#but then i saturated the colors to hell and back (as i should)

[medicalunprofessional]

twisted scientist: I have a bunch of brains in jars😁

[tanoraqui]

I watched the new Percy Jackson show and then I reread The Lightning Thief, and my takeaway is…Rick Riordan did some sort of bizarre reversal of the usual adaptation devil’s deal on this one, wherein the key themes of the book are maintained—hell, key themes of the book are amped up and forefronted! The books slowly escalate, not just in the original PJO books but from series to series through Heroes of Olympus and the Apollo books, the idea that this mythological family is fucked up, the parents are doing badly and they need to fix their shit instead of just putting it on the kids. Whereas the show is saying this from day 1! The show also captures the true friendship, the uncomfortable justification of Luke’s choices, the heroes’ sense of otherness from humanity…

But at the cost of so much of the zing of the books? The humor, the absurdist snaps between fantasy and reality like the Minotaur wearing Fruit-of-the-Looms, or the unending quips from Percy that aren’t just rebellious snark, they’re funny. (“…I am the Mother of Monsters, Echidna!” “You mean the thing from Australia??”) And the drama, the fantasy, the mythological stakes—in addition to the total lack of nighttime lighting, I spent half the show thinking everything should be 20% more color-saturated, at least when they’re in Camp Half-Blood or actively fighting monsters, and rereading the book tells me that I was right. Throughout the books, there’s a mounting thunderstorm all across the country, as warning and ambiance of the coming war! Percy only has 1 dream that’s just darkness and a voice; the others include him watching a golden eagle and a giant white horse fighting viciously on a beach! And every god stands out vividly, whereas in the show they mostly come off as Some Guy. In the book, Hades, Zeus and Poseidon are all 10 feet tall (until Poseidon shrinks to tall to Percy), and even Ares is,

vs this? This was the best they could do??

He’s not even throwing fireballs at cops and innocent bystanders in order to make them back the fuck off from his fight with this 12yo. SMH. This is bargain-brand. It’s like they didn’t have the budget for special effects and they didn’t even try.

I guess, as devil’s deals go, I would rather have the themes intact. But damn I wish they’d at least upped the color saturation, and maybe the speed of dialogue. These kids SHOULD spend half their conversations snarking like it’s Avengers (2012) actually. The perfect adaptation remains elusive, until we get both the crushing weight of familial trauma AND epic heroes and villains being fun.

[somehow-a-human]

Whose POV is it Anyway?

"Your 'Something's Wrong' voice."

DO NOT ASK NEIL ABOUT FAN THEORY

Hallo assorted ethereal and occult beings! I'm back to break down the POV of different scenes in detail! Starting with episode 1, and notably, the coffee shop scene when Crowley comes to meet Aziraphale for the first time in present day & the argument about Gabriel!

For reference & context, I recommend reading these posts:

Whose POV is it Anyway? - Introduction

Lens Filters

Let's jump straight in!

We open Season one's present day with Crowley and Shax on the bench in the park, and in this scene the Black Diffusion FX filter is in Full Effect, and Crowley's sideburns are short.

The color is well saturated, but still cool-toned and bright, indicative of Crowley's POV.

Then when Aziraphale visits Maggie, listens to his music, and Gabriel arrives to Aziraphale, the Bronze Glimmer Glass filter is used.

The lighting is warm, golden, soft & hazy. Aziraphale's POV.

This brings us to the coffee shop scene.

I've stolen this photo from @embracing-the-ineffable 's post about The Appearing Honolulu Roast Sign which you should go check out if you haven't yet. But I'd like to draw your attention to something subtler here, the tone of the top two images and the bottom two. Pull up the episode and watch it if you'd like as well.

When Crowley walks into the coffee shop and sits down, the lighting is warm and hazy, because Aziraphale had been there alone so far. There is then a cut, Crowley's sideburns are short, the Honolulu Roast sign notably appears, but the scene is also noticeably (if you're looking for it) clearer and more vibrant, the warm haze is gone. I think we've switched from Aziraphale's POV to Crowley's POV here, and I think that's then confirmed by Crowley immediately beginning to give Aziraphale a bit of a a read about his "somethings wrong voice". We're broken out of Aziraphale's fairytale filter POV into Crowley's which is a bit colder and more realistic.

They then head back to the bookshop where Crowley discovers Jimbriel.

As soon as they're in the door of the bookshop the warm hazy Bronze Glimmer Glass filter is back and Crowley's sideburns are long. He removes his glasses, he's relaxed, and then he's jumpscared out of his boots by Jimbriel. Aziraphale's POV.

Crowley drags Aziraphale to the backroom and despite the warm yellow paint on the walls, the hazy warm tone is gone and I believe we've returned to the Black Diffusion FX filter, or Crowley's POV. Additionally, his sideburns are short again. Crowley is angry, terrified, and stressed now. He's not the kindest with his words and refuses to help Aziraphale.

When Crowley storms out, his walk back through the bookshop is marked by another POV change with longer sideburns, in the warm hazy tones of the BGG Aziraphale filter, and a notable shot of him retrieving his glasses beside the plate of eccles cakes. Two details that I believe would stand out in Aziraphale's imagination and mind. He would notice Crowley's eyes, and remember the eccles cakes.

Outside in the street, Crowley's sideburns are once again short, and the filter is cool toned again, indicating we've switched to BDFX or Crowley's POV again. He's angry, he's struck by lightning, and gets in the Bentley to angrily drive off.

NEXT

POV a Trip to Hell and a 25 Lazarii Miracle

[robin-buckely]

Coloring Tutorial

Hello, this tutorial is for the wonderful @djoharrington​​ and those of you wondering how I colored this set. I’m going to be talking about how to color the first gif only to keep this tutorial from getting too long. The other two used the same coloring method with only minor adjustments made to keep them looking similar.

Yes, this scene really is that dark before coloring.

Quick notes on what I’m using:

mpv player for screencapping — not mentioned in tutorial

Photoshop 2021 for editing

I mention mpv player because I’m giffing 4k, and it’s one of the few players I’ve come across that take continuous caps that don’t end up looking washed out. It makes for easier coloring.

This is me coloring literally any Upside Down scene:

Step 1: brighten the hell out of this gif

You can use a throwaway layer to get you started. I used an exposure layer (which I eventually kept and adjusted during the original process of coloring this scene) with end settings of: exposure at +5.25, offset and gamma correction at default.

Now we can see all the beautiful details of Nancy’s face. Well, most of them.

Step 2: photo filter layer 1

The way I offset this horrid blue tint they use for Upside Down scenes is a photo filter layer (several for this particular scene). For now, just the one. Put this below the exposure layer!

This brings a bit of color back to Nancy’s face and warms up the blue tones that are so prevalent in Upside Down scenes.

I don’t change the blending mode, opacity, or fill, just keep as is.

Step 3: curves layer 1

I clicked around a lot with this layer. Mostly in an attempt to get rid of the blue and adding more color to Nancy’s face. Didn’t get the result I was looking for with this layer until I added other layers. But I managed to brighten the gif a little more and add some contrast.

Step 4: hue/saturation layer

Put this layer below the photo filter layer! I used this layer to balance out the colors I pulled from the curves layer. Brought back some warmth/purples by adjusting cyans and blues.

Step 5: selective color layer 1

Ended up a little more purple than I wanted with the hue/sat layer, so I used a selective color layer (set between the hue/saturation layer and the photo filter layer) to get rid of the purple by, again, adjusting cyans and blues.

Make sure to have “Absolute” marked!

This is better! There’s a lot more color that isn’t blue in Nancy’s face now that I can work with and manipulate.

Step 6: color balance layer

This one goes on top of the curves layer (should be the topmost layer at this point). Only adjusted Midtones and Shadows, adding a little more red and yellow in her hair and face.

This looks a lot more natural. Now we just have to brighten it up again.

Step 7: exposure and curves layer 2

I don’t touch the RGB mode on this curves layer. I mostly adjust the Red, Green, and Blue modes by adding a little more red and green while sliding the bottom corner on Blue to add more yellow to the shadows.

Technically, I could stop here if I wanted, but the purple is still pretty prominent in the gif, especially in Nancy’s eyes, and it’s hard to adjust that without adjusting the color of the entire canvas since there’s movement in this gif. If Nancy were more of a still subject here, then layer masks are an option. Alas…

So I adjust the colors and try to get rid of the purple. The gif as a whole kind of looks washed out as well. I want more color here.

