#THE WHOLE THING WAS PLANNED OUT SO WELL LIKE THE STORYLINE WASNT RUSHED

[anonymoosen]

OKAY FIRST OF ALL, WHAT THE HECK, SECOND OF ALL, WHATTTDYSUFJISICJSJCKSJDJSJD IM ACTUALLY GONNA SQUEAL AND SCREAM AND CRY AND EXPLODE FROM THIS MASTERPIECE BONNIE YOUVE DONE IT AGAIN AND IM GONNA HAVE THE REACTIONS NOW BECAUSE OF HOW GOOD THIS IS LIKE HECK IM ALREADY RAMBLING ON ABOUT IT WITHOUT EVEN GETTING TO THE REACTIONS PARTTT

CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW CUTE THESE DORKS ARE LIKE HELLO LIKE THE WAY ZIM JUST PATS DIBS HEAD LIKE NOTHING HAPPENED AND DIB LOOKS SO ANNOYED AND DONE WITH HIM LIKE TJIS IS RLLY ONE OF MY FAVORITE TROPES AND THEYRE JUST— RAAAAAHHXHSJDJSKDKDKD

ZIM IS SO RELATABLE IN THIS PANEL LIKE LOOK AT THIS POSE— ITS LITERALLY ME WAKING UP IM THE MORNING IFKDDK I LOVE LOVE LOVEEEE THE WAY U DRAW THE POSES AS ALWAYS AND THIS PANEL LOOKS SO FUNNY AND MEMEABLE I LOVE THIS

SMOL BABIESSSS THEYRE SO SMOL AND CUTE AND ADORABLE I ALSO LOVE UR CHIBI VERSIONS OF THEM SO MUCH AND ONCE AGAIN I RLLY LOVE DIB BEING SO DONE WITH HIM HAHAHHAJDJSDKSKKDD

THIS. THISSSSS THISSSS MCFRIGGIN PANEL OVER HERE IS ABSOLUTELY ADORABLE MY HEART CANT TAKE THIS LIKE LOOK AT HIS PRECIOUS EYES WIDENING IN LOVE AT THE MENTION OF DIBS CLOTHES LIKE HES FALLEN SO MUCH FOR DIB THERES NO WAY HE CAN EVEN DENY IT TO HIMSELF ANYMORE

HELPPPPPP THIS IS SO FUNNY AND ADORABLE AT THE SAME TIME ITS TRULY PEAK FASHION SENSE HE HAS THERE HAHAH AND ALSO THE MEMBRANE SIBLINGS JUST BONDING OVER MAKING FUN OF ZIM IS SO CUTE TOOOO

MY HEART JUST EXPLODED FROM THE CUTENESS IN THESE TWO PANELS LIKE HELLO KFKSKDKDKF DIB HELPING ZIM WITH HIS SHOELACES IS SO FRIGGIN PRECIOUS AND ZIM STILL SOMEHOW DENYING HIS FEELINGS IS JUST SO FUNNY TOO GJDKFKDKF EVEN THO HIS LOOK OF LOVE IS CLEARLY STATED ON HIS BLUSHY FACE

NO WORDS NEEDED.

JUST SOME APPRECIATION FOR ZIM BEING A LITTLE GREMLIN LIKE HE ALWAYS IS

Zim isn’t here, he’s in hoodie town… :((

BONNIE.

BONNIEEEEEEE NOOOOOO IM GONNA CRY RN LIKE THE ENDING IS SO BITTERSWEET RIGHT AFTER THOSE ADORABLE WHOLESOME AND GOOFY MOMENTS LIKE DANG THE WAY U FORMATTED IT TO BE SAD IN THE END AFTER THE CUTENESS IS SO FRIGGIN SMART??? LIKE THIS MAKES THE IMPACT OF THE ENDING MUCH MORE POWERFUL AND IT MAKES ME MISS THIS COMIC ALREADY

ONCE AGAIN, HAPPY BDAY AND I WISH U ALL THE BEST WITH UR FUTURE PROJECTS AND WHAT LIFE WOULD BRING YOU IN GENERALLLL

PART 28 pages 123 - 129

THE END!

<-Previous pages

☆First pages☆

COMIC SERIES

Ko-Fi ❤️

AHHHHHHHH YESSSSSSSS!!! FINALLY GOT THERE!

Gosh, so many things have happened since I started working on this comic. It feels so strange for me to actually get to the end, but also so nice. 💜 I need to take a break from bigger projects, but someday I might return to it. Thank you all for your patience, and for supporting me! It kept me motivated all the way through. And thanks to my friends who helped me with grammar and ideas! Thank you so much for being there with me! >w< 💜💜💜

[environmentworld-blog]

Making an environment in One Week - Part 1

I decided to make a whole environment piece in one week. So yeah!

