#<- just some basic colouring and sharpening

[sentientsky]

help

[shaunashipman]

i told my friend i would find him some beginner’s giffing tutorials, but all the one’s i could find were either years out of date, used a method that made me go “huh”, or incorporated ready-made actions. all perfectly fine, but if i’m sending someone a tutorial i’d rather it be one for a method i understand enough to help with.

so, here is a beginner’s guide to giffing, as told by cleo, a neurotic, detailed, and organization happy individual. there will be many pictures.

this tutorial will strictly cover the gif making portion of the process, from getting your screencaps to importing in photoshop, resizing/cropping, and sharpening. i was going to briefly go over colouring, but tumblr only allows 30 images and i ran out of space, so i'll have to do a separate colouring tutorial (which also means i can go into more detail, yay).

downloading the videos, whether direct downloads or t*rrents, is also another tutorial. but make sure you’re using at least 1080p, and the bigger the file the better. a single episode of a ~45 minute show should ideally be 2gb at minimum. a full length movie should ideally be at least 5gb. imo 2160p/4k files are not really necessary; the quality increase is negligible, and it takes a lot longer to screencap them. if you do use 2160p/4k files, try and make sure it is not HDR, as those videos are often washed out and require a different screencapping program to fix.

Programs

I am using a cracked version photoshop 2022, but whichever version you use should be pretty much the same

Actions. not a program but a function inside photoshop, where you essentially record a series of steps, and then you can simple play that action when needed and those steps will repeat, which saves considerable time when giffing. I will note which parts of the tutorial are best saved as actions, and explain how to create actions at the end.

For screencapping i use kmplayer it’s free and very simple to use

not at all a necessary program, but i use freecommander instead of the regular windows file explorer as i find the dual panels very helpful when moving the frames around

Screencapping

there are many programs you can use to get the screencaps from a video, a lot are basically the same, some are better suited for particular video file types. kmplayer is a very simple program to use, but afaik the capture function only works on mkv. files (the only other file type i’ve tried is mp4, which plays but does not capture)

once you open your video file in kmplayer, we’re going to open the advanced capture window, found under capture→advanced capture, or alt+v

the window should look like this

A-this is where all your screencaps will save to. i recommend making a specific folder for all your screencaps

B-make sure this is set to png for best quality

C-this is the number of screencaps you want to take, guesstimate how many you will need, keeping in mind that most videos are approx. 25 frames per second, and you should always cap a bit more than you think just in case

D-make sure “every/frame” is selected and set to 1

E-make sure “original” is selected, resizing will be done in photoshop

F-make sure “correct aspect ratio” is unselected

go to the part of the video you want to gif, and pause it just slightly before that part starts, then select ��start’. the screencaps will start to save to the file, no need to play the video, and will automatically stop once it has capped the number of frames you have chosen

and here is how they look inside freecommander. i have already made a folder for this gifset, which is on the left. now you’re going to make a folder for each individual gif. i’ve decided this one will have four gifs, so create four folders (i just label them gif 01, gif 02, etc) and then move the frames for each gif into their respective folder

while you can always delete frames once the gif is made if it’s too big, i prefer to make sure i have the correct number of frames before i start. the gif limit on tumblr is 10mb, so it’s good to look at the scene/shots you’re giffing and decide approx. what dimensions your gif will be. full size gifs have a width of 540px and your choice of height. if you go for a square gif (540x540) you can usually fit 40-50 frames. if you’re planning for a smaller height (such as 540x400) you can usually fit more around 50-60 frames.

and here are the caps inside the folders. another reason i like freecommander is it’s ability to “multi-rename” files. the default file explorer can do so as well, but you have to do each folder individually and you can’t customize the new names as much. either way, i prefer to rename the files to each gif just to scratch my organization itch.

Introduction to Photoshop

NOTE: i have changed many of my keyboard shortcuts in photoshop to ones i prefer, so any you see listed in the menus of these screenshots are likely not the original shortcuts. you can see and change them yourself under edit→keyboard shortcuts

quick run-down of the photoshop interface. i have adjusted placement of some things from the default so this isn’t exactly how your photoshop will look when you open it, but everything is labelled, either on top or by hovering over the element. once you’re more familiar and have your process down i would recommend adjusting the workspace to suit your process.

A-your main tools and colour selector. almost all the tools have either several tools in one, or have alternate options which can be accessed by right-clicking the tool. you can also hover over each tool to get a pop-up with a quick explanation of the tool

B-additional “windows” such as history, properties, actions etc. can be opened from the window menu at the top and moved around with click-and-drag. history and properties should already be there by default, but probably on the right hand side instead. each window opens and closes with a click

C-the timeline window where the gif is made. the white square is a single frame of a gif, and on the row below is the play controls. this will not be there by default and will need to be opened from the window menu

D-adjustment layers for colouring

E-layers box. this is where the screencaps will show, along with adjustment layers, text layers, etc.

Opening Screencaps in Photoshop

go to file → open navigate to the folder for your first gif, select the first screencap, and check the image sequencing, and click open

a window will open labelled frame rate. set it to 23.976 and select ok

the screencaps will open in the timeline view, seen as the blue panel line at the bottom, and the screencaps are combined into video layer in the layer panel on the right.

Creating Frames

technically, you could go right into your cropping/resizing and sharpening from here, however if you do that directly then you have to keep the screencaps in the folders you have, otherwise if you save and re-open the gif it won’t move.

this next part should be made into an action.

at the top right of the timeline window, click four vertical lines to open the menu and select convert frames → flatten frames into clips. depending on how long the gif is, this can take a minute.

the layers panel should now look like this, each frame of the gif is now its own layer.

the very bottom layer will be the video group. this can be deleted as we’ve made the frames from it

in same timeline menu as before, right under “flatten frames into clips”, select “convert to frame animation” and the screen should now look like this. this will be the end of this action.

Cropping and Resizing

with widescreen footage, sometimes it’s just shorter than 1080p, but most of the time it will have the black bars on the top and bottom, and frustratingly, they’re not always the same size. it’s good to save the most common sizes as actions.

to find the size of the actual screen you turn on the rulers under view→rulers and check the height. then open your canvas size dialogue box under image→canvas size and change the height, making sure pixels are selected in the dropdown. yellowjackets is what i call “xtra wide” which is 800px. “normal” widescreen is 960px.

next we’re going to resize the caps. i also make actions for this, one for each potential gif size. open the image size dialogue box under image→image size and change the height of the image to your desired height plus 4 pixels. these extra pixels are to prevent a line at the top and/or bottom of your completed gif. now re-open the canvas size box, change the width to 540px, and the height to the desired, removing those 4 extra pixels. i have set this one to 540x540. this is where you would end the resizing action.

and as you can see she is off-screen. select the top layer, hold down shift and select the bottom layer to select them all, and with the move tool (the very top one) activated, click and drag to move it left to right as needed to centre the figure/s. as you move it a box will appear telling you how far you are moving it in any direction. make sure you are only moving it left or right, not up or down. to be certain of that, open the properties tab.

the y axis is your up/down, x is left/right. for this gif the y needs to stay at -98. you can also manually change the x axis number instead of dragging the image. also helpful for making sure multiple gifs of the same shot are all positioned the same.

the layer are currently ordered with the 1st at the top and the last at the bottom. with all layers still selected, go to layers→arrange→reverse. the last layer will be on top now. if there is movement in your gif, check if you need to alter the position again to make sure the movement properly centred. but once you are satisfied with the position, the layers should be in “reverse” position, of last layer on top. this is to ensure that the gif plays forwards.

Converting Gif

this should also be made into an action, going through sharpening process

in the timeline menu, select “make frames from layers”

the frames are now populated in animation window. in timeline, click select all frames. go to any of the frames on the bottom and click the little arrow beneath it, select other, and enter 0.07 seconds. this is not a necessary step, as we will have to adjust the frame rate at the end, most likely to 0.05, but if we don’t change the frame rate here, then when we play the gif while working on it to check how it looks, it will play very fast.

in the same menu at the right of the timeline box, select “convert to video timeline”

then, making sure all layers in the panel on the right are selected, go to filter→convert for smart filters. this turns all the layers into a single smart object.

but if you look where i’ve circled, it says the gif is 99 frames long*, when in fact there are only 47. if you are making regular “scene” gifs, basic colouring and maybe a caption, this is fine and does not need to be fixed, it will play at the same speed. if you want to change it to display (approx.**) the correct number of frames, go to the timeline menu on the right, select “set timeline frame rate” and change it from 30 to 15

*if it does not list a frame number by 4 digits but instead says 5f, 10f, 15f, etc. go to the timeline menu on the right, select panel options, and change timeline units to “frame number”

**the reason why this is only approximate is because the actual frame rate is not a a whole number, so when changing the frame rate it isn’t a 1:1, and 47 frames becomes 50 frames. the extra frames are removed at the very end, but if you are not doing any edits that require working frame by frame, there’s no need to change the frame rate here at all

Sharpening

this is, as it sounds, making the gif look sharper. to start go to filter→sharpen→smart sharpen and this window opens. play around with the dials to see what each ones does. the below settings are good for most high quality footage.

Amount-basically, how sharp do you want it

Radius-hard to explain, but this essentially sets how deep the lines of the sharpness are

Reduce Noise-smooths the pixels

once you click okay your single layer should look like this.

you’re going to then right click the layer and select duplicate layer. with the top layer selected, go to filters→blur→gaussian blur and set the radius to 1.0 pixels.

then change the opacity of the top layer to 10%. this is to essentially soften the sharpening a bit, as if it’s too sharp it can make the colouring wonky. this opacity level can also be changed depending on need.

finally, select both layers, right click, and click “group from layers”. your gif is now fully made and sharpened.

Colouring

yeah. ran out of image space. but this is where you would do your colouring and add a caption or any other text.

Converting & Exporting

when all your colouring is done, you’re ready to start saving your gif. you can do it directly from your current file, but that means essentially losing your colouring, as all those layers will be merged together. i am someone who likes to save my psd’s (photoshop files), at least until i’ve posted the gifs, in case i need to fix something in the colouring. if you’d like to keep yours as well, open the history tab and select the first icon at the bottom “create new document from current state”. this will open a copy of the file in a new tab. save the original file and you can close it, continuing all work on the copy file.

select your all your layers, convert them into a smart object from filter->convert for smart filters, then follow the same steps from Creating Frames above. once you're back in frame animation, select Create Frames From Layers, and once again set the frame animation speed.

most people set the speed to 0.05. i personally set it to 0.05 or 0.06 depending on the length of the gif. check how it looks at 0.05, if it seems too fast, try 0.06.

now to save. go to file->export->save for web (legacy). the number is the lower left corner is your gif size, it needs to be under 10mb or else you'll have to delete some frames.

the right panel is your save options. the preset dropdown has some built-in settings, but you won't use them because (at least on my version) the presets only go up to 128 colours, instead of the full 256. the 3 i've highlighted in green are the only one's you'll adjust as needed. the settings below i use for i'd say 90% of my gifs. i'll sometimes change the adaptive dropdown to one of the other options, ocaissionaly the diffusion, and rarely the no transparency dither, but play around with them and see how they change the look of the gif.

when you're satisfied with the look of your gif, click save at the bottom right of the window.

voilà! you now have a gif.

Actions

this is your actions panel. the triangle on the left side is the button to open it. remember, if it's not already there, go to windows->actions to open it.

the buttons on the bottom, left to right, are stop recording, record action, play action, new folder, new action, and delete.

as you can see, i have different folders for my resizing, sharpening, captions, saving, and my 1 step (temporary) actions. to run an action is very simple; click the action, and click play.

to create an action, click the new action button, a box will pop up, give the action a name, and click record. the record button at the bottom of the action window will turn red. now perform all the steps you want it to record, and click stop recording. keep in mind it will record every single thing you do, including in other open files, so if the action you plan to record will have a lot of steps, it might help to write them down first.

to modify an action, select the step in the action above where you'd like the new step to be, hit record, perform the step, stop recording. select the step you'd like to delete, and click the delete button.

steps within the actions can be clicked and dragged, both within that action and moved to other actions. actions can also be moved between folders.

[theheroheart]

Quick GIF tutorial (Photoshop)

#holy shit this is perfection!!#i am so jealous of this set!#the coloring op THE COLORING!!! (original post)

alright @dontyouknowemma-itsyou and anyone interested, this was really easy to colour so I'm gonna give you a quick breakdown. (i didn't save the psd file?? so i'm redoing this i guess, but i did it on autopilot in the first place. i've been making gifs for over 15 years.)

GONNA INCLUDE A VIDEO AT THE END SHOWING OFF THE SETTINGS!!

General GIF stuff

This is in Photoshop CC. I extract a clip from a video as an MP4 file, which photoshop can open. (I use AviDemux for this, which is free, because it lets you save clips using 'copy' encoding for video output and still change from MKV to MP4 format - without losing any video quality, cause you're not re-encoding.)

Open that shit directly in photoshop as a video layer (just drag and drop), that lets you scan through it to check the colouring works overall. Convert the video layer to Smart Object, that lets you resize and edit it. (Do NOT open a full movie in Photoshop, it'll probably die and it has a max length anyway.)

Also all the colour adjustments are gonna be adjustment layers you can tweak and turn on/off whenever. There's a lil button at the bottom of the Layers window to add them quickly.

When we're done we're choosing a section of the video in the Timeline window and we're doing File->Export->Save For Web. 'Adaptive' (or selective) palette selection, 'pattern' style dithering.

Colouring

Curves layer to lighten. Just pull the curve up. Curves seem to give a much smoother lightening, since it mostly affects the middle, leaving the brights and the darks where they are.

Levels to make the darkest darks pure black, and the lightest lights pure white. Good for limiting GIF size. Don't overdo it though.

Colour balance!! My beloved, most important. So for the Shadows and Highlights, you're gonna move the sliders towards Cyan and Blue, but for the Midtones you're gonna do the opposite - towards Red and Yellow. This means you don't shift the overall colour of the picture, but trust me it does SO MUCH for the contrast and colour. I swear I do this for almost any edit, and also my art tbh. Also if the original clip is like very green or whatever, you can correct that here.

Selective colour. For this I did one thing. For 'Black' dropdown, I upped 'black' and 'yellow' sliders (the latter to counteract the blue in the darks). This in combination with:

Levels again. Bring in those darks, turn them pure black. Basically this does a couple things. It preserves GIF file size, by making sure the dark areas are static (file sizes mostly depends on pixels that are CHANGING). It ALSO makes the palette much more optimized, meaning you don't waste palette on the darks no one sees anyway, and instead uses them in the mid range colour variation, giving much smoother gradients. That's it!! That's all the colouring!!

EDIT: Uh I probably also had a Vibrance layer?? Idk. This just ups the saturation, but it's softer than upping Saturation. Makes the colours pop without overdoing it.

Other tips and tricks

Often I'll put a Smart Sharpen (50% amount, 0,5px radius) filter on the video layer, just to make it a bit crisper. Subtle but effective.

You can manually edit the palette when you save as a GIF, either to reduce file size, or because some colour areas look pixelly. See the video for how.

If your file size is huge but you don't want to shorten or resize, you can reduce the frame rate manually. To do this, FIRST save the GIF, then open the GIF you just saved. Go through in the Timeline window (which is now a Frame Animation rather than a Video Timeline), select every other frame, and delete them. When you do this, remember to select the rest of the frames and double their Frame Delay so you don't end up with a super speedy GIF. (You can also make a GIF slow-mo like this.)

Since the video is a smart object, I literally just resized it in between saving the different GIFs, to change composition between the different shots.

Selective Colour layer can be used for a lot of image tweaking. For example, if something is overly yellow or green, I may go to the Yellow and Green in dropdown and just reduce the yellow slider. (I usually then go to Red in dropdown and ADD some yellow to that, to balance out the reds to be less pink.) Or maybe the overall colours are nice but the blues are dull, so I'll just go to Blue/Cyan and tweak those specifically.

If you have a colouring you like that you want to use on lots of things, remember you can drag-and-drop layers between different images. You can also save a photoshop file with nothing but those layers, to use on later gifs and just tweak as needed. (You can also make Actions to automate stuff, but I won't go into that.)

