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contact-guy · 2 months

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heyyy I hope it's okay to send an ask! I just wanted to know about your art process, if you got any advise. Because I'm in love with your SH doodles, they're so dynamic and lively and the shading is such a nice accent yet it remains somewhat minimalistic? I'm relatively decent at realism but want to develop my own character in drawing more and I'm wondering how you arrived at yours, did you have a method? Thanks in advance^^

love to talk about DRAWING......

The short answer is that because I want to draw them a lot, and have limited time, I can't be too precious about how the final result looks! So a lack of perfectionism and a desire for speed ends up forcing me to simplify and stylize them. This was an organic process (if you scroll down my art tag you can see I was drawing them with a bit more detail, finish, and care a few months ago - I was illustrating vs what I'm doing now, cartooning).

Ideally when you are cartooning, every line of the character's face is doing work to make them THEM, and to tell a story. No unnecessary lines! I find that story is best expressed through eyes, eyebrows, and mouth (this might be different for you). Those features can and should change shape to express emotion. They are usually what I draw first, to figure out the emotion, and they're what I spend the most time tweaking.

The rest of the features - face shape, cheekbones, nose, forehead, ears, hairline - are less emotive, less 'plastic', they don't change shape much. These are doing work to make the character recognizable. I try to keep them simple and have a few simple rules that I can remember about each character.

(Watson is tricky because of his mustache! I've found that treating it as part of his mouth rather than a distinct piece works best, but even so it makes his face less emotive - which, honestly, works for the character, as he is less demonstrative than Holmes)

I'll usually do a simple underdrawing to figure out what the body is doing - trying to capture the energy of a pose and, again, thinking about what story the body is telling.

Then I 'ink' in the clothing, following the lines of the body and gravity. Victorian clothing is fun to draw, I find that the structure around the shoulders and neckline lends itself to expressive poses. I did a bunch of Victorian clothing studies a few months ago and felt like I built up a 'library' in my head so that I don't need to reference it every time.

Shading is incredibly minimal and quick. In really simple drawings, its purpose is usually to distinguish characters from the background. In more detailed ones, it's to give them a little dimension and focus the eye to the faces.

Every choice I make is in service of readability rather than beauty or accuracy, if that makes sense. So it is quite a different mindset than when you're drawing realistically or painting.

I hope this was helpful! I am a professional artist but whenever I get sucked into a fandom I find myself making leaps and bounds in my craft because I want to draw so MUCH and don't care about making it polished...truly shout out to hyperfixation for the gifts it brings

#art post

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thespectralvision · 2 months

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Mr. Victor Shade, SWORD's leading expert on AI, aka The Vision's mundane alias.

More concept work for my comic plans, where after Westview Vision is found by Monica, Darcy, and Jimmy who help him build a life and remember who he is. Monica offers him a job at SWORD with Hayward out of the way, to reform it and return it to her mother's vision (pardon the pun). Vision helps out with this process, because who better to be watching and ensuring there is ethical treatement of AI and other 'sentient weapons' than the most advanced synthetic being on Earth? It will also give him an opportunity to explore who he is, and how he ended up being turned into Hayward's weapon in WandaVision.

(I have no affiliation with Marvel/the MCU - this is purely a fan project, and I know if we get Vision Quest as a series it will likely go in a very different direction. That's the joy of the Multiverse though - anything is possible, and I love telling *my* Vision's story through art and my stories.)

Breakdown of my process below the cut, as this was painted as a quick demo for a friend asking about how I do things and I enjoyed it enough to finish it:

My process has changed a little over the years but remains roughly the same. The level of depth and detail just means more hours refining the painting down more and more with additional layers and passes of light, shadow, and texture.

Before I start a piece, even just sketches to unwind, I gather reference. Sometimes I'll just see a photo I like of Paul/Lizzie, or sometimes an unrelated image where the pose or lighting or ambience speaks to me. I also use my collection for reference - my statues and Hot Toy figuresm to get the right lighting and angles, especially for Vision and all his robot lines (though admittedly these days I don't always use a reference and just go from memory...I think I draw this silly robot too much).

Once I've got a concept and some references gathered I set up my canvas. Currently I use CSP and I love it, and I have a variety of texture files I've purchased that mimic different types of paper. I like working on these as it feels more natural with the pencil, ink, and marker brushes I use. Once I have my references set up in the file I'll do a rough sketch, blocking out proportions and basic shapes. I'll set a mid-tone grey background as well, and I almost always sketch in color. I like choosing a color that represents the character for me - bright blue for Vizh, red for Wanda. I have a Loki sketch I need to finish for my sister and I used green for him. It helps me capture the 'energy' of the character, and this sketch remains a part of the finished painting even as I refine.

Once I've got a rough sketch down I'll start working on more detail. Sometimes this will be inks, sometimes just another pass with pencil. Depends on the piece and what I'm going for. This step can happen multiple times for complicated paintings, and usually I'll cycle through steps 2-6 multiple times for a large piece.

Once I have the lines down I'll paint flats. Most of the time I'm using a big brush that emulates a marker, because I like the texture it gives, especially when layered. I'm very mess and use an eraser brush to clean up the lines, and sometimes I'll go back and tweak the line art until I like the look. During this phase I'll also lay down some details - freckles, scars, details like eyes, tattoos, jewelry as well. When painting Vizh I like getting the texture in his robotic eyes done early on, and usually refine them again towards the end.

The real fun starts here - I'll block in my lighting, usually just going with whaveter I'm feeling in the moment. I like playing with gradients and layering them in different ways to create a more dynamic image, and then I start blocking in shadows with soft brushes.

More lighting. I start adding top layers to further stretch the dynamic. I like overlays, and adding a sort of dreamlike/surreal filter through the color. I'll also start adding in highlights to contrast the shadows and work in small sections to render the details. I always start big and decrease my brush sizes for detail and work in layers and stages, checking the reference as well as the painting's lighting (which is not always the same as my reference) as I go.

Texture texture texture. I like texture. This step sometimes happens earlier, but once I'm happy with my actual *painting* of my subject(s) I'll start figuring out background elements and textures for visual appeal.

#the vision #white vision #wandavision #paul bettany #wandavision fanart #marvel fan art #mcu fanart #digital art #art process #my art

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dazyxi · 3 months

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;; RYWD WRITING (REMEMBER YOU WILL DIE) @vapolis — content warnings: very brief mention of sh (digging nails in skin), derealization (slightly), and smoking. notes: not lore accurate. i wrote it for fun, and it's very short becauseeee... i didn't know how to continue it from that point ibr 😭😭i don't write shit like this sooo it's very fast-paced and sloppy!! — you're not seeing double! this is a post with added content because people started liking it and the author saw it (thank you so much for the sweet words!! it made me so happy to see that you enjoyed it!!💕) and i was like ohmg!!!! so i wanted to tweak it a little. there's an extra 300+ words, but i didn't really edit the content beforehand, so if it's confusing, sorry!!

The air is thin in Ivy's lungs. The breaths she's expelling are heavy, heaved, and drawn out. She's struggling to inhale and exhale. To breathe. To function. Her room is too tight, the walls too closed-in. In short, she feels like she's being choked. Strangled. Not just by this apartment room, suffocated by life. And she doesn't know what to do. There's no out. She's stuck. Stuck in this endless loop. Stuck in a role. A rabid dog on a tight chain. A vicious animal waiting to be set loose. A psychotic murderer who shouldn't be trusted. Stuck proving them right.

She's mad. Not at Orla. Not at the people who labeled her. At herself. She put herself in this situation. How could people think differently when all she does is fit into their title? Whenever she's given the choice to do the right thing- be better- she does the opposite. Maybe she got comfortable with the low-held expectations. Got used to being held in poor regard. I mean, you can't disappoint someone who never had hope, right?

Her skin is crawling with discomfort, and her posture is rigid as she sits against a wall. A lazily bandaged hand lays against her exposed collarbones. An attempt to ground herself. Flesh against flesh. Warm flesh. Not cold.

She's disoriented. Alienated. As lines of reality turn fuzzy, and she starts to get distant, she mentally wrangles with herself. Nails start to press carelessly into olive skin while her mind ripples with static. This feeling, the sickening nauseation of being trapped, is clawing through her. Seeping into her bone marrow. Sticking itself to her permanently.

Strands of her black hair are stuck to her face by sweat. The sweat that beads from her hairline and trails down her cheeks, joining tears she was unaware of. She feels pathetic. Helpless. She wants to give in. Let herself melt away. Instead, she lets her hands fall to her side in a clumsy action, leaving crescent-shaped indents at her collarbones. They're laced with a left-over stinging sensation but no blood. She starts to count her fingers. Starting with her index finger. . . then middle finger. . . ring finger. . . pinky finger. Index. . . middle. . . ring. . . pinky. She repeats it over and over and over until she's sick of it. Sick of calloused fingerpads scraping together in a strange anchoring method. Blearily, she mocks herself through the disorderment, This is all so stupid. Get over yourself.

