#After Effects for animating everything else + compositing

[maareyas]

a little animation I made as my contribution to the Kaleidoscopic Absolution @silverfanzine! [Go download it for FREE here!]

I think he should be allowed to just chill and let time pass by :^]

[marshmallowgoop]

My @heishinvalentineexchange2025 gift for the immensely kind and patient @caliowl333, who graciously allowed me to participate with a video instead of fic or art! (And wrote me a 20,000+-word piece in exchange?! Oh my goodness!)

Song is the SadBois & NIO Remix of "Other Side" by ILLENIUM, featuring Vera Blue, which you can listen to in full here. Ramblings under the cut!

When I first began seriously video editing, I didn't think much about composition or how well clips flowed together—lyric sync was arguably my main goal, and anime pieces were thrown onto the timeline pretty much purely based on that.

Now, I put much more care into the very visual elements—the effects, the match cuts, the dazzle. But in the process, I fear that I'm losing what audiences found engaging about my early videos: the actual ideas.

So, for this AMV, I aimed to put the most effort into a strong concept. The titular "other side" is a world without the Black Organization, where Shinichi can freely be himself. Heiji is waiting for that world, where he no longer has to lie and pat Conan's head and pretend that they're not peers, and Shinichi is dreaming of that world because he's always dreamed of working with somebody just like him. The thought of meeting Heiji someday, when he first learns of his existence (Episode 490), fills Shinichi with excitement. He does a lot on his own, but he also loves working on a team—and doing so, being with people, sharing his enthusiasm with others—is what he wants more than anything.

(Heck, there's even a piece of official art called "Conan's Dream Vacation" where he dreams of playing beach volleyball with Heiji and Ran and Kazuha—as himself.)

Sure, you could argue that Shinichi simply enjoys working with Heiji as Conan because Heiji treats him as he truly is. But the times he spends as Shinichi with Heiji point to the fact that no, he just really likes deducting with Heiji. Eagerness, big smiles—in "The Scarlet School Trip" (Episodes 927-928), involving Heiji in the case of the day takes precedence over solving it himself, as he immediately shares what he knows and even jostles Heiji awake when he learns more, before doing anything else, because there's no way he's going to solve it alone. He doesn't want to.

But as things are, being Shinichi is pain. He takes an antidote, but it's poison. Being Conan is what's become "normal" and "comfortable," but Conan can't be what Shinichi is to Heiji. Conan isn't strong enough to catch Heiji when he's falling. Conan can't save him from bullets. Conan can't even talk to him naturally without hiding and secrets. His dreams have become nightmares.

And it can't be easy for Heiji, either. To see someone you care about suffering. To know that Shinichi is in a dangerous situation—and involving himself in it applies that same danger to himself. It'd make sense for Heiji to walk away and wash his hands of it... but Shinichi really wants him to stay. Despite everything, he wants Heiji to stay. For that someday when they can be true partners "on the other side."

I tried to say other things in here, too. Shinichi cementing himself as a precious person to Heiji by countering his insecurities with a one truth prevails and this isn't a competition and you don't have to prove yourself to me. Heiji finding Shinichi even after becoming Conan because he'll always find Shinichi, no matter what, because he's dreaming of being "on the other side," too (even if he didn't know it initially). Shinichi pushing Heiji away with coldness because maybe it's selfish to want him to stay, maybe it's cruelty to involve him, but he can't deny that he cares, that he wants Heiji with him, that he doesn't want to do this on his own.

And while I maybe still went a little ham on the effects, I do hope my ideas are the strongest of all! "No effects" versus effects comparison can be found here!

Thank you again for all your hard work organizing this event, Cali!!

[wolverinescheeks]

💛💙Happy Wolverine Wednesday💙💛

Unfortunately I don't have an analysis or headcanon cuz I didn't have time to work on anything (work and adult responsibilities are a drag😓) BUT instead I'm just gonna talk about my favorite Wolverine comic issue so far of all of the ones I read: Weapon X by Barry Windsor-Smith‼️‼️

Train of thought, panel screenshots, and SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THIS ISSUE YET under the cut...

(I'm half typing this half rereading the comic to remind myself of certain parts but I'll try to go in chronological order so bear with me)

The first thing I loved about this comic was the way the panels were organized in the prologue. You get an idea of what Logan was doing and how he was living before he was kidnapped which parallels what the scientists were doing before they took him. These panels along with Logan's horrific nightmares and the cruel experiments of the scientists gave me an overall unsettling feeling that also made me really curious to keep reading.

The next thing I loved was the writing all throughout. There wasn't more or less writing than any other usual comic issue but the choice of not having an omniscient narrator using third person POV and instead having the characters tell the story was amazing🤩 This is because the characters only really know what they know and nothing more so you get to experience everything that happens with them and know how they feel about it. (Kinda unrelated but there's even text boxes that are cut off by the panel borders to emphasize when a character gets cut off by someone else or something happening all of a sudden). A side note about this is how I think they purposely didn't put Logan's thoughts and speech until a bit later to really push the idea of him being an "animal" while he was being experimented on and the effects of it on his cognition. An example of this is how his first spoken words were garbled and made up of mostly simple words and phrases. A side side note about the writing I love is how they make you feel confused and like you're losing your mind with Logan near the end after he wakes up from his dream/hallucination of killing the scientists.

The third thing I loved was the characterization. It's made somewhat clear the roles each of the three main scientists play in the story throughout the beginning: the professor being the most cruel/antagonizing to Logan, Dr. Cornelius being on the professor's side but still trying not to hurt Logan unnecessarily, and Carol Hines being sympathetic and caring about Logan's wellbeing.

The fourth thing was the graphic detail put into the descriptions of what Logan was going through. His pain being described in the most chilling ways possible really evoked emotional reactions from me (I felt so bad for him I almost cried a couple times😭).

Finally as an artist I absolutely adore the artstyle and just how much it pushes the feeling of fear, unease, and discomfort. The bright almost cartoonish colors contrast heavily against the extremely dark shadows that aren't overdoing it and leaves just enough to your imagination. The inks themselves are so scary (the panels with his skeleton covered in spikes or when he was dreaming being chased and overtaken by his "mutantism") and detailed it felt like I was reading a horror comic the entire time. I just know that if I read this comic when I was much younger it would've given me nightmares for sure😭

To end this post below is my favorite page and one of the best pages in all Wolverine comics imo in terms of inks, colors, composition, and text as well as accurately portraying just how deadly powerful Logan is💖💖💖

[3liza]

Fired on Mars is alright, I especially appreciate any that it's (so far) non-space opera sci fi on a major network, an extreme rarity, especially since the Expanse turned into another ghost alien fuckaround because American audiences are too stupid to deal with realistic science fiction and think "Star Wars" qualifies. but it's really struggling as an "adult animation" production. I'm not sure if this was pitched as a live action or not but it doesn't have any reason to be animated except budget. not sure what else Max network has going on these days but you can't help but see a real show with proper production sort of superimposed on top of the simplistic and frankly boring animated backdrop. that's a real shame. they tried to split the difference by styling the drawings very buttoned-down, but it has none of the design sense of even Rick and Morty and it isn't funny enough for the writing to stand on its own, so theres just not a lot to hold onto.

the serious plot that kicks in at episode 5 reminds me a hell of a lot of the recent walking simulator, The Invincible, an adaptation of Stanislav Lem's story by the same name, with a really good surface of Mars sequence and excellent soundtrack, so I hope that's the direction the show is taking now.

it makes me think about the actual logistics and expense of filming something like this with practicals and some CGI. one of the benefits of doing something like realistic space station or mars colony stories is that you can build an incredibly cramped set and film everything on it, Cube-style, because these colonies would be modular and extremely cramped, just like NASA infrastructure is now. you could really go crazy styling a very beautiful set or soundstage that was only a few connected rooms and corridors and then just recycle them intelligently. outdoor shots in the local desert, composite out any plant life, roads, or gas stations, grey out the sky. Fired on Mars has blue sky and big cumulus clouds and initially I wasnt sure if that's referencing some sort of atmospheric control by the colony or if they screwed up or if it was focus group/producer meddling, but I looked it up and the actual Martian sky is more complicated than I assumed:

Since Mars is roughly 1.5 astronomical units from the Sun, the amount of light on the surface is about half that on our planet. Under low illumination conditions, our eyes shift sensitivity towards blue because we change from using color-sensitive “cone” cells to color-blind “rod” cells. This is known as the Purkinje effect. Hence, the first astronaut to land on Mars would probably describe its sky as even bluer than one might expect.

so anyway I think the show is ok. I stopped after watching episode 5 to write this, since this episode has taken the show in a much more interesting direction than I saw in the previous four. maybe it'll pleasantly surprise me

[skeksismars]

Watching Uzumaki episode 2 right now and I had to pause because...I can't...did anyone else also notice how cheap the animation looks? The characters barely move, they barely emote and the level of detail of the first episode is completely lost.