How easy or hard something is to colour HUGELY depends on the original video, both lighting/colouring and video quality.

Finally the video showing settings!

This is like 5 minutes long and has no commentary or anything. This is mostly to show off where you find each individual thing, and what difference it makes in the colouring.

ANYWAY hope someone found this useful!!! ♥

[plushiesssforcrying]

Bluebells.

୨୧ chapters ┊ memories. / nightfall.

୨୧ character ┊ telemachus.

୨୧ pronouns ┊ she / her.

୨୧ contents ┊ day 3. telemachus fucks up. reader fucks up too. miscommunication? kinda reasonable tho LOL. not beta read, we die. angst if you squint? they have no established relationship but they're fucked up basically.

The wind bent to the slash of the blade as a young prince swung it with precision. Sweat dripped off his face as he kept moving and attacking an invisible target, the wind in the open courtyard of the palace effectively cooling him down.

“Once more.” A stern feminine voice demanded when the prince lowered his sword. He sighed in retaliation, making her gaze sharpen.

“Can we take a brief moment?” He asked her in a winded manner, “I fear my arms might fall off if I continue…”

She opened her mouth to deny him before she stopped herself, her gaze seemed to stray off— an unusual look on the goddess of wisdom. Telemachus raised a brow, confused by her hesitance. After a short moment, she nodded.

“Yes, go ahead.”

A smile broke out on his face, stepping away to rest against a tree. Athena followed not shortly after, glancing at him as he wiped the excess sweat off his face. Telemachus hadn't told his mentor about the woman he met, figuring it was nothing to note.

After all, some people are just a bit… odd. It was nothing he should be alarmed of, he thought to himself. Telemachus stared at the grass below him, picking at individual blades as his eyes were unfocused, unblinking. His breaths stayed slow and composed as he stayed lost in his thoughts, something the goddess quickly snapped him out of.

“Telemachus, are you listening?”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. Uh, great idea.” He muttered absentmindedly.

“Really? Because I've yet to say anything.” Telemachus blinked at Athena’s claim before groaning, realizing he walked right into her trap. He leaned his head back against the tree with closed eyes, his hands still quietly fiddling with the grass below him.

He debated rather quickly in his head whether he should tell her or not but it'd be best if she did, she'd know better after all. He opened his mouth to speak, but the armored goddess beat him to it.

“Something clouds your mind, Telemachus.” She more so stated rather than asked. “Is this because of that strange woman you've met?”

“What? No! I mean, she's just an eccentric woman at the market, with scales on her skin, and— wait, you know?”

“Did you think you could keep something from the goddess of wisdom?” A response that made Telemachus groaned as he slumped further back against the tree, letting himself slide down into the grass.

Seeing his troubled expression, she decided to speak.

“You should use your head,” She started, “nothing comes with slowing down the inevitable.”

She gently pats the top of his head. “If you seek answers from her, you should find a way to get it. By all means necessary.”

With that, the goddess bid her farewell in a hurry— with firm reassurance that she will return again, something he noticed she does very often.

Telemachus mused about it quietly. He knew that he should consider her words carefully, considering a goddess had just bestowed her wisdom to him. Although, he had a bad gut feeling if he did.

He sighed after a while, nothing comes with doubt and hesitance, he thought to himself. He picked himself up from the ground, once more in hopes to find the dangerously alluring shopkeeper.

Birds chirp overhead the prince as his shoes left a trail of temporary indents in the grass. His dual coloured eyes followed the noise instinctively, assuming that it perched not too long after the sound of flapping wings went absent.

He continued further, some leaves and fallen twigs crunching under the sole of his shoes. He reached the familiar opening in the forest after a short while, hoping to see the woman yet to be named.

It didn't take long for him to set his eyes on a figure, except he didn't quite recognize it. With a discarded cloak beside her, a woman sat elegantly on a rock.

Her face obscured by her hair, she lowered a leg towards the water of the lake—stopping just as her feet hit the top of the water, leaving a ripple in her wake.

Telemachus watched with fascination, and caution. His eyes narrowed on her body, brows furrowed as he tried to make out the spots decorating her skin.

He took a step forward and unknowingly crushed a stick, a sound that seemed to startle the woman as she quickly shielded herself with her cloak once more.

Seeing her in the familiar cloak, he finally recognized that it was the shopkeeper he had been searching for.

He couldn't help but simply blink at the sight, her back faced him as she stood upright on the rock. His gaze narrows at her, he was sure he wasn't mistaken this time.

She had scales on her skin.

He thought he was only imagining it the last time they met. It wasn't a logical idea after all, why would she have scales on her skin? What would that make her?

He's read of many creatures that have scales, dangerous or not. Is she dangerous too?

The prince was too caught up in his thoughts to realize the woman had came down and faced him with a stiff smile.

“I wasn't expecting you here, prince Telemachus.” She spoke, as if she was trying to lighten up a mood that was yet to be present.

He blinked in response, “I… couldn't find you at the market, so I figured you would be here.” He spoke slowly, watching her obscured face closely.

“You were searching for me specifically?” Her teasing tone returned.

“Careful, young prince, if I didn't know any better.. I would've thought you were here to court me.” She laughed all too familiarly, the usual mocking demeanour becoming apparent in her behaviour once more.

He couldn't help but be affected by her words. Despite knowing that she was only joking, the thought never quite crossed his mind at any point in time.

So much so that he was more embarrassed that he had little to no idea about the topic and would rather not think about it now of all time.

His gaze followed the woman walking behind the rock she was previously on.

“Yes, well, a shame that's not the case.” He played along halfheartedly, trailing behind her. He watched her crouched down and rummaged into a bag, taking out an assortment of colourful flowers that was neatly put together into a bouquet.

“What is it that you seek from me, Telemachus?” She asked, her focus still on the deadly beauty she had arranged herself.

The noble didn't respond right away. Instead, carefully regarding the way she handled the vivid flowers from afar.

The way the tip of fingers brush against the leaves, avoiding the thorns that she had yet to remove from a few of them. A soft glisten of light on her cheek catches his eye, barely visible under her hood.

Expectantly, she looked up at him again— awaiting an answer to her curiosity. Meanwhile, he was trying to find an answer to his own. One that would satisfy him without the need to cross the River Styx.

He bit his lip, his eyes holding emotions indecipherable as it watched how she stood up with a rather sluggish manner. A sign that she was comfortable, no doubt.

As she opened her mouth to question him again, he caught sight of her undeniably sharp teeth.

“Are you... a gorgon..?” He asked unceremoniously.

The woman’s smile slowly dropped, a moment of silence passing by them.

The man recalled their past meetings— the way that he had never seen her eyes, her inhuman strength, her appearance, the strange aura she emits whenever they would interact. It was a wild guess, but one that he spoke with confidence, more so as a means of intimidation than genuine certainty.

The woman, on the other hand, stayed silent. The only noise that could be heard was the rushing waters, a silence so deafening that Telemachus was sure he could hear his heartbeat drum in his own ears as he gripped the hilt of his sword in one hand.

“And what if I am, princey?” Her voice flat and monotonously answered.

She tilted her head, feigning curiosity as she stepped closer. Her movement was deliberately slow and steady but not cautious as Telemachus observed.

On instinct, the prince drew his sword. He took a sharp inhale, his eyes darting to her feet as he avoided staring into her eyes. She said nothing and only took another step closer which he gritted his teeth and tightened the grip on his sword.

“Stay back! I'm.. I'm warning you—!”

“Or what? you'll fight me?” Her tone was snarky and mocking. Continuing to taunt him, she stepped closer.

“I'd love to see you try—”

In a heap of panic, Telemachus swung his blade upright with closed eyes. The woman yelped, her outstretched hand quickly retracted back to her side as crimson red liquid dripped down her arm. She hissed, trying to subside the pain while the prince could only watch the blood pool by her feet and seep into the grass.

The prince could see in the corner of his eyes how the woman's hand twitched in irritation, her breathing slowly grew heavier. The cut he had made on her arm wasn't too deep, but it definitely stretched longer than he expected. The gash began from her forearm before she swerved to the right, narrowly avoiding her wrist and vital point.

She staggered in her steps, putting needed distance between them as her heartbeat quickened. Telemachus couldn't help but stare as the glow of her eyes intensified by the second, he had just hurt a monster.

This is what he always asked for, wasn't it? To hunt and fight monsters. To see if he could find his father once and for all at the end of the battle. Perhaps this was the battle he was looking for. Maybe, just maybe, his father will return from the death of this beast.

But why is it that now as he stares into the injured form of who he thought was a regular shopkeeper, does he only stare? His brows furrowed, his mind only focused on how monstrous her appearance was.

When the prince took a cautious step forward, she flinched and took multiple steps back. Her form was hunched, squeezing her forearm for dear life—she looked like a wild animal at this moment, no longer the composed and sophisticated young woman he'd met before.

Without another word, she turned and fled into the forest, her cloak swirling behind her. Telemachus stood there, as if his feet were rooted to the ground. For some reason, he felt as if the air in his lungs were taken away from him.

Perhaps it was from adrenaline, or maybe something else churning deep in his chest?

Whatever it was, he snapped himself out of it quickly— remembering that there was a gorgon on the loose in the forest.

He stared at the deep red blood that dripped off the tip of his sword with a flickering gaze. He tightened his lips together, sheathing the weapon once more as he swiftly made his way onto the path out the forest.

He doesn't wanna cause a panic or riot, not when the suitors run rampage in his home. If he has to deal with this monster himself then so be it.

sorry this was late, i was missing a whole middle scene in this LMFAOO. also yes, reader only appears for a short time, I KNOW.

next mini chapter is reader centric and after we knew reader's whole deal, then i can start writing her pov shh.

taglist; @lin-elizabeth @theyumeeighth

[mae-gi-writes]

eyes closed. (1) . liam mairi (fourthwing)

Unlike the other marked ones, you despised having that symbol branded along your back and spent your entire life running away from it. But the charming smile and the captivating blue eyes of a certain cadet going by Liam Mairi might just convince you otherwise.

genre: slowburn! rivals to lovers (ish), Liam is smitten. He fell first but she fell harder. Happens before the fight at Resson. Reader's name is Kaelle Loo, a first-year.

----part one | part two -----

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

He's always finding you, one way or another.

You scurry over to a stack of books, glancing back over your shoulder as you make quick work of blending into the cream textures of the library. It's void at this time of the day, the hot afternoon sun beating down and gleaming over the arrays of shelves, the kind of weather that cadets usually thrive in. Not you. You hate the heat, and you hate being outside when all it does is either make you sweat or renders you cold.

Most of all, you hate it here. Which is why you try to find ways of making this experience as bearable as possible. And that is finding solace in the library.

Suddenly stumbling upon a cream-coloured figure, your face softens into a smile when you're met with Jesinia's kind eyes.

"Hey Kaelle," she signs with quick motions of her hands, "hiding again?"

"You know it," you sign back, shoulders lift into a shrug, "anything new?"

"None yet," Jesinia turns to point at the bookshelf in the far corner, "but you might want to check out this one. A lot of returned books recently.”

“Thank you,” and you’re off, winding through the smell of paper and faded ink pen until you find what you’re looking for.

Unfortunately though, it looks like you’re not alone.

“Hey Kaelle.”

Liam Mairi— with his lovely blue eyes and that dimpled smile. The kind that would make everyone falter for a second.

“What are you doing here?” Your voice comes out colder than expected.

He holds up the book from his lap, “reading?”

“Why are you telling me like it’s a question?”

“Because I’m not quite sure I understand it, whatever it is that’s written there,” Liam’s grin deepens tenfold before he straightens up, making some space for you as you slowly resign yourself to crouch by his side, your eyes already scanning for book titles that seem unfamiliar to you.

Finally, you let out a long prolonged sigh, “who sent you this time?”

He shrugs, but you can read him like an open hook. He’s always been so easy to decipher. Which is probably for the best when he’s basically stalking your every move.

“Liam,” your tone sharpens, “tell me.”

A soft sigh escapes his lips, “who else?”

“What is it this time?”

“You know we’re smuggling weapons,” his voice softens into a hushed whisper, hlue eyes darting around to scan the area before flicking back to your face, “he needs all the help he can get. It's--getting tougher."

"Well maybe that's something he shouldn't do."

Liam throws you a pointed look, as if whatever you suggested is completely irrelevant, "you know we can't do that. You know what's at stake--"

"I don't want to know," you cut him off suddenly, annoyance trickling through you at the thought that Liam might believe you're still one of them after you made it clear you had no intention of helping out with their vendetta when all you wanted was to be normal, "I don't want anything to do with whatever stupid, life-risking plan you guys are trying to come up with. So save your breath, my answer is already no."

You're straightening up before the words are barely out of your mouth and would've already been charging out of the library if not for Liam's hand snapping up to grab your wrist.

"Wait," he murmurs softly, "Kaelle. Just--hear me out."

It's probably the emotion in his voice that makes you falter, that makes you turn back to him with pressed lips and a clenched jaw. But he takes your silence as cue to continue, looking up into your eyes as he bites his lower lip, "you know the youngest Sorrengail right? Violet?"

"Yeah, how can I not?" you snort, "she's made herself an easy target with that mouth."

"What if you helped me?"

You blinked, "I don't quite follow."

Liam's gaze is steady and unflinching as he gazes up at you, "what if you help me, not as a marked one. But as a friend."

"We're not friends."

"I--" he bites the inside of his cheek and lets out a soft breath, hand unconsciously tugging you closer in the gentlest manner, "please?"

Sighing out in annoyance, you allow yourself to turn as a hand comes up to press against the bridge of your nose, "what do you need?"

You swear you're making a huge mistake, helping Liam out when he's been nothing but trouble for you. But one look at him makes all your resolve crumble. Maybe it's the emotion swimming in his eyes, the desperation lining his face that reminds you so much of your own, that has you folding over like a leaf.

You decide not to dwell on it. As long as you have nothing to do with Xaden Riorson, the one and only marked one who seems to be in charge and who's self-appointed himself as some kind of fatherly figure that makes you want to hurl the entire contents of your bedroom at him.

Then it should be fine. Right?

Right?

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

"I can't believe I signed up to be a babysitter," you grumble into your vest.

Liam chuckles from your side as he buttons up his flight jacket, "just think of it as trying to get to know her better."

"If you hadn't noticed, I'm not particularly keen on making friends," you retort.

"Yeah I've noticed," he throws you a thoughtful look, one that makes you snap, "what?"

"Nothing," his lips curl into a half-smile, one that you cannot read. It's not the kind of thing you're used to seeing. People don't tend to smile at you when the first thing they see is the marks climbing up your neck like a collar.

The only reason why you are here currently is due to none other than Violet Sorrengail, who Liam has apparently been put on duty to babysit. Because of the lack of manpower that Xaden needs in order to smuggle weapons out to the fliers, Liam has been dispatched to help in all ways he can, leaving you to look after Violet like some kind of mother hen just to make sure she doesn't cut her own head off.

The idea of it is downright ludicrous to you and you have half a mind to yell about it to the Riorson descendant later.

Your first mission? Accompanying Violet as she practices flying with her big-ass dragon that scares the shit out of you.

On cue, as if they've been summoned by your own thoughts, you feel the warm vibration of wingbeats at your back and a moment later, the rocky shattering of the earth as the weight of your dragons land behind you.

Feeling the softest brush of heat at your back, you turn and can't help but grin up at your dragon. A tiny one in comparison to all the others, but one that you'll choose again and again, no doubt in all the lives to come.

Hey Dionne, your hand comes up just as your dragon lowers his head so that your palm presses against his snout, sorry for bothering you. I know it's usually your nap time.

His amber eyes blink back at you gently, I would be mad to let another Dragon carry you, even if it's Deigh.

"Oh I know," you say aloud with a grin as you rub his purple black scales, "you're too proud to let that happen."

Another growl resounds to your right and you force yourself not to look, despite the fact that you can feel Tairn -- Violet's dragon -- from a mile away. You hear Violet's hushed murmurs as she speaks to him, but decide to climb your dragon instead, manoeuvring yourself with ease since Dionne is of a slimmer build. As if he's made just for a rider of your size.

