#every so often I think about redrawing these

[flameraven]

With all the negative posts about the Netflix Avatar adaptation going around, though I would post something positive. I did these pieces back in 2006-7, but I'm still pretty proud of them.

[glassedplanets]

what in the hell makes you think i'm going to ask for it?

[sunniestshark-ocs]

- AU Gotei 13- Division 1 Captain Commanders -

I have all these old Bleach sketches and ideas I never posted anywhere so might as well unload them here XD I've since moved all my characters into my original story but I think I'm always going to dabble in Bleach here and there.

Anyway! These two are the Captain Commanders of the Gotei 13:

Regan is the oldest soul in existence and holder of one of the most powerful Kido-type zanpakuto in the gotei. As a co-commander, she takes on the brunt of the administrative duties that the 1st is responsible for. She's a sharp-witted, eagle-eyed person and at 6'9" not much escapes her gaze. She's also well-versed in so many topics, it's a game with her subordinates to see if they can teach her something new and not the other way around. It doesn't happen very often.

Hattori Fuu is one of the most celebrated swordsman of the Gotei, and holder of the most powerful electric-type zanpakuto in history (this is an unofficial CC tradition). She takes charge of all combat operations and personnel responsibilities of the 1st. Fuu has had an interesting, infamous career and is known for being a stone-cold, pragmatic leader with a signature scowl permanently etched on her face. She does not want a military full of "heroes" and generally discourages sacrificial or glory seeking behavior (which, unfortunately for her, has not changed her favorite former student's behavior much)

[yuamin]

ORORUN REDRAW GUIDE !

i think we’ve all seen the atrocity that is genshin’s unreleased character, ororun. the entirety of natlan is a mess really, but as a yoruba person myself i CANNOT keep quiet about ororun specifically.

outside yoruba mythology, in yoruba, ‘Olorun’ (the name ororun is based on, pronounced o-law-roon , with o pronounced as in orange and the ‘roon’ pronounced shortly, not dragged on at all) is actually the same word we often use to refer to God in Christianity. Christianity is the primary religion among us yorubas so honestly, i was kinda glad they misspelled his name. it would feel SO disrespectful referring to whatever that thing is with the same word we use to refer to God who we actually worship. religion aside, genshin’s depiction of Olorun (cultural god, not Christian one) is downright disgusting. i’d never paid too much attention to genshin and its poor representation, but now that my culture has fallen victim to it, i completely understand all the outrage.

edit: please note that while we use ‘Olorun’ to refer to the Christian God, Olorun is just a general word for ‘god’ itself ! for example if i say “God in heaven” and “god of thunder” we know i’m referring to two different beings, in yoruba it’s the kind of the same—the same word is used to refer to both the Christian and other gods, but we know it’s different, even though olorun can be capitalized regardless of what god we’re talking about (unlike english where the Christian God is capitalized and other gods aren’t) at the end of the day though, when we say “olorun” even without context, we are usually referring to the christian God !

1. PLEASE DO NOT DRAW HIM WITH ANIMAL EARS !

i’ve noticed that hoyoverse has this nasty habit of portraying every dark skinned character as wild or animal-esque. kaeya seems to be the only exception to this. even xinyan, though lacking any animal features, has this wild energy to her. some might call it a stretch, but i feel like her features are pretty feline in comparison to other liyue characters.

Olorun in our culture is the supreme god of the heavens. In my opinion, it is disrespectful to liken him to something akin to an animal. normally i wouldn’t even mind that much, but with how hoyo makes its few dark characters more and more like animals, i can’t help but feel weird about it. its really off putting.

2. HIS HAIR WOULD NOT BE CURLY !

majority of nigerians have 4C HAIR. not wavy hair or loose curls. some have 4B, but 4C is the usual here, that is, kinky or coily hair. Olorun is often portrayed as bald in traditional art, but trust me if he had hair his hair would resemble his people’s, not Tyla’s.

DREADLOCKS ARE A YES ! outside nigeria, locking hair is pretty common, but in nigeria a lot of people have locks naturally. our hair sometimes just grows out that way, no treatment no nothing. dreads are 100% an appropriate style, they look good asf too.

3. PLEASE USE CULTURAL FABRICS IN YOUR DESIGNS !

when i saw ororun’s outfit, i almost started crying. they couldn’t even bother to dress him up a little. they really dressed my brother in a scarf and cape and called it a day 😭 upon how fashionable we nigerians are know to be, hoyoverse still made it their mission to embarrass us stylistically. God knows my people have suffered man 😭

ankara is a traditional nigerian fabric that features bright colors and lots of patterned designs. see below:

here in 9ja, we love our ankara. it’s a big part of our fashion here and trust me it would look excellent in your designs. it’s perfectly fine to draw ororun in normal fabrics since he’s a deity and it’s not like ankara existed back then, but if you really want to represent nigeria, ankara is a must 🙏

i’m going to address another fashion piece because if you search up nigerian fashion you’ll see it a lot: beads.

these orange beads are igbo (another tribe here in nigeria) NOT yoruba. does this mean you can’t use it in olorun’s design ? no ! let me explain. tbh, here in nigeria there’s a bit of...tension between clans. it’s not that common, but older people are definitely a lot more tribalist. as a yoruba i love my igbo brothers and sisters, i truly believe they’re the most fashionable clan and i adore their festivities, they always go over the top. please, just look at them:

(only one image because of image caps, ugh)

anyway, we yorubas wear beads too. but the specific way the beads are worn around the head and in multiple layers round the neck is igbo, not yoruba. though i personally wouldn’t care too much if i saw olorun with igbo beads since all i want is for him to at least look nigerian, at the end of the day he is a yoruba deity. it might be disrespectful to dress the god of one clan as if he belongs to another, especially since there is so much historical ( and very slight but uncommon present ) day tension between both clans.

here’s a more yoruba outfit. sorry yall, it might be hard for you to distinguish if you’re not yoruba or igbo, but a lot of nigerians can tell the difference at a glance. ( actually nowadays, there is so much overlap between yoruba and igbo fashion, but there are many specific styles that may be associated with one tribe and not the other, for example how beads are worn in the above paragraph ) please do your research, he’s not only a nigerian god, but a yoruba one.

one more thing, because i know it will start discourse : skin tone.

nigerians have a very diverse range of skin tones. some of us are so pale, if not for our afrocentric features we could maybe pass for another race. however, ororun is yoruba.

light skinned nigerians are usually igbo. not to say that yorubas can’t be light skin, but here in nigeria if you saw a light skinned person, we’d automatically assume they were igbo. igbo people usually have lighter skin tones. majority of yorubas fall on the more milk to dark chocolate end of the skin tone spectrum. i’m saying this now because i know a lot of people are going to start arguments over ororun being redrawn as ‘too light’ or ‘too dark.’ i don’t really care about complexion, but i thought i’d help you all get your facts right.

that’s it ! if you read all this i’m super thankful. i don’t usually post about this kind of stuff but i honestly love my country and could go on about it for days. nigeria is such a beautiful place with a diverse range of cultures— from hausas to fulanis to so many more. natlan was supposed to be Africa’s time to shine, as well as latin americans, but hoyoverse said fuck you and your people. they did this to an extent with sumeru but natlan was done straight up dirty—not a single melanated character in sight, and the only one who does have melanin, iansan, looks so desaturated you might as well call her grey. i saw someone on tiktok call mualani a dark skinned character—it was at that point that i knew genshin was done for.

please REBLOG this post so it reaches more people and artists in the fandom !! this is literally the third time i’m making this post because tumblr refuses to show it in the tags for some reason 😭 i encourage other cultures who feel misrepresented to make posts like this too. it’s a perfect opportunity to educate and inform people about the diverse cultures genshin has once again failed to represent properly.

Hoyo has never been one to make customer satisfaction their top priority, but we’ve been able to call them out before and i truly believe we can do it again. Natlan is not poor design choice. it is blatant racism, a nation based on POC ethnicities with not a single colored character insight. Hoyoverse has been able to escape racism accusations for as long as i can remember, but natlan is the icing on the cake. we CANNOT allow hoyo to proceed as planned without giving them the appropriate backlash.

Also, if you redraw ororun using this guide, make sure to tag me here or on my main blog, @heartkaji !! i’d love to see all your redesigns. once again, thank you all for reading and have an amazing day !!

[marie-m-art]

Good Animated Omens - Behind the Scenes

Here's a behind-the-scenes look at the walk cycles I animated of Aziraphale and Crowley (original post here).

I'll reiterate that the character designs are @lookitsstevie's creation! I made builds in Toonboom Harmony based on their designs, and then animated the builds.

Long post under the cut, organized into four parts. Feel free to jump around or just click through the images and gifs to get an idea of the gist. (At least take a look at Part IV, where you'll see a version of Aziraphale without his jacket and a closeup of Crowley's torso!)

Hopefully this is interesting even if you don't know the first thing about animation. It's not a step-by-step-from-scratch tutorial, but it might give animators some ideas to think about when trying this software!

I'm happy to answer questions about what I cover here - comments, DM's, or ask-box questions are all fine by me. If you like any of the new gifs and want to reblog it on its own, I can make new posts for those upon request! (I'd prefer you don't reupload them, but if you do please at least credit me with a tag to my account - thank you!!)

Part I: The interface and some basics

Above is a screencap of the software interface.

In the centre is the Camera window, where all the drawing and animating is done. 

To the left, the Node View. It's a representation of how the pieces and layers that make the characters are grouped and connected to each other, which is what makes a character "build". Every piece in this window is called a node, and there are different types. Light blue "drawing nodes" contain the drawings themselves. Each drawing node usually has a green "peg" attached; the peg is used to move and rotate the drawing piece; you set a pivot point on each peg. Light grey nodes are groups that have more nodes within, and dark blue nodes are added effects (eg masks, the blur for the halo, etc).

Below, the Timeline - it's where keyframes are set and tweened. The red square dots indicate there is a new keyframe on a particular frame; the white dots indicate keyframes are on layers nested somewhere under the topmost visible layer. All the pieces of the characters can be found in the timeline and correspond to the pieces that exist in the Node View (and Camera). Typically you work with a collapsed view of the build layers in the timeline, which allows you to set keyframes on multiple layers at once.

To the right, a few tabs in this window - Tool Properties, Colour Palettes, and, shown on top here, the Library. The library is where you store your builds, so that you can bring in a fresh copy when animating a new scene. This library tab also has the Drawing Substitution window, which shows thumbnails of every drawing contained in a drawing node when that node is selected.

