#hell yeah gradient maps

[tangentburd]

A wallpaper design for the @90scartoonszine, featuring the titular characters from the TV series Big Guy and Rusty the Boy Robot.

This cartoon is something I've always had at the back of my mind, even if I don't remember a single episode or scene about it haha. But I remember the character designs well — enough to have made crossover fanart of them before, and to want to work on them for this zine.

I also made a mobile/portrait version of this wallpaper, and a PPG stickersheet. Go check out the zine if you're old and cranky like me nostalgic for '90s cartoons that you may or may not have grown up with!

🚀 [ Zine now available for free digital download at itch.io! ] 🚀

[transannabeth]

noo am i too late to ask to see whatever you were going to draw but didn't but maybe you will??

this isn't what i was going to draw for them but the other stuff wasn't working. heartbreaking.

[vhsc1ty]

quite literally NOBODY asked but long post about the mental illness I gained drawing mattress car door and attic (process and references sort of... id post a timelapse but i don't have one because storage :/) this is more just to look back on because i forget my own thought processes 😔 this sounds pretentious i promise i don't think im that guy i just like to Talk

it is legitimately just taiji taomote's marble statue "death visceration" . like i STOLE IT that was my main reference AND HIS OTHER WORK IS SO COOL you can read a bit more about it here . i actually saw this BEFORE i made my karmor and it made me want to make a karmor just so i could draw mahatma and atilla like this.

i think the meaning??? in my drawing is pretty bog standard basic nothing special there like he's trying to stop his mate from dying innit . the moment was only a couple seconds but i wanted him to have like an anime moment in his head so i guess this was it lol

ummm and karmors pose was partially referenced from these spiderman sketches by j scott campbell (?) hehe so neat i love spiderman karmors pose sucks tho but what can U do lol

ummm started with a sketch and added some colours to see if i actually wanted to draw it realised what the hell sure . gradient maps did not help in this case cause i didn't have a lot of different values so i just did

regular colours

dark blue multiply layer to darken the colours

radial gradient on linear light mode going from blue in the centre to yellow/orange to brown/red on the outsides. radial just means circular i think. like radius circle yea did not know that before i found it on my program lol

blue gradient from the top and red background for some contrast yass

teal blue radial gradient in the centre with ... soft light layer mode??? idk (added after i don't think it's in the picture)

cleaned up my lines (lucario helped) and added my flats and started rendering before i realised layers are annoying and i needed to merge them and paint like a REAL WOMAN!!#(# (joking). when i had some shadows down i merged the layers together and PRAYED (U can see in 2nd img below i painted ontop of the lineart which is sooooo useful)

main shadows for me go like a shade that's hue shifted one way, then another shade that's a bit darker than that one and then a lighter shadow shade that's hue shifted the opposite direction to the first shade to fill in blank spaces i guess idk it just looks a bit more interesting

blending used brush with some pressure opacity and colour picker is amazeballs bc my program's blending tool sucks bruh. i put down a colour with slight pressure and picked the resulting colour and painted with that on hard pressure. doing that just gets you a mix of the two colours and more control over what you put down because you don't have to worry about maintaining a light pressure or anything it's just all paint no opacity

hue and saturation sliders my fave cause u can see what shading colours look good but obviously do that before u merge ur layers... highlights mostly reddish from the background

used a gradient map on black and white to check values (deleted after) and see if the highlights are actually highlights (i should've gone darker with the shadows and had more of a stronger red but it doesn't matter who cares 💔) oh and some super basic hatching in some areas that look a little bit flat

karmors lightning power thingy was a last minute decision honestly it doesn't make any sense considering the lighting but idc . who gaf. maybe using my pencil brush would've been better but i was lazy so just don't zoom in and pretend the random ribbon brush looks in place

export + a little cleanup on a new canvas (barely any cause im lazy) . check how it looks on phone add a cool toned filter to it (using my phone gallery app 😭) and . yeah . also Instagram story crash out is mandatory unskippable step

i also just stole karmors entire outfit from Pinterest you see nothing i do is original IM A FRAUD i just steal and look the other way 😭😭😭😭 AND I STOLE HIS FACE i based him off of the model akeem osborne he is very pretty if only i took the time to practice other hair textures instead of being a bum and karmors hair wouldnt look like POPCORN in the final image GOD

I also just cannot paint and. can't draw faces from weird angles . but im glad i drew a full illustration i don't think i really have like this since 2021 😞

okay ya that's it bye

[taiigaatea]

are there any nenessandra fans on tumblr i love these two so much so i put them into the void

im SORRY i thought the steven universe hyperfixation was embarassing but then,,,, friday night f. unkin.. i cant stop playing it i cant stop listening to the ost i cant. (pico is my favorite (if we only count released characters))

here is a fun silly black/white version too (gradient maps are so fun i didn't know what they were until now)

ummm i only drew this because i needed a cover for the playlist i made of them..... i like making the covers between playlists consistent BUT i couldn't find one that was close to what i wanted so i just made it myself

and then i colored it too because last time i posted on insta was in june and i felt bad

I LOVE NENE SO MUCH she is actually just like me real !!! ! ! ! we are both asian both have adhd and she's.......... yeah 😁😁😁

(sorry loz fans the hyperfixation died a long time ago and i was scared to tell the truth :( i have a few sketches of vio/shadow that i havent posted yet maybe i will finish those sometime)

I FORGOT NENES MOUTH SHIT. FUCKING HELL i already posted it on insta im not changing it now

[ozwuv]

I'm very intrigued by your use of light, how you conceptualise it, how you choose the mood, and how you adjust it to make it work in the way you want. I don't really know how to ask or what I am asking in specific haha But I love your use of light and it always calls my attention whenever you do something with it, it's usually very interesting and adds a lot to the move of the pieces, fixing them in a context beyond the piece itself that adds so much. I wonder how you come up with it, both conceptual and technical process.