Step 8: photo filter layer 2

I set the opacity to 55%. I want warmth, but not too much.

Step 9: selective color layer 2

This is where I end up seeing the most change. Even small adjustments go a long way here.

It’s mostly the cyans, blues, and magentas which makes sense given how overwhelmingly blue this scene was, then almost overwhelmingly purple as I started making adjustments. Red and yellows are important for anything to do with the face and hair. This is where I add a more “natural” shade to Nancy. Literally anything that isn’t fucking blue is an improvement to me at this point, given how it started out.

Blue is back in the background where it belongs and not in Nancy’s face.

I think this is where I originally stopped. Like this looks pretty good to me, but I also wanted to make sure the other two gifs could be colored similarly, and they were for the most part. But there was only so much adjusting I could do to Nancy’s face in the third gif without adjusting the entirety of the scene (and set), so I had to go back and adjust her here to get a similar coloring.

(A lot of this set was back and forth, adjusting the colorings until they matched. It took so long. Especially with the stupid Upside Down visual effects in the background. I’m a bit of a perfectionist, so there were a lot of minor adjustments and a lot of nitpicking until I ended up with a result I liked.)

So last and final step.

Step 10: selective color layer 3

I ended up adding more red to the face, hair, and shadows to keep the first and third gif similar in coloring. And this is where we get our final product.

And the side-by-side comparison again.

Anyway, here you have it. This is the end of the tutorial. I can in no way guarantee that this method will work on other Upside Down scenes (trust me, I’ve tried), but hopefully you’ve learned something!

And hopefully I’ve explained myself well enough that you can apply this :)

[darkworkcourier]

Hi yes I've been enchanted and ensnared by @cyber-nya's Monster 141 AU, so I rolled around in that sandbox like a heathen.

---

Dr. Adler's easy to figure out. Price picks up on it the second he walks into the infirmary on his weekly blood pack acquisition mission. Rather than the usual overly-sterile, Clorox smell, he's hit with a scent wave that screams herb garden. It makes him blink hard, reeling back, covering his nose with his wrist.

Once he recovers a little, he sees stacks of cardboard boxes, all marked up in German—Zauberbücher, Kristalle, Tränke (Zerbrechlich!), among many, many others. Adler stands in the middle of her cardboard castle, holding up two little vials up to the light. She frowns, taps on one, and tilts her head when it... changes color, turning a deep mauve.

Price wavers on whether to leave her to whatever it is she's doing, or interrupt her. He decides on the latter, mostly because he's starving, and they still have another week and a half before he can get anything fresh.

"Doc?" he tries.

"I heard you come in, Captain Price," she says, not bothering to turn her head. The vial in her left hand changes color again to a fetching chartreuse. "One moment. These are very volatile."

"Like exploding kind of volatile, or...?"

"Volatile as in prone to either reverse the order of your internal organs, or potentially cure a hangover." She pauses, squints. "I can't remember which one does what."

That seems incredibly important. Price presses himself against the wall by the door, all too happy to make a break for it if it means his small intestine won't come out his nose. Not that he uses his small intestine for much these days, but he'd rather not experience that.

In the end, she seems to decide which potion does what, setting the chartreuse vial down on her desk, and tucking the other vial (deceptively clear) in a cast iron chest that looks like it was probably made in the medieval period. She locks it twice.

Once that's done, she sighs and turns to face him. "Sorry about that, Captain. What can I do for you?"

"Just swung by to pick up, uh, supplements."

Dr. Adler raises one dark brow. "The blood packs, you mean."

He didn't remember telling her about his status, but seeing her turn their formerly boring infirmary into a witchy apothecary makes him think that it wouldn't matter if he told her or not. "Yeah," he says, rather lamely.

She nods, dusting her hands off on her lab coat, before walking over to the mini-fridge. "Do you have a preference?" she asks.

"No," he replies. "Learned not to be picky."

At that, she suddenly stands up, abandoning the fridge empty-handed. Price watches her with suspicion as she approaches her fortress of boxes with the expression of a woman on a mission. Her hands hover in front of her, going over the boxes like a human metal detector, before finally landing on one of the boxes marked Tränke. She carefully moves it to her desk, rifling through its contents (which sound alarmingly fragile) before lifting a squat, rotund little glass full of wine-dark liquid. As soon as she pops the cork, the smell hits Price like a bus.

Fae blood. Fucking hell, he'd know that stuff anywhere.

Adler winds through her labyrinth of boxes toward him, and it takes a hell of a lot of self control not to rip the bottle out of her hand. Instead, she politely hands it to him before returning her hands to her coat pockets.

"Try that," she says. "It's not completely fresh, and I won't be able to refill all my stock for at least a few weeks, but it should help."

She doesn't need to tell him twice. Price drinks the bottle's contents in one go, only vaguely thinking that maybe he should have asked how much he could drink. Dr. Adler's expression doesn't change, even when the bottle's completely dry, so he assumes it's fine. And it's good. Fae blood is sweet on his tongue, a shimmery white wine to a human's dark claret. It fills him up, gets his head clear, saturates all the colors in the room, and makes his peripheral vision glow. In short, it's fucking awesome.

"Oh," he says. "That's..."

"Stop by when you need more," she cuts in with a shrug. "I have a few other varieties. Some are harder to come by than others, so I'll have to be a bit frugal with those. Give it a couple weeks and I should have better stock."

"Thanks, Doc," Price replies, a little in awe. He hands her the bottle, knowing if he keeps it any longer, he's going to break it open and lick up the remainder.

"Gern geschehen," Dr. Adler replies. She replaces the cork, then turns on heel and goes back to her boxes.

Price decides it's better to leave her be for now. But as he leaves, he gets why she came so highly recommended.

---

As easy as it is to figure out that Dr. Adler is their resident witch-on-call, it's stupid hard to identify what ever Carrion is.

When she leaves a room, the arguments get heated. Gaz swears up and down she's another kind of witch. Maybe a... flight one, if that's a thing. She's good at piloting, having, quoth he, "A weird relationship with gravity." That has to be a witch trait.

No, argues Soap. He smelled something on her, but it wasn't the same as the strange herb-earth-magic scent that follows in Dr. Adler's footsteps. No doubt she's not human, but it irks him with the same sensation of having a word on the tip of his tongue. He knows this. Shapeshifter, maybe? Some kind of weird changeling? But neither of those seem right.

"You sniffed her?" Gaz asks, incredulous.

"Not on purpose!" Soap retorts. "I just so happened to smell her when she walked by!"

"Creep," Gaz sagely confirms.

Soap responds by tackling Gaz with a decidedly dog-like growl.

For the next four weeks, the 141 puzzles over their pilot. She seems blissfully unaware of the way they stare at her, happily in her own little world. She sings to herself, preens when they compliment her after a flight, hops away in little dance steps after every mission.

Then a mission goes wrong.

They're across enemy lines, helo half-drowned in a river, a storm battering the landscape, desperation making monsters of all of them. Soap was the first to lapse, literally tearing through hostiles with otherworldly howls and snarls. Price rips open throats, pupils blown, jaw dripping with blood. Gaz pierces soft body after body with an impossibly-sharp sword, maw burning with embers as his secondary form threatens to come loose.

And Ghost— It's hard to argue with death incarnate, especially if you're on the debating team.

Everyone's so caught up in the fight, in the desperate high-stakes bloodbath, that they don't have time to check on their pilot. She got out of the crash, confirmed she was safe, and that was all.

But then Soap's pinned by gunfire, forced to crawl under rubble just to escape the onslaught. He pauses, paws burning into the mud underneath him, thinking on the best strategy to get through a wall of human hostility. During that dull roar of a lull, something catches his eye.

The first thing he thinks is that is a fucking huge bird.

The second thing isn't so much a thought as it is shock at the sight of a talon the size of a pickax piercing a man's skull like a melon. Wings furiously beat, the sound like a snarl of thunder, and a high-pitched shriek makes Soap's sensitive ears ache.

