#i figured it was about time i actually rendered something and made a piece out of it and yeah it works :D

[antirepurp]

Your heart is a beating glass ornament

[tofupixel]

Thank you for getting me to finally try pixel art! I‘ve always wanted to get into pixel art but I never knew what to start with and always ended up procrastinating. Your blog and the post you made on learning pixel art were what finally pushed me to give it a go. It was really helpful and I managed this little animation in Libresprite.

I definitely want to improve and your art is like the ultimate goal lol. Do you have any tips or instructions for how to get better or on what to focus on in the future? I‘d appreciate any kind of criticism/input you are willing to give! How do you manage to make such gigantic and beautiful landscapes?

thank you!! and i'm so happy you decided to give it a real go, you're doing great already!! the rendering on the body and the pink shading is really nice.

i can help a little with animation stuff but i'm not an expert, ill write something out about backgrounds at the end

i hope you don't mind but i edited the sprite a little, just to illustrate some stuff

🤺Animation stuff

i added an extra frame near the top of the arc so it slows down. this is called ease or slow in/out and usually happens at the beginning and end of movements. u can do even more slow but this is just a quick version

i also removed the middle frame (where the tail is straight down) to make the swing appear a bit more powerful. this could be the principle of timing in the same video. you can exaggerate smears if you do this, its up to you!! lately i tend to exaggerate stuff a lot, things arent super noticable in motion

i also got a good bit of advice from nickwoz that helped me, basically when you begin to animate, it really puts the rest of the sprite being still into focus. try to think of how you could animate other parts of the body, even subtly. and sometimes if individual pixels stay still they can catch the eye in an unintended way as well, just keep it in mind!!

if you want to learn animation more, you could take a look at duelyst sprites, they have incredible idle and ability animations, i study them a lot

heres one i downloaded a long time ago. i recommend just downloading stuff you like and looking at it!! i have a huge collection of pixel inspo. slowing animations down can really help you understand whats going on. its just a bunch of simple elements put together that makes it look so good.

IF U WANT MORE RESOURCES/ARTISTS I REOCMMEND TO GO AND STUDY LMK!!! IM LIKE A WIKIPEDIA, I AM A BIG FAN of pixel art and love to share

🌿 OK lets talk about landscape stuff

it looks like you have art experience already, but im gonna talk as if youre a complete noob cos it might help some other people who read this!! ur doing great 👍

❓ how to learn: study (and practise a lot)

what i mean by study: draw it, copy it, try to understand it. you can try to change characteristics about it. changing the angle or lighting can help u understand how something works in 3 dimensions.

sometimes it takes time, dont worry, you will figure out your own style through doing studies, its all a process

❓ how to draw landscape details?

study pixel artists and how they do it recommendations: fool, slym, jubilee, deceiver

also please look at real world references!! you got to build that visual library

❓ how to learn composition?

study traditional artists or animation. i did a ton of studies of ghibli backgrounds which i think helped my growth a lot recommendations: arcane, studio ghibli, traditional painters

im gonna break down a piece as well and maybe that will help. this is one from 2022 but its still one of my most popular and its pretty simple too!!

if we remove all the fancy stuff what we have is actually really simple. just a few large, overlapping shapes that all point towards our focal point. it's the brightest area with the most contrast and many edges point into it.

go to pinterest or google and just search "pretty landscape" or "mountains" or something and you can see what i'm doing is nothing special or unique!! break it down into bigger shapes to begin with, its just different areas of material mostly.

and heres how you can make any landscape from any colours. purple sky or mountain? orange grass? ok !! it all works, it doesnt matter. i just blend the colours.

when parts of the landscape are in the distance they become closer to the sky colour as there is more "sky" in between you and it. its called atmospheric perspective. so if the sky was red, the clouds would fade towards red.

OKKK i dont know what else to say so i hope that helps!! honestly 90% of what i do is intuitive and hard for me to really explain, so you dont have to know The Rules, you just kind of pick up stuff as you go.

GL and thanks so much for showing me your art!! please keep going!! 💕💕💕💕

[kozachenko]

[Click image for better quality]

I FIGURED OUT A WAY TO FUCKING MAKE THE IMAGE SMALLER FOR POSTING ON TUMBLR WITHOUT SACRIFICING THE ACTUAL QUALITY OF THE IMAGE OH MY GOD

Ok so, what I did is go into the clip studio paint file, make a new file, copy and paste the group in the original file, merge everything, get rid of the extra stuff outside of the canvas, and then make the flattened image smaller and crop the canvas. Once you have that, export it and you're done. This helps maintain the actual quality of the image and also helps shrink the file size down to something actually postable (if anyone has a better way of doing this please tell me)

[Edit]: Ok I guess posting something to Tumblr just naturally compresses the image a bit more somehow because I'm looking at it now and zooming in too much makes it a bit blurry so I'm still gonna have to futz around with image quality for future pieces oof

Artist's Note:

I'm so glad I figured out a way to do this because I like working on a big canvas so I can get as much detail in as I possibly can. Only problems are how laggy it gets while drawing lol.

I had an idea for a drawing with Reimu and Zanmu because I really like thinking about their potential dynamic a lot. I also wanted an excuse to draw Zanmu again but in my normal rendering style because last time I drew her she was in my more sketchy style with generally flat colours so I wanted to draw her again. Speaking of, looking at the sketch for this is a jumpscare that I never enjoy seeing, like, man am I glad I didn't use those for my final piece.

Also about her spear. I was originally gonna make it like the ones she had in game, but it kinda threw off the whole piece. It was too big, too blue, and too flat, so I just went "fuck it" and gave her a different one instead. My headcanon justifying this is that the ones she uses in game are for danmaku battles whereas in any other fight she just uses a proper yari, or she still uses the yari and just makes it all glowy to power it up, maybe both lol. I pulled as much inspiration as I could from Sengoku era spears, and even put in some blue into the decorative part of the spear and also added a little skull to pay tribute to the original spear. Also, in my research I saw some art of izanami and izanagi making japan and saw that the yari izanagi has had a little decorative tassley thingy on it so I took some inspo from that and just made it one of Zanmu's tassles (Idk when that art was from or if the spear was still accurate to Sengoku period Japan but hey, probably the same reasons Eirin puts little bow ties on her arrows, it's just for personalization purposes).

I love rendering hair and clothes so much omg, while I like the super curly hair Zanmu, the longer, wavier hair suits her better for this drawing (I imagine it only does that like how Ghibli characters hair moves when they feel angry lol). I love making Zanmu's hair all messy and crazy, as well as giving her grey hairs, this woman has aged like a fine wine. Also, if the hem on the ends of her sleeves, top of her shirt, and her pants look like gold to you, that's because it is! It's fairly light so she's not collapsing under the weight, but it's gold! (I don't care how impractical it is, it's just cool). Not the undershirt though, it's made of a gold fabric. I had a cute idea with Reimu's hair to make it have a red shine to it. I also changed up Reimu's outfit so it isn't just a blob of red. I like it a lot when Reimu's skirt and outfit is segmented into different layers, so I wanted to incorporate that.

I tried to draw their hands differently as well, but IDK how noticeable that is. Also, I am super happy with how the side profiles for the two of them turned out, I used to struggle a lot with how to make the side profile of a character actually look like the character, so I'm really happy that they actually look like themselves.

Also added in the tree and rocks in the background as an homage to Zanmu's character art in Touhou 19, just because I was getting kinda stumped on what to do with the background lol.

In terms of a story idea with Reimu and Zanmu, idk why but the potential plotline of Zanmu wanting to ascend to godhood is so fascinating to me. Like, it is very possible that if she just convinced everyone she was a god (which would be very easy for her to do), she would become one in a heartbeat. Also, if she were to become a god, with her ability to return stuff to nothing, could she hypothetically get similar abilities to (Jojo Part 5 spoiler btw) GER? Like, idk about the death timeloop stuff, but the concept has been haunting me every night as I have been trying to find loopholes in GER's ability for a while now ( for no reason in particular). Back to the main topic, I imagine that she would probably tell Reimu that if she were to become a god she would take over the Hakurei shrine since the god there might as well be dead, and Reimu just says to her, "Over my dead body bitch." Like, I have no idea how to summarize their dynamic but like, it's the type of hero-villain dynamic where the phrase "We're not so different, you and I" would definitely be a phrase said during a fight. I think that if another IN style game were to release, Reimu and Zanmu would be in a team together. They could also have an interesting mentor and pupil kind of dynamic. Can you tell that Zanmu has been charging my mind rent these part few months? Like, instead of living in my head rent free, she kinda just uno reversed the whole situation and now she's the one charging me rent. What happens if I get evicted from my own brain? Actually, scratch that, I don't think I wanna know.

[3ofpents]

Mothman Moth Wings // Fabric Design for @shapeshiftersvt and The Cryptid Collection

It's time to talk about my Mothman fabric design!

This was another fabric design where I didn't have a poster yet to pull design elements from, so I was working entirely from scratch. I actually designed two different Mothman fabrics and fully intended to illustrate both of them, but then our whole household got covid and my entire workflow shut down and my design schedule got thrown off. I may or may not have adapted the second design to a bonus drop that may or may not be coming soon. But this is the one that Eli and I both really wanted for The Cryptid Collection, Eli especially because they'd already designed their Mothman runway look to incorporate a cape made with this fabric.

