#i feel like most of my art influences are pretty obvious but the pokemon style only seems to jump out when i draw water jets

[t00thpasteface]

the gravel wars rage eternal

[meruz]

Aforementioned long ask post please excuse me while i try to figure out tumblr's new text editor. I’ll get into the art meme questions first and then the rest at the end.

Ok first of all thank you all for sending in questions! Giving me an excuse to talk hehe. I’ll address these in number order. Here’s a link to the ask meme for reference but also I’ll restate the question for ease of reading.

1. When did you get into art?

Super cliche answer but I don’t remember a time where I WASN’T the weird art kid! I started keeping a dedicated sketchbook when I was about 12? But here’s a page from my kindergarten journal about what I want to be when I grow up.

2. What art-related sites have you ever signed up for? 

LOL this is a weird question. Not sure why so many people want to know. Anyways I definitely had a dA. more than one dA account. I used to browse oekakis when I was a kid but I think I was only signed up to some small ones that internet friends owned. What else...? Mangabullet,Tegakie, Paintberri, iscribble back when that was a thing, instagram if that COUNTs, I used to post art on livejournal and dreamwidth too. Patreon, I guess. Gumroad, inprnt, bigcartel, storenvy all for selling stuff.

In terms of resources.. I have a schoolism account that I’m sharing with friends. Used to take classes on coursera for free. I signed up to textures.com for work recently haha. I can’t remember if I ever had an account on posemaniacs. Did they have accounts...? I definitely used to visit all the time.

3. Show us your oldest piece of art you have on hand.

Alright here’s me actually logging into my old deviantart account. These are from September 2008 So I was 13 years old. I don’t have a deviantart account from before then because 13 was the required age for having an account and I didn’t want to lie about my age because I wanted people to be impressed by how young yet clearly incredible at art I was LOL.

4. What defines your artistic style?

You guys are probably more equipped to answer this than me but uh... I wanna say... Focus on colors. And... a slightly heavy hand? Like confident... not always well-considered mark making HAH...

Also I think I have a pretty healthy mix of american comics/manga influences. I feel like people who are into american comics always think my art is too manga and people who are into anime/manga always think my art is too american. And I’m taking that as a good sign.

5. Do you practice other styles/have you tried other styles in the past?

I like to think I switch it up a bunch! I mean, these are pretty different, right?

I think I’ve mentioned this before but one thing I really took away from art school is that, for an illustrator at least, art style shouldn’t be consistent. Your greatest weapon is changing the aspects of your style based on the task, the emotions and message you want to illustrate etc. So depending on the project I’m working on, the fandom I’m drawing for, whether I want something to be funny or serious or dramatic, I’ll change things about my style all the time.

One thing I don’t rly post on here is really tight polished work and that’s because I do that for my day job haha. If you’re not paying me... I’m probably not gonna color in the lines.

6. What levels of artistic education have you had?

I have a whole ass diploma LOL. Bachelor of Fine Arts in Illustration. from the Rhode Island School of Design. And I had a great college experience tbh. Besides the student loans. If any of you guys are thinking about art school feel free to e-mail or message me questions or concerns, I’ll be happy to help. Be as honest as I can be.

7. Show us at least one picture you drew or sketched recently that you did not put on a public site.

heres the wandavision kids. Uhh what else do I have...I feel like I’m rummaging for loose change here...

assorted valentines prep doodles

8. What is your favourite piece that you have done?

Well, obviously this is gonna change all the time and generally it’s gonna be my most recent piece LOL. So yeah, why the hell not. I’ll say it’s this one. I have a pretty short memory which I count as a blessing for an artist. I don’t dwell that long on older work and it keeps me moving forward.

10. What do you like most about your art?

I like that it’s something that only I would make! I had this thought fairly recently and I wrote it down in my sketchbook, it’s pretty cheesy and rambling but it felt revolutionary at the time:

So yeah. I like my art best when it’s the most me and for me. And I like it least when it feels like I’m just making something for social media or for other people’s expectations or whatever.

14. What do you like drawing the most?

Kids in baggy clothing are like my go-to LOL idk if that’s obvious. but also I like being challenged so lately I’ve really loved drawing multi-character compositions, environments, weird angles, etc.

oh i LOVE drawing the underside of shoes lol. And bandages. People that are kinda beat up.. I think it comes from getting a bunch of cuts all the time. I’m always patching myself up and I want to patch characters up too.

15. What do you like drawing the least?

mmm I try to find something to like in every drawing but lets see... I don’t like doing commissions of people’s dogs. Just because it’s normally like... a family friend and my mom volunteered me without my consent and I don’t even really know what they’re expecting me to draw and I don’t even get to meet the dog. Also I’m not that great at dog anatomy. Trying to learn though.

18. What is your purpose for drawing?

This could have a million answers! Uhhh to GIT GOOD??? But also to express myself... and also to make money... I mean it depends on what the drawing IS. I draw fanart mostly to connect to people in the fandom so if you ever see me drawing fanart please take it as like an open invitation to talk to me about the character haha. 

