#and I tested out new ways to render stuff

[lothbats9000]

If you're going out into the sunshine, you can't forget to bring your Shadow ;)

(Some progress images and rambles below!)

This is where I discovered that Sonic's face could easily turn grumpy and I loved it heheh

[ckret2]

Chapter 72 of human Bill Cipher being 50% the prisoner & 50% the weird guest of the Mystery Shack:

Soos makes a deeply significant moral decision. To redecorate!

If you're seeing this picture, it's because I either didn't have enough time to draw a better one before the queue spat out this chapter, or I decided that nothing else I could draw would be half as funny.

####

Whenever Soos faced something difficult, he talked to Abuelita. And Bill was nothing if not something difficult.

Soos laid out the situation to her in the living room as she watched her telenovelas—she didn't mind the distraction, she far preferred real life drama over anything they put on TV. He told her about the confiscated canes, the daily injuries, the bargaining for food, the threat of forced showers, the bruises and burns and blood Bill said nothing about. He told her about Bill's door trick and how he'd only used it to talk to a teen about life and tuck a kid into bed. Once he'd told Abuelita all his thoughts, she nodded slowly, eyes still fixed to the TV screen; and for the moment, said nothing.

The doctor on TV confirmed the tearful new mother's suspicions that her husband had cheated (DNA tests confirmed the baby was another woman's), and Abuelita muted the show as it went to a commercial break. Soos waited as she collected her thoughts to render her judgment.

"I have been talking to Mr. Cipher for the last month or so. He keeps me company while I cook so I do not poison him again," she said. "I think he is ruthless, manipulative, and self-centered."

Soos winced, but nodded. "That's true."

Abuelita went on, "I like him. He is self-confident. He's blunt in a way you only get when you're old and cynical. I think he is a bad person; but, many bad people are good company."

"That's also true." Soos nodded again thoughtfully. Like whenever a comic book had a young idealistic superhero team up with an old jaded ex-villain who played by his own rules, and they ended up best friends, in spite of their glaring ethical and political differences.

"But, more importantly than whether he is a good person or a bad person," Abuelita said, "he is a person. And if you do not like a person, there are three ways you can deal with him." She counted off on her fingers, "You can kill him; you can avoid him; or you can set your feelings aside, and treat him with decency. Yes, get rid of the people who are bad for you—but no matter how terrible a person is, you must treat him like a person."

Soos's eyes lit up. "Oh, like with grandpa!"

Abuelita nodded slowly. "Yes. Just like grandpa."

"Yeah but—what if treating him decently is, you know... dangerous? Like if he uses any privileges we give him to do bad stuff? The Pines think he will. And I think he might be secretly talking to his cultists or whatever? Who miiight wanna destroy the world? But what if they can't destroy the world actually, and if I tell about the people he's talking to, he gets treated even worse..."

"Without his devil powers, he couldn't destroy a bookclub," Abuelita said. "But, if he is so dangerous, are you going to kill him?"

"No. I actually don't think we can anymore?"

"Are you going to avoid him?"

Soos let out a heavy sigh. "I can't as long as he lives here."

Abuelita shrugged, as if to say there you have it. "You are a good, kind man, mijo. I am sure you will figure out the right thing to do."

####

He took Melody out for lunch. They went through a drive-thru so they could park and talk privately in the truck.

She took a firmer stance on it than Abuelita. "I do not want to be stuck with Bill forever," she said. "I could put up with it this long because I thought the Pines would get rid of him as soon as possible! Now that he's staying here indefinitely...?" She shook her head. "I really don't like it, Soos."

Soos wasn't surprised. "Do... you think they should have 'gotten rid' of him?"

Melody paused, then shook her head again. "This whole thing is such a bizarre situation. Like, I can get why it makes sense to execute the guy that can end the world, but... I just don't think that's a decision two random guys with a big gun should be allowed to make," she said. "Honestly? I think we should call some federal agency and put him in jail somewhere. You know I've been iffy on Ford's 'only we can contain Bill' thing from the start."

"Yeah. I know." Soos agreed with Ford—he was the Bill expert, he would know—but he couldn't say Melody was wrong, either.

"Our wedding's scheduled for the end of summer," Melody said. "And... I'm sorry, Soos, but I just can't live under the same roof as the guy that turned me into a statue. We'll still get married—"

"—Oh, phew, almost had a heart attack there—"

"—pff, sorry. But if Bill's still in the shack after the summer, then... then I'll keep staying with my aunt, or we could move into your old house and just visit the shack for work, or something... but I can't move into the shack permanently until he moves out."

"Okay. I accept that." Even if the rest of them had sorta gotten used to living with Bill, Soos thought not wanting to live with a former torturer/conqueror/dictator was a pretty reasonable boundary. "I dunno what we'll do long-term just yet, but—we'll decide on something before the wedding."

Melody let out a long, nervous sigh. "Okay," she said. "Okay. Thanks, Soos." She reached across the truck's center console.

Soos took her hand. "But, how do you think we should handle Bill until then?"

Melody stared out the window at the gray sky. The rain had dried up before dawn, but the sky was still hazy. "If we keep guarding him ourselves instead of getting law enforcement involved... personally? I wouldn't give him any kind of special treatment at all. He tried to end the world! He stuck the whole town in a throne! He can just keep sleeping on the floor and being miserable, and I'd be fine with it."

Soos winced. "I see."

Melody squeezed his hand. "But—the fact that you're kinder than that is one of the things I love about you. Even when the creep you're being kind to doesn't deserve it." She gave him a resigned smile. "Do whatever you feel is right."

He considered that. Then he nodded. "I will."

####

Bill kept Soos's Abuelita company while she cooked, and gossiped with her in Spanish better than Soos's about people Bill had never even met. Bill liked watching cartoons, sports where people got hurt, and weirdly intellectual movies Soos didn't get, and he heckled historical documentaries and the news. Bill was offended by white rice and had incredibly strong opinions about salsas for a guy who'd only started eating them a month ago. Bill hadn't taken his friendship bracelet off once since Mabel gave it to him. Bill might not have been a human; but he was a person.

It was high time they start treating him like one.

####

Soos came home late in the afternoon with his truck laden down with supplies. Stan's car was gone, and when Soos came in with an armload of wooden boards he didn't see anybody around except Abuelita, napping in the living room, and Dipper, laying on the living room floor watching TV. "Hey dude," Soos whispered. "Where's everybody else?"

Dipper whispered back, "Hey Soos. Stan and Ford are at McGucket's mansion." He didn't look up from the TV. He was watching a rerun of Ghost Harassers on mute. "Mabel's with Bill in the floor room. He's in a bad mood about something so they've been doing karaoke all day."

"Huh." Soos could faintly hear someone playing his electric piano. It sounded like it was on the organ setting. "I didn't know he plays piano."

"He's alright," Dipper said. "His singing's terrible, though."

Soos shuddered. He could imagine.

Well, at least it meant Bill was out of the way. Soos began his first of many trips upstairs.

####

"What's all this racket?" Stan trudged upstairs to inspect Soos's noises—and abruptly stopped at the top of the stairs as he almost ran into a wooden beam. "What the—?"

"Oh, hey Mr. Pines!" Soos hooked his hammer on his tool belt. He'd put up wall framing to section off the corner of the attic floor that included the window seat.

Stan circled around the framing, inspecting it in bafflement. "Soos, what the heck is this?"

"So, remember at the beginning of summer, when I said that me and Melody were thinking about putting in a gaming room-slash-guest room in the attic? And Ford said not to bother until Bill was gone because he wouldn't be here long enough for me to finish? Welp! Sounds like he's gonna be here long enough for me to finish now! So I thought, hey, might as well, right? No reason not to!" He shrugged. "By the way, do you think I should put the door in front of the stairs, or on the long side of the room opposite the window? If it's in front of the stairs, you can just walk right in the room when you come up, and we'd be able to put a big screen on the long wall; but when you're walking out of the room it'd be really easy to forget the stairs are there and fall, and uh, we already have enough of a problem with that—"

Stan finally got his dropped jaw working again. "But this is where the demon sleeps! Where are we supposed to put him now?!"

"Oh, it's fine! Bill can keep sleeping in here. I'll put up a curtain instead of a door for now. This way the room's ready for gaming once Bill's gone." Soos planted his hands on his hips and surveyed his handiwork with pride.

"Are you crazy? You're giving Bill his own room?! No way! He could do anything in private. We can't trust him with that—"

"Listen." Soos gave Stan a serious look. "Mr. Pines, I respect you, and I love you like the dad I never had except technically I do have a dad but he's off being a deadbeat in Florida or something so he doesn't count."

He pointed at the floor. "But this is my house now. My name might not be on the deed, but my butt is in the master bedroom! And nobody under my roof is living like—like—like some kind of starving hobo sleeping on a bench under a newspaper, you know what I'm talking about? The Mystery Shack is a happy place! Where people come to see dreams come true and have their imaginations expanded! And I won't see it turned into some sad one-man prison!"

Stan stared at Soos, speechless.

"So." Soos took a deep breath. "With all due respect—I'm building a gaming room, and it'll have walls, and Bill gets to sleep in it. Because he's a person! And we're gonna treat him like one!"

Stan slowly looked from Soos to the wall framing, to the boxes of supplies he'd bought for the room and pushed against a wall to wait—to the pathetic couch cushion bed still sitting on the floor in front of the window. "All right. That's—that's fine. I'll let Ford know."