Look at these shots of Kirie from ep 1 and ep 2

In episode 1 we have an ombre effect on the hair, the hair is redrawn each frame and shifts costantly, in the second episode her expression is flat and glassy, her eyes look unfocused and her face looks flat

And this is Kirie from a few seconds after, the drawing style has completely shifted and the level of detail is higher, did they just not check the shots for consistency??? What is this???

WHERE IS THE DETAIL IN HIS FACE?!? Where are the raindrops? He's supposed to be sopping wet and he's supposed to look disgusting! We're supposed to feel unsettled by him!

Oh my god, I kept watching and it just gets worse and worse, and they're cramming six storylines into one episode??? I wanted a full episode for the snails, that's one of the most horrific things in Uzumaki!!

S-S-Shuichi? What did they do to you???

We can talk about the animation quality dropping, but shot composition is not animation. WHAT IS THIS ABOMINATION. This isn't a frame, THE WHOLE SHOT IS LIKE THIS, WHYYYYY, WHO APPROVED THIS????? I don't know if you understand, but this is way worse than the animation looking cheap, this means that nobody checked the shots, they all got approved at first try, they tried to make the episode as quickly as possible. And it also means that who made the episode was either underpayed and overworked or they were...incompetent (I'm sorry but I'm veering for the latter, this shot proves it, why why why would you frame a shot this way)

I also want to point out the use of wide shots

They're used to give more rythm to a sequence, instead of using always the same shots that would give the feeling of stillness, BUT! In this case they're another indicator of cheapness! In wide shots usually there would be more things to animate, but in an anime, where the focus is fully on the protagonists, usually everything else is still, and that means less animation required! In both these shots (I would have put more but Tumbr said no) the only thing that moves is the characters' mouths and these shots don't add anything to help convey better the feeling of the scene!!! They're there only to give rythm to the sequence but they're actually out of place! In the second shot Katayama-kun ISN'T EVEN FRAMED WELL! He stops mid shot and is covered by the girl in the midground!!! I hope I'm conveying just how bad the production is in this episode, and I don't have much hopes for the future episodes.

I thought about it a bit more and, just talking about the animation, if I had to churn out 50 shots per week and I was told that they would be immediately approved I wouldn't care about the quality, so that's a factor, of course I can't tell 100% what the skill level of the people that worked on this episode is, but that's a theory I feel like pointing out

Ok I finished the episode and in the credits there are two key animators named and the rest of the animation is entrusted to "Phoenix animation holdings" and some other studios that are not featured in the first episode credits, so yeah, the animation for this episode was entirely exported to another, cheaper studio 🙂, the industry strikes again! 😃😃

[nanomooselet]

My Brother's Keeper (I)

So, uh, I have seen the complaints that Stampede is "poorly-written". Often enough, really, to get... somewhat overly bent out of shape about it. Stampede was my entry into the story and I may have mentioned once or twice that I like it. You know. Just a little. This is not to say it's without its flaws, but it's technically very skilful, at least to my eyes. It's just… skilful in roughly twenty-two minute chunks, so it crams a whole lot into those chunks.

Vash tells Wolfwood he can "see [kindness] in his eyes" half an hour tops after hitting him with a truck. It's assumed that they're relying on previous characterisation of the two to carry this beat.

They're not.

See, animated shows or films (and definitely in the case of Stampede) aren't only written. They're story-boarded, rendered, scored etc. and all the parts interlock with the other parts. It has to be taken as a whole: spoken, written, visual, musical, situational, compositional. These are twelve instalments of a single story where everything in it develops, comments on, or reflects what lies at the work's thematic heart, but you have to figure out how. It's not going to explain it to you. If the relationship between two characters appears strange, that's because there's more to it. And whenever you see something in it that visually echoes something else in it, get out your pasteboard and stick in two thumbtacks connected with string because the show's letting you know it's important.

Now, because I viewed Stampede first, my reaction to this part was very much like Wolfwood's ("???") but the more of the show I watched, the more sense it started to make, and the more I appreciated what it did for Vash's characterisation. Having since read the manga, in my opinion the boys aren't at all interacting like they're accessing past-life memories. Vash is too busy silently reeling over Jeneora Rock and dreading his confrontation with Knives to keep up the whacky act that the older WW pierced. Wolfwood is too young and trapped by his own hurt to empathise by seeing through Vash's false smiles.

There's something else going on with these two, and if you think carefully, it's clear what it is. There were two loved ones that Vash lost tragically early in life, and we can assume it's not Rem he's thinking of.* The heart of this series is "the song of the brothers."

Whose side are you on?

I have to choose.

Lo and behold, through that lens the character interaction made a whole lot more sense. And I want to talk about how.

So, according to the show's language, right from his very first appearance Wolfwood has a connection with Knives.

In the ensuing scenes/episodes, it was then clear to me that Wolfwood isn't just connected to Vash's brother. He's a representative, serving as a sort of understudy while Vash journeys to confront the real thing. Anything and everything Wolfwood does or says is with that role in mind, because he's either playing along or fighting against it. It dictates his development as the show unfolds. He's got a job and he'll do it, but which of the twins' agendas is he ultimately serving as he does? Even he can't yet be sure.

This is a significant change. It has a huge effect on Wolfwood's characterisation; it's why he comes across as less confident, more surly - he's rebellious, but conflicted and immature. In the manga, the first time we meet Nick he's (mostly) his own man and he (mostly) makes his own decisions. While he isn't honest about his agenda, he is trying to temper Vash's idealism for honest and well-meaning reasons, albeit in a bitchy way. When he reveals himself, throwing down the coin halves, you feel the man is protesting too much so it'll make what's coming easier on Vash. Despite how deeply the two came to love each other they couldn't communicate their forgiveness, but Wolfwood is at his core a good man first who lost his way, then finds it again in Vash. **

Again by contrast in Stampede, Nick's identity isn't his own to shape (yet). He standing in for Knives, and he doesn't much like it. He does know more about the actual shape of things than the reporters - for instance, he doesn't bat an eyelash when Brad mentioned how long they've known Vash. So he can readily talk with Vash and test his convictions. They basically both know each other's biggest secrets already, so they don't have to make a whole production of getting to know each other.

But standing in for Knives is also why the introductory aw-look-he's-nice-really scene is so quickly revealed to be staged. Knives is the primary antagonist, not a neutral agent - he's the most dangerous and personal opponent the protagonists face. He's also cruel, controlling and manipulative. His "help" is anything but. Any gift he seems to freely give, like a protector, will either extract an awful cost down the line or have some hidden purpose (if he isn't "solving" a problem he himself created). Approach with caution.

