#So I've got all sketches (like this one) done already and I'm moving on to the actual beast.

[demaparbat-hp]

Just what exactly is coming?

[burntoutdaydreamer]

Weird Brain Hacks That Help Me Write

I'm a consistently inconsistent writer/aspiring novelist, member of the burnt-out-gifted-kid-to-adult-ADHD-diagnosis-pipeline, recently unemployed overachiever, and person who's sick of hearing the conventional neurotypical advice to dealing with writer's block (i.e. "write every single day," or "there's no such thing as writer's block- if you're struggling to write, just write" Like F*CK THAT. Thank you, Brenda, why don't you go and tell someone with diabetes to just start producing more insulin?)

I've yet to get to a point in my life where I'm able to consistently write at the pace I want to, but I've come a long way from where I was a few years ago. In the past five years I've written two drafts of a 130,000 word fantasy novel (currently working on the third) and I'm about 50,000 words in on the sequel. I've hit a bit of a snag recently, but now that I've suddenly got a lot of time on my hands, I'm hoping to revamp things and return to the basics that have gotten me to this point and I thought I might share.

1) My first draft stays between me and God

I find that I and a lot of other writers unfortunately have gotten it into our heads that first drafts are supposed to resemble the finished product and that revisions are only for fixing minor mistakes. Therefore, if our first draft sucks that must mean we suck as writers and having to rewrite things from scratch means that means our first draft is a failure.

I'm here to say that is one of the most detrimental mentalities you can have as a writer.

Ever try drawing a circle? You know how when you try to free-hand draw a perfect circle in one go, it never turns out right? Whereas if you scribble, say, ten circles on top of one another really quickly and then erase the messy lines until it looks like you drew a circle with a singular line, it ends up looking pretty decent?

Yeah. That's what the drafting process is.

Your first draft is supposed to suck. I don't care who you are, but you're never going to write a perfect first draft, especially if you're inexperienced. The purpose of the first draft is to lay down a semi-workable foundation. A really loose, messy sketch if you will. Get it all down on paper, even if it turns out to be the most cliche, cringe-inducing writing you've ever done. You can work out those kinks in the later drafts. The hardest part of the first draft is the most crucial part: getting started. Don't stress yourself out and make it even harder than it already is.

If that means making a promise to yourself that no one other than you will ever read your first draft unless it's over your cold, dead body, so be it.

2) Tell perfectionism to screw off by writing with a pen

I used to exclusively write with pencil until I realized I was spending more time erasing instead of writing.

Writing with a pen keeps me from editing while I right. Like, sometimes I'll have to cross something out or make notes in the margins, but unlike erasing and rewriting, this leaves the page looking like a disaster zone and that's a good thing.

If my writing looks like a complete mess on paper, that helps me move past the perfectionist paralysis and just focus on getting words down on the page. Somehow seeing a page full of chicken scratch makes me less worried about making my writing all perfect and pretty- and that helps me get on with my main goal of fleshing out ideas and getting words on a page.

3) It's okay to leave things blank when you can't think of the right word

My writing, especially my first draft, is often filled with ___ and .... and (insert name here) and red text that reads like stage directions because I can't think of what is supposed to go there or the correct way to write it.

I found it helps to treat my writing like I do multiple choice tests. Can't think of the right answer? Just skip it. Circle it, come back to it later, but don't let one tricky question stall you to the point where you run out of brain power or run out of time to answer the other questions.

If I'm on a role, I'm not gonna waste it by trying to remember that exact word that I need or figure out the right transition into the next scene or paragraph. I'm just going to leave it blank, mark to myself that I'll need to fix the problem later, and move on.

Trust me. This helps me sooooo much with staying on a roll.

4) Write Out of Order

This may not be for everyone, but it works wonders for me.

Sure, the story your writing may need to progress chronologically, but does that mean you need to write it chronologically? No. It just needs to be written.

I generally don't do this as much for editing, but for writing, so long as you're making progress, it doesn't matter if it's in the right order. Can't think of how to structure Chapter 2, but you have a pretty good idea of how your story's going to end? Write the ending then. You'll have to go back and write Chapter 2 eventually, but if you're feeling more motivated to write a completely different part of the book, who's to say you can't do that?

When I'm working on a project, I start off with a single document that I title "Scrap for (Project Title)" and then just write whatever comes to mind, in whatever order. Once I've gotten enough to work with, then I start outlining my plot and predicting how many chapters I'm going to need. Then, I create separate google docs for each individual chapter and work on them in whatever order I feel like, often leaving several partially complete as I jump from one to the other. Then, as each one gets finished, I copy and paste the chapter into the full manuscript document. This means that the official "draft" could have Chapters 1 and 9, but completely be missing Chapters 2-8, and that's fine. It's not like anyone will ever know once I finish it.

Sorry for the absurdly long post. Hopes this helps someone. Maybe I'll share more tricks in the future.

[deadbeat-motel]

ᑕᕼEᖇᖇIᗷOᗰᗷ ᗩᑎᗪ ᔕIᖇᑭEᑎTIOᑌᔕ ᖇEᗪEᔕIGᑎ

The last two designs for the main cast. With these two done, I can finally work on miscellaneous characters that I've been eyeing the most.

Again, thoughts below the cut:

My issues with their Original designs:

Sir Pentious:

I thought I would only have one thing to say about him (the unnecessary eyes) since he was my favorite in the entire original cast but having taken a closer look at him for this, I saw a lot of things that bothers me.

Too many eyes. specifically the lower half of his body has too many eyes and it seems detrimental to him. It's kind of painful to think about it since I do not think we ever see those eyes close. Is he just slithering on the ground with those exposed eyes? That's got to be irritating at best and damaged at worst as he continuously slithers on them.

There are eyes on the bowtie and the hat? There are already 4 extra eyes on his hood, so why have even more? I get that the original Pentious design was basically a monsterous amalgamation of eyes but the eye thing could have been scrapped altogether.

While his palette was the least red out of the cast (More so composed of yellows), it still blends in with the rest of the reds.

The claws are an unnecessary repeating design trait (Alastor and Vox notably have them too). I don't think it would've been too big of a difference to just keep his fingers fully black.

The stripes on his suit are too thick. It's called pinstripes for a reason.

I don't like how the hat is shaped to fit the head, It's awkward.

not a point, but I just wanted to say how the blue color palette works really well with him in that last episode.

CherriBomb:

She's not that bad of a design (She's sort of bland in my opinion) but it's the little small details about her that makes her so simple and also so complicated at the same time. There are so many batches of freckles scattered everywhere, little explosion lines on her skirt as well as the X on her chest, the tattoos are a jamble of random loops and bombs, and her tattering doesn't have an easy shape to consistently draw.

The thought process for these two:

Mx. Pentious:

Pentious goes by both Sir/Miss/Mx. but uses she/they pronouns.

Minimized the actual amount of eyes on her, I kept it only to her actual eyes and those on her hood.

Gave her a butterfly-shaped hood. It's nothing deep since it stems from the fact the notches in Sir Pentious' hood almost looked like one to my bad eyesight. I decided to play more into that idea.

I read some posts where people talk about how Sir Pentious should have a snout and while I understand why and fully support people giving him one, I really didn't want to add the snout to this design. It drove me crazy since I'm not a big fan of it. I tried a compromise where her head was shaped more like Phineas.

Kept the tophat but removed its eye and mouth. If I remember correctly, Viv took that from one of her co-workers from the pilot. I decided to just have it as a regular tophat.

It doesn't have all the colors, but her design does have the Neptunic flag.

I'm not sure if this even is a real snake but I based Mx. Pentious' design on this:

CherriBomb:

Scraped most of her features in exchange for a sukeban theme. I personally have zero knowledge about the punk scene in Australia.

A majority of the suggestions I received for her rough draft had something to do with the skirt. I elongated it and gave it a slit in which the magenta from the inside is able to pop out.

Thought it would be a cute detail to have her hair explode if she's angry.