"Ready?" Liam calls out from where he sits along Deigh's back.

You nod at him, and when he confirms the same with Violet, soars up into the sky.

You follow, grabbing hold of Dionne as he proceeds to follow Liam's dragon into the open air. Off you go, feeling the wind trickle through your hair and the coldness seeping through your skin -- a nice welcome from the scorching heat below -- as you all but crouch against your dragon's spine. He's all speed and agility, whipping through the clouds and causing your hands to numb with the sheer force needed to stay on his backside. He banks left, following Deigh and the giant form above you can only recognise as Tairn, before doing a little spin that leaves your head reeling.

Was that really necessary? you ask him through the shimmering silver bond.

My apologies, it's been a while since I've seen so much sun, Dionne chuckles, I get excited about that.

I can see that.

You fly for what feels to be two hours -- judging by the numbness of your limbs and the fact that you can't feel your face. It's only when Dionne finally manages to land right outside Basgiath's courtyards that you feel the warmth finally seep through your palms. Descending from your dragon and checking his scales for any debris that might've gotten stuck to him, you don't notice Violet approaching until you hear her clearing her throat.

"Hey," she says, looking a little guarded. You don't blame her. You're not the picture of wholesome and welcoming, "thanks. For accompanying me. Liam," she gestures towards the said young man looking busy as though he's having an argument with his dragon, "he told me how he asked you for help. And I--well, thanks."

"You shouldn't thank me," you cross your arms, "thank Liam."

“Still,” apprehension flickers in her eyes, her posture rigid and taut, “thank you.”

You nod, not knowing what else to say, and turn back to Dionne.

You don’t hear Violet leave, focusing on your bond with Dionne so that you won’t say something you don’t mean. It happens to you at the worst of times and you’d rather not show it off to anyone in the near vicinity.

Are you alright?

Dionne’s gentle words are a soothing caress against your mind.

You nod, hiding your face in his scales as your knuckles turn white. Yeah, I just don’t know why Xaden’s obsessed with her when her mother’s the reason my entire family is dead.

The matters of the heart is always a complicated thing, Dionne says as he blinks down at you, but she is not her mother, Kaelle. She is just another cadet trying to survive, just like you.

You’re right, you sigh and rub at your face, I shouldn’t be so mean to her.

“What’s gotten your face so sour?”

You swivel on your feet and press back against your dragon in surprise. So deep in thought you’d barely noticed Liam until he stands a few feet away from you.

His hair is tousled and he has goggle marks along his cheekbones, the sight surprisingly adorable on him as he crosses his arms over his chest and leans back on one leg, “that wasn’t so bad now was it?” He asks with a grin.

“Tolerable,” you replied, “but completely irrelevant to my life. I could be using my time more productively.”

“You’re training on Dionne, that surely counts for something.”

You hate it when he’s right, and just turn your head away before patting Dionne on his chest, a sign that he may leave.

A few heartbeats later, the wind whips at your hair as your dragon leaps into the sky and you watch his figure for a moment— a dot against the afternoon sun — before heading towards your dormitory.

Liam falls into step beside you, something that he rarely does out in public. Everyone knows that you’re not well acquainted with the marked ones despite forming part of their community. You always kept yourself to your own, never wanting to share whatever experience you had with the others despite the fact that you’d shared the same branded marks. The only one capable of getting anything out of you was probably Imogen, and even she struggled sometimes, guided by the fact that she saw you as a little sister despite everything.

So whatever Liam’s trying to do only causes you to narrow your eyes at him, “what are you doing?”

He shrugs, “walking with you?”

“I don’t need you to walk with me.”

He gasps dramatically and holds a hand to his chest, “You hurt me,” he says, shaking his head, “where are you headed to anyway?”

“My room,” you arrive at the staircase and ascend the tower, your boots clicking along the stone steps. Liam follows with ease, long legs striding alongside yours, “so if you’re done playing shadow with me, you can run back to Riorson and tell him that I won’t murder his precious lady.”

“Can I ask you something?”

Gods. He’s so unshakeable. Your eyes narrow in annoyance, “what?”

If Liam notices your glare, he decidedly ignores it, “why do you hate Xaden?”

A pause. Your heart jumps to your throat.

Silence is your answer. You keep on walking, a ball forming in your throat as the words seep through you like lead.

And then, as if spurred on by his courage, Liam adds in a soft murmur:

“Why do you hate us?”

That makes your throat constrict and suddenly it’s a little too stuffy inside the corridor. You’ve thankfully arrived to your floor and that’s when you turn to lock eyes with those icy blue pupils swimming with open, genuine confusion. As though there’s nothing to hide, as though he’s never been through what you’ve been despite the fact that you know he hurts as much as you do deep down hidden between the grooves of your heart.

Your throat goes a little dry the more you stare up at him in silence. Tension cuts through the air and you swallow thickly.

“I don’t… hate you,” you finally murmur out, a hoarse whisper that speaks volumes, “I never could.”

Liam’s eyes are startlingly blue and pierce through you as he waits in silence for you to go on.

You do, “being with the marked ones, being with the people who know what it feels like to lose everything—that hurts more than anything else,” your teeth find your lower lip and you chew onto it unconsciously. Your hands slide up your arms, holding them to your chest like a shield, “seeing the marked ones just makes me remember. And I don’t want to, I want this part of my past to be gone. I don’t want to think about it, and I don’t want people to know about it. If I—“ you let out a shaky breath then and dipped your head to the ground, “—if I could disappear from Basgiath, I would.”

When Liam speaks next, there’s a gentleness in his tone that you’ve never heard before. It’s soft and coaxing, almost gravelly, “what would you do if you weren’t forced to be a rider?”

No one’s ever asked you that before. You’re left to blink at him, brows furrowed, taking note of how he’s leaning towards you like he actually wants to know.

Not because you’re marked. Not because he has to.

Because he wants to.

Somehow, it stirs something in your chest.

You feel a bit vulnerable. Exposed somehow.

“I’m not sure,” you finally say, “maybe I’d hide in the mountains. Travel. Visit towns. Gods, I certainly would not be trapped here.”

Liam’s features soften with sympathy, “that sounds amazing.”

“Yeah,” you say quietly, “it does.”

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

The days go by at an alarmingly slow pace, and Liam stays persistent throughout it all. It’s almost like your confession, that little door he’d nudged ajar to step into your innermost personal thoughts had him believe that you were more than just this ice cold wall that no one dared approach.

As the summer turns to autumn and the foliage transforms into beautiful hues of yellow and orange and blazing auburn, you find yourself spending more and more time with the blonde despite your reluctance to do so. He finds you everywhere— during your breakfast duty and sneakingly exchanging places with your partner so that he could keep you company, joining you during your sparring sessions, sitting next to you in battle brief despite your initial scowls and grumbles. He even goes as far as to find you amidst your afternoon jogs around the campus.

At some point, you can’t help but snap at him, “are you following me, Mairi?”

To which he merely raises a brow, “no, I’m just keeping you company.”

You have nothing to say to that, face reddening with embarrassment as you quickly swat away your emotions.

No need for him to figure out that he’s getting under your skin.

A little too easily, you might add.

It’s not like you to let people in so easily. Hell, you’ve been fighting to cut strings the moment you’d gotten painted on with those scars that reminded you of who you were. But Liam, he makes it so easy. One quick smile and a glimpse of the glimmer in his eyes and you find yourself unconsciously drawn to him for god knows what reason.

A little too soon, you find yourself searching for his blue-eyed gaze across the room.

A little too soon, you start to impulsively expect him to be at your side during Battle Brief.

A little too soon, you start to look forward to the conversations exchanged in the dim light of the corridor every night as he accompanies you to your room. It’s become customary, almost natural, that his warmth graces your side, that his familiar baritone echoed through the walls of the dormitory.

The first time your signet manifests, you’re currently in a head-to-head spar with none other than Imogen. She’s currently holding you in a headlock and threatening to tap you out when your skin suddenly flares up, searing in pain.

You scream.

And a moment later, you’re out of her arms.

Imogen blinks, surprise flashing through her face as you turn slowly, wondering what the hell happened.

Her smile is slow as it breaks across her features, “your signet,” she announces, “fucking finally.”

What? Your signet?

Your mind races, shock slamming into you as your eyes widen. But it’s not until you hear Xaden’s voice fill the arena that the realization of it all crashes into you.

“Time-wielder.”

Everyone’s ecstatic. Imogen practically runs you over, picking you up as you’re suddenly crowded in by all your classmates congratulating you on this amazing gift. The professors standing from the far side walk over with proud smiles, and throughout it all you spot Liam’s grin from the other side of the room, his face a pool of genuine happiness that makes your heart race through your chest.

“Time wielder huh?” He says a bit later in the courtyard. He found you sitting in a small patch of sunshine, head tilted up to the sky with an expression so peaceful it jars him for a few seconds.

Your eyes flicker towards him, down to the small wooden sculpture in his hand, before you settle your attention onto the lush landscape spreading beyond, “I still don’t understand how it works.”

“It’s only been two hours,” Liam replies as he shaves off a piece of wood, “it’s already great that you’ve manifested it.”

Sparing him a glance, you wrap your arms around your knees, “how does yours work?”

“Well,” he leans back, shoulder brushing yours as he does so, “I have to focus on the object I want to see up close. If it’s too far, I focus on the closest point I can make out first,” he points a finger towards the sea of orange and brown, “and then it’s like— I force myself through it and suddenly I can see up close, like I’m standing right in front of it.”

He explains it as if it’s that simple. And for him, maybe it is. He seems to have no trouble in seeing past what people project of themselves.

Like he does with you.

Don’t be so hard on him, the shimmer of the bond ripples through your mind. It’s Dionne, making an appearance when he usually keeps to himself most of the time, he means well.

It’s not that easy, your jaw flexes, as do your fingers in your lap, he’s too good for me. Has always been.

“How does Dionne feel about it?” Liam leans over his knees and tilts his head to look at you, his blonde locks catching the afternoon sunlight.

I knew you’d have an incredible signet, Dionne chuffs proudly, it was just a matter of when. Not if.

“He’s … happy.”

That’s not what I said.

You scoff and shake your head, “fine. He’s very proud.”

Better. But not quite.

Liam’s face breaks into a grin, “as he should. Your signet is one that’s never been heard of. You’re going to be written down in history.”

“I’d rather not,” you pull a face, “I don’t fancy being a hero. Not like Riorson,” that’s when you spare him a glance, hating the way your heart squeezes at how beautiful he looks, “not like you.”

“I’m not a hero.”

“But you want to be,” you look away before you do something stupid like brush his hair out of his face, “you’ve always been good. Better than most.”

The blonde cadet says nothing in favor of continuing to sculpt the little object between his hands. He has nice hands, you note. Firm and big, with long fingers that emit strength and quiet confidence.

“You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself.”

Your eyes flit towards his face, lock onto his blue pupils.

“I’m not.”

He cocks his head, “you are, though.”

“I’m not having this conversation with you, Mairi.”

“Why?” His lips tilt up into a smile, eyes crinkling, “am I rubbing off on you?”

“No,” you snort. But you’re smart enough to say nothing else, for there’s a small part of you niggling the back of your mind, telling you that indeed, he is rubbing off on you more than he should.

The next few weeks are filled with sparring, training, and fighting for your life whenever you try to train your signet. Xaden takes charge, pushing you to your limits until you see stars, until your knees slip out from under you and you all but fall back onto the mat, breathless. Slowly, you start to build on small increments of time; you fast-forward five seconds, then ten, then twenty. You’re sweating and boiling hot so that you’re stripped down to a sports bra and shorts, and still Xaden pushes you to try, try harder. Try now to push back in time.

“Up,” Xaden orders when he stands before you, looking just as sweaty as you look, “Now, Kaelle.”

“I—“ you gasp and curl in on yourself, “—I can’t.”

The power is simmering like lava fusing with your skin, burning you from the inside out and threatening to make you scream. Your hands curl into fists and it’s like you’re being scorched alive, the thrum of Dionne’s power so overwhelming that you have the urge to throw up.

Footsteps echo onto the mat before you feel a rough hand on your shoulder.

“Hey,” Xaden’s brows are furrowed, “you alright?”

You don’t trust yourself to talk for fear that you’ll scream. So you just shake your head no, jaw clenching as another wave of pain sizzles through your abdomen.

“Shit. Wait here.”

You don’t know how long you lie there like a dead weight, eyes half-closed and dazed, before you feel another set of arms wrap around your frame.

You tense instantly, eyes snapping open only to see a pair of familiar azure blue.

Kind. Tender. Your breath halts.

“Hey,” Liam’s voice is a gentle caress, “s’alright. I got you.”

And before you know it, you’re being gathered into his arms and cradled against his chest like a rag doll before he starts striding out of the sparring grounds. Protests make their way up your throat, only to die halfway through when you hear Dionne’s familiar rumble echo through your bond.

Let him help you, child.

So you do despite your brain screaming at you that this— all this is wrong. You fight against every instinct to push him away until he’s pushing his room door open. Like he’s handling gentle porcelain, he places you onto his bed and then proceeds to kneel by your side. Not close, but not far enough that you’d consider him scared of your response.

He ducks his head to look into your eyes, as if surveying your features, “feeling better?”

The simmer is still there, as angry as a coiled string snapping against you, but it’s less prominent if you try to focus on Liam and his scent overwhelming your senses.

As though sensing your thoughts, the said young man disappears into his bathroom for a few moments before walking back with a wet towel. Dropping to his knees once more, he hesitates slightly before pressing it against your nape.

The relief is astounding and a small moan slips past your mouth as you all but lean into his touch. The cold, a stark contrast to the heat sizzling your skin, is a welcome distraction while Liam takes hold of the other end of the towel before placing it over your arm.

He continues his ministrations until finally, finally, you feel like you can breathe again. The fire ceases to a warmth and you sigh as your muscles slowly relax. You don’t realize that you’re practically leaning into his hold until your hand accidentally brushes his arm.

Jumping away like he’s burnt you, you quickly clear your throat and right yourself, look away, “thanks.” You mutter.

His silence answers in his stead. His blue azure searching your features like he can’t quite believe that you’re telling the truth. A small sigh escapes his lips after a moment, and he falls back onto his carpet and uses his arm to lean against his bed.

“What happened?” He asks in a murmur.

“I was training,” you reply, “I think my signet overloaded.”

“And Xaden was okay with that?”

“Like he cares,” you snort, “he’d be glad to get rid of me, if he could—“

“You know that’s not the case, Kaelle,” Liam says gently, “he’s not the best at showing he cares.”

You shrug, eyes finding your lap as your hands knot together. There are questions burning at the back of your throat, questions that you’re not sure you want answers to.

“Why were you there?” You blurt out before you can think about it.

Liam’a blue eyes blink up at you in confusion.

“Did Xaden send for you?” You ask, “when I overloaded, he just— he left. And next thing I knew, you were there. So what did he do? Did he call you?” You take a breath, “do you always clean up after his mess?”

“That’s not why I was there,” Liam replies sharply, “he called for me, because he knew you wouldn’t want him to help you.”

At least he’s right about that. You can only stare at his door in growing annoyance. That’s what is is, isn’t it? Liam isn’t here because he cares. He’s here because Xaden told him to, just like he would for Violet.

Why does that leave such a bitter taste in the back of your tongue? You can barely look at the blonde in the face, not trusting yourself with whatever demons are dancing in your brain.

You get to your feet so abruptly that the blonde cadet lurches in surprise, arms already reaching out for you, “what are you—“

“Don’t.” You hiss at him over your shoulder, “touch me.”

Hurt flashes across his face for a second, before he schools his emotions into nonchalance. Liam steps back, weary and hesitant, as you throw yourself at his door and barge through without a backward glance.

You bolt.

You don’t look right nor left nor behind you.

You just make a run for it, legs pumping with adrenaline as panic and anger and irritation rages through you like a storm. You run and you don’t stop, down the staircase and out into the courtyard, not caring that the wind whips at your clothes and nips your skin with icy bites, not caring that you’re currently barefoot and you can’t feel your toes.