(You know how Nick did something no one asked him to do then hit Vash, Meryl and Roberto with a massive bill for it like a dick? You know how he then violently rescued them from a situation he himself engineered so they'd have gratitude? Those are Knives's most basic manipulation tactics, when he isn't just hurling verbal abuse: I help you/I love you so I'm entitled to take this from/do this to you. Wolfwood is causing problems on purpose by acting out because it's funny, and knows he won't get whatever he's demanding. Knives thinks he's helping, and rarely hears when he's told "no".

Also, both the English and the Japanese have Roberto calling Wolfwood someone who kills with a smile on his face. He doesn't, really, but we have met someone else who does.)

That means like every other character, Wolfwood isn't quite himself. Not yet.

And that's actually awesome. Because it speaks to who the other characters are - specifically, about Vash.

(Part II)

(Part III)

(Part IV)

(Part V)

(Part VI)

(Part VII)

* OR COULD IT BE, as inevitably assumed on tumblr when two men are in proximity, unspoken romantic desire????

I'm not saying it can't be a factor, but it doesn't explain why they start having discussions over their principles like they've known each other for years. Or at least, to me it doesn't. As I've said I don't ship them. If you disagree, it's totally fine! Hear me out and decide for yourself. There's no reason to believe both can't be true.

** By what's coming, I mean the same development that eventually comes to every iteration of Wolfwood. You know the one. And by "they loved each other" I don't mean necessarily mean romantically. My personal belief is that there were mutual feelings along those lines, but they're both too emotionally reticent to acknowledge them and might not have regardless. But that's just me!

[watercolorsam-arts]

Why the Minecraft Movie looks so bad

Okay, let’s see if I can make this work

Hi, I’m Watercolor, currently a student learning animation and visual effects. I’ve got some more technical explanations for why exactly the trailer looks god awful

I’m gonna do my best to explain this in simple terms, but if I don’t explain something very good, let me know and I’ll explain more. Alright, this is gonna be a long post

Starting off with the obsession with backlighting. See how it doesn’t really match the environmental lighting? That’s one of the major things that makes it look so weird to a lot of people. It could have been done to better distinguish the actors from the background, but it does that a little too well and makes them look way too out of place. The environment has a very nice constant (most likely singular) light source, which is most likely an HDRI.

An HDRI (or high dynamic range image) informs the animation software on how the scene should be lit, and is often a weird panoramic image of whatever physical area you want to replicate.

In a reverse case, adding a CG character into a real set, you could take an HDRI of the physical set, and use it to apply similar lighting. Adjustment will most likely have to be hand adjusted by the lighting team (and tbh they add a lot of extra lights in anyway. It just needs to look right) but it’s a fantastic starting point for the compositing and lighting teams.

However, the McM’s live set has way different lights set up then what is seen in the environment.

Here, for example, the live set is most likely being lit by standard 3 point lighting, which are not only the wrong color (the lighting on the environment is much more yellow) but also washes out any shadows that would help define the actors. If this movie wasn��t obsessed with backlighting, you could fix that by lighting the actors and environment from the front, but because the sun is in the back, they have to make the front of the actors unnaturally brighter to see them more properly. I have a slight idea on why the kid in red looks especially “photoshopped” in, and it’s mostly because his hoodie doesn’t have a similar reflectiveness to everyone else’s outfit, and his hair is a more neutral color, causing the highlight to be even more washed out. Also, while we’re here, the cube is a physical prop, but it was not lit up during filming, and all the light output was tossed on after. And it’s really inconsistent and honestly, lazy. For the most part they just hit it with a blue blur effect in post, it doesn’t actually cast any light.

Another major issue is the color difference between the actors and the environment. The color balancing on the actors is particularly garbage, they’re somehow desaturated while also being too saturated, I don’t know how they managed that. But the technical issue on why it looks odd, is because the physical camera cannot physically pick up the same vibrancy as the “camera” in the CG world. You might have seen an example of this when trying to take a photo with your phone, especially of a very colorful event like the sunset. It’s also why “ugly sonic” looked particularly out of place, he was 10x more saturated than anything else around him.

Having the actors on a very low effort green screen stage also completely ruins any chance of getting the proper ambient light or ambient occlusion.

Ambient occlusion is basically the bounce light from other objects in your scene, gamers might know this as a form of ray tracing (ray tracing is live changes in ambient occlusion, games without ray tracing bake in ambient occlusion to get a similar result)

When everything is CG, (again art style aside) looks pretty darn good actually!

I attempted some edits to see if anything could make it look better (left is original, right is mine), and I don’t think proper lighting or anything could actually fix what this movie has wrong with it. They should have made the whole thing animated, I don’t think any amount of bullying would fix this, the studio basically has to scrap the actors, and make new CG characters from scratch in the same style as the rest of the world.

All of this is not the fault f the animators, or any of the vfx team, they did their absolute best with what they had, this is 100% the fault of the higher ups on this project. I have no idea how this good this far into production without ANYONE saying that it was a bad idea (Either that, or a lot of people got fired, which is unfortunately a likely possibility)

[scattered-irises]

Thoughts on that new Rose of Versailles movie

Overall: 2/5 (2 stars for animation, 0 for story)

I've read the manga, bonus manga chapters, watched the OG anime series and that godawful live action from 1979. This film basically functioned as a powerpoint slideshow for all of the above. Here are my unorganized thoughts below. (Spoilers!)

First off, who was this film made for???

People who have never seen Rose will be utterly lost and confused by the rapid fire plot. People who have seen the anime will be pissed off by the stuff that was cut out. People who want to relive nostalgia will be rewarded by the stunning visuals! The story? Not so much, unfortunately. Time to go back to my fifth rewatch of Lady Oscar \^p^/

I remember how HYPED I was for this film when it was announced in 2022! Then it went quiet and I thought we were doomed :') I was so happy to see it come back! However, when I watched it, it felt...disappointing.

Everything feels incredibly watered down. This entire film feels like 1700s Versailles. It's beautiful for the first 15 minutes and then you realize that everyone is taking dumps wherever they want and the people outside are starving.

What really got my goat was the reduction of the ENTIRE DUBARRY ARC into a less than 2 minute cameo in the music video La Vie en Rose. WHY DOES DUBARRY KEEP ON BEING WRONGED??

Reducing DuBarry's arc to a non-speaking cameo took away most of the younger Antoinette's character development. We learned so much about Antoinette when she was pitted against DuBarry! We don't need a whole music video about Antoinette enjoying Versailles through rose colored glasses. In the film, she isn't even mentioned, nor is her exile even featured. Antoinette just runs by her in the music video and that's IT.

Speaking of music videos... Music can be used to fast forward the plot or pad the runtime. This film does both. Badly. The music videos are mainly used as the bookends to "chapters." And there's so many of them! You cannot cram an entire arc into a music video and expect it to effectively convey the story! You cannot glean natural character development through a 2 minute music video OH MY GOD

I personally dislike modern pop being mixed into historical pieces. It really grinds my gears. All of the music videos feature pretty modern compositions.

The rest of the film is mostly quiet, which is kind of weird.

Now to a completely different point: there's so much crying that it cheapens the concept. Characters usually cry only when things hit them the hardest. There is so much happening here, combined with so much crying that it just becomes cheap in the end. You can't bring yourself to care about Oscar breaking down and crying in front of her troops because I swear to god, less than 10 minutes ago, someone else was crying.

Louis the XVI is an afterthought. He has like 2 speaking scenes. His and Antoinette's children just magically appear and the awkwardness of their marriage is barely explored. This film bit off more than it could chew. If it focused on just 1-2 arcs, I think it would have been a lot better.

Also, we have Oscar's mom. She has 1 speaking scene :') and we never see Oscar's 6 older sisters. I'm glad we expanded a bit more on Oscar's family??? I guess???

