#fun fact! this was suppose to be a quick drawing- then I decided to render it….

[yourlocalabomination]

Your Wagon Is On Fire!

[maiji]

Reverse-engineering Hokushin and Otake

I am very very close to finishing part 3 of fight / flight! So close…!! I decided to take a break with what was supposed to be a quick drawing but ended up going down reference rabbit holes oops. This is modern day (actual Yu Yu Hakusho series canon) Hokushin and Otake alongside my imagined early Kamakura-era versions of them in North Bound.

More commentary below the cut.

To figure out their relative heights, it was the usual game of Measuring Stick Yusuke, i.e., relying on the fact that every single character at some point has stood next to Yusuke, or next to someone who has stood next to Yusuke. In this case:

Hokushin is a head taller than Yusuke.

Otake is about half a head taller than adult Koenma.

Adult Koenma is half a head taller than Yusuke.

Therefore, Otake is about half a head taller than Hokushin. Success!!***

This is assuming nobody changed in height between 700 years ago and now lmao

(*** EDIT: I reread this post and was like, wait, what I wrote doesn't make sense. Measuring stick logic outlined above actually indicates that Hokushin and Otake would be about the same height lol. My logic failed. However, I went back to doublecheck my notes and the manga panels and "Otake is about half a head taller than adult Koenma" is little more than guesswork because they spend most of the time crouched next to each other and leaning slightly forward, so he could be anywhere from the same height to even a head taller. Ehhhhhh close enough. Again, 700 years, who's counting.)

Reverse engineering character designs to different ages/periods is always a fun exercise. Aside from new clothes, one of the easiest and most obvious things to do is to change up their hair! Super easy for these two. Give Hokushin hair, and shave Otake’s mustache off and give him a closer-to-period hairstyle instead of his Western-style cut. Done! But of course, a challenge is that for most visual storytelling purposes, you still need the character to be quickly recognizable.

To me, the really distinguishing aspect of Hokushin and Otake is how Togashi renders their eyes. This is where I find it particularly interesting, because both of them have very fixed eye styles. I personally struggle a lot with making them more expressive without feeling like I’m going super off-model. I have a lot more flexibility with Hokushin now because I’ve drawn him about a bajillion times, and through North Bound I’ve stretched the comfort level of how I can depict him. This is only Otake’s second appearance in North Bound (though it feels like a lot more because it’s taking me a while to draw all these parts of a story), so it’s been more challenging. Page 7 in fight / flight part 1 was difficult in terms of making him look intense. You can see what happens if I tried too hard to convey intensity with his eyes by checking out the sketch of the page - it doesn’t look like him anymore. (Sometimes that can work though, for drama especially when conveying something going off the wall and pushing their limits or shocking others with an about-face.)

Working through their designs allowed me to reflect on the parallels in their design and nature. Hokushin and Otake are both envoys of sorts for extremely ancient and powerful non-human masters, and naturally bring a lot of visual gravitas to that role. Neither of them are the sort of people who’re here to just chill and hang out, and their visual appearance and presence need to convey that.

Hokushin I’ve talked about before. Togashi draws him with these really low eyebrows and flat, dark eyes that almost never shift. This makes him look very serious, to the point of glowering. But through the magic of characterization, context and other little facial details, he feels a lot “softer” - friendlier and more approachable. On the flipside, Otake has very thick bushy eyebrows and beady eyes. His eyebrows are definitely much more mobile than Hokushin’s in the manga, and the styling has the potential of coming off almost comedic, but we never get that impression from him unless Togashi is actually drawing him in a situation where we’re intended to laugh at him (e.g., his reactions to Yusuke pretending to turn into an evil demon). Instead, he feels really serious - much more rigid and inflexible than Hokushin.

Part of this is due to reader perspective as well. Hokushin is a demon who eats humans, which is typically terrifying nightmare material. Otake, on the flipside, is the head of the Spirit World’s Special Defence Force, sent out to save the Human World and also stop a powerful demon from awakening, which sounds like a classic hero. But of course, Togashi has flipped them on their heads, at the most basic level simply by sheer virtue of their associations. Yusuke is the protagonist we’ve followed since volume 1; by the time we get to volume 16, we know him very well and have been rooting for him for all these pages. We can quickly recognize and identify his struggles even in challenging situations. Thus, Otake intent on killing Yusuke (permanently) makes us quick to judge him as villainous - or at the very least on the “wrong” side. Meanwhile, Hokushin appearing in Yusuke’s court, understanding Yusuke’s concerns and even giving answers that clearly align him with Yusuke’s values, immediately develops more benign associations. It’s interesting to compare and contrast them!

[acciomalfoy]

Halloween at Hogwarts (Draco Malfoy x Reader)

The tea: 5th, 6th and 7th years receive costumes for their halloween masquerade the night of the ball, and the house elves created each costume. 

“Come on! We’re about to receive our costumes!” I tugged Hermione along as we made our way to the Great Hall. The ball was to be held tonight, October 31st. It was a Saturday this year, probably why the ball was being held for the first time ever. At three o’clock this afternoon we were drawing our costumes from the Sorting Hat, and the costumes would appear in our dorms, made by Hogwarts very own house elves. 

“I don’t see why we have to run, y/n! Our costumes are predetermined, Parvati heard that Merlin himself used the magic that controls who gets what.” Hermione sounded annoyed, but I knew she was just as excited. 

“Did you hear that there’s two lover costumes? Apparently whoever draws the two of them are soulmates!” Lavender giggled as she joined us on our walk, while Hermione and I let out identical squeals. It sounded so romantic, and the thought that there was a pair of soulmates in Hogwarts right now was almost too much to bear.

“I swear I heard McGonagall say that sometimes the hat doesn’t eject the lovers. It only has them in the hat when there’s actually a pair of soulmates in Hogwarts.” Lavender continued, and I frowned. Maybe there wasn’t a pair of soulmates at Hogwarts then.

“Anyway, toodle loo!” Lavender dashed off to spread the word, and I shared a look with Hermione. She sure could be crazy sometimes. 

“Hey guys!” I waved as we sat beside Ron and Harry. They grinned back.

“If I get a spider as a costume I think I’ll just leave Hogwarts.” Ron said glumly, and Harry sniggered. 

“If I could bribe the hat then I would make sure you got a spider costume.” Harry said, and Ron stared at Harry in betrayal. His best mate had only gone and jinxed him!

“You better watch out, Harry, or I might just dress up as your boyfriend.” I turned and looked significantly at where Malfoy was sitting, and Ron shrieked with laughter. Harry only scowled. 

“Think you mean your boyfriend, you fool.” I scowled in return, and Hermione elbowed me.

“I don’t want to hear that kind of talk, thank you very much.” Hermione said, and I sighed gratefully. Trust Hermione to pull me out of my messes.

“Attention those in the years fifth, sixth and seventh. In a moment, the Sorting Hat will be passed round to each one of you. All that’s required of each of you is sticking your hand into the hat and drawing a piece of paper. The piece of paper that you draw is your costume for Hogwarts first Halloween Masquerade. Naturally, unless you’re dressed as the costume that you picked, you won’t be allowed to enter the Great Hall.” Dumbledore said with flourish, and I watched as McGonagall walked to the Hufflepuff table first. 

“I’m sure we’ll all get great costumes.” Hermione tried to reassure us, but there was absolutely no reassurance for Ron, who was practically in tears at the thought of a spider costume.

“Keep in mind students, that it is unacceptable for you to tell anyone what your costume is. In fact, it’s impossible. Anytime you try to say your costume, write your costume, or even mouth it you will receive a brief shock, rendering you mute until you decide not to share your costume. Thank you.” McGonagall had already moved onto the Gryffindor table, and I watched smugly as Cormac drew his paper and proceeded to make a face. 

“Good luck, you four.” McGonagall smiled at us as Harry drew first. His face erupted into a grin, and I smiled back. Ron was next, and his shoulders sagged in relief. Hermione’s turn and she only paused, a calculating look in her eye, before smiling. I took a deep breath, and plunged my hand into the hat, slowly pulling out the piece of paper that The Hat had thrown into my hand.

Lover.

I folded the piece of paper quickly, and there was silence.

“Thank Godric I didn’t get a damn spider costume.” Ron was as giddy as a child at Christmas, and I only laughed. 

“Hopefully someone else did.” Harry added, and Ron swatted him with a bread roll.

“‘Professor Dumbledore said we aren’t allowed to talk about our costumes, might I remind you.” Hermione rolled her eyes at the boys, and I could hardly still my hands. My soulmate was in the halls of Hogwarts, sitting at one of the four tables right this moment. It could be anyone, it really could be. It could even be Harry. I eyed Harry carefully, but I had a feeling he would be obliviating himself if I was his soulmate.

“No one cares about his stuffy old rules.” Ron pointed out, and it was the truth.

“He’s got you there, ‘Mione.” I said, and Ron high-fived me. 

“Still. The costumes being a mystery is part of the fun.” Hermione said, and in a weird way she was right, as always. 

“I wonder if anyone got the lovers. Coming girls?” Lavender asked as she drifted by, and I felt myself go rigid on the spot. It was difficult to think about anyone but my soulmate now, and if anyone had read my mind at that moment they would have thought I was insane. It sure felt like it. Hermione yanked my hand as she stood up, and we waved our farewells to the boys.

“Who looks like they got it?” Parvati wondered from beside Lavender, and suddenly everyone was craning their necks. I joined in quickly, eyes roaming the tables, but no one stood out. Well, no more than normal. Malfoy always managed to stand out, but it was with an aloof expression of indifference more than anything. 

“Better not be Malfoy. I might actually punch the girl that gets to be soulmates with him.” Lavender said hotly, and I raised an eyebrow. 

“Can’t be Malfoy. He’s a pureblood, and he would be shitting himself right now if it were him.” Parvati said, and Lavender brightened up considerably. 

“That’s right. Lucky I’m a pureblood. D’you reckon that if I asked for a betrothal his parents would agree?” She asked, and Hermione stifled a laugh. 

“I don’t think Malfoy would agree to that. Maybe you should try to become his friend before marrying him, hmm?” I laughed at Hermione’s suggestion, but Lavender actually seemed to be considering it. 

“Maybe. Or I could just seduce him. Does anyone know his type? Who he’s had a crush on in the past?” Lavender peered around expectantly again, as though she was expecting someone to appear with all the answers she seeked. Unfortunately, no one appeared. 

“Odds are he’s had a crush on one of us.” Parvati said suddenly, and I felt Hermione’s eyes on me, Godric knew why.

“Not to be rude, but it’s probably me.” Lavender said, and this time Hermione failed to smother her laugh.

“No offence, but it could be anyone. What makes you think it's you?” Hermione asked, and Lavender frowned.

“Look at you, and then look at me,” Lavender said, and I giggled. “Malfoy, oh wait. I should be calling him Draco considering we’re getting married! If faced with a choice, Draco would obviously choose me over you all. I mean, I’m gorgeous.” Parvati appeared to be having a struggle with keeping a straight face, and Hermione doubled over with laughter.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Hermione shrieked as she chuckled, and I couldn’t help the grin that formed on my face. I’m not sure at the exact point that Malfoy began walking behind us, but I knew that he had heard every word Lavender had said.

“Look behind you Lav.” I said, and the shit-eating grin on Hermione’s face told me that she had known Malfoy was there the entire time.

“Oh,” Lavender said faintly as she turned her head to see Malfoy. “Draco, what a coincidence.” She said, and Malfoy stared at her, expressionless.

“I think we’re due for a chat, you blithering fool.” He snarled, and without waiting for an answer stalked off. Lavender audibly swallowed before hurrying down the halls in an attempt to catch up with him.

We watched as they turned the corridor before screaming.

“She deserved that!” Parvati generally wasn’t the type to make fun of someone, but when Lavender tells you that she’s hotter than you, the circumstances are a little different. 

“I do feel a bit bad.” I said, and Hermione only laughed again.

“What goes around comes around. I don’t suppose you can help me with my makeup, Parvati?” Hermione and Parvati began discussing their makeup in the vaguest way that they could, and I was shivering in anticipation of what was to come. Afterall, I was going to meet my soulmate tonight. 

“What time does the ball start?” I asked, and Parvati gasped in mock-horror.

“Y/n L/n! How could you forget? We’ve only been dreaming about this ball for the past year!” Parvati exclaimed, and I rubbed my neck. Sometimes I couldn’t remember if I was Salazar or Rowena.

“Doors open at five o’clock, doors close at half five, and doors reopen at half seven. We should aim to arrive at twenty five past five, to make the grandest entrance we can.” Parvati had very clearly planned this event down to the wire, and I wondered what she would be dressed as. 

“I’m intrigued as to what your costumes are.” Hermione voiced my thoughts, and Parvati only grinned, furthering the mystery.

“You’ll find out once we get changed. Speaking of, we have two hours to get ready!” Parvati gasped, and simultaneously we increased our pace, practically running up the stairs to Gryffindor Tower.

“Smelly socks.” I shouted the password as the Fat Lady came into our vision, and with a huff the portrait swung open. 

“Quick!” Hermione squealed as we ran up the stairs to our dormitory.

“Holy shit!” Parvati breathed as we stepped into our room, and the beautiful gowns that were spread across our bed made me stop.

“Look at your dress, ‘Mione!” I shouted as I caught sight of the black ball gown that seemed to have wings attached.

“You must be a thestral!” Parvati was grinning at the dresses, and Hermione stood still.

“You’re a lover.” Hermione whispered, and Parvati shouted in excitement.

“Oh my Godric! Come on, we need to get our makeup done before we get into the dresses!” She cried, and Hermione took an uncertain step toward the beds.

“This ball is going to be wicked!” 

It took a total of one hour and fifty two minutes for our makeup to be completed, and there was only one thing left to do.

“It’s time to put on the dresses.” I stated the obvious, and Lavender shivered in anticipation. At some point she had joined us, and now we were stood staring at our beds.

“We need to be quick, we have like five minutes.” She said, and we flew towards our gowns. The magic that was performed was unbelievable, and the second I touched my dress I was wearing it. The beautiful, bright red dress clung to my figure, and the matching red crown that had appeared in my hair completed the look.

“Y/n! You look-“ Hermione paused, grinning at me.

“Stunning.” Parvati finished, and the girls were looking just as good.

“We’d better leave.” Lavender pointed out, and we trotted down the stairs. The younger year groups fawned over our dresses, and we could only smile before heading out the door. 

“There’s the boys! Ron! Harry!” Hermione spotted them in front of us, and they turned around. When they saw us, their mouths dropped open, and we grinned.

“Holy hippogriff!” Ron said, and I saw how his eyes raked in the beauty of Hermione.

“Thank you.” Lavender preened, and I sniggered. Even I could see how in love Ron and Hermione were.

“You look great, y/n.” Harry fell into step beside me, and I smiled.

“You too, tosser.” I nudged his shoulder, and he laughed.

“Whatever.” He said, but the grin on his face let me know he still loved me.

“Ready to meet your soulmate?” He asked, and I bit my lip.

“Doesn’t matter if I am, does it?” I said, and we went quiet. 

“You’ve got three seconds to be ready.” He said as we approached the doors of the Great Hall.

Three.

Two.

One.

Ron pushed the doors open, and it was like time was frozen. The room was a colourful flurry of ball gowns and shiny jewellery, and the only person in red stood out like a sore thumb. When I met his eyes, he gave me a small smile. 

“Bloody hell.” Ron said, and we stepped inside. There was a pause in the dancing as our peers paused to look at us, and then Hermione shoved me forward, towards him.

There must have been someone shoving him towards me, and before I knew it we were stood face-to-face, and the dancing continued around us.

“Hey, L/n. Bet you weren’t expecting me.” Malfoy said, and I shook my head slowly. The red contrasting with his pale skin made him look rather like a vampire, and if I was honest, I wouldn’t mind him biting me.

“No, I wasn’t. Surely you couldn’t have been expecting me?” I asked, and he shrugged.

“I wanted it to be you. Think I would leave Hogwarts if it was Brown, wouldn’t you?” The look on his face made me laugh lightly, and the way his face lit up made my insides melt.

“You’ve got a fair point, but that’s no way to speak about your fiancée.” I laughed again, and he pushed my shoulder lightly.

“Don’t even joke about that.” He groaned, and I grinned at him. He smiled back, and suddenly I was aware of how close we were to each other, and how pretty his eyes were. 

“If I could pick anyone to be my soulmate, I’d pick you.” He whispered, and I tried not to look at his lips. I really did.

“Why? You hate me, Malfoy.” I said, and he shook his head quickly.

“I hate your friends for getting to hang out with you, and for being able to talk freely with you. I could never, ever, hate you, my love.” He murmured into my ear, and I shivered. 

“I don’t know what to say.” I whispered back, and he placed his hand on the small of my back and his other on my shoulder.

“Don’t say anything. Just dance with me, lover.”

[angel-fire]

set my soul alight

summary: loki finally has you right where he wants you.

warnings: slight dubcon, very very nsfw. knife play, enemies to lovers because if you’ve ever spoken to me you know i’m about that shit. as always, don’t read if you’re under 18. 

