#even basic stuff in blender it is having a very hard time

[moldwood]

okay google fastest way to get $4000

[nightcolorz]

I would love to hear your thoughts on autistic Armand, if you haven’t already spoke about this! Imo he’s very autsitic coded, and it’s very precious to me as an autistic iwtv fan :]

OMG!!! RUNS AROUND. Yes lmao I talk about this a lot actually it is one of my favorite Armand things to meta about bcus I’m also autistic and he is my special interest🙏I was trying to find some of the stuff I’ve written about autistic Armand but tumblrs search engine makes it near impossible to find anything so I gave up 😭, but believe me they r out there. Even tho I talk about this a lot I would love love love to talk about it some more for u anon because I can never get enough of armandtism.

I first figured Armand was autistic when I was reading the vampire Lestat because when he is first introduced he is completely non verbal and only communicates through the mind gift. through further explanation it’s very much implied that he does this because he finds putting his thoughts into words hard and he considers just projecting them into peoples brains much easier. Armand speaks out loud for the first time like more than halfway through the book, and lestat is surprised to hear him lol. This is super autistic I feel like that’s obvious 🙏 it’s basically the vampire power equivalent of using a non verbal communication device. Armand having trouble with connecting with people, understanding how to “fit in”, and talking r prevailing parts of his character throughout the whole series (not just tvl) which solidified my headcanon into basically a canon fact in my mind lol.

When Armand is first introduced in iwtv his strangeness is chalked up to his vampirism, but it’s soon revealed throughout tvl and qotd that Armand is considered a strange outcast by other vampires. The things he struggles with r unique to him and r not representative of vampires in general. His otherness/strangeness can also not be chalked up to his trauma or his age turned because Armand was also an outcast as a young child. It’s described in the vampire Armand that Armand was not understood by his parents or his community because he was obsessed with and freakishly good at painting. His community interprets his unusualness as a sign of some divine intervention, the priests believe he is a saint or a prophet sent to earth, even at times saying things implying that he is “not human”. Unusually high quickly developing skill in childhood is an autistic trait, as is hyper fixation on an activity/topic that becomes a core identity factor and prevailing obsession. The affects of Armand’s trauma only worsen the severity of his autistic traits. C-ptsd and autism often overlap and coexist in autistic people who were traumatized in childhood, which seems to be Armand’s case.

in queen of the damned Armand is at his peak autistic lol, I feel like this is when most book readers gain that head canon. The Devils minion chapter revolves around Armand using Daniel as a guide to help him learn how to be “normal” and to blend in to the modern age. Armand can’t seem to figure out how to blend in on his own because he is unable to understand social norms of any time period enough to integrate himself into society. Armand is in love with technology and what most would consider monotonous sensory experiences. He stares at his own reflection for hours, he loves kitchen appliances and watching ingredients whir in blenders, cameras, he watches the same movie over and over again and never gets bored of it. The way Armand fixates on technology really reminds me of how a lot of autistic people played as children. He enjoys repetitive, sensory behaviors over “fun”. For Armand this means watching the same things repeatedly, which is a form of visual stimming. There r moments where Armand is trying to understand his world, but is so blind to what he is trying to understand that he goes about his discoveries wrong. Such as in qotd when he tries to interrogate strangers to gain information on societal norms but he only gets uncomfortable glances. Armand is desperate to understand and to connect but he is consistently inherently alienated, whether it be from humanity or from other vampires or from himself.

Armand also can not process his memories comprehendingly. This is part trauma part autism, but autism is def a factor. Because of his repressed trauma induced memory loss Armand finds it difficult to talk about himself to people. This is worsened by Armand being unable to comprehend the aspects of story telling that he needs to be able to tell people about his life. Armand explains to Daniel that he vividly remembers small details, such as dates and weather, but he could not tell Daniel what “things were like” because he “doesn’t know what that means”. Literal thinking, the inability to grasp vague, fiction based concepts like narratives and metaphor, and strict fixation on minor details like numbers, are all autistic traits!

Armand also struggles heavily with emotional regulation. He is described as often having intense and extreme meltdowns where he cries and screams and breaks things. Armand is easily bothered, in tva he mentions that he covers his ears when he is overwhelmed. The vampire Armand begins actually with Armand becoming overwhelmed in public and trying to escape to an attic so that he can be alone in silence. Armand copes with his intense emotions by putting on a mask of neutrality. He is often described as expressionless and blank, uncanny. But this is a mask, and when Armand can no longer mask and his disguise lapses his facial expressions r described by lestat as being so over the top and emotional that they are disturbing and weird. Over the top unnatural facial expressions as well as blank unreadable ones are both autistic traits. For Armand he is naturally overly emotive to the point of being considered horrifying, and he hides this by taking the opposite extreme. Either way, either expression Armand puts on causes him to be socially outcast.

Armand often describes feeling like there is something wrong with him that causes him to be isolated from others and he’s not sure what it is. In prince lestat he tells Gregory that he doesn’t know why it’s so hard for him to have relationships when other vampires are fully capable of doing that. In the vampire Armand he explains to David that he’s crazy because his mind isn’t built right and his senses are tripled so he shouldn’t bother trying to understand him. I rlly relate to this as someone who felt like I was from another dimension as a child bcus i didn’t know the unspoken life rules everyone else did.

Armand is often treated like a child by the other vampires and assumed to be emotionally immature and too fragile and insane to be helpful. Armand says in the vampire Armand that he doesn’t consider himself an adult because he can’t function like one. This could be due to the age he was turned, but it’s shown to us that characters like Benji and even to an extent Claudia r able to self regulate and function appropriately despite being turned even younger then Armand was.

in conclusion, book Armand is an autistic person who was never given proper support or understanding because the environment and the time period he was born in decided to alienate him further rather then work to help him socialize and learn appropriate skills, and because of the necessities he has been deprived of and the horrible trauma he endured Armand is never able to learn to function in the way he was likely capable of. this recessive quality in pair with his autism caused Armand it be unable to cope or self regulate or learn ways to understand himself since he wasn’t given a chance to in his formative years. He’s a great representative of what many autistic people who experienced intense child abuse experience.

Im rlly happy with the shows portrayal with Armand so far partly because he is omg, so autistic. Show Armand shares so many of book Armand’s autistic traits. inability to understand himself or others, fixation on small details but inability to understand the big picture, etc. even his iPad is autistic asf! My ipad is my comfort item that I carry around with me to self sooth, and this is def the vibe Armand’s iPad gives me in the show. Even assads performance is autistic! He is able to play Armand masking and Armand unmasking, the stilted expressions he gives and the blank stares, the uncomprehending earnestness. AGHHHH!! Assad stims with his fingers when Armand is nervous too which is just an amazing touch. I hope the show explores Armand’s autism, because that would literally be a dream come true. Even still, for now I’m satisfied.

thank u so so much anon for the ask this made me so happy 🙏❤️ autistic Armand means so much to me and has gotten me though some tough times. Understanding and analyzing Armand helps me understand myself better and feel more comfortable with how I am. Earlier this year I gave myself a concussion because I was harmfully stimming during a meltdown, and while I was in the emergency room I was holding the vampire Armand and imaging that he would relate to what I was going through. So yeah he is very special to me too! And once again it makes me so so happy that u got me to talk some about it. I hope this was coherent or interesting lol I felt like I was all over the place

[burr-ell]

To expand on the previous post (with excellent addition by @kerosene-in-a-blender), I genuinely believe Laudna as a character would be a lot stronger in one of two scenarios:

1. Ditch the Whitestone stuff. I say this as someone who has produced almost nothing but de Rolo content—that is too big a part of Campaign 1 not to completely overshadow anything different the character tries to do in a long-form narrative. I think they could have threaded that needle, but that requires so much more focus and attention that a fast-paced story about a moon conspiracy just isn't built for. It's been 65 episodes and Whitestone nostalgia is all the character has meaningfully contributed to the narrative.

They put themselves between a rock and a hard place before the story even started. You can't bring in Delilah too often without inevitably treading on Campaign 1, but you also can't use her too little—not just because she's Delilah Briarwood, but also because that's the patron of a PC and your PCs need to be taking center stage. And yet there is nothing Delilah's presence has done in the story thus far that could not have been accomplished by a completely different, hitherto-unknown necromancer patron. Laudna's experiences in Whitestone could be replaced with a similarly traumatic backstory (it's not like Exandria is hurting for necromancers abusing power) and she'd have to actually elaborate on it and flesh out the worldbuilding and think about the backstory instead of being able to lean on "Hey, you guys remember that Briarwood arc? Freaky, right?"