Thank you so much!! I'm not too confident in coloring to be honest, my process changes every time I do it bc I'm still in a constantly experimental phase with it lol, means a lot to hear that!

To be totally honest I have a set palette I use when doing base colors and the rest is just layer modes and gradient maps. I also don't do much conceptualizing, I just kinda make it up as I do... sometimes I have a vague idea in mind, like wanting something to have really dull, solemn colors. Other times I like to just throw a bunch of clashing colors together on purpose for more chaotic drawings and it usually makes it more chaotic in a way I think is fun.

But yeah, to boil it down I set flats down with preset colors, throw on a monochrome multiply layer with just one or two colors I want to be the focus as a gradient. Sometimes another multiply layer with shading, but I've been too lazy to do most of that so I usually check out after hair and faces (which I generally start with)... and then I'll flatten everything, duplicate the layer and throw a gradient maps on (sometimes multiple) with varying layers of opacity. Sometimes I'll erase bits of these layers to give things kind of bursts of contrasting colors... examples if it helps

This is a super haphazard response but so is my coloring process, idk if this helps much... I am truly always throwing spaghetti at the wall and most of the time it sticks hahaha. I don't color that often bc it is usually what frustrates me when I'm drawing. I've said this before, but once I get frustrated with something I know that means I need to wrap it up, so I wind up with a lot of B&W sketches. Which is fine. :] (my recent stuff is a fluke, I do not color or detail stuff like this historically lol)

In short: if nobody got me I know gradient maps got me

ETA: OH ALSO blurring the hell out of stuff that is further in the distance or otherwise not the focus of the drawing is my cheap trick to create depth. most of the time i forget to do this but it makes me like things more lol

[niftukkun]

THE MAGICIAN - i've always taken this card to mean that you already have everything you need, it is just up to you to actually do something; in the same vein, you have everything you need at the start of rain world. unlike a metroidvania, there are no upgrades earned mid-campaign. it's just you, and eight buttons.

[design notes under the cut]

this card is meant to look like survivor at the very start of their campaign, with all the main things needed to progress and survive in rain world - food (batfly and bluefruit, the most common foods found in campaigns) and weapons/defence (rubbish and a spear). again its meant to convey that 'everything you need is within you' energy (<- reference to the minecraft end poem) and the idea that despite its similarities to metroidvania games its really not one (metroidvanias are largely defined by the 'get movement/ability upgrade, kill boss' style gameplay loop. in contrast in rain world('s base game) upgrades are either visiting echoes or visiting pebbles and have nothing to do with ability or movement upgrades unless you count the campaigns itself and their difference in slugcats.)

other design notes: -ive finally figured out scug anatomy! i dont know why it took me so long to finally settle on how slugcat anatomy works but i did in this piece. -the rubble was intentionally chosen those three are my favorite rubble types hell yeah brick :DD -again the background is survivor (and monks) starting room in outskirts. to reference its in outskirts (and to reference that one map in the miraheze wiki that puts all the region maps together) i put a slight tealish green blue gradient over the whole piece. -it wasnt intentional totally intentional but the spear is referencing the actual magician tarot card which always seems to hold either a candle or some other manner of stick -very intentionally does not have the survivor sigil on top. this is to reference the fact that number one you do not have it at the start and number two the like. forty cycles it took for me to get it the first time i played rain world (im pretty sure i only got it after receiving the pebbles karma upgrade)

[stepswowdsen]

【FGO】 Beautiful Carnivore, The All-Ridiculing 💚🐈‍⬛

And here's the other batch of colour tests I did

Ashiya Douman doodle 💚 🐈‍⬛

OG + playing around with gradient maps (18 total)

The 1st one is the OG!

I'm just testing rough colours for now so it's super messy and not refined yet

I already loved the colours of the OG that I chose but the other are so cool to see. The way low opacity gradient maps shift the colours in subtle ways WHOAA

If you're curious, check out the Ashiya Douman vs. Dioscuri anthology comic here! Popular FGO fan-artist and official artist AU (@delete_au) has such gorgeous art~

Rambles

I've been obsessed with Ashiya Douman, the evil clown cat since December 2020. Didn't even take me a week to be obsessed. It took 5 days. Sen's Limbo December Descent 🙌

LimGuda is my comfort HC NBLNB ship 💚🧡 They've been one of my top fave ships since December 2020. The spice of a gay evil clown demon who hates humanity, with a karmic relationship of love/hate with the human they're in love with, is unparalleled.

