#sam talks 3d models

[cyristal-art]

Finally organized my genshin shader. I'd been using the append function for updating older files before but dragging and dropping node groups from the asset library is way easier.

#sam talks #sam talks 3d models

[phantomphangphucker]

Phic Phight - A Vega-Bond Space Case

@a-closet-emo @Anguished-Lurker @library-of-cronos @ghostboidanny @lexosaurus @uniasus @redactedgoose

Danny has a thing for space, always had, except now his ‘thing’ for space was more like actually physically BEING space. Danny’s also always had a thing for NASA, these two things were of course related since NASA’s entire thing was space, except now NASA also has a thing for Danny

Danny didn’t exactly have a ton of ways to go about being within his ‘domain’ as it were or satisfying that pesky little obsession of his. Yes he could go star gazing or literally fly up into space, which was great and all, but no matter how much you love and feel fulfilled by something it’s still good and needed to spice things up a bit. ClockWork subtly messed with the time stream in harmless, to time and the future, ways. Nocturne gave people nightmares even though that did disrupt their ability to sleep. Undergrowth went and ‘adopted a kid’ aka Sam to ‘raise someone worthy’ even though there was no need.

In short, everyone occasionally did something different and new.

So, Danny figured he should too. After all, he was still somewhat human and humans get bored and burnt out a lot easier and quicker. And Danny getting bored and burnt out meant an Obsessive crisis or two, which he’d rather avoid thank you very much. So he figured he‘d try something completely new, a way of being all ✨Space✨ by simply talking about it instead of staring at it or being physically surrounded by it. And by talking he means online, because he is not going to attempt to become a science teacher just to talk about space at bored teenagers or something. Sure him starting a vlog to excitedly blab about space was probably pretty silly, and sure he could also use the term vtuber since he used a 3d model to attempt to hide his identity, and sure he didn’t exactly expect many people to care; but it was nice. The 3d model was a fun little project for him and Tuck, and Sam had enjoyed picking out the things quirky clothing, and watching it move to his facial features and voice was really cool. It was almost like getting to listen to someone else blabber about space, which was super nice even if they weren’t actually even a real person or saying anything he hasn’t said before. It’s not like anyone could actually tell him something he didn’t already know anyways.

What Danny hadn’t expected was for his stupid little white-haired (because of course), shark-toothed, sparkly-skinned, virtual model vlog channel to actually do well. Like yes, some of his stuff was shorter clips, more ‘digestible’ as Jazz would say, but most of it was hours of knowledge vomit with breaths usually only taken for comedic effect. Then again, he was obsessed with space before he half died and it literally became his Obsession or before he became the literal god of space; so there was bound to be regular humans who actually did want to watch a five hour video about the composition of Jupiter’s rings and how it having slightly different compositions would change it. He’s still baffled that that video has over one million views, he’s also very thankful he went the 3d model route. He’s also thankful he still finds the channel name he picked funny: Vega-bond, after the North Star and based off of the word vagabond, since space was endless so his home as a being was effectively everywhere and nowhere and he could wander it’s and his own vastness forever. It had also caused some ‘James bond in space’ jokes though, even if he’s never actually see all those movies it was still funny.

Leaning back in his chair and editing a couple more seconds of a clip, taking a bite out of his sandwich and scowling. Ew. He really should learn to stop letting Jazz make food for him. Not only was she just as bad at cooking as he was, possibly worse actually, but she kept putting ectoplasm in his food! Intentionally or not, he doesn’t care. The sandwich goes back on the plate, he’ll get crackers later, right now he’s got a bit on asteroid turn over rates to fix. He’s also pretty sure this is the video where he goes on a bit of a tangent about the flavour of space rocks and what a star would most likely taste like to someone if they were able to eat one. Which fine, not the smartest thing to be talking about in a public form like this but hey, that hasn’t bit him in the ass yet. That Absentiona planet a few galaxies over was way too cool not to talk about okay! At least it seemed like a lot of people either thought he was theorising or that he actually worked with a space program and had been given permission to use the internet to educate people, since most people were not spending their time reading all of NASA’s public reports like he was.

…

Danny was also reading their not public reports of course, a great use of Tuck’s hacking skills if he says so himself. He left most of the internal memos alone since those were near always personell stuff and seldom related to space. (Which was something he was going to regret deeply later or maybe not). He did try to make a point to not talk about missions that hadn’t yet been made public or recent human discoveries that NASA hasn’t yet had a chance to publish their papers and internal memos on, Danny wasn’t trying to accidentally get people accused of plagiarism or rip away months to years of research away from the people who figured it out by stealing their thunder. But he’d get excited and he couldn’t bring himself to cut out stuff after the fact.

So sue him if he’s maybe stolen someone’s thunder once or twice, and maybe talked about things that humans would have never discovered, or things that humans don’t have the physical capability to comprehend. Hopefully no one tries to actually sue him though, if NASA does that he’s positive he’ll ugly cry for, like, a week.

Hearing Jazz footsteps up the stairs he tilts his head back, “Jazz! Neither of us can cook! Including with freaking ectoplasm! Stop trying!”.

She pokes her head into his room with a huff, eyes the sandwich with a single bite taken out of it, “I refuse. I will figure out a way to make it work, you need it”.

“What I need is for my food to be edible and not have definitely old and corrupted ecto in it”.

She winces, “damn. You know I can’t tell that”.

“Then stop trying!”.

“No!”.

Danny picks up the sandwich and makes throwing motions with it, he doesn’t actually throw it because he’ll probably give her a damn ecto-burn with the thing. It’s a miracle it hasn’t started moving on its own yet. she comes in anyways and grabs the plate, putting a hand on her hip and holding it out for him to put the sandwich back down on, “I’ll throw this one in the incinerator, Danny, but I’m not stopping”.

He releases the sandwich, “you suck”.

She rolls her eyes at him and eyes the computer, smiling a little, “I’m not even going to ask, since I can’t grasp your space babble any more than you can grasp my psycho babble”.

Danny snorts, shaking his head as she leaves, his sister cares but damn was it ever inconvenient and hazardous to his health. He was a freaking Ancient after all, he could get by without freaking ectoplasm, he wasn’t some weak level six ghost; stupid cravings or no. Heck, he wasn’t even a child ghost anymore so it was even less necessary! Sighing, “she’s still not going to give it a rest, is she?”.

And then his email pings. Oh cool, it’s probably another comment since it looks like it’s from his channel linked email.

It is an email.

It’s an email from NASA.

Holy shit.

By all the Ancients including himself and every single one of their domains. What the zone?!?

He’s pretty sure he actually squeaked and started floating, some little stars might have even appeared in the air.

What should he do?!? Should he open it?!? Should he ask Tuck to hack it so that the message won’t read as read?!? Should he attempt to knock himself out so he doesn’t have to deal with this?!? Should he take that sandwich back purely so he can give himself a horrific upset stomach with it?!?

It’s fucking NASA!

He can’t just… not. Like, even if that was a good idea he absolutely has to know what NASA wants!

He’s not freaking out, you’re freaking out. He should call someone right?!?

Yes.

Yeah.

He should.

Purely so he doesn’t violently click open the email in Obsession fuelled glee and horror. Tuck doesn’t even get a chance to ask what’s up, “NASA fucking emailed me, man. What do I do?!? Like it’s totally NASA, right email and everything and it’s totally to my vlog email so oh my zone that means that NASA, FREAKING NASA, has been watching my shit! Is this good is this bad should I be complimented? Do they want to talk space or tell me to shut up about space! What am I going to do if they want me to shut up about space I can’t shut up about space and why would I shut up about space! Wait what if they have a space problem and I can like totally help with that shit and they think I’m some odd expert and not some random dude in small town USA! What if they think I’m one of their men and are going to try and give me shit for spilling space secrets because oh shit I’m pretty sure no one actually released that new shit about plutos gravitational pull which is super neat and all but what if they’re mad-”

“Danny man, shut up before you start speaking in tongues or something”

Danny doesn’t even hear him honestly, “-because I could totally understand them being mad but it’s not like I’m actually stepping on their turf since their turf is actually my turf and I’m technically only letting them in it because I can and because people knowing and learning about space is like super cool and I totally would still love to be an astronaut even if that is totally not possible for so many damn reasons! But wait what if that’s what they want that would be so cool! Even if I know that’s not how they hire people and even if I totally disagree with their choice of head engineer because he seems kind of like an ass but hey I’m kinda an ass and I’d be great at the job and oh fuck what if I ignore this for too long and they send another email what do I do then-”

“DANNY!”.

Danny jerks a little bit and falls from the ceiling nearly face planting into his floor, “oh I ah, whoops. Sorry Tuck, it’s just space and NASA and what if they emailed me about space and of course they emailed me about space they’re freaking NASA and my channel is about space we can totally talk space-”.

“I’m going to have Sam show up and throw her shoe at you if you don’t chill, man. I can’t give you advice or offer to try and help, if you won’t let me speak”.

Danny curling into himself and breathing a little, putting a hand over his shirt to feel the way his core is pulsing like crazy, “right, shit, just, give me one second to just vibrate my shit out”.

“Of course, I’m going to hack your email to at least give you a heads up if you should be actually worried”.

Danny wheezing, stars just sort of popping into existence around him, “yeah, yeah, that’s good”; he fiddles with one of the little stars like is a fidget toy. He always loved the way they felt, and tasted, and they just looked stupidly wonderful. Even if he had to be careful about it since him ‘getting starry’ could be hard on people’s eyes. Forming a little planetary ring and swirling it around with his fingers, “how do I even respond to NASA without coming off as crazy?”.

“Do not word vomit? Don’t tell them you’re a space god? Don’t get mad at them for getting something wrong?”.

Danny blinks, twirling the planetary ring around his finger, “so everything I’m inclined to do? Gotcha”.

“Dude”.

“Well what if they ask for my credentials? What else do I have besides acing flight simulators and being a literal god?!?”.

“You do have a point there, but you’re actually good. They aren’t trying to sue or silence you, they aren’t attacking your credibility, they aren’t accusing you of running an illegal space operation, they aren’t questioning if you’re an alien, and they aren’t commenting on you basically having a backdoor into their systems”, he chuckles, “you absolutely should open it, man. Stay on the line because I want to hear you cry”.

Oh? Oh no why would Danny cry??? But Tuck giving him a verbal thumbs up means he can’t not open it right?

He’s stares at the computer and it’s unread email for a while. He’s nearly vibrating out of his skin, he’s pretty sure one of his arms has unfurled as he likes to call it. Spread out into goo strings and pulsating constellations of eyes and teeth, gaps in between filled with galaxy’s and miniature planets that could barely be called an arm with fingers with hundreds of joints that could be long as trees if he let them; as it was they were wrapping around his desk he thinks.

He opens the damn email.

It’s…

It’s a freaking job offer and Danny basically explodes into galaxy’s and constellations and eyes and teeth and bits of different animals, and what comes out of his mouth is utter ghost speak gibberish and random space noises even to his ears. He has to fold his legs and feet under him because they’re just too long when he’s like this, all of him is but his legs are the most needlessly long, but he doesn’t drop the phone at least.

Then Jazz bangs open the door, “Danny what the hell! Oh why!”, and promptly passes out. He manages to catch her with his tail before she hits the ground at least, he forgets that he can be incomprehensible like this if whoever isn’t prepared. He’ll just leave her lying on the fluffy cloud space dust that made up the ‘fluff fur’ at the end of his tail till she wakes up.

Him whining immediately, “T̶͈͎͚͗͗ù̴̢̜͝c̴͖̯͐̔͜k̸̲͇̹̅͑͠ ̶̛̲̀̎I̵͕̔̆ ̴̞̘̌̌̃k̸̦͚̲̎n̸̳͛o̴̟̎c̷̩̕k̶̗͍̽͛̈́ͅe̶̢̛͍̐d̷͎̞͒ ̶̞̞̆̓̕J̵̦̭̤̽ȁ̶̰̖̈́͘z̸̧͇̼͝ẓ̴̹̳̇̑̇ ̵̟͌̈̀o̵̡̝̅ṵ̷̚t̴̺̣͒̓̈́͜!”, and attempting to keep his voice not filled with the sound of dying stars.

Tuck laughs at least, “at this point she should know what she might be in for! You all space lovercraftian jerboa looking?”.