Rosalie gets a 5 minute cameo. That's it. That drove me nuts. No mention of her sister Charlotte.

THERE IS NO JEANNE AND THE DIAMOND NECKLACE ARC AUUUUGHHH

We end the story after Oscar dies and the rest of the events is a literal historical slideshow as the credit plays. Womp womp

There are some scenes that felt like it was from a better film, like the storming of the Bastille. I really wish we could have gotten a Sailor Moon Crystal-like remake. Although, the Crystal movies (ESPECIALLY the most recent one) leave a lot to be desired.

Some positive points...

I liked how they rewrote Andre and Oscar's intimate scene! It felt a lot more consensual and more representative of their relationship. It was well choreographed and non-explicit. I know. The bar is in hell. I'm really grasping at straws here.

The animation was gorgeous! It really gave me nostalgia. I loved the sparkly eyes.

The costumes were more historically accurate. I found that very pleasing.

I loved the callback to the anime's OP when Oscar chose to become a child of Mars. The art-nouveau-inspired style of the "Believe in My Way" music video.

Overall, it was mostly all style, no substance and it kind of broke my heart because of that :( I think they tried to put in as much as they could, but sacrificed the depth of each arc in doing so.

Edit: Oh my god do not fucking touch Onisama he if you're gonna treat it like this I will turn into a werewolf

[chuuyadelune]

now that i have recovered from the emotional shock of seeing *that* akutagawa scene from chapter 88 animated in HD 4K (i thought i’d have another week to emotionally prepare myself LMAO), i just wanna be a little bit of a nerd and say that i really liked the cinematography/composition this episode.

in particular, i really enjoyed the anime’s decision to draw visual parallels between this fight and previous fights (in particular, the fight against francis, which is important because it is the first time they worked together).

after all, this fight is the culmination of everything they’ve done together. from the combining of their abilities, coming to an understanding with each other, realising the potential of beast-beneath the moonlight-rashoumon… bringing back similar shots that were used in previous fights is SUPER effective at highlighting the parallels and how far they’ve come, in my humble opinion.

here are a few things i noticed:

- first of all, both of them activating their abilities one after another is an explicit nod to S2’s fight;

- the confrontation/conversation in the hallway from S2 (to an extent! they’re on the same sides, which caught my eye);

- akutagawa blowing up the engine room on the ship, and kyouka doing the same during the first fight between him and atsushi (S1);

- and a similar angle being used for black tiger claws / koukko zessou as a nod to the fight in the S3 finale.

the parallels — though maybe less explicit, *are* still there in the manga? like, the entire “structure” of the fight so to speak is very similar to the francis fight in S2 — akutagawa finding atsushi, taking place on a(n air)ship, breaking away from the fight to strategise before confronting the final boss (then, francis, and now, fukuchi) is undeniably a nod to that fight? i love that this is given its due in the anime as well.

another thing about the cinematography this episode i loved was them using the clock as being the indicator of fukuchi’s fuckass space-time sword doing its thing. that was a really nice touch, in my opinion; the cuts in between were jarring and disorienting and really helped put us into sskk’s shoes.

and as for the background design alongside the clock itself — there were a couple of things about them i enjoyed:

- the number of floors / levels of the ship in the back (5, as a nod to the five ways an angel decays, the DOA)

- the blue of the clock is meant to be reminiscent of fukuchi’s sword, i’d argue, with the way both of them pops out of the sunset/orangey-red lighting

- the clock’s design being super ornate and gold plated reminds me a *bit* of a tabernacle (where they keep unused eucharist in a church) — and thus brings up connotations of sacrifice. that white bridge-thing beneath the clock as well reminds me a lot of an altar, too (see the image above the last to see what exactly i’m referring to, because image limit)

okay, yeah, that one might be a bit of a stretch, sure. but its placement as being above them, combined with the two tables/boxes to the left and right of the ship’s bow (which looks very much like a cross, btw) gives it a distinctly religious, altar-kinda feel, i’d argue. and crosses have been used in S4 as symbolism as well!

(tbh, there could even be a bit more imagery i’m missing, because — the angels of the DOA refers specifically to the buddhist conception of an angel. i’m not too familiar with buddhist imagery, but i thought that this was worth pointing out regardless!)

the last thing i want to say is that the red and blue symbolism went CRAZY this episode. i don’t have much else to say because it was super obvious — they even reused the same “black tiger claws” shot from S3, after all — but i do wanna point out that the symbolism even went into the carpets. the fucking carpets.

like, the shift: it’s red when akutagawa’s leading the conversation but changes to blue after atsushi’s suggesting of the submersible as a strategy? i mean, i don’t know if this (or anything i’ve said, to be fair) was intentional or not, but it’s a cool detail anyway!

personally, i enjoyed this episode, the action was great, and all of this too was a really neat addition as well! and now… uh. we wait for the chaos to get worse i suppose !? (laughs nervously)

[storiesbyjes2g]

What I've been up to...

So if you remember, I've been quite busy over the past 3 months because of a class I was taking. I promised to show you some of my work, so here are a few of my favorite assignments!

(lots'o pictures and video under the cut)

I took a 3D animation boot camp, and naturally before we started animating we had to learn how to model. The program we learned was Cinema 4D. I know a lot of you have learned Blender, and your first project was making a donut. Well...we had to make a freakin' ramen shop...with the ramen! 😂 I added the textures later once I discovered there was a library, but I didn't quite know how to edit them at the time, so they're not the best choice, but hey. I learned something.

I forgot to grab the pic of the ramen close up. Oh well. All of this was made with basic shapes. Nothing fancy. That comes next.

Next, we learned different modeling methods. The method used in this next pic is called volume modeling. Always sims on the brain lol.

After we got our feet wet with modeling, we moved into materials and "lights, camera, action," which was half the reason I wanted to take the class. I still haven't gotten the hang of lighting, but it's really hard period and will take a while to master. Materials are basically the colors and textures you apply on an object. I didn't make these headphones, but I did make the leather and fabric texture.

You will see these headphones again and again because I could not leave them alone lol.

Before we began the animation portion, we learned one last method of modeling. I won't bore you with the details, but basically taking one element and cloning it a bunch of times until you have something else. For example, we only received one piece of each skyscraper. The buildings were whole, but we only received one of each. We used this cloning method to make an entire city block out of just a few things.

Finally, we got into animating. There two other assignments before this that I did terribly on and I'll never show them to another living soul, especially since animation is part of my job LOL, but I'll show you the animated version of this city. The still image was actually made after the video based on some feedback I got. That's why things look different.

Not my best animation work, but whatever. Still learning!

Alright, by this point we're nearing the finish line. There were some other assignments about composition and what not, but for the most part it was all about animation from here on out. This next one was my favorite one. It was basically putting everything we learned so far (minus modeling) into practice. We had to take any previous project and make a 15 sec commercial/product showcase. You know I had to pick up those headphones! (sound on!!)

I love timing videos to music. It's like the best part!

The next assignment was about camera movements and editing the video in After Effects. I don't have the before pic, but imagine this clip being brighter, a lot less vibrant, and having a cool tone at the beginning.

And finally! The ultimate test! That was the actual name of the project lol. Bring it all together and make something great. I modeled every single thing you see (though not very well LOL. gotta practice!) and created all the materials except the picnic table. It's in no way perfect and I plan to go back and make many edits, but I did it y'all! I've been working on this little by little for the past 3 weeks. Enjoy! (sound on!)

[bluebudgie]

Oh hi. I heard it's gifs tips'n'tricks time.

View this as a little addition to this post I made a while back.

This time I thought I'd take you through my gif making process. It'll be very specific to Photoshop CS6 but maybe some of you will find parts of it helpful regardless.