She stares at the ground. Exhausted. Her gaze flits around the rays of neon light cast from the windows and onto the floor. Squints at the cracked wood. Scrutinizes the fractures. She drags her eyes upward to the window, the presence of Vapolis leaking through the glass. It's taunting in a way. Slowly, she regains her thoughts, the repeated buzz being replaced. Her mind scrambles to catch up with her emotions, and a moment later, she's frantically digging into her pockets. Her fingers catch onto the cigarettes and lighter, messily dragging them out of her jacket like she's on borrowed time. She flips the lighter on after she's stuck a cigarette in her chapped lips. Briefly, she eyes the dancing flame. Observes as it spins and whirls around like a dandelion in the wind, only less innocent.

She places the fire underneath the cig, and soon after, tendrils of smoke billow into the atmosphere. She sighs out clouds of mist while the familiar rush of pleasure pangs through her. Easing slightly, she lets her body slump, head tipping upward and hitting the wall. Her sore eyes flutter shut, her shoulder still tension-filled and clamped up at her sides, but the looming factor of dread has settled. Somewhat. It's still at the forefront, lingering in her mind. She takes another drag, and it begins to haze over.

One hand still holding her cigarette to her lips, the other struggles to help herself up on wobbly legs. They feel like jelly underneath her weight. "Fuck," she mutters, her voice strained. Wrecked. She stumbles toward the bathroom, and on the way, her feet nearly catch on the mass of random objects lazing on her floor.

She nudges the door open with her arm, blinks as it creaks open to reveal the cluttered state of the room. She mumbles. Something dumb, trying to be funny, like, What’s that about your house being a reflection of your mind? A rasped scoff escapes her mouth, and she doesn’t like how it sounds when it rings in her ears. It’s dull, devoid of the usual mirth. Not that the mirth is ever really real. It’s fine. Pretending is something she’s good at, comfortable with. She enjoys it. She’ll eventually learn how to do the same being a puppet– or maybe hound is a more fitting word.

She staggers in, immediately supporting herself with her hand on the dirtied tile of the sink. Frowning at the reflection in the spotted mirror, she scans it. Black hair sticks up, tangled and mused, with dried blood at the tips. A split lip and a bruised face with swollen eyes. Red-lined scleras, violet irises glowing in the yellow hue of the light. She doesn’t recognize the woman she sees. She's trapped in skin that’s not her own.

She watches the woman pluck the lit cigarette from her mouth. Hold it between her crooked index and middle. Watches her pull the corners of her dry lips upwards. It’s too toothy, the smile. There’s crimson-red itching underneath it. She doesn’t know if it belongs to her or someone else. The unsettling grin fades as quickly as it rose, and smoke leaks from her lungs and into the air. A deadpan settles on her expression, eyes half-lidded, and it looks strange on her features.

Her mind wanders, thoughts messy and daunting, growing anger festering. It wraps around her bones, causing her to shake. She welcomes it, the feeling comforting. More comfortable than whatever she was feeling earlier. It's whatever. She'll adjust. Conform to fit the mold. Easier than trying to break it or reform it. She always does what's easier for her. Less work. At the end of the day, she did this. What's that saying? Nobody to blame but yourself?

#mc oc #rywd #remember you will die #oc: ivy essa #writing

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fourseasonsfigs · 5 months

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Building Block Figs - Catching Light

Continuing on from the last Building Block Figs - Basking in the Sun and Building Block Figs - Beautiful Fight Scene in the Middle of the Lake, Part 1 and Part 2, we have this wonderful set.

These figs make me laugh - I love them so much! I don't know why, I just find them ridiculously charming.

This building block set is 1,544 pieces, measures 8.4 x 17.6 x 15.6 cm, and is rated 10 hours. I did indeed take all 10 hours to build this, if not a little bit more.

Here is the sales pic of what the finished product is supposed to look like:

Cute, isn't it? As usual, sellers do a much better job of setting the scene than I do. I will say, though, that I did make two little tweaks to the set to make it a bit more canon compliant. Can you spot them?

It'll be easier to tell as we get better pictures, so I'll get into it!

First, here's the box of doom bricks. Like the others, this came in a generic sales box, with a super handy little unsnapping tool, and a sticker with a black and white image of the set and QR code instructions.

Once again, you'll notice my line up of extra bricks from the previous sets hanging out in quasi-neat little rows. Originally I figured I'll leave them all out in case I ran short of any, but in reality, this set maker gives me extras of each color every time. Which is handy, as you will see for later posts, when I make some adjustments to the fig sets to make them a bit more canon compliant.

As you can see, there's a LOT of extra bricks left over. To be honest, there shouldn't be so many white bricks - those are from another set that I made a major change to. I'll post about that one tomorrow.

Here's the different order of assembly - I went ahead and started with the base and tree, as they suggest.

As you can see, this is a very beautiful terrain here. I did not remember this area being so green and flowery from the show - in fact, I remember it being kind of sandy and desolate, but my memory is pretty lousy, there might be a scattered flower or so. Let's check.

HUH. There is not a flower in sight, is there. Hmmm. Well, this is kind of gonna bother me. Maybe I should have looked up the inspiration before putting together the entire 10 hour plus set, huh! Well, the little flowers are easy enough to lever off.

Hmm, anyway, moving on (for now).

So a couple things here. First, as you can see, there are only two green colors. I mean, one normal color really - the light green here is actually a neon green. It's brighter than it looks here. It looks great here, don't get me wrong, but now all I can see is the very sandy terrain of that screenshot.

Second, I tried something a little different here. It actually takes a long time to sort all the individual bricks, so in an attempt to shave off some time, I decided to experiment with this set. As you can see, I dumped the entire bag out to the right and am just picking out individual pieces as I go.

You'll note it's now evening. This tree took a LONG time to build. I actually timed myself up to this point, and to get to this mostly-done state took 2 hours and 58 minutes. I was pushing hard, too, because I really, really wanted to get the whole tree done that evening before I went to bed. But there was no way. I was too tired and was hitting the point where it was less fun and more work. So, despite really not wanting to, I summoned my inner adult and called it a day here.

Fast forward through time to the next day, and I'm all bright eyed and ready to bust this tree out. And it's done! I like this tree a whole lot...I think they did a beautiful job modeling it. Imagine if they had the full Lego suite of colors and special pieces! It would be really something. I kind of like it this way though (although I would take more colors, I can't lie). It really has an old-school style charm.

You can see the grey rock there where Lao Wen will be propped up against. And of course, the cheerful greenery and pink and yellow flowers.

Feeling VERY accomplished, I put the tree aside, and moved on to A-Xu.

Yep, looks pretty good. I was a little surprised they picked the medium blue color instead of the dark blue color, considering how bright the dark blue color actually is. But this looks fine too.

I am going to proudly say that I did, in fact, knock this fig out in record time. I've put together two and a half A-Xu figs by now (the half is going to be explained tomorrow, I promise!), so this third one went like a breeze.

As you can see in the back, I couldn't help myself, I was starting to make a few little piles of the colors I was working on. The big messy pile of bricks was kind of a pain, and I had to keep resisting the urge to sort them out.

And here he is! All done. He has a very solemn no-expression on his little brick face, which is appropriate. Can you see how there's a little bit of a neck (nothing too saucy or anything), the thin white layer of his under-robe, and then the lighter blue layer? I love it. Very charming. We also have his black belt with a bit of the tails.

It was yet another evening by this time, but since I did manage to finish him before I went to bed, I did indeed sleep the sleep of the righteous.

I woke up even brighter eyed and with pep in my step, ready to rock this last fig out. 10 hour assembly time? I don't think so!

I had now made three Wen Kexing brick figures, so the fourth one was gonna be just as quick as A-Xu was, no doubt. I pulled up the instructions on my phone, and got ready to go. 95 steps for our battle-weary Valley Master, huh? Huh. That's kind of a lot. But considering A-Xu was 85, not too bad. The tree was 119, by the way.

As I looked at the picture, however, I noticed that they had Lao Wen's (virtually) omnipresent hair wispies here. Given that this red wedding costume is the one outfit where his hair is pulled back all the way, it kind of bugged me. Which is funny because I've never liked how he doesn't have the wispies with this hair style on the show. It's my least favorite look on him, which is too bad, because I did like how they at least mixed his hairstyles up some. In my defense, I feel like I'm right (so right!) about how much better he looks with the wispies with this hair style, because you could see it at the concert. And he looked spectacular.