----

Apologies this took too long to be posted, Life got in the way as well as the fact I was feeling shitty about Pentious' first draft. Her skin was an awkward and ugly shade of green and seeing some posts critical of Pentious' design got me to think a little bit more about what direction I'd like to move her redesign.

You could see this in the earlier rough sketches but this was how Pentious' first redesign looked like

[sanctus-ingenium]

another one of these posts lol... sketches vs final. not much changed for these ones, i kind of went into them with a very solid mental image already in my head. all of these were done start to finish in procreate

thoughts below the cut

horse fight .... this is based off a really really beautiful sky i saw while driving home one evening. i'm really proud of getting the colours i saw exactly right, this kind of greenish yellow fading to dark blue and with grey clouds low over it that looked very dark against the yellow by the horizon, but very pale against the dark blue.

i thought it would be a cool backdrop to draw a scene i've been thinking about for a while. The little cartoony horses are there to provide some tonal whiplash but also because these are two immortal shapeshifters who can fight violently without it being a huge deal. the little horses represent the actual gravity of the fight (that is, kind of a slap fight between two drama queens) which contrasts with the visuals of two animals brutally tearing at eachother. also i got the two horses at the bottom mixed up, Pascal is the one with the skinny plumed tail and Macha has a more traditional horse tail and i put them on the wrong sides.

i had a LOT of trouble shading this. i didn't want the horses to be too shiny but that meant a much lower contrast in shading and even with my screen brightness turned up i could barely see what i was doing. but i wanted it to read as realistic. mixed results i think. if i did it again i might try a different shading style because this one didn't really do it for me

--

spooky van!!! the post i deleted by accident (rip. i will repost it soon). this is a picture of the barrow (the field) taking a different shape - in this case a cool van. the van contains every single thing the field does (including the human victims that get lost in there...) but compressed down into a manageable shape. the void is Pascal because the field is inside him. he did this for his human bf to provide novel way to travel through the Otherworld. don't ask how this works like, spatially, because the answer is: i don't do hard magic systems in this setting

i loooove shading things with pencil hatching and i really like contrasting it with smooth colours/shading so that's mainly what i did here. it was simple enough. the van is of course heavily referenced and i wish i had been able to stylise it a little more.. maybe next time. i want to draw a kind of cutaway illustration of the van showing exterior and interior (like an old blueprint schematic), which i might use as a cover for the book/comic/whatever but that will require a very intimidating level of precision so i think i'll work up to that.

--

RUA magazine. this is my third time doing a rua magazine cover (first time posting tho). this is an in-universe magazine distributed throughout the Otherworld to an audience of fairies. in the sketch, the illustation was originally the King of Pentacles tarot card (the pentacle being the disco ball). but i decided to make a different King of Pentacles card for him instead, since I try hard to move away from symmetrical composition for the tarot cards (it's boring). so i repurposed this one into another magazine cover. like i said Pascal is a self-absorbed attention whore and has a habit of giving bullshit interviews just so that he can be on the cover as much as possible. he dresses like this all the time (the year is 2017)

the disco ball took 15 years off my life and it's not even the first disco ball i've drawn! i finished my actual king of pentacles card before i finished the rua cover sketch, so i can show u this

which is much better even if i did reference so heavily that it isn't exactly stylised. but this card needs some serious revision before i even think about posting it. i'm just not happy with his face.

original intent was for it be mysterious with emphasis on the neon lights but it ended up far more suggestive than i expected. that's life!

[bernardisgross]

Bim bam boum ! Here's the whole comic i drew for Crossroads @zine--garden , a zine focused one showing and sharing love for Hunter x Hunter ^^

I chose to focus on my two favorite teachers !!!

Bonus, making of & talk in the read more⬇

I was very happy to be able to participate and even more happy to finally share a headcanon i've had for years about Bisky and Wing's meeting.

I don't know how clear it is but basically, Wing is a young nen user who happens to have been taken in by a big criminal family. The boss is using his abilities to forge precious gems from cheap materials, passing them as precious gems he bought for his collection. As a renown collector, he also sells the gems and makes tons of money from it. As Wing's skills become sharper though, his forged gems become more and more precious, making it difficult to tell them apart from real ones.

Having sold a good gem in a batch of "bad" ones, the boss is trying to get it back, framing his client as a thief. He calls for Bisky (a "young" hunter with a good resume) planning to trick her into committing insurance fraud in his place. Unfortunately, she's got a better eye than he thought, and asks for the good gem as compensation.

Feeling antsy about his money, the boss accepts, already planning to get rid of her once the job is done.

Bisky can sense the residual nen from Wing the moment she meets him, that's why she demands he comes with her. She wants to make sure at first that this is a normal child in the wrong place rather than the boss's actual associate.

Making him her disciple just came along the way because she honestly didn't know what to do with that kid LOL but didn't want to return him to a bad place. Also, she saw his potential. Here's a rejected final page (rejected bc I couldn't tie the text properly and wasn't very happy with the visual) where it's a bit clearer that she's got back with the good gem and values it a lot BECAUSE it was made by Wing. (also metaphor, analogy blabla)

I love teachers/masters in stories, i love that trope so much!! It's always so interesting to me to have someone older and wiser share their knowledge with the young waiting for nothing in return. Nurturing and loving, becoming a support with the only satisfaction to witness the growth and blossoming of someone else. I think it's so beautiful to help others in this way, to give a little of yourself with kindness.

I think if touches on other tropes i'm sensitive to like found family etc... So of course, i've loved Bisky & Wings for a looong time, and i'm even more obsessed with the fact they're on the same line of teachers 🥺💕

I was always curious about how they could have met and what could have moved Bisky to take him under ... her ..................... wing.....🔥🔥🔥 lol... anyways !!! I went full indulgence and comics are not my thing at all so if you've enjoyed it, i'm very very, very blessed and happy ^^ !!!

I've also included a rejected sketch of the cover with big Bisky :3

and here's a look at all her outfits !! I love Lolita alt fashion soo much, i do tend to latch onto characters who dress like this... and love making my own outfits for them too !!!

I also made a sticker of Palm for the merch bundles !!

Thank you so much if you've picked up Crossroads, it was great from the start !! I'm so lucky and so grateful to @/gachahugs and all the contributors for having me ^^ !! thank you thank you !

[zombeebunnie]

Trembling Essence:💙Background + poll results💙

Hello hello and welcome new followers! :]

Firstly I just want to say a very big thank you to everyone that participated in the poll I did last week, I was really surprised but happy with the results and responses! This will help me a lot moving forward! :,] If you missed it and would like to say which route you preferred feel free to comment!

Anywho, this week mainly focused on art practicing again but I did work on the game and managed to get my bearings even more!

Here is the new background for the start of the game:

This took a long time to draw up since I sketched out the background instead of looking at references this time. Once I got a basic idea of how I wanted it to look it felt.. too empty and flat. At first I couldn't figure out why until I added more shrubbery and grass. After that I started adding the trees and then added a few more to give it depth and adjusted some of the coloring. So far the immersive symbolism I'm going for is slowly coming together! Since it just finished raining where you're located I tried to give the background the illusion of looking tolerably humid but slowly getting colder over time with a hint of decay in the distance. This is a better look of the dreary foreboding atmosphere compared to the "fairy-forest" from last week. >:,] It took a while but I also added a parallax effect here and optimized the images to save space. I kept getting an error when it came to the middle ground so I had to find and fix the problem which delayed things. I don't have a video to show it in action but maybe next time. I do want it to be known again that these automatically happen and don't follow the cursor. :,,]

Here's a sneak peek of the new choices you can do when you're in this area now. >;]

This part required a lot of brainstorming before I figured out how I wanted the explorative part to go. This was originally going to go a different way completely but a particular day caused me to just scrap it and start everything over. I have a very solid idea on how I want all of this to go better than ever so I can't wait to show some of the new areas! I didn't expect this background to take as long as it did to draw up but hopefully next week I'll have more done!