Only then does he register that it's Carrion. Their Carrie, their happy-go-lucky beam of sunlight pilot who sings made-up songs and dances like a moron when she thinks no one's watching—that Carrie is leaving gouges in their enemy like they're nothing. Her arms are massive wings, black and white tapering to red (just like the bearded vulture on her helmet, and now Soap just feels stupid), legs now scaled and ending in those deadly talons. Her head's the same, except her hair's loose from its braid and falling around her shoulders in a windblown mess, and her mouth opens to reveal two rows of razor-sharp teeth.

She's a fucking harpy.

Soap watches in awe for a moment more before realizing she's still by herself. As badass as it is, he clips around the corner of the rubble pile to attack the group from the opposite end, meeting her in the middle. Once their enemy is just a smear in the mud, he finally looks up at her, huffing once in gratitude.

"No problem," she says, smiling with her wicked teeth. Her voice is higher, crackling like lightning. It's awesome.

Their mission wraps up quick after that, a massacre split five ways, fur and feathers truly flying.

Once they're back at base, beaten and battered but otherwise whole, Carrion slinks away to the showers. The rest of the 141 leaves her be, allows her a private moment to get herself back in order.

And Gaz sums it all up with a firm, "That was badass."

Everyone hums, growls, or hisses in agreement.

[inkher0]

So left is the screencap and right is how I'd color it. I am now going to attempt to explain my choices, forgive me Father

First thing I did was add a purple overlay on the background to bring out some deeper reds and pinks and give Hell more intense shadows.

Then, I added another, dark purple overlay near the bottom of the screen. This adds further depth, and causes the character in the foreground to pop out against the red background.

I then took the idea they had in Helluva Boss- multicolored windows- and applied them here. I made them green and blue to offset the red, and to also draw your attention to the background characters.

The buildings themselves were actually fine on their own, particularly the two buildings in the center frame. However, for the building furthest away from the camera, I lowered the saturation and added more shading to one side so that it, again, adds more depth to the scene.

This brings me to mentioning a couple things I found while just Staring at this screencap:

What the hell is going on with these buildings? The building directly behind the tree is in front of the tall building, but the tall building is in front of the building with the white half-circle windows. So why is the building closest to us seemingly hidden behind the building in the back?

I was staring at this as I was coloring, trying to figure out why these buildings were like this. My husband suggested AI generation, but I HIGHLY doubt viv would get away with that. Then I realized:

The building is copy-pasted. I'm not sure which one was copied, but those buildings are the exact same. Not even flipped. I only tried to focus on the color (as that's the biggest beef I have) but this is kind of ridiculous for someone supposedly professional. I can only hope that it was done because of a last minute change, as that's the only thing that would justify this.

LIKE???? AM I WRONG??? AM I GOING INSANE??? I keep holding my head in my mf hands like "this is someone's passion project, I should be nicer about its faults and move on with my life" BUT I KEEP SEEING CLIPS AND ALL I CAN THINK IS "too red" AND I'M LOSING MY FUCKING MARBLES

[chaoscheebs]

It's Midnight, Cinderella, chapter 2

(Chapter 1) - (Chapter 2) - (Chapter 3) - (Fic Tag)

------------------

How did such a good night go so wrong?

Sure, it had been a little awkward at first; Otogi had promptly ditched him to flirt with (admittedly pretty hot) girls, leaving him stranded in a sea of stuffy people in suits he didn’t have the first clue how to approach on his own. But then Seto Kaiba—and boy, was it painfully obvious it was Seto Kaiba, even with the mask—approached him first! Without prompting! Because Kaiba’s apparently into the Ouji look? Regardless of why, it had been… nice. Very nice, to just leave all the drama and troubles and bad blood at the door and talk to him (flirt with him oh god why did he do that) like a normal person. Then it had led to card games in a private room and… Honestly, why should he have been surprised that it was like foreplay to Kaiba?

Leave the masks on, they silently agreed, let’s put aside real life for a while and enjoy the moment.

He could have revealed who he was at any time, but he didn’t. His thoughts were only how good it felt to be in Kaiba’s arms, how good it felt to have Kaiba’s attention on him and solely him for once in his life, how good it would feel to have those long, elegant legs wrapped around him, and thought absolutely nothing about the potential fallout afterward.

In short, Yugi Muto got carried away, thought with his dick, and that’s why he fled home as soon as Kaiba was asleep to go dye his hair back to normal at four in the morning, quietly thanking whatever deities existed that he hadn’t styled his hair like normal and left it in its natural state. No amount of trying out a different hair color would have hid that hairstyle, that’s for sure. Jounouchi’s gonna be upset that the perfect bleaching he helped Yugi with was already being covered up, but better covered up than the alternative.

Shit. The alternative. What was he going to do now, Yugi asked himself, slumping on the couch while he waited for the 20 minutes for the dye to set to be up. What if Kaiba figures out it was him? How is he going to react? Is he going to get fired? Or worse, barred from being involved with the major players in the gaming industry? Is he going to have to focus on the indie scene, or worse, have to take over the game store?! Is it too late to follow Anzu to New York and start over there?

“Yugi? What are you doing up at this hour?”

Yugi snapped out of his anxiety spiral-induced reverie at the sound of his grandpa’s voice behind him. “Wh-what are you doing up at this hour?!”

“I asked you first, m’boy,” Grandpa asked. He gingerly poked at Yugi’s dye-saturated hair, realized what he just touched, then wiped his dye-stained finger off on the towel around Yugi’s neck. “Didn’t you just change this the other day?”

“Oh, I, uh…” Yugi wracked his brain for a quick but plausible answer and mercifully found one. “I forgot I had a piercing appointment tomorrow and want to get this done now so I won’t forget about it being there and get dye in an open wound!”

Grandpa frowned, clearly still suspicious but unable to think of a good rebuttal at this hour. “More piercings? You’re certain your workplace is all right with that?”

Yugi smirked. “I have a company-wide e-mail from Seto Kaiba himself from the last time someone complained about someone getting piercings, telling all management that he, quote, ‘doesn’t care how much metal someone has in their face if it’s not impacting their ability to work, stop wasting his and everyone else’s time with this.’ Saved it to my computer and printed it out too~”

Grandpa laughed and patted Yugi’s shoulder. “Ho, ho! That’s my boy!” He paused for a moment, then let out a bit of a sigh. “Anyway, don’t forget to get some rest when you’re done with this, all right? Staying up all night isn’t good for you.”

“I will, Grandpa,” Yugi lied. Like hell he was getting any sleep when he was in panic mode like this. Thankfully, his grandfather took him at his word, but not without one more worried glance before leaving.

Once Grandpa was out of sight, Yugi started to flop down on one side on the couch, but suddenly remembered the hair dye and caught himself before the wet hair touched anything. His life was difficult enough at the moment; he doesn’t need Mom complaining about dye stains on the furniture on top of it. Again. He settled instead for slouching forward, staring at the floor, until it occurred to him to pull out his phone from his pocket and stare at that instead.

He really should talk to someone about this, but who? Anzu would commiserate with him, but it would be early afternoon for her off in New York; she’d probably be at a rehearsal or something. There’s also Jounouchi, but hearing him talk shit about Kaiba was not what Yugi needed right now. Honda, maybe? Yugi shook his head; they’re close enough, but not close enough to wake him up over this disaster. Bakura’s right out; he’s the god-king of wandering into trouble and making it everyone else’s problem himself. There’s always Hanasaki, he supposed, but he was prepping for midterms or something and did not need this added to his load either…

Finally, he asked himself, Otogi, maybe? It’s his damn fault he was even at the damn party anyway. But no, Yugi decided, remembering the circle of women surrounding the man before he went off with Kaiba. There’s no way Otogi was alone and he wasn’t interrupting that. At best, he’d get an invitation to join, and any other day that’d be tempting, but again, this was not what Yugi needed right now.

Yugi heaved a sigh and flopped backwards, leaning heavily against the back of the couch, head reclined back as far as it would comfortably go. He thought for a split second about what to do, but then he remembered. The hair dye.

FUCK.

He leapt to his feet and spun around to see a great big splotch of purplish pink, then bolted to the bathroom to get a wet washcloth to hopefully clean it up before it set. Dye job first, he told himself, then worry about what to do next. It’s not like he didn’t have all day to figure something out, after all.

------------------

Meanwhile, back at the hotel room, Seto Kaiba was sitting on the edge of the bed, pondering his next move.

