#Rendering Project Documents

[aeriona]

HEY! Do you guys like squid biology? creature headcanons? cool art? well BOY do I have the document for you~~!

It is with great pleasure to show off this absolute chonker of an art/writing project; The Mollusc Era! BEHOLD, MY MAGNUM OPUS!

In this document I go over the intricacies of various cephalopods; Inklings, Octolings, Cuttlings and even the Nautilus! The entire study is illustrated by yours truly, so there's plenty of pretty pictures to gawk at as well as pages upon pages of my concentrated autism ramblings to pour over if that's also your thing. Enjoy!

I��ve also included a Legacy Version of the document: a much older, unfinished version complete with ancient-ass art from mid last year in all of its poorly-rendered glory. A lot of the information in there is also outdated and poorly written, so good luck with that. yuck.

I recommend viewing both of these on desktop as the formatting seems to work best on there. You're more than welcome to use any of the info in there for whatever you like, if you're gonna use my art please credit me though! cheers!

[blueiscoool]

Ancient Rock-Cut Tomb Found in Courtyard of a House in Turkey

Found in the province of Şanlıurfa, the rock tomb features depictions of a reclining man and two winged women alongside an illegible inscription.

Archaeologists have found an ancient tomb carved into bedrock beneath an unassuming courtyard in Turkey.

Discovered in the yard of a house in the southeastern province of Şanlıurfa, the one-chamber tomb is decorated with sculpted reliefs that provide new insights into ancient funerary practices. Şanlıurfa’s governor, Hasan Şıldak, announced the find on social media this week.

One of the rock tomb’s walls features a relief sculpture of a reclining man leaning on his elbow. Another carving in the chamber walls depicts two winged women. Such images “offer clues about the beliefs and lifestyle of the period,” writes Anatolian Archaeology’s Oguz Büyükyıldırım.

The inside of the chamber’s door featured a painted inscription, though damage has rendered it illegible. While researchers haven’t yet dated the tomb, Şıldak says that its decorations are unlike others found at ancient tombs in Turkey.

Per Anatolian Archaeology, ancient rock tombs found in Şanlıurfa usually date to the late Hittite and Roman periods. The Hittite Empire flourished in Anatolia (present-day Turkey) between about 1400 and 1200 B.C.E., while the Romans began establishing rule in the region around the first century B.C.E.

Ancient Rock-Cut Tomb Found in Courtyard of a House in Turkey

The rock tomb is the latest discovery from the Şanlıurfa Cultural Inventory project, which aims to identify new historical assets across the province, as Türkiye Today’s Koray Erdogan reported in October. The provincial government collaborated with Batman and Harran Universities to assemble a team of nine archaeologists, architects and art historians to conduct the research. They’re hoping to record thousands of cultural assets, including 1,700 historical sites that are registered but poorly documented.

As project leader Gulriz Kozbe, an art historian at Batman University, told Türkiye Today, a comprehensive database is essential to protecting cultural artifacts and sites, which are always in danger of sustaining damage from humans or natural disasters—like the earthquakes that struck southern Turkey in 2023.

“Without documentation, the loss becomes irreversible,” Kozbe told the publication. “Having a database would have accelerated restoration efforts in light of such disasters.”

The newly discovered rock tomb “is exactly the type of cultural asset the survey was designed to preserve,” as Artnet’s Adam Schrader writes.

The tomb’s centerpiece carving, the reclining man, resembles some examples of ancient funerary portraiture, according to the publication. He may represent the deceased individual who was entombed at the site, while the reliefs of the winged women could represent guardians watching over him from the afterlife.

The practice of carving tombs into rock was somewhat common across the ancient world. Turkey is home to many of these ancient tombs, including the striking Lycian Rock-Cut Tombs near the southwestern coast and the remote Kapilikaya Rock Tomb in the mountains of the north.

By Sonja Anderson.

[boxturret]

BMOP: A history of the Abandoned Koro

Now that things have all come out, and the project is well and truly over, I thought I'd take a moment to talk a bit about something I worked on in the game, the "Abandoned Koro" area, now that there's video footage of a playthrough I can easily reference.

I suppose as a quick primer, I was with the BMOP team from around March of 2021 to November of 2022, serving as both 3D art lead and Level design lead for a time. There's a post out there about my experiences with the leadership of the team that I mostly stand by still, I do feel bad for how the project ended, and I have come around a bit to remember the positive times more than the negative, but that doesn't erase what happened.

So to begin, when I came on level design was a fairly inactive sub channel of the game development discord, some ideas got tossed around occasionally, but not much seemed to be happening, before I'd joined there was a rough map drawn up by the then current level design lead.

It was very basic stuff, there was a version of this map in engine that had been extruded a bit to make it a kind of playable space, one area had some trees on it and some random platforms.

One area that interested me greatly was this part in the south, the so called "Abandoned Koro"

The rough idea being that it was the Le-Koro seen in the GBA game Bionicle: Quest for the Toa, that had been abandoned in favour of the one seen in the browser game Mata Nui Online Game and the cancelled PC game Bionicle: Legend of Mata Nui, as the one in QFTT had a lot of wooden structures while the one seen in the other two was more like a woven nest.

At the time I was just a 3d modeller, and had never really done any real level design, but the concept just really inspired me, so I went off and in blender sketched out a possible level layout for this area.

I made a bunch of renders and wrote out how I thought the level could work, which can be seen in this document HERE.

For a quick overview, the idea was you'd enter the area, the bridge would break, you'd have to clear a river to activate the water wheel on a large mechanical tree that would allow you passage upwards, and then navigate through the Nui-Rama infested ruins of the village before coming to a cave.

The tree was something I poured a lot of time in to, its worthy of its own post at some point in the future.

Now I'll be honest, I was super nervous about releasing this document to the team, I thought I was overstepping my bounds. I was just a relatively new 3d modeller on the team, I didn't have the right to be talking about level design, but to my surprise people were really receptive to it, and I very quickly got added to the level design team¹.

