soft smile as he huffs out a laugh.

“Not at all.”

You both head towards the circulation desk, where you see Jason positively beaming at the two of you. As Danilo tells you about his work as a graphic designer and animator, you find yourself hanging on his every word. As he hands Jason the third and final book of the trilogy, you smile.

You can’t wait to see what else you both have in common.

#monster boyfriend #monster/human #monster romance #exophilia #naga boyfriend #terato #300 Follower Raffle #I hope you all enjoy!

[aj-artjunkyard]

Trials Of Apollo Oneshot Series CHAPTER SIX

Takes place after the burning maze. Spoilers!

Meg propped her red high-tops up on the wooden table, engorging herself in a greasy chicken wing. I myself reclined on the sofa next to her, chewing on the best tasting fish I’d come across in a long time. The aurae brought whatever food the demigod, legacy or ex-god would like best. In my case, it was a typical ancient greek dinner - grilled fish with a small side dish of olives and olive oil. It reminded me of the old days, the heavenly smell wafting from my mother’s kitchen (minus the olives of course, as they had not yet been invented) while young Artemis and I played with nymphs, climbed trees and held archery competitions. Granted, my mother usually added a garnish of ground ambrosia, but that was slightly too impossible for me in my current state. Still, the thought brought tears to my eyes. I missed my sister and mother, more than words could describe. I managed to blink back the moisture welling up, but I was still glad we dined alone.

Our table looked pathetically desolate compared to the tables around us, which held fifteen demigods each. No one really wanted to talk to those who had pulled their respected leader into a quest which had gotten him killed. So, with our backs to the crowd, we ate in thoughtful silence (at least on my part) until Meg stirred me from my nostalgic reverie.

“You think Ella will finish the book thing in time?” Meg asked, pulling a chicken bone from her mouth and flicking it across the table.

“The Sibylline Books.” I corrected.

“Same difference.” 

“That’s my line.”

“Will they be ready or not?”

I sighed with exasperation at the impatience of my master. 

“I do not know.”

Meg rolled her eyes. 

“You never know anything.”

“Hey! I know as much as my father has left intact in my memories, and that is not my fault.”

Meg ignored my defence, and leaned over to my plate to prod my fish in the eye. 

“That’s gross,” she said, screwing up her face.

“Yes,” I agreed. “It is in fact disgusting to poke someone else’s food when they know you haven’t washed your hands.”

“Not that, dummy.” She pointed at my forkful of fish, which was halfway to my mouth. “That.”

I rolled my eyes and took another bite. “What’s wrong with it?”

“It’s hardly cooked.”

“It’s grilled.” 

Meg stuffed her face with another few bites. Her mouth was so full I was surprised she could still breathe. “Aren’t you supposed to put batter on it or something?” She asked, spraying my face with spit and bits of chicken. I grudgingly wiped it off. 

“Is there anything you Americans don’t deep fry?” 

In response, Meg lifted her feet off the low table, swivelled around and dropped them heavily onto my legs. She was now lying the length of the sofa while half-draped over me, pinning me to the soft cushioning. “Ow.”

She snorted at my discomfort, then continued to inhale her meat. 

My mind wandered around the possibilities of ever seeing my family again. My uncle Poseidon, who had always been my favourite uncle (although my only other uncles are either titans or Hades, so I guess that doesn’t come across as much of a compliment, but it is). My good friends, Hermes and Dionysus, who were always up for a good prank on Ares or ready with a bottle of wine after an awful day (but remember, alcohol is bad, kids. We only drink it because we are each over 3000 years old. Do not attempt until you are the same age, no matter what Dionysus tells you). My sister, the sharp huntress whom I would defend to the death. My mother. Sacred Sibyl, I missed my mother. I missed her warm hugs, her sweet honeysuckle scent, her soft, caring voice. I couldn’t stand the thought of never feeling her comforting presence again. I had to get home.

…

I woke, drenched in cold sweat and gasping for breath. ‘Blasted nightmares,’ I thought, desperately trying to rip the sheets off myself with shaking hands. My legs were still partially entangled when I attempted to stand, resulting in me thumping loudly to the floor. I grasped around in the dark for the small bedside table to help me stand. When I found the edge, I began to pull myself up, but the table tipped, sending me back to the hard floor and spilling its contents onto my head. The digital clock that clattered beside me read 01:38. I growled at it and stood, despite my quaking limbs. My nightmares had wildly unsettled me in ways I wouldn’t tolerate. ‘You’ll never hang onto those memories’, they taunted. ‘Give it a week and you won’t even remember their names’. 

“Shut up, shut up!” I hissed to myself. I began wondering, stumbling towards to bookshelf at the end of the long room. ‘What kind of brother forgets a sibling?’ “Stop.” ‘What kind of son?’ “Stop it!”

I began to yank old, dusty, leather bound books from the shelf, looking for anything with my name on the front. I needed to remember me. Anything. Anything at all. Finally, a large black book with the emboldened golden letters ‘APOLLŌ’ printed on the spine caught my attention. It was a few inches thick and the cover was almost as wide as my chest. Eyes widening, I harshly ripped the book out from its place, the sudden weight bearing down on my weak arms almost causing me to drop it. I did not wish to make any more noise than I already had. I wrapped it in my gangly human arms and lugged it out the door. 

I cannot say I knew where I was headed. I simply needed to get somewhere, to feel the crisp night wind sting my skin into feeling anything but numbness. I found myself marching up a hill. The extra muscle exertion distracted me from my troubles, so I kept climbing. A good way up the hill, I started to feel the pull of the familiar. Temple Hill. I scanned the assorted statues and . There was no particular order, other than ‘most important at the top’. Further on, a massive red crypt loomed, decorated with flames and human skulls. The name Mars Ultor came to me, but I overlooked it. My mind was so busy with rushing thoughts and doubts that I feared any more information might make my brain explode.

My fingers fidgeted with the tears and rough leather texture of the book in my grasp. I felt as if a band composed of nothing but timpani were performing a drumroll in my mind, getting more and more intense with each passing second. Unable to stand still for much longer, I bolted to my right, keeping my head down and following whatever path was under my feet. 

Maybe the last scraps of my godly essence guided me to the place it felt most at home. My mind was caught in such a flurry of panic that I barely noticed I was climbing marble steps until the steely cold shocked my unprotected soles. I was in an circular, open room held up by bronze pillars that were rimmed with gold. A golden dome sat over my head, and an array of my favourite items littered the right side of the room - a golden bow, a quiver stocked with arrows, an elegant grand piano. In the middle of the temple, an altar sat, waiting for sacrifices. I padded to the back of the room, my bare feet echoing on the smooth marble. Sliding my back down a pillar, I sat and heaved the book open. I was too flustered  to have possibly read a word, but the pictures soothed me. There were a few century-old ink sketches of the 'Apollo Belvedere’ in Rome, next to a modern Polaroid marked ‘Latona and Her Children, Apollo and Diana, carved 1874’ I smiled at the tranquil scene. Mother rarely appeared as such now, certainly not after the invention of many modern braid styles (she got me to teach her how to use Instagram so she can ‘see the videos all those pretty young ladies post’ and learn new hairstyles. She’s admittedly very talented. We tied on our self-held Let’s See Who Can Braid Their Hair The Fastest completion). A tear dripped onto the picture. I turned the page.

This one showed the ‘Diana as Huntress’  statue in Berlin. Artie always huffed about her statues, said they were ‘Too dramatic’. She questioned why she, a seasoned hunter, would ever stand around and wait around for the wind to blow the right direction just so she could look cool to the monsters charging at her and her girls. She can say what she likes, but I know that she prefers it when sculptors include her dogs. Just a thought for any artists out there, looking to gain Diana’s favour *wink*. I grinned at the thought of her thirteen year old form pouting up at me. The memory was fuzzy, but still clearer than usual. I turned the page again.

Again and again I flicked through photos of my relatives, skimming over the paragraphs just enough that it reminded me of their names and their relationships with me. Hermes/Mercury was my impish best friend, who I’d vowed to love for eternity. Hera/Juno was my stepmother who caused my mother and siblings nothing but pain, but somehow we respected each other enough to eat cabbage together and compliment each other’s hair. Dionysus/Bacchus was the ultimate party-man, often inviting me to play for his revelries. 

I turned the page once more. This time, I was met with an image that spanned the length of the two pages. At the top of the page, black threatening letters spelled out ‘JUPITER, FATHER OF APOLLO’ and in smaller writing ‘St Petersburg, Hermitage Museum’. Even from glancing into those blank, marble eyes, my anger spiked. ‘There he is’, I thought, ‘sitting all smug on his little stupid throne-’ I admit, my thoughts turned to bitter toddler-like insults. But looking at the god responsible for my misery made me want to throw the book across the temple and storm away. So I did just that. The book smacked into the alter (which tipped) and thumped open onto the floor cover side up, the crusty pages wrinkling under the force. I left the hook where the golden bow had hung empty as I went.

…

Twang!

The arrow just inside the red circle of the target, and I mentally awarded myself seven points. Not that it mattered. Judging by the moon’s position in the inky sky, it was now 3am - I had been at Camp Jupiter’s open-air archery range for almost two hours. No one else had been here when I arrived, and I was glad it had stayed that way. I needed time alone. To stew. I had first come out with the intention to ‘practice’ (still an alien concept to ex-flawless archers such as myself), but now, this long into the session, I was only blowing off steam. Channeling my frustration into every loose of an arrow, imagining the target as everyone who had wronged me over the course of this forsaken punishment. My knuckles tightened. My eyes narrowed. My shoulders tensed. 

Twang! An arrow buried itself deep in the flesh of Commodus’ shoulder.

Twang! A wooden shaft protruded from Caligula’s throat.

Twang! Blood seeped through the mauve suit surrounding Nero’s manipulating, insensitive heart.

Twang! Zeus howled in pain at the arrow embedded in his sternum.

Twang! Python writhed in agony, agony he deserved-

“Apollo!”

I yelped and my shot went wildly off course, flying high with no power or distance, and landing in the grass in front of the target with a thud. Whipping around, I was about to tell whoever it was to GO AWAY when I was met with an equally startled young man, dressed in pyjama bottoms and the signature purple Camp Jupiter t-shirt, with the gold letters SPQR emblazoned boldly on the front. He quickly raised his hands in a placid manner, showing that he meant no harm. Nevertheless, I remained on guard. There had been a few who had not exactly welcomed the bearers of Jason’s coffin warmly, and this had been a close friend of the son of Jupiter. I feared I could not take this particular demigod in a fight. Even though he looked to be not much older than myself, he towered above me - perhaps a few inches beyond six foot tall, which made my lanky 5”6 feel minuscule. He had handsome asian features and soft brown eyes that I wagered could shift from kindness to anger in moments. He wore jet black hair in a military cut, making him seem like the world’s youngest army general.

“Frank Zhang.” I nodded to him once before turning back to my anger outlet. I was in no mood to talk. Not after loosing any way to contact my family. Not after loosing my memories to oblivion. Not after loosing Jason. Not when I knew he could react violently, as some already had. And if his heritage and blessing from Mars went against my mortal pathetic self, I doubted I would last more than ten seconds. Thankfully, he did not look like he came to pick a fight. He came forward and stood beside me silently, watching as I drew back the bowstring. I felt his eyes bore into me, assessing my posture, my strength, my balance. It was off-putting. That, dear readers, is why my arrow went rogue. It wasn’t my fault. It thunked into the wooden leg that held up the target. I felt my cheeks redden. I glared at the stupid arrow, willing it to pick itself up and hover over to the bullseye. Unsurprisingly, this did not happen. It stubbornly stayed where it was, planted in the wood. 

I really hated having an audience for my failures, especially if the audience was a child who had once hoped and prayed for me, the Great Golden Archer, to be his father. I doubted Frank felt such a longing anymore. I glanced at him from the corner of my eye. He was smiling sympathetically at me, having witnessed my disgraceful excuse for a shot for the first time. I decided that Gaia coming back and swallowing me whole at that exact moment would not have been protested against.