WHAT THIS IS: Practice and an experiment. This was just a personal test to see what I could achieve and share my experience. WHAT THIS IS NOT: Healthy and practical. Healthy for reasons you will read bellow (at least for me), and practical because rushing things doesn't make you better. Even though there was some discovery here for myself, I didn't learn any new techniques, didn't learn from critiques, etc. I dont recommend to do this as a constant art practice. Its not smart if you are planning to grow in your craft.

That said!

Its been both a challenge, and a great time. It was definitely a big learning experience for me, and I am not very happy with the results but I decided to share it because I got something out of it, and hopefully some of you will as well.

The main challenge was to conceptualize and go from blockout to final in 1 week. Basically, going from here...

...to here...

...in one week.

The result is running realtime in UE4. I used Blender, ZBrush, Topogun2, the Substance suite and Photoshop.

DAY 1. Starting out...

This was, heads out, the hardest part. The whole piece took me around 45 hours. 4 hours after work from Monday to Friday and at least 12 hours on each day of that weekend. Needless to say, at the end of that week I was completely exhausted. MVP of the week was my girlfriend who decided to take care of my chores the whole week while I worked!

Looking at the empty canvas is always scary.

And of course this time it was no exception. It added an extra layer of pressure knowing that every minute I spent looking at it and clicking around, would take valuable minutes away from my busy week.  

I had to figure out SO MANY THINGS.

When tackling down an environment, there are many things I usually keep in mind. You have composition, theme, storyline, execution method, end platform, etc. And in this crazy jungle of thoughts that usually strikes me when starting to build a piece, I can get lost really quickly and begin walking in circles.

First I had to CHOOSE A PLATFORM. Unreal, of course. Moving on!

Then I had to FIGURE OUT THE MAIN THEME, on which I'm going to build my scene. So I almost instantly thought: pirates. I LOVE pirates. I mean, who doesn't? And with Uncharted 4 still to this day in my veins and one of the latest Magic The Gatheringset ever-present in my head (go Ixalan bois!), I had all the inspiration I needed. I had found my theme. And I set it in stone, for I would never allow myself to lose time changing it. That was not an option...

And of course, I ended up changing it.

Now, I need to THINK OF THE STORY. It was going to be amazing! I wanted to have a small boat in the sand with a treasure on it. And in the back, a huge ship shooting at it. As if the pirate stole the treasure and was getting away! He got to shore, but the ship was too damn close, so he had to take away whatever we could in his hands leaving most of it behind.

Cool, I liked it. It was no Dark Souls environment art storytelling, but it kinda worked!

So then I jumped to the next and one of the most crucial of steps: GATHERING REFERENCE AND BUILDING A MOODBOARD.

I think I got rid of most of my pirate-related reference, but here you kinda see what I was aiming for terrain wise. I had to cut a lot of it, but the feeling was there. This step is almost crucial, and it is really important not to underestimate reference. Spend 1-2 days looking for it. Always keep it open while working, and never stop looking for new pictures!

All this took me a good couple of hours. Perhaps 3 (tight time frame after all). So I HAD to move on to the engine now. No time to waste.

Next, I started with my main BLOCKOUT. This is definitely the most important part of it all. Here is where you should spend the most time when making environment art. The blockout is going to dictate the overcome of your whole piece. Don't think in details, details sucks, details are for murlocks. Nail your main shapes and composition FIRST. You will definitely tweak things around, but having your composition, shapes, balance, and flow of the piece in place in the beginning, is not only going to allow you to work more effectively, but it will also keep you inspired and moving forward.

So I did. This is the first blockout of this piece ever.

I started out with the simplest of compositions. I can go quite crazy trying things out at this stage but, not to my surprise, I hadn't much time to spare. So a simple rule of thirds, which I personally dislike (here is why), will do for now. I knew that I was going to keep a simple 3 point composition, and 2 counterbalancing points will do the trick for now.

Also, at this points rocks, water and sand texture were taken from the UE4 library.

I moved on then to BLOCKING OUT LIGHTING. As everything in this stage, it was very simple. Just used a basic skysphere (default to UE4) and tweaked the values a bit. I knew for a fact I wanted to keep working on both the mood and the clouds. But no time for that right now.

The goals of my first day were to have the whole blockout done. At this point it was almost 10 pm and I wasnt ready. And I wasnt going to bed until I had at least a very basic sand texture there.

So I made it.