20. How would you rank your art? (poor, mediocre, good, etc.)

Good!!! I have a lot of self-confidence primarily born out of ignorance and a short attention span. If I don’t think too hard about how many other artists are mindblowingly unfathombly good... its easy to think I’m good too! LOL

In all seriousness though, I think the opinion a person has of their art is like a crazy balancing act, right? Like you have to think you suck enough to want to get better but also you have to think you’re good enough to not want to give up. I think we’re all walking that line, I know I am! But also I’m a glass half-full type of person so. Most of the time I feel good about it.

22. List at least one of your “artspirations.”

This is a good question because I’ve been trying and failing to put together one of those “influence map” memes for like a full month now. What’s giving me a hard time is I feel like none of these are actually really obvious “““influences”““ in my art? Like it’s hard to see a lot of them in the work I make...? But idk maybe you guys’ll see what I can’t.

And these are just a couple! God there’s so many more. I could talk about other artists for ages, from all different genres of art. Daumier, Rockwell like every illustrator out there, Dana Gibson, Alex Toth, Hiroshi Yoshida, a lot of the Brandywine School. Lots of current working artists too, Karl Kerschl, frikkin Masashi Kishimoto lol, Jake Wyatt, Richie Pope, Edouard Caplain, Matt Cook, Sachin Teng, - lots of big internet artists, Sophie Li, Freddy Carrasco, Milliofish, Angela Sung... like all my friends from art school too. I could just keep going but I’ll stop for now lol.

24. Do you have a shameful art past? (recolour sprite comics, tracing art, etc.)

I mean if that’s how we’re defining shameful?? sure LOL. It’s not sprite comics but I used to do pokemon sprite recolors all the time. And I used to trace manga panels and color them... Granted this was all when I was like under 12 yrs old so it’s not even embarrassing. Can you really call it shameful when a 7 year old wets the bed or whatever? Not really. In fact some of these are cool as fuck. Look

25. Draw a picture!

Man I’m so tired now but here.

I used to get a lot of compliments for drawing people smiling lol but I don’t think I’ve drawn a lot of smiling lately.. here’s proof I’ve still got it.

OK MEME DONE. onto the rest.

I read this ask first thing when i opened my computer in the morning and it made me really emotional.. I’m so glad my sketches could help you!!

I think a lot of artists on social media talk about the struggle of making art but imo not enough people talk about the joy! Like I know it’s corny but. I really meant what I said at the beginning of that sketchbook about re-contextualizing art around process and progress > product and perfection. I think its super important..! The strength of messy, unfinished, and energetic art! For the feeling of it, for the love it!

That's crazy!!! I hope you like 'em. The whole line of x-books is really good rn imo.

Hi! I totally have the answer for digital stuff on my faq lol. But in terms of drawing on paper.. it varies! I tend to use sketchbooking and any on-paper doodling I do as a way to loosen up/warm-up or experiment. But right now my go-to aresenal is:

from top > bottom

- kuretake no.55 doublesided brush pen

- tombow fudenosuke

- muji 0.38 ballpoint

- medium size poscas

- grey tombow double brush pens

- good ol bic mechanical pencil

not EXACTly sure which inking you referring to from my sketchbook but if I had to take a guess it'd probably be the kuretake no55. That's been my main inker, lately. Great for sketching with the thin end too.

You can print out and eat my art if you like. Just please don't mass produce or re-sell. <3

Thanks! I've come to accept that my art is always gonna be sort of gestural and painty naturally. It's getting it to tighten up enough to be legible that's hard lol...

uh yeah lol I agree actually. I think yolei is great.

I assume these asks are related? LOL

1) Yeah totally true. I love David.

2) I don’t take requests, sorry! But if you want to commission me to draw Legion i would be MORE than happy to. Just e-mail me at isellhotdogs@gmail.com.

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[itsbenedict]

I didn’t post about everything I played this year, so here’s my opinions on the stuff I played that I didn’t make a rec post for:

Raging Loop 

Raging Loop is one of them twisty meta Zero Escape-y branching-path visual novels where an ensemble cast is trapped in a mysterious circumstance where people are dying gruesomely, and you have to find out what’s happening and stop it by looping a bunch. 

I can’t wholeheartedly recommend it, because... it tries to have its cake and eat it too with the supernatural elements. Clearly magic is real and has important impacts on the scenario, but then other parts are trickery you’re supposed to see through, and it’s entirely uninterested in cluing you in to how that trickery was accomplished. Not exactly a fair play mystery, in that regard- you have to kind of just be along for the ride, rather than try to figure it out.

That said, it’s a good ride- pretty strong character writing, and the central conceit of the Werewolf/Mafia-style murder scenario creates really interesting drama. It’s more concerned with making itself feel clever than letting the player feel clever, but it’s still well-paced and gripping and has a pretty decent resolution.

Detective Grimoire

I recommended Tangle Tower, the sequel, pretty strongly- and this one, while obviously a little rougher around the edges with the art and mechanics (the suspicion tracker system is a total dud; I didn’t even realize it existed until I realized I was missing an achievement for using it), it’s still pretty darn good. Really fun character designs and animations, fully-voiced, and a solid whodunit backing it all. Plus- while the two are more or less self-contained, the continuity threads with Tangle Tower raised some really interesting questions.

Contradiction - the all-video murder mystery

This one was pretty fun, largely on the strength of the actors. The main mechanic of interrogating people on evidence and using their own statements against each other was some good stuff, too. Definitely had that Phoenix Wright quality to the deductions, and Jenks is a really fun character. (Had a few points where progression was just linked to standing in a certain previously-abandoned area of the map where a clue was suddenly there for no reason, there- good thing it had a hint system.)

