#Idk how well of a read I got on them

[broadwayfangirl222]

one, their little smirks are funny. Also this moment honestly raises a really interesting question about their actual power and influence. Not even just Vox but the Vees in general. They're set up in a way where they all prop each other up. They all heavily rely on each other and their respective industries. Genuinely how successful and powerful would they be if they were on their own? How would they actually function if one of them was gone?

VELVETTE likely helps with their publicity and PR. Making sure they & their brands stay relevant and up to date with current trends and fashion and stuff ('cause while they both are pretty current, Vox and Val are from the 50s and 70s, there's bound to be this generational gap to a degree) I'd say more on her but there's only so much canon stuff we know/see about her.

VOX essentially is the salesman and tech guy out of the group. He sells their products and supplies them with top of the line equipment for their work and keeps their respective businesses/industries consistently moving forward. He basically keeps this all cohesive and organized as one unit operating together in sync. As well as making sure they all maintain the image Velvette likely spearheaded in making for them in the first place

VALENTINO I'd say helps keep all their employees "in line" (Like Vox saying he'll send that month's lowest earners Val's way so he can shoot them) and helps both Vox and Vel's industries by incorporating more sex appeal into them. Sex sells after all. Not to say Velvette and Vox aren't powerful in their own rights or can't hold their own but Val is the one we see brandishing weapons all the time and is easily the quickest to get physically violent out of the 3 of them. Like if they wanted someone dead Val probably would want to take care of that personally meanwhile I just get the vibe Vox and Vel would rather just save their time/energy and just get someone else to do it for them (unless it's obviously a personal thing like Vox's rivalry with Alastor)

Just with how they're talked about and operate as a group makes it genuinely difficult to gauge how powerful, successful and influential they'd be on their own. Like how did they first form this team? What were things like when it was just Vox and Val before Velvette showed up, or how did they all do before they even met?

[eyrieofsynapses]

why Aurora's art is genius

It's break for me, and I've been meaning to sit down and read the Aurora webcomic (https://comicaurora.com/, @comicaurora on Tumblr) for quite a bit. So I did that over the last few days.

And… y'know. I can't actually say "I should've read this earlier," because otherwise I would've been up at 2:30-3am when I had responsibilities in the morning and I couldn't have properly enjoyed it, but. Holy shit guys THIS COMIC.

I intended to just do a generalized "hello this is all the things I love about this story," and I wrote a paragraph or two about art style. …and then another. And another. And I realized I needed to actually reference things so I would stop being too vague. I was reading the comic on my tablet or phone, because I wanted to stay curled up in my chair, but I type at a big monitor and so I saw more details… aaaaaand it turned into its own giant-ass post.

SO. Enjoy a few thousand words of me nerding out about this insanely cool art style and how fucking gorgeous this comic is? (There are screenshots, I promise it isn't just a wall of text.) In my defense, I just spent two semesters in graphic design classes focusing on the Adobe Suite, so… I get to be a nerd about pretty things…???

All positive feedback btw! No downers here. <3

---

I cannot emphasize enough how much I love the beautiful, simple stylistic method of drawing characters and figures. It is absolutely stunning and effortless and utterly graceful—it is so hard to capture the sheer beauty and fluidity of the human form in such a fashion. Even a simple outline of a character feels dynamic! It's gorgeous!

Though I do have a love-hate relationship with this, because my artistic side looks at that lovely simplicity, goes "I CAN DO THAT!" and then I sit down and go to the paper and realize that no, in fact, I cannot do that yet, because that simplicity is born of a hell of a lot of practice and understanding of bodies and actually is really hard to do. It's a very developed style that only looks simple because the artist knows what they're doing. The human body is hard to pull off, and this comic does so beautifully and makes it look effortless.

Also: line weight line weight line weight. It's especially important in simplified shapes and figures like this, and hoo boy is it used excellently. It's especially apparent the newer the pages get—I love watching that improvement over time—but with simpler figures and lines, you get nice light lines to emphasize both smaller details, like in the draping of clothing and the curls of hair—which, hello, yes—and thicker lines to emphasize bigger and more important details and silhouettes. It's the sort of thing that's essential to most illustrations, but I wanted to make a note of it because it's so vital to this art style.