“Here,” Frank said calmly, reaching towards me and adjusting my grip on the bowstring. “You’re gripping the string too far up your fingers. You don’t want to make a fist around it.” He peered down at my feet. “And you’re too tense. Relax your stance a little.” I obliged, already seeing my stupid mistakes. My cheeks seemed to heat up even more, and I found myself resisting the urge to bury my acne-ridden face in my hoodie. Frank seemed to notice, and backed off, instead ambling over to a small supply shed where he scooped up a bow and a fistful of arrows. I kept myself occupied from the daunting future that would have Frank humiliating me by nocking another arrow. This time, I tried to take on board what advice I’d been given.

I angled my left foot closer to the direction of the target, so I took on a more open stance, then checked my fingering was correct. Taking a deep breath, I used my back muscles to push my shoulder blades together as to take the strain off my arm and shoulder muscles - an unforgotten golden rule of archery. I drew back the bowstring until I reached my anchor point (the index finger touching the corner of my mouth), and fired. Twang! Not a bullseye, but well within the first yellow circle. I grinned in delight. Success was a rare feeling nowadays.

“Good job.” He congratulated quietly, grinning and turning to his own target. We both drew our bows.

After about ten more shots, and four bullseyes on my part (how many frank got is not relevant, moving on), Frank suggested we go back inside.

“It’s early,” he said, rubbing his eyes and letting out a yawn. He started walking down towards the fifth cohort’s barracks, so I followed. “We should get back. Jason’s funeral is later, and you’ve barely been to sleep.”

“How did you know?”

Frank scratched the back of his neck and smiled awkwardly.

“Well, you made a bit of a racket when you were leaving the barracks. What with the whole…falling and throwing books and stuff…”

Yup. The ground was more than welcome to swallow me now. I stuffed my hands in my pockets as I felt my acne-riddled face turn tomato coloured for the umpteenth time that morning, and glared at the grass.

“Apologies.” I muttered. “I panicked.”

“Yeah, you seemed upset so I told the others to leave you alone. I thought maybe you wanted some peace and quiet. But you were gone for ages, so I came to find you.”

I shot him a questioning look. ‘Why?’ He read my mind. 

“It’s my job as Praetor to make sure everyone’s safe,” he explained, his chest puffing out slightly at the little self-reminder of his recently increased status. “And, it sucks. To loose people, I mean.”

I looked up at the Roman. His eyes were shimmering with tears, but he looked me in the eye anyway. He wasn’t afraid to show emotion, which was a rare trait, especially in the legion, but one I had always admired. 

“I only knew him for a few hours. Why do I feel so awful?”

“Because Jason was a great demigod. The greatest. He made an impact on everyone he talked to.” -Frank gestured around the camp- “He really made an impact here. Especially with the loser fifth cohort.”

“He-he told me to fulfil his promise. To build temples for every god in the pantheon.”

“Yeah. He could be like that. Noble, even at the worst of times. But that’s not the reason you’ve been drilling holes into the archery equipment for an a few hours straight.”

I answered with all the intelligence of someone who hadn’t slept since 1am. 

“Huh?”

“I didn’t think to check here first,” he said. “I went up to your temple.”

I got flashbacks to my toddler-esque temper tantrum.

“Ooh. Yeah…”

“Yeah.” He responded in a tone that said ‘been there, done that, got the t-shirt’. “Families are messy.” 

“I miss them.”

“That’s normal. Bitterness is normal. You aren’t being overdramatic.” 

I smiled at the confirmation. 

“Thanks. It means a lot.”

We were back at the barracks. Frank smiled at me one last time and patted me on the back, before lumbering in. I followed. 

I slept soundly the rest of the night.

…

I walked, lead-legged, up Temple Hill. The whole camp was eerily quiet. Jason’s body had been given proper honours, and the legion had been given the day off from duties. I couldn’t stand the prying eyes of 200 kids for much longer, so, even while I had only gotten four hours of sleep and was weighed down with grief, I travelled to the only place in the camp that was truly ‘mine’. 

Tired and weary, I plopped down on the seat of the sleek, white grand piano. I ran my fingers across the smooth fallboard for a solid minute of distracted silence, before lifting it to reveal the ivory keys. They were chipped and yellowed and seemingly out of place compared to the stark white of the piano itself, were inevitably out of tune. I played a short scale, opened up the lid and tightened the loose turning pins I had hit, then continued with my scales. I repeated until I was positive that every key was in perfect harmony, which took all of ten minutes.

Satisfied with the tuning, I took a deep breath and splayed my fingers out on the keyboard, and played a tune that inspired grace and felt to me like a ballerina daintily dancing on water. After a second, the fingering flowed into my memory, allowing my hands to glide elegantly across the piano while I stared over the rim and through the gaps between the temple’s pillars, and into the distance. The sky was clear and perfect blue, and the warm breeze swept gently through my hair. I remembered sitting with my mother on Delos, our shoulders touching as together, we played two parts of the same harmony. Like two streams running down a mountain, weaving around each other and sometimes intersecting to make one stronger melody. My heartbeat calmed from the stress of what was now everyday life to me. Peril, danger and death.

A jarring dissonance of notes jolted me back to unwelcome reality. I rolled my eyes glared at the pudgy young demigod beside me.

“You know, there are ways to make your presence known without scaring flocks of birds away.”

“Yeah I know,” Meg replied shrugging. “But it’s not as fun as watching you jump ten feet in the air.”

“I wasn’t scared! I knew you were beside me!”

“Uh huh,” she grunted, turning her attention to the keys and banging a few more notes without mercy.

“I just tuned those, you monster.”

Meg smirked. Then she ordered me to shift over on the bench, and practically bounced down in the middle, leaving me with one leg hanging off the side.

“Teach me that one. The one you were playing.”

I was too taken aback to argue it’s difficulty, especially for a beginner. I thought we had long since given up on the piano lessons (Meg was not very good), and even if we hadn’t, this tune was graceful and elegant - not words commonly used to describe Meg McCaffrey. But I admit, I missed playing with someone. And so we began.

“Why don’t you watch me first, try to absorb as much of the tune as possible before I teach you the left hand.”

Meg tried to hide her smile.

“Yeah. Whatever.”

Bit of a shorter chapter this time. Sorry for the long wait, I started writing out several completely different chapters and never finished them because they just weren’t good enough. Also, the point about ‘No romance’ in these chapters still stand. Frank and Apollo were written as a kid and an adult becoming good friends, NOT BOYFRIENDS. 

#toa #trials of apollo #lester papadopoulos #meg mccaffrey #TOA oneshot #story #fanfiction #fanfic #my fanfic stuff #fanfics

[rheyninwrites]

Old Friends Part 21

He and I had come to an understanding, finally. We knew where each other’s weakest points were, and we each did our best to shore the other up. I won’t pretend it was easy, or perfect. It was damn hard work, and sometimes we failed. Occasionally one of us would spend a night on the couch before we made up, kissing each other to make up for the time we’d lost.

We fell into a pleasant routine. His work, my painting. Coffee shared in the morning, dinners at night. Occasional nights with friends, sometimes alone, but often together, as we became one more couple in the group, but we still rarely spent time as the full gang, the way we had previously.

That’s why, when Abigail brought up the idea for a big, day long birthday party for me, I was ecstatic. We planned far enough ahead to be sure that everyone could attend. Even Jack was going to be there, and I’d told Abigail and John to bring Mr. Matthews as well, since I wanted to meet the man who had been so kind to them. Arthur even invited Dutch! The day couldn’t come soon enough for me, and I spent every day leading up to it trying to get the house to a place I felt would be appropriate and comfortable for such a large, varied group of people. I extracted promises from everyone that they wouldn’t bring gifts, because the only thing I wanted was everyone together.

Well, almost everyone. Every time I asked Arthur to promise me he wouldn’t give me a present, he’d fidget and find a way to leave open a technicality. He wouldn’t, no matter how hard I tried, agree to a solid nothing for my birthday. Finally, after bugging him forever, he broke down and confessed why.

“I can’t promise to not give you a present, ‘cause I already got one. It’s been in the works a long time. But I promise, it ain’t nothing big or fancy, ok?”

I rolled my eyes at him and pretended to strangle him, which resulted in him pulling me down and covering my neck with kisses, making me laugh. He always knew exactly how to get to me, making me forgive him, most of the time, before I’d even gotten mad. And I’d never been happier.

When the day finally came, I was a bundle of nerves, straightening out the same things over and over, checking the same things I had a thousand times already. I was excited to see our friends, and meet the few people I didn’t know. I didn’t even care about birthday wishes, I just wanted everyone there already!

Mary-Beth and Kieran were the first to arrive, and we had a great time catching up on everything in the quiet time before the place got crowded. Kieran positively doted on her, and she gave him the same attention.

“Ain’t he just the sweetest thing? He spends every spare moment he’s got with me. He doesn’t even care if I’m writing! He’ll just spend the time watching me, and get me anything I need. It’s just like one of my romance novels. I ain’t never been happier in my whole life,”

Abigail, John, and Jack came next, Mr Matthews following closely. Jack gave me a big hug, and Mr Matthews thanked me profusely for inviting him, and urged me to call him by his first name, Hosea. He told me that I reminded him a great deal of his wife, Bessie.

“A kinder woman I have never known in my life, all smiles an sweetness. That is, until you crossed her. A tougher adversary you’d never find.”

I said it was an honor to be compared to her, then moved to greeting the next arrivals. Dutch came in before long, demanding to see the woman who ‘had so undone my dear Arthur.’ He gave me a very thorough once over, then pulled me into a tight hug.

“My dear, I just want to thank you. This poor sap has been miserable beyond belief all the time I have known him, and you come into his life like a ray of sunshine, and suddenly he is all smiles.”

His flowery language made me laugh, and Arthur blush. He yelled a sarcastic response, and before long we were bantering, along with Hosea. Laughter filled the house. Sean nearly set fire to it, as he tried to light the grill, but Javier and Bill took over, and the smell of meat cooking filled the afternoon. Not my thing, but I appreciated the feeling it brought as I watched everyone chatter, Jack playing with a stray cat in the backyard. It was the feeling of family, the only family I’d ever really known.

As the afternoon turned into evening and the bugs came out, we moved inside, perched on every space any of us could find to sit. Sadie, Karen, and I watched Sean getting ever drunker with mild amusement. Lenny, Charles, and Arthur were deep in conversation on the couch, and Tilly was reading a story to a sleepy Jack in the corner. Abigail and Mary-Beth were looking over Mary-Beth’s new novel, while Bill, John, Kieran, and Javier talked about work by the kitchen counter. Hosea and Dutch were apparently becoming fast friends, sharing drinks and laughter at the table. It was picture perfect, my own little slice of paradise.

Soon, I felt a tap on my shoulder. Arthur had come over, a flat package tied with a bow in his hand. The room went quiet and all eyes were on me as I walked to the counter and sat the box down so I could unwrap it. The knot gave me a little trouble, but soon the ribbon was off and the box unwrapped. I lifted the lid. It was a worn leather book. The same book I’d seen dozens of times, usually in Arthur’s hands.

It was his journal.

I was trying to work out in my head why on earth he would give me his journal as I picked it up and opened it to the first page. It was a drawing he’d done of me, must have been years ago when we first met, as I looked about twelve. My heart skipped a beat as I skimmed page after page, knowing already what would be on each one.

It was filled with pictures of me, sketches he’d done over the years. Some were loose, barely there suggestions of my face or figure, but some were more detailed, sketches he must have done while I sat or slept nearby, and I’d never known. I’d never had any idea that he’d been drawing me, all this time. The last page was an image of me, in our bed asleep, my head resting on my arm. It couldn’t have been from more than a few days ago.

“Arthur . . . .”

“That one got full. Got to get another one now.”

I had no idea what to say. What can you say to someone who’s given you a window into their private thoughts, and they’re all beautiful thoughts of you? Instead of saying anything, I just wrapped my arms around his neck and kissed him, holding him as close to me as I possibly could. He returned the embrace, sweeping me off my feet for just a moment as everyone around us whispered and cooed about what a great gift it was, and how romantic.

I waited until everyone had left before making him sit down with me to go through every page, stopping occasionally to ask him about one. It turned out that he’d done a sketch of me for nearly every night we’d ever spent together, sometimes having to go from memory the next day. He pointed out a few that were really special to him, like the first time we rode out together to watch the sunset, the night we got drunk and fell asleep in the back of Boadicea, and, yes, the first time we slept together all those years ago. That was nearly two full pages across, loving detail of my face as he must have seen it, my arm above my head and staring right into his eyes.

