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bluntforcefem · 3 years

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bug fables roleswap au!

hi thank you @cyanopicacyanus most beloved i would LOVE to! fair warning to anyone reading the text under the cut that this au explanation will have spoilers for the entirety of bug fables! so if you’re someone who wants to go in entirely blind and hasn’t watched/played bug fables yet- don’t click!

similarly, this covers similar things to the original bug fables stories, including the themes and plots of the requests. so watch out if any of those bug you! (Bug You haha)

the central focus of the au is the swap between the three main characters: leif takes vi’s place, vi takes kabbu’s place, and kabbu takes leif’s place. however, it gets a little more funky from there, in the nature of telling a fun and fresh story AND preserving major & important parts of their original personalities and backstories!

this explanation will go over the characters, and then specific moments & such that i think would change as well! ft. vi & leif getting to do crime, as they deserve

VI AS KABBU

vi, her sister jaune, and a currently unnamed friend of theirs are from a hive outside of bugaria, beyond the wild swamplands. they all decide to go to bugaria to explore - vi for money and exploration, jaune to see the art there. on the way there, in the same fashion as kabbu’s master and bit, vi and jaune’s friend dies to the beast to protect them while they run away.

vi and jaune, fueled by grief and anger at the loss, have a VERY LARGE blowout fight that ends in jaune leaving the swamplands for their home hive, and vi continuing on to go to bugaria! wooooo

what you get here is. vi largely keeps her desire to prove herself and get rewards from exploring, but there’s an added layer of: “if i can just prove myself as an explorer, i can kill the beast, and show jaune that she was wrong and trying to go to bugaria was worth it all along.” (even if vi doesn’t fully believe herself that the loss was worth it! character nuance my beloved)

KABBU AS LEIF

HERE’S WHERE THINGS START TO GET FUNKY! stick with me here folks, because ghosts are going to be real and in your home (and in bugaria.)

it all starts with a change with what the roaches in snakemouth labs are researching - instead of trying to achieve immortality with cordyceps (which is relegated to another lab, which is a special tool that’ll help us later), the roaches in snakemouth were attempting to achieve immortality by finding a way to bind spirits to exist after death, subsequently to re-enter their bodies. snakemouth was chosen for this for the high concentration of magic that allowed this to be possible - magic that permeated beyond just where the labs were. however, no corpse fit the conditions for spirits to re-enter them, leaving tens of spirits lonely and wandering. eventually, they all ganged up on the roaches who left them this way and killed them!

enter: kabbu, his master, and bit, who entered snakemouth den during the reign of elizant the first to find the artifact! the same beat as leif and his exploration team in canon. they get ambushed by a spider while investigating, and kabbu wakes up decades later when leif & vi rescue him!

what happened in snakemouth den was this: all three of the exploration team that entered perished, including kabbu. due to the experiments going on in snakemouth, and the roaches’ adjustment to the area and its energy, all three of their spirits sustained after death, and All Three Of Them Went Into Kabbu’s Body! kabbu is fully unaware of this until his request is done, in which the final battle of snakemouth labs is not a zommoth, but an amalgamation of lost ghosts that kabbu (and master and bit) refuse to acknowledge any similarity too.

instead of using the royal we and slipping into “i” during his request, kabbu uses “i” most of the time, and slips into using “we” when he sees the amalgamation and realizes the truth about what happened to him and his old family. i have given the kabbu ghosts both metaphorical AND literal this time!

tl;dr: the theme of snakemouth labs is ghosts instead of zombies, and kabbu is very, very haunted.

LEIF AS VI

remember when i said that the cordyceps being in another lab would be my special tool that would help us later? yeah! so. the most important part of this is that both leif & muse are still alive! it hasn’t been decades, for him - he’s been around during elizant ii’s reign.

leif and muse were an explorer (muse) and scientist (leif) duo exploration team that was sent by elizant ii to study the lost sands and find clues on the roaches and the everlasting sapling. they were pretty good at it! and one day, near the sand castle gate, leif finds a cordyceps colony that acts a little weird, has some sort of magical ability. so he takes it back to his lab for isolated study!

while he’s studying it, bandits from the lost sands attack while muse is gone, hoping to find research, etc. to hand over to the wasps. the cordyceps’ tube keeping it temperate and lively is shattered, leif is heavily injured, and it isn’t looking good for him or the cordyceps. so they reach out to each other, and fuse into each other, and the cordyceps “patches up” leif. both of them are still kicking around in there! it’s a very confusing case of identity for a while, but in a similar case to canon, the cordyceps Wants to care about muse and the people leif cares about. this time they’re just aware of what they are!

HOWEVER. muse comes back! and leif fills muse in on the situation, but neither him nor the cordyceps are particularly interested in studying himself or the effects it could have on his body, or any form of self-preservation related to it - they’re mostly just content to take their blessings as it is. This Does Not Sit Well With Muse! they argue about it for a while, it causes a rough patch, and they both agree that it would be better if they took a while to think about it by themselves. for context, this happens about six or seven months before the bug fables canon Starts.

leif is also SUPER banned from the explorer’s association & science groups for unethical science practices, particularly when the queen herself condemns his actions (mostly after he refuses to share the information he gained about what this could mean for the everlasting sapling. the cordyceps’ dislike of the roaches and what they did to it sustains post-fusion!)

leif’s request, then, centers around him coming to terms with the idea that he can be both kind to himself as he is (him and the cordyceps, him-and-the-cordyceps) AND make sure that this fusion is healthy for him AND continue his work in some form. it’s all about accepting that although his response was reasonable for when he had it and his experiences, muse was also very right about the fact that he needed to take care of himself after that! and it’s also about reconciling with muse herself. they do NOT get divorced i promise they’re happily married and have a kid

OTHER FUN THINGS TO THINK ABOUT

this is longer than i thought it would be! but hey, here’s my favorite part - getting into some of the major/minor plot changes that result from the changes in the roleswap!

all of the characters keep their attack types! for the reasons explained (gestures above) in their plot. however, kabbu gets a ghost-related TP skill after his request is completed!

leif & vi don’t have a legal explorer’s permit until AFTER snakemouth den. vi isn’t allowed to get one by herself, and when leif offers to be her partner, he’s reminded that he is SUPER BANNED from doing that! so they both sneak into snakemouth den illegally to find the artifact and prove that they can be an exploration team, and along the way find kabbu. inside your local fucked up cave you will find a free moral compass and friend

also: both kabbu and leif have a SUPER weird reaction to areas with heavy magic/the artifacts/roach technology! in this thread, they also have a super fun reaction to seeing each other for the first time, while vi is Literally Just Sitting There. sorry vi you’re on a team with not one but TWO fucked up guys (affectionate) on it

vi’s request is similar to kabbu’s with setting up the gravesite in the swamplands, but team snakemouth also helps her write a letter to jaune! i think in a post-canon world jaune eventually comes to bugaria to see vi and they (after a very long talk and bribery via vi getting jaune into this hive’s art gallery) reconcile too.

muse is HERE and i like her SO MUCH. this isn’t much of a plot thing but she’s alive in this au and everybody gets to see how like. Much she definitely made the first move, etc. i think her and elizant ii are friends they have tea on saturdays

if you made it this far - thanks for reading!! this is an au i love dearly and have put a LOT of thought into and i hope to write some fic for it sometime!!

#kbitycus art #bug fables roleswap #<- this'll be my tag for it lmao #whew this was a lot #bug fables

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hitheryon · 4 years

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Ooooo can we have some more headcannons about the katsucrew !!! (Also I’ve been so into undercut-kun x Katsuki lately and this account is a godsend! thank you!!!)

asdfghjk omg Anon, you’re so sweet!!! Also, yes, of course you can have more Katsucrew headcanons. I dunno if you were in bunny’s server when I posted all the ones I had, but for those who weren’t, here are some of them!!

So, starting with Seika!! She’s a real sweetheart, a bit of an airhead when it comes to social situations, but very book smart. She’s especially fixated on plant science, especially since she often uses the flowers, roots, herbs, and leaves she finds in her baking and in making medicinal tonics and salves. Additionally, due to her love for all things nature, she’s obsessed with wearing floral patterns with every outfit, often resulting in the clashing prints and colors that Katsuki despises.

Kariage is older than the rest of the Katsucrew, being seventeen, and, combined with how he raised his little sister from birth, often acts older than he is. He’s the first to tease and make fun of his friends, but he’ll beat up the first person who says anything bad about the crew. When he got old enough for a license, he got his hands on a motorcycle. Now, it features art that every member of the crew helped to design, and something that represents each crew member (i.e.: explosions and grenades for Katsuki, fire decals for Mito, water bubbles for Henshuu, etc.).

Mito is one of the few in the Katsucrew that can actually cook, often competing with Katsuki to make the best version of complicated dishes. She’s also a bit of a bad girl, despite being enrolled at UA, often partaking in underage drinking and buying weed from Yasushi. Despite this, however, she’s a model student, one of the top in the first year Support Course and always up to use her skills for good.

Henshuu is a bit of a wildcard in some people’s eyes. She’s small and wears her hair in pigtails, but, as a skilled boxer and martial artist, she’s also one of the only ones in the Katsucrew who can actually take Katsuki down in Quirkless fighting. She was raised in a mixed-race household, being 1/2 Japanese, 1/4 Chinese, and 1/4 Mexican, so she’s multilingual and and skilled in the art of cooking fusion dishes for her army of little siblings.

Yasushi is the only one of the crew not going to Hero school, instead attending a normal highschool. He works afterschool at the arcade the Katsucrew frequent and the konbini his parents own. He’s the first to start pranks wars in the crew and the most lax about following the rules, as he’s the most mischevious.

Hifue is studying in UA’s business course for the sole purpose of becoming Katsuki’s PR Agent when he becomes a full-fledged hero. Back at Aldera, she was Katsuki’s casual study-buddy, and the two still meet up on weekends with some of the crew to study at one of their various hangouts. Despite seeming quite aloof, Hifue is a kind girl, calling Katsuki out when he goes too far and helping the business owners in Musutafu by taking stock and organizing their finances for extra cash.

Hope you like these, Anon!! <33

#bnha #the undercut-verse #hither's asks #hither's headcanons #undercut-kun #kariage-kun #the katsucrew #agei ashikari #daikikou seika #kate mito #shioawa henshuu #dehisa yasushi #obuki hifue #bnha oc

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silyabeeodess · 4 years

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FusionFall Headcanons: Coco

It goes without saying that Coco plays a pivotal role in the war effort thanks to her eggs; however, because she often runs off to do her own thing, she can also makes trouble for those ordered to protect her. It’s not the hardest job a fusion fighter could have, but it does come with an insane amount of stress.

She’s really good at disappearing, which simultaneously relieves and terrifies those around her at the same time. On one hand, she can escape Fuse’s forces pretty well: On the other, the same can be said for their own forces. She’ll go somewhere without telling anyone, including sneaking onboard a S.C.A.M.P.E.R. to fly to dangerous areas, which sends everyone into a frenzied panic. Nevertheless, she always has her reasons, typically to help the war effort in some way.

While Coco is encouraged to stay safe at all times due to the important role she plays, again, that doesn’t mean she just sits around idly while people look after her. Outside of her runaway stunts, Coco regularly takes part in missions by watching the movements of fusion monsters and keeping the things they drop for study, like in “Building a Master Arsenal (Part 4 of 4).”

Coco has a motherly nature not just reserved for her close friends: She really does enjoy spending time with kids in general, as seen in the episode “Cuckoo for Coco Cards.” Because of this, there’s not really any better place for her to be than at a KND base. For her sake, the security is pretty top-notch, and for the kids, she can sometimes act as a good role model whereas they may not listen to an actual adult. Her wacky, fun nature as an imaginary friend draws them in, making it easier for her to get down to their level and reason with them when needed. She’s also, as Wilt describes, “good with words.”

Still, if someone irritates her, Coco’s not above eating their belongings and only giving them back in egg form after they apologize.

She’s glad that Mac doesn’t take an aggressive role in the war, since she can’t help but feel responsible for him chasing after her all the way to Mt. Blackhead. While she understands it may be inevitable and that there are other kids his age within the KND who are fighting fusion monsters, she’d feel really guilty if anything happened to him because of her. In “Fuse No More (Part 3 of 4),” she actually got a small taste of her own medicine in his sense, as Mac snuck inside Fuse’s Lair to help in the major battle.

No one knew prior to the start of the war that Coco could lay eggs that give a person special abilities instead of a physical item. The one trouble is that these are always extremely temporary boosts, and many nano abilities typically offer these same enhancements for longer periods of time. As a result, these eggs are used more often in situations when a nano can’t/shouldn’t be summoned. The main exception is the health and explosive eggs seen in the Firepits, which are scattered there in large numbers to be used against the powerful fusion monsters located there.

The E.G.G.s from the E.G.G.E.R.s aren’t produced by Coco herself. Both the machines and capsules were designed by the KND as a small way of generating income to help support the war financially and give Fusion Fighters something to do--which is why we see them at many of the major bases. They are, of course, inspired by Coco though and she in-turn has the group give her a small chunk of the profits for the use of her likeness. (She’s all about being kind and helpful, but she’ll draw a line at mass producing things after herself without benefit.) It’s a small past time for soldiers, who will purchase the capsules and then trade the items, codes, and tools from them with each other.

