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One day I’ll write a video essay about all the movies that turned out mediocre (or worse) because they were changed from the original plot the director wanted so much they became unrecognizable (looking at you croods 2 and the good dinosaur)

#pen talks #potential video essay

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Art Help

I redid this list because broken links 💀

General Tips

Stretch your fingers and hands

Art is for fun

Never too late to start/improve

Tumblr radar! Submit your work!?

Using a tablet

Editing software: pictures & video

Moodboard resources

Comic pacing

Storyboarding techniques

Watercolor

Coloring

Color Theory (not children's hospital)

Resources: coloring things a different color

Gold

Dark Skin undertones

Dark Skin in pastel art

POC Blush tones

Eyes colors

Cohesive Color Palette

Lights and Colors

Human Anatomy

POSE REFERENCES

Eyes: pupil shape, direction

Wizard Battle poses

Romance poses

Shoulders

Tips for practicing anatomy

Proportional Limbs

Skeletons

Hair Directions

Afro, 4C hair

Cane use

Dingle dongles: male reproductive

Clothing

Long skirts

Traditional Chinese Hanfu (clothing reference)

Cultural clothes

CLOTHING REFERENCE

Sewing information

Animals

Horse -> Dragon

Snouts: dogs, cats, wolves, fox

Foot, paw, hoof

More

Drawing references sources

Art tutorial Masterlist

Another art tutorial Masterlist

Inspiration: father recreates son's art

Inspiration: Lights

ART BOOKS

Plants/flowers: North America, Hawaii, Patagonia

Art Cheats

#reboop cause broken linkies #art help

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9/10 my fic ideas are just “wow I like this idea but it’s not a) written enough, b) not written long/well, and c) my hyperfixation”

#pen talks #bonus: me writing fics that arnt smut based cause I refuse to write that stuff and also don’t care for it #fellow ace’s out there who write stories because they don’t care for the smut

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Personal opinion on webtoons and vertical scroll format:

It sucks.

Not just from a personal preference standpoint but also from a creative standpoint.

I’ve seen many creators who work on webtoons originals comment on how they miss doing regular comic page formatting and I honestly think the vertical scroll CAN be used creatively… artists just don’t have the time to do it.

They expect 70+ panels every update (which is ridiculous btw, at most 1 standard page comic would have 10 panels at most to give you an idea, so basically webtoons is asking for 7+ pages per update which is insane) which can be stressful but they also expect you to somehow do that many panels in a week!

When I see people complain about the background art in some of these comics I IMMEDIATELY come to their defense because would YOU honestly be able to draw over 70+ backgrounds in that time? The story is more important at that point! So I really don’t care.

Not to mention that workload is KILLER on an artists drive, motivation, and overall health (mental and physical) I don’t see how any of that is okay.

Regular comic artists who don’t use the webtoons format have expressed their own problems with all these issues and they make a single page a week!

Unfortunately, the draw back from doing a regular page a week means less exposure to an audience so there is a draw back but this consumer mentality when it comes to comics is disheartening.

Idk what or where I will be posting my comics in the future (maybe tapas? They allow regular page formats I think) but I don’t intend to bend to the webtoons gods will on this matter either if it means I can finish a story reasonably with my squirrel brain.

So ye… rant over I guess

#webcomics #webtoons #webtoon #rant #pen talks #I really don’t like the vertical scroll

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NO STREAM TODAY!!

too many tech issues and i forgot to level up one very important pokemon for the gym soooooo ye~

#pen talks #update #no stream today sorry

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WE STREAMING POKEMON AGAIN! RUNNING AROUND IN DRIFTVEIL CITY AND PLOT???

#pokemon #pokemon black and white #pokemon bw #nuzlocke #streaming #youtube

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hot artists don't gatekeep

I've been resource gathering for YEARS so now I am going to share my dragons hoard

Floorplanner. Design and furnish a house for you to use for having a consistent background in your comic or anything! Free, you need an account, easy to use, and you can save multiple houses.

Comparing Heights. Input the heights of characters to see what the different is between them. Great for keeping consistency. Free.

Magma. Draw online with friends in real time. Great for practice or hanging out. Free, paid plan available, account preferred.

Smithsonian Open Access. Loads of free images. Free.

SketchDaily. Lots of pose references, massive library, is set on a timer so you can practice quick figure drawing. Free.

SculptGL. A sculpting tool which I am yet to master, but you should be able to make whatever 3d object you like with it. free.

Pexels. Free stock images. And the search engine is actually pretty good at pulling up what you want.

Figurosity. Great pose references, diverse body types, lots of "how to draw" videos directly on the site, the models are 3d and you can rotate the angle, but you can't make custom poses or edit body proportions. Free, account option, paid plans available.

Line of Action. More drawing references, this one also has a focus on expressions, hands/feet, animals, landscapes. Free.