As a mystery, it could use a little work- most of what you end up finding out is sequel bait (for a sequel that never actually came together, unfortunately), and the actual whodunit is just sort of hiding in the cracks of all that. And... cornering the culprit just sort of happens out of nowhere once you’ve got your hands on the right piece of evidence, without much fanfare. You’re following up on leads like usual, you find a little lie in someone’s testimony, and then- oh, shit, they’re just confessing everything! Unlike all the previous times you questioned them and they were super evasive like everyone else! And then the game is over. 

All in all, it’s pretty meaty and entertaining and I’d recommend it, but unfortunately the creators have moved on to other things, so there’s not going to be any follow-up on the stuff it left unresolved.

Ikenfell

Ikenfell is a tightly-designed RPG about kids at a magic school, with Paper Mario-style action command mechanics and a battle system that makes a big deal out of careful positioning and movement, which was really enjoyable. The difficulty’s a little high (I recommend always always always speccing into max damage because killing things before they kill you is worth more than any amount of defense, speed doesn’t work, and healing is cheap), but I found it really satisfying.

There’s... something... off? About... I don’t know how to put it, it’s... doing that “yes, everyone is queer and mentally ill, deal with it” thing, which, sure, okay. But for a lot of them it’s such a background thing, like... half the playable cast is unambiguously nonbinary, but like... I don’t know if it’s trying to make some statement on how there are no rules to being NB and you can 100% perform a particular binary gender presentation but still count, or if they wrote the whole story and then changed the pronouns of some of the characters for Representation Points, or what. Probably the former? I dunno, it just feels weird. Maybe I’m just not woke enough to Get It.

(unrelatedly: why the heck is the official art they use everywhere so... off-model? none of them look like they do in-game- they look like the creator commissioned someone to draw a group shot with one reference image each and didn’t tell them anything about the characters. how much you wanna bet they commissioned a friend and it came out wrong but they were too polite to say “sorry, no, this is wrong, can you do it over?”)

Trails of Cold Steel IV

Hoo boy. It’s... not great, and it’s not great in a pretty predictable way for an even-numbered entry in the Trails series. It happens every time- first there’s a game in a new engine with new characters and a new world to explore, and it’s really nice and does interesting things... and then it ends on a cliffhanger, and then there’s a sequel game in the same engine with the same characters and the same world, reusing as many assets as possible. Also the League Of Generically Evil Anime Supervillains is there causing trouble for reasons they refuse to explain, and the plot is a storm of magicbabble and macguffin-chasing that makes little to no sense. 

Cold Steel IV is that for Cold Steel III, full stop. Welcome back to all the same places you visited last game, except this time there’s some stupid magic apocalypse happening (not that it stops you from taking the time to do random sidequests constantly, of course). The whole “oh, the evil curse mind controls people and that’s why they do stupid bullshit that’s in no one’s interest” plot point is leaned on super hard, and it’s just a big yawn the whole way through.

It’s still really fun, though, because the battle system remains really well-designed. (The same battle system that was just as fun in Cold Steel III, mind you, but it hasn’t gotten old.) And- though they’re struggling to square it with the dumb mind control apocalypse plot, the NPC dialogue continues to make the world feel believable and lived-in. They don’t slack on the parts that make Trails good- it’s just the parts that make Trails bad are making themselves more evident than ever.

did finally get to date Towa though so that’s a win

One Step From Eden

OSFE is... uh. It’s fucking hard is what it is. It’s sort of a deckbuilding roguelike, and there’s this combat that takes place on a grid, and- wait, it’s like Mega Man Battle Network, it’s exactly like Mega Man Battle Network. Man, I forgot about that, but the mechanical influence is extremely obvious. It’s MMBN meets Slay the Spire.

Except it’s super duper hard as hell, because unlike MMBN you can’t pause and swap out chips or anything- everything is just always happening so much, all at once, everywhere, and you have no recourse but to git gud and learn all the enemy patterns and the behavior of your own spells and develop the twitch reflexes necessary to not fucking die from all the shit that’s on the screen always.

(What’s the story? Uhhhh, there was some kind of magic apocalypse, and some anime girls are trying to reach a city for some reason that doesn’t really get explained ever. The game doesn’t really care to build its world at all- it’s all mechanics plus a little token character dialogue that doesn’t say much.)

The point is it’s really frickin’ hard but I am an epic pro gamer and I got ALL THE ACHIEVEMENTS, MOTHERFUCKER. If you’ve played it, I expect you to be really god damn impressed with me, okay???

A Short Hike

This one was really relaxing! It’s a platformer where you explore an Animal Crossing-y island of cartoon animal people, collecting mobility upgrades- but like, mainly it’s about straight chillin’. The flight controls are fun and there’s lots of little secrets to find and it’s just a nice time that doesn’t drag on too long. Not too much to say about this one.

Pokémon Sword

Ehhhhh.

I’m not here for the hot takes about how Dexit is good actually. Development hell happened, they had to make cuts for time, I get it. It’s disappointing and makes the game a little bit worse, but it’s not the end of the world.