#fusionfall #headcanons #video games

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sepublic · 5 years

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Proposed origins for Butt Witch

(Keep in mind, these are just for fun, speculation, and/or fanfic purposes. Thus, while some suggested origins are theories, most are just headcanons I came up with.)

-Butt Witch is just the embodiment of Reggie’s insecurities over growing up, puberty, womanhood, etc. Her unusually possessive view of Endless and expectation of it to be tailored to herdesires are fake memories and delusions planted into her mind by Endless, meant to darkly reflect Reggie’s center-of-the-universe view of Endless, and likewise show how she expects Endless to be for HER, even though evidence suggests otherwise that it’s for anyone who enters and Reggie has no actual claim to single ownership of the island.

(Personally I’m not too sure about this one, because Butt Witch, again, acts very surprise in general about Endless, as if she was expecting something else. Likewise, while other creations from real-world objects have memories, they’re usually adapted from their real-world experiences –like Brown Roger’s love of Reggie- and not from anything on Endless.)

-Butt Witch is the embodiment of someone else’s fears of growing up, created from whatever they buried or naturally generated by Endless itself. She tormented this previous human visitor but was later defeated and trapped in the volcano.

-Butt Witch was a friend of a previous human visitor, either made from the sand or by Endless itself. The two both wanted an adult paradise out of Endless and got it, but due to some falling out Butt Witch was trapped in the volcano and later summoned by Reggie’s personal issues. She feels entitled to Endless because beforehand, Butt Witch was her human friend’s equal and was thus given sway over the island and its populace during their friendship. Alternatively, her human creator decided to permanently leave Endless and trapped Butt Witch under the volcano under false pretenses, not wanting to break the truth. Perhaps Butt Witch tried to keep her human friend from leaving Endless, too, and even tried to sabotage escapes by breaking the key.

-The popular one; Butt Witch is a human visitor to Endless who arrived long before even Elmer. She’s been there for so long that her Endless-form has transformed into an extreme caricature of itself, and she may or may not have forgotten parts of her previous life. During her initial reign on Endless, the island was a more ‘adult’ place (whatever that means). Inexplicably, she was trapped in the volcano and apparently summoned by the puberty books, possibly because her personality was the ideal representation of whatever being Endless would have created from Reggie’s insecurities. In other words, the island brought her back as the manifestation of Reggie’s fear of growing up, assigning Butt Witch this sole purpose.

-Branching out from the aforementioned human origin, Butt Witch is a hybrid of a transformed human and whatever being that was created from the puberty books. Butt Witch was buried in the volcano a long while ago, and when Reggie threw the books into it, Butt Witch, who was also buried in the lava, was included in the transformation, the same way various items when buried together (like Todd’s possessions and Borbo’s drawing) merge into a fusion. Because she was human, Butt Witch didn’t start transforming until a real-world object was added into the burial.

As a result, if she remembers her past life or is aware of the circumstances of her rebirth, she may have an identity crisis as she questions what part of her actions and motives are her own, or just the will of the island trying to make a point to Reggie. The two don’t have to be mutually-exclusive, either.

-Further adding to the original human theory (and acting as a possible extension to the hybrid theory), is a VERY crazy, edgy, and not-to-be-taken-seriously proposal for a dark fanfiction. But what if… Butt Witch was a homunculus born from a dead body.

Essentially, a previous human visitor lost a loved one, and knowing how Endless gave life to buried objects, brought the dead body to Endless and buried it. Instead of being brought back to life, the body instead transformed into a hollow imitation of the original personal, a shallow facsimile and caricature; In other words, the being that came about was like a Homunculus from the Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 anime series.

The human who buried the body was quickly disappointed when they realized their loved one wasn’t really brought back from the dead. Unable to handle their failure, and seeing the Homunculus as a constant reminder of their grief and loss, the human buried the being within the volcano to hide the evidence, out of sight and mind, and eventually left Endless. This buried Homunculus eventually became the being known as Butt Witch thanks to the puberty books- Her small speech to Brown Roger about being ‘thrown away and buried like a dog would bury a luscious bone’ applies to this idea.

(Honestly, I’m half-tempted to write a fanfiction about this concept, but it might be toodark and edgy.)

-As a slightly alternate take to the resurrection theory, Butt Witch was once a human who visited Endless with another friend. Like Reggie, Todd, and Esther, they got into a fight, but this ended up actually going too far and killing Butt Witch. Her human friend panicked and buried her in the volcano to hide the evidence, or tried to bring her back to life by burying the body in the sand. It didn’t work, and Butt Witch has possibly mistaken that friend’s burial as them abandoning her.

(A less edgy take on this idea is that instead of dying, Butt Witch just got accidentally trapped and buried by her friend, who thought her dead and gave up on finding her body. Either way, she has abandonment issues and resentment.)

-Butt Witch was a human visitor who got transformed and whatnot, BUT she intentionally put herself in the volcano to willfully forget her lost life. She got trapped in Endless because her key broke while she was on the island, and unable to return home, she yearned to forget the painful life she missed. So, she buried herself- Possibly to escape the pain of existence through sleep, or to hurry up the process of forgetting her past life. Either way, Butt Witch forgot, with only a general idea of Endless being for her and whatnot remaining.

(Melding with the human friends proposal, perhaps they had a fight that broke BW’s key, and the friend angrily stormed off and left Endless. Butt Witch however realized her key was broken shortly afterwards, and she waited for her friend to return to bring her back, but she never did… The friend never looked for BW because they assumed she could leave whenever she wanted with her key and thought BW choseto stay in Endless forever. Butt Witch thinks the friend willingly trapped her in Endless to die and intentionally broke the key to do so.)

-Butt Witch was one of THE original inhabitants of Endless, naturally born, before the island began appealing itself and attracting human children. This original proto-Endless was a more grotesque, nightmare realm of which Butt Witch and other eldritch beings naturally inhabited, but when the island began changing its appearance to invite visitors, Butt Witch was buried within the volcano due to her unappealing, aggressive nature and appearance.

By the time she comes back from the puberty books, Butt Witch has no idea why her home has inexplicably changed and why these random human kids have claimed it and act like it’s been catered to them this whole time. She’s essentially a different flavor of victim of Endless, a native displaced and rejected by her own sentient world, brought back only for her usefulness.

-Butt Witch created Endless from scratch to be her own ‘adult paradise’, and may or may not have been a human who did so. However, another human child desired their own escapist world and in turn was summoned to Endless, more or less hijacking the island from Butt Witch and imprisoning her in the volcano.

Further expanding on this idea, perhaps Butt Witch created Endless to lure edgy people in who desired an ‘adult paradise’ to feed on their negativity and presumptions of maturity, but then it backfired when someone took the opportunity to grow as an actual person and challenge her reign.

-She was an inhabitant of Endless born from negativity in the form of those worms, or whatever other possible origin. She hijacked Endless from the human visitor at the time and turned it into her own Adult Paradise for a while, but was eventually defeated and trapped.

-Butt Witch was human, but her transformation was influenced by her actively eating the negativity worms. That, or she brought visitors to Endless to torment them, cause discourse, feed on their negativity, etc.

-Butt Witch is what happens when those negativity worms are able to grow on their own and develop. Perhaps the original batch fused together to create BW.

#twelve forever #buttwitch #endless island #reggie #speculation #theory #headcanons #fanfiction

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ainchase · 6 years

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All About That Ain Design

Ain Base Class

Ainchase Ishmael. Two faced representative of God.

Celestial - New race.

Two faced

His story is deeply connected to the lore

Exterior: Appearance and personality created to naturally blend with the world. (Soft, polite, gentle, social, laid-back)

His true form is revealed only when he unleashes his true power, who looks like a “typical” celestial in the Elsword lore, which appears mysterious/ expressionless face/ only acts toward fulfilling the mission.

Incorporated the “intervention” aspect of his character into the awaken system to portray his duality within the game.

vs Demons - When facing demons who defies Ishmael’s ideologies “It’s outrageous to think that I have to work with such impure things.” (Disgusted)

He starts saying rude things he would never say normally, or instinctively react in a negative way.

vs Henir - Dominion of darkness and chaos “...” (Surprised)

He becomes speechless for a while from shock. It’s like he stopped functioning because he doesn’t know how to cope with the situation.

Lofty: Executor

Melee specialist utilizing weapon projection and creation mode. He avoids human emotion and human contact.

A transient period where he heads toward becoming the perfect, emotionless representative of God in his 2nd class.

Pure White, Silent, Watcher, Melee, Serious, Holy

Because he specializes in a fast melee battle with daggers, long sword, and spear created with creation magic, we stayed away from big silhouette and went for more tight suit-like fit, while showing less skin at the same time for more of a strict and serious feel.

Arme Thaumaturgy

The perfect representative of God who has his eyes only on the mission. His hair is one color now that his determination for the mission is clear. A bigger silhouette that displays a celestial dignity. His coloring is monotonous which reflects his cold, logical personality. Minimized the revealing of skin.

Design elements derived from priests, as he is a follower of God. Though he is a representative and his atmosphere should reflect that, his priest-like design should not be overdone, or become reminiscent of the stereotypical image of an angel in renaissance works, as the celestial realm in the Elsword lore is more close to the world of “nothing,” visually. His awakened form should appear as a mysterious being with powerful force as if he was possessed by a God.

Richter

Richter’s design should succeed Arme Thaumaturgy’s characteristic “clean, perfect, cold” feel while making sure it does not feel as if he added on decorations to adorn himself for his appearance’s sake.

Clean, symmetric appearance to reflect his position as the Judge, one who keeps neutrality. His outfit is in a straight-lined, “still” silhouette to appear dignified. Minimized the revealing of skin to emphasize on his sacrosanctity.

To show a noticeable progression of time after the 2nd job to a character who does not age while also adding to the “godly” image, we gave him longer hair.

There were more gold details in the earlier drafts of his design. However, much of that was removed for a more neat and simple priest design as the previous design looked too extravagant. We also wanted to show a more tight-suit style like when he was Arme Thaumaturgy, so his Spiritualism outfit is a suit form without the priest cape.

Lofty: Anpassen

He has lessened his burden of the mission and accepted the experience he’s gathered in Elrios, starting to believe in the bond between his friends.

Power of El, Active, Free, Fluffy, Street-fashion

An all arounder who uses eids, a fusion of circulation magic (power of the El) and creation magic (power of God). His hairstyle reflects his effort to keep his appearance while he stays in Elrios along with thick, cozy over-fit leather jacket, comfortable sneakers. The modern look of his style shows his full embrace of the culture he was previously foreign to. He still carries around the cylinder-shaped ornaments, made up of creation magic which symbolizes God’s power, reflecting his hesitance to completely be free of his responsibility as the God’s representative.

Erbluhen Emotion

Free-spirited “nerdy boy” / carefree and soft image. Big collar, wide sleeves, long coat reminiscent of a magician. A more active image has been implied through the use of a modern fashion choice such as sneakers and half gloves.

Design derived from Loki of Norse Mythology; adept at different kinds of magic, carefree, and enjoys making fun of others. Smart enough to lie extremely well. Front bangs are positioned so that his emotions can be better expressed through his eyebrows. Winter street-fashion: carefree style - a layered look with a leather jacket, high top, boots.

Bluhen

Emotions in bloom. A conductor of emotions who reveals his true self and grows together alongside his human friends. Focus point on Ain’s emotions as he walks the future he chose through his own will and not the mission he was given.

He had a light and upbeat image in the 2nd job, and now he is dressed more prepared for the new journey ahead: to match his theme as a “conductor,” his outfit is a conductor’s attire remodeled to appear a bit more casual and fantasy-like. Fur added for a cozy and soft image. His design reflects his image when he first met the El Search Party; he keeps the earrings from his previous 2nd, 1st, and even base class.

His silhouette in Spiritualism becomes bigger as his awaken level increases to echo his concept as a “blooming” emotion. His “intervened” appearance appears longer in this Spiritualism to coincide with the fact that he is Ain who grows together with humans. His eids changed due to the fact that he now belongs to a different God, and that his emotions are in full bloom. Instead of the symbol composed of God’s power, the eids are formed of light particles as they were at the beginning of time.

Lofty: Wanderer

A wanderer consumed by chaos in search of himself. Ain who is confused by the expansion of the injury he’s received in Henir.

Wavering mission, anxiety, broken, chaotic, closed-off.

His power of creation begins to deteriorate due to the increasing influence of chaos from within while his Henir mark continues to grow. His desire to hide his unstable condition as a representative of God is reflected in his hood, and bandages over his body.

Apostasia

Absolute ruler of the Void who betrayed the God. Ain who abandoned the Goddess and his mission and accepted chaos instead.

Void/ Freed from worldly experience/ Eye of the Storm/ Chaotic

He was being watched through the rifts of chaos and slowly consumed by unknown things in his 1st job - now he’s reached a point where he can accept and control them. He understands human emotions and all of the cycle of life, recognizing that they’re all meaningless things that will eventually disappear in time. His bangs cover his eyes to hide his emotion. The mark is left to spread over his body. His hair is duller now, and he’s let go of the pendulum from his hand. His awaken form shows him changing into a completely new being, not a divine celestial, as a result of accepting chaos.

Herrscher

The master of the void who calls everything to his side. He was reborn inside the void. His design should show that this is the result of abandoning the Goddess and choosing chaos and void.