“I can’t believe this. Arthur, it’s all so beautiful. I love it, but I have to ask why you decided to give this to me.”

“Didn’t have more space to draw in. Besides, I thought maybe it’d help you see you the way I do. The way I always have.”

“Arthur Morgan, you are such a romantic! No matter how tough you pretend to be.”

“I never pretend with you. Don’t have to.”

“No, you don’t. Now come over here and kiss me.”

He happily obliged.

#arthur morgan fanfic #arthur morgan #rdr 2 #rdr #rdr2 fandom #arthur morgan fic #arthurmorgan #rdr arthur #red dead fandom #red dead redemption

[ireddeadredemption2pc-blog]

Red Dead Redemption 2 PC

Red Dead Redemption2 PC

The old west feels brand new again.

Oh Jesus Christ, what have you done? “Thomaschen 978 wants to know why a dozen carcasses and a couple of horse corpses are placed on rail tracks bordering the early industrial city and are the New Orleans stand-in St. Denis.” You killed half. village.” PC Games For Free

We are on round two of the recurring corpse pile. My poses got the idea to jump in front of the train after a few rounds of Lose Your Friends and Toss Them in the Sea in the Couple Friendly Strangers. Like GTA 5, Red Dead Redemption 2 has its own bowling minima, we explain to Chen in a roundabout way that provokes his fear. Die in the shared open world of Red Dead Redemption 2 and you’ll react fast enough to move your corpse around. Best RPGs games pc

The boy is in line with us. We should make it bigger. As the train comes around again, another pose tries to take us out. The chain defends us but does not bring it back to the tracks. He goes away screaming. Death of a true warrior.

Red Dead Redemption 2 could be the biggest, most humble videogame ball pit for an annoying story about impulsive children, the forced disintegration of the community, or simply a quiet and reflective hiking simulator. It’s just about what you need it to be, and it’s good at it.

Just hours before the corpse-bowling, I was alone through the icy forests, stepping into the long shadow cast across the snow by the rising moon. I heard a gunshot from a distance. The tracks of some wolves marked snow in the same direction. I saw them who won. Anytime I pay attention and look closely, RDR2 is the result of my curiosity. Best Racing games on pc

The mind-numbing expanse that makes up the vast world of RDR2 speaks to the creative force of a development team with an intense, obsessive dedication to realism (and all the money and time needed to do so). Like how my friends’ characters flare up when I fire a gun at them, how animal carcasses disintegrate over time, how NPCs react according to a sloppy or bloody outfit, how to stir through a doorway. Scares everyone everywhere.

It is hard to believe that RDR2 is so deep and wide and is also a harmonious, playable thing. I was already playing it for days worth the console version. This is why I am particularly disappointed that it ended up on the PC to some extent.

For every non-taught multiplayer adventure, disconnect or crash on the desktop, desktop. The rock star’s best storyline and character so far has been filmed through Frame Hutches’ slideshow and addressed over the launch weekend.

RDR2, one of the best Western games and one of the best open-world games I have ever released with enough stability issues, is recommended for the hard way until everything is completely smooth.

Morgan trail

EVERY PRETTY VISTA IS SOMETHING TO LOSE THROUGH ARTHUR’S EYES.

The story genre of Red Dead Redemption 2 follows the dying days of the Wild West. The sprawling industrial world faced the bandits and social downtrodden of Arthur Morgan’s small band, an imperfect but loyal, loving and self-reliant community.

Capitalism is reducing its value as resources to humans. Indigenous USA America is driven from the plains to make way for ‘civilization’ and commerce. The forests are brought down for timber, the hills are cut down for coal, and Morgan’s chosen family is caught in the middle, forced to flee, assimilate, or respond with violent protests is done. They do all three.

This is Rockstar’s most serious drama, and it’s really, really long. If you are running, the story ends after 40 to 50 hours and then continues for 10 to 15. The main story missions of Red Dead 2 feature distinctly rockstar fare: ride to a destination that is talking to everyone, tightly scripting though, entertaining things, riding, and chatting to the final destination.

Missions are often thrilling action sequences or artificially mundane pictures of wrench labor and trade, full of long-winded Bespoke animations, and outstanding performances. They are only hopelessly harsh, to the point where it feels like I am following the stage directions rather than playing the role of a vagabond in the Old West.

Step out of line in these campaigns and this is a failed situation. As opposed to Red Dead Online, there are very few of them that encourage players to think for themselves, each designed to advance the story. The RDR2 show is at least a spectacle of the slow pace of life in the Old West.

This is not the death and theatricality of a lifetime; My favorite missions include shoveling, drinking wine with a friend, proposing an old romance and riding a hot air balloon. Working through a greater rut, stricter tasks are considered meaningful in the end anyway, inspired by extraordinary, ambient world-building and characterization.

Side missions, minigames, small activities, and random world events — whether they hunt great guns, capture a play, or stumble upon a woman trapped under a horse — all set Arthur’s character and setting in subtle, rich ways. Please inform.

Nested in the third act of a fully animated and voice theatrical performance, something like 10 minutes, it is possible that the response button is pressed after an artist has included a telephone. Arthur would shout, “Hell with the telephone!” It is an optional activity, a long one, and an option is to react in that short window. I think most players will remember this, but this is Canad Response 1 through 3 because this is something Arthur would say, a rageless goofy set his way in the right way.

He would write complete, real diary entries about the 50-hour campaign, sketching memorable scenes and depicting the state of affairs of his chosen family, which people once knew changed their fortunes between hope and despair. It is meant to be a completely alternative reading, but a refreshingly intimate take on a masculine figure that unsettles many doubts and hopes as to the next person.

He sings himself on a lonely ride and lowers his old body in the mirror. He will have an exciting conversation with the horseshoe woman as he gives her a ride into town, both commenting on the troubles of working for wealthy, ungrateful men as a growing necessity. I feel it all. Best horror games on pc free

Hillbillies can capture him after making the camp, a couple may try to rob him after inviting him to dinner, a man with snakebite can come out of the forest by stumbling and tell him to suck venom is. These haphazard encounters portray brutal life on the fading frontier, as nature pushes back against inner poppers who want to change it. Arthur is the perfect vessel to see it

This is because Arthur Morgan is one of the darkest human characters I have played during a great turning point in American history, playing a playful, cruel and compassionate role according to differing theories.

The game world, beautiful as it is, is made more beautiful and tragic by how it is ready to play it on every occasion. Every beautiful vista has something to lose through Arthur’s eyes, power lines and train tracks, cut through the skies, and the rest of his life is slowly filling with factory smoke. Just about everyone sees a sad end in RDR2, too. This is a story that I might not sustain every moment, but I will not forget its brutal arc or the man in the middle of it all. God damn is it sad? An apocalypse that led to this.

Ren Der Reflection

Assuming that you are able to run it at high settings, the biggest strength of RDR2 is how it exquisitely renders the Old West setting on PC, drawing more attention to the nuanced details that make it. This is one of the best looking games I’ve seen and a rare experience that justifies a new GPU or CPU.

Better draw distance and a greater range of vegetation detail were added, making some vistas look photographic. Long shadows vary from walking or roaming between places to rides, to cute nature tours. Due to animal attacks, bullet holes, rain, mud, or rapid flow of blood, the markings on the clothes are caused by very high-resolution textures, which tell a very little story about your friends.

A new photo mode makes it easy to share those moments of amazement. The way the player rides on RDR2 for just sightseeing and sounds is an important feature. I am desperately trying to get an artistic portrait of my horse’s silhouette to sit against the moon, yet another self-proclaimed goal was tolerated by this ridiculously large complex game.

With 2080, i9-9900K and 32GB of RAM, I can run RDR2 mostly on ultra settings with some resource-intensive settings completely off or switched off. But some hardware combinations are proving troublesome for RDR2, leading to random crashes in some APIs and, more recently, to a hotfix, leading to hitching problems for some 4-core CPUs.

During the first weekend, I couldn’t spend more than an hour without crashing on the desktop, though Vulcan switched from DX12 (which gives me better framerates) back to static stuff. Sometimes the UI malfunctions and I cannot select a select or purchase option, the map fails to appear, or I get paged unexpectedly from game servers.

The graphics settings are almost too much as well, and probably confusing. In our test, only a handful of settings affected performance by more than 1-2 percent. Large residuals, the mapping between MSAA, volumetric lighting, and parallax occlusion, affect performance by 5 to 25 percent. Most of them don’t make a big visual difference anyway and are best left out.

The way the settings are presented is made to feel underdeveloped: a huge list with unclear presets that require tinkering to make RDR2 run in a satisfactory framerate. It is hard. The PC should be the best place to play, not the best place to play, after all, after a few patches. It’s a shame for a game to look good. upcoming pc games

Cowboy poetry Red Dead Redemption 2 PC

Like in singleplayer mode, in Red Dead Online I can make my goals reasonable and watch them. The problem is, it is basically hamstrung by a frustrating multiplayer leveling system that locks basic equipment and cosmetics behind long XP requirements that can meet hours, perhaps days,

The option is spending gold, premium currency, items and clothing to unlock them immediately. A fishing pole is not available until level 14. A damn fishing pole in an outdoor recreation game. This is not spectacular and is a terrible way to invest players.

out a basic suite of tools (fishing rod, bow, varmint rifle, nice hat, etc.), Red Dead Online opened up widely. I have largely ignored traditional matchmaking modes such as gunfights and horse races, cheap thrills, I will play much better versions in different games, to have fun. It led to the most inventive, serene, real, and sometimes buzzing echo I’ve ever had.

I once walked into the middle of a fire in Blackwater and took the player corpses one by one to the church cemetery. Some were captured and participated in the ‘burial’ of their friends. A corpse thanked me for the gesture. Later, in an extended streak of criminal activity, my pose and I caught another player and instead of killing them on the spot, we rode into the swamp and threw them into the garter infected waters. I got the idea to act like a friend. Best pc games 2017

On a less absurd note, I set myself a constant goal of earning strictly enough money from hunting to buy cool-weather gear and a fine rifle. I am going to hike in the mountains and find the best way to hide there, a wild mountain man adorned with animal skins, which almost touches the floor.

In the meantime, I’m stopping gunmen across the city by running through the streets and calling for a parley. I am participating in an eight-player ballroom. I am living the life of a normal cowboy in the best shepherd game. I hope it clears up soon.

RDR2 PC System Requirements

OS : Windows 7 SP1 64bit

Graphics   Nvidia GeForce GTX 770 2GB / AMD Radeon R9 280

Processor:   Intel Core i5-2500K / AMD FX-6300

Memory:    8 GB RAM

DirectX:   Version 11 Or 12 Support

Storage: 150 GB

[ladyvialana]

Fic: Friday Night Revelations - Ch. 3

Final Fantasy XV fic. band!AU, pre-relationship Prompto/Noctis

Chapter Summary: Prompto loved these hours they spent together where creating beautiful music sometimes felt like a bonus rather than the purpose. He wanted to remember them all.

Notes: Prompto POV, pining Prompto, hinted Promptis

Also on Ao3

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Prompto liked to keep records of things; he’d been doing it all his life. He kept everything: school reports, scribbles from kindergarten with gold stickers in the corner, sketches drawn in history class, all of his old textbooks, movie tickets, a train timetable from that overnight excursion to Galdin Quay when he was twelve years old. Everything.

Some of the keepsakes were preserved better than others, like his collection of printed photographs that he kept in special hardcover photo books lined up on the bottom row of his bookshelf. Others were stashed in whatever he could find that fit, like the plastic zip lock bag that held his collection of Justice Monsters discs he used to find in cereal boxes (the cartoon was okay, the games were way better) that was stashed in a box full of childhood trinkets.

So, it was honestly no surprise that he wanted to properly memorialise every moment of this.

“Really Prom?”

Prompto grinned at his best friend, but obligingly turned his video camera away when Noctis kept shoving his hand at the lens.

“You don’t want to record this for posterity?”

“Maybe after I have a shower.”

Prompto shrugged and turned the camera off. That was fair. Neither of them exactly looked their best. The lack of shower might have been an exaggeration, but Noctis was wearing the same shirt he’d worn the day before and Prompto had ditched his contacts for his old glasses hours ago. Neither of them had bothered doing their hair. Noctis looked like a startled mop and Prompto had never more resembled a chocobo nest.

