#which is bad. because i would like to draw images w layers

[orange-frog]

doodles from the past bit

#shabadabeebededabadie #ensemble stars #enstars #doodles #fuck those stupid brim hats from the new cards. they are so cool so i want to draw them but they are so hard to draw #<- guy whose been really into the mspaint pencil brush clearly #i need new brushes for fire alpaca anywayy~ i hate everything i have rn and it makes me not want to draw on it #which is bad. because i would like to draw images w layers #fgfh anyway

[princemick]

hi kyle, please explain your process of making graphics! <3

hi anon! I definetely will, I'll walk you though how I get to a graphic like this:

(warning, half of my process is just 'throw it at the wall, see what happens' so like, idk how easily explainable it is.)

first off, I get all my inspiration from pintrest, instagram graphics artist and random stuff I find. inspiration is everywhere and I always keep a notebook with me where I draw/write what I come up with.

all my photo's are from pinterest and google, I dont sell these, if you're going to please make sure the photo's you're using are free use.

all my fonts come from dafont.

the program I use is photoshop.

now, I'm going to break up my editing process into 7 parts.

inspo

images

editing

colouring

font

colour blocking

textures

hopefully it's clear enough

gather inspiration.

so I really like this and this edit I made before and they're pretty easy so I wanted to make a new one.

but normally if I wanna make an edit I scroll through my poster/edit inspo pintrest board which you can find here.

normally if I dont have such a clear way I want to go I'd make some sketches to see what works and how to get the idea out of my brain.

2. gather images.

I wanted to make a Danny one so its not to hard to find stuff as I have a specific search for this edit but I also have a growing archive of folders of drivers full of pictures ive found over time that I'd normally go through to find good stuff.

when you use google please remember to click on 'tools' and select 'size' and big otherwise you'll cry because of the bad quality

this is the picture I wanted to use for the danny edit.

I thought this would work well because it has depth and so will show the colour blocking well, it also has the flag and the shoe which is clearly recognizable.

3. trow it into photoshop baybee.

this is going to be hard to explain but I basically jsut fuck around. most of the time I kind of know what I want to do and the way I want to go but one of the first steps is always to raserize the layer.

I also make sure to copy the original picture for later so you have the same picture twice

I do this so i can be lazy and go to quick actions and remove the background because then, I get this.

without basically any work. (it's almost never perfect so after I let photoshop do it's work I fix up the parts that need it.)

this is what your layers should look like fter.

that lil black and white thingy is really useful and if you select that and go over it w the erase tool it doesnt permenantly change anything.

next thing I do is smart sharpen to spice it up, here is the sharpening settings I use.

a small problem with this picture is that it's to small for an A4 size (which is what I'm making it on) so I need to extend the background a little. which I do in the laziest way.

I select the most of the top of the picture I can and copy paste + extend it out. like this:

then, for this edit, I'm gonna add a black and white filter to the background so everything behind daniel is in black and white with an adjustment layer. I do this to keep the focus on our subject and remove any and all focus from the bg.

I also add a guassian blur to the bg to once again, keep the focus on daniel.

this is the before and after of that.

now, kinda boring right? yeaaah so now onto

4. colouring

first off CLIPPING MASK IS YOUR BESTIE!!!. if you right click on the adjustment layer and click on clipping mask it will ONLY grab the picture right below it, this way it wont affect everything else you've added to your edit.

anwyay. this is the fun part, and the only way I can explain it, is fuck around, see what you wanna do and what works.

I always add, levels, curves etc to just deepen the blacks and add some contrast. heres the before and after of that.

for this edit I kind of wanna focus on the contrast of blue and orange, kinda like the seb one but a lil different so what I'm gonna do is add hue/saturation and remove the yellow and blue from the picture.

you use this adjustment layer by grabbing the little hand and selecting the colour you want to change.

so I'm gonna play around and remove the blue and yellow from this picture. here's the before and after of that.

now I'm going to add selective colour, i wanna up to an extreme the reds in the suit. this is kinda hard as you'll obviously grab his skin with that too so I'm gonna use that black little mask on this too, it already exists when you add an adjustment layer

it's that little white box, if you select that and ue the erase tool you can basically remove that adjustment layer in places you want to, this is what it looks like on my layers and on the picture.

I want to upp the red even more then this so I'm gonna copy paste that layer two more times and THEN add a non erased selective colour and play around with the depth of the skintone until I'm happy with it.

now I'm almost happy with the colour, I want it to be a bit more blue so I'm gonna go to 'colour balance' and play around with that a little more.

this is the before and after of all that

then I'm done with the colouring on the picture itself. I'm also gonna put all my adjustment layers into a folder to make my layers less busy

I'm also going to add noise to both the BG and front picture. it just gives a bit more texture and grain that I like

5. typography!

now the stressful part lol.

I know what I'm gonna add so that makes it easy. the name of the race, place and year. this is hard to explain, I know where I'm gonna put everything because off the other edits so it's just about finding a good font.

for this I'm not gonna fuck around with shapes and text layers and adjustments etc. if you want me to explain that please ask away that's just a whole other 5k worded essay.

I know what kinda font I wanna use at first already these choices have to do with a few things which is basically one questions I ask myself:

is there a vibe that already exists around the race and/or win and how do I translate that into the font? (is it fancy, cool, magical, incredible, bold etc etc)

here's an example of how a font can change the vibe

so the vibe I want to go with for this edit is fancy smansy n stuff so I'm thinking of flowly maybe 1930s vibes this is the font I ended up with

I'm still gonna move the place around but the idea if there.

(I change and play around with my text a lot so, again, ask if you want me to go deeper into this)

6. colour blocking

now for this edit I'm going to add a box of colour, I do this if I want to add a bit of an oomph and contrast to it, I like what I have now but I want to add some contrast to make the colour and him pop even more.

this is petty easy I'm basically just going to add a colour box behind him, I'm gonna do blue as well, thats the opposite of red on the colour wheel AND its the other colour red bull is associated with, also colour theory and all that etc.

I'm also going to add gaussian blur and noise to add some texture and use and overlay. heres the diff in with and without that to show the use of it.

at this point I'm also going to move the text around (as you can see) to make it fit better with the added box

7. texture

the moment where it starts feeling like its finished.

for this edit I kinda want to add some photo texture and more grain. here are the textures I used:

I added these and put it on a screen overlay layer and added some adjustement layers to tweek the last few things.

you can find different textures on google, pinstrest and some awesome artists have texture packs you can pay for w just a few bucks. for these, again, if you're going to sell your work MAKE SURE ITS FREE FOR USE!!!

THATS it!

I add my watermark and maybe fix a few little things but thats all and then I'm done, I reccommend playing around and seeing what works for you.

enjoy and have fun <33

#I dont know how clear this is BUT this is how I work so askjdbajksda #kyle.answers #design.stuff

[little-cereal-draws]

Hi feel free to respond to this privately but Hi, i love your animated videos, especially the shadows ones! What program(s) do you use if you don’t mind me asking and do u have any tips? I would love to start doing animatics but idk how/where to start. Thanks in advance! ^^

Hello! I'm so glad that you enjoyed my videos! My software is not fancy at all and might be a bit of a letdown tbh lol

For drawing I used to use Paint tool sai (which i think is what a lot of ppl use) but it wasn't working right on my computer, it wouldn't let me save my images. I got it off of some Japanese website and it was $19 (USD). Now I use the app that came with my computer. I have a Windows computer. It's called Sketchbook (oOoOh, so fancy lol) and it is limited in terms of brushes and pen pressure but I like it. Very easy to figure out. I also have Krita which I think I had to pay for. I don't remember how much tho, I want to say $15 (USD)?? Maybe? It is much more complex and lets you do things like animate but I don't use it bc I'm too lazy to figure it out lol I know there's a lot of great tutorials online tho. I also know a lot of ppl use Procreate which is much better especially in terms of brushes but it's not compatible w my computer :( Procreate costs $10 (USD) I think.

As for editing, I use Shotcut. It's a free software that I downloaded from somewhere, I don't remember. It is definitely limited in terms of filters, camera angles, and what you can put in it but hey, it's free! The one thing I hate the most abt it is you can't pan. It drives me insane. But it has zoom, text, filters, etc. I used to use Filmora which is also free but is even more limited and I think it puts a watermark on your videos.

Now for tips!

Uhh, I guess the most obvious is practice. I started doing animatics four years ago and I can't watch any of my old ones now, they're so bad lol

Another thing is vary your shot type. If you have a couple ppl doing smth together, do close ups, medium shots, and wide shots. Try different camera angles. It's ok to do the same type of shot a couple times in a row but after a while it can get boring.

An extension of the last point, if a character does smth like knock a thing over or move it or whatever, show the object moving and then their reaction. Reaction shots are very important for character's emotions. Wide shots to establish a setting.

As an extension of that point, watch your favorite show/movie and watch how they film it, when they zoom in, how they frame the characters etc. I've spent so much time doing that lol (WWDITS might not be the best example bc it's a documentary but it should still work pretty well)

In terms of moving characters/making it smooth, layers are going to be ur best friend lol I end up with so many layers when I make a video. It's partially because I'm scared to delete layers in case I need them later but it's also helpful to see a character's last position. If they're on the left and need to move to the right, draw them on the left, copy the layer, and move the new layer a little bit using the original one as a reference point. Continue until they've made it. Same thing if they're moving their hand up or whatever. Use old layers as reference points to avoid jumpiness.

Because animating/drawing in general is hard and time consuming and I'm lazy I try to reuse shots/poses as much as I can. Again if you have a character going from left to right and then later in the video going right to left, save the left to right layers. You can just flip them to make it look like they're going right to left and now you don't have to draw it again! This can be tricky tho bc you don't want your video to get repetitive like I said before. So do it but do it sparingly lol

THUMBNAIL FIRST! This is very helpful. Just make a bunch of little boxes with stick figures mapping out what's going to happen in ur video. It doesn't have to look good at all, it's just so you don't forget what's going to happen/get lost. This is mine for the video of Laszlo and Nadja dancing:

I put notes on this one so I remember what the actions and camera angles are. Since I was copying an already choregraphed dance here, I did that in black and then put in more interesting camera angles in blue on a different layer so it wasn't two minutes of the same full body shot

And uh yeah I think that's it! Hopefully this is helpful!

#asks #animatics #advice #drawing #animating

[pensbridgertons]

Hi!

Can you please do a tutorial on how you made this gifset (https://www.tumblr.com/pensbridgertons/729348005153685504/swanfire-appreciation-week-2023-day-7-free?source=share)?

Your gifs are gorgeous!

hello!! thank u sm!! <3

so im just gonna explain my process for the two types of gifs in the set (all of this done with PS CS6) (also i'm bad explaining things so bear with me pls <3)

for the lyric gifs (which were inspired by this gifset):

i started by making up a template for they layout that ended up looking like this

i got the play bar/song title template from here, and then just used the same font to add the "playing from playlist" text (and then also for when i filled in the lyric text). i used the rectangle shape tool to draw a square the size i wanted for the album cover spot (just as a place marker for where the gif would go), and used a rounded rectangle shape tool make the lyrics box, and for the color fill i used a light grey to dark grey gradient. in terms of determining the look, i was very much going off of the set i was inspired by and trying to recreate that look.

for making the gif, i started with my base bg gif shot. i used a gradient map to make it a solid color, applied my other brightness/contrast/etc adjustments, and converted it to work in timeline (i started in frames bc thats what i normally work in), and then applied noise (monochromatic, 5%) and gaussian blur (radius 0.8). i then made a new layer that i colored to match the blue or green of the gif i was working on, and lowered the transparency until the gif looked a little more flat/solid colored but you could still see the gif thru it (ended up being 46% opacity). i then copied the template over to the doc on top of the gif. this is what my doc looks like so far:

(the lyrics bar is the rectangle on the left, music player is everything a part of the play bar/text on the right)

the album cover gif was next, and for that i just made a second gif (either just one shot or two blended together depending on the gif), cropped it into a square, and resized it to fit the square template i had made. i then copied that gif file to the main gif doc, and moved it over the spot my template marked off and then hid the square border. after that, all thats left is adding the lyrics on top of the rectangle and changing the music player text to match the song (in the ref image above i have already changed it). for the lyrics, i chose certain lines i wanted to highlight and changed their color to match the color of the rest of the gif. and thats it!

for the song list gifs:

i started by making three different gifs that i was going to transition between, making each one a different color (blue, green, or b/w). for the transition, i followed this tutorial (just gonna share that instead of explaining it myself, they do a much better job than i would <3).

then for the song list, i used the same rectangle i had made for the lyrics gif. in order to make it into a song list like a playlist queue, i used the line tool to draw lines across the rectangle (i made their color light grey to make them subtle), spaced them out to the distance i thought looked right for each song spot and then copied those lines along the rest of the rectangle, making sure they stayed evenly spaced. and because i was working in frames, its important to make sure that all the shapes have unify visibility and unify layer position turned on so they are present the whole gif as it plays. i then filled in the songs i wanted to list in the spaces between the lines, using the same font as before.

and then finally, to go along with the transition, i included a lighter grey rectangle to make it look like the song was being selected. for this i made a rectangle the size of one of the song slots, positioned the layer under the text, and made it a lighter grey so it looked like the song was highlighted. to make it change between songs, bc i was working in frames, i made three copies of the rectangle layer, one for each song, and made them all invisible. then, i selected the frames i wanted the first rectangle to be visible on and turned its visibility back on. i wanted it to look like the selection was what caused the transition bc it was switching to a new song, so i did some overlap with when the rectangle changes. basically, i have gif 1 2 and 3, and so for the highlighted song for gif 3, i selected the last three frames of gif 2 (bc it came before gif 3 in the loop) as well as all of the frames of gif 3 excluding the last four (leaving one frame blank, and then the last three being a part of the next one) and turned on the visibility for the rectangle, and then repeated this for the other two rectangles/gifs.

for the playlist cover gif, i just did a regular gif making/coloring process, added the text, and used a film grain gif overlay over the top (i dont have the video source anymore, but you should be able to find some just by searching film grain overlay).

and that should be it! hopefully this is helpful to you!! i know this is kind of wordy/rambly so if you want anything cleared up/explained better feel free to let me know <3

#teresa answers #asks #anonymous

[maxwell-grant]

Having asked your thoughts on designing Frankenstein's daemon, might I now ask your thoughts on bringing Count Dracula from the written word into illustration? (I'm definitely in favour of the 'Hairy Old Mountain Man of Horror pretending he's people' look from the original novel; one of the small tests too many Draculas fail to pass is an absolutely tragic lack of the Evil Beard and/or Wicked Moustache explicitly described by Mr Stoker).

Unlike with Frankenstein, where I think the design needs to be painstakingly thought out in order to achieve the best balance of the creature's traits for horror and tragedy alike, I think with Dracula you can actually just take an approach of "whatever works". Because as I mentioned before, I think much of the appeal and longevity of Dracula is how the character's both a layered villain as well as a shapeshifting narrative force that can be tailored to whatever you want to do with. Granted, there are bad or dissappointing Dracula designs, of course there are, but in regards to the leeway you get for reinterpretation, you get a lot more of it with Dracula than with other literary icons.