When I was brainstorming designs, the big thing I was focused on was how to utilize the common visual shorthand for Mothman — a black humanoid figure with moth-like wings and big red eyes — without unintentionally encroaching on someone else's interpretation. It did not take me long to decide against depicting Mothman literally and to remember that the coolest looking moth wings almost always have a pair of false eyes on them.

I wanted a very sooty look, like I had in my head the story of the moths in London during the Industrial Revolution whose wings got darker in theory because the sudden extreme rise in the amount of smoke and coal in the environment darkened the bark of the trees that the moths hung out on. I didn't want it black because I still wanted the pattern to be visible so that you really got the effect of the moth wings.

I opted for more of a blood red with the eyes just to keep that kind of broody, vampiric vibe too. It is plenty bright and obvious amongst all the greys.

There might ... also ... be a bit of an easter egg ... for fans of a certain game ... thinking about ... how ... dreams ... and manipulating people's dreams ... to try and save them ... is a big part ... of Mothman's mythos ...

I actually had to go through like two rounds of unofficial proofing to get this final version of it. When I say "unofficial", I mean that I went through Spoonflower's digital proofing process, we ordered a couple of yards in different fabrics, and when we got them, we discovered we were victims of the reason you should really do a physical proof: The colors were way too dark. Which makes perfect sense! It looked fine on my laptop screen, but my laptop screen is a giant LED light. A yard of fabric isn't. So what I saw as pretty good detail on my screen, just ended up being mostly undefined black blob when it was printed. So I lightened the colors a bit.

Then, when orders started coming in for binders and sports bras, we realized that the eyes were set too close to the edge of the fabric to accommodate multiple sizes. So I moved the eyes in to the center of "wings". Which also proved to be better for the cape too, which got remade with the new print.

As frustrating as it was to, like, go a couple of weeks thinking the print's good and finished, and then hear from Eli that there's something wrong, fix it, then go another couple of weeks thinking it's good and finished, and then hear from Eli that there's something else wrong, and fix it ...

I'm really pleased with this design. I don't think it's exactly what I had in my head at first conception? But part of the reason it changed so much was just the medium it was designed for. It was a really practical education in how a piece can change from digital art to rendering in a different medium. Like, I knew that was a risk in theory, but it helps to see it happen and understand why. Now I have more knowledge about how to avoid it in future projects.

As I mentioned in the last post, if you'd like your own chest binder or sports bra in this fabric like the ones pictured above, you can find them here (along with the poster print) on the Shapeshifters website.

If you'd like to purchase the fabric for your own sewing projects, you can do so through our Spoonflower shop. There are three different sizes there — small, medium, and large. The large is a single pair of wings that takes up the entire yard; the medium is two sets of wings across the width of the yard; the small has three sets across the width of the yard. Though keep in mind that these were designed with Spoonflower's sport lycra in mind, which is wider than some of their other fabric options. For fabrics under 56" wide, one or more of the wings may get cut off, so you may want to take that into consideration when you're choosing which size you want.

[stephofromcabin12]

Any art tips for artists just starting out? I’m struggling big time to find my style 😀

Sure.

It got kinda long. Bc when have I ever been a person of few words?

There is no trick to finding your style other than drawing a lot, and setting a, more or less, loose goal. When I was young it was old school Disney and Don Bluth. That was my holy grail, ideal style. But it evolved to be something else, because that's how style works. You'll put your own twist on things, in time. But first focus on practicing and don't narrow yourself down to just one thing. You'll also probably develop multiple styles out of convenience. Sometimes I prefer the cartoony, simpified stuff. Sometimes I'm more into fully rendered pieces.

Experiment. Make bad art a lot. The more you expose yourself to the inherent let-down of sucking at something, the less it stings. The key is asking yourself why something didn't turn out right.

You can't get good at All Art at once. Start with something you're most interested in learning. Maybe it's anatomy, or gestures, or expressions, or colors. Start with that one thing and practice is with a specific goal in mind. Fx: "I want to get better at drawing faces and expressions, so I'm going to do an expression sheet of a character once a week, and do a little practice every day if I can" – That sorta thing. Everyone is different, though. My old music teacher used to say 30 minutes a day. If we couldn't do 30; 15 mins. So on. As long as you do a lil doodling every day that's still progress.

Learning art is sometimes frustratingly non-linear. Somedays I still 'forget' how to draw a certain thing I've had down since I was 14. Other days I bang out something I've always struggled with on the first try, then fail the next day. It's not a linear progression, it's a damn roller coaster. Best you can do is throw your hands up and try to enjoy the ride. The pipe line for me is usually: First attempt (sucks ass but I've learned to laugh at this stage, just throw ideas at the wall) -> getting comfortable (this is where you think to yourself you have a concept down but you really don't) -> Getting good (you start to draw with more ease, you're not having to 'remember' how you wanted something to look, it's just muscle memory by now) -> Actually having it down (and still having more growth to go. But this is where you get to look back on the comfortable phase and go: 'wow I really had a long way to go')

In fact, having fun is by far the thing that's made me progress. More than tutorials, more than fancy equipment. If I'm not having fun, I have no motivation to keep going. If it's not fun, try and make it so.

Get into the habit of stepping back (whether physically or more metaphorically) and really looking at your art often while you draw. When you add a line, or color, or background element etc. Ask yourself "Does this work?" And adjust accordingly. It seems like a lot of work at first, but eventually it becomes a natural part of the process. I don't really realise I'm doing it but most of the patreon screen recordings I have show the way I zoom in and out of the canvas constantly lol.

Make the things you want to make. Even the most self-indulgent stuff. We have a million artists already doing their thing, but we don't have you yet. Show us what you got! There's room for everything.

Get used to people expressing mild envy/annoyance when you're drawing near them. I've gotten the 'wow I wish I could draw, I can't even do a stick figure!' comment from waitresses, cabin crews, classmates I'd previously never spoken to, teachers, strangers on trainstations, etc etc etc. But! Learn to say 'Thank you' when people compliment your art.

Don't ask for critique if you don't really want it. Don't let people critique you if you didn't ask for it.

You! Don't! Need! Fancy! Equipment! Save your money and get the version of a medium that's affordable and comfortable for you. Look at Stardew Valley's creator's old setup. It's really not about how the tools are set up or the price of them. It's how you make use of them. Didn't FNAF's creator build the models in a moving car on a laptop?

Art takes time. There is no short cut to make it take less time. But the more fun you have the more it'll feel like it's faster. If you're miserable the time will drag on and on and on.

Look at a lot of art. Take in and analyse. I wish I could go back a few years and tell myself to analyse paintings I liked, rather than just going "Oh I like that! Nice!" and then moving on. Why is it good? Why does it move you? What captured your attention? Be the person at a museum leaning forwards to see the paintstrokes, you learn more that way.

Don't feel ashamed if you want to take inspiration from others. Everyone takes inspiration from somewhere. If you see something cool another artist is doing with their rendering or lighting or whatever, try and do a drawing or two emulating it! Maybe you'll discover a new favorite technique, or you'll not really jam with it. Either is good. Both teach you something.

You'll go through more eras than Taylor Swift. Sometimes you gotta do a lil Eras Tour of your own and go back through the catalogue. I'm currently working on reviving several projects I made when I was 13-14. Keep everything. Don't delete; archive.

Get good storage. Like, seriously, wish for a harddrive your next birthday or christmas or whatever. If you're working traditionally wish for some good ringbinders and the good plastic sleeves. Much nicer than running out of storage and having to delete things. Never delete!

You are already an artist. You became one the second you picked up a pen and put it to paper, and then decided to keep going with that. So don't compare yourself. When you find yourself jealous of someone, it's because they have something you want. Figure out what it is, and make it for yourself.

Deadass? Tracing helps so much with learning forms. But it's only helpful when you also practice drawing the same things freehand.

The trick to coloring is just that everything looks good shaded with purple set to multiply, and that if you're ever in doubt go in an L shape on color wheel. Down in brightness, inwards in saturation.

People who say you can never use white or black in drawings are jerks and you should not listen to them. You can do literally everything you want. Sure, experiment with other ways of using white and black. But art advice is just that: It's an option, not gospel. As a wise prophet of our time, Justin Bieber, once said: Never say never.

People will say you should be your own biggest critic. But fuck that. Be your own biggest cheerleader. Love what you make, even when you hate it, find something that works. That stepping back I mentioned in point 6? Sometimes that's zooming out and saying "Damn! That looks really good!" – People will often make art out to be something that should be suffering and painstaking. It's not though. In my honest experience, I've made just as much good art when I was happy and content, as I did when I had severe depression and anxiety and burnout. You're not an artist because you suffer. You're an artist because you can't just sit in that suffering all the time. You know there's beauty besides your pain, and so you'll remind yourself in the act of creation that there is always something more.

Once you realise you have the power to draw truly anything, you'll start having a lot more fun. "Oh but I've never done it before" or "Oh I tried and it just didn't work" Okay. So?

In case of frustration to the point of throwing your art supplies out the window: Take a breath. Go for a walk. Sometimes it's just not your day. Sometimes the rollercoaster gets stuck in the middle of a loop or right at the top of a hill. Wait it out. Try again.

You have absolutely got this. Let me know if there's anything else I can help with.

