#earthsong does the big think

[earthnashes]

I really love your diverse character designs! Mind if you share some advice on drawing different body types and distinct characters? I’m trying to improve my own art.

I actually started a Saturday Short Tips series where I gave small advice for this stuff, especially character design. I only got 2 pages in due to not having met my Patreon goal to continue it, but I think they might be what you’re lookin’ for in terms of your question, as well as little exercises that might help you in that regard:

The full pages can be seen here if you wanna have an easier time reading them (as well as extra little tips):

https://earthsong9405.tumblr.com/tagged/saturday%20short%20tips

Hope they’re of some help! <:

[theclockworkbibliophile-blog]

Song of Blood and Stone Blog Tour [Spoiler Free Review]

Goodreads Synopsis:

A treacherous, thrilling, epic fantasy about an outcast drawn into a war between two powerful rulers. Orphaned and alone, Jasminda lives in a land where cold whispers of invasion and war linger on the wind. Jasminda herself is an outcast in her homeland of Elsira, where her gift of Earthsong is feared. When ruthless soldiers seek refuge in her isolated cabin, they bring with them a captive--an injured spy who threatens to steal her heart. Jack's mission behind enemy lines to prove that the Mantle between Elsira and Lagamiri is about to fall nearly cost him his life, but he is saved by the healing Song of a mysterious young woman. Now he must do whatever it takes to save Elsira and it's people from the True Father and he needs Jasminda's Earthsong to do it. They escape their ruthless captors and together they embark on a perilous journey to save Elsira and to uncover the secrets of The Queen Who Sleeps. Thrust into a hostile society, Jasminda and Jack must rely on one another even as secrets jeopardize their bond. As an ancient evil gains power, Jasminda races to unlock a mystery that promises salvation. The fates of two nations hang in the balance as Jasminda and Jack must choose between love and duty to fulfill their destinies and end the war.

Review:

I’d like to thank St. Martin’s Press for providing me an early copy as a part of the blog tour. My review is 100% honest!

I was definitely interested in this book, especially because of the cover. It was incredibly gorgeous and I loved the fact that, just by the cover alone, the main character was going to be a POC. I want to mention that her skin color is hardly mentioned and I’m glad it wasn’t mentioned because I couldn’t picture any other person than the model on the cover the entire time. Props to Miss Penelope.

So, Jasminda is alone in a cabin as an Earthsinger, someone who is pretty much looked down upon as a witch. She is an outcast among her town until she meets Jack, a soldier that is captured and who sees her as a person. 

When Jack and Jasminda escape from the captors and meet refugees, a crazy journey begins that leads them all to the royal castle where secrets unfold and visions are revealed of the past thanks to a tiny stone.

I really enjoyed Jasminda’s character, though I didn’t feel the biggest connection to her that I feel like I should have. She is a strong girl and has a big heart. She has been through so much trauma, but it’s only given her a thicker skin. She does put herself down sometimes, especially when it comes to Jack and their feelings for each other. However, something didn’t click with me. I didn’t feel that 100% connection with her character. I don’t know if it was the fact that I didn’t get enough backstory or character building, but I’d like to see if that connection will build in the second book.

Jack was an interesting character, but like Jasminda, it feels like he is still a stranger to me. His personality matches Jasminda’s and I will go ahead and point out that their relationship is definitely insta-love. It wasn’t really that big of a deal to me because they match with each other, but I do think the ending of the book was kind of rushed and too cheesy for my taste. 

Back to Jack’s character. He is definitely not the normal kind of soldier that he appears to be in the beginning of the book. I was honestly surprised and then not surprised when his secret was revealed. It was the kind of moment where I was like “Holy crap, what?!” to “Oh, that totally makes sense.” I think L. Penelope framed his character really well, but she does have the opportunity to be more in depth with his life than she was in this book.