I can’t get over how much I adore Douman. They’re simply the best. This chaos clown is a forever fave of mine~ I love how in-depth and nuanced this hot evil jester onmyouji is. The emotional nuance and complexity of this chara…

“WANTS TO WATCH THEM FALL TO HELL BUT UNWITTINGLY FALLS IN LOVE WITH THEM.” I’M DEVASTATED ABOUT THEM

The amount of detail that went into Douman's character and design is insane to me… Hasendow AKA Showichi Furumi (Douman's character artist/illustrator) has such a huge brain 🤯

My LimGuda collection is my pride and joy 🤭 When Douman first released on FGO NA in November 2022, this was my Douman pentagram setup. Douman merch summoning circle catalyst! We did summon an evil demon into my Chaldea~ Welcome home! You are now reunited with your WIFE 🫶

The clean up's gonna be hell with how detailed Douman's design is, but I love working with their colours! I wanna draw LimGuda in matching green and red Áo tấc so bad!!! Matching couple clothes~ 💘💞

Douman loves them with curses… LIKE A CAT TIPPING OVER VASES CUZ THEY WANT TO BE PAID ATTENTION TO. The whole “Limbo gets defeated/is overwhelmed by the power of feelies and their S/O’s Candid Sincerity" trope I love to see in their ship works that I wanna draw eventually btw… I wanna draw them lots!!!

Cinna said “Douman just reminds me of that ‘cat reacts to separation anxiety by trying to maul their owner’ thing I saw one time” LMAO

Ashiya Douman vs. Dioscuri Anthology Comic by AU

The Ashiya Douman vs. Dioscuri anthology comic has such beautiful art by AU (@/delete_au). Douman invited Ritsuka to fall into hell with them & now they're the one inviting him. Douman tells them that the two of them are "bound by unbreakable/inseparable fate." JAW DROP??? THIS IS GAY AS HELL 🏳️‍🌈 LIMGUDA IS REAL!!! 💚🧡

AU (@/delete_au) is a popular Fate/Grand Order (FGO or Fate/GO) fan artist that's been commissioned to draw official works for Fate (including official merch)

TYSM to Carli (@/carlikun) for translating it... I got stuck on some parts reading the JP version cuz of Douman's difficult, esoteric and archaic vocabulary... I got to clear things up reading the VN fan-TL, and it was interesting to see how it was translated in Viet, but yeah the EN fan-TL cleared up so many things for me.

They drew the Ashiya Douman vs. Dioscuri chapter in one of the FGO anthologies. LIMGUDA ALSO INTERACT IN IT, AND THERE'S TONS OF LIMGUDA FOOD HEHEHEHE... Their art is so gorgeous. They're one of my favourite FGO artists, their works are stunning.

THE WHOLE THING IS SO DELICIOUS SO I'LL JUST SHOW A COUPLE PAGES FROM THE END, BUT OH MY GOD???

I LOVE THEMMMMMMMMMMM LOVE IS REALLLLLLL

Douman is gigantic. Ritsuka's 200 cm tall (~6"7) bf that loves them!!!

AU'S DOUMAN COMIC FROM THE FGO ANTHOLOGY COMIC WITH DOUMAN AND RITSUKA IS MAKING ME SCREAM WTF /pos /endearing

[miku-meeku]

Great artist Miku, can I know what brushes do you use for sketches, lineart and rendering?

Can I also know your art process? Very curious about it 🤔

it is i, great artist miku, descending from heaven once more

i used paint tool sai (sometimes i use sai2 but i mostly use the old one) and my best friend is the brush for sketching and lineart

i sometimes change the brush settings to simple circle or spread as u can see, i usually lineart w simple circle

and you'd think with how many brushes i have, i would use a lot for rendering hahahahahahahahahahaha airbrush and watercolor brush is my best friend for shading cuz im stupid

anws my art process; yippe;

i usually sketch by drawing a blob of silhouette cuz i saw this trick and its pretty good to give u a gist of what the hell you're drawing

idk when ill ever finish that last one dies

anws i lineart w simple circle brush (or if im lazy, i go w spread brush and not even bother w lineart) and then i slap some random bright ass color

and then you you yeah

idk how to explain the shading process, uhhh, i airbrush the shit out of everything and add many blushes (and lots of multiply mode) i had like two layers to do hair, one for the darker shading while one is for the lighter shading

does this makes sense yet-

and then i use my friend watercolor to bullcrap my way for the clothes while airbrushing some bits and parts of there and here

gomenasorry, i dont know how to explain my shading process sobs,,,

and for the final touches; i use gradient mapping on clip studio paint kyaa!!!!!!

abuse the crap out of gradient mapping and lower that opacity

then you slap my favorite iconic noise filter, set it to overlay and lower the opacity to 10%-20%

oh yea, recommended thing by me;

do this to the faces and set it to overlay and lower opacity to 20% for that wowzers effect

and then you put idk lots of filters so your art pops off

oh yeah i forgot to mention, color the lineart

and now w0w look at this difference, its night and day!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

thank you for coming to my pep talk about my art process feel free to ask more questions cuz i feel like i didnt explain myself properly on how i cook out my art dies

[nerdy-arty]

THABK HOU I WAS TALKING ABOUT THE GRADIENT MAPS i don’t really know how to do the colors right so i just used the presets and i think my art is changed forever

OH HELL YEAH!! Honestly, once you learn about gradient maps, the game is completely changed from there HAHAHA

Sometimes all you need to do is add a gradient map adjustment layer to a coloured piece and put it on overlay or something to get good vibes and colour unity

[lord-shitbox]

all the questions you like

2. Do you do art in any professional capacity? (Graphic design, commissions, animation, etc.)

i have, but not rn. Shit not together enough to reliably complete art for people

3. What are your favorite subjects to draw? (OCs, your fan faves, etc.)

the characters .