Like with Frankenstein, I'm gonna bring up how I'd tackle a less grim, more comedy-centric Dracula first, one that's less a force of horror and more of a charismatic villain, and I think to that end I definitely agree that people are sleeping a lot on the hairy old man barely-passing-off-as-humanoid of the original story. Despite very much loving these performers, I'm actually not a fan of takes that mold Dracula too closely to people who've portrayed him, like Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee, partially because I think it's a waste of an opportunity to create your own Dracula design. Since I can't draw (yet), I'll do what I usually do and make a board of images to try and convey some of my thoughts on one way I'd design Dracula.

(Pictured: Kiwi's design for Dracula, Hotel Transylvania concept art, Nandor, Castlevania Dracula, Charles Dance in Dracula Untold, Vladislav, a Transylvanian rug)

I used the images in my other Dracula post and I’ll post it here again because I absolutely adore @kiwibyrd's designs for Dracula and it's main heroes, in particular I love the way it strikes a good balance at making sure Dracula looks distinctly separate from the humans, but not too much that he couldn't conceivably operate in society as just a harmless old man. I also adore the mustache and bushy eyebrows and pointy ears and I think these three are wonderful features to keep on any Dracula design. I'm also very partial to the Hotel Transylvania concept art, even if it makes me incredibly depressed to look at all the great designs they had for Dracula that they threw in the trash because they somehow decided making him look like Adam Sandler was the idea to go with.

I deeply adore What We Do In The Shadows, both the movie and the show, and Jemaine Clement's Vladislav is one of my favorite (maybe even my actual favorite) on-screen Draculas. But I also enjoy Nandor just as much, and I think it's really great that as a character he's completely different from Vlad while also being ostensibly a take on Dracula, and in particular I bring up his Jersey look because "Dracula in common clothing" is a criminally underrated concept for a joke.

As a character, I'm very partial to comedy takes on Dracula that play him up as a decadent aristocratic supervillain, the kind that can get away with talking in third person. I also have this idea for a version of Dracula who dresses ostentatiously in finely-broidered Romanian or Transylvanian patterns, maybe even wearing a rug as a cape, claiming that he's carrying the legacy of his people on his back. And of course he's lying, he's not Vlad Tepes and he's not even Romanian, he is just a parasite pretending to have a history to be proud of, but good luck getting him to admit that. And finally, I'd like this version to be played by Charles Dance, and I consider it a tremendous crime against humanity that he has yet to play Dracula proper even despite being in a film with the character's name on the title.

So that's kinda how I would design a take on Dracula for something more comedic or more based around him as this guest character and personality on-set. Now, if we're talking a more serious version, I think the possibilities increase, and I won't be getting into all of them because I may prefer to keep them to myself, but I'll elaborate a few ideas.

For example, the edition of Dracula I personally own comes with these really scratchy, really creepy B&W illustrations related to the story, that I can't find scanned online so I'm uploading them here so you can look at. They don't necessarily depict the scenes but rather some of the story's moments, like Van Helsing staking Lucy, Renfield in a straightjacket, Dracula as a coachman, and they are more focused on conveying the horror of the concepts at play.

Dracula never looks the same way in any of the illustrations, in fact you kinda have to piece him out of them by trying to find teeth or capes or eyes or bat-features to see where he's hiding this time. In the first, it's the half-man half-bat, in the 2nd, he's the shrieking bat silhouette next to Renfield, and in the latter, he's the gaping jaws and eerily humanoid eyes in the wolf. The effect to me almost feels like if you were to look at a bunch of tv static and then see a humanoid shape form for a split second before everything went back to normal, something like you'd get from Slender Man or other modern creepypastas, and I’ve argued before that Dracula’s form of horror is a very modern one. 

In terms of illustrations of Dracula that keep up the original traits while still pulling off horror, I definitely have to hand it to the one at the left of the image above, drawn by regourso on Deviantart (account deleted at present). Going back to Castlevania’s many takes on Dracula, two in particular that stick out to me would be Castlevania: Judgment’s armored dress Dracula, who’s got this great twisted heart/rose motif going on in his outfit, and Dracula’s final form in SOTN where he just sits in his throne and his cape twists into all these monsters, particularly how it’s depicted by witnesstheabsurd’s depiction. 

I’m not particularly a fan of how Dracula’s “final form” in these games is usually just some big demon, and part of what I like about his final form in SOTN instead is that, while it’s not a particularly challenging final boss, I do find it interesting the idea of us never actually getting to see what Dracula’s true final form looks like, only an ever-shifting pitch-black torrent of teeth and claws and bloody veins pouring out because that’s ultimately what Dracula is and brings to the world.

On the flip-side of the rotten old monster, we have the charming seductor Dracula, and while I’m really not a fan of how various adaptations have convinced people that “the point” of Dracula is that he’s a seductive force and an allegory for Victorian xenophobia and I’m reeeally even less of a fan of adaptations that make Dracula some misunderstood tragic hero (and I think I’ve made rather violently clear my feelings on interpretations that play up a romance between him and Mina), that the seductive force part exists is impossible to deny, so conversely, while on one hand we can have Dracula as the gargantuan whirlwind of predatory violence, we can also go for Dracula as the tantalizing lover.

I’ve seen a lot of opinions proclaiming Frank Langella as the best Dracula because he was the best at actually being seductive while still playing Dracula, although I haven’t yet seen his performances. If I had to point at one picture I look at and do buy for a second the idea of Dracula as a romantic character, it would be that particular still of Raul Julia in the left of the above image. And it’s strange for me to think of Raul Julia as attractive because I mainly associate him with his brilliant comedy performance of M.Bison (I know it’s far from the highlight of his career but, look, I grew up with Street Fighter, I can’t help it) but those eyes are definitely looking pretty convincing to me, if nothing else. 

And I’ve included this still of Sebastian Stan in the right because, during a conversation between me, @krinsbez and @jcogginsa about who could be a good fit for Dracula, jcog suggested Sebastian Stan, partially because he’s Romanian, and I’ve learned recently that Stan was actually interested in playing the character in Blumhouse’s upcoming remake. And you’d think I’d hate this idea  considering how much I don’t care for tragic anti-hero Draculas, but who says that’s what he’d have to play? 

Do you have any idea how much actors, who are traditionally known for heroic or supporting roles, usually LOVE it when you give them a chance to cut loose as the main villain?

I’d want Sebastian Stan to put all of his charm, all of his talent, all of his good looks and etc, into playing the absolute most vicious, bloodthirsty and irredeemable Dracula put on screen. Someone who is exceedingly, eerily good at being a lovable protagonist, who’s all smiles and charming eyes and politeness mannerisms and maybe even a funny accent, and then it isn't as funny when he's flying through your window intent on kidnapping babies to feed to his brides, except he may take a moment or two to do so because he's feeling pretty hungry himself right now.

Now, admittedly this is kind of a lot to juggle in regards to a single character, which is why my answer for questions like these inevitably has to be “depends on what I’m going for”. That being said, if I was going to try and cast someone who I think could both look the part of Dracula, as well as respectively, play “cartoon aristocrat” Dracula, “mercurial embodiment of evil” Dracula, as well as realistically be an attractive, even seductive performer who can charm viewers even as the character descends into horrible villainy, and juggle these performances even?

I think I’d have to go with Mads Mikkelsen. Not specifically because of Hannibal (I actually haven’t watched it yet), although it’s definitely a factor, the thing that actually made me pick him specifically is, other than his looks, his voice, his reputation for playing sinister characters, the fact that he loves the role and wants to play it, or how many people are deeply in love with this man, or that people already joke that he looks like a vampire, was watching him in Another Round, and specifically that glorious final scene where he’s just dancing to his heart’s content and just, moving with such spring in his step and such joyful vitality even though he’s past his mid-fifties, and that was the moment where, in regards to how much you all love this man, I went

And now I am going to add “casting Mads Mikkelsen as a dancing Dracula” to The List of Reasons Why I Became a Filmmaker.

#replies tag #dracula #horror tag #bram stoker #charles dance #sebastian stan #mads mikkelsen #castlevania #raul julia #wwdits #what we do in the shadows #vladislav #nandor

[lynaiss]

My second contribution for the Autumn Season of @tgtw-project​​ featuring variations in Cobalt Soul formal clothing ✨

I wanted to portray formal clothing of various members who all have different positions in the Cobalt Soul. On the first image, they are from left to right: Demid Sunlash, Dairon, Yudala Fon and Tubo.

Notes about my process are under the cut.

So, here’s another post with a bit of insight into how I approach things. Hopefully it’s helpful or interesting!

When I chose this subject to draw it I knew I wanted to portray variations in formal clothing throughout Cobalt Soul (part of Critical Role Campaign 2 setting lore) hierarchy. My idea was to convey station through detail level and the variety and intensity of the color scheme. With just that I set out to draw a sketch.

(yes, it was a very bad idea to just go sketch it and it went very poorly. Some people can fly in blindly but that never works for me. Chaos reigns in vague directions and is my biggest nemesis.)

Halfway through drawing the figures I realized the outfits felt very same-y and lacked unique shapes. I also wasn’t pleased with how tense the poses looked like so I abandoned the sketch and went on to do a separate sketch for the outfit designs. Sometimes you just have to scrap things and start over with better preparation.

While making these I kept in mind my goals for each outfit and had one eye on the cut and detail references below, which I gathered just before sketching.

I knew I wanted to have some elements inspired by Eastern European traditional clothing so I gathered those images specifically, and wanted to have eye and triangle motifs in there since they are associated with Ioun (patron Goddess of Cobalt Soul). I also looked up the wiki for Cobalt Soul and determined which named characters from Critical Role Campaign 2 I’d like to portray, then added stock photos of models that had similar features that I wanted to paint.

Another thing I did while gathering references was to shoot my own with a few poses that I thought might work best. There were many broomsticks in there as stand ins for staves 😔

I don’t own any lighting equipment, and I wanted a clearer idea of how colors and light interact, so I mocked up a scene in Blender. I used DAZ for figures and the Sketchfab addon to quickly add stand in props made by other people, then very roughly blocked in the clothes. I am sure anyone who actually does 3D would recoil in horror at it.

This time I had all the things I needed and finally produced a good sketch. Some elements of it I traced off of the Blender render to save time; models were posed off of photos so risk of making things stiff was minimal and anything that was off I just corrected while drawing over because I have enough figure drawing experience to spot it.

I like to keep my blockin process very organized and very similar to how I approach it while working in different styles so I don’t get overwhelmed and lost. First I lay down flat local colors and then on top add shadow and light with Multiply and Hard Light layers.

With the initial blockin done, this is where A Lot of Rendering begins. While I’m at it I keep finding things that need more detail or specificity so I’m constantly looking up images to help me. Below you can see how my reference board looks after the entire process. This piece was very heavy on clothes so there are many references of fabrics and folds. I also wanted to push myself with painting skin so I gathered quite a few photos that gave me a clear idea of color shifts.

While rendering the outfits many times I noticed some elements were too much or needed a bit more detail, so I deviated from the original outfit sketches where necessary. None of it was a big change so the general feel of the outfits wasn’t disturbed, but that extra bit of accessories or stitches really helped the clothing feel more lived in.

(I redid that BG so many times because I couldn’t settle on a look for it...)

And then some 20 hours later we have this! That probably would’ve been half as much but I had things going on IRL which kept distracting me from work and then I struggled to focus while trying to get back to it.

I’m fairly happy with how this turned out and it really made me think more about how I use my brushwork to convey detail, along with making me pay more attention to how much detail I add. One thing I noticed that I should work on improving is my values because until the very end some of them were quite murky and made some important details and edges unclear.

Overall I probably spent around 25 hours working on this piece. I did all of my painting with Wacom Intuos graphics tablet, in Clip Studio Paint, with 3 custom brushes.

#tgtw #tgtw project #critical role #critical role fanart #Illustration #my art #lynart

[hongism]

patience - l. felix 18+

➻ pairing: felix x reader ➻ wc: 1.3k ➻ genre: pwp, smut ➻ rating: 18+, M ➻ warnings: explicit smut, oral sex: m receiving, bondage with a tie, tad spanking

Testing your luck with Felix right now would be a bad idea, especially with his patience running thin as it is, but you can never resist the desire to act up a little with him. And he’s letting you be on top this time, which only increases your desire to make him bend and break under your touch. You push your lips further down his cock, taking in as much as you can before pulling back off with a lewd popping noise. He groans as he watches your movements and brings a hair to wrap around your hair. He tugs your head back ever so slightly. Your eyes meet his, a playful gleam dancing through them, and you pull back down to his length despite the grip on your hair.

“Do you ever listen to me?” He asks, lifting a brow as you lick a long stripe up his cock. You smile around him and move to take him back between your lips, but Felix pulls you back with a sharp tug. “I asked you a question, princess.”

“Sorry, I wasn’t listening,” you tease. Your head tilts as you say the words, and his eyes flash with annoyance. You have to brace yourself on the mattress because Felix thrusts into your wet heat all of a sudden. You slam your palms on either side of his hips, nearly catching his trousers in your grip as you go. The sight in front of you is so worth the teasing though. Felix is still fully dressed, pants tugged down just enough to let his cock out, and the white dress shirt he wears clings to his body even more thanks to the layer of sweat on him. And that damn tie is just a little loose around his neck. You want to reach forward and tug hi–

Your train of thought is cut short by the disappearance of Felix’s touch. Your lack of attention must have been the final straw because he sits up on the bed. His hands go to his tie and yanks at the material. You choke on air as you watch him pull the tie loose.

“In front or behind?” He asks, pulling the collar of his shirt up when he yanks the tie free. You blink dumbly back at him with wide eyes and an open mouth.

“W-What?”

“Behind it is.” You don’t have any time to think before Felix is grabbing you by the hips. He switches your positions in a show of strength and places you on your back only to flip you over again. A gasp escapes you as you realize what exactly he’s doing. His hands cover your wrists and pull them together, then a soft and silky material wraps around them. You can’t see what he’s doing with your eyes, but the image that rises in your mind is more than enough to draw a high-pitched whine from your chest.

“Fe-elix, you said–”

You don’t get to finish your sentence thanks to a sharp slap against your bare ass. Felix closes his fingers around your bound wrists and tugs on them a little to make sure the bindings are secure. You moan at the contact, pressing the side of your face to the mattress so that you can see his motions out the corner of your eye. Annoyance still coats his features, but it only causes more arousal to pool in your gut.

“Were you saying something, baby girl? I wasn’t listening.” His tone is nothing short of mocking. The smirk playing at his lips should annoy you, and it nearly does if not for two of his fingers pressing into your core without warning. You hiss at the contact. He pulls your hips up with his free hand, sliding warm fingers over your bare skin, and the motions bring his fingers deeper in you. You moan into the sheets. His pace picks up when he hears your noises of arousal, pushing your hips onto his fingers while holding onto the tie around your wrists.

The sight of the action causes embarrassment to burn at your neck and cheeks just because it looks so filthy. Felix groans when you try to press yourself further into the mattress.

“Shy all of the sudden? You were so bold earlier.” He crooks his fingers in you, brushing over your g-spot, and the sensation has you seeing stars. “Trying to dominate me, was it?”

“Y-Yes, sir.”

“Act up a little?”

“…yes, sir.”

“And have you learned your lesson?” You can’t hold back the smile that pulls at the corners of your lips as you hear the question.

“No, sir,” you respond through gasps. Felix laughs and pulls his fingers out of your tight heat.

“Of course you haven’t. Which is why this happens every time, princess.” Felix guides his hard member to your folds, pressing them open with the tip.