Animal Photo. You pose a 3d skull model and select an animal species, and they give you a bunch of photo references for that animal at that angle. Super handy. Free.

Height Weight Chart. You ever see an OC listed as having a certain weight but then they look Wildly different than the number suggests? Well here's a site to avoid that! It shows real people at different weights and heights to give you a better idea of what these abstract numbers all look like. Free to use.

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Gonna be real with you all… that post I made about Drarry started some unwanted discourse that defeated the whole purpose of that post.

“You can’t ship drarry because the REAL reason JK hates it is cause he’s a racist/bully!”

Dude when did I say any of that? Also BOY do I have some information for you that your not gonna like about JK

“Shipping canon drarry is toxic!”

Again… where are the askers?

“Don’t spread this misinformation!”

Okay, I’m gonna stop you right there and ask you to take a step back. JK Rowling has been confirmed to be a terf, racist, and general horrible human being for a long time now. Trying to “um actually” me in a post that was encouraging the fandom to keep making what they like and ignoring the creator by making everyone of her hated tropes fanon is not helping anyone or yourself.

I’m of the opinion that drarry functions as a ship so long as Draco himself gets the character development he so obviously was deprived of. (I’m also of the opinion that that CD needs to be beaten into his skull brutally before his true self can even come out but I digress)

You can dislike the ship all you want but calling it “toxic” just because of canon will not give you browny points here. Canon can go suck an egg.

To reiterate my point for people who seem to ignore it: JK Rowling hates drarry not because it’s “not healthy” but because of what it represents, which is a legitimate gay relationship between her protagonist and a character she beat into the ground.

Flawed characters are interesting because they are flawed.

A relationship is interesting in a story because of the potential that it brings to the story.

So again: make your trans characters, make your poc Harry and Hermione, make your marauders drip the rainbow (forgot to include them last time whoops), because the garbage human being who made our childhoods is mad about it.

That’s all.

#rant #Harry Potter #drarry #maraders era #hermione granger #draco malfoy #trans inclusion #death of the author

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… how does one address something in the reblogs of a post I made and get two people to stop like… fighting? On my post? How do I get them to stop cause its discourse that is really stupid and unnecessary and ignores my main point

#pen talks #annoyance

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Elesa-powerline~

Plus speedpaint with a certain song~

#reboop #Pokémon #goofy movie #illustration

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Elesa-powerline~

Plus speedpaint with a certain song~

#pokemon #pokemon bw #pokemon black and white #penapalooza #illustration #digital art

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WE FIGHTING GYM LEADER ELESA! JOIN US!

#pokemon #nuzlocke #youtube #streaming

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i heard there was a dino squead reboot? O.O may i have?

I mean, it doesn't exist anywhere public yet! (who knows if it ever will, I work on it as a fun little "what if")

^ By @zachdoesfanart

The working title is Dino Squad: Evolution! It's a little reboot I created with my friends that refocuses the show on found family themes and reimagines the show in a more Teen Titan-esque plot style. It's meant to be three seasons.

If you know the original Dino Squad, there are some differences like character identities and ethnicities and a couple different dino choices! (Fiona is now a Pachycephalosaurus and Moynihan is now a Anzu Wyliei).

^ a snippet I wrote about the opening of episode one.

^ All above character design sketches by @dovelydraws

^ Fiona character transformation test by @jinbugs

We have all of the general big arcs for all three seasons planned, with a bunch of individual imaginary episodes for season one.

There's some fun stuff like the struggle of choosing to put aside college plans and life to fight to save the world, queer self discovery, and... losing yourself to your dino form or joining the villain!

^ Comic of s1 finale plans by @jinbugs

But yeah! Dino Squad is a silly show that has always filled me with so much joy to watch, so I've been having a lot of fun over the years messing with my own version (with my lovely artist friends' help!).

#I’ve been lurking in the development chat of this #it’s been crazy seeing what they have planned #I’d watch the reboot tbh #friend art #dino squad: evolution #not my art

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The secret wish is to write a fanfic that someone loves so much they make fan art of it, or to create a drawing that someone creates an entire fic based off of it.

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Do u do rottmnt requests?

as I am no longer consistently drawing or writing rottmnt anymore and have moved on to other interests, sadly no. I also don't take requests. As a full time artist, making a living is very important to me feeding my cat and partner as well as paying bills BUT! in the future I will possibly be opening commissions in which case i would be happy to draw rottmnt again.

my main focus has been on my webcomic and pokemon nuzlocke but i'm still a fan of rottmnt, and motorcity my attention is just... elsewhere

#asks #pen talks #rottmnt #pokemon

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Was thinking about streaming some grinding today but I realized the ev grinding I’m doing is actually super dull and not at all interesting (plus the weather is god aweful here rn and if Fridays stream wasnt a clue enough, our Wi-Fi is never happy at the slightest inconvenience) soooo I might not stream grinding this week because there’s a lot of it to do and not as entertaining!