Anyway. Warring between my extreme desire for him to have the wispies and the simple fact of it not being canon, I started to build.

I got the first big chunk done very quickly indeed. Many of these figs are done where you do a big piece, and then set it aside while you work separately on the next piece. This is where I was.

And that's where I stayed, for a long time. I built this piece three times. I had to completely disassemble the entire thing the first time I built it, because I was off on my brick count, and the second time I had to disassemble it down to the first third.

Part of the problem was the way the directions were. As you can see, they still have the first "set it aside" part showing up on the directions directly under the new piece. Unfortunately, all that red blended into each other when I rotated the image around, and it was very easy to accidentally think I needed more or less pieces than I actually did.

I went ahead and built it with the wispies, as directed...and then just couldn't do it. I disassembled half the head and re-built it again without them. I also think that this fig, just like Lao Wen, does not look as good without them, but canon is canon.

Unfortunately, it was so late and I was so tired by the time I finished him (and yet also pretty jubilant), that I forgot to take a pic of the finished fig! Yes, I literally finished this set late last night, despite my best intentions of finishing it up and then triumphantly posting about it on the same day. It did, in fact, take longer than the 10 hours build time.

It took a long time, in general. My finger tips have actually toughened up a bit, so they don't feel sore from snapping the bricks in place, but my neck isn't all that pleased with me from hunching over these various sets for so long. So, I've been taking a few more breaks to stretch and do other things.

But, I woke up early today, and very happily took this set's beauty pics in the clear light of the morning. I love it!

I love how this set all fits together. We have the tree growing over the edge of the base, and Lao Wen there leaning up against the rock. A-Xu is standing with his elegant posture, and their little brick hands are reaching out to each other. Cute cute cute!

Wow, this light is great. I clearly should get up early to take fig pics more often.

The tree looks great, I think (and not just because I spent hours building it!).

This is a good view of the rocks behind Lao Wen here, and his big ponytail (I do like this part of his hairstyle).

The green doesn't look so bad on the ground, I think. I'll pull off the yellow and pink flowers, and maybe make a brown patch on the corner closest to A-Xu. That'll keep it colorful but make it a bit more like the show.

A-Xu's hair looks great, as usual. You can also see how I removed the wispies on Lao Wen's hair. I'll get a close up later so you can see it better.

Shoot, not my best pic - can't really see any of the detail on A-Xu's glorious night-black hair.

There we go, now you can. Oops, I see I knocked a tiny piece out of kilter on the bottom of his hair, I'll have to fix that. But! Here you can see both changes I made from the instructions - the lack of wispies of course, and then I made Lao Wen's guan gold instead of white. This took a while too, because I didn't have enough yellow pieces. The only yellow I had from any of the sets was literally from the yellow flowers here and the few extra they gave me of it. I actually pulled a few yellow flowers off the base there and replaced them with green or pink, just because I needed them for his guan. I then also carefully checked to see what internal yellow bricks were covered up by the black of his hair, and replaced them with black so I could save the yellow ones for the parts that did show. I'm very happy with how it turned out! It looks just like the white one, except, you know, yellow.

I don't know why they didn't originally design it with yellow, given that it is gold on the show, and they had already included yellow bricks with this kit. Maybe they felt the white stood out more or something. Anyway, it was bothering me it was white, so I'm glad I was able to figure out a way to make it work.

Alright, we're back around! And a bit of a different angle here, so you can see the poses a little bit more clearly.

Alright, a true top-down pic here. May I just say one more time how much I like this tree! The detail in A-Xu's guan is really nice too.

The bottoms-up pics are always tough here with the bases. Not a flattering picture, sorry A-Xu!

A close up of our noble shixiong with his little hand outstretched...

...and our weary shidi. What a great set, I love it! I'm so delighted by it, I can't even tell you.

Alright! come back tomorrow, for the much hinted at next set. And the last one, for a while - I have to wait for the remaining sets to be sent to me.

(Come back tomorrow, she says, as she still has some assembly on the last fig to do! I'll wake up bright and early tomorrow, and hopefully finish up).

Material: Plastic bricks

Fig Count: 506

Scene Count: 35

Rating: They're actually both reaching for their light

[link to the Master Post Index]

#word of honor #wenzhou #wen kexing #zhou zishu #word of honor merch #shan he ling #figthusiast

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dulltoned · 5 months

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currently brainrotting about the possible antagonists that we could get in Trolls 4 (if that does end up happening) and I need to get this shit out somehow

I’ve seen people talk about Crimp being the next antagonist, and imma be real; I don’t see it- like sure, that lil mop thing is smart, hell, even Velvet acknowledged that and ended up not trusting her as a result, but I highly doubt Crimp could be some kind of evil mastermind (also wondering how she didn’t get arrested as well since, legally speaking she could be considered a as an accomplice to the whole shit fest with Floyd?? make that make sense, but then again, law may work different in their world so what do I know)

some said something about Creek coming back, and let me just say I HATE plots like that-

Creek’s dead, end of story, and even if he is somehow still alive, he doesn’t deserve to fucking return (I hate Creek, alright- can’t stand the little shit)

now, I’ve seen someone speak about a new kind of Troll popping up and I gotta say that caught my eye a bit more; Phonk Trolls- I’d say it would be an interesting concept to play with-

I got a personally idea of mine since, throughout the movies, the subject of grey trolls in general is never truly talked about again- so far, canonically, Branch seems to be the only troll we know of that has turned grey and remained that way for a long period of time- but what if there were more, similar to him? trolls who had lost their colors and just- never gained them back

I find the idea of a whole tribe of grey trolls rather interesting, and it would be a fun concept to tweak and play around with- and how they could pose a threat to our beloved main cast- perhaps they want to rid the world of color, or they want to steal that color to have some sort of happiness back, unfortunately ripping all the others trolls of that same mirth- are they driven by anger, grief, vengeance, or a mix of all of these?

or perhaps the newest antagonist is another species entirely, or a bigger threat than anything they’ve experienced before-

anyways it’s midnight where I am and I need some sleep

-🪶

I don't really have any big hopes for the antagonists of the fourth film, were there to be one. I'd like to see some returning antagonists, to be fair, even if they've all been pretty safely written off and tucked away where they won't be a problem anymore.

I don't remember if the storyboards I saw were real or not but I honestly wouldn't mind if Creek was a returning villain. I'd honestly like to see him antagonize Branch a lot more, I enjoyed their bitter dynamic before the Snack Pack got taken in the first movie. While Chef is most certainly dead we saw Poppy save herself from a similar experience during Get Back Up Again so I don't think it would be entirely out of pocket to have Creek survive somehow.

I just don't know how the franchise could do that in a way that I wouldn't despise. I know that I absolutely loathed how Creek was written into The Beat Goes On and I would hate to have the main series ruined by some blunder like that.

I'd just like to see one of the Trolls movies expand a bit more on what we already know, like how World Tour really went into detail about the Trolls and their different cultures and subspecies. I don't want a whole new species like the Mount Rageons even though I adore them, I think it'd be fun to dig a little deeper into the world we already have and then continue to expand it later down the line maybe.

I like what I've seen a few people say here and there, though. I'd like to see a scenario where Branch is the one that needs help for once, instead of being the one to offer it and pull off the rescue. I love seeing how competent and aware he is but I'd like to see what would happen if the rest of the trolls didn't have Branch to rely on for once. He's always a really big piece of the solution so what would happen if they didn't have him to put things together?

Regardless, if/when a fourth film comes out I hope I love it just as much as the other three. That's all I can really ask for.

#| world tour |#| branch answers |#| branch rambles |#( 🪶 )

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spoodlebat · 8 months

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OC-tober day 3/4: Old OC/Redesign

This one took me a few days so I'm combining the two prompts ^^ It would have been the same oc regardless anyway so it makes sense to given the tasks. I very rarely draw mechs so I hope you'll excuse the identical style to Zerrinth's post; symmetry is just so much easier when it comes to designing and basic posing.

His name is Delta, and he's an OC who I've had for a very long time.

Extremely long ramblings, timelapse and original art under the cut

I'll frontload this with the character lore and timelapse; if anyone cares for my breakdown of the oc itself, that'll be the huge ramble at the bottom ^^

D-17, going these days by Delta, is an autonomous multi-function guard unit. Originally from a world shrouded in eternal night, he and his charge Amyss fled its destruction in their ship, the ArchWing, to the planet of Soniterra. Spending their time amongst my other ocs, they now live amongst its denizens in secrecy, studying the world of light and sound through void-borne awe and wonder.