2. Keep Laudna as she is and use her in an EXU miniseries. Set it in northwestern Tal'Dorei, where she's been wandering aimlessly for thirty years, spending half the time disassociating and half the time making her dolls. She meets a colorful group of people and they go on some adventures, and she finally decides to take back her life and do something about the voice in her head. You'd basically keep the Whitestone episodes of C3 as they are, give or take a few beats, as the climactic episodes of the series, and then the newly fire-forged friends set off for whatever new journey awaits them.

Maybe Laudna switches patrons; maybe she ditches the warlock thing entirely; maybe she ends the miniseries not knowing what she wants but excited to learn about it with her new companions. Mini-campaigns don't have to worry about that kind of thing! You can have your Whitestone nostalgia and some fanservice while still telling a pretty fun story, and it won't feel like a weird extra appendage to a main campaign that otherwise has very little to do with it. I wouldn't say it's a story I'd be interested in seeing continue, but it's perfectly serviceable for something small and self-contained.

What it has not been serviceable for is the long-form story of Campaign 3.

Honestly, I was a little concerned about all of this even before I started watching all the way through, but I wanted to give it time and judge it for myself. I don't believe in unfounded doomsaying, and I wanted to give the show a chance to do something interesting. And it has been 65 episodes, over 260 hours of content, which I think puts us well past the window of "give it a chance", and Laudna has spent the vast majority of her time not meaningfully engaging with her levels of warlock if it doesn't contribute to creepy girl vibes. (She frankly isn't engaging with her levels in sorcerer, either.) She's never even addressed potentially finding a new patron—so does she not want to? But then why is she so distressed about the idea of Delilah resurfacing? And if she does want a new patron, why has nothing actually happened in the almost-thirty episodes we've had since the Whitestone trip? If she's been "fighting Delilah for thirty-odd years", why didn't she take the chance to explicitly try to connect with, say, the Sun Tree? Or literally anyone else?

And honestly, as a Campaign 1 fan I have to say I'm also frustrated at how Delilah's presence specifically undercuts that story. Like, yeah, you have a technical reason for why she's still here, but "well she IS a powerful necromancer" is just a mechanical explanation, not a dramaturgical one. Her story is done. The chapter closed. She had ample opportunity, including when specifically asked by the Hells, to state any specific goals—any at all—and didn't. This is the woman who menaced Percy and Vex? This is the woman who permanently killed Vax? ...Really?

It could have been an interesting challenge to take on in referencing something from the past while bringing something new to the table, and it's not like they haven't done that before; they've already shown with Jester and the Traveler that it can be done. But they haven't done it here; any opportunity for Laudna to grow beyond her vague concepts—"What if Sun Tree Body...with Delilah patron? What if weird scary girl...but happy?"—has been generally ignored. Her killing Bor'dor is the first time in the entire campaign that she's done something that really got my attention, and in two episodes it's almost immediately papered over, followed by some inexplicable "must you continue to reconquer?" word salad about the gods.

Marisha explicitly refused to create a new character until she knew for sure whether or not Laudna would be resurrected. But if she enjoys her so much, when is she going to do anything meaningful with her?

[feyspeaker]

Hii me again. I'm not sure if I sent the ask I'm talking about on anon, so maybe that's why you didn't see it? It partially got answered with a recent ask you got anyway so no worries. I was just wondering if you use 3d in your process and if so, how? I've seen other illustrators use it to varying degrees and it seems like a really helpful tool to push your work.

Oh that's so weird! No I periodically go through my asks in chunks and I didn't see anything like that. I've had a few people in the past few months send me asks that looked like the second half of something else with no context, so maybe it's Tumblr fuckery. Sorry!!

I recommend learning Blender so you can help sculpt shapes and render lighting onto them in order to get the weirder/more complex shadows right. You can also apply colors onto the things you sculpt in order to see how the colors act in different lighting. It's pretty much an invaluable tool to me as it keeps me from having to problem-solve too much. I did a lot of digging around in my house to build references to photograph but it was just impractical to achieve the things I want to a lot of the time. I still do that, and you would not believe how many goofy photos I have of my husband in the poses you've seen me paint Astarion in lmao...

I do think that it needs to be used in moderation if you are a more beginner artist- I think that using 3D is DANGEROUSLY close to becoming a massive crutch for a newer artist and improper usage or over reliance on it can lead to stiffness or artificial looking colors. You need to be able to train your eye to create compelling compositions by bashing things together, and train your hand to replicate/add/subtract as needed from your references with an organic feel.

I will say this as a total committer of this crime myself in the past, it's VERY easy to tell when an artist relies too much on, for example, Clip Studio Paint posed models as bases for pieces without a good enough grasp on their fundamentals. And I also used to prickle when I saw more advanced artists warn of this, so I do think maybe it just has to run its course sometimes, because I know that using 3D for reference seems like an easy-button.

I've taken a lot of in-person classes for live figure drawing and painting, as well as just totally done drills, basically, on sketching and painting from life before relying too much on static imagery/3D/etc.

I often fret over every piece I do looking too stiff even still.

You have to do a LOT of the boring hard stuff the old fashioned way. And I regularly go back to it over and over when needed.

For example, I recently did a stupid amount of rose petal/flower studies deconstructing and painting ugly little paintings/doodles over and over because I know that I've been horribly weak at painting flowers for years (actively avoiding them). And I've been doing a lot of floral stuff lately due to that.

Whenever I start a new piece in new territory, I know it's going to mean several 3AM nighters where I have two other tabs open on Photoshop where I test out different textures or do a couple of studies. I'm working on a piece of my OC right now that has a lot of gore/medical instruments and I've been working on testing out different methods for shiny metal painting and some anatomical studies. I'll come to a snag in a painting and go "here we go" and work through it one piece at a time.

My Halsin piece, "Secret Spot" in the hot spring, was a massive undertaking with a lot of these moments. The Karlach x Dammon piece took 3 times longer than it should have due to me just having to go back and fix things knowing I could do better after doing some studies.

Ultimately I personally find art tutorials to be quite useless overall once you get to a certain point, unless they are teaching the use of a tool/software because you HAVE to figure out what works for you. And even then I use Blender like a monkey with a keyboard, I suspect, because I've just bruteforced through it, so I could probably use a tuneup from a good teacher on that haha. I hope this helps some, and sorry if I overstepped if I sound preachy.

[kaiserouo]

Hello! In this post I will describe the details of making a render of Apex Legends stuff (namely the video you're watching) so you can make a photo / video to your liking! Even if you don't wanna render things, I think you might still find the process interesting, OR, especially, the tools useful in you future work.

Why am I doing this? Because I'm taking a train and I'm bored. Also there's too little Bloodhound content here. Maybe someone will actually do some cool rendering of them after this.

Idea

Do you know in training mode, Bloodhound will wait for you indefinitely like a puppy with their cute little look-around motion?

Precious footage of Houndy on Youtube

I want them to be my background. So the most important requirements are:

3 Bloodhounds looking around and waiting like that of training mode. (why only 1 if you can have 3?)

Firing range background.

Looks overall good or something (e.g., lighting, motion not synchronized, 1920x1080 for my computer, etc.)

Let's get started.

Model

Well, there won't be multiple Bloodhounds waiting for me in the firing range in-game. I am also not intended to mod R5Reloaded just for this. So we'll use Blender to pose them.

First we need the model. The details of how to use Apex Legends model in blender can be found in this tutorial I found. Basically you just need Blender, semodel + seanim loader, Legion+, and the game itself. You COULD find archives of some models on the web, but manually extracting will guarentee that you can get everything you need.

Reddit Apex Legends model tutorial

Apex File Archive (by Biast12)

Model name list (may be incomplete)

I made an auto shading addon btw

There are a lot of tutorials of how to use Blender. I will not include the details here.

We need:

Models of 3 Bloodhounds (pilot_medium_bloodhound, bloodhound_v21_pilot_level03_w, bloodhound_v21_heroknight_w)

Animation of them waiting indefinitely (mp_pt_medium_training_blood_idle_A_0.seanim)

The names are a bit weird. You can just try to import all the models / animations to find what you want.

Background

Map files are large and hard to load. In my case I never even imported any map in Blender successfully. Fortunately we are looking for a still image background.

I used R5Reloaded's photo mode (or something like that) to get a clean picture. Quite a lot of steps to get a background picture, I know. I used R5Reloaded for other things at that time so this was the most convenient way for me ironically.

R5Reloaded does has a lot of potential, though. Maybe you can use it on other stuff afterwards.

R5Reloaded official page

But if we just make a render in Blender and composite the result with this background, the perspective will certainly not be aligned and the result will look very weird. Probably need a disgusting amount of time just to adjust this stuff.