A/N: okay this is like... almost pure filth i don't even know what to say. but in honor of no nut november being over imma share what i finished writing the second i had an orgasm for the first time in a month. title from supermassive black hole (yes the one from twilight!!)

---

You’ve done plenty of stupid things in your life. Chasing whiskey with wine coolers, texting back people you probably should have blocked – deciding that yes, working alongside the Avengers seemed like a perfectly reasonable career path for the rest of your life.

You could deal with the spies, the weapons dealers, the abandoned Hydra bases you’d raided for intel from time to time. You’d made peace with the fact that at any moment, you could be summoned for a mission you wouldn’t return from. And, well, it’s hard to regret your decision when it’s more than just walking the line between life and death. It’s the bonds you make with your teammates, the lifelong friendships you know will last with people that leap into the abyss right alongside you.

Oslo, Norway. It was supposed to be simple. You weren’t supposed to get caught. Taken. The question of how you got here is unnecessary, simply chalking it up to just another ill-advised decision you’d make in your life. If it lasts.

The God of Mischief stands before you, clear blue eyes raking over your bound form as he observes you. Your wrists are tied up above your head by what feels like silk, your ankles tied with the same material, bound to what feels like a post attached to a wooden beam. You’re upright, head lolling around on your shoulders as you rouse into consciousness. You become extremely aware of the fact that you’re still in the jeans and top you were wearing while you were supposed to be undercover earlier. Undetectable. So much for that.

“You’re awake.” Loki remarks, taking a calculated step towards you. No shit, you think. You drink him in, clad in an all black suit with his hair brushing the tops of his shoulders. He’s still disarmingly attractive, which is an in-fucking-convenient thought for you to be having considering he’d kidnapped you about – from what you can assume by the absent sun outside the window to your left – one or two hours ago. “Good. I’ve missed you, darling.”

“What the hell are you doing?” you mumble, tired limbs struggling against your bindings in a futile attempt to free yourself. At least it isn’t rope, you muse. Being tied up with thick ropes and subsequently tased until your bones rattled under your skin had been the least fun you’d had six months ago in Venice. The most fun… well. That’d been involving the god before you, teasing him into a frenzy ending in a hushed whisper of salacious promises detailing the things he would do to you if he got you alone. You suppose decision making is definitely not your strength, because after you’d rebuked his filthy whispers with a mere smirk accompanied by a wink, you expected that to be the end of it. Flirting with the enemy can only get you so far.

“Do you remember what you said to me, that day?” Loki inquires, ignoring your question entirely. “When you’d begged so sweetly into my ear for me to fuck you, to take you in the most filthiest of ways? I’ll admit, you rendered me speechless.” He chuckles to himself at the memory as your face flushes.

“I was not begging, and I didn’t mean it,” you respond automatically, the lie tasting like ash as it slips off your tongue. Loki only smirks, making you internally cringe at yourself. No matter how good a liar you might be to any other enemy, your teammates, your friends - you knew you couldn’t lie to him. Not to the God of Mischief.

He’s not just your enemy, a small part of you whispers. You shove the thoughts down before they can gain any traction.

“I should punish you for trying to lie to me,” he glides closer to you, eyes trained on your heaving chest at having him in such close proximity. “Shouldn’t I?”

There’s an unmistakable sound of a blade being unsheathed, your eyes flicking down to his right hand and widening when he produces a dagger from his wrist. It’s long, sharp, the light of the moon reflecting along its blade as it glints at you. You shudder instinctively, fear and arousal licking up your spine the longer your stare lingers on it.

“You were always my favorite,” Loki muses, standing a breath away from you as he draws the knife closer and closer to your body. “So headstrong. Unbreakable. I do look forward to seeing you fall apart for me.”

“Fuck off, Loki,” you snap, pulling against the silk ties at your wrists once more, realizing that they’ve likely been spelled to stay put. You would have been able to break free by now if they weren’t. That’s what you tell yourself, at least. “I’m not doing anything for you.”

“Oh, you’ll beg for me, I know it,” he chuckles darkly. “I can practically smell your fear. The way your body responds so deliciously to it. You’re dripping in spite of it, because of it.  And if I did this-“ he raises the sharp edge of the knife up to the base of your throat, dragging it across the length of your clavicle to where it meets your shoulder. You shiver in anticipation, toes curling, and his eyes flash. “-you wouldn’t be able to hide just how much it excites you.”

“Shut up,” You gasp, watching the tip of the blade travel over your shoulder and, with a quick maneuver of Loki’s wrist, tear through the fabric of your top. “God, Loki, what the fuck?”

“Don’t act like you’re not aroused by the feeling of the steel against your skin alone,” he counters, dragging the blade clean through your top all the way down to its hem, effectively exposing your left side. “Knowing I could hurt you so easily if I applied just-“ he presses the knife’s tip into the delicate skin of covering your rib cage ever so slightly, drawing a shaky breath from you as you feel the rush of arousal flood between your legs. “-the right amount of pressure. Your body betrays you, little mortal.”

“You’re sadistic.” You breathe, unable to deny the urge to clench your thighs together to relieve the ache between them.

“Maybe,” Loki simply chuckles, pulling the knife away from you and flipping it between his nimble fingers in a way that makes your eyelids flutter and your heart race. His left hand travels up your other side, drawing your top above your breasts, gathering the material in his hand as he yanks you close. “But you love it, don’t you?”

You have no time to answer before his lips connect with yours, teeth biting at your lips and tongue curling around yours as you gasp into his mouth. The taste of his tongue sends you into a tailspin, wrists straining not just to escape, but to bury themselves into his raven hair and drag him closer. You chastise yourself for feeling this way, but when Loki pulls away and promptly lowers to his knees before you, your mind goes blank.

“Fuck,” you whisper, watching with wide eyes as he takes his knife and cuts straight through your flimsy jeans, waistline to ankle. You hope he doesn’t notice the way you tremble in excitement ever so slightly, but when you hear him hum quietly in approval, you realize it’s useless to try to hide it from him. Well, he is a god, you muse.

“There it is,” he murmurs, lithe fingers teasing at your skin as he cuts your jeans completely off of you, tossing the remaining scraps of it somewhere to his left. “You’re lovely when you give in, darling.”

“I won’t, you bastard,” you curse, shutting your eyes tightly and tilting your head back in an effort to delay the inevitable.

“You will.” He promises, and you feel the tip of the blade dance up your ankle, over your knee, pausing at your thigh as he brings it inwards towards your femoral artery, before passing over the crevice between where your thigh meets your sex to play at your hip bone. Loki lightly traces indiscernible patterns along your skin with the knife, and your spine alights with pleasure as heat builds in your core. He’s teasing, building up to something else, and you know it by the way he growls as he senses you becoming more and more aroused by the second, trading the knife for both his hands as he pries your thighs apart as far as they can go in your position. Your eyes snap open at the feeling of his hands on you, so close to where you want him, so close to where he’s very capable of making you give in.

The last coherent thought you have is about how you can no longer feel the tightness of silk binding your ankles, but the last thing you feel is Loki’s dark chuckle against your thigh before he dives in.

His tongue plunges deep into your pussy, lithe digits holding you open for him as your thighs shake and your legs ache to be released, to wrap around his head and squeeze in retaliation for this assault of pleasure. He pulls away just enough to raise his dark eyes up to yours, a sly grin dancing across his lips.

“Oh, Agent... Your cunt tastes absolutely divine.” Loki purrs, long tongue flicking out of his mouth to catch your essence spread across his lips. No sooner after, he dives back in, the wet muscle of his tongue flicking against your clit and urging your hips to arch into his mouth. He drinks from you voraciously, hungrily, a man starved of touch for so long that he can’t get enough when he finally has it.

“I wonder if your precious Avengers know just how sweetly you moan for their enemy,” he coos into your thigh as he takes a moment’s pause. “I wonder if maybe I should make them watch, next time. Watch you come apart at my touch, my tongue.”

The feral expression on his face as he devours you combined with the sounds of your slick heat between your legs in response to his ministrations causes you to let out a high pitched moan, jerking your hips wildly, to which Loki simply buries his face further into your folds. He wrenches your thighs even further apart and wraps your legs around his neck, ankles crossed between his shoulder blades as you clench around his tongue while his hands press bruises into your thighs. You’re helpless in resisting, taut body tensing above him as you hurtle towards your peak at an alarming rate.

“I feel you holding back, darling,” he murmurs against you, the rumble of his voice rippling through you like an electric shock. You let out a gasp when he inserts a long finger up and into you, making you tremble with delirious pleasure as you give another sharp moan. “Let go for me. Give in. Let me make you come.”

You squeak when he pushes another finger into your wet heat, stretching you open as he wraps his lips around your clit and sucks, your body unable to hold your release in any longer as you come apart in a wave of unbridled passion. You’re nearly bent backwards in half, Loki’s arms holding you up by your quivering thighs as you come into his mouth. He laps at you greedily, emitting growls that reverberate against your pussy, drawing whimpering moans from you when it only seems to prolong your orgasm. You’re lost in rapture, hands grasping for something to hold onto in an attempt to stay grounded but coming up with nothing but cold air and the sensation of silk on your wrists.

Loki’s already gazing up at you with darkened eyes, fingers lazily pumping in and out of you as you come down from your high. “Feel good, do you? You sang so beautifully for me, little mortal.”

You huff indignantly, narrowed eyes lowering to meet his blown pupils that surely mirror your own. “Don’t think this means anything.”

“It’s valiant of you to believe you aren’t already mine.” Loki hisses, dragging his fingers out of you and, as he rises from his feet, abruptly shoving them into your mouth. You inhale sharply around his fingers, the taste of yourself on your tongue jarring and intensified by his face nearing yours once more. Your eyes lock, and the challenge in his stare nearly makes you submit completely. Nearly.

Eyes still trained on his, you throw him a salacious wink before circling your tongue around his fingers, lightly sucking them into your mouth as you watch his stare grow darker and his breathing become heavier.

“Oh,” Loki rasps, voice thick with arousal. “You’re a little minx, aren’t you?”

Abruptly once more, he pulls his fingers from your mouth and winks in retaliation as he licks the rest of you off himself, humming in delight as he tastes the mix of your cum and saliva on his tongue. With the same hand, he grabs a fistful of your hair and yanks your head back to look up at him. A pang of arousal shoots through you and you let out a quiet whimper, Loki’s breath fanning across your face as his eyes scan your features.

“You want it, don’t you?” He beckons in a low voice, removing his hand from your hair to grip your jaw with bruising pressure. “You want my cock so deep in you that you see stars.”

With your breath trembling, you mutter what you hope comes off as an affirmation in a moment of pleasure-induced weakness. You take his satisfied smirk as confirmation that it did.

“Now,” he purrs into your ear, lips tracing down the length of your jawline and up to your mouth. You’re shaking with it, this need that could only be sated by his touch and his alone. “Are you mine?”

You’re breathless, aching for more – of his tongue, his lips, his cock. You manage to shoot him a sly smirk of your own, craning your neck towards him to whisper in his ear. You know the answer, and he knows it too, but you don’t pass up an opportunity to make just one more ill-advised decision.

“Why don’t you untie me and find out?”

[selfproducingfanfictionauthor]

Lessons to Build - i: you can’t outrun what’s in you

Summary: Two years ago, you break off your 5-year long engagement with Min Yoongi of the Min family and ran off to New York. However, for people like you, running away has never been a lasting solution.

Pairing: Yoongi x Reader / (member to be decided) x reader

Warnings: Y/N’s back in Seoul. Her father’s sick, and we see Yoongi for the first time. Lots of things Y/N doesn’t know and Yoongi doesn’t know. So... future miscomm? Notes: Short chapters for quicker updates is my jam. Taehyung’s being so extra, writing himself into this story. I can’t believe--- should he be our other member? Do you think he’s in love with Y/N? Word Count: 1.6k Prologue Lesson #1 Lesson #2 

Home.

Home shouldn’t be something you have to run away from. And yet, the moment you booked your flight, fingers tapping away on your phone - your passport details, credit card, seat number - an undeniable weight has began to made its home on your shoulders. As encompassing as a blanket but as imprisoning as heavy sand.

“What do you mean you’re flying to Seoul? Now??”

Isn’t it funny how things change in less than 24 hours? In a blink of an eye? Taehyung’s voice is shrill in the background as you toss clothes upon clothes over your shoulder, hopping they’d get at least near the perimeter of your open suitcase.

Around you is your life in disarray. At the back of your mind, you find it slightly disturbing how easily it could fit in several boxes. No roots.

“Yes—“

“Why?”

You pause from grabbing your toiletries. There are things to do here in LA - there’s the campaign, the meetings with investors, your contracts, your would-be dog - your life.

Your mother told you that your father doesn’t want you to make the flight. That he’s fine, and it’s just exhaustion but the waver in your mother’s voice had your heart dropping straight to your stomach. And so despite her half-hearted protests, you’ve turned over your works over email and sent the rest for your assistants to manage.

Seoul may as well be just another place in the map. No, you’re not coming for Seoul, you’re coming for family.

You grab your phone off your bed side table and press it against your ear. “My dad had a heart attack.”

On the other line, you can feel Taehyung consider his words. “I’m coming with you.”

Your hands pause from folding your clothes and you look at your phone and as if seeing your questioning gaze, Taehyung plows on. “Yeontan and I are coming with you.” “Why?”

There are two ways for Taehyung to answer. One easy way is to tell you the truth. That he knows you need a friend, a tether to your life here, someone who will solidify what you’ve built. Someone, something tangible, someone to prove to you that your life here is as real as the life you left.

Going back always runs the risk of regressing, falling back to old patterns, he learned.

After all, he knows the feeling of being forced back to square one.

Or, he could tell you this, “My brother’s been bugging me to visit. And I hate flying alone.”

You don’t mention that he’s flown across the globe more than you could count - even flew to France once because he wanted authentic mille-feuilles - and just nod. “Okay, I’ll send you the flight details.”

“Okay, Lady, I’ll be there.”

The collapse of the CEO of the biggest chain of hotels and one of the upcoming land developers in an annual gala event can never be kept a secret.

You’ve seen it happen only once before, to Mr. Min. As a young girl, you remember how the media feasted around him like flies, and how shareholders of his company stalked around like wolves under sheep’s clothing.

It was as if everyone was waiting with a baited breath for the old man to die. A final shift of power from the old ways to the new. It was sensational, romanticized by the public - not sparing a thought or two to the families except when they needed something.

That was years ago, and it’s an unfortunate fact that hasn’t changed a bit.

“Well, can’t say I didn’t expect this - at least we look good.” Taehyung mutters, decidedly ignoring the occasional flash of camera in his periphery. They were still trying to be subtle, maybe not sure of the “scoop”? Scared of your supposed hidden bodyguards? Who knows?

“You always look good, Tae.” You whisper lightheartedly, forcing calmness in your words.

Around you, people continue to buzz around, grabbing their suitcases from the conveyor, talking on the phone, glancing at their watches. But they too have noticed, and glances towards your way multiply as the minutes pass by.

Taehyung hums in agreement, looking as if he hadn’t just flown across the world. “Yes, it requires effort, but don’t go telling them that.”

A loud shutter sound draws you away from your conversation and you boldly meet the lenses of a masked photographer eye-to-eye. Every bit of the Oh heiress they’ve built up in their mind.

Last time you checked, you were the high society’s prodigal princess. Ran away from home, off to play Cinderella in the United States. Keeping busy with shallow causes, burning through your daddy’s money.

You wonder how they come up with their headlines. You’ve long since given up in appealing towards their journalist’s ethics, but with how creative they come up with stories, you’re a bit disappointed with the headline you last read. The least they could do was make it more fun - a hidden lover? Pregnant? A twist, or something.

You scoff. Although you may have been away for two years, you still are your parents’ daughter. This is child’s play.

Dressed in a black luxury pantsuit, heels lifting you up from the ground and make-up on point, you provide no weak points. Eyes half-lidded you stare straight to the cameras who’ve come out of their hiding, propriety be damned and all.

Oh Y/N is back.

(And if it feels like shrugging on a second skin, you pay it no mind)

“Tae… Tae… Tae!”

Taehyung jostles awake beside you, the hand you were shaking him with falls on your lap. “Wha— What?”

Yeontan’s yip echoes his owner’s confusion. The sound sounding as exhausted as he probably is. Flying has and will probably always be stressful for pets, but Taehyung refused to have someone dog sit Yeontan for this trip saying that he needs to meet his cousins, RJ or something.

Your eyes soften at your friend’s sleepy eyes. Outside the sky is bright, but you too can feel the time difference and jet lag creeping up.

“Sleep this off at the hotel, Tae. I’ll have the driver drop you off.” You’re already reaching out to press the button for the partition when Taehyung shakes his head.

“‘M not sleepy.”

“You’re dead on your feet, Tae.” Fondness laced in your words, you watch Taehyung straighten in his seat beside you and card his fingers through his hair, making the mess look like a ~coordinated~ one.

“I’m not letting you go there alone.”

“I’m going to the hospital, Tae, not war.” You chuckle, rolling your eyes. Taehyung spies the way you tuck your hands around yourself, almost curling inwards, almost shaking.