They’d locked themselves away in Noctis’ music room for three days straight after they spent most of a week avoiding doing anything and playing video games. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to do anything, but inspiration was hard to come by. It was easy to fall into old habits and just hang out and be together.

But part of their friendship was so entwined with music and playing together that it was hard to avoid—even if playing together felt less like fun and more like work this time.

They still hadn’t managed a full song yet, but they’d at least tried. They hard parts of songs—a few riffs and the beginning of a drum line—but nothing cohesive. No lyrics yet. Noctis had tried to make up something on the spot late last night when they were getting changed for bed, but the result had ended up with the two of them collapsing onto Noctis’ over-large bed in a giggling fit when he struggled to find a word that rhymed with “sock”.

“This is hard,” Prompto said, tipping over from his kneeling position to lie on his side facing Noctis on the floor.

Noctis grunted in agreement, closing his eyes. He was sprawled in front of the window, the last rays of sunset settling over him like a golden blanket. The light softened his features, making him glow with the sort of warm ethereal beauty Prompto imagined of the Astrals.

Everything about Noctis was beautiful. The unruly hair that he refused to cut so he could see properly, his surprised laugh, the soft smile he reserved for people he cared about, the grey eyes that seemed to shift shade with his mood, his husky voice when he sang under his breath (so precious for being even more exquisite and rare than everything else about him—Prompto almost cried the first time he heard Noctis sing). Prompto could watch and listen to and just sit with him for hours—days, months, years—and never experience all of the beauty Noctis exuded.

Lying there, staring at his best friend bathed in fading light, Prompto felt the stir of inspiration in his aching heart.

“Something on my face?” Noctis tilted his head, opening his eyes to meet Prompto’s soft gaze with his own intense look.

Somehow, Prompto managed to quirk his lips into a teasing smile. “Just all of your face.”

Noctis snorted, that tiny smile Prompto adored forming on his lips. “Jerk.”

“You still love me.” Prompto’s heart wasn’t beating faster. It wasn’t.

“I’d love you more if you ordered me a pizza.”

Prompto broke their gaze, sitting up and groping for his phone. “Fine. But only because I’m hungry too.”

“Nice. Stomach twins.”

Prompto fumbled as he was typing the number for Noctis’ local pizza place, laughing at the ridiculous comment. “What does that even mean?”

Noctis had turned over, curling up in the tiny patch of orange sunlight still shining through the window, and closed his eyes again. He was already halfway asleep.

It had been a long few days.

Prompto snuck a quick photo of Noctis on his phone before leaving the room to order.

Once their usual order was confirmed to be at Noctis’ apartment within half an hour, Prompto went back into the room, careful not to disturb his friend.

Sitting down on the floor in front of the black piano, Prompto reached to grab his battered acoustic guitar but changed his mind and left it leaning against the side of the glossy instrument. Instead he opened the cheap notebook he bought to record what his camera couldn’t. Flipping past the first few pages of scribbles and notes and random jokes they’d managed though these last three days, he found a blank page and started writing.

Noctis peacefully slept on in the periphery of his vision, ever present in every word.

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#fanfic #ffxv #ffxv fanfiction #promptis #prompto argentum #noctis lucis caelum #au #band!au #pining!prompto #pre-relationship #vialana's fic #friday night revelations

[maiji]

Process and wip images for A House That Holds Long Limbs (Part 2) 

See Part 1 process and wip documentation

Read the pages for part 2 here (full complete version will be linked from YYH North Bound master post) 

As a story progresses, I tend to become more comfortable with jumping ahead and around in my so-called process. This is mainly because the idea of getting deeper into the action is exciting and I want to get to drawing the pages as quickly as possible. The downside is that it usually results in a lot of “oops” and rework on what was supposed to be a final page.

Here you’ll see that script/pagination/thumbnailing and final pages are all starting to drift even more than in Part 1.

The (last version of the) script

Earlier versions were even more point form and incoherent with typos. But, it only needs to capture enough that I can recognize key actions, points of dialogue, the mood, things to draw in the panels, etc. A few specific items to point out:

“[new part 2]”: The script originally had no exposition on rokurokubi - it went straight to Hokushin telling Raizen he was leaving. It occurred to me later, after I’d started thumbnailing, that inserting a few pages of storytelling narrative right here would help to further solidify the kaidan (traditional Japanese ghost story) effect and mood. More importantly, it creates a baseline reference for what the reader will know about rokurokubi for the purposes of this story. I was lucky that Part 1 and Part 2 were cut neatly enough that this wouldn’t be jarring.

I’m still not entirely happy with the text for this section, mainly the “features of note” about rokurokubi. Not just the fact that it’s oversimplification and slight adaptation of actual Japanese folklore - which can’t be avoided unless I want to write a historical essay here. I’m mainly not super keen on how each of the three items has been phrased. It’d be nice to make the three points more parallel in terms of length, but I couldn’t seem to edit, increase the number of points (by splitting them up), or reorder it effectively without negatively impacting other aspects of pacing and information reveal. More points would draw out the pages longer than I wanted, and some points were clearly sub to other points. The final here is the “good enough” version. JUST GET IT DONE ALREADY SO THAT IT CAN GO OUT INTO THE WORLD.

Sooo many word choice changes. The biggest one, done at the last second, was “They are almost always female” to “They are rarely male”. Other phrasings I debated - “They are very rarely male”, “They are almost never male”, etc. Lemme tell ya, it’s easy to get lost in the weeds… Anyways, the main reason for this was because after I drew it and ran the text through my head, the originally-intended juxtaposition of Hokushin on this page with the word “female” felt too subtle. I felt it would create a brief moment of cognitive dissonance that didn’t serve the flow of the story, so I changed it to create emphasis on the same gender instead with the rationale that it will flow more smoothly and allow the reader to focus their attention on the fact “males are very rare” more than the mental hiccup of processing the juxtaposition. DOES THAT MAKE ANY SENSE?? It made sense in my head.

Anyhow, I’m sure there are people who will disagree with many of the decisions I’ve made, but at least you can see what I was trying to do.

Thumbnails

As mentioned, these thumbnails were done BEFORE I decided to insert the exposition at the beginning.

The first two rows on the left hand page are actually the same set of pages - you can see little arrows pointing down or to the right whenever I’m dissatisfied with a thumbnail and attempt to redraw it.

WIPs

I really like how Hokushin turned out in the last panel here; I like the pencils more than the final inked version. It’s also another example of changing text up to the last second. In case it’s hard to make out, it says (along with what happened to them in the final):

First thought bubble: Ugh, whatever… (moved to the next page, seemed to work better as the end exclamation for this sequence of thoughts before he turns his attention to something else)

Over Hokushin’s head: Aaaargh (moved into the thought bubble)

Second thought bubble: He’s not my responsibility anyways! (no change)

First arrow:  *already feeling bad* (no change)

Second arrow:  *too responsible* (dropped, since a previous panel already said “too responsible”. Too redundant)

Next to Hokushin: All he did was tie me up in a tree (no change)

The above panel “And at night...” was a thrilling and scary thing for me lmao.  I don’t usually tackle large patches/fills of black, since many of my comics are scribbly in style (pencils, hatching) or colour. I’m too lazy for screentones, traditional or digital. It’ll be interesting as parts of the story coming up will involve poorly lit/dim/dark spaces. I’ve been reviewing how other artists handle it, particularly those with styles driven by pure-ink or minimalist type approaches. Two immediate examples from Yu Yu Hakusho that I’ve been going back to are the dark room fights during Genkai’s successor trials (I’ve taken a similar approach here), and the haunted bedroom case in volume 19. Hardcore cross-hatching seems like a likely route, but that freaks me out when I have to do it over faces. I’d like to minimize or avoid screentoning out of principle, but I still want to create a clear mood, so we’ll see how it goes...

This was my view while inking this page - holding the book in one hand while inking Hokushin with the other. Using the more freehand, sketchy inking style for this comic was so helpful in terms of reducing my inking anxiety and allowing me to work faster.

It’s always great when you can find a reference for period armor (because I find armor very difficult) that is so close to the pose you’re already drawing. There are some small differences - for example, Hokushin’s head is turned more to the right; his left arm is turned and raised more as he’s pulling the sword upwards. But it’s close enough.

Also, spotlight on a few of the books I’ve referenced over the course of working on North Bound in general and this part specifically.  

Clockwise from top left:

日本服飾史 女性編 and 男性編 (History of clothing/costume in Japan female and male editions). This marvelous set of books highlights Japanese fashion throughout history. I’ve actually been referencing these photos for a long time before I ever picked up these books - you can see them at the Costume Museum’s website here, alongside helpful line drawings and translations of some of the details. But the books allow me to see a lot more detail.

Hokusai manga vol 1 (this book is published as part of a set of 3). Sketches by Hokusai. This one focuses on “The life and manners of the day” and includes drawings of youkai, including rokurokubi, as well. You can check out the drawings online at places like The Pulverer Collection Online Catalogue.

Action references!! Real Action Pose Collection 02 (focuses on sword fights) and my favourite Samurai & Ninja Action Scene Collection. Not used as much in Long Limbs, but was helpful in some of the other chapters. The time frame is really much later than what I need for ideal clothing references, but it’s helpful for things like movement.

Kekkaishi volume 32. SPOILER a key flashback takes place about 500 years ago, which is actually a few centuries off give or take from but at least it’s closer than the Edo period. I’ve been looking at it for houses, some clothing.

Osamu Tezuka’s Phoenix - Civil War parts 1 and 2. I reference this so much while working on North Bound in general. It has scenes with peasants and commoners and some appropriate street and interior environments, not just stuff focused on the aristocracy or warrior classes. Just have to remember that they flipped all the artwork in the English version lol

Bunch of Yu Yu Hakusho manga and anime references from the end of the series, mostly for Raizen, the kudakusushi and just to check against things he or Hokushin said. The actual clothing and environments are not helpful at all lol

Last minute edits

After I posted, I discovered a few mistakes (of course). I used to freak out a lot and drop everything to fix it. Now I just sigh and laugh (and still freak out a little bit, depending on the mistake) and then decide what’s important enough to fix and what is like, “Oh well, whatever, move on with my life”.

I feel that seeing other artists share their frustrations and mistakes helps a lot of people feel better about it when they realize IT HAPPENS ALL THE TIME TO EVERYONE (including professionals. There are errors like this in professionally published series, like Yu Yu Hakusho, too). YOU’RE NOT ALONE. 

So, these ones bugged me enough that I quickly redrew them on the computer.

#yu yu hakusho #comics #fanart #hokushin #process #wip #art supplies #sketches #art by Maiji/Mary Huang #yyh north bound #raizen

[greekstreetart-talks]

Billy Gee

Graphic designer, visual artist, columnist and skater in other words Billy Gee. We present you his artworks although he doesn’t need any particular recommendations and we discuss with him about the age of innocence and the today that looks so different.

What have you studied and when did you began getting involved with street art? My first touch with graffiti was in November 1993 at Ag. Paraskebi’s square. When I graduated from high school, I continued my studies in Athens Graphic Design Department. A few years later I ended up for 3 years at the painting workshop in Plaka which functioned as a department of asfa. It used to be a beautiful place, it’s a pity it doesn’t exist nowadays. Since I was spending many hours there sketching and painting I was offered to attend classes as a listener on asfa, which helped me a lot.

Practically the years of innocence are your starting line, the murals were made just so the creators could express themselves since there wasn’t the slightest knowledge from the crowd that this isn’t separated from the rest of the arts. How was the experience of creating in a public space? The situation back then was like a big school, both from a practical and from an ethical point of view. Feuds didn’t exist between us. What everyone wanted was to create on a surface with their friends and enjoy. Our concern back then was whether a hooligan would approach us to steal our money. They called us “Americans” and the truth is we were different  from others mainly because of our clothes. The result of this was to be considered everything but artists. Really messed up situation.

Groups, spray and music. What was the relationship among the different crews and how connected was graffiti with the urban culture? Those years music was what united us in such a magical way we didn’t even realize it. The first hip hop bands were TXC, FFC, RAZASTAR, Paremboles, ZN ect. who created a movement by graffiti artists, b-boys, skaters, bmxers and many supporting fans who followed. We weren’t thousands, but we could fill the ‘’AN club’’ and that seemed amazing! So as you can understand there weren’t any troubles in our circle, we were united, facing daily the whole intensity of our adolescence which many times felt extreme. Graffiti was the element of the urban culture that was spreading constantly throughout Greece at the golden age of 90’s. Magic!