You gnaw on your lower lip as he teases your hole but refuses to thrust in. You want to push your hips back and take him in you, but the grip he maintains on your bound wrists keeps you from doing so. He gives a sharp tug to the tie and pulls you off the bed a little. As he tugs, he thrusts his hips against your ass, burying his length in you. A cry of pleasure leaves you. Felix hesitates with his hips flush against your skin, and your walls pulsate around his member as you grow accustomed to the sudden stretch.

“Will you ever learn?” He asks, heaving a deep sigh. You twist to smile at him over your shoulder and wiggle your wrists a little in his makeshift bonds.

“Not if you fuck me like this every time.”

The teasing smirk that accompanies your words causes Felix to snap his hips against your ass. The angle has his cock pressing hard against your sweet spot with each thrust, and Felix is well aware of that. If not because of the moans that spill from your lips as he continues to fuck you, then because of the way your back arches a little more each time. You can’t focus with the way he’s fucking you, but something tells you that he intends for it to be that way so you can’t talk back to him any more than you already have.

“F-Fuck, I-I–”

“Are you close, baby? Is that it?” Felix asks, leaning over your body a little as he fucks into you. You manage a couple nods but that’s all because his next thrusts send you over the edge. You cum with a loud moan that swiftly turns into a whine, squeezing tight around Felix’s cock. He continues to fuck you through the orgasm, and each drag sends sparks of pleasure through you. His orgasm comes soon after. He stills his hips and remains in you as he cums, a shaky moan echoing alongside yours.

The two of you remain in that position for quite some time. You don’t know exactly how long you stay like that, but eventually, Felix pulls himself up and undoes the knots of his tie. Your arms fall uselessly by your side as he frees them, and he flips you onto your back again to press a myriad of kisses along your neck. You smile at the sudden gentleness of his touches, reaching up to comb your fingers through his hair while he kisses you.

“So… again?”

...

a/n: r i p the quality of my banner, you will be remembered and missed dearly ;-; this one is for YOU @a-tiny-8iny​ you are the Root Cause of this ((even tho it was TECHNICALLY me but i claim innocence))

#kpopuniversenet #kwritersworldnet #thekpopnetwork #writekpop #ultkpopnetwork #skz x reader #stray kids x reader #skz smut #stray kids smut #felix x reader #lee felix x reader #yongbok x reader #felix smut #yongbok smut #felix imagines #felix scenarios #felix drabbles #yongbok imagines #yongbok scenarios #yongbok drabbles

[thenamelessdoll]

For newbie digital artists such as myself, what advice would you give when they want to make characters using the coloring book sheets?

TIPS AND TRICKS WHEN WORKING WITH DIGITAL LINES

Want to make your colouring page see-through? Simply change the layer’s Mode. I would recommend Multiply in this case.

Do you want to colour the lines of a page that’s not transparent? Then you first need to mask and cut out the lines onto a new layer like THIS. Then all you need to do is lock the layer. Now when you draw your brush will only affect the already existing lines. 

Have you found a colouring page you like but the quality is bad or subpar? Throw it into Google image Search and see if you get any hits for the same image but better.

Don’t want your lines to be pixelated? Increase the size of your image/canvas. (My personal default settings below)

Got a page with quality loss due to image compression? Pump up the values for WHITE and add it to your line-art layer. In the .gif below I use the Adjustment Layer “Selective Colour”, change the settings, duplicate the layer (for double effect), and then Merged all layers into one.

 Keep forgetting to keep something in mind while editing? Make a check-list which you can use as you go along. I myself have things like “light source?”, “incomplete lines?” , and “save document” on the side. 

Don’t feel like you have to use just one colouring page. This is the perfect opportunity to practice editing since you only have to worry about b/w lines. 

Trying to recreate your OCs but want to avoid what I call “Belle’s sister” syndrome (when it’s super obvious what character you have used as a base)? Either find your inner Dr. Frankenstein and stitch together different features from several characters, or draw over the page with new lines while tweaking every single feature just enough to not be identical.

It’s okay, you are allowed to trace. By tracing you practice your muscle memory, teach yourself to mimc specific art styles, and refine your brush-stroke skills.  

If you play around with several pages in one, keep in mind anatomy and proportions! It’s easy to get “spoiled” when someone else has already done the line-art and silly anatomical mistakes can slip under the radar. My biggest mishaps are too big hands and heads, crocked eyes, and ears placed on weird positions on the head.

There is no right or wrong way to colour digital line-art, only methods we either like/dislike or did/didn’t about about. It took me months if not years to find the comfort zone I’m in today, and I hope that I will continue to thrive and improve. 

Wether you want to practice a specific skill, or you cant draw, or because you are bored, or because it’s calming, or because you simply like it;  don’t feel like you are being childish for enjoying colouring pages. Colouring on it’s own is a creative outlet, one that helped myself stay sane while suffering from clinical depression. There is no shame in finding joy in the simple things in life.

Have fun! (^-^)

INSPIRATION  +  COLOURING PAGES GIVE-AWAY

#digital manipulation #colouring page #colouring book #digital colouring #Photoshop #tutorial #editing #tips and tricks

[thesightstoshowyou]

Search and Rescue

Chapter 1

Featuring my Monster OC Kaith x F Reader

Warnings: Mentions of blood and minor character death

Here’s something a little different! Let me know what you think <3

~~

            It is your scent that first draws him; floral, a hint of cinnamon, and the acrid tang of adrenaline. Silently leaping from tree to tree, he follows his nose. He tracks you to a small clearing encircled by a ring of trees.

           The light is dying quickly, the sun having just set behind the mountain. Though, he’d smelled you long before now, your scent blown to him on the chilly breeze susurrating through oaks and pines. Pacing, unable to leave the safety of his cave until the sun had fully set, he thought he might go mad.

             Your boots crunch on crisp foliage as you slowly shuffle about, shining a flashlight onto something on the ground. Light illuminates violent red splashed across an outcropping of rock. He can smell it; coppery, tangy with fear. It is blood from the other human that came this way a day before.

            Insatiably curious, he tilts his head to the side and leans over a branch to get a closer look at you. He has seen no humans for decades and now two in the span of two days. He forgot how good they could smell.

             Your hair is pulled back away from your face and tied at the base of your neck. The slowly rising moon gives your smooth skin a lovely sheen. He bets it tastes just how it looks: Soft and supple. He leans a little closer, interested in the way your clothing clings to your hips.

             An icy breeze rustles the trees, knocking more yellow and red leaves from its branches. You shiver, hiking the blue outer layer further up around your neck. You turn and he is able to read the blocky white letters on the back of the garment: Search and Rescue. Ah, so you search for the male that wandered through this clearing yesterday. Alas, your search will end in vain. You will find no further trace of the young man.

             “Team Five to Team One, over. I found...what looks like blood, over.” You speak into a black square attached to your coat. Crackling static is the response. You frown. This is apparently not the reply you wanted.

             “Team Five to Team One, can you hear me? Over.” More crackling, then silence. He hears your heart rate pick up, the frantic sound sending a shiver down his spine. Unable to resist, he intentionally cracks the branch under his clawed foot.

             Your heart stutters as your head snaps in his direction. You search the trees, pretty eyes wide and anxious. Suppressing a devious chuckle, he ducks behind the tree trunk just as you shine your flashlight in his direction.

             When you bite your lip and turn your attention back to the blood, he silently moves two trees over. You give an uneasy glance over your shoulder before starting for the trees. The direction you walk is the same the young man took yesterday. It is unwise for you to continue on that path.

             What does this human speak? The writing on your clothing is in English. With only the slightest second of hesitation, he speaks, “I would not go that way, if I were you.” You whirl around, eyes wide in fear, heart hammering.

            Perhaps he should have let you enter the trees. However, he enjoys the way the moonlight illuminates your skin and how your heart sounds pounding against your chest. He is not ready for his fun to end.  

             “W-Who’s there?” you ask, voice cracking. You have a firm hold on the knife at your belt.

             “A…friend,” he replies simply. His voice, deep and scratchy as it is, must be quite something to hear coming from the dark. You visibly tremble. Poor thing.

             You hone in on the direction of his voice. He moves again, further to your left before the beam of the flashlight falls on the empty branches. Only a few leaves are displaced, fluttering to the ground to join their brethren. You take a small, tentative step toward his tree.

             “Are…are you Matthew?” you ask in a tremulous voice. He guesses this is the name of the missing human. It is a silly thing to ask, but you must be desperately trying to rationalize the situation. Your ears must be playing tricks on you. This can’t be real. These are the thoughts he can almost hear.

             “No,” he replies with a rasping chuckle. You quickly twist in the direction of his voice, gasping breath tearing from your throat. He can see the exact moment you realize you are not dealing with anything remotely human. He had moved a great distance without making the slightest sound. Your pupils expand, your pulse flutters like a trapped bird, and the scent to adrenaline fills the clearing. You do not use the flashlight, surely terrified of what you will find. Delicious.

             An anxious thought strikes him then. He shifts, his own nerves prickling on the back of his feathered neck. The scent that oozes from your pores is strong and will carry on the chilly breeze. It will attract something that will not be good for either of you.

             You step back on quivering legs. You ask, rather bravely, “W-What…what are you?” He hums quietly at your question.

             “I am…me.” He isn’t sure how to answer your question because he himself does not know. He doesn’t remember parents or family. He just is.

             “Are you t-the one that did this?” you question slowly, pointing to the congealed blood splattered across the ground. You hold your breath, awaiting his answer. He lets the silence drag and stifles another chortle when you tense, your knuckles white around the flashlight.

             “No,” he finally responds before moving around to the tree directly behind you. You release the breath, but remain just as tense.

             “Um…do you know who…or w-what did?” Just as you ask the question, he catches the scent he has been dreading. It moves quickly through the trees toward you, toward him. He glances down at you, so unsuspecting, so vulnerable.

             He could save you, possibly, but that would put him at risk. The creature flying through the trees is stronger and faster than he could ever hope to be, but he possesses the ability to completely mask his scent. Perhaps he can hide you as well?  

             Yet, why is he even considering it? He had watched the young man perish yesterday without so much as batting an eye. Why are you any different?

             His body makes the decision for him. As fast as lightening, he bolts from the tree, snatches you off your feet, and leaps back up into the branches. He claps a clawed hand across your mouth to quiet your terrified scream while wrapping you in giant, feathered wings. He must pin your writhing body to his own and threaten you with a long claw at your throat so you will still and be silent.  

             Shushing you, he peers into the clearing. As if on cue, in stalks a hulking creature. It walks on four feet equipped with fearsome claws. A long tail whips back and forth as it sniffs the ground with a toothy snout. Muscles ripple under brick colored skin as it paces through the foliage.

             You have gone ramrod straight in his arms. You must hear the beast prowling around on the ground below you. Your heart hammers so loud. He hopes the creature will not hear it.

             The creature sniffs at the blood coating the ground, its handiwork. Then it lifts its bulky head to sniff the air. Little by little, it edges closer to the tree.

              He tenses, every muscle pulled taut, prepared to flee if necessary. He will have to leave you behind if he wishes to survive, which would be too bad. He enjoys your sweet scent and how your skin radiates warmth.  

             With a huff, the creature turns away and sniffs the air. He smells it too; musky body odor and cigarette smoke. Perhaps it is from the other humans whom you were trying to contact earlier, Team One. There will be no way to warn them. It is regrettable, but inevitable.

             As quick as it had come, the beast disappears back through the trees. After a full minute, he finally relaxes and removes his hand from your mouth. You tremble in his arms.

             Gingerly, he sets you on the branch and scoots away, folding his wings along his back. Cocking his head to the side, he waits for you to speak. His image must be a great shock to your poor little nerves.

             “Y-Y-You saved m-me,” you stammer after several seconds of wide-eyed scrutiny. With a trembling hand, you reach out to ghost your fingers across the giant bird skull that is his head. Realizing he is tangible and not a figment of your imagination, you snatch your hand away as though it has been burned.  

             “What is your name, little human?” he asks, leaning forward minutely. He resists the urge to brush away the strand of hair that has caught on your parted lips, lest he startle you and send you toppling backwards out of the tree. Your whispered name is barely audible, fear and awe constricting your throat.

             “I am called Kaith.” Unable to resist, Kaith scoots forward a fraction. He is drawn to the warmth and alluring scent of your skin. You grip the branch tighter but do not try to move for fear you will fall.

             “Kaith,” you repeat and his feathers bristle pleasantly at the sound of his name in your mouth. Then, he is struck with sudden inspiration.

             “I fear the creature may return. We must flee the area,” he lies. He wants to move you somewhere he can touch you without risk of you tumbling to your death.

             “But, my team…” you object, turning to look through the trees. Kaith shakes his head.

             “No time.” He reaches out and pulls you to his chest once more. With a rustling of feathers, he extends of his enormous black wings and leaps from the branch, gracefully landing on another tree further into the forest. You wrap your arms around his neck, gasping and burying your face in the feathers of his shoulder. From this new position, he can feel your pounding heart beat against his chest, something that makes his own heart flutter with excitement.

             Surely, you will provide hours of entertainment.  

#exophilia #monster oc #monster #monster x reader #kaith oc #search and rescue fic #my writing #original writing #my oc #exophilia writing #terato writing #reader insert #horror #horror writing

[justimajin]

A Lone Wolf’s Howl ☾ Part 12

⇾ Pairing: Jungkook x Reader

⇾ Genre: ANGST, Action (with some dashes of Fluff here and there)  

↳ Werewolf AU

⇾ Words: 5.7k

⇾ Warnings: descriptions of violence and blood, a lot of angst for this chapter

⇾ Summary: Jungkook and you have been like two peas in a pod for the majority of your lives; whether it was going through the ups of downs of the horrid teenage change, to transitioning to the racing world of attempting to be adults. Simply put, you’ve been inseparable and glued to each other’s sides longer than you can remember. But one fateful day seems to completely change everything you had faith in and you begin to wonder if there was ever a time where you and your best friend even knew each other’s true colors.

⇾ A/N: There will be an epilogue posted next week so this isn’t the final chapter for the series but it does work as a finale. 

⇾  Moodboard Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11(M) Part 12 Epilogue

The black shirt rolls down, rough fabric enveloping your head until it drops down and drapes your torso. You reach out for a pair of black leather gloves, threading your fingers through the holes until they firmly set onto your hands.

Your fingers work around to carefully lace them against your wrist tightly as your eyes drift up, gazing to see the dreary ash clouds coming together. Planting your clothed hand against the window, your mind can only go back to the point in time when the sky was flashing with angry bursts of orange. You had stood back marvelling them one the day they had arrived, until you saw the collection of exhausted, broken faces emerging desperately out of their clutches.

It was on that day you had moved to grasp onto your sword, declaring with firm words that you would help protect them just like they had protected you. It was on that day when a series of tangled feelings had been launched deep within you, invoking a multitude of unforeseen questions and shedding light on the darkest spots that were never visible to you.

Like a wavering seesaw, you were abruptly pulled into two different directions, but you would have never guessed that you would be looking up into those same clouds one day, hoping to rid them of orange entirely.

Arms suddenly wrap around you, causing your instincts to instantly be on guard when you sharply jolt, only to calming down when those arms are familiar, his scent not drawing out spikes of fear from you.

“Are you okay?” He quietly whispers and you hum, fingertips still tracing over the glass.

“I was just thinking back to the day I fought with everyone.” You turn around, looking into his sleepy concerned eyes, “The day I almost lost you.”

The thought sends an unsettling feeling to spindle in your stomach and Jungkook adorns a soft smile, holding warmth in his eyes.