5. What piece of art are you still proud of to this day? (Show or describe)

imo the best things ive made

8. How would you describe your art style?

this is really hard. uhh. colored lighting and the sparkles.

10. How do you deal with art block?

play inspiring video games,..consume inspiring media basically. Revisit anything that gives me brainworms. I draw because of brainworms

11. Have you ever drawn a meme with your OCs or canon characters from a fictional media?

yeah

14. Do you prefer to make fan content or original content?

let me think on this one. thru my entire life i've tended to make more fanart but i actually spend more time thinking about my ocs than fictional characters i think? but when drawing my ocs i get all in my head about whether or not the designs are any good. w fanart i dont have any responsibility for the quality of the design so its not my fault

15. Do you/have you participated in Artfight or art trades in general?

i am on artfight!

16. What was something you used to struggle to draw with confidence/ease, but have now mastered?

Legs 🤤

17. Your personal favorite works of art (not made by you) are...?

basic as hell but van gogh's starry night over the rhone, uhh big fan of impressionism in general, anything made by neuehell, i should go keep a log of favorite classical pieces i have because i forget them all

18. Do you typically use filters on your art?

ehhh? if they count i usually do one or more of the following: tone curve adjustment, gradient map, blur, and/or chromatic aberration effect. i manually adjust them all though

19. What's your biggest insecurity when it comes to your artwork?

it's all CHARACTERS. and they're HOLDING EACH OTHER. i show my FAMILY THIS SHIT. embarrassing.

20. What motivates/inspires you artistically? (topics, emotions, etc)

it used to be feelings, nowadays usually Character Brainworms or desire for thematic significance

[wonderxshows]

the power of gradient map

WOAH YEAH i love gradient maps even tho im terrible at using them lol THOSE LOOK SICK AS HELL THO

[avoiltaire]

he's tugging on my sleeve. so much of me wants to hate myself for what i've done, but this changes it all. forget trophy collecting. i'll gladly be his accessory.

every cell, every pore in him shrieking for him to pull away, but he's never felt more alive. maybe he finds fun in rejecting rejection.

[corpsentry]

do u have any tips on how to start drawing and get better?

hi anon! to be completely honest i have no idea what the fuck i’m doing but my single most earnest piece of advice is to draw. do it. draw. don’t think, don’t stress, don’t exhibit self doubt-- draw.

here’s a list of things that aren’t worth thinking about: - how good everyone around you is - how other people will see your art - your current skill level - what you know you are capable of accomplishing and what you believe you are not - how hard the thing you want to draw is - how impossible it is to create - how you cannot do anything - how you are incredibly new to this and therefore incapable of creating something incredible - how many bodies there are left

drawing is a process, a habit, a mindset, a physical motion, a heartfelt emotion, drawing is: many things. but thinking about drawing isn’t and never will be, like, Drawing.

ok i know i sound like i’m high as fuck so i’m going to contextualize this now dab. i have been scared of backgrounds for my whole life. my entire life. all of my 19 years i have been bitter and resentful and dumb. then at the start of december i decided to challenge myself to do a 15 minute photo study every day because i was tired of being scared shitless of backgrounds and now everything has changed by taylor swift feat. ed sheeran. this worked because 15 minutes isn’t very long and therefore isn’t that intimidating but also because i was forced by my own word to put in consistent work over a fixed period of time. this also worked because i made a firm decision to only use the photographs that the momentum browser extension displays on your new tab screen every day which means i had a choice between exactly two photographs every day (firefox or chrome?) and was forced to confront some of my demons instead of looking for an easy way out. finally, and most importantly, when i sat down each day with my photo reference i didn’t let myself think about how fucked up this photo was. i didn’t let myself think about how completely fucking impossible it was for me to recreate this batshit insane image. i smashed the start timer button before i could get nervous and shut my brain off and focused all my energy on making the canvas look like the photograph and somehow over the course of 26 days my body and brain and soul (???? if i have one) figured something out.

here’s december 7th

here’s december 24th

december 15th

december 26th

december 12th

december 23rd

and then on december 24th i was like i want to try doing something different. i want to draw something from my favorite video game and current obsession the legend of zelda breath of the wild. and so i took a moment away from redrawing scenery and tried to do something different and serious and to my complete fucking surprise it didn’t turn out a disaster. it turned into this

i wouldn’t have been able to do this if i hadn’t done twenty-four shitty 15 minute photo studies before that. i wouldn’t have been able to pick colors, render shapes, account for lighting, et cetera, et cetera, because i only learned about how the shape of your lines and the direction of your movement and the different colors you use can affect a drawing by suffering through making some really shitty choices earlier on in the month. i wouldn’t have dared to try this at all if i hadn’t been fucking around for three weeks before that, getting my ass handed to me every day for no good reason other than that i was mad and tired and tired of being mad. i wouldn’t have thought i could draw backgrounds at all.

obviously i still have a lot of work to do as i’ve only been at this for a month (people are another matter and i do not wish to perceive them) and i have zero technical advice to give because i have never taken a formal art course in my life but i do have something to say and it’s this: if you want to draw, draw. don’t give up. don’t give in to the fear and mindset that you’ll never be able to do something. you can start with fuckall knowledge of how to pick colors, use lighting, draw water, whatever, and figure them all out eventually. you can start out shit and become not-shit. what you need to do is keep drawing, and keep drawing, and keep drawing.