Murals full of details on a bigger or a smaller scale and co-creator of the emblematic figure of Loukanikos on Psirri area. How many time is needed for a work like this one? Give us some information for the specific mural. I was in Belgium when I learned about the death of Loukanikos, with whom I had spent several years in Syntagma Square. He was around skaters on a daily basis, we used to give him water and food, it was a wonderful creature. So I came up with the idea of creating a mural in his memory. Around these days I met up with Alex Martinez for a coffee when I told him I had found a spot to create the dog and he looked at me saying : “ I can’t believe it, today I was thinking the same”, so we ended up painting together the favorite dog of Athens . Sunday is the day of graffiti artists. Thus early in a Sunday morning we headed for the Sarri street to paint. The rest just rolled naturally. Back then we couldn’t imagine that the specific theme would have such an impact on people and that was very moving for our work.That’s why Loukanikos continues to stand still there until now. The vandalisms at the background of the mural is a natural result of the ‘’street’’ what  I mean is that by being exposed, like all street art’s artworks, in a public view, they are simultaneously  exposed in a varied, heterogeneous reactions, coming from multiple politics and other beliefs. We accept it, it’s how we learned, how we grew up!

You work almost exclusively with specific roadside partners. Lune82, Martinez, pupet... How important is that for you? Describe us the stages of your working process. In Athens I now work only with the specific artists for different reasons in each occasion. We are connected by the same things, we are close by age but most importantly we all have our roots on graffiti. The key element is not to have strong ego, which is rare. A mural isn’t a simple thing, so you have to know well you partner in order to continue together afterwards and build an even stronger relationship. When we work we chose our theme and we study the way we are going to process it on the surface we have on our disposal, depending on the each time available space.

What are your views on the belief that Athens is the new Berlin or that we are the capital of graffiti in Europe!? I wish Athens had the museum infrastructure and the support of modern art that exists in Berlin and generally in German almost immediately after the end of War World 2. I would be sincerely happy if something like that happened. So from that point of view Athens clearly isn’t Berlin and I’m afraid that it’ll never be. But because I think that’s not exactly what you mean and you’re referring at the existent rumor that due to the abundant presence of graffiti in the city Athens is becoming more like Berlin, I have to answer that in that case too the social, economic and above all cultural conditions between the two cities are so different, that even if we’d say that Athens is right now the capital of graffiti, it would be in a totally different way from Berlin.

Muralists, street artists, graffiti artists, writers… and everyone on top of each other. Too much information, too many visuals especially in areas like Exarcheia. Is each one so good? How come and the perception that we respect the precedent on the same wall and we don’t paint on it has changed? This particular question pleases me because it proves that I am not only one to observe the exaggerated visual information in Athens. You are not the only one who has asked me that question, my answer as an older writer is this:We grow up, and that means everything around us is evolving. Since the internet has entered into our lives, it’s only reasonable to lose the values and the habits based on which we grew up. The younger ones learn through the internet, and this helps them to choose which way they’ll follow in order to leave their stigma in the city. Everything must exist in order to have the potentiality of comparison. At the end of the day I accept them all. Whatever we used to do, the young ones do it now, just on an other era and by having on their disposal all kind of means and much more comforts. Nowadays writing on the wall, with any form of writing, has become fashion and little consumption, as opposed to the beginning of this story where a strong eroticism dominated our relationship with the wall. The important thing to me is that in the general chaos you can discover unique pearls. So it would be great to just enjoy the freedom in our city, like going on a wall and paint on it without having anyone to bother you, where else would we do that? If the situation was different, your page wouldn’t exist, many other pages that care only about their image depending on other people’s effort without giving credits on the artists wouldn’t exist, like so many others that take advantage of the specific art with a good or a bad manner wouldn’t exist. So create as much as you can because this feast will end and we won’t believe it.

Passionate skater who creates on the boards with visuals. Talk to us about your Project. Skateboarding was my link to graffiti, my acquaintance with it, it marked me and it made me want to learn to create myself. After 25 years of  being on stage, some times on a professional level, I continue skateboarding with my friends. Art was always and continues to be more than ever connected to skateboarding culture. Many of those who have gotten involved from time to time with skate evolved into artists in many fields like direction, photography, painting, music… So in my case the inseparable relationship between skating and painting looks completely normal. By acting somewhat heretically, I try to combine great classical painting with a solid dose of humor and caution by redefining my relationship with classical works through a fresh, contemporary look adapted to skate’s and society’s today reality in which this is included. I cooperate with S.O.S Skateboards which founded 3 years ago.

In ten years from now? To have health, integrity and the rest is coming. I wish great creation to everyone!

Follow Billy Gee Website \ Instagram

_

Γραφίστας, εικαστικός, αρθρογράφος, skater με άλλα λόγια Billy Gee. Παρουσιάζουμε την δουλειά του αν και δεν χρειάζεται ιδιαίτερες συστάσεις και μιλάμε μαζί του για τα «χρόνια της αθωότητας» αλλά και το σ��μερα που μοιάζει αρκετά διαφορετικό. 

Τι έχεις σπουδάσει και ποτέ ξεκινάς να ασχολείσαι με την street art; Η πρώτη μου γνωριμία με το graffiti ήταν τον Νοέμβριο του 1993 στην πλατεία της Αγίας Παρασκευής. Όταν τελείωσα το Λύκειο, συνέχισα τις σπουδές μου στο τμήμα Γραφιστικής Αθηνών. Κάμποσα χρόνια μετά, βρέθηκα για 3 χρόνια στο Eργαστήριο Ζωγραφικής στην Πλάκα, το οποίο λειτουργούσε ως παράρτημα της ΑΣΚΤ. Ήταν ένα πανέμορφο μέρος, κρίμα που σήμερα δεν υπάρχει. Δεδομένου ότι περνούσα πολλές ώρες εκεί σχεδιάζοντας και ζωγραφίζοντας, μου προτάθηκε να παρακολουθήσω μαθήματα σαν ακροατής στην ΑΣΚΤ, πράγμα που με βοήθησε αρκετά.

Πρακτικά ξεκινάς στα χρόνια της αθωότητας, οι τοιχογραφίες γίνονταν μόνο για να εκφραστούν οι ίδιοι οι δημιουργοί καθώς δεν υπήρχε η παραμικρή γνώση από τον πολύ κόσμο ότι αυτό δεν διαχωρίζεται από τις υπόλοιπες εφαρμογές της τέχνης. Πως ήταν τότε να δημιουργείς στον δημόσιο χώρο; Η κατάσταση τότε ήταν πραγματικά ένα μεγάλο σχολείο, τόσο από πρακτικής όσο και από ηθικής πλευράς. Δεν υπήρχαν ίντριγκες μεταξύ μας, όλοι ήθελαν απλά να δημιουργήσουν σε μια επιφάνεια με τους φίλους τους και να περάσουν καλά. Τότε, ανησυχούσαμε για το αν θα μας στριμώξει στη γωνία και μας πάρει τα λεφτά κάποιος χούλιγκαν. Μας αποκαλούσαν αμερικανάκια, και είναι αλήθεια ότι ξεχωρίζαμε σαν τη μύγα μέσα στο γάλα, λόγω των ρούχων που φορούσαμε. Πράγμα που είχε σαν αποτέλεσμα να μας θεωρούν τα πάντα εκτός από καλλιτέχνες, πολύ μπλέξιμο…

Ομάδες, spray και μουσική. Ποια ήταν η σχέση μεταξύ των διαφορετικών crew και ποσό συνδεδεμένο ήταν το graffiti με την αστική κουλτούρα; Εκείνα τα χρόνια μας ένωσε η μουσική με έναν τόσο μαγικό τρόπο που δεν το πήραμε καν είδηση πώς έγινε. Τα πρώτα ελληνικά hip hop συγκροτήματα, TXC, FFC, RAZASTAR, Παρεμβολές, ΖΝ κ.α., δημιούργησαν ένα κίνημα από graffiti artists, b-boys, skaters, bmxers και πολλούς fans που  ακολουθούσαν το κύμα. Δεν ήμασταν χιλιάδες, το ΑΝ Club γεμίζαμε και μας φαινόταν τρομερό!Καταλαβαίνεις ότι δεν υπήρχαν περίεργες καταστάσεις στον κύκλο μας, ήμασταν ενωμένοι, αντιμετωπίζοντας καθημερινά όλη την ένταση της εφηβείας μας που πολλές φορές φαινόταν ακραία. Το graffiti ήταν το στοιχείο της αστικής κουλτούρας που εξαπλωνόταν συνεχώς σε όλη την Ελλάδα τη χρυσή εποχή τον 90’s. Μαγεία!

Τοιχογραφίες με αρκετή λεπτομέρεια, μεγάλης ή μικρότερης κλίμακας, και συνδημιουργός της εμβληματικής φιγούρας του λουκάνικου στο Ψυρρή. Πόσος χρόνος χρειάζεται για μια τέτοια δουλειά? Μίλησε μας λίγο για το συγκεκριμένο mural. Βρισκόμουν στο Βέλγιο όταν έμαθα για τον θάνατο του Λουκάνικου, μαζί με τον οποίον είχα περάσει αρκετά χρόνια στην πλατεία Συντάγματος. Άραζε με τους skaters σε καθημερινή βάση, του δίναμε νερό και τροφή, τρομερό πλάσμα.Έτσι είχα την ιδέα να δημιουργήσω μια τοιχογραφία στη μνήμη του. Εκείνες τις μέρες συναντήθηκα με τον Alex Martinez να τα πούμε, πίνοντας έναν καφέ, του είπα ότι έχω βρει ένα spot για να δημιουργήσω τον σκύλο, με κοιτάζει και μου λέει: «Δεν το πιστεύω, σήμερα το σκεφτόμουν κι εγώ», οπότε καταλήξαμε να ζωγραφίσουμε μαζί τον αγαπημένο σκύλο της Αθήνας. Η Κυριακή είναι η μέρα των γκραφιτάδων. Έτσι λοιπόν, νωρίς το πρωί μιας Κυριακής, πήγαμε να βάψουμε στη Σαρρή. Τα υπόλοιπα έγιναν από μόνα τους. Τότε δεν φανταζόμασταν ότι το συγκεκριμένο θέμα θα άγγιζε τόσο πολύ τον κόσμο, και αυτό είναι πολύ συγκινητικό για τη δουλειά μας. Γι’ αυτό και ο Λουκάνικος στέκεται ακόμα εκεί καμαρωτός. Οι βανδαλισμοί  που έχει υποστεί το φόντο του έργου είναι το αποτέλεσμα του δρόμου, και με αυτό εννοώ ότι όντας εκτεθειμένο, όπως άλλωστε όλα τα έργα της street art, σε δημόσια θέα, είναι ταυτόχρονα εκτεθειμένο σε ποικίλες, ετερόκλιτες αντιδράσεις, προερχόμενες από πολλαπλές πολιτικές και άλλες αντιλήψεις. Το δεχόμαστε, έτσι μάθαμε, έτσι μεγαλώσαμε!   Δουλεύεις σχεδόν αποκλειστικά με συγκεκριμένους συνεργάτες στον δρόμο. Lune82, Martinez, pupet... Ποσό σημαντικό είναι για σένα αυτό; Περιέγραψε μας λίγο τα στάδια της δουλειάς. Στην Αθήνα δουλεύω πλέον μόνο με τους συγκεκριμένους καλλιτέχνες, για διαφορετικούς λόγους σε κάθε περίπτωση.  Μας συνδέουν τα ίδια πράγματα,  είμαστε σχεδόν όλοι κοντά ηλικιακά, αλλά το πιο σημαντικό είναι ότι όλοι έχουμε ρίζες στο graffiti. Βασικό στοιχείο είναι να μην έχει κάποιος έντονο «εγώ», πράγμα σπάνιο. Μια τοιχογραφία δεν είναι κάτι απλό, πρέπει να ξέρεις καλά αυτόν με τον οποίον συνεργάζεσαι ώστε να υπάρξει συνέχεια, η οποία θα κάνει τη σχέση αυτή ακόμα πιο δυνατή. Όταν δουλεύουμε, επιλέγουμε τη θεματική μας, μελετάμε τον τρόπο που θα την επεξεργαστούμε πάνω στην επιφάνεια που έχουμε στην διάθεση μας, ανάλογα με το εκάστοτε πλαίσιο.     