[jiveyuncle]

your roleith pieces give me so much lifeeeeee ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ plz share any headcanons u have of them ps have a good day 🤩

!?!? You have no idea how delighted this ask made me, anon 😭💕 thank you sm!! I obsess over them in my notes and have so much planned for drawing. I’m actually about halfway through coloring a little mini comic interaction I have sketched out between Rolo and Krolia where she’s basically like, “High key, I’ll kill you if you betray him, again.” Lol

Sneaks!!

As far as headcanons, hmm. I’m bad at detailing, but I have general concepts and moments laid out in my brain:

When the Blade of Marmora teams up with the rebels on one of Keith’s earliest missions, Keith is not happy to see a certain someone working with the rebels. Doesn’t trust him at allll. He’s not outwardly hateful or anything, but his stress goes through the roof whenever intel is shared with Rolo or when Rolo is expected to watch Keith’s team’s backs.

Trust is slow to build. It takes Rolo ignoring an order from the Blade to go back for a civilian before Keith finally starts to believe Rolo might actually be alright. (It reminds him of something his old Voltron teammates would do.)

They race each other in crafts. Things are more even when Keith flies base models instead of his old lion, but he’s still the better pilot. He enjoys having someone challenge him.

Rolo 100% falls first. He’s not subtle at all, but he also doesn’t announce it or anything. Rolo’s team is so painfully aware of his feelings and tease him endlessly. Nyma will drop remarks (to Rolo’s annoyance) right in front of Keith about it, and it will still go right over Keith’s head. Matt is the last to figure it out and he about short circuits when he finally puts it together.

Despite the height difference, Keith kicks Rolo’s ass in hand-to-hand combat training.

Rolo’s bandages cover scars from his time under Galra captivity. The skin is particularly sensitive and fragile in those areas, and they’re prone to reactive flair ups of pain and swelling when messed with. Keith gets a look at these scars for the first time after a particularly rough battle where they wind up stranded and have to wait for backup to pick them up.

Lance is initially outraged to find out Keith is buddy-buddy with Rolo and Nyma (“You know, the people who sold us out to Zarkon and chained me to a tree ‘Rolo and Nyma!?’”), but he and Nyma actually eventually click and become decent pals. They have a bet going about how long it will take Keith to realize Rolo’s crush.

Krolia meets Rolo post- Space Whale and basically threatens Rolo with murder if he ever betrays her son, again. She doesn’t trust Rolo, but she trusts Keith’s judgement so she doesn’t meddle beyond that initial greeting. He earns her respect at a later time when a mission fails because he does something to ensure Keith’s safety over the mission’s success.

Rolo’s race can breathe in a wider range of atmospheres. There’s a pretty big scare when Keith’s mask gets shattered in a battle on the ground, rendering him unable to breathe, and Rolo has to drag him back to the ship while under heavy fire. Rolo essentially spells out his feelings after.

First kiss follows Keith making a close call piloting maneuver during a mission that saves his team. Rolo outright grabs him by the hood and fusses him out over the risky behavior, before Keith ends up closing the last of the distance.

Rolo’s race needs less sleep than humans. Once they’re finally together it basically becomes a battle for Keith to either choose to go to sleep together or wake up together. Keith chooses to do both anyway sometimes.

Both work in humanitarian aid efforts after the war.

I think that hits the highlights. Hope this satiates! And hopefully I'll finish the next Roleith piece sooner than later lol

[grimvestige]

2023 Summary of Art!

This year was full of experimenting and trying new things, and I think it really paid off in the end. I'm getting more comfortable with pixels, I finally have a way of painting I can do reliably, and I feel like I refined my main cel-shaded style a lot! I also feel like I improved on fundamentals just a bit more, with more solidly constructed anatomy (which I want to get even better at in 2024), and shading that actually makes more sense.

I feel like I'm finally getting to a point where I like my art - and a huge part of that is my partner picking up the habit of asking me what I like about a piece whenever I showed him something I made this year. It was super hard when he started, but now I can find at least one, maybe two things that are my favorite. I used to feel really, really neutral to bad about most of my work. I just did it and it was done, and on to the next piece. I knew I was "good" at art, but never really in the way I wanted. Now I'm daring to set my own work as my desktop and phone wallpapers.

I also finished a yearly challenge for the first time ever! Not that I completed every day of it, but I tasked myself with drawing a "Daily Snake" each day - as in Metal Gear, not the creature. It was sort of like those year of Miku challenges, but with Snake that left me room to draw any version of him. It was a fun thing because at the end of the day it ended up being like a little diary of my art, I could tell how I was feeling, whether I had lots of time to draw, all that. I think there was one time when I drew Liquid, there was an ACAB Snake in there, and also a trans one for fun.

Going into 2024 I have three big overarching art goals I want to work towards.

I want to learn and improve my anatomy enough to be able to solidly construct a body in perspective without needing to grab reference. (Not that I'll stop using reference, this is meant to be a goal that forces me to learn even more anatomy to feel confident with it)

I want to push my colors to be a lot wilder and more interesting. Rather than just picking the correct "local" color and working with light, shadow, and gradient maps to tweak colors, I want to be able to make interesting color choices right off the bat.

I want to at least try to start figuring out 'the style' for ttrpg art. (That nice rendered painting style you see in core books!) I'd really LOVE to start working on those projects, but I know most of them shoot for a different art style than I have.

The general plan is to keep doing studies, with the first half of the year being anatomy, the second half being color, and the ttrpg style thing being spread out throughout.

Thank you to everyone who's supported me and hung out on Tumblr! It genuinely means a lot, as this has been my go-to site when I'm down, and the one where I feel most comfortable sharing my art because the platform itself isn't predatory. I hope 2024 brings everyone lots of comfort and joy this year 💕

[sakarrie-creates]

It’s that time of year! Here’s my 2023 art summary! After two years of having to include non-colored pieces, I finally did enough ‘full’ pieces to fill my art summary template! I did have to get a bit creative with the months since I was able to draw a LOT more during the summer, but I’ll take it! Sorry it's a bit blurry. I'm not sure if that's just for the preview or not, but it was a smaller file than normal and since these reflections are 99% for my own interest, I decided it wasn't worth trying to change.

As usual, I got rambly so reflection questions are answered under the cut. The template I used is available here in case anyone else wants to make their own! My fic summary will be coming in a week or so, so stay tuned for the stats and round-up there. :)

What events did you participate in (with art)? Player Appreciation Week, Fandom Trumps Hate, Dear Fellow Traveler (Animatic), Weird People (Editing), SPN Comfortably Queer Zine (dropped), and lots of zine applications for page artist, merch artist, comic artist, and spot artist roles!

What was your biggest challenge this year? While time, like last year, was still a challenge, I think my biggest challenge was a mix of low motivation and an intense perfectionistic mindset. At the start of the year, I got super into TOH and was super hyped about all the zines with apps opening. I really REALLY wanted to get into them and figured I should apply for art too just cause it would increase my overall chances of getting in. After the finale, I did a screenshot redraw that ended up being absolutely fantastic for where my skill level is. I went deeper into rendering than ever before, and somehow it worked for me. 

That probably was the start of my unreasonably high expectations, and I got it into my head that maybe if I could make a whole portfolio of artwork at that quality level, I actually stood a chance at getting into a zine as an artist. From then on, I was hardcore crash-coursing perspective, rendering techniques, and generally trying to improve without allowing room for mistakes. While I do think it helped me grow a lot, it burnt me out so I struggled to work on stuff past summary (when all the zine apps were) and even dropped from the SPN Comfortably Queer Zine cause my imposter syndrome was so strong. (Though that was also partially because it was a ‘sign-up and you’re in’ zine, so they never saw my art during the application process and had no way of knowing if I was good enough.

What was something you were surprised by? I’m pretty sure I discovered the perspective tool is CSP this year! CSP has so many tools I’m not aware of (despite watching tons of tutorials and guides), so it wasn’t super surprising but it was nice. I have to say, they’re a serious hassle to work with and require a higher understanding of vanishing points and such than I currently have, but I could see it being very useful for future scene art pieces.

Did you try anything new this year?

Yes! This year I kicked down the door to the merch world and have been collecting and designing throughout the year. Though the designs have mostly just been for zine app portfolio’s, everything has worked out really well for me and I hope to produce charms for my collection as I improve my skills. Where do you think you most improved? Definitely my confidence in rendering! And probably my rendering itself too. I did a ton more pieces with it this year and it’s definitely a favorite part of the art process for me. I think I’ll have a lot more fun with it this year too, since I’m trying to keep it lower pressure, so I can experiment more to find out what brushes and styles I like most. What are you most proud of? I think I’m most proud of how ambitious I was with my zine apps. Though I didn’t get into any for art and it burned me out a fair bit, I did a lot of hard work and made pieces I can be mostly happy with. As for specific pieces, I’m very proud of my animatic clip for the Dear Fellow Traveler MAP (which is what the Belos art from the summary is from). My portion was about 5 seconds with 24 fully colored and shaded frames. A few of those were moving frames too, so the end result is the closest thing to actual animation I’ve done. I also really like the rendering on the Huntlow Epilogue art and generally how the Steve&Matt hug turned out.