A second of animation is 24 frames long. Finished animation will often have keyframes on every second frame with the tweens removed, to help simulate the look and feel of traditional animation - this is known as animating "on twos", and saved time, money and paper in the old days. If you leave the tweens on, and/or have keyframes on every frame, the animation is "on ones".

My walks are on twos - it's the look I prefer.

When I say "tween" I'm specifically referring to the software feature that will automatically calculate and interpolate the path between two different poses/keys of a peg. An inbetween could be the result of using a tween, a new drawing, or both. On twos, an inbetween will look the same as any other keyframe on the timeline when you're finished - its relevance as a concept is during the process, not the end result.

Quality animation is achieved via a combination of moving/tweening pre-existing drawings using their pegs, and adding new drawings as hand-drawn inbetweens when needed. Toonboom Harmony also has nodes called "deformers": they offer a way to tween the shape of a drawing without needing to redraw inside the drawing node. (Part IV has the explanation for which pieces I used them for, and why.)

Part II: Navigating the builds

This is what their default poses with no animation look like.

Animation using builds is sometimes colloquially referred to as "puppet-style animation" because the way you can connect body parts to each other feels like making and handling a 2D digital puppet: you can connect a hand to a forearm so that they can move as a unit, and you can connect that unit to an upper arm to move the whole arm as a unit, and that arm gets connected to the torso, and so on.

When you want to connect two pieces, like a hand to a forearm, then you create another peg in the Node View and attach the two body parts together under that new peg. The screencaps below show the nodes that make up Aziraphale's and Crowley's entire builds inside their respective groups:

Things got a bit sloppy ... It looks extremely complicated, but once it's set up, you don't have to think about it too much when you're animating!

And I've zoomed in on the nodes that make their arms so you can see how there are pegs on top of pegs (all the green nodes), with wires connecting everything:

As I explained in Part I, new drawings are added and contained within a body part's drawing node (the light blue ones under the green ones), and the Drawing Substitution window is where you can see all the drawings that exist in a particular node. In the timeline, you set keyframes for moving the pegs, and you also choose which frame the new drawings will appear when applicable. You might have a lot of drawings stored in the nodes, but only what you set to appear in the timeline will be visible in the final animation.

You can select a body part in the camera view, and then find the corresponding layer in the Timeline or the Node View by pressing the "o" keyboard shortcut. If you select a body part by clicking on it, and then press the "b" keyboard shortcut, you will jump up to the next peg it's connected to. You can hide and unhide pieces using "d" and "a" respectively.

In the first capture above, I'm showing that the arm pieces can be moved separately or together, and you can see how the pegs in the Node View light up when I select them in the Camera window (hiding them turns them red). In the second capture, I pop down to the timeline to step back and forth between the poses - the light grey row (it appears between the rows of red dots) represents the hand's drawing node in the timeline.

Part III: Summary of animation process

In my head I imagined how their walks would differ from each other - Aziraphale bouncier but with very straight posture and limited arm movement, vs Crowley slinking and swaggering all over.

I also knew that I wanted the animation to look good for both a walking-on-the-spot version, and as a version walking across the screen (both versions are at the top of the post!).

Then I started doing some rough animation.

I set aside my finished builds for the roughs. For each character, I made a few drawing nodes and two pegs; a peg for the up-and-down upper body motion, which I tweened, and a peg for moving them across the screen. The legs and arms are drawing substitutions.

With these extremely rudimentary rough "builds", I worked out - how many frames long the walks would be, - how far the characters would move across the screen each step, - how much the upper bodies would move up and down, and - the key drawings of the legs and feet.

I didn't worry about animating clothing, hair, or Azi's arms in the rough stage. For those elements, the drawings would be spaced really close together and would be easier to figure out with tweens. (Note: this rudimentary setup would be sufficient if you want to clean up and inbetween characters by hand frame-by-frame instead of making full builds; my preference is build animation because the process is more fun for me)

Then I started working with the finished builds, using the roughs as a guide, and established the broadest motions first: the up-and-down motion in the upper bodies (I set a keyframe at the lowest point, a keyframe at the highest point, then tweened between them) and how far they'd travel across the screen. Then the feet were done.

I went back and forth between viewing them walking on the spot and walking across the screen to make sure that both versions worked. I also made sure they crossed the same amount of ground relative to each other.

After those crucial parts, I moved on to animating their arms, hair, torsos, clothing details, and finishing the legs, not necessarily in that order. I simulated twisting/rotating their torsos in 3d space by moving their waistcoats and lapels.

The first gif switches back and forth between versions (imagine a background scrolling by when they walk on the spot). The second gif is an example of bad "footslip" - they're moving at different speeds, and if you pay attention to their feet, Aziraphale appears to slip on ice while Crowley appears to slide forward on skates.

"You go too fast for me, Crowley!"

Part IV: Extras and details

Here is a version of Aziraphale's walk without his jacket, and a closeup of Crowley so you can see his swaying hips better:

One of the cool things about animating with builds is they lend themselves well to small modifications; the jacketless version took all of five minutes to make.