And since its really awful, I figured I might aswell explain what was I shooting for composition wise. The framing was going to be natural vs man-made. Rock vs water. So the big rocks on the fore and the middle ground where doing that for me. At the same time, I was throwing all the flow lines I could to make the ship pop up.

And that was it. 11 pm. Time to eat something, go to bed, and go to work the next day. I could have stayed up all night. But I knew better.

DAY 2. Sand and rocks

Day 2 started out nicely. I almost ran home to get my hands on this! I was confident that I was going to pull it off. All was great!

I jumped right away to Substance Designer. I knew (and had been thinking all day) that I wanted to have the sand in as soon as possible. So I jumped directly to my next step BLOCKING OUT TEXTURES. Not everyone works this way, but I found out that having a solid blockout of your textures helps you to see the bigger picture. In an interesting scene, not only color but also roughness take a big part in making it look unique and appealing to the eye. And having your materials blocked out will get you early to a point where you can start tweaking lighting, composition and even propping to get the most out of your scene.

This screenshot is 2 hours in on the second day. I kept moving rocks trying to improve the composition, and all this new perspective came from my new sand material being applied to the terrain. I built a simple blend shader and vertex painted some roughness variation in where the land met the sea.

Also grabbed this super high poly ship from somewhere on the internet and used it very quickly to try to pull my vision a bit forward. All assets were created by me in their entirety, but blocking out a ship just for the blockout's sake would take me a whole day, and I was already starting to get scared from the scope of this scene. At this point I didn't think I was going to pull it off, and grabbing these ships helped me realize that my original vision simply wasn't going to happen. They were a lot of work, so I had to improvise something on the fly.

Much like in game development, the cool parts get cut. Ships were out, and I spent a whole hour trying to think what to do to replace them. And the clock kept ticking.

So I kept working on the composition. A 3 point composition would do it. A simple offset of focal points kept in flow by the terrain and contrast. Not too fancy, but would do the trick if done correctly.

Then I thought I might as well move on to the next thing: CREATING KEY PROPS. So I decided to get started with the rocks. I sculpted these godforsaken monstruosities and quickly decimated and textured them.

Here is a quick tip for you all: DONT RUSH THINGS. Because when you do, you end up losing time. They looked like crap. And I knew that. And hated the fact that I had to redo them. That didn't only make me lose time, but also severely affected my morale. Tackle things smartly, and give every piece of the puzzle the time it requires, because if one single piece is off, everything will look unfinished or just wrong.

Then added some fog and, just like that, the day was over. What a waste.

DAY 3. Rocking rocks.

Day 3 started at 7pm. I had to get to work with the rocks right away. So I did.

I looked for a lot of references and got to it. I ended up finding some killer ref on it, that was exactly what I needed. In the end, and after pretty much all day, I was happy with what I got. The sharp edges broke nicely with the smoothness of the scene. It almost felt like I was achieving a gradient between the smoothness of the water, the semi-rough surface of the sand and the sharpness of the rocks. I quite liked that. There was even a cool story element to it.

It also had to be reusable, so I sculpted it 360 degrees, since it was going to be rotated like crazy. I knew they weren't perfect since there was barely any small detail on them, but I would come back to them later.

I also kept developing the blend shader a bit. And used it on the rocks as a test, painting some sand on top of them.

DAY 4. Propping, mesh scatter and sand!

Getting back to it on the fourth day had me excited! I knew what I wanted to do with the rocks, so I started creating bigger variations and some backdrop ones. Once I had them, I kept working on the composition and framing of the whole piece. Also created some sharp ones to add at the distance, as some reference I found showed.

So at this point, halfway there, I had my composition kind of there, my secondary props almost done, my main textures half done, and I was still experimenting with lighting. Damn.

When propping, it's always good to keep micro-compositions in mind. There is a lot to talk about on this topic, and I plan to do it in the future in more detail, but as of now this should do. Every big shapes should be grounded, accompanied by medium and smaller bodies. And this is what you can see I did here. Breaking the rotation of assets and having other smaller props around them, blend big assets and terrain together smoothly, almost like in a gradient.

And then it clicked. I decided to take a huge U turn. Pirates wasn't an option anymore since the ships were too expensive to make. So I decided to turn into scifi. Star Wars more specifically. For some reason I just got a bit of a scifi vibe out of it. Decided to follow my gut.

First big change was lighting. Before I was aiming for something really moody and gray. Tons of fog, low visibility and and sad/uncomfortable mood. Changed it into a mostly clear sky at dusk.

DAY 5. Prop making

Getting back to it on the fourth day had me excited! I knew

My first idea was to recreate the crash from Star Wars Jedi Knight Jedi Academy on the planet of Blenjeel (the one where the sand worm tries to get you). So I thought it could be a really nice remaster piece to make! Story was figured out and all.