I ended up doing a rough blockout in engine. This was back in the time before Lewa had been chosen to be the main player character, so it was still Tahu.

This was the first time I'd ever touched Unreal, so it took a while. That's why the sky is black, I didn't know how to add a skybox.

I never got in to level scripting, but as a proof of concept, I think it was successful.

You can see that in this version of the level it had already progressed, now there was the idea of using the Pakari to break the dam, so finding it was the first task on the ground.

This version wasn't in the actual demo map, because as I said before the demo wasn't really very fleshed out at the time. One thing my map showed though was that the demo was way too big. The level design lead at the time had decided the size based on how long it took to get around the map as a perfectly flat plane with no terrain, at max run speed, with no obstacles. This is a very flawed methodology to say the least. Having an actual level with things scaled to the character really started to show the holes in this, and eventually, once I became lead, the demo area was massively shrunk.

Here's a version from just a month later. The version is now part of the new, more compact demo area, but its mostly barren at this point.

This version was actually completely rebuilt from the ground up because it had been decided to try out voxels as a basis². They were a pain to deal with and this was overturned eventually. I'd say in total, including the 3d sketch I did, I re-built this map maybe 4 times.

One benefit of voxels was it was trivial to have caves, so this is where the idea of the pakari being found in a cave started to emerge.

As I continued to play and refine the demo it became clear how much the movement systems would need to be tweaked. There seemed to be this idea in the team that everything could be done separately and bolted together later, so character moment was all handled by someone jumping around on some big blocks in a test map whereas level design was off doing their own thing, but it really wasn't working. So while the movement felt good in a vacuum, actually putting it in context really exposed a lot of issues. You could easily jump over any enemy you could come across, as said earlier maps had to be huge in order to make the world seem big while you were running at full speed, and after about 3 jumps you'd be 20 metres in the air.

At this point the idea still was to have the entire island of Mata Nui be one large open area you could freely explore, so the sheer size of the maps resulting from the over powered movement was a major issue. I lobbied very hard to have things pulled back and eventually they were.

its a bit out of order, but here's the demo area from closer to when I left. Its a fraction of the size of the original map

Here's another video from a month later.

As much as it pains me to say it, this is basically it in terms of meaningful development. By this point Lewa had been locked in as the playable character, and the movement had been dialed back to a more reasonable degree, so I was able to really start trying to refine the area. This is where I ran in to a fatal issue.

No one else wanted to play the game.

And what was worse barely anything worked.

The level is still in what I would call a grey box state. I used a couple tree trunk assets I'd made here and there, and put in a big canopy asset from one of the many asset packs we had for a bit of ambience, but it was all still very basic geometry, easily changed or modified.

Unfortunately, there's only so much you can do for playtesting your own area. You built it: you know where everything is, what's supposed to happen, where you're supposed to go. You can try to pretend to play it as a new player, but that only gets you so far. I was hoping people on the team would play it and provide feedback³, but outside of maybe one or two people a handful of times⁴, trying to get any really feedback was was a futile effort.

The thing was that this area was very complex. If the demo was a vertical slice of the game as a whole, this area was itself a microcosm of the demo⁵. It had platforming, puzzle solving, combat, mask powers, the lot. Now unfortunately for me, barely any of those systems actually worked.

As an example, this long ledge was for a long time a stand in for vine swinging, then rail grinding⁶, then was ultimately just replaced by a platform.

So things had kind of hit a wall. I couldn't properly design areas with combat in them until combat existed in a more stable state, I couldn't design platforming sections until platforming worked in a consistent way. I couldn't even adjust the overall flow of the level because everyone else basically refused to give feedback.

But the unfortunate thing is, in August of that year they'd released a teaser trailer.

And that trailer had gotten hundreds of thousands of views.

This is where the whole development of this game really went off the rails. Now there was this push to get things in a presentable state, start set dressing and making final assets so things could be shown off.

But I refused. Everything was too up in the air to commit to set dressing, this is why block out exists, if the jump changes height its no big issue to grab the couple cubes an area is made out of and shift them up or down, if combat is found to need more space its easy to make things bigger, or add or take away walls. If something is confusing things can be shifted. Once set dressing starts now you're dealing with dozens to hundreds of objects being scattered about, even the smallest tweak can lead to a mess.

Not to mention set dressing raised its own series of issues, from plants triggering the IK on the toa's feet, making their knees go up to their chin when walking through a bunch of ferns, to collision volumes being oversized or offset, meaning that big rock face they just added has now created a massive invisible wall in another area. Once the addition of some plants caused all ledges within a wide radius to no longer work⁷.

It was a miserable state of affairs. My mental state rapidly deteriorated as I fought against this, I became very short tempered and irritable, and eventually near the end of 2022 I was kicked from the team. It was such a relief honestly.

I think the tragic thing is, set dressing is actually quite a fast process. The starting area went from looking like this to something quite like the final in about a month?

But you can't show off the first screenshot on twitter⁸.

I guess I'll spare a quick moment to talk about the final version seen in the video.

Its at 46 minutes in if the link doesn't work

Its...fine? The assets they've made are all good, though I think they lost the QFTM inspiration along the way. The thing that stands out to me is just how...little its moved on from 2022. Just look how much progress was made in like 3 months, compare that to now, 3 years later. Temporary platforms I placed are still in the exact same spot. I do find the addition of a matoran with a key for the cave to be a not great addition, if only for the fact that you need to find a tiny green man in amongst the overwhelming greenery to proceed.

One part I found quite amusing was the final enemy encounter. It was supposed to be this large hut, probably Matau's, that had been completely overtaken by a hive, and Nui-Rama would spawn constantly from it until the encounter was over.

There were a lot of concepts drawn up, but I guess it just...never happened. I also don't know why there's waves of fikou there either, that was after my time I think.

So that's really all I have to say about that version, it looks okay. Its still clearly unfinished. It kinda works more than it did when I left, but its shockingly not that much different, outside of some new assets.