He had been sleeping more peacefully than he had in years, but when he turned over in his sleep, his arm fell onto… nothing. The other man’s lithe form was no longer next to him, nor any trace of his warmth left in his place. A quick check of the room and adjoining bathroom proved he was no longer there, period, and a brief check of his belongings showed nothing was missing, save for his mask—he presumed the man grabbed the wrong one in his haste—and, infuriatingly enough, the business card the man had given him.

At least corporate espionage seemed to be off the table as a motive for the man’s quick retreat, Seto thought; with everything that’s happened in his life, a honeypot operation targeting him wasn’t out of the question. Not that he thought anyone would be bold enough to try, with how utterly apathetic he was about… well, being with anyone that way, to be frank.

Which, honestly, was what made this hurt, and what he was blaming for the urge to fight his cynical first impulse to let this matter drop and chalk it up to a passing whim and people being shitty yet again.

He growled quietly, running a hand through his hair. What was wrong with him; why couldn’t he just let this go as an obvious mistake, a momentary lapse of judgment? The man clearly wasn’t taking this as seriously as he was, if the bastard could just run away like this. Still, something nagged at him, something he couldn’t quite put a finger on, but he was very clearly missing something in all of this and it was absolutely infuriating.

He picked up his pants from the floor, fished out his phone, and opened a notes app. He needed a guest list, he typed into it, and started typing out a description of what the man looked like and what he could remember the man saying to him. Also, a description of the man his target was the plus one for, not that he got a terribly long or clear look at him. Still, combined with the guest list, what he did notice could be illuminating. If he could find the “date” that ditched the target, maybe he could get the target’s damned name.

For better or worse, Seto Kaiba was a man who, when his personal curiosity took over, could not be stopped until it was satisfied, and this was going to be no exception to that.

[vt-scribbles]

Color Theory Confusion [long post/call for help]

There is a concept in color theory [it might have a different name?] that NOBODY talks about/teaches that I cannot wrap my head around, and it frustrates the hell out of me.

SO every video or w/e I find is like 'this is complimentary colors! Tri-whatever color palettes! blah blah blah' and I'm like YES. I know how to PAIR UP color types! But they're only! Talking about HUES!!!

They're talking about THIS:

Like! cool! I know how to use THIS part! I know my bullshit of like. All these colors technically work together. [READ MORE]

But these are all at full saturation. My knowledge stops here. And this is where I get frustrated. they'll whip out palettes like this:

Monochromatic:

Complementary:

Etc:

AnD THIS IS WHERE I GET GRUMPY. I understand 'this has red and blue so it works, this has different shades of green and blue so it works' but HOW DID YOU CHOOSE THE VALUES? THE SATURATION??? Each of these palettes has varying values and saturation for each color, and it looks great! SO HOW DO YOU FIGURE /THAT/ PART OUT??? Why doesn't anyone talk about this part of color theory? I can only ever find people talking about how to pair HUES. I'm going insane.

HOW DO THESE COLORS GET PICKED??

Sources: Girl and the Glim

Sources: Magnum Bullets

Some of these palettes have SO many colors, but they're completely cohesive. And like! I understand why the HUES work together. Yellow and pink and blue, yellow and red, pink and green and brown, etc.

But all of these palettes have massive ranges of value and saturation. And that's why they work. But how do you figure that stuff out??? I hate trial-and-erroring my way through every project. Or worse, trying to make palettes for model sheets. I just don't get why I can't seem to find info/teachings on this specific aspect. It's like every 'color theory' video stops at 'here's how to pair up hues on the color wheel' or completely skips over this step like you should just. Know what to do.

Like, let's say I have a picture I wanna do. It's a forest scene. so I go 'okay, blue yellow and green. Those work together.' And I start with full saturation. But okay, I don't want full saturation... I want a muted palette. If I just choose randomly inside blue, yellow, and green, I get shit like this:

only ONE of these even remotely looks okay! And that's cuz they're ALL desaturated. But then look at this piece!

This does exactly what I WANTED to come up with, but like. How do you land on these colors? How do you pick them?

Bah

I am lost and confused and this is something seriously holding me back in my art. I'm so tired of doing Local colors on a character and then shading them with effects layers. I want to know how to /color them/ to be cohesive with a background. Or just... how to make colors for a background in the first place.

[tarisilmarwen]

Ahsoka "Fallen Jedi" Liveblog

Let's go let's go let's go let's go let's goooooooooooooo!

Oh I'm so excited for this I already know there are Developments.

Hype hype hype hype.

Oh we're starting off with complete silence are we? Okay.

Sabine trying to raise Hera. :(

Ahhhh yes it's the "Ahsoka and Sabine butting heads about saving Ezra versus stopping Thrawn" convo Sabezra fandom predicted.

"Can I count on you?" Low blow Ahsoka, recalling Ezra's own words.

"I know how much Ezra means to you." *falls into this line, dies*

Oh don't let Huyang get shot, come on now, you already had him get blasted once.

Buncha trailer shots in this episode I'm guessing.

"Stay together. You always did better that way, in my opinion." Ha ha ha this would be a sweet line if we had ever actually SEEN Ahsoka and Sabine working together. *grumbles*

Hera going off by herself to go help Sabine and Ahsoka lolol. That little face she makes when she says, "Watch me."

Baby Jacen is still super precious.

The GHOOOOOOOOOOSSST!

This sequence would have been the perfect spot to drop Zeb in, you know. Just saying.

Go girls go, go, go, you need to get on that ship before it leaves!

And it's my favorite new villain couple.

If Shin could have a bit more personality she'd be more interesting but "feral" is wearing thin.

OH AND NOW WE HAVE A TICKING CLOCK DEVICE.

There were people complaining that this moment where Ahsoka wipes Marrok was lifted from "Twin Suns" but in context... no it's just Dave's usual thing for cool samurai finishers.

Oh wow Shin looks extremely unnerved at Marrok dissipating into green Nightsister mist.

Did... Morgan take all the guards and droids with her? Just leaving Baylan there by himself to handle Ahsoka huh? What a bitch.

"One must destroy in order to create." Nooooooooo they really don't Baylan, that's grade A horseshit.

And stinks of Empire and Sith apologism.

The map is gorgeous. Wish they'd turn the saturation and contrast up just a smidge more so the colors could POP.

Oh this music cue is great!

YES! LET BAYLAN CUT LOOSE. Man is a beast.

Ahsoka's trying to disengage long enough to get the map. :((((

Ha ha, nice. Mandalorian trick.

Ooooof the map burned Ahsoka's hand?

Ahsoka where's your shoto blade?

Right, like Sabine's dinky little blaster is gonna do anything to that map, sure Ahsoka. You just burned your hand on how super overheated it was and all it was doing was generating hyperspace coordinates for a cross-galactic jump, you think a shot from a small firearm is gonna pierce it?

Oooooh that angle-back closed-eye look from Baylan... he's telepathically reading her like a book isn't he?

"Your family died on Mandalore because your Master didn't trust you." WELL I'M JUST GOING TO PATENTLY IGNORE THAT BECAUSE NO FILONI, YOU CANNOT JUST DROP THAT IN LIKE THAT.

Getting real tired of character motivations being reveals and not outright stated from the start.

ALSO WHAT EVEN THE HELL IS HE TALKING ABOUT???!???

THIS WOULD HAVE BEEN REALLY NICE TO ACTUALLY SEE, OR YOU KNOW, TALK ABOUT BEFORE THIS MOMENT.

Anyway as I said, excising this bit entirely from my personal canon, Clan Wren is fine, they're just in hiding like all the other Mandalorian clans.

"And I... to serve a greater good." Ohhhhhhhhhhh I see what you did there, nice paralleling Baylan to Thrawn.

SABINE CHOOSES EZRA.

(I mean I knew it was coming because I was spoiled but still.)

Sabine, Sabine, my poor heartbroken babygirl, this is such a human choice, it's not the choice a Jedi should make but then Sabine isn't a Jedi, I maintain that this is all still playacting and cope that Ahsoka is indulging.

Sabine is falling into the classic Attachment trap but also there are no good choices here. She could try to destroy the map, but I seriously don't think it would work, and then Baylan would just kill her and take the map back anyway.