I'd be remiss not to include a close-up of Aziraphale's hair, the real star of the animation :) (Crowley's hair is also animated but I purposefully kept it understated since it's a much different texture.) And a closeup image of Crowley's snake tattoo:

The biggest unit for both of them are their upper bodies, which includes their pelvises. The up-and-down motion is only on one peg instead of on every single piece, which is handy because it means I can hide just that part of the animation when I want to work on the clothing details:

During the process of animation, I am often hiding then unhiding pieces like this so I can see what I'm doing.

Their clothing ended up being a lot of separate pieces, which I kept adding during animation rather than before, as it was hard to predict everything I needed. Their clothing also incorporates cutters (aka masks), and deformers (see explanation in Part I). In the next set of gifs the deformers show up as green outlines with handles and get turned on and off.

Aziraphale's torso functions as a mask for his clothing. The shape of his torso subtly changes via deformer. His lapels and waistcoat have V shapes that are masks/cutters (they cut a V shape out of those pieces); the same pieces that make the cutters also are used for the black lines of those V shapes via a special layering setup. The main shapes of his lapels are animated with deformers, and you can see how far beyond his torso shape they extend when I turn on the deformers in the second gif.

Deformers work best for shapes that change a little bit, and/or slowly. The minor shape changes in his and Crowley's clothes ended up being a great use case for deformers, because they pretty much tweened perfectly.

The reason I didn't use them on Aziraphale's legs was because those shapes change significantly between keys; I predicted I'd have to re-adjust every frame of a tweened deformer, so I drew the inbetweens by hand (halfway through, I realized I probably should have used them after all, but I was in too deep by then; hand drawing was fun though!). Deformers worked well on his bottom jacket:

Crowley's pelvis is layered above and below his thigh pieces and has a deformer. Also take a look at all the drawing substitutions for his hands:

And lastly the deformers on the hair:

Epilogue

I'm hoping the gifs all play at the same speed for everyone as they play for me. Hopefully the demo gifs are at least watchable, if not super clear... (I'll listen to feedback on the presentation of the information, for if I do similar posts in future!) Don't hesitate to ask questions about anything I covered, or about any details you noticed that I didn't elaborate on!

ko-fi.com/marieanimate

I'm shy about mentioning it, but I set up a Ko-fi account in case this post compels anyone to leave a small "tip" (but reblogging and sharing is just as good)!

Thanks for reading, and have a nice day!

[otaku553]

Ok so I have been stewing this crossover au in my brain nonstop for the past few days and. I am nothing if not committed to the bit, so. Volume cover redraws :)

Here are the originals:

If you want to read more about my one piece spy x family crossover, keep reading!

So the idea is simple! Crossover reincarnation au where ASL is reborn in Spy x Family. They’re each born separately and none of them are born with the same names as their previous lives, and with no way of finding each other, they each find their own thing to do in the world.

Sabo, too used to the dangers of being a spy, eventually finds a cause to devote himself to again, in preventing war from engulfing the country he was reborn in. Ace, drawn to fire as he was in his previous life, used arson as a means to rob rich people for sustenance and survival, and is eventually scouted and hired by Garden as a fire specialist and assassin. And Luffy, though born in perhaps the poorest condition, grows up happily and takes whatever part time jobs he wants to do.

The thing about Sabo is that, as much as he seems like a young man of good repute and high standing within society, everyone in WISE knows that he is a massive nuisance. Nobody knew in the beginning how a child less than half the age of most of their veteran agents could have the same skills and knowledge in their profession. Sabo was— and still is— hyper competent, and by the time WISE figured out just how much of a menace to society he was, it was too late.

Ace forgot for the first few years of his new life that he wasn’t made of fire, and consequently, received multiple accidental burns. This did not deter him, however, from growing up to be a very skilled arsonist, well-practiced in every which way to start a dumpster fire or house fire. As a teenage he would use this often to draw attention as he robbed rich people blind. When he was caught, he was given an ultimatum by Garden: join them and receive payment for starting fires and causing problems under contract, or face the government and authorities for his crimes. Begrudgingly, he joined Garden, but eventually comes to appreciate that he can make substantial money in his element.

Luffy is Luffy. No telepathy or experimentation, no fancy schools, no gimmicks or secret identities. But he has still lived an extremely colorful life in this world, full of fascinating and kind individuals who have helped him grow up healthy and relatively happy. He goes where he is free, and he takes whatever part time jobs he wants in order to make the minimum he needs to survive.

Ace and Sabo find each other first, in their late teens, and neither of them realize that the other remembers their previous life, but both refuse to separate. (Sabo thinks Ace doesn’t remember, because Ace didn’t recognize him. Ace never saw Sabo grow up past 10, however, so he doesn’t recognize older Sabo immediately. By the time he does realize who exactly Sabo is, Sabo has backtracked and pretends to know Ace from a dream, or from somewhere else.)

Sabo’s attachment to Ace, predictably, causes problems between Sabo and WISE, but by then, Sabo is indispensable to the organization, and they make an exception for Sabo to be able to remain with Ace, so long as Ace never finds out what Sabo’s actual job is. Ace, on the other hand, hides his job because he doesn’t want his brother, who he has just found and who does not know Ace well enough yet, to know that he makes a living from killing people.