#pen talks #Pokémon

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You need more free art.

I quit my job yesterday. Well, actually I quit my job eight weeks ago, but they finally released me yesterday for good behaviour. Don't get me wrong, I love what I do - but I do it for the wrong reasons. Working for major charities, you learn very fast that 'I want to make the world a better place' is a phrase you use to ask people for money, not to give them things. I was an ass-backwards fit for that world.

You need more free art. I need more free art. Everyone has felt the shift in our media landscape over the last ten years, away from access and towards nickel-and-diming the human experience. That lack of access is making life and culture worse for all of us, across the board. Paywalled news sites leave us less informed, attacks on the Internet Archive leave us less capable of research. Algorithmic social feeds and streaming walled gardens trap us inside smaller and smaller demographic bubbles, where we are increasingly only likely to encounter ideas that have been curated for us by marketing departments. Hasty efforts to resist AI commodification have only led to more artists locking their work away and calling for even more onerous systems of copyright law. This is not good for us.

We all need more free art.

So what am I going to do about it?

This is a question I have been asking myself for years. It's easy to sit here feeilng frustrated and thinking 'boy I hope SOMEONE does SOMETHING'. It's harder to take action in a world where I still have rent to pay. But hard doesn't mean impossible. Sometimes hard just means time-consuming, frustrating and slow. And sometimes it's worth doing something time-consuming, frustrating and slow because...I want to make the world a better place.

I'm going to do this:

1. From April 1st, I am relaunching as a freelance writer and editor.

This is the one that will (hopefully) help to pay the bills. I am a very good and experienced editor. I've worked on hollywood movies, I'm a member of the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders, I have clients who have been coming to me exclusively for more than 10 years.

Alongside bigger contract jobs, I am going to refocus on offering my services to small-press creators at a reduced rate. That means you, graphic novelists. That means you, itch and amazon writers. I want to help you develop your work, the same way I help large organisations. You can learn more about what en editor even does and what kind of pricing you can expect here.

2. I'm also going to start giving shit away. Like, constantly.

Next week I'm going to launch a new free shop. If you're unfamiliar, a free shop, giveaway shop, swap shop, etc. is an anarchist tradition of setting up a storefront where anyone can take what they like for no cost. Offline, this often means second-hand clothes, tools, furniture, food etc. Online, I am going to be giving away digital art. Copyright-free, no strings attached. It will (eventually) feature everything from print-res posters to zines, poems, tattoo flash, t-shirt designs and anything else we come up with.

Yes, I said 'we' - while this is a curated collection, it will feature work from a variety of credited and anonymous artists and activists, all of whom have agreed to give their work away to the public domain. Some of it will be practical, some of it will be political, but a lot of it will be decorative or personal. This is, in part, a response to recent difficulty I had finding somewhere that would print a one-off joke poster for a friend that featured the word 'faggot'. Enough. No middlemen - no explaining ourselves. Just print our shit and enjoy it.

I'm very, very excited about this project. I'll have more to say about it closer to the launch, but you can expect it to go live on March 27th.

2.2 I forgot to mention the ACTUAL LAUNCH GIVEAWAY

To celebrate my launch, I am going to be giving away a ton of physical prints. When I went looking for my old stock to see if it was worth setting a new (paid) storefront up, I realised I had way more old work in storage than I thought. This will be announced in its own right on Monday, but this is why I've been hinting you should go follow my Patreon.

On April 1st, I will pick 8 random patrons (from across all tiers including non-paying followers!) and mail them a bundle of assorted prints and postcards. The prize pool includes A3 and A4 posters, packs of A6 postcards, and printed minicomics that I've previously sold for up to £12 each.

You don't have to be a paying subscriber to enter - this is strictly no-purchase necessary. It is purely and entirely a celebration of the concept of GIVING ART AWAY FOR FREE.

3. PORN, YOU PERVERTS

Because I still have to pay to stay alive, I am going to be subsidising all this free art with the introduction of Fuck You Fridays. Starting from March 29th, I will drop a new 18+ short story on the last Friday of every month, over on itch.io (yes I know my page is desolate right now, don't worry I'll get there).

The first edition, Go Fuck Yourself, is about, well - telling your boss where to stick it. Julia has had it with her millionaire man-child manager, and is just about ready to let him know what she really thinks. It's a short and steamy 5k words, with a gorgeous cover illustration by @taylor-titmouse, and you can pick it up for $3 starting from March 29th.

4. ANOTHER BIG SURPRISE

I'm keeping this one under wraps for now, but April 1st will also play host to one more (FREE) launch. If you've been following me for a long time, you might remember the other significance of this date (no not April Fool's day, though that is certainly thematically relevant to this entire effort). That's all I'll say right now. Watch this space.

tl;dr: I'm sick of paywalls and career ladders. I'm literally putting my money where my mouth is. More free art for everyone and I'm not kidding around!!!