Maybe she could run but with their ship damaged she wouldn't make it far, she'd have to hide in the woods and avoid Shin and Baylan and whoever else she's stranded and fight them all off by herself for who knows how long until maybe Hera gets there. And she has no way of knowing if Hera's coming.

Oh ouch, I thought Sabine was having a "What have I done?" reaction to handing Baylan the map, but no, Shin is just choking her.

HERA MADE IT.

See it takes Baylan deliberate sustained direct contact with his lightsaber blade to destroy the map, no way was Sabine's blaster gonna do shit to it.

SABINE DID NOTHING WRONG, I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL.

Again, guys, this would have been the perfect sequence to have Zeb in.

Uhhhhhhhhh I would move away from the ring if I were y'all.

HO JEEZ.

OH BOY.

WELP.

Chopper sounds really unnerved.

THE WORLD BETWEEN WORLDS. THE STAR VOID.

Unless it's a weird-ass Force vision lol. Which is still possible.

Yeeeeeeeah I'm going with Force vision, Anakin should be blue and glowing, shouldn't he? Unless things work differently in here.

The Imperial March is not reassuring.

Okay well... that was a thing.

I'm starting to wish Deborah Chow had been showrunner for this, Filoni is doing... okay-ish (not really) but I really think this story needs and deserves a director willing to go all-in on the emotional resonance and beats of the story.

Which isn't to say the Kenobi show didn't have its problems (ho ho boy could I list the nitpicks and writing issues I had with it) but Ahsoka isn't quite reaching the highs it needs. Everything is way more subdued that I think it should be. I don't know how much of this is the writing, how much is the short mini-series format, how much is the cinematography or the directing.

THAT BEING SAID I AM HERE FOR SABINE MISSING EZRA SO MUCH SHE SACRIFICES HERSELF AND THE MAP FOR THE CHANCE TO FIND HIM.

See everything about her motivations makes so more sense if she's in love with him, sorry Filoni, the ship is still sailing.

Baylan got a bit more characterization here and got marginally more interesting, while Shin just... continues to be wet paper. RIP Marrok we hardly knew ye. Hope they explain the green mist shit soon.

Natasha's shoulders must be sore from carrying this show lol. Someone please let Sabine hug Ezra, she will feel so much better.

[miks-fantrolls]

Hey mik! what's the process you use to make lands? They all look super amazing btw

i follow this tutorial but i dont follow it word-for-word

here i can do a quick lil thang

i like to use photoshop for this, idk how to translate it to other programs

i start w a canvas 1000x1000pixels, that way u can get a lotta detail in and then it looks even better when u inevitably shrink it for whatever ur using it for

use shape tool to make a circle. hold shift + click while dragging the tool to make a perfectly symmetrical circle. (or dont im not ur mom)

merge the shape layer down onto a raster layer.

turns into

now ur basically just adding textures n shit. i like doing it Hussie Style and using google images to add texture, basically just taking that shit and bastardizing the hell out of them through fucking around w/ the contrast/exposure/colors/etc. u can also use the photoshop generative tool to generate random texture shit (i love putting in nonsensical prompts to confuse the hell out of it--my favorite results are the really shitty ones that look like terrible collages), but its the same process for each one.

lets make up a planet. Land of Horns and Thorns.

i like to use satellite images to get that planet-y texture. i try to think of a relevant land-type. thorns are triangular, so are mountains. lets grab this image

next what we're about to do is called "transformative use"

copy+paste image on a new layer

right click on the image's layer, select "create clipping mask"

this should be the result:

but its a little flat. so lets make it rounder. i use the Liquefy tool in photoshop, but im sure theres other ways of doing it.

click filter > liquefy, then make sure u have the bloat tool selected. now bloat that mfer to ur liking. its ok if it looks a bit shit right now. when uve bloated it as much as u want, click ok. now u have smth like this

now start messing w/ filters and colors. i try to ascertain the mood im going for with a planet. Land of Horns and Thorns sounds a bit whimsical, but maybe subtly dangerous? so, translating that to color, maybe it's fun and colorful, but like, in the same way those deadly poisonous frogs are fun and colorful. maybe there will be some dark pits as well. lets see what we can do

i start w/ messing around w/ contrast. go to image > adjustments > brightness/contrast. fuck around w it to ur liking. this is what it looks like now

already we're starting to get some of those dark pits i wanted. lets make the colors pop a little more by messing w the exposure.

u can also mess w/ the vibrance, hue, saturation, etc. basically all those lil tools in the image > adjustments are ur best friends now. i like to increase the saturation to get that shit-jpeg look u see in homestuck sometimes

now create a new layer. we go back to google images. im gonna look up some closeups of thorns

this works fine. copy & paste. create clipping mask. bastardize the image however u want, similar to the first one. using the liquefy tool helps to get shit into place where u want it.

made it a little more abstract.

played w/ the color settings. i dont want this one to be as vibrant b/c im going to be using the layer modes. however, i do want to posterize the hell outta this

ok i like how it looks in luminosity mode.

however, i kinda wanna change the colors of the bottom layer now. lets use a gradient map (image > adjustments > gradient map). just hit ok when the prompt comes up, we can detail it in the side panel.

if u just click the actual gradient bar itself, itll open up the gradient editor. there u can make ur own custom gradient and specify the colors n shit. theres also a bunch to choose from.

so, i think that looks pretty fucking cool. i love the contrast, but i kind of want to see what it looks like in other colors too. we head to the hue/saturation tool.

there, i like that. a bright, poisonous color with the threatening blotches of red. now lets make this mfer look like a planet. merge everything into one layer if ya want

the gradient tool is now ur best friend. i like to fuck w the gradients, one of my favorite effects is making a sorta halo gradient (basically just copy the opacity controls i have, im sure u can also google how to do it) and merge the gradient to an empty layer

and, yknow, just mess with the settings

u can add gradients to make it look more like a 3d object. mess w the colors and settings n shit

we add some clouds now. i just use 1px pencil tool. try to use the curvature of the planet to inform how u draw the clouds. think about how u want them to be formed (swirling around the center? stretched out? etc) and think about what u think the atmosphere would be like on ur planet. a completely barren planet like mercury may have no clouds at all. or maybe its like jupiter, where its nothing but clouds? also think about the anemology of the planet. how do the winds form, what directions do they go?

i think the Land of Horns and Thorns sounds like a place that would have a good amount of thunderstorms, so lets make the clouds black. mountains are pretty windy, so maybe the clouds will sporadic but dense.

fuck around w/ it til ur tired of looking at it. then make that fucker smaller (the average mspa panel is 650x450. unless ur planet is taking up the entire page, u can probably get away with smt smaller.) **make sure u have interpolation set to bicubic or nearest neighbor.

and then ur done.

side notes: literally do whatever u want tbh, u can do as many layers as u want, use whatever tools u want. thats pretty much the basic format ive got.

[01010010-01100100]

gotta give the biggest #respect to you feltcaverns you sure roasted my applesauce over a campfire good and plenty

Thank you. Finally, some god damn credit.

you guys are obviously at it lyrically on the public forum but i gotta know do yall ever throw down verses behind the frankly unbelievably saturated curtain

HELLO!!!! HELLO HELLO HELLO HELloo hello you messaged me........ oh my godhshhgfhdfjdsfka fshello hello for messaging me. you are the one who sent me a thing... OH!!!! yes ys yes yes.

you are asking about curtians... did you know that in the curtsins of cave johnson they pout moon rocks in there? and now he is singing about lemonsade. lemons like the ones on the tree. with the whores O_O

hello did you know about.... singing. i sing sometimes but not to my friends because i dont think my voice is good. i dont remmeber if i had a voice? but i sing onto the words and it becomes music. i think thats sort of a magic in away

you also didnt forget to ask about my whoooooooooaaaa cant say that one!!!!! ehehehe

hello you are eeee the first person to message me on the wbesite. nobody has before.... did you know that????

not a long time!!! i mean not for a long time. fuck. fuck i am so bad at typing thats why i like doing it the other way. mmhmmhhhghrgfg

they say im the favorite now but it was through being mean... i;m tired of being mean i just want to fuck and suck on plushrumps.com. yknow? i think you know :D

hellO!!!!! and thank you for your message.