I'll be honest, I did intend this to be more of a happy, reflective post, but when watching part of the developer commentary a quote stood out to me.

"Traditionally you would kind of have really basic blockout for an environment and play test that to see how the level design is working. Because of the the situation we had we were kind of forced to just go ahead with set dressing and prettying it up and everything so if it were in a perfect world I would have loved to have gotten to do some more play testing early on but we did what we could with it. And I mean you basically had to just blindly trust the process because many systems weren't working at the time things were designed." -AN UNKNOWN BMOP DEVELOPER (2025)

And I just fundamentally disagree. This was a fan project, there were no deadlines but those that were self inflicted. This process they blindly trusted just lead to a thing that on the surface looks okay, but is still riddled with bugs that were well known for years. I've seen some people on the team say the game was 90% completed, feature locked, just 3 more months of polish and it would have all been working, but from what I've seen of the game I really doubt it. They say themselves in the commentary that there's bugs they've been fighting for nearly a decade still rearing their head.

So yeah, its not exactly a happy tale. I'm quite proud of the work I did, I learned a lot, and met a lot of people I'm still friends with to this day. Its a shame the project had to end this way, and I'm sad everyone's work has gone to waste, but I'm also not going to pretend this was some amazing project that was struck down right before achieving greatness.

But most of all: Fuck you lego.

If you're interested in seeing a few more of the things I worked on in my time with BMOP, go HERE. I may post more publicly about some of them in the future, who knows. I have a post about the regional Kini temple I designed and built for the game HERE. Also some renders I did for some of my game design reports HERE.

¹-I say team, it was maybe two other people who were barely around. ²-I'll be honest here: Some people wanted to have the entire map destructible so that they could have Bohrok dynamically destroy it. For the post game DLC after we'd finished this Zelda sized free fan game⁹. ³-💯👍👀 isn't helpful feedback at the end of the day. Its supportive I'll give you that. But sometimes you need more. ⁴-One person on the team even outright refused to play the game until final release, to "save their first reactions for their stream"... ⁵-idk if its clear at this point but the "demo" is, was, and now always will be the entirety of the existing game. Oh there were ideas for other things, but nothing concrete ever materialised⁹. ⁶-You know, like Sonic⁹ ⁷-The ledge's over sensitive detection for something blocking it is one of the most frustrating things about the game's development for me. ⁸-You absolutely can show off real development stuff, there are lots of people who find that fascinating. ⁹-This game was nothing if not ambitious.

You see that kind of mop is called a "Bee Mop", because of its sponge's resemblance to honey comb.

[thedragonagebigbang]

Calling All Artists!

With nearly 50 new longfics underway, we are looking for just as many ARTISTS for our Big Bang! Sign ups begin August 2nd.

In just a few short weeks, you will be able to read the enticing summaries of these Dragon Age fanfics—and decide to make an illustration for one of your choice.

In the meantime, follow us here to stay in the loop for announcements! You can also optionally join our Discord server to cheer everyone on, but Discord is not required for this event.

For more information - continue reading!

What is a Big Bang?

A fandom Big Bang encourages writers to produce a new, long piece of fanfiction, with the challenge of a deadline. Each fic will be paired with an artist, who will work with the author to create a new illustration based off of the themes and vibes of that work. Each pair of participants in this event will produce: One (1) new Dragon Age Fanfic of at least 25,000 words, and one (1) art piece inspired by that fic. You can read more here and in our Event Guidebook.

What does artist participation in the Bang look like?

Artists will sign up by ranking their preference of fanfictions based on detailed idea pitches (example) presented by the writers. Artists commit to illustrating a new, polished artwork that is tangibly inspired by their assigned fanfiction written during the event. During the collaboration process, artists stay in regular contact with their writer and work collaboratively on their projects

⤷ Artists are expected to meet all deadlines as indicated in our Event Timeline

What does "tangibly inspired by the fanfiction" mean?

▸ The artwork includes characterts as represented in the fanfiction, OR ▸ The artwork depicts an interpretation of a scene from the fanfiction, OR ▸ The artwork represents a high-level view of the fanfiction in entirety (ex: the kind of image that might be for a book cover)

👉Even if a fic is a modern AU Professor Solas fic, you do not have to depict a modern setting, modern clothes, or even Solas at all. Even if a fic features OCs, you are not required to depict those OCs. You can find a broader view of artistic representation, if you desire.

What does "polished artwork" mean?

▸ Must meet the standard set by the artist's general portfolio of previous artworks ▸ Your work should match the level of effort of a 25k+ word fic ▸ You are not required to be a professional or experienced artist, but you are asked to put in an effort that you would be proud to attach your name to in a public forum. ▸ Polished does not necessarily mean "highly rendered" or "full color"; if the artist primarily works in pen and ink, for example, then a black and white artwork is acceptable.

If you're interested in joining us as an artist, you will be able to view & rank writer pitches starting on August 2nd, 2024.

If you have any questions about participating as an artist, please check out our Event Guidebook or reach out to the mods as noted below.

Full Event Documents: Rules | Code of Conduct | Event Guidebook

Contact The Mods: ask | discord | email: thedragonagebigbang@gmail.com

[eliyips]

Xisuma's Helmet 💜

My 3D final for the fall quarter! 4 assets made from scratch, modeled in Maya/Zbrush, textured in Substance Painter, and rendered in Unreal Engine 5.

Detail shots and some rambling about my process below the cut! :)

The helmet! I've talked about it a lot before, but my design for X's helmet is very heavily inspired by Motocross! :) this model was done with an AHR motocross helmet as my main reference, as well as my own art of Xisuma. The tubing was the main addition!

The pedestal was the final asset I made. I designed, modeled, and textured it in one day, and I'm very proud of how it turned out! I wish I could have shown it off better in the final render, but alas, the composition didn't allow for it. I still think It's pretty neat :) The decals along the top and at the center were designed by myself as well. At the top, we have some text art. It's hard to read (deliberately) but it spells out "XISUMA," repeating four times on each side. The front decal is dragon wings, framing an end crystal.