And they find Luffy sometime afterwards, prior to the beginning of the Spy x Family canon. Luffy figures out, not long after moving in with his brothers, both of his brothers’ secret occupations and the fact that both of them remember their past memories. He thinks it is common knowledge, however, and so he never brings it up.

[phantomarine]

Clam's Quick Tips for Starting Your Very First Webcomic

Howdy! Here are the three bits of advice I tend to give people who ask me about getting into webcomic-making. Maybe they can help you jump into the fray with a little less fear.

1) Make Your First Chapter a Pilot Episode

You will be told by webcomic veterans to start with a short, simple comic idea first - which is wise - but if all you can think about is your big magnum opus, then you might as well hop in, right? Otherwise you'll just be glancing back at the other cooler project forever.

But if you can't start with a small simple story, start on a small, simple part of that larger story. Your first chapter should be a snapshot of the main conflict - show us a simple scene with few characters, ease us in slowly, keep things clear and focus on emotion/impact/clarity. Get the audience to care by offering something easily digested, but full of promise.

Once you're done with that 'pilot' chapter, and you're feeling more comfortable with the whole comic process, you can open the gates and show us the larger world. At that point, you'll be way more ready.

2) Simplify Your Art Style For Your Own Sanity

Always try to make your webcomic's art style as simple as possible - the standard rule is to use only 75% of your artistic skill for every comic page you make. Otherwise you will burn out quickly and terribly.

But you also need to be PROUD of your art style. If you're really feeling itchy, add a couple bells and whistles to your style so you can look at the finished page and say "Yeah, looks cool." You'll find the right balance the more you draw.

Also, don't be afraid to change your art style as you go along. Ultimate consistency is often impossible in webcomics anyway - so embrace your desire to try new things, streamline your work, whatever you feel needs to happen to be happiest. Sometimes the coolest part of reading a webcomic is noticing that style change - so don't hesitate to embrace it!

3) Resist the Reboot! RESIST!

The curse/blessing of drawing the same things over and over is that you'll inevitably get better at drawing those things. The trouble comes when you look back at old stuff and start thinking "Damn, I could draw that way better now."

You must recognize that this feeling never goes away. Not after a hundred pages. Not after three hundred. Not after a thousand.

I think everyone should be allowed one soft reboot for their first webcomic. Redraw some panels that bother you. Change up some dialogue if it doesn't make sense with your new story ideas. Do maintenance, basically. One of the beauties of webcomics is that they can be easily edited, without reprinting a whole book or remaking a whole game.

But if the ultimate purpose of a webcomic is to tell a story, then constant reboots will just be retelling the same story - slightly better each time, but the same at its core. We've heard it before. Most audiences would rather you save your strength and just keep going, rather than circling back year after year and going "Wait wait wait! I'll do it better this time."

Reboot early, not often, and only when you absolutely must! You're a storyteller, and you're constantly getting better at telling your story. Don't be ashamed of it - look back how much ground you've covered, and keep walking!

---

That's a good start. Happy webcomicking - don't be afraid to jump in, but be prepared to learn a lot very quickly. And if this advice doesn't work for you or adhere to how you did it, that's absolutely fine - webcomics are diverse by nature, and so are their creation processes. Feel out what works best for you, and good luck!

[tibbycaps]

Do you know have any tips on how to draw a comic? As in simple style and easy to draw and consistent in redraw? I love your style and I can't help but wonder how you got here and if you could help. Thank you

okay sorry i left this in the inbox for a bit because. where to start lol! there's a lot of thought that can go into making comics i think. but i believe you're specifically asking about having a consistent art style and being able to draw the same character a lot over and over again, so i'll try to focus on that

i think a lot of consistency is just playing around with character designs and getting something you feel comfortable with. ill use grian as a good example because it took me a while to come up with a grian design that i liked. once i liked it, i was able to draw my grian a lot & very consistently. every time you draw a character, even if it's a little doodle, you gain that muscle memory for ur lines a little better, so you should doodle always as much as you can and never be afraid to try something new and experiment with your style

the pipeline

i think a good way to establish a character design that you really like to draw & can familiarize yourself with is by defining some key features about them. like in this image for example, my older grian designs don't really have anything about them that stands out to me. he wasn't rlly that fun to draw. but nowadays i think i have a distinct hairstyle & expression & glasses shape i give him, which are fun to draw. even if it's a tiny doodle with like, 15 strokes, you can still identify it as my grian design i think

something that i noticed (i didn't consciously do this but it just sort of happened as i was trying to make them all look different from one another) is that i assign different shapes to grian, cub and scar. these guys are good examples because 1. they're the three characters in my hotguy comics part and 2. they're the three guys i draw the most often

grian i tend to go for more rounded shapes, cub more squares/rectangles, and scar is more pointy and triangular. little things like this can help them stand out from one another and makes them fun to draw in my opinion. when i draw grian's hair i always have the hair come to a rounded point and is more neat/tidy. when i draw scar the hair is more spiky and wild. cub is sort of in the middle where his hair is more pointy, but is kept neat, which gives it those straight lines and right angles

TL;DR how i draw characters easily and consistently is make key features & shapes that make them fun to both draw & look at. and then draw them a lot

i hope that makes any sense, i like yapping about character design so hope you don't mind the long response lol ^_^

[runningwithscizzorz]

HOW DO YOU DRAW FACES??!?! seriously, everything about your art is pure eyecandy, I love it SO MUCH, but faces. YOUR FACES. the faces are perfect. they capture every detail. they feel so human. so expressive. i would love to know how you draw/structure your faces because it's the biggest thing i'd like to improve on with my art!

