Relieving Neck Stiffness Exercises for Flexibility and Relief
Exercises to Loosen Up Your Stiff Neck
Neck stiffness can be a common issue, especially for those who spend long hours sitting at a desk or engaging in repetitive activities. Incorporating targeted exercises into your routine can help alleviate tension, improve flexibility, and provide relief from a stiff neck.
1. Neck Stretches
– Side-to-Side Neck Stretch: Gently tilt your head towards one…
Eddie, who is intently watching Steve, fidgeting every so often. If Eddie was a cat, his tail would be flicking back and forth with rapid increasing movements as he got ready to attack.
Steve, who was so innocently watching the game, happens to realize he hasn't heard Eddie say anything for awhile. Which means one (1) thing: he's up to mischief.
Steve barely has time to turn his head to look when Eddie tackles into him. Steve falls back further onto the couch with a grunt as his boyfriend wrenches his shirt up. "The hell-" Steve's hands are in the air, unsure if he should pull Eddie closer or push him away.
The hesitation gives Eddie enough time to attempt to slither under his shirt. Eddie can only fit his head and the tops of his shoulders under Steve's form-fitting t-shirt, but it's enough. His eyes light up at the torso covered in hair and freckles.
Eddie lays his head against Steve's chest with a dull thud, echoing the thudding of Steve's heart. Eddie snakes his arms around Steve's waist. Eddie can feel Steve slowly place a hand on his back, and stroke up and down his spine.
Steve lightly pulls the neck back so he can look down his shirt at Eddie. Eddie doesn't see it, the look on his face, content to just lay there with his eyes closed. But the adoration, love, and pure glee can't be held back on Steve's face.
One of the biggest things that makes me see Leo as trans is absolutely the size of his carapace in comparison to his brothers’.
And I’m not talking about height! I’m specifically looking at his shell here, because when you compare him to the others, particularly Donnie who is nearly the same height as Leo, it’s very clear that Leo’s carapace is much longer in proportion to the rest of his body.
Like - standing side by side, even though Donnie is shorter his carapace ends noticeably higher up than Leo’s does. And I like this not only because it really helps push the idea that Leo could very likely be trans (or intersex!), but it’s also just a fun design difference between them.
(It also lends way to future scenarios of Donnie eventually getting taller than Leo, but sitting down still has Leo being the taller one haha.)
I'm so in love with everything about your art!! I wanted to ask something about your MLP human designs in particular. all of them have really lovely and interesting face shapes/details. even though all the pony designs have the same head molds (save for eye shape), all the unique characteristics you gave them just... look RIGHT. is there a particular method or design principle you used? thanks for your time!! I can't wait to see more of your work!
It's all about shape language and how they inform a person's read on the character.
I talked about this before, but each of the Main 6 were paired together so I could design them in contrast with each other. For RD, I wanted her short hair to have a wind-swept look, as if she's constantly running. So bare forehead and hair spiking out at the bottom. She contains lots and lots of sharp lines and shapes to give her the look of a speeding arrow.
Felice, on the other hand, droops down a lot to reflect her solemn, shy disposition. I didn't want her hair to be perfectly straight though, as that'd suggest she spends a lot of time fretting over it and isn't outdoorsy, so I made it a bit of a tangled mess too.
In short, RD's features are sharp and point upwards, Felice's features are round and droop downwards. (Think Joshua tree vs. weeping willow.)
For these two, I specifically wanted to include non-Western facial features, as I found I haven't really included them in my character designs up until now.
Pinkie's bold and loud, so I gave her bold eyes, bold eyebrows, a bold nose, etc. I worked on Thea's nose for quite a bit and ended up abstracting the shape a bit to look more cartoony, borrowing from Pixar's Soul's character design notes. In cases like these, I recommend finding ways to simplify features and break them down into easily-recognizable shapes and forms (Cartoon Saloon are masters at this). The less visual noise, the easier their expressions are to read! And it's generally more fun to draw.
In short, diversify, exaggerate, and simplify. Figure out what works for you and get a little wacky with it. Character design is all about finding a balance between maintaining your voice and vision and creating something unique and lively.
If you experience headaches and neck pain, then I’m sure you’ve tried many stretches and releases at the neck but we need to look further into the secondary impairments. Meaning what is causing everything to tighten up and produce headaches. One of those things have to do with the muscle that act the shoulder. In this video, I showed the latissimus dorsi and the upper trapezius and how they have a tug-of-war relationship. If you can mobilize the latissimus dorsi and free tension on the upper trap, you can reduce neck pain and headaches. Give the exercises in this video a try
Things I added and changed from the previous design:
Fluffy!!
Legs are more stylised to be like deer's because hot damn were they previously hard to draw
Now Extra Lanky™
More scales, like a wyrm
More of the light peeking through their scales (99% of them aren't visible unless under specific circumstances and angles, I just wanted to show them off, mostly it's just their ribs, shoulders and tail showing)
just saw this girl on tinder that i had the most insane rollercoaster thing with in college but she now identifies as a goth dyke and let me tell you… i swiped right so hard but almost didn’t because i wanted to keep looking at her pictures. she looks the same, just different style but it suits her so so well. and as ya’ll know i am a whore for goth/alt aesthetics to my colorful dyke look. the contrast is so giving but it just so happens to be what im usually drawn to. if we even go out to coffee and end up making out over this, it will have been worth the swipe. even if nothing, it was still totally worth it. i cannot lie, she was such a disaster in college though and nearly tanked an entire group project for me but my professor was also a lesbian (shoutout to this professor bc i loved her so much and she really cared about me) and she was like “hey allura,” and proceeded to tell me that this girl was a less experienced gay than i was and was clearly very obsessed with me (cause apparently she had gone to our professor to talk about me and had accidentally dropped a weird amount of concerning info??) and so my professor was going to separate her from me as much as possible (cause at that point she was like causing a crazy ton of issues for my school stuff and in my social life) but i mean… she was/is REALLY hot. her intensity was really sexy and the way she was so shameless was ALSO very sexy. plus i mean, even though she was doing wild shit it wasn’t like she was an awful person. i found her to be super yummy in all respects and was really shook when she flew off the handle and was basically harassing me. now this all sounds really insane i know but… ugh i want her so bad and i really hoped that some years apart would change those toxic obsessive pieces so let’s hope yes and find out