He lowers himself to your ear, whispering in a playful tone, “I think you out of all people should know that I’m much stronger then I look.”

He lets out a laugh when he catches sight of your expression, scoffing at him until he pulls you closer, letting you bury your face against his broad chest.

“Relax a little, please?” He pleads, “I could feel you tense up and I was legitimately scared for a second that sneaking up on you was a bad idea.”

“Why?” You softly smile, mumbling against him, “Because I have the ability to take you down and everyone else in this house?”

He abruptly separates from you, a horrified look spreading across him, “Okay now I’m actually scared.”

You lightly laugh at that and he joins you, eyes crinkling when you’re grateful that even for the briefest of moments, he’s managed to ease some of impending pressure off your chest. Gasping onto your hands, you let him lead you out of the room, holding his hand firmer and firmer with every passing second.

***

Upon entering, you see him pointing his fingers around, eyes scanning all over to the wolves currently huddled around him as they listen intently. He steps back for a moment when Yoongi begins to talk, eyes flickering over to you and Jungkook.

“All set?” Namjoon questions, seeing you dressed in the familiar clothes. When you nod, he gestures over to the remaining wolves, “We’ve gone through the plan with them as well, you two will need to stay prepared.”

With a hum, you glance over to see Jungkook hurriedly advancing towards his members, quickly making eye contact and mumbling a handful of words until they all draw closer, grasping him into a sincere group hug.

He lingers for a moment, eyes still latched onto them until he shakes his head, forcing his vision elsewhere. Walking over to stand by your side, you can easily see the small hints of distraught still swirling in his eyes, however when he faces you, there’s only remnants of determination leftover.

Light flashes through your hands, your golden sword emerging out as you pull it back onto your hip. Sending Namjoon and the rest of the members a quick farewell look, Jungkook reaches out to grasp your hand as he drags you away.

He takes you to the far end of the pack-house, a narrow dark hallway that leads to a direct entrance to the large field. Your eyes remain glued to his back, scrunched eyes watching him as you follow his steps.

“You okay?” You softly ask, knowing his keen ears will pick up on it.

He tilts his head to the side, sending you a strained yet assured nod until you reach the door.

A chilly breeze immediately envelops around you when you head out, the icy coolness sending shivers through your entire body. Looking up, the clouds are a dark grey, messily tangling in the sky as the breeze picks up by the minute.

Jungkook stops for a moment, staring off into the distance until his eyes come onto you when he sees you quickly adjusting your gloves. The serious gaze he directs at you vanishes for a second, lighting up when there’s an amused smile on his lips.

“You know, you kind of look like one of those anime fighter girls.” You quirk an eyebrow at that and he lightly chuckles, pointing to the piece of steel attached to your side, “The glowing sword doesn’t help either.”

With a huff, you get up and dust yourself off with a playful smile, “Well, the glowing sword is going to come more into use today than it ever has.”

He smiles, leaning down on his knees as gold begins to fill his eyes, “Ready?”

You nod, watching the caramel brown fur encase his arms and shoulders within a flash, sharp canines protruding from his mouth as small ears emerge from the base of his head.

Jungkook’s wolf glances up at you when you move to situate yourself on his back, arms tightly looping around his neck. Once you’re secure, his wolf makes a soft grunt before it trudges at an alarming speed across the field, the distance between you and Crimson only decreasing with every minute that ticks by.

***

“Y/N?”

A set of bright wet orbs glance up, a wave of confusion overtaking them when you’re suddenly being lifted up, eyes similar to your own tracing over your features. There’s a layer of depth hidden in her eyes, swirling with a mixture of kindness and concern that has more water seeping out of your eyes.

She places a gentle hand on your delicate hair, smoothing it out with a whisper, “Why are you crying?”

The words that escape you are only broken and cracked, words that stutter out when your body harshly shakes.

“I-I miss t-them.” You bury your face into your knees, more tears overflowing, “I-I want to s-see them.”

You hastily look up for a split moment, trying to see anything – a ray of hope, a new solace, anything that tells you what you were feeling was a horrible lie.

Hollow silver eyes stare back at you, appearing both torn and disappointed at the same time.

You’re burying yourself again, refusing to come out of the room even when asked and wanting to desperately go home.

A black leather-bound book inches towards you, spiralling with intricate sliver designs on top of its crumbled brown crumpled pages.

“W-What is this?” You question, seeing two hands nudge it closer to you with a warm smile.

“It’s a book for slayers.” She explains, “A book full of magic.”

“Magic?” You ask, tilting your head when you simply stare at it. She nods, placing it down next to you before she pats your head again.

“If you read it for me, I can teach you how to fight those awful people that took your parents away from you.”

Your small eyes widen, enlarging as if she had just offered you a piece of candy. “Y-You can teach me that?”

She lightly laughs, “That and so much more Y/N.”

Her old hand reaches out for you and you hastily grab onto it, entering a promising world with a goal that would astray your path forever.

You blink your blurry eyes, slowly fluttering them open as you rub against your lids with your hands. A low yawn escapes your lips, glancing down to see you were still on Jungkook’s back as his wolf paces against the stormy wind, practically flying at his immense speed.

Taking a glimpse at your surroundings, it seems you and Jungkook had travelled a great distance before you had ultimately dozed off, drawing closer to the base then you had expected.

A deep sigh leaves you, leaning down to press your cheek against the wolf’s warm fur and tightly shutting your eyes against the sharp wind. The image of a book swirls in your mind, causing your tired eyes to open up again when the memory remains as fresh as waking up this morning.

You wonder why it decided to emerge after so long, why you could feel your stomach lurching and heart aching now even though at the time all you could ever imagine was learning how to fight for what you had lost. It was your decision, set in stone when you began training for something you truly believed in for so many years.

But it’s a decision you didn’t know would lead to this.

A decision in which you will have to face her.

You grab onto his fur tighter and Jungkook’s wolf lets out a small howl, like he was sensing your distress already.

You smile, placing a hand against him, “Keep going Jungkook, I’m just tired.”

His wolf grunts in response and you plant your head against him again, attempting to get any more remains of sleep before you reach your ultimate destination. However, when you finally close your eyes shut and begin to feel yourself drifting off, Jungkook’s wolf lets out a sharp growl that awakens your ears instantly.

There’s a crease in between your brows when you lift yourself, peering into his field of vision only to see a collection of slayers breezing by, all armed with swords.

Your breath hitches, grabbing your sword from your side and lighting it up with silver instantly. Swinging it around you with one hand, you keep the other on the wolf beneath you when it comes into contact with other slayers as you attempt you clear up your pathway.

A handful of them get knocked down thanks to your instant reaction, but then you see them moving in closer to target Jungkook and it only causes the grip on your sword to tighten even more. Jungkook on the other hand, is speeding up drastically so he can get the two of you all the way Crimson safely in one piece.

A loud yelp leaves you when you meet another sword harshly, knocking you down from Jungkook’s back and causing you to spiral down until you hit the base of a tree. You wince when it slams against your shoulder, letting out a pained cry when you reach out to press your hand against it.

You can hear a distance howl from afar, growing by the second until you sense sharp canines penetrating deep into your jacket and tugging you along the ground. You’re suddenly sent flying back, rolling over to smoother ground into a room that is filled with a collection of swords and clothing.

Heavy gasps are coming from underneath you; your eyes instantly sparking when you raise yourself to see a pair of golden eyes tightly clutching onto your form.

“Jungkook!” You cry out, eyes trailing over his now human form when he weakly opens his eyes. You notice a blotch of blood pooling around his side, dangerously close to the injury he had sustained before.

You instantly scatter off him, watching him slowly rise with scrunched up eyes, before they move onto his injury.

He sighs in relief, turning to you as he catches his breath, “I’m okay, just grazed by a sword.”

You nod, eyes shifting to look behind him to view the large expanse of swords in the dark room. It only clicks in after a second that you’re in Crimson and the realization itself causes a string of twisted emotions to run through your veins.

“We need to start heading out,” Jungkook hurriedly says, grasping onto your hands and pulling you along with him, “If we follow the same path, it’ll lead us directly to–“

A roaring howl pierces through the air, sending a jolt through you when you view the hidden opening you and Jungkook entered through. You glance back at Jungkook, who immediately stiffens right beside you until his trained eyes walk closer to it.

It’s soon followed by up another rapturous howl, this time sounding louder and more strained. “What is it Jungkook?”

“It’s too much.” He whispers, taking an instant step back, “The numbers, there’s more slayers and rogues out there then we had expected.”

He abruptly turns to you; golden eyes sinking deeper into the dreadful realization when they falter, words being caught up in his throat.

You take a step forward, recognizing exactly what was dwelling inside him when you reach out for his hand and grasp it tightly within your own.

“Go.” His eyes widen, staring at you in alarm when he wonders if he heard you correctly.

“But– “

“Go Jungkook.” You stare into his eyes, an understanding smile painted on your lips when you give his hand a comforting squeeze, “Your family needs you.”

There’s a range of emotions spiralling in his golden eyes, from overflowing levels of relief to a sense of pure gratefulness. You expect him to turn and leave instantly once those words come out from you, but instead he tugs you towards him and interlaces his arms around you.

He crashes his lips against yours, moving them feverishly until you part with a harsh gasp. His fiery gaze sends a spike of determination within you, especially when he whispers in your ear.

“I’ll come back as fast as I can, if anything happens, I’ll find you.”

You nod, blinking away the water in your eyes when he lets go of your hand, slowly backing away with every step as his eyes never leave you once. He tumbles out of the room, morphing instantly and you have to snatch your eyes away from the sight, swiping your sleeve against them as you walk into the deepest depths of the base.

***

A symphony of water drips down from the ceiling, splashing against the silent ground. It echoes with the sound of your heartbeat, pounding pulse by pulse against your chest as your feet slowly shuffle across the eerie hallway.

It’s the same place you and Jungkook had stumbled upon during your first visit to the base together, the same oak walls, swirling with thick air along with the small lamps lit against them. However this time you are alone in the dark, looming passageway and the thought itself is unsetting, your throat drying when memories resurface of the horrors you had discovered here.

You slowly pace yourself though, threading your way into the hallway stealthily as you keep your sword tightly clutched in your hand. Despite the shallow breathes escaping you by the minute and the frantic shaking your limbs, your sliver eyes continue to roam around for any signs of movement until they land upon the familiar room.

Recognizing the faint lines on the oak door has become second nature to you, so with another deep quivering breath, you grip your sword and will yourself to push against the door.

You don’t realize you were holding your breath until you finally exhale, eyes gluing themselves to the hooded figure standing by the window in a sharp instant.

With arms crossed behind their back, the figure stands on the other side of the room from you, orbs watching the mayhem occurring outside. It’s a view full of flashes of fired orange, drenching cries of misery and howls of pain echoing through the thin glass.

A million thoughts running through your mind from the sight alone, but you hastily push them all away when you know there’s one thing you came to do here and nothing would be over until you finished it.

Before you even have the chance to voice out what you were going to do, a deep voice resonates through the room, surprising you with a layer of softness it retains.

“You came sooner than I had expected.”

The pulled curtain falls down from her hands and when she turns around, reaching up to push her hood back to reveal her face. It occurs to you in that single moment how long it’s been, how long it’s been since you’ve seen those dark silver eyes, the tired complexion and the slender old hands – all deeply etched into memory prior to leaving entirely.

“How long are you going to stand there?” She seats herself down on a wooden stool, one distinctively similar to one she used to read stories of the past to you when you just a mere child, “I suppose we can settle what’s on your mind, without bringing that into question.”

She gestures to your gleaming sword, encouraging you to sit down in front of her as she takes it as something brewing inside your mind.

A part of you is lurching on the inside, itching to raise your sword and bring down the accumulation for fiery building up inside you bit by bit. However, just like an obedient, trained child’s strings are pulled, yours are soon maneuvering over to doing just as she wants.

You gulp when you sit down, a question already sitting on the tip of your tongue that begs for an answer.

“Why is the Crimson Clan housing rogue werewolves?”

“Ah.” Her eyebrow raises, like she had anticipated that would be on your mind. A deep sigh escapes her, clasping her hands together firmly, “You know what the history is Y/N. Slayers were close to being gone completely and if they needed to come back, then some assistance was certainly needed.”

“By wolves?” You sharply question, gripping onto the base of your sword harshly, “You took assistance from creatures you’ve always sought out to destroy?” 

She crosses her legs, eyes narrowing, “Those creatures are not werewolves Y/N. They are merely puppets, to be used and discarded of until we get our hands on what we desire.”

You blink, perplexed she would think in such a way, “Now that you’ve asked a question, I would like some answers as well.”

She leans forward, eyes turning stern that instantly reminded you of times she would scold you for not properly handling your sword, “Why was I informed that not only were you missing during your first hunt, but that you were staying in close proximity with a pack of wolves?”

Her voice is sweet as honey, but the underlying demanding tone doesn’t go unnoticed by you when you know that she knows, yet wants to hear the words tumble out of your lips as she draws all the spotlight onto you.

The voice is so quiet and faint, barely passing through your lips.

“Because my best friend is a werewolf.”

Her silver eyes spark with your confirmation, brows furrowing intensely, “It’s him, isn’t it? The boy with the brown wolf.”

Your eyes twitch for a moment, anger brewing in your eyes, “The same boy you had stabbed.”

Her eyes falter at that, glancing at you in sympathy, “Y/N, he’s a wolf.”

“He was a friend.”

“A friend?” She scoffs, growing frustrated by the second, “A slayer’s duty is always to exterminate werewolves Y/N, you and I both know that. Besides,” She lowers her gaze, “He took something of mine away and I simply needed to retrieve it back.”

“Why if that something didn’t want to come back?”

Her eyes narrow, flickering in confusion for a moment until they sink in deeper, “Has that monster gotten inside your mind Y/N?

You grit your teeth, your sliver eyes blazing, “Don’t speak of him in such a way.”

“He has gotten inside in your mind, hasn't he?” She rises, fuming when she draws closer and tugs your arm up instantly, “He’s trapped you in his clutches and turned you against your own people!”

She freezes, eyes latching onto the faint mark residing at the base of your neck when your shirt is tugged away. You carefully watch as her expression immediately contorts, sourly twisting up when she lets go as if the very touch burns her, a low hiss escaping her lips.

“Y-You’ve mated with him.” She whispers, backing away from you when she stares at you in horror. Her eyes enlarge even more when you fix your shirt, not reflecting the same remorse dwelling in her eyes in the slightest.

The empty look in your eyes aggravates her even further and suddenly there’s a flash of light forming from her hands, a sword immediately protruding out.

“Since it’s clear you’ve made up your mind already, I won’t hesitate either.” She lunges for you, sword blazing as it clangs against your own and you push against the sword with a great force, pushing her back alongside it.

Skidding against the floor, you tighten your hold when the orange glow her sword is radiating with grows brighter, meeting against your silver glow with such intense strength that you grit your teeth in retaliation. You meet each and every one of her hits with a swift hit of your own, effortlessly spinning on your feet with a flash.

You heave, gasping when a line of sweat trails down your throat and her eyes latch onto the fated mark on your shoulder again, teeth clenching.

“Don’t you realize already Y/N?” Her voice changes, causing you to look up when there’s desperation leaking into her eyes, “It’s a matter of minutes now.”

She raises her sword to the window, drawing your attention to it, “Those werewolves don’t stand a chance against our slayers and the rogues. They’ll be finished,” The next words sting you the most.