Soos's shoulders relaxed. "Thanks, Mr. Pines."

Stan clapped a hand on Soos's shoulder; looked for a moment like he wanted to say something; then just shook his head and said instead, "Knock off the hammering before the kids go to bed, all right?"

"No problem! I've gotta set up some furniture and stuff in here anyway." He got back to work as Stan went downstairs.

####

Soos paused his work when he overheard Bill's voice: "Hey Stanford. Figured out the kitchen situation yet?"

Soos had to strain to hear Ford (jeez, Bill was loud) as he said, "We haven't had a chance yet. For now, we can at least leave one of the counter cabinets open."

"Huh." It didn't sound like an impressed huh. "And will this open cabinet have any of the foods you put in the cabinet to hide from me? Or just more of the junk I've already been scavenging."

Ford was silent long enough to provide the answer.

"Right."

"I went by the grocery store," Ford offered. "I got avocados."

"Uh huh."

"And several pepper varieties."

"Ooh." Bill sounded intrigued in spite of himself.

"And protein drinks. They're nutritious, at least," Ford said. "But—I know that's not adequate. Stan and I will have something permanent figured out by the end of the week."

"I guess it's fine as an emergency measure," Bill said, "but you know how the phrase goes! Give a triangle a protein drink, and it'll eat for a day. Teach a triangle to open the fridge, and it'll eat for the rest of its life. If you lift that curse..."

"We'll talk. But don't get your hopes up. Neither of us likes the thought of giving you the power to come in our bedroom and smother us in our sleep the next time we have an argument."

"Fine." Bill's voice had hardened again. "You've got to the end of the week. But don't forget! If I don't like your offer, I don't have to take it! You can't keep me in this rickety barn anymore."

"I haven't forgotten."

The conversation seemed to be over and Soos didn't hear anyone coming up the stairs. He got back to work.

He felt good. He was doing the right thing.

####

When Mabel came up to bed, she stared in confusion at the modified attic floor, squealed in excitement when she realized what she was looking at, surprised Soos with a hug, and gushed about how great it was; and then she let Soos know Dipper and Ford were out tonight investigating weird stuff and went on to bed herself.

The first notification Soos had that Bill had come upstairs was a flat, offended, "What."

"Oh, hey!" Soos ducked out of the opening he'd left for the doorway—which he'd ultimately decided to put straight across from the window, to let a little light back into the attic. (He'd have to add more lighting in the main attic now that the window was blocked off.) Bill was standing at the corner of the new room, surveying the work with an expression of deep suspicion.

Soos said, "I was just getting started on this gaming room Melody and me wanted to put in—it's okay though, you can keep using it, we'll just turn it into a gaming room, uhhh... lllater. Whenever, it's cool!"

Bill turned his suspicious look on Soos; but when Soos gestured for Bill to follow him into the room, he reluctantly followed.

"Yeah, I got up the framing," Soos said, "but I couldn't get to the drywall today, so I just stapled up some tarps to be walls for now. But, look!" He gestured grandly. "I brought up the old orange sofa and chaise thingy that used to be in Abuelita's room! They've been in storage for like a year. I bet we could sit, like, six people on it for game nights. It turns out the sofa's a daybed, so we can use it as an extra guest bed for visitors, we do not have enough beds for visitors in the shack, haha. And, check it—" Soos flipped up the lid on a chest he'd placed in front of the right end of the sofa like a footrest. "I put in one of those top-down chest fridges for gaming snacks! It uh, the top of it swings up, that makes it a lid instead of a door, right? Sooo I guess you can use it too, right? You can just, put whatever you want on the weekly grocery list, and we'll put it in here. Oh, and!" He pointed at the ancient TV console table he'd hauled up from the cellar, "I set up a hot plate here, too! So you can cook stuff in the attic! For—for normal legitimate gaming room purposes."

Bill's gaze followed where Soos pointed, from the ancient orange sofa to the fridge chest to the hot plate. He didn't say anything. His expression was completely unreadable.

Soos swallowed. "Oh, and, by the way, speaking of home improvements, I took out the doorknob on the main bathroom, and put in one of those, like, little slidy dealies like public bathroom stalls? Plus I gave the door those swinging hinges—like the kind on saloon doors in the movies, o-or, say, the door into the gift shop—"

Bill whipped around to face Soos.

Soos jumped. He laughed nervously and tried to remember what point he was making. "S-so, um... there's no latch now, so it doesn't latch, which means there's no way to accidentally get locked in—or out, of the bathroom, and... and I don't actually know how much of that you understood, due to the whole curse thing? Just forget everything I just said, I guess, the important thing is you can use that bathroom without asking someone else now! Cool, right?"

He had to turn away from Bill's intense gaze, pointing back at the gaming room's doorway. "Anyway since the room isn't finished yet and you're probably gonna use it for a while, I hung up a curtain instead of a door. And I added that cool zodiac spell blanket thing Mabel gave me inside the curtain! Since you said you liked it so much when you first got here. And like... having it in our room kinda creeps Melody out, I think it might be giving her nightmares? So I thought you might like it better. Anyway I've still gotta do some other stuff, like add power outlets in here, and air conditioning, and... a-and..." He petered out weakly.

Bill was giving Soos the most venomous look he'd ever seen. 

"Sure. Terrific." Bill crossed his arms, seething. "I've slept on the floor, I can cope with sleeping in the middle of a construction zone too. No big deal! I'll make do."

"Oh," Soos said. "Uh... if it bothers you, I could try to get the walls finished tomorrow? Shack's closed tomorrow too, so, I was already planning to keep—"

Teeth grit, Bill snarled, "Don't put yourself out on my behalf."

Soos froze. "Oookay! Uh... well, I'll be getting ready for bed if you need... yeah, no, you—you probably don't need anything. Bye." He ducked out into the attic, letting out a whoosh of a sigh as soon as the curtain swung shut behind him.

Bill had looked like he was two seconds from ripping out Soos's throat. Why? Had he liked sleeping on the floor? He'd never seemed like he had. Maybe he'd preferred the attic's open flooring? Maybe he hated extremely 70's orange upholstery? Was this a mistake...?

Bill watched through the tarp until Soos was down the stairs. Then he lunged over the sofa, hanging over the back by his waist, to reach the attic window seat. He groped for the corner of the seat cushion where he'd hidden Journal 4.

He sighed in relief when he felt the familiar rectangular block in the cushion. He pulled it free: there was Journal 4, along with his two stubby crayons. As well as two marker pens, black and red, with a sticky note wrapped around them that said, "Thought these might be useful, dude!"

Bill's hands trembled with fury.

####

Soos was brushing his teeth when someone pounded on the bathroom door, making him drop his brush. The door swung open a couple of inches; Soos heard Bill mutter a confused, "What?" before it swung shut again.

Soos opened the door. "Bill? What's..."

Bill's face was completely flushed. It was hauntingly reminiscent of the look he'd had last year right before trying to murder Soos and the kids in Stan's mind. His rage had shot past "apoplectic" and landed on "apocalyptic." Soos understood how Pompeii had felt when the rumbling began. He took a few steps back.

Bill stalked into the bathroom.

He slapped the red pen down on the counter.

And, avoiding eye contact, he muttered, "Fine-tip yellow highlighter would be better. If you've got it."

"Oh," Soos said. "Sure, I... I think I have some skinny highlighters in my office. Just... lemme finish brushing my teeth."

####

Bill leaned in the office doorway, arms crossed tight, waiting. As Soos rummaged through his desk supplies, back to the door, he got the uneasy feeling that maybe Bill had lured him here to stab him in the back or something. He seemed mad enough. And the office was narrow; if Bill came up right behind him, there'd be nowhere for Soos to dodge...

When he found a new highlighter and turned around, Bill was glowering inches behind him.

Soos jumped. "Dude! You freaked me out."

Bill didn't condescend to respond. He just snatched the highlighter out of Soos's hand and stormed from the room. A moment later, Soos could hear him stomping up the stairs (and stumbling on one step. Soos really needed to figure out how to make the stairs more safe). 

For the life of him, Soos didn't know how he'd offended Bill.

####

The contraband supplies Bill had hidden behind a loose board in the wall still appeared to be undisturbed. He could only hope Soos hadn't found them during his snooping. For tonight, he could hide Journal 4 there; tomorrow he'd have to find a new, more secure hiding spot that kept it close enough to where Bill slept.

He turned around the hanging zodiac blanket and curtain so Bill's watchful triangular face was guarding the new attic hallway rather than staring into the room.

He surveyed his atrocious new sofa. If he'd known he would be plagued with this thing in the future, he would have found a way to make Ford get rid of it thirty years ago. Would Ford have thrown it out if his blessed Muse had told him it looked hideous? Maybe, but that would've put a ding in Bill's benevolent image. He could've said the sofa would lead Ford to doom? No, too implausible. Ford had always wanted a nice set of leather furniture; maybe if Bill had claimed the cost of leather furniture was about to skyrocket, and if Ford ever wanted to build his dream sophisticated gentleman's den then he should buy as soon as possible—maybe sell his current sofa to recoup costs and free up space... Yeah, Ford would've eaten that up, he'd have been so grateful Bill was thoughtful enough to care about his silly little life dreams and look out for his financial future. He shoulda done that. Hindsight.