Thankfully, by the theory of perspective and projective geometry, we can calculate the focal length, the height and the angle of camera all from a single image by your favorite subject: math!

...I mean, by fSpy. We have computers. We don't do the math that others already did for us.

fSpy official page

After getting the parameters of the camera, you can import them into blender directly. The camera from fSpy already has the background image composited so you won't need to do much else in Blender.

Posing & Lighting

We have almost everything we need. So just:

Import all models and camera (from fSpy)

Shade the models and adjust size / position / orientation so it looks good on camera

Import animations on model and adjust the keyframes s.t. they don't do the exact same motion every frame.

We are using the existing animations so posing won't be a problem. If you want to make your own pose you might need some more proper rigging. Not expert on this so that's all I will say.

Now we need the lighting. The lighting environment in the firing range is not really available to us if we don't have the skybox or the map file. Maybe you can find the skybox in Legion+ or archive, but I use lights in Blender instead.

Namely, a sun light to simulate the light from the sun, and a plane light at front for overall light adjusting (probably also simulates reflection from the ground and the environment).

And wait for like half an hour for Blender to spit out all 285 frames and we're done! I let Blender store each and every frame as an image and use ffmpeg to composite them all into a video because I thought I need the high resolution images for something else. Blender does have a setting to just output a video without the intermediate result if I recall correctly.

Conclusion

This is definitely not a complete guide on how to do rendering pieces of work with Blender. I myself am not even well experienced in this kind of stuff. But I think the process is fun and the result is rewarding, especially when seeing your favorite character moving on your background.

I hope you do check out the reference of tools and tutorials above. After all, as an artist (kind of), having the model is like possessing THE absolute reference for a character. Very recommended for every artist to learn how to use Blender and search for models. In 2024 a lot of games are in 3D and there WILL be someone on the web sharing how to extract models from the game or simply gives out the entire archive. You name it! Apex Legends, Titanfall, Destiny, even Ultrakill has like a 1GB blender file for high quality models, if you just google for that ever so slightly.

...Welp actually you can just treat this post as a huge Bloodhound advertisement. The end.

[salemssimblr]

Hello there! I'm Eden :D I LOVE your renders! I've been rendering for well over a year at this point, however I only stuck to the super basic stuff since it took me a year before that to even know how to do it at all. I've wanted to up my game and get to where you are now. I'm SO SORRY if this question was asked already (I haven't gotten too far in your posts yet), but;

How do you personally edit your renders? I understand you use photoshop, but how do you do it exactly? Your renders have that kind of digital art style, like you drew them yourself. Feel free to be as descriptive or brief as you'd like!

Hi Eden!!! Thank you so much! 🥹😍♥️

I've followed you back and glad we're moots! I'd love to see some of your work!

I'm not sure if I've answered this before but I'm happy to answer it again! Also I haven't advertised it in a while (and I really need to try to get up a new tut, maybe soon), but my alt account is a Render School where I post tutorials, with plans to post editing tutorials in the future!

But honestly as far as my editing, I really don't do much.

Actions are my secret weapon, and I have a few favorites/go-tos I'll link! A few are by simmers and a few are just action sets. I'm in a family of photographers, so I have access to a wealth of resources for my editing.

Sonder set by @intramoon

Cold Water set by @intramoon

Retro Prime photoshop actions

Indie camera photoshop actions

But my "secret weapon," as it were, and the set of actions that I think most helps me accomplish that digital art style is a set of actions that are sadly expensive and hard to find now.

My favorite set is by Totally Rad! and I think in recent years it's been folded in to this Pixel Sugar product on their website. I know that's a steep price point but it's possible you can find it around the corners of the Internet for less, or if you can't, you might be able to find "dupes" of the better ones, which imo are:

Technicolor dream world

Super Fun Happy

Bullet Tooth

Grandma's Tap Shoes

As for my method, I know a lot of simmers paint over their renders, and I've done that a few times but find I'm too impatient tbh. My goal is always to have to do only minor touchups over my renders and some color/vibe adjustments before the finished product. My "raw" files are always exactly what blender spits out for me, unaltered in any way except to resize them for Tumblr.

To get that digital art style, I'd recommend rendering with alpha details if you don't already. If your computer can't handle alpha cc in the game, DM me and I can give you some pointers (sneak peek info for a future tut lmao) on how to accomplish it without bogging down your game.

When I go into photoshop I adjust the brightness and contrast, as I tend to personally prefer high contrast pieces that contain dark subject matter but you can still see the details. Then I'll paint/blur/clone/adjust anything that needs it, then I'll "stack" and adjust a handful of actions before applying edge blur and vignette and any other color adjustments (levels, curves, etc).

That's a very oversimplified rundown of what I do, but really overall my editing process is simple. The bulk of my work happens in blender itself. I find that the more time I take to perfect the lighting and shadows and angles in blender, the less frustrating the editing process and the happier I am with the end result. So, that said, be sure you're spending a lot of time in blender getting the light and shadows to be exactly where you need/want them to be before running it.

I know this is a bit long I'm sorry! If any of it is super confusing or you'd like a more in-depth look at any of it please let me know! I do plan to do editing tutorials for my side blog, but the latter half of this year has kind of run over me like a train, and for now I'm just trying to get by day by day. But I'm happy to help if you have more specific questions!

& thank you again!! ♥️

[youredreamingofroo]

Long winded rant of me talking about NSB, doing a new series, storytelling and whatever else I talked about under the cut, feel free to read it's just me rambling, I don't really care if ppl read it or not it's VERY long 😭

I've been painfully itching to start a new series, I know I'm doing NSB rn, and I do plan to at least finish the normal NSB legacy (up to Gen 9), although I might finish or take a break at around Gen 5 or 6, just because I don't wanna lose motivation and also because it takes A LOT to make some of these posts (for example, the last NSB post... took a lot out of me), and I'm only on Gen 2, almost Gen 3 rn, and I was originally planning to do all 30 or 40 Gens in the updated ver of NSB, which def doesn't seem like it'll be happening right now, because at the current rate at which I post, and how fast things in my game move, Sims 6 will be out before I even finish Gen 30 😭😭

Anyways, I don't know what the series would be about, if I were to do a new series, it would definitely be a lot more story based, if not completely story based, I don't know if I'd do/include gameplay, but I really wanna dive into more storytelling and setting up scenes, I'm not a film or theatre kid by any means, and I really don't know much about writing and setting up scenes and stuff, to be honest, i don't even know how I storytell, I guess it's just regurgitated content molded to shape the statue of my story if that makes sense lmao, I guess it's also the art of using so many fucking metaphors and similes that doing something like comparing love to drowning in a cold ocean comes sorta easy to me? I'm not grammatically inclined and don't know a lot about punctuation, my teachers all kinda gave up on me in English class, so all of my writing is basically self taught, which I guess is the case for a lot of things I do- I feel like starting a new series would help me learn how to write better, even though it seems like a lot of ppl love my writing, I still feel like I could improve so much and do so much better. I already have a couple ideas in mind for a new series, I don't think I'll say much rn just in case I decide to make them a series, but as for right now, I've got plans for Gen 3 NSB (aka Calico), and if I were to start a new series, I would not stop playing NSB, but due to how I function and shit, I would have to put NSB on hiatus, I kind of have a hard time doing two stories at once, hence why Sharkie's story got put on hiatus, because it was too stressful for me to double up, especially with how often I post (at least 3 or 4 times a week), I would like to go back and play Sharkies story and share her story up to this point where I last played her, her story is a lot more gameplay centered (for example, I am more inclined to make a blender scene for NSB, then Sharkie, for Sharkie, I'd do stuff like go to the bar and see how it plays out and take screenshots and just edit those) which I like more, but that's not to say I don't enjoy NSB, because I equally LOVE storytelling as I do gameplay.

While writing this, I did think of something I could do, which would be posting NSB every other week (so one week I do Sharkie or some other series and then the next week I do NSB, then a diff series, so on so forth), the only problem is that usually when I get an idea, and I finish that idea, I like to post it asap, I'm not good at scheduling posts lmao, but it might be worth it if people want to see another series (that is if anyone is still reading up to this point lol), I'd like to channel my storytelling into a more story based save/story, but idk! I'm just kinda doing my thing rn and I'm at a point where i wanna do something different. I especially wanna start doing more in blender, it just takes fucking forever to do some of the stuff I wanna do, and some of it means learning new stuff which is thrice as hard and takes thrice as long compared to normal posing and stuff 😭

[kendoola]

Solar Opposites S4E10 The Re-visibility Bouillabaisse

*messy kitchen, objects floating*

T: you know what? I’m happy I destroyed the stupid invisibility ray. At least this way I’ll never have to see your ugly face again!