“Including that wretched wolf I allowed you to get close to.”

“You didn’t allow anything.” You hiss, rising from your feet, “I chose to have a normal life, I chose to become friends from him.”

“And yet you turn your back on your people? On the person that raised you?” She scoffs, “How could you?”

“How could you?!” You blink away the tears, your sword immediately blazing with heavy silver when her words only play a tune you want to desperately forget, “You’re the one that took everything from me!”

She lifts her sword when you bring down yours, looking up to see pure fiery swirling in your eyes, “My parents were killed by werewolves.” You pin her against the wall, sword pushing down on her form as you tower over her, “Werewolves with black smoked eyes.”

Her expression falters and that’s all you need for an answer, but before you can strike, she rolls away from you, tightly grabbing onto the base of her sword.

Her bottom lip twitches when you get up, eyes brewing darker and darker the longer she stares at you, before her sword comes down and slashes down onto your shoulder. A loud cry erupts from you, warm blood spilling onto the ground.

“What your parents had, was wasted potential.” She kicks you, causing you to fall onto the ground harshly. “They couldn’t see what I saw in you!”

“You never needed me!” You grip the ground, tugging yourself up, “Slayers didn’t even need to exist, but you brought them back when they weren’t needed in the world anymore.”

“You never cared about us, you just needed weapons.” Your voice begins to crack, but you can’t keep the harsh tears streaming down your eyes at bay anymore, “W-Why did you even have to drag them into this?”

The anger only increases on her; her features contorting when you bite down on your lip, shaking your head, “Why couldn’t you have just left us all alone?!”

Silence cuts through the air.

“Because you were too perfect.”

She whispers, fascination buzzing in her eyes, “A natural-born slayer, strong and powerful, but thankfully without my sister’s foolish mistakes.”

Your head instantly snaps up, jerking in her direction when there’s a faint layer of regret wafting in her eyes, “M-My mother-…”

She hums, “One of the best slayers I knew, up until she met that human man and decided she was going to leave her slayer life behind for his sake.”

She walks over to you, sword dragging along the ground as you remain startled in place, “I tried to convince her. Many, many times.” Faintly, she shakes her head as if recalling a handful of memories, “But then I found out she was pregnant, with his child.”

She stands right in front of you, sliver meeting each other’s eyes, “When I first laid eyes on you, I knew you had inherited the same powers. I knew I had to welcome the newest member into my forming clan.”

Her hand reaches out to pat your head but your arm shoots out, tightening your grip around her wrist, “You mean to say…you took me in because my mother refused to take part in your insane idea.”

Her brows furrow with the word ‘insane’ but she shakes her head.

“It was her loss.”

Your hand trembles against her, wet eyes contorting into pure anger when you look at her straight in the eyes. Her brows furrow, a layer of fear overtaking her features when she watches one of your sliver eyes completely morph into a bright gold.

“No.” You whisper, voice coming out in the form of a growl, “It was your loss.”

Letting go of her hand, you take a deep breath when the silver fur rapidly encases your throat and face, cascading down onto your chest and arms swiftly when an ear-splitting howl escapes you. You scrunch up your eyes, drops of blood falling onto the ground when elongated nails spike out of your fingertips.

Breathe Y/N. You remind yourself, allowing the change to take a natural pace and as a way to not tear your own body in half, Just like Jungkook taught you.

A raspy howl unleashes from your throat, canines on full display when you narrow your half pair of gold eyes at her and she stares at your form in utter horror.

Immediately, you pounce – sharp claws scraping against her when you snap your large canines and grab onto her sword. You chuck it away harshly, the bronze blade meeting the wall with the thud and she screams, grabbing onto your fur with a fist and throwing you against the ground.

“Y-You…” A trembling finger is pointed at you, tainted with specks of red when panic is painted across her features, “You are not my student anymore.”

A snarl escapes you at that and you ready yourself to lunge again, but a throbbing wave overtakes your wolf and you shake your head. Blinking again, your vision starts to steadily blur, but you toss it all aside when you see her gaze fall onto her blade on the ground.

Your silver claws scrape against the wood when your wolf is sent flying, knocking her onto the ground when the blade clatters. You know you don’t have enough time left on your hands, your wolf already struggling to keep up with you as the seconds quickly tick by. With a loud roar, you know you have to end everything there and then – all of the wolves depending on you and Jungkook heavily. Although you can sense yourself hesitating, this is something you must do and finish.

Leaning down, you bear your canines.

But they don’t reach her.

Instead, a flash of pain shoots up you.

Splashes of blood colour the ground when you gasp, staggering off her when your vision blurs even more. The fur immediately is snatched away from you; sliver turning back into skin when you collapse onto the ground with a wheeze.

You turn your head, watching her rise with a dark grin and then trailing your horrified eyes down to view to see your entire arm ripped open.

The very arm you use to wield your sword.

Shock pulsates through your mind, frantic scattering thoughts all over the place until a firm foot lands onto that arm, ripping out a loud scream from your lips.

“My most treasured student.” She whispers, blood seeping from her forehead when she places her blade against your mark, “How unfortunate for it to end like this.”

You shake your head, tears streaming down your eyes the more she roughly presses her foot down and silent pleas leaving you by the moment. Squeezing your eyes, one last lone tear leaves you when you feel the blade meet your skin.

It never pierces through your throat.

A thunderous howl echoes into the room, paws padding with speed against the ground until they lift and grab onto the sword aimed out or you. The Elder is thrown off, dark silver eyes enraged when she spins to throw the wolf off and comes face to face with a familiar shade of caramel brown that stands its ground in front of you.

“You.”

The wolf has a glint of rage dwelling in its eyes, the feral nature consuming it entirely when it snarls at her and she directs her sword at it. “I lost my precious child because of you!”

The wolf launches itself again; a blur of caramel brown whizzing across the room when its canines lodged themselves into her arm, causing her hold on the blade to loosen. Its claws dig in, tearing her flesh apart when a distant scream is heard.

The wolf continues to attack furiously, letting out all of its rage as the Elder continues to fight back with no avail. As blood coats the ground beneath them, your fading eyes catch onto sparks of orange swirling in her hands. No sound is produced in your throat when the colour intensifies, striking the wolf instantly until it falls onto the ground on its stomach right beside you with a whimper.

You instantly turn, ignoring the pricking sensation your arm was giving you when the wolf’s golden eyes shut, twisted with pain until they open to meet your own. The eyes enlarge and the wolf breathes at an abnormal rate, shaking its limbs as it attempts to push itself onto its paws again.

You have no time to react when a pained howl leaves the wolf as a sword slashes across its back, form completely slumping down onto the ground with a strangled whine.

“This is what he deserves.” The Elder whispers, staring down at both of you with disappointed eyes.

“He doesn’t deserve any of this!” You cry out, “This is between you and me.”

“How could I forget?” The bronze sword is pointed towards you, “This is the end, my child.”

She raises her sword and for a moment, you just smile. Being aware that your time spent as a slayer was utterly precious, that becoming friends with Jungkook is a moment you would want to repeat a thousand of times over and over again and eventually coming to find out his identity had guided you to become aware of a hidden truth you were always shadowed away from. Even in the end, all you simply wish is to set things right, and if there was a way Jungkook could escape and live, you would take that chance within a heartbeat.

But of course, you were going to stay by his side no matter what.

Her sword clangs onto the ground when a harsh gasp escapes her throat, an angry pool of blood forming onto the ground. Her knees buckle, staring at you astonished when a silver sword pierces through her form, being wielded with your opposite hand – a clawed hand that was covered in fur.

Your smile grows, watching her confused eyes when it’s taking every drop of energy out you to hold this form. Your last words to her are in the form of a whisper, wet silver and gold eyes staring back at her one final time.

“Goodbye, Mother.”

Her form falls down harshly onto the ground with a thud, silver eyes having the life draining out of them when she collapses. You take a deep inhale, sitting up and staring at your sword wielding hand, now trembling when the blade slips out of your hands and clatters onto the ground, tears viciously streaming down your cheeks.

A bundle of brown fur soon circles around you, enveloping your shuddering form when you snatch your eyes away from the corpse. You screw your eyes shut, burying them within your hands as the tainted remainders of your sword fade away with a flash.

The room is left with a deep silence, the sound of your violent sobs being the only tone resonating off the walls.

#btsboulangerie #jungkook fanfic #jungkook werewolf fanfic #jungkook werewolf au #jungkook fluff #jungkook angst #bts werewolf au #bts jungkook fanfic #bts jungkook fluff #bts jungkook action #bts jungkook angst #jungkook series #bts jungkook werewolf fanfic #bts jungkook werewolf au #jeon jungkook fanfic #jeon jungkook werewolf #jeon jungkook fluff #jeon jungkook #jeon jungkook angst #bts fanfic #bts fluff #bts angst #bts imagines #bts series #bts scenarios #justimajin

[barbarawilson-moved]

i’ve got. a LOT of thoughts to collect as i attempt to sort out my rhato notes in preparation for forming a coherent paper out of them so. i figured i’d dump some of my thoughts regarding some shit here while i attempt to develop them. please don’t read if you can’t be nice.

first off: sc*tt l*bd*ll has a messy fuckin history with women in the comics industry and this isn’t even meant as a condemnation of him as a person but rather as an overarching reminder that any woman he writes is going to be forced through his own personal sexist lens. this is blatant in the 2011 run of rhato where his attempt to make kori a strong character falls so atrociously flat it like sinks a few layers into the ground. i am not addressing whether or not his mistreatment of women is intentional; for the purposes of this research i literally do not care. what matters is if you do not know how to respect women you cannot respectfully write them.

compare lobdell’s run on rhato in 2011 with james tynion’s follow up. tynion, a now out bisexual man who has a history of promoting representation of marginalized people both as characters and creators in comics, immediately challenges the indisputably horrific narrative role kori began the series forced into. im chucking one of my favourite moments in all of the first run of rhato in here bc theres no way its going to end up being relevant.

[image 1: rando: “what are you messing around with this dude for?” kori: “because it amuses me to do so.” rando: “i have a yacht the size of a cruise ship sitting right out in the bay. staff of a hundred and fifty. just for me.” kori: “is that so?” rando: “let me tell you what i would do with you on that ship, babydoll--” jason, to roy: “what’s going on?” roy: “that charming gentleman is telling kori what he would like to do with her.” jason: “oh, hell.” rando: “why don’t we go...” image 2: kori beating the actual shit out of the rando.]

anyways moving on. kori is interesting bc she’s pretty clearly Not involved with jason (there’s this whole weird subtext thing that i still haven’t figured out where it’s kind of implied jason lied to roy about even having slept with kori?), but when it comes to rebirth artemis fills kori’s role as sexy lady powerhouse and DOES get pushed as a romantic interest for jason. which. god do i have opinions on that but my paper has a Whole Different lense thing going on where im also considering rhato as a loose adaptation of robin hood and the weird thing there is that the robin hood stand in changes w/ requiem for an archer?? so that’s wack.

the two characters whose roles i’m like. actively struggling to comprehend are suzie su, isabel, and essence. suzie su’s intro was uh. i would argue bad? im not even gonna throw the image in here because Word Of God at the time did declare her trans which makes the art. uh. let’s go with “problematic.” except with the rebirth series she becomes an ally and also as of rhato 43 isn’t just explicitly canonically trans but also functionally immortal because of it which unfortunately is simply super sexy of her. (note: word of god says jason todd respects pronouns and i might not respect scott lobdell but i have to respect that.) something weird with this though is that her art has become prettier and more traditionally feminine as the series goes on. i have no idea what that means.

isabel and essence get the same paragraph bc as of rhato 43, spoiler alert! same fuckin person??? neither of which i particularly understand. partially bc the way every single relationship jason has (other than with roy) is fairly underdeveloped and jason will just sort of be like “i have feelings for her” meanwhile im sitting over here like then why do you spend every monologue talking abt how the only people you love are roy and kori, huh?? huh, buddy??? also while im at it. that meme that’s an uno card but it’s “have a relationship with someone not significantly older than you or draw 25″ and jason’s got fucking a hundred cards in hand. anyways. i don’t get isabel! i think she’s great! i like dog! why does she continue to be a character tho.

things i still haven’t considered: clara′s teacher-crush on jason. dna as another trans character. shay veritas in general. ma gunn????? there’s a whole fuckin lot there idrk. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

#oh boy am i not tagging this i dont want the j*ytemis fans coming after me if anyone does bother to read this #ref #long post #in case the read more fucks up on mobile

[littlestgahena1301]

Poison In My Mouth

Post-Kidnapping. A time where Bakugou starts cooking to ease up some past stress. Anxiety got the best of him, and his perceived notion of peace got even more shattered than before. 

It's my first time trying to write any fic for this fandom, but I guess I should give it a try anyway. Also, English is not my first language, so please mention if I made some mistakes down there.

Word count w/o intro or outro= 2048

________________________________________________

The pan starts sizzling. Oil hissing just loud enough to let Bakugou know it's ready. Dutch onions was the first to go in. Slightly cold cresents descend on hot metal, Bakugou watched closely as he tries to lose himself in the process. After all, as a perfectionist, Bakugou won't let anything stop him from giving his absolute best.

 Salt was thrown in just a bit late for the onion to preserve some of its natural sweetness. The batch that he got from the supermarket was pretty decent, and he would feel terrible if he failed to bring out the best of them. Salt draws out the moisture from the onions and makes their original taste a bit more concentrated in the center. A little bit goes a long way in this situation, as he needs to layer in some more seasoning later when other ingredients are piled up in the pan. He throws in a bit of chicken oil that he got from dry frying the skin earlier. Then comes the chopped chicken bits.

 Sauteeing just enough to have them on the verge of browning, he had them pushed aside for other ingredients to come in. Mushrooms are generally hard to go wrong with and long beans just for that speck of greens peeking through. The green beans are pre-cooked though, he made sure to drown them a little bit in hot water for a bit so that they are not too crunchy when he's biting through it. He's making fluffy omelet rice, nothing in a fluffy omelet is supposed to be too crunchy.

 The green suddenly reminded him of someone, for some reason, it took him back to that night where he sees Izuku rushing over to his side. Bloodied, hands purple and broken, so much that it pains him to just even recall the image. The sharp phantom pain that he felt running his left arm as if a jolt of electric briefly course through it. He instinctively curled in and grab onto his arm to massage it, although secretly knowing that it was just his mind playing tricks again. He shook his head as if it would also shake off his previous thought, and then he focuses on cooking. Remembering that night would bring him no good.

 After they are good enough for him, he continued with just a slice of butter. Forget dieting for a bit and let's not be pretentious here, who the hell would say no to butter? His quirk works in his favor to burn off fat anyway, so there's almost no harm to it. He took a bowl of cooked rice into his hands and crumble them into the pan. Making sure he spreads it out evenly so that its more natural for him to mix it. After giving it a quick mix, he poured in a ladle of sauce. Beef demi-glace, his favorite.

 Just earlier today, he contemplated using canned stuff but decided against it after reading the ingredients on the labels. He knows how to make his own sauce, albeit it was a tedious and lengthy process. He found that he couldn't really trust canned sauce since most of them are usually laced with food coloring and with too much sodium to boot. Besides, making his own sauce gives Katsuki a reason to stay in the kitchen just a little longer. So he did. Made his roux, add in some tomato paste, and only spent about an hour reducing the stock. In turns out well, and Katsuki was satisfied with its consistency.