Apart from that... perfectly serviceable? The Wild Area could’ve used a little more technical polish (as could most things in the game, really) but was a step in the right direction, giving the player a wider array of early-game team-building options than ever before. No HMs is good. Story and characters were kind of nothing, but that’s par for the course. “At least this time they’re not shoehorning in some kind of stupid evil-team-wants-legendary-pokemon-to-destroy-the-world apocalypse plot”, I thought to myself before they managed to shoehorn one in at the last minute with zero buildup- but, hey, beats wasting half the game on it.

It’s nothing special and it’s missing a lot of polish, but its problems are mainly due to being rushed, and presumably next gen they’ll be able to reuse a lot of the models and animations (maybe even improve the animations so they’re not so boring??? a man can dream) and make something interesting. SwSh seem like they were testing the waters for something else, and not taking too many chances in the meantime. 

(yo why would you sell all these cosmetic items and then turn them all off during gym battles, though) 

Hades

Hades is- oh, who am I kidding? Everyone knows Hades, it’s the game of the year, greatest thing since sliced bread, Supergiant are heroes, yada yada yada. I’ve played almost 300 hours of it and I’ve completed everything except all the Resources Director levels (currently a Sigma Wraith), it’s extremely fun and you don’t need me to tell you that.

Petal Crash

It was that thing the Paranatural creator helped on? It’s, uh. It’s a block-sliding puzzle game thing, sort of in a Puyo Puyo vein. It has fun character designs and some good dialogue, like you’d expect from Zack’s involvement, but it didn’t really leave an impression otherwise (besides how got dang infuriating some of its Turn Trial puzzles can be.) The story is... kinda heartwarming, kinda didactic, kinda childish, not especially deep or interesting. Hard for it to be, when it’s told through little bits of fluffy character dialogue that exist to set up a puzzle battle as quickly as possible. Not super recommended unless you really really like block-sliding puzzles.

Hollow Knight

Man, why’d I sleep on this for so long? It’s a metroidvania platformer with heavy Dark Souls inspiration, in terms of tone and difficulty and death mechanics and environmental storytelling. And it’s... apart from all that, just really good as a game, with tight controls and juicy movement and great animation. Progression is linked as much to mastery as it is to upgrades collected- I found myself in lategame areas facing down things that would’ve killed me ten times over at the start- not because I had the best gear, but because I’d learned the game’s language and understood how to move in ways that wouldn’t get me killed.

(Usually. Sometimes I’d walk into a room and sit on a bench and suddenly there’d be a boss fight and I’d get slaughtered. Ain’t that just the way it goes?)

Anyway, on top of all that it’s just charming as hell, with a really unique and well-realized world full of little bug people. I love how, like, your character is clearly some kind of eldritch abomination, but it’s small and cute and so everyone (besides enemies that attack you on sight because they’re possessed by some kinda evil mold) is like “awww, who’s this little guy? want some help, little guy?”

(except Zote, who is just an ass hole. i love him.)

[ravenwolfie97]

2020 Art Summary

Yep, it’s 2021 already. 2020 is finally over. It felt like it lasted forever, and it felt like the end would never come, but here we are. Crazy how the time flew by.

I felt like I didn’t get much art done this year because of Current World Event, but I made a lot more than I thought I did. Even some of my new favorite pieces came out of this year, so I think that’s worth celebrating and looking back upon!

I was insanely productive during the first month of 2020, and looking back I was surprised at all the stuff I did, but then I remembered that that winter season was actually one of the best times of my life! I started being more socially involved, and I think my newfound drive at the time translated into all the art I pumped out this month. This is just a small fraction of what I made in January, but I only have so much space. Quite a few complex pieces in both style exploration and polishing my own style.

Apparently February was a rather intimate month. Things began to slow down in terms of my own art here, with me spending more time in social settings and school work ramping up, I didn’t have as much time to coop up in my room to draw. I did wanna do something for a friend’s Valentine’s Day OC art challenge, so I drew my lovey-dovey couple from Dance of 1000 Words havin’ a dance. Nothing actually came of that challenge, but it was fun to do regardless.

One of the things I was most proud of in the winter season was making more friends, and one of the closest friends I made was completely coincidental. I met a person named Kiri on the bus one night I decided to volunteer somewhere by myself, and we ended up chatting and getting along. They quickly told me their tumblr username, and I shot them a message immediately after they left. A couple days later, we met up for brunch, and we started becoming really close friends and creative partners!

Not much else happened in March cuz that’s when Current World Event started becoming an issue, but Kiri and I still kept in close touch and we randomly started developing a concept for a Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Galar Edition. These are a handful of characters we thought up, with Skipper the Scorbunny and Dross the Dreepy as the main characters, Morgrem as the main antagonist, and some shopkeepers such as those of the Greedent Bank and the Indeedee General Store. This was also my first time drawing all of these Galar Pokemon (except Scorbunny, but I also made Skipper a bit more unique than a regular Scorbunny).

Lots of events happened this month. First of all, Steven Universe Future ended, one of my favorite and most influential shows was no longer continuing. I had to do something as tribute, both as a send-off to one of the greatest cartoons in the world and as a cathartic release for my feelings towards it.