So. What did he have here? A daybed; personal fridge; mini-stove; walls (tarp); two pillows; throw blanket; two markers; a lamp (unplugged); a clock radio (unplugged); a low console table with two shelves, onto which Soos had emptied the contents of Bill's cardboard box of clothes; and an implicit promise to keep a pile of secrets.

How humiliating.

He considered sleeping on the bare floor in protest; but, his back still hurt. Once again, subject to the tyranny of an organic body. He sighed, pulled his bedsheet from the console table, and curled up on the sofa.

The moment he lay down, a scent soaked into the seat cushion made his heart leap into his throat. He was sure he could smell home. Familiar and comforting and right—and for a moment the evidence of his other six senses didn't matter: he had his power back, he was in his kingdom, and all was right with the world. It took a moment to figure out what about the scent had so strongly disoriented him: he was smelling the atmosphere of the Nightmare Realm.

And then took another moment to work out that it wasn't really the Nightmare Realm, but a very similar scent—sulfurous, organic, burning. Burnt hair.

The cushion still smelled like Ford.

Bill groaned in frustration, rolled off the sofa, and flopped to the floor.

After permitting himself a moment of rage at the injustices of the multiverse, Bill crawled up onto the chaise lounge on the left end of the sofa, avoiding the part of the sofa where Ford used to sleep.

The chaise was smaller than his floor cushion bed used to be; but he'd make do.

####

(I know we're all busy going insane over the website but i'd love a comment when y'all read this chapter lol)

[nekioe]

This is my @dreblrsecretsanta gift for @michygranger23! I hope you're having a great holiday🧡🧡

Here is stageduo sitting wrapped in a very soft blanket in front of a warm little fireplace for you :3

video and images with descriptions of the process under cut because I think it's fun to talk about :3

At first I was kind of scared of starting so I started with a traditional sketch which I ended up really liking! So I decided to use it and made lineart for it, but then I immediately ran into problems because the angle made it really really hard for me to add a fire without making it look like they were on fire

You can't see it in the timelapse, but I made a completely new csp file where i tested out different compositions and stuff to find a way that didn't look like they were on fire... it was a struggle

In the end I ended up changing the canvas size a tiny bit and added these stylized flames instead, I hope it helped them not look on fire😭

The rest is the rendering part :) This is my favorite part :) I have no recollection of it at all :) I don't know what im doing :)

Also I think I might be obsessed with making swirlssssss

[badninken]

Gamma Knife - painting process

I had so much fun painting this piece and I want to share some behind-the-scenes stuff on how it was made.

I would like to thank MagicPoser for making it possible to try poses, scale, angles and lighting and saving my ass so many times. I use the app on my iPad but there's a free browser version too.

So I wrangled these 3D dudes into the poses I wanted and then I cut them to pieces and stretched them out to make them as leggy as they're supposed to be. Before I did that though I spent forever trying to pick the angle I wanted to paint. Including two other screenshots I considered using before settling, because it's fun. (nevermind Doffy's weird arm angle, it wasn't going to show anyway. The smoke-placeholder makes it looks like he's in The Sims though which is cute. That thing's about to go so red.)

Then I started sketching. I quickly moved Law higher up and changed his pose to make him more curled up, elbow-to-knee, legs bent etc for more intensity. MagicPoser is great as a reference but the end result gets pretty stiff and boring if you follow the 3D models too closely, and I wanted swoosh. So I painted some swooshy shapes to figure out the movement I wanted for the whole painting. Purple swooshes for the curve of Law and the direction of his jump. Pinker purple for Doflamingo's leg and spine arcs.

The b/w image below also shows the rough base for the feather coat. It's painted with a flat, tapering oil brush that created nice curves that I could refine later.

Skipping lots and lots of work to get to the next step. It's all rendering and detailing, mostly done with the HB pencil brush.

Coloring! I started by creating a gradient map bit lots of color steps. I kind of knew what I wanted but there's a lot of trial and error involved while picking colors and dragging sliders. In Photoshop I'd do this on an adjustment layer but in Procreate I do it by copying all visible layers (three finger slide, copy all visible) and making a new layer out of them where everything's merged (three finger slide, paste)

I then put that layer in Color-mode on 77% over the grayscale image after playing around and testing lots of things. I rarely know what I want before I see it. I copied that layer again and put it in Add-mode on a very low opacity because it looked neat. Every image is a new adventure when it comes to layer blending modes, there is no right or wrong here, you just have to test things until you find an effect that you like. Huge potential for happy accidents in this step.

I didn't want everything to be pink so I created a new Color-layer to paint skin, clothes and radiation. Lowered opacity to let the pink base shine through slightly, for a cohesive and more natural look. Color-mode on full opacity often looks a bit flat and washed out unless combined with something else.

There's a lot more that happened after that but it's all detail stuff, effects, lots of layers with soft airbrushed gradients on various blending modes. Also directional perspective blur where I masked out some feathers to still be sharp against the blurry ones in the back, a quick and easy way to create a sense of movement and depth.

Again, thanks MagicPoser, I would have cried so much and probably given up over the angle of Doflamingo's head without your help ��

[mangocurist]

who up wifing on their rot.....

wifies calls parrot darling very casually here because the information of wifies calling parrot darling on stream rewired my brain just a bit

ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـــــــــﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩـــــﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ��ـ♡ﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩـــــﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـﮩ٨ـﮩﮩ٨ـــﮩ

Parrot’s wings beat softly against his back as he stared into Wifies’s lab, eyes fixated on the tall, raised test tubes that tower above him.

His wings were practically useless, of course— five seasons of Lifesteal’s brutal policies have all but rendered them into nothing more than fancy back decoration, but the rhythmic flutter of cool air between his feathers helped temper his nerves as he explored the lab. Wifies had offered once to make him a robotic pair, but he'd denied— the pain of being ground-bound had long since faded, and it had simply become a new reminder of the difference between his time on Lifesteal and life with Wifies.

This was the first time that Wifies had allowed him to go around exploring without feeling the need to hover over his shoulder— Parrot supposed it was fair, given his reputation and where he’d come from, but it was hard not to feel a bit of excitement as he made his way through halls of experiments, each more unique than the rest.

He tried not to meet the blank, half-opened eyes of the clones that floated inside some of the stasis chambers as he pushed open the door to Wifies’ main monitor room, unsurprised to find the man standing above what looked to be a bed of skulk sensors.

“You’ll want to watch your step, darling,” Wifies told him as he entered, cautious as always. 

It was a quality that Parrot found kinship in— that this man, so far removed from the horrors that came from a server like Lifesteal was still as skittish as Parrot himself, careful around people even when he didn’t need to be. It was probably a quality that came free with the mad scientist status. 

“I can't guarantee it won't summon anything around you,” Wifies warned him again as Parrot took another step closer to the skulk bed.

Parrot, to his credit, actually took a look at all the precautions Wifies had put up instead of immediately raising an eyebrow at the man’s paranoia and almost laughed. Did he really think a Warden would be able to rise with the amount of traps and failsafes he'd set up? He would have fit in well with the rest of them on Lifesteal, probably. Even though he couldn't fight his way out of a cardboard box, Parrot could do it for him— and while Parrot wasn’t dumb enough to think that Wifies would stay with him the whole time, he was confident enough that they’d built up enough of a rapport in the time he’d been here. 

In any case, the skulk bed wasn’t of any concern to him, and he said as much to Wifies, draping himself over the scientist, who frowned but didn’t push him off. The wrinkle in his brows said more than what he was willing to say out loud, and Parrot felt a small prick of indignance at Wifies’ concern.

“You don't think I can take it?” Parrot asked, grimacing a little as soon as the words came out. 

He sounded a little less like himself— well, the self he used to be on Lifesteal— every time he talked to Wifies. Honestly, Parrot was still undecided if that was a good thing or not. Wifies had to have noticed by now, it had been a few months since he'd picked Parrot up, after all, and he knew what Parrot had been like before— but thankfully, he didn’t say anything about the way Parrot's less injured wing beat nervously against his back.

“I don't want you messing my equipment up,” Wifies corrected lightly, a hand going up to smooth the messy clump of feathers on Parrot’s wing before turning back to the sensors. “I had an idea for a new method of cloning.”

“It's still freaky how nonchalant you are about all this stuff, bro. Don't think I'll let that stuff slide so casually,” Parrot told him, batting the other man in the face with a wing piled with more bandages than feathers when Wifies playfully— or at least, as playfully as Wifies got— swatted at him. 

Honestly, he could just be searching for affection that wasn’t there, trying and failing to cling on to the only person he'd known since leaving Lifesteal. But if Wifies knew this, he certainly hadn’t shied away from playing into Parrot's slowly growing familiarity toward the scientist, and considering they both knew Parrot could kill him in just a few hits no matter how many tricks he pulled out of his sleeve, Parrot wasn’t all too concerned about his growing attachment.

This wasn't Lifesteal, after all. Wifies wasn’t Spoke, and there was no danger Parrot couldn’t fend off here.

“So what's the idea with this one?” He asked finally. “Making a fighter this time?”