It’s getting harder to ignore the fact that your heart melts at the blonde with the blue eyes that makes your heart skid and skip with cartwheels. You realize it, as you stare up at the moon and watch the shadows in the courtyard dance with the wind tangling in your hair.

You’re letting Liam in, and you’re not sure how to stop it.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

As it turns out, you don’t need to dwell too much on your emotional feelings and detours, as life in Basgiath takes priority. Soon, you’re focusing on wielding your signet, understanding where the Wards are failing and which cities are being invaded, while also babysitting Violet Sorrengail at every chance you can. Xaden calls for you and you haven’t heard of Liam ever since your spat with him, your declaration that has created a crevice so deep in your relationship that you’re not sure how to fix it. If you want to fix it.

Part of you is recoiling at the fact that maybe you’ll never be subjected to his kindness again. That you’ve ruined it all.

But the logical part of you is happy about it, glad that there are no expectations, nothing that can hurt you if you push everything away and build stone walls as high as your college itself.

Imogen asks you if you’re okay, a few days before the Reunification Ball, while you spar with each other. You tell her yes, you’re fine, and there’s no need to worry.

But the look in her eyes tell you otherwise; she’s not buying your lie.

Xaden finds you in your room a few hours before the Ball itself, his presence inviting lingering shadows as they dance around the corridor.

“What is it?” You ask as soon as you open the door.

Xaden’s dark brow raises in amusement, “you have a way of greeting people.”

“What is it, Riorson?” You repeat without patience, annoyed that he’s disturbed your peace.

“You don’t seem dressed,” he crosses his arms over his chest and leans against the doorway, “why?”

“Dressed to do what?”

“The Reunification Ball.”

“Ah,” you grimace, “I’m not going.”

He stares you down, “you are.”

“I am not.”

“You are,” he retrieves a bag from behind his back and dangles it before your face, “I want every Marked one at the Ball. Consider it an order from your Wingleader.”

You don’t take the bag, instead glaring at him, “I’m not going.”

“Like I said, cadet,” his tone grows cold and firm. The tone of a Wingleader. He shoves the bag into your hands, “it’s an order.”

So you have no other choice but to attend.

“I knew you’d make it,” Bodhi says when he sees you storming out of your room, no doubt ordered by Xaden to ensure you’re actually keeping your word with the dress that he made you wear, “Imogen told me you were sulking.”

“I’m not sulking,” you don’t fail to notice that it’s not Liam that’s waiting for you today, and the thought unfortunately causes a sting in your heart that you truth to brush off.

But who are you kidding really?

“Sorry, you must be disappointed blondie boy isn’t here today,” Bodhi says like he can actually read your thoughts.

You chortle and kick him in the shins for good measure. He yelps before he throws you a scowl, “ow! Damnit Kaelle was that really necessary?!”

“Yes it was. If it serves to shut your mouth.”

“Gods woman. You’re so brutal,” he moans dramatically, “pretty sure you left a lasting bruise.”

The great Mess Hall where you usually eat your dinner has been scraped clean to give way to beautiful red drapes and arrays of foods, snacks and drinks along the far corner. Riders, Healers and Infantry are all present, a mix of blue and beige and white blending into a mixture of color that for once seems to be in harmony. A stark contrast to the reality that lives behind these walls.

The lights have dimmed and everyone looks more relaxed than usual. You follow Bodhi across the floor, trying not to let the wandering gazes of other people get to you despite the fact that it makes your skin crawl with unease. Soon enough, you spot the squad of Marked ones huddled together like a pack of tuna and can’t help but wonder if that makes it worse; the fact that they’re all clinging to each other in a sign of defiance.

Finding Xaden’s eyes involuntarily amidst the sea of faces that greet you, you can’t help but throw him a scowl. One that he responds with a wicked grin of his own.

“You look gorgeous,” he says to you.

You narrow your eyes at him, “why are you all huddled together like sheep?”

He shrugs, “they feel safer around each other I suppose,” and then throws his hands up in mock surrender, “I don’t know. I don’t make the rules.”

You can’t help but chortle because he does, actually, make the rules. He’s practically the king of all these ministrations happening under Basgiath’s nose.

It’s almost impulsive, the way your eyes do a quick scan of the area as if searching. No, you’re not actually searching, but you find him anyway; the blonde hair and the blue eyes and— gods, that dimple.

His gaze collides with yours and you wrench yourself away. Heat permeates your skin, embarrassment flushing through you as you look at everything, anything, to make it go away. To make your heart stop galloping like a wild horse.

Fuck. He’s seen you, hasn’t he?

You’re so filled with your own self-loathing that you barely take note of the little push that makes you stumble.

You frown, look down at you feet.

And see shadows. It should be normal. It is normal.

But then you feel it again, the way they tug you, push you slightly, causing you to stumble slightly.

Whipping your head into Xaden’s direction, you’re rewarded with his dark gaze glittering with mischief, as if he knows damn well what he’s doing, even lifting a brow as if to ask; go on. Go to him.

Xaden’s shadows are insistent as they push you further towards Liam and you’re cursing under your breath until you’re just a few paces away from the him. He’s beautiful tonight; hair slicked back and away from his face, tall broad frame filling out in a black suit that seems to hug his silhouette. It almost makes your mouth water.

He spots you before you can do anything — like run for your life— and dips his head into a nod.

“Hey,” your voice comes out small.

“Hey,” he answers.

It’s wary, guarded even.

“I—“ the words feel like sandpaper along your tongue, your eyes drop to a point on his chest, “I’m sorry.”

He blinks, then turns towards you, “for what?”

“For what I said,” you shift from one foot to the other, “for how I am.”

He’s quiet and you think that maybe he doesn’t want to divulge, so you opt for silence as well, taking this time to watch the couples on the dance floor and laughing like there’s no tomorrow.

You don’t know how this kind of happiness feels like. You wish you did. But somehow, it seems always out of your reach.

But then a small nudge along your arm makes your head turn to see Liam, who tilts his head towards the said couples.

“Wanna dance?”

Your first response is to make a run for it. As it is, your legs are itching to turn the other way and break into a sprint. But another small nudge from Xaden’s shadow — the one curling around the arch of your foot — has you stumbling straight into Liam’s chest.

His face breaks into a dimpled grin and before you know it he’s grasped your elbow and tugged you to the dance floor.

The first thing you take notice of is that he’s warm. Warmer than you’d expected. You don’t know where to put your hands, panic taking over as your palms hover over him. But that’s before he clasps one of your wrists to place it along his shoulder before his other hand grips the remaining one so that he can draw you to him.

There’s a small smile dangling along his lips as he leads you onto the floor, “you’re looking a little green, Cadet Loo.”

“I’m fine,” you retort, your hand automatically flexing along his shoulder.

The silence reigns for a while as he sways you to the music. For a minute, it's almost peaceful, almost relaxing. His scent, it's everywhere, wrapping you in a soft cocoon of warmth; a mixture of sandalwood and fresh laundry sheets and something else, something spicier that just defines Liam in general.

But when Liam speaks next, there is a weight to his words.

"It's not easy to trust people," his azure blue pierce through your dark maroon. It's like he can see right past you, right past the facade you've built for people to fear and cower. But not him. Never him, "especially when you've been let down your entire life."

Your eyebrow quirks up in curiosity. Where is he going with this?

"You asked whether I clean up all of Xaden's messes," he continues and you swear you can taste the bitterness in his voice. He twirls you around before clasping your waist back to his chest, "there's one thing I'd like you to understand, and that is that I owe Xaden my life."

Of course, your initial response is to ask why. But you decide to opt for silence as an indication for him to go on.

"When he asked me to look after Violet, I had no choice," Liam continues in a softer tone, "but that day, after he sparred with you, was not his mess that I needed to clean."

Oh, so that's what he's getting at. He's still not over the horrible things you'd spewed about him that particular night and wants to set things straight.

You were quite harsh on him that night, adds Dionne at the other end of your bond.

You don't bother replying. She's right, no argument there.

Part of you wants to run away, make a dash for it when he's not looking. But you can't, not when his blue eyes are piercing yours with an intensity that makes you want to squirm.

"I helped you, because I wanted to," Liam hesitates for a beat, bites onto his lower lip, "because I cared enough to worry about whether you were burning yourself out."

You blink.

"Maybe that wasn't what you needed," he makes a turn and you follow, dress billowing as you do so, "and I overstepped. I'm sorry, Kaelle."

You blink again.

This time, confusion springs through your mind. What is he on about?

"Why are you apologising?" you blurt out.

Liam looks at you in surprise, lips parting, "well uh--like I said, I overstepped when I shouldn't."

"No," you snap, suddenly annoyed by how kind he can be. How stupid. This kind of gentleness will never get him anywhere at this rate, "no. You shouldn't apologise. I'm the one that should, and I did. Let's leave it at that."

"Why are you mad then?"

"You're apologising when you did nothing wrong," you scowl at him, "kindness does not get you far, not at Basgiath."

"I wasn't just being kind," Liam lets out a chuckle and shakes his head, "gods, you don't get it, do you?"

"What?"

"That I--" he presses his lips together and for a minute, all you can do is stare up at him with narrowed eyes.

`'You know what? Never mind," he sidesteps to the right, just about avoiding another couple before he twirls you around one more time, "you look beautiful, by the way."

His sudden compliment causes your cheeks to blaze, "thanks," you choke out.

You're more than glad to escape his arms when a group of Marked ones make their way over, looking drunk over their heads and high up their arses. Making quick work of slipping out through the throng of cadets and upper years, you don't hesitate to grab your skirts before making your way out of the Mess Hall, into the courtyard. The breeze is a cool, gentle caress against your cheeks and you all but collapse against one of the big, marble columns lining the main staircase that leads to the courtyard.

The moon is high up in the sky, and there's no doubt that there's a splatter of stars streaking through the night if you tilt your head up to search for them.

That's when you notice Xaden, lingering by the staircase leading towards the First Year's Wing. He leans casually against the wall looking deep in thought, not even bothering to glance up as you approach.

"Bold you of you," your voice carries over through the wind, "to let your shadows manipulate me like that."

His dark gaze finds yours for a heartbeat, before he re-focuses his attention on the darkness beyond, "you needed a little push. All I did was give you that."

"I don't need your help, Wingleader."

He sighs, "you're so stubborn."

"Thanks, I got it from my Wingleader."

Xaden finally cracks a smile before he looks at you, "so there is something that makes Cadet Loo's heart soft."

You almost choke on your own spit, "I'm sorry--what?"

"I'm not blind Kaelle," he shifts from one foot to the other, "why are you so insistent on shutting him out?"

You know without the shadow of a doubt that he's referring to Liam. His sweet, dimpled smile flashes through your mind and your heart tugs at the ache it brings.

So you decide to turn this on him, "why are you insistent on keeping your distance from Cadet Sorrengail?"

Xaden tenses, "that's out of your rank, cadet."

"I don't think so, not if we're going to talk about my love life," you can't help but smirk, "so? are you going to answer my question?"

"Not if you don't answer mine."

Hm. He has a point and your ego doesn't want to be trampled on. You lift your chin up in defiance, "fine. An answer for an answer."

"Fine." his dark eyes glimmer with amusement, "do you like Mairi?"

Gods. Isn't he a little too blunt? "No."

"Liar."

"I'm not lying--"

"Fine. I was asking the wrong question," his lips curl up at the edges, "do you think Mairi likes you?"

"I--no."

"No?" he cocks his head.

"I don't know. I don't care," your scowl deepens, "why don't you ask him if you want to know so badly?"

"Just do us a favour and stop denying it, cadet," Xaden says with a sigh, "It's starting to get really frustrating watching you two rotate around each other but never fucking taking risks."

"It's my turn now," you remind him, "do you like Cadet Sorrengail?"

His nostrils flares, but he does reply, "I believe I do."

You blink at him, not having expected him to be so brutally honest with you, not when it comes to feelings, "oh."

"You'll keep this quiet if you know what's good for you."

"Yeah yeah I got it," you shoot him a look, "I'm not a tattle tale, in case you couldn't tell."

It's not Xaden's sudden confession that has you tossing and turning all night, but rather the admission that maybe Liam might have feelings for you. You're not sure how you feel about it; on one hand you don't want to have anything to do with him when there are so many other things to care about; like Xaden's rebellion and the Squad Battles and trying not to die every single day you make it to tomorrow. But on the other hand, another part of you is screaming at yourself, running around in circles, trying to find deeper meaning into any of your interactions. That part of you wants to revel in Liam's attention, wants to know what it feels like be loved for who you are, for what you are.

Why does he torment you so? asks Dionne through the bond link a few days later as you make your way to Battle Brief, her energy thrumming like a vibrant white light in the back of your lids.

I don't know, you tell her truthfully, it's not like I want to. He's just--always there. He haunts me.

Maybe the Wingleader is right, she says, maybe you do have feelings for the Mairi boy.

Having feelings in the Rider's Quadrant will only serve as a weakness.

Having feelings for someone is not something you can control, Dionne replies flatly.

"Hey Kaelle," Bodhi says as you enter the Battle Brief room. He is seated up int he furthest corner he could find, stowed away like a shadow along with Garrick and a few other Marked ones. You can't help but roll your eyes at how cliquey they're being, and stroll on to find an empty seat only to spot Imogen waving at you and motioning towards one beside her.

Quickly slipping through the aisles of disgruntled cadets, you make your way towards the pink-haired second year when you spot none other than Violet Sorrengail and-- low and behold, Liam.

You haven't spoken to him since that night at the ball. And Xaden's words just keep replaying in your brain, making you unable to act as you would around the blonde.

The sight of him and Violet sitting together has your stomach churning with a queasy sensation.

"Morning Kaelle," chirps Violet.

"Morning," Liam's eyes are bright as they find your face.

You nod, mutter out a "good morning" and turn towards the front before they can continue on with conversation.

That's how your day goes, with you trying (and failing) to ignore Liam so that you don't do anything you'd regret in the long run. You stick by Imogen's side throughout the rest of the classes and despite being stuck in the same squad, quickly find another sparring partner so that he doesn't have the chance to even ask you. But if Liam notices of your reticence, he doesn't show it. He still comes and finds you during your afternoon run, still talks to you about his day as he carves into his dragon figurines like you're not blatantly answering in monosyllables, still manages to find you amidst a sea of riders during dinnertime, though it's not that hard, considering the Marked ones (namely Bodhi, Garrick and Imogen) seem to suddenly have an interest in sticking by your side at all costs.

You're still training your signet at every chance you can get, practicing on Xaden and increasing the number of times you can wield as the weeks go by. It's a routine that you've set for yourself, along with your Wingleader, to ensure that you're up to speed about defending yourself. So imagine your shock when you turn up one early Thursday morning to discover that Xaden's gone-- apparently on a mission outside of Basgiath -- and that in his place is a half-awake Liam Mairi looking like he'd just rolled out of bed.

"What are you doing here?" shock lines your tone.

"Here to train you."

"Why you though?" it could be anyone. Imogen, Bodhi, Garrick...all of them flash through your mind, until you come to the realisation that Xaden has done this on purpose.

The little shit.

You're so going to get him and Violet into the most fucking embarrassing situation and we'll see who will be laughing then.

Oooh a sabotage plan, Dionne purrs from the bond, I like the way you think.

He deserves it after everything he makes me go through, you reply with gritted teeth.

Liam merely raises a brow in amusement. He crosses his arms, "am I not good enough for you, Cadet Loo?"

"I didn't say that."

"Then I see no issue," amusement glitters in his blue-eyed gaze, "shall we?"

Turns out, Liam is a great opponent.

He fights with the quiet confidence that Xaden has, but is so much more precise in his moves, Rather than raw power that Xaden uses, Liam is careful, deft, his movements calculated with intention. And he adapts as easily as water, dodging and swiftly evading before you can reach him. You get a few punches in though, with the use of your signet, but one wrong turn and Liam's punch sends you flying to the other end of the mat.

You scramble up as fast as you can, but his arms grab your elbows and he all but tumbles you over onto your back, one knee between your thighs and his weight pressing down onto your chest until you let out a quiet gasp.