A while later, I got the opportunity to start playing an MMO in beta called Fer.al, by the same people who made Animal Jam, which coincidentally I had also beta tested for back in the day. I ended up getting really attached to my first character, a Senri I named Sasha, and though I’ve made more characters than them since, they’re still my absolute favorite. Though I haven’t touched the game in a few months, I was really engrossed for a long time and enjoyed playing through the beta and early access phases.

At the end of the month, some friends of mine invited to a roleplay group with some mutuals, and we all played characters in a crime syndicate. Just a bunch of ragtag thieves and criminals who ended up together in order to protect an artifact called the Crown of Thieves, which was essentially a flag to be taken by other groups to prove that they are the best thieves in the land. My character was based heavily on my sona (if it wasn’t obvious) and was also influenced by Cloud Strife, since the FFVII Remake had just come out and I was super into watching the cutscenes at the time. My character’s (code)name is Valkyrie, and they are a mercenary, going between multiple different employers to carry out whatever duties they need to do. They have a more complicated backstory, but presently they were recently hired by recommendation of their friend Shark (played by @shmoots-universe​ who is also My friend now ily maya) who works with a group called the Court Cards who are currently in possession of the Crown of Thieves. Valk never really had a place to call home, but staying with this group of people had to be the closest they could get to that feeling. They still sleep with a knife under their pillow because of trust issue but that’s okay.

Okay, so technically these examples started in April, but I continued making content with them in May, and the month was just pretty void of art in general, so here I am addressing them.

There were two main things I worked on this month: a Steven Universe AU of my own and the whole #sixfanarts thing that kicked off around then. Let’s start with the fanart bits. I did two and a half of them (six in April and nine in May), and it was so much fun to be able to draw stuff I don’t normally do! My personal favorites are shown here: Blake Belladonna from RWBY, Roll from Megaman, Yuki Konno from Sword Art Online, and Link from The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess. The other thing I’d been planning for a while was a Steven Universe AU, probably to cope with the show being over but also because I was inspired by a lot of those SU AU artists I started following at the time. I won’t share the details here because it’s gonna have its own blog at some point, but the example I’ve shown here is of a comic I made loosely in order to introduce a divergence in the plot of the story as well as introduce a character unique to my AU. It was a lot of fun figuring out how to draw the characters and get a feel for the style.

As the year progressed, my amount of art I made per month began to dwindle, this time mostly because school was kicking my ass especially hard with finals. However, I took what time I had to get some backburner pieces finished, like the Tigerlily picture which I sketched out a couple months back, and the Gunvolt picture which I started working on SIX YEARS AGO. I don’t quite know why I got the urge to work on it again after so long, but it was nice to finally realize. The other drawing for DOTS was done in the dead of night but I was really happy with how it came out.

Despite only having two summer classes left of school, this month was really rough because they demanded a lot of my time and attention. I did not have the gumption to do anything digital, so I stuck to my sketchbook to get out what I felt like getting out.

My friends and I did a stream of the game Helltaker, and I really enjoyed the concept, so in following my friends I made my own Helltaker demon OC named Raksha the Ravenous Demon (it’s a pun but also got mythical insp). I also got super into Hazbin Hotel at this point, mostly because the Addict music video dropped and I couldn’t get enough of it, so I doodled Angel Dust cuz I felt like it. The other drawing I did was actually a free commission I gave a friend of mine as a prize for a trivia game show I ran back in June. He along with a couple other friends got some free drawings from me for getting the top three scores, and this one in particular was fun because of how interesting it was. He wanted me to draw a video game reviewer called the Irate Gamer from a specific moment, and I decided to go ham and just make it as dramatic as possible.

University classes finally wrapped up and right after that I was in the process of moving out of my apartment and getting adjusted to living with my parents again. I did a couple of agg.io drawing sessions with my friends from the Court Cards group as well as a new Dungeons and Dragons homebrew group I had joined. I drew some more of Valkyrie and came up with a design for my DND character Qakuqtuq (or Kai for short). He is monkey grandpa and I love him.

My main focus was on finishing a polished piece for my friend Cake, whose birthday was in the upcoming month. I wanted it to be as amazing as possible, so I put a lot of time into getting more detailed and making them look good. In addition to that, I did a few TOME doodles just for fun. The creature on the bottom was for this month’s art challenge on my Discord server where we made original TOMERPG monsters, and I created Hundylow, a Crystal-element monster based on the Grindylow from English folklore.

This month was a lot more productive than the past few had been. I tried to do a 31-day art challenge called Creatober but failed to get past the third prompt because I was still swamped with other work. I’m still happy with what little I did, including the piece with my characters Kyle and Guarudan from DSWD.

I don’t remember how, but I also suddenly rediscovered an old Flipnote Hatena series called Tales of LostClan, a Warriors fan series that I would say was the most obscure thing I’ve ever been super invested in. It was what got me into the actual Warriors books, and I liked it so much I redrew the animations into a comic... twice. Didn’t get nearly as far the second time but clearly my love for this little fanfiction had not waned after nearly a decade. I felt like drawing a book cover/movie poster for the series, just to get it out there and see how much I’ve improved over all that time.

Also I felt like making a vampiresona just before Halloween because I never dress up for Halloween in art (or real life anymore, for that matter), and I wanted to do something like that for once. It was short-lived but I really liked the design!