His newly reborn body exists separately within the void, after accepting the chaos in his 2nd job and abandoning his previous body he’s received from the Goddess.

Normal: Parts of his body are hollow to show that his empty shell is constantly breaking apart. To express his unstable and neglected state, hands crawl up toward him from the ground as if to devour “abandoned” things.

Spiritualism: His main body in the void takes over his shell. He gains strength and willpower, which completes his breaking and empty body. Including his weapon, everything appears as a full, complete version without any trace of breaking or shattering. His true self seen in the void during Hyperactive is portrayed as a black silhouette to allow people to freely imagine what he could be. Apostasia’s Absorption (the floating eye thing) appeared to be watching Ain through the rifts of chaos, whereas Herrscher’s Absorption aids him by his side.

#ain design #elsword translation

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miximax-hell · 5 years

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I always tell my friends that they’re capable of anything they put their mind into. But, personally, I should know my limits and act accordingly. And considering how INCREDIBLY long it took me to finish this piece for such a poor result (despite the fact that I was just trying to replicate official art, so I had all the help in the world), well, I would say this was my limit. But, hey, you’ll never know until you try, and all practice is good practice.

That aside, hello! For today’s post, I decided to revisit the concept I started this blog with and work on a bigger illustration. It’s probably my least popular kind of post, but trying to mimic KH’s artstyle is kind of a blast regardless of the result or the struggle.

With Max’s and Kageno’s out of the way, it was about time I worked on Handa’s, since, you know, he’s my favourite character and all. I can be biased here, right?

So, it might be a good time to talk about HanRoku’s reasons to be.

Well, well, well. This is coming at the beginning of April when my last post was on January, and even that was just to celebrate the fact that, somehow, over a hundred people have decided to follow this blog. I’m not even going to pretend I’m way too busy to work on stuff--it’s just been a fantastic combination of things that made me want to... stop. I hit a big wall where the ideas I had were being a tad too difficult to pull off in a satisfying way (I swear to God, Kidou, your hair is impossible to work with), and I was either not in the mood to do anything or more focused on other and, at the time, more fun endeavours. I was super passionate about my graduation thesis, for example--and that went rather well, thankfully.

But, boy, I loved Kingdom Hearts 3. No bad mood or task was going to keep me from sinking hours into that game somewhat regularly. Playing it filled me with immense joy, and seeing Roxas again after so long brought me to tears. It made me think a lot about finally finishing (or trying to finish) this big piece... and it caught me very rusty, which led to hours, hours, hours, HOURS of work for what I have already described as a disappointing result. I mean, it’s not the worst I have ever drawn, but... well. It could definitely be much better, and I’m rather tempted to rework it in the future. I hadn’t touched my tablet in ages and it shows. Nor my pencils. Just my brushes, but that was just to paint doggos and Life Is Strange-inspired landscapes.

And the best part is that the illustration ISN’T EVEN COMPLETE because the rest would actually be a spoiler for a fic of mine called Zero. If you check the official art I linked above, you’ll see that what my illustration shows as a black area is actually filled by a completely separate illustration. I know what I want there, but, as I said, it’d spoil the story, so, yeah. Talk about a work in progress. I hope I can finish it all one day...

Anyway, enough pointless ranting! Thanks for putting up with me. To reward someone who has made it this far without getting tired of me, I’m giving away a Steam copy of Batman: Arkham Origins, along with all of its DLC. If you want it, please shoot me a non-anonymous message~ There is absolutely no need to follow me nor reblog/like this post, although it’d obviously be greatly appreciated. The first to ask for it will get it. And, please, don’t follow me for future giveaways--I doubt there will be any. Now, let’s talk about HanRoku. That’s what you clicked on that "read more" button for.

The beginnings of HanRoku are ancient at this point. We’re talking 2012 or 2013, and that’s INSANE. For how long have I been struggling with this project?! Goodness gracious. Anyway, at the time, Chrono Stone was hitting all of the right notes for me. Time travel? Check. People that transform to become more powerful? Check. Fusions, because I've watched too much DBZ for me to not love that? Check. And one day, for reasons that have been lost to time, but probably have a lot to do with the aforementioned fic, I realised something. Zero was supposed to be a story about how Roxas mingles with Someoka, Handa, Aki and mostly Endou, but then it hit me: Roxas and Handa are actually... extremely similar.

To those who have never played Kingdom Hearts, PLEASE GO PLAY KINGDOM HEARTS. And to those who couldn’t care less about what I recommend them to do, KH is a story that, under a deceiving cover full of Disney characters and confusing plot points, makes a deep and rather interesting point about what the true nature of the soul is--even if they insist on calling it “heart” instead. What is a soul? What is it for? Who, or what, has a soul--and why? Is the soul linked to the mind or to the body? Is it even possible to have a body and not have a soul? Is the soul something you’re born with or something you can/must acquire over time? What makes it grow, and what is true strength of soul? You know, for a game where you hit cute Hot Topic monsters with an oversized key, that’s pretty darn cool.

I talked more about this way back when, but I’ll give you a brief summary of the main reason why Handa and Roxas are such a perfect match: they are both people looking for their place in a world that actively acts against their very existence. They have no purpose and are simply tools for other people to shine and/or achieve their goals. That is obviously not a good, fulfilling life.

But, well, after all these years of ruminating and thinking (and crying) about HanRoku, there has to be a bit more to it than just that, right?

Obviously (and even more obviously after Kingdom Hearts 3), Roxas is very strong. Very strong. What he lacks in existence, he makes up for in raw power. For someone like Handa, who is so overlooked due to being okay at everything but not great at anything, this is massive. Even if Roxas doesn’t make him stellar at everything, he doesn’t need to. He still gives Handa enough power to become an extremely invaluable asset in the field and a force to be reckoned with--especially early on, since Handa is the first original Raimon player to get a miximax and all. I’ll talk more about HanRoku’s powers in the future.

But the usefulness in the field is only the first part, and even that is debatable due to the post I linked to earlier and the fact that, well, he sure will be special and super strong when no one else can mixitrans, but he won’t be once the whole team can do so. I mean, let’s count: Endou, Gouenji, Someoka, Max, Kageno, Megane, Tamano... That’s 7 people, when there are only 11 players on the field at a time. Handa would only be at an advantage over 3 people. (And if you’re going to tell me that he’s still the only midfielder with a miximax, thus making him special on his own, that’s a perfectly valid point and you should congratulate yourself for having such a keen eye.)

What really shines about HanRoku, though, is how mutually symbiotic their relationship is. Even if their struggles are so similar at heart, the reasons why those struggles exist are not.

Handa’s problems come from not being good enough at anything to be really... indispensable. Sure, he can do pretty much any job at any given point and be adequate enough at it, but he’s never the first option. He has no place of his own in the team; not one thing only he is capable of doing. And that leads to all kinds of problems of self-worth and trying to find a purpose. He will leave Raimon and no one will remember he was even there.

Roxas is completely essential to Organization XIII, but he’s been reduced to a killing machine that they are trying to replace with a better and more obedient one, thus taking away from him the only reason to be he ever knew and making him question his very existence. Once Org XIII disposes of him, no one will miss him--and that’s made even worse by a certain plot point: Nobodies disappear from the memory of everyone who ever met them once they are defeated/killed.

Of course, Roxas would help Handa immensely, as stated earlier. That’s kind of the point of this whole ordeal. But here’s the catch: Handa would help Roxas too. By leaving a part of himself inside Handa (that sounds extremely wrong, but please bear with me), he knows he will never be truly forgotten no matter what happens to him, and his life will ultimately have a purpose: to help a friend in need find his own worth. But let’s not forget that Roxas has only been alive for less than a year, while Handa has been struggling with his demons for over a decade without ever giving up. Despite having the world against him (or, at the very least, definitely not on his side), Handa is still going at it, trying his best, fighting for what he believes in, dealing courageously with the fact that he’s just an ordinary boy in a world of amazing people in order to help them achieve their ultimate goals. At a time when Roxas felt like his existence was worthless, meeting Handa, a boy who challenges his own self to find an identity that may not even exist, is truly inspiring. His selflessness, his love towards his friends and his neverending efforts to be better give Roxas a reason to stand up to the norm and fight for what he believes is right: in this case, to save his few and treasured friends.

Handa and Roxas find in each other a mirror that, for the first time in their lives, shows them in a new light that gives them hope for the future. They learn from each other, complement each other, improve each other, inspire each other, share a deep bond of friendship and trust, feel stronger and braver when they are together, and make a fantastic team. A team of throwaways, a team of tools, a team made of convenient replacements that will one day become obsolete. But a team that, however, is much greater than the sum of its overlooked parts, and will achieve incredible things when they eventually figure out just how unique and special they both are.

Talking about HanRoku makes me very emotional and it’s difficult to convey my feelings about them when I’m choking on my own tears, but I hope you can all understand why I love these two so very much. And if you can’t... well, feel free to ask me any questions you may have! I’d love to find new ways to describe why these two are so precious to me.

#Inazuma Eleven #original raimon #Handa Shinichi #illustration #reasons behind the miximax #inazuma eleven go #inazuma eleven ares #Inazuma Eleven Ares no Tenbin #info #miximax #mixi max

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minijenn · 6 years

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Three’s a Crowd Preview

Hey hey hey, time for the first bout of “Jen writes a UF chapter she’s actually hella excited about for a goddamn change” so yeah imo I’m already having a lot of fun with this chapter and we haven’t even gotten to the good stuff yet so that’s a really good sign. Either way, have this, imo enjoy!

“Whoa...” Dipper mused in amazement as him and Ford stood near the barn, observing Sugilite’s strength from afar. “They make it look so easy…”

“They certainly do, don’t they?” Ford agreed with an enthused smile. “Fusion is by far one of the most incredible abilities I’ve witnessed from Gemkind. The fact that they can merge their light-based bodies and gem-based minds completely together to create larger, stronger beings is simply astounding! It’s always been one of my favorite topics to study when it comes to Gems and its an absolute treat to see it again for myself.” The author paused briefly as Sugilite tossed her flail once more, rattling the entire area as a result and nearly knocking Ford and Dipper to the ground entirely. “E-even if Sugilite is… quite a bit to handle…”

“So, is that why you wrote so many notes about fusion in your journals?” Dipper asked, as curious as ever to hear perspective from the author himself.

“Oh, yes, absolutely,” Ford nodded before letting out something of a wistful sigh. “After all, its about the most I could do to document my research on such an amazing phenomenon, even if that research is somewhat… inadequate…”

“Inadequate?” Dipper frowned, confused. “What do you mean?”

“Well, you see, Dipper, I’ve always believed that the best kind of scientific research is born from firsthand experience,” Ford informed astutely. “Its for that reason that I accompanied the Gems on so many of their missions back in the day—so I could see their mysterious powers at work for myself. But fusion is… something on an entirely different level. Its complexities, its true nature, the sheer experience of fusion in and of itself is something that is unfortunately beyond human’s capacity to understand due to one single, simple, unfortunate fact alone: humans cannot fuse.”

“Well… I don’t know if that’s completely true…” Dipper muttered without really thinking.

“What was that?” Ford asked, looking down to his nephew inquisitively.

Dipper flinched, suddenly anxious as he realized that he’d now have to explain exactly what he had just implied. An explanation that likely wouldn’t be the smoothest to provide given how he was still occasionally baffled by it himself. “Um… w-well… I know this might sound… kinda crazy but… I’ve sort of—ok, well not really sort of as much as I’ve actually fused before… So… yeah.”

At first, such an admission was only met by a look of complete confusion from the author, though he soon broke out into a small bout of bemused laughter that only flustered his nephew even more. “Oh, that’s a good one, Dipper!” Ford chuckled, warmly patting the boy on the back. “You nearly had me going there for a second, but I know better. Like I said before, fusion between humans and Gems is a complete and utter scientific impossibility.”

“N-not for Steven it isn’t!” Dipper protested earnestly. “I… I mean, Steven’s half Gem and half human, so I guess that means he can fuse with both? A-anyway, he has fused before, with Connie, and with Mabel a-and… and with me.” He finished quickly, only barely noticing how warm his cheeks were with the recollection of his own fusion with the young Gem.

“…Really?” Ford asked, now quite intrigued as he realized that his nephew was completely serious. “W-well, that’s… that’s incredible! By all accounts something like that should be impossible, but then again the fact that someone like Steven, who’s simultaneously both Gem and human even exists at all is a miraculous impossibility in and of itself! Still, Gem and human cross fusion… it’s a scientific marvel! I’d simply love to know more, that is, if you don’t mind filling me in with all of the details, Dipper.”

“Oh, of course!” Dipper readily agreed, more than eager to aid in his uncle’s important research. “Well, first we—wait…” he paused briefly, a smile spreading across his face as he came up with a plan that would no doubt impress the author even more than the knowledge of human-Gem fusion had. “You know what? I have a better idea. Instead of just telling you about it, why don’t we just show you instead?”

“Show me?” Ford asked, raising a confused eyebrow.

“Wait right here,” Dipper advised quickly, already glancing around to see if Steven was anywhere around in the immediate area, which he wasn’t. So instead, he began hurrying off to go find the young Gem for himself, refusing to pass off the opportunity to amaze the author in more ways than one. “I’ll be right back!”