The flowers I selected are Asters! I was under the impression when I started this project that these were Xisuma's birthflowers, but it turns out his birthday is in October, not September, LOL. I was thinking of the his Youtube anniversary... I still associate these flowers with him either way though!

The flowers were probably the most difficult asset, but the skull might be the one I'm least satisfied with. Skulls are weird and complicated. If I were to do this over again, I'd go for a skull that I can find more precise reference for, rather than a sailfin lizard :') I picked out a lizard because I wanted to invoke dragons a lot in my imagery, but felt like choosing an extinct animal, like a dinosaur, wasn't appropriate for what I was going for? The sailfin lizard is a species which is vulnerable but not extinct, which I decided was more in line with my vision. Again though, if I were to do this over, I'd pick a skull which is more readily documented.

To conclude, some WIP screenshots! :] My initial sketch for the composition, two Maya screenshots, of the high poly helmet and pedestal, and an early screenshot from UE5, figuring out the composition, before I'd finished the pedestal model.

Happy to talk more about this, or answer any questions that people have! :D my ask box is open. I've been considering writing a short fic about the concept behind this piece as well... It's a little fuzzy, the details, but I do have a concept, and most of my choices for this project did have intention behind them. :)

Thanks for reading! 💜

[mistakenot4892]

Progress on my little game project.

It looks extremely simple (because it is, really) but this is a client-server engine built on the Monogame rendering/input framework and the C# Socket class. I've never really worked on netcode before outside of one semester at Uni so this has been an interesting challenge.

With a regular single-player local game, you can update everything on the fly as frequently as your renderer refreshes (120 times a second for my render layer). You don't need to have a specific authoritative (accurate and real) world state, because definitionally, the world state that exists is authoritative.

With my build, even local singleplayer is using a server via localhost, so prediction and interpolation are required to make inputs feel snappy and movement feel smooth. The server runs at 50ms intervals, so twenty times a second, which means if I just use the world state at any given point, movement is going to be choppy and inputs are going to be delayed. I need to interpolate (smooth out) movements across the 50ms intervals, and I need to run my movement and physics logic on the client to hide the 50-100ms latency between inputs and action on the screen.

Valve has some great documentation on their model which I have been using heavily, and I am currently trying to implement Gabriel Gambetta's writeup on client prediction so my character stops jumping around wildly on my remote test server.

The other big challenge at the moment is getting my serialisation and marshaling logic to work consistently. I am using MessagePack for serde, which is a lot easier than trying to write my own serde and handle Endianness and network byte order and whatnot, but I am struggling a bit with debugging bytestreams on the remote server. I may need to learn to use Wireshark and equivalent to work out what the hell is going on under the hood.

It has been a lot of fun, even if some of the bugs have been extremely frustrating. I am hoping to build this out into a general purpose engine for future game projects, but even if I stall out I have learned a ton about netcode for games.

[kay-jaye]

aziraphale is pretty sure attempting to sneak a demon into heaven is a bad idea.

forget the fact that he’s the supreme archangel. forget the fact that the second coming is not going at all according to plan—his plan…the ineffable plan? forget the fact that he and crowley haven’t had a moment alone that wasn’t interrupted by muriel or maggie or nina or a legion of demons or the end of the world.

forget the fact that crowley hasn’t taken those wretched sunglasses off since…

it’s definitely a bad idea.

crowley is wearing a cream-colored suit over one of those turtlenecks with a gold version of his usual scarf, saying something about heavenly bees, but whatever joke he’s trying to make falls flat because all aziraphale can think is, i could appoint you to be an angel, you could come back to heaven, and isn’t that the pinnacle of cruel irony?

he understands why the disguise is necessary; it’s the not-so-subtle rub-in-the-face from a bitter demon squeezing his heart into a fist. it’s the prick of unease in the back of his mind that something isn’t quite right, the floor is at an odd angle, that book belongs on a different shelf. at the same time, it’s the you’re gorgeous he’s longed to return since before the beginning, sitting behind clenched teeth every day for 6,000 years. and it’s the realization that this was not what he imagined at all.

“this the one?” crowley asks, flipping through a file laid out on michael’s desk. “supreme archangel, and they’re still keeping secrets from you, huh?”

aziraphale would appreciate it if crowley would refrain from certain reminders. “yes, that’s it.” he looks around the pillar he’s taken to leaning against, waiting for the inevitable repercussion of being caught in the act. his suit is newer, sharper, grayer, but at this rate, all the worrying his thumbs have been doing to the fabric of the jacket is bound to have him looking his normal self. he supposes crowley sees something similarly foreign whenever he looks at him.

“wait, these are—”

“i know.”

crowley’s frown deepens as he rummages through the papers and documents and photos that aziraphale spent so long staring at, debating if coming back to beg crowley for help was worth the knife wounding his pride, and whether crowley would simply twist it instead and tell him to fuck off.

(he did, at first.)

too many things on the tip of his tongue—another apology, a frustrated yell, the heavy memory of crowley.

“you were right,” he settles with a sigh.

the demon pauses, considers him, then closes the vanilla folder, dragging the projected holograms back into the file. aziraphale braces for an “i told you so” or the self-deprecating laughter that’s made an increased appearance in wake of his leaving. the damn sunglasses render his expression unreadable, a book aziraphale regarded himself as an expert on, but now he isn’t so sure he’d ever gotten the words right to begin with.

then crowley is smiling at him. no sneer, no malice. crowley’s smile is small, two parts sad and muted expectations, and aziraphale feels like he’s being offered something important, more than a title, more than a job, more than the opportunity to fix the unfixable, though he certainly tried, and he’ll be damned before he lets it go. it’s still angry, but it’s so much realer than anything aziraphale has felt up here for months, and aziraphale knows. he knows they need to talk, and even if they’re just as irreparable as heaven and the whole system, he knows which one he’ll be devoted to mending.