Τι έχεις να πεις για την αντίληψη που λέει ότι η Αθήνα είναι το νέο Βερολίνο ή ότι είμαστε η πρωτεύουσα του graffiti στην Ευρώπη;! Μακάρι η Αθήνα να είχε τη μουσειακή υποδομή και την υποστήριξη της σύγχρονης τέχνης που ισχύει στο Βερολίνο, και γενικά στο γερμανικό κράτος, σχεδόν αμέσως μετά το τέλος του Β΄ Παγκοσμίου Πολέμου. Θα ήμουν πραγματικά ευτυχής αν συνέβαινε κάτι τέτοιο. Οπότε, από αυτή την άποψη σαφώς η Αθήνα δεν είναι Βερολίνο, και φοβάμαι ότι ούτε θα γίνει ποτέ. Όμως, επειδή νομίζω ότι δεν εννοείς αυτό ακριβώς, αλλά αναφέρεσαι στη φήμη που κυκλοφορεί τα τελευταία χρόνια ότι η Αθήνα έχει πάρει τη σκυτάλη από το Βερολίνο στην άφθονη παρουσία graffiti παντού στην πόλη, έχω να απαντήσω ότι και σε αυτή την περίπτωση είναι τόσο διαφορετικές οι κοινωνικές, οικονομικές και κυρίως πολιτισμικές συνθήκες ανάμεσα στις δύο πόλεις, ώστε ακόμα και αν θεωρήσουμε ότι η Αθήνα είναι σήμερα η «πρωτεύουσα» του graffiti, είναι με έναν εντελώς διαφορετικό τρόπο απ’ o,τι η γερμανική πρωτεύουσα από το 2000 μέχρι το 2005 περίπου.

Muralists, street artists, graffitαδες, writers... και όλοι ο ένας πάνω στον άλλο. Παρά πολύ πληροφορία, παρά πολλά εικαστικά ειδικά σε περιοχές όπως τα Εξάρχεια. Είναι όλα τόσο καλά; Πως γίνεται να έχει αλλάξει τόσο πολύ η αντίληψη ότι σεβόμαστε τον προηγούμενο στον ίδιο τοίχο και δεν πατάμε πάνω του; Η συγκεκριμένη ερώτηση με χαροποιεί γιατί αποδεικνύει ότι δεν παρατηρώ μόνον εγώ την υπερβολική εικαστική πληροφορία που υπάρχει στην Αθήνα. Δεν είσαι ο μόνος που μου έχει κάνει αυτή την ερώτηση, η απάντησή μου ως παλαιότερος writer είναι η εξής:  Μεγαλώνουμε, και αυτό σημαίνει ότι όλα γύρω μας εξελίσσονται. Από τότε που το διαδίκτυο μπήκε στη ζωή μας, είναι λογικό να χάνονται οι αξίες και οι συνήθειες με τις οποίες μεγαλώσαμε εμείς. Οι νεότεροι μαθαίνουν μέσα από το internet, και αυτό τους βοηθά να  επιλέξουν ευκολότερα τον δρόμο που θα ακολουθήσουν, προκειμένου να αφήσουν το αποτύπωμα τους στην πόλη. Όλα πρέπει να υπάρχουν για να υπάρχει δυνατότητα σύγκρισης. Στο τέλος της μέρας, αποδέχομαι τα πάντα. Ο, τι κάναμε εμείς, κάνουν και οι νεότεροι σήμερα, απλά σε άλλη εποχή, και έχοντας στη διάθεσή τους όλα τα μέσα και πολύ περισσότερες ευκολίες. Σήμερα, το να γράφεις στον τοίχο, με οποιαδήποτε γραφή, έχει γίνει μόδα, και λίγο κατανάλωση, σε αντίθεση με το ξεκίνημα αυτής της ιστορίας όπου κυριαρχούσε ένας έντονος ερωτισμός στη σχέση μας με τον τοίχο. Όπως και να έχει, το σημαντικό για μένα έχει ότι μέσα στον γενικό χαμό, ανακαλύπτεις μαργαριτάρια. Καλό είναι να χαρούμε την ελευθερία που έχει η πόλη μας, το να πάς σε έναν τοίχο να βάψεις χωρίς να σε ενοχλήσει κάνεις, σε άλλη χώρα το κάνεις αυτό; Αν η κατάσταση ήταν αλλιώς, δεν θα υπήρχε ούτε η σελίδα σου, ούτε πολλές άλλες που πλασάρουν image με τον κόπο άλλων, χωρίς να βάζουν credits στους καλλιτέχνες, όπως δεν θα υπήρχαν ούτε όλοι όσοι εκμεταλλεύονται τη συγκεκριμένη τέχνη, με καλό ή κακό τρόπο. Οπότε δημιουργήστε όσο μπορείτε γιατί το πανηγύρι θα τελειώσει και δεν θα το πιστεύουμε.  

Παθιασμένος skater όπου και εκεί δημιουργείς πάνω στις σανίδες με τα εικαστικά σου. Μίλησε μας για αυτό το Project. Το skateboarding ήταν ο συνδετικός κρίκος που με έφερε κοντά στο graffiti, και η γνωριμία μου μαζί του, με σημάδεψε, και μου δημιούργησε την επιθυμία να μάθω να δημιουργώ κι εγώ με τη σειρά μου. Μετά από 25 χρόνια παρουσίας στη σκηνή, κάποια από αυτά σε επαγγελματικό επίπεδο, συνεχίζω να ρολάρω με τους φίλους μου. Η τέχνη ήταν ανέκαθεν και εξακολουθεί να είναι περισσότερο από ποτέ συνυφασμένη με την κουλτούρα του skateboarding. Πολλοί από εκείνους που έχουν ασχοληθεί κατά καιρούς με το skate εξελίχθηκαν σε καλλιτέχνες σε διάφορους τομείς, σκηνοθεσία, φωτογραφία, ζωγραφική, μουσική... Οπότε, στην περίπτωση μου μοιάζει απόλυτα φυσιολογική η άρρηκτη σχέση skating-painting. Δρώντας κάπως αιρετικά, επιχειρώ να συνδυάσω τη μεγάλη, κλασική ζωγραφική με μία γερή δόση χιούμορ, αλλά και περίσκεψης, επαναπροσδιορίζοντας τη σχέση μου με τα κλασικά έργα μέσα από μία φρέσκια, σύγχρονη ματιά, προσαρμοσμένη στη σημερινή πραγματικότητα τόσο του skate όσο και της κοινωνίας μέσα στην οποία αυτό εντάσσεται.  Συνεργάζομαι με την S.O.S Skateboards που ιδρύθηκε πριν από 3 χρόνια.  

Σε 10 χρόνια από τώρα? Να έχουμε υγεία και ακεραιότητα, τα υπόλοιπα έρχονται.

#greek street art #street art #graffiti #billy gee #europe #Athens #city #greece #downtown #urban life #urban art #loukanikos #skateboarding #spray #paint #public art #mural art #Greek Artist #outdoors #γρεεκζ #γρεεκ ποστς

[branddesigner-us]

Being a brand designer! Part 2

  - Yeah, that's where I spend most of my time is on our main marketing site, yeah. - I think I'm writing a site, it does well, but we wanna do a lot more to it. - Yeah. - You know, we're releasing e-commerce in a few weeks and with that comes with a feature page and it comes updating every other part of the site. - Yeah, all the screenshots, yeah. - All the screenshots, yeah, we're updating our UI, we have to update all of that, and, you know, with this new page that we're working on it's like well should really update these other ones if we do this one. - Yep, and it just turns into a whole refresher of the whole site. - Yeah, and then, with that we're doing a video, so we're working with a contract agency to produce this launch video, we're all working really hard on that. Lot of work to be done on our blog, there's a lot of like side programs we have. There's a lot we're always working on. - Is it mostly digital for you though? Do you ever do any of the like print or like swag stuff? - You know, I really want to, I would love to take a week and just make swag, but just don't have the time right now. - Just doesn't become the priority, right, when it's a whole saturated line. - Yeah, we recently had to make a banner and some flyers for a conference. And that was like oh yeah CMYK is a thing. - Yep, you gotta go back to it. - So there's a very small amount of that, but yeah, a little bit, I think that's more typical for brand designers. Especially as I look around and look at the work of people that call themselves brand designers. It's a lot of internal, I think marketing related, but usually a lot of internal swag related and illustrations. Me and my team do a lot less of that type of work. - Right. - But there's a project we wanna do really badly and we got close to doing it for the launch of e-commerce where we were actually gonna produce our own swag store. - Oh my gosh, that's such a good idea. - So it's like, it serves a lot of purposes. - Yeah, yeah, yeah. - One it's, a lot of people ask for Webflow t-shirts and pens and stickers all the time, and we're like yeah, sure, here, take it, you know. And then we do have like events, it's hard to organize, you know, getting all that swag in the instant and all that, at the same time we're producing an e-commerce products and we, very few of us have run an e-commerce store. - Right, so this would be good practice for you all. - Exactly, so it's a test for us internally. - Yep. - To really even find the pinpoints and be able to mark it towards those and talk to product, be like hey, this was hard, let's fix this, you know, so it's gonna be really fun too, cause then we'll just get to make a bunch of crazy shirts and stickers and all that. - Yeah, that's cool. So with projects like that, that was you and your team come up with the idea for it and do you have a lot of freedom in that in suggesting the projects that you work on essentially? - Absolutely. - Yeah. - There's absolutely, you know, we're a design focused company. As a designer here there's a lot of respect that goes on and everyone's really supportive of the ideas that we have. - That's cool. - I come up with a lot of crazy ideas. Not all of them are feasible or fit in with the timeline of what we wanna get done, but there's always support to at least explore the idea or put it in the backlog or whatever, but like this one, you know, there's other things that took priority, but. - But you know it's safe for later. - But it's safe, yeah, it's gonna come. - Yeah, I do a similar thing at ConvertKit when in my marketing design work I can always feel free to suggest how I think is the best way to solve this problem, you know, cause it is a problem, how do we market this feature or whatever. - Totally. - Sometimes there's time for it, sometimes there's not, but yeah, I think it's great when we can have the freedom to suggest things like that. - Totally, I think the best ideas come of like, all right, let's random thought in a meeting, I'm just gonna share it, and you know, if there's a culture of that being out of place or a culture where that's not supported and encouraged then you're gonna lose a lot of good ideas. - Yeah. - And so everyone here's always like yeah that's cool let's see what we can do with that. And I love that. - Yeah, I love that too. - I think that that's something that makes for a really successful in house designer in general is when you're not just doing the work that someone asks of you, but you're coming up with your own ideas as well, and suggesting things. - Totally, like when we released the ability to search within a Webflow site, we created a essentially Google for dogs, and it was Kibble, and it would like look like Google, acted like it, you could search for stuff, you'd get articles that were like tailored towards dogs, it was just, yeah, just stuff like that where we were like hey, let's just do something fun and it'll take a week or whatever. - Yeah, do you wanna show me some of your favorite, I don't know, like what are you working on now or some of your favorite projects? - Okay, I'll show you what I'm working on now. - Yep. - It's the e-commerce feature page. Coming soon. - It'll probably be out by the time this video goes out actually. - Okay, it's live, here's the URL. This is the e-commerce feature page, work in progress, there's a heal that's not done. But our main focus with the page is talking about design cause that's really our largest selling point is all the things we can do with that. So there's six sections, which, this one's done. - Oo, that's cool. - It's talking about the checkout. It's really rare, I've experienced this both shopping a lot online but shopping on an e-commerce store now built by Webflow where you're like oh yeah the checkout always looks terrible and doesn't match anything. - And it always looks the same on every e-commerce site you go to as well. - Exactly, it's like being able to have a custom like checkout, like yeah that's cool and now that I'm experiencing I'm like oh wow, that's really nice. - This cool I love the animation. - Cause you build out everything you design as well, obviously, in Webflow. - And then, talking about the shopping cart. - Love, oo. - Customize it, and there's different ways you can display it. We get to your product pages, there's gonna be a video here, it's not done yet. Here we have. - I love all this animation, it's so cool. - This, the shadow kind of popping up there. - So what's your process with making a learning page like this, do you have like a copy team or something give you the content for it first? - It's definitely a couple rounds back and forth between copy and design. - Mm hmm. - It'll always start with a Word doc, for sure, and we have a few people that are very good writers and very good at starting there, and then kind of once we actually JP threw this into a sketch file and we started to play with the layout, and we actually get to see the content in the design, it's like oh this is not working as well and let's see what we can do here. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. - And over time we wanna change what we actually show in the page. So there was a lot of back and forth between copy and static layout. I typically, when I designing something don't use Sketch or Figma or Illustrator or whatever, I usually just kind of go straight to Webflow, but it does work well for getting ideas out there quick, you know, from there we adapted the designs to Webflow, a lot of it changed, it's almost completely different, but it was at least a starting point to get us here. - It's a starting point to have the conversation, right? - Yeah, totally, and then this was actually really nice cause we had just started with a very basic layout, we didn't do anything too fancy, and then just kind of tested the content structure across I think 10 users right now, and then got some really good feedback as to what they felt was missing, and you know, what we can do different. So it's gonna go live already being tested. - That's great. Is that usual for you? Because I was gonna ask you about A/B testing and user testing, that sort of thing as well. We do, well not so much right now, but we have been doing a lot of A/B testing at ConvertKit, like little pieces on our site, or sometimes like full pages, like we did two completely different home pages. But user testing for me, normally happens after the page is live. - Yeah. - Mostly because I'm like, I don't know, I feel like I'm always behind our product team in getting like, you know, they've got a new feature that's launching and I'm like ah I've got to get the lining page done. - Sure. - Yeah, how does that normally work for you? - We don't do a lot of A/B testing. - Okay. - It's something we wanna do more this year for sure. A lot of it's usually, we have enough of an idea of what we need to do that it's gonna, it's not gonna fail, but it could always be better. - Yeah, but there isn't any point in testing, I don't think, unless you're willing to like take the time to implement results from it as well. So like when you've got other projects on, like that's why I said at the moment at ConvertKit we're not doing much testing cause there's just so much going on. - Exactly, we're in a similar spot for sure. It's unfortunately a luxury to test, I feel like. - Yeah. - As designers we like generally know what's gonna work, and that's usually like yeah, cool, let's do it, but, testing is something I definitely wanna do more of. - I think that as brand designers as well, perhaps our projects are launched on a more regular cadence than product designers, so testing is obviously a huge part of product design like before you launch a feature out to all these thousands of people, that's really important, whereas with what we do it's pretty easy to like make an update to the website without it like affecting too many people's lives. - Yeah. - If you need to change something later on. - It's a little bit quieter, you know. - Yeah, exactly. - Doesn't break anything, not necessarily. - Which is again, something that I like about doing my own design. - And if we do fail, we'll know on Twitter or wherever else, people are gonna be like hey. - Yep, someone will tell you, this link is broken! - That happens for sure. - Yep, for sure. All right, Ryan, thank you so much for sharing all this. Where can people go to find out more about you? - Yeah, I've got a website, ryry.io, r y r y. - Great URL. - Yep, there it is. - Or just like Twitter, I'm slash ryryjmo. - We'll put that on the screen as well. - I love following Ryan on Twitter, would definitely recommend giving him a follow. - I tweet mostly Webflow stuff, just be warned. - Oh there we go, yeah, so you're gonna be like promoted too, the people that want it. - Yeah. - But it's interesting stuff, you get to see all his projects and things like that. - Thank you for being here Ryan, this was really great, I hope you enjoyed watching it, give it a thumbs up if you did and I will see you in the next video. Bye! Just don't get scared and like move too far away. (laughing) Thanks Tim. - Bye, love! - Bye, I love you! (laughing) - I say that more than you'd expect.