 He mixed it well this time, making sure that no rice is left uncoated. He makes sure nothing is too dry. The hot and crisp summer weather would usually make cooking a little bit faster but also causes his ingredients to dry out a bit too rapidly. It also makes him just a little bit more sweaty, which makes cooking a little bit tricker. He might just accidentally let a few drops into the fire and boom! There goes all his effort! It's a good thing that the room has air conditioning and proper ventilation that he only had to remember to turn on before cooking. Katsuki generally avoids staying too close to the stove for a long extended period if these resources were not available. He placed the rice in the shaper and set it aside.

 Now, onto the main star of the dish. Katsuki oiled the pan just a little bit more to make sure it doesn't stick. Just enough for it line the pan for the size of the omelet. He poured in the egg and was quick to move after noticing it starts to solidify. He goes on shaping the omelet, flicking his wrist to keep it moving and rolling onto itself. This process had to happen quickly, or the egg will be cooked through, but getting it off just too quickly, and he'll end up with a raw middle. That's not something Katsuki wants to see tonight.

 He quickly went to lift the shaper with his left hand, revealing its perfect shape. He steadies the egg on top of the right with a pair of chopsticks. He took a knife to cut it open; as expectedly, it opens up to reveal a partially gooey inside. He smiles to himself, he still got it.

 He reaches out for the remaining sauce and scoops up just enough to let it run down the sides without drowning it. After garnishing it with some chopped spring onions, he felt quite proud of himself. Yeah, too bad he couldn't show off his skills entirely in front of his classmates. He bet they'll be begging him to cook for them, and Katsuki would definitely need to tell them to scram.

To think back, he didn't get to really taste the curry that he made during the camp. He didn't even get to check if they got the recipe right. All because of the.....

 The...

 ..........

 He felt a hand wrapping itself around his neck. Katsuki tried to pry it open, but when he reaches out, he made contact with his own skin. The fear never left him despite knowing nothing was there. It ran through his back as if an apparition slowly run their index finger, tracing his spine, while a malicious smile cracks their pale and ghastly faces.

 Katsuki notices he started to sweat. A familiar pop was heard from his closed fist. He didn't realize he was gripping the spoon he had in hand. A small ribbon of smoke emitting from his now open palm, barely visible in the dark-lit- room.

 Katsuki had no idea why he was so tense that night. His sleeplessness brought his feet to the kitchen, and he thought it would make him feel better. Tired and worn out, it might help him fall asleep.

 He shook his head again.

 Now's not the time to think about that. Besides, Katsuki shouldn't waste his perfectly-made food. His mom would've shouted his name loud enough to be heard by his whole neighborhood if he was ever late for dinner.

 And now here comes the first bite. Katsuki expected it to taste just as usual since this is a recipe that he made so often, he could do it blindfolded.

 He put the spoonful inside of his mouth and closed his eyes to savor it. The flavors swirled in his mouth.

 Bitter.

 Bitter.

 What is this metallic taste in his mouth?

 Was it blood?

 Was the chicken raw in the middle?

 He opened up his eyes to stab through one of the chicken pieces to check the doneness. It looks fine to him, so why does it taste so bad?

 He took another one.

 Bitter.

 Bitter.

 Raw.

 Raw.

 RAW.

 Then everything tasted bitter with a hint of metallic taste no matter how much he avoided the chicken pieces. He didn't understand, when did it go wrong? How could he mess things up after making it for so many times? Katsuki didn't think that he could let this haunt him the entire night. Refusing to give up, he lits the stove back up to give it another try.

 ________________________________________________

 Kirishima does not usually wander at night, especially on days when he'll be too tired to even do so after a tough gym workout. His muscles are hurting a bit too much for him to fall asleep. Was the soreness from a strain? It looks like he needs to pay a visit to Recovery Girl in the morning.

 Initially, he had only planned to grab some water from the fridge and then go back to his room. But after seeing plate after plate of omelet rice placed on top of the dining room table, he immediately forgot of his purpose for coming there. He recognizes Katsuki from behind, his face dimly illuminated by the stove fire.

 "Bakugou? Bro, what are you doing?"

 "Can't you see for yourself? I'm cooking! What else would I do in the kitchen?" his voice hiked a little bit. Not that he never screams, Kirishima just didn't expect it.

 "Well, you sure made a lot of these..."

 "Trying to get it right, Hair for Brains," He grumbled.

 Kirishima got curious and took a bite from the nearest plate. It was a little bit cold but otherwise its a perfectly fine plate of omelet rice.

 "Hey, what are you saying, man? These are great!"

 "Shut up, I'm trying to focus! Something's off."

 Kirishima took this liberty to taste every single one of them. Most of them taste the same, only differing slightly from one another. Kirishima settled for the most recently made one since it's still a bit warm. Seeing how Katsuki didn't stop him from eating, he thought that it's okay to eat them. Katsuki doesn't seem like he would eat all 5 plates anyway.

 Katsuki gave the sauce another taste. Bitter. Blood. "It's still off."

"I don't know what you were expecting, Bakugou..." he trailed off as he took another bite. "None of them tastes bad."

 Katsuki turned around to see Kirishima eating his latest one. "Who the hell said that you could eat those?"

 "Well, you certainly didn't say anything about it earlier."

 "I was going to compare them!"

 "Yeah, but it's sad to let this one get cold like the others. Sides you still have like another half a plate to compare with."

 Katsuki sighed, feeling defeated at the sight of the half-empty plate. "You know what? Fuck that plate! Just clean up after yourself, and don't get it my way!"

 "Oh, thank you!"

 Katsuki continued to re-evaluate what he did as the sauce continues to cook. Looking for weaknesses in his approach or his technique. He even brought down some notebooks to write down his steps. He just couldn't find anything wrong with what he was doing. Was there something else that he misses?

 Katsuki heard the tap being turned on and saw Kirishima standing at the sink next to him and was washing the plate from earlier. He then dried the plate off and put it aside.

 "Thanks for the meal, man. That sure hits the spot."

 "Yeah, whatever."

 "Would you invite me over to test some more if you're planning to cook again?"

 Katsuki was perplexed. "Hah? I'm not gonna cook for you, damn it!"

 "But doesn't food taste better when you are cooking it for someone else?"

 "Never heard anything like that before." Katsuki gave him a skeptical look.

 Kirishima grinned."I heard that from my mom! She said that food turns out better if you cook for someone else, especially if it was for my siblings and me!"

 "Yeah, sure, you're just trying to get me to cook for you."

"And what's wrong with that? Does your food always turn out bad?"

 Katsuki fumes."NO WAY ANYTHING I MADE EVER TASTE BAD! I'VE BEEN COOKING SINCE I'M OLD ENOUGH TO HOLD A KNIFE, HAIR FOR BRAINS!!!"

 Kirishima giggled. It's so easy to get Katsuki to see everything as a challenge. "I'll look forward to your delicious food then, see ya!"

Kirishima grabbed the bottled water from the fridge and went on his merry way. Katsuki felt a smile creeping up his face as he saw how giddy the redhead was after the meal. He turned back to his stove to taste the newly made sauce. His smile grew wider.

 Spicy.

 Savory.

 Sweet.

________________________________________________

Hey, its me again!

 This fic was based upon an experience I once had with food. I noticed that I have a lot of anxiety after entering college, and it basically made every food taste bad. Some of the food did taste like blood, but not as severe as what I described in this fic. I just imagine that it's more heightened since his situation ends up as much more traumatic.

 I noticed this after I ate something a few months ago, and the taste change midway after getting a trigger. At first, I thought the food was simply bad or poorly done. I started cooking sometime before at my rented apartment and found out that none of them taste as good as I remember that, and that deters me away from cooking.

At one point, everything tastes like a poison that I have to shove into my mouth to survive. This thing is not a singular incident too.

 There's an article that said that mood greatly affects our taste buds, and things get more delicious when we're happy. Stress and anxiety could cause some changes in your perception of your five senses. Make sure your mental health is always in check if you are noticing these changes.

 I started cooking again recently, and while some of them didn't turn as good as I thought, my tastebuds are functioning correctly once more.

 I had help from a friend that's a regular home cook, and she's very open to answering my kitchen curiosities. I start slowly building back the confidence I lost, and now I can say I am at least not the worst chef ever lived. And hey sometimes you need a second opinion from someone you trust, and that's why I choose Kirishima and Bakugou because both of them play off each other so well that their chemistry is just natural. I also relate a lot to Bakugou on a lot of different aspects, so seeing him recover is also giving me some hope that I'll improve too.

If you are suffering from this condition, I suggest checking it with a doctor. Sometimes it might be other things other than stress or anxiety. If, however, if it was anxiety-induced, you could come back to eating after you calm down. No use of eating if you hate it.

@recoveryzine 

#recoveryzinecontest

[thenarcolepticone]

Phantasm

by TheNarcolepticOne

Day 2 + Day 5: Spooky Colors ( @aphfallfandomweek )

AO3

Summary: Lovino was the relative in the family that no one particularly liked to visit. And wasn’t because he was crude: this was a misconception developed from the in-laws of the family who wanted to steal some of the family’s rich heritage. Rather, Lovino was just a different kind of Vargas. Or at least, Feliciano liked to think that his brother was.

Characters: APH Italy, APH South Italy, APH Spain.

Warnings: None. But it's spooky I guess? If you don't like spooks.

A/N: I... put two concepts into one story again -- I'm SORRY it's just very addicting to try and put them all together because it forces me to try and creatively shove them together. I hope it's not too clunky though... I've not actually posted any stories online with Feliciano or Lovino. Not yet anyway. It's not meant to be anything hard to look into, actually, so don't look too hard into this story.

##

Lovino was the relative in the family that no one particularly liked to visit. And wasn’t because he was crude: this was a misconception developed from the in-laws of the family who wanted to steal some of the family’s rich heritage. Rather, Lovino was just a different kind of Vargas. Or at least, Feliciano liked to think that his brother was.

Lovino liked to spend a lot of his days alone too and occupied the spare room of Feliciano’s paint studio when he came back from a long day from working at the pastry shop. Feliciano had given the space to him out of sympathy, as no one else in his family seemed to put an effort into knowing his brother beyond just his strange behaviors. Except for him and his Grandfather of course, but Romulus had passed away some time ago, leaving only Feliciano to be the sole caretaker of his brother.

Calloused hands and flour dusted fingers from folding dough and wheat did nothing to dissuade Lovino from coming over in the evenings to continue his work in his project room. Lovino always mentioned finishing the same painting that he started two months ago and had never let Feliciano see it since he bought his brother the easel.

Now, Lovino was one of the best water color artists that Feliciano had ever know. It deviated a lot with his own style, but not in a bad way. Feliciano often liked the crispness of oil-based paints in its raw form upon a canvas while Lovino once told him that he enjoyed the medium of water because he felt the transparency of the paint reflect a sort of ‘ambiguity’. He liked an image of a color that wasn’t quite solid and wasn’t too minimalist either, which made Feliciano very empathetic to his art pieces most of the time.

Lovino was a schizophrenic, part-time freelance artist.

It wasn’t a very pretty title, but it was because of this stigma that Lovino often told people of his condition first, like a warning, before accepting any commissions from any eager client. Lovino didn’t enjoy the idea of people giving him sympathy and especially disliked being compared to van Gogh in any way, shape or form.

Rather, he preferred patrons that were honest with him. And it was a trait that Feliciano envied; having interactions between others without that sense of superficiality to it.

Lovino was more grounded to the realities of people more than Feliciano ever was. And that, alone, was the reason why Feliciano loved his brother dearly. And the same reason why he had even given him the room in the first place.

Though, just because Lovino got commissions didn’t mean that he received a lot of them. The man would often burst into Feliciano’s small business building without a word and retreat his secret sanctuary in silence. But Feliciano never minded it; his brother’s business was his own.

That was, until one day Feliciano heard his brother talking alone inside of his room one night after washing all of his brushes. Feliciano had planned to leave early, as he had a scheduled 8:30 AM appointment with his next model soon. But the sounds of his brother speaking was what drawn him to stop and listen.

“Hang on,” Lovino was heard groaning on the other side of the door. “I’ll finish this part soon. Stop giving me that look, won’t you? It’s intimidating, and you’ll make me rush it.”

Feliciano quietly set his used brushes from earlier that day into a bucket nearby. And, watching his feet to ensure he did not step on anything, Feliciano leaned against the thin white door to eavesdrop.

“Yes, Toni. I know you like red. But I’ve already painted enough leaves around you. Any more of them and I’m sure you’ll look like you’re in front of a volcano!”

Feliciano bit his lip. A quick suspicion made Feliciano assume that Lovino snuck a male model into the room. But looking at the base of the door, he saw some movement of shadows.

But he could not distinguish if this was his brother’s movements or not.

“There. See?” Lovino murmured. “It was the green that was missing. Not the red. Red wouldn’t make much sense to add on to you. It’s like wearing a red shirt, red pants, red shoes and red socks: it doesn’t match.”

Feliciano moved away from the door now, perhaps realizing that Lovino wasn’t quite... himself. Lovino often had episodes of these, but ever since he had been on medication, he hadn’t fallen into the habit of babbling to himself until now. 

But he didn’t want to be too straightforward with Lovino either. Pointing out his strange behavior would only strain their relationship as his only caring family relative and the last thing Feliciano wanted to do was to make his brother annoyed with him because wasn’t caring enough to shut up appropriately.

Choosing instead to promptly ignore the conversation in the other room, Feliciano began pack his things, set his coat on and retreat home to sleep. He and Lovino did not live in the same places, so he was never really sure about what time his brother went home.

But as Feliciano attempted to sleep, he couldn’t help but start to wonder about Lovino again. The way he talked behind that door and the emotion in Lovino’s voice that really almost sounded like he was speaking to his painting... the curiosity had burrowed itself into Feliciano’s brain enough to the point of making him unable to sleep. And months of secrecy on Lovino’s end was enough to draw Feliciano back into his car and drive right back to the studio.

It was just quarter past two in the morning when Feliciano arrived, fall air breezing through his hair. His keys clinked as he opened the door, and he turned the lights on, immediately heading for the forbidden room.

He swung the door open gently, turning on the lights.

The room was an absolute chaotic mess, as if someone had ransacked the place. It scared Feliciano a minute to think that the perpetrator would be somewhere nearby, but Feliciano did a quick sweep around the perimeter of the room.

No one.

The only object that was the most preserved in the mess was an easel and canvas in the center of the room, draped by a tattered blanket.

Feliciano frowned, feeling his chest compress. He felt like was violating his brother’s trust by peeking into his personal work. It wasn’t as if he was planning to do anything bad, right? Just looking.

Feliciano took a breath, going up to the painting and removing the cloth.

It was the portrait of a man that Feliciano had never seen before. The paint that was included in the picture was layered upon each other, blending a lot more smoothly into indescribable mixes of color; the paint’s opacity made it a hard to tell the difference if the color was in between red, yellow or green. The brush strokes that framed the man’s clothing were cleverly blended with the darker colors to contour the light more to the man’s chest, rather than the shoulders and overcoat. It curved at the exact angles that highlighted the physique under the painting’s clothing, and it caused Feliciano to realize that he had been holding his breath when he finished examining it.