Progress doodle layout:

Since certain endings are being changed I thought it would be cool to animate a progress layout to visually show how everything is going! It shouldn't take too long to finish this section up since I already have a foundation laid out.

Noah's sprite sheet update:

As far as Noah sprite sheets goes, it's still in sketch mode and I haven't messed with them yet since I've been practicing. :,,]

There are some old drawing prompts I wrote down and sketches that I'm still doodling up behind the scenes so hopefully I can get to them at some point with some attached lore. :,]

Q&A / Ask box is still open:

If you have any questions about Trembling Essence/Noah feel free to ask here please. This makes it easier for me to see and answer accordingly! I would really like to hear from you guys!

Thank you to those who have sent in asks after everything got reset! I'll try to get to them when I can along with the ones that come to mind that got deleted. I just need time to answer since I like to respond with doodles/drawings as practice. :]

Overall that's everything I have to share so far, thank you guys for your continued encouragement and support through all of this, I wholeheartedly appreciate it! :,,]

[penig]

So we're having a rough summer and I haven't been talking about it because why brood but it's different when you talk about people being nice. So, thumbnail sketch:

We finally (as I've been wanting to do for years) got an estimate on getting the house rewired (pretty sure some of the original wiring installed in 1910 is in use) and partially replumbed (can't use the shower tub because the iron pipes are too clogged), and the paperwork for the loan took forever, and then a high wind came along (on my birthday) and dropped a dead redbud tree on our porch and a large branch on our car, which was totaled, and we had to buy a new (used) car and get a tree service to come out and take care of the fallen wood and trim the trees so no more wood falls, but the cost to take care of the big branch and woodpecker damaged tree in the back yard was more than we could afford with the car business, but that could wait a few months assuming no more high winds come along; and the loan comes through and we get the car squared away and the tree service is scheduled to come and we're starting to breathe again -

And I spy somebody putting what I recognize as a code violation notice on the front gate so I open the door and come out to tell her that if this is about the redbud tree on the porch we've already scheduled the work and she says: "It's everything on the lot. Cut it down to 12 inches. You have ten days" So I point out that most of the tall stuff is legal garden plants that should not be pruned in August, that it's two years since I've been physically capable of doing yardwork of any kind, that the work she's demanding is impossible in that time frame and oh yes, it's August, in Texas, with triple digit temperatures predicted for the foreseeable future and it could very well kill me to try. She thought there might be a local program to help me (No; they're all for structural work) and wouldn't budge. So that was like being shoved back underwater when we'd almost crawled out on shore.

But we put out a call to our friends, and people came over Saturday and did miracles, and almost every day this week somebody has come over (in addition to the people putting holes in our walls and ceilings and arguing over how to run the wires and occasionally turning pale at what they find) to help me in the mornings before the third digit kicked in. We did not, of course prune any of the poor heat stressed legal plants, but great inroads were made on the rest of it, and one friend even cut up the big branch in the back yard and the tree service people hauled it off, along with a collapsed picnic table which they told me, when they quoted the price for this small secondary job, that they would not take.

This morning I could barely move. I'm getting a lot of pain in the good leg as well as the bad leg, and in my back, plus I was just weak with heat and tiredness, and for the first time in almost a year I decided I'd better break out the cane again, at least to take the stairs and walk in the yard to discuss with the friend who came today, the last day before the inspection, where best to put his effort (because it was plain to both of us that I wasn't lifting a finger) in order to convince the inspector that we really had done the best we could and to let the stuff we couldn't get to slide until fall and spring.

And I guess one of the workmen noticed the cane, and noticed that the handrail on the upper staircase had pulled out of the wall on one end (it had been anchored to the sheetrock, not the wall proper; the other end was anchored in paneling and was fine; this happened a couple of months ago and we had bigger worries), and just - fixed it. Because it's certainly fixed now. As is typical in Texas most of the workmen are people I can't even talk to because my Spanish is as bad as their English, so it's not as if we've made friends with them. And I didn't see it done, nor did the foreman know who did it when I brought it up and asked him to thank whoever it was, so it wasn't somebody looking to make points. They just saw a chance to do a small simple thing to benefit a total stranger, and did it.

The point here being that two people - whoever called in the code complaint (seriously, that should be illegal in August, at least for yard code with no clear and present danger) and the city employee who wouldn't listen to reason - went out of their way to force me to focus on the least pressing problem facing us right now at the expense of my own well-being. But they are far, far outnumbered by the people who have gone out of their way to help us, just because we needed help.

So, suck it, cynicism!

[notthatnoodle]

Tombstone Redemption

~Van Der Linde Gang meets the Cowboys~

”Gentlemen! May I simply ask you to listen to my, proposal.”

”Hear that, boys? We’re going to have some fun tonight, shall we!”

~~~~~~~~~~

And my dumb talk about cowboys, mental health, and me being so unsure of my drawing skills. Buckle up cowboy, it's going to be a long one.

~~~~~~~~~~

Do you know that feeling, when you have an idea. And that idea is something that scares you? Because I do, too clearly if one may say.

I wanted to do something. Draw something that I would be proud of. But how to do that when you just hate everything you do, when it feel overwhelming to do.

Well, just trying to do it. Just trying to enjoy the journey and the things I'm doing while on it.

It was scary to start, but I still had a plan for it, you know.

Something big, scary.

"This is never going to look good. It's going to be terrible."

"It's going to take so long, it's going to look stupid."

"I already hate it."

That's what I thought at the time, while doing the sketch.

And you know what...

I did. But after days of just doing the lines again and again, it finally got better. After DAYS. For me it might take weeks before I can continue working on something which looks bad in my eyes.

I hated to do the line art first, I hated to do it, so much that I almost gave up because it already, alone, felt overwhelming. I didn't like it one bit. The characters didn't look like themselves, and I wasn't happy. No one has any idea how long it took to do it.

BUT i finally did it. I got flat colors done. And from there, I could finally move to the next part. And I was so happy how it turned out, it gave me hope, feeling of success.

"I can do it."

"I can do the next part too."

I was in halfway now, the RDR2 side was ready, except the lighting and the shadows of course but anyway. To get myself to do the rest, I asked myself...

Why I do this again?

And the answer to that was surprisingly simple.

I do this because even it feels so overwhelming at times, I love to do it. I love to see what I'm capable of. I love to draw, sketch, do things like that.

Because it helps my mental health.

Because I need to get my inspiration out to a paper.

Because I love westerns

Because RDR2 became my comfort game.

Because Tombstone became my comfort movie.

Because I have no money to travel to the other side of the world to a meetings or something. I have to create my own "meetings", in a way of an art.

Because both, RDR and Tombstone, have helped me in the past year, in the ways I never imagined would be possible.

Who would've known long time ago that I wouldn't need any meds in couple of years because some sad, rough, cold, unstable cowboy men, huh?

I've heard so many times that people have called comfort characters "cringe" or "weird."

And that "you should get real help."

Well, I did. I had that real help, but beside the medication that helped, I just couldn't find anything to talk about with the professionals.

I never personally have liked talking (but it's still good, try it) and I've always used art and writing to get all my feelings out. Tbh, it haven't helped the situation that I'm terrible at recognizing my own feelings.

And, well.

If anyone would've said back in 2020 that "In couple years your mental health is going to get better because of Arthur Morgan and Johnny Ringo" I would've been so confused.

"Who??? Where??? When???"

The two most mentally stable men in the universe, right?

But you see, here we are. Still trying to decide do I hate my art or not. But even still, it's finally on place where I dreamed it would be when I was 14 years old and could only draw poor dogs and cats.

I may not feel like it, but I try to remind myself many times in a day. That this is what I wanted, this is what I worked for.

The progress has been slow, but it's still showing up. But I want to get better, I want to draw even more better, to get more realistic or something. I'm not even sure myself. Can you believe it? 10 years of drawing and I'm still not sure what I want my style really to be, other than somewhat realistic.

The progress is slow, but it's here. The mental health and drawing skills are both growing even I may not admit it to myself. And I still want to get better.