How’d this year compare to your 2023 goals? I honestly couldn’t remember what my goals were, but all things considered, I didn’t do too bad! Thankfully past-Sakarrie was wise and made it a bullet list so I can just check things off. Met: -Player Appreciation Week -Add to zine portfolio -Apply to at least one zine as an artist (fine if don’t get accepted) -Keep experimenting with backgrounds and shading -Pull out some old WIPs -Build more consistency of style

The checked off ones I definitely met, so good for me! This was a very zine-focused year, so I way exceeded those goals. The last two I did do, but they’re a bit subjective. Specifically, I think the ‘WIPs’ I was referring to were old sketches, but most of the old WIPs I revisited were already colored and I was either adding rendered or cleaning them up for zine usage. As for style, I’m REALLY bad at telling haha. That said, my characters seem reasonably similar when I draw them, so I’m going to tentatively count it. Kinda: -One fully colored piece per month

I’m gonna give myself a half check on this one. I didn’t have a fully colored piece every month, but I did have over 12 fully rendered pieces in the end, several of which had backgrounds. So while I didn’t meet the letter of the goal, I feel like I met the spirit of it.

Did Not Meet: -Finish Huntlow comic -30 minutes animatic digitalize rough draft -Maybe make some fanart of my favorite fics

These don’t shock me. They’re all personal projects and this was a very external-goal-driven year for me. The Huntlow comic is a big love of mine but it’s definitely ambitious for where my skill is. I’ve got the whole thing messy-sketched and most of it has been clean sketched, but the jump from that to lineart is gonna be hard, and I have no idea what I’d be doing with color since the panels don’t have a background. That said, I do feel like it’s some solid work and I adore the angst vibe of it, so maybe I’ll get it done one day. I could also see myself posting it as a messy lineart comic so that others could enjoy the concept being executed in case it never gets finished.

As for the 30 Minutes animatic, I still 100% intend to complete it eventually. I love the way it fits to the music and I’m so proud of the thumbnails. Even if it never becomes a full animatic, I want to digitize the frames and line it up with music so I can share the concept I see in my mind with others. My brain was somewhat overtaken suddenly by TOH this year, so now that that’s settled and I’m hoping to follow my muse more this year, maybe this will be something I can get excited about again.

The fanart for favorite fics is no surprise since it’s kinda the tack on. With low motivation and projects with deadlines that needed my focus, personal art like this was buried way below other priorities. It’s a nice though for sure though.

Alrighty then, now it’s time for 2024 goals!! Oh goodness, I really don’t know what to expect of myself. I definitely am going to try to allow for more personal projects with lower pressure, but I do still have some goals. Hopefully most can be accomplished without applying big pressure though.

2024 Goals:

-Number One Priority: Create for my and don’t put myself in a place to get crazy burnt out and still have requirements. If I meet this goal, then it’s okay if I don’t meet any of the others. (It would be sad.... But I would still count it as meeting overall goals.) -Participate in Summergen and PAW Week (Art or Fic) -Design Handplates charm as anniversary gift (November) -Design CS Charm -Have a fully usable Zine Portfolio (Currently need more merch samples and rendered pieces with backgrounds) -Apply to new TOH Zines or other loved fandom zines. If I end up getting into any, I can pull back, but since that doesn’t seem likely, I want to get into the habit of always being ready to apply with what I have. -Make an ongoing project list to pin to my tumblr. This applies mostly for fics, but that way people coming to my page can see what fandoms I’m actively creating for and what they can look forward to (as well as have an opening to ask questions if they’re interested). -Post more (at least 10 times throughout the year) and add my best pieces to instagram (8+ pieces by end of year). -Do ONE of the following:     1. 30 minutes digitized so it can be shared with music      2. Open Up Your Eyes fully thumbnail      3. Fanworks for other people’s fics      4. Participate in an extra bang or exchange with art      5. Design and manufacture a pin -Play with different brushes and rendering styles -Draw something from scratch every month, no matter how small -Not exactly art, but I want to have a finalized long-term merch display plan for all my items Overall, how’d the year go? I think I did well! I didn’t meet all my goals and I pushed myself too far, but I learned and improved a LOT this year. All things considered, I made pieces that last year me would be blown away by, so I think that’s an automatic win. I’m pretty uncertain on how this next year will go (even more so than last year, which is surprising since I was changing schools last year), but I’m hoping to enjoy what I do and create art semi-regularly. Here’s to 2024!

[haze-of-hyperfixations]

🍄, 🦴, and 🧩 for the writers ask game

🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings

(i have so many headcanons about every dynamic ever, and they all conveniently vanish the moment i am asked to name one, ha.)

hmm....for Perimedes and Elpenor from Epic the Musical, i have a headcanon that they're in a qpr. and yeah, i know that's modern terminology and they are from ancient greece. (i did a research paper about qprs once, fun fact.) but also: a. you don't need a modern explanation of a concept for that concept to exist in a historical context. b. Perimedes uses the word "yeet" in his cut song, rendering any arguments about historical accuracy invalid. c. i'm having fun and no one can stop me. :)

i also think the idea of Perimedes sometimes calling Elpenor "El" is cute. <3

🦴 ⇢ is there a piece of media that inspires your writing?

oh, there's a lot. my writing in general is inspired by a lot of media. but my venture into the world of ao3 in the first place was because of this series:

and, if i remember correctly, it really inspired me to start getting more into fic writing. it probably also influenced the way i write, since i read it at around the time i was kind of figuring all that out. incredibly good series! <3

as for specific fics, i have so many playlists for inspiration. one of the fics i'm currently working on was completely inspired by the song Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol. (it's a Parallels fic still in my drafts, but if i ever finish it, it's gonna have so much found family trope and it's gonna be great)

oh, and my most recent fic, this one:

you know what inspired it? i was on pinterest, and i saw this photo of eggs:

and i got kinda emotional about how much i liked that photo. idk, i was already in a vaguely-sentimental-fic-writer mood, and that photo somehow just opened the floodgates of ideas in my head. the actual fic is only vaguely related to the photo through the fact that both involve cooking eggs, but nevertheless, some photographer out there is directly responsible for the existence of my current most comforting oneshot for me to reread. and i think that's really neat. i love humanity and art and connection and inspiration. <3

🧩 ⇢ what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?

okay, so i tried to think of a new answer to this question, but i couldn't think of one, so i'll just copy-paste my answer from three days ago:

okay, with every answer i try to think of for this one, i immediately think of exceptions. because i have a long track record of being in microscopically small fandoms, and if one of those fandoms got a new fic, there is very, very little that would stop me from reading it to the end. i guess if the entire fic was untagged, very explicit smut, then i would click away immediately. (although most authors i've seen do tag well. so i would probably know without clicking that it's something i won't be really comfortable reading. everyone say thank you for the tag system <3)

yeah, i never really have an interesting answer for this one, ha. i have exactly 2 authors muted on ao3. one was because they had hundreds of fics in many fandom tags that i searched a lot, all of which were exclusively a specific trope that made me really uncomfortable. the other one, i don't remember; no works are showing on the account anymore, but it was probably a similar situation if i felt the need to mute them. other than that, i haven't really been let down by the tag system yet, which i guess is a pretty good thing. :)

thanks for the ask!! :)

[s1oths]

Just realizing how over time the way I think about the art I'm creating has changed so much over the years.

Only recently now, for the first time in the 3.5 years I've been actually been starting to think about viewership and the emotional impact I want to bring out through the tools, style, etc. in the art rather than the overall skill I want to show. I feel like this has definitely made my art have a more appealing feel to it that it didn't have nearly as much as before.

I think something else that has definetely changed is how precious I am with my art. Today I've been working on a new piece, but I decided I wanted to combine this "painting" style I did but in a full body character in my normal style. I've been really struggling with figuring out the painting/rendering bit, but when I know somethings not working I get rid of it, I go over it, whatever. I'm not precious with my art, because I know if I've done it once I can do it again. This gives me so much freedom to create without worry, and I think really allows me to create much more interesting pieces.

I think my art style will be changing a lot over the next while, I don't even know if I'll really have a consistent art style after this anymore (and won't that be interesting?).

Both who I am and how my art is is changing, and I want to document as much as I can onto Tumblr, rather than my DeviantArt, even though I have roughly 400 less followers here (like 10 or something, compared to the 405 on DA).

This place feels more right though.

Thanks for reading :))

[tamelee]

hi tamelee!

I'm here to ask for a little bit of advice if that's okay (: about a month ago I bought a Wacom drawing pad so I could start experimenting with digital art. artists like you here on tumblr have really inspired me to start making art. but I feel kinda.. lost. I've been mostly drawing naruto manga caps and I'm getting better but I guess I don't know where to go from here. coloring and shading scares me lol. I'm using clip studio paint and it's just a little.. intimidating. I feel discouraged, like I won't be able to do it. how did you do it tamelee? did you watch a lot of tutorials, or did you experiment until you figured things out? any advice you'd have for a beginner artist I'd really appreciate.

thank you veryvery much for your time ^^

Hi Nonee! 🧡 Sure!

Oh I think that’s a very good place to start. As well as drawing subjects you like ^^! Hmm, tbh I’ve just experimented a lot, but I don’t think my way of having done things was the most efficient. You might want to follow tutorials step by step? You can try coloring only with flat colors until you feel a bit more confident with that as well as cell-shading (toon-shading/non-realistic, like in anime) instead of rendering further as that can all be confusing at first. I personally never truly understood shading until I studied cell-shading and made my art a lot more readable. A lot of Anime uses this; 

You see how there is a base color, a darker color for shadows and highlights? (Sometimes not even highlights.) 