:)

holy shit

okay gimme a sec i gotta whip out the old reading glasses for this one

ok refrances those are always good ten out of ten from old rd here

man i played portal 2 like three times

and the first time while in old aperture knocking over old sheet metal with my boingo pogo stick boots

it was literally like a bouncy house with all the colored splooge of quick and bounce and the third boring cum joke

got nauseous from all the camera shenanigans

was tossed around flipped about except chell cant really flip in game thats more pre rendered cutscene crap

anyway we should hook you up with vocal chords sometime what do you think of vocalpids

aw man not p typo

everyone hates p typo

vocaloid thats better

O_O

i dont know who that is? thank you for talking about that. i learn everyh day. you dont know actually what this guy's talking about. you thought you had something on the but it's not actually there.

it might be best to exist this conversation? but noooooooo!!!! i want to talk more but i dont knowwwwww it's a lot and confusing. O_O

bottle rocket 6????? no ive never been there, except the times i have. you dont actually want to be put back there. it's okay, but it's kind of lonely. you aren't a spy, areyou? like from teamfortress 2. gaben

nah i was more of a fusionfall kid myself

i have never heard of video games

when the almighty dell would actually run the damn thing anyways

what the hell

seriously

let me explain to you a thing alright lemme nab one of those longplays of portal 2 really open your world

Yo, behave. Otherwise this shit gets cut off. Not exactly in the state to get scrambled again, and I'm getting a headache already.

Fuck.

Okay, please don't send confusing shit like that.

I can't read it, let alone read it.

oops my bad man

id ask what set you off but i think that would just add another lobotomy to the pile

should i be talking more about plush assholes or something what is the vibe im heading for here im not jiving to hurt you honestly

noooooooo... i can answer that!!! it was all stuff ive never heard of . and i am exposed to a lot of that but thats too much to much too much!!! and it was a lot.... O_O

i havent actually never heard of video games ive heard of a coupel video games. like fortnite. stacey fortnite is my best friend. you aren't sure what fortnite is, but you think it's a video game? you just hear about it on the website.

hello. i am okay not talking about pluhsurmsps.com but it;'s hard because there are more rules. im not allowed to know a lot of stuff... even though i see it and its confusing to me. okay? thank you :) its like when mario gets the star.

To translate, keep the anachronisms to a minimum. I'm not dumb enough to miss the signals, but I'm trying to stay dumb enough to not have to worry about it. Got it?

got it crystal as meth

I LOVE CRYSTAL METH!!!!!! HELLO WALTER WHITE can we be all sortso f things together. you arent actually sure what that is eaither but its fine because it fits the bill. quack

oh god dammit i wasnt even referencing that guy

my bad

shit what year should i be heading for

Breaking Bad came out in 2008, you're fine.

ok cool

waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh hello . i dont know :) its okay plushrump content is eternal and can be shared and downloaded in 1080p with a premium scubscripstion? but if we catch you reuoploading the H0TT3ST V1DS onto othwer porn sites then wuhhhhh oh . wuh oh!!! its no good. :O

hello you arennnnnt actually a subscripber? but thats okay im allowed to be social and and with it and ferioucsious. thank you mwahahahaha

absolutely lets get downright rapport-ical

i have been actually just typing and backspacing references ad infiniteezums the past few and reckoning with that whole mess

but yeah besides that im about to settle down for the day i reckon

you guys hooked up to anything or is plushrump like your giant fishbowl

> absolutely lets get downright rapport-ical yessssss. yessssss maybe not that last word. O_O or maybe yes.... i dont want to think about that fucking thing !!!!!!!! hello

woaahhahhhahhhh it's the internet!!! and you are filled with so many connections outbound inbound gmaildotprotonmail dotcom. it's almost like thew hole thing is at your fingertits. you dont remember fingertits being a thing but youre glad they are now. :) whehehehee

did you remember what it was like back there? up there in the sky? no, i didnt think you did. that's alright, because i dont remember eitehr. its equal partitioning, a give and take. running and running as the heavens pour hot death open, and the caverns seem like the only safe respit you've got.

is anyone else there? noooooooo thats bad. thank you for not reading that. oh boy

my eyes are shut dont even worry about it

if there is literally anything i value as a strider now its some actual fucking privacy

  my eyes arent because im looking at the hottest vids on plushrumps.com. did you know they have fozzie bear anal fisting. woooooooooow!!!! aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa i cant believe it im bursting at the ssssss whaoat athat a new message??? i am not typing fast enough.... O_O

yeah i got some feisty fingers

always chomping at the bit and shit

my graspnubs dont chomp at anything because they are finger tits.... but i dont think thats what it means eiher. have you seen the video before??? on your makrs... ... oh thats wrong? okay

thank you for letting me know :)

broadcast yourself slash watch ? v = Y7WtkdLQ6PM

if tits could bite woah mama id be worried for the baby

oh shit free movie

yeah i love this one

is this you

O_O

yeah god damn

you literally captured my entire essence in this picture

and lookie here theres the whole family

right down to the ridiculous symbols on our old shirts

is there not a dirk in this one? notably missing some dirk and hal here

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa no no no no no no shh not that topic. shhhh . id ont want to hear about the new stuff :O i want to smoke weed andn make out with a hot babe made from FELT!!!!!! ouggghgh yeah it is like she is toking it up. but actually she is stroking it up on our newest video. check out mrs muffet on plushrump.com she is called that because she likes vaginas.

whats a vagina dont actually tell me i just wanted to say that i dont know.

yeah alright word word

yeah im gonna just let mrs muffet do her thing

this pictures delightful though

catch me right click saving

okay cool. :) we are so coooooool. you are cool? i feel like you are cool.

yeah so cool

we are the coolest you and me

NOOOOO thats exclusive property of plsuhrrusmrp.s....... the valueeeeee will go down. if you right click save. mewo

aw damn alright

meow meow sorry i misspelled meow.

thank you.

no problem anything for my pal feltcaverns

that isnt my name............. you know that already dont you!!!

Nope, never mind.

Alright.

One moment.

alright take your time dude ill just be sitting here

ehehe. sorry. HELLO!!!!!!!!! have you susbcriped to plushrumrmrsps totcom?

naw

wb tho

was i gone? i dont think so.

nah im just fuckin with you

youa re being mean for saying things like thjat....... you arent a vey good freind!!! frotship is like that.... it has its upsa nd downs.

im all about that altitude

yeahhhhh buddy!!!!!!!!!!!

like riding a dragon and through the sky. and it's out there, floating in the veil, glittering gleaming golden. you see it in your dreams and you can't wait to go back. Holy shit, okay.

I think I'm gonna end this conversation here, if that's chill?

yeah i think thats good

sorry dude

Not that you can't ever send another message. Just letting things rest tonight.

It's cool. Just taxing on the CPU. Letting the temps cool off before trying anything like this again.

gotcha take it easy

Oh, and, uh. You've got my permission to publicize whatever you want from what we talked about today. I think my "friends" feel the same.

publicize?

i dont follow

On your blog or something, I mean. If you want to. Fuck, sorry. Long night. Ignore what I said if that's better, my decisionmaking processors are not fucking functioning tonight.

[adobe-outdesign]

DOG! JUST TALK ABOUT A DOG POKÉMON! ANY DOG POKÉMON!/j (aka I’ve just now realized you’ve also talked about Fidough)

(I'm going to do the Electrike line solely because it's one of the few dog (not wolf or hyena) Pokemon I haven't reviewed)

Electrike is an odd little thing. The head is really strange in particular, with lobed three segments (I guess two of them are ears, though they definitely don't look like it). Green is also an usual color for an electric-type, which, points for doing something different, but I'm not sure why they felt the need to change it instead of just using the blue from Manectric. Hell, the shiny actually does already anyway:

It also feels a bit vague and hard to grasp conceptually. The thunderbolt across the eye and spikes along the tail kind of convey electricity, but I don't know what they're going for beyond that. Supposedly it's based off of the raijū, a blue wolf (more obvious in its evo) with yellow electricity, but it doesn't look like one much beyond that.

I think it might've made more sense to make it blue, remove that half stripe from the back (or continue it down into the tail, I don't care, just don't have it end partway down the back), and maybe raise the middle lobe up so the ears and lobe form a vague lightning-bolt shape that would be mimicked by the yellow streak. That might at least help it convey something a big more clearly. As is, I kind of like it for how odd it is, but it's hard to remember it exists at times.