THE USE OF LAYER BLENDING MODES OH MY GODS. (...uhhh, apologies to the people who don't know what that means, it's a digital art program thing? This article explains it for beginners.)

Bear with me, I just finished my second Photoshop course, I spent months and months working on projects with this shit so I see the genius use of Screen and/or its siblings (of which there are many—if I say "Screen" here, assume I mean the entire umbrella of Screen blending modes and possibly Overlay) and go nuts, but seriously it's so clever and also fucking gorgeous:

Firstly: the use of screened-on sound effect words over an action? A "CRACK" written over a branch and then put on Screen in glowy green so that it's subtle enough that it doesn't disrupt the visual flow, but still sticks out enough to make itself heard? Little "scritches" that are transparent where they're laid on without outlines to emphasize the sound without disrupting the underlying image? FUCK YES. I haven't seen this done literally anywhere else—granted, I haven't read a massive amount of comics, but I've read enough—and it is so clever and I adore it. Examples:

Secondly: The beautiful lighting effects. The curling leaves, all the magic, the various glowing eyes, the fog, the way it's all so vividly colored but doesn't burn your eyeballs out—a balance that's way harder to achieve than you'd think—and the soft glows around them, eeeee it's so pretty so pretty SO PRETTY. Not sure if some of these are Outer/Inner Glow/Shadow layer effects or if it's entirely hand-drawn, but major kudos either way; I can see the beautiful use of blending modes and I SALUTE YOUR GENIUS.

I keep looking at some of this stuff and go "is that a layer effect or is it done by hand?" Because you can make some similar things with the Satin layer effect in Photoshop (I don't know if other programs have this? I'm gonna have to find out since I won't have access to PS for much longer ;-;) that resembles some of the swirly inner bits on some of the lit effects, but I'm not sure if it is that or not. Or you could mask over textures? There's... many ways to do it.

If done by hand: oh my gods the patience, how. If done with layer effects: really clever work that knows how to stop said effects from looking wonky, because ugh those things get temperamental. If done with a layer of texture that's been masked over: very, very good masking work. No matter the method, pretty shimmers and swirly bits inside the bigger pretty swirls!

Next: The way color contrast is used! I will never be over the glowy green-on-black Primordial Life vibes when Alinua gets dropped into that… unconscious space?? with Life, for example, and the sharp contrast of vines and crack and branches and leaves against pitch black is just visually stunning. The way the roots sink into the ground and the three-dimensional sensation of it is particularly badass here:

Friggin. How does this imply depth like that. HOW. IT'S SO FREAKING COOL.

A huge point here is also color language and use! Everybody has their own particular shade, generally matching their eyes, magic, and personality, and I adore how this is used to make it clear who's talking or who's doing an action. That was especially apparent to me with Dainix and Falst in the caves—their colors are both fairly warm, but quite distinct, and I love how this clarifies who's doing what in panels with a lot of action from both of them. There is a particular bit that stuck out to me, so I dug up the panels (see this page and the following one https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-20-30/):

(Gods it looks even prettier now that I put it against a plain background. Also, appreciation to Falst for managing a bridal-carry midair, damn.)

The way that their colors MERGE here! And the immense attention to detail in doing so—Dainix is higher up than Falst is in the first panel, so Dainix's orange fades into Falst's orange at the base. The next panel has gold up top and orange on bottom; we can't really tell in that panel where each of them are, but that's carried over to the next panel—

—where we now see that Falst's position is raised above Dainix's due to the way he's carrying him. (Points for continuity!) And, of course, we see the little "huffs" flowing from orange to yellow over their heads (where Dainix's head is higher than Falst's) to merge the sound of their breathing, which is absurdly clever because it emphasizes to the viewer how we hear two sets of huffing overlaying each other, not one. Absolutely brilliant.

(A few other notes of appreciation to that panel: beautiful glows around them, the sparks, the jagged silhouette of the spider legs, the lovely colors that have no right to make the area around a spider corpse that pretty, the excellent texturing on the cave walls plus perspective, the way Falst's movements imply Dainix's hefty weight, the natural posing of the characters, their on-point expressions that convey exactly how fuckin terrifying everything is right now, the slight glows to their eyes, and also they're just handsome boys <3)

Next up: Rain!!!! So well done! It's subtle enough that it never ever disrupts the impact of the focal point, but evident enough you can tell! And more importantly: THE MIST OFF THE CHARACTERS. Rain does this irl, it has that little vapor that comes off you and makes that little misty effect that plays with lighting, it's so cool-looking and here it's used to such pretty effect!