“Oh, w-well, alright then,” Ford smirked, waving his nephew off, even if he really didn’t understand whatever he could possibly be planning. At least not yet. “In that case, I suppose I’ll be right here until you return!” A mere second later, however, a large piece of upturned earth crashed down right next to the author, courtesy of Sugilite’s recklessness, prompting him to step into the barn for his own safety. “O-on second thought… maybe I won’t…”

#jen writes #universe falls #uf preview #three's a crowd

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purplenyxknight · 6 years

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Gemverse Suggestions

I don’t have a Tumblr, so I’ve never done anything like this before, and I hope it works. Sorry if I’m using this incorrectly, and sorry for the word count, I know it’s long. Basically, here are some suggestions for your Ducktales gem-verse.

I’m assuming Goldie is a gem as well, based on Scrooge’s reaction to Webbolite in your fanfic and the images that you have of a Scrooge/Goldie fusion. I’m also not seeing any descriptions for her gem or fusion, so I’d like to make some suggestions for those gems. Note that these suggestions may not actually be “gems”, I can’t really find much on their status and cultural significance, but maybe you have better resources. Anyways, I was recently on an Alaskan cruise, where I learned of both Gold Nugget jewelry and Gold (Bearing) Quartz/Glacier Gold. If you’re looking them up, try adding “Alaska” to help narrow the search results, otherwise you get a lot of fertilizer. Literally. Glacier Gold is a brand of compost.

Basically, Gold (Bearing) Quartz, which is often shortened to Gold Quartz, is when a vein of gold is found inside a vein of quartz. In jewelry, at least the ones I’ve seen, it is usually a white or clear type of quartz that is used, which makes the gold stand out spectacularly. In jewelry, Gold Quartz is the rare, naturally occurring variety, while Glacier Gold is an artificially created variety, which could be referenced as a running or inside joke somehow (like if Goldie is flirting with another man/gem for some ulterior motive, it would be an artificial thing, not like the real thing she has with Scrooge).

Anyways, Goldie Nugget seems fitting, and since Citrine is a quartz the combo would make sense. It would also be pretty representative of their relationship, as freely intermingling yet determinedly distinct individuals. When you think about it, it would be almost sensual in a weird way, like even as their bodies become a single entity, their souls are continuing to dance or play instead of settling down. Also, consider that “Alaska”, “Gold”, and “Glacier” are three words that pretty much sum up the beginning of their history together. If “backstab lovingly” was a type of gem, you’d have the whole of it.

On a semi-related note, I actually got myself an Ammolite necklace, so was quite tickled about the triplets’ fusion. So here are some questions/ideas about that. First, since Ammolite is a fossil, is their gem in the shape of a shell, or is it cut into a geometric shape as most often found in jewelry? Also, how pure or solid is the coloration of it? I ask because there is something called “Dragon Scale Ammolite”, which has a very crackly appearance as opposed to the smooth color scale you often see in jewelry. I mention this because, if the boy’s gem is naturally crackly looking even when entirely intact, it may be another reason they see nothing wrong with Donald’s gem. Also, it would give you a good excuse to have other gems freak out for no apparent reason when they first see the gem’s appearance. Just a thought.

And along with that thought, I would like to note that because it is a fossil, Ammolite is actually a very very fragile stone. It requires a protective coating to be used as jewelry. And considering the trio’s individual gem placements, on the stomach, forehead, and back, it seems like they’d be unable to protect all three at once, leaving themselves pretty vulnerable to attack. I know Webby isn’t a gem, and fusion with her probably doesn’t strongly affect the gems themselves, but maybe adding Webby adds an invisible protective layer to the gems? Or, if you go with the crackly appearance, her addition fills in the cracks for a smoother, stronger appearance? It could be a way of showing that, even as a non-gem, her inclusion makes a notable difference and improvement, instead of it just being a fun thing they do for the novelty of the experience.

Wow, that got a lot longer than I thought, so I should wrap it up. Anyways, love the idea and what I’ve seen so far of your work, and look forward to seeing more in the future. Hope you guys continue to have fun with it! -p2s

~*~*~*~

Nyx: Thank you so much aaaaaaa!!! This was an awesome thing to wake up to!

Don’t worry about it being long, it’s amazing that you took the time to do this for our AU thank you!!!

We had actually given Goldie, well, Gold, because I thought it’d be funny, because we thought it fit, especially seeing as Scrooge (and Goldie) likes gold. Also Gold is a mineral that basically means empowerment and that’s pretty much Goldie right there (except you know, at the expense of others but hey, no one’s perfect.). Glacier Gold sounds perfect as the Scrooge-Goldie fusion though aaaaa! Also “If ‘Backstab Lovingly’ was a type of gem” made me laugh so much like you wouldn’t believe I love it.

Purple: This is so well thought out and great. It reminds me of when I first messaged Nyx about the AU and started to info dump them… now I’m somehow a co-creator for this thing. Trying to answer everything coherently…

We aren’t planning on having gem shape change for any fusion so the triplets will all have their gems cut like jewelry. I actually didn’t think about dragon scale ammolite when I first thought of them but I was thinking of including some less severe concretions in the gem due to how common it is, even in jewelry. I don’t know if I was subconsciously thinking about it when designing but you put the idea of it being why they don’t think about Donald’s gem into words so thank you!

I’m not sure if people (or gems at least) would freak out about seeing Ammolite’s lines because that may be a known feature of the gem but it is a cool idea. When deciding on the gem I thought about the way the colors blend into one another and the metaphysical meanings of harmony and protection. I did know that Ammolite was a soft stone but being completely honest; other factors of the gem were so cool I just didn’t think about it after the decision. Given that they are magic rocks I think they are probably more durable than regular Ammolite.

Pewycert: hi i’m here too i have nothing to add but i just wanted to be a part of things

#gem au #nyx #purple #ducktales #duckverse #ducktales 2017 #submission #hi i'm here too

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gargaj · 6 years

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“Along For The Ride”, a reasonably complex demo

It's been a while since I've been anticipating people finally seeing one of my demos like I was anticipating people to see "Along For The Ride", not only because it ended up being a very personal project in terms of feel, but also because it was one of those situations where to me it felt like I was genuinely throwing it all the complexity I've ever did in a demo, and somehow keeping the whole thing from falling apart gloriously.

youtube

The final demo.

I'm quite happy with the end result, and I figured it'd be interesting to go through all the technology I threw at it to make it happen in a fairly in-depth manner, so here it goes.

(Note that I don't wanna go too much into the "artistic" side of things; I'd prefer if the demo would speak for itself on that front.)

The starting point

I've started work on what I currently consider my main workhorse for demomaking back in 2012, and have been doing incremental updates on it since. By design the system itself is relatively dumb and feature-bare: its main trick is the ability to load effects, evaluate animation splines, and then render everything - for a while this was more than enough.

Around the summer of 2014, Nagz, IR and myself started working on a demo that eventually became "Háromnegyed Tíz", by our newly formed moniker, "The Adjective". It was for this demo I started experimenting with something that I felt was necessary to be able to follow IR's very post-production heavy artstyle: I began looking into creating a node-based compositing system.

I was heavily influenced by the likes of Blackmagic Fusion: the workflow of being able to visually see where image data is coming and going felt very appealing to me, and since it was just graphs, it didn't feel very complicated to implement either. I had a basic system up and running in a week or two, and the ability to just quickly throw in effects when an idea came around eventually paid off tenfold when it came to the final stage of putting the demo together.

The initial node graph system for Háromnegyed Tíz.

The remainder of the toolset remained relatively consistent over the years: ASSIMP is still the core model loader of the engine, but I've tweaked a few things over time so that every incoming model that arrives gets automatically converted to its own ".assbin" (a name that never stops being funny) format, something that's usually considerably more compact and faster to load than formats like COLLADA or FBX. Features like skinned animation were supported starting with "Signal Lost", but were never spectacularly used - still, it was a good feeling to be able to work with an engine that had it in case we needed it.

Deferred rendering

During the making of "Sosincs Vége" in 2016, IR came up with a bunch of scenes that felt like they needed to have an arbitrary number of lightsources to be effecive; to this end I looked into whether I was able to add deferred rendering to the toolset. This turned out to be a bit fiddly (still is) but ultimately I was able to create a node type called the "G-buffer", which was really just a chunk of textures together, and use that as the basis for two separate nodes: one that renders the scenegraph into the buffer, and another that uses the buffer contents to light the final image.

The contents of a G-buffer; there's also additional information in the alpha channels.

Normally, most deferred renderers go with the tile-based approach, where they divide the screen into 16x16 or 32x32 tiles and run the lights only on the tiles they need to run them on. I decided to go with a different approach, inspired by the spotlight rendering in Grand Theft Auto V: Because I was mostly using point- and spot-lights, I was able to control the "extent" of the lights and had a pretty good idea whether each pixel was lit or not based on its position relative to the light source. By this logic, e.g. for pointlights if I rendered a sphere into the light position, with the radius of what I considered to be the farthest extent of the light, the rendered sphere would cover all the pixels on screen covered by that light. This means if I ran a shader on each of those pixels, and used the contents of the G-buffer as input, I would be able to calculate independent lighting on each pixel for each light, since lights are additive anyway. The method needed some trickery (near plane clipping, sphere mesh resolution, camera being near the sphere edge or inside the sphere), but with some magic numbers and some careful technical artistry, none of this was a problem.

The downside of this method was that the 8-bit channel resolution of a normal render target was no longer enough, but this turned out to be a good thing: By using floating point render targets, I was able to adapt to a high-dynamic range, linear-space workflow that ultimately made the lighting much easier to control, with no noticable loss in speed. Notably, however, I skipped a few demos until I was able to add the shadow routines I had to the deferred pipeline - this was mostly just a question of data management inside the graph, and the current solution is still something I'm not very happy with, but for the time being I think it worked nicely; starting with "Elégtelen" I began using variance shadowmaps to get an extra softness to shadows when I need it, and I was able to repurpose that in the deferred renderer as well.

The art pipeline

After doing "The Void Stared Into Me Waiting To Be Paid Its Dues" I've began to re-examine my technical artist approach; it was pretty clear that while I knew how the theoreticals of a specular/glossiness-based rendering engine worked, I wasn't necessarily ready to be able to utilize the technology as an artist. Fortunately for me, times changed and I started working at a more advanced games studio where I was able to quietly pay closer attention to what the tenured, veteran artists were doing for work, what tools they use, how they approach things, and this introduced me to Substance Painter.

I've met Sebastien Deguy, the CEO of Allegorithmic, the company who make Painter, way back both at the FMX film festival and then in 2008 at NVScene, where we talked a bit about procedural textures, since they were working on a similar toolset at the time; at the time I obviously wasn't competent enough to deal with these kind of tools, but when earlier this year I watched a fairly thorough tutorial / walkthrough about Painter, I realized maybe my approach of trying to hand-paint textures was outdated: textures only ever fit correctly to a scene if you can make sure you can hide things like your UV seams, or your UV scaling fits the model - things that don't become apparent until you've saved the texture and it's on the mesh.

Painter, with its non-linear approach, goes ahead of all that and lets you texture meshes procedurally in triplanar space - that way, if you unwrapped your UVs correctly, your textures never really stretch or look off, especially because you can edit them in the tool already. Another upside is that you can tailor Painter to your own workflow - I was fairly quickly able to set up a preset to my engine that was able to produce diffuse, specular, normal and emissive maps with a click of a button (sometimes with AO baked in, if I wanted it!), and even though Painter uses an image-based lighting approach and doesn't allow you to adjust the material settings per-textureset (or I haven't yet found it where), the image in Painter was usually a fairly close representation to what I saw in-engine. Suddenly, texturing became fun again.

An early draft of the bus stop scene in Substance Painter.

Depth of field

DOF is one of those effects that is nowadays incredibly prevalent in modern rendering, and yet it's also something that's massively overused, simply because people who use it use it because it "looks cool" and not because they saw it in action or because they want to communicate something with it. Still, for a demo this style, I figured I should revamp my original approach.

The original DOF I wrote for Signal Lost worked decently well for most cases, but continued to produce artifacts in the near field; inspired by both the aforementioned GTAV writeup as well as Metal Gear Solid V, I decided to rewrite my DOF ground up, and split the rendering between the near and far planes of DOF; blur the far field with a smart mask that keeps the details behind the focal plane, blur the near plane "as is", and then simply alphablend both layers on top of the original image. This gave me a flexible enough effect that it even coaxed me to do a much-dreaded focal plane shift in the headphones scene, simply because it looked so nice I couldn't resist.

The near- and far-fields of the depth of field effect.

Screen-space reflections

Over the summer we did a fairly haphazard Adjective demo again called "Volna", and when IR delivered the visuals for it, it was very heavy on raytraced reflections he pulled out of (I think) 3ds max. Naturally, I had to put an axe to it very quickly, but I also started thinking if we can approximate "scene-wide" reflections in a fairly easy manner. BoyC discovered screen-space reflections a few years ago as a fairly cheap way to prettify scenes, and I figured with the engine being deferred (i.e. all data being at hand), it shouldn't be hard to add - and it wasn't, although for Volna, I considerably misconfigured the effect which resulted in massive framerate loss.