[cynicallyneutral]

Question: HOW DO YOU COLOR YOUR ART ITS AMAZING I COULD CRY?!?!?🥺✨💘

akshsk first of all thaNK U SO MUCH ur a kind person 🥺💛 and um

if im lazy i mostly do greyscale and do a lot of gradient maps? and sometimes just changing a few colors if i needed variation

and if i have time I color pick them one by one. Lately i tend to use cold colors for base and warm for shadows on skin. Idk just to change it up a lil ahahaha. I use at least three colors to color smth, base, shadow and well...darker shadow. Sometimes if im feeling it, i’ll add like a.....light? i forgot what it’s called ahahaah.

But yeah for the shadows dont just lower the value of the base color, try to do a different hue, bc after all, unless youre in a grey room, shadows wont be grey. It will be the color of what place youre in. Like even if you dont draw the background. Try to at least picture where they are so your colors can be uniform. Outside? maybe cooler shadows. In hell? warmer shadows ahahahahaha. I often forget to use it (i really should, cause it’ll save me time) but layer modes are extremely helpful keeping uniformity with your colors??? if that makes sense lol.

Maybe i’ll upload a more recent timelapse of my coloring process, once i actually draw smth finished hhahaha

I hope that helps...a bit? idk ahahaha dont hesitate to ask me questions. i’ll try to answer them the best i could!

EDIT: oh what I try to do to keep my colors sort of unified is to get a color i need? and maybe mix in a lil of whatever’s the most dominant color in my piece, maaybe it’s the skin or the hair. Like just get a low opacity brush (like really low) brush it over your color of choice and use the eyedropper tool to pick up ur new color.

OF COURSE this is MY way to do things and certainly not the only or right way to color, so take it with a grain of salt lol im not the most reliable source of actual art tips. I recommend watching sinix on yt, he inspires me a lot

[hallucinosims]

hey, lee! could you please recommend a couple of video tutorials on editing, esp color balancing? btw, i'm absolutely in love with your story, characters and aesthetic 💛 💫

Oh hell yeah! I’ll link some of my favorites to use from used the most often to absolutely overdoing it that I really only have used once but it turned out rad anyway

1. Used the most     Colour in Storytelling - Not a tutorial per say, but I like looking at it to see  if its possible for me to convey certain moods with different color or lighting set ups      Reverse Key Lighting - I use this stuff for some in game lighting nonsense      Color Grading with Gradient Maps in photoshop - Exactly what it says      Screenshot Editing Tutorial - an oldy but a goody, helped me most when I was trying to find a style. I don’t really do most of these things that much but I love the pointers about the facial shadows       Adding Depth of Field - There’s a lot of tutorials about this one around but it’s the main thing that people talk about when it comes to Reshade use.

2. Used often, but can be lived without      Matte Paintings - Pretty basic one, personally I like making them myself but that’s just because i’m particular the few times I’ve done it even though... none of those posts are up yet      Gel/dual lighting - We love a good two tone for dramatic effects      Horizontal Curve - To make things moody and darker without sacrificing the contrast or details!

3. I’ve only used these once but it’s always a good time       Cinema graphs - We love a good flare       Volumetric Light - This one is for after effects but if you want to add some dynamic dappled light or streaks from windows basically the same thing applies. I just had it in a moving frame when I first looked it up       

[themummersfolly]

I will probably not enter this in the contest I wrote it for, but I’m proud of it anyway.

@aerialsquid, @ardenrosegarden, you will probably like this. It involves ghosts and extinct cephalopods.

The Ordovician Testament

           I guess it all started the day we opened a new fracture at the Dakota site. I was a consulting geologist, monitoring pressure gradients in the wellbore while they pumped slurry in to widen the crack.

           “We’re about ready to start extracting,” the site manager told me. I nodded.

           “You know what the downside is to this process? No fossils.”

           “What, like dinosaurs?”

           “No, no, we’re in the wrong place for that. See right here,” I pointed to a chart, a map of the wellbore. “We’re right on the edge of the Ordovician shale. The fossils in this layer would be shellfish, trilobites, corals…”

           “You collect ‘em?”

           “Sort of. But that’s only part of it. Think of what we can learn from them, the picture they paint of the way the world was during that time…”

           I could see the manager’s eyes glazing over. He didn’t care that much about geology, as long as it wasn’t working against him. As long as the well kept producing.

           At last, the oil started to flow.

           “Hell yeah!” The manager grinned. “This is a good one!”

           I grinned back. The company had gone out on a limb with this site; my team had been pushing for it, and it had paid off.

           I was still thinking about the nice fat end-of-year bonus we’d be getting when my vision started to change. Everything in the monitoring station took on an electric glow. I blinked. It didn’t go away; in fact, it was getting stronger. A faint tension appeared far behind my eyes.

           “Hey, Greg, I’m gonna punch out early today. I think I’m getting a migraine.”

           The manager glanced back at me. “Yeah, sure. We should be good for a while. Be careful.”

           Halfway down the highway, the pain set in. I pulled into the first motel I saw, managed to hold it together long enough to book in, stagger to my room, and collapse.

-------

           To this day I haven’t had as bad a headache as that one. I was in that motel room for three days: two of them trying to fight off the pain, the third too wrung-out to move. When my team members called to check on me, they told me to go to the hospital. If I had been thinking clearly, I would have.