The book itself was interesting. This entire book was just all together interesting, okay? You know how you are reading a book and you can’t put it down and you don’t even know why? That’s how it felt to read this book. It was really good, but I couldn’t figure out what was so good about it. Sometimes, the pacing would be slow or too fast. Not much would happen. Characters would get kind of slow. Yet, I didn’t want to put it down. it just has that certain appeal that is hard to explain, hence my four-star rating. It may be the cover that stuck in my mind the entire time or maybe it was the elements and how intriguing it was. I mean, the setting makes it seem like this is the Middle Ages yet it gets kind of futuristic with having actual motor vehicles and freaking airplanes and cables and all that stuff. 

All in all, I did enjoy this book for some mysterious reason that I can’t grasp on to right now. It just has that appeal and I think it has the appeal for fans of high fantasy, especially those who enjoy Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings. I know I’ll definitely be waiting for the second book.

Amazon St. Martin’s Press Barnes & Noble Book Depository Goodreads

Rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ ⭐

[earthnashes]

Speaking of dragons, what do you think is your favorite depiction of dragons in fiction? (books, movies, tv, games, etc.)

I like most if not all depictions of dragons, but for like my all time favs? It’s a tossup between Divinity: Original Sins 2 and How To Train Your Dragon.

Divinity: Original Sins 2 gets my vote because it has dragons that can shapeshift into a mortal form, and I’ve always loved that concept to bits. The dragons have vast magic, and another concept they do that I absolutely love is how they talk: like both their mortal and their dragon form have the same voice, but when in dragon form their voice takes and undertone of growl echoing behind it, like its their regular speaking voice but underneath that is the rumble of a beast. It’s so cool, I love that sort of attention to detail. Also, their designs are hella cool.

The only issue this game has is the lack of dragons in general; you only see like... 3? In the game? Which is fine since they’re like a super rare race in universe but I’d love for a character who was secretly a dragon to have more screen time. Maybe in the third game. O:

How To Train Your Dragon, however, gets my vote because of how versified it is! Not one dragon breed looks the same and they’re all super creative, and I absolutely love the character design for each of them. They’re absolutely dragons without conforming to the typical standard that classifies a dragon and I adore the creativity they have for it. o3o

[earthnashes]

Why do you like big girl, smol girl dynamic so much lol?

There’s nothin’ super deep or thoughtful about why, I simply think it’s cute and it’s fun to draw. Doesn’t just limit to big girl/small girl either, I just like varying heights of characters in general.

[earthnashes]

How did you come up with the outfit choices for Azure Edge?

When designing outfits I always keep in mind the character's personality, environment, and profession if they have one. Personality is important to get a feel of the style the character would go for, such as the colors and overall design, whereas their environment and profession will help dictate the material and look of the outfit overall.

For example, Pinkie Pie. Her work outfit is made to look practical given her environment and job: she works in a smithy so in relatively hot conditions, but is required to where heavy material for safety while working hence the gloves, apron, and leather material. But none of that would stop her taste in clothes from shining through, so her outfit is mismatched and far more colorful than Applejack, who works in the same environment but approaches it with a far more practical view.

Basically, part of designing is learning and understanding the character's mindset. Think about how THEY would approach the outfit, not what you personally would do. Once you get that, compile a stock of references to work with to help with the design. Almost ALWAYS use refs. I always use them myself.

[earthnashes]

Question: Do you have advice on creating a story/self art project thing?

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I can certainly try.

I suppose the first thing you should probably do is figure what sort of project this is gonna be. Is it long-term? Short term? What sort of medium are you gonna tell this story with: animation? Comic? Writing? Illustration? A mixture?

Before you write a story you need an idea to branch from. Unless you already have a story in mind, write down a bunch of things that appeals to you as a consumer, not what you think will get you more views. It’s always a balance to find what will appeal to audience + what appeals to you, but in the end I think it’s a good idea to make a story you wanna write, a story you’d love to read as a consumer. You’re the one who has to create it, may as well be a story you’d love to see.

When you finally narrow down to the story you wanna make, try making what’s called an “elevator pitch”. Essentially, you should be able to sum up the meat of the story within 1-2 sentences, and this is a good way to figure out what story you’re trying to tell. For example, Feathers and Flowers: After breaking an ancient seal, a girl finds herself navigating everyday life with a Spirit as a roommate. This doesn’t have to be perfect the first time around and can take several rewrites before you settle on one that works, but definitely keep it in mind.