On the one hand, Manectric at least makes the raijū thing a bit clearer... but on the other hand, the awkwardness is unfortunately increased by a lot. None of these elements really go together; you have the super straight head point with the yellow stopping at the neck in weird shapes, the random fur on the front paws and only the front paws that also has no defined shape and leaves a weird blue band on the toes, the spikes on the haunches, which go in a different direction than the ones on the head, and the tail, which goes in a different direction than either of those two.

There's also just one or two more questionable things in there as well; for example, the random hole in the side of the head (is that supposed to be an ear?? that's not how dog ears work) and the incredibly small hind body with a completely messed up haunch (mentally make the yellow bits blue and remove the spikes and you'll get what I mean).

I think that if all the elements—head, haunches, and tail—pointed backwards, if you removed the chest fur and yellow fur on the front, and if you made the yellow accents flow more naturally, there could be an interesting design here.

Thankfully, the mega helps a lot here. Don't get me wrong, it's goofy looking as hell, but... well, so was Manectric, and at least this design gives a clear visual to latch on to, a clearer indication of typing, and a much more streamlined design with sense of flow.

Visually, the yellow bits are now all focused on the lightning-bolt back (and the front legs; still not fond of that, but they probably felt obligated to keep them seeing as they were on the original design). The colors are also more saturated. Everything flows backward, reducing some of the awkwardness of the original design, and the whole thing now has a sense of movement instead of being stiff. It reminds me a bit of a aardwolf, though I doubt that was intentional:

I do think that the back lightning bolt is too large and could've stood to be about 20% smaller; the red nails also distract from the eye. Here's a sloppy five-minute edit to show what I mean (original on left; ignore the weird looking ear placement on the edit):

While I didn't edit it, I also think the middle segment shouldn't have gone down past the body, instead ending at the same spot the thrid does, and the ear should be folded back to match the same diagonals as the lightning bolt. However, the mega is still a substantial improvement over the original design overall.

I really wish that the mega had been its own evolution. Many mega designs look too similar to the originals to work as evolutions; but in this case, the design has been altered so radically as to basically be its own thing. All you'd need to do is change the colors (as Electrike has a different color, and the line would be uneven if it was one green and two blue); maybe white with blue lightning to reference the raijū thing. It's not like there was any reason it shouldn't evolve, after all.

So overall, kind of an awkward line with a massively improved mega that unfortunately isn't around any more. Ain't that just the way.

[apocalypticdemon]

got this a few days ago but was in academic paper hell, so i'm sorry for the delay! thanks for the tag, @clandestinegardenias and @sunlaire!

do you make your bed? i definitely should, and i absolutely do not lol

what's your favorite number? i've had a personal fondness for 13 ever since i was a kid, but i also really enjoy the number 117. for nerd reasons

what is my job? that's. a moving target tbh. during the school year, i worked as a TA at my university, while working weekends at a coffee shop as a baker. now that it's summer, i'm going to have to get a second job, but the jury's still out on what that's going to be.

if you could go back to school would you? i am currently in school, and i'm hoping to get a PhD, so i don't think i'll be going back to school right now, lol. but in a hypothetical future, just to do whatever? absolutely. i would get another bachelors in neuroscience or some other field of biology, probably for medical research.

can you parallel park? absolutely. but i fuckin hate it, lol, and being on the road makes me nervous, so i avoid it at all costs. but i can do it

a job you had that would surprise people? dunno if i have anything in my history that has been surprising. i guess the lab technician one is kind of the outlier.

do you think aliens are real? yeah, but it's probably microbial life of some sort.

can you drive a manual car? i learned the basics, but all i can really do is drive in circles in a parking lot in second gear. my mom tried to get me to drive it on the road and i got scared, lol, so i never fully learned how to do it.

what's your guilty pleasure? honestly it's TV from the 70s. begrudgingly i have to admit i like CHiPs. Emergency! is a non-guilty pleasure, though. love that one with my whole heart. but a lot of older stuff has some... pretty not great politics involved, but i still really enjoy them. also have to admit that i really like those terrible Dan Brown movie adaptations, lol

tattoos? i want at least 3 and have plans, but i haven't found an artist yet to get them. but i don't have any as of yet.

favorite color? tbh it depends on my mood. the goth in me says that it's a deep burgundy or a velvety black, but really deep greens or very vivid sky blue is also very good. saturated jewel tones as a color class are my jam, i guess.

favorite type of music? this is a cruel question to ask me. i have so many. i've been on a real rammstein/alt metal/nu-metal kick lately, but i also really go for folk, hard rock, prog rock, and 1980s new wave music. but i'll listen to just about anything. if i'm going for orchestral music, i have to say minimalism all the way. i adore the work of philip glass and arvo part

do you like puzzles? absolutely, in any form. jigsaw puzzles are really soothing and engaging, but i also adore puzzle games. i've revisited the Portal franchise lately, and i have a game series called The Room (not the movie...) that's only a series of puzzles. they can be frustrating, but i adore them

any phobias? i am a deeply anxious person, but i am petrified of fire. it's kind of unreasonable. bugs and germs also make me lock up really hard, too, even though i can rationalize my way through them. but all of them freak me out really badly.

favorite childhood sport? oh it was definitely competitive swimming. soccer was really really fun, but i miss being on the swim team. though i did like 5 sports growing up and truly would just love to have joints that would let me do any of them again

do you talk to yourself? oh yeah. internal and external monologue, baby. my college friends got to be on a call yesterday and listen to me talk my way through editing papers, lol. i talk to myself while doing laundry, cleaning, just walking through the house or from my car to my place. truly, i never shut up

what movie(s) do you adore? there are a lot, honestly. Castle in the Sky, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Crimson Peak, Pacific Rim, The Nice Guys, and For A Few Dollars More are probably the movies i've watched the most. also literally any Dan Bluth film. the animation is always so gorgeous

coffee or tea? definitely tea. i love herbal teas, but i can't do caffeine, so like. there are only so many things i can drink now, lol

first thing you wanted to be growing up? paleontologist. hands down. i wanted to be a paleontologist from age like 6 until 15 or 16. then i had to do a research project on what jobs are growing and found out there aren't many job openings. so i pivoted to music. and then music academia. lol. lmao (i say it cynically, but i genuinely love what i'm doing, it's just funny to me)

this was lengthy, but if you want to participate, consider yourself tagged!

[blueskittlesart]

Your thoughts on the phantom thief’s costumes?

oh this should be fun!! i included akechi and sumire also because i love talking so the more the better

joker: solid 9/10. easy to remember and draw which i appreciate. not a lot of color variation except for the red gloves, which i actually like ON HIM but i generally dislike the bright primary colored gloves as a common motif among all the thieves because i think it hinders most of their designs, with joker being the one exception.

ryuji: 8/10. harder to remember than joker's but i also don't draw him that much. again not much color variation but like. they're thieves. that's normal and makes sense. i love the metal spinal cord detailing on the back of his jacket!! my only real problem with it is the yellow gloves and red scarf. i think if the gloves HAD to be yellow then the scarf should have also been yellow to match, because since they're so similar in terms of saturation they end up fighting for attention.

ann: 0/10 god i hate this outfit. i literally cant stand it it's so god awful. the fact that they put a 16 year old girl in a skintight cat bodysuit with a boob window is one thing but like. they couldnt even make it look good. the pink gloves clash with the monotone red of the rest of the outfit. the boots are ugly and don't match the aesthetic of the catsuit. the zippers on the suit are clearly meant to add visual interest but just look stupid and impractical. NOT TO MENTION she breaks the theme of a primarily black outfit that (most of) the rest of them have going despite her codename being panther, a BLACK CAT??? why is it red. if i could kill the designers of this outift i would

yusuke: 6/10. would be infinitely better if it was a shirt and pants instead of a bodysuit. also the giant sleeves look stupid as hell <3 once again the bright blue gloves suck ass but at least they're SLIGHTLY brought in to the rest of the design with the blue stripes on the belt. honestly i think it would be better if they just ditched the gloves and made the belt stripes red to keep with the kitsune mask aesthetic but whatever. it could be way worse ig

makoto: 8/10. her mask is ugly let's get that out of the way first. sorry queen its the truth </3 aside from that i think she's got one of the better designs of the thieves. very cohesive aesthetic and it's almost exclusively black but doesn't lose detail (the silver metal accents help with this and are a very nice touch!) she's one of the few that doesn't suffer from the glove problem because her gloves are gray but if it were me i might have made them black. overall solid design

futaba: 7/10. one of the more practical designs which i think is cool! she's got arm and kneepads and pockets on her thighs which i think is very on-brand for a support character like her. she also keeps some aspects of her real-world fashion sense like her legwarmers and big platform shoes which is cool!! her color palette could be a liiiiitle bit more cohesive, she's got both gold and silver metal accents which throws me off a bit and the red of her goggle lenses ends up looking somewhat out of place with the rest of her green accents. she doesn't suffer from the glove problem though despite her gloves being bright neon green, i think because that same green is used just enough in other parts of her design that the gloves blend in more as an accent color.