The idea behind SSR is that a lot of the time, reflections in demos or video games are reflecting something that's already on screen and quite visible, so instead of the usual methods (like rendering twice for planar reflections or using a cubemap), we could just take the normal at every pixel, and raymarch our way to the rendered image, and have a rough approximation as to what would reflect there.

The logic is, in essence to use the surface normal and camera position to calculate a reflection vector and then start a raymarch from that point and walk until you decide you've found something that may be reflecting on the object; this decision is mostly depth based, and can be often incorrect, but you can mitigate it by fading off the color depending on a number of factors like whether you are close to the edge of the image or whether the point is way too far from the reflecting surface. This is often still incorrect and glitchy, but since a lot of the time reflections are just "candy", a grainy enough normalmap will hide most of your mistakes quite well.

Screen-space reflections on and off - I opted for mostly just a subtle use, because I felt otherwise it would've been distracting.

One important thing that Smash pointed out to me while I was working on this and was having problems is that you should treat SSR not as a post-effect, but as lighting, and as such render it before the anti-aliasing pass; this will make sure that the reflections themselves get antialiased as well, and don't "pop off" the object.

Temporal antialiasing

Over the last 5 years I've been bearing the brunt of complaints that the aliasing in my demos is unbearable - I personally rarely ever minded the jaggy edges, since I got used to them, but I decided since it's a demo where every pixel counts, I'll look into solutions to mitigate this. In some previous work, I tried using FXAA, but it never quite gave me the results I wanted, so remembering a conversation I had with Abductee at one Revision, I decided to read up a bit on temporal antialiasing.

The most useful resource I found was Bart Wroński's post about their use of TAA/TSSAA (I'm still not sure what the difference is) in one of the Assassin's Creed games. At its most basic, the idea behind temporal antialiasing is that instead of scaling up your resolution to, say, twice or four times, you take those sub-pixels, and accumulate them over time: the way to do this would be shake the camera slightly each frame - not too much, less than a quarter-pixel is enough just to have the edges alias slightly differently each frame - and then average these frames together over time. This essentially gives you a supersampled image (since every frame is slightly different when it comes to the jagged edges) but with little to no rendering cost. I've opted to use 5 frames, with the jitter being in a quincunx pattern, with a random quarter-pixel shake added to each frame - this resulted in most edges being beautifully smoothed out, and I had to admit the reasonably little time investment was worth the hassle.

Anti-aliasing on and off.

The problem of course, is that this works fine for images that don't move all that much between frames (not a huge problem in our case since the demo was very stationary), but anything that moves significantly will leave a big motion trail behind it. The way to mitigate would be to do a reprojection and distort your sampling of the previous frame based on the motion vectors of the current one, but I had no capacity or need for this and decided to just not do it for now: the only scene that had any significant motion was the cat, and I simply turned off AA on that, although in hindsight I could've reverted back to FXAA in that particular scenario, I just simply forgot. [Update, January 2019: This has been bugging me so I fixed this in the latest version of the ZIP.]

There were a few other issues: for one, even motion vectors won't be able to notice e.g. an animated texture, and both the TV static and the rain outside the room were such cases. For the TV, the solution was simply to add an additional channel to the GBuffer which I decided to use as a "mask" where the TAA/TSSAA wouldn't be applied - this made the TV texture wiggle but since it was noisy anyway, it was impossible to notice. The rain was considerably harder to deal with and because of the prominent neon signs behind it, the wiggle was very noticable, so instead what I ended up doing is simply render the rain into a separate 2D matte texture but masked by the scene's depth buffer, do the temporal accumulation without it (i.e. have the antialiased scene without rain), and then composite the matte texture into the rendered image; this resulted in a slight aliasing around the edge of the windows, but since the rain was falling fast enough, again, it was easy to get away with it.

The node graph for hacking the rainfall to work with the AA code.

Transparency

Any render coder will tell you that transparency will continue to throw a wrench into any rendering pipeline, simply because it's something that has to respect depth for some things, but not for others, and the distinction where it should or shouldn't is completely arbitrary, especially when depth-effects like the above mentioned screen-space reflections or depth of field are involved.

I decided to, for the time being, sidestep the issue, and simply render the transparent objects as a last forward-rendering pass using a single light into a separate pass (like I did with the rain above) honoring the depth buffer, and then composite them into the frame. It wasn't a perfect solution, but most of the time transparent surfaces rarely pick up lighting anyway, so it worked for me.

Color-grading and image mastering

I was dreading this phase because this is where it started to cross over from programming to artistry; as a first step, I added a gamma ramp to the image to convert it from linear to sRGB. Over the years I've been experimenting with a lot of tonemap filters, but in this particular case a simple 2.2 ramp got me the result that felt had the most material to work with going into color grading.

I've been watching Zoom work with Conspiracy intros for a good 15 years now, and it wasn't really until I had to build the VR version of "Offscreen Colonies" when I realized what he really does to get his richer colors: most of his scenes are simply grayscale with a bit of lighting, and he blends a linear gradient over them to manually add colour to certain parts of the image. Out of curiousity I tried this method (partly out of desperation, I admit), and suddenly most of my scenes began coming vibrantly to life. Moving this method from a bitmap editor to in-engine was trivial and luckily enough my old friend Blackpawn has a collection of well known Photoshop/Krita/etc. blend mode algorithms that I was able to lift.

Once the image was coloured, I stayed in the bitmap editor and applied some basic colour curve / level adjustment to bring out some colours that I felt got lost when using the gradient; I then applied the same filters on a laid out RGB cube, and loaded that cube back into the engine as a colour look-up table for a final colour grade.

Color grading.

Optimizations

There were two points in the process where I started to notice problems with performance: After the first few scenes added, the demo ran relatively fine in 720p, but began to dramatically lose speed if I switched to 1080p. A quick look with GPU-Z and the tool's internal render target manager showed that the hefty use of GPU memory for render targets quickly exhausted 3GB of VRAM. I wasn't surprised by this: my initial design for render target management for the node graph was always meant to be temporary, as I was using the nodes as "value types" and allocating a target for each. To mitigate this I spent an afternoon designing what I could best describe as a dependency graph, to make sure that render targets that are not needed for a particular render are reused as the render goes on - this got my render target use down to about 6-7 targets in total for about a hundred nodes.

The final node graph for the demo: 355 nodes.

Later, as I was adding more scenes (and as such, more nodes), I realized the more nodes I kept adding, the more sluggish the demo (and the tool) got, regardless of performance - clearly, I had a CPU bottleneck somewhere. As it turned out after a bit of profiling, I added some code to save on CPU traversal time a few demos ago, but after a certain size this code itself became a problem, so I had to re-think a bit, and I ended up simply going for the "dirty node" technique where nodes that explicitly want to do something mark their succeeding nodes to render, and thus entire branches of nodes never get evaluated when they don't need to. This got me back up to the coveted 60 frames per second again.

A final optimization I genuinely wanted to do is crunch the demo down to what I felt to be a decent size, around 60-ish megabytes: The competition limit was raised to 128MB, but I felt my demo wasn't really worth that much size, and I felt I had a chance of going down to 60 without losing much of the quality - this was mostly achieved by just converting most diffuse/specular (and even some normal) textures down to fairly high quality JPG, which was still mostly smaller than PNG; aside from a few converter setting mishaps and a few cases where the conversion revealed some ugly artifacts, I was fairly happy with the final look, and I was under the 60MB limit I wanted to be.

Music

While this post mostly deals with graphics, I'd be remiss to ignore the audio which I also spent a considerable time on: because of the sparse nature of the track, I didn't need to put a lot of effort in to engineering the track, but I also needed to make sure the notes sounded natural enough - I myself don't actually play keyboards and my MIDI keyboard (a Commodore MK-10) is not pressure sensitive, so a lot of the phrases were recorded in parts, and I manually went through each note to humanize the velocities to how I played them. I didn't process the piano much; I lowered the highs a bit, and because the free instrument I was using, Spitfire Audio's Soft Piano, didn't have a lot of release, I also added a considerable amount of reverb to make it blend more into the background.

For ambient sounds, I used both Native Instruments' Absynth, as well as Sound Guru's Mangle, the latter of which I used to essentially take a chunk out of a piano note and just add infinite sustain to it. For the background rain sound, I recorded some sounds myself over the summer (usually at 2AM) using a Tascam DR-40 handheld recorder; on one occasion I stood under the plastic awning in front of our front door to record a more percussive sound of the rain knocking on something, which I then lowpass filtered to make it sound like it's rain on a window - this eventually became the background sound for the mid-section.

I've done almost no mixing and mastering on the song; aside from shaping the piano and synth tones a bit to make them sound the way I wanted, the raw sparse timbres to me felt very pleasing and I didn't feel the sounds were fighting each other in space, so I've done very little EQing; as for mastering, I've used a single, very conservatively configured instance of BuzMaxi just to catch and soft-limit any of the peaks coming from the piano dynamics and to raise the track volume to where all sounds were clearly audible.

The final arrangement of the music in Reaper.

Minor tricks

Most of the demo was done fairly easily within the constraints of the engine, but there were a few fun things that I decided to hack around manually, mostly for effect.

The headlights in the opening scene are tiny 2D quads that I copied out of a photo and animated to give some motion to the scene.

The clouds in the final scene use a normal map and a hand-painted gradient; the whole scene interpolates between two lighting conditions, and two different color grading chains.

The rain layer - obviously - is just a multilayered 2D effect using a texture I created from a particle field in Fusion.

Stuff that didn't make it or went wrong

I've had a few things I had in mind and ended up having to bin along the way:

I still want to have a version of the temporal AA that properly deghosts animated objects; the robot vacuum cleaner moved slow enough to get away with it, but still.

The cat is obviously not furry; I have already rigged and animated the model by the time I realized that some fur cards would've helped greatly with the aliasing of the model, but by that time I didn't feel like redoing the whole thing all over again, and I was running out of time.

There's considerable amount of detail in the room scene that's not shown because of the lighting - I set the room up first, and then opted for a more dramatic lighting that ultimately hid a lot of the detail that I never bothered to arrange to more visible places.

In the first shot of the room scene, the back wall of the TV has a massive black spot on it that I have no idea where it's coming from, but I got away with it.

I spent an evening debugging why the demo was crashing on NVIDIA when I realized I was running out of the 2GB memory space; toggling the Large Address Aware flag always felt a bit like defeat, but it was easier than compiling a 64-bit version.

A really stupid problem materialized after the party, where both CPDT and Zoom reported that the demo didn't work on their ultrawide (21:9) monitors: this was simply due to the lack of pillarbox support because I genuinely didn't think that would ever be needed (at the time I started the engine I don't think I even had a 1080p monitor) - this was a quick fix and the currently distributed ZIP now features that fix.

Acknowledgements

While I've did the demo entirely myself, I've received some help from other places: The music was heavily inspired by the work of Exist Strategy, while the visuals were inspired by the work of Yaspes, IvoryBoy and the Europolis scenes in Dreamfall Chapters. While I did most of all graphics myself, one of the few things I got from online was a "lens dirt pack" from inScape Digital, and I think the dirt texture in the flowerpot I ended up just googling, because it was late and I didn't feel like going out for more photos. I'd also need to give credit to my audio director at work, Prof. Stephen Baysted, who pointed me at the piano plugin I ended up using for the music, and to Reid who provided me with ample amounts of cat-looking-out-of-window videos for animation reference.

Epilogue

Overall I'm quite happy with how everything worked out (final results and reaction notwithstanding), and I'm also quite happy that I managed to produce myself a toolset that "just works". (For the most part.)

One of the things that I've been talking to people about it is postmortem is how people were not expecting the mix of this particular style, which is generally represented in demos with 2D drawings or still images or photos slowly crossfading, instead using elaborate 3D and rendering. To me, it just felt like one of those interesting juxtapositions where the technology behind a demo can be super complex, but at the same time the demo isn't particularly showy or flashy; where the technology behind the demo does a ton of work but forcefully stays in the background to allow you to immerse in the demo itself. To me that felt very satisfactory both as someone trying to make a work of art that has something to say, but also as an engineer who tries to learn and do interesting things with all the technology around us.

What's next, I'm not sure yet.

#demoscene #demo #computer art #gamedev #game development #realtime

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jadonsancho09 · 3 years

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Yarloo

The Ultimate Crypto Lottery

Changing the crypto space by giving back to our community.

#bsc #yarloo #yarl #ido

INTRODUCTION

Yarloo is a new take on the lottery gambling system well known to everyone around the globe. We felt that the current state of lottery is quite… lacking, to say the least. It’s not fun, the risks are too high and your chances are dim. Very. Here’s a quote from K5: “According to Lottery USA, the odds of winning the Mega Millions jackpot are 1 in 302.6 million and the odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million. Combine those two and the odds of winning both jackpots for more than a billion dollars comes out to 1 in 88 quadrillion. That’s the number 88 followed by 15 zeros.

But with the current advancement of the crypto space, we at Yarloo felt like there was so-mething that could be done to revolutionize the lottery system around the world, and to make it much more fun, give people significantly higher chances of winning, creating much more flexible jackpot pools, and introducing NFT card sets as the core function behind tickets. Also the fun aspect of making the entire theme of the project revolve around pirates!

Through this methodology, we believe that, while lottery gives people significantly small chances of winning, cryptofying that system, wrapping it with fun games and money making features for those who don’t want to risk too much would potentially change the shape of the entire lottery industry, and that’s the clear end-game for us at Yarloo.