No.

“Could’ve fooled me, you’re dressed to kill.”

You look over expecting a teasing grin on his face but you falter, frozen, at the sight of his eyes. Dark chocolate eyes pin you to your spot, and heat blooms on your cheeks. Suddenly, you feel like your suit is too tight and even in its dark shade, too sheer.

Almost two years of friendship has not rendered you immune to Kim Taehyung.

Like the passing scenery, the moment is gone as quick as it came. Taehyung smiles and lifts Yeontan to his shoulder.

“He’s going to be there, isn’t he?”

There’s no question as to who he’s referring to. “He might be, my mom said he almost hasn’t left my dad’s side.”

Taehyung scoffs, “Like a vulture.”

You want to defend Yoongi but despite leaving the country because of him, you did keep updated. Partly because it’s ingrained to you to stay on top of news relating to your family business and its periphery but also… well, you don’t know what you hoped for.

In the span of less than two years, Min Yoongi dragged their struggling company and made it great again. Competitors lost out, assets were seized left and right, absorbed, repurposed in the gaping maw of a resurging giant.

He’s ruthless.

But you can be too.

Oh Jiyoung is not a young man anymore.

He doesn’t think he’s been young since his mother abandoned him and his father when he was ten. He wasn’t young when he left school at fifteen, or when he went back when he was eighteen.

He wasn’t young when he bussed tables, or worked in shucking oysters Yeosodo with swollen scarred hands. He wasn’t even young when he first met his wife, fell in love and learned what it was like to be loved back.

So, no, he isn’t surprised when he had a heart attack. A little off-put, and a bit terrified but not surprised. He’s lived more decades than he actually expected to already.

Looking down at his hands, he thinks that if he’d kicked the bucket right then and there the only true regret he’ll have is one that involves the young man across him.

Oh Jiyoung is old, but he hasn’t forgotten the mannerisms of a young man. His wife still makes him feel like one after all this years. So of course, he’s noticed the young man across him fiddle with his rings, his feet tapping to a rhythm only he knows.

“Don’t tell me you’re nervous.”

Yoongi looks up from his seat to the teasing face of his would’ve been father-in-law. His thumb pauses from rubbing against the ring in his forefinger, he doesn’t answer.

Yoongi feels the stare of your father bore down on him and he almost shifts like a boy caught in a lie.

Your flight has landed just less than two hours ago, he doubts you’ll give yourself time to rest first before heading to the hospital. Which means, any time now, those doors will open and you’ll be here.

How odd.

As if summoned, the doors open and —

— there you are.

Tag List: @moonlitmyg  @shadowstark  @kookiebunnii  @loveyoongles @swegstuffsuckers @anpanman-sonyeondan

End Notes: Hearts are appreciated but comments and reblogs are gold. Let me know what you think and if you want to be included in a tag list!

[one-piece-dumpster-fire]

I think this will be my first request to you (or maybe I am wrong). xD Anyways, here goes. Can I request Law, Kid and Marco seeing their fem s/o getting drowned in books and notes every day (because studies, you can make it a morderen AU if your feel comfortable that way) and they decide to try to distract them but in a peculiar way. They start kissing, sucking, groping, massaging them: basically getting her turned on which ends up in sex? (I hope this makes sense).

WHOOP WHOOP MAMA TO THERESCUE! My baby Ai is having a stressful time so I moved her requestup a bit, I hope this makes you a bit happy during those tryingtimes

And since there is dirt inthis request, I’ll add a cut to be safe

Law

It was a hot and sunnyday, people were out having fun and enjoying the weather, coupleswent on ice cream dates, this was simply the most perfect time foreveryone to have fun!

„Still at it, are you?“

„Mh-mh…“

…Well, for everyone butyou. Because like every other day, no matter the weather, you weresitting inside your room, completely isolated from everything thatwas happening outside. You couldn’t allow yourself to get distracted.Books and notes were lying around everyhwere, not just on your deskbut on your bed, in your dresser, heck, even in your dirty laundry!Your finals were just around the corner after all, and you decided touse this time in an efficient way to properly prepare yourself.

But unlike most otherdays, your boyfriend, Law, decided to ‘help’ you with your studiesthis time. And by ‘help’ I mean he was standing in a corner, throwing in ahalfhearted comment at you every now and then.

„You missed lunch againtoday, (Y/N)-ya. Bepo and everyone else is pestering me, they want toknow when you will come back and spend some time with them.“

„Mh-mh…“

You didn’t even listen towhat your boyfriend was saying, your brain was on auto-pilot and shuteverything else out to really suck in all the information you neededfor your nearing exams. You flipped another page, wrote down anothernote and closed your eyes as you tried to memorize what you had justread. But suddenly, your train of thought was interrupted as youcould feel someone’s hot breath tickling your neck.

„WOAH!“ you yelped insuprise and tried to turn your head to see who it was that dared todestroy your focus, although it was pretty clear already since therewas only one person in this room with you… „Trafalgar! What areyou doing?! Man, I was in the middle of memorizing something… it’simportant for my upcoming final!“ you started to protest andalready played with the thought of throwing him out so you couldproperly regain your focus, but…

„Relax, (Y/N)-ya…“

You swallowed hard as hecontinued to breath against your neck, and his words send shiversdown your spine. Damn, his voice, it was… unusually smooth today.Soft, and silky. Deep and seducitve, …and just further destroyedyour already crumbling focus.

„As your boyfriend anddoctor, I order you to relax…“ Law continued as his hand softlystroke your cheek, which send sparks along your body. Was he usinghis powers? Did he suddenly master a new technique that rendered youunable to move? Because that was how you felt right now…

„Law, I know you meanwell but I can’t allow myself to mess up, this is important what if-“you were trying to appeal to him but he quickly silenced you bypressing his thumb against your mouth and slowly dragging it downyour lips, before it lingered on your now slightly trembling bottom one.

„I admire yourdetermination. But there is no use in forcing yourself to study whenyour mind and body is in such a tense and stressful state. It willonly lead to failure, and neither one of us wants that. So… instead, let mehelp you…“ you could feel his breath against your ear now as heslowly started to trail his hand down your neck and to your chest.With a quick movement he unbottoned your shirt, and although a partof you wanted to protest at first, you couldn’t deny that he wasright. And you needed this. Law smiled as if he knew that you wereslowly giving into him, and while his mouth wandered down to restagainst your neck his hand wandered inside your bra to gently gropeyour breast.

„Hnnngh… Law…“you could feel how your heart started to beat faster as he draggedhis thumb across your nipple, before adding some pressure to thesensitive middle. His tongue was now drawing circles on your neck ashis other hand continued to wander down, past your navel and inside of your pants. His middle finger rubbed against the fabric of yourpanties, right where your clitoris was, and a loud gasp escaped yourlips. You could feel him smirk against your neck as he slowly startedto move his finger up and down in a steady rhythm. Automatically andout of habit you spread your legs so he could get a better go atit, and a low and deep chuckle escaped his mouth which not only sendshivers down your spine but wetness into your panties. „You clearlyneed some relief, (Y/N)-ya, so I order you to sit back and let metake care of you…“

His finger slowly pushedyour panties aside as he slowly started to stroke over your exposedskin with his hand. He grunted in suprise as he felt how drenched youalready were. Seems like your thoughts weren’t just focussed aroundstudying….

Law’s other hand that wasmassaging your breast until now slowly went back to your neck as heinserted his first finger into you. You couldn’t help but gasp andshudder at the sudden penetration, and in a desperate attempt tocreate more friction you moved your hips against his finger to makehim go deeper. Your enthusiasm started to get his gears turning aswell as he could feel how a small tent was forming in his pants. Hewas now panting along with you as he added in a second finger, whichslipped in so easily that it almost caused him to shudder.You needed this so bad, damn, why didn’t he think of this anysooner…?

„Law, I….“ youtried to tell him something, but your voice was trembling as hisfingers moved faster and faster inside of you, and it was nearly impossible to remain calm and collected…

„I… I think I couldreally use a break…“ you cried out as his fingers curled upinside of you and he hit that deep spot that always made you squirmaround in pleasure. His smirk grew wider as he went back to suck onyour neck, and his free hand slowly went down his body so he couldundo his own pants as well.

„of course, (Y/N)-ya.I’d be more than glad to provide you with some relief…“

Kid

„God dammit Eustass,for the last time- I will not do a 'student teacher’ roleplay withyou!“ a groan left your lips as you massaged your temples with yourhand. Infront of you were around ten books stacked ontop of another,waiting and begging for you to continue your studies. On your left there wasEustass Kid, your boyfriend, who was once again horny and pissedbecause you wouldn’t let him have some sugar.

„Screw your studies(Y/N), you’ve been at it for so many days now, I feel totally leftout!“ he growled and crossed his arms while his foot was angrilystomping down on the floor. Everyday he came up with a new idea to disruptyour studies and convince you to have sex, but today you finallysnapped for real. „Don’t tell me you’re jealous of my studies andbooks now!“

„Pfff, no, I just wishyou would study my dick like you’re studying those weird hieroglyphics!“

„That’s simpleliterature Eustass, and it’s not my fault that you forgot how to jerkit!“

„I still know how tojerk it, but the thing is I want you to jerk it!“

You groaned again andshook your head before shifting your gaze to your book once more. Therewas no point in arguing with Eustass, he would never give up anywayand just continue to rile you up. Ignoring him was the best choice.Or was it…? While you tried to regain your focus on the studiesagain, Kid was feeling more and more aggravated and the fact that younow decided to completely ignore him just further fueled his angerand desire. „Screw it,“ he growled and with a quick movement ofhis hand he shoved all of your books off the desk and grabbed yourhips to lift you onto it instead. „Now this is something I wouldn’tmind studying!“ he grinned lecherously as his hand went to squeezeyour butt, while you were still trying to get a hang of what justhappened.

„What the fuck,Eustass?! Now how am I supposed to find the pages again?! I didn’tmark them yet!“ you hissed angrily and considered kicking him inthe groin for revenge, but there was no denying that you were partlyrelieved that your boyfriend freed you of your book prison for now.As his hand continued to massage and tickle your behind, which feltrather nice you had to admit, you reached out to grab the hem of hisshirt to pull his face close to yours. At first Kid was expecting youto kiss him and he already had an anticipating grin plastered on hisface, but instead you leaned forward and pressed your mouth againsthis ear.

„Ugh, can you not thinkwith your dick for once?!“ your voice was a bit hoarse as it gotmore difficult for you to cover up your hidden desires, which justcaused his grin to grow even wider.

„Ay, (Y/N), you see… the thingis,“ Kid chuckled darkly as he smoothly unbuckled his pants, „mydick and your pussy often tend to think alike.“ he purred andgrabbed your hand to lead it down to his boxers, where his bulgingerection was already aching for your touch. You simply tsked inreturn while stroking him through his undergarment, and you had to admitthat there was some truth to his words. He wasn’t the only one thatlonged for physical contact.

Of course Kid also wastedno time as you worked your magic on his stick, and quickly unbottonedyour pants as well before forcing his hand past your panties andright against your trembling womanhood.

„Straight to business,as always huh?“ you whispered as a small moan escaped your lipswhile his hand viciously rubbed against your sensitive clitoris,which sent a few violently pleasurable sparks through your body.

„You know me!“ Kidexclaimed proudly as his fingers rubbed against your entrance in arough yet very sensual manner and his mouth moved in against yourneck where he started to suck and bite into your sensitive skin.

„Good god…“ yougrowled at the feeling of his teeth, which also caused your movementsto speed up and finally pull down his boxers. His erectionimmediately jumped out and you could tell that he was already hard asa rock and practically on the verge of cumming. „Hey, what’s thisabout? Don’t tell me you’re that close already?“ you raised aneyebrow at the sudden sight, and even though it was suprising to seehim that bothered already, it was also strangely erotic andimmediately send a rush of wetness down between your legs.

„'Cause I didn’t jerkit for a while,“ Kid answered and grunted as the cold air hit his exposed skinand his longing to feel your warmth grew even more, „I’ve beenwaiting for you, can’t you tell, woman? You had to hold back all thistime, and so did I…“ he growled and left a trail of love bites onyour neck as he moved up to take a quick sniff of your hair. Jeez,you smelled way too good…

„Kid… are you forreal…?“ a moan went past your lips as you could feel him twitchin your hand, and a sudden desire of feeling him inside of you NOWpopped up in your brain and send shivers down your body.

„Yeah, babe,“ hisvoice was so husky by now that he had a hard time holding back, andKid quickly licked his dry lips in an attempt to moisturize them, „because Iwanted to feel your skin on mine, and not my hand. So….“ hetrailed off as his fingers pushed your panties aside so he could rubhis erection against your entrance,

„let’s forgeteverything else and just have a good time together.“

Marco

„Hah, and another onedone….“ you sighed and leaned back in your chair before closingthe book you just worked through. Another batch of notes joined yourfolder as you prepared to continue with the next lecture. „Man,this is so much…“ a whimper escaped your throat as your eyeswandered over your desk and to the books on the side, which you stillhad to work through. „I wonder if I will ever get to finish…“

Just as the words leftyour lips, a pair of big and soft hands rested on your shoulders, andwith a suprised „oh!“ you turned your face to the side, only tolock eyes with your boyfriend. Marco wore his signature glasses and agentle smile grazed his lips as he started to rub your shoulders inan affectionate manner. „I just wanted to check if you’re stillbusy with your studies, and it seems like I was right.“ his voicewas smooth as honey as he leaned down to press a kiss to your cheek.

„Ah, yeah, I think I’mhalfway through now,“ you sighed and leaned back and against histouch as he continued to massage your tense shoulders. Marco usuallydidn’t disturb you during your studies since he knew how importantthis was to you, but for now you could really use some distractionand a gentle touch. „Mh, I see. So there’s still that much left-yoi?“ he whispered and you simply nodded in response. At night youbarely got any sleep nor did you have the time to- every minute youdidn’t spend at your desk or with a book in your hand simply feltwasted to you. A louder sigh went past your lips as you reached outto grab the next book while Marco slowly trailed down your shouldersand towards your neck with his hands. „Alright, here comes the nextsubject…“ you murmured and opened the book at a random page whileMarco started to tickle over your sensitive skin with his fingers,which send pleasurable sparks down your body.

„Mh, so this is whatyou’re working on now-yoi?“ he whispered into your ear and thefeeling of his hot breath almost caused you to release an involuntarymoan, but instead you simply nodded in response. „Yeah, this issuper important for my next exam…“

As you opened the book ona random page you could feel how he shifted his position so his headwas right next to yours and he started to read the text alongsideyou. „Mhhhhhh, interesting…“ he whispered and playfully reachedforward to trace a sentence with his finger, almost as if he wasstudying the book as well. He was clearly teasing you. His other handwent down from your neck and to your blouse, where it quickly slippedinside and started to massage your breasts through your bra. A gaspescaped your lips as he kneaded your chest, but you decided not togive in and instead focus on the page again.

One of his fingers wentpassed your garment and slowly circled around your almost hardenednipple in a lazy, yet determined manner. Did he want to throw youoff…? Because if that was Marco’s intention, it worked. The moreyou tried to follow the words written on the page the more blurrythey seemed, and instead of difficult formulas it was as if you couldonly read one thing…

His other hand wanderedto your pants where it remained still for a moment, and you wonderedif he really wanted to keep you from studying by doing dirty thingslike this to your body- but then he suddenly pulled away completely,which caused you to mewl in disappointment and suprise. A low chuckleleft his lips as Marco went around your desk and crawled under it,which made you question his motive even more, but it all became clearwhen you could feel a tuck at your pants. Oh, so that was hisgame….

You pretended to continueyour study, even though you’ve been staring at the same sentence fora few minutes now, and all of your thoughts were swirling around theword SEX and your desire to feel your boyfriend’s hands again. Itdidn’t take long for Marco to relieve you of your pants, and yourpanties quickly got pulled down as well, which left your lowerabdomen completely exposed. Goosebumps formed all over your skin andyou testingly moved your hips forward a bit to see if Marco wasclose- and yes, he was, since you basically just pressed your hotentrance against his awaiting mouth. The sudden contact almost causedyou to pull away, but his strong hands held onto your thighs to keepyou in place as a small chuckle left Marco’s throat. He didn’t sayanything, there was no need for words. He quickly left a few butterfly kisseson your entrance before the tip of his tongue slowly dragged alongyour sensitive clitoris.

„UUUnnnghhh…“ asudden and loud moan immediately left your mouth at his actions andyou could feel your body heat up as Marco continued to gently lickover your sensitive bud. After repeating the same movements a coupleof times  he took your clitoris between his lips and started tonibble and suck on it while one if his fingers now rubbed againstyour entrance in a teasing manner. But you weren’t in the mood forteasing.

„Put it inside,please!“ you begged as your hands tightly clutched the book youwere still holding, and it took all you had not to throw it away andreach down to push his head against your drenched entrance. „Mh,focus on your studies, (Y/N)…“ he simply whispered in return, hisvoice had the stern and authoritarian tone of a teacher scolding theirstudent, which just further hightened your desire. Regardless, heslowly started to move a single finger inside as his sucking on yourclit continued, and your breathing grew heavier and heavier as yourbody started to feel incredibly hot. Marco wasted no time and putanother finger inside of your tight entrance, now pumping at an eager and fast pace whilehis lips sucked harder and harder on your sensitive bud, until youcouldn’t hold back anymore and released all of your build up tensionwith a loud scream.