Lovino really did pull reality from his imagination. The only thing that made the painting appear unrealistic was the white edges of the unfinished background and unpainted pencil-etched leaves. The picture was meant to fully depict a Spaniard of the 1600’s in the middle of the fall leaves, posing right before his voyage over the Atlantic. The portrait man gazed back at Feliciano, looking soft in his features but held a sense of power behind his gaze. The eyes were a piercing green, and it made Feliciano feel like he was being watched. They also looked like they were following him when he moved around even more, causing Feliciano to be completely unsettled by the eye movement. It was enough to make Feliciano want to leave.

It’s then that Feliciano grabbed the cloth, pulling it over the painting’s gaze as he retreated out back to the parking lot, heart beating from almost practically sprinting out of the building. He locked the door twice for good measure and checked it before starting his car.

##

The next morning hadn’t been too unusual after that. Feliciano had fought the evening’s events out of his brain when his patron showed up; a man who looked entirely ready for his own portrait by dressing in outrageous clothing. Feliciano could deal with outrageous.

He had spent the day avoiding the room when he was doing his own work and waited patiently for his brother to return after work.

Eventually, Lovino did come through the door. But not before Feliciano stopped him. His model had long gone at that point, giving Feliciano more time to speak to him.

“Fratello,” he called to his brother, causing Lovino to turn his head to him with tired attentiveness. “What are you painting in that room? I’ve always been meaning to ask.”

Lovino gave Feliciano an incredulous expression. But not before just sighing. “I’m actually almost done with it anyway. I suppose you could look at it.”

Feliciano practically jumped at this opportunity to be with his brother, dropping his palette onto a nearby table as he grabbed a towel to wipe his hands off on the way to follow Lovino back into the room.

But by the time his brother had opened the door, he felt himself freeze.

The room was practically spotless. Or at least, there wasn’t a place out of order like it had been last night. It looked as if someone had cleaned it, though Feliciano was 400% sure he had locked the door that evening and had not touched anything else in the room. Especially after seeing the gaze of that frightening man under the blanket on the canvas. He couldn’t stay after that!

When Lovino uncovered the painting, Feliciano had to bite his tongue.

The man that had stared at him last night was turned away from the viewer’s perspective, head turning to look back at the autumn scenery behind him. It caused Feliciano to rub his eyes, trying to understand how his brain was playing tricks on him.

He can’t have just imagined last night all on his own. Could he?

“Like it?” Lovino said, having not noticed Feliciano at all since he had also been staring at his own work and criticizing it himself. “It’s... not quite there yet. I’m missing a lot of the edges and leaves. But I think one more week would finally get this done.”

“W-Who is that?” Feliciano fought his voice to remain calm as possible, which clearly wasn’t working too well. “In the picture?”

“Someone I keep running into in my dreams,” Lovino sighed. “You know. Those dreams.”

Feliciano turned his gaze back to Lovino, who now appeared much quieter and more reserved after admitting that clause. Feliciano frowned at that. Lovino was trying to hide his hallucinations again. And fighting the urge to reveal the reason behind his own state of panic, Feliciano noticed that he began to say something else as well.

“I’m jealous, Lovino,” Feliciano replied. “I don’t think I’ve ever been able to really... do the same as you when it comes to painting in water color. It’s strange because it looks so real. Like it can move on its own.”

Lovino laughed at that. “You’re the only one who can see the reality of everything, Feli. I’ll admit it; sometimes I see the painting move all the time. And I think I can say that this one of my best works.” Lovino felt his smile soften when he stared at his masterpiece. “Antonio. That’s what I call it. It’s a name in Spanish that means something of value and praise.”

“I... didn’t take you for the type to be researching on name meanings, Lovi.”

“Shut up. Just because the names of your pieces are long doesn’t mean that mine have to be.”

Feliciano relaxed at that. “It’s beautiful, fratello.”

“It’s not finished yet,” Lovino murmured. “I’ll get it done soon. But I’d like to be alone, if that’s okay.”

“Of course.” Feliciano went to the door, letting him the space. And with a smile, he closed the door again.

But the second the door clicked shut, Feliciano’s expression that he had been keeping up had dropped. And fear poured into his heart as he dared to open the door once more.

“Lovino?”

The room was empty, with a gust of wind blowing into the room with the faintest smell of wet grass and undergrowth.

Feliciano stared at the picture that was revealed to him.

There, amid all of the colors of the fall within the canvas, was Lovino. And next to him was the man he had seen in the piercing green eyes, smiling right at Feliciano as he had an arm around his shoulders.

Feliciano only stared for a few moments before feeling himself drawn into the room. And with a final examination, grabbed the cloth again to cover the painting up as he picked it up into his arms to take home.

#aphfallfandomweek #aph italy #aph south italy #APH Spain #fanfic #fanfiction #day 2: colors #day 5: spooky #my fanfiction #you can mark this as spamano if you want but I hardly put anything for it here lol

[uniformbravo]

me trying to make a gif part 2 (thrilling finale, buildup ver.)

ok good news and bad news: good news being withheld for Spoilers (not that it’s that hard to guess anyway lol), bad news explained first bc, chronologically, it is first

so yesterday i mentioned in the tags of that post that i had seen that krita has an animation feature so i was gonna try importing the frames into that and then exporting it as a gif. easier said than done, as it turns out

i started by opening the file i made yesterday with 62 layers as the frames and importing that into krita, which worked fine (i didn’t know you could actually open .psd files in clip stuido ((this typo is so fucking stupid it made me laugh so im leaving it)) and krita, so that’s pretty neat, i wonder if it works the other way around too) but i ran into problems when i tried to convert those layers into frames in an animation. because, like, the layout of the program has the layers displayed in one tab, and the animation timeline in another, like so:

(do u like how im using pictures now, i thought of that yesterday after i published the other post and realized hey, visual reference would probably make my plight a lot easier to understand!! so enjoy these educational diagrams from now on)

so my goal was to get the frames from the layers into the timeline, and i still don’t know if i did it right bc lbr krita is not very intuitive at all,,.,, i mean i watched a video tutorial abt how to animate in krita which was v helpful (it’s the one by jesse j james on yt fuckin SHout out) but it was about animating from scratch, not importing an animation you’ve already done elsewhere

so like, the way krita’s animation thing works, from what i could piece together as i bumbled my way around w/ it, is that each layer in the layers tab is a separate timeline in the,,, timeline tab

i want them all to be in the same timeline, not separate ones, and there’s no way to combine them in the timeline tab bc doing that just overwrites whatever layer you’re pasting it down onto, and also if you define the number of frames for that timeline (62 for this project) it just puts the single image of that layer for all of the frames instead of just one of them, so you’d have to go through and delete all the other frames you don’t want it to be, which would be such a fuckin pain

so i found a workaround, which is so tedious that it can’t be the right way to do it, but basically i started w/ layer 1 and defined 62 frames & then emptied frames 2-62, like this

(that blue box is the frame, btw, even tho it says 0, which actually kind of annoys me like why doesn’t it start the first frame on 1????)

from there i went up to layer two and selected that in the timeline, but for some reason the frame doesn’t show up automatically?

& i couldnt fuckin figure out how to make it into like, an Official Timeline Layer or whatever tf bc like, u see on layer 1 how theres that little lightbulb-looking icon on the right? that’s for turning on onion skin which only applies when you actually have frames with things drawn on them, so basically layer 2 in the layers tab has a drawing but in the timeline it doesn’t?

i didn’t find out what the actual reason for this is or how you’re /supposed/ to make the frame appear in the timeline, but what i did was right click on layer 2′s timeline & select “create blank frame” which magically made the frame i want appear

but it’s on top of the layer 1 frame, and i want it to be the frame after. also it’s still in a different timeline. this is the only easy fix in this whole damn process, u can literally just click & drag the frame from layer 2 to layer 1 and put it wherever u want on the timeline

and then u just delete layer 2 and that’s it, frame transferred!! then i just had to do that for 60 more layers and after [unspecified amount of time but it was a fuckin while ok] my timeline looked like this!

(the gaps near the end are held frames, to save me time so i didn’t have to copy a bunch of frames that were exactly the same)

krita is great because as far as i know ur animation can have an unlimited number of frames, at the risk of your own pc’s processing power, which is a definite upside to SOME expensive art programs i know (clip studio, i’m talking abt csp) and u can pick the frame rate too (cough photoshop elements 5.0 even tho u dont technically have an animation feature & it’s a miracle u can even make gifs at all) so once i finally got all the frames situated all nice and in order like on the same timeline, playing it was great! played at the right speed, looped perfectly, it was a dream come true right

well, time to export it as a gif

ha

haha

hoooo oo  o

so u got 2 options for exporting ur animation, u can either hit “export,” which lets u save it as different file types, one of which being gif, or you can hit “render,” which gives you gif and video options

well

i tried export first, bc that seemed like a good idea, but the “””gif””” it made was distinctly not a gif, despite its claim to be one?? this is what i got:

notice: 1. it is not moving, and 2. the black bars to the sides?? those are supposed to be transparent. they’re transparent in the file i made so why didn’t they register as transparent in the export, when gifs have transparency capabilities??

so That was some real live bullshit but i still had the “render” option, right? export was wrong, so rrender must be the correct option to go to that will produce the results i am wanting to see produced in front of me like a silver dinner platter with a correctly functioning gif under the lid, that’s what i want to see and “Render Animation...” is gonna Give me that silver platter righWRONG ok look at this shit rn ok Look

it says GIF it says it RIGHT THERE right??? right?????? then WHY

?????????????

and it also gave me all This bullshit

like did i ask?? did i fucking ask???? i already have all the individual frames why do i need even M o re i mfjgjgk

((rationally ok yea thats v useful for if ur making the animation in krita and want to export the frames to use elsewhere, but like uhhh 1. again, they’re not transparent & 2. i should have the option of saying i don’t want these??? bc *meme voice* i don’t want these)

so in the end i could find NO correct method of exporting animations as a gif in krita bc every ooption that says gif is fuckign LYING to ur face there are NO gifs in krita, aliens made the progam who looked at gifs and went “hmm i thikng this is how a gif works “ and just made jpegs instead but somehow got on the computers good side and got it to lie for them about it being a gif so thats why it says gif on the file still even tho its not a gif illimati confinr

so what is the conclusion to this? well i said there was good news too, and this is the portion where i divulge that sweet nectar (i type dthis 2 seconds ago and @ me what the fuck)

so after wasting a good 2 hours trying to figure out krita i gave up and watched some good old [youtuber name redacted bc what if it shows up in search & ppl see this dumbass post in there but it rhymes with fjackfsepticfeye] to relax into accepting my fate that i’ll never be able to upload my animations to tungle except in poor quality loopless video form, making me into a laughing stock on my own art blog, but THEN i had a stroke of genius, in my Brain

so if u read yesterday’s post u might remember that flipnote studio, the animation program i use on my ds, to animate, has the option to export files as gifs, both animated and sequential (meaning either as one fully animated gif or each individual frame separately), which is super convenient, but as i mentioned yesterday, any time i tried to open the folder with those files on my laptop, it crashed immediately

WELL today i thought “hey, how about instead of opening the folder in the sd card when it’s plugged in, how about i copy that folder from the sd card to my flash drive, and try to open it there, in case it’s the card’s hardware that’s causing the problem, not corrupted files”

so i tried that and it FUCKING WORKED THANK GOD GLORY HALLELUJAH

so now instead of spedning A THOUSAND YEARS trying and failing to force art programs to bend to my will i can just export the animations straight from my ds and drag them onto my computer Just As God Intended oh GOD im so fucking happy

here’s the gif in the end, i’m gonna post it to my art blog too but this is the Green Version bc i animate in green bc of some default settings in flipnote that i got used to, plus it makes me feel like i’m just sketching so nothing really has to be finalized so i’m comfortable while i work, and also it’s just nice ok it’s a Nice Green

(there’s a few frames at the end that are like the extra scraps from while i was working dw i got rid of those in the final version that i’m posting to my art blog later. also i added my blog url to that one too it’s aaaaaall good)

the only downside to this method is that i can’t change the canvas size to be 540px wide to fit with tumbrl s image dimensions but whatever i can just post them in a text post and fix the html to display it at its original size instead of the resizing bullshit tmurbl pulls constantly ugh. anyway it works great on desktop but it’s inevitably gonna look like shit on mobile no matter what i do *Big Ass Shrug*

anyway thats the end of my success story uhh i can’t make the like comment & subscribe joke again bc i already did that in the last post so like bye i guess thanks 4 watchign & have a great day i’ll see u in my next fvideo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YYob4uDjEKI&t=0s

(^that’s my outro music)

#this started out so boring like a tutorial (but made by someone who doesn't know what the fuck theyre talking abt) #& then things derail Real Quick #that's why this is the ''buildup ver.'' #retag later #talkin bout stuff #today posts #rieley's wips #(me: i can't mention this youtuber by name in case my post shows up in search #me: *adds a link to the post rendering that effort for naught* #me: *leaves it anyway bc it's funny*) #pls listen to the outro musi c it's rly good & tunmgmldnr wouldnt let me embed the video & idk how to do it thru html & too lazy to look it #up :(

[katzirrart]

Art Growth Compilation

I really enjoy doing posts about improvement in art.

It makes me feel better about my work, especially with how busy I am these days.

I wanted to compile all the comparisons I’ve made over the years and kinda discuss the posts, for myself or others.

I thought it’d be funny to start with comparing how I first drew on a tablet, using dodge and burn tools, to how I do now which is using layers and actually painting. It’s funny to look back on that, you know?

I linked the post I made, compiling all the month to month memes from 2003-2017 that I try and do yearly. And everything else is under a cut ;w;’‘/

Most artists have done a drawing of themselves and a few Pokemon, or their team. I did that in 2010, and was dissatisfied with my work...

I took a crack again in 2013 after I’d learned to draw more animals and not be so Edgy(tm) I really liked the results. I still didn’t use references though, because I was lazy. I just didn’t want to. I still was on that boat feeling like I was CHEATING. I wasn’t being CREATIVE if I looked at references.

Artists get stuck on using reference and it’s AWFUL. USE THEM. USE TWENTY. LEARN!! It’s so HELPFUL, I wish I had started sooner.

In 2014 though -

I tried again.

I had gotten better at anatomy, but most of all, I started to work off references more. I started to really focus on not stylizing so much, but to work on actually making things look like things. I started to work on caring about COMPARISON sizes. Composition!!

While Pokemon reference sizes are -wiggle hands- and while my team changed up, I was satisfied that I could draw Arbok ACTUALLY like a cobra now, Meowth is easy given it’s just a noseless cat so to speak, Haunter is literally a triangle cloud - I was satisfied having drawn that team.

My secondary team in the new games? I was excited to draw them. It was fresh and new and FUN and it turned out PRECIOUS.

I learned better how to proportion things in an image for layout, and just... making characters feel COHESIVE in the same space.

It was a nice thing to keep visiting. I have a sketch in the works for an update even hopefully.

These pieces are kind of interesting to me too, because they’re towards the end of my era of THIN lineart?

My lineart has gone from this, and THIS,  to this.

Literally I use to not believe in line weight, I can still do thin work of course, but I’m not a fan of trying to FORCE it like I use to? Even the second link, I went from the SMALLEST brush in Sai, to using a marker brush that had barely ANY give, to a custom brush on Sai that acts like a Paint Chat brush I use to use with friends online!

That’s what I mean about style too, like you may reserve yourself about things - like not coloring black in and outlining with white, or certain ways you do things. But the growth and changing and figuring FUN ways to color that black etc is where the fun of art comes in, to me??

Learn. EXPERIMENT. PUSH!