K: you take that back you cherish my face! [shouts]

T: not anymore I don’t! I’m done taking your shit. Forget the ray, forget the mission. I am moving out! …Soon as I can find the door

*rolling pin and measuring cup slam into the fridge and fall to the ground*

K: Terry are you still there?

T: …Yeah I got confused about what side of the door I was on and got too embarrassed to say anything

K: I’m sorry I threw your nutrient powders. I think something is broken in me that a ray can’t fix.

T: do you want to know why I bid on an afternoon with Nancy?

K: well I thought it was cause you’re a simp for Netflix celebs

T: [haha] yes, but also, remember when we went on that vacation to highland park and you had an amazing piece of pizza and wouldn’t stop talking about it? That was Nancy’s crust! You always work so hard on the ship and lead us so good, I just wanted to bring a little slice of highland park to you.

K: that’s very thoughtful of you Terry

T: korvo the reason i never want to help with the sci-fi stuff is… I don’t know math!

K: [gasp] not even basic math? Like the goldbach conjecture or the real values function on a three dimensional space?

T: you shame me. I am shamed

K: i actually like that you don’t know science stuff

T: what?

K: it makes me feel necessary, like a hunky sexy science shlorpian

T: you were fronting for me?

K: i was fronting and stunting

T: but we said we’d never front in this house!

K: agreeing to that was my original front

T: it is sexy when you know about the ship. I got pretty hot when you complained about the neutronium core.

K: it’s always low on ions!

T: mmm I’ll tell you what, that tech support tone makes me goosh.

K: what about when I yell about the fluidic processors?

T: drives… me… wild

K: Terry take your clothes off

T: oh I’ve been naked this whole time

K: [moaning]

*metal clanking and blender whirring*

T: treat me like an ektorp, call me a slutty little malm! Talk Swedish dirty to me

K: but IKEA legal, they’re so powerful

T: just do it after we cut away!

*Nancy Silverton pulls into the driveway*

K: [grunting] Billy bookcase! Ribba frames!

*rolling pin starts thrusting by itself*

T: [moaning] yes

K: kallax shelving!

T: yes keep saying more IKEA merch it gets me so fucking hot

K: Allen wrench! Home delivery! Sustainability! Meatbaaaalls!

*microwave falls over*

[grinfodoro-reblogs-corral]

Wait I have to ask what happened to dig? I have it wishlisted and heard its got another free dlc in the works as well so I was looking forward to it (reported issues with softlocks/need for more varied items aside)

Don't get me wrong, I've spent over 90 hours playing this game and I still roll around in for a couple runs/trying to complete the DLC. My main problem is with how the game itself is structured.

I do like a challenging game, I like going in a game and being an absolute noob and then learn as time goes on in hopes of getting some rewads, and getting said rewards; whether is some extra content, upgrades, a secret ending or heck just progression in the story (if the game does have it). And Dig gives you that! You can get multiple endings and a heck ton of collectibles (some of them being upgrades, some just lore stuff)

The problem I have with this is, however, with how all of those rewards are not much great thing compared to the effort you must put to gain them. The levels are generated in a way that game selects a bunch of levels segments (of various difficult) and puts together a level, however unless you play on PC and have the last updates on, you have no way to know what segments you're gonna get and you can get very dang unlucky on just level one. By making the level going down, you don't always see where you jump off, there are issues with the spawning and dodging of enemies (they can just gang up on you leaving you little to no possibility to avoid them), the difficulty spike is absurd. In order to get the true ending, you must satisfy very specific requirements that are so hard to pull if the elements they are based on are just RNG. The whole game is based on RNG. Normally you would get a couple few static points for upgrading yourself in a roguelike, Dig doesn't do that. There were times I reached the final boss with basically no upgrade because of how unlucky I got.

Not to mention some of the achievements are based as well on requirements that are RNG-based. For example there is the "Dirty Poor" feat, but in Dig gems are literally everywhere the levels are designed so that you *will* get gems. You must be incredibly lucky to get those 3 gemless segments in the first world to get the feat, making it one of the most difficult feats to achieve not because of difficulty but due to being based on luck. And so many other feats are like that. I could give out more examples but I don't want to spoil much of neither the vanilla game or the DLC, but basically the whole game feels more like playing with a gambling machine rather than a roguelike.

Many players have reported such issues, alongside the bugs and glitches, but the difficulty was never adjusted. The possibility to select your own level segments is exclusive to Steam. No improvement was made regarding the entire game being so luck-based, and instead the DLC just adds more restrictions and further rises the already high difficulty spike to an insane degree that made many casual players drop Dig completely, and I know of less than five people who were able to 100% the game and DLC with cheat options on (extra life, powered up attack, etc. Etc.). Also enabling said cheat options make impossible to get feats.

The game ends up feeling like a chore to go through at times, as the player must rely more on luck than actual skill and adaptability. And so far, no change was made despite the multiple complains of fans; hopefully with the upcoming DLC they will fix such issues, but who to say. The last update ended up adding more issues than solutions, make more players drop, and add even more elements to the RNG blender.

Does the story pay off? Perhaps, but it does not make up for the hours and attempts it takes to actually finish the story. Nor do much the rest of aestethic rewards, nor the upgrades since you may just never get them in your run.

I feel like I was too harsh on Dig, and perhaps I am. I was really waiting for this game and was excited to see the characters and new levels but that wish just quickly wore off when I could not even get past half the game because I could not find, due to bad luck, the upgrades I needed to continue further in a non-hardcore way.

I would suggest playing Dig only to players who are down to spend a ton of time to progress and don't mind the amount of luck required, and just want to try experience the lore bits and visuals on their own rather than from a video. But I wouldn't feel in good faith suggesting this game without underlining the somewhat brutal difficulty and the fact it ends up relying more in luck and the player's patience rather than their skills. If you play it expecting a rogue-like, then it's not- exactly one lol. Think of it more like a arcade game.

That's about what I have to say about Shovel Knight Dig. I still do play it because I don't take too seriously unfair deaths and such, but I wish this game was more accessible to players of all kinds as some friends don't have as much time or energy to spend playing such a luck-based game. I think the game has the potential for being a genuine enjoyable experience for everyone and not just hardcore/completionists/similar kind of players but yeah, we got what we got, and devs both from Nitrome and YCG don't seem to care too much. Which is understandable considering all the projects they are making, but still somewhat sad.

[hugduckhesgay]

Can I ask what you use to animate??

Yus of course! I'm always very excited to help other people get into animation.

Right now I use Tahoma2d, it is free and a more user-friendly version of OpenToonz which is the famed, also free, software used for a lot of Miyazaki films. I used OpenToonz before Tahoma and def found Tahoma more intuitive. (Side note, you do need a decent computer to run it and not lag. I get by on an old, no-upgrades microsoft surface pro with a little finagling, though.)

It took a while for me to figure it out, and I probably am only familiar with 1/3rd of its capability tbh, which is enough to make what I want to make, tho I'm constantly learning more. I used tutorials on youtube to learn, there's a lot of good ones! You can use the opentoonz tutorials for tahoma too, basically the same interface

I never pay for art programs and thankfully there are plenty of people who believe they should be accessible that there are a lot of free resources.

I have also dabbled with GreasePencil in Blender, but yikes the learning curve is so steep, there are so many little technical details in the software that hold me up for hours. I want to learn it more someday, when I have the time, because it can do sooooo much!

I'll also add, that when I was first starting out and just wanted to be able to produce animations without much fuss, I used Pencil2d. Very simple! It helps to use that if one gets frustrated with learning a more complex program like Tahoma. Take a break, animate something easy that makes you happy, then try figuring it out again.

I do my thumbnailing, sketches etc in Medibang Paint, and if I need some video editing stuff, (like piecing together segments of a scene because i learned the hard way you're not meant to animate full 5-minute long scenes in one file lmao) I use Davinci Resolve, but I barely know how to use that one lol. That one is massive with effects and capabilities also. That one lags my laptop a lot more than tahoma..

You didn't ask for all this, but I tend to info dump because there are so many things i wish i knew when i first started animation. The downside of self-taught -- not knowing what questions to ask!, That said, idk if my information is even that great, being that I have no experience with the professional industry. Oh well, I hope this is helpful!

[m0n0lithical]

Sims - get to know me

Tagged by @igotsnothing thanks so much I absolutely wanted to do this one! Also if ya’ll like occults you better go follow them.