"Good effort, Loo.” he murmurs. With him on top of you so scandalously, you can't help but feel every inch of his firm build pressed against your curves, a temptation that causes heat to build in your lower stomach.

It worsens with butterflies when you feel his nose brush against yours.

Your mouth parts.

You blink up at him. His breath mingles with yours.

His eyes are a darker shade of blue in the dim lights of the sparring gym. But they darken even more when he holds your gaze.

There's something there. Too much emotion. The kind that makes your chest ache. The kind that makes you forget to breathe.

Oh.

He's so close.

"Let me go," you wish for the words to come out strong. Confident. Instead, they sound just like a restrained whimper.

Liam is still searching your face, as if dazed by the sudden proximity between your two bodies.

Too close.

You shove him without warning and with a cry, he topples onto his back as you straddle his hips this time, hands pinning down his arms with a victorious smirk.

"Not so cocky now, are we?" you murmur out, hating the way your heart sputters upon taking note of his dimple when he cracks a grin up at you, "hate to admit it but," he shakes his head, "you fight good."

You retreat and help him up to his feet before you're finding your water bottles for a little break. God knows you need it when all you can feel is the residual heat in your cheeks from being so close to the said blonde.

A distraction, surely.

"How are you feeling about the Squad Battle?"

Liam's question causes your eyes to flit towards him. You shrug, "I'm not too worried, to be honest."

"Confident," he quips.

"I’m being realistic," you lean back against the bleachers, "we’ve been training for this ever since parapet. There’s no reason we’ll lose.”

“You were pretty badass on the Gauntlet.”

“Yeah,” that reminds you of the cadets who didn’t. The ones whose lives were cut short as soon as their grip had slipped.

Your fingers unconsciously tighten on your bottle. It can be you, or it can be Liam at any point in time. The thought makes your stomach curl and you’re surprised by your own reaction.

“How’s Sorrengail holding up?” You ask him then, sparing him a glance.

He looks at you in surprise, “she’s good. If you don’t count the amount of times she gets her ass kicked on Mat.”

“I think everyone gets their asses handed to them on mat at some point.”

“Not me.”

You roll your eyes at his confidence, but a small smile tugs at your lips nevertheless, “confident.”

But he is right. Liam is one of the best fighters of your year and you haven’t seen him falter, not once.

“How’d you fight so good?” You can’t hell but ask.

He shifts forward until his shoulder brushes yours. The warmth sends ripples down your spine, “the Orphanage I was placed in after our parents…they didn’t like having weaknesses. I was trained from very early on.”

“Makes sense. My foster parents wanted me to sit still and be pretty so that I could marry as quickly as possible.”

Liam looks at you grimly, “that must’ve been pretty tough.”

“Tell me about it,” you take another gulp of your water, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand, “they just wanted money and status so that they could live their lives without having to lift a finger and I—“ your throat tightens, memories of their faces, of the disappointment and guilt washing over you, “—I thought they loved me.”

“Shit. I’m sorry, Kaelle.” Liam whispers hoarsely, “that’s— that’s sick.”

You stay quiet. There are so many other things they did to you— that they let other men try to do to you— but you don’t want to speak the words aloud, for fear that they’ll haunt you in your sleep.

A warmth brushes against the back of your hand. It’s Liam’s. Gentle, light. Almost tentative. A sign of comfort. One that you’d usually shove away with all your might.

But you don’t.

Instead, you watch the way his knuckles brush against yours in a way that makes your heart sputter, causing you to bite your lip and look away as a horde of butterflies threaten to explode along your ribs.

This softness, it’s not something you’re used to.

“Hey,” his words are tender, practically a whispered breath, "you okay?"

"I'm fine."

His eyes are on you. You can feel it without looking at him, probing you, searching for answers in your features.

Your chest feels tight with secrets practically bursting along your tongue and suddenly, you blurt out without thinking, "I still trusted them, despite everything. I thought that maybe if I listened to what they said, if I did whatever they told me to do, no matter how scared or angry I was, maybe--" tears burn at the corner of your eyes and you look away, hating that Liam is seeing that side of you. Loathing that you can't even hold yourself together, "--maybe they would love me like I'm one of theirs."

Liam hooks a finger around your thumb, slowly sliding along your palm until his hand engulfs yours.

The act is too intimate, he's too close for you.

And yet, you can't seem to find the energy to pull away.

You stay there for a while, fingers interlaced as you listen to the slow hum of the generators a the back of the training room. The blonde's thumb has slowly started tracing soft patterns over your outer knuckles, an act that leaves tantalising heat spreading up through your arm, permeating the back of your neck.

You swallow thickly. Your eyes flit towards your conjoined hands. They dart back up to his face, quickly averting towards the floor when you notice he's been gazing at you all along.

You swear you feel a smile spread across Liam's face when he asks, "what?"

"Nothing," you mutter. You don't have to look at yourself to know you're blushing. The heat is practically rolling off your cheeks at this point.

You hear him chuckle before he tugs you towards him.

“Hey,” crystal blue eyes search yours with the kind of open vulnerability that triggers your heartstrings, “no one can hurt you here.”

“I know that.”

His lips press into a thin line, “your face says otherwise.”

“I—“ you suck in a breath, your voice trailing off into a broken murmur, “I can’t help it. The things that I endured… their voices haunt me. It almost feels—“ you bite your lip, “— like they’re still here.”

A warm hand comes up to cradle your face and you yelp, flinching back on instinct as panic soars through your chest.

Liam’s hand falls away, “sorry,” he lifts the limb up in mock surrender, guilt etched in his features, “sorry I—not the face. Got it.”

“Sorry,” you mutter out.

“Don’t apologize,” his other hand distracts you with his soft touch, probably the only piece of you that you’ll give him for today, “you can talk to me, yeah? If things get hard?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean it,” his gaze locks on yours, “I’m not going anywhere.”

You don’t answer, but you’d be lying to yourself if that doesn’t make your heart hurt in all the best of ways.

You pray that Malek doesn’t take Liam’s soul that night.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

It starts off really slow, at first.

It’s so slow that you barely notice it, the tiniest shifts of skin against skin. The tiniest movements ebbing with warmth with every step that Liam takes towards you.

If you were anyone else, you’d probably say that’s as romantic as you can get.

“He likes you,” signs Jesinia for what seems to be the hundredth time this past hour as you all but deny her words. You’re currently hiding away in the library so that you don’t have to think about the upcoming War Games. It’s a surprise that you even made it through the Squad Battle, though knowing that Liam’s Squad had won does send bitterness down your throat. Their squad is the strongest after all, one that you’re pretty certain you won’t beat no matter what.

You try not to focus on the fact that you lost three of your teammates during this mission.

“He’s just being nice,” you sign back upon realizing that she’s been waiting for your response. You lean against the cream colored couch with a sigh, forcing away thoughts of Liam from your brain.

“That’s not just being nice. He actually likes you, it’s written all over his face,” Jesinia responds.

“Shut up Jesinia.”

“Rude,” she sticks out her tongue, “tell me when you guys kiss though.”

Your face flames, “not funny!”

In truth, he has been paying a lot more attention to you ever since that night in the training gym. Not quite touching you, but definitely finding your hand whenever he deems it possible.

During Battle Brief for instance, where he’d slide his palm over until he engulfed your hand under the table, not letting go despite you going red, despite you trying your best to tug your hand away.

“What are you doing?!” You’d hiss at him with narrowed eyes.

“Hm?” He’d hummed, hiding his smile into his other palm as gentle blue eyes would finds yours with so much emotion you’d feel your chest tighten and look away.

Or during sparring sessions, where his touch would linger longer than necessary; hand finding the back of your spine to pull you up, arm circling around your waist when your legs gave out, tugging you so hard you tripped right into his chest in a blushing mess that made you want to combust on the spot because— really? You could survive Threshing, you managed to survive Squad Battle and yet, this was what could be the death of you? Really?

You’d spent so long running away from people, outrunning the past that would still haunt your dreams and the touches that would send your mind reeling with disgust, that you’ve forgotten how it feels like for someone to touch you for reasons other than to hurt you. It’s more than a little foreign, but Liam does it so easily, worming his way into your heart without you knowing, like sunlight reaching for your skin before you have time to process how good it feels, how alive it makes you feel.

It’s on a late evening as you’re walking back to your dorm that things start to change. The walk is innocent enough, casually exchanging conversation as you ignore the way your shoulders brush, the way your hands drift towards each other’s. But you’re not surprised— not anymore — when his hand finds yours in a firm, comforting grip.

“How does it feel,” you’re asking him, trying not to sigh in bliss at how good it feels to have his thumb brushing your knuckles, or how stupidly pathetic you feel for being putty into his hands, “to have won the Squad Battle?”

“Honestly?” His brow furrows, “I was a bit worried.”

Your expression matches his, “hm?”

“I was worried about you,” his admission is soft, barely audible amidst the soft croon of trees and foliage dancing in the wind.

You stop in your tracks, “no,” you look at him dead in the face, “no. You don’t get to do that.”

“What?”

“You—“ you shake your head, “you don’t get to worry about me. That was not our deal—“

“And what, exactly, is our deal?” He asks softly, pulling you to him to decrease the distance.

“I…” but you’re distracted because he’s so close so suddenly. You have no choice but to tilt your head up to meet his eyes, “I’m not quite sure… I follow.”

Liam’s gaze searches your features, assessing, still treading unfamiliar waters. It’s hard to keep logic and reason above the sudden roaring of emotions taking hold of you and all you want to do is wrench yourself out of this predicament as quickly as possible because dear god you feel like you’re losing control of all your senses.

When Liam speaks next, his voice has dropped an octave and you feel it vibrating through your very bones.

“You can berate me all you want about worrying. But I can’t help it,” he lowers his face to yours. Your breath hitches, “you make it impossible not to worry about you.”

Surprise slams into you, “what—are you saying?”

Instead of answering, the blonde tugs at your hands and pulls it up so that you can see it, “does that—“ he squeezes your palm softly, “—mean anything to you?”

Heat swathes the back of your neck and you lower your eyes, “I—I don’t know. You tell me what you’ve been doing with me all this time.”

Liam chuckles, the sound so deep it rumbles through his chest like a storm, “gods, Kaelle. You are dense for someone so smart.”

“Excuse me?! That’s—“

He gives you no time. Pulls you so that you crash into him and wraps his arms around your waist before you have a clue about what’s happening.

Before you know it, he’s gotten you engulfed in a hug, his cheek pressed against the side of your head as he pushes yours into his chest, tucked underneath his chin like he believes he needs to protect you.

Alarms go off in your brain. Your body tenses, as if on alert, but his voice is soft as it echoes through your ear: “relax for me?”

It takes some huge effort from your part.

Like flight or fight reaction, you’re at odds with your brain.

But you do, after a few beats of hesitation. It’s not easy, and you have to keep reminding yourself that this isn’t at all like your past, that Liam is not anything like your parents, that this— whatever this is— is made out of warmth and comfort and love.

Things change after that night.

There’s a shift in the air, like a new door has been opened. But soon you find Liam a little bolder with his touches, and dare you say, you actually don’t mind it.

He keeps things private whenever there are eyes around; finding your hand under tables and pressing his knee against yours as a gesture of comfort, leaning his shoulder into yours as he listens in on Battle Brief, and merely resorting to ruffling your hair during your banters.

But it’s the small acts of tenderness that he does whenever you guys are found alone; pulling you to him behind trees only to hug you, his knuckles drifting along your cheekbones whenever you had dirt, blood or mud along your face, leaning over you from behind when you sit at your desk with piles and piles of homework, adding on his comments and guiding you through material you don’t quite understand all while you feel his breath brush the side of your head, the heat of his chest permeating your back. The sight is surprisingly too attractive and you’re always reduced to a blushing mess afterwards, hating how your face gives you away so easily.

“Are you guys dating?” Imogen asks you suddenly after Battle Brief one day and you almost lose it, dropping all your pens and papers in shock.

You gape at her with stuttered heartbeats, “I—No—it’s nothing like th—“

“Oh save the excuses,” Imogen throws you an exasperated look, “do me a favour instead and just hook up with the guy.”

“What the fuck Imogen!” You splutter in embarrassment.

“She is telling the truth,” Garrick says from your other side, a surprising appearance considering he’s always shadowing Xaden for stuff. God knows what, you don’t want to know, “his balls are probably blue at this point, and it’s definitely not because of winter.”

Your face flames at his joke, heart practically falling out of your chest at his insinuations. You and Liam? No way. You can’t imagine a world where that’s a possibility.

You’re too unstable. Volatile. Liam is… everything that you’re not. And you cannot fathom a future where that might be possible.

Because you’re used to ruining things. That’s what you’ve done your whole life.

Nevertheless, their words stick to you like caramel and you're unable to shake them off no matter how hard you try. So that's how you corner the said blonde cadet a few days later as he's leaving for the flight field.

"Kaelle?" His brow raises in question before his face breaks into a dimpled grin, "need anything?"

"I--" you flex your hands, knuckles turning white as you gripped onto your pants for something steady to hold, "Can I ask you something?"

He placed his flight goggles on his head and tugs it down onto his neck, looking more and more confused, "sure?"

"Do you want to fuck me?"

Liam practically chokes on his own spit, "wha--I'm--sorry?" He splutters out as his face turns bright, beetroot red, flushing all the way up to his ears.

"Do you--" you're blushing too, you can feel the heat sizzling off you, "do you want to fuck me?"

"That's--" he keeps on shaking his head and looks at you in a mixture of shock, surprise and horror, "where--what are you talking about?"

"Just answer my question, Mairi."

You're glad that your voice, at least, doesn't give away the fact that this is probably the most embarrassing thing you could've ever done to yourself.

"I--" he presses his lips into a thin line, "I would be lying if I said no."

Heat spreads across your stomach, dips down into your lower belly, "why?" you croak out.

"What--" Liam looks like he's about to make a run for it, eyes flickering back and forth between you and the flight field a few meters beyond, "what do you mean--why? I--Yes, I mean--No, that's not the sole reason why I'm talking to you but--"

"But?"

"But if you ask me this, like that, then..." his jaw flexes, "Yes. Yes I would."

"I asked you why," you replied, "are you a player? Are you bored? Is this normal in the rider's quadrant, to be hooking up with everyone you want?" A pause, as realization dawns, "is this why you've been all--touchy with me? Holding my hand and shit?"

"Gods no," He looks absolutely mortified, "hey, that's not why I'm--"

"Then why are you being so--so--" you can't find the words, motioning at the air instead in hopes that he'd understand.

"I--" but you hear the sound of the Flight Commandant's voice starting roll call in the distance and you know now is not the time for answers.

Liam grasps your shoulder and tugs you closer, "listen, I'm sorry. I gotta go," he throws you an apologetic look, squeezing your shoulder blade, "but I'll answer all your questions tonight. I promise."

You gaze into his bright blue eyes, "You mean that?"

"Promise," and before you know it he leans over, pressing a chaste kiss along your temple before he's jogging off and sprinting for his life, leaving you and your heart racing like you've just ran a marathon or flew over the gauntlet thrice without stopping.

He finds you in your room that night.

A knock resounds off your door and you turn, book still in hand and currently buried in piles of homework, to find Liam -- all washed up, hair still sticking out and dripping from his shower, in soft cotton pants and t-shirt with a towel slung around his shoulders.

In the dim amber light of your room, he looks softer. Bathed in a golden halo that stirs something in your heart.

"Hi," he murmurs, clear his throat, "can I come in?"

You nod silently and he takes a step inside, closing your door in the process with a firm push. You close up your book and put your pens away as he strides over to the bed, glancing at you with hesitation as he allows himself to sit by the edge.

He still has those darned eye goggle marks along his face and your hands ache to touch them, run over his skin and his freckles and count how many he has.

But you don’t. You curl your hands into your lap, wrapping them around your knees to keep yourself sane, "how was Flight Field?"

"Tough,” he ruffles the back of his head with his towel, “never gets easier. But Deigh is a lot more cooperative than most.”

“Which means?”

“He catches me when I fall,” he shakes his head, “some dragons are not as merciful."

That is quite cruel. Horrible, almost inhuman. But then again, dragons aren't like humans. They don't live by the same rules, the same way human society is built.