A few months ago, I did my first redraw. Of this piece from 2012.

Six years difference.

This was interesting for a number of reasons. There’s aspects I like more in the old one, but not many. I really like the pose a bit better, but I like the casual closeness that I did in the new one because that’s more my Shepard.

But technically speaking, it’s worlds better because I took time. I paid attention to details. I did fun things instead of rushing. I took time with my coloring and didn’t SMEAR it around. I had a friend who use to complain I drew so fast and they felt so SLOW, but I love what that taught me. I started taking more time on my art, and enjoying it more since I caught more mistakes and vastly improved. By leaps and bounds.

It’s amazing what a difference six years makes in not only style, which is often a FOCUS of these things? My style has come awkwardly and naturally to me over the years of critically picking certain things apart? but I really love where it’s gotten.

I have things I want to get back to, but I love... where it is, and CAN be?

But it’s wild to me how much change happens in technical handling? It’s a hand in hand thing, you can’t focus on one or the other only, or the other suffers.

Honestly this has been my favorite improvement to notice though?

Kisame was a character I felt I should be able to draw EASILY? Not so much. Itachi? ALSO EASY. Not so much??

Kisame has weird eyes to grasp how to draw? Thus focusing on them kept making them wonky to me!! On top of that, he’s everything I’ve been use to drawing for AGES because he has a muscular body, with a smaller waist? ... that was something I was use to drawing? I still was awkward getting back into the swing of that... Drawing HIS HAIR though? NOT SO EASY....

But like, Itachi should have been easy, but I have a thing about him appearing too feminine as he gets drawn because his eyelashes, and I’ve really found a nice... medium at this point?

But even still like my face styles and eye styles are finally to a comfortable point for me? I have stopped focusing on some weird things with Itachi’s hair and just... DO IT? But even still like...

The improvement here is literally just if I don’t know how to do something, or I’m not satisfied with how I do it? I just keep at it.

It’s a theme of this post honestly... repetition, persistence.

Keep drawing it. Keep trying to figure out what it is that’s catching you off about how you do it. Don’t like how you do eyes or how they fit on the face? Look at facial structures and references and figure it out. Draw them separate and figure out how to apply them to what you are.

Remember there’s a skull in there. I draw the holes in the skull like the eye sockets, and the nose area to help my proportions for SURE.

I’ve also gotten to a nice marriage in my lineart? The piece before the recent one, those lines feel HARDER or HEAVIER? The newest piece seems...softer? Like I’m lighter handed again?

I really like critiquing my own growth on what is good or working better for me? Older pieces it looks like I’m putting lineweight for SAKE of it versus where it goes now?

INTERESTING.

Like this lineup -

My style shifts so RAPIDLY, it still is noticeably MY style to people, but parts shift so VIOLENTLY because I’m constantly picking at what I don’t LIKE.

It’s funny too in the case of Kisame and Itachi because consistently I’m drawing the SAME character over and over - can make you REALIZE how you’re doing something wrong?

Like, here’s a difference of eight years, and it’s all the brush I use now, and it REALLY shows how my style has changed - in the aspect of one point of reference?

I have a childhood favorite character too, of Daisuke, and I use to be bad at drawing boys, and I use to be SUPER bad at drawing fluffy hair?

It was something I specifically started to learn to do? And I started to draw Daisuke every few months or years for a while. Especially when I started to first REALIZE I didn’t like my style that much?

But the middle one was July 2009, top left is less than 6 months later, and the last one is about a year later. DRASTIC DIFFERENCE. But next -

This one was in 2012, when I started to do more with teeth, or first dipping my toes into anatomy. I started to focus more on HANDS too, I was super bad at them. Overall I started to focus more on making my art have...ages? Like a boy versus a man. Facial features being DIFFERENT.

I can look at this boring little bust and see that he comes off more of a teenage boy to me now. I need to work more on figuring how to draw asian features especially the eyes. Sometimes I hit the mark, other times I don’t.

but between this and 2012? Not too much has changed. I do hair fluffier now, and I angle the eyes better. The teeth not being outlined doesn’t give that weird effect where I might give him TOO MANY TEETH....

People do that and it’s easy but whoof.

So there’s still learning and adapting to do in QUICK drawings, you know? but I can still see there’s good things. That took me like 5 minutes to draw? Not bad honestly.

In it’s own bracket is original characters though too?? But also divergent of STYLE shifts because like...

OKAY. Nightmare Syndicate’s story.. started for me in 7th or 8th grade, that was when I was...14? 15? I’ve been fleshing it out for like 13 years, that’s wild haha!! I love my kids and all.

But okay so SIALI. She’s still fairly similar but I restructured her face for SURE. She’s gotten less edgy, she’s.... a teenage girl.

FELIX?? CHRIST. He’s been such a long journey!! More on that later?

Rot and even Cor?? Rot and Cor are a shorter span of development, but Rot started in Highschool so almost 10 years ago, and Cor has been fairly solid - but even just DRAWING him over three years? Go look at how much he changes.. I’m not married to concepts easily. haha!

People act like making a character you’re STUCK with it. Like Oh boy, I better make this character good, from the get go!!

I only worry about that with small potatoes like my Pillar(Gods) designs I just made for the comic?? Even still, small things will change with them I’m sure.

But not only has Felix and Siali changed, but they’ve GROWN with my style and DEFINED it even. I’ve had to adjust my style to support Felix’s look honestly a LOT. Bend my rules. Break my anatomy stickler attitude - and honestly, that’s the thing.

You have to learn the rules and anatomy BEFORE you can break them. A style built upon broken anatomy will fail you down the road if you just excuse everything with style.

Learn to draw the hands. Learn to draw the feet. Figure out the face. Bones exist. You can break the FUCK out of it once you learn how to do it, you know? Like I’ve seen so many styles I LOVE who are cartoony and BROKEN AS FUCK, but there’s still some STRUCTURE to it. Most of those people can still structure a face just fine, and the reason exaggeration works so well is because there’s like unwritten rules for what works and doesn’t based on that?

Idk.

Felix has a very elongated torso, he’s like 7′ or 8′ tall so I mean?? He’s... broken anatomy, but he’s... lanky - but his muscle is LITHE and stretched. It makes contextual sense. That’s the important part.

But even designs, it’s important to understand designs YOU make, or like... to understand they’ll CHANGE and that’s growth within your art too?

Like okay, example. Felix has a millipede inspired monster form. But with designing that? I still have to know how millipedes and SNAKES work because there's bones and vertebrae in there??

But there’s also the difference of like... CONCEPT, versus execution. You can design a fucking badass character, but understanding your own concept is SOMETHING.

I had no idea how this would play out, until I was mapping out his ‘midsection’ spikes? and man. MY STYLE WAS MADE FOR THIS CHALLENGE NOW. Which is so interesting how smooth my style has always been? Felix has defined ANGLES in it, and it’s hilarious tbh?

But even too, I’ve had to work with Felix’s monster form FACE, to break the rules to make it WORK the way I need it too?

On the anatomy subject too, like when I first got into Marvel comics 6 years ago or so? I had no idea how to do muscle structures?? I was so BAD at it.

I can look at this left image and CRINGE so badly at how NONE of those are muscles?? THOSE ARE THINGS I PERCEIVE AS MUSCLES. Like...

A course I took taught me to draw what I see, not what I know. That’s the whole point of that post that goes around about drawing a shrimp. Look it up. It’s hilarious and cute.

But it’s like, asking an artist to draw a bike, you can tell who uses reference and who WINGS it. It’s funny, but like it’s what you know versus what you see.

I started to study anatomy like crazy and was seeing improvements days at a time. The right image was done like... a month later? already I can see the muscles under the pectorals? those look normal now. the abs aren’t dough lumps under the skin in a perfect 6 pack, they’re the actual plane shapes.

I was trying to find a good reference for myself of learning to make men ‘thicker’ too in terms of the waist etc since the left is really...thin.... but...

A bit better, but even still, comparing these two - they’re 2 months apart? and I can see understanding more about arms and how they connect to the body, where the planes ACTUALLY lay for the chest and obliques and such?

I can see improvements from July 2012 up there, to - WHOOPS. I FORGOT TO CHANGE THE YEAR LMAO... TO FEBRUARY 2013...omg

I mean, I could go on and on about improvements I see, when I go through my art though? Gosh.

Like I’m seeing so SO many bad hands and feet in my old stuff, and just CRINGING because tricks I learned for myself by now?

I give so many pointers and streams and screenshares on discord still to help people with art and it cracks me up?? Like...

I dunno. I’m pretty mediocre tbh, but god damn.

#art improvement #art meme #pep talk

[ff7central]

Creator Spotlight: Kizunatsudoishi

Miri here, with the next entry in our Creator Spotlight series. This time the random number generator has summoned artist Kizunatsudoishi (Kizu). ( http://Kizunatsudoishi.tumblr.com )

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

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

Kizu: Hm, for some reason the sleeping elves!Sefikura popped up in my head. It was certainly one of those that took me weeks to finish. I learned so much about coloring doing that piece. Seph's thighs were thickened with layers of white and purplish white and blueish white and orangeish white because I couldn't get the pale tone right. I even beat myself over it for days. Thank god it turned out... not so bad...?

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

Kizu: Comments ANYWHERE. But anyway, from what I've seen, people are less likely to comment on the reblog because they feel like it's rude or something, but if you feel like that, please comment all the craziest thing and reactions in the tags. UwU I dare speak for all of the creators out there that WE LOVE COMMENTS. Especially the squeally over the top ones.

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

Kizu: Aside from the obvious choices (the blond angry smol and the silver-haired mean assholery tol), in terms of characterization (and in-game stat), Cid Highwind is my lowkey favorite. Those moments featuring Cid Highwind is either hilarious or super inspirational. His speeches about his dream, the power of mankind and science, the planet Gaia, the goddamn tea... gosh. Cid Highwind gives the most powerful speeches and the most hilarious profanities.

Miri: Favourite media to work in?

Kizu: I actually have a love hate relationship with it but, pencil and paper.

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

Kizu: Hmmmm. Maybe... try to brainstorm exactly how you want to draw the thing. Come up with keywords that you can search by (aka finding references). Read/watch something visual and may inspire you to draw the thing since references can pop up in those visual media.

If nothing of the above works, force your stupid hand to at least draw *something* (Like, if you draw something that would involve a human, sketch their head first with a circle, and try to expand the face, where the face is facing towards, then expand pose from there with skeletal-ish pose.) If you don't know how poses work then feel free to look it up. At least, learn how to *sketch* poses with stick figures since that will save you from so much pain.

You can also listen to music that put you in certain moods.

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

Kizu: I suppose most of the stuff I had always want to doodle *cough* frillysmexykinkydressesandflowyconcubineoutfitsandfancyhairdosforCloud *cough* I have done... to some extent. There's so much more Emperoth x Cloudcubine thing I want to do though... :Q_ I-I have this... constant need of putting Cloud in dresses. He just... looks too gorgeous in dresses. Mmm, Cloud in dresses...

Come to think of it, I kinda want to try doodling something fluffy or... school life-ish too...?

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

Kizu: 1. Have a section of land that looking towards Midgar that can trigger a flashback cutscene of Zack's final stand... and maybe his yellow flower...

2. Keep the W-Item glitch ;D

3. Explorable Midgar, maybe SOLDIER private quarters with snippets of the SOLDIER boys...?

4. Keep Cloud riding a dolphin. And the CPR part.

5. A dressing up montage of Miss Cloud with pink background and hearts flying while everyone ogles "her". (A thing that ACTUALLY HAPPENS in FFRK so I'm looking at you Squeenix you WILL give us a Miss Cloud dressing up montage).

6. We get to Omnislash """Executioner""" (a synonym for half naked) Sephiroth with Miss Cloud. In a purple dress. With a big bow. Wearing perfume. And diamond tiara. Yeap The Great Sephiroth was defeated by all of *that*.

7. Kinda overlap with the above but... maybe an attire option like we can change the party member's clothing (much like FF15). We can have a bunch of Shinra infantrymen and sailors running around in dirt.

8. Steve Burton and Takahiro Sakurai saying "Warrrk!!". If Lightning can say "Kweh" then of course Cloud has to be a chocobo whisperer.

9. After seeing the giant ass Diamond Weapon in Kingsglaives... I actually look forward to the Weapon boss fights.

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

Kizu: I don't know... most of the headcanons I enjoy are all from you guys, like Sephiroth being a Scorpio, or he being the one breaking Ifalna and smol Aerith out of Shinra back then, or Cloud being a little shit... Usually I would think more about AUs. If it's an AU then I'd like to see more school life AUs. Listening to Bolbbalgan4 songs makes me think of a Cloud doodling stick figures on Seph's notebook in the library and they're playing footsies under the table ughf.

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

Kizu: I usually go for the OP team or the most practical so... Cloud Aerith Cid in disc 1 (I usually have Cloud as the healer/tank/everything else XD Aerith as main magic damage bc she is stronk with spells, and Cid). After that the team is Cloud Yuffie and Cid because of Yuffie's morph ability and her agility is stupid. Nothing can hit Yuffie... ever.

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

Kizu: CLOUD.

Drawing Sephiroth, albeit very satisfying for the eyes, is a great burden. That ridiculous man has a too high standard for his face alone. And then there comes that stupid, geographically mountainous plane of a body, and his 84 miles of legs. Not to mention that unbelievable luscious hair. And don't make me rant on those *eyelashes* that stabs through the fabric of space and time itself.

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

Kizu: Well guess what, I AM. Poof: http://kizunatsudoishi.tumblr.com/post/161768170836/3-commission-open-%CE%B5

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

Kizu: I used to be in a too active fandom and it was a nightmare. I used to be in a dead fandom and it was so sad. But then... this FF7 fandom is by some magical blessings, is still an alive submarine after all these years. I know some may have been sour grapes to some other, but the people I found in my little trash can corner, I can say that you guys are one of the greatest creators and people I've ever met. You guys... are the best. UmU

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

Sefikura Ballet: http://kizunatsudoishi.tumblr.com/post/177615867741/ballet-dancerssefikura-performing-swan-lake

Sefikura: http://kizunatsudoishi.tumblr.com/post/172478852401/art-based-on-asreoninfusions-whiskey-kisses

Sefikura Week Art for a fic by RadiusZero: http://kizunatsudoishi.tumblr.com/post/170107270506/sefikura-week-day-1-showing-up-unexpectedly

NSFW Cloud for a fic by AsreonInfusion: http://kizunatsudoishi.tumblr.com/post/161495409636/oviposition-tentacles-au-this-is-based-on (NSFW)

NSFW Sephiroth Images: http://kizunatsudoishi.tumblr.com/post/165607580006/sephiroth-in-chain-lingerie-commission-for-anon  (NSFW)

http://kizunatsudoishi.tumblr.com/post/165966347761/another-kinky-ukeroth-in-chain-lingerie-for-anon-u  (NSFW)

http://kizunatsudoishi.tumblr.com/post/166560946871/ukeroth-commission-for-anon-xd-this-time-i-went  (NSFW)

http://kizunatsudoishi.tumblr.com/post/167444208926/ukeroth-commission-for-anon-this-time-with-lace  (NSFW)

And my personal pick, my Christmas card for my discord group (This one IS safe for work): http://kizunatsudoishi.tumblr.com/post/167932312851/a-merry-asgzc-christmas-for-asylos-and-the-folks

#creator spotlight #kizunatsudoishi #fanart #community