1. What’s your favourite sims death? Either meteor because of HOW dramatic it is, or pufferfish since that’s like, the only way for your own sim to kill another sims (without mods, anyway).

2. Alpha CC or Maxis Match? Mostly Maxis, but I do have mix elements (like the hairs that aren’t TECHNICALLY alpha but are so detailed they almost look it), especially in my fandom saves because the outfits in those are always alpha.

3. Do you cheat when your sims gain weight? Nah, if I really want a sim to stay the same weight, I lock the weight/gain loss (I do this for my selfsim every time so she’ll STOP LOSING WEIGHT oh my god woman). But if I’m playing with it on, what happens happens.

4. Do you use move objects? I don’t even have to enter this cheat because it’s always ticked on my BBB.

5. Favorite mod? I mean the most practical favorites are MCCC and BBB, and really most of the ;must haves’ the majority of people have, so lemmie pick a lesser seen one – PreferencesPlus by Helaene is a huge game-changer for someone who really dislikes all the missing likes/dislikes in the game.

6. First expansion/game/stuff pack you got? ...I wanna say Outdoor Retreat? I know, horrible pick, I didn’t know how lacking it was.

7. Do you pronounce “live mode” like aLIVE or LIVing? Like LIVing

8. Who’s your favorite sim that you’ve made? This...is hard, but I’m gonna have to roll with Amie, because she’s evolved beyond being just a sim at this rate – she’s also my FFXIV character, as well as a VtM character. But she absolutely did START as a sim.

9. Have you made a simself? Yes – she’s set loose in EVERY save I have for sake of hilarity – I love passing by her in-game and she’s doing something utterly random. The last time I saw her she was shooting down a goth witch lady flirting with her – thrilled the sexuality update can make her proper asexual now, was so happy to see it without having to put dumb flags on her!

10. What sim traits do you give yourself? Lover, Unflirty, Lazy, Cat Lover, Creative, Foodie.

11. Which is your favorite EA hair color? I’m a pretty big fan of the middle red tone. Or the green, if we’re picking unnatural colors.

12. Favorite EA hair? The RoM updo short locs are SO good. Honorable mention to the EL undercut half-ponytail.

13. Favorite life stage? I’m gonna be boring and say YA, because the game is LITERALLY built around them so you have so, SO many more options.

14. Are you a builder or are you in it for the gameplay? I do a little bit of everything, but CAS is my specialty. I spend HOURS in there.

15. Are you a CC creator? If some hair/eye recolors and simple tattoos count, then yeah. I really can’t be fussed learning blender beyond pose-making.

16. Do you have any simblr friends/a sim squad? My social anxiety stops me from interacting a lot, even if I try my best to talk to people. Like, I know the chances of someone being an asshole to me are very, very slim and that most everyone is chill and laid back like I am – REASONABLY I know I’m being dumb, but also my brain is an asshole.

17. What’s your favorite game? In Sims, I’ve honestly only played 4 (a friend sent me 3 a while ago but I have yet to fire it up). Outside sims? Uh...Okami for single player, Guild Wars 2 for multiplayer.

18. Do you have any sims merch? God I wish.

19. Do you have a YouTube for sims? Hahahah like my internet would let me upload videos.

20. How has your “sim style” changed throughout your years of playing? Lord I have no idea...I’ve been fiddling with different types of sim face styles, but I keep falling back to the same one, really – at least for non-themed saves. And it doesn’t even stand out I’m pretty basic bitch.

21. What’s your Origin ID? Monophony! I mostly make sims, but there’s a few terrible builds there, too.

22. Who’s your favorite CC creator? That is a hard as hell question...but I wanna say @simandy,. For multiple reasons, but primarily because their hairs are just...to die for.

23. How long have you had a simblr? It’s been a year or two, but I took several hiatuses as I got distracted by my MMOs. I have a goldfish attention span.

24. How do you edit your pictures? I have several different reshade presets I’ll alternate between, and a good number of Photoshop actions and/or PSDs, and it’s always some combo of those. Each save has a different reshade/action (or PSD) combination to make them have their own looks (I have a word doc for ref so I know what save uses what combo).

25. What expansion/game/stuff pack is your favorite so far? Vampires will always be my favorite, but I was shocked by how much I also enjoyed Werewolves – I’m not a werewolf person, really. Non-occult...Growing Together really does add a ton through the whole game.

26. What expansion/game/stuff pack do you want next? I uh...well you see >-> I’M STUPID WITH MY MONEY I HAVE THEM ALL.

I’m only gonna tag a few peeps since I’ve seen most people having done this - @simarcana, @druidberries, @apricote, @lotus030, @salemssimblr if ya’ll wanna do this here’s your excuse! <3 Feel free to ignore if you don’t wanna!

[marinersubmariner]

I don't normally like to show WIP/sketchy/unfinished artwork because my process is a complete mess and I'm embarrassed by how bad it all is before I reach a point where I'm satisfied enough to call something done. That being said, as the AI inundation is upon us, it feels valuable to share the human trial and error and my own manic desperation that goes into making art. I always spend too much time on stuff that ends up looking like it should not have taken that much time, but I REALLY overcooked my last drawing and fried my own brain. Trying to draw a speeder bike was torture. Here's some of the goofy shit I did!

I really had intended to simply draw an existing speeder bike, but as I considered the ~aesthetic~ I wanted and examined the standard ROTJ-style bike, it wasn't working for me. In terms of motorcycles they're too much like choppers for my taste when I vastly prefer the chunky '80s futurism/cyberpunk/mecha anime look (clearly, since this started out as an Akira reference). But. I have zero expertise in mechanical design or even concept art itself. I do not know how vehicles work or how to draw them. And referencing either real or fictional motorcycles isn't a huge help because they have wheels to focus the design around, which of course hover bikes don't have.

So obviously trying to both design a speeder and draw it in perspective was really difficult to wrap my brain around. I started out by photographing one of my old '90s Micro Machines for reference, but it wasn't exactly useful for extrapolating the shape into a new design:

I sketched out some profiles, but, again, tough to convert to 3D using only my very weak power of imagination:

The only 3D-adjacent tool I know well enough to use is After Effects, which is a poor substitute for a real 3D modeler because it can really only do flat planes and basic shape extrusion, and it was too cumbersome for this. I started to try it and it sucked:

"Just learn a 3D program," you say. "Blender is free." WELL. Maybe someday. But not today. So I resorted to building it in miniature out of cardboard:

This is less mortifying than taking pose reference photos of myself (which I have done a lot! it's a great way to make yourself feel like a complete lunatic!!!) but it was also more work, so. Still makes me feel like a lunatic.

Thankfully it did make it possible for me to finally draw something. The design isn't groundbreaking, and I still have absolutely no idea how to create convincing mechanical details despite poring over mountains of concept art… but an attempt was made. My perspective is probably still out of whack because, despite having studied art throughout my entire academic career, I never officially learned all those multipoint perspective tricks, drawing cubes inside of cubes, etc. I've always preferred and been much better at organic shapes than anything mechanical or architectural.

My initial iterations were more X-Wing/BSG Viper-esque, but I kept being unhappy with the nose shape. I wanted it to be pointy and triangular but I couldn't add enough detail to make it interesting. Even after building it MULTIPLE TIMES I didn't like it, so the shape I ultimately landed on… wasn't one of the prototypes I built. LOL. It was just so hard to tell in the earlier stages, so I had to go through the whole refining process just to land on "nah." It looked alright in cardboard, and then translating it to line art, and then once I colored it I didn't like it. It would have been a lot easier if I could tell at an earlier stage than that!!!!!!

There wasn't any one ship/vehicle I referenced, but things I looked at for inspiration included: the Akira bike (obviously), Tron lightcycles, every time we've ever seen a speeder bike in any piece of Star Wars media, actual motorcycles, X-Wings, A-Wings, U-Wings, Jedi Vectors… etc.

Once I had settled on the split nose, I tried adding vertical stabilizers to the tail section for some more interest back there and to balance out the front, but even though I liked them I thought they made it too busy. It also started to look too much like a miniature ship instead of a bike, like he was riding one of those coin-operated kiddie rides. No!!! I wanted this to look cool!!! So I stuck with the nondescript tail section.

Pose and likeness referencing aren't very exciting but just know that I use a mishmash of references for literally everything. Normally I would pose myself (even though translating my own blobby female proportions into those of a large man is another layer of awkward difficulty), but riding a speeder is a tough action to recreate so I downloaded the "MagicPoser" app on my phone and used that instead. The basic version is free and you can move around limbs and joints in their normal range of motion—some of it gets rubbery, but for the most part it did what I needed it to do.