“can i get that in dance form?”

and suddenly aziraphale knows what it is to soar without wings.

he doesn’t get the chance to respond before michael’s approaching voice sends him into a panic. aziraphale hopes the click of heels on white porcelain tile will drown out the sound of their own shuffling as he lunges for crowley, who just manages to grab the file they came for, and pulls him around the pillar.

there aren’t many good hiding places in heaven. why would there be? it’s supposed to reflect truth and dispel lies. the good thing about being an archangel, however, is the ability to alter heaven’s layout, although minutely. you want a desk? there. you want to lengthen the hallway from uriel’s office to yours? done. you want a slightly darker corridor leading into the wall a few feet to the left of michael’s desk? aziraphale does.

he almost shushes crowley’s quiet yelp of surprise when he frantically presses the demon into the alcove out of sight, and aziraphale feels the punched-out exhale more than he actually hears it.

it’s deja vu. they’re back in tadfield manor except crowley’s holding a folder containing plans for judgment day trapped between them, and aziraphale’s the one with his hands clutching lapels like they might leave with another stinging don’t bother. the moment is dangerously loaded because fuck, aziraphale has no idea where crowley’s sunglasses got thrown in his haste, and crowley’s looking at him, really looking at him, without dark lenses to hide the way his eyes flicker down or the split-second fear that flashes across them.

aziraphale is crushing their chests together, and crowley is caving under him, and jesus isn’t here yet, but there wouldn’t have been room for him anyway.

“angel,” crowley breathes, and aziraphale knows it’s a slip of the tongue because crowley hasn’t called him that since they last parted ways.

aziraphale’s mind is a constant loop of yellow, yellow, yellow, and it takes every ounce of remaining self-control in his body not to lean forward and do what he should’ve done months ago. he doesn’t have quite enough left to pull back though, so he’s stuck on the verge of never knowing how to ask for what he wants, always too good at backtracking for their own safety, afraid to do it now because he really thought last time was the last time, and he doesn’t know if crowley can take another rejection.

aziraphale doesn’t know if he can either.

any sound of michael has disappeared.

aziraphale reckons this is the part where he’s supposed to say something like, “i’m not nice. nice is a four-letter word.” aziraphale reckons crowley might even agree with him. he doesn’t feel nice; all these millennia of you go too fast for me, crowley, and i don’t even like you.

their noses bump as crowley shifts his head. “aziraphale,” he says. it makes the angel want to cry. “‘s alright.”

so crowley’s catching the bullet this time, and that’s all it takes for aziraphale’s grip to loosen. he steps back—all too familiar a motion—and watches the demon smooth himself out.

“crowley, i—”

“nah,” he interrupts, waving the file in his hands. “talk later, remember?”

aziraphale relaxes, wonders what miracle gave him this and who performed it, wonders which stars aligned and whether crowley knew about them. the angel nods.

neither speaks again until the elevator doors are closing and the angel disguise has fallen away.

crowley, in all of his too-tight pants and infinite patience, doesn’t even look at aziraphale when he says, “dance later, too.”

[alabasterwasps]

Alex Kralie's Glass Fireflies, an student thesis film.

——

It was his sophomore year of college when Marble Hornets had debuted, it was a rookie student film, but one that got him a good grade and into his advanced classes. His junior year rolled to a close and he was given a summer project, his student thesis project, due by the end of his senior year. Ultimately he decided to make a film in universe with Marble Hornets, something better, something using the skills he learned. It’d be great. It was supposed to be for fun. It was supposed to be dipping a toe into the world of film, a summer project he would finish up when school rolled around.

Something happened to Tim that summer, something no one had answers to. He stated to recluse, and he stepped away from the project.

Alex ran into a lot issues, corrupted footage and broken cameras. There were other issues of missing tapes, but he powered through and released the film just in time for graduation.

They celebrated, inviting Tim but with no answer.

It was a week before graduation that things went downhill.

First it was Jessica, who’d suddenly stopped answering calls, missing. Amy had gone looking for her friend naturally. Amy never came home. Alex followed her location on his phone, only to have a run in with none other than Tim.

Then, like a chain reaction, Jay had went in search of Alex, also having a very unfortunate run in with Tim.

Over the summer, Tim had a very personal encounter with the Operator, one which left “Masky”, a protective alter, rendered dormant. Masky is known to hold onto injury and pain much longer than Tim, and ever since this incident he is nowhere to be found, leaving Tim effectively without his shield. For the next several months he’s visited by the Operator, over and over again like he had been in the institution, except no one was here to save him. It was his fault, this thing. That’s what he’d told himself. When he’d seen the corruption of Alex’s film, he knew he’d done something awful, and he had to stop it, stop it from spreading, stop it from infecting others. He’d starve the fever, then stop the source.

Alex had woken up in the hospital the morning of his graduation, with no recollection of the previous night. Jay was gone, Amy was gone, Jessica was gone. Jessica and Amy were missing, no evidence of where they may have gone. Supposedly, in a woods not far from a local school there had been a spent bullet casing and blood tracing back to Jay Merrick. With no sign of a body, he was deemed missing but deceased.

After his funeral, Alex moved out of town, with little word to his remaining friend, Brian. He had to get away from everything he’d lost.

It was Brian, years later, who decided to look further into his friend’s disappearances, into how odd Tim had been. He played detective, documenting his findings with video and photo so he could try to find answers.

At first, Tim was cooperative, but his stories didn’t always add up. Brian still followed, taking note of weirder things going on. Corrupted footage, burned photos, something deeper was at play. The Operator, two strange masked men, and still no answers about Jessica or Amy or even Jay.