https://youtu.be/nGSszoFSWV8

#brand designer

[xhostcom]

20 Best New Portfolios, December 2018

It’s December, which means it’s officially carol season. Oh well. Whether you’re a curmudgeon about these things like myself, or are even now feeling the heat rise in your elf ears and Santa hat, we can all agree that portfolio sites are cool, right? Let’s see what those wacky designers have come up with now. There are quite a few modern, as in pre-post-modern designs here. You know, classic, business-friendly minimalist sites. I must say, sometimes my writer and designer sides clash, and I worry about what design trends make me do to the English language. (Also, I’d like to take a moment to thank Hubert Gałczyński from the previously-featured K2. He has directed me towards Wappalyzer which is a tool that’s helping me more accurately figure out what platforms and CMS everybody is using.) Note: I’m judging these sites by how good they look to me. If they’re creative and original, or classic but really well-done, it’s all good to me. Sometimes, UX and accessibility suffer. For example, many of these sites depend on JavaScript to display their content at all; this is a Bad Idea

, kids. If you find an idea you like and want to adapt to your own site, remember to implement it responsibly.

TJ Dhillon

TJ Dhillon’s portfolio starts as the rest of this article will probably go on. It’s simple, it’s clean, it works. It’s got some nice little drop shadows on hovering over certain elements, and is it weird that I’ve actually missed those? They were never a bad thing in moderation. Moderation might be the key to this whole site design. There are frills, but they’re not overdone. Platform: Static Site

Matt Kevan

Matt Kevan’s portfolio looks a little bit like a prototype, though it’s obviously polished. As he is a UX designer, the aesthetic certainly works thematically. He’s also elected to put his writing front and center, rather than his more visual work. It’s certainly one way to demonstrate your expertise, but I wish I had some kind of analytics Platform: Jekyll

Daniel Spatzek

Daniel Spatzek’s portfolio will take us, just for a moment, to the world of the ultra-modern. You know how I feel about sites that are this JS-heavy, but I’m still a sucker for that grid-based aesthetic, especially when it’s properly using the full width of my desktop screen like this. Platform: Static Site

Undersight

Undersight has that clean-and-modern look, but with a little bit of artistic flair provided by the work itself. It feels like the portfolio pieces are almost as much apart of the overall aesthetic as any other element of the site. In a world where so very often the design and content almost feel like separate parts of a website, this is an improvement. Platform: React

Sei Yamazaki

Sei Yamazaki’s portfolio is focused on art. With this comes the classic “art gallery style” which includes lots of white space, and text that’s perhaps a bit too small at times. Still, the layouts themselves are beautiful, and the featured installation has some of the finest video presentation I’ve seen in a while. Platform: WordPress

4POR4

4POR4 is a rare breed indeed. Normally websites that use this much space-related imagery have darker layouts. But here we have lots of literal white space mixed with astronaut imagery, illustration, and photomontages. It’s a bit bandwidth-heavy, perhaps, but the overall effect is stunning. Platform: Static Site

Your Creative Copywriter

Your Creative Copywriter is, as a website, the very picture of business-friendliness. The layout has elements of post-modern asymmetry while maintaining a clearly businesslike look. The illustrations are classic, and even the stock photo of the hand holding the pencil is perfect for the market. Sure it’s a little cheesy, perhaps, but far from the cheesiest stock photo we’ve ever seen. It’s always interesting to see a site so clearly made with modern tech that feels like something from another era. It doesn’t hurt that this is probably exactly what their clients are looking for. Platform: Static Site

Niccolò Miranda

Niccolò Miranda’s portfolio is one of the most “presentational” sites I’ve ever seen. It’s dark, it’s got animated illustrations, and even the blog is animated to an extent. This is only possible because every blog post is a YouTube video tutorial, with accompanying practice files. It’s not the most accessible site I’ve seen, but it is beautiful, and it takes an interesting approach to ongoing content. Platform: Custom CMS (I think)

Pixavio

Pixavio is another highly presentational site with a “modern” look so old it reminds me of old fashion magazines and, weirdly enough, a lot of the barber shops I went into as a kid. It’s something about the typography and gradient use. The site shows off the flexibility of this aesthetic by using a different color scheme for each portfolio page. It feels like a blast from the past, but it still works today. Platform: Static Site

Eleken

Eleken brings me back to a time when everyone was doing design “like Apple but with thicker headings”. It’s pretty classic minimalism, mixed with a little background video, and workplace photography. Platform: Gatsby

Kobu

Kobu is a rare beauty. It’s sleek, stylish, and makes wonderful use of curves in its illustration and animation. The animations run smoothly, and aren’t altogether too distracting. The color palette is strong, and the headings are thick. And it does all of this without scroll-jacking. Can you even believe it? A fancy site that performs well and lets me scroll normally. I’m in love. Being a bit more serious, it’s a lovely looking site. Just wish they had more fallbacks in place for all of the JS stuff. Platform: WordPress

MOXY

And we’re back to the scroll-jacking. But I can forgive MOXY for this because it’s just that pretty. It’s sites like this that remind me why—even though I dislike how JavaScript has become the new Flash—web animation is a discipline and an art form all its own. It’s an art form worth exploring, and MOXY does that beautifully. Platform: React App/Static Site

Trajectory

Trajectory is doing it all wrong! If you’re going to use a monospaced font, your site either has to be an ironic brutalist meta-commentary on web design or a post-modernist artsy design. None of this pleasant, business-friendly stuff with smooth illustrations and gorgeous gradient use. Using monospaced type for all the body text might be a bit much, but it certainly does stand out when combined with everything else. Platform: Craft CMS

Soap Media

Soap Media is hitting all the right buttons for me, personally. It’s bright with bold colors, it’s playful, and it’s got a huge rubber ducky. This is an entirely subjective point, but I just like rubber duckies. The whole site feels creative and whimsical in that “we’ll playfully make you a lot of money” sort of way. It’s genius. Platform: Static Site

Nate Denton

Random chickens are equal to rubber duckies if you want to be silly and playful. Nate Denton’s portfolio went with a big one, contrasted by a relatively soft and warm color palette. The resulting aesthetic is a combination of professional and artsy that is overall pleasing to the eye, but less likely to scare away the more straight-laced potential clients. Platform: Static Site

Crema

Crema is this month’s site that isn’t mind-blowingly experimental or anything, but is here because I admire the craftsmanship. Plus rounded corners. We don’t seem them as much as we thought we would, do we? Platform: Custom CMS (I Think)

NoBears

The amusingly-named NoBears agency goes with wackiness, combining striking photomontages and background video with a comparatively subdued dark design. I’m still a sucker for those semi-visible grids as part of the design, so of course this one’s on the list. Platform: Silverstripe

BAUNFIRE

While many other sites are going for bold and bright aesthetics, BAUNFIRE keeps it soft and pleasant with a pastel-infused, and fairly minimalist design. It’s a calming and soothing experience from an agency that presents itself as easy to work with. Platform: Craft CMS

Friends

Friends’ website presents a fusion of that near-postmodern, element-overlapping aesthetic with some more classic-feeling minimalism and typography. That fusion works quite well. Platform: Craft CMS

Daniel Kusaka

Daniel Kusaka’s portfolio gives me some of that good old magazine feel that designers wanted to do for years. Well now we can, and I can’t get enough of it. God bless Flexbox and CSS Grid. Platform: WordPress

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20 Best New Portfolios, December 2018

It’s December, which means it’s officially carol season. Oh well. Whether you’re a curmudgeon about these things like myself, or are even now feeling the heat rise in your elf ears and Santa hat, we can all agree that portfolio sites are cool, right? Let’s see what those wacky designers have come up with now.

There are quite a few modern, as in pre-post-modern designs here. You know, classic, business-friendly minimalist sites. I must say, sometimes my writer and designer sides clash, and I worry about what design trends make me do to the English language.

(Also, I’d like to take a moment to thank Hubert Gałczyński from the previously-featured K2. He has directed me towards Wappalyzer which is a tool that’s helping me more accurately figure out what platforms and CMS everybody is using.)

Note: I’m judging these sites by how good they look to me. If they’re creative and original, or classic but really well-done, it’s all good to me. Sometimes, UX and accessibility suffer. For example, many of these sites depend on JavaScript to display their content at all; this is a Bad Idea, kids. If you find an idea you like and want to adapt to your own site, remember to implement it responsibly.