So I used some UE primitives to build the basic shapes of what I was going to go for in both focal points. It was going to be the fallen ship and one of the ships parts you need to retrieve in the mission.

But as I started looking for reference, what I could find was really limited. the game is really old and there is barely any art for the level. I found a single piece of concept art in one of many Star Wars wikis and started blocking it out from it.

My plan was to execute the main asset that day, so I quickly jumped into it. And as I started modelling one of the turbines of the ship (you can see it in the next image), it resembled something I was really fond of. So, again, a new sporadic change in the design...

Pod racers! I LOVE pod racing. Who doesn't?

And like that, day over!

DAY 6. Of grounding and helmets

First day of the weekend. My intention was to finish everything today. Wanted to have all props figured out, all dressing done, all painting in place, etc. The last day had to be just post processing and super small details in the scene. Lots of things happened on day 6.

The new prop was simpler and more easily recognizable. And, most importantly, I liked it! It would be now the remaining of a crashed pod. The races (as depicted both in the movie and the game) were pretty brutal, and so I figured I could try to show that.

Here is the asset.

After that I quickly jumped into grounding the asset better and adding smaller detail. Added some dragging marks for the turbine, wires, random parts of the broken pod scattered everywhere.

DAY 7. Final tweaks and presentation

Final day upon us!

I started the day early adding the third focal point to the scene. Backdrop pods racing at the distance. This wasn't only the third piece of the 3 point composition, but also a big storytelling element. This guy had some tough luck, but the race still keeps on going!

Also started to play heavily with a post process volume and some nice LUT tweaking.

Then did a final pass on everything. Added some more scatter, tweaked lighting, added some fake bouncing lights and tweaked the reflections. Then made some quick dead vegetation and added it around some rocks. The final composition was rather simple, but here is a breakdown of my mental process. It doesn't really matter which of the 3 focal points to see first, all of them are connected creating a circle flow between them.

In blue, you can see the helmet connecting with the turbine thru the wire in the sand, creating an arrow directly pointing back and forth. Framed by the rocks in the foreground, the helmet creates a strong contrasty focal point that is very likely to attract most attention at first glance.

In red, the turbine. The trail behind it serves a single purpose: its guiding the viewers sight towards the next focal point in the rotation. Also the same positioning of the turbine works as an arrow pointing left. Perspective and placement work together here for this end.

In green, the pod creates an attention spot simply because of contrast. And so it completes the circle. All shapes around are meant to both point towards it and guide the viewer back to the helmet.

General positioning on the scene and during the dressing had purpose. Playing with empty spaces vs populated ones, contrast and color helps, and here the sand areas and sea create clear paths to traverse. and the central, uninteresting, piece (in orange) creates the perfect shape to accentuate direction and a pivot for the whole image.

And so I was done! 8pm on Sunday. Crazy week! Was absolutely exhausted and had a real bad time trying to concentrate next Monday morning. But I managed to pull it off to the best of my ability in the given time, and the result was rather acceptable.

Many lessons learned on this. Not going to bore you with all the details of my own realizations, but I tought it would be nice to share the crafty side of them.

Im not doing this again any time soon. Even though I look back and can be proud of having finished a piece in this small amount of time, the gain wasn't really worth it. Things I would improve if would have had more time are:

Pods could have improved with some motion blur (didn't have the time to figure out how to make it happen in UE).

Smoke looks still and inorganic.

Rocks could be better grounded, with sand buildups on the sides.

Backdrop rocks are way too simple.

More color variation would have taken this to a much nicer place. I played it safe with complimentary colors.

Assets could use some more time.

And I think I could keep going on forever. Even though my eyes are still a bit used to seeing it constantly.

Thanks a lot for reading! Sadly I had to cut a bunch of it due to text characters limit, but I think this sums it up well enough.

Please leave any questions you may have, happy to answer them! Also any ideas and C&C on the piece is absolutely encouraged.

Thanks again, and till next time!

Otto

[danyellatatizzz]

#pllendame #wtfwasthat?

Ok so, PLL stopped being awesome years ago but I didn´t really gave up hope after the time jump. The AD emoji weirdo plus the whole spaleb/haleb storyline really ruined what was left of the show for me. 

I stopped watching the show then but I kinda kept up with some posts and yt videos because I still wanted to know how it was going to end. And in my opinion it was a mess. The storyline and the ships, both were ruined by bad writting and fatal continuity.

About the ships...