Art is a translation of how you perceive the world. Art is both extremely watered down and painfully vulnerable with emotions. The artist translates the world, and people translate the art. Lots of art gets lost in translation. My goal is to make people read my art regardless of my language. I want my art to speak louder than my simple cluttered words could.

How can you read a face with no words? You have to find your own way to do that, but here’s a very rough way of how I read people and attempt to translate their world into mine.

One practice is drawing straight from a reference. I've been watching TLOU, which has some of the best acting ever and is perfect for screenshotting specific moments to recreate. Pulling scenes from episode five, I stretch and amplify the facial features to properly read their emotions in my style, ex, making Ellie and Sam's eyes bigger to amplify their youth, smoothing out facial wrinkles for simplicity, and (my favorite) exaggerating the mouths so they emote louder.

Second method is feeling how your face moves. Ethan Becker on YouTube explains it better (go watch all his videos) of how to feel and observe how your face compresses and works with different features to properly express emotions. Using your own face as a stencil to understand how your muscle and jaw work is both simple, and always accessible for artist reference.

An example of how I break down bits of a chapter into chunks for each panel while still attempting for it to run smoothly like the writing. Honestly, a lot of this part rides on wanting to do the author justice for their fabulous work. You want to show them how much their work affected you and why it’s totally worth it to draw their stories.

Some examples of scenes from media (that almost made me cry) and how I translate and manipulate it into my style. This is why I redraw scenes from movies so often, not only is it fun and easy, but it’s a great way of studying the masters

But, to actually answer your question, I think the reason my drawings are so expressive to you is because I still follow somewhat typical human anatomy while still being cartoony enough to break the uncanny valley and create an aesthetically pleasing style. I’m still practicing and studying everyday to get better. You must work as much as possible to attempt to properly translate the world.

[sangoundercover]

Someone asked me how I draw faces a couple months ago and I never had a good example to show so here‘s a little snippet and some text about how I think while drawing:

I always make a copy of my first sketch in case i mess up. Sometimes I try to do a clean up on a new layer, and it doesn‘t always work out. Not because the lines or anatomy is bad, but because i lost focus and with that I lost the gesture/energy and emotion of the original sketch.

Don‘t try to fix what‘s not broken. When that happens I go back to my original sketch and start again, often I draw straight on that same sketch layer, trying to carefully clean it up, staying zoomed out to stay focused on gesture and emotion instead of zooming in and only seeing individual lines. There‘s no need to completely redraw something on a new lineart layer if the original sketch looks already good.

Other factors can play in too (first drawing of the day, not warmed up, tired after long day) So don‘t force yourself into thinking your first attempt has to work out.

Bonus:

Learning when to stop and start over is not just good for faces, it‘s something that helped me improve at drawing in general, be able to draw faster and more efficiently. I started to adapt this years ago when I drew a lot of short comics.

This is especially useful if you tend to get stuck on specific parts on drawings e.g. one part of a face looks wrong and then you erase,re-draw,erase, re-draw -> repeat for an hour and get frustrated. (i think we‘ve all been there)

This is where you have to learn to STOP and START OVER. Recognizing the frustration cycle before it can happen. Re-Drawing the whole face/thing from scratch instead will often get you better results than trying to „fix“ a single sketch for hours. The longer you spend trying to fix a sketch the less likely you will want to start over because you already put so much time into it.

People often ask me how I draw a lot/fast and this is a big part of how☝️ Learn to stop early and start over if something doesn’t work instead of getting hyperattached to every single line you draw.

[o0o0thorn0o0o]

POV: There’s a spiky-haired ginger nearby.

Ack, just a few more days, and it’d be a whole month exactly since my last post 🫠 oops… I am working on things, I swear, it’s just, they’re taking longer than I thought they would… And I’ve also just been busy in general, too (not too busy, but busy all the same).

So realizing just how long it’s been, decided to sketch a quick lovestruck Hime because <3 <3 Played around with colors and rendering whilst staying loosey-goosey with it—was fun; especially love those pinks sm… I need more pink sketches, tbh, haha.

No, but I should probably let myself do doodles like this more often, especially in between longer projects (and not, like, dip for a month, ahhh). Helps with being 1) a warm-up (would you believe I barely do warm-ups? ‘Cause I barely do warm-ups… I have awful drawing/writing habits ^^;;;), 2) being a bit more experimental without me nitpicking, and 3) making me feel better about my art in general. ‘Cause, like, part of why it’s taking so long to get a proper post out is because I keep redrawing the same thing over and over again and haven’t even started on coloring…

These, however, can look flawed on purpose, but I’m also just really happy with the result! Ahhh, Hime’s a precious bab, especially a smitten Hime 🥺🥹 (which I don’t draw as often as a smitten Ichigo, I don’t think; she’s, like, more happy/delighted than full-on endeared—shame, shame, shame on me… But, like, his soft puppy dog eyes are also ✨everything✨).

That being said, do expect my next post to be soon (at least, not in a month’s time again…). At the very least, I do plan on whipping up a quick Mother’s Day post (it sneaks up on me every year, so I can’t ever plan one…). But a proper post shouldn’t take much longer after that, I don’t think. I’ll discuss more then.