Powered by a zynal core, Delta is mechanically minded and quiet most of the time; tweaks to his functionality by Amyss have given him something of a sassy streak, however, and he's not afraid to giving a gentle ribbing to (or occasionally completely devastate) a poor friend with sharp remarks every once in a while.

Able to rearrange panels and parts of his body, as well as altering the shape and location of the hardlight parts of his form, Delta is capable of minor shapeshifting. He can also very precisicly manipulate tools and objects, capable of working on engineering projects at microscopic levels without any form of magnification or complex set ups with ease. Combining these skills means he is a very capable engineer, and has even rebuilt a living body into a partial cyborg to save someone's life. Though the world he now lives on seems primitive and inefficient by his standards, he does not usually feel arrogant about it; the mechanics of its tech are so different and new to him that he is ever interested in studying it.

A highly capable combatant, D-17's original purpose was to protect the outpost he and Amyss lived within from creatures of void. Energy beams firing from his hands and sharp blades forming from his body kept him and his charges safe, but the planet's end signalled an end to his guarding duties.

Ok, rambling time ;w;

I don't know exactly when I made this guy, but I remember writing about him all the way back in primary school, in blue pen on lined paper that I kept in my little organiser tray. That would be about age 6 or 7, making this guy almost twenty years old in real time ;-;

This OC is old enough to drink and vote in the uk, good fuckin lord

His origins start even earlier, in fact; he's an amalgamation of a couple of simple characters I made as a small child, including one of those 'running along the side of the road' guys you'd imagine on long car trips. Timelines and memories are fuzzy after 2 decades, but I'd imagine those guys are from at least a year or so before I squished all those ideas under one single name. So a solid 19 years, and a potential 20-21 easily :') wow.

Delta is actually old enough that I hadn't done much drawing by this point in my life, and so I mostly wrote things instead. Those old papers are around here somewhere, but design-wise he's never been truly nailed down; just a basic mental image and the odd description or two. The one exception is an old pixel art piece I made of him in mspaint, back on the Family Computer (remember those? ^^). I was a huge fan of pokémon fusions at the time, and I'd spend ages mixing up their sprites to see what I could do. Eventually I moved onto making things from scratch (scratch spriting, what a fun term), and that lead to the one and only time I've ever drawn this guy. It took way too long, it's very clunky, and I no longer have the original file :c Lost long ago in the move between computer to laptop I imagine. Instead, I managed to find it in a gloriously 240p youtube upload set to a Linkin Park song ^^ ah child me, you never left.

All the way from 2010, here's the best surviving version I could find. And yes, the youtube bar at the bottom is in the shot; you want to fight me over it, go find and screenshot it yourself :)

It's weirdly posed, has literally only 1 shade of grey + shading for colour, the design makes very little sense, especially for the chest and torso, and he looks a lot more evil than I intended. Despite a few efforts that went nowhere later in life though, I just never managed to redraw or redesign him in a way I was happy with. So for a long time, this grey pointy spriteart has been all I ever saw of Delta. Figured he was long, long, LONG overdue an update, and so here we are :)

Though he might look very different now and have actual anatomy knowledge informing his structure now, who'd have thunk? I tried very hard to keep intact the core design features that 13 year old me added in. It's the same fella after all! Here's a quick list of basic ones, since most of them are subtle but intentional after all:

-Glass/screen face with digital expression; I think taking the top off frees him up to look cleaner, but underneath was always a smooth screen. This way he can see above himself too ^^ -'Bunny ears'; little antenna/paddles that originate from the endless runner character, who was originally something of a rabbit -Shoulder-mounted boosters. Pretty self explanatory. -Upper arm loops; this one was actually a coincidence! I guess 2010 me and 2023 me both thought the upper arm needed something ^^ -Elbow plates; these were like. A big thing. Originally able to shapeshift into blades and other tools, I had to keep them in. It wouldn't be delta without them. They're just less... accidentally lethal now ^^ old design was POINTY -Split shins; the original shins have a pair of plates on them that form a sort of 'cuff' above the foot. I honoured this by making the feet the same way, the ankle connecting between the two sides. -Spikes! His hips were feeling a little.. empty? So I gave him some electromagnetic spikey blade things he can use as tools, as well as some hardlight claw hands.

#spoodle draws #digital art #art #potatoposting #bweird oc tober #bweirdoctober #robot #redesign #oc #original character

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eliyips · 6 months

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Can i ask how u do lineart so well,, it looks so smooth,,

I've always been very big on keeping my lineart clean and smooth! :) I'm very inspired by comic and graphic novel illustration, so naturally, I try to take notes from that sort of aesthetic in a lot of my art.

The short answer is that I just have a lot of practice, and am very picky about how my lineart looks. So, I'll often spend a long time making sure it looks just how I'd like it, before moving on, even if the lines aren't necessarily going to be the focus of the final drawing.

The longer answer kinda depends on what lineart you're asking about! The style of my lineart tends to change to fit whatever mood I'm going for, so I have a lot of different line styles with varying levels of smooth-ness.

On the super-smooth end of the spectrum, we have these bubbly, cartoony lines! These are a pain to draw, to be honest. But they really contribute to giving that cute look :) For these, I used the Clip Studio Paint G-Pen, with some minor adjustments to the settings, mainly so that there's not too much line width variation. The uniform, thick lines are important for this look! :) Drawing in this style really just a lot of trial and error. Usually when doing lineart, I'll erase away at lines to get them to the right thickness, or even just clean up a sketch and call that lineart, rather than doing lines on a new layer. But, that's a lot harder to do when the line thickness has to stay consistent. So, I end up just drawing the same line 7 times over, un-doing my work and re-doing it until i'm satisfied. Again, it's a pain! I used to draw like this a lot more frequently, but I stopped because I found that other approaches are often a lot more satisfying and rewarding. This is still great, for that cutesy look, though.

Next, we have what I would affectionately call my ref sheet lines. As much as it's probably a bad idea, I have a habit of just kinda skipping the lining stage of art. I'll just take my sketch, and tidy it up until it's clean enough. But for a drawing where there's only going to be flat colors, that sort of roughness can look sloppy, In my opinion. So, particularly when doing ref sheets, or other art which I don't intend to render, I will actually go through the effort of fully sketching out my idea and lining on a separate layer. The result is a lot cleaner and more deliberate, and looks a lot nicer when colored! Especially if I take the time to color the lineart :) I also really like doing small details with thin lines, particularly body/facial hair, elastic cuffs on clothing, and the seams of clothes, too. I like drawing those little details a lot, and I think they shine the most in my cleaner line style :D

For this, and for most of my lineart, I use these brushes which you can find on the Clip Studio Asset Store:

I'll bounce back and fourth between these, and Kozmo's Scratchy Scribbler brush, which you can find on Ko-fi!

Additionally, I have a modified G-Pen with a pencil texture that I think I made myself? I don't remember making it, but I also don't know where it came from! So i guess I did, lol.

A little more messy than my ref-sheet lines, we have the line style which you probably see most often on my page. As mentioned before, I usually kinda skip the sketch step for these? I don't encourage that, it's a bad habit of mine. But I make it work! I feel like the best way to explain my process with this is to just offer you a timelapse of my lineart process:

I just kinda... go. and it works out! most of the time. lots of cleanup and tweaking, and as you can see with Bdubs and Etho here, sometimes I do actually just. do a sketch and then line over it. So maybe I have no idea what my own process even is, LOL.

Now, to completely abandon your original question here's how i don't do smooth lineart! :D In this style, for the most part, I ignore the cleanliness of my lines, only really erasing with the lasso fill tool, when lines get too cluttered to actually read. Usually I'll only go for this when I'm already planning on painting over the lines. Because sometimes an idea doesn't need or want clean lines, and sometimes I just want to paint some values or slap some colors together and call it a day. Love my clean lines, but scratchy, messy lines are fun too! :)

Not sure if any of this really explained how i do smooth lineart, but I sure did talk about lineart for a while. I hope you could find something interesting or insightful in here! :) thanks for the ask, and I hope you have a great day <3

#inbox #digital art #art process #timelapse #lineart #another ~1k words on my art process?#yippee!!!#askeliyips #ask

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octoagentmiles · 1 year

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Hi! I love your analysis posts! So, I have a question: What kind of music do you think the Octonauts (And any Octo agents you want to add) would listen to, and what are their favorite song?

merci beaucoup <33 I have very little actual musical "knowledge"; I just like specific songs that go beep bap boop a specific way, but I'll try my best here—and as for their favourite songs, I'll just name some songs that remind me of them, if that's okay 👍

Barnacles likes accordion of course, so he'd probably enjoy anything that incorporates it. I can see him liking most genres tbh, he's not super picky—but he definitely likes folk and classical, and he LOVES sea shanties—almost more than Kwazii 👀

Dear Fellow Traveler - Sea Wolf

Born For Greatness - Papa Roach

AND:

Leaving London

Lost

Ship In A Bottle

Abandon Ship* (*pretend it's Kwazii singing to him)

They're all from an album by Steffan Argus, and you need to listen to them in order because they tell a story, and the whole thing is so Him fr.