When you start to study it from existing work you’ll start to notice things like color always being in the same area of saturation and when you suddenly have a color that is way more saturated than the other it can look off. (See example.) But this is a guideline, not a rule. In your own art you can especially use saturation and brightness to help aid you to direct a viewer's focus and even tell a story.

I LOVE ‘How to train you dragon’ and ‘Kung Fu Panda’ for this because their coloring is so inspiring and if you truly want to learn from professionals... well those are the type of media to look for of course! I have an entire folder to inspire me just based on those.

Do you see how calculated those color combo’s are?!?! Here you see both analogous and complementary schemes and it is actually through looking at the things I like that I learned it >< The orangey colors stand out and are bright which helps you to focus on that area whereas the complimentary scheme is used to bring characters together.

If drawing Manga-caps is something you love to do, then maybe for coloring you can study screen-caps from Anime or even other animated films. I’d recommend to take it step by step, though I haven’t really applied it myself, from the video’s I’ve seen and artists I’ve followed it is always advised to have an art-goal that you can work toward. Maybe you first want to focus on lineart and then laying down a base color where the colors are harmonious and next would be cell-shading maybe and then you can start adding another light-source etc- eventually you can decide to create more depth or practice with monochromatic coloring, maybe even greyscale to learn values. But right away that can all sound a bit intimidating doesn't it? Find things that you like and then maybe you can open them in your program and just study. Find a brush you like, put on some music or a show on the background and for a moment play around with it without needing to create a finished piece. This is also how I learned how things like adjustment layers work or what all the different kinds of tools do. I have to agree with you, CSP is intimidating for me as well >< so this is kinda how I approach it as there are so many add-ons and additions within it but I try to only learn what I need for that moment so I don't overwhelm myself.  I definitely try to find video’s that can help me with creating Manga though! ^^ There are plenty!  It'll get easier eventually, you'll learn the program and you start to recognize placements for shadows and you will get a feel for the coloring- no worries 💪 Learning something new will always stay intimidating, every time I open up a new document I feel it too. It's not easy at all, but you kinda have to allow yourself to experiment and even make mistakes because practice is never perfect. I have some beginner tips written here- I hope any of this is somewhat helpful 🌷🫶

[nrrrdgrrrl2002]

“Oh 12 april is such a b••ch. she gets so much just handed to her and has two guys in love with her yet she acts so picked on and is such a player Meh meh meh”

Ahem.

Bullet points of s••t april had to deal with in 2012

•Her dad got kidnapped by aliens and she had no idea if he was ok or not for months

•this guy she just met that saved her life obviously has a crush on her but is also keeping track of her exact whereabouts, making extremely detailed plans on how to get her and him alone, is keeping weird pictures of her as his desktop wallpaper and won’t stop despite being told it’s creepy.

•She finally gets her dad back after months, only for him to be mind controlled and turn her in to aliens

•who then torture her to use her as a battery to destroy humanity.

•THEN later on her dad gets horrifically mutated into an animalistic monster that tries to kidnap her

•because of a mistake her friends made that they didn’t seemingly plan to tell her about

•she decides shes had enough of this weird s••t only to literally be forced back into it

•and have her new friends life be put in danger cause of it

•her ex friend is still stalking her despite her saying she wants to be left alone

•she then finds out she has these freaky powers because half her dna is from the aliens who kidnapped and tortured both her and her dad and has tried to kill her friends

•Now her new friend has gotten deeply involved in the weird part of her life

•and now him and the other guy crushing on her won’t stop fighting and bickering with each other over her

•Then her bestie of over a year reveals herself as an alien who was only monitoring her this whole time, rendering the entire friendship fake

•then her city gets invaded and her and her friends have to barely evade killer aliens

•her dad gets mutated AGAIN into a kraang monster

•her and her friends have to abandon their home city and friends and family to have any chance of surviving to possibly save them later

•the only place they can go is her childhood farmhouse where her mom disappeared

•one of her friends is in a THREE MONTH COMA so she has to help keep his family together during it

•while the two boys she isn’t sure how she feels about are STILL fighting each other over her, only now she can’t get away from it since they all live together

•her friend makes her a creepy music box with a picture of only him in it, still trying to pursue despite all the other going on, like HIS BROTHER REELING FROM A KNEE INJURY AND JUST GETTING OUT OF A THREE MONTH COMA

•he then tells her he’ll stop pursuing, but then basically says she’ll never love him cause he’s a mutant, making her feel awful cause she does love him, she just doesn’t know in what way and hasn’t had the chance to figure it out

•she then finds her long lost mom frozen in the basement, only for it to actually be a kraang monster made with her moms dna that tries to eat her friends, forcing april to kill something that looks and sounds like her mom

•she returns to an apocalyptic New York with her friends, only to start having nightmares of what the kraangified slaves of the kraang are currently going through, including her dad

•THEN her planet gets destroyed, killing her friends and family outside of the turtles and Casey, leaving them with the pressure of saving the whole world on their own

•she saves a planets society from its corruption and is gifted with a piece of their most valued item, only for that piece to slowly possess her and alter how she thinks

•this possession then causes her to “murder” her best friend, leaving her with the guilt and trauma

•she later loses her secondary father figure

And yet she’s ENTITLED and irrational??

Y’all can feel free to add on cause I know I forgot some stuff

[underratedandoverit]

In My Head

~3,2k words orangekip (orange cassidy/kip sabian)

set in immortal fears/the belt corruption arc. this will be an official piece at some point so i might have to revise it, but. actually in-story canon first kisses/love confessions. theres a lot of anxiety surrounding this topic as its a heavy point of realization for kip especially, so its just kinda angsty. also kip says fuck way too many times cause ofc he does i tried to proofread and edit this but if theres something wonky yo thats entirely on me

@midnightpretenders0 @stormbornpirate

---------------

Kip carefully pushed the bedroom door open, breathing raspy and heavy, heart in his throat as he was met with the familiar darkness beyond the door. Most nights it wouldn’t have been such a big deal, but something felt different tonight. Maybe it had been the past few days, the past few hours leading up to this moment, the words that had been said, the touches that still burned the skin he couldn’t get out of, the feelings that he didn’t know before now for sure that burned in his mind.

Seeing the familiar figure already laying on the bed in the darkness didn’t help any of the feelings he had in him.

Maybe he could figure this out. Maybe he was imagining it all, maybe he was pushing it all and everything he was feeling was nothing but a fragment of his own imagination. Maybe Kip was making it all up. Maybe he didn’t mean anything that he had been saying, thinking, wondering the past few days, the past few hours.

But the longer Kip stood frozen in the doorway, the more he knew he was just lying to himself thinking that he didn’t mean any of those things.

The worst part was, he just didn’t know if Cassidy was on the same level with him at all.

Kip slowly made his way into the bedroom, closing the door behind him as quietly as he could. He wasn’t sure if Cassidy was still awake, but as he hadn’t moved or reacted at all while Kip had been standing in the doorway, it was safe to say he was fast asleep. Kip was honestly surprised he was still willing to sleep in the shared bed after today, no matter how much Kip was trying to tell him that he didn’t need this anymore.

The thought of Cassidy still refusing gave him the chills, his response even more so.

“Maybe you don’t. But who says that I don’t?”

If Kip hadn’t been confused about everything before, he sure had been again after that. All his efforts to push Cassidy away, even slightly, to stop the inevitable that was happening in his head were rendered effortless. Useless. Just like how he felt most nights, most days, which was exactly why he was in this predicament to begin with.

Because he needed help. It had taken its sweet time for him to acknowledge that fact, but as soon as he had accepted it, Kip knew there was no turning back. The moment he allowed the one who he had been his sworn enemy to help him, there was no way anything was going to be like before ever again.

And he was terrified of that thought. And nothing he tried made it go away, anything Kip did either made it worse or stronger. He couldn’t fight it, only hide it. And he was sure at this point that he was fucking awful in that as well.

He could navigate the bedroom in the almost pitch black darkness effortlessly, Kip had done this maybe a million times before. The extra thick curtains were a welcomed addition to help the sleepless nights, but at the same time Kip wished they weren’t thickening the air in the room right now. He was already having trouble breathing, the darkness feeling even more suffocating around him, making things even harder for him to grasp, as if they weren’t already confusing and driving him up the walls closing in around him.

All he wanted was to know if he was imagining it all or not. Why was that so fucking much to ask.

Taking a hesitant seat at the edge of the bed, Kip tried to steady his breathing. Closing his eyes, he ran hands over his face multiple times, trying to make sure he knew where he was, what time it was, the date, anything to ground him to his surroundings. His mind was swirling with a million thoughts faster than he could arrange them in a sensible order, but the soft carpet under his bare feet and the fingers drumming gently against his forehead kept him in one place in space at a time.

Not that it helped him breathe any easier, but at least knowing where he was and how things were going made him feel slightly less insane.

Kip could feel the bed slightly moving underneath him, but he didn’t pay it any mind. Maybe Cassidy was just tossing a bit, Kip knew he was a rather light sleeper on nights he wasn’t completely exhausted because of him. He had tried to be quiet, but maybe him getting on the bed was a bad move. Of course it was, Kip wasn’t known for making good moves in this life, that much was obvious.