One of the panel captions says something about it blurring out all the injuries on the characters but like THAT AIN'T TOO BIG OF A PROBLEM when it gets across the environmental vibes, and also that'd be how it would look in real life too so like… outside viewer's angle is the same as the characters', mostly? my point is: that's the environment!!! that's the vibes, that's the feel! It gets it across and it does so in the most pretty way possible!

And another thing re: rain, the use of it to establish perspective, particularly in panels like this—

—where we can tell we're looking down at Tynan due to the perspective on the rain and where it's pointing. Excellent. (Also, kudos for looking down and emphasizing how Tynan's losing his advantage—lovely use of visual storytelling.)

Additionally, the misting here:

We see it most heavily in the leftmost panel, where it's quite foggy as you would expect in a rainstorm, especially in an environment with a lot of heat, but it's also lightly powdered on in the following two panels and tends to follow light sources, which makes complete sense given how light bounces off particles in the air.

A major point of strength in these too is a thorough understanding of lighting, like rim lighting, the various hues and shades, and an intricate understanding of how light bounces off surfaces even when they're in shadow (we'll see a faint glow in spots where characters are half in shadow, but that's how it would work in real life, because of how light bounces around).

Bringing some of these points together: the fluidity of the lines in magic, and the way simple glowing lines are used to emphasize motion and the magic itself, is deeply clever. I'm basically pulling at random from panels and there's definitely even better examples, but here's one (see this page https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-16-33/):

First panel, listed in numbers because these build on each other:

The tension of the lines in Tess's magic here. This works on a couple levels: first, the way she's holding her fists, as if she's pulling a rope taut.

The way there's one primary line, emphasizing the rope feeling, accompanied by smaller ones.

The additional lines starbursting around her hands, to indicate the energy crackling in her hands and how she's doing a good bit more than just holding it. (That combined with the fists suggests some tension to the magic, too.) Also the variations in brightness, a feature you'll find in actual lightning. :D Additional kudos for how the lightning sparks and breaks off the metal of the sword.

A handful of miscellaneous notes on the second panel:

The reflection of the flames in Erin's typically dark blue eyes (which bears a remarkable resemblance to Dainix, incidentally—almost a thematic sort of parallel given Erin's using the same magic Dainix specializes in?)

The flowing of fabric in the wind and associated variation in the lineart

The way Erin's tattoos interact with the fire he's pulling to his hand

The way the rain overlays some of the fainter areas of fire (attention! to! detail! hell yeah!)

I could go on. I won't because this is a lot of writing already.

Third panel gets paragraphs, not bullets:

Erin's giant-ass "FWOOM" of fire there, and the way the outline of the word is puffy-edged and gradated to feel almost three-dimensional, plus once again using Screen or a variation on it so that the stars show up in the background. All this against that stunning plume of fire, which ripples and sparks so gorgeously, and the ending "om" of the onomatopoeia is emphasized incredibly brightly against that, adding to the punch of it and making the plume feel even brighter.

Also, once again, rain helping establish perspective, especially in how it's very angular in the left side of the panel and then slowly becomes more like a point to the right to indicate it's falling directly down on the viewer. Add in the bright, beautiful glow effects, fainter but no less important black lines beneath them to emphasize the sky and smoke and the like, and the stunningly beautiful lighting and gradated glows surrounding Erin plus the lightning jagging up at him from below, and you get one hell of an impactful panel right there. (And there is definitely more in there I could break down, this is just a lot already.)

And in general: The colors in this? Incredible. The blues and purples and oranges and golds compliment so well, and it's all so rich.