Your high lasted over aminute and once you had cooled down again, Marco was gone frombetween your legs and now standing next to you again, with a smirk onhis face and a bulge in his pants. You simply panted and smirked backat him before throwing the book to the side and pulling him againstyou. It seemed like both of you could agree on one thing: studies could wait for now.

Hope you liked it, mysweet Ai! I never wrote dirty scenarios before, so I hope it didn’tsuck that much xD

[fae-fucker]

Zenith: Chapter 27-28

Chapter 27

We’re back with Valen. It’s all dark darkness and vengeance will be his and he’s sad his sister is dead. That’s all his character is, really.

Has a dead sister

Is an Artiste

Dank darkness

Really wants vengeance

Is there anything else? Let me know in the comments! Don’t forget to smash that like button and subscribe to my channel for more tired witticisms. 

Valen hears a sound outside and:

With trembling limbs, Valen reached up and gripped the bars on his cell door, then pulled himself up so he could peer out through them.

So ... you’re telling me that ... the guards also sit in complete darkness? Just to fuck with the prisoners? Because Valen can’t wank on and on about the DAAHKNESS if this whole time there’s been a window in the cell unless the corridors outside are also completely dankly dark. 

Whatever. Valen sees Dex, whom he describes as a “star-covered man” because gotta get that SJM juice somehow and we all know SJM has a hard-on for stars. He then sees Andi, standing in the DAAAHKNESS with her super-duper high tech GLOWING CUFFS PLEASE NOTICE THE GLOWING CUFFS SHINSAY WORKED REALLY HARD ON THIS HARD SCI-FI WORLDBUILDING. 

We get another predator comparison because Shinsay has the collective creativity of an old banana peel, and Valen describes Andi twice within 2 paragraphs, using pretty much the same words, because fuck you.

Andi slices the guard’s arm off with her cool electrical whip, and for a man who hates Andi, Valen sure takes his sweet time describing how cool and badass and dangerous she is. I mean, who cares about character consistency when you have a protag whose ego you have to stroke every five seconds? The reader is never smart enough to think she’s badass based on her actions, you simply MUST describe everything she does as badass!

Androma Racella wasn’t an angel.

She was death incarnate.

Ok.

Chapter 28

There’s an alarm and Shinsay uses the word twice within two sentences because get fucked. 

Valen doesn’t want to get out, because who cares about realism when your character is such a spooky scary space pirate that even torture victims would rather continue get tortured and dying slowly instead of getting saved by her?

It makes too much sense!

Apparently Valen leaves a trail of blood as he crawls backwards. How is he not dead yet?

He was a shadow of the person she’d once known, but he was still a Cortas—a living fragment of Kalee.

I’m pretty sure that’s not how genetics work, Androma. 

She uses this to motivate herself to save Valen, and it makes her feel like a Spectre again.

She knocks Valen out with a knock to the noggin so she and Dex can drag him out (obviously Valen’s already critical condition will not be worsened by blunt force trauma, because this is video games and research is hard when you’re a vapid booktuber and a mediocre YA author), while also doing cool combat against six armed guards, because Dex taught her one-handed swordfighting that one time. Insert Skyrim+masturbation reference here. 

I mean yeah. Sure. Whatever. At this point I’m too tired to even say anything. 

I will, however, mention that Valen smells “rotten.” Are we absolutely sure he’s not dead?

She gripped her short-whip tight, imagining it was one of her swords, already seeing the way she’d slice it through tendons like a blade carving through raw meat.

Hey, uh. Not to spoil your fun or anything, but I’m like 99.99% sure that using a whip is uuuuuh completely different from wielding a sword? But what do I know, I’m not a ko0le spays pie rut. 

They sprang, their two bodies moving in one single motion, Valen still between them.

Hey, uh, sorry to interrupt again. Just a quick note: Can you maybe put Valen down to dispatch the guards and then pick him up when you’re done? Since you’re such COOL BADASSES, wouldn’t it be quicker to just kill the guards first and then get Valen, instead of ... carrying the guy between you, severely impairing both of your abilities? 

Then again, I guess neither Dex nor Andi have to suffer any sort of consequences and any handicap just makes them stronger, so hell, pick up the other two guards you killed. Carry three dudes! Fling them around like a flesh-tornado! 

Andi’s whip flashed in a glorious arc [...]

Uh-huh.

Andi does some Cool Flips and then a bit of her hair gets singed, which sends her into a murderous rage, because priorities.

Andi gets stabbed in the shoulder and barely reacts before yanking the knife out (fucking dumbass) and charges blindly at more guards, blinded by more murderous rage (she’s like, on her third layer of murderous rage at this point), leaving Dex and Valen alone and defenseless, apparently. My eyes were rolling over as I read this so I have no idea what happened. 

Dex decides to throw Valen’s unconscious body at the guards. 

...

...

...

Honestly, the fact that I’m still reading this fucking book is an insult to my intelligence. I should be doing better things. I should be writing. I should be enjoying an episode of Aggretsuko. I should draw yet another OC of mine.

Instead, I’m reading about a bounty hunter who just threw his unconscious, heavily bleeding, heavily damaged ward who most likely has a serious concussion down one flight of stairs. 

But hey, at least it’s not twenty flights of stairs, right? No, that’s literally in the fucking book.

The guy was unconscious. No harm done unless he died on the descent—it was only one flight of stairs, not twenty.

Obviously, being unconscious makes people invulnerable. Unless they die. 

I don’t want to insult the authors, but either Lindsay and Sasha are extremely fucking stupid, or they think you are. Pick your poison.

Also I just noticed. Each and every chapter has big letters announcing which POV we’re in at the beginning, but they’re rendered completely useless when we switch POVs mid-chapter anyway, without anything but context clues telling us who we’re following this time.

Top-notch editing, lads.

Anywhoo, they fight through the guards and meet up with Soy. 

Who promptly shoots them both.

I wish she shot them to death, but even if the chapter ends all dramatically and we’re supposed to be shocked, this is just chapter 28, and I remember Soy mentioned she can bring people back to life. 

The end is nowhere in sight, fuckos! 

[firebirdscratches]

Thought process on designing a Fat Pride Flag

So, the only existing fat pride flag I’m aware of is this one: 

Unfortunately, it is a Fat Fetish Flag. Full explanation can be found here:  https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FatFetishFlag.png I’m not judging people who have Fat Fetishes, but I think it’s unacceptable that in 2018, the only Fat Pride Flag that exists represents people who fetishize us, and not US.  So, I’ve decided to design my own.  I thought the idea of the Neopolitan Ice Cream colors was cute, actually. But I don’t think the flag should be food-related. While reclaiming stereotypes can be really powerful, the notion that fat people eat poorly or only eat junk food is just that - a stereotype. Also, it can be really triggering for survivors/current sufferers of eating disorders, which absolutely affect the fat community at saddening rates. In fact, many fat people are in recovery from eating disorders, having disrupted their body’s natural metabolism over years of trauma. *waves hello* I thought about having the outline of a fat body on a rainbow flag - but there are straight fat people too, and they deserve to feel Fat Pride as well. Being a queer person myself, of course gayness matters to me...I just think this is an important area to be inclusive. The final design of the flag should be able to be easily combined with other flags to express the diversity of our community, should people choose to include other aspects of their identity, like their sexuality, race, or gender identity. I’ve thought up a couple images and made some quick n’ dirty sketches under the readmore

- A cornucopia. While I wanted to steer away from food, I feel like this is vague enough not to be triggering? Something like this maybe? 

I feel like a cornucopia represents ampleness, generosity, plenty - all positive associations with “bigness.” On the other hand, cornucopias automatically conjure up Thanksgiving, a time inextricably tied to food, and overeating, which could be triggering...and again, there is technically food in that picture. I could do an EMPTY cornucopia, but that sends the image of famine and lack, so....maybe not. (Also cornucopias are really varied in the way they’re drawn, usually intricate, and would be difficult to recreate consistently).  - A whale. I KNOW, I KNOW, but part of pride can be found in reclaiming words and imagery that have been used against us as slurs and making them a point of pride, rendering them useless as a slur, the way the word “queer” was reclaimed, or other slurs being reclaimed by members of specific communities. I’m thinking maybe a sea blue stripe - to represent the ocean in its vastness, diversity, and life-giving properties. (Again, positive associations with bigness) and the outline of a whale as a radical reclaiming of an insult that was hurled against us. Whales are also deeply family-bonded, nurturing, graceful animals that are unjustly hunted and persecuted, and who are SUPPOSED to be big. It’d also be very easy to overlay on a different pride flag color scheme, to incorporate other identities.  Maybe something like this? 

Stripe color is #5899b8, ocean colored. I made it extra wide, because...wide people. :D Whale color is #a1e1ff. I didn’t spend too long perfecting it, it’s just an idea sketch right now. Here’s what it might look like overlayed on another pride flag: 

Other potential fat avatars could include pig, elephants, rhinos, etc. All things that have been hurled at me as insults before....though while reclaiming slurs can be really powerful, fat people have been associated with animals by fatphobes WAAYYYY too much - codifiying that into a pride flag could either be seen as a powerful subversion of that shaming tactic - or seen as capitulating to that shaming tactic.  Anyway, let’s keep working on other ideas.  What other things are big? I thought - outer space. Stars. “Celestial Bodies.” All bodies are made of star stuff...Our own sun is a star - and it’s massive and gives life to the whole planet. Fat people are “Stars” too! And we deserve to shine. So I cooked up a few star/sun based ideas. 

I chose purple this time, being the color of royalty, and because we’ve been euphemistically referred to as “Queen Size,” or “King Size.” Why not lean into our royal birthright? It’s just a simple star on a wide purple band, but it emphasizes pride and that we are all “celestial bodies” made of starstuff. Here’s what it might look like over another pride flag: 

I didn’t bother cleaning up the background, I’d need to find a star with a transparent backgroung to overlay, but - you get the idea. Although...you could also do overlays like this: 

That leaves even more of the original flag clear, and gives increased legibility. It could also be added to the top left, or expanded as a triangle on the left side. Here’s both options. 

lol graphic design is my passion XD (again just a sketch) I was thinking about the sun, but then I also realized - the moon deserves some love, too. Especially as a gravitational body, and its effect on the tides...So I thought - how can I include them both? 

A solar eclipse! But I also know flame burns at different colors depending on its heat, like you see when you light a match or a candle: 

I also like sending the message that fat people are HOT! Which isn’t a message we get to hear about ourselves very often. ^_^; So pulling design elements from both these images, I came up with this: 

....Hrm. Including the flame colors was a fun idea, but I kinda hate how it came out. Also, a center circle is currently used on the intersex flag, I wouldn’t want people to be confused. And this looks like it would be really hard to use as an overlay. Too busy. Lemme try simplifying a little. 

Hm. Not AS ugly but...still pretty ugly. -_-; yeahno. I searched for a public domain sun/moon images and was inspired by old drawings like these: 

Obviously, this is just a sketch I winged together, any final image would have far superior art. But...take a look: 

I.....don’t hate this?? I like that it includes two obviously round faces...I like how Renaissance-y it looks, alluding to a time period where fat bodies were appreciated and lauded in art. And it still has that “celestial body” connotation. I also HELLA simplified the color scheme to a midnight blue (moon) and golden (sun). I made some of the rays straight, and some of the rays curvy, because not everybody is straight. I also feel like this would be easy to transpose onto another pride flag like so: 

The design is a little busy, but it could either be made more intricate (a la the source inspiration) or LESS intricate, deliberately “dumbed down” into something easy to understand and replicate.  Anyway, these are some preliminary thoughts. Fat people, please “weigh in” (hurrrr puns) and let me know what you think! I’m tagging some friends and some fat positive blogs I follow - would be interested in your feedback! I’m just one person, and having other voices for concrit would be super helpful.  @fatgirlsdoingthings, @fatphobiabusters, @fuckyeahfatpositive, @thebodyisnotanapology @stophatingyourbody, @frostyemma, @charmingfury, @semi-sem, @sillyengineer

[freedom-of-fanfic]

I'm kind of torn on the Mary Sue issue. On one hand, I don't care what anyone writes for their own amusement, but writing is still an art that does and should have standards for professionals. As someone who has degrees in writing and does it as a profession, it's a little insulting to be told that the work your poured tons of research and time into is on the same level as amateur self-insert fic. That's why I advocate for different standards for fandom vs pro work.

I feel you, anon. and I have a lot of respect for people like you who got degrees and write professionally, because words are held rather cheap with the internet being around and anyone who can get paid to write words impresses me to some degree. but:

 I’ve always felt like comparing fanfic and original fiction to be not exactly congruous? and 

I think Mary Sue suffers from maligning because she’s disproportionately evoked by the youngest/least experienced of writers.

this got … pretty long … so i’m dividing it up a little for ease.

the concept of ‘standards’

first of all, I also advocate for different standards between published/professional/marketed works and fan works, but I do so because of 1)potential spread and 2)they aren’t accomplishing the same thing.

In general, a fanwork will have limited appeal outside of the fans of the canon the work is based in; they cannot stand on their own without some additional effort. Further, fandom has its own language to some degree or another, and fanworks are frequently best understood in the context of other fanworks, like scientific papers citing other scientific papers in passing because the audience is expected to be other scientists in the field who have read it. In other words: the audience is probably fairly niche and in on the ‘lingo’. its potential damage circle is therefore relatively small. if somebody fucks up their research for a fic, it’s nbd, for instance.

On the other hand, an original work with a professional marketing team will certainly reach a much more diverse audience and probably a much larger one. It’s therefore responsible, imo, to be proportionately aware of the potential impact of the subject material and approach it accordingly (though true fiction will always have an unpredictable effect on any given individual, so there’s only so much the creator can do). I’d expect accuracy where research was done, if for no other reason than to avoid spreading false information to such a big potential audience.

and of course I’d hope that if somebody is being paid to write, their grammar/prose/proofreading will meet a certain standard of readability. (the same cannot be expected of free works done for fun that take a few minutes to post on the internet.)

having said that: standards for quality fiction writing will always be subjective. I’m always going to have questions about why The Sound and the Fury is an American classic (I couldn’t make sense of it no matter how hard I tried).  What gets published can be as simple as having good luck with the slush pile reader that day. I’ve seen fanfiction complimented with incredible research: there’s a Tokyo Babylon work-in-progress with an author who has traveled to fic-relevant locales to nail story and character details. I feel the line is blurring these days, especially because there are people who make a living off writing commissioned fanfiction now (too small-scale to be an IP concern, of course).

I think the fundamental difference between fanworks and original works is not quality of the work itself or effort expended.  It’s related to structure and aim. 

Fanworks, even AU fanworks, are like interior decoration. A 'good fanwork’, even an AU fanwork, works within a pre-built framework to elaborate on or add to or evoke what drew its audience to the framework in the first place. 

Original works build a whole new house, creating a new framework from bare construction materials to draw in and house the emotions of its readers. (and then maybe its readers decorate the house with their own fanfic.)

tl;dr: if an AU fanfic was so different from canon and the characters were so OOC that the author can shave the serial numbers off and repurpose it as an original story, it might be a great original work. But it wasn’t a very good fanfic, was it?

why is mary sue so offensive to us?

I don’t know if you’ve ever read the post Mary Sue, What Are You?, but what I keep coming back to is its iconic opening. the author describes an OC at length: orphaned as a child when her parents were killed in front of her, she decided she would dedicate her life to fighting for justice. She grew up to be rich, athletic, beautiful, sexy, angsty, a genius, undefeatable in a battle of wits and agility, and everyone who meets her is instantly lovestruck. In other words, a classic Mary Sue …

but also Batman with female pronouns.

I think one could argue that Batman is not always well-written, but the relevant point here is that Batman - and Mary Sue - might be 99.9% perfection in the shape of a human around whom the universe revolves, but if its their own canon and the universe doesn’t recognize their perfection the way the reader/writer does, it’s not really 'bad’. (And there’s something to be said about why giving this power fantasy male pronouns seems to render it so much more palatable than female pronouns, but for more on that I point you to the referenced essay.)

Your ask is worded to suggest that Mary Sue is synonymous with unprofessional writing. I … kind of agree? Mary Sue is frequently the main character of Baby’s First Fanfic, and let’s be real: Baby’s First Fanfic is often being written by somebody who might be as young (or younger than) 12-13 years old, with all the inexperience, grammar mistakes, and lack of training that suggests. and as far as characterization goes, I think that anyone who takes decent writing classes will be discouraged from writing a Mary Sue. But like Batman, Mary Sue can be a perfect princess and get away with it under certain circumstances.

I posit that Mary Sue characters (or Gary Stus) - whom I will call Flawless OCs from here - are not really a problem on their own. Further, Flawless OC is more agregious in fanfic than original works. Because what makes the Flawless OC so irritating isn’t their perfection, really: it’s what the character’s presence must do to the universe (which is, in the case of fanfic, the universe the reader came to experience in the first place) that’s the real problem.