Also just had to make up an excuse to put him in a pilot helmet! The shape is based on a Y-Wing helmet—a personal favorite of mine—which made sense to me for using on a speeder since it has more face coverage like motorcycle helmets tend to have. (not that I drew him actually wearing it on the speeder, haha. safety first, kids!!—UNLESS you're a dumbass space wizard, then just do whatever looks cool.) I really waffled back and forth on what color to make the visor, because I'm extremely partial to the pink from the Y-Wing helmet, but ultimately I went with the more traditional yellow-orange. Either one looks good with blue and white so I still like 'em both.

This all feels like it was an enormous waste of time, but I did realize the thing that was in my head, so. I guess that's an accomplishment. Unfortunately the problem with making art for myself is that I invariably end up hating my own work, and being in a dead/dying fandom on a dead/dying platform means there is very little external validation to counteract the self-loathing brain worms. Agony!

[goron-king-darunia]

I posted 14,439 times in 2022

206 posts created (1%)

14,233 posts reblogged (99%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@actualaster

@biophilie

@fanotastic

@strange-aeons

@quezify

I tagged 14,425 of my posts in 2022

#lol - 2,300 posts

#mood - 1,066 posts

#pffft - 980 posts

#oof - 954 posts

#yep - 832 posts

#art - 753 posts

#omfg - 528 posts

#bless - 506 posts

#yeah - 477 posts

#cats - 378 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#me looking at the future and wondering if the pandemic will be over before i'm 40 or if we'll all just be stuck in this regressed state unti

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Eggtober 23 A Cube of Egg Casserole (Featuring Bacon, Ham, and Tomato) Clip Studio Paint, Gouache Brush, Gouache Blender, and a new tool, the Pointillism Brush. 15 colors, 1 hour. This was a friend’s suggestion! I didn’t even know Egg Casserole was a thing, but now I want some! Basically a quiche with much less fuss. Speaking of Quiche, I do like my piece from yesterday a bit better today. Depresso Espresso makes things look worse than they are. But my mood improved a little today. I like the results on this much better too. I wanna bite into some nice, fluffy, spongy egg and get some yummy veggies (or, well, tomato is a fruit...) and meat and just... enjoy. Just a little eggy treat for me. As always, big thanks to @quezify for organizing Eggtober. And also for the very nice tags he leaves. Makes me feel better whether I’m in a bad mood or not. Big sweetheart energy. Huge positive force. Hard not to be in a better mood with all the nice things he says on my eggs and on other peoples’ eggs. 😊

76 notes - Posted October 24, 2022

#4

Eggtober 4 Eggs Benedict Clip Studio Paint, Gouache Brush, Dry Gouache Brush, Freckle brush for the pepper, and airbrush for the cayenne because it does good solid speckling. 16 colors. 1 hour. Tragic as it is when the egg arrives on your plate with the yolk already busted, I gotta admit that nothing beats the aesthetic of a yolk pouring out of a poached egg. I just prefer the satisfaction of biting into it myself and feeling the soft casing of cooked egg-white burst between my teeth and feel the warm fatty ooze of deliciously runny yolk engulf my tongue. Maybe that’s an overly erotic way to describe eating egg, but if any egg is like sex, it’s Eggs Benedict and I will die on that hill. Learning to draw the shiny surface of runny yolk and hollandaise sauce was a challenge and I think it needs a little polish, but it’s a warm up, and I’m sure to improve little by little with every egg. I was originally going to do a poached egg today and save Eggs Benedict for later, but someone drew a lovely poached egg the other day and I want to let them shine for a moment, especially since there are many ways to draw an egg, and if the base of this taught me anything, I should save a poached egg for a day where I have less time, because I got a very satisfying result drawing the egg on this one in just 10 minutes. (Not that I would mind posting the same sort of egg as someone else, I just like the challenge of drawing all different eggs and if I can let someone else shine for a day, then I will! It was a very lovely poached egg too!) But yeah, Eggs Benedict slaps and I think it’s the best way to have an egg, other than a poached egg in ramen, which is honestly a tie for me. Soft-boiled is traditional for ramen eggs, but nothing beats a poached egg to me, and whether it’s a topping for ramen or the star of this little breakfast treat, I’ll take a poached egg any day, any way. If you’ve never tried Eggs Benedict before, it’s well worth it! Honestly, thank you @quezify for organizing this little drawing challenge. Nothing like a daily warm up to get me in the mood for other drawing stuff I need to do, and eggs are just so nice to draw, and you can make them as easy or as challenging as you want for yourself and, no matter what, you still end up with a cute little bit of egg art at the end! I don’t know what it is about eggs, but I love them and I love art of them and they make me happy, so it’s lovely getting to see so many nice eggs from everyone, not just my favorite Egg Master.

93 notes - Posted October 4, 2022

#3

Eggtober 11

Tonkotsu Ramen (Featuring Ramen Egg, Enoki Mushrooms, Kikurage/Wood Ear Mushrooms, Chashu Pork, and Green Onion Garnish.) Clip Studio Paint, Gouache Brush, 20 colors, ~1 hour (I forgot to count, I got too into it.) Tonkotsu ramen has to be one of my favorite comfort foods, especially with all the good stuff you can put in it. I’m a sucker for mushrooms if you haven’t noticed. Love them almost as much as I love eggs. Strangely I’m a bit picky about pork, but chashu pork is always so tasty that I’ll just wolf it down. No picking around the fatty bits or picking it apart for fear of gristle. Just shove the little slabs of meat in my mouth and delight in all the flavor. Used the same technique as last time, which means a lot of the detail got covered. But it ALSO means less volleying between colors and a better end product in my opinion. Getting ahead and doing/posting this Eggtober item early today since I keep waking up late and getting to my egg art at midnight. So technically I did an egg, took a break, and then did another instead of going straight into other stuff. Honestly? A delightful way to spend my time. Once again, huge thanks to @quezify. Art is actually starting to be fun again. For the longest time I was so shy about it because none of my stuff measured up to my own expectations. But I’m honestly just... starting to love the process and the product again. The stress of it is just... melting off. I find myself EXCITED to draw a new egg every day. Best Inktober niche ever. All eggs. 😊

102 notes - Posted October 11, 2022

#2

Eggtober 13 Çilbir (Turkish Poached Eggs with Garlic Yogurt) Clip Studio Paint, Gouache Brush and Airbrush (for the paprika and chili flakes), 12 colors, 1 hour and 20 minutes. So when I was looking for egg references for my poached egg pieces, I stumbled across an absolutely dazzling dish that looked delectable. I’d never heard of it before. Now I really want to try it. Recipe (and the reference I loosely based this on) is linked in the title. Poached eggs, yogurt, paprika butter, dill, chili flakes, garlic... what’s not to like? (Catch me modifying the recipe though and just replacing the paprika with cayenne because I like it SPICY. Yes, I know there are spicy and smokey paprikas but shush. Cayenne is cheaper.) But yeah, I saw those dazzling eggs swimming in a buttery sauce on a plate of yogurt and just... had to draw it. I knew it was my destiny. You cannot put dill and yogurt on a plate with some eggs and some spicy sauce and not have me drooling. Took longer than usual because getting the translucency to carry through on that sauce WITHOUT just doing an adjustment layer and lowering the opacity was a challenge. A lot of the colors I used were for really subtle things and you can BARELY see the purple I used at the base of all that yogurt to build up the colors. Also, I think I’ve finally done one piece with every color of the rainbow as a background (The ROYGBIV Rainbow, that is.) The closest thing I had to yellow was a sort of beige-y color that I used as a background for my omelet. But now I have one that’s actually yellow. I think this was a perfect piece for it too. Contrast with the blue and purple in the yogurt shading and the bright reds in the paprika butter. Just the tiniest peek at the orange of the yolks ready to burst forth through those eggs. Big thanks as ever to @quezify who organized the best Inktober ever! Eggtober is the superior Inktober, fight me.

131 notes - Posted October 13, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Eggtober 2 Deviled Eggs.  I had more time today so I spent a little longer on this one. Clip Studio Paint, Gouache brush and a Freckle Brush pen for the paprika. 7 colors, 40 minutes. Last time @quezify accused me (affectionately) for coming in hard for their style by drawing a fried egg on green. And honestly, yeah. I can only hope to be as versatile and talented at egg drawings as the resident egg master. Fried eggs on a pretty green just look very nice. But I promised myself I would draw loads of different eggs, not just the fried eggs I love so much from quezify. And as much as I adore that shade of green, I also promise I won’t use it for EVERY piece, even though I love how it looks with the white of an egg and the yellow of a yolk. Again, this is a pretty new style experiment for me to not use lineart at all and paint like I would with straight paints. I’m not well-practiced in shading, not since I had to do it for art classes 10 years ago, but for a style of egg that demands shading to look good here with the piped in egg yolk mixture, I think I did well with the shading! Eggs are definitely a fun warm-up. A delicious feast for the eyes as well as the mouth.