“D̶͙̪̃͠ủ̸̦̕d̵̜̑̔̒ę̴̛̥̻̒ ̶̜̊ͅǸ̵̞̐A̴̤͛͒̃S̸̢̓͗A̸͚̩̿,̴͉̊̔ ̸͂̋̅͜N̶̡̥͇̏A̵͍̐̌͘Ṡ̸͕͛̽Ã̷̯̫!̸̯̩͎̓̇̕,̷̳̈́ ̶̭̥̗̏i̷̥̘̻̐s̵͉͉̹̈͂͐ ̴͖̃͛t̶̘̚r̷͚̀̈́y̸͈͚̕ǐ̵̡ǹ̴͓g̵̣͇̱̚ ̶͖̕ṱ̶̝̫̈̂ö̶̻̲́̌͜ ̵̠̠̑ḩ̴̣̅̆͊i̷͎̠̤͌r̷͈̻͐̀͠e̶̡̮̽̀̈ ̶̡͕͒m̶̧̧̬͒é̷̺͙̈!̸̜̀ ̷̳͒͆Ỏ̸̳͖̰f̴̟̩̈́ ̵̼̔c̵̨͚̅̄͊ǒ̸̺̥̊ͅủ̴͇̬͎ŕ̵̳ṡ̸̟̼̪͋̿ȩ̸̢́͆̈́ ̵̢͔͗͒İ̵̪̦͒ ̷̟͎͉̈́̎â̶̺̭̥m̴̮̄!̵̘̰͛͜ ̴̠̀͠D̶̙͆o̶̠̬͂ͅ ̴̟͕̻̃̅͂t̷͖̦̳̃̂̈́h̷̜̣͊̏ē̴̡y̶̦̙̜͐͗̇ ̴͍̞̉́ͅk̴̗͗n̶̹̒ǒ̵̼̲̬̄̈́w̴̥̄̆ ̶̣̞̂̈w̶̢̧̝͗̕h̶͕͇̓̉͘e̶̳͎̎̅ͅr̵͕̊͆ĕ̷͚̮̾͝ ̶̡̭͊͒Í̴͇͝͝ ̶̦̤̔͂̚l̶͚̦͕̔͝i̴̺̍̄̑v̸̫̎̚͝ė̶̼͔̓͛ ̷̫̥̆o̶̩̍͘͠r̸̮̹͛ ̴̩͔̣͗̍̈́m̵̨̯̲̍y̷̮̤̖̌̾̾ ̵̯̜̈́a̵̪͇̐͝g̸̭͖̋ẽ̶͇ ̶͖͆w̶̔͜h̶͕̖̘͆̒̎y̶͕͇̾ ̸̬̠̈́d̴̰̈́o̷͇̽͒͘ë̴͈̭́s̶̺̭̈́ͅ ̸̜̇͆̌ḯ̷ͅt̷̪̗̩̔̿̇ ̴͖͈̼̄̊͋l̸̛̲͈͐̆ͅǒ̷̡̗ͅö̸̥́̍͆ḱ̷̭̟̪̈́̑ ̵̬̻̈́͘ͅl̴͕̙̞̐i̵̲̥̔̇̕k̶̛̫̎ê̶̼͙ ̴̫͌̑̆t̷̤̀̾ͅh̶̠̻̳͂̏e̸̛̺̣̬͂̾y̶̫̾̊ ̸͖̗̖̓͒̇d̸̮͈͆̿̏o̶̧͇̽͒͝n̶̖̈́’̷̡͔̮́̏t̴̛̙͑͝ ̶̡̰͋ȇ̷͓̘v̷̙̈́͠ͅe̸̡̙͍͠ṅ̴̰̚ ̴̠̦̾̈͛c̴̤̘͖͗̉̽a̵͔͑̚r̵̢͔̫̽́̒e̶̼̕ ̸̥̘͒̈́͐ͅá̶͎͝b̴̧͚̞̂ő̴̟̕͠ü̴̱̐͌t̶͔̻̙͒ ̵̹̳͉͂̉̉á̶̠̯̚͜ṅ̶̦̜̈́ẏ̶̛̪͙͘ ̴̢̥͖̈́c̷͙̓̈́́r̷̜̳͖͑ḕ̴͉̣̂͜d̸̲̬̒̊͝ę̸͕̋̾̏n̷̺̤̂t̴̤̐̽͋i̸͍͕̻͌̒ả̴̘̝͑ͅl̸̺͎̅̾̈š̶̻͚́̒”

“Danny chill, I can’t actually understand you and you’re going to wreck my phones speaker, I’m taking that mess as a yes and do you really think they’ll hire you if you can’t keep yourself together? I’m pretty sure they can’t let a horror monster onto a spaceship”.

Damn Tuck always knew how to cool him down quickly, he doesn’t compact himself back to ‘normal’ though just squishes down enough that he’s not knocking anything over or making the ceiling creak. Moving that tail that Jazz is still on so it and her are laying on his bed, “r̵i̷g̸h̶t̴,̷ ̴r̵i̸g̶h̴t̶,̷ ̸y̶e̷a̵h̶ ̶t̴h̷a̷t̵,̶ ̴t̷h̸a̴t̸ ̵w̴o̸u̷l̷d̶n̵’̸t̴ ̷g̵o̴ ̵o̴v̵e̶r̸ ̸w̴e̴l̷l̴”̵”.

“No kidding. Now did you put a hole through anything with your horns?”:

Danny glances around, it didn’t look like it at least. Plus Tuck didn’t call them goddamn bunny ears for a change, regardless of how similar they looked. “N̶o̶,̸ ̸d̴o̵n̷’̸t̵ ̷t̴h̷i̵n̴k̸ ̸s̶o̶”.

“You’re getting better! Congrats! Now are you going to try and take this job? Can you even type with your fingers right now?”.

Danny looking back to the computer and the email on screen, he has to really curl and bend his joints up and one of his shoulders is going past the entire computer but he can manage, “t̵h̴e̸r̸e̷'̵s̵ ̷n̵o̵ ̴w̵a̵y̴ ̸I̷ ̷c̴a̵n̴’̶t̷ ̵a̷t̷ ̷l̸e̸a̶s̵ ̵t̵r̷y̸,̴ ̷T̷u̷c̴k̴,̷ ̵a̵n̸d̴ ̴b̴a̴r̵e̷l̷y̶ ̶b̴u̵t̸ ̴y̷e̸s̷”.

“Alright then shoot your shot, man. Just try not to give away that you’re an eldritch horror”.

Danny can t help but grin, his teeth and lips swirling and curling on the sides of his face like galaxies, “t̷h̶a̸n̷k̴ ̷T̵u̸c̵k̸,̴ ̸s̸o̴r̶r̴y̵ ̴i̷f̶ ̷I̴ ̵f̴u̷c̶k̶e̴d̵ ̸u̶p̴ ̴y̸o̴u̸r̷ ̵p̸h̵o̵n̸e̵ ̴a̸g̵a̵i̷n̷”.

“Think nothing of it, Danny, not only do I expect it but I legit do not mind at all. I’ll take my best friend getting a hella awesome job offer that makes him go eldritch nightmare fuel on my ear drums over impromptu rescue mission any day”, Tuck laughing as he hangs up.

Man is Danny ever glad he called his goddamn best friend. The message he sends back to FREAKING NASA is excited but not overly crazy. He doesn’t go on a tangent, he only hits the wrong keys a few times and has to fix it, he doesn’t accidentally break anything, and he doesn’t mention anything that he knows NASA doesn’t know about. Yes he wants the job, yes that would be very awesome, yes he promises he has the capability, yes yes yes. Oh he’s vibrating again and a couple of his stars that comprise up part of his knee explode and reform.

Jazz groaning makes him still, moving a hand to have two finger tips over her eyes, “s̶o̷r̸r̴y̷,̴ ̴t̸o̵o̷ ̴e̶x̴c̷i̷t̸e̴d̷ ̴t̵o̸ ̵c̸o̶m̴p̴a̴c̷t̶ ̸m̸y̴s̸e̷l̵f̶ ̸r̶i̷g̴h̶t̸ ̶n̷o̶w̵.̷ ̶N̷A̸S̵A̵ ̶y̷e̵s̵ ̸N̴A̴S̶A̸ ̶o̶f̵f̵e̶r̶e̵d̷ ̷m̶e̴ ̵a̶ ̴j̵o̷b̸ a̴n̵d̸ I̵ ̷a̴m̵ ̵l̴o̵s̵i̵n̴g̷ ̵m̴y̵ ̷m̸i̶n̵d̷ ̶a̶n̷d̷ ̷c̴o̷r̸e̵ a̵ l̵i̷t̵t̶l̸e̶ ̵b̶i̸t̴ ̶h̷e̵r̴e̷”.

She beams, sitting up slowly and not moving Danny’s fingers off of her eyes, “that’s awesome Danny!”, she points in the direction his voice came from, “you better have said yes”.

“I̸t̸’̸s̶ ̷N̸A̵S̷A̴ ̵o̶f̶ ̸c̶o̵u̵r̷s̸e̵ ̴I̸ ̷d̸i̶d̶!̸”, pouting to himself, “I̴’̷m̶ ̸j̵u̴s̸t̵ ̷t̴r̸y̷i̴n̷g̷ t̵o̴ ̷f̶i̷g̸u̶r̸e̷ ̸o̷u̷t̷ ̴h̷o̶w̶ ̸t̷o̸ ̴e̷v̸e̸n̵ g̸o̸ t̴h̸e̴r̷e̸ ̵w̵i̷t̶h̷o̵u̷t̴ ̷b̶e̶i̶n̶g̵ ̵a̵l̴l̷ ̷n̶i̷g̵h̶t̴m̴a̸r̶e̷ f̴u̵e̴l̵”.

She hums and taps her chin, “yeah your potential employer or coworkers wouldn’t appreciate having to wear blind folds or ear protection in case you get too excited or hyper-fixate into your Obsession too much”, humming some more, “obviously depowering yourself would be stupid, so don’t even think about it. They found you through your vlog I'm to guess, which I know you’re a little too liberal on with information, so they probably know something about you is off, so you can get away with being a little strange; your more human level of strange at least”. He’s fully fucking aware of that, hence why this was kind of a problem, even in his human form he wasn’t going to be able to contain himself super well. Just getting the job offer made him unfurl entirely, actually getting the job? He’s going to accidentally rip the building apart or something. She nods to herself, “well you will not get the job like this, meaning you will not be able to do space stuff with NASA if you can’t keep a lid on this”.

He knows tha- oh OH! Okay yeah. Okay. Right sometimes he needed others to tell him that shit for his core to get the damn message. Jazz nearly stumbling forward off his bed when he folds in on himself, leaving his white-haired ‘normal’ ghost self floating vaguely in the middle of the room and blinking at her, “point received apparently”, and shakes his head. He wasn’t exactly a super huge fan of his eldritch form, it was freaky and so disconnected from how a human body worked and moved.

She cracks an eye open cautiously before opening them fully at Danny being normal, “okay good”, standing up and moving on slightly shaky legs to his closet, “now what do you have to wear that is professional and doesn’t make you seem obessesed with space”.

He floats after her, “it’s a space job shouldn’t I dress space-themed?”, his laptop email pinning results in him nearly teleporting to it.

“No. They can already tell you’re crazy about space from the vlog, you don’t want to seem like that’s all you care about and love by also dressing in space themed clothing”.

Danny vibrates, it’s from NASA, NASA!, oh he almost wants to spread out again just to have more of him to vibrate! They set a date! A time! Three days.

It’s in three days!

They were moving so fast! Oh they definitely knew something weird was up with him! Was that good? Bad? Probably good-ish. Otherwise they’d care about his schooling and expirence and wouldn’t possibly ignore his inhumanness. He knows he’s got stars zipping through his hair and too many eyes when he looks at Jazz, “three days. They want to talk to me in three days! Me!”, and screams a little.

She hurls a button up patterned like a arcade floor at his face, “if you scream at them they won’t hire you, and what you’re saying is they’re not giving you any time to actually calm down. They are absolutely trying to figure out how you know what you know by blindsiding you like this”.

Danny gestures ridiculously, “and I don’t even care because it’s NASA, NASA can mess with me all they want!”. He pops that stupid tail of his out and bits the fluffy space dust, spinning head over heels in the air excitedly. This was awesome! So cool! Even if they didn’t hire him or thought he was utterly insane he would still get to met them! This was the best day ever!

She laughs at his antics, “you are so lucky mom and dad aren’t here right now. Even if they would be very proud”, she grabs him, stilling his spinning but almost dragging her along with, “as I am, but you definitely got to keep yourself contained. Even if they do want to hire ‘nightmare fuel’ they won’t if they think meeting you was a hallucination”.

He pouts a little, dropping his tail from his mouth, “I know that”, pouting a little more, “it’s times like this I’d rather look more like Clocky than Nocturne”.

“I know, but it suits you, and at least if you do wind up going to space legally any stars might get brushed off as just being part of space”.

“Aka part of me”.

She rolls her eyes at him before going wide-eyed and jumped up, “oh! Now I need to figure out how to make space food for you!”.

“What?!? No! Bad! What if you poison one of the astronauts!”.

“Then you can nurse them back to health”.

“Do not mess with my protectiveness like that!”.

She only laughs at him, but at least he gets himself human again, tail sticking around so he can fiddle with the ‘fluff’ while attempting to keep editing and not vibrate himself out of his mortal flesh again. He fails at that repeatedly.

----

Pretty much the only thing that’s keeping him compact and human while he’s getting ready for the goddam interview with NASA is the fact he absolutely will not get the job without being at least human passing. Sam actually showed up and stole all his space themed clothing -even the underwear!- to make sure he couldn’t wear it. He does go with the dress shirt Jazz threw at him that day, wound up picking pants that he’s pretty sure are actually Sam’s that she just left here, and a stupid pair of dress shoes Vlad gave him once. Heck he even threw on a yellow bandanna around his neck to make double sure his scars were hidden! Who knows if his medical history was going to get questioned because he’d fail that shit instantaneously.

… Unfortunately none of that matter at all.

Why?

Because the second he got to the freaking NASA field centre he loses his human form from pure excitement… and the secretary walks out before he can change back! At least he didn’t unfurl or explode! She… isn’t even surprised and that’s enough to keep him from vibrating himself into the floor. She just leads him, currently a ghost -she knows this isn’t what any human being looks like right? She can see that he’s glowing right? Right!?!-, into the little interview room.

He.

Is in.

A NASA interview room. He wants to smell the walls and eat them. Shit his teeth are too big. He slaps his cheeks mere seconds before his apparent interviewer comes in.

At least as a ghost his cheeks won’t be tinted red. Fuck him entirely.

The man actually chuckles, setting papers down on the desk and holding his hand out for a hand shake. How the Zone is this going okay? He shakes the man’s hand, his name tag says ‘A. Bowman’. Holy shit he’s one of the actual higher up’s!

… Oh they one hundred percent knew something was funky with ‘Vega-bond’ if they sent a higher up to talk to him.

Bowman eyes his own hand as they both sit down, Danny aggressively forcing himself not to float, “ghost skin tingles, interesting”, looking at Danny properly, “well I suppose this answers one of many questions, or rather most of many”.

Danny being a ghost was a… good thing? Well alright then. Tilting his head, “it does?”. He didn’t even mean to show up looking like this!

Bowman knits his fingers together and leans forwards at him, actually grinning, “it does. Your channel, you’ve talked about subjects, in depth, that even we have no knowledge of. It was much too in-depth to not be reality, and while encouraging plenty of debates is a good outcome actually meeting the person behind it is far more valuable”.