To show what a good fighter Flawless OC is, they defeat the best canon fighter.

Flawless OC has a backstory more tragic and painful than the most tragic canon backstory, and they cope with the trauma of it better.

There’s no room for Flawless OC because canon wasn’t holding a spot open for a self-insert, so now there’s a 6th Lion or a 10th Fellowship member or a Second Child Who Survived Voldemort.

The entire universe bends to ensure Flawless OC has perfect luck; their enemies are helpless before them. Everything seems to go their way except in the chapter where the their love interest is supposed to rescue them from danger. (the rescue goes flawlessly, of course.)

Depending on the author wish that Flawless OC is meant to fulfill, Flawless OC will defeat any undefeatable enemy, solve the unsolveable problem, be the envy or lust object of any character, etc etc, often without regard for the original context of the enemy/problem or the canon personality of the character.

In short, Flawless OC usually have two major issues: 

they render canon irrelevant to glorify Flawless OC, and 

the universe constantly validates their choices to a degree that wrecks narrative suspense. 

what makes each of these things 'bad writing’ is different.

The first problem I mentioned - warping of mythos, plot, and characters to accomodate the Flawless OC - is a fanfic problem.  Canon-warping absolutely allowed, but what makes it fanfic - the canon source that acts as our shared experience and usually our main reason for being a potential audience to the fic - is almost always nigh-unrecognizable. That makes for bad fanfiction, but it doesn’t always make for bad fiction. Change all the parts of canon enough and you’ve arguably got an original work. It might even be a good original work if the author has writing skill.

The second problem - the validation of the universe - is what makes Flawless OC a dull read in any context. If Flawless OC wants something, you know they’ll get it. If Flawless OC hates someone, you know they’re going to catch hell. If Flawless OC needs to be vulnerable for their love interest, something just bad enough to make them vulnerable will befall them. The perfection of the OC is less of an issue than the lack of meaningful conflict. (A character can have no faults and still be interesting to follow if they must struggle against a universe that doesn’t care.)

to wit:

there’s a fantasy book by David and Leigh Eddings - The Redemption of Althalus - that I read long ago. it stuck with me to a peculiar degree because for a book with such a unique conceit, it was incredibly boring. This is published fiction: it had editors, a marketing team, and was written by professionals with lots of experience! But looking back, none of this saved the story from featuring Gary Stu in a universe that catered to his every need.

The main character, Althalus, is ostensibly a person in need of redemption for being such a bad person all his life and never punished for it, but he’s a loveable, quick-witted rogue almost from the start. To 'redeem’ himself, he’s tasked with saving the world from Enemies (we’re told they’re evil, but I don’t think we see them more than once or twice).  Protected by the Goddess of Luck - literally - for the entire novel, there’s never a single moment where Althalus’ victory over the Enemy is in question. He never does anything really awful that would explain his need to be redeemed (in fact, it turns out the Luck Goddess is the one who protected him from punishment all his life). The enemy is weak, forgettable, and constantly outwitted, and the protagonists, supposedly people of gray morality, never did anything worse than be snarky.

The unique conceit that kept me reading was the House at the End of the World. Being the home of the Goddess, it had doors that opened to anywhere on the planet. but for an idea with such double-edged possibilities, it turned out to be an impregnable fortress of Good. The House and its owner were the forces that bent the whole book’s universe to the inevitable triumph of the main character and his companions.

A counter-example might be Miraculous Ladybug. I’ve often wondered if Mary Sue could be written well and be likeable, and Marinette - the titular Ladybug - is probably close. She’s good at almost everything and always outwits her enemies; even when she seems confident to the point of arrogance, it’s justified by her endless successes. (Her only real flaw is being clumsy when she’s distracted, and it only happens when it’s conveniently cute. this is a walking Mary Sue cliche.) Her power is to be lucky, after all.  

However: even though everything ends up right for Marinette at the end of every episode, she’s not rewarded when she acts poorly towards others. She causes herself problems when she does. Her luck powers give her the ability to bend the universe a little, but the universe is otherwise unforgiving; she’s subjected to the same banalities as everyone else and learns to be a better person along the way.

OTOH if you put Ladybug in another canon with a makeover to recast her as Flawless OC, changing everything so she could occupy a central role like the one she has in her own series, she’d be insufferable: hence Ladybug is a solid example of how a Mary Sue can prosper provided she’s in a universe designed to both feature her and contain her powers for the sake of Good.

I apologize for how long a reply this is. Still: I hope it successfully illustrates for you that:

though original writing and fanfic writing use the same tool (words), and both can use them masterfully, what original writers like you do and what fic writers do are, in general, very different things.

And Mary Sue is what you make of her. In the right universe, she’s just a very lucky person. :)

[aion-rsa]

Abandoned and Hideo Kojima Silent Hill Conspiracy Just Got Much Weirder on YouTube

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Today was supposed to be a big day for Silent Hill and Hideo Kojima fans, at least those who believe an upcoming PS5 game called Abandoned is secretly a new entry in the horror series from the creator of Metal Gear and Death Stranding. But after a week of teasing the release of a new “trailers app” meant to reveal more of the indie title at the center of gaming’s latest conspiracy theory, Blue Box Game Studios’ enigmatic founder Hasan Kahraman released a video to announce the app and reveal had been delayed to August.

Did this quiet the fans who had spent more than a week speculating, deciphering “clues,” uncovering weird coincidences, and hounding the Blue Box Twitter handle for answers? If you think the answer is yes, you clearly don’t know the internet very well.

But let me rewind. If you’ve not been keeping up with the chatter on Twitter or obsessively reading the Blue Box Conspiracy subreddit like I have, we tracked many of the potential clues the eagle-eyed sleuths on Reddit found last week. But here’s the gist:

Ever since the first cryptic trailer for Abandoned premiered during a PlayStation State of Play broadcast last April, fans have been drawing connections between the game, Abandoned developer Blue Box Game Studios, Silent Hill, and Hideo Kojima. At first, the theory just seemed like wishful thinking, but A LOT has happened since then. After the official Blue Box Twitter handle posted a now-deleted tweet teasing that “Abandoned” wouldn’t be the final name of the game, fun speculation quickly turned into obsession for some.

“Guess the name: Abandoned = (First letter S, Last letter L). Reveal closing in…” read the tweet posted on June 15, which was enough to trigger a full-scale investigation spanning the entire internet, from Kojima’s Instagram feed to some really creepy YouTube videos involving Morse code. More on those videos in a second. The point is that things are getting SO weird.

All this even after Kahraman posted a video earlier this week confirming not only that he was a real person (and not Kojima in a mask — the MGSV developer previously pulled a stunt like that once) but that Blue Box and Abandoned had nothing to do with Konami or Silent Hill. He’s also been previously interviewed by IGN and went on the record with Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, arguably the most reliable reporter in games journalism.

“It doesn’t matter how much I try to debunk all this,” Kahraman told Schreier in an hour-long phone interview. “People don’t believe it. They just expect something that’s not out there. It bothers me.”

Quick message from Hasan: pic.twitter.com/1oVeaMvu3w

— BLUE BOX Game Studios (@BBGameStudios) June 22, 2021

The videos on social media and statements to the press would normally be enough to debunk the theories that Kahraman isn’t real, but many fans have dismissed the evidence as red herrings designed to push them off the trail. Plus, there ARE some weird coincidences, such as the fact the Kaharaman and Kojima both share the same initials and that when you translate “Hideo” from Japanese to Turkish, you get “Kahraman.” Blue Box’s initials are also “BB,” which is the name of a character in Kojima’s most recent game, Death Stranding.

Some “clues” that Kahraman and Blue Box aren’t who they say they are more outlandish. For example, some Reddit sleuths have suggested the black t-shirt Kahraman is wearing in his first video has a secret meaning. Why? Because every major figure whose talked about Abandoned or Kojima’s next game on video has worn a black shirt, including Leo Enin, the founder of Nuare, a real art outsourcing studio that has most recently worked on Marvel’s Avengers and Halo Infinite. The Game Awards and Summer Game Fest founder (and longtime Kojima collaborator) Geoff Keighley also teased that Kahraman had reached out to him to possibly help him reveal the game sometime in the near future.

Then Kahraman posted a new video today to announce the delay of the release of the Abandoned trailer app on the PlayStation Network. Yes, an app just for your trailers is a peculiar way to market your game, and it’s strange that PlayStation is giving such special attention to a very small indie studio, but that’s not the weirdest thing about Kahraman’s second video.

An update from Hasan: pic.twitter.com/vpFN81YDXL

— BLUE BOX Game Studios (@BBGameStudios) June 25, 2021

While Twitter users were busy trying to decipher the meaning of Kahraman’s switching from a black t-shirt to a white turtleneck, and speculating that perhaps the developer was actually a CGI model created by Kojima, something far stranger was happening on YouTube.

More than 10 hours before Kahraman announced the delay, a YouTube channel claiming to be the official channel of “AbandonedTheGame” went live with a countdown video, seemingly for the launch of the promised trailer app. But right when the clock hit zero on the live YouTube broadcast, Kahraman announced the delay on Twitter. What the hell?

At first it seemed like Blue Box had gotten cold feet at the last second, deciding to reveal Abandoned when it was a bit more polished. But those who stuck around YouTube after the delay was announced were treated to new clues that seem to confirm what some have known all along: that there’s much more to Abandoned than meets the eye.

The video, which played a loop of weird sounds over the Blue Box logo, began to communicate with the viewers, sending out messages in Morse code that some speculate is actually a conversation between two sides of the same person, potentially a tease of a character both in and outside Silent Hill’s Otherworld. Each line of Morse code appeared in either blue or red, seemingly signifying that two different voices were speaking, although some simply took this as confirmation that PlayStation (blue logo) and Konami (red logo) are collaborating on the new Silent Hill.

Either way, viewers quickly deciphered the would-be conversation:

BLUE: FIND THE SOURCE RED: REALITY BENDS TO MY WILL BUT MY MIND IS DELUSIONAL BLUE: I CANT TRUST YOU IF YOU CANT TRUST YOUR MIND SO FIND THE SOURCE RED: SHALL I REMIND YOU WHO I AM BLUE: SHALL I REMIND YOU WHAT I CAN DO BLUE: I THINK THEY SPOT ME STOP PLAYING ME AND FIND THE SOURCE RED: I CANT GET HOLD OF YOU SO I ASSUME YOU GOT MADE TIME TO SEPARATE BLUE: BYE BYE FOR NOW RED

Those on Reddit and YouTube quickly rushed to try and “find the source,” the central message of the otherwise nonsensical conversation. At this time, neither the Blue Box Conspiracy subreddit nor fans on other social platforms have come up with a definite answer as to what’s happening here, although there are some stunning theories I won’t delve into here because…it’s A LOT. Unfortunately, the video recording was deleted from the channel after the broadcast ended a few minutes after the final line of Morse code.

There are other videos on the channel, including this very creepy teaser apparently released earlier this week:

If you feel like taking a trip down the rabbit hole this weekend, I highly recommend you check out all the weird videos on the channel as well as the aforementioned subreddit. Even if you’re not invested in what Kojima or Blue Box have planned, it’s a lot of fun watching these sleuths try to figure out what’s going on. I can’t even begin to summarize all of the theories that have popped up since the Morse code dropped.

As of this writing, the YouTube channel has most recently dropped an “Act II Teaser” with more Morse code that reads:

RED: Endure BLUE: Survive

What does it all mean? We’ll hopefully get some answers in August…which also happens to be the month in which P.T., Kojima’s “Playable Teaser” for Silent Hills, released on the PSN back in 2014. Oh god.

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from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2SrDVj5

[gris-0]

MED2306- CW2

1st study- Boring Room Challenge

Video link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Dd6jOmC2dSE&feature=share

In this study, multiple types of shots had to be used to make a single room or setting appear more interesting. The overall direction that was taken was using a variety of shots to give a sense of narrative structure, all in a single setting.

(Pictured: Myself reading a book, medium shot)

The opening shot. The slight low angled view allows the viewer to see that a book is being read while also drawing attention to the person in the shot, who is the main person of focus throughout the video.

(Pictured: Medium-long shot)

A shot taken where the book is placed down on the bed before the person gets up and walks to the front door. The person, who again is one of the main focuses in the video, is placed around the centre of the shot in order to draw the viewer’s attention. The shot also allows a clearer view of the setting- which appears to be an apartment. The lighting is mostly dim to set the atmosphere.

(Pictured: Box at a high angle)

Opening the door, the shot changes to the box. The high angle and positioning of the camera is supposed to simulate a first-person view from the person featured in the video. As up until this point a single character has been the main point of focus, the viewer naturally assumes that the shot is a first-person view.

(Pictured: Extreme long shot)

Down the hallway from the box a myserious figure walks away, who is implied to have something to do with the box. In the shot, the camera begins as an extreme long shot but zooms in to become a long shot and focus on the figure. The lighting here is particularly washed out and cold, contrasting with the warm lighting of the apartment. The figure is also stationed in the middle of the shot to draw the viewer’s eye.

(Pictured: High angle shot of a hand)

A high angled shot taken after opening the box, revealing the contents. The shot differs from previous ones mentioned as the composition draws less attention to the centre of the shot and instead veers off to the right. The overhead shot allows a clear view of the hand, while the composition retains a level of interest in the audience as it’s less mundane compared to a centred composition.

2nd study- A day in 60 seconds

Video link: https://vimeo.com/498957212

The second study differs in some way from the first in that the purpose is to show the progression of time in a day. The main intention was to follow an average day, taking different shots to highlight time and location changing, while also editing the shots together in a way that gives something of a cohesive narrative. As there was some limitation in recording myself directly for the project, a prop was used as a stand-in. This both came with positives and negatives when creating my video.

(Pictured: Curtains)

The opening shot was of some curtains with sunlight shining through. The shot signals to the viewer a few details about the setting. Firstly, it’s taken in-doors, possibly in someone’s house. Secondly, and more importantly, it’s daytime. The shot highlights the fact it’s daytime by the use of contrast between the light shining through the curtains and the dark of the room.

(Pictured: Prop in bed)

Next shot is a short pan over to the prop in bed before the prop is seen moving about a bit, which is implied to be from the sunlight which was established as being there in the previous shot. Again, the prop was a stand-in for myself and my initial idea was to have me be recorded in bed, eyes closed, before squinting from the light and rolling over. As a prop became used instead though, a slight wriggling motion was used instead to indicate a response.

(Pictured: The Hub, establishing shot)

An establishing shot of the Hub, where the camera is facing at the sky before panning down towards the doors. Directly after, the next shot has a coffee being taken out a set of automatic doors, which were implied to be the doors of this buliding as indicated by this shot.

(Pictured: Coffee on desk)

The coffee being placed on the desk, a quick and subtle detail added to the video. The coffee itself is a form of prop and gets referenced slightly later in the video and is actually quite important in representing the change of time. It also should be noted that I found this shot somewhat troublesome to do correctly as both the speed the coffee was placed down had to be in line with the pacing I wanted to have. Also my hand couldn’t be in the shot as it would break immersion as the character the video follows the day of isn’t a human and doesn’t have hands.

(Pictured: Prop looking at screen)

A shot of the prop looking at the screen. Just establishing more of the daily activities being captured at this moment in time, though another later shot will also focus on the screen that now has something different on it. This is to again established the change in time.

(Pictured: Close up shot of the head of the prop)

A close up of the head of the prop that has a slow zoom in, which was a fun addition to include. Given a direction on what would appear in the video was already somewhat decided upon before filming, this would have originally been a shot of my face with a somewhat vacant expression instead. In my opinion the lack of expressive capabilities with the prop makes the shot more amusing as the expression and thoughts of the character get left to both the slow zoom and the viewers.

(Pictured: Coffee cup after a fade-in transition)

Another shot of the coffee cup that appeared earlier, which fades from one clip of the cup to the pictured one where it’s moved and the lid is slightly skewed. The transition is supposed to signify that the coffee cup has been used over the course of an undisclosed amount of time, which itself signifies a time shift. 

(Pictured: Prop in bed)

The final shot of the film where the prop is in bed, very similarly to how it began at the start of the video, before the light switches off and the screen goes black. The previous shot directly before this also included a shot of the curtains being pulled closed, similarly to how the curtains were pulled open at the start of the video. The two shots exist to show the final moments of the day when everything goes dark and the day is over. The similarity of the opening and ending shots also give the video a somewhat cyclical structure to the narrative.

3rd study- Character cinematography

Before taking the shots of the character model came setting up the lighting. The lighting set up was a basic three point lighting layout, which is most commonly used for photography. In this particular lighting set up there’s a subtle but diffused back light that’s intended to highlight the outline of the subject, a key light intended to highlight parts of the subject and emulate a particular light direction, and finally a fill light that’s intended to maintain visibility in certain features and soften shadows. Back lights are located behind the subject, keylights are often placed in front and facing somewhat down on the subject and fill lights get placed across from the key light to act as a secondary light source. For the sake of differentiating the different light sources in this study, I used a blue light for the key light, a red light for the fill light and a green light for the back light.