See also:

The Last Shanty - Derina Harvey Band

—for some Manitoba!Tweak vibes.

Dashi listens to nightcore. She also got Peso into it. Honestly I feel like the two of them are both into pretty much anything—Dashi has a preference for pop, and Peso definitely likes symphonies, ballads, and anything that's chill and lofi.

Dashi also listens to hard rock and heavy metal in her spare time, and it disorients the heck out of whoever witnesses it randomly come on in her shuffled playlists. However, the only type of music I can't see Peso liking, is really loud music; like rock or metal—so they're the exact same and polar opposites at the same time 😂

I ALSO always think of Dashi when I listen to Marina—no idea why lol—might be her accent 😅

I don't have many songs for either of em- but here's what I've got:

Peso:

Cold Cold Cold - Cage The Elephant

Anxiety Song - Human Petting Zoo

Dashi:

Right Hand Man - Something Rotten

Hermit The Frog - Marina. just vibes once again.

Inkling:

Dude exclusively listens to oldies, classics, and like,,, Beethoven probably, BUT! I feel like any one of the Octonauts could ask him to listen to anything and he would. He unironically enjoys Kwazii's music.

Octopus' Garden - The Beatles

Vegimals:

They all have ridiculously contrasting tastes; they all probably enjoy the same kind of music as their respective Octonaut counterparts—but aside from that, they mostly just make their own music so they can all be happy.

Get Back Up Again but SPECIFICALLY the version from Disney's Trolls. trust me on this.

(some) Agent songs under cut:

Calico Jack me beloved:

I headcanon that he wrote his own theme song, so he likes shanties for sure; but I feel like as the years went by and he grew as a person, his music and general interests toned down a lot—so now he's more into ballads, and very Lord Huron or Hozier-esque music.

(all the following songs are angsty but they also hit HARD ykwim?? aye 👀 /pos)

Never Love An Anchor - The Crane Wives

Farewell Wanderlust - The Amazing Devil

Problems - Mother Mother

Metaphor - The Crane Wives

Flight Of The Crows - Jhariah

(oh look a non-angsty song–)

That's Life - Frank Sinatra

Natquik my beloved²:

Barnacles 100% got his music taste from him, I cannot be told otherwise. That's all I have to say about him.

Constellations - The Oh Hellos

Snow - Ricky Montgomery

December - Ricky Montgomery

New Discovery - The Crane Wives

Runaway - Aurora

plus bonus:

Hand Me My Shovel, I'm Going In - Will Wood

Touch-Tone Telephone - Lemon Demon

—to satisfy my personal "I think Natquik deserves to go feral" needs.

Ranger Marsh my belov–:

Exclusively listens to folk and country, and actively refuses to branch out his horizons.

Cicada Days - Will Wood

Swarm Swamp Swim - Cosmo Sheldrake

Birdhouse In My Soul - They Might Be Giants

Tracker:

On one hand, I really like headcanoning that he likes to sing when he's alone—and is actually pretty good; but on the other hand... I think it'd be hilarious if he had unbelievably bland taste in terms of what he enjoys listening to 😂 He has no real preference, so he just lets whoever he's with control the radio. For their sake.

Hold It In - Jukebox The Ghost

I shall not/cannot explain why that song reminds me of him but it does so much-

and I don't have any more for him, RIP ✌️😔 I could probably find some easily if I looked, but I'm lazy ┐⁠(⁠‘⁠～⁠`⁠;⁠)⁠┌

Paani:

He has weird taste too; but unlike Tracker, he has the most alternative underground music taste you can imagine, and he WILL subject you to it. He eats bugs in a universe of talking bugs, and I think it'd be funny if all of his interests were on the same wavelength lmao. He's just a weirdo (affectionate).

Just like Tracker I probably could find more songs if I actually tried to look—but for now all I have is this:

Water Island - My Singing Monsters

I found it on tiktok and it's literally His Song™ ever fr.

#ask #octonauts #ps every song listed is in my playlist 👀👀👀#wink wink nudge nudge /j #i have so many more songs for each character it was kinda hard only picking a handful 😅😅#really exposing my music taste here ain't i #i will never let paani's bug thing go. they need to explain it one day 😭#until then i'm just gonna continue headcanoning him as a weirdo lmaoo xD #i feel like I've never said the word ''taste'' this many times before #well- ok actually i did make posts abt their favourite foods a while back-#but still hfdfhk it doesn't look like a word anymore 😂#anyways #golistentomyplaylistokbye- (/nf)#long post

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inkwell-and-dagger · 2 months

Note

I love your art style!! How did you gain it?

WAIT OMG 🥹🥹 THANK YOU SO MUCH ANON!!!!!!!!!

okay so! hmm

I've been doing mostly traditional art for a good portion of my life now, so to be honest I'm kind of new to digital art. back then I mostly just drew profiles and faces and wasn't good at anatomy (but to be honest I'm still bad at it- I use Poseit to help me ;D!!) and I hadn't really touched digital art until around. last year to the year before that I'd say? I'm not sure. my memory is horrible

as I said, I now use Poseit to help with structuring my art, and my previous art style just looked a bit. strange with it I'd say? lemme find the first digital art I posted

foster! this one was made using a posing template I found on pinterest, not Poseit. I wasn't all that good about making clothes look like clothes, so other than the little creases in the shirt their clothes look a bit strange. I'm really iffy about the eyes and the way I shaded them, and back then the way I drew scars is really different to how I do now. I'm all for the clean look it has at the end, but I prefer my new style ;3 also I remember I immediately went in with doing lineart instead of sketching out what I wanted to do first? on the plus side, though, as I said the finishing style is clean, the lines are consise and their expression is definitely foster-y, and I actually don't mind the shading!

as previously stated, that was my first try at digital art. now let's take a look at my most recent one, aka my pfp (actually, I'll use two recent ones)

Rayan (left) and Ruaridh (right)!!

let's start with the rayan one! as with foster's, I stuck to having clean lines, except I think I did vary the sizes of the lines? I'm not sure. I've only recently begun adding things like blood and blush to my art, so I don't think I've mastered it just yet. idk, does that count as rendering? I'm not sure

god, bloody noses. I love bloody noses. I had so much fun giving Rayan a bloody nose it's insane. also, you can tell that the lines on the scars are slimmer compared to the ones on foster, but I think they'd look better more like. idk, wiggly? uneven? scarry? I'm not exactly sure

and then Ru, omg Ru. this was my first try making a background, and I used stencils from ibis paint to do the trees n leaves n whatnot. this was more of a chance to experiment than anything; using a textured brush was a really nice change, and I got inspired by @/befuddled-calico-whump (sorry I'm a big lurker around their channel I really like their art) and the way they sometimes show the sketches beneath the actual lineart in their own pieces! it allowed me to be more messy and make it look more candid (?) in my style. I didn't really go for too much shading other than the lighting of the moon, since I still don't know what I'm doing with shading 😭😭

anyway! I guess the simple answer was a lot of years spent tweaking my style, and sort of just experimenting and having fun until I settle on something I'm comfortable with. I'm still new to certain aspects of drawing digitally, but I'm glad that people like my art :3

thank you for the ask!

#am i gonna show you my traditional sketches of foster when i was first figuring out my style? probably not 😭#those can be buried in my notebooks until im confident enough to show y'all lmao #whump ask #i hope i answered your question well anon! i tried my best #whump #whump asks

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natashacoco · 1 year

Note

Sorry to bother you again 😅😅😅

Can you do another headcanon for Lewis Tan x reader where the reader is an assassin or something along those lines and if you want, Lewis trying to protect the reader as a bodyguard???

I am so sorry that this took forever and I hope that you end up seeing this anon, for some reason this got lost in my inbox somehow for who knows how long and ofc tumblr notifications suck and I just saw this due to another notification i got recently. I tweaked it just a little bit to make things flow just a little more but otherwise, here you go bb

The game: cat and mouse.

The players: You and Lewis.

The objective: you were a trained assassin with a target close to somebody Lewis cared about and he could never know that the person he thought he was protecting needed it more than he thought he did when it came to you.