About Yarloo

Yarloo is one more translation of the lottery wagering structure outstanding to everyone all through the planet. We felt that the current status of lottery is very olacking, undoubtedly. It’s terrible, the risks are too high and your conceivable outcomes are weak. Regardless, with the current progress of the crypto space, we at Yarloo felt like there was mething so much that ought to be feasible to change the lottery structure all through the planet, and to make it extensively more fun, permit people basically higher chances of winning, making considerably more versatile treasure trove pools, and introducing NFT card sets as the middle limit behind tickets. Similarly the incredible piece of making the entire subject of the endeavor pivot around privateers!

Through this methodology, we acknowledge that, while lottery permits people basically little chances of winning, cryptofying that structure, wrapping it with fun games and worthwhile parts for individuals who might rather not peril a great deal of would potentially change the condition of the entire lottery industry, and that is the undeniable end-game for us at Yarloo.

How it Work

On Yarloo, you will really need to check out different fiscally supportive activities, including, anyway not limited to:

- Solo Lottery Jackpots

- Team Lottery Jackpots

- Fortune Spinners

- NFT Trading Center

- Yarloo Wallet (for checking and exchanging our tokens)

- Arcade Games

- DeFi Lending and Borrowing System

As can be seen, Yarloo is offering a wide scope of ways to deal with check out our original lottery system, and to benefit through different styles and approaches. Use our fortune spinners to check whether you could assemble another exceptional card that extends your possibilities. Is it exact to say that you are a finder who has amassed a gigantic number of critical cards as time goes on? The trading center is yours for the taking, and there are from a genuine perspective no risks at all as you’re simply selling your cards. In the event that you’re not as fortunate with cards and don’t want to confront high difficulties, then most certainly, stamping is your best methodology.

Different Us

What makes Yarloo unprecedented, regardless, is the means by which it utilizes the NFT system, making it the standard engine behind the entry tickets. Accepting you need to partake, you ought to enter by orchestrating out a specific game plan of cards that you own. Joining cards can regularly net you unprecedented characteristics, dependent upon the exceptionalness and sort of the card, and the likeness features it could have with various cards that you may guarantee. Cards are your passage ticket, and it’s the solitary way you can endeavor your shot at winning the huge stake.

To enter using cards, there’s a part charge that ought to be put away into the pool to add to the incredible prize, anyway by then you will be permitted to disseminate 5 cards just from your set, going along with them to have the best result which would fabricate your conceivable outcomes. If your strategy ends up extraordinary, you may have gotten yourself a gold mine, and congratulations would be all together.

Product and Features

Yarloo will be overflowing with cool arrangements that will be unfathomably useful for everybody, and as we acquire progress later on, we’ll start including more, and analyze them with our neighborhood we can see what else ought to be conceivable in Yarloo.

- RST : Yarloo is the world’s first assignment to execute a development known as “Pay Sharing Token”, which allows the neighborhood get 30% of Yarloo’s advantages to serve the organic framework whereupon it is manufactured.

- NFT : We’re also the essential lottery project in crypto history to utilize NFT cards as your guideline segment ticket system in any pool! This infers instead of buying tickets, your tickets are tended to by the cards you’re using in your lottery pools.

- DeFi : You’ll have the alternative to benefit fiscally from Yarloo as a result of its cross variety DeFi structure, fundamentally by allowing you to get 2% of a pool’s advantages on the off chance that you’re its creator, and by benefitting from our RST natural framework on the off chance that you’re holding enough $YARL.

RST ECOSYSTEM

Revenue Sharing Token, or RST for short, is the revolutionary backbone of Yarloo the first implementation of its kind in what will one day become just as recognized as NFT and DeFi technologies, RST is how Yarloo can be weaponized as an anti-bear project, one that could withstand any market sentiment. How it works is fairly simple, and it can be reconfigured based on each company’s preference, but we’ll be using Yarloo as the core example for how RST will be utilized given that we’re the original founders of this concept and its first integrators.

Seed & IDO Investors: 30%

Holders: 25%

Buyback: 20%

LP Providers: 15%

Wheel of Fortune/Rewards Pool: 10%

CARDS SYSTEM

Our card system isn’t really complicated. There will be 5 types of cards, ranking from bottom to top as:

These 5 types of cards have incredibly different functions and values. For example, petty cards only grant 1 ticket per card, due to their low value, and Bronze cards give out 2 tickets per card, but both of them have no special attributes and can’t be paired with any other card.

On the other hand, starting from Silver to Sapphire, cards give out much more tickets and all of them have special attributes. Silver cards give out 5 tickets per card, Gold gives out 10, and Sapphire grants 50 participation tickets.

Card sets will be consistently released in Yarloo, even after launch, as it will always be a vital part of the system of how everything works. There will be 3 types of card sets, so that users can know what to expect from each one of them:

Standard

Premium

Eccentric

ROADMAP

Q3 2021:

Funding Rounds Conclusion

3-5 Card Sets Launch

Wallet Alpha

Marketplace Alpha

Q4 2021:

Wheel of Fortune Release

Lottery Platform Launch

Bridging $YARL to new networks

First CEX listing

5-8 New Card Sets

Fusion System Testing

Governance features for $YARL holders

Updated Lightpaper

Q1 2022:

Venturing around the Seven Seas!

We’ll continue updating our roadmap depending on new introductions, the games we announce, and so much more. For the time being, only information surrounding Q3 and Q4 of this year are available.

Useful Links:

Website : https://yarloo.vercel.app/

Telegram : https://t.me/yarloochat

Telegram Channel : https://t.me/yarlannouncements

Twitter : https://twitter.com/yarloo_rst

Medium : https://medium.com/@yarloo

Reddit : https://www.reddit.com/r/yarloo

Author:

Forum Username: Jadon Sancho

Forum Profile Link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=2954208

Telegram Username: @Jadonsancho09

BEP-20 Wallet Address: 0xb05fc25bCfa612Eaef1Fa17cEBF05A675a40D5e1

#bsc yarloo yarl ido

0 notes

loosewhalessinkships · 7 years

Text

KCB203 Consumption Matters

1. Introduction This trend report explores the consumption of food mash-ups in Australia and the cultural appeal it holds. A food mash-up is an unorthodox spin on fusion cuisine. Fusion cuisine marries elements of different cultural dishes and is widely accepted in Australia due to the rich diversity in culture, and nowadays flexibility of nationality and identity is a global consumer priority (Australian Human Rights Commision, 2014). Moreover, mash-ups consist of either combining two different meals together or a variety of opposing flavours deemed controversial which create a unique taste experience. Sales in the mash-up trend have increased significantly over the past few years. America first discovered consumer interest in mash-ups a decade prior through culinary adventurism. Since then Australia has followed in their footsteps with similar success. This report will analyse the key factors of this trend and establish the reasons behind its emerging success with analysis into consumers’ values and changing attitudes. The key findings from this trend report will inform entrepreneurs and marketers of ways to capitalise on the food mash-up market.

Let’s get messy! The Pulled Junk waffle sandwich. Dr.Pepper pulled pork, Jolly Rancher BBQ sauce….you get the idea 😉 . . . . . . . . #yumstagram #fries #food #foodporn #foodie #toronto #torontofood #love #cheese #junk #junkfood #pulledpork @jollyrancher #showusyourjunk #torontoeats

A post shared by Junked Food Co. (@junkedfoodco) on Oct 23, 2017 at 9:32am PDT

2. Background

From the 1990 boom decade of foreign fusion cuisines emergence – whereby culinary chefs combined and built upon different gastronomies – came the migration into food mash-ups in a much broader sense, experimenting with different food combinations without thorough acknowledgement of traditional cultural foods (Mennella, 2016). Mash-ups first blew up on social media following the success of the first Cronut in New York City which has gained a mainstream following. Cronuts gained such a high profile that hired staff from Same Ole Line Dudes would pre-order meals and waiting lines as a service for busy consumers (Mennella, 2016).

Only a few days left to try these Pumpkin Cranberry Cronuts 🎃🍩 Hurry up 🏃🏻‍♀️🏃🏼 #feedyourgirlfriend 👫 #dominiqueansel . . . . . . . . . #dessertporn #dailyfoodfeed #yahoofood #eastcoastfoodies #eatingfortheinsta #nycfat #nyceeeeeats #devourpower #foodbeast #eatupnewyork #Foodiesofinstagram #feedfeed #forkyeah #bestfood #noBSfood #buzzfeast #f52grams #tryitordiet #noleftovers #nycdining #foodgasm #topcitybites #eatfamous #thedailybite #eater #zagat #foodilysm #foodiegram

A post shared by 👫Have u fed ur girlfriend yet? (@feedyourgirlfriend) on Oct 26, 2017 at 8:49am PDT

Mobile access to sites such as Instagram and Snapchat has given consumers increased the opportunity to discover, follow and share food experiences. Food must present not only as appetising but also creative in order to attract viewer interest. The popular hashtag “food porn” used on Instagram in 2010 increased readership dramatically, with this hashtag still being used in over 106 million posts to date (Mennella, 2016).

#foodporn

According to Link, Australians are very open to trying migrant cuisine, and this is furthered by gastronomic experiences from travelling to different countries, however, taste expectations are not always met. Mashup food becomes the bridge of which blends both familiar and unfamiliar flavours to reduce consumer rejection and increase acceptance. However, mash-ups have also been regarded by others as a food identity crisis. The loss of tradition and originality in mash-up cuisine is the problem with contemporary attitudes towards diversity (Mannur, 2002, 180). Through practices of production and consumption of food and foodways, people find themselves belonging to a global community often through very local attachments instead of mix experience (Jonas, 2014). Consumers are seeking for authenticity in food and preferred to stay within the boundaries of traditional food (Link, 2012, 237).

Authentic Spaghett (Mejor Con Salud, 2017)i

Spaghetti Tacos Mash-up (Limento, 2017)

Authentic Tacos (Kathleen of Gonna Want Seconds, 2017)

3. Research Method To explore this trend, two qualitative research methods were employed. The first was participation, by which the researchers sampled three mash-up meals from three separate restaurants. Notes were taken on the atmosphere and décor of the restaurants, and the attributes (presentation, ingredients, flavour profiles) of the mash-up meals. The purpose of this research method was to gather data about the consumptive manifestation of the trend so as to ascertain its fundamental characteristics, and to assess qualities of its producers. The second research method was individual interviews. The purpose of this research method was to gather data on consumers ‘experiences and perceptions’ of the mash-up trend. Eight subjects were interviewed ranging from their early twenties to mid-thirties with one being a professional chef. The question structure was designed to uncover:

subjects’ knowledge of/interaction with the trend;

why the trend does/does not appeal to them;

the key forces driving the trend.

Suki Decor

Sushi Burrito Presentation

4. Research Findings

4.1 Participation Research The first meal sampled was Gangman Fries from the restaurant ‘Junk’, which were loaded fries, topped with kimchi, nacho cheese sauce, spring onion and nori. The second was a Sushi Burrito from Suki, which had salmon and tuna sashimi, mango, edamame, spring onion and mayonnaise, wrapped in rice and sushi seaweed. The third was Earl Grey flavoured ice cream from Gelateria Cremona. There were two main similarities between the meals, constituting the fundamental characteristics of the trend. These were a) traditional meals presented in an unconventional method, and b) unconventional combination of flavours and ingredients. The restaurants themselves all used appropriation and bricolage to create their décor, combining aesthetics of different cultures, themes, and time periods.

Cultural Appropriation/Bricolage at Junk

4.2 Knowledge of/interaction with the trend Of the subjects, none had heard the term mash-up meal prior to the interview. After being given the definition of the trend and some popular examples, all the subjects had seen a mash-up meal on social media, and all had tried at least one mashup meal.

4.3 Trend Appeal The subjects unanimously expressed that the trend has a primary appeal of the novelty factor. Two used the word novelty, three expressed that it was fun, the remaining three described it as ‘new’, ‘different’, and ‘crazy’. The other appeal identified by the subjects was the shock value. Responses indicated that the strangeness of the meals, insofar as they would never have considered the relevant combinations, resulting in curiosity to try them. Of the eight subjects, only five felt that the trend appealed to them. All of these were millennials, and each responded that they would again purchase mash up meals – particularly when the flavours being combined were individual favourites of theirs. The two subjects in their mid-thirties both felt that the trend was off-putting and that it was a trend specifically for millennials.

Eat street markets cronut pioneer (Grounds, 2017)

The “conut” (cone + donut)

4.4 Driving Forces

4.4.1 Social Media The first driving force identified by the subjects was social media. Seven of the subjects had first seen the trend on social media platforms, and every subject felt that social media was a major factor. The two subjects in their mid-thirties reported that before social media, food trends were less noticeable and more difficult to identify than they are now. The six younger subjects reported that seeing mash-up items shared on social media would increase their likelihood of trying them. Every subject thought that the trend would be either not popular, or significantly less popular if it wasn’t for the social media aspect.

User-driven content @misterfitz_

Suki

Junk Bar

Gelateria Cremona

(Gelateria Cremona, 2017)

4.4.2 Millennial Culture The subjects unanimously felt that the mash up trend was specifically targeted towards millennials. The six younger subjects felt that this was primarily due to;

them being more adventurous than their parents; and

their use of social media.