Figure out a production pipeline that’ll help you keep on track with the development of your story/project. I personally follow the animation pipeline given it’s the one I’m most comfortable and familiar with, but I’ve modified it to better fit the production of this story. So mine is essentially: Concept (Idea, rough outline, character design) | Pre-Preproduction (worldbuilding, environmental development, “episode” scripts) | Production (the actual drawing part: roughs, lines, flats) | Post-Production (cleanup/edits, written portion of story/speech bubbles, upload). I honestly don’t follow it to a T given I like “discovery writing” and apply the process basis-to-basis, but it’s something that helps give me a bit of direction whenever I’m working on a project. Have direction is important, especially for personal projects, because it gives a basis for you to follow if you’re ever stuck with somethin’. It also helps organize yourself, which is just as important.

Don’t be afraid to rewrite your story, especially if what you have isn’t working or isn’t the story you want to tell. Feathers and Flowers, in it’s few months of lifespan thus far, has been rewritten about 3 separate times. First idea was too vague, second one was too convoluted, third rewrite strayed away entirely from the story I wanted to tell and write about. I’m tentative in saying it, but the current version of it is almost exactly the story I wanna share. It takes patience and a lot of reading and rereading what you have to make these decisions, but don’t skimp out on them. Your final product will be better for it.

And uhhhhhhh that’s all I can really come up with right now. If you want some better advice I’d recommend taking a watch of this vid HERE. Other than that, good luck, have fun, and I hope this helps. uwu

[earthnashes]

Hey, just wanted to give a quick thank you post to ya’ll regarding Feathers and Flowers, and just ya’lls support in general.

For as long as I’ve been a presence online as an artist, I rarely really indulged in original projects; always stuff revolving around fanart and headcanoning said fanart. Which is a lot of fun and something I still will very much do, but I don’t think I’ve ever been as attached to an original project as I have as FnF, and I was initially very nervous to try and share it with ya’ll because it’s so different content wise from what I typically do.

But even from the beginning you all have been nothin’ but supportive and have given me some great feedback throughout it’s progress, just as you always have throughout the entirety of my being here in general, and I can’t articulate just how much that really means to me.

I dunno man, I’m just in a really good mood today and I feel like I don’t thank you all enough, so thank you so much for bringing me confidence, for talking with me throughout all the crazy ideas and headcanons I’ve thrown at you, for commissioning me, and for your overwhelming support. I honestly wouldn’t be where I am today without you. I hope to continue to earn your support, and here’s to a good rest of 2020! <:

[earthnashes]

I really like the way you draw anthropomorphic animals! Especially ponies. I never really liked the idea of anthro animals having human bodies and I always imagined they'd have their animal bodies just evolved a little bit. Sorry for rambling. I'm a big fan of your work and you are an inspiration to me.

Thank ya so much! I personally don’t terribly mind when anthro characters have a more humanoid body but I gotta agree with ya; I def prefer it more if they were, like... animals who evolved to stand up on two legs, but are still essentially animals. Like Zootopia, actually! I drew a lot of inspiration from how they structure anthro-fied animal anatomy with my own tweaks in there to get the current look I have for my anthros. uwu

I really appreciate you liking my work too, thank you again! <:

[earthnashes]

Do you like AtLA or LoK? I feel like you would have cool headcanons for those shows.

I do indeed! I’ve watched AtLA twice over (highly considering a third watch sometime soon) and while I admittedly didn’t watch the entirety of LoK it was a lot of fun and I love Korra.

That said? I won’t do any headcanons for it. AtLA franchise is one that is already so thoroughly explored and steeped with lore canonically that headcanons, at least from me, is unnecessary. When I make headcanons its often to fill in the gaps that whatever I’m workin’ with has. With the way LoZ’s timeline works I’m able to do just about whatever the hell I want with it, right down to creating an entirely new entry to the timeline to play with the characters and how their world works and so on.