Wifies snorted. Clearly, he remembered the last time he tried to make a clone who had more PVP knowledge than himself (Parrot's PLSSD, post-Lifesteal stress disorder, had kicked in and he'd had to deconstruct the clone after all the damage had been done). Parrot never did apologize for that incident, and it seemed Wifies didn’t care all too much about it now. He didn't care much then, either, only having told Parrot to lie down and rest instead of reacting over the loss of one of his creations. 

It was another strike in his book that separated Wifies from the people he'd met on Lifesteal. From Clown, from Mapicc, from Spoke. 

“No. I wanted to make the clones more responsive to the escape rooms. Since the skulk sensor operates off the slightest of noises, if I could figure out how to combine that quality with soulspeed and the creaking heart, I could potentially kill three birds with one stone,” Wifies said, musing. “Well. That is… I'll probably start with skulk and the heart first, because I don't want to go too robotic with any of the clones.”

“Why are you making your clones into robots? You know you don't need to make them metallic to apply enchantments, right?” 

Wifies shook his head, gesturing at the open book balanced haphazardly in his hand. “I know that, it's just that the enchantments for soul speed specifically work weirdly. I can't enchant flesh to run quicker and I certainly can't embed soulfire into flesh unless I want a burning corpse on my hands, so the easiest solution would be to use robotic body parts that could be enchanted with soulspeed. I’d rather not do that if I can help it, though. It’s just a matter of preference.” 

Parrot nodded in lieu of a reply. If Wifies couldn’t understand it yet, he had little faith that he'd be of much help. His expertise laid in lies and traps and betrayal and murder, not the eerie silence of a lab laid in stasis, open only at its creator's behest. 

And there was that difference again. Lifesteal versus Wifies. 

Parrot found that sometimes, the difference between the two was stifling. It made him feel a little sick, at times, just how far he’d gone away from home. At times like this, he liked to retire to the little observatory Wifies had made for him, a small two-story apartment room with a large glass ceiling open to the End sky. He hardly slept there, of course— a habit carried over from Lifesteal, an unwillingness to trust anyone, even his own teammates.

He was right, in the end. Of course he was. 

But that was then, and this was now, and now, Parrot found that for some reason, he slept more around Wifies than he ever had on Lifesteal. He slept more around Wifies than he did in the room specifically built for himself, too, so much so that Wifies had asked twice now if he wanted to relocate the apartment somewhere else. Parrot sometimes had half a mind that the scientist had been releasing some sort of sleeping gas around the lab, but that wouldn’t make sense unless Wifies himself had built up tolerance to the chemical.

Parrot slowly tucked his wing back under his shawl, making sure not to agitate Wifies as he removed the appendage from his back, getting ready to leave the room once more before Wifies called for him.

“Are you healing alright?” Wifies asked. He nodded at Parrot’s wings, then at the multitude of scars hidden underneath his clothes. “I can go over your injuries again if they hurt. There’s plenty of medicine to spare.”

“Nah, bro, it’s fine. It’s not that big a deal,” Parrot said, even though there was a part of him that wanted nothing more than to take up the offer readily. He turned to walk away, stopping only when Wifies placed a hand on his wrist.

“Call for me if you need anything, darling,” Wifies said gently, fingers twitching lightly against Parrot’s wrist as if he didn’t want to let go— and then, his grip loosened and he was back to the skulk bed, poring over whatever research he’d managed to dig out of this testing world again. 

And— well. Parrot, as much as he liked to think otherwise, was a weak man at heart. 

So he stayed in the room, wings still beating weakly against his back, like a second, foreign heartbeat in his chest, mimicking the pace of Wifies’ steady breathing. 

He took the time to study Wifies while he was hard at work. Wifies’ eyes were dark, black pools of void, the only light in them being the mismatched hearts that practically twinkled in his eyes when he was happy. It was a condition of some sort, Parrot remembered, some sort of experimental circumstance he’d brought upon himself that Wifies had muttered to himself over sometimes, late at night when he thought Parrot had fallen asleep next to his testing equipment. All his clones had bright purple eyes, the man's favourite colour. 

There was nothing wrong with their eyes, Wifies had explained once, because it would simply be cruel to inflict something that he’d brought upon himself to the multiples of himself just because he’d made one dumb mistake when he was younger. Parrot hadn’t pointed out the fact that making and experimenting on his clones was probably crueller, mostly because it felt redundant to tell the man something he already knew. And because he’d done worse, too. It would be only hypocritical to point something like that out when he’d known about all the shit that had happened on Lifesteal and hadn’t done anything to stop it.

“Are you alright?” Wifies’ voice, as it so often did, snapped him back to reality. The man had finally left his skulk sensors, coming around to the side counter where Parrot had been perched on, his stance a little more animalistic than he typically behaved in Wifies’ lab. “Parrot, if you need to go home, I can take you there.”

Home. Lifesteal. Home. Lifesteal. Wifies, or Lifesteal—

“I…” Parrot’s voice was dry. “Let me stay?”

He couldn’t go back now, but… he didn’t want to stay alone in the corner either. Maybe Wifies could tell too, because his eyes softened as he pulled Parrot down from the counter and into an actual chair, an antique armchair that had only been moved into the monitor room for Parrot’s sake. 

“The way that the Ancient Builders used skulk sensors is still mostly a mystery to modern researchers, because it’s still unclear whether or not the Warden is a man-made mob, something that arose because of human worship or simply terra itself reforming into the shape of a protector. That said, I think I’ve found the general usage of a skulk sensor, and how best to exact it when building my clones…” Wifies spoke slowly, the lull of his voice making Parrot’s already fraying grasp on consciousness unravel further as he curled up in his own wings.

The last thing he registered before he fell asleep was the familiar feeling of a hand through his wings and the draping of a long white jacket over his form, before Parrot let himself fall.

[just-a-sleepy-idiot]

Roommate! Herbert West Imagine: Reader having that time of the month

Content/Warnings: Gender neutral Reader!, ties in with my previous fic of him, mild Swearing, Sexism from Dr. Hill

It‘s the 80‘s and even medicine is behind on actually understanding the reproductive health and needs of anyone they don’t consider the standard human being which directly translates into ‚white male‘. There is shame and secrecy on the topic, so you had every reason to believe that it would become immensely uncomfortable as soon as your new roommate saw you in that state. Thankfully, he was so preoccupied with his experiments at all times that you doubted he would notice if you came home one day wearing a Mohawk.

It wasn’t that you ever really saw Herbert outside of his selfmade lab in your basement. Besides his products in the bathroom, his neatly arranged self and the fact that he hasn’t starved yet you had no evidence of him ever actually using any other rooms in your shared flat. Sometimes you imagined him doing mundane tasks to fill in the blanks of never actually seeing him do any. Like ironing his many dress shirts and ties, cleaning his glasses, putting on socks. Now that you were thinking about it it may be more weird of you to be imagining that than the topic itself.

You usually hid your period products out of sight in the bath, hoping he wouldn’t find it so no awkwardness would ensue. It was simply how you were brought up, and having to pretend that this literal bodily function didn’t happen was unnerving. Especially since you realized that you had just gotten your period- and that you had no more products in the house. Fuck fuck fuck-

you just stuffed your underwear with some tissues for now, hoping to swipe some pads in the Hospital without anyone noticing. Surely you would make it till work.

Herbert already called out for you from outside, reminding you that you needed to go now if you wanted to be punctual. Before he didn’t bother waiting for you even though you were going the same way, outside of your Home one wouldn’t have assumed that you were roommates by the way he just minded his business. Lately however he started going to work with you, which rendered your watch practically unnecessary because he was always very much on time.

You came out of the bathroom and grabbed your bag, ready to go. You were very speedy today because you were trying to distract yourself from the cramps you were getting, you might need to get more than just pads from the Hospital once you were there.

What you didn’t expect was that once you arrived, your colleagues were all over you and you were thrown in to handle a full on emergency before you could even think of aiding yourself. You hurriedly waved to Herbert before you were involved in tending to multiple serious wounds of a car crash victim.

You initially planned to go around with him and look into the listing of freshly deceased patients together, as you were looking for a suitable person to test the Reagent on. And shortly after you were finally released from the patient your Roommate picked you up right after, urging you to go after your plan now so it was hard to call for a bathroom break, or rather a ‚I need to find a storage room with nobody in it and stuff my pockets with tampons‘ break. You were starting to get a headache.

Both of you were now hurriedly flipping through files, you had to be quick before someone got suspicious. Herbert had made himself known quickly with his sunshine attitude, especially since he was so keen to piss off your resident Narcissist Top Surgeon Dr Hill. It wouldn’t go unnoticed if anyone saw you two looking through confidential records.

You were surprised when Herbert stopped you by putting his hand on your arm, prompting you to pause and look up. „What?“ This was his idea in the first place, why was he stopping you now? „Y/n“ you tried to flip over to the next page, catching his eyes with slight irritation. „What, we‘re almost..“ „Y/n you’re bleeding.“ Oh.

You threw your head around to see the blood stain that formed on the back of your pants, and it was hard to tell for you if that made you go even paler than you already were today or blush with the vast embarrassment that this caused you.

This was even more embarrassing than if he had found a Tampon or something. Should you move? Quit your job? You seriously considered it while your eyes searched for a bathroom in sight, you needed to get away as quickly as possible before even more people saw it- „Um, I‘ll be back!“ you dropped the files on the counter and swiftly went for the bathroom before Herbert could say anything else.