[sonicenvy]

So this project is continuing to be complex and detailed, but I'm having a good time. If you haven't seen my original post, this is an image that I pulled from the book of Kells on folio 27v. The full page contains four figures: the man, the lion, the ox, and the eagle. The four figures represent the four gospels. This figure is the eagle, and it represents the book of John, St. John the Evangelist and the ascension of Christ into heaven. I am not religious (though I was raised Irish Catholic), so I picked this design because I love the art in medieval manuscripts and in the Book of Kells specifically.

So, how'd I get here? (an extremely detailed step-by-step)

Downloaded the full size image of Folio 27v

Cut St. John out of the image using the pen tool in Photoshop and moved it to a new document with a clear background.

Pasted St. John into a blank high res procreate document.

Did a rough digital tracing of the image in procreate with my iPad and Apple Pencil.

Opened tracing in Illustrator and made it into a vector. Took forever because I fucked up my procreate settings RIP.

Turned Vector into live paint object.

Opened original image in PS, and used eyedropper tool to select colors in original document. Compared those colors to the colors that I had in my stash (wanted to use mostly if not all from my stash rather than buying new floss).

Used threadcolors.com to get the hex codes for the selected threads. Made a spreadsheet of the selected colors for my reference. Printed out spreadsheet.

Colored the image using the paint bucket tool (and recolor artwork options) with the colors corresponding to selected threads. Saved Illustrator document.

Opened illustrator document in PS, gave it a solid white background and exported it as PDF.

Printed out initial copy of PDF image on blank printer paper to see if it was the right size. It wasn’t lol, so I made it bigger (super easy with vector images!) Printed test copy #2 and it was the right size.

Iron chosen fabric and stretch in Phillips head screw tightened hoop.

Printed the PDF image on Sulky Fabri-solvy, cut to size, and adhere to the surface of the stretched fabric.

Stitch, all single stranded….

 

What's new?

Since the last time I posted, I've mostly completed the head. It's comprised of a mixture of satin stitches, long and short stitches, chain stitches, and some other stitch I can't remember the name of. The other new feature is very, very, tiny orange and red glass beads.

When I was considering how I wanted to render the dots in the circle behind the head and the three tears of blood, I initially considered doing french knots for the dots and bullion knots for the blood tears. To make a decision about this, I did some tests on scrap fabric. At the end of the test stitching I found that I was not completely satisfied with what I had come up with. As I stared at it, I was hit with the sudden vision of using seed beads of some kind for these two areas. This idea completely possessed me (lol), and I made a trip to my delightful local beading store the next day, hoop in hand.

The old ladies who run the bead store helpfully showed me to a bunch of interesting beads and got me all set up with them. I also purchased some size 11 beading needles, which are barely large enough to stick a single strand of embroidery floss through. At the time, I didn't know whether or not the embroidery floss would even go through the needle or the beads, so I purchased some tiny beading thread, but ended up not needing it. The eyes of those needles are SO tiny that they were extremely difficult to thread, but I managed it eventually. They were also, interesting very, very bendy. I ended up liking the stitching experience with them so much I continued using them to stitch other, non-beaded sections of the piece.

The other consideration that I had to make while putting this section together was whether or not I wanted to render that yellow ring around the head in golden yellow thread or gold, gold metallic thread, as in the original image that section appears to potentially be illuminated with gold leaf. However, my hatred of metallic thread (Satan's embroidery supply) won in the end so I went with the gold yellow thread, leaving the crosses as the only metallic gold element. I don't know that I'll end up using any other metallic gold, but I obviously can't rule it out.

Anyhow, looking forward to continuing this project and to what new challenges I'll end up having to figure out as it goes along.

[grenade-maid]

Honestly it's really telling how, despite all the sabre rattling about "rising antisemitism" in the pro Palestinian protests in statements of politicians and articles in the news, I have yet to see any of them articulate any specifics on the matter. "These protests are antisemitic", but with no explanation of how or why. Antisemitism is something specific, and has a very long history to pull from. Its many forms and permutations are well documented, from conspiracy theories about Jews controlling the media to puppeting racialized minorities into overthrowing white Western society to ancient claims of kidnapping and murdering children for ritual purposes, or even banning kosher slaughter based on baseless belief that it is savage and cruel.

The fact that, despite all this, all of these sources are incapable of pointing to any instance of these protestors enacting or perpetuating anything of the sort should be telling about how cynically the charge is being made. Over the last decade there has been a concerted effort on the part of zionists to redefine antisemitism primarily as any opposition to the state of Israel. But in this moment, I can't help but feel like this fact is being omitted because to admit that this is the defining criteria would show their hand too much, and would itself turn even more people against the zionist project. After all, if they said out loud that these protestors are antisemitic on the basis of opposing the actions of the state of Israel and nothing more, well... That's not really bigotry, is it? It's a principled stance on national policy.

They want the killing to stop. If that itself constitutes antisemitism in the eyes of zionists, their admitting as such renders the attempt to discredit protests as xenophobic completely meaningless and nakedly cynical. Much more useful, then, to just imply in nebulous terms that these are the actions of bigots, until repeating this intellectually empty phrase takes the place of argument itself.

[darth-puma-vader]

The Biden presidency might have been the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the American people. A shocking investigation by the Heritage Foundation's Oversight Project has revealed that virtually every document bearing Joe Biden's signature during his presidency was signed by an autopen — except for one.

What makes this revelation particularly damning is that the only document confirmed to have Biden's actual signature was his letter announcing his withdrawal from the 2024 presidential race. Let that sink in for a moment.

Remember when House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) revealed his discussion with Biden when Biden couldn't recall signing the executive order halting LNG exports? Now we know why — he probably didn't. The real question is: Who did? Who was running the country while Biden was not all there?

The evidence is overwhelming. We know that Biden's handlers desperately tried to prevent anyone from meeting with him one-on-one. Even Democratic insiders admit the truth. DNC fundraiser Lindy Li recently spilled the beans and acknowledged that Biden wasn't running the show; his staff, his wife, and Hunter were.

