#RubyRKGK

[rubydeeby]

RAMONA - New Hair Style

I was on the brink of tears in the new show, I've waited decades to see Scott Pilgrim 2...

Background Alts.

Edit: I forgot to do the Soup of the Day

[shoomus]

Fresh Funky drawings I did for my friend @rubyrkgk (pls follow them!!!)

[blazehedgehog]

Would you mind going more into detail on the visual side of Superstars? Some of its shortcomings, inconsistencies, etc. I haven’t had the time to put anything together to discuss it, but had the same feelings about the way it looks that you seem to have, and no one else really seems to see it.

Sure! I actually already broke a lot of this down in my discord for my patreon donors, so I'll just mostly copy and paste what I said out of there. Warning: LOTS of images ahead!

The problem I have with the way the game looks is the lighting. Let's take this screenshot as an example:

I want you to ask yourself: where is the sun positioned in this image?

Let's look at Sonic. On Sonic's body, the sun is above him, to the right, slightly in the background. The top edge of his head has the highlight, which fades in to a shadow closer to the camera.

The shadow on the grass suggests the sun is in the same position, but shining from the foreground. The shadow is being cast going in to the background, away from the camera. This is the opposite of Sonic's body.

This rocky outcropping near the top of the image is receiving very intense edge light from both the left and right sides, but barely from the bottom.

Under the grass at the bottom of the image, we see light shining up from below this rocky arch. You could say that maybe it's light reflecting off the water (caustics), but it lacks the caustic pattern and is pure white light, when the water itself is teal. Caustic reflections also generally don't carry 25+ feet away like this does.

The palm tree fronds are receiving light from the same direction as Sonic is, but the trunk is being lit like the rocks are, which is to say its edges are lit up, even in places that should be in shadow.

This is what's known as "rimlighting." It's an important detail in photography and 3D graphics rendering, because it creates a strong outline for characters and important objects.

The catch being rimlighting is one of those things that works when it makes sense. In photography, getting a good rimlight requires very carefully positioning physical lights in a scene, and that light obeys the properties of reality.

What Sonic Superstars has done is grab a very basic rimlight effect that applies a cheap, colorless halo around objects using a shader. It doesn't obey the properties of real light, it just makes everything look weird and inconsistent, giving it this awkward glowing outline. This type of effect was common in Wii games from the mid-2000's. For example, Super Mario Galaxy uses this type of rimlight quite a lot.

Galaxy gets away with it because it's a game set in space, and these bright glowing rimlights help characters pop out from the dark space backgrounds. And, on brighter levels, the rimlight intensity is reduced considerably:

Sonic Superstars has applied its rimlighting in a very haphazard, cheap, ugly way. Some have called it "Generic Unity Rimlighting" because a lot of low-effort games use it to bad effect. And, as far as we can tell, the game is being made in Unity, because the debug menu uses the default Unity background color.

The whole game's lighting situation just looks muddy and dark and confusing, when I think the ideal should be something like New Super Mario Bros. or Donkey Kong Country Tropical Freeze.

Lighting is a bit flat, but everything is bright, clear, and consistent. Superstars is very messy and dated looking by comparison. And the above two games are like 9 years old!

[stevecrafts2k]

I may not be entirely accurate, but this helps me learn dynamic posing.

Anyway, Fresh from rubyrkgk's Spacewrld99.

[rubydeeby]

Kermit

Saw The Muppets Movie (1979) last night and burst into tears at Going to Go Back There Someday. It’s been on my mind all day.

[rubydeeby]

Afterparty - Sex Bob-Omb

My favorite album

Soup of the Day - tiết canh/blood soup

[rubydeeby]

A separate upload of the full page spread from Balance and Barbers, it's my absolute favorite part of the comic, and I want to do more like it

[Commissions] [Carrd] [Soup of the Day]

[rubydeeby]

Commercial Break! - SpaceWRLD 99 (1999)

[Commissions] [Carrd] [Soup of the Day]

[rubydeeby]

Day Out With My Favorite Stuff

[Commission Info] [Other Accounts] [Soup of the Day]

[rubydeeby]

By it's light.

[Commissions] [Carrd] [Soup of the Day]

[rubydeeby]

Hello! It's only been a day but the reception to this has been awe inspiring to me as an artist. Its been absolutely lovely hearing everyone's thoughts and perspectives, how this has helped them through bouts of grief, all that good stuff.

I wanted to make a bigger post under this to point out some little fun details I worked in and some of my thought process behind decisions I've made in it, and a few things some people have picked up on elsewhere that I thought was super cool!