There is going to be bad times, there is always going to be bad times, those are never going to disappear. But what also is not going to disappear, is my passion to my art. To the characters, to the world they live in.

It's surely going to stay a big part of me, even it may fade in some point. But it is still there, a part which shows what helped me get back up.

As a reminder to myself how I got better. And that healing journey isn't in the end. Is only just begun.

It's a journey I'm afraid of, excited, curious, terrified...

But it's going to be amazing, hard, I'm going to hate and love every second of it.

And that's good. It means I've finally managed to dig up my closed emotions.

I may be able to know what I feel for the first time in years. I might be able to feel something that has been hidden away since forever.

And all that just because of some Cowboy Depression Simulator and the movie with the Cowboys and tuberculosis.

Seriously, they both end almost same way and managed to broke my fucking heart while doing it. And still they are probably the best things that have ever happened to me.

What I learned, what I thought while doing this art and thinking it's meaning... Only person you can let down in this planet is yourself, and only person who really knows everything you've done to get back up, is yourself. So, give a hug to you, give a tap to you, give a hamburger to you or something.

The good begins before the bad things end.

So go kick this day to the balls or something, somewhere where the sun doesn't shine, get it all back to yourself.

Carpe diem and have some FAITH to yourself...

Because you really don't know how good the light of tomorrow morning could feel.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I believe in y'all.

~~~~~~~~~~~

-Setri.

[ottpopfic]

“Hey, you remember how I've been wanting to get my Legion tattoo covered?” Uncle Jason asks

---

god dad fluff

It's a fall Friday afternoon and Katie is done with class

She's cuddled up in on a couch in the library with the fairy lights on, two Cocoa Puffs curled up on her and a brand-new sci-fi novel that Uncle Jason brought her when he came to camp this week. He is coming over for dinner after he's done with his priestly duties for the day. She thinks Dad is making a fall chili if the cornbread mix and the squash she had to hull up from the last grocery order says anything 

Things in her novel are moving out of the character and world-building and into the meat of the story when she hears a knock on the window. She looks up unphased, because with her life it could be anyone, and sees Uncle Jason. This is pretty typical for him and she gets it, if she could fly Katie would also be entering every building like a Ninja Turtle. 

She has to detangle herself from Puffs and blankets to let him in, both hellspawn complaining the whole way like she didn't place each on their own pillow. The spider-looking one grumpily climbs the wall to fold into a shadow at the corner of the ceiling. 

“Your early!” Katie greets excitedly as she throws open the window and screen “I don't think Dads started on dinner”

“It's cool,” he says as he climbs in “How's the book treating you?”

“Good so far!” she gushes excited, Uncle Jason has always been awesome about letting her infodump “The zinophysiology angle has been really interesting, I'm looking forward to where they're gonna take it” 

Katie pops back on the edge of the couch and the Cocoa Puff clambers back into her lap vibrating for scratches that she happily provides. Uncle Jason sits down next to her

“Hey, you remember how I've been wanting to get my Legion tattoo covered?” he asks

“Yeah?” 

They have been talking about it for a while. Katie has a friend from Hecate who's been working in enchanted tattoos and it got Uncle Jason thinking about getting his old SPQR tattoo covered. She doesn't blame him, it's filled his whole forearm for most of his life, and it's never suited him either. Not like her dad's tattoos, which were personal and felt natural on their bodies. Uncle Jason's has always felt like a barcode, or a brand

Katie and Uncle Jason have always enjoyed talking about art, whether it's what they were working on or something they have seen when they're out and about. Uncle Jason is a modest artist, but his work with the temples speaks for itself. And Katie has a lot of good memories sitting with him as he sketched, parallel play at the max. 

“I got the design, you want to see it?” but he's already pulling out the folded printout from his inner jacket pocket to give over to her excited grabby hands.

At the top is a mandala-style design of the big window at the Way Station. Below it there are two trees; one is obviously Aunt Thalia’s tree, the shape and golden fleece make it indistinguishable. But the dragon in its branches is more serpentine and made of metal, a stylized Festus if she's ever seen him, raising his head up towards the window motif. Katie doesn't recognize the other tree off to the side of Aunt Thalia’s , smaller but equal in the composition. Between them sleeps Grandma Lupa, regal as always, underneath a night sky with the trees as a frame. She thinks she recognizes the leo constellation front and center in the rich starscape.

“It's great!” Katie tells him, impressed, “Did you do it all yourself?”

“I did most of the planning and a sketch,” Uncle Jason says “But the tattoo artist I found did the final drawing. I'm into the city tomorrow to get it”

“What's with the second tree? Just to help cover more?”

“No, it's a poplar tree” and Uncle Jason is watching her face “A balsam poplar”

“That's me” Katie breathes, touching where she and Aunt Thalia’s branches merge and overlay in the picture. They had figured out what kind of wood she was made of last time she was at the Way Station for her quest. 

“Is that ok?” Uncle Jason looks a little worried, rubbing the hair at the nape of his neck “I wanted to get my whole family in it, but I don't want to overstep-”

“Of course it's ok!” she laughs, throwing her arms around his neck. The Puff squeaks in her lap “It's wonderful!”

Uncle Jason hugs her back, warm and solid as always. Big arms and a wide chest, pulling her in tight and safe, the greatest of hugs. He smells like heat lightning and smoke from the offerings, he's the absolute best and she loves him so much

“Would you like company,” she asks him after they separate “When you go to get your cover-up?”

“I would love that!” he tells her all smiles

[powderblueblood]

I hope this isn't too random but I really like your taste in movies and media and one of my favourite movies ever is Dogfight (1991) with River Phoenix (which I think you'll like if you haven't seen it already) and I love the idea of a Dogfight AU with Eddie or maybe Steve. It's pretty convenient that the lead character's named Eddie in the film too lol. Anyway, I'm not making a request or anything like that I just wanted to say that ever since I started following your blog I've felt that you're the perfect kind of writer to do a story like that. I watched the movie again a few days ago and I was reminded of your blog and I kept thinking oh man if anyone could get this AU down the right way it would be powder

so I want to preface this with telling you that I hadn’t seen dogfight when I received this ask but I read this and I was like you know what. I’ve got nothing on this morning lets pop in a movie

and jesus christ anon, have you ever got my number. i really, really liked it. took a few notes during. this was one of them

and i also got to thinking about this little sketch-- i mean, i have a bias towards wisecracking tragedy boy eddie munson lets be so serious, so i watched it with him in mind. (i also think there's such fertile real estate with steve as berzin-- i wanna talk about the marcie of it all with him!)

but you've got eddie, okay, eddie with a crew cut and a malaise that seems boyish but isn't. in boot camp, they cut off one of the last things that made him him (his hair, i am always thinking about his hair) and dressed him up to send him off to die.

on the one hand, he's dabbled in the counterculture by virtue of being an outsider all his life (he knows the war is fucked); on the other, he doesn't want to be a draft dodger like his father. the more he's surrounded by something like the rigidity and after-dark feral lost boy-ishness of the marines, the easier it becomes to surrender to it. forget himself. make a bunch of jarhead buddies and put money on a dogfight.

they're calling for okinawa in the morning. he's got twelve hours in frisco and a mission to find the ugliest date that he can.

and then he meets you.

you, and you are sweet and weedy in nature with a guitar in your hand, with hands you hold like there oughta be rosary beads webbed between your fingers. your shrine to joan baez and odetta holmes on the wall of your bedroom in the apartment above the diner that he stumbles into, sweating and desperate and running low on that classic munson charm, trying to find the gnarliest bitch hound in all of san francisco.

your hair is a little too done up in a poor imitation of girls in the magazines and you move your body like it's a constant obstruction, apologetic to everyone in your path. you're perfect-- for this. he asks you to a party, a party set up to humiliate you and amuse him and that's all well and good until--

you pluck off the chords of dink's song and you remind eddie of something he'd tried to beat down, you pressed little flower you.

and this eventual exchange.

'what are you grinnin' about?'