[wqnwoos]

minghao knows he’s in a mood again, but frankly, he couldn’t care less.

his whole day had just been wrong, and he’d set about it with a frown marring his features and a biting undertone to everything he’d said. it just happened sometimes — one of those bad, awful days where nothing goes right and it feels like everything’s against you.

it was when he snapped at jun that he finally gave in, retired to moping in his bedroom. his roommate had said he understood — jun had plenty of his own bad days, after all — but minghao still feels awful about it. he’s still too irritated to apologise — he will do it, though, he promises himself.

for now, he’s thrown himself on the covers of his bed, staring at the ceiling listlessly, and blasting music through his earphones — loud, but not so loud that he doesn’t catch the soft sound of the doorknob when you twist it, and slide yourself into the room.

you do it almost apologetically, a regretful smile directed towards him. you don’t even speak, just make your way over to his side.

minghao wishes he could be annoyed, but he never can be, at you. you’re his best friend, and maybe something more that he’s not quite willing to accept yet. it’s lurking, though, at the bottom of his chest, and it pushes up every so often — like now, as you take a seat on the edge of the bed, almost as if you’re unsure; uncertain if you’re welcome here or not.

you always are, but he doesn’t quite know how to say that yet.

instead he thinks about how he knows jun must have called you, just as he knows you, too good for this world, dropped whatever you were doing to come and talk to him.

not that you’re doing much of that — talking, he means. you’ve only flopped beside him on the white duvet; and yet it’s enough to relax a little of the tension in his limbs.

it’s so easy to be around you.

it’s so easy to offer you an earbud without even looking. it’s so easy to close his eyes, slip his hand into yours. it’s so easy to interlace his fingers with yours too, squeeze gently, keep his eyes shut, pretend.

and then suddenly it gets hard. when you shift slightly, card a hand through his dark hair like you’ve always been doing it — you’ve never done it before, he hopes you do it forever — and you blur the lines even more. that makes it harder, harder to breathe with your careful hand against his cheek, the smell of your conditioner against his lips, he can’t breathe, he thinks he loves you.

you move back slightly. the moment is gone, he can breathe, but the lines are still blurred and you can’t unblur them. god knows he doesn’t want to redraw them.

your hand slips back into his, and squeezes. his eyes flutter open — yours are shut — your breath catches — minghao realises, then.

“oh,” he whispers softly. and it’s his turn to brush your cheek with slender fingers, but he’s always been the braver of you two — he leans, he brushes his lips against your cheek too.

you might not be able to call it a kiss, but maybe you could call it a confession.

an / guys i think this might be one of my fav things i’ve ever written which is so annoying because it starts off kind of badly 😭 but also it’s 12:17am and i’ve slept like 4 hours max in the last 24 hours so my judgement may be misguided. idk. possible deletion when i wake up ⁉️

[guruan]

"I'm sorry."

Sketch for Every You Every Me #4 by @astroboots

Open for surprise:

Before you scroll further, just wanted to say that, I often avoid these kind of insert drawings for obvious generalization reasons- but this time I thought the pose left me space to change little things without being too much work so I added a few variations of hair textures and lenghts :) Naturally, I cannot possibly do every existent hairstyle, but I tried to think about some general ones.

Also, I edited a little the body for kind of a plus size version too.

Due to the angle, I don't know if it makes that much of a difference (because I also couldn't edit too much or it would've meant to redraw completely some things). But I tried it, so I hope you find some you can feel identified with.

Now! For you Cici: This is why I asked about your hairstyle the other day 😆Yours is the third one from here ❤

Really loved that scene so much (and I mean- many others too, but I felt an urge to sketch this one- I had to sacrifice some details in order to do so many alt. versions, but hope you still like it ❤)

I was thinking how much "Every Me" makes sense here HAHAHA

and Plus size ver:

[multi-fandom-agereg]

hihi!!! could i possibly request some regressor young neil (scott pilgrim) headcanons or a moodboard?? no pressure- the headcanon has just been on my mind hehe

- @beaistiny 🐝

🚀 Little!Young Neil HCS

🚀 | I can 100% do that! Thank you so much for requesting^^ love your content btw! I hope you enjoy:]

💙 : the type of baby to prefer naps over being awake when regressed. Don't get me wrong— he loves to play video games, watch every cartoon he can stumble onto and hang out with friends or family. However naps is something that keeps him calm literally 80 percent of the time. If he doesn't get his naps he will be a very cranky boy

💙 : his favorite little food(s) is anything involving ice cream or Mac and cheese. He highly prefers ice cream over Mac and cheese and everything else, but he isn't that picky. He gets what he can get, and he'll end up being neutral about it. If he were to hold a grudge about it; he'd forget about it within two hours

💙 : very very quiet around people. He's like the kid in your class who rarely talks at all. (Or socialize much in class). He's exactly like that most of the time. Just hand him a controller or a comic book and you won't even notice he's there.

💙 : is pretty liquid with his agere age and isn't sure what his age is. But all he knows is that he regresses younger than 10. Not much older than that. (I think hes either a infant or toddler regressor)

💙 : a very sweet baby. Will ask for cuddles from his babysitters and CGs whenever the opportunity is there. He will also follow them around while he's glued to his games. He will let you play his games, but only because he wants to watch and do commentary on your gameplay.