The two subjects in their mid-thirties attributed this to the younger generation;

having more disposable income;

having shorter attention spans and less refined food preferences; and

not having to worry as much about how healthy their food is.

Four of the millennial subjects were sure that their parents would be very unlikely to engage in the trend, thinking that they would find it off-putting.

4.4.3 Globalisation Four of the subjects expressed that globalisation was another driving force of the trend. They identified that contemporary society is more culturally intersectional than it once was, so new combinations of cuisine ethnicities is a natural by-product. One of the four further attributed this to the increased availability of different options that results from globalisation.

Sushi Burrito

A post shared by Mash Up Food (@sushiburito) on Oct 26, 2017 at 10:07pm PDT

5. Analysis of Findings

5.1 Neoliberalism The research data indicates that the popularity of the mash-up trend is linked to neoliberalism. Under a neoliberalist paradigm, the novelty aspect of the trend is a product of a competition-driven free market, propagated by a maximum amount of consumer choice (McDonald, & Wearing, 2013, p. 15). This is reflected in that three of the subjects felt that competition drives producers capitalising on this trend to outdo each other in shock value. This can also be seen in six of the subjects highlighting that the aesthetics of the mashup item was crucial to it being shared by consumers on social media.

Check out our daily Cookie Scoops flavours!!! Photo cred @tipsyfork #cheatday #cookiedough #cookie #torontofood #torontoeats #dessert #dessertporn #food #foodie #foodporn

A post shared by Junked Food Co. (@junkedfoodco) on Apr 13, 2017 at 11:16am PDT

5.2 Consumer Identity The data indicates that this trend is heavily focussed on the identity of the consumer. The unanimous opinion is that the mash-up trend is specifically targeted towards millennials, and the explanation for this by the younger subjects, demonstrates the personal and social identity of millennials as adventurous and cultural (McDonald, & Wearing, 2013, p. 45), with producers capitalising on this perception. Moreover, the subjects agree that the online sharability of the mashup item is critical to its success exemplifies characteristics of the commodified self (McDonald, & Wearing, 2013, p. 47). The neomarxist critique could explain this as being exploitative of the consumer through the practice of ‘value co-creation’ (Zwick, Bonsu, & Darmody, 2008, p. 3). When asked, though, the six millennial subjects felt that this was not the case as consumers weren’t being forced to post these meals online and were, instead, voluntarily electing too.

Fries+Mac and Cheese 👍👍😋😋. Don't forget we add in cheese curds!!! . . . . . #torontofoodphoto #yum #fries #cheese #toronto #torontfood #torontoeats #poutine #food #foodie #foodporn

A post shared by Junked Food Co. (@junkedfoodco) on Aug 10, 2017 at 6:46am PDT

5.3 Future of the Trend? Two of the subjects thought that the trend wouldn’t last. Of these two, one felt that because of the short attention span of millennials things get old quick. The other thought that the shock value would wear off soon. This is reflective of ‘The Moment Makers’ nature of contemporary youth culture, insofar as consumers are trying to ‘experience new environments and cultures’ (Future Consumer 2018).

“That’s just the nature of our current society. Information is instantly accessible which means you don’t have a long-term word of mouth impact. You have about 24-48 hours for that initial hype and if you don’t get that it’s dead unless it comes back as a cult meme.” Interviewee, 13/10/17

Two of the subjects thought that the trend would last but would develop into a more sustainable product. The subject who is a chef felt that the trend would have to become more refined, focusing more on quality and less on novelty and that this would reflect the maturation of millennials. The other subject, who was younger, thought that mash up meals that utilise complex cooking techniques would last, but that those that just randomly combine flavours would lose their novelty appeal.

From the findings, this report predicts that the future of mash-up trends is dependent on producers ability to create an appeal in the trend that is more than the novelty and shock value. The data indicates that this is the current driving appeal, with the sharability of these products on social media being critical to their success. The data also suggests that millennials identify themselves, and are identified as others, as consumers who want to engage with new things at a rapid pace. It can be predicted from this information, then, that the longer the mash-up trend exists, the less of a novelty it will be, thus it will be less appealing to millennial consumers. Given that the data also suggests that millennials are the primary consumer for these products, without them as a consumer base there will be nothing to support the success of mash-up meals. It follows, therefore, that only mash-up meals which have the appeal that surpasses the novelty effect will last.

References

Australian Human Right Commission. (2014). Face the facts: cultural diversity. Retrieved from https://www.humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/FTFCulturalDiversity.pdf

Gelateria Cremona. (2017). Ice Cream on Bench. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/Gelateria-Cremona-Rosalie-168894049806183/

Gelateria Cremona. (2017). Three Gelatos on Stand. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/Gelateria-Cremona-Rosalie-168894049806183/

Gelateria Cremona. (2017). Worker Placing Gelato on Stand. Retrieved from https://www.facebook.com/Gelateria-Cremona-Rosalie-168894049806183/

Grounds, E. (2017). The Doughnut Bar Van. Retrieved from http://www.visitbrisbane.com.au/information/articles/activities/free-things-to-do-brisbane?sc_lang=en-au

Jonas, T. (2014). Culinary Cosmopolitanism. Encyclopedia of Food and Agricultural Ethics Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2F978-94-007-6167-4_8-5.pdf

Kathleen of Gonna Want Seconds. (2017). Achiote Roasted Pork Tacos. Retrieved from http://www.gonnawantseconds.com/2011/09/achiote-roasted-pork-tacos/

Limento, B. (2017). Fiesta Spaghetti Tacos. Retrieved from https://www.babble.com/best-recipes/fiesta-spaghetti-tacos/

Link, C. A. (2012). Challenges to flavour: Influences on the cultural identity of cuisines in the Australian foodscape (Order No. 10308709). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (1915934729). Retrieved from http://gateway.library.qut.edu.au/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/docview/1915934729?accountid=13380

Mannur, A. (2002). Culinary scapes: Contesting food, gender and nation in south Asia and its diaspora (Order No. 3068578). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (305575193). Retrieved from http://gateway.library.qut.edu.au/login?url=https://search-proquest-com.ezp01.library.qut.edu.au/docview/305575193?accountid=13380

McDonald, M. & Wearing, S. (2013). Social Psychology and Theories of Consumer Culture: A Political Economy Perspective [QUT Blackboard Version]. Retrieved from https://blackboard.qut.edu.au/bbcswebdav/pid-6962453-dt-content-rid-9125218_1/courses/KCB203_17se2/Social%20Psychology%20and%20Theories%20of%20Consumer%20Culture.pdf

Mejor Con Salud. (2017). Neapolitan spaghetti. Retrieved from https://mejorconsalud.com/spaghetti-napolitano/

Mennella, J. (2016). Tracing the Rise of Food Mash-Ups. CUNY Academic Works. http://academicworks.cuny.edu/gj_etds/160

Zwick, D., Bonsu, S., & Darmody, A. (2008). Putting Consumers to Work: ‘Co-creation’ and the new marketing govern-mentality. Journal of Consumer Culture, 163, 1469-5405. DOI: 10.1177/1469540508090089

Talt Anast | n8883238

Ellen Coonan | n9708715

Hiulam Kwan | n9580662

Amanda Wardle | n9186565

Trend Report: Mash-up Cuisine KCB203 Consumption Matters

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lawsonalfred94 · 4 years

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How To Get Taller 5 Inches Super Genius Diy Ideas

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entergamingxp · 5 years

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Persona 5 Royal Review — This Palace’s Treasure Gleams Even Brighter

March 17, 2020 9:00 AM EST

The long-awaited Persona 5 Royal is finally upon us, with tons of new content and gameplay overhauls to create a more robust experience.

Persona 5 Royal is the upgraded version of the immensely popular JRPG that originally released in Japan back in 2016. With this definitive edition of the game comes a variety of new changes which include two new characters and Confidants, a brand new semester and Palace that culminates in two new endings, new gameplay mechanics, and reworked dungeons and boss battles.

There are also a variety of new minigames, gameplay balance fixes, expanded character scenes, and so much more. While it might still share much of the same DNA as the original Persona 5, Atlus has packed P5R full of new content that is sure to delight newcomers and veterans of the original with a far more robust experience.

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“Atlus has packed Persona 5 Royal full of new content that is sure to delight newcomers and even veterans of the original with a far more robust experience.”

Royal starts off with a bang as it brandishes two of its biggest additions in the prologue. The protagonist, codenamed Joker, ends up using his grappling hook to reach a new area of the stairwell during his chase scene. Afterward, he encounters a mysterious and masked young woman, who wields a Persona, and aids him in battle. She departs just as abruptly as she arrived — with parting words hinting at her relationship to him — and Joker continues on his way.

Following this opening, we delve into the story proper: a tale of high school students who band together with the help of a cat-like ally named Morgana to dive into the hearts of rotten adults. Known as the “Phantom Thieves,” they slowly become infamous both online and in the real world and are soon pulled into a much greater and more sinister plot.

While the main premise from the original Persona 5 remains intact, it soon becomes apparent that the story has been tangibly altered due to the added presence of the two new characters. First is the mysterious girl, Kasumi, whom we met in the opening. The second is the psychologist Maruki, brought in by Shujin Academy after the infamous events of Kamoshida occur. Both newcomers are as interesting and nuanced as the rest of the main cast and it’s clear that plenty of effort went into reworking both the general writing and the spoken dialogue to ensure that they fit in with the plot seamlessly.

Both characters even receive their own Confidants (Faith and Councillor respectively), giving the protagonist time to cozy up and learn more about their backstories and motivations. I found their Confidants to be engaging, funny, and well-written, particularly Maruki’s, as his methods of counseling mirror how real-world psychologists and psychiatrists’ sessions run. There’s even a tangible perk for ranking up their Confidants. For each level, Kasumi awards the hero with a 5 HP increase while Maruki provides him with a 5 SP increase. But even ignoring these benefits, the quality of writing alone places them as two of my favorite Confidants, only beaten out by Toranosuke Yoshida.

Just as Kasumi and Maruki are intertwined with the protagonist, they’re also deeply connected with each other. This all comes to a head during the new semester and final Palace, which spirals into an emotional reveal and conclusion that contrasts well with the beautiful aesthetics of both the dungeon itself and the true final boss designs. Without going into spoiler territory, I found the resolution between Kasumi, Maruki, and Joker to be wholly satisfying, if not somewhat predictable.

Receiving some much-needed love is the ever divisive Akechi, as his entire Confidant route has been completely overhauled. As a result, his route is slotted in at a different point in the story to go along with more screen time and importance in the bonus sections of the new endgame content. While my opinion of him is still rather lukewarm, I found myself appreciating his character more due to these improvements.

“Both newcomers are as interesting and nuanced as the rest of the main cast and it’s clear that plenty of effort went into reworking both the general writing and the spoken dialogue to ensure that they fit in with the plot seamlessly.”

The main cast also shares in the glow of additional screen time. Throughout the game, there are new holidays featuring brand new cutscenes and voiced dialogue, new conversations that lead to special team-up moves being unlocked, new portrait artwork giving each character a more dynamic range of expressions, and a third tier of Personae that are unlocked during the new semester (similar to Persona 4 Golden), among other features. Even the last party member, Haru, receives slightly better treatment, though her late introduction to the Phantom Thieves still hurts her overall development.

The infamous scene at the end of the drug trade investigation in Shinjuku has also been altered in the English version of the game. The two gay men, who in the original attempted to sexually harass and assault a teenager (AKA Ryuji), have had their dialogue changed to instead mistakenly believe that he’s into the drag scene because he’s been standing around their club and attempt to help him out. While not perfect in its execution, it’s a far more genuinely funny scene than the one in the original Persona 5 and is much less painful to watch in action. Not to mention, it’s a very natural change that fits much more nicely; if you weren’t aware of the original scene, you would be hard-pressed to notice any difference.

Gameplay gets plenty of fixing as well. Each dungeon has been reworked to incorporate the grappling hook mechanic, which at first feels limited due to its fixed uses. Players will find that the hook not only serves as a far better way for Joker to traverse through each Palace but also lets you access brand new areas where Will Seeds can be found. Each Palace contains three seeds and finding them all unlocks a special accessory that, when equipped, allows that party member to permanently access a certain useful skill.

Then there’s Showtime, the brand new super moves that are unlocked throughout the main story via conversations between two teammates. This allows for two party members, whether in the active or backup party, to team up and unleash a Showtime attack that deals massive damage to the enemy. Though incredibly fun to watch and even more useful, they’re extremely powerful and destroy the balance of each battle as they’re much stronger than All Out Attacks. Luckily, they’re optional, so you can simply ignore them when they crop up.

Boss battles have also been revamped to either provide more of a challenge or to better connect them with their respective Palace. For instance, Kamoshida’s battle now involves two new “slaves” that help him set up his special attack. Madarame’s battle features a new stage, and Kaneshiro’s fight now requires that you toss away an item to avoid his most powerful attack. While small changes, they make each boss feel more fleshed out and memorable from a gameplay perspective. Though, my one complaint is that the connection between the Palace boss and their corresponding story arc could have been stronger and made more personal, resulting in a more compelling conclusion.