Thanks to the Heritage Foundation's investigation, we now have proof that Biden's signature was automated throughout his presidency — which raises serious questions about whether he was aware of what was being signed in his name at all. The Oversight Project rightfully points out that since Biden revoked Trump's executive privilege, we can easily determine who controlled the autopen and what safeguards, if any, were in place.

The implications are staggering. We essentially had a presidency by proxy, with unelected staffers wielding presidential power while the man himself was barely cognizant enough to read a teleprompter. This isn't just a scandal; it's potentially the biggest constitutional crisis in American history.

[eternalfarnham]

i'm not sure if this will make sense or if it's even supposed to intended characterization, but im partway through questing beast and i absolutely adore how you've made the cabbits relatable *before miss kyubey ever even becomes a proper social sophont*.

like pmmm canon makes the (correct imo) choice not to assign any interesting interiority to the antagonists abusing young girls, or to unduly anthropomorphize an alien race. but your incubators are really well rendered with their own kind of aesthetics of maximization and minimization, of abstraction and pattern-seeking, in a way that both makes a thematic motif out of a gag inciting incident (verbalizing shape rotation makes it moe) and seems xenopsychologically realistic to the kinds of minds you would expect to be able to fill an incubator's ecological niche. critical support to miss kyubey as she builds the torture nexus in pursuit of grand unification in fundamental physics

I think this may be my favorite compliment I've received about Questing Beast! My goal, basically since the beginning of the project, has been to write compelling, persuasive xenofiction, and building out the Incubators from Space Mara/Space Mephisto to something slightly more realized and complex has been both fascinating, as an exercise, and fun. I have an entire document just for puns I might get to use later. Miss Kyubey's just as much a vehicle to explore the Incubators' default as her own steady divergence from it, and the ambiguity of where she has or hasn't diverged, and what's projection versus genuine care, has been a sometimes-harrowing needle to thread. (God I hope I'm still threading it.)

That is to say, thank you so much. It's enormously cheering to hear someone tell me how much they like specifically the part that I've been hoping I've been doing right. I wrote this response with a big goofy smile on my face, for context. Miss Kyubey appreciates your critical support and will be counting on your voice, vote or soul at her next budgetary hearing.

[forafricans]

AI generated photos rendered by Sharq Afrik (a visual project by Adam Omar and Ahmed Mekki)

“Before the Storm: Examining the Significance of Photo Studios and the Tradition of Physical Photo Albums

Since the invention of the camera, photography has consistently played a pivotal role in preserving moments and presenting them to both contemporary viewers and future generations. Reflecting on its historical context, during colonial times, photography was predominantly a lens held by outsiders. However, in the postcolonial and independent era, photo studios owned by Somalis or residents native to these lands took center stage. Postcolonial these studios provided a unique opportunity for people to capture themselves without the intrusion of colonial voyeurism.

This newfound ability to document oneself held great value, especially for those with family members living abroad. In an era when digital connectivity wasn't readily available, visiting a photo studio meant more than just a simple snapshot. It involved dressing up for the occasion, creating multiple copies of photographs, and sending them to absent family members. These photographs included names and dates, making them a cherished record of family history. They were often added to family albums, which were carefully passed down through generations.

With the assistance of AI, it's intriguing to contemplate what might have transpired if these photo studios had been preserved and continued to be an enduring tradition within Somali families. The preservation of such studios and the continued practice of maintaining physical photo albums could offer unique insights into the evolution of families, culture, and identity over generations.”

[carniekisses]

Here's a long post that I really hope Tumblr will not flag as NSFW (please don't flag this), I remember back when I showed off the needlefelt Gomer sculpture I had made, someone asked if I had like a work process to show off for it. And I did not, because I had kept it all confined to a private account. I thought it'd be fun to have something to show for it for this one.

So I've been wanting to make a BJD for at least the past 15 years, back when I was a kid with no money to buy supplies with and also with a worry for symmetry, and also also I wasn't very skilled. It's 2024, and I vaguely know how to use Blender now

I've started this project on April 6th, as I've been documenting this on the above mentioned private account.

Of said model I (much) later ended up only being able to salvage the physical sculpts of the chest and torso parts as I messed up somewhat badly, see down below. I also ended up dropping the 'magnets in hands & feet' concept as it was just redundant, one can simply unhook them off the elastic if they are to swap them out.

At any rate, I 3D printed it all and got to sanding, and painting.

So far so good I guess, really not a fan of how the knee and elbow bean slots were just holes (I fixed that later don't worry)

So This was Not looking good lmao. I used acrylic paint, which was not necessarily the problem, the problem was that I'd applied it with a sponge brush which caused the surface to feel really sandpapery once dry. So don't do that I suppose, bad idea

On top of this, I realized that given the thickness of this doll I absolutely needed double joints in the legs, in order to have decent articulation. You can see in the above pics I *had* sculpted those, but I later fused the knee beans with the shins with apoxy resin, for some reason? I think it was because as I posed the legs the knee beans kept falling *into* the hollowed out shins/thighs, and I got tired of it.

The final blows for this model were me applying some 3D finish resin in a last ditch effort to smooth out the horrible texture, which rendered the pieces extremely shiny and smooth (disgusting), WHICH then prompted me to apply matte varnish to fix that bullshit. It absolutely did not work lmfao, and I have no pictures of that disaster because I became pretty discouraged about having to go back to like square two or three.

Some time passed (months really because I kept getting distracted for many a reason [sanding is so fucking boring, Blender was a mistake, I was feeling overwhelmed, I was too sad/tired to work that day, etc.]), I buckled down and finally retooled the pieces that needed it: everything But the chest and torso parts, off of which I managed to sand the varnish and smooth resin. I had fixed all the double joints too to actually be decently functional this time. The head was completely resculpted to better reflect the character's latest design iteration.

bean slots: Fixed

So after sanding (which was the part I was dreading the entire time, because it's so tedious and also it hurts after a while), I caved and got myself an airbrush to, hopefully, lay paint down good this time.