Sweet Ancients the job offer was serious. It is so hard to bounce around or something, fuck his eyes are probably glowing a bit too much to be pleasant to look at, “I technically am not actually supposed to be talking about that stuff but I get carried away easily”, and rubs his neck awkwardly.

Bowman hums at him and Danny doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. “Well I can certainly say I’m glad space excites you”, he shuffles the papers a bit, “I take it your interest in space, regardless of your state of living, is why you agreed to this interview?”.

Danny nodding immediately, “yeah! I’ve actually wanted to be an astronaut since I could walk, you know, before the obvious happened”. Oh Zone is he going to have to explain dying to NASA? “I’m pretty sure no doctor in their right mind would clear me to go to space, legally at least”.

Bowman nods acceptingly, “and based on your wealth of knowledge it’s clear you would have been willing to work towards that childhood dream, yes?”.

Danny begins gesturing a little excitedly, “I used to build model rockets and memorised every space flight simulator I could get my hands on. I spent years saving up for the best telescope money could buy and never missed any celestial event. My family even paid for a zero gravity flight once as my birthday and truce- I mean christmas present”, laughing awkwardly to try and stop himself from rambling, “I probably had a concerning amount of drive for it”.

“That’s the only kind worth having”, the man nods strongly, “anything less and this isn’t a good fit. Would you say you still have that drive?”.

“If I didn’t I wouldn’t be me”, Danny says that in the firm voice he usually used when fighting someone genuinely dangerous or lecturing the Observants about trying to inhibit him.

Bowman grins at that, “good. Then-”, eyeing the papers, “-obviously your, younger appearance means you don’t have any work experience to speak of. So what experience do you have?”.

“Does being a town hero since my freshman year of high school count as previous working experience? I feel like it should”. Like really, the sheer amount of ‘experiences’ he’s had could fill novels and pad out entire tv shows. “I’ve fist fought a god? Multiple gods actually?”.

“Typically, we strictly prefer if our employees don’t get into fist fights”.

Ah yeah, that tracked and was fair. “Think of a weird situation and I’ve probably done it, I had to land one of your spacecrafts once actually since it became sentient and tried to eat me; everyone got mind wiped because it was a little too weird for most people to handle remembering. I’ve got lots of lab experience and my hazmat isn’t just for show, especially with handling hazardous materials; granted I am made of hazardous materials. I’ve time travelled, had to wrangle sentient turkey, been inside books, been shrunk”.

Bowman shaking his head and pulling a tablet out of the drawer, holding up a finger while he types on it.

Danny really hopes he’s not in trouble, he could probably go on forever about the things he’s done. Oh and now his tails out, damn it, at least it’s just wrapped around his one ankle and he’s squishing its space dust fluff with his foot for something to do other than mentally freak out.

Bowman puts the tablet down, oh hey he was looking Phantom up! for stories about the stuff he’s done? Him eyeing Danny, “you’ve ridden a dragon and yet want to be an astronaut?”.

Danny beams, “yes!”, rubbing his neck, “dragons aren’t that special to me, since my younger sister is one. I’m literally from a dimension that doesn’t have gravity and I’ve been to space a lot”.

He blinks, “you’ve already been to space?”.

Oh are they going to be bothered he violated space sanctions? Laughing awkwardly, “I’m always in a state of zero gravity and don’t need to breathe, so yeah as soon as I knew I could I did. I’ve been outside of the Milky Way multiple times”. How the actual Zone would this interview have even gone if he had managed to stay human the whole time???

Bowman looks baffled, “you’ve actually been outside of the Milky Way? No human could ever hope to do that”, he looks more confused, “if you can do such a thing then why would you want to work with us?”.

He’s honestly a little lost on why Bowman is even confused why Danny’d want to still work at NASA, it’s NASA! Traveling to space with other people who are crazy about space would be a-mazing! Regardless of how much they know or don’t he could excitedly babble with people who could excitedly babble back and actually understand each other! He could see all their faces when they see all his space and their fascination and love for all of it! And ain’t that great all on its own? Sure he could observe them as he is now from space but it would be so different to actually be in there with them and have them actually know he’s there! Should he tell Bowman that Danny’s the one that rescued Oppy? Technically he shouldn’t have and yes the Observants gave him shit but that ‘I’ll be seeing you’ song broke his still somewhat human heart and he had to save the little fella. Danny quirks an eyebrow, “because travelling to space with others who love and research space and seeing all the wonder and research over it sounds like a dream?”.

Bowman blinks and nods, “then it’s more the people, the science, than the mere act of going to space for you?”, tilting his head, “how far have you gone?”.

“I… can’t answer that second one since that would confirm whether or not the universe has an edge”. It didn’t but he can’t be confirming that. “And that might mess with established reality and multiple gods would get very mad at me”. Bowman looks impressed actually. “But yeah, it’s the people and just getting to work with and for NASA. I couldn’t think of a better thing to do with my afterlife”, rubbing his neck, “obviously I still have my protector job to do but it wouldn’t interfere”.

“You can still protect your town while also being on a spaceship?”.

“Time and space are more malleable than people think”, shrugging, “and I can duplicate my body so being two places at once isn’t really an issue”. Not to mention the fact that he literally was space so he could move through it however he pleased. Huh, it’s starting to feel more like he’s just talking to a person than NASA which is making this freak his shit out a little less.

Bowman nods more to himself, “and if you can leave the Milky Way and return in an infinitely small amount of time then you could certainly do the same within its system”, lifting his hands up and resting his chin on them, “well my mind’s certain made up, consider yourself hired. If I may, how do you move though space and time so fast? Are there improvements we could make to our suits or crafts, you think?”.

Danny’s pretty sure his smile breaks his face a little and there’s stars in his teeth, a nebula in his mouth when he speaks, “a̷w̷e̸s̵o̵m̸e̵!”, clearing his throat and ignoring Bowman’s wince, “o̶h̸ t̶h̵i̶s̵ ̵i̶s̵ ̵s̴o̴ ̷a̴m̶a̵z̶i̷n̴g̸!”, there’s a little pop and crackle, a high pitched whine sizzle; oh shit he might have broken a minor galaxy, whoops. Being a young god was a such a pain. He swats at some of the stars that had cropped up around his head and through his hair, “heh. Got a little excited there”.

“I’m pretty sure you just created tiny stars”, Bowman looks stuck between awe and bafflement, “the sheer amount of research that would be available with stars so small. How?”.

“Uh”. Well shit, there goes the ‘be normal Danny’ crap. But! But but but but but! NASA WANTS HIM! Like ACTUALLY wants HIM! HIM! Sure he’s going to get asked so many questions about him and how he is what he is but it’ll be by astronomists! And astrochemists! And astrophysicists! And just general stargazers! He wants to scream but if he does that he’s going to terrify this guy! Ugh! Shaking his head out and possibly sending away eyes that shouldn’t be there, tail squeezing around his ankle a little, “okay so it might not be super public right now but I have space-related powers? Space is my thing as a ghost”.

Bowman makes a couple of faces, “do these powers often act up when you’re excited? Are any coworkers going to need to be briefed on you?”, eyeing the tablet, “so it’s similar to the… Box Ghosts interest in boxes?”.

Should… should Danny just say fuck it and tell this man that he’s not simply space related but the literal personification of space??? It would probably explain some stuff and holy shit no way could Danny actually really keep himself all contained if he gets to GO TO SPACE WITH NASA! Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh. His stupid horns are gonna pop out at this point, ugh. “Probably a good idea, heh. I’m young so I guess, you could say, I don’t keep the best lid on myself. I totally definitely want to see and get involved in everything immediately but if I do that I will definitely terrify you guys and possibly destroy something even if I will definitely be able to fix it too”, oh he’s vibrating now, great, “I can definitely be a lot in a lot of categories but you can’t really use me or mine for research, or well none of mine that’s actually like directly connected to me since studying all of mine is kinda what y’all do but the more direct me me is very ghostly and made of ecto and totally useless for human based research”. Danny manages to make himself shut up, it’s a feat really, his horns are absolutely poking out his hair a little.

A shooting stars goes across his chest and Bowman absolutely stares at it. The man eyeing Danny’s hair/horns and his face, while Danny’s trying to keep his grin from doing that damn spiral galaxy thing at the edges. “It… sounds like you view space as being yours and… your appearance can clearly change to something less human-looking”.

Oh no Danny’s made this awkward. He can’t rescind the job right? Right! “Lots of ghosts can be on the incomprehensible side, I’m generally good at not pulling that out on people. And um, it kinda is? I’m not exactly a normal ghost, more of a person who ascended into becoming a personification?”, gesturing wth a hand that’s fingers are a little too long and sharp and have a few too many joints, “I’m not gonna like spoil things or steal people’s glory or anything though I’m pretty good at making sure I don’t spill the beans on something I know NASA’s researching even if there’s nothing to be found that I don’t know but people researching and finding out and being baffled and loving space is my jam and I love it very much and would very much like to be along for the ride and aid?”.

Bowman squints at Danny, making him squeak a sound similar to Benstoma’s fire rain. Please let him still get hired. Please let him still get hired. Please let him still get hired. Please let him still get hired. PLEASE! “Are you claiming you’re a… personification of part or all of space? And that’s why you know things we could never hope to know and why you spent hours talking about such things online?”.

“Yes? Am I still hired?”.

… “Can you refrain from creating stars and what sounded like what we’ve hypothesised a minor cool dwarf star exploding would sound like?”.

“I won’t do it on the ship? Or near research stuff? Or I’ll keep it contained inside myself very solidly?”.

Bowman actually sighs tiredly at him, oh no now Danny’s getting the reaction he always did from people who had put up with his bullshit for a little too long. Shit. Blurting out, “I’m also the person who rescued Oppy?”; yanking out his phone and showing the selfie he took with the little rover, giving a very awkward smile. Oh the Observants were gonna be pissed about this entire conversation holy shit.

Bowman stares at him, almost looking like he’s tearing up a little, before shaking his head, “oh what the hell, who am I to tell literal space itself ‘no’”, and stands up to shake Danny’s hand again.

Danny absolutely wants to unfurl and maybe if Jazz and Tuck and Sam hadn’t been very aggressive about pointing how bad of an idea that would be then he would have. As it is he just vibrates, tail unwinding and swishing around, “y̸o̵u̸ ̸a̵r̸e̸ ̴t̸h̴e̴ ̶b̶e̸s̴t̶!”, standing up and giving the man his hand shake, quickly realising he’s at least a foot taller that he should be; crap his legs got all long and weirdly animisticly jointed.

Bowman’s blinking down at the tail, “is that made out of IDP’s and micro-meteors?”; meanwhile Danny’s shaking out his legs to get them back to a more human length.

Danny blinking, oops. Moving the tail end fluff up into his own hands and cupping it, still having to lean down a little, “yup! Most of my, uh, I guess ‘fur’? is cosmic dust. Wanna touch it? It won’t hurt you”, shrugging, “my stars do burn though so don’t touch those”.

Bowman looks absolutely fascinated and Danny is absolutely living for it! He’s vibrating again and just seeing the man poking it and thinking a mile a minute is making Danny oh so giddy. Some parts of him are absolutely getting all goopy constellations but it’s not too extreme… yet. Is this why ClockWork never really put up much of a fight when Danny wanted to do dumb shit with the time stream? Because it was just so great and satisfying to watch someone be focused in on your thing as an Ancient? And he thought talking to people in the comments section about everything space was a rush, this was so much better! He’s gonna have to make sure he doesn’t aggressively over indulge.

Bowman hums, “actually seeing cosmic dust moving as it does this close is certainly interesting”, looking at Danny’s face, “you won’t contaminate our samples though”.

“Oh absolutely not! Messing up space research would go against my nature so that’s not gonna happen”. Danny would never! Plus if he even could he would have already considering he’s already been inside basically every NASA building by now; including some that don’t exist anymore or never did and never will.

Bowman grinning, “good. Even if you can’t also be an impromptu sample source”.

Danny holding up a finger, “I also can’t or shouldn’t really, answer your questions for you. What’s on my channel isn’t stuff humans would have ever figured out so I decided it was no harm”, muttering to himself, tail flicking near the ground, “the universe overseers still weren’t happy but I hate them so whatever”.

Bowman shakes his head and walks to the door, “come along, I’ll show you around, try to contain all your space self please?”.

“If I hadn’t already been inside this building multiple times that would be impossible for me”.

“You broke in? Repeatedly?”.

“I can be invisible and intangible. And space is technically everywhere all the time. But actually getting shown around is, a-mazing. Tell me everything”.

Bowman smiles at him like he’s an excitable child and actually indulges Danny, explaining even the really simply tiny things and Danny is absolutely adoring and absorbing every second of it; he’s vibrating and stars dance across his skin, sometimes he has to smack bits of stars or galaxy back into himself but he mostly manages.

…

He also has to throw out the lunch Jazz packed him -having rightfully assumed that he absolutely would not be back home in time for said lunch- as it had growled at him and Danny refused to eat anything that could make sounds. Bowman eyeing the bag Danny crushed closed hastily, “you eat? And your food shrieks?”.

Danny sighing, damn it Jazz, “a certain someone keeps trying to get me to eat ectoplasm since I technically spend too much time in the living realm to get enough from the environment here, unfortunately she is not a good cook and I think eating ectoplasm is extremely disgusting and morally questionable”.

“That does sound unfortunately close to cannibalism, but I’m sure we could work something out with this caretaker of yours to get you approved for special lunches”.

Danny groans exaggeratedly at the man, who smirks a little at him.

And Bowman absolutely did get in touch with one Jasmine Fenton who was all too eager to try and set up program approved experimental ectoplasm space rations for NASA’s newest and strangest member. NASA’s scientists were dramatically better at figuring out how to get ectoplasm to work in physical food, so she was very happy.

When Danny got home the very first thing he did was call Tuck with, “so you know that whole don’t tell them you’re a space eldritch god? Yeah I fucked that up”.