And since our biggest nemesis appears to be ~The Tumblr 10MB File Size Limit~ I decided to go for the absolute worst premise for a gif: Lots of stupid wobbly particles and gw2 bloom and transparency effects. Because huge gifs love these.

Aah, a horrifying amount of those in this single scene. Perfect!

Let's start with a little timelapse video, and I'll get into the details with screenshots below then.

So this actually went smoother than expected? Not super much fiddling needed in the end, but here's how it went in detail:

Load the raw footage into photoshop.

You can do this in two different ways: What I do is simply drag & drop the video file into the program and it'll open with a video timeline and some rudimentary video editing options.

What you can also do is File -> Import -> Videoframes to Layers and select your source video, which will give you a timeline of separate still image frames instead.

It comes down to preference, I used both methods in the past but nowadays I find the video timeline more intuitive.

Cut the footage to roughly the right length.

From experience I know that most of my gifs are around 3-4 seconds long. This can of course vary depending on different factors. Don't get too attached to the exact seconds you selected, you might have to shave off a bit depending on how evil the file size decides to act.

Optional: Change footage speed

Depending on the gif and its purpose, I slow the footage down. I usually do this for the visual effect (especially nice for showing off animation details) but it also has the practical side effect that it can help with file size. Say you want a gif that loops after 4 seconds. At 100% speed your gif will move at your original framerate (in my case 60 fps); if you slow it down but keep the same length in seconds it'll logically use less frames. That's less data to blow up the size! Yey.

Crop the image.

Now this is probably one of the most crucial parts when it comes to your final file size, and your gif looking nice on tumblr. Since the tumblr dashboard displays images at a width of 540px, you want this to be your absolute minimum image width to ensure a crisp image. If I can, I'll make the gifs larger (I like starting at a minimum of 600px and then reduce the image dimensions if needed).

With that in mind.... choose your image crop wisely.

A "widescreen" image like this will be the most merciful in terms of file size, but might not always be what you want in terms of composition.

Given tumblr's very vertical nature, this kind of approach will look great in posts (if it fits your image composition of course), but at 540px minimum width tends to be a file size monster.

For the gif I'm attempting to make here I opted for a more square approach. The subjects of the scene fill out the image's space nicely, and it's still a nice size for tumblr posts overall. Let's see what the file size will say about this.

Replay your footage after cropping to make sure you didn't accidentally cut off any motion you didn't mean to cut.

Next up: optional colour corrections

I tend to crank up the saturation for gifs way, way more than I ever would for regular screenshots since I find that often the limited web palette can make them look fairly dull. But like everything else so far, this greatly varies depending on the scene you're showing.

Note that colour correction can increase or decrease file size depending on what exactly you're doing. The more different colours you have, the larger your file size will be.

Reduce image dimensions

Since my original video footage was fairly zoomed out, the cropped area only left me 575px of width to begin with. In an earlier attempt (that I absolutely did not fail to capture and therefore had to record the whole thing a second time) I tried to leave it at these dimensions, but the 10MB size limit did not like that so now I knew better and immediately reduced the width to 560px.

Note: After you've changed the video's dimensions it won't let you edit the speed anymore (for some reason), so make sure you've got that settled.

After all the adjustments are done it's time for the moment of truth...

File > Save for Web...

This beautiful window will open and...

Aww almost.

But honestly? That's not bad at all. I've had completely different disasters to deal with in the past (starting somewhere in the mid 20MB, good luck trying to make use of every size-reducing trick you've got up your sleeve).

Before I do any adjustments to shave off the last few KB though, I preview the gif to make sure it loops correctly. I want the Chak to sway seemlessly. Turns out it didn't, so I back out of the window to remove a few frames from the footage. And when I open the "Save for Web" window again....

Well that's anticlimatic. Apparently those few frames were enough to get the file size where I need it. (Note: Sometimes Tumblr likes to be a little b* and pretends your file is too big when you're this close to the 10MB limit. It be like that.)

While my gif journey theoretically ends here, I want to at least show you a few more things that could have helped if I had needed to get the file even smaller.

So this dithering thing I keep making a big deal of...

It can make or break a gif. In my experience this is so, so crucial to the final file size and quality of the gif.

In my own very amateurish words, dithering is a way to emulate colours that aren't actually part of the images colour palette. This is especially needed for in-game transparency effects like fog, glowy stuff, or smooth gradients. And that is part of why I chose this hell scene of all the ley line glow and the typical gw2 bloom that's particularly bad in this area.

PS CS6 offers you three different kinds of dithering techniques: Diffusion, pattern and noise.

My go-to is diffusion dithering, which has adjustable quality levels.

In my opinion it's generally the type of dithering that's often the least noticeable and creates the smoothest looking images. Unfortunately, it's also the one that creates by far the largest file sizes. Another downside is that it doesn't work super well with heavy DoF/fog etc. effects and is prone to really ugly banding, especially visible the more you decrease the quality. It looks awful for this particular scene. (Look at the glow around my asura's headpiece if you don't know what I'm talking about. Or... just the entire background.)

Both noise and pattern dithering will get you smaller file sizes, luckily.

I've never used noise so far (it tends to look messy in my opinion), but pattern gets the job done! Especially for gradient heavy gifs it's a lifesaver. It's definitely more noticeable than the diffusion dithering on static parts of the gif, but it absolutely makes up for it by not having any ugly banding effects. This is also what gave me the neat little 9.99MB file size in comparison to the diffusion dithering's 15.31MB.

Last but not least, if fiddling with the dithering or image dimensions doesn't help you get below that magic 10MB mark...

Limit the colour palette

You can either manually colour edit your image to use less colours for a more artistic approach, or you can let Photoshop limit the palette to its best abilities.

Additionally you can double click each individual colour to replace it how you see fit. (I've done that in the past when Petthri's yellow eye colour got erased and I had to bring it back manually.)

In this gif's example, reducing the palette from 256 to 128 colours has brought the file size down from 9.9 MB to about 8 MB. It can have a big effect, but doesn't always in my experience.

SHOW US THE GODDAMN GIF ALREADY!!!

Not the best quality gif we've ever seen on tumblr, but given the extremely unfavourable source material I think it turned out alright. I have to admit I'm actually surprised it worked at all.

Oh well! This got long (once again). I hope this was at least a little bit helpful to someone out there. Happy gif making!

[bunnymi1k]

i'm gonna make a bit of a masterpost with all my good art here, as i'm officially opening my commissions. i don't expect many requests, but i'm still limiting it to five total for the time being. first come, first serve, but i do have the right to decline for any reason i see fit.

let's get into the do's and don'ts first. it's a bit of a read, but please stick til the end if you're interested

things i WILL draw

ship art, within reason*

original characters

official characters, movies/shows/etc

other people's ocs, with permission!!

furries/anthros

my little pony characters

powerpuff/teen puff art style

chibi characters

nsfw art, but only if you can verify you're 18+!!!! and no underage characters!

portraits of yourself or others in my art style, which is not realism sorry

mild gore or body horror

things i WON'T draw

loli/shota

*ship art of the following: incest, pedophilia, canonically abusive couples, noncon situations

nsfw art of or for minors; unless the character canonically is 18+ at some point in the story, they're off limits. no fanon aged up designs.

mecha/highly robotic designs; it's just not my forte and i would hate to disappoint anyone expecting highly detailed mechanical designs. if you feel it's simplistic enough, we can discuss it further.

nsfw art of full-on animal characters, or anthros with realistic animal genitalia

nsfw art in the mlp style. same situation as above; if they're not anthropomorphic enough, i'm not drawing nsfw of it

chibi or ppg style nsfw

extreme gore/violence

payment can be made either in full, or 50%, upfront.

if you choose to do half upfront, the other half MUST be paid after approval of the final sketch for me to continue further. adjustments can continue to be made within reason. ie: please don't ask me to change the composition when it's half finished, or anything else outlandish

works in progress WILL have effects added to them to prevent usage in AI programs, and will be heavily watermarked to avoid theft.