Like, seriously, just throughout the whole comic, the use of gradients, blending modes, color balance and hues, all the things, all the things, it makes for the most beautiful effects and glows and such a rich environment. There's a very distinct style to this comic in its simplified backgrounds (which I recognize are done partly because it's way easier and also backgrounds are so time-consuming dear gods but lemme say this) and vivid, smoothly drawn characters; the simplicity lets them come to the front and gives room for those beautiful, richly saturated focal points, letting the stylized designs of the magic and characters shine. The use of distinct silhouettes is insanely good. Honestly, complex backgrounds might run the risk of making everything too visually busy in this case. It's just, augh, so GORGEOUS.

Another bit, take a look at this page (https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-15-28/):

It's not quite as evident here as it is in the next page, but this one does some other fun things so I'm grabbing it. Points:

Once again, using different colors to represent different character actions. The "WHAM" of Kendal hitting the ground is caused by Dainix's force, so it's orange (and kudos for doubling the word over to add a shake effect). But we see blue layered underneath, which could be an environmental choice, but might also be because it's Kendal, whose color is blue.

And speaking off, take a look at the right-most panel on top, where Kendal grabs the spear: his motion is, again, illustrated in bright blue, versus the atmospheric screened-on orange lines that point toward him around the whole panel (I'm sure these have a name, I think they might be more of a manga thing though and the only experience I have in manga is reading a bit of Fullmetal Alchemist). Those lines emphasize the weight of the spear being shoved at him, and their color tells us Dainix is responsible for it.

One of my all-time favorite effects in this comic is the way cracks manifest across Dainix's body to represent when he starts to lose control; it is utterly gorgeous and wonderfully thematic. These are more evident in the page before and after this one, but you get a decent idea here. I love the way they glow softly, the way the fire juuuust flickers through at the start and then becomes more evident over time, and the cracks feel so realistic, like his skin is made of pottery. Additional points for how fire begins to creep into his hair.

A small detail that's generally consistent across the comic, but which I want to make note of here because you can see it pretty well: Kendal's eyes glow about the same as the jewel in his sword, mirroring his connection to said sword and calling back to how the jewel became Vash's eye temporarily and thus was once Kendal's eye. You can always see this connection (though there might be some spots where this also changes in a symbolic manner; I went through it quickly on the first time around, so I'll pay more attention when I inevitably reread this), where Kendal's always got that little shine of blue in his eyes the same as the jewel. It's a beautiful visual parallel that encourages the reader to subconsciously link them together, especially since the lines used to illustrate character movements typically mirror their eye color. It's an extension of Kendal.

Did I mention how ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL the colors in this are?

Also, the mythological/legend-type scenes are illustrated in familiar style often used for that type of story, a simple and heavily symbolic two-dimensional cave-painting-like look. They are absolutely beautiful on many levels, employing simple, lovely gradients, slightly rougher and thicker lineart that is nonetheless smoothly beautiful, and working with clear silhouettes (a major strength of this art style, but also a strength in the comic overall). But in particular, I wanted to call attention to a particular thing (see this page https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-12-4/):

The flowing symbolic lineart surrounding each character. This is actually quite consistent across characters—see also Life's typical lines and how they curl:

What's particularly interesting here is how these symbols are often similar, but not the same. Vash's lines are always smooth, clean curls, often playing off each other and echoing one another like ripples in a pond. You'd think they'd look too similar to Life's—but they don't. Life's curl like vines, and they remain connected; where one curve might echo another but exist entirely detached from each other in Vash's, Life's lines still remain wound together, because vines are continuous and don't float around. :P

Tahraim's are less continuous, often breaking up with significantly smaller bits and pieces floating around like—of course—sparks, and come to sharper points. These are also constants: we see the vines repeated over and over in Alinua's dreams of Life, and the echoing ripples of Vash are consistent wherever we encounter him. Kendal's dream of the ghost citizens of the city of Vash in the last few chapters is filled with these rippling, echoing patterns, to beautiful effect (https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-20-14/):

They ripple and spiral, often in long, sinuous curves, with smooth elegance. It reminds me a great deal of images of space and sine waves and the like. This establishes a definite feel to these different characters and their magic. And the thing is, that's not something that had to be done—the colors are good at emphasizing who's who. But it was done, and it adds a whole other dimension to the story. Whenever you're in a deity's domain, you know whose it is no matter the color.