           As bad as it was, the pain wasn’t the worst part. Whenever I fell asleep, I saw colors. Bright, vivid, solid colors, blinding primaries, rapid-fire pastels, swirling psychedelic neons. It sounds nice, but at the time it was like being kicked repeatedly in the brain. My head was full of colors that gave me no peace and made no sense.

           And the mood swings – one minute I was bawling my eyes out, the next, I was ready to rip the lamp out of the wall and throw it across the room. At one point I was up for about twenty-four hours straight, bouncing from rage to depression to manic glee, faintly aware than there was something wrong with me.

           About 3 am on the third day of my stay, the pain broke enough to get a coherent thought through, and that thought was that I might have been poisoned. My next thought, which occurred maybe forty minutes later, was that the worst of it was over and I might as well try to get some sleep.

           This time, I dreamt of an ocean.

-------

           I didn’t have any more symptoms after that, although as soon as I was up I made an appointment to get checked out. Everything came back normal, and the doctor gave me a referral to a neurologist if I kept having migraines. I didn’t call, but I held on to the number. The pain and hallucinations were gone, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t over.

           In the following days and weeks, I kept coming back to that thought. Every now and then, my head would fill up with colors again. And I kept dreaming about oceans. Not like I was at the beach or sailing or scuba diving; I was disembodied, submerged in a sea I didn’t recognize. When I was awake, I would get flashes of sights and smells, like when a memory jogs, but in response to the most random things. And I was remembering things I had never seen.

           Come to think of it, I was having a lot of intrusive thoughts, and I had a growing sense that I wasn’t alone. In the middle of the night, I would wake up thinking something had brushed past me; a search of the house would show it was empty. At work, on the long drive to the site – I felt like if I looked over my shoulder fast enough, I would see… something.

           “I feel like there’s another mind inside my head,” I said.

           “Maybe you should see a doctor,” offered Greg.

           I didn’t really want to see a shrink. But when invisible tentacles wrapped around me in the shower, I decided to bite the bullet.

           “Stress,” the psychiatrist said after talking to me. She suggested I take some time off work. But she wanted to schedule a follow-up, soon. She was worried.

           I had some vacation time, and the nearest airport was advertising cheap flights to Mexico. If I was having a nervous breakdown, might as well have it in Puerto Vallarta with a drink in my hand. On the flight the intrusive thoughts seemed to slack off; but during the final approach, when I looked out the window and saw the Pacific, my vision exploded with purple and teal. Ocean, ocean, ocean! I had to reach for the airsickness bag.

-------

           Whatever this is, it’s connected to the sea. I spent the first day of my trip lying in my hotel room with the blinds drawn, going over and over the past weeks. I wasn’t in any pain, but the thing in my head – I was increasingly sure that it was something separate from me – whatever it was had gotten more agitated since I arrived in PV. This all started in a rented room like this… Had anything unusual happened around that time? Did I eat something, or interact with anyone who acted strange? No, the only thing that had happened was we’d opened a new fracture at the wellbore…

           I sat up straight. That was the day this had started. Either that headache had done me permanent damage, or oil wasn’t the only thing that had come up the wellbore.

           I squeezed my eyes shut, shouted mentally at the source of the colors and visions. Hey! What the hell are you?

-------

           A neighboring hotel had a hypnotist doing nightly shows. Expert in multiple personality disorder, said his brochure. Underneath, it listed another of his specialties: contacting past lives.

           This is insane, I thought as I knocked on his door.

           I’d called ahead, asking if I could meet with him privately, since I didn’t want to work out my issues in front of a crowd. The fee was a little steep, but he sounded intrigued by my symptoms and offered to meet me before a show.

           If he was a quack, at least he was professional about it. He explained up front what would and would not happen and what might happen, and then he put me into a trance.

           You are completely safe, nothing can hurt you. You allow all thoughts to exist. You float through all levels of consciousness like a warm, peaceful…

           OCEAN.

           I was disembodied, submerged in sunlit waters. Beside me rose a coral reef; below it spread meadows and forests of seaweed. Sea-pens and sea-lilies sprouted everywhere. Below me, rustling through mud and algae –

           Trilobites?!

           They were trilobites. Little Asaphus kowalewskii with its eyestalks – I had a fossil of that one in my collection. And a Paraceraurus, all horns and spines, blindingly iridescent.

           And off in the murky distance, the outline of a gigantic, drifting cone.

           This sea hadn’t existed for over 400 million years.

-------

           “When I snap my fingers, you will return to the waking world.”

           On cue, I opened my eyes. The hypnotist stared at me, his face sweaty. His assistant had her phone out, poised to make a call.

           “You should have told me you are an epileptic!” he started.

           “What?”

           “When you were in the trance – you slumped down, you were making faces. When I spoke to you, it was like you couldn’t understand me. You tried to speak and a noise like an animal came out! Do you remember anything?”

           “Yeah, I… I was in an ocean. Like the one in my dreams, only I could see it clearly this time.”

           The hypnotist stared at me, chewing his lip. “Can you describe this ocean?”

           “Shallow, lots of light coming through the water. It was full of extinct creatures.” If I concentrated, I could picture it clearly.

           “Extinct creatures – perhaps a manifestation of your oneness with all life, past and present –”

           “No, no, a real ocean with an ecosystem that’s been extinct for millions of years. Like the fossil record came alive, like I travelled back in time or something.”