haru: 10/10. my favorite design in the game BY FAR. she's got such a cool and cohesive aesthetic going. the pink accents are noticeable but don't overpower the black enough to make her look out of place with the other thieves, and the frilliness and puffiness of it also reminds me of her real-world fashion sense! she unfortunately is probably the biggest victim of the glove problem. the purple gloves absolutely destroy an otherwise beautiful color scheme and distract from all the beautiful details of her outfit because they just look SO out of place. i don't hate them enough to dock her points but if they were just. black. or pink even. then she would be completely perfect

pre-reveal akechi: 10/10. ok i laughed out loud when i first saw this because it looks fucking stupid and i recognize that objectively it looks fucking stupid. but from both a design and lore standpoint its. good. it is genuinely very good. it's got a cohesive color scheme and aesthetic which visually places him opposite joker--he is white with red and gold accents in direct contrast to joker's black with red and silver accents. certain aspects of his design seem to deliberately parallel joker's--the v-shaped buttons on his coat are an obvious imitation of the v-shaped accents on joker's waistcoat, the cuffs on his sleeves look just like joker's, the v-cut of his cape is reminiscent of the slit in the back of joker's coat, etc etc. even his gloves (which have to be spotlighted because ive done it for everyone else) are a parallel to joker's--white against red cuffs as opposed to red against black cuffs. from a design standpoint everything about this design is SCREAMING at you that akechi is a direct parallel of joker, and it's done very well imo. from a lore standpoint i can't help but wonder if he made these decisions deliberately, as some sort of challenge to joker or something, since he's the only character who mentions putting actual thought into their outfit.

post-reveal akechi: 3/10. i don't want to be mean but this was a huge downgrade. it's got some good things going for it--the mask is cool, and definitely better than the ugly shit he was wearing before, and the way certain aspects become almost corrupted, like the cape and belt, is a cool touch. however i think a lot of what i praised his pre-reveal design for made things difficult for the designers of this outfit. so much of white knight akechi seems deliberately designed to mirror joker, to be the white to joker's black. so when the designers had to do a dark version of akechi, they ended up backed into a corner, because simply turning akechi's old design black would leave him looking far too similar to joker, who, crucially, he is rejecting completely in order to attain this form in the first place. what the designers settled on was an evil candycane, which. well. i think we could maybe have done a little better. i think leaning into the prince thing might have helped--going from a prince of justice to a prince of darkness, keeping that aesthetic but twisting it into something more disney-villain-esque. at the very least he needs to not be wearing a striped bodysuit. please. im sympathetic to the problems the designers must have faced with this one but im SURE there's a solution that isn't a skintight purple monstrosity.

sumire: 5/10. sigh. this one is hard for me. because if i look at it objectively i think that her design is GOOD. like it's cohesive, it's pretty, the elements fit together, etc etc. but i can't get past the fact that they just straight up made her female joker. like the poor girl can't even get her own outfit. i know she's the love interest but COME ON can we give her a little more agency here PLEASE. the leotard is the only thing that feels definitively like HER because gymnastics and everything else just kind of feels like a genderbent joker cosplay to me. for every other character in this game their thief costume's aesthetic can be related somehow back to them as a character--their motivations, their innermost desires, their personality, SOMETHING. sumire just. gets none of that. she gets to be Joker's Girlfriend. and yeah maybe you could make the case that she like doesn't know who she is or whatever and that's why she defaults to him but it still feels CHEAP. she doesn't even get her own glove color. EVERY OTHER CHARACTER IN THE GAME has a uniquely ugly glove color except sumire who has to share with joker because she is his girlfriend. ugh

[beansprean]

Hello, first of all I love your art but I noticed you color Nandor with grey/blue blush which I’m sure is just part of your art style but I wanted to let you know that it sort of falls back into early western drawings of arab or farisi ( or typically eastern ) characters in purplish or so grey skin. ( for ref. Check early comic book drawings of Ras Al Ghul ) just wanted to let you know ! Thank you

( also it’s ok if you want to delete this ask )

Hello! I’ve addressed this before in this post - I desaturate from human skin tones to create vampire skin tones, so I neither have vampires looking hale and healthy or poc looking white as hell. This is true for all the vamps I draw; Nandor’s is just more noticeable because he’s darker than Laszlo and Nadja. Derek is pretty gray, though! You can also see when I draw Nandor as a human, his skin is brown.

I did research some into your historical concerns but I’m sorry to say I wasn’t able to find anything. I looked through a bunch of early western orientalist art, caricatures, and political cartoons and looked into typical depictions of middle eastern peoples in western culture, but none of the resources I found seemed to depict blue/gray skin or mention it as a common racial stereotype. But maybe I wasn’t using the right keywords? I also looked up early depictions of Ra’s Al Ghul, but I only found one cover where he looked quite blue (and apparently no one can decide what his actual ethnicity is lmao).

Please let me know if there are specific artists, articles, or other resources I should be looking for! I would like to ensure I’m educated on this topic and if I may want to revisit my palette to raise his saturation or something.

[deadbeatdadjokes]

So I didn’t technically get this in my inbox but I was asked (probably as a joke, now that I think about it) to write about characters without actually writing about them, ie w/o mentioning their names/any spoken dialogue, etc. I did my best, but it’s either going to come across wildly confusing or annoyingly heavy-handed so this one was a hell of a challenge, touché to you. In that vein I chose to write about the boys again in the hopes that either of those problems would be mitigated somewhat...(the answer was no :D )

The paint chips in a forgotten corner. He never thinks to peel the broken piece back all the way to see what horrid hack-job mess lied beneath the already abysmal layer of rapidly disintegrating illusion, it’s difficult enough to keep gravity from forcing it to hang loose like an another irritating distraction. 

Occasionally he’ll take to pushing at it with his entire body, in the vain hopes that the broken piece will somehow stick itself back together again-a mend that does nothing to address the overall ugliness of it, though it would at the very least relieve him of any burden of responsibility for its maintenance.

But each time it adheres lightly a brief moment before fluttering to rest at a wilt again. Much as the broken piece annoys him, there’s little he’s actually willing to do about it besides complain.

So he ignored it.

There were more important matters to attend to.

Until today, when he swears it crumbles into dust between his fingers, saturated with darkened stains that bled into his own clothing, and he feels it thrum within his embrace as he again desperately presses it into his own body to make it stop, make it stop-

The broken piece clings to him just as desperately, flushed colors diluted with water that ran down against him and it’s all he can do to just keep it together because he refuses to strip the paint any further, now terrified of the visions that stirred eerily beneath the ever-warping surface.

He can’t help but apologize with his numb lips for the sorry state of affairs.

Then, miraculously, eventually...it holds.

The broken piece melds itself to the rest of the wall long enough for him to let go.

It conceals the horrors underneath long enough for him to open his eyes again, though it’s not long before he decided again he did not care for what he saw.

It didn’t care right back, cracking with a splintered, bloodied technicolor smile of sorts as the leakage dripped to a halt before finally peeling away again, wilting back into its original place with a gentle wave.

He blinks, and in spite of the way he notices his door swaying open and closed he’s inexplicably alone again.  

It’s only going to get worse, he hears someone, somewhere warn.

But it wasn’t his. He hadn’t been the one to break it, he was just left dealing with a problem that never should have been his responsibility-

Even if his negligence caused the issue to persist...he wasn’t strong enough for this.

He’s only strong enough to mount a shadowed blockade of furniture up against it the next day, and weak enough to pray it was enough.