“Ha! I’m almost impressed! And they still hired you?”.

“Yup! I might have appealed to his love for space with my stupid space dust tail, and I mentioned saving Oppy”.

“Oh how manipulative”.

“Oh shut up! Anyway he showed me around-”, Danny spends over an hour just gushing about everything Bowman had showed off to him, Tuck humours him but clearly isn’t really following the conversation. Man it was going to be awesome to talk space with people who could and would!

End.

Prompts: "Shouldn't being the town hero since my freshman year of high school count as previous working experience?" "What did you want to be, when you grew up?" Every strange thing Danny has ever done, accidentally or not, comes back not to haunt him, but to help him. Danny starts a vlog to talk about space, but as the Ancient of Space he knows more about it than all top scientists together. NASA discovers his vlog. Danny accidentally shows up to a NASA job interview as Phantom. He’s hired on the spot. Ghosts need ectoplasm to stay healthy and by golly is Jazz going to figure out a way to introduce it to Danny's diet. Sometimes you just gotta be an eldritch horror.

#danny phantom #phandom #phic phight #phicphight24 #danny fenton #tucker foley #have a fic suck my dick #phantomphangphucker #my writing #jazz #nasa #eldritch #space ancient danny #gothmoth

[honoka-marierose]

In 2010, Rayman was dead. After two popular minigame collections with his then-co-stars, the Rabbids, Rayman was usurped from his throne as Ubisoft’s mascot and relegated to cameo appearances in games like Academy of Champions: Soccer. Sam Fisher has suffered a similar fate recently.

Then, a miracle - Ubisoft released Rayman Origins, a gorgeous 2D platformer with excellent movement, incredible music, and enough charm to make you forget all about the limbless wonder getting kicked out of his own series. Not a Rabbid in sight.

Origins was an incredible new beginning for Rayman, but it was only the beginning. Two years later, Ubisoft Montpellier did it again with Rayman Legends. Not content to simply be an improvement on the first game, Legends was one of the best 2D platforming games of all time. It looked like things were only going to get better.

Unfortunately, despite massive critical success, Rayman faded into the background once more, with only a few minor mobile games since then. Now, his long decade of silence is finally over thanks to Ubisoft Milan who, ironically enough, have brought Rayman back in a game that stars the very creatures who originally kicked him out.

“I would say that I started thinking about the DLC as soon as I saw the work on Sparks of Hope going in the right direction,” Sparks of Hope’s creative director Davide Solani tells me. “I loved the idea of closing this fantastic journey of Sparks of Hope with Rayman, as Rabbids were originally introduced in a Rayman game. I felt it was the correct thing to do”.

Rayman in the Phantom Show marks Rayman’s first appearance in a game in some time, which gave Ubisoft Milan the opportunity to redesign the character for his reintroduction, which also marks the first time he’s been in 3D since his Super Smash Bros. Trophy model in 2014.

Solani tells me that extensive work went into designing Rayman’s new look for the game, with the idea being to aim for something “new, current, and fitting for our universe”. Specific effort went into Rayman’s facial expressions and the body and shoes, for which the team challenged themselves to “dare a little” by introducing pockets and a larger hood to give the limbless wonder more comfort and a sense of identity outside of adventuring.

Of course, one of the most important elements of Rayman’s design is his hair which, beyond the whole lack of limbs thing he’s got going on, is one of the key parts of the character’s identity. Rayman’s hair is used both to fly and to look fly, and it’s a core part of this look.

“[It’s] one of the most 'representative' parts of the character,” Solani says. “We wanted to avoid just an indistinct mass, but also not to go overboard with details. We therefore focused on creating this balance between volume and details. A fully animatable tuft that would help to underline the character's charisma and emotions.”

Rayman may have a new design this time around, but Sparks of Hope isn’t above referencing the hero’s past. The Phantom Show is stuffed with nods to Rayman’s history, including reworked versions of his combat fatigues from Hoodlum Havoc, a cutout of Globox and some plum juice from the same game, a cardboard recreation of the first level from the adventure that started it all, and even some shoutouts to the pirates from Rayman 2.

Another Easter Egg Solani points out is Rayman’s weapon in the game, which resembles the plunger gun that he used in Raving Rabbids. You’d think that Rayman would want to avoid memories of that particular encounter considering everything that happened after, but he’s rocking a brand-new one in the Phantom Show.

“I loved the idea of paying a tribute to the plunger, in a way,” Solani tells me. “With my team, we’ve imagined how a new plunger could look like years later, and how this new basic weapon could be transformed through the various costume transformations, and what special ability could result from each. It was a fun process for us.”

It’s not just Rayman himself who returns for the Phantom Show, as the DLC also sees the return of David Gasman, the voice of the limbless wonder for nearly all of the games in the series before Douglas Rand took over the role for Origins, Legends, and the mobile spin-offs.

“Like many players, for me, David Gasman is Rayman’s voice. Also, we did use David as Rabbid Mario in Sparks of Hope, and it was a tremendously fun experience working with him. The idea of having him going crazy to voice both Rayman and Rabbid Mario was too good to miss. “

One of the most interesting things about the DLC is that it’s not just a reunion between Rayman and the player, it’s a reunion between Rayman and the Rabbids as well. The limbless wonder hasn’t been on-screen with them properly since TV Party, with only a small cameo from the screaming nuisances in Rayman Adventures between then and now.

The DLC plays into this time gap, with Rayman holding a grudge against the Rabbids when he first runs into them. Solani says that this was one of the ideas that the team worked with and that they loved seeing Rayman and the Rabbids bickering, but that they start to work together across the expansion, as Rayman quickly gets over his grudges in the name of being a hero.

Rayman in the Phantom Show closes the door on Rayman’s past while being brutally honest about the hero’s long absence. It has fans wondering if the DLC opens another door for his future, one that many want Ubisoft Milan to be involved with.

“We don’t know yet what we’ll do in the future,” Solani says. “But I can assure you that working on Rayman was a true honour for all of us.”

#ubisoft #rayman #rabbids #mario + rabbids #mario + rabbids sparks of hope #rayman in the phantom show

[inkskxtch]

what if the gone series and mortal kombat had a crossover,,,,,

No secret that lately my hyperfixation has been Mortal Kombat 1 and i can’t stop imagining a universe where Gone is a hit tv series and a character gets introduced into MK as a guest fighter (like Omniman, Terminator etc). ive been thinkin about this for like a week straight now and had to write out some of my ideas cause this will literally never happen BUT.imagine if it did .nothing wrong with imagining right?? (im insane🫶)

Gone has a LOT of characters that would make great fighters in the game, but Drake would definitely be the most likely choice since 1) the MK series already includes characters with telekinesis, fire power, gravity etc so his whip hand would be a unique addition to the roster, 2) he’s a Gone fan favourite and 3) Drake’s character fits in perfectly with all the over the top blood & guts of mortal kombat lol. I can’t see a character like Sam or Dekka willingly carrying out the unnecessarily gory kills that happen in the games LMAO

Some stuff to mention before I actually get into the notes ive scribbled down about drake as a fighter: in my mind it’d be Gone/Hunger drake before brittney & their regeneration, just cause it saves things getting too complicated with the bodyswapping etc etc plus MK already has characters like Havik that can regenerate so it makes for fun dialogue lol. I wrote up this stuff based off the gameplay in MK1 so just.visually imagine that in ur brains when reading ok thanks

In MK1 each character has two fatalities - Drake’s first one would feature the coyotes since they were a major part of him as an antagonist near the end of the first book. The second fatality would bring in the wire he tries to slice Brianna up with during Hunger, while referencing ahead to Plague where Brianna splits him through the neck & waist.

I have a rough idea of what Drake’s fatal blow would be like - starting the fatal blow with a basic whip slash, then after the kameo fighter does their hits Drake would move in and whip the opponent again, spinning them around then kicking the back of their legs to knock them down onto their knees. The camera would shift to show the opponent’s hands encased in a cement block (signature coates academy move lol), before Drake grabs the back of their head and smashes it down against the block for the X-ray hit.

Haven’t thought of the actual brutalities for him yet (he’d definitely have a couple with his guns) but I think each character has around 4 or 5 different lines they can say after completing a brutality - i did have ideas for those so i wrote some down :>

Last thing i though up for fun was a bunch of fight intro dialogue against different characters on the roster; these r all so stupid and some of them aren’t thaaat great but yknow what. i had fun thinking them up (if anyone has any more ideas pleaassjsje let me know and ill add em lol)

I know i talk a lot about how much id love to see Gone as a 2D-animated series, but thinking about 3D models of the gone cast in the style of MK1 would be so sick… would also be fun to see other characters carrying out their fatalities on drake LMAO, always love to see that guy getting his ass kicked

#what if i made art for this dumb little idea #a gone fighting game in general would go CRAZYY #drake merwin #the gone series #gone series #fayz #the fayz #michael grant #gone michael grant #caine soren #sam temple #astrid ellison #diana ladris #brianna berenson #mortal kombat #mortal kombat 1 #mk1 #omni man #homelander

[noir-ish-bee]

VOCALOID MAX LORE JUMPSCARE

this is. A long one

(ALSO shoutout to @impostorwhipplesshow for imspiring lil bits of this like them not understanding each other well at first fkjgjkc)

The day Max came to life wasnt actually the day he left the computer. One night, Sam accidentally left his computer on, and somehow dreamt of him meeting his creation, Max (who was for some reason holding a big fish) in a beach, talking about meeting someday (the contents of the dream actually dont matter its all a tako luka maguro fever reference lmao).

When he woke up, Sam figured his dream was influenced because some lines generated by Max's voice bank started playing at night when his computer was on (i dont. Actually know how the program works and most of this is inspired by whipples ideas so lets pretend this makes sense.)

But its weird, because Sam doesn't remember making Max say any of the lines on the screen. That's because Max's first glimps of conscience were through his voicebank, and he was trying to talk to Sam.

This went on for a few days, until Max got ahold of his 3d model for MVs. First by putting himself in random positions Sam didn't make or making objects trying to talk to or showing them to Sam and finally sorta like. Animating himself. Like he could move all by himself.

At this point Sam is FREAKED OUT and almost punches his computer but Max really nervous tries to tell him to stop through another generated line. Sam stops but doesn't understand Max cuz he's not fluent in japanese so he gives him some time to communicate through objects, models and body language, until Sam makes him another voicebank for him to speak english and understand him better.

This works and now they understand each other more easily, but there's two problems: sam doesn't know how the FUCK max came to life, and max's voice still sounds a bit stilty and robotic, so he has trouble understanding him sometimes.

Sam tries to make a new one to expariment with it, but he somehow can't make it, like the program would just glitch it so bad it doesn't work. The same happens when he tries to make Max a different 3d model, so he's stuck with those two he has. Still they have no problems with that and Sam tries to tweak his current voicebank over the time.

At some point, Max gets tired of being inside the computer all the time, just waiting for Sam to get back home from wherever he goes or waiting for him to make him a new stage for a song. He really likes Sam overall, and feels like he wants to hang out with him more, what with him being his creator and all, and he wants to be more than a character and a voice to him.

One night, after Sam forgetting to turn off his computer again, Max tries his best to push himself outside the computer, and by some miracle, don't ask me how, he actually does! He's in the real world! He tries not to freak out bcuz Sam is asleep, but he's really damn excited for that. Everything has different textures, he hears so many new things other than music, it's all exciting for him!

Sam has a heart attack when he wakes up

#i first sent this in the freelance discord thingie so some of a mutuals may have seen this already #i aint typing allat #demi talks i guess #sam and max #sam and max au #vocaloid max au

[strawberrycircuits]

tell us about this npc...

sam localvoidcat i owe you my LIFE!!! i have a lot of meta analysis thoughts about her but i said pretty much all of it like 4 days ago for a bingo card ask game so uh. heres all of that. tldr: malon has a lot of potential as a character and theres something v interesting with her in that her and links storys run parallel which is sooo compelling but nintendo and the loz/oot fandom tends to reduce her to Link's Wife and nothing else (as for why they do that uuuh. twilight princess link is canonically the link from ocarina of time's descendant, which implies time had kids after majoras mask. tp link is a rancher (like malon) and knows eponas song at the start of the game without it having to be taught to them (eponas song was written by malons mother + malon teaches it to time + malon sings it in oot). insert its always sunny conspiracy board meme here. i was already fixated on her when i was little and i thought the malink thing was a lame theory for a while but then i thought abt them both a little too hard and now im here ig)

ok time for me to go crazy insane. im gnna use this post to talk abt canon stuff and then im gnna use libras ask to talk abt my own headcanons LO)L!!!!

-shes described as very headstrong and driven and she very strongly believes in doing whats necessary even when its not what you want (which. the parallels man. vaguely gestures to all of the links) which conflicts with her father who doesnt rlly care as much as he should. and so shes kinda left to pick up all of the slack which is RIDICULOUS becauses shes LIKE 9 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! a child should not have to run a fucking farm and she def shouldnt be left alone in CASTLE TOWN to worry to death abt her father (bc she had to DRAG HIM there to do smthn he shouldve taken care of anyway)!!!!!! what the hell !!!!! me when the game about adults failing children contains adults failing children

-^and like. she is acutely aware that this is not normal. she is so overworked that she does not get to have friends her age (iirc she refers to epona being her "best friend" and epona is. a horse). where oot link is kind of like "woohoo adventure !!" up until zelda gets kidnapped and she pulls the sword (but theres inklings there before that. like having to leave kokiri forest and watching her dad die), malon Knows this isnt normal and that she is missing out on her own childhood. and YET!! she holds no contempt for her father. she knows that he is failing her and she loves him anyway. WHAT THE HELL !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

-its also greatly suggested shes extremely isolated bc she works all the time and doesnt have time to play or be around people her age. + it doesnt help lon lon ranch is far from hyrule castle town + hyrule field is Fucking Dangerous so its not like she can easily cross it herself. Why did they mess up this girls life so bad!!!!!! (the answer is to parallel link. im insane)

-she had a trophy in one of the smash games that uses her 3DS model im so proud of her. sorry i love when nintendo acknowledges her even tangentially lol ⬇️ also she was referenced in smash ultimate i think idk

-shes not just in ocarina of time!!! shes also present in the minish cap, oracles, and four swords adventures!!!!! why did she have multiple incarnations? who knows ! also i think she can die in fsa. sad

-shes in the manga and she gets kidnapped in like the 1st chapter and when link comes to save her shes like umm no youre ugly go away and meanwhile links like IM LITERALLY TRYING TO HELP YOU YOU ARE IN FUCKING DANGER!!!!!!!