Before I start though, I wanna say: If you've seen this on Tiktok, 99% chance that was NOT me. A popular account has reposted my work and didn't properly ask if I was okay with that. My only Tiktok account is "GoodBuddyRuby", and beyond that I'm "RubyRKGK" practically everywhere. You can check my Carrd in the original post for more info on that.

The Balance Bucket

This isn't my favorite page but it has some of my favorite details

Obviously there's Martin, Jake, the Finn Sword, and Finn's arm. A loss of people he loves, a feeling of loss spiritually, and a feeling of loss physically. But I wanted to talk about the Snail and flame. Someone rightfully pointed out the Snail's relation to the Lich, but I was also thinking of it as a symbol of manipulation or malice in important figures in Finns life. This can range from the manipulative way Martin has treated him, to finding out Billy was the Lich, or any other greater act of manipulation toward him.

The flame is a lot more interesting to me personally because the likely response was "Flame Princess", which is partly true.

The flame was generally meant to represent romance, but more in the sense of something Finn can't express. Finn, to me, doesn't seem like the kind of person who can reasonably hold a healthy, steadfast romantic relationship. Beyond his brotherly love of Jake, Finn's love of others stems from heroism and friendship. In parallel to Martin, Finn seems to slip up when he lets romance get the best of him, and it does seem to be the far healthier for him to obscure it than to burst. You can see this in just how lowkey and unspoken his relationship with Huntress is at the end of the series. I figured this was an interesting part of his person, and something he'd find deep inner turmoil over.

The Haircut

This is one of the best pieces I've ever done, and words can't express how proud I was of it.

A few cool details: The colours in this page are very deliberate. The yellow of Finn's hair was meant to contrast a lot of the blue in a metaphorical way, with blue acting as a symbol of forgetting or miseries of the past, and the yellow as inevitability. The blue forget-me-nots line the path of his hair, yet the entire page is caked in a golden yellow light.

The catalyst comet in the top right follows this trend, being a bright golden yellow, and acting as the incoming symbol of what was destined to happen between Finn and Jake. Not a literal event, but metaphorical.

The three stars hidden in the skies near the end are meant to be Margaret, Joshua, and Jermaine. Finn mentions hearing their voices in the wind, meant to be a literal nod to the fact people can contact outside the dead worlds, yet Jake chooses not to. The stars line up with the way Billy contacts Finn in the ocean.

Quick bonus, here's a version of the page prior to a quick change made to stay in line with a change in the comic. Finn was originally gonna keep the hat on. Very glad that changed.

Composition

This one is far more subtle, but the layout of the comic itself was meant to mirror the inner feelings of Prismo and Finn

Originally, it starts out extremely closed off and bordered. They're trapped within these small boxes, mirroring the Time Room very literally. That obviously changes later in the comic.

In this panel the borders fall away as the tension loosens a bit. Prismo's body is stretched far more than normal, forming the border of the page. Literally stretching himself thin trying to entertain Finn's wants in the relationship.

Later on there's next to no panels at all. The relationship between them has become completely open and vulnerable, and there's almost no walls between what they can say or think.

Time

This is a little more obvious. Not only is time a major theme in the show alongside grief, but Finn finishes Prismo's "-Time" in reference to the way Jake does call in response to "What time is it" in the show. I meant to have an extra page establishing as well that Finn visits the Time Room specifically to sit OUTSIDE of time as well, a bad coping mechanism to escape the pains of the passage of time.

Finn's Outfit

This one is super short and fun. Finn's outfit in the comic is notably not really taken from any existing outfit adult Finn wears, rather loosely on this vision from Season 2.

Teal shirt, sports tape on the arm and leg, robotic arm, gem on the knee, belt. Obviously some things were cut out just for the sake of design, but I thought it was super fun! It also helped his overall pallet stand out in the context of the Time Room.

That's about all I have! Again, thank you so much to everyone who's taken their time to share their thoughts and feelings on what I've done here. I couldn't be more proud to have helped so many people, and that's definitely not the last you'll see of this style of writing, whether that's AT related or not. Peace!!

Balance and Barbers

After the death of Jake, Finn makes routine trips to Prismo's Time Room, to try and spark up a bromance that never was.

[Commissions] [Carrd] [Soup of the Day]

[rubydeeby]

Steven Universe (1998)

[Commission Info] [Other Accounts] [Soup of the Day]

[rubydeeby]

Congrats to SUPERMEGA on reaching 1 Million subs!

[kitkatiepine]

Me and @rubyrkgk are hard at work behind the scenes right now. Can't wait to share more!

I’m sorta back, here’s a sneak peak at my next big project!

[rubydeeby]

Steven—

[rubydeeby]

Kung Fu PANDAH 🐼