           He and his assistant exchanged glances. “How are you feeling now?”

           “Okay – a little loopy. It’s been a while since I’ve eaten.”

           He motioned to his assistant. She put down her phone, dug in her purse, handed me a candy bar.

           “I’ve never seen a case like yours,” he said. “If you’re willing, I’d like to see you after tonight’s show. There are a few things I can try that might make sense of this.”

-------

           The hypnotist’s assistant walked me down to the hotel restaurant; I think she was afraid I would have another episode on the way. Once I had eaten, I stretched out on a couch in the lobby, but didn’t sleep. If I let my mind wander, I could see subdued colors at the edges of my vision, could feel tentacles drifting loosely around me.

           The hypnosis show was over around 10 pm. When the last of the audience had filtered out, I went in for my second appointment.

-------

           “You are completely safe and at peace. You are alone in a comfortable room. No one who enters this room can harm you.”

           “Okay.” In my mind’s eye, the room looked a lot like the hypnotist’s hotel room.

           “There is a knock on the door. It is the source of the visions you’ve been having.”

           There was water outside the window, ocean water. A school of finless, heavy-headed fish swam by.

           “Remember: nothing that enters this room can harm you. You are completely safe. You open the door and invite your guest inside.”

           I did just that.

           “What do you see?”

           “It’s – it’s an ammonoid. No, it’s an older species. An Ordovician nautiloid.” Awake, I might have been scared. But in the trance it was no worse than coming face to face with a noisy neighbor. Big eyes, with square pupils like a goat’s, stared at me over a mass of gently swaying tentacles; behind them, a shell curved away in a loose spiral. It drifted in, swimming through the room as if still in the water.

           “You are completely safe. You can ask it any question you want.”

           So I did. “What are you?”

           The creature’s eyes turned purple. On the mantle covering the end of its shell, a rippling hounds-tooth pattern appeared.

           “It’s changing color. I think – I think it’s trying to communicate.”

           “You are one with your guest. You feel its thoughts and feelings as your own.”

           He was right. Desire to be understood. Identity. The colors, each with a concept attached to them.

           “It’s the name of its species,” I realized. “Purple is happy, blessed. The other pattern – it’s more complex. I don’t quite get it. It’s one of the Blessed Somethings.” Another wash of thought. “It has a question for me.”

           “What is the question?”

           “It wants to know if I’m – if I’m a squid? A nautiloid? No, it’s asking if I’m a person, like a sentient being. Yes, yes I am. Are you?”

           A pale blue swirl of annoyance. Of course I am.

           “You can ask your guest any question.”

           I mulled it over. “How did you get here? Inside my head, I mean.”

           In response, a riot of colors and patterns.

           “I don’t understand. Can you show me?”

           One long, smooth feeler reached out to the window and touched the glass. I followed it and looked out.

           The seaweed was gone, and most of the algal mat. All the coral had turned gray. Overhead, the surface of the water creaked and groaned: ice. The sea was cold and sour.

           “Ordovician extinction,” I said.

           Death. Empty shells. Only the mindless drift-feeders were left.

           The new fracture had been near the top edge of the Ordovician shale. “You were trapped there. We let you out.”

           Affirmation. Confused affirmation.

           “What do you want?”

           The colors turned muddy. It had no idea; it hadn’t asked for any of this.

           “Can I talk to you again sometime?”

           Affirmation, and relief.

-------

           There were six days left in my vacation. I decided to spend them learning to meditate.

           The hypnotist offered several theories about what was going on, mainly “past life regression” and “ancestral memories.” My theory, and the one I was going with, was that we had somehow turned loose an ancient ghost, and I was being haunted. Actually, it wasn’t all that frightening once I came to that conclusion. The whole thing had been accidental; far from being malicious, the thing in my head seemed apologetic when I told it all the trouble it had caused.

           It wasn’t hard to reach a state of mind where I could talk to my guest, as I’d started to call it. Before the flight home, we’d even worked out a way to share space in my waking mind without causing problems, and my strange dreams had stopped. The biggest hurdle was communication. My guest used a visual language of colors and patterns; emotions and simple nouns and verbs were easy, but more complicated concepts tended to get lost in translation. Playing around with the paint program on my computer, I found out I could transcribe our conversations… sort of. And when I got home, I pulled out my fossil collection to show it.

           Stone. I was showing my guest a fossil ammonite shell. When I closed my eyes, I held it with tentacles instead of fingers, turning it over and examining it. Old. Very old.

           “Millions of years younger than you. From the Jurassic period.”

           City-builders, too?

           “What?”

           Nautiloids, cities, construction. Descendants build, maybe?

           I sat back, mulling over the images and color-words. “Wait – you build cities?”

           Not self. Too small. Nautiloid-kind, city-builders. City-dwellers.

           “City-builders, like a civilization? 400 million years ago, in the ocean?”

           Annoyance and confusion. How was this a question? It was surprised enough that I was a land-dweller.

           “We never found evidence of intelligent life before us – none that we recognized.”

           Confusion. Denial. It wasn’t possible, there had been so many of them all over the world.

           “Maybe we didn’t know what we were looking at. Or maybe… it’s been almost half a billion years. Not much survives that long.”

           Denial. Denial. But then: Understanding. Yes, time eats all.

           Red was the color of Nautiloid grief. Red like an ancient sunset filled my mind for the rest of the evening.