The focus of this month was definitely on Pokemon stuff. As per usual I contributed to the current Gotta Draw ‘Em All collab, and I was tasked to draw Regieleki. It was really fun to figure out how to make it stand out and look like it was made of electricity.

I also committed a lot of my spare time to my Fakemon Gym Leaders, as I had been working on bringing them to life in the past year or so now. As of this post, I’ve finished rendering their full body poses and gym badges, but I’m still working on completing all eight VS portraits, the first half of which are shown here.

I... didn’t draw anything this month, actually. What I’m showing here was worked on in the last few days but has actually been in progress for a couple of months, and I just finished it earlier today, in 2021. But I needed to show something off, and it’s also about time I mentioned it.

Back in October, I kept seeing people rave about this game called Genshin Impact, and I was interested but not so much as to start playing it... until my friends started playing and I was like “fuck it, let’s download it”. Since that day, I have been super immersed and in love with this game, to the point I came up with my own canon based on my gameplay experiences. This also included the creation of an original player character: Astra, the non-binary Traveller. And now, I’ve finally drawn them and brought them to life.

It has been one hell of a year. I had some of the highest highs and lowest lows in 2020, lots of changes, and I have now officially moved onto the next chapter of my life now that my time at university is finally over. I’m very excited for what 2021 has to offer, and I’m going to go forward with great ambition.

[alizardjae]

lcaito

  Mmmmmm… a friend got me O ctopat h traveler as a...

I’d actually like your opinion on the game if you have time! I’ve been interested it, but not quite enough to buy it at the current price…

M’kay, this’ll be under a read more because it might get long and so people who like the game can choose to ignore this.  I am also writing the name of the game as O ctopat h to at least try and avoid the tag, though I’m not sure how well it will work.

But in summary, I like the RPG elements, not so much the battle system, and the story and art is pretty generic.

Disclaimer: I only finished chapter 1 and started Therion’s chapter 2, so I can’t say if it gets better or worse later on. 

The RPG elements are fun, kind of reminds me of the Pokemon Ranger series, with lots of sidequests that you can come back to at any time and don’t interrupt the main story. Each character also has a “Path action” that they can use on certain NPCs to various ends that adds an interesting dimension and elaborates on the stories of some of them; though the “reputation” mechanic for the “rogue” versions of the actions (stealing instead of buying, etc) is, as far as I can tell, more or less just a money penalty and a time waster.

I despise the battle system. It’s mostly the generic type of fantasy turn-based party battle you’d find in like an RPG maker kind of game with a few bells and whistles such as the “break” meter that is lowered by using super-effective attacks and renders the foe unable to attack for the rest of the turn and the next turn and lowers their defenses for that period as well. On the other hand, it means you’ll be doing pitiful damage most of the time for a turn or two of halfway decent damage at a time. 

You can’t see the enemy’s HP unless one character uses up his turn, and even then you only see what it’s like at that moment, and apparently boss character’s names turn red when their HP gets low enough, but I never noticed it. This means that you can’t really judge if your strategy is working or not. In addition, the bosses can have like twenty times as much HP as your highest-HP characters if you’re at the recommended levels and do two to three times as much damage as you do, with their allies also being fairly more powerful than you. For me, coming off the various Pokemon games and sidegames, Fire Emblem, Ever Oasis, and recently, My Hero One’s Justice, where the challenge comes from the bosses’ strategies, skills, and slightly higher stats, this is really annoying. So far the bosses don’t really have any sort of skill or strategy, they just have huge stats and take forever to fight, even if the whole battle is going well, as a result. The difficulty feels more like a slog than a challenge. I’ve heard the postgame is especially bad about this.

The characters are... fine. Nothing you haven’t seen before if you’ve played a fantasy RPG, but executed competently. Same for the story. The only kind of unique thing is that all eight characters have equal focus and their stories are tangentially related. From the spoilers I’ve read, they could have done a lot more with the “eight intertwining stories” idea. The story and characters are the sort of thing that, if you haven’t played this kind of game before, there’s no reason not to start here, but there’s no particular reason to start here either. All the writing elements are competent, but not spectacular in any way, and most of the plot is fairly predictable if you know the tropes, and sometimes doesn’t even go as far as that and just takes the immediately obvious route (though, I tend to be particularly good at guessing plot twists, so this might be a me thing).

The art is absolutely standard JRPG, with slightly better environments. The enemies have way more detailed sprites than the playable characters get at any point. Personally, I find the “scale and detail to indicate power” for bosses kind of works against the game because it means that bosses that are specifically supposed to look huge lose their impact because human bosses are just as big. The character sprites also kind of remind me of Pokemon Ranger, but not as distinct, nor as easy to read against the backgrounds. The monster designs aren’t particularly original either.

The overworld also has a tilt-shift effect over it that makes the whole thing look like a miniature model and takes away from any sense of grandiosity the game might have had. It’s a cute effect for a game that wants to be serious. This is exacerbated by environment effects such as water being larger for the scale than they should be, and, unlike Ever Oasis, in which the characters are quite small, this doesn’t feel intentional.

Also, don’t play this game if you have serious problems with sexual abuse, forces sex work, or violence directed specifically against women, as it’s a major part of one character’s background and heavily features in her first chapter.