MLP, when I did headcanons for it, barely explored the world they were based in which is a damn shame, so when I did headcanons for that I would often explore how their world worked and making up ways to answer the questions the show would leave.

AtLA doesn’t do that; it’s one of the few shows I dare say uses every ounce of its worldbuilding to its advantage in canon, and I rarely felt like I had a question of how anything worked or anything of that sort regarding it. That’s similarly to how I feel about the Mass Effect trilogy, which is part of why you don’t see a lot of art from me about it despite it literally being my all-time favorite franchise.

Fanart is one thing, but headcanoned fanart is another, and of the two I’d rather headcanoned fanart. <:

[earthnashes]

Now this isn't a FnF question but a Mass Effect one. Tho Tali's canon face reveal was panned by the fans and various fan art has depicted her and the Quarian's much better, my question is what would *your* interpretation of the Quarian's look like without their suits?

Oh I’m probably not gonna do anything of that sort. I LOVE Mass Effect, I LOVE the Quarians, I FUCKING LOVE Tali. But part of the reason why the Quarians are so interesting to me is because of the suits they’re in and how they ended up in them in the first place, and how it’s become an integral part of their culture. To the point where it’s probably never gonna removed from their culture, even if they become resilient enough to live without it. It’s fascinating, and I’m one of the minorities who didn’t really care what the Quarians looked like within the suit because that bit of mystery was always a ton of fun.

In their defense though, Quarians were always canonically said to be the most human-like of all the races outside of the digitgrade feet, 3 fingers, and glowing eyes. And if EA was involved I also wouldn’t be surprised the use of a stock image for Tali was the only viable option for them to make deadline. That said they could have absolutely gone back and made something far more unique than what was used, but it’s such an insignificant blip to me that I personally don’t care.

TL;DR I more than likely won’t do any headcanon art on what the Quarians look like because I already like what they look like as is in canon. I’m not terribly curious about how they look without the suits; the suits is part of their charm and what makes them unique.

[earthnashes]

So what're you hoping to see in, if it didn't die, the next Mass Effect? I'm hoping to see a variety in squad members, and romances, like a Quarian, either gender rly but seeing a male Quarian as a squad mate/love interest would be cool, a Batarian, Volus, hell a Vorcha squad mate would be cool too.

It didn’t fully die, actually. There’s been an announcement that there’s a new Mass Effect game in development, but with how early it is in development it’ll be a long time coming before we actually see anything outside of just them saying “aw yeah, new Mass Effect game in the works”.

More than anything, I want a Mass Effect Trilogy remaster. If remastered I wouldn’t really change anything outside of updating everything that could use updating. And fixing the ever loving hell out of the first game’s romance because jesus that was a shitshow, I hated how the romance is handled in the first one.

If we’re talking a full-on new game, I want a continuation of Andromeda. I can’t really see the series actually going anywhere else with how the Trilogy itself ended, so Andromeda’s storyline continued would be the most likely way the game goes unless they entirely retcon it, which I personally don’t think they should. The original galaxy was fun and a memorable experience, but with its trilogy there isn’t much to offer us as a way of a game outside of giving us a bigger threat than the Reapers, and that’d be cheap because the Reapers being the galaxy’s biggest threat period was their entire point. If I play a new Mass Effect game, I’d rather focus on something new; new threat, new galaxy, new aliens, new mysteries, new racial and political tensions, and you as a player bringing everyone together as a united unit. And so far, the only way I can see that happening is through Andromeda’s continuation.

Speaking of an Andromeda sequel, I want more new aliens. The Angara were pretty cool but I wanted more than just one specific alien species; they went to a literal brand new galaxy, there ain’t no way the Angara and the Kett are the only ones there. They’re probably gonna have to make new races to fill the gaps the other aliens left anyway; far as I remember, only the Citadel races went on this voyage outside the Quarians and Krogans, both of which aren’t Citadel but were valuable enough to bring anyway. 

I personally don’t bother with romance so I can’t say I want anything else in that regard.