Sometimes, just sometimes, you wonder about a life far, far away from all this.

"So," Liam leans his elbows onto his knees before he turns to look at you over his shoulder, a look of masked indifference on his face. Despite that, you still catch the wariness, the unease in his eyes. They speak more truths than anything you've ever said this year.

"What was that all about earlier?" his question is a soft murmur. Probing. Not quite aggressive. But firm, not quite soft either.

He wants to know. He has questions. Questions that only you can answer.

You shift, wary about his closeness. He can engulf the space, swallow it whole in a heartbeat if he wants to. But still, Liam sits on the edge. Waiting, patient. Always so patient.

Your heart twists painfully in your chest.

"I don't do hook ups," you start off slow, trying to gage his reaction through each word that spills from your lips, "I don't like meaningless sex. I've never done it. But people have, and people talk. Imogen and Garrick," you lift your chin, eyes meeting his, "they think we should hook up."

"Do you?"

You blink at him. Your lips part, "I--" you look away, towards your hands. Anything to get away from these stormy aquamarine pools that makes your insides simmer with heat, "I don't know. Is that what you're looking for?"

"No," he responds almost immediately. His voice is clear, like he knows exactly what he's saying. What he wants, "I'm not doing this for the sex."

Your mouth presses in a tight line, "hm.”

“I’m not playing with you,” he continues, turning fully so that he can lock gazes with you, “and I definitely don’t do meaningless sex.”

“Then why are you doing it?”

He blinks, “doing what?”

“This," you motion towards the air, "the hand-holding, the fact that you're always so close within touching distance, hugging me when you think no one's looking and earlier--" the thought of his lips against your forehead has you seeing fireworks for a split second, "--why?"

He takes his time, letting the weight of your words settle across the room like a blanket. It should've been jarring and annoying, that he's not quick to deflect your words with a response all because he's seeing you all riled up and worked over something that people might've thought to be trivial in another context.

No.

He just shifts closer until his knee brushes yours. His lips part into a silent breath before he dips his head down to hold eye contact with you, one hand sliding up slowly -- so as not to shock you -- to cup the back of your elbow in a hold that makes you feel like you're something precious, something akin to a baby.

When he speaks next, you swear your heart does a 180-flip.

"Because I like you."

You stare.

And stare.

And would've kept staring, if not for Liam's sudden little chuckle that has you snapping back to reality and shutting your mouth just in case you drool.

"What--" you swear your ears are ringing with the aftermath of this literal verbal bomb, "--what did you say?"

"I like you," he repeats it as clear as day and your heart does another flop around on its other side, "actually," his thumb brushes over your elbow as he murmurs out, "I might love you."

"Shut up, Mairi," your voice is shaky as you tug your hand away, "you don't know what you're talking about."

His eyes dance with emotion in the dim light of the room, golden flecks in his hair where the light bounces off, "I'm simply answering your question."

"But--" your face flames red with embarrassment, "you cannot say things like that."

People don't just say these words. They have to mean them, and you haven't lived long enough for someone to actually say these aloud to you. Not your foster parents, not any of your friends, definitely not anyone you'd met on Basgiath grounds.

"Why not?" Liam murmurs.

"Because this isn't a game. It's not a joke. I might be dead tomorrow, you might be," you snap, "this isn't the time to be talking about feelings and--"

"Kaelle, does it ever occur to you that I don't give a fuck about whether we'll live or die tomorrow?" he cuts you off.

You blink, "what?"

Liam shifts so that he's pressing even closer and the reduced distance between his face and yours has your tummy twisting so hard it makes you press your lips together, "you asked me why I hold your hand," his hand trails down as if on cue to tangle his fingers through yours in his lap, "why I hug you, why I'm being like this. The truth is, I'm doing it because I can't help myself," he lets out a slow, ragged breath, "and I'm not looking for anything from you. I promise."

The look you give him is filled with so much doubt that he laughs half-heartedly and leans back to flick your forehead.

"I mean it," his voice is a soft murmur. Impulsively, his hand goes up to brush against your cheekbone, "I don't need anything else, I'm not expecting anything else. Just--gods, don't push me away."

He's so sweet it's sickening. And yet, the butterflies in your stomach are telling you otherwise, practically bubbling up with the kind of heat that drizzles right down to your lower belly and flushes you straight up through your neck.

Liam doesn't say anything else. He doesn't have to.

He tugs at your arm. Softly, gently, so as not to startle you, until you're being pulled into his lap. Your lips bubble up with a protest, only for the words to die on your tongue the moment his arms come around your middle to anchor you to his chest.

With one swift move, the blonde swivels you round so that he's the one resting against your headboard, you on him, practically cushioned in his lap like a child.

You blink, cheeks fiery with embarrassment as you attempt a frown, "what in the world are you doing?!" you snap at him, though your words don't hold much bite.

Or, well...they do. But Liam has long since been able to read between the lines with you.

He just grins, dimples flashing. Your heart stutters and before you know it he's got his face buried in the crook of your neck.

He nuzzles into the crevice of your collarbone, sighing like this is exactly what he needs to calm him down.

"Mairi," you poke at his arm. Still rigid, still tense. Is he--is he going to stay this way? "Mairi."

You groan and attempt to squirm, "Liam?"

He hums. His nose moves up, nuzzling your ear, "can we stay like this?"

"I--"

"Please."

It's the way he says it that has your heart caving in like a fucking damsel in distress and you really want to pull out your hair at this very moment.

But you cannot deny him. And he senses it, for he merely pulls you even closer until your bodies are meshed together in one single, solid piece.

And that's when he says, "relax for me."

You doze off into his arms that night, for once your knife forgotten along your bedspread.

⋆⁺₊⋆ ━━━━⊱༒︎ • ༒︎⊰━━━━ ⋆⁺₊⋆

A/N: Part 2 will be up as soon as I'm done with it, but here's what I have so far. I was supposed to publish it earlier but honestly I got stuck halfway through because I just want to do a good job writing and fleshing out Kaelle and Liam's characters TT3TT

[gwenpendragns]

i was asked by @matthew-macfadyens for a colouring tutorial, so here we go ! i've been making gifs for almost 4 years now and finally feel comfortable and confident in my skills to make a full tutorial on my colouring process. there are so many different ways people colour gifs, and there's no wrong way, this is just how i do it ! i learned to gif by reading so many tutorials and picking and choosing what works for me, so hopefully this can help someone out !

if this tutorial helps you, please considering supporting me ! buy me coffee ♡

TUTORIAL UNDER THE CUT

what you'll need: - photoshop ( i use ps cc 2023 & frame timeline ) - basic ps knowledge ( how to make gifs, how to sharpen gifs, general understanding of adjustment layers, layer masks and blending modes ) - a whole lot of patience

helpful resources:

the beginner's guide to channel mixer by @aubrey-plaza

giffing 101 by @cillianmurphy

gif making for beginners by @hayaosmiyazaki

colouring yellow-tinted shots by @ajusnice

becca's mega colouring tutorial by @nataliescatorccio

@usergif

PART ONE: BASE COLOURING

- step 1: curves - step 2: exposure - step 3: colour balance - step 4: selective colour - step 5: levels - step 6: brightness / contrast - step 7: gradient map

okay so, before we get started, this tutorial is for colouring only. at this point, i've already gotten my screencaps, imported them into photoshop, made the actual gif & sharpened the gif. the above image includes what my typical adjustment layer stack looks like !

STEP ONE: CURVES

a lot of people do the majority of their heavy lifting in curves...i'm not one of those people. i've never gotten the hang of curves and haven't been able to fully taken advantage of everything it can offer. i use curves to mainly brighten up my gif and to start my process.

i use the "auto" button in the curves function - this automatically corrects the curves for your gif ( mainly the brightness / contrast )

you can see that the auto curves has brightened up the gif and evened out the brightness/contrast. i just find this gives a better starting point for the colouring process.

STEP TWO: EXPOSURE

this step is for, you guessed it, brightening the gif more and evening out the contrast and blacks. i don't have any real rules for doing this, the amount i highten the exposure and contrast is different based on the scene and the show, however, i tend to stay around +1 on both exposure and gamma correction.

exposure effects the brightness of the gif and gamma correction effects the blacks and contrast. this step also effects the saturation of the gif, so it's important not to go too crazy. i often end up coming back to this step every now and again to adjust and fiddle with it.

for this gif, i put the exposure at +1.18 and the gamma correction at 0.85

you can see this step serves to add some more brightness and contrast - it also adds some more saturation, that we don't always want, but don't worry, that's what the next steps are for !

STEP THREE: COLOUR BALANCE

i use this step to do a lot of my heavy lifting - i'm a whore for colour balance. this serves to even out the colours and help neutralize the colours for an easier canvas. it's important to understand the basics of colour theory for this, i recommend checking out the channel mixer tutorial i listed above, because a lot of those steps applies to colour balance.

essentially, there's three separate profiles to edit on - highlights, midtones and shadows. in each profile, you have 3 colour sliders. the top one is your cyan to red, middle is magenta to green, and bottom is yellow to blue. the colouring of the scene will decide where to move your sliders.

for example: if your original scene has a cyan tint to it, you'll want to pull your slider to the right, towards the red to help neutralize the cyan. if your scene has a green tint, you'll want to pull it left towards the magenta. as you move the sliders, you'll notice that sometimes it brings out other colours you don't necessarily need, you can adjust the other sliders to help neutralize further.

i always do my main correction in the midtones profile.

since this scene has a heavy yellow tint, my first step was to adjust the bottom slider. i pulled the slider to the right towards blue at +22. you can see this helped get rid of a lot of the yellow, but adding in the blue warmed up the reds and made it more saturated.

to help with this, i pulled the top slider left towards cyan to help neutralize that red.

i pulled the top slider to -28 and you can see this cut out that heavy saturation and redness. it's looking a lot better, but now it's a little too green for my liking. this is where that middle slider comes in!

i pulled the middle slider to -6 towards the magenta to help counteract the green that came in. ( i ended up going back in and adjusting the bottom slider to +10 instead, as it was a little to blue )

you can see this step really did the heavy lifting, helping to neutralize the canvas so that it's easier to work with...but it's not quite perfect yet!

STEP FOUR: SELECTIVE COLOUR

a lot of the same principles around colour theory apply to selective colour! this is where i go to adjust the colours according to what my colour palette is. for this gif, the overall colour is going to be purple, so i'll adjust the individual colours with that in mind.

i only ever adjust my red, yellow, white and black profiles! sometimes i'll do the other colours, but that's only for tweaking the final colour. i normally don't touch them at all.

ps: you'll notice i prefer a cooler toned gif, and almost always go for a more magenta looking red/yellow.

i always start with my yellows:

in the yellow profile, i pull my cyan towards the left to -38 (this helps eliminate the green in the yellows) and my yellow slider to the left to -27 (this cools down the yellows. i top it off by adjusting my magenta slider to -10, to help lower the saturation of the yellows.

you'll notice this step got rid of most of the green undertones - that's because the green was nested inside the yellows, so by taking out a lot of the cyan and yellow, you're left with a warmer yellow as opposed to a cooler yellow.

next i go on to my reds. this step will mainly effect the alys's skin tone, but i'm going to do pretty much the same as above but with much less dramatic of a change. lowering your colours in your red profile too much can lead to a very saturated gif, which is not what i'm going for.

i pulled my cyan slider to -19, magenta to -9 and yellow to -15. you can see this helped add some more cooler tones to the reds.

the next profiles are your white and black profiles. i use white to brighten the lightest parts of the gif. no rhyme or reason here, i just pull the black slider towards the left...usually around -25. for the black profile, i always move the black slider towards the right. anywhere from +3 to +8, depending on the gif. for this gif, i did +8. this darkens the blacks and, in my opinion, helps the gif pop!

you can see this step got rid of the yellow tint, gave the gif a more neutral look and adjusted the reds to better compliment a purple colour scheme !

STEP FIVE: LEVELS

this adjustment has three toggles - i'm not 100% sure what each toggle really does, i just know that by pulling the leftmost toggle to the right, it darkens your gif, and pulling the rightmost toggle to the left brightens your gif.

this step is so hard to explain, but really i just pull the toggles around until it looks good...sorry !

STEP SIX: BRIGHTNESS / CONTRAST

this step is exactly what it says on the tin...it brightens your gif. this step is based on your scene and personal preference, there's no real guide to it.

i always pull my brightness slider to the right ( brighter ) and my contrast slider to the left ( less contrast ).

STEP SEVEN: GRADIENT MAP

this last step is something i learned from @nataliescatorccio ! i add a gradient map to the top of my stack, and choose a lighter colour of what i want my overall gif to be. in this case, i used a very light purple!

i then set the blending mode to "soft light" and lower the opacity to anywhere from 20-30%. for this gif, i did 30%

this step will help make your colour pop once you do your main colouring!

PART TWO: PAINTING & COLOURING

- step 1: layer 1 - step 2: layer 2 - step 3: layer 3 - step 4: final touches

okay, so my actual colouring process is based in 3 layers. for this gif, i'm using a deep purple/mauve colour !

STEP ONE: LAYER ONE

between your brightness/contrast and gradient map layers, add another blank layer. change the blending mode of this layer to "colour" and set the opacity to 40%.

then, using a soft round brush with an opacity of 100% ( size of the brush is your preference, i typically use around 108 ), colour the parts of the gif you want coloured !

you can see this helps us get the canvas to a more uniform purple colour!

STEP TWO: LAYER TWO

for layer two we're going to do the exact same thing. add a layer above your previous, set to "colour" at 40%. we're going to go over the same areas!

you can see this helped get the purple so much more vibrant and closer to what our final colour is going to be!

STEP THREE: LAYER THREE

for our final layer, add another layer above the previous 2, set your blending mode to "multiply" and your opacity to anything from 60%-100%. for this gif, i did 60% !

now, our colouring is pretty much done but you can see that, now that our colour is down, alys's face is still a little too blue/green/yellow for the background purple. the next step, we're going to adjust and add final touches!

STEP FOUR: FINAL TOUCHES

at this point, i went back into my selective colour layer and adjusted my yellows & reds and went back into my colour balance layer to adjust everything overall.

at this point, i'm going to go in and add some adjustments layers above everything - i usually add some brightness/contrast, and a selective colour layer to darken the blacks.

which brings us to our final result:

[elinordash]

Thank you @cobbbvanth for asking me for this; I’ve never been more flattered! ☺️ I’ve only been making gifs for a little more than 2 years, so I’m really still only figuring Photoshop out, and my colouring owes everything to other people’s tutorials (some of which can be found here). To be honest, I was only asked some tips, but I have no clue what to include and what to leave out; so, here’s my complete (if random) colouring process.

NOTE: This is a colouring tutorial, not a gif-making one. The tutorial that taught me everything I know about that (and to which I am eternally grateful) is this one by @hayaosmiyazaki.

I. SHARPENING My standard sharpening settings are:

One Smart Sharpen filter set to Amount: 500 | Radius: 0,4

A second Smart Sharpen filter set to Amount: 10 | Radius: 10

One Gaussian Blur filter set to Radius: 1,0 and Opacity: 30%

One Add Noise filter set to Amount 0,5 | Distribution: Gaussian

II. BASIC COLOURING This is the part where I add most of the adjustment layers available and just play around with them. Obviously different settings work for different scenes, but I do have some standard ones.

Brightness/Contrast I usually up the Brightness to +10-30, and the Contrast to about +10.

Curves

For the first Curves layer I go to Auto Options > Enhance Brightness and Contrast, and then adjust the opacity until I’m happy.

I might repeat the above step if the gif still looks too dark to me.

I add another Curves layer, I go to Auto Options and this time I pick either Find Dark & Light Colors or Enhance Per Channel Contrast, and check or uncheck the Snap Neutral Midtones option, until I see something I like. I will then adjust the opacity.

Levels I add a Levels layer that usually looks something like this:

Exposure I add an Exposure layer, where I usually set the Offset to around -0,0010.

Selective Color To make the faces look okay, I create a Selective Color layer, select the Reds and usually add some Cyan (+10-20%) and play around a little (±5%) with Magenta and Yellow too. I might also add another layer, select the Yellows and make slight tweaks there too.