(Pictured: Close Up shot of head)

In this shot the camera was placed somewhat below the character, angled upwards. This angle was picked as it would be able to capture the whole head clearly compared to picking an overhead angle. In doing this the lighting used is better visible.

(Pictured: Full body shot)

In this shot an overhead angle was used, unlike with the head shot. As the reason behind picking this angle was to capture the full body in a dynamic way as opposed to having the head and face as the sole focus I felt it was a suitable choice. However, in selecting this angle the use of lighting becomes less obvious though this in part is due to the character being mostly black and not reflecting as much light.

In the process of using this lighting set up the largest issue I found was by far to do with the backlight. Maybe due to my setting choices for the light or the type of light used, the inclusion of the backlight didn’t visibly change how the model was highlighted. 

4th study- Reconstruct a painting

The 4th and final study focuses on attempting to emulate the lighting and composition of any painting that seemed suitable.

(Pictured: A makeshift 3d model based on the key shapes of the skeleton used in the reference image)

To better do the study I created a simple, low poly model that is supposed to resemble the basic shapes of the skeleton in the original painting I based my study on. Deciding to carry out the task this way came with strengths and weaknesses. The positive in doing this was that I became able to better set up the composition to be more accurate to the original painting, which in itself is a bit of a necessity when the skeleton is the only subject that appears in the painting. However, the issue comes with how low poly models don’t interact with light as well as high poly models due to how the light can’t diffuse as well on a blocky surface. On top of that, when producing my final render I failed to realise how the render would differ from the render preview in Maya, leading to the lighting to appear dimmer overall and for the secondary light source, which was used to highlight the parts of the skeleton furthest way from the viewer, can barely be seen in the final render.

(VAN GOGH, 1886.  Head of a Skeleton with a Burning Cigarette [Oil Painting on canvas]. At: Amsterdam: Van Gogh Museum)

Pictured is the original reference painting used to carry out the task. In my CGI recreation I used two light sources. One is above the viewer to the left and would be the lightsource in the painting giving the skill the visible highlights, and one on the other side of the skeleton of a lower luminosity, enough to cast some light to define the skeleton on the black background but not enough to lose the shadows on the front of the skull. As stated previously however, due to a rendering oversight, the lighting overall came out dimmer than expected.

[gerardwayisarchive]

MSI’S JIMMY URINE ANNOUNCES SOLO LP FEATURING GERARD WAY AND…ROBOTS?

https://gerardwayisalive.tumblr.com/post/176963498454

https://www.altpress.com/features/jimmy-urine-james-euringer-solo-record/

Jason Pettigrew  August 13, 2018

“I wanted it to sound as if Depeche Mode hired J Dilla and DJ Premier to drop loops while Frank Zappa produced—and then I came in and shit all over it.” So says James Euringeraka Little Jimmy Urine of ADD-addled electro-rockers Mindless Self Indulgence when asked to describe his new solo album under the handle Euringer, featuring cameos from folks such as Gerard Way, System Of A Down’s Serj Tankian, Grimes and Chantal Claret.

(Read more: Jimmy Urine talks MSI, Guardians Of The Galaxy role and new album.)

The album—slated for release Oct. 19 by Metropolis Records—is the beginning of a whole new chapter for the multi-instrumentalist and programmer. After visiting New Zealand a few times in the past, Euringer and his wife, Claret, decided to leave their Los Angeles home and move to the other side of the world.

“I totally think New Zealand is the most awesome place in the world,” he says. “It’s like a combination of San Francisco, New York City and Middle Earth. And I’ve always wanted to live in Middle Earth.”  

“We loved [New Zealand] when Obama was president, but now we love it more since it synced up with the world turning to shit!,” he continues. “Awesome! We’re ahead of the curve!’”

Moving is one big step for a whole new reboot. While his previous album The Secret Cinematic Sounds Of Jimmy Urine was primarily an instrumental dive into various synth-laden idioms inspired by such classic electronic composers as Vangelis and Jean-Michel Jarre, Euringer is a whole new pint glass of piss altogether.

The album’s audio verité vibe is best described as sneaking through Urine’s diary, with diversions of everything from metaphorical politics to wild-assed cover versions to having his buddies and parents (Ma Euringer counts in Spanish on “That’s How Jimmy Gets Down” while Dad assumes the role of disappointed parent on “Two And A Half Years” and a bitter old record producer on the cover of the Doobie Brothers’ “What A Fool Believes”) helping him out on the record.

“This album is kind of a psychedelic, counterculture, avant-garde record with vocals,” he opines. “I’m calling it Euringer because I didn’t want to corrupt any of the other stuff. It’s not Cinematic Sounds. It’s not MSI, which have always been a provocative in-your-face kind of band. [The solo album] allows me to experiment with various BPM speeds, lyrics and tones and try some other avenues.

“It is very personal,” he agrees. “As much as I like being in a crazy shock-rock band, the one thing that gets lost is that people focus on the shock rock and don’t really focus on the fact that I’m a really fucking great programmer, and I’m a deconstructionist and an audio collagist.”

“I sculpt audio and make songs around it,” he continues.“And that’s the first thing that gets lost. [imitates fast-talking industry type.] ‘Awww, Jimmy! You’re crazy and the band’s crazy and they’re great and they do all this provocative amazing stuff,’ and that’s fine—that’s what Mindless are supposed to be. But nobody ever says, ‘I like how you programmed that beat and sampled that stuff backwards.’ [Laughs.] That area is what I went full hog into.”

Urine is thrilled with what his collaborators brought to the proceedings. On “If It Ain’t You Today It’ll Be You Tomorrow,” Urine and Tankian updated Rev. Martin Niemöller’s famous anti-Nazi sermon, “First They Came For The Socialists…” “I always thought that quote was really great,” Urine says. “I wanted to write something a little bit political considering the climate, but not a whole record. Serj was in one of the most amazing politically charged bands of the last 20 years. He went through a whole bunch of lyrics and poetry that he had and screamed stuff for an hour. We had coffee, and I went home and edited [the parts] I liked. The point I’m trying to make [on the song] is that we should all stand up for fringe causes because once they’re gone, you’re next.”

Urine teams up with Claret on “Fuck Everything,” describing it as “our ex-pat song. We kind of wrote it while we were packing up our house and leaving, and then we recorded it in Wellington. She’s a really great songwriter: I’ll be sculpting a song for two months, and she’ll write one in a day. I was like, ‘Oh, my God, that was so quick! No wonder I married you!’” [Laughs.]

For “The Medicine Does Not Control Me,” Urine was trying to write a song about alcohol that wasn’t about partying or rehab. “I don’t have an addictive personality. I’m not trying to use alcohol to escape; I use it for time travel,” he explains. “I can pull myself a glass of scotch and then go watch a ton of movies that are based in New York. I can find a movie that was shot in the neighborhood I grew up—‘Oh, there’s the place I went to school. There’s the place where I used to play pinball’—immerse myself in it and then fall asleep. I don’t drink to get crazy. I think there’s a middle ground where people use liquor to get creative, but you never hear songs about it. You only hear the ones where people ‘went too far’ or they’re ‘gonna party!’”

He wanted to work with electronic/hip-hop maven Grimes because of her hands-on work ethic. “She’s DIY like a motherfucker. There aren’t a lot of ladies doing synth work, producing, mastering, editing their own videos, everything. Because she’s so talented, I wanted her to write the track and to produce me singing it, like a reverse Britney Spears thing: I’m the ingenue, and Grimes is the mastermind. We didn’t have enough time to do it that way, so I gave her some tracks and ["Medicine”] was the one she chose.”

Urine has been friends with Way back in the days when My Chemical Romance were opening for MSI in NYC. So having the 21st century polymath appear on the fast-paced “Sailor In A Life Boat” was a complete no-brainer.

“First of all,” he begins to laugh, “Gerard could have sang every song on the record! MCR did a B-side from something off Danger Days [�["Zero Percent”]here the programming was drum-and-bassy, very weird and hard at the same time, like MCR being MSI.”

“This time, I figured we’d go the other way and leave it up to Gerard,” he continues.“I sent him the song, and he obviously knocked it out. The lyrics—“you’re a dogface on the frontline,” “a pilot on a ship that’s going down,” convey that you used to be a sailor in the Navy, but now you’re just some dude sitting in the middle of the fucking ocean. His vocal and lyrical style comes across to me like a Frank Miller comic book from 1981, like Sin Cityand stuff.”

As usual, Urine can’t resist taking a swipe at the scene. And here he is with “Random EMO Top Line Generator,” one of the most heartfelt songs he’s ever written. And the joke is on all of us: Much like the net’s random name generators for everything from porn star names to Wu-Tang handles and other monikers, Urine had the net write lyrics.

“I loaded up, like, a thousand random generators that gave me words,” he explains. “I put in a word, then a random generator would give me a sentence. Than I’d put that sentence into a different random generator, and it would give me a phrase. I wrote this song based on what I’d get out of these random generators, and I made it a very emotional and heartfelt song.”

“So the schtick is people will say, ‘Wow, it’s so deep, look how mature Jimmy is,’” he continues.“Motherfuckers, a robot wrote that song. The robot wrote the lyrics, and you’re lovin’ it! A robot wrote a song that’s so emotionally empowering it could have been written in the last 10 years. And random generators are all over the internet, you could write a whole album that way! We’re really living in a William Gibson cyberpunk reality these days.”

With all the cool collabs with women, men and machines happening on Euringer, it might be easy to ignore the elephant in the room. You know, the one with “MSI” painted in 4-foot DayGlo letters and festooned with crudely rendered drawings of penises. Urine swears that everything is good with his homies in Mindless, and the door is always open.

“That’s not the reason I made a solo album or why I moved to New Zealand. We were all on different coasts. These days, the technology exists so you don’t even have to be in the same room to make a record. MSI are a wonderful art project that never stops.”

And you’re not going to see Euringer on tour to support the new album, either. “I’m not going to tour for it because I’m gonna chill here in New Zealand for a while,” he says. “I’ll make some videos, do press and work on some top secret projects—maybe a Mindless record—down here. Incorporating New Zealand in all the stuff I’m doing is really cool and fun. I like touring with Mindless; I don’t need to put a whole new band together.”

Right now though, he’s enjoying his time in Middle Earth and keeping busy. He’s also working alongside Tankian and the animation house ShadowMachine for an English gangster cartoon called Fuktronic. Expect more, but on his terms, as he steadfastly refuses to reveal if the other projects he’s got rolling are for film, video games or elevators.

“Oh man, I wanna do stuff for elevators really bad!” he beams excitedly, in the same perverse glee that has marked every creative avenue he’s cartwheeled and silly-walked on for decades. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve gotten into an elevator that had music playing in it.” He pauses for a moment. “Damn, we gotta bring Muzak back into elevators. I’m gonna change all the Mindless songs into Muzak. The future is elevators.”

You can preorder Euringer here prior to its mid-October release date. Check out “Problematic” from the LP and the record’s artwork below.

[zak-graphicarts]

‘Byte Me’ - Pixel Art Workshop Review

In this workshop, I’m exploring a retro 8-bit aesthetic to my characters and the economic approach games such as Mario took to animation, additionally to discussing why the pixel has become so popular in modern culture. 

Recently, computer games with a retro style have become rather popular in modern culture - with examples like Minecraft, the popular app Ball Kings and the NES game consoles being reissued to eager fans. There’s a nostalgic appeal to pixel art, a loving look back at a bygone era of digital graphics and games. These simple pixelated graphics effectively paved the way for on-screen imagery - allowing gamers to play as a character rather than just a shape or line.

South Korean illustrator Jaebum Joe is renowned for his use of the style, which follows an approach that allows the artist to produce more detailed and exciting characters, with differing body shapes and fun character designs. His work harkens back to the side-scrolling beat ‘em up arcade games than a pixel platformer, with a Street Fighter aesthetic that results in a brilliant and striking animation for Nike, of an imaginary basketball game.

Nike / RUN_IT. (2018). Jaebum Joe.

Whilst I won’t be taking this more detailed approach, his work possesses a life and cinematic excitement unrivalled by any other pixel artist in his field. Joe isn’t limited to striking, flashy movements either - with his Tiger Office being a perfect example of a much-needed subtlety. It’s only fifteen seconds long, but the quiet whirring of the PC booting up and the flickering lights illuminating a quiet, lonely workspace speak volumes.

Tiger Office. (2017). Jaebum Joe.

In contrast to this more detailed and exciting approach to pixel art is Ivan Dixon, who works with significantly less pixels to embrace that retro aesthetic and nostalgia. Where Joe is focusing on exciting character designs, Dixon is an animator at heart - and how his characters move reflects this. His website is a showcase of extremely fluid and lively characters bouncing around in their small pixel boxes, with a naive and child-like sense of fun that’s rather infectious.

Avengers. (2018). Ivan Dixon. 

His characters are often inspired by pop culture, with characters from films, games and popular tv shows all getting the bouncy pixel treatment. It’s this limited, cyclic animation approach that I’ll be exploring in my response, but in a more restricted way.

It’s Dixon’s limited colour palettes and embrace of the pixel aesthetic that I’ll be responding to in this workshop. The more detailed Street Fighter style is exciting too, but I’m looking to create a character and animation that’s clearly retro pixel art - so I’ll be sticking to a strictly 8-bit style.

Step 1: Draw

The process began by creating a few sketches, using grid paper to create a square module of 8 by 8 squares. For these drawings, I was working off a few observational sketches, taking inspiration from these to create my own character.

All of the examples I’ve looked at use bright colours - something studios did at the time to grab the gamer’s attention and make up for the lack of character detail. I wanted to follow this idea, so used a combination of green, purple and orange pencils to build my character.

My main idea was to create a supervillain character, looking at comic book villains such as Green Goblin, Joker and a whole host of other bad guys that also sport the same green and purple colour scheme. These pencil sketches, whilst just quick coloured studies, provided most of the design process for me. When you work digitally, there’s an unconscious restriction and lack of experimentation. We’re so quick just to ‘undo’ anything that isn’t perfect the first time, that we might miss a great idea. With a pencil and paper, the pressure is off and I’m just sketching whatever comes to mind.

Step 2: Pixelate

Having a basic idea of the character I want to create, I headed into Photoshop in order to build a digital version. After setting up a new custom document with the correct specifications, I could then begin piecing together the bit-mapped image.

Pixel art is a style I haven’t really explored up until now, but it’s a process that I found rather intuitive and straight forward - as I’m restricting myself to a 8x8 grid, there’s no half pixels or diagonal lines - so it’s just a process of dragging and dropping blocks onto the grid.

When building my character, I played around with adding different features and colour schemes, but decided to leave the eyes, nose and mouth - instead, I explored a minimalist approach that resulted in an appealing character design, I think.

Having shown a few of my peers, I’ve found the success of the design lies in the simplicity, I feel. It’s purposely restrictive and minimal - and it finds a power within that limitation. Something I didn’t account for was my audience assuming the character is naked - the pink was supposed to be a costume, rather than skin - so I had to reconsider my choices if I wanted to illlustrate a super-villain character.

After experimenting with a few different colour palettes, I initially decided to use a monochromatic brown colour palette - going against the flashing vibrant colours of Dixon and Joe in favour of a quiet, subtle aesthetic. 

Just in this pixelated style, I find there to be great potential using this technique. There’s a universal appeal to the style that cannot be overlooked, the naive quality of the designs engage audiences of all demographics due to it’s child-like creativity and sense of fun.

Step 3: Animation

My next move was to animate the character. Our tutor showed us how to do subtle movements using replacement parts, however I wanted to create a walk cycle so I made separate illustrations using the same character design. Working on my research into examples of how to animate walk cycles, I only needed four frames to capture that limited movement, but I think it really works here. 

To create the sequence, I created separate illustrations for each frame: a contact and passing pose, and reversed them to create a walk cycle. It’s a bit jarring, but it works and the audience knows the character is walking. Its a fun asthetic that I hope to explore further. It’s a simple frame by frame animation, dragging the body down on the contact poses and then up again as the body steps up. As a looping animation, though, it’s quite endearing. The rather crude movements and jolting actions results in a visually interesting walk cycle, separate from any other sequence I’ve created so far.

The brown colour scheme works, exploring that idea of nostalgia once again, but I do feel as if removing the bright colours removes a life to the piece. The animation is still successful, but if I were to create another pixel walk cycle, I would want to experiment with a range of colours beyond the monochrome palette I’ve chosen here. It’s interesting, but the pixels aren’t properly arranged here - there’s some overlap that defeats the 8 bit style. 

Having identified this, I went back and used my original bright colours, embracing the bizarre character design and cleaned up the actual animation. My final piece is much more exciting and successful, I think. 

My animation is more restricted and minimal in design than the examples I’ve looked at here - but there’s a charm in that simplicity. If we compare my animation to fellow student Alex’s pixel characters, we can see we’ve both taken a relatively minimalist approach to design - something that’s inherent to the 8-bit restriction. Like myself, Alex decided to create full body figures, rendering famous characters from 70s horror movies. It’s her Cthulu avatar that I think is the most visually exciting, an ominous red eye amidst the blur of dark green tentacles makes the avatar look suitably omniscient and more than a bit sinister.