'i was just wondering what you'd look like with your hair a little longer and without that bruise on your face...'

sweetheart, i need to have a fucking LIE DOWN. this really might end up on my WIPS by VIRTUE OF THIS ASK ALONE. DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE! I LOVE YOU

[chiimeramanticore]

Part of the Band - Chapter 10 - Dress-Up

Chapter summary: Dook visits Billy Bob and Looney Bird to make his outfit for the band. Billy Bob orders a pizza. Looney Bird gives Dook some advice. A/N:

the space between chapters remains long, but I assure you: I have been cooking chapter 11 is actually also already done! so expect that to be uploaded within a day or two as well. things are about to get very interesting... buckle up!

Chapter word count: 1,177 <- Chapter 9 - Chapter 11 -> Read it on AO3!

"Dook!" Billy Bob exclaims as he opens the door. "I'm so glad you're here! Come in, come in!"

Dook shuffles through the doorway of Billy Bob and Looney Bird's house. It's been some time now since Looney Bird offered to help Dook make his costume for the band, but it took Dook until now to actually really accept. He'd told Beach Bear he was going to pick it up today, which shouldn't take too long. As long as he's in and out, Beach Bear won't suspect a thing.

"Make yourself comfortable," Billy Bob says. The house is incredibly lived-in. The decor is like if Billy Bob and Looney Bird's personal styles had an epic battle, with the remains of those fallen scattered around the house. Some of the furniture looks like they just found it in the street and brought it home. None of it is broken, it all just... clashes. Dook sits down on the couch. It's incredibly plush.

"Dook!" A rush of footsteps from down the hallway, and Looney Bird appears in the living room, arms full of fabric and sewing materials. "I've got so many ideas for you! Look–" He dumps everything onto the table in front of them. Among the pile are several pages of crude sketches of outfit designs.

"You're all about space, right?" Looney Bird says.

"Sure am," Dook replies.

"I'm gonna make you into a space man," Looney Bird says, determined.

Dook laughs. "Sure, just–"

"Looney Bird!" Billy Bob calls from the next room over. "Would you come help me with this?"

"Sure thing, Billy Bob!" Looney happily calls back. "Be right back, Dook."

Dook follows Looney Bird into the next room, where Billy Bob is stirring an almost comically large pot over a stove.

"You're making dinner?" Dook says incredulously.

"Yeah!" Billy Bob replies. "You wouldn't be our guest now if we didn't treat ya with some southern hospitality!"

"I mean, that's real nice and all, but I–"

"Looney Bird, come help me with this," Billy says. Dook sighs. He doesn't have time for dinner.

Looney Bird approaches the pot and starts helping Billy Bob lift it and move it toward the table.

"Guys, I really appreciate the thought," Dook starts, "but I ain't exactly got the time f..." Dook's eyes drift toward the table they're moving the pot towards. It's a folding table– and one of the legs is unstable.

"Guys, wait! Don't–!"

The pot lands on the table, and it loses its balance. In the blink of an eye, it falls, spilling stew everywhere. Looney Bird falls too, shrieking as the stew spills onto him.

"Looney!" Billy Bob exclaims, helping him stand up. "Are you alright?"

"Y- yeah," he says, brushing stew off of him. "But my feathers are all stained...! And wet! I can't touch any of the furniture like this!"

"We'll get you cleaned up, don't worry," Billy Bob says. "Dook, could you take Looney Bird to the bathroom? I've got my work cut out for me here."

"Uh... Sure," Dook concedes.

"I'm real sorry," Looney Bird says from the bathtub. "We just wanted to–"

"Show me some 'southern hospitality,' I know," Dook says.

"Yeah," Looney Bird says. "Billy Bob's trying, y'know? We don't get guests too often. I think he's just excited."

Dook says nothing for a while, staring at himself in the sink mirror. "I just wanna get this costume made," he says.

"Sure," Looney says. "And we will, once I'm clean! Which..." Dook hears the faucet turn off. "...Is now!" Looney Bird steps out of the shower, shaking himself dry.

Dook smiles. "Okay, you ready?"

"Sure am," Looney Bird says. The two leave the bathroom together.

Waiting for them in the living room is Billy Bob, who's set out several pizza boxes... which he's made space for by pushing aside everything they'd set up for sewing.

"Hi guys!" He says cheerfully. "I thought since the stew didn't work out, I'd just order us pizza!"

Something twinges in Dook. "I... I don't want pizza," he says.

"Oh! Sure, do you wanna order something else for yourself?" Billy Bob says. He rifles through a drawer next to him and approaches with several takeout menus. "We've got a lot nearby! There's Mexican, Chinese, Thai, burgers, we can–"

"No!" Dook snaps. "I don't want food at all! I didn't come here for southern hospitality, I just wanna get my costume made and go! I can't be wasting time like this!"

"...Dook, I–" Billy Bob starts. Dook turns and re-enters the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

He presses his back to the door and sighs, sliding down to the floor. He's being a jerk. He'll apologize, he just... needs a minute to cool off first. Who's wasting time now?

After a minute of sitting there, Dook hears a gentle knock at the door. "Hey, Dook?" It's Looney Bird.

"Yeah," Dook replies.

"Do you, like... wanna talk about it?" He asks.

"...I guess," Dook says. "I just– I guess I'm stressed. I'm tryin' to cover my tracks with this whole situation. I don't want Beach Bear to know I lied. And I guess that's makin' me all uptight."

Looney Bird is quiet for a moment. Then, "You haven't told him?" He asks.

"No," Dook responds. "Why would I?"

"I told Billy Bob."

"Wh-?" Dook turns to face the door. "What do you mean, you told Billy Bob!"

"I mean I told him!" Looney Bird says.

"But what happened to 'we were never here?'"

"I dunno! I didn't think you were being that serious. And I only told Billy Bob, okay? No one else knows."

Dook sighs. "Okay."

"What I'm tryin' to get at is," Looney continues, "when I told him, he was a little mad at me, sure. But we talked about it and we moved on. And he's not mad at me anymore. And I just think... if you told Beach Bear, he might get mad, sure. But he'll be a lot more upset if he finds out what you did and you kept it from him."

Dook stares at the back of the door. He hadn't considered the consequences of not telling him. That if Beach Bear somehow found out about this from someone other than Dook, his trust in him might be broken for good. The thought upsets him more than he'd like to admit.

"...You're right," he says. "I guess I should... I guess I should tell him, then."

"Yeah," Looney Bird says encouragingly. "I think he'll be cool with it anyway. It's Beach Bear! He's cool about everything."

Dook laughs. "Yeah, he is."

"...Do you wanna come out and have some pizza?" Looney asks.

"Yeah," Dook replies. He stands, finally opening the door.

As he returns to the living room, Dook promises to himself two things: that he'll take the rest of this visit in stride, and simply enjoy this time with his friends– and to tell Beach Bear the truth once he gets home. He's kept this all from him for long enough.

He just hopes he hasn't waited too long.

[a-flux-uchiha]

I’ve been meaning to post these for a while, we’re not technically done, since I haven’t done Mikoto yet, but what can you do.

From top left to bottom right, it is Dot(Grimoire), Tenten(Tome), and Mai(Archive), then on the bottom it’s Ivy(name undecided), and Kushina(Kitsune).

The top three are the focus of Shuriken, Spikes and Swords, a crossover magical girl au I’m still working on, although it is fully planned out, just not fully written out.

Kushina and Mikoto were the generation before them, so they function a bit as mentors. I'm hoping to write out some shenanigans from when they were active. I've been meaning to get around to doing Mikoto, although I haven't managed it yet. I have a sketch for her, I just have to do it.

Ivy will be introduced in a second fic, something I had been intending to do anyway, just because it's been a lot of fun working on SSS. I had been intending to just continue with the three from the first one, however...I am not active in loz anymore, and that is very much on purpose, so I'd rather not have a fic still involving that. So, we're swapping Dot out. She'll just be moving away and Ivy will take her place. Ivy will be a couple years younger then Tenten, so just a year younger then Dot.

Please ask me about this au, I love it dearly, I have so much for it.

It got Long, so design notes under the read more.

Design notes going from top left to bottom right:

Dot: Her colors were a little rough since, well, almost all of her associated colors are already in Tenten or Mai. Pink, Red, and Teal all show up in one of those two. So it was a bit of a struggle to work that out. I think it worked out alright in the end though. Her design was originally a bit more complicated, then someone noted that her design was more complicated then Tenten and Mai's, so I ended up simplifying it a bit in the final version. She does have a cape, although it's rather hard to see. I swear it's there though. The bag at her side holds her magical item, which is a book, a grimoire you could say. It holds spells and potions and other such things. Her and Tenten were designed first, then Mai, so I could work out what things the two of them had in common and make them show up in Mai, since she had the least direction as she doesn't have any particular typical outfit from her anime. If you're wondering, the golden orb is magic and yes it's fully there to hide the fingers of that hand. We don't talk about that hand. Oh yes, please note the crown as well, that blue diamond is something you can note shows up on Tenten, Mai, and Ivy. It's a sort of team identifier thing. It's used when multiple teams of magical girls are in the same area, for something like a natural disaster usually.