III. FUN COLOURING About colour manipulation: PiXimperfect just uploaded a tutorial that explains everything so much better than I ever could, so I highly recommend you go watch it. It’s made for static images though, and things are more complicated with moving images, so I also recommend @sabrinaacarpenters’s tutorial.

The reason I usually go for a softer colouring is that a more vivid one requires a lot of patience and precision, and I honestly can’t be bothered. Instead, I try to tweak the colous only a little, so that the edges can be a little rough without it looking too wrong.

One thing to remember is that each gif is different, and there isn’t one foolproof way to do this, so you will need to use a different technique depending on the gif you’re working with.

Okay, so, after I’ve decided what colour I want my background to be:

1. I create a Hue/Saturation layer and change the greens, cyans, blues and magentas to that colour. That’s easy enough, since it doesn’t mess with the face colour. I then set the blending mode to Color. If your background doesn’t include any yellow or red, you might be done here, like in the case bellow:

2. To change the yellows and reds, I create a new Hue/Saturation layer, select the yellows/reds, move Saturation to 100 (temporarily) and then play around with the sliders until the face colour isn’t affected. I then change it to whatever I’ve chosen and change the blending mode to Color.

3. If for whatever reason step 3 doesn’t work (the background is white or black for example, or just too red), I might create a Solid Color layer set to whatever colour I want, set the blending mode to Color and then select the layer mask and carefully paint with a soft, black brush over the people’s faces/bodies. I will then lower the Opacity, to whatever looks smooth enough. If there’s a lot of movement in your gif, you might have to use keyframes (see sabrinaacarpenters's tutorial linked above). However, my main goal is to avoid using those; that’s why I try my hardest to tweak around as many Hue/Saturation layers as needed and not have to create a solid color layer.

4. Once my background looks the colour I want it, I might add a Selective Color layer that matches my background color and then try to make it look more vibrant. For this Aziraphale gif below for example, I’ve selected the Cyans and then set Cyan to +100%, Yellow to -100% and Black to +60, then created another one, selected the Cyans again and then set Cyan to +20 and Black to +20.

5. If the gif has a white area, I create a Solid Color layer with a colour that matches the rest of the background and then set the Opacity low. I might also create a Selective Color layer, increase the Black and then play around with the colours.

IV. FINISHING TOUCHES

I create a Vibrance layer and set the Vibrance to around +30 and the Saturation to about +5.

I create a black and white Gradient Map layer (with black on the left end of the spectrum and white on the right), set the blending to Luminosity and the Opacity to about 20-30%.

AAAND that’s about it I think! This ended up way too long and perhaps a little incoherent. I tried to make it as general as possible, so you might have to mix and match for best results. Feel free to ask me for further explanations about any one of these steps, and please tell me if you want me to go through the colouring of a specific gifset (although, as I said, I'm by no means an expert). Happy gifmaking!

[simminginstars]

Updated: How I edit my sims 4 screenshots (night-time edition)

A more detailed editing tut so you can understand my process as it may help you, i edited this relatively quickly and usually spend about 1-2hrs editing something...so let's goo.....

Before taking screenshots:

Help yourself as much as you can in-game, I always make sure there is some sort of light source in my pictures or something interesting that I can add to enhance something already there

Understand good/bad composition and add variety by using different angles

I take LOTS of photos just to end up with 1 or 2 good ones

I'll just be using photoshop for this, but i also like to use the procreate app as i'm more confident w it.

step1: I check if there are any major glitches or hard areas e.g, fingers elbows etc.. that have sharp points and pull them in liquify so they are smooth. Then use curves to change the contrast.

step2: *duplicates image* using the dodge and burn tools (keyboard shortcut: o ) i'll add emphasis to highlights and shadows (be careful with these as the dodge tool can ruin the image if used in excess) *merges image* (i duplicate and merge as i go, utilise using lots of layers so you can go back if you mess up/ want to change the opacity of an effect.)

step3: making light sources POP. *new layer* change blending mode to overlay or soft light and choose a colour you like.

step4: *new layer* draw hair strands. i just use a basic round brush in photoshop and change the hardness or i'll use a sharp caligraphy type brush depending on my sims hair type. (i try not to overdo it as i like maxis hair and don't want it to look too realistic)

step5: i would then add a new layer and set the blending mode to multiply to add more shadows, but i don't feel like i need to at this point.

step6: *duplicates image* go to filter > camera raw filter, i change the "light" and "curve" panels, i like green tints in my screenshots especially the night ones. (this is where all the magic happens really so just adjust all the channels to your liking, lightroom is also really good to use)

step7: *create new layer* blending mode: screen or linear dodge (add) / makeup and finishing touches! - for this look i'll get stars and glitter pngs off google or unsplash same for the smoke, though if i'm using procreate they have free brushes for that :')

step8: add light leaks as they add some fun dynamic lighting and textures to your screenshots. (i also flip my image horizantally [image > image rotation > flip canvas horizontally] whilst editing as it's like a "fresh pair of eyes" when you've been editing for a while so you can see what looks off)

final step: merge all the layers (though i do merge along the way once i'm happy with something) go to filter > sharpen > smart sharpen. I leave it as the default setting.

extra step if u want: for party pics i might add chromic abberation here is a 60 second tutorial on youtube it makes the pic look cool and trippy.

And you're done!! congrats on surviving. if you have any questions please send them in my ask box so others can see and get help too.

[freckleslikestars]

Hi! I was wondering if you’d be up to share how you made the before and after slider on this post:

https://www.tumblr.com/freckleslikestars/780305824654540800/before-after-gif-colouring-challenge

It’s really cool! Thank you!

Aww thank you so much! I literally had a dream about doing this two weeks ago, and when @sophsun1 tagged me I was like "oh my gosh lets try it!"

Now, before we start, I'm going to assume basic knowledge of gif making, colouring, etc. I'm using Adobe Photoshop 2025, but you should be able to adapt the steps for pretty much any software that has a timeline and allows for vector masks.

Once you understand key frames and vector masks, it's super easy to do!

First, we're going to open our gif in video timeline view, with our colouring already done. (My colouring is all in "Group 1")

Next, I converted the footage to a smart object, leaving the colouring as it's own independant group. This isn't technically necessary, but I do this to a) apply sharpening and b) so my layers tab is less cluttered. This is normally also where I'd make sure my image size is correct (I do 540X400 pixels) but I forgot so I did that later on this one.

At this point, I turned some guides on and, using the rectangle tool, drew a rectangle that was around the size of the canvas, clicked to the last column on the right hand side.

The next step is to turn it into a vector mask. With command held down on a mac (I think it's alt on windows, but don't quote me on that) drag the rectangle layer onto the colouring group layer. It will fill in the whole canvas with colour.

Delete the rectangle layer, so that you're just left with the gif itself and the colouring layer with the rectangle vector mask over the top.

Next we're going to animate it, so you need to open the dropdown for the colouring layer on the timeline, and you'll want to scroll down to where it says Vector Mask Position

Making sure your playhead is at the very beginning of the gif, click on Vector Mask Position and drop a keyframe. Then, move your playhead to the very end of your gif and drop another keyframe - at this point you don't need to move the vector mask at all.

The next thing you need to do is find the middle of your gif - this doesn't need to be overly precise, particularly with longer gifs, but the precision means that the vector mask moves at the same spead both ways. Drop another keyframe there.

With the playhead over the keyframe, select the vector mask on the layers panel and using the move tool, move it across to the first column on the left. I personally prefer to use my arrow keys to just nudge it left, rather than faffing about with clicking and dragging.

If you were to export it at this point, it would be perfectly fine, you'd get the moving vector mask to show the before and after, which has a pretty cool aesthetic all of it's own. But lets add some details to make it look like a before and after sample image.

I started by adding the BEFORE and AFTER - I used Adobe Clean as my font, but font choice is really personal preference. I just centred them in the bottom left and right squares of my guidelines. I then drew a white line, using the line tool, down where the divide is, added a couple of rounded arrows (and lowered their opacity), and merged the three of them together (keeping the text separate).

Then I simply followed the same steps to add key frames to the line in the same places as I did with the vector mask, making sure that the centre one was nudged to the location for the vector mask on the centre key frame.

Export as usual and et voila!

Something to note is that this effect works better with longer gifs. As you'll see, this X Files gif was a touch too short, and so the slider feels a little too rushed:

Also, if you're wanting all of the sliders to move at the same time/speed, you're going to want to make sure all of your gifs are the same length, which I didn't do because I'd had a long day and I was procrastinating from postgrad work for an assessment I have tomorrow. Which is incidentally what I'm also doing right now.

Anyway, there you have it! Super simple when you know how! If you have any further questions, don't hesitate to ask! :)

[smallnico]

song of rest

felt like doodling out esper's tent. trivia and guide under the cut!

the tent is a plain dark colour, very unflashy, fairly low to the ground. it provides shelter to sleep under, but doesn't close -- esper is a bit claustrophobic, especially when alone, so they don't tend to sit inside unless they're sleeping, and they prefer to sleep in the others' tents if they're allowed to.

wind chimes! their magic moves the chimes around slightly, so they like to play along to them. if it's too windy they don't set up the chimes. the magic itself isn't a particular spell (could be song of rest, but they're just tuning into the weave, really) but they usually have spell slots left at the end of the day, so they use any residual magic to vibe. more on that in 8.

a lantern that's basically an empty wine bottle that's been faerie fired. esper sets up pretty far away from the campfire -- they like the dark, but they do find comfort in the little motes of light.

the much-abused training dummy. this thing has been decapitated and run through so many times it's not funny. part of why esper sets up so far away from the center of camp is because they sometimes imitate death noises when they destroy this thing (for fun & enrichment), and they're a little too accurate for comfort.

barrel of swords. esper takes the weapons from enemies that they respect and sometimes polishes or sharpens those weapons, even if they don't use them.

just a huge pile of pillows and hide blankets and discarded armour. esper sleeps on the equivalent of a dirty laundry pile with a pillow. they will tidy up a little if they have company, but they are a slob on their own. anything that isn't a weapon or research is extremely disorganized.

pile of collected journals and notebooks. most of the books they pick up through their adventures esper will give to gale or astarion or halsin, or whoever wants them, but they keep notes that give them an eerie feeling -- notes that Might be about their mysterious past. some nights they will take out their own notebook and try to put the pieces together until their headache gets too bad and they have to stop.

esper bangin out the tunes. they're playing the spider's lyre. not any particular song, mind you, just a series of notes and a rambling improvised melody charged with magic. esper tunes into the vibrations of the surrounding area (birds, wind, rustling leaves, tremors in the ground, etc.) and harmonizes with them so they can sense if anything around the camp is weird. they're meditating and calming their own emotions when they do this, but they're also stretching out their senses for nearby threats or weird energies in camp.

this is probably tea or just hot water. it might be soup. esper will drink about anything but they rarely make it for themself -- someone wandered over there and poured a liquid in there and they've just been sipping it since. esper isn't a heavy alcohol drinker -- their tolerance is really low, and they don't like having their judgement or control compromised.

these are weapons from enemies esper Doesn't particularly respect, or just daggers that are shit and cheap and not worth using. i'll be real, this is mostly for the aesthetic, but when you have bad knives, sometimes you want to punish them by burying them in the ground and using them to hold up your tent.

[tidescaller]

Hello, this gifset for pscentral event 37 is really pretty ✨

https://www.tumblr.com/tidescaller/779330612766081024/pscentral-event-37-trios-the-girl-the-boy-and?source=share

would you please consider posting a tutorial on how you made the blending multi gifs and colouring in the first gif?

Hi anon, so glad you liked it! I'll try my best to explain as detailed as I can. Just a small note that I'm not an expert, I'm still pretty new to blending edits in general so I'm learning as well as everyone ૮(˶˃ᆺ˂˶)

But before that real quick, and if my tutorial isn't enough, I'll leave you a list of amazing tutorials/guides that help me a lot when it comes to everything gifmaking related, so shoutout to them!

basic blending tutorial

coloring tutorial

blend gifs tips

blending, coloring and text effects guide (video)

another one similar to the previous one

gradient text

text outline

HOW TO: Blend multi - gifs / Dual Gradient coloring

You will need any version of Photoshop (I use CC 2019) and basic knowledge on making gifs.

STEP 1: THE BASE

1.1 - Make sure your canvas is 540px width. Mine is 540x450. Choosing which gifs to blend is kinda tricky and no one can tell you what's perfect. Everything depends of the scenary your show, movie, anime whatever you're working on has; but a tip is to use scenes that have dark areas, since it's easier to blend then. 1.2 - Make your individual gifs: crop, color, sharpen, all that, and make sure all of them are the same amount of frames. 1.3 - Before duplicating your gifs into your empty canvas, convert them all into smart objetcs. This will help to simplify stuff, have a much more organized work space and help you load your preview faster.

STEP 2: BRING YOUR GIFS

Now all you have to do is right click on every gif you made, go Duplicate layer… and sent it on your empty document. I would suggest doing one by one, so you can work better. Duplicating them all at once can be a little bit intimidating and might have you confuse how to combine your gifs. Try imagining what you want your gif to look like and where you want each element to be. As an example, I wanted the key scene when it kinda drops to be falling from the top of my gif and also as a separation of the one in color and the one Sakura is roller-skating.

STEP 3: BLENDING

3.1 - Okay, now that you more or less know what you want your gif to look like you can start by changing the blend mode of your gifs. Photoshop has mutiple options on this and it applies to all types of layers. For blending, one of the two (or more) gifs you are working is going to be on top, that's the one you're gonna have to change its blend mode in order to start this process. Generally, Screen is the one to go to.

3.2 - Some people group (selecting your layers > ctrl/cmd+g or right click > group) all the gifs so they can then change the group's blend mode into Screen but I personally like to do separately cause if I need a gif to fill some of the background I would keep it as Normal.

STEP 4: LAYER MASK

The key gif works perfect with Screen blend as it has a black background, but of course this won't be the case for most gifs you want to put in the main one. For those unwanted pixels we don't need, we use a Layer Mask. 4.1 - In order to do that, select your gif by clicking on them and next click on the layer mask button.