Alex has also stuck to the more abstract pixel approach, using a limited grid to embrace that retro aesthetic. If we compare this to an artist like Joe’s work, there’s a noticeable difference in style and concept - we’re actively embracing that lo-fi, pixelated look whilst Joe’s working on creating a more refined piece that looked like it jumped out of a 90s street fighter arcade game. Both approaches are successful, but Joe’s results in a much more refined outcome and visual style that I wasn’t really going for. It almost hides the fact it’s pixel art, and Alex and I wanted to embrace the process with our examples.

Although not animated, there is a life to Alex’s designs. I think it’s the dark grey backdrop and floor - a frame to the characters - that results in a piece looking like it’s about to bounce in true Mario fashion. I’ve said these pieces are appealing to a universal audience, due to the simplicity of the designs - but now I’m going to attempt to discuss why pixel art is so popular.

There’s a few factors as to why pixel art is seeing a somewhat of a resurgence in games and animation, as described by a few articles on the topic on the internet, from art discussion blog Widewalls to the more mainstream media hub IGN.

The main factor, of course, is nostalgia. People who were born in the early 80’s and later grew up with games featuring pixel graphics - and now, they’ve got their own money to spend. Adults see these games and apps with that retro pixel aesthetic, like Ball King and a whole host of other platformers, and they’re reminded of their happy memories as a kid, playing those games. Nostalgia for the time of old is an extremely powerful tool on any audience, so game developers take advantage of this effect and produce games and animations that capitalise on that warm feeling.

It also helps that these pixelated games are rather cheap to make, in comparison to 3D rendering and graphics. It’s an open door for anyone - both big studios and independent developers alike. It’s approachable and comparatively much more easy to make. It’s this simplicity of process and technique that inspires hundreds of artists to produce works of their own, and it’s a way in to the gaming industry for many independent developers and small studios hoping for their big break.

Finally, there’s definitely something to be said about the inherent simplicity of the process - pixel art is commonly not detailed, and doesn’t need intensive rendering. It’s not intimidating, doesn’t look too intensive and as a result - draws a wide audience in. When games have high-quality graphics and specific settings just for the image resolution, fps and graphics card, casual gamers might feel a little alienated. As that myself, I can personally agree that this is the case. I go to a pixel game because of the neat aesthetic, but also the simple charm of the minimalist design.

This simplicity consequently reflects the simplicity of the mechanics - when an audience member sees a game with pixel art, say Kirby - they aren’t expecting a difficult experience. Contrast this with the latest Fallout game and it’s a different story altogether. Complex graphics can be appealing, but as a whole - it can intimidate and even alienate a wide audience, who associates high graphics with ‘hardcore gaming’ - a style of gaming that might not be appealing or approachable to the general public.

Just in that brief discussion I’ve been able to explore why I think pixel art is so popular with a wide audience - but a good development from this would be to ask other students why they think pixel art has such a hold on the games industry, or contact pixel artists asking for their opinion on the matter. I’ve only looked at a few perspectives with my discussion, so exploring a few more would be a good way to further establish the context of this workshop.

In this workshop, I was able to learn a new process within Photoshop - how to create not only a pixel character, but how to animate him too. It’s a rather intuitive and straightforward technique, but one that allows me to work in an entirely different and exciting aesthetic. This visual style is universally appealing, and it provides an interesting contrast in not only style but movement in comparison to my other walk cycles I’ve produced so far.

There’s some real potential in this process, and I’d love to create a whole host of characters using the process, exploring different movements. Perhaps I could take some of the characters I’ve already designed and pixelate those, for example Michael.

I’m really inspired by the incredibly fluid and bouncy motion Dixon has been able to integrate whilst keeping to those pixel restrictions, and I could look at that approach as a potential development. Seeing a pixel character just bounce like a traditional animation is just appealing to me, so exploring how he creates these animations, by breaking them down frame by frame, would be a good way to follow this line of enquiry. 

Moving forward, though, I’m going to be jumping from two dimensions to three - beginning some stop motion walk tests using my armature. So far I’ve explored digital and pixel animation, and I want to challenge myself to produce some stop motion tests too. I’ll be building a puppet, but I want to begin exploring the medium of stop motion and a physical walk cycle before I move onto producing an actual model, using my ready-built armature. We’ve recently acquired the professional stop motion software DragonFrame, a programme used by animator in the industry at the moment, for films like Isle of Dogs and Kubo and the Two Strings - so I’ll also be attempting to get to grips with the program in the process. 

Actions

Make some stop motion walk tests using my armature, get to grips with professional and industry standard stop motion software DragonFrame.

Potentials

Produce another pixel walk cycle animation, based on my character Michael

[symbianosgames]

The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

Outlast 2 has recently been released and has spurred a lot of discussions around not giving the protagonist any means to fight back. I haven't played enough of the game to be able to give an overall impression of it (I'm just 30 minutes or so in), but I think I've seen enough to weigh in on the discussion. We at Frictional have been knee deep in this problem since 2006, and I've been up against the problem myself ever since I made my first hobby horror game in early 2000. This is something I've been thinking about for almost 20 years, and hence something I have a strong opinion about.

The discussions around weaponless protagonists is often focused on horror games. It's really a question that concerns narrative games in general, though, and isn't just about what sort of horror you want. It's really about what sort of approach you want to take to storytelling. It also has a lot to do with my recent post on mental models, which makes this a good time to go into it.

---

Let's start with the main reasons why you would want a game with a defenseless protagonist. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it brings up the most important reasons.

1. It makes the player assume the appropriate story role To someone with only a hammer, every problem will look like a nail. The same is true for the tools that we give to a player. The actions that we let the player use informs them about the role they are supposed to play within the game. It's really hard to make the player feel like a detective if they never get to do any actual detecting.

Why is this the case? Because the way we interact with the world around us is via a mental model. This mental model is built from a network of connected attributes, all having do with the various aspects of our world. When taken together this gives us a sense of how the world behaves and what we are dealing with. So when we see a character looking for clues in a crime scene, interviewing witnesses and trying to piece together evidence, it'll point towards the idea that this person is trying to solve a crime. This creates a strong belief that the character is indeed a detective. If we are simply told a character is a detective but only see him chopping wood it is really hard to take the first statement seriously. You will never model this character as a detective. No matter how many times you tell me that a pile of sharp glass is a chair, I will not perceive it as one. It simply lacks any of the attributes that I associate with things that are chairs.

In the same way, in order for the player to feel like they are inside a horror story they need to have access to the actions of the protagonist of a horror story. In horror the protagonist is supposed to be vulnerable, uncertain, and out of their depth, and to get this across to the player you need to restrict their available actions to support this. A really simple way to do this is to simply skip any means of fighting back. Sure, you can always make weapons less effective in the game, but the moment you give them any sort of weapon it's likely to awaken deeply rooted mental models in the player. We humans are really good at generalizing and unconsciously judge many situations on the first pieces of evidence we can get our hands on. So when you introduce a weapon in a horror game, the player will view the game as one where the primary action is combat and then by assumption add a variety of other attributes to the experience. This is something we experienced firsthand when making Penumbra: Overture where player would even treat an old broom as a potential weapon.

2. It make monsters feel like threats Just as the actions at your disposal informs your role, so do your interactions inform what sort of world you are in. If the player's main action is to shoot down monsters, the monsters become target practice. Again this is mental modeling. Just like we determine something to be a chair by determining its shape, how well it can be used for sitting, and so forth, we also evaluate any dangers by what attributes we can assign to them. When "thing that I shoot to generate fun gameplay" becomes a strong attribute for a monster, a lot of the horror is lost.

If, instead, monsters are things that the player interacts with only by running away and hiding from them, the mental model becomes quite different. You start to draw connections to other things that you would run away from, and this jacks much better into your primal fear response. The monster is no longer a game object connected to a core combat loop. Instead it becomes an unknown entity that you have no means to fight. This makes a huge difference to how the player perceives the threat.

3. It leaves more to the imagination Another problem with being able to fight any creature is that this requires many close up encounters. You need to aim at the creatures, see feedback of them being hit and so forth. Most importantly, in order for this gameplay to work you need to have lots of actual confrontations. This goes against one of the most important rules in horror: leave the monsters as vague as possible.

When your gameplay doesn't rely on combat, it's much easier to keep the monster out of sight. When you are running and hiding, the monster doesn't really need to be visible at all. You can just rely on the player seeing quick glimpses, hearing sounds, watching a motion tracker and so on in order to sustain the gameplay. This gives a lot more room for the player's imagination, and allows them to conjure up far scarier monsters than what could be rendered using polygons.

4. It makes the player paranoid Checking how much ammo you have left, thinking about what gun to have available, planning for ammo usage, looking for items and so on - all of these are activities that the player constantly has on their mind when playing a shooter. And all of these take up mental resources that could have been used for other things instead. It's very important to know that the player has a limited amount of focus and whenever you tell the player to give something their attention, something else will have less attention. Remember this as a designer: whenever you say yes to something, you say no to something else.

What this means is that when you remove any form of combat, the player has a lot of mental focus to spare. In fact, many players will have too much. This almost leaves the player is a state of sensory deprivation. The outcome of that is that they start to pay a lot of attention to small details. It makes players more paranoid, more prone to invent reasons for small sounds and so on. This is an extremely good state in which to play horror. It's also something you lose if you give the player too much else to think about. We noticed this ourselves in Amnesia: The Dark Descent, where many levels where made better by giving the player less to do. This encouraged them to fantasize more and gave the unintuitive result of increasing their engagement,

5. It makes it harder to optimize away emotions A combat system is something that the player often has played hundreds of hours of before. Sometimes much, much more. There are lots of well-known tactics for dealing with encounters, and players often come with a huge instinctual toolset on how to bypass various dangers. What this means is that there is ample opportunity for the player to figure out ways to beat the monsters. In turn, this means that the monsters lose their core attribute, to be horrible threats, and instead just become standard gameplay objects.

It's much harder to do this in a game without combat. When you don't have a set loop that the player uses to interact with the game's world, it becomes much harder to figure out underlying systems and to optimize. This means that the player has to rely more on their imagination to make a mental model of the world and its inhabitants. If the systems that drive the monsters are obscure, you have to think of them as living, breathing creatures and this greatly heightens any emotions that you associate with them.

Of course, if you use non-combat oriented gameplay in the wrong way, you will fall into the same trap. This is something I'll go over in a bit.

6. It is a great design constraint As I noted before, games are often too much fun for their own good. This is most certainly true for combat. In fact, combat is probably the most common core mechanic in games. It's really easy to come up with engaging ways for you to do it. So the moment that you decide that you will have combat, it makes it so much simpler to come up with engaging scenarios for a game. This means that you are very likely to overuse combat and to drop focus on the narrative you are trying to convey.

When plot dictates that the player has to go through a sewer, how should we make this section engaging? With combat this answer is easy: just add some monsters and have the player fight them. Problem solved! You see this over and over in games that use combat, especially horror games. Even though it is clear that the focus ought to be on delivering a certain end experience, there are tons of areas that, by being satisfied with just having simple combat, counteract this goal.

If you don't have combat, you don't have this option. If your basic gameplay is just running and hiding, it's actually quite the opposite: your core mechanics are not much fun. This means that you need to think of ways to vary them, you need to be careful when to use them and there need to be other activities involved. This forces you to avoid any easy solutions. Simply relying on "add some monsters for the player to encounter" will not work in the long run. It will soon become very tiresome to play the game, because you are relying gameplay that is, at its core, not engaging enough to be the driving force of the experience.

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That concludes the list of the most important reasons why a defenseless protagonist is really good to have in a horror game. Now I will go over a few common counter-arguments, and respond to them.

Claim 1: "Without combat, the game becomes boring" I think this is both true and untrue. 

It's true in the sense that in order to get the player to experience certain things, such as the paranoia that comes with sensory deprivation, your game simply cannot be too much fun. This is how narrative works in other media as well. Certain experiences cannot simply be made into a super-engaging package. There needs to be a certain level of "boredom" for it all to work. The experience as a whole must of course be engaging, but not every game can have the moment-to-moment excitement like something like Doom. 

It is untrue in the sense that we haven't yet seen what can be done without having combat. Many people simply compare the current state of games with defenseless protagonists to the current state of games with combat, and then take this as how it will always be. I think there's a lot that can be done in order to make interesting defenseless horror, or other narrative experiences for that matter, and still have a level of "gaminess" on par with that of a shooter. The problem is that combat gameplay comes naturally and has had 40 years to evolve; gameplay without combat is much harder and has had much less time to evolve.

I have to admit that I am growing quite bored with the standard "run and hide"-gameplay. I think it can work when used in short bursts, but it's far from an ideal solution. We need to think harder and dig deeper in order to improve gameplay for horror and other narrative games. That is basically what this whole blog is about and something Frictional Games is investing heavily in. This is uncharted territory and there is huge room for improvement.

Claim 2: "No combat leads to lots of trial and error" If you look like a game like Outlast 2, this is certainly true. There are a bunch of sections where you have to replay over and over in order to continue. This all boils down to Outlast 2 using the "run and hide"-gameplay as a foundational element of the game, and it's interesting to discuss why this must give rise to so much trial and error.

The first reason is that it is very hard to have a good analog feedback system. In a game with combat it's much easier to have stats for things like health and ammo which you can vary during an encounter and use as feedback. But in a game where you are trying to not get caught, the situation is much more binary. You either get caught or you don't. So the moment you need to give the player the feedback that they are "not playing correctly" that usually means killing them off, and forcing them to start over again.

The second reason is the fact that player failure means death and restart. This doesn't have to be the case. Few things break our immersion as much as having to replay the same section over and over. In fact, in order keep a level of presence you are almost obliged to make sure this never happens. Every time you pull the player out of the experience, you break the illusion and force them to build up the fantasy from (almost) scratch again. Player death is a huge problem in narrative games, and despite this, very few games try to deal with it.

Again this is something I think that has lots of room for improvement. It is also something that we at Frictional Games are trying to solve in both of our upcoming games. The goal is to have an experience where you never see a "Game Over" scene, yet feel a strong sense of being able to fail and is very anxious about not letting that occur. This is not an easy challenge, but it is also one with huge potential. Staying immersed and feeling your actions have consequences are big reasons why interactive storytelling is so interesting, and even small improvements can come have great impact.

Claim 3: "Not having combat is unrealistic" This claim is highly dependant on what sort of experience you are trying to create. Sure, if you are doing a videogame version of Aliens or Deep Rising, it's a great fit. But as I have outlined in this ancient blog post, there are many different ways in which combat is featured in horror movies. If you want to do a videogame version of The Exorcist then combat will play a much smaller role - probably none. Most of the time, weapons are there as a last line of defense for the protagonist(s). From that angle it makes sense that you should have at least have some form of defense. But you also have to consider all of the negative aspects, many of which I listed earlier, that come along with having combat. If a horror story should "realistically" let the protagonist use a weapons in two or three places, then it might make more sense to try and make these places go away somehow.

Another way to approach this is to have combat in ways that doesn't imply your standard combat mechanics. Weapons could be puzzle items that the player have to be careful about when they use them. It's also possible to use the environment as a means of defense. The point I'm trying to make here is that it's possible to retain a sense of realism without reverting to full-blown combat mechanics.

Either way, I think the most important question to ask is: "What is the best way to achieve the intended experience?". If combat is the best way, even if you take all of the downsides into account, then by all means go in guns blazing!

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Most of these discussions have centered around horror games, but really most of these things apply to any narrative game. It's not just horror games that strive to keep the player's imagination going or want to avoid players that optimize away emotions. These are foundational issues for any game that wants to try and tell a story. The problem of not being able to rely on an engaging set of core mechanics is also something that goes beyond horror games.

Thinking about why we want a defenseless protagonist in the first place and then figuring out means to make it better feels like a really important question to me. It connects to many of the core issues that face a game that wants to focus on narrative, and any improvements are bound to be helpful to interactive storytelling in general.

Next week I will present a system that will allow us to more easily think about these issues, and will hopefully also make it easier to find solutions.

[super3danimaticssecretsworl-blog]

How to Find Animatics Software on the Web

The Secret to Animatics Software

Practice the instructions to the letter, and you're ready to go. Comment can be helpful to add notes, while Chapter Marker supports drag video in a location that plans to mark for a chapter. Course content During the eight weeks we'll focus on every one of these topics below and the way in which they relate to one another. It's vital to decide ahead of time HOW you are going to color these.

You may receive a rough idea about what the entire issue is supposed to be. But to tell the truth, this sort of information is something which you can learn by yourself. The fact which everyone can easily produce movies is incredible. I like this one as it is more honest. Due at the start of the following class.

The Tried and True Method for Animatics Software in Step by Step Detail

There are loads of Background that include iMovie. Additional reading about iMovie, please check whatever You wish to Know about iMovie. SAM ANIMATION has quite an easy and simple to understand interface and decent standard capabilities. `Storyboard Quick can be thought of as a healthy storyboard system, as it doesn't make the most of the 3d images. How to receive all the absolutely Free download and software reviews.