you will receive the full FINISHED artwork in any file format(s) you want (PNG being the default) via email, with a smaller watermark. it is yours to do whatever you wish with, all i ask for at that point is credit linking back to my blog!

please bear in mind that i have a full time job and other responsibilities if you choose to commission me. i would love for art to be my full-time job, but as it stands, it can't be. all of this to say, please have patience and empathy for the person behind the screen <3

now to get into the juicy part, pricing. please note- these prices are for single character pieces. additional information will be below

BUSTS (shoulders/chest and up)

sketch: 5 usd

lineart only: 8 usd

flat colors: 12 usd

cell shading: 18 usd

fully rendered/painted: 25 usd

HALF BODY (lower torso/waist and up)

sketch: 10 usd

lineart: 13 usd

flat colors: 17 usd

cell shading: 23 usd

fully rendered: 30 usd

FULL BODY

sketch: 15 usd

lineart: 18 usd

flat colors: 22 usd

cell shading: 30 usd

fully rendered: 45 usd

the cost of ONE additional character is 50% of the price listed above. TWO characters are an additional 30% each, and anything more than three will be 25% of the listed price per character.

if you've made it this far, congratulations! now you get to enjoy my portfolio, if you wanna call it that. reblogs are very much appreciated!!!

if you're interested after all of that, dm me and tell me your pet's name so i know you read through everything (;

some of this stuff is a bit outdated, but like i said i think these are some of my best works to show. i'll definitely rb this with more stuff to add someday, as well as when the number of open slots updates.

0/5

[marshmallowgoop]

2024 AMV Review

[2022] [2023]

2024 felt like a huge video editing year for me. It was characterized by three major developments:

Submitting to contests

Editing MMVs (Manga Music Videos)

Participating in timed challenges

For contests, I maybe really threw myself into the con contest scene (that is, for AMV contests that take place at conventions) after sparking a heated discussion about submitting personally captioned videos for the sake of better accessibility. An initially stressful situation ultimately became one of overwhelming support, and I've since become more involved with this part of the AMV community, which has been so kind, encouraging, and inspirational. I'm certain I wouldn't have made the strides in my editing that I feel like I made in 2024 had it not been for the community.

In fact, the last two developments on my list are purely because of the community. It was the community who pushed me into making MMVs; after signing up for an MMV exchange (check out the video Violet Skies gifted me here!), I practiced MMV-like skills with an AMV/MMV ("No Choir") and also made my first full-blown MMV in DaVinci Resolve ("15 Min Flame"), which involved thinking in a more motion graphics way and utilizing my program's 3D camera, something that maybe looks a little wild (but is sincerely less complicated than it seems!):

Incorporating more motion graphics and manga panels into my work then became almost "standard" for me. Four of the six AMVs I made for Project Org Editor (POE)—of which none are unfortunately in this reel because they remain unfinished, but you can check out a preview here—utilized a fair amount of manga as well.

And that brings me to my last development: participating in timed challenges. POE is a biennial video-editing tournament with six preliminary rounds in which participants have one week to edit a video to a theme. I took part in every round (always with a Detective Conan video because I think I'm hilarious), but it was actually my second timed challenge in the year. The first was SLICE (Short Little Iron Chef Edits), wherein participants had about four days (100 hours) to create a video set to a song from a list of songs only revealed at the start of the challenge. "If You Kill Me" was my entry, and I finished it pretty much to my satisfaction by the end of the 100 hours, so I thought I would do even better with POE.

But POE was extremely hard on me. I finished nothing, never scored above mediocre, and had a meltdown after Round 2, where I must have cried all day after submitting an entry that I hated (and won't be revising). It was my most difficult video editing experience thus far—emotionally and physically, as I sacrificed sleep to edit and wound up sick by Round 6. I really wanted to stand out and impress, but... I wasn't there yet.

And that probably describes my feelings about my AMVs in 2024 better than anything else: not there yet. There's been a lot of growth in my skills, in my eyes; there's the aforementioned MMV experience, where I practiced 3D camerawork as well as manga animation for the first time, but I've also made longer videos, utilized "Twixtor" effects ("Feel About You"), learned how to make my own VHS tapes for the ultimate VHS aesthetic ("Eyelash"), and continued to work on my pacing and compositions (even if I still have a long way to go with the pacing and even intentionally made it "worse" as an experiment once). Videos from 2022 and 2023 that I used to be so proud of almost became painful, and I'm overall much happier with everything I made in 2024.

But whenever I'd make finals in a contest—which happened at seven cons (green text in the video, with yellow being when I didn't make finals but still had a video exhibited, which happened at six cons)!—I knew I had no chance of winning a category, and I have yet to. Because I'm not there yet. I'm satisfied with most of my videos from 2024, but they don't feel special enough. Good, maybe, but not great. For POE and Anime Frontier, where I entered nothing but Detective Conan videos, I captured attention for my dedication to the franchise, but the AMVs themselves still feel lacking.

In thinking about 2025, I've been thinking about what it means to be there. I've been thinking about how to measure growth, as measuring the times I make finals, or my note counts, or YouTube likes, or even scores I get in tournaments like POE, don't seem to be healthy ways of defining development (especially when what makes finals at cons might not really correlate with what's most beloved online, with "If You Kill Me" being my most successful con video of 2024 but "Nosedive," which never made finals once, being my most successful video on the web). Conversations with others (thank you!) have provided a wealth of wonderful suggestions for considering growth: trying new things, doing easily what used to be difficult, finding joy in your work.

And in 2024, I do think I made progress in all those things! But being there goes back to my question of what is good art?, and, well, I think I'll need to continue working on defining what that means to me.

Still, my major goal for 2025, at this time, is to be less hard on myself. As my videos have become longer and more elaborate, they've taken more time to complete, with each AMV in this reel (excepting maybe one) representing at least 30 hours of work, with many being 50+-hour efforts. That's a fair chunk of time, but I still beat myself up for "not doing enough" or "not completing enough videos," which isn't fair to me.

It's regrettably not something I did for 2023, but my year-end DaVinci Resolve hour count for 2024 (counting time from when I first got this computer in late August 2023) is 1,107 hours!

The earliest total-hour screenshot I can find is 666 hours in July 2024, so this means I spent, at the very, very minimum, over 441 hours in Resolve in 2024. And dedicating that many hours to improving my craft isn't nothing!

In the end, I am sad that there are only 12 videos in this reel when I at least started brainstorming and drafting for 9 more. But all the improvements I made, all the ways I challenged myself, all the seeing things like this at cons, in person, on the big screen... that's worth celebrating.

Thank you so much to everyone who has supported me so far. I hope to post even "better" videos in 2025—ones that are there!