4.2 - Now you'll see a white square next to your gif layer. This will help by reducing the opacity of those things we don't need of your gif. What is white is 100% opacity and what is black 0%. So all you have to do is click on the layer mask, pick the brush tool and paint over what you want to "delete". Pay attention to use a soft brush, and the size of it should be around 200 and 300px. 4.3 - Repeat the process with all the gifs that need it

STEP 5: EXTRA LAYER

Sometimes a gif will look too bright/transparent/softened over the other ones. In order to fix this, you can create a new layer (the button right next to the trash can)

and paint with a black soft brush over the part you need to bring back. I don't know exactly how to explain it properly but I'll try with these before and after images. I'm adjusting the one with Sakura and her card:

STEP 6: COLORING

6.1 - OKAY, now that we have all that sort out and the gif has a proper structure is time to add some color. As I'm going to do a dual gradient after and leave only one of these 5 gifs with color, I'll use a black and white gradient map and add it to every individual one as a clipping mask (right click on the gradient map > create a clipping mask). Like this:

6.2 - Now that we have this I can add my own psd. I started making my own psds for every edit I make and I'm not ready in any way to explain that, but I learn how to do this with this tutorial. With that, my gif now look like this:

STEP 7: DUAL GRADIENT

Finally for this part I recommend making another group (the folder button next to new layer) and add a new layer for the different colors you add. This is all about painting and playing with the blending modes for these layers. There's no right way to do this, you just have to play around and see what works best for you and the scenes you have. You will end up with something like this:

Tips for this step are: 7.1 - Use a soft brush, size it up to 1000px, zoom your gif out and start painting out of the canvas. This will help create that gradient effect we are looking for. 7.2 - Change the layer's opacity/blend mode. This is (again) about playing around with colors. I changed these settings for all my layers that are part of the gradients' group. In order: dual is Screen + 90% opacity, pink Vivid Light + 70%, more pink Lighten + 90%, yellow Hard Light + 70% and final touches Multiply at 100%. I also mixed up the colors, not only staying with certain yellow or pink. 7.3 - The gradient tool works the same way as the brush tool! Just make sure the gradient is any color you're working with + transparent. 7.4 - I also added a layer mask to my gradient's group to erase some of the extra color in Sakura's face. All this will result on this:

And that's pretty much it! For the text part, I was going to add it but the tutorials I linked at the beginning explain it perfectly so shoutout to them. As always, if you have any other doubt, send me an ask and I will answer it as fast as I can! Always happy to help ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡

[louferrignojrofficial]

I hope you don’t mind asking but you consistently have some of the best 911 gifs. How are your gifs so sharp? And the coloring so good? Could you do a little tutorial about your giffing?

omg thank you!!! this gets pretty long so i’m putting the tutorial under the cut

so firstly, i use kmplayer to screencap. the most important part though is the quality of the episode you have. you always want to work with 1080p, and my file is around 2gb. that is how my gifs always turn out ‘the best’ as you say 🤗 of course, colouring and sharpening help a lot, but if you don’t have a good download, your gifs can be helped but won’t be the best possible.

this is the gif i’m making having only been cropped and sharpened. i’m gonna show you how i make a gif and my colouring process (which, for this one, is admittedly pretty short and simple compared to what i usually do.) as you can see, it’s dark and pixelated and doesn’t look that appealing, no matter how handsome they both are.

also, i forgot to screenshot this before i started but the screenshot below shows the action i use to basically get all my screencaps organised to make one gif. this is after you’ve got the screencaps into photoshop in a stack.

i can’t find the original post with the action, and i’m not sure how to share it on this post… but if it’s not that important in the scheme of this post, there are many other posts out there with actions you’ll be able to easily find and download.

anyways. so this is gonna go through the process of making a gif assuming you’ve done the process of importing the frames and sharpening. (i would normally cut out my taskbar but there are so many screenshots, it would take foreverrrr)

the next step would be cropping. this is the original:

and i’m doing a 540 x 500 gif. i like mine to be bigger so i can only get the person/people i want in the gif (sorry eddie) but sometimes if i want that it’ll be smaller, usually 540 x 400.

anyways, i crop from the edge and make it a little smaller so i don’t get the white border around it. and then i move the gif away from the top and right edge of the gif just by 3-5 pixels. which i already did here and then zoomed in:

next, image size. i honestly didn’t know about cropping it and then using image size for a few months when i started giffing (i don’t even know what i did back then not knowing that.)

then as you can see, it’s 540 x 500. if you’ve cropped it to the size you want beforehand, it’ll be automatically those dimensions.

next, we’re finally starting on colouring. i always tend to start with curves and use the middle brush on the left. the top one you use to make it darker, and the bottom you find the whitest point on the gif to make it a lot brighter. but i find the middle one colour corrects too, so it’s not too bright or dark, and is less yellow or whatever colours you don’t want.

it depends on where you click to get this result, i’m not sure how to explain what i do but i just click all over and try to get the yellows off and the skin colour to look generally the same as what they have. most of the time, if i get this accurate enough, the rest of the colouring process is just to brighten up the gif.

so, then after i got my desired result, we’re brightening it up because you can’t really see them all that well. i use brightness/contrast but i tend to use exposure the most.

as you can see, i am at +2.78 exposure which is crazy high (imo). but as that and the curves layer did a lot of the work for me, i mostly have the colouring i want.

although i think it could be a little lighter, so i add a new layer of brightness and contrast this time. i don’t brighten it all that much after that. i want to make it so that either one of their faces aren’t shining, and with too much of the exposure, it can make that happen.

next, i notice that tommy is kinda green/yellow, so i want to fix that up and make him more natural. i go to colour balance for that this time. most of the time i go to selective colour -> yellow or red, depending on how much i want to change. with selective colour, it gives you a few options in shades: cyan, magenta, yellow and black to alter, all for your specific colour.

meanwhile, colour balance changes the whole thing. since i wouldn’t mind that in this instance, i just go with colour balance.

tommy is looking less yellow and green, but still, he’s not where i want him to be. (plus oliver’s scruff area is naturally ginger so it shows up as yellow, and i want to decrease that a little.) so i go to hue/saturation, choose yellow, and decrease it a little more.

now, after this, i messed around with selective colour as i mentioned earlier and with the colour yellow and red specifically. but after comparing where i was at before, vs with those selective colour layers, i just liked that previous one more. so my last layer is the hue/saturation one. and i’m done colouring!

next, i go to my trusty camera raw filter to make them stand out more and be a little crispier.

i tend to stick to + 10 up to 30, somewhere in that range. sometimes the texture and clarity match, sometimes they don’t. it’s all up to you, but for this one, i knew it would end up a little too crispy so i didn’t go too high.

i also like to add some grain so that it’s less pixelated (it admittedly annoys me a lot when it’s got those visible square pixels all over.) i never go higher than 5 in grain, it does the job well.

after that, i’m finished with my gif!

next, we want to export the gif.

as you can see, the gif is less than 10mb, is set to loop for forever, and is made with selective diffusion. admittedly, i don’t think about that setting that much, but sometimes if it’s a lower quality gif, i’ll change it to selective/adaptive pattern instead. but that’s not relevant here.

after that, we open our gif that we just made into photoshop again. this time we want to select all frames:

and change the frame delay so it’s not as jumpy. for some reason, it automatically changes so that they alternate in frames from 0.03 to 0.07, but i want them all to be 0.05.

now that’s the last step and you just export the gif again!

this is the final gif!!!

i hope this was easy to understand! thank you for the kind words, and for asking me about my process because i’ve honestly always wanted to make a tutorial. if you have any more questions, or want to see my process colouring something more difficult to work with, let me know! 🫶

[anam-mana]

what’s your painting process?

THIS IS A HARD QUESTION! Because I am a lil chaotic in my personal work. My best personal pieces can vary wildly from me painting randomy shapes in black and white and slowly turning it into something by getting more and more detailed in every pass at it, like I did here:

To an almost completely 3D render with a paint over, like I did here:

Or anything in between those to processes that you can imagine, tbh, I've probably tried that as well. BUT, I'll tell you what I've been doing lately in my professional stuff to keep the quality and style a lil less all over the place.

Step 1: Plan a pose and lighting in Daz 3D.

The models I usually use for this are modified Victoria 9 and Michael 9 because those are the most anatomically correct. But you can totally just use the free Genesis 9 or Genesis 8 models that come packaged with the free software and it souldn't really give you any issues.

Step 2: Posterize your refrence until it's 3 Values, then use that a reference to create a 3 value thumbnail, planning the arrangement of element in your painting and the lighting, midtone, and shadow colours.

Step 3: Create a duplicate of the thumbnail and apply a black and white filter. Put the original thumbnail in a seperate window or on a reference board or something to look at, so you don't stray too far from the points of contrast and lighting in that. Define your hard and sharp edges in the black and white painting, using your favourite hard edged painting brush and your favourite soft smudging tool. then fil in the values that exist in between your 3 key values. You can usually find these correct in-between values by eye drop selecting from the gradient in your newly softened edges.

Step 4: Detail and paint until your black and white painting looks like it would be a passable greyscale painting by your own standard. This one is hard to give specific instructions on how I detail because I just look at things I dont like and fix them until the things I don’t like are minimal.

Step 4: Add base colours using gradient maps, colour balance, selective colour, or curves. If you don't know which out of these is your favourite method for colouring greyscale, I encourage experimenting. Sometimes I myself use different methods even withing the same painting, because they all have their lil quirks of how they work and the colour results.

Step 5: Render. This one is, again, hard to discribe as it's mostly just looking at things you don't like and fixing them until you're happy.

Step 6: Add lighting effects. Here you can see I added bloom, jittered the hue in the shadow and light affected areas to be warmer or cooler, added glare to the glass, and then, dust particles being hit by the light, a VERY transparent colour dodge layer where the light is coming down from an off screen chandelier, then since all these lighting effects washed the character in the dress out too much, I went in with a softlight layer and a low opacity brush to do colour correction.

Step 7: Post processing. Add a noise layer, smart sharpened the image, added a high pass filter on overlay and set it to 20% yada yada now if one were to print the full res it would look nice.

And that's basically the process right now. But if you ask me again in a month I'm probably going to have changed the way I do things again because I'm always developing the process more and more as I go. I hope this answered some questions for people, was informative, or in any way helped.

[plor-bindery]

Bound: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

This one is for a friend, whose spouse made me a bench hook. I used @canon-in-too-deep's delightful free typeset (thank youuuu!) Binder friends, if you're not already perusing and using canon's typesets, I urge you to take a look! They are so well done, beautifully laid out, and so lovely to look at.

While the book and the cover colour were both at the request of my friend, I think P&P is my favourite book in the world, so it wasn't exactly a hardship to dig into this bind. I'm very fond of my Oxford World Classics copy from my uni days, and I also own a Penguin clothbound version... but I might need to make my own someday.

I reflected already on how this started off as a cursed bind, but I'm happy to report that though the text block cuts are not perfect, the book itself came out quite well. I'm thankful I didn't give up and start over!

Process and materials as per usual under the cut.

Materials: First time using faux leather! I am still not sold -- it's just wooqu's version of the stuff, and while the colour and texture are nice, it's quite plasticky overall. But I remain uninterested in real leather, so I suppose it's good to start trying some faux options. It was a little harder to crease/turn in, and wanted more patience with my mix. But it was easy to wipe errant glue off, which was kind of a treat. Also easy to mark with a hasty fingernail, less good.

The rest is nothing new: ledger paper (24 lb Xerox) cut down to short-grain letter (badly). I sewed on tapes since this baby is 440 pages, but used waxed cotton floss because my linen thread is quite heavy and I was worried about swell. I also used a bone folder to flatten each signature around the thread as I sewed it, which helped. Basically no swell! So far so stable?

End papers are scrapbook papers. Endbands are cotton floss on leather cord (yes, I sewed them; yes, it was a weird choice for a friend who probably won't care. I wanted the practice!)

I bought the peacock cover art when I was doing an early bind (Probationary Action, I think) from a seller on Etsy. Yes, it was horrifying to weed.

Process: As mentioned above, this started out as a cursed bind, but I pulled it out of the fire pretty well by the end! I did a trial run applying HTV to the faux leather because I was worried about the heat melting the material. It didn't seem to have that issue, but the carrier sheet for the HTV left indelible impressions wherever I pressed the edges into the material. (I press with a cheap Amazon mini-press, but I don't use a huge amount of pressure.) So I decided to do a cover/spine design that would allow me to use a full sheet of HTV that ran edge to edge on each part of the cover, so I didn't have to worry about that edge marking issue. It worked!

I have tried rounding and backing spines before, but it's almost impossible to do backing well without backing boards, which in turn need a lying press or finishing press, and I'm still over here working with wrapped bricks and two cutting boards with carriage bolts and wingnuts. So I'm trying to figure out ways to avoid needing to round/back. 20-page signatures help! Lighter thread! etc etc. I did one rounded spine (a bind of Sense and Sensibility I've never shared here) and it was... okay? Without backing, rounding is mostly an aesthetic choice anyway.

I need to get my guillotine sharpened. There was a whole saga a month back with me trying to level the blade and almost slicing my fingertip off (ouch) but the result was that I had trouble putting the damn machine back together properly and the blade sat on the fence a bunch while I was figuring it out, which definitely dulled part of the blade. I'm procrastinating about getting it done because a) terrified of cutting myself again getting the blade off and b) mad at myself that my almost new guillotine already needs this service. So for now, I'm just shoving scrap paper under every text block I cut so that the dull bit of the blade is failing to cut the waste paper and not the block. Works? Annoying, but works?

See, this is the problem with a writer doing a craft, I won't goddamn shut up once I start typing.

[moonsua]

hiiiii vivi do you maybe know of any tutorials on how to start giffing

hello lovely!! thats such a good question and im also so excited to see your gifs if you start! i know it looks incredibly overwhelming at first and like a lot to handle, but just remember to have fun experimenting and trying everything out and very soon it will feel like second nature! and take things step by step, you dont have to have everything figured out immediately.

this here by @hayaosmiyazaki is an amazing and detailed tutorial for beginners! it explains about everything you would want to know when you're starting out. this is another lengthy tutorial that uses the "import video frames to layers" method instead of screencaps, it all depends on what your photoshop can do and what you prefer (if you need a ps link dm me).

when it comes to colouring i think this is a great tutorial on colouring east & southeast asian celebs and how to avoid white-washing. here is also a nice compilation of anti-whitewash tutorials! just in general @usergif is an amazing place when you're looking for resources and tutorials because they have basically everything. here is their resource directory.

this lovely tutorial here is very similar to what i do when it comes to sharpening my gifs.

aaand finally this is a nice compilation of different basic gif making tutorials and resources!

i hope this helps you at least in some way, dont hesitate to reach out if you have questions, and most importantly have fun!!

[kingofscoops]

Can I ask how you do the color overlay/backgrounds on your color palette posts? Specifically the rose tyler one.

Sure nonnie, sorry it took me a while to get to I had some other colour palette requests and wanted to make a little tutorial for you using one of them when I got to them. So I'm gonna use this gif from this gifset because I really liked how the colours came out. I'll be honest I have no set colouring pattern for these, the colouring differs from gifset to gifset but it follows the same basic steps. (also a little warning, I tend to ramble when I'm making tutorials so hopefully it makes sense)

For this tutorial you will need:

Basic gifmaking knowledge (I make mine on the timeline option on PS but it works with frames too)

Your gif prepared with your preferred colouring and sharpening

Knowledge of using layer masks when gifmaking (if not don't worry i'll show where to find them)

So here's the gif before all the colouring;

and here's the gif after I've put my normal base psd on and made the adjustments to it;

Now we come to the fun part, like I said before what I do varies from gifset to gifset so just play around with it. A good tip though I've found for changing the background though is choosing a scene that has a lot of blue or cyan because I find them easiest to change the colour of, but it works with any colour to be fair.

For this gifset I started by adding a hue/saturation layer and setting the cyan and blue (or whatever the main colour of you gif is) and setting them to -100, it's not an essential step but it does help if the blue/cyan route is the way you went.

that make the gifset look like this;

All the blue and cyans have turned have turned to gray so now we can start experimenting with our colour overlays. So I created a new layer and filled it with my desired colour, which was this lovely purple colour here;

And i set the layer blending mode to soft light.

And got this nice result, the parts that were gray now have a purple colour to them, but it's not quite the same shade I'm trying to get, so I duplicated the colour layer, keeping the same blending mode.

We're getting there now, but I want to try making the purple a bit brighter now, so I duplicated the purple layer again, but this time I set the blending mode to lighten, and turn the opacity down to 12%

It's a tiny difference, but it's perfect for the shade I'm trying to get, but like I said above it's all down to experimenting with different blending options. Now my only issue is I want to bring back Dustin and Erica's natural skin tones that have been given the purple shade due to the layers. That's where layer masks come in. To get a layer mask pick the layer you want and and click the little icon I've circled underneath where your layers are, which brings up the mask as a white box next to it.

With the white box selected I select the brush tool and make sure the colour of the brush is set to black and paint over the areas of the gif I want to take the purple shade away from (note this step works better on subjects that don't show a lot of movement in the gifs, but there are other tutorials out there that show key frame colouring and stuff that I'll link at the bottom of this)

So now the mask should look like this;

Then I need to apply the ayer mask to the other purple layers, for that I press ctrl and click on the layer mask (not sure what that would be on mac sorry)

It should look simular to this, the outer area selected is where the purple colouring is the the circles are the are you're trying to change, with that select your next colour layer and apply layer mask, that will then give it the same altered layer mask from the pervious layer. Then repeat these steps on all your colour layers.

They should all now look like this leaving you're gif looking like this;

And here's the final result, Dustin and Erica have their normal skin tones while the surrounding areas of the gif are now the colour I changed them to. I hope I explained things clearly enough, if not don't hesitate to ask me any follow up questions, here's some other tutorials for changing colours in gifs:

my own colour gradiant tutorial

gradiant colour map blending

key frame colouring

gradiant fill layers

colour manipulation

Just remember to be creative and mess around with it, there's all sorts of results you can get from different blending options that might work better for you ;)