Aside from the difficulty, this is a fairly standard medieval fantasy JRPG. If you enjoy the genre, you’ll probably enjoy this. If you’re new to the genre, there’s no reason other than the difficulty not to start here, but no reason not to start anywhere else either.

I can’t really recommend any alternatives for this specific genre, as this is my first experience playing them, rather than watching let’s plays, but I can offer recommendations for games with similar styles or mechanics that I do enjoy.

For a medieval fantasy setting with multiple characters that have associated plots, there’s always the Fire Emblem series, with turn-based tactics on a map for the main series, and real-time strategy for FE Warriors. Pokemon Conquest has a similar playstyle to the main FE series, but is set in a mishmash of modern science fantasy, feudal Japan, and the Pokemon world. English language Fire Emblem games can be found for the GBA through 3DS eras of Nintendo consoles, as well as one each on the Gamecube and Wii, though be warned that games before the 3DS ones have a permanent death system for your characters, while this mode is optional for later games. A new game is set to come out at the end of 2019 for the Switch. Pokemon Conquest can be played on the DS line of handhelds.

For a JRPG with a main plot and fun little sidequests, the Pokemon Ranger series should work, with a capture mechanic rather than a battling mechanic. “Shadows of Almia” is probably the best one to start with, as it has a medium difficulty and is a bit less frustrating than the first one. The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series also kind of fits the bill, and has a turn-based battle system on a map as well, though, as the title suggests, most of the gameplay is in long dungeons with limited save points, and it also doesn’t show enemy HP. “Explorers of Sky” is probably where you’d want to start for this series. The Pokemon Ranger series can be played on the DS line. The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon series has one game for the GBA, several for the DS, and a few for the 3DS.

For turn-based tactics in random and scripted encounters, the core Pokemon series should work fine, with varied strategies and a noticeable uptick in plot quality with each new generation. Games for this can be found on every handheld Nintendo console, and one for the Switch is coming out about a week after I write this, though with catching mechanics from the mobile game, rather than the rest of the series.

For the 3DS and I think on the Switch as well, I’d also recommend Ever Oasis as a game that doesn’t get as much attention as I feel it should. Ever Oasis is a fantasy game set in a desert, with heavy artistic influence from ancient Egypt. The gameplay is sort of like if you mixed Animal Crossing with Breath of the Wild, as is the art, honestly. The game is fairly short, but sweet and very cute.

And this concludes my thoughts (for now) on O ctopat h traveler and other game options. Remember that these are just my opinions, and it would probably be good to check out other people’s opinions to see what people do like about the game that I may not have covered here or that I personally disliked that others find fun.

[woohooligancomics]

Webcomic Whimsy: Modest Medusa (WW:MM)

Welcome to the Woohooligan Weekly Webcomic Whimsy! I've given a couple of interviews in the past, but this is my first experience with reviewing. If you have any suggestions for improvements, feel free to leave a note. If you're a webcomic author and would like a review, you can see my announcement and review rules here.

Title: Modest Medusa

Author: Jake Richmond • Facebook • Twitter • DeviantArt • Tumblr • Google Plus • Patreon

Site: Modest Medusa • The Duck

Genres: Comedy, Humor, Slice of Life, Fantasy, Adventure, Gaming, Surreal, Absurd

Rating: PG, T for Teen

Updates: Monday, Wednesday, Friday (909 pages at time or review)

Synopsis: (from TV Tropes - there doesn't appear to be an "about" page on the site) On the night before Christmas, Jake comes home and finds that the toilet has overflowed and flooded his bedroom. While moving his stuff to a different room, he finds a gorgon child hiding in the closet. Because she cannot return to the land she came from, Jake and his niece Marah have to take care of her.

Jake's work on Modest Medusa is a little hard to place. The art style and even the writing on most pages feel to me like it's trying to be a g-rated, all-ages work. But before you go thinking it's a "children's book", you have to know that it also contains scenes of "graphic cartoon violence" (if that's a thing) and more than a few jokes that only adults will understand. I say "graphic cartoon violence" because yes, characters lose arms and eyes in the fighting, but the visual style never changes. This means that when you're seeing a severed arm with a bone in the middle, it still LOOKS like a chlidren's book rather than a horror movie. I think the strip on the right epitomizes the overall feel of Modest Medusa rather well.

The archive of Modest Medusa is pretty deep, I think it's over a thousand, but it's impossible to get a reasonable estimate of it's size because of the navigation on the site. I've learned through some casual digging that it apparently bounced around a bit on various hosting before getting the site it has now. I read that it was originally on DeviantArt, then another hosting site I didn't recognize before The Duck (then Drunk Duck) all before finally landing in the WordPress site at ModestMedusa.com. Some of these earlier strips are still black and white if you use the mirror on the Duck. Jake still updates the Duck as a mirror in parity with the official site, so you wouldn't miss anything by reading it there.

Like most webcomics, the art in Modest Medusa improves over time. The art in these first two pages was a good start, although it's obviously not as refined as his current work.

The fourth page here is the introduction of a running gag: Chocodiles. I had never heard of them. Apparently they're chocolate-coated Twinkies. I've seen a few episodes of American Dad, but not enough to know these things were described as Roger's favorite snack. I suspect Modest Medusa uses them more often than American Dad -- in the first couple chapters they're pretty constantly mentioned.