[jasperandhenryslovechild]

guys...... post apocalyptic henry danger au belowww......

do you like apocalypse aus!!! do you like unincorporated county of swellview (an AMAZING fic series by octoberbardo on ao3 go check it out)!!! do you like sweet tooth!!!! and also slightly the last of us!!! do you like oc content!!!

fear not good friend because i have come PREPARED WITH EVERYTHING to feed each one of those ideas!!! all packed into one au!!!

it's kinda a big mush of everything i enjoy rn— the hybrid / sense of dread aspect of sweet tooth, the underlying corruption and politics behind swellview and rays job as a hero as a whole with unincorporated county of swellview, lowkey tlou vibes (but also highkey yaelokre vibes to me too), it's just like AGRGRHGHH BUT ANYWAYS

YAP ABOUT THIS INCOMING

--

ok so it's based kinda off of a fix called unincorporated county of swellview, but also inspired off of sweet tooth, and also loosely inspired by the last of us

ray manchester is a government employee

which is obvious— as a hero, he works under the influence of the mayor of swellview, for the greater swellview county. and, to an extent, for the government of the five quint cities (rivalton and bordertown, adjacent city, neighborville, and swellview).

as a result of being a hero, ray is forced to perform different sorts of favors for the mayor in order to keep him on top. at some point, he is asked to assist with a third, different kind of favor. not just for the mayor, but to directly assist the quint city government. as a lab rat child—because ever since carl manchester accidentally made his child indestructible, why wouldn't he conduct experiments to make sure he stays that way?—who better to ask about what to do with these new findings than ray himself! besides, these new findings aren't just findings, they're people. people that the quint city government is collectively banding together to kidnap and use for their "new" discovery; the side effects of the trans molecular densitizer when used on other humans beings

originally made to make unbreakable glass, the machine made ray manchester the world's first completely invincible man. and by making him a hero, of course the government wanted to know if they could do it with other people. turns out, they can't. but the amount of radiation and chemical shit pumped through the bloodstream during those moments in the densitizer is enough to alter the chemical composition of any human being who goes through it. giving them freaky abilities and features. and carl manchester knew this— of course he did, because he'd done it himself with a bunch of different people a dozen times after ray. tweaking it and fixing it to make whoever went through it only indestructible and not have some weird, off putting physical tie to remember the experience by for the rest of their lives. it was a fail, ray was just a miracle. but that's not how these higher ups viewed that.

some of those abilities were, indeed, completely useless, and some were incredibly useful for the government. especially in this time of crisis— the world is on a cusp of a war the quint cities started due to bad negotiations and treaties with foreign nations. nobody wants to fight in that war, and those who do aren't skilled enough to last. but people like these are, people who are chemically altered to harbor animalistic features. sharp claws, animal ears to hear long distances. and it's exactly why they ask carl manchester to alter the densitizer for soley this purpose, and for ray to supervise the process for quality assurance. oh, and to conduct tests on these super humans, to make sure they're indestructible and that their abilities are useful enough to keep them around for. if not, they'll probably just put them back through a molecular transducer and try again with someone else.

ray is fucking outraged when the mayor tells him everything. he has to keep it a secret and he isn't happy about it at all. it's the only time he takes his public presence and uses it in direct opposition to the government he's under rather than working with it, because he would rather die than have to supervise over the same torture he went through being endured into others. who wouldn't?

ray isn't sure what keeps him from not quitting his job as capitan man as he starts publicly spilling secrets about the five quint cities and the greater swellview county, "a place where nothing ever happens". he starts small and works his way up through public speeches, grand openings, and even social media posts soley based around exposing the mayor. because he won't stand for this— as a protector of swellview, this is the only way to protect his citizens as he sees fit

two months later, ray manchester goes missing without a trace. all posts made contradicting the quint city government are taken down. people who speak up about it go missing too— it's like they're trying to pretend ray never existed

five months later, the boom happens & nuclear warfare practically destroys the world

a year later, hybrid children are born (supposedly) from the surviving mothers. without explanation.

ollie and sovilo— who used to work for ray behind the scenes before the world began dismantling itself and before ray went missing—are convinced there's a greater force acting behind all of this. ray's dissaperance had something to do with all of this, and if he's still alive out there, he has every answer they seek. but with the fall of technology, it's increasingly harder to get there than before. all his hints that ray could have possibly dropped publicly that could help find him were only documented through video captures, and those are now lost to nuclear explosion upon nuclear explosion. it all eradicated technology and the internet as a whole— there's practically no use in trying to find someone to fix it, especially with a good 3/4ths of the population dead. if that information only found on a device wasnt truly lost and unrecoverable, the only people who could probably provide the duo with it are probably dead already

factions begin to rise in the coming years after the end of the world at large. the last men, the harbingers. all factions that connect to ray somehow—all that connect to the Mayor somehow, because it has to— but that man still being alive is just an unproven rumor nowadays and there's no way for ollie or sovi or anyone to know for sure unless they go looking for both the mayor and ray

the only people they could possibly turn to for assistance with that were henry, charlotte, jasper, and schwoz. a painstakingly long trip to dystopia which brought about hundreds of different challenges for the duo brings up nothing. they're all dead— dead long before they could have even thought of reaching them. radiation poisoning is a bitch, and they probably died without knowing who was trying to find them at all. but, in their wake— or rather, in mainly schwoz's wake—they leave clues. clues to these groups of children, and to a whole different faction. clues that point towards ray, and all they have to do is follow them

---

if you made it this far i am so proud thank you so much

i don't really know how i wanna go about telling this story but i do know i really really want to tell it!!! theres so much stuff i wanna say or draw or write or anything about this au but im not rlly sure how, but if anyone has any ideas or questions or comments dump them here or in my asks or whatever rlly!! ask things!!! have comments!!!! i love talking to ppl about the things i create sosooososo yes yes anyways i hope this was enjoyable :)

[marointhemoon]

It would have been fine...

Chapter 1

Travis hasn’t gotten consistent physical contact since he left the Horizon for the first time. He hasn’t had much reason to think much about it, either. And then some plant goes and attacks him, and he’s starting to see why it might be a problem.

If the shit was going to hit the fan, Travis sometimes wished it would hesitate a little less.

The away mission had gone fine. He had been assigned to pilot T’Pol and three Sciences crewmen down to a new, tropical M-Class planet—Philotes Major, he thought he'd heard—and accompany them as they took plant samples.

The planet was strangely beautiful. Lush, warm, humid forests of violet trees that were covered in vines. A pinkish, cloudy sky. Odd, sweet-smelling flowers everywhere that reminded Travis of hibiscuses.

It had been his fault, really. T’Pol had told him not to get too close to the foliage. “We don’t know what could be down here,” she’d said matter-of-factly. “While there were no new elements on the initial planetary scan, we should still act with the utmost caution.”

And then…

Pff!

Travis hadn’t quite seen the flower before it had sprayed him, straight in the face. It had taken him a second to register what had just happened. Just enough time for T’Pol, who'd gotten a smaller dose of pollen, to shepherd everyone back to the shuttlepod, a sample of the flower—a blue catchfly-looking thing—in tow. The pollen was sweet-smelling but transparent; to anyone else, it didn't seem like anything had happened.

They’d gotten back to the ship and gotten through Decon, slightly shaken but unharmed. He and T'Pol had been sent to sickbay immediately, and everything checked out.

They were fine.

And then he woke up the next morning, and he was definitely not fine.

He wasn’t in pain. As it turned out, he didn’t need to be. He was absolutely miserable.

This was almost worse than pain—like a middle ground between a tickle and an itch, but affecting every square inch of his skin. Every once in a while, it would make Travis shiver, shooting goosebumps along his arms or down his neck. The longer he sat with the sensation, the more it felt like the very end of a feather, barely touching his skin. It was light, and tingly, and persistent, and fucking everywhere.

The only thing that seemed to help was having the shower as hot as possible. As the feeling started to dissipate, he started to notice a certain … anxiety starting to go away, as well. About what, exactly, Travis couldn’t say. It was less about any issue in particular and more a general kind of unease, sitting low in his chest.

As he finally stepped out of the shower, Travis resolved to check back in with Phlox. This had to be some sort of allergy or poison. Right?

---

“The good news, Mr. Mayweather, is that you have not been poisoned,” Phlox announced. “You’re also not having an allergic reaction—at least, not per se. That leads me to the bad news: the pollen that you encountered yesterday contained a chemical compound known as a cortihistamine.”

Travis blinked, staring at him. “A what?”

“A cortihistamine,” Phlox repeated. “As the name suggests, it signals the brain to produce elevated levels of cortisol—the hormone responsible for stress—and histamines—the chemicals responsible for allergic reactions. Hence, the issue of your skin … crawling, as you say. Such an interesting phrase. In any case, despite the name, antihistamines have no effect. It would seem that the chemical is named for its effects, rather than its composition.”