You found the bathroom empty, thankfully, and hid in a stall to dispose of the tissues you bled through. Even if you had the time and secrecy to just go scrub the stain in the bathroom sink and wait for it to dry, blood was way harder to get off than the coffee you had repeatedly spilled over your shirt until you had approximately more of it soaking through your clothes than was left in the cup when you arrived at Dr. Hill‘s office. Which certainly is not based in a real example. At all.

You considered your options. Should you just go home and call in sick from there? No, it would be weird to not tell anyone in person that you were going home, people already saw you..

Someone cleared their throat and you froze- did someone see you come in??

„If you are.. composed right now you should open the door for a moment.“

Herbert?!? Why the heck did he follow you in? Gods if he wanted to discuss this right now- he was oblivious to personal details sometimes but he wasn’t stupid. And also a med student.

„Um, I think I need to go home early today. We can continue with the files tomorrow.“ You said, hoping he took it as a sign to not talk about the river styx situation in your pants right now.

„That’s not it, open the door and I‘ll go.“

You complied, slowly opening the stall. Herbert looked back to see if anybody was coming before handing you.. a bunch of stuff. „That should suffice, just put your pants in the plastic bag after.“ And with that he really did just.. leave, without further explanation. You looked after him and retreated back into the stall to find.. a blue pair of scrub pants and both pads and tampons stuffed into a plastic bag. He didn’t know what you preferred so he just got both.

He.. your tense expression softened, a surprised smile setting on your face. Of all people you didn’t expect Herbert to be doing this for you, and he didn’t even seem awkward or disturbed by it. Stern as always.

You changed into the new pants, took care of the rest and put the plastic bag with your stained pants in your locker to pick up after work.

Herbert had a way of flickering his gaze around in a sharp, acute way as he was always somewhat alert. Yet when you came back out and found him leaning against a wall with his arms crossed he looked at you, and softly lowered his gaze before looking back up to meet your eyes. Maybe you imagined it to look assuring, but it surely felt that way to you. „Thank you.“ He simply nodded, and you went back to look at files without him even mentioning it again.

Dr Hill likely assumed you two to be a couple and that brought you both peace and stress in a way, because now he wasn’t relentlessly flirting with you anymore and actually let you do your job. But if anything about how you did your job stood out to him he would find a reason to scold you about it. If he couldn’t have you he likely just put you and Herbert on the same list with people to put in this creepy cell with one way see through glass that he had bordering on his office if he gets the chance.

Now he was onto you as well when you returned to work, taking just a second too long to act the way you should when he came up to you in long, malignant slides promising trouble. He consciously ignored Herbert.

„Do you need someone to instruct you on your own job now? You are wasting the budget of this hospital by slacking off like that.“ He huffed, making you freeze by the sudden accusations he threw your way for the simple act of pausing for a moment. „And now you can’t even respond? Are you always this incompetent or just on your period?“ Some by standing staff quietly looked on as Dr Hill didn’t even bother lowering his voice, in fact he seemed to be pleased with this act of public humiliation. Your face turned red, what the hell was wrong with him?!?

„What an excellent example of the alarming parallels between toddlers and people of old age, Dr Hill. You really do act just like a squeamish kid rather than someone who should know better about Medicine by now.“ Herbert chimed in, approaching you two to stand beside you with his hands buried in the pockets of his coat.

„So brain death isn’t the only topic you are lacking in I see. Now, what body function can we attribute your incompetence to then if this is the logic we go by now?“ He took a step closer to him, and he really did not care for the height difference because if Dr Hill were to even lay a finger on him he would prove his intellectual inferiority in front of everyone looking. He was just staring him down as the older man was practically fuming.

„It will be a pleasure to fail you, both of you!!“ He yelled, throwing you a furious glance before turning around, „Stop wasting my time, I‘m having dinner with the Dean and I‘m sure we‘ll have lots to discuss.“ With that he left with this vague threat hanging in the air, leaving you two and the other staff who each now stopped staring after a few moments and returning to work.

You were quiet for a moment, both you and Herbert. Did he.. did he defend you there? Or was it just him trying to one up the man he so very openly despised? You looked at him now, trying to read in the ever lasting frown on his features why he did it. Why this was the second time he had came in to help you out of a highly uncomfortable situation.

He didn’t let anything on. Only later when you were both home you couldn’t bear to leave it unsaid anymore, despite the embarrassment that came from bringing up the topic. „So today um.. you really helped me. Twice.“ He shot you a glance from the kitchen, it was the first time you ever saw him use it. „Yes.“ He answered factually, somehow that made you smile a bit. You stared at the back of his head for a moment. „Thank you.“ He nodded without really turning around and let out a hum. „Why did you do it?“

That made him pause in his movements for a moment, he then turned down the stove. You saw his shoulder blades moving through the fabric of his dress shirt. He moved around some more before returning to the living room with two plates with some simple pasta.

He took a seat and handed you one of the plates, impaling some noodles with his fork.

„First, we are Reanimating the dead in your basement Y/n, I have seen worse than a little blood. Bodies are complex organic mechanisms, everything makes sense and comes together in perfect order. The only thing I defy about it is Death.“ He looked at you intensely, it seemed as if he were hesitating to say what he intended to next. Herbert scratched his neck and looked away for a moment.

„You did not leave when I was in withdrawal. This state isn’t any more pleasing to witness than it is to go through it. Well,“ he pressed his lips together. He was well versed to argue from a logical standpoint, but this now wasn’t a position he really found himself in often nor voluntarily. You understood it, though, and he found you smiling at him. „I see.. Thank you, again.“ He reciprocated your look and then turned his attention towards his food again.

He was glad that you knew what he meant. You often seemed to do so, even when he was rambling or pacing like a madman, and you understood him now too. It was.. nice.

[sims3fiend]

Sims3SettingsSetter thing

OLD POST REALLY SORRY IF YOU BOOKMARKED THIS I'M DUMB LMAO

NEW: https://www.tumblr.com/sims3fiend/764382296987025408/sims-3-settings-setter?source=share

---

Was bored ripping my hair out trying to do optimizations so I made this instead of anything actually worthwhile. For now it's mostly just a novelty. Rushing it out as I'm at work 4x12hrs starting tomorrow :)

This is a ALPHA IT SHOULD BE SAFE BUT IT MIGHT ALSO NOT BE. Speedwriting this post as I've gotta go sleepy.

Ignore the strange names for things i-it's an alpha.

Simsfileshare

To use, have an ASI loader like this or maybe this and shove it into the folder where the sims 3 exe is. Press insert to toggle

What it does:

Renderer Flags:

This was the original idea and what this was solely going to be. I found a function that set things like wireframe and other renderer things, so I made a script for it.

Some useful things it can do are turning drop shadows off, which is nice for reshade as it lets you do a better looking AO. Some people might find the pips, scene boxes, etc. useful but idk. Some of it is neat to look at I guess.

Game Values:

Just the one for now, max lots, it's still effected by the weird range/frustum cull thing that effects shadows, so outside of that range extra lots wont load. These are going to be static values that can be edited ingame. There's a few other ones I've found like ObjectSizeCullFactor but I need to properly test them. I'll also add some informational ones that can't be changed like loaded object count, etc.

Game Config:

This is where things went off the rails…

I'm hooking two functions here to grab and set boolean and string config values directly as they're called in memory, which is important as some are overridden or altered, or aren't listed in the files at all (ForceHighLODObjects my beloved). Currently it lists mostly everything in the SGR file and some ini settings. The boolean stuff is a pretty sure bet, the strings might be overwritten elsewhere idk. Please keep in mind that some of these settings can be very damaging to your game and sanity, do not use ones you don't recognize on a save you love.

To enable the config overwrite, tick the box next to it and hit save. They won't do anything unless the box is checked.

I'll be adding tunables (like LightingCommon) into the list… eventually. Currently they're a little… weirdly/interestingly/uniquely written in the decomp'd functions I've been looking at, so I haven't been able to get their values. There's probably a really simple way of doing all of this in one of the dlls or packages or something but idk. If you know lmk.

I'll also probably try and find the in memory location of some of them, so they can be changed ingame without the need to restart.

Issues:

If you have any problems/info please message me either on discord(fleshtexture) or tumblr ! Keep in mind it's still an ALPHA (or whatever) and I haven't really tested it that extensively.

Known problems:

Config sorting is yucky

Code looks yucky, weird names for things, don't look until I rewrite!

There was a freezing issue due to how I was hooking d3d9 but I think I fixed it? Idk I've never used imgui before.

[le-tiny-tato]

Here's a colored Arthur & John!

Thoughts & stuff under cut!

Made a new post simply cuz I like formatting sketches & finished digital work differently. This is all just process yapping because Tumblr is basically my art diary at this point.

I made these two as ominous as possible to bring in that "cosmic theme" since I didn't wanna accidentally draw spoilers when I am very much still at the beginning of the series.

I'm especially proud of the six-gun since I refuse to draw fingers but wanted Arthur looking as trigger hungry as he and John seem to be lmao.

The most challenging part was the tentacles, since I could not get the suction cups to not look dorky or unfinished without putting more effort into rendering than I wanted to. Went through several versions to land on this lit blob style with hits of suction cups through the tentacle outline.