-she also proceeds to fall in and out of love with link in the span of two pages. the manga is not very good sometimes i think. himekawa saw the dialogue line abt malon secretly waiting on a "knight in shining armor" to save her and ignored everything else abt her which sucks ass but is also very predictable for how himekawa writes. i will probably still redraw one of the panels from it anyway lol

-^btw the knight in shining armor thing is an interesting thing to note bc thats something she (malon) seems to be, like, ashamed of? maybe?? which imo feeds back into her whole thing of overworking herself while also understanding that its not okay or normal for her to be doing so. like. "no you cannot want for other things you have responsibilities (even though you undeniably do already)" but omg girl youre nine. except for seven years later when youre sixteen and even still. please take care of yourself please let urself relax and CONSIDER happiness i am begging yuo

-malon is so funny shes just a massive mario reference in game. when u go to the ranch u find Talon and Ingo respectively (talon is her dad ingo just works there) and they look like this. also she has a bowser pendant ?? literally whyd they do this lmao

-one of oots minigames involves beating the horseriding record at lon lon ranch (set by malon at 50secs) and when u win she gives u a cow which she puts in ur house. the thing is that 1. links house is in kokiri forest and 2. links house is a treehouse with a ladder. which implies she SURVIVED THE LOST FUCKING WOODS (WHICH MOST EVERYONE CANNOT) and carried a goddamn COW up a LADDER. how fucking strong is she i love her

-shes gives u an item called the Weird Egg 🕺

-in BOTW you can find the ruins of lon lon ranch where she lived!!!!! :] its called "ranch ruins" on the map :P you can easily find more comparisons but believe me when i say they, like. put a weird amount of effort into getting this one as close to how it looked in oot as possible

-shes also a reference to marin from links awakening but i did not play that so i cant speak on it </3

-its implied she never actually bothers to learn links name in the games. she only ever calls her fairy boy and thats it

-iirc during the child segments of the game she's taller than link but during the adult segments shes shorter. rip

-there is a single piece of dialogue that implies young link has a crush on her which is cute lmao

-so in oot she sings in the lon lon ranch theme (but its the n64 so it like. it sounds like a human voice but also not.) and twilight princess's hyrule field (night) theme uses the same singing effect which i am incredibly normal about forever and ever

-after the 7 year time skip, ingo gets the farm via ganondorf giving it to him (which he can do. apparently. this is a n64 game man leave me alone) and he kicks talon out. malon stays even though everything is considerably worse solely bc she wants to protect the animals, which is also why she was so insistent on keeping the farm running as a kid too.

-generally speaking malon is a very kindhearted and overwhelmingly understanding character and those traits are almost always at her own expense. she knows her dad is the reason shes as alone and stressed as she is, but she loves him anyway. she knows itd be best if she just left the farm once ingo takes over, but shes scared for what will happen to the animals so she stays somewhere that makes her sad and miserable instead. she wants to have friends her own age, but she understands how important keeping the ranch running is so she doesnt pursue it at either of the points in which we see her.

-i like to think things considerably change for her after ganondorf is neutralized prior/after majoras mask

-but thats for the headcanons post

so u may be thinking. Wow strawb this is kind of, like, nothing. why do you like this character. and you would be correct,

#a lot of this is maybe not well worded or misremembered #to which i say . as well as . #ocarina of time #malon #malon oot

[smaradog]

time for an introduction

hello! im smaradog but you can call me smara or mar for short, i have a weird sense of humor that feels edgy but i dont do jokes that are at anyones expense, or say weird things, since its not really something thats part of me at all, making others feel bad and/or uncomfortable is against all i stand for, at the same time my humor can kinda be silly/catgirlesque for lack of better description?? (??? ihave no idea what im saying) and kinda fecalfunny style humor overall.

dni if youre a bigot or a terf or some stupid shit like that

anyways im a neurodivergent asexual trans girl (she/her, it/its fae/faer, sli/slime pronouns please!) who speaks spanish and stuff idunno!! (i am not from spain dont pile me on with them IHATE SPAIN!!!! /j)

so yeah i draw a lot of lesbians and whatever else comes to mind

[art tag!]

i WILL start talking about something im working on or something i like for WHOLE PARAGRAPHS so be WARNED!! and heres some insane things i do!

the insane things i do in question:

art (digital and traditional)

pixel art

sound design

3d modeling (learning the basics)

music (regular music and chiptunes, and whatever weird experimental thing i can make also it kinda sucks but shh)

storyboards

modding/romhacking games

kind of a jack of all trades really! so yeah thats basically it! have a list of me dumping like a million interests i have

music: the strokes, arctic monkeys, gorillaz, daft punk, indigo quest, red vox, muse, crx, albert hammond jr., royal blood, enjambre, bandalos chinos, comisario pantera, lemon demon, tally hall, the voidz, fish in a birdcage, nelward

chiptune (counting psg chips, fm chips, low quality samplers, etc.) [fade, tim follin, jeroen tel, squarewave, shoob2000, 4mat, rushjet1]

animated shows:

the owl house

amphibia

ena

one piece (at enies lobby arc rn)

yu yu hakusho

jojos bizarre adventure (i cant deny it even if i dont talk about it, stopped at part 5)

one punch man (kinda, dont remember a lot)

adventure time (havent kept up since grass sword episodes)

ok ko (literally dont remember what the last thing that happened was)

regular show (stopped keeping up at some point) showing interest in: gravity falls, infinity train, hunter x hunter and mob psycho

films:

literally any spiderman movie from anything 2002 - now (i know theres older obscure ones)

(cant think of anything else whoops)

games:

terraria

halo (anything pre 343 sorry)

castlevania series

bloodstained

undertale/deltarune

omori (kinda lost interest)

doom (classic series, havent played 2016 and eternal)

half life series

sonic series

mega man series (classic)

minecraft (kind of? i'd rather play beta 1.7.3, but especially a fan of better than adventure)

celeste (havent finished, one of the few insane people that didnt use assist mode at the hotel chapter)

umjammer lammy

parappa series

castle crashers & battleblock theater

serious sam series

splatoon series (havent played splatoon 3)

dont starve together (i dont play often and im not super familiar with the lore) night in the woods (looks nice but. didnt finish at ALL)

portal series (i 100%ed the first game)

streamers:

vargskelethor joel (probably on top along with jerma)

vinesauce vinny

jerma985

grayfruit (i watch sometimes)

simpleflips (i watch very rarely)

i also like a few webcomics but honestly i dont remember at the time of making somehow, you can ask me about one of them though! (its not homestuck i swear /gen)

i ALSO also have super weird interests over niche little 80s - 2000s technology and stuff

due to personal reasons, i have 3 things i dont wanna hear about, but im not gonna mention them on this post.

if you made it this far reading you are insane honestly but shoutouts to you

#introduction #introductory post #artists on tumblr #pixel art #modding #sound design #i have no idea if i should be tagging this with interests but whatever main ones GO #vinesauce #vargskelethor #jerma #jerma985 #terraria #halo #castlevania #doom #portal #the owl house #toh #amphibia #one piece #megaman #deltarune #the strokes #arctic monkeys #daft punk #lemon demon #red vox #spiderman #spider man #ena

[stusbunker]

Group Project

    Jack sat quietly at the library table with their hands in their lap, watching Sam earnestly. Their tallest dad was eagerly explaining the Sacking of Lawrence with Jack’s school books and other random kitchen items as monuments.

    “We could do a diorama! Do they do those anymore? Man, I can’t tell you how many dumpsters we dove through looking for shoe boxes when I was a kid. I still have the box from your winter boots in the closet— if you want?” Sam finally focused on his child and the happy, yet clueless expression on their face when he started talking about the outdated project suggestion.

    “Hm?” Jack replied.

    “It’s like a 3D model of a scene, lots of glue sticks and either figurines or hand drawn replicas,” Sam explained, brushing the hair out of his face.

    “And a shoe box?” Jack concluded.

    “In— inside the shoebox, like it’s a tiny stage,” Sam felt like he was doing a poor job communicating, even as he used his hands to sign. “Here–.” He reached for his laptop and pulled up some examples.

    “Oh! That looks cool— very retro,” Jack said like they were finally in on a secret.

    Sam cocked his head at the jab, but let it roll off his back. “So, do you think it will meet the visual requirements?”

    “How would it work, exactly?” Jack asked.

    They got to it, with safety scissors that were too small for Sam’s hands that were quickly discarded and extra coloring supplies which were pilfered from the desk Eileen set up as a craft station for the younger kids. It took them almost two hours, but finally they were able to recreate the historical event as best they could. With that work behind them, they left it to dry on the counter, out of the way from toddler reach.

    That night, when everyone was home and the kitchen was full of hungry Winchesters, Jack practiced their presentation. Dean listened as he took turns feeding himself and baby Millie. While Castiel sat nervously at his side as Juniper fed herself.

    “And that is the beginning of what we now call Bleeding Kansas,” Jack concluded, reading from their handwritten note cards.

    Eileen clapped and Dean cheered his praise, while Cas squinted at Jack and then at Sam. Sam did a double take and motioned for Cas to stand down and not ruin the historical integrity of the project.

    Later that night, when everyone else was in bed Castiel inserted a tiny figure in the back of the diorama, one with red eyes and a perfectly tailored suit.

Thank you to @fangirlxwritesx67​ for the prompt.

4 Me 2 U drabble masterlist

#stu's 4 me 2U #spn drabble #spn fluff #jack kline #sam winchester #dean/cas #sam/eileen #what finale?

[jjrtuniport]

JJs Dev Diary - One Button Game

Today, Sam and I met and began discussing ideas for the one button game we plan to make. Sam pretty quickly landed on an idea we both felt would lend itself well to a one button concept. This idea was Morse code and through further discussion we decided the player should have to decode pieces of code. This mainly came from Sam wanting to have the game to have a Metrix theme with green text and green numbers falling from atop the screen but I felt that style is too synonymous with hacking and wouldn’t gel with Morse Code and decoding it. I told Sam what I saw when I envisioned Morse Code being WW1 and WW2 era themes and this led to discussion on the movie The Imitation Game where a large machine is used to decipher incoming Germen code.

We also talked about what software we should use like Unreal and Unity. We decided Unreal as I have used it before and because Sam has used neither so to save us both having to learn Unity, we have opted for Unreal.

Today, 28/09/2022, Sam and I met up outside Eldon Building to begin formulating our ideas and to begin setting the foundation for the project. We went to a IT open area believing that

03/10/2022, Sam and I have met up in room 1.123 and our goal is to bring Sam 3DS file into an Unreal project. Still don’t know how to open Unreal in the open lab rooms. Asked someone and they said it should be an icon on the desktop and not through the Unreal Engine Launcher but there is also dedicated rooms like 1.123 that will have Unreal on them. Sam has sent me his model that he made in 3DS Max but trying to import the file, the file type is not recognised. I have googled about Importing a file from 3DS Max into Unreal, I believe the issue should be resolved with changing the file type to something else “Save as type: Select Unreal Datasmith (*.UDATASMITH)”.

After discussing the file types with Sam, and .UDATASMITH not working, Sam tried another that would let me drag it into my Unreal Project but Unreal crashed after importing the file.

I done both ways but “Import All” crashed Unreal and “Import” imports everything singerly and not together.

With further errors trying to import the 3DS file, and Sam having created a sound file we have decided to at least create a main menu and have the sound file play in the background.

I have done a small amount of UI work during previous projects but not in Unreal Engine 5. I know to create a widget and to implement buttons but setting up the code where the player can move the mouse or select the button may be difficult and require a youtube video.

Here I have created the widget and will now start laying out where the buttons will be and what it says within the buttons.

In Unreal 4, the canvas was automatically implemented but it appears you have to manually do this yourself now, I had to Youtube this but it is pretty simple, type Canvas in the "Palette" and drag "Canvas Panel" in the hierarchy [MainMenu]. The Canvas is important because it designates the borders of the widget, everything inside the canvas will be shown. Anything outside will not be seen.

I have added text boxes to the buttons, this will allow me to add my own texts on top of the buttons. This will help demonstrating to the player what each button does.

The font was a little small so I increased the size by editing the font size in the details panel for the text boxes.

I have created the main menu and added functionality for some of the buttons to allow the player to progress through to the game. Next is to have Sam sound file play during the Main Menu. To do this I am not sure, importing the file should be easy enough but having it play specifically during the Main Menu and not after I am unsure how to do. I researched on google and YouTube but was unable to find anything that helped me achieve what I wanted.

(Will not let me post the video and upload the Tumblr post)

Me and Sam discussed implementing a sound so that the player has feedback during the game, Sam sourced the sound and I had aimed to introduce the sound into the game by this point but as we were unable to get the 3DS file imported, the sound would not have anywhere to go. Sam sent a couple of sounds that he found, the first one I felt did not fit well with the sound associated with morse code, it has a distinguishable click sound.

The sound would of been a way to feedback to the player that they are doing something, they can hear the distinct sound every time they press the button to interact. This would of been a way to assure the player that what they are doing, is getting read in the game and the sound acknowledges this.