It started out simply enough, you were assigned a target from your underworld shadow organization. You never questioned why you were being sent or the reason why the picture of the person needed to be "dealt with", but that was just the way it went. Unbridled and unquestioning loyalty imbued in you for as long as you could remember

Your assignment was easy, watch and monitor a target for intel

Unless of course they had to be taken care of. If that was the case, make it look like an accident or a mugging gone too far, by any means necessary

Simple enough, right?

You were used to working in the shadows, stalking your targets and learning their habits and routines better than they did it themselves.

You "accidentally" bump into them one day and end up cloning their phone for easy access to their lives

You find that their routine is almost identical every week without fail, never once faltering or changing

Monday: leave the house at 8:20-8:25 to get to work by 9. Maybe a quick stop by their favorite coffee shop with that 10 minute window they allowed themselves.

Tuesday night: hit the gym

Wednesday: Try a new restaurant with friends

Thursday: stay late at the office so they can leave early on Friday

Friday: meetings in the morning followed by a night of takeout and nights spent at home.

You can't believe that you were sent on this mission, it's almost comical at home easy it'll be to take out your target

It's not until a break in their routine when things start to become a little more complicated.

You notice small changes in your targets schedule after a couple of weeks that don't bother or raise suspicions

it isn't until you start combing through their e-mails and notice the late night calls you listen in on.

That's when you realize why they've become your target: they've found some discrepancies within their company and they're planning on becoming a whistle blower

Your target ends up becoming more erratic at work, outbursts to people, constantly looking over his shoulder. You find yourself smiling and wondering if he can somehow feel your ever hovering presence.

His righteous paranoia comes to a head when he decides to hire a personal bodyguard from one of the best independent security companies in the city.

That's when you're introduced to Lewis Tan

Tall, handsome, tattoos littered all over his body and a professional martial artist

Your interests are piqued of course, not that he'd be able to stop you but that this assignment just got a lot more interesting

You decide to test the waters with how adequate Lewis is with protecting his client

You start off small, following them as they set up a new routine that's completely different from the one your target started with

You scope out the new surveillance camera and system that Lewis has installed

It's simple enough to bypass the system with your skill set, even looping the footage for later use

You decide to tease your target a little more and hack into his personal computer, leaving no hints or clues for him to find

Finally after weeks of observing and reporting to your superiors, you're given the go ahead to take out the target before they're moved to a secure safe house set up by Lewis's team

You expertly end up setting up a Trojan Horse malware that ends up destroying the evidence on the targets computers along with any and all copies made on that computer

thanks to your surveillance over the weeks you know that the original piece of evidence is currently sitting in a safety deposit box under a fake name at the city bank.

That'd be your first stop tomorrow morning before the bank opens and notices it missing by the time Lewis and his team arrive to retrieve it

Your chance comes when a storm hits the town and the power goes out (thanks to a little help of course). No lights, no phones, nothing works

you sneak into the house, completely under the cover of darkness and shadows

You know exactly where your target is

it seems like hours rather than minutes before you've sneaked up behind them

like your assignment you take out your target, making sure it looks like an "accident"

just as easily you sneak out of the house, once again returning to the shadows.

#Lewis tan #Lewis tan x reader #lewis tan x assassin! reader #lewis tan headcannon #this took for fucking ever #i hope you see this anon #shadow and bone #mortal kombat

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ghosts-and-blue-sweaters · 8 months

Note

*limps in with an achy back, crackling knees, and gnarled fingers*

It's been a hot minute since we talked. You've been throwing conversations at me and I've been dead head radio silent. My bad. So I'm here to throw it all in one place so maybe I don't forget one in the line up. Lol

It's very much apparent from what you say that Ghostbur is damaged. There's something not quite right about him. Something just tweaked to the side that makes him a little different and a little confused. But I can feel how much love and joy he has just from the way you talk about him. How much he aches and reaches for life and for happiness. I think he's a very kind little lad that is haunted by something bigger.

Yup! My darlings from Halo. 😍 John and Cortana my beloveds. Also Mark, whom it still physically pains me to talk about even literal years later. And Kevin my darling who no one knows about but damn it *slams table* I will make him known!! JD, Marcus, Kait, and Baird are my babies from Gears of War. And Ghost and Soap are from Call of Duty.

Your sister should get rats!!!! They're so much fun! They're very biddable, friendly, and smart as a whip. Mine knew so many little tricks and games and they'd run around and play while I did work around the house. My poor dog had to deal with them using her as a bed. Super duper fun little pets to own. They're like having an apartment sized cat with a dog-like temperament. I love them so much.

Hi Deathy!! This ask made me smile XD

Oh, no worries!

ONCE AGAIN—I LOVE THIS DESCRIPTION SO MUCH. JUST. AAAAAH!!! YES YES EXACTLY ALL THIS YES YES!!! YES!!!

Man, you’ve got a better grasp on his character than most in the fandom 😅 He’s a very misunderstood little guy :(

MARK!!! OOOOOH YES I REMEMBER MARK!!! I want to learn more about him; from what I’ve heard, he seems like the sort of character I’d like :)

Gears of War, that’s what I was thinking of!

GHOST AND SOAP! I LOVE THOSE NAMES SO MUCH!!!

Yesss, she definitely still wants them :D Unfortunately, we own a very mean cat who picks on anyone + everyone lol (including elderly cats, our dog, us, my younger cousins… Everyone) so rats aren’t exactly an option right now 😅 But when my sister moves out she absolutely wants them!!

YOURS SOUND SO CUTE AAAAAAAAH!!!

#Deathy tag #ask

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gittetj · 10 months

Text

To @novafirst1 who's been leaving so many funny and thoughtful tags on my old End of the World art (waving back at you - yes I see and appreciate you, thank you so much), I saw you were wondering about some things regarding the fic's development and whether my drawings still fit in or not, and I thought maybe I should officially clear that up or whatever, because I don't think I ever have?

So, some things to keep in mind about my drawings:

1) I almost always draw scenes while I'm drafting them, not after they're done, so often they diverge from what ends up in the fic. This is especially true of anything from chapter 21 and forward. The story takes a big turn around there and it's where I started fucking big things up in my old, old first draft. Sometimes I feel like deleting some of the art that has nothing to do with what actually happens in the fic anymore, but I also have a lifelong policy of never deleting anything, so…

2) My OC Ren was written out of the story a long time ago because she was introduced way too late in the story and her role could be redistributed between other characters, mainly Serizawa. I still love Ren, though. I've stored her away in a little corner of my mind, hoping some day she'll be of use in a different story.

3) Shimazaki was also written out of the story quite long ago. I honestly don't remember what his deal was that well because every time I change something in this fic, the old version is immediately purged from my mind so I don't confuse myself too much. Ehh, he kind of had the role Iida has now, except not really? Like, the end purpose of that role was similar, but his methods and motivations were wildly different (and more uninteresting) and it was executed in a way where it forced other characters into situations instead of letting them decide to go there on their own, taking too much of their agency away. It didn't work well, so I axed him. I don't miss him. Well, okay, I had one scene where he dumped Shou in the middle of a desert, I kinda miss that one, but apart from that, don't miss him.

4) I don't know if this is very apparent from just my art, but several of my OCs/might-as-well-be-OCs (like Shou's mom or Fukuda, Higashio, and Ootsuki) have been tweaked quite a bit along the way. For example, speaking of Iida, he started out as some random Claw henchman, and now he's one of the most central characters to the main plot line. Whoops? Satsune and Himiko's personalities drifted from what I originally expected from them, affecting their actions in the story. I've recently made some huge changes/additions to Higashio's scenes because I felt like you didn't get to know him well enough. I know I'll have to do the same for Ootsuki. The list goes on...

5) Bottom line: Everything is fluid! Sometimes I draw stuff and then change my mind with reckless abandon the next day. Nothing is real until it's on AO3

#never underestimate how nice and motivating your comments are #comments and tags always makes me really happy and mean a lot to me - like why share something if I don't hear what people think about it?#(I'm reminded I've neglected replying to AO3 comments again whoops)#also I think it's so funny that I've basically created an environment for myself where I could probably draw a blatant spoiler-#-and it'd be so hard to tell where it fit in or if it's even likely to happen that it ultimately wouldn't spoil anything #like I'm not gonna do that but I bet I could get away with it #I have a lifetime of experience being vague about longform story projects #the end of the world as you know it #my writing

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shylittleoctopus · 1 year

Note

Your pixel art is amazing!! Do u have any advice on how to start trying to make pixel art?

Oh man I don't even know where to start.