I am a bit rusty since college has been beating my ass, but my inner child who drew mermaids way too much really likes this silly month. Trying out a new shading style - I like using these art challenges to test out new art skills I have seen, so it might be a lil less polished than my regular stuff. Also! Restricted my palette for like the first time - stuck to only yellows, browns, and gray/black because I thought the cool reference fanart of these two using restricted color palettes looked the cleanest.

------

Anyways! Normal progress shot stuff/proof that's at the end of these cut segments

[seat-safety-switch]

Kids these days may not think it's "cool" to hang out at a municipal building at all hours. Bribery is way down nowadays, and so is journalism, so there's no supply nor demand for lurking in the parking garage all night just to catch a glimpse of a package stuffed with cash changing hands. Most of that stuff is fake internet money now, anyway, like flooz. Where do you even buy a manila envelope these days?

The thing is, political scandal hasn't gone away. Believe me, I'd like to think it is. Whenever I work for The Mayor Hisself, it's easy to overlook the large quantity of favours rendered to himself (and very infrequently, to me) in exchange for some small judgment or gentle steering. Surely his friends would have been just as generous with money, business partnerships, and fresh-off-the-lot Porsches if he did nothing at all for them? Of course they would. That's what makes them true friends and not seedy business associates that I'm around just in case one of them needs to be put back in line.

Now, you might think it's easy to monkey-wrench a homebuilder or someone who owns a used-car dealership. It is, but that's not the point. You have to be subtle about it: it doesn't make re-election look good if The Mayor's somewhat-esteemed childhood maybe-friend gets caught on camera using violence. No, you have to get creative about it. Deniable.

One of my favourite not-confessing-to-anything techniques is what I like to call the "smoke-out." You may remember some articles in the news recently about how Volkswagen got in trouble for making cars that produced too much exhaust. They were just running regular old passenger diesel fuel! The fumes off that stuff won't even make your eyes burn, not like high-test nitromethane being shot out the hood-exit exhaust of a half-fibreglassed Dodge Ramcharger doing donuts on your lawn. Sometimes I didn't even have to do a full spin: they'd be on the phone, tearfully apologizing to The Mayor, just because their wallpaper started to melt!

In my own day, they used to make corrupt business people tougher. A higher class of manufacture. That's why I think today's kids need to get involved. Build a new and even more dirtbaggy semi-organized semi-crime architecture, because these folks are just getting lazy with it.

[kokoasci]

Heyooo, I'm new here, and I just want to say I absolutely adore your art so far. It's such a beautiful style; honestly, I'm incredibly jealous of the skills you've acquired as well as impressed.

I mostly came on here to ask for advice(if you're willing to give any, of course, it's your choice):

Are there any tips you have for getting started on making comics/stories online??

I saw that you're working on a comic to get out soon - I know it's not yet debuted , but I was just curious about your process and time with it so far? I myself want to start making my own writing public, and I wanted to ask others who have a bit more experience than me if they have anything to say that they think could help confidence and just general tips wise?

Apologies for all the yapping and the sudden question! 😓😓

hi !! first off thank you! that really means a lot :) <3

i feel like i'm definitely not the most qualified of people to give any sort of concrete advice, given yeah this comic isn't out yet, but i can definitely share what's helped me get more confident in posting my original stuff

probably everyone's going to tell you the same thing of like "just start posting it" but like yeah. literally just start posting it 😭 i've always kind of had my ocs as like characters i would use to test story and worldbuilding stuff since 2020, but i didn't actually consider making a comic until like last year-ish. i think i got lucky where a lot of people following me are just also tolerating the fact that i post oc stuff here, and drawing actual colored pieces and character art has helped grow that audience a little bit (i think?) to people who are interested in the original stuff rather than fandom stuff

the best advice I think i can give right now is to definitely just try it out. start small, maybe character introductions or sketches, etc., and then branch out to whatever you feel comfortable with, until you figure out what kind of style you want to share your stuff in. I was in the exact same position where I was incredibly shy to post my OC stuff on here, since it felt very private to me (these are my children that i've had for five years...) but after posting character introductions and a few sketches I got way more comfortable with finally sharing actual rendered pieces and written skits that i would have probably never felt anywhere near comfortable sharing online if i didn't just start at some point. I think that's helped me a lot, and helped grow the interest in the original stuff I make too! plus, seeing people's responses to this stuff has been incredibly motivating. I probably wouldn't have made so much progress and even thought about making a comic if it hadn't been for the incredibly kind reception i've found here

my personal style for trying to organize this comic is I'm trying to hold off on an actual debut until I'm completely happy with the first few chapters, which is taking me a long time...you obvs don't need to follow this, but I think I get more engrossed into a media if there's quite some content to start with. bottom line, i'd recommend to make and post the story/art that you'd be most interested in seeing, which i think helps motivate a bunch since ppl interested in it are also part of your same tribe.

I am a full-time student, so this is just a side project that i work on in my free time. that's mostly why I usually just post quick rendered art and sketches on here, and i've found that finishing small things helps keep me motivated to do the big things. it's easy to get lost in the big picture, and I highly recommend just drawing/writing whatever you feel inspired to do in the moment. just put it down on paper first, and you can fix it later. i find that it's easier to tweak stuff into what i envision rather than stressing about making it perfect the first time :)

[lothbats9000]

This AU isn't mine!! All credit for the cool idea and epic designs go to @peoplepersonoaktree! You should totally go check out her art because it's glorious and beautiful and amazing!

These little mushroom guys have been happily living in my brain for a bit so when I learned a new way to paint/render stuffs I had to test it out on them! They were incredibly fun to draw! I love their designs so much!! Like Raph still having his little snaggletooth? Genius! Mikey's freckles? Adorable! Also, you can't really see it in this painting but Raph has these small red diamonds down his arm and I love them! Thank you so much for making these adorable little guys!

(Also, last thing, I feel like the image quality died a bit while posting this so it might get better if you click on it! :)

[kimiko24-art]

🌙☀️⭐🌱🌿🍀🌙☀️⭐🌱🌿🍀🌙☀️⭐🌱🌿

🌱❴ INTRODUCTION ❵🌱

🌙☀️⭐🌱🌿🍀🌙☀️⭐🌱🌿🍀🌙☀️⭐🌱🌿

This is my self insert. This wiki entry is specifically for my JJBA AU. Art, some general info, and tidbits will be posted here. Not sure if I wanna continue the full story. I think this is enough info for now lol

🌱❴ GENERAL INFO ❵🌱

Name: Kimiko Daiyuki (This is actually an alias)

Age: 23

Gender: Female (Any pronouns)

Zodiac: Gemini

S/O: Bruno Bucciarati ☕🍵

Occupation: Model, singer-songwriter (changes to match AUs)

Sexually Orientation: Panexual

Species: Human

General Appearance:

Kimiko is a thin woman with a medium bust and a few curves here or there. She stands around 5'7, has a dark golden skin tone, and medium shoulder length black hair. Kimi’s body has a lot of faint scars. Mainly around her limbs; arms and legs. However she loves to wear clothing that shows off her physique. So you can most likely find her wearing short dresses, form fitting clothing, and heels to display her figure and long legs.

🌱❴ AU INFO ❵🌱

(Mainly backstory and relationship stuff are provided. I have two main plots, canon AU and My AU. In my AU everyone lives. )

🌙☀️⭐🌱🌿🍀🌙☀️⭐🌱🌿🍀🌙☀️⭐🌱🌿

❴ 「STORY」 ❵

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🌿 Kimiko was never fond of her family, she always felt so distant from them which caused a deep loneliness. After failing time and time again to gain their approval. Kimiko decided to move on, change her name, and restart her life Italy. She pursued a job opportunity, perhaps this would be her chance? A new start with a happy life, but unfortunately this wasn't what it seemed. Kimiko was tricked and nearly smuggled once reaching this "job" but luckily escaped in time. However, since she used every last penny to pursue this false career, she was stuck, stranded. Lost and alone, in a foreign country. She lived on the streets for several months. Starving and trying to survive, she joined a small gang out of desperation. ("I Dannati" (The damned/The fallen))

A bunch of treacherous fellows, and not the type for a woman like her to be involved with. Though their leader had a fancy for her, which gave her some since of security. But once again Kimiko ended up in danger when one of the members try to have their way with her in an alley. Luckily a passersby rescued her from the situation, he revealed himself to be a mafioso from a rival gang, Passione. His name; Bruno Buccirati. After talking with this stranger for a while, he offered her a position in Passione. A place on his team. Though she was hesitant, not wanting to trust another person after everything she'd been through. Despite being shaken up she agreed to join. Some time passes and after a few encounters with stand users, she gained her own through Polpo's test. After gaining her stand and reclaiming her confidence, that's when Kimiko decided her new life would start right then and there. Bruno and his team had filled her empty heart with a burning passion for life and she wanted to spend it with them, her new family. (These events happen a little before Giorno arrives.)

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❴ STAND ABILITIES ❵

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🌱STAND NAME: Boom Boom Satellites

🌱STAND CRY: "Ti ti ti ti !!" & "Ti prendono" (I forgive you in Italian, a shorter version of "Ti perdono per i tuoi peccati" in English, "I forgive you for your sins.")