Travis blinked again, his mind attempting to put together some incoherent thought about psychological warfare and death by allergies. “Well,” he started, “that’s unfortunate, but … why would a plant even produce something like that?”

“In the case of the particular flower you encountered—Nocturna paludosa macrantha, otherwise known as crushbloom—the function of it is really quite fascinating. The flower douses an animal—usually small prey—with its pollen. Then, after a while, that animal’s skin will start crawling and itching, and it will likely become irritable and anxious, much as you are now.”

Travis started to open his mouth to protest, but Phlox cut him off.

“Now, the animal may or may not learn, through burrowing practices and certain … social behaviors, that the solution is deep pressure. After several weeks, assuming it doesn’t get enough of this kind of pressure, the animal will have been … essentially, run so ragged by the itch and elevated cortisol that it will—quite literally—run into a predator’s mouth.”

Travis blanched. A plant that made animals on Philotes Major miserable enough to let themselves get eaten.

"Right."

“Because of certain anti-acidic properties, the pollen is not digested, which then allows it to re-propagate through the predator’s resulting excrement.”

His brain didn’t give him much time to think too hard about that. His brow furrowed. “So wait, back up. What exactly is deep pressure?”

“Deep pressure is … essentially, as the name suggests. In technical terms, it's firm tactile sensory input that provides proprioceptive input to the body. Ultimately, the more of it you can get, and the more consistently you can get it, the sooner these symptoms should subside.”

Travis gave Phlox a suspicious look. “What kind of … sensory input are we talking about, Doctor?”

“Well…” he thought for a moment, then put his PADD down. “If you’d allow me to demonstrate?”

“Uh … yeah, sure.”

Phlox stepped forward and firmly placed his hands on Travis’ broad shoulders, squeezing gently. “Things like this,” he explained. “In general, being firmly held or squeezed can have similar effects. Hugs, massages, cuddling … that type of thing.”

The words didn’t register at first. The second Travis felt the contact, he gasped a little. On his next exhale, he had to bite back a moan of relief.

The skin on his shoulders had stopped crawling, sure. But, with the touch of Phlox's hands instead of the hot water of the shower, it was more than that now. A sort of warmth took its place — something that felt like comfort. Travis immediately felt his mind fly back a decade. This was what it felt like when Paul would roughhouse with him. Or when his mom would give him a hug. Or when his father would put a hand on his bicep as he explained something about how the Horizon worked. Travis did the math: he hadn’t gotten anything like that—not regularly, anyway—since he was sixteen. Sure, Hoshi and Trip would give him side hugs every so often, and Captain Archer would sometimes clap him on the shoulder, but nothing consistent.

A lump formed in his throat as he realized, with some horror, how much he’d missed it.

He’d thought it didn’t matter. What kind of man—what kind of grown man—needed hugs to function? Travis swallowed thickly. How was he supposed to get them now without looking like a child? Travis was supposed to protect and care for his friends. And sure, as siblings in arms, they ought to protect him back. But at the end of the day, he had to take care of himself. He couldn’t entirely count on anyone else. It was a great way to get hurt for no reason.

Something blipped on Travis’ monitor. Phlox walked away to look up at it, and Travis suddenly found himself embarrassingly upset, as if something precious had just been torn away from him. His head lurched forward, his vision going blurry.

Seeing the source of the blip, Phlox smiled. “It would appear that the contact involved will provide a hearty dose of endorphins, as well. No wonder the pollen is so potent.” He started to turn back toward Travis. “This process should be relatively—Mr. Mayweather?”

Travis drew in a ragged breath, before looking up at Phlox. “I don’t know if those … endorphins … last after the contact.”

The doctor’s face fell a little. “Ah…”

Travis felt the pit in his stomach start to come back, along with his skin starting to crawl. “What do I need to do, exactly?” he asked.

“Well … you have friends on this ship, don’t you?”

“I do…”

“You ought to enlist them, then,” Phlox said, quirking an eyebrow. “My understanding is that humans friendly with each other tend to initiate close contact. Isn’t that correct?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Excellent!” Phlox exclaimed, smiling again. “You should be able to get plenty of close contact that way. Perhaps from Mr. Tucker or Ms. Sato, hm?” Something in his eyes told Travis that he knew more than he was letting on.

Travis swallowed thickly again. He was screwed. There was no way anyone on the ship would touch him that frequently, even Hoshi or Trip. Even they only gave side hugs. That was it … right?

Travis sighed. Whether he was right or wrong, this was about to get very, very embarrassing.

End-of-chapter note: To my knowledge, cortihistamines do not actually exist, nor does Nocturna paludosa macrantha. I needed a vaguely science-y name for cuddle pollen that wasn’t “cuddle pollen” and my sources were two Google searches and two blogs about plant names. If I screwed something up, don’t worry about it.

Chapters:

1 (you are here) 2 || 3 || 4 || 5 ||

[bichitosdecolores]

i was bored yesterday and decided to read some manga, but i didnt feel like getting up to date with any of the ones i follow, so i browsed the site for a while until a new manga caught my attention. and it tuned out to be so very good and i feel like posting about it so here it is

i dnot usually read many horror manga, but im a big fan of the few ive read. i think a big reason i like horror manga more than movies or books is the visual aspect and the freedom of pacing that maga offers. The black and withe, sometimes hyper detailed, manga drawings are something that you cant really replicate with animation or movies or my imagination. i also live that when reading a maga you can pause any time and take as much time as you want with any given panel, and i think that, for a visually-driven horror story, that's a great strength.

That said, most often than not, when reading a horror manga i end up admiring the skill and detail of the art more that i get surprised or impressed the way i would with a movie for example.

so anyway, i found this manga called "Bibliomania". Its pretty short, 12 chapters, so i finished in one reading. It starts with an interesting plot, but nothing indicative of it being a horror manga. The story is bout a girl called Alicia that wakes up in the 431 room of a "hotel". There a snake-looking character appears and tells her that she is a guest and as long as she remains in the room all her wishes will come true, but she cannot leave for she is linked to her room and the further away she gets from it the more her body will discompose. Alicia wants to leave back to the real world, though, and the way to do that is to travel every room until she reaches room 000. Thats the plot, and the manga follows it as you'll expect for 3 or 4 chapters. Alicia travels impressive-looking room after impressive-looking room.

the artwork is great. One thing i really like about it, and that ends up being incredibly effective later on, is the contrast between the simple, cartoonish look of the protagonist and the hyper detailed art style of everything else.

The manga used possibly more and more body horror as the story progresses, both in the main character and in her surroundings.

Now, as I said, body horror is way more impressive to me the it is disturbing. Or it was. Until i read this manga.

there's a manga technique used to surprise readers that consist on putting the resolution of a building tension as the firs panel after a page turning. That way the reader is very invested in the story, turning page after page and then, in one of these page-turns, there is a big, detailed, beautiful art that, if made correctly, makes you stop bathing for a second.

There's one instane of these technique in bibliomania that is possibly the most effective use of it I have encountered (except that damn snow fight in chainsaw man that still haunts me to this day). i was reading the manga digitally, so i can only imagine how much more effective it will be in a physical version of the work. But it still got me very good. Twice, actually, while getting some screenshots. The image is still clear in my mind. That's the reason im making this post, really. ive read other horror manga, but they have never caused any strong reaction in me such as this one did with a single panel.

The story also gets very good, and not in the direction you may be expecting. And did i mention the artwork is insane?

And the composition is so cool too

so if you like pretty art and cool art and great art and like horror and you body horror, give it a read. It's only 12 chapters long and is very worth reading. (if you do decide to read it be aware that there is a lot of body horror, death, depictions of suffering, suicide, gore, skuls?, mmh i think that it)