An arm suddenly wrapped around his waist, securing him as it pulled Kip slightly better on the bed. He allowed the action, despite his mind telling him otherwise, but he was already numb to everything else. Pair of legs appeared on his sides, the touch grounding him as they slid down over the edge of the bed, right next to his own, one on each side. A warm body pressed against his back, one hand running through his hair, a face being pressed into the crook of his neck as Kip could feel the hot breath running down the inside of the back of his shirt.

“Hey.”

Kip knew the voice, he had expected it, and yet the jolt it sent through him was something he couldn’t explain. His hands slowly left his face, landing on his lap, not being sure what to do, how to behave. This was a situation he had found himself in too many times by now, and yet every time he was here, Kip didn’t know how to proceed. He felt so helpless, being held in arms that he both did and didn’t want to be in, not knowing what he was supposed to do. What he was allowed to do. And he hated it, and yet the words to express any of that were stuck in the throat that only allowed him to sob at moments like this.

He swallowed hard, not wanting to repeat the nights where things had gone down like this so many times before. He didn’t want that, but he didn’t know what else he was supposed to do.

Kip could feel the tears swelling in his eyes, trying to fight them back as much as possible without giving Cassidy a hint of it. Of course at this point he knew it was pointless, the other man was able to read him like an open book no matter the situation. It was just another reason why this hurt Kip so much, how he wasn’t able to hide anything but the things he desperately wanted Cassidy to see. He wasn’t sure if Cassidy was completely ignorant to those things, those feelings, but the fact that he never directly responded to any of them was giving Kip a really good hint where they were going with this whole thing.

“Kip --”

He didn’t want to hear it. Standing up, he still couldn’t escape the one arm that had snaked its way around his waist. He was held in place, firmly, yet gently, making sure he didn’t do anything drastic as he clearly wanted.

Feeling a hand grab a hold of his, Kip allowed himself to be pulled back down to the bed as Cassidy made him room for Kip to sit down next to him. There was no point fighting it, this would just end up like any other night. He was going to have a moment, they would talk it out, cuddle it out, that was going to be the end of it. He didn’t know why he thought it was going to be any different, but the thought that it wasn’t still ached his whole being more than any other night. The hand now holding his burning fingerprints on his skin that Kip never wanted to be able to wash away, but he knew that by the morning they would all be gone and he would have to start this painful circle all over again.

Kip could feel Cassidy looking at him, trying to observe the side of his face as Kip refused to look directly back at the man now sitting next to him. There was no point. Nothing was going to change.

He felt the hand leaving his, gently landing on his face, a thumb running over the cheek wet with tears that Kip didn’t even realize he had been crying.

“It’s going to be okay.”

Was it? Was it really? As long as Kip was concerned, no the fuck it wasn’t. But it was just another one of those thoughts that he couldn’t express, that he had to leave to burn inside of him until his lungs turned to ash so he couldn’t say anything anymore, even if he finally wanted to. And that was a thing he could never tell Cassidy. The one person that was supposed to be his worst enemy in this whole wide fucking world.

“It’s --”

“Is it?”

His voice was so quiet, but Kip could feel Cassidy tense as he heard the two words. His hand stopped on his face, Kip could have sworn he was looking at him with surprised, widened eyes, if he could have made out most of his features in the dark. Kip finally looked at him, confirming his suspicions to the best of his ability behind his own tears.

“Is it really?”

Cassidy just looked back at him, remaining silent. The oh so familiar silence that was driving Kip insane, up the wall, what have you. He had lost the ability to read its meaning a lot of times ever since they had become closer, and he didn’t like that. Cassidy used to be so easy to look at and see what he was thinking, and now every time Kip tried, nothing seemed to make sense. His own feelings thrown into the mix absolutely did jackshit to help with the situation, but even before then, before the realization, most of the time he was just lost when looking at the blond and trying to dig some kind of an explanation out of him and his voiceless self.

“…It will be.”

“How?”

Kip didn’t intend to snap at him, but he couldn’t stop himself before the word slipped out, laced with the venom of disbelief. At this point he was sure Cassidy was just making it up as he went along, trying the same things and same words that had previously worked, being oblivious to the fact that Kip was starting to grow immune to his fruitless efforts of comfort. On some level Kip obviously still believed him, like he had always done, hearing those words of encouragement and comfort still got to him, but at the same time he had started to believe that they were nothing but that, words without any deeper meaning behind them. Just noises to fill the dead air in hopes that they distracted him for long enough until Kip either forgot what he was struggling with or Cassidy could come up with better ones.

“How the fuck is it ever going to be okay? How is this supposed to get better if nothing ever fucking changes?”

“If you want it to change, maybe you have to try to do something about it.”

It was like something clicked inside of him, pushing Kip to the move. He wasn’t sure in hindsight if Cassidy had meant it as he took it, as an open invitation to close the gap between them and with a single shift motion move himself into his lap, but that’s how Kip ended up taking it. The blond was almost caught by surprise as he suddenly had Kip so close, but he didn’t try to push him away, instead his hands helped to steady him in place.

Only after his hands were already on the back of his head, Kip froze in place, realizing the direction he was pushing this. Even in the darkness he could see Cassidy almost too intensely staring back at him, neither of them moving an inch, waiting for the other to do something about the sudden shift in the situation.

“I-I…”

Kip’s voice drifted off, his head dipping down first, forehead pressing against Cassidy’s. He couldn’t explain any of this even if he wanted to, at least not without sounding like he was losing his mind more than he already was. The days and nights that had slipped past so far, so many that he barely remembered, had unexplainably been building up to this moment, and now he was too scared to do anything about it. Anything he wanted to say was stuck in his throat, the actions he wanted to take made him freeze in place worse than the anxiety he had felt leading up to this.

He had Cassidy right where he wanted, inches away, and he couldn’t even bring himself to look him in the eyes anymore. It was all so overwhelmingly much, all way too suddenly than he had prepared himself for. 

Thankfully, it was Cassidy that tilted his head upwards, closing the gap to press a soft kiss on Kip’s lips first. He didn’t reply back to it, his mind yelling at him that this wasn’t how it was supposed to go, that this was nothing but a sick fucking joke being played on him. Cassidy had him by his mind, by his feelings, none of this was as real as Kip wanted, as he was hoping for.

“Hey…”

Kip could feel a small, soft track of kisses being traced down his cheek and his neck, sending shivers down his spine. The jolt pushed him over the line, finally getting some sort of control over his body in this situation he had put himself in, grabbing Cassidy by the shoulders and shoving him down against the bed. Hovering above him, Kip tried to steady his breathing, watching as the confused eyes looked back up at him from the disheveled blond.

“I… I need to hear you say it.”

Kip could feel the hands snaking their way around his neck, gently pulling him closer. He resisted, insisting on doing this first. “I need you to say it.”

Cassidy looked back at him, not being entirely sure where this was going as Kip shook his head back at his silence.

“I need to hear it. I…”

Kip leaned in closer by his own will, stealing a quick kiss from his lips. He wanted to do so much more, but he couldn’t before he would know this was real. That this wasn’t just a trick, not his mind lying to him, this wasn’t happening just because Cassidy thought it would fix him. No, Kip needed to know this was because he wanted it, because they both wanted it, before he could allow himself to proceed.

“I love you.”

Cassidy remained silent for a moment, Kip could feel the heat creeping up his cheeks as the words finally left his lips, burning his insides harder than they ever did when he couldn’t say them out loud. It was out of his hands now, all the hope he had he had put out there in the world. All he could do was hope that this wasn’t a fragment of his imagination like so many other things before, that this one thing he could feel with his whole being was actually real.

Kip was certain he could see a smile, before he was pulled down to Cassidy’s level by the back of his head.

“I love you too, Kip.”

The voice was barely a whisper, the last word of it melting into the kiss Cassidy pulled him into.

----------------

His eyes fluttering open, Kip started at the ceiling of the bedroom for a moment. He didn’t remember falling asleep, he had no idea what time it was, what day it was, what anything it was. The only thing he knew was that the bed and the bedroom were familiar to him, and the tingling feeling on his lips was something he had carried with him since last night.

His head slightly tilting to the side, his eyes dimmed a little at the sight of the empty half of the bed next to him. His hand lazily reached for the pillow, only to find it cold – it was obvious Cassidy had been up for some time now, without bothering to wake him up. That’s how this usually went, as Kip was the one out of the two of them that needed more rest in his currently still mostly messed up state.

Except after last night, Kip might have expected something to change, but…

Pushing the thought aside, he carefully sat up, observing his surroundings. The room was fairly dim still but he could at least see, so at least it should be day time. Getting up from the bed, Kip fished a pair of socks from the drawer, slipping them on before making his way out of the bedroom. As soon as he opened the door, he was attacked with a bolt of sunlight, but for the first time in forever it didn’t feel like it was immediately too much for him. Kip still had to shield his eyes a bit as he made his way down the stairs, but it honestly didn’t feel too bad.

Kip actually had to admit, his entire being felt lighter than it had in the previous days, weeks, maybe months at this point. He had honestly lost count how much time had passed since he had lost the title and Cassidy had started to care for him, but at this point Kip felt better than he ever had since that fateful night when everything had started to go downhill for him.

He headed towards the kitchen, hearing the water running over there. Kip stopped at the doorway, a little smile crossing his lips as he watched the shirtless blond make an attempt to prepare breakfast, turning the coffee maker on before he focused on getting the toast into the toaster. As he wrapped the bread bag shut and turned on his heels to head towards the fridge, Cassidy froze in place briefly as he saw Kip standing there, clearly not having heard him come in.