135 notes - Posted October 2, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[doublerainebow]

Artist Resources (Part 1?)

This is basically just going to be a bunch of resources I have found to be useful. I can’t say that I’ve used all of them, but I’m sure they’re all worth checking out.

I’m also gonna try to put a detailed description for most of the links so you have a better idea of what you’re getting. I apologize in advance if some of them are redundant lol

(I put “Part 1″ if in the case I make another one)

~Links to Tutorials, Tips, Resources, etc~

Another Resource List -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Apparently, the post isn’t mobile-friendly, so it’s suggested to view this on Tumblr browser. Has a bunch of other links. I’ve checked out a few of them (mainly the copyright stuff lol), and it seems that some of the links may be a bit outdated. Still, it doesn’t hurt to check out the links.

Arms and Legs -- Leads to another Tumblr post. A handy tutorial on elbow and knee placement.

Art & Game Dev -- This leads to my personal playlist of a bunch of YouTube videos. Has a bunch of tutorials and interesting videos that I’ve collected over the course of a few years lol.

Blamblot -- A website that contains resources and tutorials on comic lettering. This is primarily in reference to western comics, but it doesn’t help to take a looksie.

Commission Calculator -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Helps artists to stop selling themselves short.

Comparing Heights (hikaku-sitatter) -- A height comparer for centimeters.

Comparing Heights -- A height comparer for feet and inches.

Mouth Shapes and Lip-Syncing -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Useful for... drawing mouth shapes.

Reference Angle -- Useful for when you’re trying to map out a face from an odd angle.

Soft Proofing for Printing -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Helps when you’re trying to make prints of your artwork.

Textures -- A website full of different and mostly free textures. While this website is made for 3D texturing, it can also be useful for 2D drawings. Signing up gives you 15 free credits everyday, and you can use those credits to download some textures for free.

The Models Resource -- A website of models ripped from a wide array of games.

The Spriters Resource -- A website of sprites ripped from a wide array of games.

The Textures Resource -- A websites of textures ripped from a wide array of games. 

~Links to Stock Images~

Please check out whatever policies they may have for their images before using them!

(not sure if any of them are active anymore as I followed some of these accounts a long time ago when I used to be more active on Deviant Art lol)

adorkastock (formerly senshistock)

anatoref -- Leads to another Tumblr post. Has a bunch of hand photo references

charligal-stock

HumanAnatomy4Artist -- Does contain nudity

null-entity

PhelanDavion

RobynRose

~Links to Other Artists~

Akihito Yoshitomi -- Yoshitomi is a mangaka who has tutorials on manga making. He also has an insightful series in which he drafts and draws a 30-page manga in 18 days. Remember that every artist works differently and his process may be different from another’s.

Drawfee -- Drawfee is an improv drawing show of four artists: Nathan Yaffe, Jacob Andrews, Julia Lepetit, and Karina Farek. While they don’t have tutorials in a sense, their videos explain the different processes they go through as they draw. They also occasionally provide tips, tricks, and resources in their videos. They do have another channel and a Twitch channel where they host drawing classes in addition to other fun shenanigans.

EtheringtonBrothers -- Has a bunch of useful and eye-catching tutorials called “How to Think When You Draw”.

Mark Crilley -- Mark is a comic artist, specializing in manga, who has a bunch of tutorials about anatomy, perspective, comic making, and other things.

Miyuli -- Miyuli is an artist who posts tutorials on their Twitter. Their tutorials range from anatomy to clothing to other things. They even have a few books of art tips. Currently (as of the time of posting this), their 2018 version is free for download, so I highly recommend you download that. Some tips may be outdated, but they should still be helpful.

Whyt Manga (Twitter/YouTube) -- Odunze is a comic artist, specializing in manga, that has a bunch of tutorials on manga making and drawing characters of color.

~Links to Free Programs~

Blender -- A free 3D program if you’re into 3D modeling and such. I also personally haven’t used Blender (I use Maya lol), but I know it’s a respectable program.

Krita -- A free painting program if you can’t afford Photoshop or Clip Studio Paint. I personally haven’t used Krita, but I have recommended it to a few friends and they have positive reviews about it.

Paint Tool SAI -- Okay, this one isn’t free, but it’s a significantly cheaper painting program where you don’t have to pay a subscription. It’s 5,500JPY (~50 USD). I’m not sure how well it still works on modern computers (the last update was 2016), but I still use it here and there because I love the pen tool feature it has, and it still works like a charm for me.

~General Tips From Raine~

Raine admits that she’s guilty of not following her own advice, but Raine hopes that the tips that she does know will be beneficial to someone who will follow them. She’s also going to keep all her tips under the cut so as to not make this post a huge wall of text (even though it technically already is lol)

Also, if you have some resources, tutorials, tips yourself, please feel free to send them to me and maybe I’ll make a part 2 to this post!

ALWAYS LOOK FOR REFERENCE. This should really go without saying. You can’t draw from life if you refuse to observe life itself.

If you can’t find the exact thing you need, MAKE YOUR OWN REFERENCE. Time and time again, I can’t find something exactly that I need. So instead, what I do is that I take pictures of my own reference. Sometimes I even grab a friend and take pictures of them doing whatever it is I need.

Have a mirror handy when you’re drawing. Sometimes what you need is actually right there in front of you.

Having trouble drawing something? Do some studies. Take the time to understand what it is you’re drawing. I can’t remember the exact story, but I heard that the people who were working on Tarzan were having a hard time drawing his hands. So, what they did was spend a few hours looking at hands to try and understand how they work.

IT’S OKAY TO STUDY THE ART OF OTHER ARTISTS. Just as we look to the old masters as a reference, it’s definitely okay to look at modern-day artists for reference. Just don’t go copying exactly everything that they do, or worse, trace what they do. Just don’t do it... at all.

Not every line needs to be realized. The viewer of your work will automatically connect the dots.

DO NOT TRASH YOUR OLD DRAWINGS. Please, never ever do this. Your old drawings have value to them, even if they look terrible to you. Old drawings may hold ideas for things you could do for the future. They also serve as a way to see how far you’ve come as an artist.

GETTING BETTER AT DRAWING TAKES TIME AND EFFORT. You’re not gonna get better overnight. It’ll take months, or even years, to feel like you’re a competent artist, and even then, you’ll still have room for improvement.

DON’T LOOK DOWN ON YOURSELF IF YOU’RE TAKING A LONG TIME TO GET BETTER. It’ll be better for your mental health in the long run.

Alternatively, DON'T LOOK DOWN ON OTHER ARTISTS EITHER, ESPECIALLY TO MAKE YOURSELF FEEL BETTER. You know the struggles it took for you to get where you are, so don’t go putting down other people when you’ve been in their shoes once.

KEEP DRAWING. If you’re not making an effort to get better, then you’re not going to be better. I get that it’s hard to find the inspiration to draw (I’m very guilty of this), but just keep trying. It doesn’t have to be big or spectacular. You don’t even have to post it if you’re the type who likes to post their art stuff.

Try to find references from real-life. It’ll help you better understand form, lighting, shadows, etc., especially if you’re going for a more realistic kind of art style. Otherwise, finding reference from things like cartoons, anime, comics, etc. are just as good.

Try new things. Try new art mediums. Try a different art style. Switch up the way you do things. Maybe you’ll hate it, maybe you’ll like it. Who knows if you don’t try.

Watch time-lapses (or speed draws/speed paints) of other artists!

Pinterest and Google are your friends if you need tutorials or references or whatever.

If you’re offering commissions, DO NOT WORK UNDER YOUR LOCAL MINIMUM WAGE. You are literally devaluing the work you actually put into a piece.

I like to think I’m an aficionado of Photoshop, so feel free to ask me questions on how to achieve something! I’ve used Photoshop for about 11 years now and know my way around the program. On another note, I do recommend setting custom keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop because the default shortcuts are terrible (in my opinion), and because having custom shortcuts increases the speed of your workflow.

Because I’ve been seeing this a lot lately in Twitter, you’re never too old to start in art. Art is just one of those things that anyone can pick up at any age because the only thing you really need to get good in art is time, diligence, and patience.

Try not to post hi-res images of your artwork to prevent art stealers from selling your artwork in high resolution.