I never did see the gorgon given a name. I did see at least one page where Jake's neice calls out "Medusa" while looking for her, but I suspect that's being used in the generic way that most people use medusa as an improper noun, meaning gorgon. I suspect that was the intention in the title as well, using the less common definition of "modest" meaning "a small amount", as in "yes, there's a medusa, but it's just a little medusa." :P You might think that's the reason Jake's not turning to stone -- to be honest I'm not sure. I've read through what I think is almost two chapters and I've seen one character turn to stone after a bite from her snakes, but it's unclear if that's what caused it.

Obviously the relationship between Jake and Medusa had to evolve over time and it does... You just couldn't have a long story about the two of them with her hissing all the time. And the characters having fingers becomes a regular occurance about half-way through the first chapter. I'm sure the characters were happy they could use their phones. :P

The first panel of this next strip shows one of my few criticisms about Modest Medusa. Even now, Jake could improve the lettering. In this first panel the first dialogue balloon is pointed straight at Jake's neck, giving the impression that Jake is claiming to "come from a mystical land." Or maybe the collar of his shirt comes from that land... it certainly would explain the design.

And here's where it becomes obvious that Modest Medusa isn't meant to be a children's book. While there's nothing in the art or writing that you wouldn't want a child exposed to, this just isn't a joke they would understand. Admittedly, Jake has a graphic at the top of his site that describes it as being rated "T for teen".

In this first chapter, Medusa's lack of experience with our world is a frequent foil for comedy.

The climax of the first chapter* is a bloody fight sequence. This is likely to come as a surprise to anyone having read from the beginning, given the children's-book-style illustration, the description of Medusa as "a four year old", the overall slice-of-life-comedy tone, and the fact that the rest of the chapter is devoid of any violence at all, save some hissing and a solitary slap-in-the-face. It is pretty unusual to see a hundred pages of straight slice-of-life comedy suddenly punctuated by something more like Friday the 13th. I could see some readers describing it as a pleasant surprise. I personally enjoyed the sequence and the contrast between it and the rest of the chapter only occurred to me after I finished reading.

This fight is preceded by a phone call from Medusa's mother, demanding that she come home, and informing her she's going to kill Medusa's new friends.

* Jake calls it a "season", ending at the 100th strip

At first I thought the use of that last dialogue balloon was bad-form, with the standard for comics being to avoid the characters describing things the reader can already see on the page. It's the same as it is for TV and movies, you never have a character say "put my shoes on" when the audience can already see that she's doing that. On further reflection however, I think Jake made the right decision on that last panel. With all that blood and without that exclamation, I think it's likely that a lot of readers might have thought it was a horse being slaughtered in a really unpleasant way. So that dialogue eliminates the confusion, which I think is needed in this case.

Also... did the horse travel to our world from the land of Yeld like Medusa; through the toilet? :P

Toilet horses are tough!

After the unicorn fight, the first chapter ends with Jake being abducted... through the toilet, natch. This is the obvious lead in to the second chapter sequel. Jake apparently took that comic-making class that teaches you end a book on a cliffhanger. :P

While I can't give Jake too much grief for ending the first chapter that way, because that actually is the better way to do it, I did have one issue so far: the first chapter was awful slow. At this point I've read through a hundred strips and I know virtually nothing about Jake or his family. He has a neice named Mara, he likes video games (Pokemon in particular) and he eats Chocodiles. That's pretty much the extent of my knowledge of the Jake character (as distinct from the Jake author), and it feels pretty thin for being an entire book. It also feels like a lot of those strips in the first chapter were just filler for it's own sake, like an entire strip devoted to Medusa opening the first Chocodile, or an entire strip devoted to standing in line at the store waiting to buy the new Pokemon game, with narry a joke or word balloon in sight. True, it shows that nobody in the store is reacting to the gorgon in the room, but I feel like the dialogue on the following pages conveys that message already.

The pace of the story improves notably in the second chapter, despite the fact that we're still not really learning anything about the heroes. Some of their other friends and family members are introduced and then promptly abandoned while Mara and Medusa begin their quest through the looking-toilet to save uncle Jake.

Once in the land of Yeld, the story takes on a much more overtly fantasy-adventure tone.

And there's the occasional surrealism, like Medusa's snakes eating her stars. You're right, you shouldn't let them do that, otherwise they'll come to expect it and start demanding blue diamonds and green clovers.

It occurs to me that "where are your sparkles" and "it's a secret to everyone" are pretty subtle (obscure?) pop-culture references. While I understood those jokes, it makes me wonder if I'm not missing a lot of other jokes throughout the series. That's not a good or a bad thing, just something I noticed.

While I've never been a fan of Calvin and Hobbes, I suspect that Jake Richmond is and that the influence of Watterson on Jake's work is fairly apparent to fans of Calvin and Hobbes. Any Modest Medusa readers out there want to confirm or deny?

So if you're looking for a combination of absudity and slice-of-life comedy, with a liberal dose of fantasy-adventure and a smidgen of pop-culture, I think you'll like Modest Medusa.

If you are a webcomic author and are interested in a review from me, you can check out my announcement and my review rules here.

If you enjoy my reviews and would like to help ensure I'm able to continue publishing them, you can contribute on our Patreon or if you're short on funds you can also help me out by checking out and sharing my own webcomic, Woohooligan!

Thanks! Sam