“…Hey.”

Kip nodded back to him, watching as Cassidy walked up to him, grabbing him by the hand and leading him to the kitchen table, gently sitting him down. “I was going to bring you something upstairs.”

Kip chuckled at him a little as he took a seat by the table. “It’s okay, at least we won’t get crumbs in the bed.”

Cassidy stopped, looking at him for a moment. It was so rare to see him without the sunglasses, but Kip could have sworn he also had a much brighter energy to him, something he had rarely seen from Cassidy before. Kip’s smile slowly faded from his lips, him tilting his head in a slightly concerned manner. “Is… Is something wrong?”

“No,” Cassidy finally replied after a short silence, smiling back at him. “I just… Realized something.”

Before Kip could question him further, Cassidy grabbed him by the front of his t-shirt, pulling him closer for a soft, deep kiss.

So it all really wasn’t just in his head, after all.

[feather-dancer]

just a business transaction, please!

HO BOY the rare "It didn't spawn on discord first" given how much for that fandom does. This is also going under a cut given the rating.

So apparently in very late July last year (?!) I woke up with these words still rattling in my brain as you do.

"Only men have ever had the audacity to offer..." "Then clearly you have only had the pleasure of boring people. Answer me this time instead of changing the subject: Will following your orders anyway be a problem?"

One of those stupid things you end up doing sometimes involves @writer-rider-flirty-thirties and me trying to have at least one (1) piece of writing in some form for every two person ship. This is based on spreadsheet data I made and excludes the adults purely because even just the kids takes FOREVER to collate. We've flipped a lot, I keep putting aged up monsterfucker stuff out there you know how it is. It gets the world more than just endless lovesquare it should be considered an important community service. Because of that, Bre went and picked three people and I started wrangling those original lines as a whole ass oneshot.

I've got to be in the right mood to write the thing because of the rating, otherwise took me a bit of figuring out the dynamics for the ship to work within those weird brain leftovers.

That said:

“Remember now, honeybee, we’re dressing for impressing. Every star earned for services rendered is an extra five minutes with the sofa bed rolled out later and you know I’m as good as my word.” She doesn’t need to glance at her reflection to know her cheeks are burning, not if her boss’ grin is anything to go by. Those ratings have become a potent currency to be cashed out as the holder sees fit, and well, there is an unspoken extra perk to being in the head of staff position. “I might even be persuaded to close up shop early if it’s glowing bright enough if you need any extra incentive but for now let’s just see how things go. Everything good so far?”

There's more than a few gems in here:

Partners in business Partners in life Partners in private

So whole thing has ended up like a hotel? Place of business?? Where clients can pay big money for entertainment behind closed doors and not one word of it will escape. Privacy is everything even if you want something as mundane as a clown party you'd dreamed of as a kid. Break the rules such as touching any the staff without express permission though? Get blacklisted from the establishment in all forms and fined. They do not fuck around.

One of the characters in here is Trans and also got caught up in a splicer fad rich people had going for a while until the law caught up and banned it. Finding employment when you have insect wings and weird eyes is pretty difficult so that white whale of good boss that will protect your ass is like gold dust.

This oneshot isn't one of the more innocent jobs though that wake up line was VERY clear about that and wanted to keep to the spirit of it. They're in their early/mid 20s in this so what do I care. With this fandom unlike ToA I have zero attachment to the characters in canon so I just kinda grab them, change the ages, actually give them personalities that are stuck to, put them in situations and off we gooo.

[auranova26]

Donovan Baine, Dhylec, and Anita

Quite a mouthful, but this trio is pretty connected, so they are gonna relatively be put together. Donovan will take the bulk of this since there is actually quite a lot to his backstory. First of all, his render!

Now to talk a bit about changes. So first off, one thing I never liked about his official design was the fact his top was skintight: It just didn't look right. I was down for the aesthetic idea of a Buddhist monk that he had going, so I kept that. However, his top is now drawn in a way that his clothing would actually flow and wrap around his body. The big thing you might have noticed is the new garment he wears to cover his legs. That there is known as a longyi, a clothing piece worn by the people of Myanmar. The reason I chose that was because I wanted to pick a country of origin for him in Cryas Darkstalkers since in the original timeline, he never had a specific country of origin. However, he always gave the vibe of being a SEA. As I researched around, Myanmar caught my eye for being a country where Buddhism was a prominent religion there and for the fascinating longyi. In Cryas Darkstalkers, Donovan is Myanmarese.

So, with a country of origin and a nationality, does that mean he has a birth date? Why yes indeed he does in this mythos. Donovan was born in a village on March 3rd, 1949. This combines the release of Night Warriors: Darkstalkers' Revenge/Vampire Hunter: Darkstalkers' Revenge in Japan in the arcade (March 3rd, 1995) and the birth of Hideyuki Kikuchi (September 25th, 1949), author of Vampire Hunter D.

With him being a dhampir, that means he was conceived by a human and vampire. In Cryas Darkstalkers, his parents actually have names! His mother is a human known as Nandar with his father being a vampire known as Dragomir Baine. Now in the original timeline, it seems to imply his father was not around when he was being raised by his mother, which have some rather unpleasant implications. Not in this mythos.

Story time!

Now originally, Dragomir hailed from the lands of Maximoff in Makai serving as a warrior. However, after Demitri's failed coup and surviving the battle, life for vampires was not pleasant. While many did what they could to survive and live, Dragomir had enough. Aware of the Gate, he made the dangerous journey towards the Gate in order to escape from the turmoil he faced continuing to live in Makai. Now on Earth, he tried to figure out what to do from here. As he traveled the lands, he would eventually wind up deep in the rural areas of Myanmar. One day, as he was looking for blood to sustain himself, he happened to catch sight of woman that caught his full attention. He was bewitched by her looks and felt something in his heart of hearts. After thinking, he made the choice to approach this woman, after doing certain things to make himself look a bit more human. Overtime, they would get along and eventually marry. On that fateful day in March, they conceived a son, whom they named Donovan.

Life for the Baine family was very modest, but fulfilling as they enjoyed one another's company. Dragomir felt content in life with having a loving wife that he wanted to be with and a son that symbolized their deep bond. Nandar was also quite happy that Dragomir showed himself to not only be quite strong and handsome but was a dedicated man who always did what he could for her and Donovan. Not only that, but Dragomir was also respected by the people in the village for his honest and modest demeanor. Dragomir was not above being firm, but never raised his voice or hand to his son or wife. In all, it was a happy family life. However, neither his wife nor son were aware of his true origins as a vampire and thus their son being a hybrid. Many a times, he thought about coming clean to them as it could be a potential danger of Donovan is not made aware. However, he was fearful of them rejecting him. He was deathly afraid of losing the only people that gave his life meaning and purpose.

Before he could tell them, one fateful day in 1957 as he made a trek to the nearby village to get some supplies for his family, he vanished without a trace. Nandar and Donovan panicked and eventually their village had men search as far as they could. The only thing they ever found was bit of clothes, draped in blood. Nandar and Donovan were devastated. As they tried for days to pick up the pieces in their lives and hearts, fate would deal the Baine family another cruel hand. On the night of November 7th, 1957, a Blood Moon occurred over the lands of Myanmar. Donovan shook in his sleep as he began to have an intense nightmare. Hearing all sorts of horrendous, blood curdling sounds, he screamed in terror, desperate to get away from these sounds. Eventually, he awoke but in the middle of the village at night. As he got his bearings, he saw a horrid sight: mutilated corpses as far as he could see. Mortified by what he was witnessing, he cried in terror and tried to make his was back home for his mother. However, he froze as he saw his mother... on the floor dead. Blood running from her lacerated body, he fell down emotionally dead. As he put his hands to his face, he felt something cold: blood on his hands. It was then as he really took a good look at himself, he realized what happened. He killed everyone... his neighbors, his friends... his mother. As all these emotions welled up at the gravity of the situation, he screamed a blood curdling scream of terror and wailed with a deep sorrow over what he had done. Eventually, he just sat there motionless has he couldn't scream anymore and cried himself dry of tears and emotion. In due time, a man found him as he heard the wails and screams while out on a trek. No ordinary man though as he was also a hybrid. He felt for the young child, and after coercing him, managed to bring the silent but compliant Donovan with him back to where he lived: a village deep in the woods where Darkstalkers lived.

For a decade, Donovan lived among the people of this hidden village. While its population was that of Darkstalkers and hybrids, there was a monastery of Buddhist humans who showed no malice towards these people. If anything, they showed compassion and helped guide the people with the teachings of Buddhism. Donovan kept to himself, barely emoting, and just seemed to only survive more than live. He was still traumatized by that night and the death of Nandar by his hands. But something else also ate away at his mind: his father. As the people found out he had the blood of a vampire as well, that meant his father was a vampire. Why did he say nothing about this? What was his intentions with him and especially his mother? Were they only pawns to him for something heinous? No... he was always kind and respectful. He loved them... and that is what hurt and confused young Donovan. What happened that night was the works of a monster. The blood of a monster flowed through his body all because of his father... but his father was no monster. He couldn't make heads or tails of anything, his mind always tormented by that night, by his mother's mutilated body, his tainted blood, and his father.