Very glad I did because the difference is kinda crazy. Please ignore my dirty ass desk, it's what happens when you craft. These pictures are from last week btw.

The blue base and the blush were airsprayed, the finer details like the dark shading and the pinker parts were done with both chalk and just acrylic paint. I miiight remake the eyeballs, or at least add more of a smooth finish. The shine to them is really nice

Here's she with lashes, wearing a shitty little scrap of fabric I cut in 10 minutes for fun (please DON'T flag th), and posing to test out the double joints too, they definitely could be better but they work Fine and I'm okay with that.

As of today I'm waiting for the fibres to deliver, for the wig, I already have the cap done. I guess I can update this when it happens, thanks for reading so far, I hope it was interesting, see you next time.......

[gh0stofstarman]

HELP WANTED: LITTLEBIGPLANET FAN MOVEMENT

For the past year or so I’ve been working on a fan movement to revitalize interest in LittleBigPlanet on Sony’s terms. Think it comparable to Operation Moonfall, a fan movement for revitalizing interest in The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask, which eventually led to its 3D Remake.

While I can’t promise the plan I’ve set out is guaranteed to result in a new LBP game, I do believe that it is also the best opportunity for one to be made. However, as I’ve worked behind the scenes I’ve found it impossible to maintain on my own. Therefore I must ask for help.

Operation Mushroom Tree, as it is tentatively titled, involves the creation of a professional pitch for a new LittleBigPlanet entry for modern consoles. This pitch would provide a basic outline of what a new entry would entail, and prove why the franchise would still be popular.

The goal is not to make a wishlist nor a whole new installment on our own, but a feasible design concept for a new game that the community can rally behind. While this exact pitch may not be directly used by Sony Interactive Entertainment, Operation Mushroom Tree would be a template to guide development of a new game. The design document at the forefront would show the best way to make a new installment in a way that would be enticing to shareholders and employees of Sony Interactive Entertainment, the current rights holders.

The document has been mainly continuously written by me. However, I am just beginning my journey into game development, and this project would be unsustainable on my own. I need concept artists and render artists to create mockups of believable illustrations of the game Operation Mushroom Tree provides. As well, I’d sincerely love the second opinions of other game designers who are passionate about the LBP franchise. Finally, I have only a very rudimentary idea of how LBP works on a programming and hardware level, and thus this project would benefit from an expert on such.

To be precise, I am looking for:

- 3D Modeling or Photoshop Artists to create renders and mock-ups of gameplay mechanics.

- Individuals with history in Game Design and have a fondness for the LittleBigPlanet Franchise, mainly to help write and guide the main design document.

- Individuals who have intimate knowledge of the LittleBigPlanet franchise on a hardware and software level, and can evaluate the feasibility of certain features on modern hardware.

If you or anyone you know falls into these categories, please contact me through Tumblr. If you are not in these categories, but are interested and believe you are able to help with this campaign, please contact me as well, and hopefully we can find a way to work together still. Do please provide some evidence of your past work and knowledge with your message.

I know that many out there currently are disappointed with the treatment of the LBP franchise after 2024, as am I. However, I do believe that LittleBigPlanet could thrive in today’s landscape, and would be beneficial to the games industry as a whole. Therefore, I am willing to embark on this journey, not only to entertain fans, but to help support up-and-coming developers get their first steps, as LBP did for me.

[hotkeyliimepies]

Hey, so I couldn’t find it anywhere when looking in your other blog so i just wanna ask, what is a variant? cause i’ve seen like the rk900v2 but I don’t know what that really means, is it just the updated version of the og rk900?

(also I love your art especially the color/rendering you do, thank you so much for blessing us! 🙏)

Hi! Im so saddened to hear you couldnt find them! they were very detailed document styled writings explaining the purpose and reason of the Variants, ive written two regarding the v1 and v2, nevertheless I will reblog them for you! on my main blog here.

You see the purpose of the Variants are deliberate and new. Its a new concept that is being executed by Cyberlife, this is something that happened right after the RK800 Prototype 55, neutralised the Revolution. Markus and North is dead and a-lot of Androids have been destroyed and immobilised. So this project is a kind of a “rebrand,” by the Company to gain trust from the people. 

This Project is called “Variations and Iterations to the Exclusives.” (VIE) you see because the RK900 is the finalised model of the RK800 that dismantled the revolution, it brings a kind of “comfort” to the people. Where they believe the bug has been “fixed,” in some sort. Its given this image that they are very difficult to deviate and are more subservient, loyal and advanced. Which they are, they’re better, quicker and resilient. 

The first RK900 is of course “Nines,” he is considered the G-Model, or Generic Model, he is used for forensic analysis and detective work. With this he is branched out into different variations, the v1 is SWAT. The reason why is because Cyberlife was still hesitant on the idea of completely remastering the PM700. Police Android Model, alot of them did deviate in the first Revolution.

So by the second Variant: Military, they touched on scraping the SQ800 first. As the US government did reach out on the concept. The SQ800 is a now discontinued Model that is being replaced by the V2, because it was old technology now anyways as the RK900 offers much more advance mechanics with a more rounded out system. The reason why they are more leaning towards this idea is the fact they can branch out without having to create a completely new model: V2 (Marines,) VA2 (Airforce), VB2 (Navy) and etc.

Then they finally remastered the PM700 while keeping the female PC200. (So the SQ800 and PM700 are no longer being massed produced, but alot that were not destroyed during the revolution, are still circulating at work.)

the Variants are basically a minimalist movement by Cyberlife as a sort of way to tuck the revolution under a rug. While also pushing a more authoritative angle in the US, with the government. Eventually they will make Variants of Models like the EM400 (Jerry) to branch them out for more service roles like cashier or waiter and etc. Whatever you guys may suggest.

This idea came to me, because alot of Brands or Companies go through a “minimalist phase,” to freshen themselves up a notch. I hope I explained my idea well! I am very open to criticism and thoughts, to round it up a bit!