Regarding that shape language, I wanted to make another note, too—Vash is sometimes described as chaotic and doing what he likes, which is interesting to me, because smooth, elegant curves and the color blue aren't generally associated with chaos. So while Vash might behave like that on the surface, I'm guessing he's got a lot more going on underneath; he's probably much more intentional in his actions than you'd think at a glance, and he is certainly quite caring with his city. The other thing is that this suits Kendal perfectly. He's a paragon character; he is kind, virtuous, and self-sacrificing, and often we see him aiming to calm others and keep them safe. Blue is such a good color for him. There is… probably more to this, but I'm not deep enough in yet to say.

And here's the thing: I'm only scratching the surface. There is so much more here I'm not covering (color palettes! outfits! character design! environment! the deities! so much more!) and a lot more I can't cover, because I don't have the experience; this is me as a hobbyist artist who happened to take a couple design classes because I wanted to. The art style to this comic is so clever and creative and beautiful, though, I just had to go off about it. <3

...brownie points for getting all the way down here? Have a cookie.

[tabithatwo]

(x)

(this is a pls stop blaming juliette lewis for nat’s arc and death post <3)

[gammija]

musing about what a translation of the silt verses would sound like and immediately running headfirst into the problem of whether and how to translate 'Sister Carpenter'

[slavhew]

Hello!

If you're not too busy, would you mind listing some of the things you think count as death flags for Mr. Spender?

There's the obvious fact that he's the "old" mentor to group of young protagonists, but what else do you think would count?

OHH BOY ok so I'd think I'm a crackpot for this but since we're talking about Zack "Foreshadowing" Morrison. I have some thoughts

No harm in leading with the (chronologically) first thing that jumped out at me:

This one IMMEDIATELY made me antsy whenever I came back to it after my initial read, and considering Zack has referred to it on twitter in the past as one of their favorite jokes it's definitely not been forgotten about.

Second, the sheer amounts of near-misses, jokey or not, of Spender narrowly avoiding specifically lightning

Again, not much, but it's weird that it happened thrice, latter two of which had real gravitas rather than an one-off joke.

And third, Spender himself. He's repeatedly shown himself to be kind of a self sacrificing idiot, as well as prideful to a fault. Granted, it's both him and Mina trying to take on all the responsibility of saving Mayview and its inhabitants from their fate.. But Spender is exactly that right measure of doesn't-value-himself-enough (chest footprint aftercare or lack thereof), having an obscene amount of power (enables his loner act + pride) and poor judgement that has the capacity to put him at great risk. And it has!

Spender has not only shown low enough self-esteem to view himself as the de-facto scapegoat for the safety of the town, but also prideful enough to make very bad calls that end up in people, often himself, hurt (COUGH FORGE INCIDENT COUGH)

This is all conjecture, but it's definitely enough to make me worried about him :') Even if all this doesn't mean he'll necessarily die he's definitely getting (even more) seriously injured at some point. I love the guy but he's so far doing a horrible job of convincing me he wants to live bad enough to circumvent at least that

[sonknuxadow]

society if when people said fleetway sonic they meant the sonic comic series published by fleetway or the version of sonic who appears in those comics instead of their version of super sonic who is never even referred to as fleetway in universe

[amazingspider-z]

some more ghost rider sketches, version i guess i wanted to draw some bones,

including a partial prototype of whatever the hell the Rider has going on underneath his skin-suit (which might need more leather 'muscles' but. whatever), a theoretical endpoint of how dead Robbie could get in my verse, which. unlikely? extremely. but fun to draw, and a line-up of Robbie, Lisa, and Gabe

in theory, Lisa's sense of style was inspired by @wazzappp 's post of Claire's fashion Lisa, but, well, outfit design eludes me. so. brightly colored vague y2k vibes are. the best i got

[derpinette]

girls being nice to me gets me higher than ecstasy ever could

[bacchuschucklefuck]

would you like to elaborate on any gender analysis or headcanons for the bad kids?