The adults and monks tried to help Donovan as he grew. Attempts were made to teach him peace and enlightenment through the ways of Buddhism. Donovan went along without protest. If anything, maybe this could help find a way to make sense of everything and find some peace. While he showed discipline in taking the lessons to heart and dedicating himself to Buddhism, his mind would still be uneasy, like ripples in a lake. As he continued to practice and learn, one thing did catch his attention. Stories of this deity who roamed the lands known as Nǚ Jì Sī and her servant, Guì Zi Shǒu. Tales of Nǚ Jì Sī's exploits of heroism towards the people of the lands far and wide. Ridding the world of the scourge. These tales seemed to strike a chord with Donovan, eliciting some reactions from him. Thoughts would circulate between his studies in Buddhism and the stories of Nǚ Jì Sī. When he was 18, he made a decision. He would go out and journey to follow in the footsteps of his hero. He would seek to bring peace to himself, repent his sins by saving the people from the monsters and evil of the world. From then, he set out on his long journey of repentance.

Donovan would return back to the village after a six year journey. Much had happened in that time as he not only honed his skills as a warrior, but even met the fabled Nǚ Jì Sī and Guì Zi Shǒu. As it turns out, the mythical figures were Chinese twin sisters who transformed themselves into undead spirits with the goal of saving their mother, known as Mei-Ling and Hsien-Ko respectively. After aiding them with fighting of the powerful vampire Demitri in Romania, he went back home in order to process everything that had happened. The monks and people welcomed him back with open arms, surprised that he not only was still alive, but a bit more willing to talk and emote. As he took time to get back to his meditation, his studies with Buddhism, and contemplate about all he had been through, Donovan was plagued by a strange sound. It was not constant, but no matter if awake or asleep, he kept hearing what appeared to be a voice... calling out to him? After discussing with elders for help, it was determined that he was in fact in connection with something. Something to the northeast, a force was calling to him. They were not sure what it was nor its intent, but with this news, Donovan set out to go find the source.

As he traveled, ever slowly the voice would get a bit clearer. In time, he found himself in Tibet, among the Himalayan mountains. At this point guided merely by the voice, he eventually traversed the mountain before him to discover a strange alcove in said mountain. Examining it, he found that there was an opening to a tunnel. Aided by torchlight, he went in and found a boulder oddly blocking something. He could hear the voice the clearest it had ever been. Determined and with his strength, he moved the massive rock to the side and happened upon an odd sight: A chamber with only a sword embedded into a stone with a set of beads among the guard. While perplexed, he realized that the voice was coming from the blade. While unsure at first, he decided to unsheathe the blade. As he put his hand on the handle, he heard many other voices speaking to him, warning him to not take out the blade. However, the voice that had been calling to him spoke brashly against the voices, realizing someone was actually in the room. He pleaded with Donovan to let him free, complaining how he had been stuck here for so long and that he was bored since the 'other guys' were no fun.

The other voices interjected to explain to Donovan about the reason why the blade must stay sealed. Known as Dhylec, the blade was once a demon that caused havoc many moons in the past with a group of other creatures. In time, he was confronted by a noble monk who sought to end his campaign of terror. With his spirits and skills at his aid, he actually proved a difficult challenge for Dhylec. Seeing their boss struggling and wishing to save their hides, his group turned on him and aided the monk with taking down Dhylec. Despite the combined forces, Dhylec proved to be hard to kill. In a last-ditch effort, with the aid of the spirits, the monk transformed the demon into a blade. With the spirits at hand, he had control over the demon sword. However, even as a sword, Dhylec still proved rebellious. Seeing no other option, he knew he must be sealed away. With the aid of the surviving demons, they dug out a chamber in a high point in a mountain and sealed him there for all of time.

Dhylec interjected that sure, he caused some trouble here and there, but that he is willing to change so long as he can be released. At this point weeping, he promised he would be a good guy. He just wants to taste some fresh air again. While befuddled, Donovan then decided to make the decision to release Dhylec. Now free, Dhylec whooped and cheered as he got to move his body for the first time in centuries. At that point, he started to ramble in anger about his posse, spewing profanities about their betrayal and wishing to get back at them. Donovan merely stood there perplexed at the sight of a living sword, beads in hand. It was then, the spirits talked to him. They made it clear that Dhylec was now Donovan's responsibility as this blade could not be trusted on its own. Should he choose to deal with this blade, they would offer their power and services to aid him in keeping this blade in check. With this offer, he decided to adhere to being the wielder of Dhylec. While Dhylec was not keen on being a tool and listening to someone, he realized that he had to go along as he didn't want to be back in that stone. From then on, the strange duo of Donovan and Dhylec would set out to continue his journey.

For ten years, the odd duo worked together in a rather uneasy gentlemen's agreement. While Dhylec was helpful in providing Donovan more means to fight the wicked, he was rather annoying. Likewise, while Dhylec was grateful to finally be able to stretch his limbs and feel the blood rush of battle once more, he still was annoyed at having to adhere to a master. But overtime, they managed to find ways to cope with each other's company. Traveling through Europe again, as they rested for the night, both suddenly felt a powerful spike in power. Both were shocked at not only feeling this power, but how far away it was. Clocking on to the direction it came from, Donovan set out to locate the source. Days of travel found him and Dhylec in a village. As he got ever closer to the source, he found himself at an orphanage. Seeing that it was a place for children, he wondered if the source could have been from a child. Given the idea of seeking to 'adopt' a child in order to investigate by Dhylec, Donovan talked with the staff in regard to seeking such. Guided by the staff lady, as he was shown the area where some kids were playing, he eventually locked eyes onto a young girl. Her energy, it matched what he felt all those nights ago. But more than that, looking at her face and eyes, he almost felt like he was looking into a mirror image. A face devoid of emotion, eyes that felt soulless, yet sad, it was eerily like seeing himself as a child... no, himself deep down. He approached the child slowly, greeting her. She didn't respond. The staff cautioned him about the child known as Anita.

Anita came here days ago from a village that had been massacred by a group of Darkstalkers. When a merchant found her, she was beside what appeared to be her parents. Oddly enough, every human beside her was killed. But not only that, every monster there was also dead. Anita was the only surviving living being found there among the rubble and death. This resonated with Donnovan as he recalled his trauma of what happened to him all those decades ago. As he thought these thoughts, Anita looked up and stared Donovan in the eyes. This caused Donovan to flinch slightly as he realized the girl was... reading his mind? Why else would she be doing what she is doing right as he had those thoughts he thought. As they both looked at each other, something was clicking. She then walked up to him, and then grabbed his longyi silently letting him know she will go with him. The staff surprised by this, asked Donovan if he wished to take the child with him since this was the first time she had any genuine interaction with anyone. Looking down at her and thinking, he decided to do so. From then on, this odd trio would venture out into the lands far and wide.

[secondmagic]

a fucking problem i've had recently is

a) i've been in college for the past few years and it's an art school so all my creative energy has been put entirely in school projects (and i am life a few months away from starting my last year where. i'll be working on my graduate film. which, wtf.) leaving me with little to no time or energy for personal stuff or stuff i draw for fun or that isn't for a specific poroject

b) all i want to draw recently is p*rn (and i really do not want to censor that but the tumblr algorithm has locked my blog down for content enough times at this point) or at least horny or something that at least has bare titties and the occasional bare pussy so either i have to just give up on it i guess or post a little preview piece of it here and link somewhere else and.... like twitter is in a dire state at this point, don't exactly have a following there, it has been well, well documented how the algorithm is actively like against you even if you're like some kind of da vinci level maestro. but it's basically my only option now for most the stuff i do want to post to even get stuff our there. and i did recently get a bluesky acc but you know it's a not very active website and also invite-only. so, not a lot of options.

and you know, my posting here has always been kinda sporadic and i have tried to make stuff more frequently and have a bigger output but out of all the time i spent drawing which frankly is a lot, very little of it ends up as like. a properly fully rendered piece that i can show and i would occasionally post stuff here from my sketchbook that i find at least a little bearable to look at but that also actually takes effort and is difficult to make it like. visually presentable.

a while back tumblr has informed me that this blog has turned 10 years old, which, whoof, huge crisis over the passage of time and also how many grand ambitions i had with this blog when i made it and how little of it i achieved in those 10 years and genera feelings about my own skills and growth and where i stand in life because of my very sporadic posting and my slow pace of work which has gone from like. once very two months to 2-3 times a year and now even when i feel inspired i don't know how much of what i make is even going to be here. recently i've been reevaluating if i even have what it takes or if i even should be an artist with the pace at which i work and how little of anything i complete not to mention how i feel about my own art skills in general, but you know given i've been stubborn about wanting to do this since childhood and i literally just cannot concieve with my brain of doing anything else in life. and on top of that i'm too much of a stubborn spiteful bitch not to keep pushing because i can't let the evil malicious gnome trying to take me down win, so this is something i'm figuring out over time.

anyway i did somehow manage to get 320ish followers in that time, give or take those that are either bots or inactive, and most of you probably followed me for stuff i'm either not super into right now or don't post anymore so you're probably not getting your follow's worth if you look at it practically, you might not even know or remember who i am or what you ever followed me for because of how long its been and how sporadic i am. but i guess i just want to say i know i don't have a lot to offer on this blog compared to a lot of other artists in terms of quality or quantity, which hopefully that will change one day in the future because i am trying to figure out how to do this all better, so thank you all who did follow and are still following and are sticking around despite all of [waves hands] all the things i described