I guess for tl;dr lots of practice and aseprite

One of the biggest tips I can give someone just starting out: don't use PS or a comparable program

It would work, sure, and some people swear by it! But it's like trying to get rid of aphid infestation by using a fighter jet equipped with a flamethrower. Gets the job done but it's waaaaaay overkill, and you'll have to NEVER use certain features (like the paintbrush) and have to make a lot of adjustments and tweaks just to get started. It's not worth it.

Aseprite is what I've been using for years and it's pretty cheap (like $25 usd? I don't remember) but I've used other free programs like grafx2 and even the OG ms paint with success. Not the new paint with all the different brushes, has to be the old pixel based one. Graphics gale was really popular back in the day but now it's Aseprite I think. It seems like theres more options nowadays so whatever works for you.

There a bunch of pixel art tutorials out there, but I don't know if the ones I referenced while learning are even still online lol...

Pixelogic is a great little zine if you can afford the $9, but there's hundreds of free tutorials out there. Derek Yu is a big name in the pixel scene and he has some tutorials still online.

Also just browsing sites like pixeljoint really helped. I wouldn't advise posting there if you're just starting out (they're very much pixel art pros and critique is a big part of the culture. To even get stuff posted it goes through a peer review process), but look at some of your favorite pieces and try to analyze what they did. You can apply this to video games too, like old snes games and or even newer, more modern titles. Analyze the shit out of what they did and why.

Dithering and anti-aliasing are two popular tricks that can make a piece pop but they require a lot of practice. Manual anti-aliasing helps smooth out lines or shapes while dithering helps blend in gradients.

Go as small as you're comfortable, bigger sizes means more pixel pushing and thus more work. I usually pixel from 50 x 50 up to a max of 150 x 150 pixels. I size up everything when posting to tumblr, always use nearest neighbor when resizing and only resize in whole amounts! For example by 200% or 400%, never something like 47% or 65%.

Palettes are a big deal, the smaller the color palette the more street cred in a sense. It takes a lot of skill to make a small palette work, when you're starting out you can always use an another artist's ready made palette (aseprite comes with a bunch preloaded, including the nes palette).

That's all I can think of for now. This was a hyperfixation of mine a while back so uh. This got a little long.

#pixel art #long post #sorry for the long post lol

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sirfrogsworth · 3 years

Text

Home Theater, Party of One

For over 10 years I have slowly been building a tiny home theater in my bedroom. After saving and scrounging and getting a thing at a time, I now have a 5.1.2 Atmos system. (5 ear level speakers. 1 subwoofer. And 2 height speakers.)

That means I have a left and right speaker for music. A center speaker for dialogue. Two speakers behind me for surround effects. Two speakers in my ceiling for helicopters. (Sometimes lasers and gunfire and thunderstorms too. It's neato.) And a subwoofer—which supplies all the other speakers with bass frequencies.

It's not the best system ever. But I think it would impress everyone who isn't an audiophile with individual $1000+ speakers.

Or whoever was able to do this 19+ speaker configuration that Dolby has on their website. Keep in mind that in real life, there would be 4-6 subwoofers instead of just 1.

At this point, your room is just speakers. There is no room to actually walk around. The ceilng opens up and you are lowered onto the couch via a crane.

Home theater is a journey. And in my journey, I've been taking advice from home theater experts on all the best ways to configure my speakers. For the most part, that advice has been top notch. But even though I've been messing with this stuff for about a decade now, there always seems to be something new to learn—something to tweak.

And then I'm like... "Why didn't I do this years ago?"

I just realized a huge mistake I've been making. Probably the biggest error of all the numerous errors I've made in my various configurations over the years.

I wasn't selfish.

Usually, when giving their expert advice, these gurus will make suggestions for multi-seating experiences. They figure most people are going to be listening to their systems with family and friends.

They review leather recliners that hook together like at the cinema. They teach you how to build platforms to install a second row of seating. They say things like "wide sound stage" or "expansive sound stage." They recommend multiple subwoofers so that every seat has a bassy good time.

They weren't giving advice for basement loners like me who are in bed listening to their systems.

I've been setting up my speakers for the ghosts that haunt my bedroom. For my non-existent wife and kids. And when you do that, you have to make some compromises in quality. I don't want an expansive soundstage. I want... a skinny one. I want a directional sound stage where all the speakers are dialed in and laser-focused to where my head is.

The only reason I thought to change things was when the guy from Audiohaulics said you only need one subwoofer if you only have one listening position.

It was an audio epiphany.

It all started to come together in my mind. I remembered a review of my left/right/center speakers that said they sound better oriented vertically—especially if you have *multiple* listening positions.

So I put my little stormtroopers upright as suggested.

But later on, when I remembered him saying that, I thought, "Maybe that means they would sound better for a single position if they were horizontal."

I turned them on their sides. Instead of placing them as far left and right as I possibly could, I moved them as close together as my space would allow. Then I put them on stools just high enough so the tweeters were directly in line with my earballs.

My speakers sounded amazing before.

Now they sound... unbelievable.

Music is like a completely different experience.

I thought maybe having them closer together would make it harder to tell when sound is panning from left to right. But it is *more* apparent now. My theory... sound is very reflective. If you don't have speakers pointed directly, the sound might bounce off the walls or other objects before it enters your earholes. I think this adjustment is now shooting the bulk of the sound right at my head without any reflections off the walls or ceilings.

There is this concept called 2 channel listening. The idea is that most music is mixed in stereo, so you should probably just listen to it with a left and right speaker—even if you have a surround sound setup.

But that was always a little underwhelming. I used to put my receiver on this setting that shot the music out of all my speakers at once, even the ones behind me and in the ceiling. It increased the chances of all the sounds I wanted to hear getting to my earballs. It sounded thicker and more full than when I listened in just stereo.

But after I made these seemingly small adjustments, my 2 channel listening experience is much better than shooting sound at me from all directions. Before it was like I was trying to throw paint on the walls by just tossing it out of the bucket. And now it's like I am using a fine brush to paint a hyper-realistic mural.

I finally get why these speakers I spent years saving up for cost as much as they did. (Weirdly most in the home theater community would still consider them "budget" speakers.)

But the sound is... selfish.

If I move to any other part of the room... all of that magic is lost. But I haven't had a visitor to my room in, well, years. So I am going to selfish my system to the max. To hell with "multiple listening positions."

I fixed my front speakers. Now it was time to address my subwoofers.

I have never been able to get my bass perfect. People talk about how much they love bass. They spend thousands of dollars on giant speakers just to get better and better bass. Subwoofers are, by far, the most reviewed component on home theater channels. And while I agree that a subwoofer is the single greatest investment anyone can make if they love music... my bass never really stood out the way all of these bassheads described.

How could I adjust and tune them for "selfish mode"?

Forget other listeners. I want them to sound good for the tiny space where my head rests.

I actually have 2 subwoofers. I have one I bought over 8 years ago. It was all I could afford at the time. For the price, it's actually a great speaker. But since I upgraded all of my other speakers, it just felt... out of place. Like it couldn't keep up with the increased quality of my new front stage. So, I saved up for about a year and finally got a more suitable companion to my other speakers.

The new one is basically furniture. It is *gigantic.* (Though subwoofers can get much more gigantic-er.) And it is insanely powerful. Again, most of the home theater community would still call it a "budget" sub. But it took forever to sock away $20 here and $10 there.

Okay, I'm going to interrupt this for a little storytime.

I probably shouldn't tell this story. It might be in the realm of TMI. But it involves humorous pain and America's Funniest Home Videos lasted decades from that sort of thing, soooo....

My new sub has all kinds of crazy dials and switches on the back of it. I had no idea what they did. I figured the best way to find out was trial and error. I'd flip a switch, listen to a song. I'd turn a knob, listen to a song. But I am not able to stand up for very long. So I sat down on my sub after getting tired from configurating things. It is extremely dense and can easily handle my weight, so I figured it was fine.

I made my final adjustments and without thinking, hit the play button to bring on the tunes—while still sitting on the sub.

Some bassy music started playing and, well... it felt like a 4th grader did a soccer kick to my bean bags.

Fun fact: Massive subwoofers and testicles are not compatible.

I'm glad I wasn't planning on procreating because I might have vibrated my spermatozoomies into oblivion.

Henceforth I have nicknamed that subwoofer... The Ballbuster.

What was I talking about?

Two subwoofers!

Yes... every guru says two subs are better than one. Much like testicles.

And 4 subs are better than 2. Much like testicles.

Why?

Reason the first, if you have two subs you can lower the volume of each sub to get the equivalent volume of one sub by itself. The idea is the less effort the subwoofer uses to produce sound, the less it will distort. Turn the volume knob down and it will sound cleaner. It's also better for the health of your subs. With two, you can push things louder and deeper without endangering the speaker cone from going in and out too far.