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🌿 Boom Boom Satellites is a "Psychological Assault Type" Stand. It's main ability affects the targets perception of reality. It used this ability to manifest a world inside the targets psyche. Any damage dealt to the opponent within this alternate world, harms them in real life.The stand is close range, as the user technically enters the mind of their opponent. It renders both the user's body and it's foe's body in a frozen state in the real/waking world. Leaving the user vulnerable and open to outside forces and attacks. This ability is best fit interrogations. Hence it can create a scenario within the targets mind, like being tortured for example. (BBS offensive move is a sound wave that comes from the Stand's hand)

Boom Boom Satellites is a manifestation of Kimiko's daydreaming tendencies, creating vivid worlds in her mind to escape the reality during that time she was living on the streets of Napoli. This carries over to her stands ability... there is also a darker side to her that also carries over.

❴ Tidbit(s) ❵

🌿 Kimiko hasn't truly escaped "I Dannati" the gang she was previously involved with. There's a bounty on her head within their gang, due to her becoming a traitor and getting involved within Passione.

🌿 Kimiko needs glasses but they got messed up during her time on the streets, so she couldn't really see for a little bit in the series. She eventually gets a new pair and cries when she can see everyone's faces clearly for the first time. (Happens after Giorno and Trish join)

🌿 Her stands name is Boom Boom Satellites~ named after one of my fav J-rock bands!

🌿 Kimiko likes to feed the abundance of stray cats that hang around Libeccio and the area on her downtime. She also enjoys writing poetry, music, really anything creative. and drinking tea with Bruno.

🌿 Kimi’s body has a lot of faint scars. Mainly around her limbs; arms and legs. However she loves to wear clothing that shows off her physique. So you can most likely find her wearing short dresses, form fitting clothing, and heels to display her figure and long legs.

🌿 Here's a playlist of songs that are dedicated to/remind me of Kimiko.

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🌱❴ RELATIONSHIP HEADCANONS ❵🌱

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🐦🌊🐦 Kimiko deeply admires and respects Bruno's heart and who he is as person. She finds his goals extremely admirable and knows that he's a person that cares deeply for those around him, she wouldn't hesitate to follow him to the ends of the earth. Kimiko can let her guard down completely around him. Bruno and her tend to spend a lot of time at different cafes together, taking walks to view the scenery, and trying out different restaurants. They both enjoy a slower pace to life, in contrast to their hectic lives as mafiosi. Bruno enjoys his time with Kimiko and likes how supportive and innocent she is. There is a sense of serenity and security that brings them both an inner peace. They often chat about a lot of different things together, especially at night~

⭐⭐🔫 Other than Bruno, Kimiko is really close to both Trish and Mista. With Mista around Kimiko feels at ease and laughs a lot with him. They often hang out and go to cinemas, or find other fun or mischievous things to do around town, it's really a breathe of fresh air with him! She really enjoys their friendship and the comfort it brings too! Fugo and Narancia tag along too~ After getting use to her, Mista began treating her like one of the gang.

🌺🌹🌸 With Trish Kimiko finds it easy to talk with her, they're actually more similar than what they realize. They often spend hours talking, just nice having a break for themselves to be girls for a while honestly. Kimiko often goes out with Trish shopping, or to go get sweets from pastry shops. She has a protective instinct towards Trish because she sees herself within her. Kimiko treasures the bond between them a lot. Trish seems to appreciate the company and enjoys herself when they hangout.

⏪▶⏩ Kimiko sees Abbacchio as an authority figure, and someone she can trust undoubtedly. She often goes to him or Bruno for advice. Abbacchio sometimes does offer her advice, but usually he ends up telling her that she should use her own head and gut. She usually finds herself wanting Abbacchio's approval. Even though she finds him intimidating, Kimiko knows that she can trust him with her life. She sometimes tags along with him when he runs small earns. Abbacchio wonders about Kimiko sometimes, she's a bit naive in his eyes. And honestly he thinks she's too soft for this sort of life. But he knows how much Bruno cares about her. So he watches over her from a distance for him.

🔱⭐🔱 Kimiko respects Giorno a lot. She respects his intelligences and ability as a person and stand user. Giorno has a lot of Kimiko's trust even though she does not display it with words. She always asks Giorno what his views are on certain matters and she likes having conversations with him. They take strolls around town, or Giorno stops by sometimes to help her with the strays. Giorno likes chatting with Kimiko. They find each other interesting.

🍊🍊✈ For Narancia, Kimiko often finds herself wanting to take care of him like an older sister, or mother. Though she realize that he's his own person and tries her best not to smother or pester him. Usually internalizing the urges. Her and Narancia often read books, play games, and listen to music together. She also tries to help him study sometimes along with Fugo. But she really sucks at math as well, so Fugo ends up schooling both her and Narancia. Other times Narancia eagerly tries to get Kimiko to join in when him, Mista, and Fugo dance~ but she's too shy to.

🍓🍓💉 When it comes to Fugo, Kimiko sorta views him as a younger brother as well, he doesn't seem to mind though. Fugo often helps her out if she asks and Kimiko really appreciates that when he does. She tries to return the favor when she can! They often do find themselves discussing deeper, more philosophical topics, or just having an intellectual conversation in general. With Fugo's practical thinking, and Kimiko's more curious, abstract thinking, they can talk for HOURS depending on the topic. But they don't hangout much outside of Passione's activities! But they sometimes spend time together if someone else is along with them (mista, narancia, trish)

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🌱❴ COMIC/ OCS /FAKE SCREENSHOT(S) ❵:

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Full Animations: 1, 2, 3

Anime Screencap(s): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Comics: 1, 2, 3

OC(S): 1, 2, 3, 4

Animatics: 1, 2

GIF(s): 1, 2, 3

🌱❴ CONCLUSION ❵🌱

(That's it for now~ I'll probably end up changing some things at some point.)

[dwcmarshalarts]

I adore your style and content - I’m considering doing masters studies of some of your pieces just to try it out, but I’m still fairly new to art. I was curious if there’s any part of your process or any particular advice you’d have?

Gave this answer before to someone who asked me the same question, and I think it still counts! 1) Build stamina. You can do this by drawing often- and with intention. Start your drawing with a warm up- something light, not overly serious. Focus more on the literal mechanical feeling of your hand moving to draw. Then focus on the heavier stuff after you’ve both literally and mentally warmed up, setting the stage for more involved drawing. Make this a routine and drawing overall will be less tiring over time.

2) Focus on replicability, not detail. This goes hand in hand with the previous point. A lot of people develop a kind of perfectionism early on, where they get overly attached to a specific sketch and don’t wanna budge from it, and put details until it “looks good,” even when the subject as a whole is wonky. I like to equate this to “too much icing, not enough cake,” or “building on sand foundations.” I’ve been there before, and it can hold you back. Instead of focusing on a specific piece and how you rendered it that one time, focus on how you render it such that you could do something similar, easily replicate the concept. Once you’ve built more stamina, you can open up the gates to tackling the same subject matter in different ways.

3) Mind your mark making. Some folks agonize over the tiniest detail, sometimes for hours. At the end of the day, that itself doesn’t necessarily bring improvement- that’s more of a test of patience. Unless someone specifically asks, you don’t- for example- need to draw every single ridge of every knob on a switchboard in great detail. These things can be implied through mark making. Remember, a lot of drawing isn’t about literally making something for people to see- it’s tricking the eye into believing what’s drawn is actually there. You’ll be amazed at what detail can be like even when you don’t define every part.

4) Drawing is more seeing than “making it up.” * Don’t be afraid to use references and such. It’ll help you render form than imagining it- sometimes the imagination can conjure things incorrectly. *Even seasoned artists who don’t typically use too much references need to do studies from life or books every now and then to reinforce skills.

One point I didn't add before for style things specifically is: 5) Look where the artist got their inspirations from if you want to learn from them. No art exists within a vaccuum, everyone has their influences. Trying to do a study from someone's art will only take you so far- because then it'll feel more like mimicry than actual, learned study. Research or try to see parallels with artists that you might think had a hand in influencing a given artist's style. Notice the patterns there- certain textures are invoked here, this form was defined like this, etc. A lot of folks confuse wanting "more of a thing" as opposed to "what makes that thing desirable/unique." If you'd like to know where some of my influences come from, I'd say look at the works of Squiddy, covers for Hellboy comics, and the Snowpiercer graphic novel.

Addendum: If you're looking to draw anatomy specifically- study from real anatomy, and learn how to do those before you begin to "break the rules" (exaggerate, anthropomorphize, etc). For resources on that, I'd recommend the Morpho books (all of them haha) and Dynamic Human Anatomy by Roberto Osti.

Hope this helps somewhat, feel free to ask if I missed anything.

[quinndominion]

Thought I was going to make another rant-y ramble about scene staging, but I figured it out before I finished typing.

Anyway...Terrific fun seeing your scenes come to life exactly the way you envisioned them. Terribly frustrating when it feels like you've forgotten how to do basic stuff, elicit some very basic poses - like, hold your hand out, sir! No, more. Out thataway. Please?

Look, see, like this, Sylvia Marie did it, why can't you? (which, of course, means why can't I...remember how to do such a little thing?)

But this is why I always like to keep SimPE open while playing. (Standard warning, you know what your computer can and can't handle, blah, blah, blah. And if you don't load it first, obviously, and fully load in the game files, you won't be able to do a damn thing with it while the game is using them and you, of course, can't edit cc files that are in use. But if, like me, you've got multiple cc setups and test hoods and wip stuff it comes in handy when you're too lazy to quit the game just to check something.) I double-checked my 'undies ad' posebox and turns out I did, actually, make that overlay. Oops. But, frustration allayed!