The Quarians returning to the cast would be fun but more than that I wanna see what happened to the Quarian voyage ship. I know there’s a comic that talks about what happened to it and all that good stuff but fuck that. I wanna experience finding the ship, see why they didn’t arrive alongside the other voyage ships, how we as the player character have choices that impacts their fates in the new galaxy. You can’t end the game with talking about the mysteries of the new galaxy and a barely audible distress transmission from the ship that harbors one of the series’ most iconic races, only to regulate that shit in a fucking comic. Bullshit. I know it’s because the DLC for it was cancelled in part with the shitstorm people gave the game and EA tanking its development studio soon after release, but still. I’m mad salty about that.

TL;DR: If we had to get a new Mass Effect game I’d want a remaster of the Trilogy. But if it’s a brand-spankin’ new game, I want a continuation of Andromeda, see more new aliens and more of the brand new galaxy they’ve presented to us, with every danger and mystery it’d have to offer. I want Andromeda’s series to be given more of a chance than what it originally got to flourish into something more because the potential is there.

[earthnashes]

I'd love to see a possible new romance involving Quarian's. Like a Male Quarian this time or both or maybe even another Drell.

I honestly never romanced anyone in any of the Mass Effect games aside from Samantha Trainor. On a joint playthrough with friends we romanced Liara, that was fun, but generally I don’t go with romance options in games at all.

That said...  It’ll never be the same as Tali man. She’s legit top tier, grade A, my BABY. I AM FOREVER SALTY I CANT ROMANCE HER AS FEMSHEP. WHY BIOWARE? WHY YOU GOTTA SHAFT ME LIKE THAT HUH? ;_;

[earthnashes]

Heyooooo so I have a question for anyone who’s visited/moved to different countries or difference cities for extended periods of time: did you experience culture shock, and if you did what were your experiences and how did it make you feel?

I’m askin’ because Kaela from FnF would definitely experience it given she moves from her small island to some mountainous town a whole ocean and then some away, and I think it’d do me some good to hear first-hand experiences so I can develop her character better in that aspect.

Sooooo yeah! If you don't mind indulging me, tell me your story of a time you experienced culture shock! <:

[earthnashes]

There any games you need to get back into? Replaying Mass Effect is on my list, buying all the DLC's first tho.

Mass Effect is legitimately my all-time favorite game and I play the entire trilogy literally once a year with about 100% completion each. Like listen. You’re doing yourself a disservice not playing that games’ DLC; I hope you enjoy them because they to me make the games’ already great story even better.

Anyway. Games to get back into? You mean like replaying? I’m assuming you mean replay them, in which case I’m planning on replaying:

-Okami

-Horizon Zero Dawn

-Spyro: Reignited Trilogy (though I’ll probably only play 1 and 2; 3′s my least favorite of the trilogy)

-Divinity Original Sins 2

And games I plan on finishing OR starting for the first time:

-Kingdom Hearts 3 (I’m nearly done but I haven’t finished it yet)

-Divinity: Original Sins (Played several hours of it but I’m not sure how far I am in game)

-Red Dead Redemption 2 (never played it but the ending was spoiled for me so I’m kinda not frothing to play it)

-LAST OF US PART TWOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

[earthnashes]

I just happened to stumble across your midzel HCs and art and I'm absolutely in love! The Twili in general are one of my favourite fantasy races and the amount of detail you put into them gives me life

Thank you thank you, I’m glad you enjoyed them! ^.^ The Gerudo are prob my fave race of the LoZ world but the Twili are a very close second, and I’m a complete sucker for some MidZel ;w;

Might have to try to do another headcanon comic thingy for the two of em soon ;3

[earthnashes]

What other series do you do a lot of headcanoning with?

I barely do any MLP headcanons anymore and most of my current headcanon stuff is entirely focused on LoZ with the occasional Super Mario Bros. Outside that? Nothin’ else really. As of now, no other game or movie or show or whatever else caught my attention enough to make me wanna headcanon for it. The occasional ordinary fanart sure, but dedicated brain energy to worldbuild headcanon and whatnot for it? Nah. 

The rest of that is going toward original projects.