TJ Dhillon

TJ Dhillon’s portfolio starts as the rest of this article will probably go on. It’s simple, it’s clean, it works. It’s got some nice little drop shadows on hovering over certain elements, and is it weird that I’ve actually missed those?

They were never a bad thing in moderation. Moderation might be the key to this whole site design. There are frills, but they’re not overdone.

Platform: Static Site

Matt Kevan

Matt Kevan’s portfolio looks a little bit like a prototype, though it’s obviously polished. As he is a UX designer, the aesthetic certainly works thematically.

He’s also elected to put his writing front and center, rather than his more visual work. It’s certainly one way to demonstrate your expertise, but I wish I had some kind of analytics

Platform: Jekyll

Daniel Spatzek

Daniel Spatzek’s portfolio will take us, just for a moment, to the world of the ultra-modern. You know how I feel about sites that are this JS-heavy, but I’m still a sucker for that grid-based aesthetic, especially when it’s properly using the full width of my desktop screen like this.

Platform: Static Site

Undersight

Undersight has that clean-and-modern look, but with a little bit of artistic flair provided by the work itself. It feels like the portfolio pieces are almost as much apart of the overall aesthetic as any other element of the site. In a world where so very often the design and content almost feel like separate parts of a website, this is an improvement.

Platform: React

Sei Yamazaki

Sei Yamazaki’s portfolio is focused on art. With this comes the classic “art gallery style” which includes lots of white space, and text that’s perhaps a bit too small at times. Still, the layouts themselves are beautiful, and the featured installation has some of the finest video presentation I’ve seen in a while.

Platform: WordPress

4POR4

4POR4 is a rare breed indeed. Normally websites that use this much space-related imagery have darker layouts. But here we have lots of literal white space mixed with astronaut imagery, illustration, and photomontages. It’s a bit bandwidth-heavy, perhaps, but the overall effect is stunning.

Platform: Static Site

Your Creative Copywriter

Your Creative Copywriter is, as a website, the very picture of business-friendliness. The layout has elements of post-modern asymmetry while maintaining a clearly businesslike look. The illustrations are classic, and even the stock photo of the hand holding the pencil is perfect for the market.

Sure it’s a little cheesy, perhaps, but far from the cheesiest stock photo we’ve ever seen. It’s always interesting to see a site so clearly made with modern tech that feels like something from another era. It doesn’t hurt that this is probably exactly what their clients are looking for.

Platform: Static Site

Niccolò Miranda

Niccolò Miranda’s portfolio is one of the most “presentational” sites I’ve ever seen. It’s dark, it’s got animated illustrations, and even the blog is animated to an extent.

This is only possible because every blog post is a YouTube video tutorial, with accompanying practice files. It’s not the most accessible site I’ve seen, but it is beautiful, and it takes an interesting approach to ongoing content.

Platform: Custom CMS (I think)

Pixavio

Pixavio is another highly presentational site with a “modern” look so old it reminds me of old fashion magazines and, weirdly enough, a lot of the barber shops I went into as a kid. It’s something about the typography and gradient use.

The site shows off the flexibility of this aesthetic by using a different color scheme for each portfolio page. It feels like a blast from the past, but it still works today.

Platform: Static Site

Eleken

Eleken brings me back to a time when everyone was doing design “like Apple but with thicker headings”. It’s pretty classic minimalism, mixed with a little background video, and workplace photography.

Platform: Gatsby

Kobu

Kobu is a rare beauty. It’s sleek, stylish, and makes wonderful use of curves in its illustration and animation. The animations run smoothly, and aren’t altogether too distracting. The color palette is strong, and the headings are thick.

And it does all of this without scroll-jacking. Can you even believe it? A fancy site that performs well and lets me scroll normally. I’m in love.

Being a bit more serious, it’s a lovely looking site. Just wish they had more fallbacks in place for all of the JS stuff.

Platform: WordPress

MOXY

And we’re back to the scroll-jacking. But I can forgive MOXY for this because it’s just that pretty. It’s sites like this that remind me why—even though I dislike how JavaScript has become the new Flash—web animation is a discipline and an art form all its own. It’s an art form worth exploring, and MOXY does that beautifully.

Platform: React App/Static Site

Trajectory

Trajectory is doing it all wrong! If you’re going to use a monospaced font, your site either has to be an ironic brutalist meta-commentary on web design or a post-modernist artsy design. None of this pleasant, business-friendly stuff with smooth illustrations and gorgeous gradient use. [/sarcasm]

Using monospaced type for all the body text might be a bit much, but it certainly does stand out when combined with everything else.

Platform: Craft CMS

Soap Media

Soap Media is hitting all the right buttons for me, personally. It’s bright with bold colors, it’s playful, and it’s got a huge rubber ducky. This is an entirely subjective point, but I just like rubber duckies. The whole site feels creative and whimsical in that “we’ll playfully make you a lot of money” sort of way. It’s genius.

Platform: Static Site

Nate Denton

Random chickens are equal to rubber duckies if you want to be silly and playful. Nate Denton’s portfolio went with a big one, contrasted by a relatively soft and warm color palette. The resulting aesthetic is a combination of professional and artsy that is overall pleasing to the eye, but less likely to scare away the more straight-laced potential clients.

Platform: Static Site

Crema

Crema is this month’s site that isn’t mind-blowingly experimental or anything, but is here because I admire the craftsmanship. Plus rounded corners. We don’t seem them as much as we thought we would, do we?

Platform: Custom CMS (I Think)

NoBears

The amusingly-named NoBears agency goes with wackiness, combining striking photomontages and background video with a comparatively subdued dark design. I’m still a sucker for those semi-visible grids as part of the design, so of course this one’s on the list.

Platform: Silverstripe

BAUNFIRE

While many other sites are going for bold and bright aesthetics, BAUNFIRE keeps it soft and pleasant with a pastel-infused, and fairly minimalist design. It’s a calming and soothing experience from an agency that presents itself as easy to work with.

Platform: Craft CMS

Friends

Friends’ website presents a fusion of that near-postmodern, element-overlapping aesthetic with some more classic-feeling minimalism and typography. That fusion works quite well.

Platform: Craft CMS

Daniel Kusaka

Daniel Kusaka’s portfolio gives me some of that good old magazine feel that designers wanted to do for years. Well now we can, and I can’t get enough of it. God bless Flexbox and CSS Grid.

Platform: WordPress

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Device Mockups In Website Headers: Design Tips & Examples

Mobile device mockups are perfect for demoing new apps. These mockups let designers edit the device screen to add UIs that blend perfectly and fit naturally into the mockup photo.

Tons of mobile app websites also use these device mockups to style the page header. It’s a growing design trend I’ve seen a lot recently, and in this post I’ll explore this trend, sharing examples and tips that any designer can follow.

Straight Device View

By far the simplest technique to use is the front device view. This can use any type of device mockup where the design faces the viewer head-on.

Many designers use vector shapes to replicate the phone design rather than a realistic device mockup. This usually comes as a transparent graphic so you can blend it into any layout with ease.

Take for example the Mimo app header. It uses a dark iPhone vector graphic featuring a Mimo screenshot to help sell the product.

Most of these features are easy to setup and don’t require much editing in Photoshop. And since the devices appear flat on the page you can really showcase everything the app has to offer.

Most landing pages either use this flat style or the perspective style, but rarely both together. It all depends what type of design you’re going for.

But you could also use slideshows to get a mix of both. The Spendee homepage is the perfect example.

Their very first slide shows off the app in both Android & iOS devices. This stays fixed right at the top of the page so it’s a quick intro to the application.

But as you scroll down you’ll notice this page uses the dot navigation style and different sections of the page have perspective mockups too.

If the flat mockups work best for you then stick with ‘em. Tons of freebies out there in Google if you spend some time searching.

Strong Perspective Views

Another popular style is the skewed perspective device mockup. This technique uses photorealistic designs to create accurate devices with editable screens.

Most come in PSD format and they use smart objects for the screen. So when you edit the smart object you copy/paste your app UI flat into the window, then save it locally. Once you close the smart object you’ll see the screen properly aligned on the device to create the illusion of perspective.

Typically these mockups also come with transparent backgrounds so you can blend them into any layout. Filters has a terrific example of a device mockup spanning multiple sections on the page.

If you look closely at the device you can see the photorealistic layer FX are likely created in Photoshop. It’s definitely not a real device photo, yet it’s designed well enough to blend nicely into the homepage.

The app screenshot also follows this same perspective. This app UI is automatically manipulated in Photoshop to get the perfect angle every time.

On the Nuansa homepage you’ll find a cool slideshow effect that cycles through many different screenshots.

This uses different pics of the same device mockup holding different screens of the interface. It gives visitors a chance to see what the application can do without downloading it or watching a video.

Perspective app mockups are very common and you can find resources for everything from smartphones to tablets. You can also find many varying perspective shots aligned both vertical and horizontal.

Consider this style if you want a more realistic presentation. These mockups usually come as transparent PSDs so you have full reign to edit and publish them to perfectly match your layout.

You can even follow the Stripe lander and use mp4/video content instead of a static image. This adds even more realism to the mockup without you recording a full video of someone actually using the application.

Device Hero Images

The single hottest trend in web design headers is the full-page hero image. This usually spans the entire header using a large photo to convey a message about the site and its content.

You can find tons of hero image mockups online and many of them include device PSDs. These are real-life photos of devices lying on desks or in the hands of users.

But you can edit the device screen to insert your app’s UI, so this creates a realistic photo as if someone was using the app on their phone. This lets you create promo material without ever submitting the app into an app store.

On the Weathertron homepage you’ll find a big juicy hero image plastered behind the main logo and navigation links.

This could be a real photograph of the application on an iPhone. But if you look closely at the graphic you can see the UI is a bit more polished than the rest of the photo. This is usually a sign that the photograph is real, but the iPhone’s screen was replaced with a smart object.

You’ll see something similar towards the bottom of the page on an iPad screen.

I like these larger photo mockups because they present the app as much more realistic. Visitors see the app on a real iPhone and it feels like a much more tangible interface.

Operator is another example with a BG photo of a woman using the app on her iPhone. This again might be a real photo or a device mockup, but either way the effect is the same.

Use these larger photograph mockups when you want to sell your app in use. There are plenty of photo mockups out there and they’re just as easy to use as all the other device PSDs.

Designing With Device Mockups

There are tons of resources out there to use in your work and you’ll find dozens of styles to pick from.

Whether you’re looking for flat designs or photorealistic perspective mockups, or even live photo device shots, they’re all online with plenty of items to pick from. And these should be enough to get you started on the right path.

iPhone Clay PSD Mockups

The team at Ramotion recently published iPhone Clay PSD mockups which let you fully customize the color of each device.

This is part of their massive device library for iOS & Android smartphones. But these clay mockups are perfect for landing pages because they offer more control over colors and styles to play better with your color scheme.

Each device is built in Photoshop using vector shapes so they’re easy to resize. And they use smart objects for the screen so you can drop your app UI and quickly export a picture-perfect graphic for your landing page.

Sketch Device Mockups

Some designers prefer Sketch over Photoshop so it’s no surprise that there’s also full Sketch device mockups ready for use.

Unfortunately these all come from different designers and there is no central source for Sketch device mockups. But you can find a ton of freebies on the Sketch App Sources website which curates the best resources from all over the web.

If you’re a Sketch fanatic then definitely consider grabbing one of these packs.

Dribbble Devices

Last but certainly not least is the talent of Dribbble. This invite-only design community is packed with freebies that’ll leave you grinning from ear to ear.

Most of the top designs are from Ramotion’s perspective device packs. But if you dig deeper into the search results you can find some cool resources including flat iPhone/Android devices and actual photo mockups with people using/holding devices.

You might spend 30-60 minutes searching Google just to find the perfect mockup for your site. But Dribbble offers a smorgasbord of resources with preview thumbnails that make searching through mockups a breeze.

Wrapping Up

I mostly covered device mockups on mobile app landing pages but you can use these devices for blog posts, portfolio slideshows, and even graphic design pieces for print work.

Device mockups are here to stay and it’s a trend that’s growing in popularity. These device shots even work for responsive websites if you’re showing off a new homepage design. Get creative with these mockups and see what else you can come up with!

from Web Designing Tips https://1stwebdesigner.com/device-mockups-website-headers/