#but also hard trying to find poses?? i don't wanna take pics of myself doing the poses

[bryastar]

word salad #12

oh shoot I'm back edition!

alrighty so, hi, it's been a bit. so I guess I should explain my absence a bit but I ended up getting a certain respiratory illness which included trouble breathing, headaches, nausea, fatigue, and it was so bad that it took me out for basically an entire week.....

yeah pneumonia isn't fun

anyway......

what have I been up to that hasn't been staying in bed all day while doom scrolling way too far in TikTok...

probably a tiny thing here but I reorganized my ipad icons a bit, keeping all the drawing apps on one screen (plus the battery info for the pencil), socials on the next, and games at the end. seems less overwhelming....and cuz I like the background art ^^; (art by @wavecipher)

solar eclipse! we had to drive out an hour towards the path of totality to be able to see it, but honestly this was one of the coolest experiences I've ever got to witness! pictures don't do it full justice and it's really hard to describe the mood. just being able to witness the moon slowly creeping in front of the sun slowly while experiencing this beautiful mix of daytime and nighttime vibes simultaneously....aaaa! I was really sad before I wasn't able to see much of the 2017 eclipse previously and I wanted to make certain it worked out this year, and just so happened that everything lined up perfectly (teehee) to be able to see this! (top pic taken by amber, the others by me)

butts! I ended up using a combination of pose to pose and straight ahead animation here. I wanted to try and push myself with this and experiment, and I'm discovering a bit that I enjoy doing things like water splooshes. down the line I wanna touch on more things like water ripples or fire animation too.

all of this happened before I got sick and bedridden and I was a bit worried that I would lost the drive to anima--

nope! still got it! I'm pretty happy with how this came out! I asked for a random object and a random action at home and got "apple" and "jumping" and I decided to add the bit at the end with it bonking and bruising itself. I used a mix of drawing individual frames, but also simple subtle transforms when the change was minimal anyway to streamline the work just a bit.

I originally struggled with getting the impact to look right. adding a smoke cloud and simulating a camera shake seemed to help with that (which I struggled originally because I tried to keyframe it in capcut but because it's animated of twos that came off weird and the earthquake effect didn't satisfy me either so I had to just manually move everything in toonsquid...which ended up taking less time overall anyway) I especially like the doubling/smear frame I made right before it hits the ground.

I think improvements I wanna make is planning out the facial expressions more. there is a point where the apple realizes it loses balance but I think it happens way too fast to be properly noticible at full speed. also I did abuse the transform tool juuust a bit much at the end so maybe I'll stick with reserving that for ease in and outs.

lately I've been in a bit of a Starfox kick. I ended up finding the N64 cartridge at a game shop (only $40 USD which was definitely a bit cheaper than I was expecting for a first party title) and I'm honestly really impressed with how well it looks compared to the NSO version on switch, particularly with transparency effects, colours seem bolder (the gold rings in particular stand out more), and how smooth the game runs overall (with occasional but expected slowdowns in certain areas). also the voice samples seem to sound more accurately to a radio signal. I also wanna see if I can get the 3ds version of SF64 sometime too and compare that.

alrighty so apologies for the extra word salading this time around but there was a lot to catch up on. hopefully I can keep up a bit more as I start to get back towards 100%

🦊🐦🐰🐸

[nyanykamito]

🎐🍡  Aomna’s fullbody civilian look! 🎐🍡

She’s a senior in high school and she’s currently working at a summer camp. Aomna loves the different seasons and celebrating their different festivals. Her partner is Chime, horned koi fish fairy.

her precure form is gonna be wild, but hopefully fun TuT

[fyeahnix]

hello um i got a question how do i commission someone idk what to say do I describe what I would like in details or do I send them some references of it I'm just nervous to ask and I don't want to seem stupid or rude

Don't worry about it! It's initially a scary thing, but you'll get it.

When I first commissioned someone, I was ADMITTEDLY kind of an asshole about it. I won't go into detail but once I ordered my second commission from someone else, I changed my entire attitude and approach to it, and it's been immensely helpful.

I've ordered a ton of commissions over the last couple years and here's what I've learned:

First off, be nice! Cannot stress this enough lmao. You don't wanna come off as an entitled asshole demanding work because if you end up loving the piece and want to work with the artist again in the future, the artist likely won't wanna work with you again.

Before anything, research and see if their commissions are open. Some artists will have carrds, others will have tweets/pinned tweets saying they're open. If in doubt, just DM them and politely ask. Some artists may be busy or not taking any at that particular time, or some may not take commissions at all, and while that might suck or be a bummer, it is what it is! So find out first if they're even open.

Find an artist that matches the style you're looking for. Not every artist will fit your idea, and that's no shade to artists. Sometimes you have a certain idea in your head and someone's art style may not mesh well with that. Figure out what they're good at or willing to try by looking at their past work and commission info page.

When you find an artist's style you like, and their commissions are open, message them, introduce yourself, and say you'd be interested in ordering a commission. Usually I like to combine this with figuring out if they're open like "Hey, I'm Nix and I love your art. I was wondering if you take commissions and if so, if you have any slots open."

Check their prices before you ask tho, that should be on their commissions page. If you genuinely cannot find it, politely ask them where you can find the info. Make sure they're within your price range for what you want. You should absolutely factor a tip into this total price.

HAVE REFERENCES. I neglected to do this for a large chunk of my commissions and I have mentally kicked myself for this before. Artists are not mind readers and sometimes descriptions are hard to read or imagine. They're likely a professional artists and may have a MUCH different idea of what you want in your head. Get some photos of the characters you want if they're not familiar with them, get some poses together and locations if applicable.

In addition to references, draw up what you want in paint or something. I neglected to do this as well until recently but trust me when I say artists LOVE this shit because it helps them see exactly what you had in mind instead of guessing. This is an embarrassing part for me to do because my reference drawings of what I want end up supremely shitty looking but I do the best I can and add little harmless funny comments in the pic too to take a little embarrassment out of it for me (comments explaining parts of the piece may work here too).

Learn what your artist's timelines are, but be flexible and upfront about the work. If you seriously need the artwork soon, ask them if that's okay. Some artists will charge a rush fee to get it out sooner. If not, just ask for a general timeline, but don't be surprised if you get delays. Life happens and the world sucks.

Don't be entitled to times but don't also be a doormat. If your artist said you'd get a piece by a certain timeframe (like a month or something) and it's been a month and a half and they haven't said anything, ASK THEM FOR AN UPDATE. You're spending money on this and they should be doing the bare minimum of communication.

COMMUNICATE. The best artists I've worked with have taken literal MONTHS to complete pieces for me, but I've been fine with it because they've communicated when delays are expected to happen.

When the piece is finished, ask them what their usage terms are. Sometimes this will be on their terms of service page if they have one, but if you can't find it, ask them. Some artists are completely fine with you reposting the art as long as it's the watermarked version and tagging them or using it as a pfp, etc. Some are not.

If you love the piece, TIP THEM. I like to tip all my artists like 20% or more.

I think that's about it for the process!