-------

           “Will you show me?” I asked one day. “I want to know about them. About your kind, what they were like.”

           I closed my eyes and saw them. My guest’s family, or something like a family. They were the group that had raised it, but none of them were genetically related. Many weren’t even the same species; as I saw more and asked questions, I learned that my guest was one of several intelligent nautiloid species. It showed me straight cones like wizards’ hats; loose curlicues; tight curlicues; talkative, half-naked little things like cuttlefish darting around. Not only had they existed at the same time, but they used the same color languages, lived and worked in mixed groups, raised their young together. Their civilization was founded around the idea that each species was necessary to the lives of the others.

           My guest showed me things it had seen, things it had heard of. The civilization of the nautiloids had lasted nearly a million years, in all its various iterations and divisions. I saw shining cities of gel and silica stretching up the walls of continental shelves; I saw the ocean floor vents around which their technology centered. Household items of cast cement and water-fired clay, delicate metallurgy that had long since corroded away to nothing. They had domesticated the giant drifting orthocones, they hunted the arthropods that tried to prey on them. They had learned to live in all corners of the ocean and at all depths. They had even begun to explore the barren, alien land.

           But then the cold had come. And not every species had been able to weather it.

           Food animals disappeared first. Then disease began to spread as hunger and cold took their toll. Those that lived in the shallow reefs suffered most. Attempts to build shelters were too late; within a few years, whole segments of society were extinct.

           Symbiosis. If the surface-people do not farm, the depths-people cannot make. If the egg-raisers do not nurture, the city-makers cannot build.

           “Did anybody make it through?”

           Unknown. Maybe. Not self, but maybe others.

-------

           They had a written language, if you can call it that. My guest taught me. Strands of colored fiber, knotted, strung with shells and beads. We had to make a lot of substitutions; some of the modern materials weren’t exactly right. But a nautiloid would have found it readable. My nautiloid did.

           I would sit up late into the night, stringing yarn together while my guest dictated. It was a book, but it felt like a rosary, like a prayer that could be handled. Do not forget us. We lived. We mattered.

           I had gotten used to my guest. It had a name for me; I don’t know what it meant, but it looked like dark blue tie-dye with a spray of stars. I had a name for it: Shelby Squidsworth. We would talk about geology, the species that had come after the nautiloids, what might come after humanity. It was fascinated by life on land.

           When the book was finished, we celebrated with a trip to the beach.

           Descendants? It wanted to know. I sat on the sand, drying in the sun.

           “Your descendants, you mean? Do you have any?”

           Maybe. An image of my Jurassic-era ammonite. All stone, maybe. All empty.

           “There are still creatures like you today.” I concentrated on an image of a nautilus, of squid and octopi. “They’re not as smart as you guys, not in a city-building, history-recording sort of way. Not that we know of. But they might get there.”

Maybe. Images of its family group; it missed them.

I dug my toes through the sand. “Did your people believe in an afterlife?”

           Yes. A whirl of colors; I didn’t grasp the meaning, but it seemed to comfort my guest. I wondered why it was with me and not there; quietly, I hoped, but it noticed.

           No burial. No rites.

           “If you got a proper funeral, would you be able to rest?”

           Maybe. Hope.

           “Tell me what I need to do.”

-------

           400 million years ago, when the nautiloids laid their dead to rest, they would separate the body from the shell. In deep-water countries, the shell would be painted and displayed by the family group; in shallow waters, where my guest was from, it was floated on the surface or pushed onto land, to dry and crumble in the sun. The body was ritually eaten by family and close friends, so that their loved one could remain with them in a way and strengthen them.

           Old custom. Dawn-of-time custom.

           “My people don’t really approve of cannibalism.”

           Amusement. Different species. Have comfort.

           I bought a big ceramic shell online, and about a pound of calamari from the store. It was as close as I could get; the spirit of the thing was what mattered. I ate the calamari alone, in silence. I had the sense that my guest ate, too, for all the other nautiloids who had died alone. Then, with the ceramic shell on a little raft I’d built, I drove to the beach and waded out past the surf.

           “Do you think humans and nautiloids go to the same afterlife?”

           Maybe. Hope.

           “I’ll see you later, then. Godspeed, good friend.”

           I laid a garland of knotted yarn over the shell: a nautiloid benediction, written out. I knew a few of the words humans use, and I said those as well. Then I pushed the raft off, away from the shore.

           When I climbed out of the water, I was alone in my head.

-------

           “You’re different,” Greg said. It was my first day back at the site. “You have a good vacation?”

“Yeah. I had to attend a funeral right at the end, though.”

“Man.” Greg winced. “Family?”

“A friend.”

“That’s rough.”

“It was time. And the service was just the way my friend wanted.”

“Timing still sucks.” Greg shuffled. “Oh hey, you’ll like this: the museum was running an exhibit on ancient sea life. I had my daughter last weekend, so I took her to see it.” He handed me a flier. “She wants to do her school project on these nautilus fossils. I told her you could help her with the research.”

“I don’t know how much I can help, but I’ll try.” I smiled at the picture on the flier.

My friend’s book was coiled neatly in my backpack; I had already started the translation. I doubted most people would want to read it, and even fewer would believe it. But it would be there, at least for a while: a faint, brief echo of a people long gone. A chance for them to be remembered.

           I can only hope that when my time comes, someone will offer me the same kindness.