The point of a time jump is to show how people change with time, how they were no longer high school girls, they were adults with different lifes and responsabilites. And in real life the truth is that you move on from you high school sweetheart and that doesnt mean you didnt love them or what you had wasnt real it just means that people changes and grows apart and thats ok, it happens. 

All of the couples broke up for valid reasons. They wanted different things, their priorities were not the same and they had to get different experiencies and meet new people. 

Toby was happy with Yvonne. She was really likable and of course his relationship with Spencer turned a little awkward at times but that happens. Spencer was still happy for him and the truth is that Toby chose Yvonne. Even though he was always gonna care about Spencer, he chose to start a life with Yvonne. And as much as I loved Spoby in the beginning I think Spencer deserves better that Toby settling for her cause Yvonne died. I hated that. If they wanted spoby to be endgame they should have done it differently. Not like they just got stucked together. Also, Toby had a whole non-con issue with Jenna in the past and that´s not a topic to treat lightly. It´s messed up and just... wrong. And they did it again with Alex. Toby did not consent to have sex with her, he thought he was with Spencer so, no matter how you called it or how you justify it, it was rape and that was awful. 

Hanna was happy with Jordan. She was gonna get married and they were planning a life together. She had told him everything about her past which was a big deal, and she always had that big smile when they talk on the phone or when she saw him. He was good for her and he could be a part of the life she wanted. Of course it was gonna be weird to watch one of your best friends fall for your ex boyfriend, someone who was really important to you, but she was engaged and Spencer was honest with her about her feelings. Caleb and Spencer had met again years ago and they have shared moments and start a different relationship, even though they had always got along well. Even if the conection started then, they waited cause the timming wasnt right and after that first kiss your could see that they were really happy together, creating something new and good in the middle of the whole mess. Honestly, for me Caleb had a radical change from one episode to another. He was really supportive with spencer, he was cordial towards Hanna and Jordan and of course there was some awkwardness at first but I never really felt like he was still in love with her. I really saw him trying with Spencer and betting on that relationship. Then BOOM! suddenly he was plotting with Hanna and they were holding hands and he was ignoring spencer and I was like.. Wait a minute did I miss an episode or what? I hated that, i think it was terrible writting. I was afraid they were gonna get haleb back together but did it had to be with cheating involved? I saw it really out of character, both from Hanna and Caleb and it made me really dislike them. I also hated how everyone was hatting on Spencer for dating caleb years after his relationship with hanna but it was ok for hanna to sleep with him just a couple of days after his break up with spencer. And the whole getting married thing? Totally rushed. Don´t get me wrong, I don´t hate haleb and I was pretty sure they were gonna be endgame but I hated the way they did it. Specially after the whole door scene, where Hanna was present. I mean he was asking spencer for another chance and then he went back to hanna, What if spencer had said yes? I think it just ruined three good relationships and it should have been managed better. Personally, and I know its not a popular opinion, but I´d have loved for spaleb to be endgame. 

Emison... never was a fan of it but, again, I was pretty sure it was gonna happen. I never really liked the way Allison treated Emily but Ali changed a lot and their relationship was different now. Still, the whole pregnancy thing was SICK and just WRONG. Alison was impregnated against her will and Emily´s eggs were use without her consent and it was treated so lightly, like does this show really make girls think that these sort of things are ok to happen? Also, Emily had chosen Paige. And I think that if I was an emison shipper I´d like my ship together beause they choose to and no because one of them is suddenly pregnant with the other´s baby. And I know what Emily sort of always loved Ali but still, the babies really rushed their relationship and that was just wrong.

Ezra kinda manipulated his way into Aria and the girl´s life and got involved with a minor, which also WRONG and I never really liked this relationship a lot but they also got their happy ending cause... reasons.

So, let´s make a time time jump... 5 years into the future just so we can get all the ships back together cause the girls are all gonna end up with the girl/boy they met in highschool. Grrrr I was so pissed at that.

Now... the storyline. 

How many plot holes can you have? Why adding so much details so many new characters if you are not gonna keep up with them. The only good thing about the whole twin thing was Troian´s amazing acting skills. Other than that it was just rushed and not thought in deep. And that flashforward we had seen before the time jump about the girls running into Ali´s classroom... it was a dream? come on! that was just a way to show you had no idea what to do with that scene or how to justify it. I don´t think Alex Drake really explains all the things the girls went through and it´s not a good enough motive for me. I really expected more after all this time and I ´m very dissapointed but not really surprised. I expected Melissa and Wren to play different and more important roles in the finale and I think the show really lost his spark after season 4 or so. 

If you enjoyed the finale then I´m hapy for you because it´s awful to feel dissapointed of a show after so many years. This is just my opinion and I just wanted to get it out of my chest.