Always, always, always add your signature and watermark on your artwork. I like to add my signatures and watermarks in places that’ll be hard to erase or crop out. I’ve also seen people add their signatures and watermarks in creative ways (ex. on a character’s shirt). You need to protect your work in an era where people will just blatantly steal it and make profit off your work.

Tag List

@reality-is-often-disappointing

[aniraklova]

Hello how are you? I already knew your tumblr before, but I looked a lot yesterday, I was very curious to know how you make these amazing clothes, what caught my attention the most was the one inspired by Hunger Games and the one inspired by Kateryna Pavlenko. I don't know if you do it yourself, but either way you are extremely talented. I just wanted to know if you have any tutorials to suggest, I want to make well-structured clothes like yours.

Hiiii, thank you! It's actually not as hard as it looks like. Once you start and will make lots of stuff, it will be a piece of cake later. I take the game meshes and play with them around, the basic blender things, editing here and there, then goes the tricky part calling - WEIGHTS. And some other little adjustments. There are lots of tutorials about how it works and how to do the cc. I will be honest I don't even remember what tutorial I read and used, I'm sorry. ;-; But most of the time I was on s4s studio forum and read different topics about certain stuff.

[biteghost]

How do you come up with so many cool characters?? All of your OCs seem so vibrant and fleshed out. Do you have a specific process for developing them, or do they just kinda come to you mostly formed? I find I struggle with building a compelling OCs for D&D games & would love to hear your thoughts on character development.

(This answer got long, sorry.) This is a super nice sentiment, I’m happy you think my characters are all cool and unique!!

As far as process goes, uh, it depends on the character? I’ve spent a long time (years) rewiring my brain when it comes to what I think about when creating OCs. They don’t usually come to me fully formed - I get an idea in my head about a concept, and then over like a week or even months of fiddling I end up with a character for that concept.

A lot of the time my characters are simply people I wanted to see more of in media as a kid! Mostly, female characters I actually relate to or are as nuanced and messy as their male cast members, haha... (It was a trip when I realized in high school that I didn’t hate female characters - it was actually that none of them were written as well as the cool boys in the anime series I liked, haha! Be the change you want to see in the world, basically.)

Inspiration for characters (and stories for them to be part of) come from a lot of places. An easy piece of advice is to make an effort to intake media you like! Read new comics, watch new movies and television shows, read books, play video games, listen to music and obsessively memorize the lyrics - hell, obsessively learn everything there is to know about black holes or public domain characters (that’s what I did, lol...)!

(Note: ’New’ meaning new to YOU - you don’t need to only be partaking of media that’s created in 2021 - you can find a lot to love in media that was created before your time, or for generations before you!)

I must reiterate: intake new media that you ENJOY! You don’t have to like all the same things as everyone else, you don’t have to be invested in the same shows and podcasts as your friends. Varied interests and taste is part of what makes us all unique! Increasing your pool of inspiration will help you come up with interesting ideas, and help you find YOUR voice. Your particular interests and the niche things that speak to you will help you figure out what kind of characters and what kind of stories you like to create! But the process doesn’t end at just intaking media... When you find the stuff that brings you joy, analyze what exactly it is about that thing that speaks to you... Put it into words. Explain it to a friend. Make it tangible, analyze the feelings and why the series made you feel that way... and then take it and shove it into your own stories, lol!

Engage critically and thoughtfully with work you like, with characters you like, and it will help you have the language and thought process to recreate it in your own work!

My creative process is like an exquisite corpse of all the characters and series I’ve liked over my lifetime. I mesh them all together in a grim blender and what comes out is a shake in the vague shape as an OC, lol

BUT... it seems like you’re asking more specifically about making characters for tabletop roleplaying games like D&D? And THAT is a different process for me than making OCs for my comics or original story ideas!

I don’t usually join a tabletop game with a fully fleshed out character, actually?? I don’t spend a long time on their backstory, and I usually figure it out like halfway through the story, or through collaboration with my game master!

My TTRPG characters are usually whatever I think would be most interesting in the given game setting or set-up and... usually they exist in opposition to whatever the core concept of the game is. So, the examples I have from games I’ve played are:

In Cardians: West (World of Darkness: Hunter the Vigil): we played in a modern-day urban fantasy setting, where players were recruited into a supernatural Hunter group that was also a criminal organization that Did Crimes and Broke The Law in the name of keeping peace and protecting humanity from the supernatural creatures that go bump in the night. I played Andrew, a Lawful Good Police Detective, because I thought playing a character who would need to grow past his original ideals of ‘Right and Wrong’ in the name of the greater good would be interesting! (And it was!)

In SINNING ADVENTURE (WoD: Geist: The Sin-Eaters) we payed in a modern-day urban fantasy setting with the premise that the players all Died and were brought back to life by forming a pact with a powerful spirit (and getting cool ghost powers in the process!) I played Cassius, a character who could not cope with his death, and thus refused to use his new powers because they were evidence that he was no longer strictly human. It caused conflict in the group and world, but I thought it would be interesting! (And it was! Cassius was a Bitch.)

In Rex Machina (Dungeons and Dragons 5E), I wanted to play an Aarakocra, but was having a hard time deciding on a class or backstory... until I found out that in the ‘canon’ of D&D Aarakocra only live to be like, mid 20s???? Their lifespans are insanely short compared to other playable races!! And I thought that was stupid, so I decided to make MY Aarakocra, Izzy, a warlock that’s looking for ways to extend his own stupidly short life. His pact essentially granted that to him, giving him extra time to find a way to achieve True Immortality. His conflict challenges what’s ‘true’ living in this world, and his extended life is in direct conflict with a lot of forces in the world we play in, and while it is very stressful I think it’s really interesting to play!

In Lamplighting (Monster of the Week), my character Aicen is an assassin who made a deal with a demon and gained supernatural perks out of it... except I decided that she doesn’t WANT to be in this deal. She is actively trying to undo it because it wasn’t her deal - she inherited it from a CEO that she killed during an unrelated job. (Aicen is probably my character I’ve put the most backstory into, and that’s just because at character creation in MOTW you are given a lot of questions about who your character is and why they’re where they are!)

In Hand of Adam (WoD: HtV), the concept was that all players were going to join a post-apocalyptic supernatural-hating cult. I played Shouter, who was a self-preserving pacifist coward who also turned out to be a fae (which the cult would have killed him over). It was stressful but very fun. I love Shouter. He ran away from fights and didn’t actually kill anyone until the last episode where they fought God (whom he killed, lol).

NOW. THESE ARE ALL JUST EXAMPLES OF HOW *I* LIKE TO PLAY CHARACTERS!! For me personally, I enjoy playing a character who has built-in conflict either with the world, the story, or the other players. I’m only able to play characters like this because my friend group are all really cool and we all know that conflict is not bad - it’s fiction and we’re just roleplaying! If I didn’t trust my GMs and fellow players as much as I do, I probably wouldn’t have felt comfortable enough playing some of these concepts.

I don’t think you need to know every little thing about a tabletop character, and in fact, not knowing some things and leaving it up to the GM and story to flesh out is an easy way to help you get more invested in both your character AND the story your GM is telling! Tabletops are a collaborative storytelling experience, so if you’ve already plotted out your character’s whole story, there won’t be much participation from other players or your GM. Figure out what your character wants, and let your roleplaying and GM slowly put all the other pieces in place over the course of your campaign!

But the TL:DR about how I make tabletop OCs is that I just... try to give them a goal, an ideal, or a personality that is in direct conflict with some aspect of the game we’re playing. I don’t want the character to be undermining the whole game, because that’s really crappy to do to your GM, but I have to have something for my character to grow through or change. I like giving them built-in character arc starters, lol. I haven’t played a game where my character has gotten along with every other player character and NPC over the entire campaign since my very FIRST game, lol!

Also, if you’re having trouble, why not ask your GM what they think? Again, tabletops are collaborative! Don’t be afraid to talk ideas out with your GM for your character.

A final note about playing in specifically oneshot games (i.e. games that are not long campaigns but are meant to be played in one or two sittings). Personally, I always just retrofit an OC I already have to play in oneshots! When I make a new character for a long campaign, it usually takes me two or three sessions to find their voice and figure out how to roleplay them. If the game you’re playing is only one session, I find it easier to jump right in and get the most out of your character and the game when you’re playing a character you already know pretty well! I’ve played characters from my webcomic quite a few times, and it’s always a lot more fun for me than figuring out a new character on the fly!

SO UH, IN CONCLUSION... sorry if this is mad unhelpfu!! My personal processes are unique to me! but that's the point - no one person will have the exact answer that works for you! You have to keep trying until you figure it out for yourself! Good luck! Keep creating! <3