I love th way this is worded. what if I wouldn't like to where would we be

[thewingedwolf]

one thing about hbo is that when they get a journalist coming up to them and going “man do i have a fucked up story i want to follow” they really do let that person go wild. i’ve mentioned the way the ronan farrow one really moved me emotionally and that’s just because ronan knows how to investigate and tell a story to get you righteously angry for who it is he’s defending. he’s good at his job!

but this one, quiet on the set, has genuinely made my jaw drop a few times, even if i think some of the framing could have been better in the last episode. of course i know about all the rumors about dan schneider and the abuse on set, it’s hard to have been into the teen nick scene and not notice, and it’s pretty easy to figure out which kids were being harmed through too much attention and which were being harmed through not enough attention, and there’s been all sorts of rumors floating around for over a decade!

but the build up to the drake bell reveal was well handled, i thought. i was initially skeptical because i think it’s hard to make a documentary about child sexual abuse without leaning into being exploitative in some way. and at first, where you have the actors who left early, like katrina, or who you remember but weren’t mega famous like giovannie, and they’re all saying “this set was so weird & inappropriate, i knew something was wrong but i didn’t have the experience or vocabulary to say what” it feels a little too schlocky. like, oh we’re just kind of speculating on the inappropriate nature of dan’s “friendship” with amanda bynes for two episodes? yeah it is fucked up that two pedophiles were on that set, but did they hurt anyone on set?

and then drake bell walks into the room dressed like timmy turner and says it was me. he hurt me.

i can’t stop thinking about the choice of clothes here and the way it helps drive home the point of the doc. he’s sitting there in fairly odd parents colors as an adult and can’t describe the sexual trauma he experienced as a child still, has never spoken about it, had his mom lie to his father over it because he was so screwed up. really driving home the point that he was just a kid who had a knack for physical comedy and it got him preyed on by dan, a man who should have protected him, set up and handed over to a monster who traumatized him for months and years.

but when that reporter said she got a judge to let them unseal the court documents because drake bell told her how much support peck had? my jaw dropped, like yeah this is reporting, this is someone who saw this story and finally fucking cared not about the salacious details but about who knew what and why they did nothing to stop this from happening. it’s not about forcing drake bell or katrina jackson or alexa to live through the worst moments of their life - it’s about how so many people knew what was going on and didn’t do a god damn thing to stop it. it’s about how these monsters, these convicted pedophiles, were given access to little kids to hurt and traumatize and everyone knew and didn’t just look the other way, they actively helped cover it up. THATS the story. Not that it was an isolated tragedy but that it was a clinical, purposeful environment built by people who wanted to harm little kids.

[todayisafridaynight]

would it be okay if u told me why u like aoki😭/gen😭😭😭😭BEEN TRYNA LIKE HIM FOR SO LONG I JUST CANTT but i love ur art so much so i still consume it otherwise lol

i liked tohru adachi in high school and tbh i think that alone is enough of an explanation for why i ended up liking aoki

[pepperpixel]

Some art of Tori from @misfitmccoward ‘s Naruto fic Plasticity! Because!! It’s such a good fucking fic…! I had to do fanart for it!! honestly after I first read it I was so fucking hype about it that I was almost like “omg.. I have to do an animatic or something for this. it’s SO GOOD” but. My ability to do animatics has kinda flushed down the drain recently ghghg- But! Still!! I had to at least draw some fanart for it…!

[arts-i-enjoy]

AHHHHHH

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[sonknuxadow]

they werent lying that knuckles series barely has knuckles in it

[atomicsuperrobot]

Rereading again, and it's really interesting to note just how different the early art style is from the later style- and especially from the anime itself. With the manga, you can at least see where things came from; in the anime, it's a fairly radical departure that is only barely recognizable as what it's meant to be, at least in regards to Joker himself, specifically.

The early manga has lots of sharp points and angles, creating a character that, even if he behaves in largely similar ways, still feels almost entirely different from his animated counterpart. No wonder I was so put off by the anime's designs, originally- and that I had gotten the impression that he was older than he actually wound up being, or was type-cast as. Funny how I now largely prefer his anime design and personality, even if it's altogether not that different!

Fun fact, when I first started reading, before I had started watching the anime (and even for a bit after I had started), the voice I had for Joker in my head was the same as Kaito's, from Magic Kaito- which, as far as anime goes, would be from Detective Conan and Magic Kaito 1412, specifically. Even if he seemed older, at least in looks, in my head he very much still read as a bratty teenager, it would seem.