Wrong hand, anyway. But that wasn't the point.

Serviceable as is, I guess.

But it looks even more awkward from this angle and that's the one where you can see what he can't see yet as he's looking for his daughter.

Ooh, maybe Adele's prop box, sans prop? I'll check! Too many newer poseboxes, I'm forgetting the virtues of the golden oldies! Otherwise, I have found something that should work but it means exiting and reloading the game. And she may or may not hold her pose on reload.

The positioning itself I can recreate easily enough, but she is well off her lot (get it..."well" *snerk*) and therein lies the hassle. I'd have to learn new tricks (all over again) to make that a simpler process. And, uh, no. I need, literally, 3-5 more pics. Then all I've got to do is finish the write-up and wrestle with the html formatting. So, tomorrow maybe, or more likely the day after since it's Christmas.

Apparently, some things have changed in the past few years, but not DW's post editor - which I hate, love everything else, no plans to shop around for a new home, but hate the tiny post creation window that you can't expand in visual edit mode - you know, the one you need to see, it's in the name - but can drag out in html mode, like being able to see the alphanumeric wall-o-text in a bigger window is at all useful to me! They render all visual line breaks exclusively with code now so even if you space it out to be able to see what you're doing with the html, if you click over to visual mode to see that it looks right and click back, they've smushed it back into one big block of text. Why...oh, why? That's not really the new hassle, but I'm tired of rambling. Suffice it to say that my workaround no longer works straight copy-paste. Even when I remember to add all the extra <br /> breaks. Still have to fiddle with it in their tiny post window where they nevertheless render the pictures full-size so I can only see half of what I'm doing without side-scrolling back and forth. Okay, now rant really over.

How do I know this? Well, I celebrated my bday last Monday by actually posting a chapter. No linky, I'll get to that...eventually, but it's there on my Dreamwidth if you wanna read it. Or you can wait til I'm finished wrangling with the rest of Act One and feel like making proper posts with links and stuff. Doubt anyone's read this far into a ramble post to warrant adding links anyway. 😃😃😃

[kozachenko]

I've crawled out of my cave after playing Final Fantasy IX for a long ass time what have I missed?

Artist's Notes:

I'M BACK BABY! A while back I made a post with a new style experimentation thingy but I ended up deleting it because it was just kind of a boring face thing, I was planning on doing more art but then I started playing Final Fantasy IX and uhhhh yeah so that game has kind of taken of my brain for the past two weeks and I am 20 hours into the game because I love it so much. I wanted to draw Vivi because Vivi is just really fun to draw ok? I've kinda been feeling really burnt out with my lineless style, mainly because of how hard it was to do lighting. I'll show one of my initial art style tests on the bottom of this post. Again, used to have it be an individual post but it was just one face so it was kinda boring, so might as well include with this one on the subject of art styles. I wanted to kinda mix some aspects of my older style with the sketchy shading lines with a more painterly way of doing the lighting (mainly in the shadows). All in all, I think that's my favourite part about this drawing, it feels nice to finally be able to do some proper lighting again, and I want to experiment even more with my lighting and rendering in future pieces. Also, part of the pant shading got kinda lost in the sketchiness, so for next time I'll probably focus on the clarity of the more sketchy parts of the drawing, since I did go with my initial sketch for the final drawing. I also gave up on the background since I had no idea what to do for it, and I didn't put too much detail into the staff as I forgot which one I gave him in my current playthrough and I didn't want to risk spoiling myself via looking up references, but that's ok I like how the singular yellow circle on it matches Vivi's eyes. Also I was having a bit of trouble figuring out how to draw his body and how to pose him, but I like how the pose turned out a lot. It was inspired by his idle animation when in a battle in game where he does a little shimmy.

Ok I need to talk about Vivi's design because I love it so fucking much oh my god-

I absolutely love how his face is just in complete shadow and only his eyes stand out, it's so cool and unique and I love how they recontextualized the original black mage design from the classic Final Fantasy games. How they did it I won't say because I don't wanna spoil the game, but someone give this poor baby a therapist because he goes through a lot. Actually, same can be said for all of the FFIX cast, they all need therapy (again, I won't spoil anything, please go play the game for yourself).

While I do love almost all the characters in the game, even though Vivi is most fun to draw, my favourite character has to be Zidane (the main protagonist of the game). He's a really fun protagonist, and they could have easily written him as a misogynistic jerk who doesn't respect women but they didn't, and I really appreciate that. He's just an overall cool dude who's a really nice older brother figure to Vivi and also just has a cool character design (who I also want to draw eventually). Initially in the game I was planning on grinding levels for Vivi to make him the tactical nuke of the party, but then that title went to a different character (who was initially multiple levels behind the group since I grinded the party in the starting area way to much before they joined, but now they are two levels ahead of everyone and have pulled the team through a lot of tough battles, again I won't say who it is because it is kind of a spoiler and the way the gameplay actually ties into their character arc is just so good omfg). Once I eventually finish the game I'll probably write a full review on here, so no spoilers until then lol

Also, I've kinda been burning out a bit with making Touhou art, which also made me a bit burnt out with Touhou stuff in general (although I will continue keeping up with the manga) so getting into other things (i.e. Final Fantasy and even Fallout since I've watched the first season of the TV show which is a whole other post for another day) has helped me refresh and given me something new to think about. I've ended up in the exact place I feared ending up, where I would start drawing fanart for it not because I wanted to but because I felt like I had to, so I'm taking a bit of a break. When I do draw Touhou fanart again I'll try to draw for the sake of myself, and to all the other artists and fanartists on this platform (and on any social media for that matter), take care of yourself and don't forget to take breaks when you need to!

(Ok part of that last paragraph was definitley influenced by the good ol' "it's 9:00pm and I need sleeb, but the message at the end still holds up, always take care of yourself)

Oh yeah, and here is that one style experiment I did btw

Man I really fell down the "Yoshitaka Amano art enjoyer" to "Final Fantasy fan" pipe line didn't I?

[feyspeaker]

Hii me again. I'm not sure if I sent the ask I'm talking about on anon, so maybe that's why you didn't see it? It partially got answered with a recent ask you got anyway so no worries. I was just wondering if you use 3d in your process and if so, how? I've seen other illustrators use it to varying degrees and it seems like a really helpful tool to push your work.

Oh that's so weird! No I periodically go through my asks in chunks and I didn't see anything like that. I've had a few people in the past few months send me asks that looked like the second half of something else with no context, so maybe it's Tumblr fuckery. Sorry!!

I recommend learning Blender so you can help sculpt shapes and render lighting onto them in order to get the weirder/more complex shadows right. You can also apply colors onto the things you sculpt in order to see how the colors act in different lighting. It's pretty much an invaluable tool to me as it keeps me from having to problem-solve too much. I did a lot of digging around in my house to build references to photograph but it was just impractical to achieve the things I want to a lot of the time. I still do that, and you would not believe how many goofy photos I have of my husband in the poses you've seen me paint Astarion in lmao...

I do think that it needs to be used in moderation if you are a more beginner artist- I think that using 3D is DANGEROUSLY close to becoming a massive crutch for a newer artist and improper usage or over reliance on it can lead to stiffness or artificial looking colors. You need to be able to train your eye to create compelling compositions by bashing things together, and train your hand to replicate/add/subtract as needed from your references with an organic feel.

I will say this as a total committer of this crime myself in the past, it's VERY easy to tell when an artist relies too much on, for example, Clip Studio Paint posed models as bases for pieces without a good enough grasp on their fundamentals. And I also used to prickle when I saw more advanced artists warn of this, so I do think maybe it just has to run its course sometimes, because I know that using 3D for reference seems like an easy-button.

I've taken a lot of in-person classes for live figure drawing and painting, as well as just totally done drills, basically, on sketching and painting from life before relying too much on static imagery/3D/etc.

I often fret over every piece I do looking too stiff even still.

You have to do a LOT of the boring hard stuff the old fashioned way. And I regularly go back to it over and over when needed.

For example, I recently did a stupid amount of rose petal/flower studies deconstructing and painting ugly little paintings/doodles over and over because I know that I've been horribly weak at painting flowers for years (actively avoiding them). And I've been doing a lot of floral stuff lately due to that.

Whenever I start a new piece in new territory, I know it's going to mean several 3AM nighters where I have two other tabs open on Photoshop where I test out different textures or do a couple of studies. I'm working on a piece of my OC right now that has a lot of gore/medical instruments and I've been working on testing out different methods for shiny metal painting and some anatomical studies. I'll come to a snag in a painting and go "here we go" and work through it one piece at a time.

My Halsin piece, "Secret Spot" in the hot spring, was a massive undertaking with a lot of these moments. The Karlach x Dammon piece took 3 times longer than it should have due to me just having to go back and fix things knowing I could do better after doing some studies.

Ultimately I personally find art tutorials to be quite useless overall once you get to a certain point, unless they are teaching the use of a tool/software because you HAVE to figure out what works for you. And even then I use Blender like a monkey with a keyboard, I suspect, because I've just bruteforced through it, so I could probably use a tuneup from a good teacher on that haha. I hope this helps some, and sorry if I overstepped if I sound preachy.