The Fight Against Animatics Software

You may want to do this if you prefer to eliminate the audio that accompanies the video and utilize background audio from another source, something like building an audio video. Anyway, at the conclusion of this process, I have a single shot that I am now able to overdub with audio. To wrap this up, here is a list of some the very best explainer video companies available right now. Your client may want the PSD but the majority of the time they're delighted with an excellent res JPG. The moment you complete the scene, it will quit recording the audio.

Should you not already have a Wacom tablet, then this is the opportunity to purchase one. Frameforge has existed for a very long time. A lot of the moment, this comes at a comparatively small price tag. In addition to that, you still must account for rendering time. It is strongly recommended that if it's your very first time playing Animator vs. Animation, you should begin at the simplest level that's victim.

Choosing Animatics Software

Your arsenal is weak when compared with the animation's weapons, but they're flexible and offer you a broad range of freedom. Try to go involved with global or local VFX communities since you should get a comprehension of your prospective employment atmosphere. This is only a few of the numerous different kinds of weapons which you've available to combat your enemy.

I'd encourage individuals to have an extremely basic understanding at least. With a tiny practice, however, it will become second nature. Yes, it's the tough truth.

Animators play a significant role in the game's pipeline, ensuring the game's world behaves how the player expects. An essential issue is it not bleed, it feels good, and you've got two or three line weights to pick from. This kind of effect is ideal to shorten up an incredibly long clip or to make the less significant part the movie more bearable.

When it comes to fast motion, you can choose the speed factor percentage. The animation facet of this game (and character) arrives in the shape of a smooth stick man. If you're contemplating using two motors in precisely the same axis, you first have to recognize the level of mechanical accuracy needed for your motion.

Once you determine what you wish to tell or show you can begin to storyboard it. I'd also suggest that you check out Startup-Videos. It's also the priciest.

The One Thing to Do for Animatics Software

You can even add several images to the project in 1 go. Notes would return to the artist who'd draw new panels, and the procedure would start over. A fast web search provides you with plenty of learning materials to experience.

Clipart includes backgrounds in every single aspect ratio. You're probably going to utilize several sheets of paper. Visit a superior art shop and try them out.

The History of Animatics Software Refuted

I would like to use storyboards to create the most efficient possible story. Salary reflects the technical prowess necessary to turn into an animator. Title another major portion of a movie. For the book, I didn't have to produce any new animation.

Also, it has to be cheap and easy, since effort that enters the animatic isn't going to appear in the finished film. The essential thing you have to be a storyboard artist is the capacity to draw. Make a little storyboard to have a clearer picture of what it is that you are likely to make. To make 3D animation, one ought to understand plenty of technicalities. The actors and actresses record on separate tracks, in place of together a standard way of capturing voice-over.

Storyboards are a critical part of the pre-visualization procedure, in addition to being a significant tool for preproduction and on the set. Here, you can choose the input supply, volume level, and whether you would like to mute the undertaking or not. The capabilities differ from program to program. This is an overall volume control, drag this up to grow the level or down to decrease. I'll want to learn if other tools make this step simpler.

Therefore, what we'll discuss within this section is the pre-production manufacturing procedure, which is frequently overlooked, yet crucial to the video making process. Additionally, extensive alarming with paging is supplied, and complete data logging. Also, you need to be prepared to manage software complexity. Having experience utilizing the application you're writing software for is always likely to be an immense assistance.

Top Animatics Software Choices

It's quite user-friendly. Also, it has many powerful features that permit you to rapidly make animations. I can select to earn clip adjustments. These are just two of some other steps we take to create excellent animations.

The one enormous disadvantage' of Frameforge is it doesn't include complex animation. It needed a great deal of rework. But if it's practice you are searching for, then you can earn a couple of seconds of animation to become used to this idea. Have fun making your own animation!

These types of financiers normally come in the shape of production businesses, distribution businesses, financing businesses, government agencies and possibly even banks. There's a particular position held using a manufacturing guy named Peter Gave,'' says Escobar. Directors will need to enter this too.

[zak-graphicarts]

Sam Elston: Drawing People & Writing Thoughts

In this post, I’m looking at local artist Sam Elston, his portfolio of work and the importance of drawing from life for inspiration.

Self-portrait. (2018). Taken from https://www.instagram.com/p/BiRoFLGDRK_/?taken-by=samelston_

Based in Essex, artist Sam Elston produces incredibly energetic and expressive illustrations and sketches. His works have an appealing dynamic aesthetic, with loose linework and gestural marks. He’s interested in capturing the everyday - and as such, he’s only got a limited time to sketch that fleeting image before it fades away. This kinetic, rapid approach to drawing can be best seen through a more recent example of his work, Interests are Interesting.

The use of muted, flat greys and greens give the piece a dull aesthetic, something which reflects the ‘everyday’ quite effectively. This is doubly true then riding a public bus, where life seems it’s most banal. The lines look as if they could move at any moment, with scribbled marks creating an inherently exciting and dramatic atmosphere - even when it’s just a bus driver and his pin collection. This plays a part in the successes of the artist’s entire portfolio, I think. He takes moments from everyday life, ones which we tend to overlook, and forget to admire in the hustle and bustle of our daily lives, and illustrates these in loose, observational comics.

This same dull, flat theme can be seen in a few of his works, most notably Steel Grey Day - a piece with his signature hand-drawn aesthetic, with clear mark making that creates an effective, lo-fi and naive finish to the work. The hint of colour gives the comic a focus, but blends in well with the dull tones of the rest of the piece. Real life isn’t in greyscale, obviously, and the subtle muted blue gives a life which still feels very monotonous, and weirdly, grey.

Along with these hand-rendered pieces, Sam is able to make subtle commentary on everyday life - writing his thoughts whilst drawing which creates sublime works of visual poetry: his observational comics in particular could be considered the comic equivalent of a haiku, with loose, scribbled images of everyday life accompanied by imaginative and ambiguous thoughts working together to throw the audience into Sam’s shoes.

These observational comics inspired me in particular, and over the Easter break I decided to produce a few more, inspired by the ideas behind the artist’s work. In these pieces, I adopted an aesthetic from one of Sam’s earlier works, Faces, a simple exercise in which he went out and began drawing people in cafes, as reference for another project. These have a confident, bold line quality that I found visually quite interesting - and I think with a Sharpie there’s a spontaneity in your marks - you’ve just got to start drawing, without any planning or sketching first. There’s an honesty in the process that I like, and so decided to adopt it in my own comics.

Faces. (2017). Sam Elston.

Through this, I produced several of these ‘observational comics’, and found it to be quite a fun exercise - most importantly, it made observational drawing interesting and fresh for me as a graphic artist. Normally this is where I’d go into more depth on the artist’s portfolio, but I decided to contact Sam via email and we were able to talk about his work, why he started making observational comics, his influences and a quick review of my own art.

To begin, I asked why Sam started creating observational comics - if it helped with composition or characters. ‘At the start I just wanted to improve my drawing skills to try and find a consistency in the drawings I was doing, so I started drawing a page a day in an A6 Sketchbook - which gave me a size restriction and I suppose started the whole panel thing. I was never very good at making up stuff straight from my head and found it much easier to just pause and draw whatever was in front of me at a set time each day.’

It seems like it wasn’t really a conscious idea to make it a comic - it just happened through the format he was using. This is quite an interesting idea, and none of the artists he goes on to mention follow this panelled structure - suggesting this was his own personal touch.

This regular drawing helped Sam build his confidence and speed with his sketches, who began playing around with the composition of the page. ‘At this time, I would mainly draw things rather than people because I would take longer and people move all the time. At the same time I wouldn't let myself spend more than around 5/10 minutes on each drawing otherwise I’d end up never finishing it.’

Adding a time limit seems to breed creativity - this is something that I’ve begun doing in life drawing classes and my own work, and the challenge forces you to capture a specific subject or person in the quickest way possible. This idea of timing yourself for a drawing is perfectly expressed in the comics I’ve discussed already, thinking about the expressive and scribbled marks in Interests are Interesting especially. 

‘I came across Robert Weaver by accident when I was looking in a 'lots of artists in a book' book and really liked his Reportage work and then found 'Robert Weaver: A Pedestrian View' which is a book that has more of his personal work in. When I saw this stuff, something just made sense and realised that I could add text to what I was drawing and it didn't really need to make complete sense or have a big narrative, it could still be as natural as just sitting down and drawing except now it would be a case of, draw what is in front of you and write down what you're thinking.’

This summarises Elston’s work perfectly - draw what’s infront of you, and write down your thoughts whilst doing so. He’s clearly not taking the aesthetic from Weaver, however - with his examples in A Pedestrian View staying true to a sense of realism, with an acrylic still life aesthetic illustrating anonymous legs in a constant state of motion, manholes and police barricades. There’s splashes of colour to add life to the composition, but his works echo more of a still life painting than an energetic moment in our everyday lives, as Sam’s does. 

Up until this point, Sam had been strictly drawing from life - not writing from it. Seeing Weaver’s works, however, inspired him to stop worrying about a linear narrative and begin writing his own thoughts in addition to his comics, creating a series of works which took the idea of an observational comic in a very traditional place. These examples are rather cinematic and introspective, acting almost as a camera pan around his home town as the naive, wobbly lines illustrate seemingly banal scenes of coffee machines and Chinese takeaways.

‘So I would try and do a full spread per day and write down what I was thinking at the time of drawing. At this point, I had planned to make what I drew in this sketchbook into a zine so started playing with panel size and the flow of it from page to page so that it looked more like a comic than the stuff before but I think it was more along the lines of a visual diary.’

At this point, Elston was avoiding drawing people, due to the fact that they move around and it’s quite an unnerving activity for the first few times you try it. This is a sentiment that I share, but exploring Sam’s work and discussing how to approach observational drawing made me go out and draw people in my sketchbook, using the same loose style.

Discussing his more recent influences, Sam mentioned the work of artist Joost Stokhof - an artist who draws and writes things on an A4 page until he’s filled it, with the compositions hinting at storylines and bigger narrative, drawn from life. Looking at Stokhof’s work, I can see a clear influence on Sam’s more recent work - which abandon the traditional panelled approach to comics and show a more spacious, loose composition. Sam’s keeping with the scratchy and scribbled aesthetic, however, which allows his art to stand apart from the somewhat more refined, linear and minimal line work from Stokhof’s examples.

I think responding to an artist’s visual style can be exciting, but it’s more interesting, to me, at least, when we incorporate an artist’s philosophy and thought process to our own work. This way, we’re able to move past mimicry and a purely superficial line of enquiry and visual analysis and hit more distinctive areas when responding to our research.

An idea that I’ve found to be strictly Sam’s own, however, is the use of a ‘cardboard view finder’ to create the compositions for his comics. This struck me as an original and creative approach to the medium, so I asked why he began using it. “If I’m in a slump, I use the viewfinder to help me find interesting compositions as it can be hard to see them when you can see everything at once, I think a lot of it is about giving yourself restrictions whether that is time, size or focus points.”

An example of one of Sam’s viewfinders

That last part was one of the most important ideas to take away from the conversation, I think. As artists, when we give ourselves restrictions we force ourselves to step out of our comfort zone and be creative in ways we aren’t used to. When I begin designing characters, I’ll be following Sam’s practice and giving myself a time limit on each sketch, keeping the illustrations expressive and loose.

“As for a reason why [I make comics], I think it's to keep me drawing as there is no excuse not to, if all it is is what is in front of you, it can become a very cathartic process if you let it - I think it would be a good thing to start and try and keep a Visual Diary as it gives you space to try stuff out that can help inform your practice and it should definitely help to free you up and grow your confidence and speed with drawing.’

I asked about drawing people - his process, experience and any tips. “Coffee shops are good if you sit in a corner where you can see lots of people (they're normally all too busy talking so you can stare at them easily) or sit at a window then you can draw people outside. To loosen up and warm up at the start draw 10 faces in 10 minutes (they might not turn out any good or they might - who cares because they're warm-ups) get a sketchbook just for warm ups if you don't want to draw straight into your main one. If you think they are going to drastically move or leave half way through you drawing them - take a sneaky picture and use that instead. For practice, draw from pictures but only give yourself a few minutes.’  

Coffee Shop Drawings. (2018). Sam Elston.

This is something that Sam’s put a recent focus on, producing quick studies of people in cafes. Drawing people is something I’ve been working on throughout this project, something which, previously, had always been rather intimidating to me. All the animation tutors I’ve spoken to have stressed the importance and value of drawing people as a great exercise for animators - and so this is something I’ve been trying to keep up with on a regular basis. It’s a good way to develop ideas for characters, but also I’ve found it helps to develop skills in gestural and figure drawing - as I only have a few moments to sketch someone before they walk past.

Finally, I asked Sam to make an overall comment on my work, shown on Instagram.

‘It's really good that you're letting your own personal interests feed into the work your creating (if that makes sense? Like, I can see that you do actually have an interest in film and animation because of the work you're making and the research you're doing.) so I would try and continue to do that and see how you can push that further.’ This was an idea I hadn’t even considered about my work - that it conveys to the audience not only an interesting work, but my own passion for the craft, and subjects I’m exploring. He’s basically saying to continue to explore my own interests in my practical work - and that’s essentially what I’m doing with Exquisite Walks, exploring the potential of a walk cycle in animation in exciting new ways.

‘By the looks of it, you've got pretty good digital skills to be able to put together the animations, videos and digital drawings so keep that going and see how you can combine traditional and digital methods together in the work you make - which I can see you've been starting to do with the Moonlight animation tests. Illustratively, you're getting a good confidence in your line work. I think FMP will be a great time for you to step out of your comfort zone and try and learn something new because you've got a good skill set to work with that will be worth pushing. ‘

A few of my works that Sam is discussing. 

‘Learning something new’ is essentially the mantra for my FMP, as I’m drawing people from observation, learning new animation techniques and I’ll be exploring how to make a stop motion puppet - pushing my 3D skills further than I’ve ever done before. It’s not something that I’m particularly confident with, and is probably one of the biggest ways I could ‘step out of my comfort zone’ with an animation project. It will be a challenge, but that’s how we grow as artists.

A little project of Sam’s that I was particularly inspired by was his ink warm ups, using a brush and ink to produce quick character sketches. This is something that I found really interesting, and wanted to incorporate as a warm up for my own character designs. The challenge comes from the time limit, use of a brush instead of a pencil, and the camera watching your every move - it’s a timelapse so just recording your process forces you to work in Sam’s signature ‘loose’ approach.

There’s no time to think when you’re on camera, and as result, my pieces possess a loose, fluid line and uneven, quick ink aesthetic. These are just warm up sketches, but it’s an exercise which allowed me to get ‘loose’ in a mindset sense additionally to my linework - working in an autonomous, instinctual manner like my compositions with the Abstract Aesthetics workshop. They’re quick sketches, and they obviously have value through these quick approach - but there’s a difference between lose and ‘bad’. It’s a fine line, and I think it’s a line that I’m skirting with a few examples. With the brush size that I was using, I should have focused on heads and faces - the few body illustrations I attempted look very amateur and crude in comparison to my other examples.

This is a process that I’ll continue to use as I progress through my FMP, as it challenges me to abandon my structured predisposition and ‘get loose’ with my drawings. Brush and ink is a medium that I’m yet to feel comfortable with, and results in a distinctive, visually exciting aesthetic and imaginative, aloof designs, not responding to anything other than my own thoughts.

Through this online discussion, and looking at Sam Elston’s portfolio of work and producing my own observational comics, I’ve learnt the value of drawing from life for inspiration. There’s a wealth of ideas to draw from when we respond to things and people around us - an honesty and substance that results when we’re producing our own research. A key idea that we’ve discussed in class is how primary research is essential for a successful, distinctive self-led project, and I will continue to draw from life as I begin to develop character designs from my own observational sketches, and recorded walk cycles.

This also marks the first time I’ve been able to conduct my own primary artist research, contacting Sam and discussing his process first hand. Not only was this to hit the higher grading criteria of the brief, but also to make my research more valuable and useful to me as an artist. I was able to discuss his thought process and get some ideas for my own developments into character design, in a way that moves past simply reading from a website article.

Whats next? Having explored the work of Sam Elston in detail as an artist case study, I’ll be focusing on creating character sketches and developing these into several designs for my animation. With this, and my contextual research into the idea of an Exquisite Corpse and Richard William’s approach to a walk cycle, I’m shifting my focus into producing exciting practical outcomes - creating character designs and learning new animation techniques.

Recently, I was able to attend a street art tour in London exploring some of the world’s most exciting works of graffiti and street art. This was a great experience, and introduced me to a handful of interesting artists that I plan to briefly discuss in an upcoming blog post.

Actions

In my sketchbook, continue to draw people from observation following Sam’s challenges

Create several character designs in response to these drawings, using a time limit to produce a series of designs with a range of materials

Write about the London Street Art Tour, discussing key artists that I found exciting e.g. Nathan Bowen and MCLN.

New References

Weaver, W., 2013. Robert Weaver. Distributed Art Pub Inc.

Self-portrait. (2018). Sam Elston.