Reason the second... multiple listening positions. Having 2 subs helps ensure that every seat has the same or similar sound. Something about "standing waves" and "nulls" and other things I haven't quite put the effort into understanding fully yet. But apparently, even moving one seat to the left or right can substantially change the sound of a single subwoofer.

There is that advice for people with friends again.

That's the wrong advice for my situation!

I thought it was more important to have two subs because everyone said it was. I never thought about *why* they said that. So I just put one in the front of the room and one in the back of the room, hoping I'd be covered from all directions.

The thing is, I was combining a cheaper subwoofer with a really nice one. The cheap one was kind of muddy and sloppy sounding. It couldn't play sharp, fast bass notes very well. It couldn't go as deep. It couldn't go as loud. And while my receiver has two outputs for subwoofers, its equalization software can only configure one subwoofer and clone that signal. You have to account for the distance your speakers are from your position. The receiver has to add a few microseconds of delay to the signal for the speakers that are closer so they aren't out of sync with the speakers that are farther away. But I don't have the option to set that delay for my cheaper sub. So it was playing just a tad out of sync with all my other speakers.

I was polluting my sound and adding that slop to my nice subwoofer that didn't have that issue. I noticed it when I was listening to a song with an acoustic bassline and I thought they just mixed it super bad. All the notes just kind of mushed together instead of being distinct.

But in that moment my brain cooperated for once and remembered the guru saying one sub is fine if you have one listening position. And I remembered that it is usually recommended to get identical subwoofers when doing multiples.

So, I did an experiment. I unplugged my old cheaper subwoofer. Magically the bassline sounded nice and tight. The professional musicians had not mixed it poorly.

I felt smart and dumb at the same time.

But I still had the issue that a single sub had to do all the work. Those super loud super deep notes were still on the edge of distorting because it was putting forth all the effort. And I do not have the patience to save up for an identical brother.

Then I remembered a video I saw of someone's home theater where they put their subwoofers directly behind their couch. They did this because they were in an apartment with neighbors. They mentioned that the closer they could put the subs to the listening position, the lower they could set the volume of the subs. And even though the subs sounded loud from their perspective, to their neighbors, the subs were turned way down. I believe this is called "near field" placement.

Subwoofers are cool because their sound is omnidirectional. Bass frequencies just go straight through everything. You can put them almost anywhere and they can sound good. They are a supplement to the directional sound and because of that, even if a sub is placed behind you, if the higher frequencies are coming from the front, your brain will think all of those bass sounds are coming from that direction.

I was placing my main subwoofer in the front of my room.

Why?

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Because that's where most people put them?

I guess common sense says you want the speaker pointed at you. Plus, it is probably more convenient and aesthetically pleasing in most rooms. But I wondered if I could do that near field thing and take advantage of the inverse square law to reduce the efforts of my subwoofer.

The inverse square law refers to radiating energy and its power in relation to distance. I learned about it when doing the photography thing. If you put light farther away, it gets much much dimmer. Same principle applies to sound energy.

So if you double the distance of a speaker from your position, the sound energy decreases by 75%.

So what if you *decrease* your distance from the speaker?

Eh? EHHH? See where I'm going with this?

If I move the subwoofer as close to my listening position as possible, then I could LOWER the power of the speaker, while achieving the SAME volume level as before.

I can make the speaker use substantially less effort.

I moved The Ballbuster right behind the headboard of my bed.

(Please don't judge my cable management. I'll get to it someday.)

It went from being 6 feet away (red square) to only 2.5 feet away. And I was able to turn the volume knob down 25%. (It's a very sensitive knob and a 25% turn is more than a 25% reduction in power output. Logarithmic maybe?)

It sounds soooooooo good.

I'm in bass heaven.

I GET IT NOW!

I'm finally a total bass douche.

By removing my old sub from the equation the slop is completely gone. I reduced the distortion by reducing the power output. It feels like I have oodles of headroom. I could turn the sub up way past my comfort level before it even breaks a sweat. And I can also feel the vibrations physically, which is fun.

And there are two bonus side effects of moving the sub closer.

My subs used to cause a very distracting rattle in the walls & ceiling if they hit a certain low frequency. It would really ruin the immersion of movies. I was taping my wall sconces and other things more securely to the wall to control this awful rattle... which looked really stupid. Even when I didn't have it cranked, if the sub played *that* frequency... just oodles of rattle.

But now... the rattle is gone!

In the past, my parents have been very understanding of my need for bass. They actually kind of like it. They play thunderstorm sounds to go to sleep at night. And it just sounds like more thunder... but from below. (Literally thunder from down under.)

That said, I think when I have it cranked it is probably a bit annoying. Especially during the day when they aren't thunderstorming themselves to sleep. But now when I go into the next room the subwoofer is substantially less audible. Which means it is probably not going to distract my folks upstairs.

I feel like I have a whole new setup. Like I upgraded to thousands of dollars worth of speakers or something. But I just turned a few speakers on their side and moved them closer.

I got selfish with my sound and it's awesome as heck.

#long post

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krethes · 2 years

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Oh I am very interested in nr 22, because you very much have your own writing style.

Buckle up, it's a bumpy road, lol!

My writing process is probably going to make some people pull their hair out or scream, but it works!

If I'm not working from a specific prompt for a fest, I almost always start with a line of dialogue. The dialogue usually comes to me like at really inconvenient parts of the day, so I have to write it down in my Jot app and hope I remember the vibe when I start to work with it. I really like starting fics or scenes with dialogue. It grabs me as a reader, and I think it helps set the tone in a piece. A real challenge would be for me to write a fic over 2k without any dialogue and in a "reliable narrator" voice.

So I'll build a bit from the dialogue and decide where I'm going with it. Lines, for instance, I thought about, "We're too old for morning sex," which ofc screamed "Remus" to me, so I knew who was saying it and I knew I wanted Sirius to react because he's Extra and it would be more entertaining. ;)

Unreliable narrators are where I live. I love it. Let me have misunderstandings and stream of consciousnesses and all that good stuff, keep the reader guessing. They don't get to know anything my character doesn't know! :D

Someone asked me if I could share my writing playlist and I was so embarrassed at myself because...I will listen to one song on loop for as long as it takes to write, even if it's not a "song fic". If I listen to different ones, I lose my focus and my ADHD brain loves to hyperfixate on something. 10-hour loops make brain go mmmm.

Here's a hair-pulling part: I don't pick a tense until about 75% of the way in. 😬 I naturally drift to present tense when I start writing, but sometimes I'll shift to past. I always figure it out and fix it before I publish, but it's sort of that chaotic disaster human energy i exist with lol.

Another potential scream: I almost never draft. I just...start writing. I'll have my dialogue, my POV, and an end goal (normally). And I'll just...write. I am fortunate to be a very fast typist and a very quick thinker, so I can keep up with my thoughts while I write. I'll just go and go and go until either a) I need to look up a word, b) I need to research or verify something, or c) I'm done. Sometimes I don't have the time to finish actually writing, and THEN I'll do little action points or more dialogue in chunks like:

//Remus goes to the market and picks up vegetables

//Sirius makes a joke about the vegetables, make it good krethes

//they end up having a food fight even though they're 50, we love to see

(yes, I talk to myself in the blurbs lol)

Once I get the content down, I'll reread. I tweak dialogue constantly to make it punchy and impactful while still sounding natural to the character. Banter is my favorite thing to write, and I want it to FEEL flirty and fun. I fix my tenses, usually have to change "thing" to "thin", "Remorse" to "Remus", and correct my spelling of courtesy because really...it's a stupid fucking word, and give it another read through. I try to read my work at least 3 times with 1 time out loud or mouthing silently to make sure I haven't missed anything.

I...almost never get a beta. 👀 I'm impatient! When my writing's done, I want to post it immediately! I've used a beta on Silver for Monsters mostly for "does this make sense to someone outside the Witcher fandom" and for fests that require one. I find that I frustrate betas who aren't used to my writing style. I abuse the ever loving shit out of a comma and the em dash, and I don't know the meaning of "run-on sentence". I've accepted this about myself, but it drives some betas up the wall. Whoops!

I tried to correct myself and write in shorter, grammatically sound sentences but...it felt stifling. I wasn't able to express the emotions of my character properly and everything felt so abrupt. Someone once called my Explicit fics "poetic smut" and I think it's one of my favorite comments about my writing style as a whole.

I feel like I could continue forever, and I'm happy to, but this is getting long! Feel free to ask me a specific question or six if you have them, I love talking about my writing. ❤️

Thank you!

#asks for krethes #how do i write #chaos demon #disaster bi #time to hyperfixate #nice anons

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