Tenten: I settled on that hair option after it was decided to be the superior one between it and something similar but with braids. That one's probably more fun, if very Sailor Moon ish. Oh well. Her outfit does look very similar to one of her canon ones, which of course is on purpose, although note her forehead protector has the blue diamond on it instead of the Konoha symbol. She has a thigh pouch, and the bag hanging from her waist holds her magic item, which is a scroll similar to the ones she used in Konoha. When she's transformed it holds seals for all weapons she used in Konoha, when she's not, she draws her own seals on it, and those work like normal seals where she needs to put something in to take something out, as opposed to the transformed seals, which just spawn things in for her. There's a good chance I designed her first, since she's got the easiest design. You'll notice the waist belt system thing also shows up on Kushina and will show up on Mikoto, that is on purpose.

Mai: There was no particular reason for the boob window, Mai just wanted one and thought it was fun. Which, fair. It's mostly blocked by her hand in the drawing though. She's holding her magical item, which is a binder she writes in. She uses it to keep track of things, including the kinds of monsters they're seeing and in what quantities. She's got a couple other uses for it too, but that's the big one. She's technically a support type magical girl as she does not have magic from a past life, but she does still have magic she can use. Her specific ability is to briefly slow down time. She can't use it for very long though, as she doesn't have much magic. She's got blue diamond earrings, and if you're wondering, no one can pull on them, they're actively not technically attached to her ears. Not just a design choice they're actively not attached. Grab one and pull and you're just going to pull it away. It'll reattach itself when you let go. Notes I had when designing her outfit primarily were the skirt design, the lining of the top and sleeves, the gloves length, the bag, and the presence of the blue diamonds. Oh and the boots being like that. Her hair is held back by a headband, to go with the forehead protector on Tenten, and Dot's crown and hair bow.

Kushina: Her name is Kitsune, I'm sure you can guess why. She originally did have the long elf-like ears the others do, but after she figured out she could change her transformed state, she swapped them out for the big fox ears. It doesn't really matter as long as the ears aren't human. (Editor's note, here I realized while looking at my Ivy design that I had forgotten to do the long ears, and hurried off to fix that, this post has the proper version.) The whiskers on her face are fully because she knows Naruto had em in the other world, and she remembered his birth(and her death) soon after she became a magical girl. So there are very very few pictures of the times Kushina didn't have whiskers or big fox ears. Her magical item is the necklace, Mikoto's is also a necklace, although hers is a hawk. If you're wondering, Mikoto does have giant hawk wings, just because she could. And she should match Kushina. Kushina's actually wearing shorts under the green over dress.

And Last but Not least, Ivy: I lowkey almost forgot to draw the long ears on em. Luckily I remembered before posting this lol. Most important thing here and now: I'm going with a genderfluid Ivy! Mostly since I think it'll be fun. There is gender stuff going on with the whole magical girl situation, and while this isn't on display with any of the others, I figured I might as well get someone on board who could show off that side of this. that's mostly why I ended up picking Ivy out of all of my options for who would replace Dot. I'll just be using she when describing Ivy this time, but I'll probably switch it up in future posts. Ivy's one of the rare genderfluid magical girls who doesn't mind being active when they're not a girl, many genderfluid individuals who become magical girls are only working essentially part time. Whenever they comfortable with it. They're only found in teams of 3 or more because of that, so there's always at least two active magical girls. Actual design notes now: She's wearing kind of a variant on what she's normally wearing in the show, just without the jacket. Her magical item is Sora, although the slime only comes alive when she's transformed. Otherwise it's just a cute little plushie she carries around. She does have a fourth bag in the back attached to the belt around her waist, similar to in the show, and she can pull about anything out of those bags that she wants to. Similar to Tenten's scroll, they just spawn in the item she needs, although they are temporary. The blue diamond is on her bag strap, so still visible. Sora often hides out in the red bag, and is capable of healing large injuries, as well as smaller scrapes. Can and will eat bigger things now as well, although still prefers the potions Ivy can toss it. You will note that Ivy doesn't match Tenten and Mai quite as well as they match each other and Dot, that is on purpose, that's fairly typical for magical girl teams where one person was added later, since Ivy didn't become active at the same time as them, although they are her first team, she's technically considered a latecomer, which isn't bad. It's fairly normal for magical girl teams to switch up who's in them, especially early on when everyone is in college and early adulthood. Oh yeah you can note that her bangs are slightly off, particularly in the front, that is on purpose on her part, they look like Lattrua's.

[thedawningofthehour]

Ok I have a lot of questions and I have to break this down into parts.

Actually, on the revealed page of the new comic, you can see Casey jr in one of the panels, and he looks the same as he does in the movie, which would confirm that the deaths of donnie and Raph were actually recent.

Wait, what's going on with the gay laws in china? Last I heard, china was actually tightening their laws regarding anything remotely queer, because of that many danmei (chinese gay genre) productions who already had experience working around censorship were having problems to the point where they didn't know if they could release. Even the genshin impact company was having problems over there, because one of their male characters was too feminine for their standards.

Aw, I got the impression from Casey Jr that he had never met Raph. He was really comfortable with Donnie and April, but much stiffer with Splinter and Raph. I always took that to mean Raph and Splinter either died before he was born or when he was too young to remember much. And you know Raph would have dadded any child that displayed even the slightest need for dadly guidance.

The way I have the order of death plotted out in my own headcanonical world, the death order went: Raph on invasion day -> Bella dying to save Donnie -> Splinter doing something stupid in a 'it needs to be done and it might as well be him' scenario -> Cass doing something unimaginably badass and cool and probably screaming "WITNESS ME" -> Donnie sacrificing his life to take out the Technodrome -> Draxum going on a suicide mission to destroy one of the main three Krangs -> Big Mama and April as we see their bodies at the beginning of the movie.

I will not be amending this whatsoever in light of the canonical material.

No but for real, I kind of enjoyed that the fandom had so much leeway to really do whatever we wanted with the post-apocalypse storyline. And I'm going to admit it now, I don't like Donnie's overalls. I like the ones other people have drawn on him and maybe it's because the sketch we saw was pretty low quality, but it doesn't do anything for me.

I said Chinese attitudes, which...in retrospect, means a lot less than it really should. Jesus Christ, I literally said that on the 35th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

My understanding of what goes on in China is-well, for one, it's just not something I'm super informed on, I had literally one semester of world history in high school and we didn't even really get to east Asia, we started with Africa and moved east but got stuck in the Arab world because this was 2011. (use your imagination on what was said there) Literally, everything else was American history with the occasional Ancient Greece unit thrown in. No shit, I am literally Raph, I didn't know the Holy Roman Empire was a separate thing from the original Roman Empire until I was an adult. (I also thought nobody was Jewish anymore until I read 'Are You There God? It's Me Margaret' and realized that the Jews didn't all convert in Jesus' time) And what we did learn about modern China, we learned it through a...very anti-red lens. Which isn't to say communism good and all criticism of China is red scare propaganda, but educating yourself post-indoctrination involves actively challenging and unlearning the shit you were indoctrinated with, which can interfere with actually learning about shit with an open mind.