The side quest dungeon, Mementos, sees its fair share of upgrades as well. The dungeon portions have been expanded and the randomized floors are often much larger in size, lending itself to more exploration. That said, why couldn’t they change the music sooner? Only the later sections of Mementos play an excellent remix of the main theme. Most of the dungeon is still filled with that unfortunate, bland track that’s stuck on an infinite repeat, which is personally disappointing to me, especially considering all the enhancements to the dungeon design itself. The brightest spot in the host of changes comes in the form of a strange young boy named Jose who appears before your party the first time they venture into Mementos. This is the same boy from the Thieves’ Den.

“While small changes, they make each boss feel more fleshed out and memorable from a gameplay perspective.”

Jose opens up a special shop that sells battle items based on the number of flowers you collect for him within the dungeon. And if you located special stickers scattered around platforms, you can use them to change gameplay properties inside Mementos which can lead to more rewards from battle, higher encounter rates, and so on. It doesn’t hurt that Jose is adorable and his shop UI is literally the most gorgeous thing you will see in the game (considering how polished the UI is in general, this is extremely high praise).

Even the Velvet Room hasn’t been spared from improvements. One of the major new features is called Challenge Battles. By speaking to the wardens, you can fight foes using your current party to aim for the highest score by dealing as much damage as possible. You’ll receive a reward from the wardens based on your score and because you won’t get a game over if you lose, it’s a fun and low-risk challenge.

Another added mechanic is the fusion alarm status, which occurs randomly after defeating enemies in a Palace. When fusing during this time, any resulting Persona will have greatly boosted stats and a chance to pass on new special skills. The downside is that fusion accidents are much more likely, which can result in wildly different and sometimes disappointing results. Despite the clear drawback, it’s a great mechanic that injects some much-needed excitement and vibrance in the otherwise monotonous grind of fusing.

Personae themselves — both with Joker and the other playable characters — have been upgraded with a brand new feature called Skill Traits. In Royal, each Persona possesses a unique trait that grants certain abilities, such as decreased SP cost for skills under a certain element or increased potency for spells that have a single target. These special traits can also be passed on just like regular skills and can also be passed on during fusion, allowing for even more customization options. Their general existence, especially skills that cut down on SP cost, are so useful during dungeon runs that I found myself wondering how I managed to traverse Palaces in vanilla P5.

It’s also worth mentioning here that another major change to Royal sees Morgana cutting back on the number of times they make Joker go to bed early, which has a tremendous effect on how quickly players can rank up their parameters. Even on days in which venturing outside isn’t possible, you can still engage in a multitude of tasks that raise your social stats. For instance, in my own playthrough, by the middle of July, three of my stats were already rank three and the other two were rank four.

More minigames make their debut in Persona 5 Royal and not only are they a welcome break from the intensity of the main story, but they also provide players with gameplay advantages.

The Thieves Den is an example of the former as it lets players use collected P Medals, the currency of this base, in order to purchase artwork for your gallery, soundtracks, and trophies depicting major story events to decorate said base with. You win P Medals either by obtaining awards or by playing the card game Tycoon with your party members. I’ve spent so much time playing Tycoon that it often feels like its own separate (albeit much smaller) game and the enthusiast voice work and expressions from the characters really immerses you in the experience of sitting back and playing a fun round of cards with your friends.

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The last minigame comes from a new district that Ryuji opens up, called Kichijoji. The area itself, bustling with tons of eateries and shops selling unique wares, is the largest explorable location in the game. It’s also home to the Darts and Billiards lounge, which features a darts game reminiscent of the one from the Yakuza series in that it utilizes the motion controls built into the DualShock 4. The darts minigame is fun, fairly easy to master, and best of all, it can be used to rank up a team member’s Baton Pass. The higher the rank, the more benefits that party members will receive whenever Baton Pass is used in a turn, which includes dealing more damage and HP/SP recovery.

Graphics have been noticeably upgraded in Persona 5 Royal as they’ve been optimized for the PS4, resulting in a crisper look to the character models and 3D environments. PS4 Pro owners haven’t been left in the dust either, as there’s a 4K setting to choose from.

There are also several new music tracks in Royal and for the most part, they’re quite enjoyable, particularly the new battle theme. That being said, I wasn’t too impressed with the true boss theme; while a great track on its own, it lacked the weighty presence and punch that a final boss theme should have.

“If you never got around to playing vanilla Persona 5, then Persona 5 Royal is now the perfect starting point.”

If you never got around to playing vanilla Persona 5, then Persona 5 Royal is now the perfect starting point. Filled with a plethora of new story and gameplay content to go along with all of the DLC from the original, this is without a doubt the definitive edition.

However, what if you did sink over 100 hours into the original? Then the question becomes, how much did you enjoy Persona 5? Because make no mistake, even with all the shiny new things included here with Royal, this is still Persona 5. That means you will absolutely be playing through the same 100 hours of the base game since no effort has been made to fix one of the most egregious issues of the original: its pacing. First time players discovering each twist and turn will most decidedly find Persona 5 Royal exciting and fresh. However, veterans may have a difficult time staying engaged the whole way through, even with all the bells and whistles.

Regardless, for an updated re-release, Persona 5 Royal is certainly worth the price of admission for newcomers. And if you enjoyed the original and are eager to jump back into the fray, then there’s certainly more than enough new content and improvements to justify a second purchase.

March 17, 2020 9:00 AM EST

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/persona-5-royal-review-this-palaces-treasure-gleams-even-brighter/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=persona-5-royal-review-this-palaces-treasure-gleams-even-brighter

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marie85marketing · 7 years

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What Tinder Can Teach Us About Growth Marketing

Just in case you’ve been living under a rock for the past five years, Tinder is a hugely popular mobile dating app that matches potential partners based on user data and proximity.

Since the application was launched in 2012, it has experienced explosive growth.

Within two years, Tinder boasted 800 million swipes every single day. As of 2017, that daily figure is 1.6 billion.

So what makes Tinder so special, and what can we learn from Tinder’s growth that we can apply to other businesses?

You’ve probably heard the phrase “sex sells.” That’s certainly part of the picture, but there are many other facets of Tinder’s growth engine that are worth admiring.

Conceptual Design

If you look at all the major case studies for growth hacking in recent years, from Airbnb to PayPal, they all have one thing in common: an excellent product.

On a conceptual level, Tinder is ingenious.

All marketers know that consumer behavior is driven by emotions rather than logic. To be specific, people are motivated to act due to two reasons:

The desire to move towards pleasure

The desire to move away from pain

Tinder’s users are motivated by seeking out romantic encounters (pleasure) while simultaneously avoiding rejection (pain).

We’re not talking about mild emotions here. These are core human desires with an evolutionary basis.

It’s theorized that the fear of rejection stems from when humans lived in primitive hunter-gatherer societies. With limited amounts of potential mates in a small tribe, being rejected could entail the end of your lineage and in some cases, would lead to ostracization and death. Today, rejection is a stinging emotional experience that people don’t want to go through.

Google the term “approach anxiety” and you’ll find a library of articles on the subject – indicating how serious of a problem it is for people.

Since both parties have indicated a mutual attraction before a Tinder match is made, daters don’t need to go through the experience of approaching someone they’re attracted to while hoping the other person feels the same, and don’t have to worry about being approached by someone they have no interest in.

Additionally, Tinder uses the intermittent reward system. New matches are a “reward”. You get excited when you swipe right and it’s a match, you get the push notification telling you there’s a new match waiting for you when you open the app. When using Tinder, you likely won’t get 5+ matches a day, or even a match a day. So when matches become more scarce, they are more valued, and then when they come, it’s a huge (and addicting) reward. You get back into the app, keep swiping, keep messaging, and it becomes a “must have” in your life.

Rewards come early (the critical first few tries for a user, when it determines if they’ll be sticky, they quickly see the first signs of value from the app when they get new matches. Overtime, the rate of new matches will diminish, but by then you’re already hooked on the app. You get more matches because it’s suspected that new Tinder users are shown to more people, and thus achieve more matches.)

The emotional drivers of pleasure and pain are the cornerstone of Tinder’s success.

User Experience

Even with a great concept, Tinder’s success would have been severely limited if the user experience was inadequate.

Fortunately, Tinder’s creators were wise to the fact that we’re living in a culture of instant gratification. While traditional dating sites require you to read long-winded profiles for potential dates, Tinder gives you an avalanche of potential partners that you can accept or dismiss in one hand gesture based on first impressions.

In many ways, Tinder replicates real life. People make snap judgements all the time, and you’re unlikely to get to know someone’s favorite artists or movies unless there is an initial physical attraction.

Tinder’s CEO, Sean Rad, states: “We want to create experiences that emulate human behavior. What we do on Tinder is no different than what we already do.”

In order for word of mouth marketing to be effective, it’s important for user onboarding to be smooth and efficient. If your friend has got you excited about an application but you’re having trouble logging in or understanding how to use it, then it’s not very useful.

If you have a Facebook account, you simply connect it to Tinder, pick your photos, and start swiping. You don’t even have to include photos to start swiping (but you probably should considering this is dating).

The application has a four screen tutorial which you can skip at any time by logging in using Facebook. With a marvelously simplistic onboarding process, Tinder maximizes the impact of word of mouth marketing. (Image Source)

And while there’s a bio section, you don’t even have to go through the pains of creating a witty bio before you can start swiping. Tinder already looks at your Facebook Likes, Friends, and creates “shared interests” and “Mutual Friends” with potential matches.

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Compare this to the wringer that most dating sites put new users through. You have to write your bio, list your favorite books, movies, what you’re looking for, etc. By the time you can actually start viewing profiles you’ve already used 20 minutes of time writing a bio that few people will read.

Unlike the desktop, the smartphone is an ideal device for Tinder’s fast-paced dating action. Swiping left or right on a smartphone just feels natural – akin to swiping through a deck of cards.

Given that smartphone displays are image-centric, you’re compelled to make snap decisions primarily based on looks. Some would argue that this is superficial, but maybe dating is more superficial than we’d like to admit?

With an excellent product, in both concept and execution, the team at Tinder deployed some powerful growth marketing tactics in order to generate attention.

The Two-Sided Network

According to Wikipedia, two-sided networks are: “economic platforms having two distinct user groups that provide each other with network benefits.”

In the case of Airbnb, the brand was only successful because there were enough hosts and guests to facilitate each other’s interests. Simple laws of supply and demand.

For Tinder, both men and women would be required to make the app work. Additionally, a significant portion of the user base needed to be attractive – otherwise there would be insufficient matches.

In order to get heterosexual men on the platform, there needed to be heterosexual women already present, and vice versa. So, which demographic would need to come first?

Tinder came up with a smart solution to this quandary.

Having enjoyed her experience in a sorority at college, Tinder’s Vice President of Marketing at the time, Whitney Wolfe, set off to acquire campus VIPs as early adopters.

Tinder also got a fair amount of publicity during the 2014 Winter Olympics when snowboarder Jamie Anderson and others revealed that they’ve been using Tinder. This added to the social proof of Tinder, which only helped its user base grow more.

Image Source

Interestingly, former UFC champion Ronda Rousey stated that she didn’t have much luck with Tinder because of her fame, and actually signed up using a fake name before being found out. Given the UFC’s predominantly male fan base, I’m sure a significant number of UFC fans became Tinder users upon hearing the news.

With “high quality” models and sorority leaders using the application, this would do away with the negative stigma that digital dating is for lonely people. Instead, Tinder would be an application that social, attractive people use to make their good dating lives even better.

Campus Presentations

On a tour of numerous campuses in the United States, Wolfe gave group presentations about Tinder to sorority houses.

At the end of the presentation, Wolfe insisted that all the girls sign up for the application. Immediately afterwards, she would go to the corresponding brother fraternity and encourage the guys to sign up.

Right away, the guys would see profiles for the attractive girls that they already knew, but hadn’t had the opportunity to interact with in a romantic context.

Because campuses have a dense population of single students in close proximity, initial users had more than enough potential matches to keep them engaged with the application.

Parties and Outreach

In another display of Tinder’s marketing ingenuity, Tinder hosted a party for a USC student’s birthday and went the extra mile to make it amazing. Tinder paid the bill for the party in exchange for putting a bouncer at the door that only let people in after downloading the application.

When Wolfe returned after her college tour, Tinder’s user base jumped from 5,000 to 15,000. This is when word of mouth marketing gained momentum.

Parties would still play a prominent role in Tinder’s marketing strategy as the application expanded beyond the American college system. With launch parties in Mexico, Japan and England, Tinder brought nights of fun and entertainment to singletons around the world – while simultaneously promoting the Tinder brand.

As a result, Tinder’s user base expanded. In the initial months, 85% of Tinder’s users were within the 18-23 age, but by the following year that same age range represented only 57% of all users.

Conclusion

The growth of Tinder can be attributed to a quick onboarding system, an addicting product with random rewards (matches), a unique dating product that was different than current options, and successful launch parties.

Have you used Tinder? If so, what about the application encourages you to keep coming back?

Please let me know in the comments below.

About the Author: Aaron Agius, CEO of worldwide digital agency Louder Online is, according to Forbes, among the world’s leading digital marketers. Working with clients such as Salesforce, Coca-Cola, IBM, Intel, and scores of stellar brands, Aaron is a Growth Marketer – a fusion between search, content, social, and PR. Find him on Twitter, LinkedIn, or on the Louder Online blog.

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