💙 : his little hobbies are mostly him napping, playing games or reading. But sometimes he will color for his friends or redraw scenes from his books.

💙 : I feel like when little he'd play animal crossing, red dead redemption and minecraft. He finds comfort in those games. When it comes to books the majority of it is comics. Such as manga or superheros (DC and Marvel)

💙 : steals his babysitters/caretakers shirts and or hoodies. You can't get them off of him because before you can, he's asleep. Sometimes he likes to tease about it when he's big because he knows nobody has the guts to wake him up. So he's pretty slick when it comes to getting what he wanted

💙 : doesn't have a permanent caregiver per say, but he looks up to Stephen Stills alot more than other people. He see's him as an influence and father figure enough as it was. So he trusts him to be his caregiver

💙 : owns 'too many' agere gear for one person. But it's often than not that he's spoiled rotten. But he doesn't mind it

💙 : he's probably a bluey and paw patrol fan. Change my mind

[jayskaiart]

wake up! it's almost christmas means it wasnt christmas day! time for aa fans to be annoying again 🥳🎄 here's a mini comic to celebrate the fact that the cringe terrible comic i did last year is my most popular post in every single app that exists ❤️ (i hate it here. but im also glad ppl liked it, i never expected it to do so well lol) (and i swear it's the last time i redraw this shit!)

tbh this comic is more accurate to how i actually feel about their dynamic! so HEADCANON TIME ‼️ i think they wouldn't usually be romantic and clingy, especially edgeworth,, imo he'd be more subtle displaying affection; but of course they have their little moments like this (and unfortunately franziska has to witness it 😭). it's not like they avoid being romantic or anything, they just don't force it and let it happen naturally,,, but of course phoenix likes teasing him a bit sometimes like in this comic Imaooo — ANYWAYYY i hope you like it! this ship never leaves my mind i guess,,,

i honestly wasn't planning to make anything with the mistletoe comic again because last year's comic makes me cringe a lot Imao but it did relatively well so i couldn't help but redraw it with a dialogue i like a bit more. i still think my art is a bit stiff (i should draw ppl interacting more often) but i guess that's a goal for next year loll

and yes i remade last year’s meme too because i still feel this way everytime i draw ppl (narumitsu) kissing 🤭

also this one ,,,,, siblings <3

[alexthebordercollie]

Soooo I made thing. I will probably redraw this in the cannon style in the future. As for my own personal style for drawing GF stuff, I'm still fleshing it out. But I have another AU now. My Hand of God AU has Ford committing to Bill and spending years trapped in a very abusive relationship, also the apocalypse so that's fun. This one's the complete opposite direction. Ford and Fidds accidentally come into possession of a pair of twins, these boys end up being the motivation it took for Ford to cut things off with Bill and do whatever it takes to keep him from ever getting out.

(I've yet to flesh out exactly how these two were born but the boys were created through anomalous means.)

On the left is Nik (Nikola) An adrenalin junkie who loves adventure and is an absolute menace to society as is the Pines tradition. On the right is Newt (Newton), a pastel-loving soft boy who will cry if you tell him pink is a girl color and gets overly attached to every weird critter Ford brings home.

Nick is missing a pinkie because Bill cut it off while possessing Ford when he was a baby as a threat. Trying to scare Ford into compliance by threatening to kill the boys. Ford did some very unsafe brain surgery on himself to make it impossible for him to ever sleep again. Cutting off Bill's ability to control him for the most part.

Portal is gone, still living in Gravity Falls though, and keeping an eye out for anyone Bill might try to manipulate. Fidds and his wife are divorced. Emma has primary custody but Tate stays with them in GF during the summers where he often bullies Nik and Newt. But Nik and Newt don't tell their dads about it because they know how much Fidds loves his other son and they don't want to make things complicated for him. Tate is just taking out his frustration over his parents failed marriage on his half-siblings. Fidds takes the twins with him when he visits Tate and the rest of his family in California for Christmas. Ford stays behind because Emma hates him and he doesn't want to deal with her family.

Ford and Fidds aren't married both cause it's not legal yet but also tbh not sure they ever would regardless just cause Ford is pretty disinterested in those sorts of formalities. Whatever it is they have going for them right now works for him.

Heavy thoughts below the cut.

TBH I made myself sad thinking about autistic people and our relationships. The way we love isn't always obvious to NT people and it can sometimes feel like you're not good enough for anyone because loving people in the way you're expected to is such a struggle.

Sometimes I see people frame Ford^2 as this completely unrequited thing and it reminds me of the experience of loving people very intensely but feeling unable to prove it because it's so difficult to live up to the standards most people have in relationships.

I like Fiddlestan as a ship it's cute and a fun idea and I get the appeal but there's a little nagging thought in the back of my head that it kind of implies Ford's neurotypical brother is better. More capable of real love. That Ford was never good enough. Not to say Fiddleford didn't deserve better but the idea that these two couldn't have worked makes me kind of depressed for kind of personal reasons so I wanted to make up a universe where they do.

Not to say there isn't plenty of material of Ford and Fidds reconnecting as old men and making it work but the fact they lost so much of their lives to bad decisions is still sad.