What was I talking about? Right, gay stuff in China. There's been little victories on that front, but from what I've read they've mostly been pretty performative without real underlying change, like with women's rights in Saudi Arabia. Which is its own problem, but progress is progress? But yeah, the censorship is getting worse. Which is worrisome.

Maybe it's kind of wishful thinking on my part, but I also think a shift in official attitudes would be the most logical thing for China right now. A lot of Chinese people support LGBT rights, and that number is only going to swell as older, more conservative people die off and young people enter adulthood. (and people get exposed to pro-LGBT viewpoints and content and realize homophobia is dumb) And the rest of the world is becoming more and more gay-friendly, the only exceptions really being Russia and a few Islamic states, and, uh. China is not really...endearing itself to the Islamic world right now. We'll leave it at that. It's going to get to a point where the UN is pressuring them and their own people are pressuring them, and either they give in on that issue or it comes to conflict. That's how it works.

I'm hopeful that things will change in China in my lifetime. I'm just very worried about how much blood it will take.

[maydayfireball]

Len model finished !! His video was suppose to be a black background like rin's was, but i got a little carried away.. Just like Rin, check below for the model progress timeline and video credits !!

Turning Rin into Len ! I'm lazy and i want these two to look very similar, so i just edited rins face and body. Time elapsed: 00:34:53 (his head isn't smaller i just didn't screenshot well.)

2. Struggled drawing Len's hair ! I wouldn't normally include this part in my time, but like. fuck len. tumblr helped pick which one i used of these two blue prints. Time elapsed: 01:07:00

3. Len hair finished ! Why does this man hate me ! Time elapsed: 02:46:44 (almost two hours, huh..)

4. Body rig ! Unlike rin, I decided to rig len from scratch. This is because his base is too different from anyone else's to get away with weight transferring. (significantly shorter than kaito / gackpo, but with a different body shape than rin.) So here's a gif of his silly little arm movin. Time elapsed: 04:08:32

5. Hair Rig / Physics. For all the models (except rin) I've done their hair rig / physics right after rigging the body. This is mostly so i can have a fully optimized base to work off of later when making outfits. For rin i just.. forgot to do her hair lol. anyway time elapsed: 04:34:30

6. Outfit Designing. I didn't time this for rin since that timing was more for commission reference sake, and more clients won't have me designing their stuff. so it wouldn't have made sense to include it. but here we are. Rough outfit sketch. Fuck drawing headphones. Time elapsed: 05:06:05 for all my original models, the concept was more or less blending their design aspects together. (with the exception of gackpo, who's only difference between updates is colors and slight hair changes.)

7. Outfit modeling ! He went pretty easy, since It was just a matter of making parts i already did for Rin. So anything I struggled with last time, i had practice for. Time Elapsed: 7:50:25

8. UV Mapping. I included this step into texturing last time, but I felt like separating it this time around. Basically, i unwrapped all the UVs for the model and laid them out on a texture sheet to draw over. From what i've seen, a lot of people do this differently / in different orders? like they might uv map and then immediately texture the shirt, before moving onto the next piece of clothing. But texturing (using my tablet in general) hurts my shoulders typically, so i try to get it all out of the way at once. So i uvmap before even pulling the tablet out. Time elapsed: 8:50:48

9. Texturing. My neck hurts ! Time Elapsed: 11:40:19

10. Extruding, triangulating, exporting.. and then spas / toons. i think last time i included the extruding / triangulating in meta under texturing? But i've decided to break it up this time. Basically, i add depth to parts of the outfit, manually turn quads into triangles on tricky sections (like shoulders and hips) so they're easier to rig. Basically getting it ready for pmx before i export it. Time elapsed : 12:45:23 (left is unextruded / mirrored, right is extruded with the mirroring fixed.)

11. Rigging adjustments and physics ! Basically, used the weight transfer plugin to transfer the weight onto the outfit to match the base. I then cleaned the rig up and added bones / physics for parts that needed them. Time elapsed: 13:40:25

12. Cleaned ! Honestly there wasn't much to do, since most of the cleaning (like renaming bones) carried over from Rin.

Total time elapsed: 13:41:56 !!

Significantly less time than Rin, but that's honestly to be expected. Overall three days worth of work? Since I didn't. actually work on him much the first day.

I've also discovered that my models shoulders tend to disagree with game rip motions (which is why they look so. sharp. in the video), though i've noticed other models doing this as well.. it occurs since most motion rips don't use the rotate bones, but mine are made with those in mind. Kind of annoying, but maybe i can find a work around.

Final thoughts??? He might be my favorite original model right now honestly. I really like him. I might even distribute him and Rin, with expressions to remove their headphones and arm warmers.

Video Credits: Song: My Love Is Hellfire by SLAVE.V-V-R Len Cover: XZenvii Motion: anonRipper, Colorful Palette Scripts: TearlessHen, thtrandomlurker, minmode, skyth effects: おたもん, soboro, beammanp, 化身バレッタ, 呉石

[dotthings]

Thinking out loud and I hope this is coherent. This spec isn't meant to cover all the details, I'm trying to get across a rough sketch of what I think's going on here with Dean and modulate and tweak on some of my earlier spec, but mostly this is still in line with what I've been thinking all along.

And also to reiterate: what we're seeing on TW is canon. It's not an alt timeline. It's not an alt universe, it's part of the flow of events that leads to the mothership events.

The Dean we see in the pilot, I at first thought might be Dean in a limbo space, after the rebar, before he passes to Heaven. I still think that's happening, and that it's crucial to the plot. But now I'm modulating to we're seeing Dean who has already time traveled to 1972 Lawrence. Troubled and restless because he's on a mission.

Because here's what I'm thinking--after the rebar, Dean's soul got stuck in a limbo-like place. A liminal afterlife space. He can't move on, he can't get to Heaven yet. How did he get to Heaven? The original ending skipped over all that. We're going to get that story. Dean's got regrets. His arc isn't done.

The rebar death isn't being retconned, I don't think, but it will be transformed by context. You think Jensen's salty about the rebar, you think we're salty about it, that's nothing to how salty Dean is about it, and he has other regrets, things that were not resolved. And his soul, landing in limbo, is in trouble. Something goes wrong and Dean, thinking he's fixing stuff, hoping to make things better, and ease the pain, actually breaks things, and it breaks the canon timeline. Away from what we're seeing in TW right now.

Dean's going to need some help coming back to himself and then, to fix what went haywire.

Mystery man is "not of this earth." Because he was put there from the afterlife.

TW events are not the haywire.

The repair is Dean handing John the letter and sending him to Mary, which leads him to the monster club.

This is how it always happened. This is the canon path that leads to the mothership events.

And without it--without John being sent to Mary, without the monster club, without the circle of love and support, things would be a lot worse for John and Mary and everyone than what we saw on the mothership.

I can throw a few examples, imagine John who didn't even survive to Dean's 18th birthday, or a Mary who drifted even farther from the loving parts of herself. Boy King Sam laying waste to the earth with his demon army. Dean v Sam. Cas never rebels.

Earth prime becomes a burned out world, just another one of Chuck's discarded drafts.

By handing John the letter, Dean puts things back on the og canon path.

Our Dean, running around 1972 Lawrence to set things right, to keep things on the path that leads to the events of the mothership. The good, the bad. All of it. All that makes Dean be Dean. He's choosing not just to save the world, he's choosing himself, he's choosing to be who he is, he is good with who he becomes. It's self-acceptance, and completes the emotional circuit on Dean's arc that 15.20 abandoned and skipped over.

This also makes Dean the literal guardian of the canon.

Jensen really loves spn and he respects the canon, so this seems like an apt role for Dean to have. He also doesn't seem spn as perfection, he's mentioned that himself on con panels, some eps work better than others. He knows.

Without retconning or fixing this via discarding any part of canon, the repair and comfort and recontextualization is coming.

(Also I don't know if ALL of this will be revealed in ep 13 but I think we'll get a bunch of reveals that indicate towards the long term arc, even if it's not the resolution yet so this is my spec on What the Heck is Going On).

[ask-obt]