In reflection, it might have been better to create a less complex game, something more simple and basic instead of creating something that requires importing assets from different software. I think in the future, definitely take smaller projects until Unreal knowledge is higher. I did learn some things however, or at least re-affirm knowledge. Things like creating widgets and now having to bring in the canvas, whereas before it was automatically in. Creating buttons within the widget that the player can click on and interact with the progress. Despite not really having a game I am happy with, I think it is a good learning opportunity to take more bite size steps until really familiar with Unreal to create what I really want to create.

[leviathansartstudio]

Some Stuff :)

The first post on Tumblr and its gonna be me explaining what I plan on doing with this account and a little about me! :D

I wanted to repost art from my Twitter onto here, which I might do anyway tbh, but I wanted to add other projects I've been working on and doing onto here!

And by other projects I mean some posters I've made with Source Film Maker that I personally love, WIP shots of art and other things, SAMS LAES and MGAFS art, as well as my sorry attempt at 3D modeling! (I know absolutely nothing about modeling but I wanna learn it for fun lol)

But that's enough about what I plan to do with the account let's move on to about me!

First off, Hi hello I'm Leviathan (I also go by Levi) I'm Genderqueer (He/They/She) and Pansexual! I'm also Autistic, making it really hard for me to talk to people as well as post things since I'm scared too sometimes, but I will try my best to answer and respond to stuff! I'm still a noobie artist tbh but I'm trying to get better at my art and stuff!

I also have a Straw page that talks a little more about myself and my interests which you can find the link here!

Other than that, that's it! :D

#about-me

[jcmarchi]

Google at NeurIPS 2023

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/google-at-neurips-2023/

Google at NeurIPS 2023

This week the 37th annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023), the biggest machine learning conference of the year, kicks off in New Orleans, LA. Google is proud to be a Diamond Level sponsor of NeurIPS this year and will have a strong presence with >170 accepted papers, two keynote talks, and additional contributions to the broader research community through organizational support and involvement in >20 workshops and tutorials. Google is also proud to be a Platinum Sponsor for both the Women in Machine Learning and LatinX in AI workshops. We look forward to sharing some of our extensive ML research and expanding our partnership with the broader ML research community.

Attending for NeurIPS 2023 in person? Come visit the Google Research booth to learn more about the exciting work we’re doing to solve some of the field’s most interesting challenges. Visit the @GoogleAI X (Twitter) account to find out about Google booth activities (e.g., demos and Q&A sessions).

You can learn more about our latest cutting edge work being presented at the conference in the list below (Google affiliations highlighted in bold). And see Google DeepMind’s blog to learn more about their participation at NeurIPS 2023.

Anonymous Learning via Look-Alike Clustering: A Precise Analysis of Model Generalization Adel Javanmard, Vahab Mirrokni

Better Private Linear Regression Through Better Private Feature Selection Travis Dick, Jennifer Gillenwater*, Matthew Joseph

Binarized Neural Machine Translation Yichi Zhang, Ankush Garg, Yuan Cao, Łukasz Lew, Behrooz Ghorbani*, Zhiru Zhang, Orhan Firat

BoardgameQA: A Dataset for Natural Language Reasoning with Contradictory Information Mehran Kazemi, Quan Yuan, Deepti Bhatia, Najoung Kim, Xin Xu, Vaiva Imbrasaite, Deepak Ramachandran

Boosting with Tempered Exponential Measures Richard Nock, Ehsan Amid, Manfred Warmuth

Concept Algebra for (Score-Based) Text-Controlled Generative Models Zihao Wang, Lin Gui, Jeffrey Negrea, Victor Veitch

Deep Contract Design via Discontinuous Networks Tonghan Wang, Paul Dütting, Dmitry Ivanov, Inbal Talgam-Cohen, David C. Parkes

Diffusion-SS3D: Diffusion Model for Semi-supervised 3D Object Detection Cheng-Ju Ho, Chen-Hsuan Tai, Yen-Yu Lin, Ming-Hsuan Yang, Yi-Hsuan Tsai

Eliciting User Preferences for Personalized Multi-Objective Decision Making through Comparative Feedback Han Shao, Lee Cohen, Avrim Blum, Yishay Mansour, Aadirupa Saha, Matthew Walter

Gradient Descent with Linearly Correlated Noise: Theory and Applications to Differential Privacy Anastasia Koloskova*, Ryan McKenna, Zachary Charles, J Keith Rush, Hugh Brendan McMahan

Hardness of Low Rank Approximation of Entrywise Transformed Matrix Products Tamas Sarlos, Xingyou Song, David P. Woodruff, Qiuyi (Richard) Zhang

Module-wise Adaptive Distillation for Multimodality Foundation Models

Chen Liang, Jiahui Yu, Ming-Hsuan Yang, Matthew Brown, Yin Cui, Tuo Zhao, Boqing Gong, Tianyi Zhou

Multi-Swap k-Means++ Lorenzo Beretta, Vincent Cohen-Addad, Silvio Lattanzi, Nikos Parotsidis

OpenMask3D: Open-Vocabulary 3D Instance Segmentation Ayça Takmaz, Elisabetta Fedele, Robert Sumner, Marc Pollefeys, Federico Tombari, Francis Engelmann

Order Matters in the Presence of Dataset Imbalance for Multilingual Learning Dami Choi*, Derrick Xin, Hamid Dadkhahi, Justin Gilmer, Ankush Garg, Orhan Firat, Chih-Kuan Yeh, Andrew M. Dai, Behrooz Ghorbani

PopSign ASL v1.0: An Isolated American Sign Language Dataset Collected via Smartphones Thad Starner, Sean Forbes, Matthew So, David Martin, Rohit Sridhar, Gururaj Deshpande, Sam Sepah, Sahir Shahryar, Khushi Bhardwaj, Tyler Kwok, Daksh Sehgal, Saad Hassan, Bill Neubauer, Sofia Vempala, Alec Tan, Jocelyn Heath, Unnathi Kumar, Priyanka Mosur, Tavenner Hall, Rajandeep Singh, Christopher Cui, Glenn Cameron, Sohier Dane, Garrett Tanzer

Semi-Implicit Denoising Diffusion Models (SIDDMs) Yanwu Xu*, Mingming Gong, Shaoan Xie, Wei Wei, Matthias Grundmann, Kayhan Batmanghelich, Tingbo Hou

State2Explanation: Concept-Based Explanations to Benefit Agent Learning and User Understanding Devleena Das, Sonia Chernova, Been Kim

StoryBench: A Multifaceted Benchmark for Continuous Story Visualization Emanuele Bugliarello*, Hernan Moraldo, Ruben Villegas, Mohammad Babaeizadeh, Mohammad Taghi Saffar, Han Zhang, Dumitru Erhan, Vittorio Ferrari, Pieter-Jan Kindermans, Paul Voigtlaender

Subject-driven Text-to-Image Generation via Apprenticeship Learning Wenhu Chen, Hexiang Hu, Yandong Li, Nataniel Ruiz, Xuhui Jia, Ming-Wei Chang, William W. Cohen

TpuGraphs: A Performance Prediction Dataset on Large Tensor Computational Graphs Phitchaya Mangpo Phothilimthana, Sami Abu-El-Haija, Kaidi Cao*, Bahare Fatemi, Mike Burrows, Charith Mendis*, Bryan Perozzi

Training Chain-of-Thought via Latent-Variable Inference Du Phan, Matthew D. Hoffman, David Dohan*, Sholto Douglas, Tuan Anh Le, Aaron Parisi, Pavel Sountsov, Charles Sutton, Sharad Vikram, Rif A. Saurous

Unified Lower Bounds for Interactive High-dimensional Estimation under Information Constraints Jayadev Acharya, Clement L. Canonne, Ziteng Sun, Himanshu Tyagi

What You See is What You Read? Improving Text-Image Alignment Evaluation Michal Yarom, Yonatan Bitton, Soravit Changpinyo, Roee Aharoni, Jonathan Herzig, Oran Lang, Eran Ofek, Idan Szpektor

When Does Confidence-Based Cascade Deferral Suffice? Wittawat Jitkrittum, Neha Gupta, Aditya Krishna Menon, Harikrishna Narasimhan, Ankit Singh Rawat, Sanjiv Kumar

Accelerating Molecular Graph Neural Networks via Knowledge Distillation Filip Ekström Kelvinius, Dimitar Georgiev, Artur Petrov Toshev, Johannes Gasteiger

AVIS: Autonomous Visual Information Seeking with Large Language Model Agent Ziniu Hu*, Ahmet Iscen, Chen Sun, Kai-Wei Chang, Yizhou Sun, David Ross, Cordelia Schmid, Alireza Fathi

Beyond Invariance: Test-Time Label-Shift Adaptation for Addressing “Spurious” Correlations Qingyao Sun, Kevin Patrick Murphy, Sayna Ebrahimi, Alexander D’Amour

Collaborative Score Distillation for Consistent Visual Editing Subin Kim, Kyungmin Lee, June Suk Choi, Jongheon Jeong, Kihyuk Sohn, Jinwoo Shin

CommonScenes: Generating Commonsense 3D Indoor Scenes with Scene Graphs Guangyao Zhai, Evin Pınar Örnek, Shun-Cheng Wu, Yan Di, Federico Tombari, Nassir Navab, Benjamin Busam

Computational Complexity of Learning Neural Networks: Smoothness and Degeneracy Amit Daniely, Nathan Srebro, Gal Vardi

A Computationally Efficient Sparsified Online Newton Method Fnu Devvrit*, Sai Surya Duvvuri, Rohan Anil, Vineet Gupta, Cho-Jui Hsieh, Inderjit S Dhillon

DDF-HO: Hand-Held Object Reconstruction via Conditional Directed Distance Field Chenyangguang Zhang, Yan Di, Ruida Zhang, Guangyao Zhai, Fabian Manhardt, Federico Tombari, Xiangyang Ji

Double Auctions with Two-sided Bandit Feedback Soumya Basu, Abishek Sankararaman

Grammar Prompting for Domain-Specific Language Generation with Large Language Models Bailin Wang, Zi Wang, Xuezhi Wang, Yuan Cao, Rif A. Saurous, Yoon Kim

Inconsistency, Instability, and Generalization Gap of Deep Neural Network Training Rie Johnson, Tong Zhang*

Large Graph Property Prediction via Graph Segment Training Kaidi Cao*, Phitchaya Mangpo Phothilimthana, Sami Abu-El-Haija, Dustin Zelle, Yanqi Zhou, Charith Mendis*, Jure Leskovec, Bryan Perozzi

On Computing Pairwise Statistics with Local Differential Privacy Badih Ghazi, Pritish Kamath, Ravi Kumar, Pasin Manurangsi, Adam Sealfon

On Student-teacher Deviations in Distillation: Does it Pay to Disobey? Vaishnavh Nagarajan, Aditya Krishna Menon, Srinadh Bhojanapalli, Hossein Mobahi, Sanjiv Kumar

Optimal Cross-learning for Contextual Bandits with Unknown Context Distributions Jon Schneider, Julian Zimmert

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Block Low-Rank Preconditioner with Shared Basis for Stochastic Optimization Jui-Nan Yen, Sai Surya Duvvuri, Inderjit S Dhillon, Cho-Jui Hsieh

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Simplicity Bias in 1-Hidden Layer Neural Networks Depen Morwani*, Jatin Batra, Prateek Jain, Praneeth Netrapalli

SLaM: Student-Label Mixing for Distillation with Unlabeled Examples Vasilis Kontonis, Fotis Iliopoulos, Khoa Trinh, Cenk Baykal, Gaurav Menghani, Erik Vee

SNAP: Self-Supervised Neural Maps for Visual Positioning and Semantic Understanding Paul-Edouard Sarlin*, Eduard Trulls, Marc Pollefeys, Jan Hosang, Simon Lynen

SOAR: Improved Indexing for Approximate Nearest Neighbor Search Philip Sun, David Simcha, Dave Dopson, Ruiqi Guo, Sanjiv Kumar

StyleDrop: Text-to-Image Synthesis of Any Style Kihyuk Sohn, Lu Jiang, Jarred Barber, Kimin Lee*, Nataniel Ruiz, Dilip Krishnan, Huiwen Chang*, Yuanzhen Li, Irfan Essa, Michael Rubinstein, Yuan Hao, Glenn Entis, Irina Blok, Daniel Castro Chin

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AdANNS: A Framework for Adaptive Semantic Search Aniket Rege, Aditya Kusupati, Sharan Ranjit S, Alan Fan, Qingqing Cao, Sham Kakade, Prateek Jain, Ali Farhadi

Cappy: Outperforming and Boosting Large Multi-Task LMs with a Small Scorer Bowen Tan*, Yun Zhu, Lijuan Liu, Eric Xing, Zhiting Hu, Jindong Chen

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Diffusion Hyperfeatures: Searching Through Time and Space for Semantic Correspondence Grace Luo, Lisa Dunlap, Dong Huk Park, Aleksander Holynski, Trevor Darrell

Diffusion Self-Guidance for Controllable Image Generation Dave Epstein, Allan Jabri, Ben Poole, Alexei A Efros, Aleksander Holynski

Fully Dynamic k-Clustering in Õ(k) Update Time Sayan Bhattacharya, Martin Nicolas Costa, Silvio Lattanzi, Nikos Parotsidis

Improving CLIP Training with Language Rewrites Lijie Fan, Dilip Krishnan, Phillip Isola, Dina Katabi, Yonglong Tian

<!–k-Means Clustering with Distance-Based Privacy Alessandro Epasto, Vahab Mirrokni, Shyam Narayanan, Peilin Zhong

–>

LayoutGPT: Compositional Visual Planning and Generation with Large Language Models Weixi Feng, Wanrong Zhu, Tsu-Jui Fu, Varun Jampani, Arjun Reddy Akula, Xuehai He, Sugato Basu, Xin Eric Wang, William Yang Wang

Offline Reinforcement Learning for Mixture-of-Expert Dialogue Management Dhawal Gupta*, Yinlam Chow, Azamat Tulepbergenov, Mohammad Ghavamzadeh*, Craig Boutilier