What steps do you usually have for creating each page, and how long does each one usually take you? Do you do stuff like thumbnail entire chapters in advance, etc?

I don't know how big your page buffer is, but you seem to get pages done at a really impressive rate, especially considering every page is clean and colored, so I'd love to know how you manage it :)

// this is a long ask, so buckle up!

all of my pages start with an outline, which is then fleshed out into a script- over time I've found that having an entire chapter done before starting any other step cuts out unnecessary fat that comes with editing. if there's one thing I learned from preboot OBT, trying to figure out what exactly happens on a page as you're drawing it can lead to a lot of heartbreak if you decide to change it (a lot of preboot OBT's chapter 4 was subject to this- I have a million drafts of rune and fienne in the market because I didn't know what I wanted them to do there). my scripting program is actually the beta version of a program one of my classmates in college made, and if it ever goes public I'd be happy to pop a link since I believe they want to make it open source eventually. on average my scripts are about 5000-6000 words long, and are written (casually) like film scripts since that's the format I was trained on as a film student.

my outlines are a bit sloppy because it's just like a stream of consciousness flowing out while I try getting ideas slapped down as quickly as possible. I try not to worry too much about details unless I have a clear vision in mind because I think writing the plot out in one go flows the most smoothly.

and then from there, I expand that outline into a script.

after the script is completed, and assuming I have enough buffer, I thumbnail the entire next chapter- or at least as much as I can stand in one go. I'll usually either be working on rendering the previous chapter during this step, or I'll have the previous chapter completed so I can devote my attention to it. either way, I try and give myself room to do a variety of tasks depending on my mood. thumbnails are easy to work on while on-the-go for example, but they require a lot of thought to put together. coloring can be tedious, but it's great to do while multitasking of on lunch at one of my jobs.

part of the thumbnailing process for me includes putting down text bubbles. surprisingly, this is a very tedious task, so I try to get it all done in one go so I don't have to agonize over it. and this is where my process gets a bit convoluted, so bear with me.

to do this, I take a look at my script and break all the dialogue into different text bubbles. I've gotten to the point where I think I do pretty well naturally finding breaks in pages, and I just go in chronological order putting text down. for this step I have page templates prepped, which show the safety margins that I need to follow to prevent text from getting stuck in the binding when printing into books. I make sure all the text is safe, and then move onto the next step.

after that, I copy the page with text bubbles, and then shrink it really small into thumbnail size. on a layer above this screenshot I trace the text bubbles, and then treat those bubbles as "dead zones" to draw around while working on the thumbnails. this might be an unnecessary step if you have a good grasp on how much text takes up a panel, but I am historically awful at judging that so knowing the exact text bubble size when thumbnailing helps prevent my bubbles from getting in the way after the art is already rendered. then, rinse and repeat for the rest of the chapter!

some chapters I'm quicker at thumbing than others- on the low end we've got chapter 5, which I wrapped up in 2 months (I did roughly 1 thumb per day)

and then chapter 6 which I dragged my feet on a little bit, at around 6 months

(and chapter 7, which is twice the length of a normal chapter for me, took 4 months!)

after that is sketching, the part I dread most when working on a chapter. it's the part that requires the most thinking on my part, and I did away with sketching completely for most of chapter 3- but I've been trying to make my lines thinner lately, and until I build up the confidence to work without sketches, I'm afraid I'm stuck with them. I try to do 1-2 sketches per day, but some days I just don't do them if I'm not feeling up to it.

(I'm actually avoiding sketching while I work on this ask)

while most of OBT is done in CSP, the one thing I don't do there is lines- for that I use Autodesk Sketchbook. sketchbook has a pretty incredible predictive stroke tool that adjusts your strokes after you make them. it takes a bit of time to get used to, but with it I can draw much faster than any other program or with any other stabilization tool. I gave CSP an honest shot with lining by trying to use it for 6 months, but sketchbook was just too powerful so I live the multiprogram life. I try my best to keep all my lines closed during this process because it'll make coloring WAY easier. like I think coloring used to take me an hour, now it takes me 20 minutes tops.

then I flip off the visibility on all layers except the lineart layer, save as a PNG (saving a working file as well if I'm feeling spicy), and then import to CSP! where the most fun part begins.

to start, to do that colored lineart thing where the lines on my characters are darker on the outside than the inside, I start by coloring characters their inside color first (using the "lock transparent pixels" layer option). for comics this is reduced to a simple "warm palette" color and "cool palette" color, which are brown and blue respectively. it's subtle, but you can see it in action with rune and eilwyn here.

then I use the magic wand tool, my best friend. I select the negative space around the characters, invert it, and then with the dark color selected in my palette (for me it's a dark brown approaching black) and the transparent pixels still locked, I use the "outline selection" option to outline the characters. I usually outline them by 6 px, but it'll depend on what looks best.

then for coloring, with the characters still selected, I use the "shrink selection" option to shrink it by 1 pixel. this helps prevent aliasing when I use the fill bucket to fill characters in with a base color! after that I pick them out by character and manually add their main color by hand, so they look something like this.

and here's the part where I impart upon ye, dear reader, with the forbidden knowledge I learned while doing the Monster House Marathon this month. see, I really like doing these daily events because they push me to my limit. a page a day is the most comfortable fast pace I can work on the comic, but it can still be a bit of a strain to get a page done before my bedtime, so I'm much more willing to learn shortcuts in order to get a nice juicy 6 hours of sleep instead of 4.

if you do a closed lineart method like me for most of your character's markings, the "Set Reference Layer" tool is going to become your new best friend. using this, I set the lineart layer as the reference layer (and only the lineart layer), move over to my coloring layer, grab my fill bucket tool, and then I can just start literally filling in characters within seconds. some characters have unclosed markings that I'll have to do by hand, but this is extremely quick and I love it so much.

finally I add a multiply layer where I do some light shading. this step used to be full cel shading, though over time I've found that my art reads a little more clearly without it. and shading also used to be miserable because it was another 30 minutes to an hour of rendering that kept me from completing a page, so it sometimes got a little miserable.

and finally, I add backgrounds and lighting effects. I have a pretty decent library of pre-rendered backgrounds I've made that I can just plop in a scene, but sometimes for new or one-time locations I'll make a new one by hand.

and that's a completed page! it's a bit hard to calculate how long a singular page takes start to finish since I try doing everything before the lineart in batch style, but I'd say it all roughly evens out to 2-4 hours. breaking it down, it looks something like:

Thumbnail - 10-20 minutes Sketch - 30 minutes - 1 hour Lineart - 30 minutes - 1 hour Coloring - 10-20 minutes Rendering - 10-20 minutes Background - 20 minutes - 1 hour

so pages are pretty quick for me to make! this helps me build a pretty sizeable buffer, I think my previous record was somewhere around 40 pages? maybe 70 if I included dielle's wish. though I will admit during this Monster House Marathon, I actually ran out of buffer on day 7, and I'd been laying the tracks in front of the train until, uh, checks watch, the 27th! as of writing this I finished the buffer through the MHM, so I can rest easy. this ask probably won't queue until after the MHM has ended so this probably sounds a little comedic. the main reason I was able to manage these daily updates without a buffer was because of an art high I was experiencing this month, which is also why I did a marathon in the first place.

though usually, I really am an advocate for buffers. having a buffer of at least 3 months means I can hop around with different processes as my interest in them flips around. my brain usually likes to focus on one task at a time, and a lot of it, so having that freedom is great for me. and sometimes, I just wanna take a month off to play a new game or hyperfixate on stardew valley once again! it all comes down to practice and developing a workflow and schedule that works for you.