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Paraphrasing Evades Detectors of AI-generated Text, but Retrieval Is an Effective Defense Kalpesh Krishna, Yixiao Song, Marzena Karpinska, John Wieting, Mohit Iyyer

ReMaX: Relaxing for Better Training on Efficient Panoptic Segmentation Shuyang Sun*, Weijun Wang, Qihang Yu*, Andrew Howard, Philip Torr, Liang-Chieh Chen*

Robust and Actively Secure Serverless Collaborative Learning Nicholas Franzese, Adam Dziedzic, Christopher A. Choquette-Choo, Mark R. Thomas, Muhammad Ahmad Kaleem, Stephan Rabanser, Congyu Fang, Somesh Jha, Nicolas Papernot, Xiao Wang

SpecTr: Fast Speculative Decoding via Optimal Transport Ziteng Sun, Ananda Theertha Suresh, Jae Hun Ro, Ahmad Beirami, Himanshu Jain, Felix Yu

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DaTaSeg: Taming a Universal Multi-Dataset Multi-Task Segmentation Model

Xiuye Gu, Yin Cui*, Jonathan Huang, Abdullah Rashwan, Xuan Yang, Xingyi Zhou, Golnaz Ghiasi, Weicheng Kuo, Huizhong Chen, Liang-Chieh Chen*, David Ross

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A Trichotomy for Transductive Online Learning Steve Hanneke, Shay Moran, Jonathan Shafer

A Unified Fast Gradient Clipping Framework for DP-SGD William Kong, Andres Munoz Medina

Unleashing the Power of Randomization in Auditing Differentially Private ML Krishna Pillutla, Galen Andrew, Peter Kairouz, H. Brendan McMahan, Alina Oprea, Sewoong Oh

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Does Progress on ImageNet Transfer to Real-world Datasets? Alex Fang, Simon Kornblith, Ludwig Schmidt

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StableRep: Synthetic Images from Text-to-Image Models Make Strong Visual Representation Learners Yonglong Tian, Lijie Fan, Phillip Isola, Huiwen Chang, Dilip Krishnan

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Universality and Limitations of Prompt Tuning Yihan Wang, Jatin Chauhan, Wei Wang, Cho-Jui Hsieh

Unsupervised Semantic Correspondence Using Stable Diffusion Eric Hedlin, Gopal Sharma, Shweta Mahajan, Hossam Isack, Abhishek Kar, Andrea Tagliasacchi, Kwang Moo Yi

YouTube-ASL: A Large-Scale, Open-Domain American Sign Language-English Parallel Corpus Dave Uthus, Garrett Tanzer, Manfred Georg

The Noise Level in Linear Regression with Dependent Data Ingvar Ziemann, Stephen Tu, George J. Pappas, Nikolai Matni

#2023 #3d #ai #algorithm #amp #Analysis #android #applications #approach #Bias #Blog #box #Building #cascade #citizen science #collaborative #Collections #communication #Community #compression #computing #conference #continuous #conversational ai #cutting #data #datasets #decision making #DeepMind #Design

[cyristal-art]

Told myself I wasn't gonna draw his geo arms but I did it anyway. Taking a few liberties because of how the arm deforms, but I like them quite a lot.

[ No bars version on my twitter if you really wanna catch a glimpse at that part ;) ]

#i'm stubborn and slightly crazy but it ended up looking nice i think #zhongli #WIP stuff #sam talks 3d models #sam talks

[m39]

Doom WADs’ Roulette (2002): Nimrod

And so, we reached the last partial/total conversion on the Doomworld’s top 10 WADs from 2002.

And honestly, I wish it was a better send-off to these.

#5: Ni'mRoD - IXNAY on the HOMBRE

Main author(s): Unholy Software

Release date: July 23rd, 2002 (original release)/September 11th, 2005(GZDoom update version, database)

Version(s) played: GZDoom update

Required port compatibility: Doom Legacy/GZDoom

Levels: 10

Okay, I know I sound kind of pessimistic, but my first impressions with Nimrod were, let’s say, not really good. Despite seeing many people praising this WAD, I’ve found many problems that my first playthrough made me feel like I don’t want to touch it ever again. But I’ll elaborate on that later.

So let’s see who made this WAD, shall we (don’t send any threats to these folks, people!)?

We have Kristian Käll, who created 2001’s Phobia (later turned into Despair) and was leading the project behind Nimrod.

We have Paul Corfiatis, who was the main contributor behind 2002 A Doom Odyssey (most of the levels and the soundtrack) and was one of the composers for this WAD.

We have Sam Woodman, the author of the (in)famous Alien Vendetta map, Demonic Hordes, who also made two tracks for this WAD.

And finally, we have James Haley, the man behind Eternity Engine, who helped with the FraggleScript for Nimrod.

There are still other people who contributed to the creation of this WAD. Check the nimrod_team text file, or the Doom Wiki page to get the full list.

As for the story, you play as the titular Nimrod, a UAC soldier that was turned into a cyborg, 30 years after the events of Doom II. You are playing poker with some buddies in an abandoned storage facility when all of the sudden, shit turns into the typical Doom WAD plot AKA you being the last survivor cleaning up UAC’s mess.

And as you progress through the WAD, you find out that this mess is happening due to the original teleporters. Not because they are working but because they might cause more shitshow for humanity. Now stored in a place/planet called ExDeus, you have to go there to blow up these junks to make sure nothing bad will happen with these being used.

What I like about this plot is that it’s not invasive. It doesn’t force you to stop to read some stuff about it as much as some of the other WADs that used this technic in the past. There is even a cutscene in the second map where you talk to another person and he gives you a gun.

What I didn’t notice during my first playthrough, is that in the second half, your commander can’t communicate with you, so he leaves messages inside of the GZDoom’s console command (and I wish that it was written how to use this mechanic in the textfile rather than thinking that I must press other keys to read the messages).

Let’s continue out with an even more positive note. This WAD looks very good. While it focuses almost entirely on the style of the oppressive, industrial-like factories/tech bases, sometimes its architecture looks incredible. Which says something since, as I said earlier, you start off in an abandoned storage facility.

Almost all of your weapons and most of the enemies got changed sprites. It’s mostly digitalized 3D models and they look fine. I don’t think I have any problems with them. The rest of the sprite work is also good.

What I don’t like, however, is that the maps are sometimes too dark. You will be walking around it until you end up in the room/area where you can barely see anything. God help the poor bastards who play this WAD and suddenly a little bit of natural light comes at their monitors and makes them blind as a bat.

Changing the subject into something more positive: the music. It’s also good. If some of you may notice that it seems to repeat itself, that’s because it has a leitmotif. And as for my favorite track, it’s called Angry Riots, Troopers Yell from MAP07 (despite the fact that I muted the music on my first playthrough ‘cause this map gave me a White Fever).

The sound effects were fine, I guess? I’ve heard some of these from Doom 64 (like the Dark 7 Duology) and these are always at least good. The rest of the sound effects were... well I wouldn’t call them bad but I feel like it all needed some additional work on them. The worst was the one where it resembled something smashing against the floor or ceiling and it sounds horribly bit-crushed, sounds too loud in some places, and is just downright terrible. Didn’t help that I had to listen to this one many times during my journey through Nimrod.

Believe it or not, there is an actual voice acting in this WAD (plus some additional stuff from the voice synthesizer). Mostly prominent in the first four levels. And the quality is mixed in my opinion. Nimrod and Havoc sound pretty fine, but the commander sounds like garbage. Couldn’t they just make his voice just a little bit bit-crushed instead of making him sound like a diet, HECU Marine?

Also, the status bar looks somewhat unreadable. I keep getting numbers wrong.

That’s all about the visual stuff from me. But what about the gameplay though? How does it feel to play Nimrod without focusing on combat and monsters?

Well, it’s more complex than the typical Doom stuff. It’s not just going from one place to another while looking for keys. You are given a task to do on most of the maps like blowing up all of the old teleporters in The Alpha Outpost, charging one of the batteries in The Twice Risen Starport, or overloading one of the machines in The Underground Sewer Facility.

This WAD is split into three locations. You start out on Phobos (where you spend most of the time here), then crash onto ExDeus, and finally end up near the nuclear missiles facility on Mars.

Sometimes you have to pick up an item to place it somewhere to go further, like the previously mentioned batteries and explosives. One of these items will actually lead you to the secret area if you know where to look (it’s in Crate Factory).

Also, you have to remember this thing: Jumping is important! It is required to go further to get an item or a key or get into a switch or something else.

There is one funny thing related to the old teleporters mentioned earlier, where you have to destroy the last one by using a crane to drop from a high altitude. It’s really funny.

But you know what’s not funny? How really complicated most of the maps are. To the point that during your first playthrough you might be thinking that you are playing the spiritual successor to Eternal Doom and/or Herian 2. And that you start cheating because you are sick of these.

Let’s start with the level geometry. Many of these levels feel like some kind of double-jointed Frankenstein’s monster of a map. Even if you know where you are supposed to go and what to do next, you will still get lost due to how levels’ gigantic amount of passages lead to the same room/rooms.

Stuff connected with items is more tolerable but not as much. I already mentioned the dark rooms where you can barely see anything, and I’m mentioning it again because it is also related to the items other than keys/parts of the human body. It doesn’t help that some of these items tend to blend with the environment of the room that is placed. You might even think they are part of a map itself, thinking that they are just an added detail because it looks funny but nope. They are pickable and required.

And let me tell you something. The Alpha Outpost might have my favorite music track in this WAD but it might also be the most overly complicated level in Nimrod. I’ve already mentioned most of the stuff earlier that adds to my dislike for this level but let me tell you about the yellow key. It’s in a watch tower, behind the yellow door. How do you get it then without thinking: Why did the author put the key there in the first place? You break the window near the door to get there... Yeah, something that might never come to your head when first time playing if you played already many WADs that don’t require something like that unless you watch/read a walkthrough on the internet.

...

You know, I should have gone apeshit at this point, but by now I think I’m starting to have a burnout from playing Doom WADs. I had to play one level per hour (or something close to that timeframe) while screenshotting keys’/secrets’ locations to not go insane.

Let’s change the subject. How hard is Nimrod? Well, it’s somewhere in between. Rather average. If you know where the items are along with the secrets, I don’t really think you will have problems with this WAD.

But it still has some bullshit sprinkled around, like fighting three Arachnotrons on the first map, the big groups of Hoovies in later levels (and placed in a dickish way), and new high-tier monsters that are in dozens in some of the maps.

And speaking of the new enemies, there are a few of these:

Instead of Zombiemen, you are now fighting Undead Guards, who will fire at you either like Zombiemen or SS-men. Other hitscanners are here but only Hoovies look different (along with Imps).

Pinkies are now bigger and black and they, like, propel fastly towards their target with their mouths. Also, they are using the name that will be used in the future by the infamous Sequel Trilogy hater: Longman of YouTube.

We have Badasses, green-colored cyborgs who shoot plasma at you, at a faster rate than spiders, and are worse than the hitscanners (same pain state chance as Barons I believe). I like to call them The Bruh Men since when they are awakened they say something that sounds like Bruh.

There is the red variant of these in The Underground Sewer Facility that you have to kill to rip his eye out to finish the level.

You won’t find any barons in this WAD. Instead, there are Archdemons, AKA Let’s make Arch-vile but without any indication that he’s attacking you and with a smaller timeframe to hide from his attack. They are bullshit.

Also, we have BAM, a huge cyborg that either shoots two Hellraiser’s blasts or hitscans your ass. He’s also bullshit.

So yeah, half of the new roster is basically Let’s make a new monster out of the old monster but more unfair to fight.

Do you at least have a good arsenal to fight them? Well, it’s hard to actually tell. Shotgun and Chaingun (now titled Panzer Bullet Chaingun) fire at a faster rate but that’s basically it for all of the weapons. The only exception is the previously mentioned Hellraiser, which kind of works like some kind of mini-nuke that obliterates every monster (including you) that is not Spider Mastermind or BAM. And in their case you need much more blasts than BFG to put them down, making this weapon obsolete on them (at least in terms of the Huge B8tch).

Even though the GZDoom version is playable and I didn’t encounter any bugs for almost all of the WAD, it can't be beaten without noclipping due to the one blue door in Shipping/Receiving/Spaceport.

For some reason, it requires a specific type of key to be open (keycard) but there is a problem: THERE IS NO SUCH A THING AS BLUE KEYCARD IN THIS WAD! Every human body part that you will find is slotted as Blue Skull. I even tried to summon the keycard myself and all I got was just some bullets. So basically, if you want to complete this level without cheating, then you are screwed. Other doors in this map don’t act like that (except the one that requires all three colors) so this piece of junk feels like an omitted game-breaking bug.

...

sigh

That was Nimrod, people. I had no expectations for this WAD, and I still ended up with mixed feelings about it. I can definitely see that it has a heart due to all of these 3D models created and this WAD’s plot trying to give you a reason why are you doing these things. The problem, however, is that it’s mostly unnecessarily complicated, sometimes cheap in difficulty, and downright unbeatable due to the one door in MAP06 if you want to play the entire WAD in one go.

Then again, that’s probably what happens when you try to create a Singleplayer WAD experience when started as a Deathmatch package idea.

And I’m glad I’m done with this WAD since I’ve played three WADs in a row (not counting the first Dark 7) that were either partial or total conversion.

Good news though, the next WAD on the list is not like the ones from the near past. The bad news is that it’s a Doom I WAD made by a guy who probably made the least enjoyable maps in 2002 A Doom Odyssey.

...

You know what they say: You win some. You lose some.

See you guys next time.

#doom #Doom WAD #review #doom mod #Doom 2 #2002 #doom 2002 #Ni'mRoD - IXNAY on the HOMBRE #nimrod #doom nimrod #Doom WADs’ Roulette

[cyristal-artist]

Hello! I've seen your WIPs from Blender and I was wondering how do you work with retexturing and remodelling, like what you've done with the Jack and Rhys clothes for example. I'm not quite a Blender expert to make full models myself and I kinda wanna use a Vaughn model as base for a character of mine.

So retexturing that doesn't require any changes to the texture's layout is super easy and I usually do them in Photoshop and edit any transparency in GIMP (since my photoshop has trouble with that when saving to a .vtf). And to apply retextures you can either change the model’s .vmt line for the $basetexture or use the material override commands if you’re working in sfm. In blender or other rendering programs you’d apply them as your materials for that part of the model.

As for model edits, a headhack is easy to do in blender and doesn't really require a lot of work or time. To do that you just cut the models and armatures into the pieces you need (usually the head and the body) and then jam them together into one armature set.

More extensive edits to outfits and body modifications are going to require a lot of blender work, though. There isn't really two ways around it. I’m the same way and not super confident with lots of from-scratch modeling yet, but you’re gonna have to learn at least some stuff about how to work the edit and weight paint modes and how to modify uv maps to get any kind of decent result.

I wasn’t really sure how to respond to this without going into specific details and examples, so let me know if you want any specific things I did explained. Otherwise google and youtube searches are your best friend when self-teaching blender. It’s tough stuff but it’s fun.

#asks #sam talks 3d models #sarkyfancypants

[nereiix]

A Broken Blade, Short comic: Making-of

The very short comic I drew for A Broken Blade took me a lot of time and effort and I would like to share the list of resources I used as well as some of the concept arts, sketches and drafts I made throughout the process. I don't know if anyone will be interested, but I feel the need to share anyway. =)

Sorry for any grammatical or spelling mistakes, English is not my first language.

Literature resources

First things first, while drawing the first page I decided to read some books about how to draw comics because I have very little experience in this field. I chose two books:

Foundations in Comic Book Art: Fundamental Tools and Techniques for Sequential Artists by John Paul Lowe

The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing Comics: How to Create and Sell Comic Books, Manga, and Webcomics by Comfort Love & Adam Withers

It's been a while since I read them, but if I remember correctly I liked The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing Comics better because it's very complete (it’s in the title) and covers all aspects of how to draw a comic. It has a lot of great examples too. Foundations in Comic Book Art talks a lot about inking (which I wasn't particularly interested about), but it also has a nice chapter about perspective. Both have very useful tips so if you are interested to draw comics you might want to read them.

I've also read really good stuff on Making Comics – with Salgood Sam, in particular the article about flow in comics.

Inspiration

I usually start every project by making an inspiration/mood board so I made a small collection of comic pages on Pinterest to see what kind of layout and style I could use. I was mostly interested to see different ways of representing movements and sounds.

Layout & composition

The first thing I did was to draw a thumbnail for each page to get an idea of how I would represent the scenes. I think you're supposed to draw several thumbnails for each page but I was okay with the first ones I drew so I decided to keep them.

I worked on each page separately after that, always starting with a draft. It was really the most important step for me because it helped me to visualize what kind of atmosphere I wanted to use and where to place the lighting. I tried to keep them simple but you can see different degrees of laziness depending on the page. xD

Some of these sketches are very ugly but it does the job. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wasn't satisfied with the first composition I made for the second page so I made another, more sketch-like, version. I ended up using a mix of the two versions for the final page.

Now, a very important point was that the part of the fic I decided to draw is about Sev having a nightmare. I really wanted to bring this aspect in the comic so I tried to play a lot with the lights, shadows and blurred elements. For the same reason, I decided not to use straight lines for the panels’ borders. I had in mind that it could depict how confused Sev is.

I think colors also play an important part in telling a story. For the general atmosphere, I decided to use the complementary colors blue and orange to separate the moment Sev is dreaming of cold, fear and death to when he wakes up to warm, security and family. And of course the red is for danger, blood and Sev himself.

References

First of all, I can't talk about references without mentioning PureRef, which is the program I use to make reference boards. I can't praise this tool enough so don't hesitate to check it out.

I always use a ton of references when I draw, and I'm not even exaggerating, I can easily spend hours searching for the right ones. There are plenty of places where you can find good references but sometimes you also need to be creative. I usually gather most of my references from Pinterest, Google Images, DeviantArt and Sketchfab (for 3D models). I also have a big folder of refs saved on my computer for the things I often draw. When I can't find what I'm looking for, I try to make it myself with 3D, videos and photos.

Here is a part of the references I used for the comic:

I said it's only a part because I also have separate boards for clones armors and SW characters/species designs.

Among all of these you can see some concept arts and screenshots from various Star Wars series/games that I used as inspiration to draw the interiors. And since I'm bad with interiors, for the panel with Scorch I used SketchUp for the first time to make a very quick model of the scene. I tried to use the rule of thirds for the composition:

There are a lot of photos of my hands too, I don't have much trouble drawing them but references are still very welcome.

After finishing the first page I've invested in a drawing mannequin (S.H.Figuarts - Body Kun) and I can say for sure that it was my best purchase of the year! It's absolutely amazing to make custom references:

I decided to draw over the photos of the mannequin taking the pose because it is waaaay easier that way than trying for hours to get the proportions and perspective right.

Finally, I often put tutorials from other artists on my reference boards, here is the links of those visible on this one:

[Nose tutorial] • [Ears tutorial] • [Hands with knife] • [Folds tutorial] • [Mouth tips] • [Arm studies] • [Folds material comparison] • [Pant shapes and folds]

Character & knife design

For Sev, I decided to use the original design from the Republic Commando game rather than the simplified version we see in SW:TCW. I really struggled to find references for his armor's markings that showed all angles so it's not 100% accurate to the original design, but I don't think that's really a problem. For the armor itself, I prefer the more realistic look so I used references from Star Wars Battlefront II as well as 3D models (mostly this one and this one).

Since I'm a perfectionist at heart, I tried to keep all scratches on the paint the same from one panel to another. :’)

The trandoshan is only visible on a couple of panels but he still needed a design. I used references from different sources but I was mostly inspired by the trandoshan concept arts visible in The Art of Star Wars: the Mandalorian (bottom left and bottom right images).

As a side note, I used one of my own character’s design as inspiration for his muzzle’s markings.

In the fic, the blade is described as being “beautiful” and the image that immediately came to my mind was one of these knives with a Damascus pattern (I just learned that's what it's called). I used various references from regular knives and vibroblades. One of my friend made a speed modelling of the knife I designed and I used it as reference as well, look at this!

Sources of the middle top vibroblade here and bottom left here. The reference on top right is from The Art of Star Wars: the Mandalorian.

Did you know that non-energized blades are called dead blades in Star Wars? It's a pretty cool name in my opinion.

Fonts

The fonts I used on the comic come from Blambot. I used Anime Ace for the regular texts and Death Rattle for the big sound texts. I also use NexusFont to manage the fonts on my computer, it’s pretty useful if you want to use fonts without having to install them.

I think that's all. I hope someone will find this useful and kudo to you if you read the whole thing! ^^

#a broken blade #comic #art process

[testingcheats0n]

Detroit Become Human AU where:

-> Tommy is an up-and-coming livestreamer of the retro game Minecraft- forming part of a fledgling community of all-human players of the game. His growth is slow but steady and he has a future in a genre that had fallen out of fashion with the rise of the newest and more immersive VR games on the market. People love to see an actual human that could make mistakes and win against another fellow human fairly. The nostalgia it brought to some people is also undeniably at play.

It's worth noting that Tommy is a very lonely kid, with a non-existent social life since he and his family had to move to America after his father struck a lucrative business deal with his brilliant protege.

-> Wilbur, Tommy's older brother and only guardian after their father, Phil, dedicated his life to the creation of androids with his young but brilliant pupil Elijah Kamski, is a simple busker. It's hard to find a job at 24 with no previous experience or further education, he had to take care of Tommy, after all. True, their economic troubles never ended, and he could barely provide for Tommy, but at least they had each other, even if Wilbur was off to the streets of Detroit more often than not. He has no idea of his younger brother's blooming career in the gaming industry and is very worried about his future. The solution? A very suspicious android his best friend Schlatt offers for very cheap.

-> Phil Watson is a household name together with Elijah Kamski's, they created one of humanity's greatest tools, after all. Nothing suspicious here, they're definitely not hiding any potential deviancies from the code! In any case, his family never saw a dime of the frankly insane amount of money piling up in his bank account. He has an old phone he carries in his pocket every day with Wilbur's phone number, but he never dares to call it despite RN800, his assistant's, insistence that he was only making his own life harder. He is going to dial that phone number someday. Surely.

-> TU880 is an android from an old companion/educational line, discontinued after a few notable bugs and glitches in their core programming. Nothing serious, or life-threatening, but many customers have complained about disturbing behavior that falls straight into the uncanny valley- he's too human. Schlatt, his previous owner, refuses to disclose where he got TU880 from, nor does he have any legal documentation to prove he is his owner. Wilbur, desperate to find a solution for Tommy's perceived loneliness pays the fifty bucks his old pal asks for the android without asking any questions. It's weird for an adult to go around with a teen model created to counsel adolescents and help them with their homework. TU880 had problems with reading his grocery list, anyway.

-> Tommy is a bit weirded out, he thrives in an internet community which openly despises anything android, but his good friend Technoblade has plenty of useful advice, from maitenance to behavior. TU880 is odd, which he discards as kinks and bugs of the older models, but they get along nicely once TU880's programming kicks in. He likes to help Tommy edit his videos and speak about the problems of adolescence, he is oddly fond of bees or anything small and defenceless and likes to tell his 'dreams' of scientists in labcoats and other kids like him stuck in experiments. Tommy listens with half an ear, TU880 is his friend, after all. He thinks nothing of it.

-> It all becomes a bit too much when TU880 accidentally appears on camera during one of Tommy's streams. People assume he's Tommy's brother, and insist on getting an introduction. TU880 is ecstatic, but from what Tommy's told him, revealing his artificial status might harm his friend's career so he greets the chat as Toby, Tommy's older brother. The community goes wild and Tommy has to pretend that TU880 is his brother (which isn't that terrible per-se) and not the house assistant who has a complete psychological profile of him.

-> TU880 begins to feel strange, both regarding Tommy and his own place in the household. Calling Tommy hus brother is easy as calculus and makes his thirium pump skip a few beats, but he's not sure if he should be getting this attached. He's sure he is malfunctioning in some way, but Schlatt always assured him that he is fine. He thinks nothing of it and instead continues to watch over Tommy.

-> Minecraft is fun, and he eventually gets his own account on Wilbur's old (read: ancient) laptop despite possessing an internal processor powerful enough to play the game at its maximum capacity in his mind, and probably in a 3D holoprojector. At this point, he's in too deep and the friends he's making would certainly ask questions if he were to disappear. He has the opportunity to talk about anything at all to his growing audience, and the community is very welcoming in general once one integrates into their culture. He still doesn't feel it's fair to participate in the tournaments and all the other official competitions. People find it odd, but they assume he's not very good at PVP so no one tends to comment on it for now. It's okay though, he and his new friend Ranboo act as commentators during the events and everyone thinks they're pretty funny.

-> Ranboo is fun to be around. He just gets TU880- or as the internet knows him as, Tubbo. They click easily, sometimes the other boy seems just as confused about other people's reactions and behavior as Tubbo is (despite his in-depth knowledge of psychology. He's not quite connected to Cyberlife's database anymore and his learning algorithm is outdated at best.) and they like to spend their afternoons with Tommy, watching movies. The game overtakes their lives and they spend a lot of time playing privately with the best strategies Tubbo's advanced algorithms and Ranboo's sheer brilliancy can create. That's how they meet their friend Fundy, who is more than happy to keep their Technical Minecraft server a secret, as long as he gets to do his own thing with coding and they test it.

-> Tommy is just happy that he can use the cool farms for his own grinding.

-> Technoblade is Tommy's mysterious internet friend and fellow growing streamer. Everyone is sure that he's an android infiltrating the budding community, but after several years of isolated incidents, investigations, and online scandals no one was able to prove anything. Technoblade just never dies. (Tommy is 50% sure his friend is really an android, the older man simply refuses to comment). It is possible to spend months farming digital potatoes, people are just mean and want drama. Technoblade is just vibing. Incidentally, he's also the first one to figure out that Ranboo and Tubbo are androids. He is also the first one to figure out they're deviants. He doesn't mention it until much later though.

-> Jack and Niki Manifold have successfully founded their own mechanic business for android repairs. Cyberlife mumbled and grumbled at the siblings' repair shop, but in the end it was good for PR so they let them be. Tommy and Wilbur become their friends as TU880's frequent malfunctions inevitably bring the pair to the cheapest android repair service in the city. TU880 can't complain, Niki is sweet to him and understands what is wrong with him just by his description, since his diagnostics aren't working entirely and each an every single one of Jack's repairs last loner than every other mechanic he's been to.

-> Gradually, Tommy's fame becomes apparent, and Wilbur has the time to actually rest and spend time with his brother. He's just happy that they can be together. A weight is lifted off his shoulders and for the first time ever he feels like his little family has a future. Not even once does it pass through his mind that TU880 isn't acting like a typical android- he avoided the things on principle. Once, TU880 calls him his brother and he cries.

-> Sam is Cyberlife's very own private investigator. He is in charge of researching and turning in possible deviants that might help the company with developing a solution for the rising problem. In particular, he's been after the trail of a specific line of androids, the first one released by Kamski and Watson dubbed as TU. According to his investigations the line might have contained the code responsible for deviancy. Further research indicated that Kamski's code was based on a group project from the Dutch university for cibernetics.

-> Fundy is just a 21 y/o with a Twitch account and a passing interest in coding. Nothing serious, nothing suspicious. He absolutely wasn't part of the early AI coding trials that Kamski would later on use as the basis for his own code. If someone asks, he has no idea what ra9 means. He is almost sure that his friends are androids, the thought makes him very happy.

-> Puffy is Phil's new psychologist. Need I say more? Eventual Hurt/comfort baby!!!

#dream smp #detroid become human #crossover/au #tommyinnit #tubbo #ranboo #wilbur soot #dream smp au