#i may come back to this with my own colors because i love the lineart

[cathalbravecog]

Hi! I'm kinda shy but I love your vintage finish on your work. Would you consider offering pointers for how to achieve that vibe?

oh, absolutely!! i love that sort of style and i think more people should be able to achieve it if they want!! shouldn't gatekeep art stuff ^^ i don't really do vintage style stuff a lot, and i take more comic book/print/retro inspo than anything. but, these go hand in hand!! please know i am still learning, too! this is just how i do it.

also, there's a lot of guides for this online and tools... that you have to purchase. i can assure you everything listed here is free! (including my pirated SAI2 copy!) some things have donations available towards the artists that made them, so you can do that if you want to support an artist :D

i'll go over basically everything i know, so this WILL get long! i also spent hours going over several days searching for resources, so i'll list everything so you don't have to ^^

(PART 1/2 BECAUSE OF IMAGE LIMITATIONS!!! PART 2 SHOULD BE WRITTEN SOON AFTER THIS ONE!! reblog THAT once it's done!)

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THE ART ITSELF / INSPIRATIONS:

for the ARTSTYLE and WHAT you draw: you can just draw whatever!! really, do your own thing! twist this style in your own way, it doesn't have to be a 100% accurate!! i literally used these same vintage look effects in a drawing drawn in my usual style of high roller. you can draw anything you want and you don't need to copy comicbook styles or all that!!

or - you CAN take inspo from vintage comic books / artwork or other printed comics! (for me tom and jerry comes to mind as something with a toony style, since it's what i read as a kid. also donald duck comics! no need to follow this but if you wanna be extra you can! ^^ looking at inspo is good.)

however you will need to look at examples aside from just the Artstyle, to achieve the actual Look!!

here's some examples pics i took of some comics i own laying around in a shelf. these are mixed ages, the asterix and ducktales comics being older and the tom and jerry comic being newer. i have some oldies since i got them passed down! czech text + asterix jumpscare, sorry.

to move on from the artstyle talk fully and more to the general style/look part - notice how the tom and jerry has brighter colors, less dirt, and an overall better quality!!

one thing i want you to note, in older prints there's obvious color misprinting and imperfections! you may chose to do this, or don't! depends what kind of era or printing you wanna reference. of course, also keep in mind the veeery limited CYMK colors they had Back In The Day. also note the dirt!!! how some parts are lighter and more chipped and how it isn't a full block of color!!

a lot of this does parrot posessedpasm's own guide, which i HIGHLY recommend! it's where i got a jump-start on things. there's other things listed on their post, which you should give a read! goes over history of some things that will let you have a better understanding of stuff.

speaking of inspo and on the topic of posessedpasm, before we move on - they're one of my biggest inspirations for this! their art is incredible and i think it's important to look at other artists' take on these styles. go out there and look at other artists who draw in a similar style achieving the same retro look!!! (no but genuinely i could look at posessedpasm's art forever... i love just looking at it and studying it!! i want what they have... but i'm not gonna gush now!)

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ACTUAL TECHNICALITIES / HOW THE FUCK DO I DO IT ???:

FIRST, LINEART!!: i choose a brush that's somewhat fluttery and resembles ink at least a little bit, instead of a basic round brush. here's the brush i used, for any sai2 users. i'll show my krita faves after!!

(note brush size, gets fuzzier the bigger it is)

and the krita alternatives! i don't do inking / lineart in krita in 99.9% of my art unless i'm experimenting. but there's some great brushes you can find online to use! here's links to the ones on screen

tomb of null

buck a. brush

ramonm inktober (he just presents it but since it's his post i named it that) (download link is on the video!)

that alone already gets the lineart look just a bit. but it's not all! krita is especially useful for this, as sai doesn't have this function. (but i find my way around it

here's a WIP screenshot i took while drawing that piece VS the final piece!

you may notice the lineart is "chipped" away in some spots. printing always wasn't perfect and created some imperfections, that may smudge and chip away as time goes on.

HERE'S A GUIDE FOR IMITATING THAT!!!!

what i do, is simply create a clipping layer on the lineart. (typically i do the lineart, then color, THEN do lineart effects, but this is just for show) (i also usually have a set, typically orange/yellow background color picked already, but i haven't done that here for Whatever Reason)

set it to "erase" layer mode... (and click the little "a" to actually clip it to the layer. you could also just make a quick clipping group that does it for you!)

and draw over the lineart! (preferably with a highly textured "dirty" brush!) the erase clipping layer will only erase the lineart, and nothing underneath it. you can change the opacity up and down to adjust the erasing... you can add more erase layers to play with the effect a little!

what i then do (sometimes), i ctrl+e the lineart group to one layer. i copy it. i ctrl+z to go back to keep the group if needed. i paste the copied lineart underneath it. i add a blur filter, shift it to be slightly off from the lineart by a few pixels, and set it to "burn". i may change the color to be a very dark orange-ish brownish color. gives an effect of the lineart bleeding a little!

COLORING!!:

color: okay so for this part i just kinda bullshit it and either pick whatever colors i want, or i color pick them from this image below then slightly alter if i need a different color. i do not have the patience to do my own cymk layer management digitally, just adding my effects can take OVER an hour and i have a way that looks nice Without It. i either fake my color misprints later or i just don't do it. still stuff to consider!

(taken from posessedpasm's guide! this is how i colored my sticky lou drawing. usually i will just pick my own colors and yellow them/dim them slightly.)

how do i do it: i color in sai using my usual brush or the one i showed previously. if i color on krita i use a different fuzzy kind of brush...

some colors i do on different layers and i move them slightly to make the misprinted effect. then i may erase small bits of it to make it look a bit better if i want.

if you really want the funky color mixing that may not be Extra Accurate anyway - draw using different colors on different layers. the layer overlapping with the bottom layer... set it to "multiply" and eyedrop the color where the two colors overlap. set the layer effect back to "normal". lock your opacity so you draw only on the Already Colored Parts and color the overlapping area using the eyedropped color! neato !

ONE THING TO NOTE!!! if something is white, you should leave it uncolored/transparent. unless you stylize it to be a different color entirely, if so... go ahead! but if it's WHITE white - just don't color it at all!!!

and now, to my Favorite part - the halftone overlay effect!!! here's where things can get fairly convincing already - plus, i use this effect / similar even in my normal art!

before ANYTHING!! at least, for krita - to achieve the best look i use the newspaper plugin!

newspaper plugin for krita

FIRST, i merge the color layer into one layer and then add it into a clipping group. i then copy the color layer and paste it OUTSIDE the clipping group.

then, select your PASTED color layer (named on the screenshot so u know what i mean) and go to tools>scripts>newspaper (once you install the plugin!)

i then play with the settings a bit. i typically don't touch everything - i just change the mode to Four color (CMY+K Pictures) or Four color (CMYK - Pictures) (this one usually looks better imo)

i also change the size to be smaller, usually around 4.00px.

click OK! it'll generate cymk halftone layers IN a clipping group! don't worry about the black, you can rid of it easily ;]

just close the group and move it to be inside of your color group below! clip the whole cmyk group over the color layer... and BOOM!

but that's not it! set the newspaper group's layer effect to luminosity (or whatever you find works best...!) adjust the opacity to around 50%-30% and BOOM!!

though, that's not all! do the same things we did to erase up the lineart earlier to the coloring, too. same steps! in the same clipping group! just make sure it's above the cmyk newspaper group.

you can then group both lineart groups and color groups into ANOTHER group that will contain them both. with that you can then make an erase layer over them both so they both get affected by it and make it look like both got chipped away, and not like they're separate entities. ^^

you can then use this for backgrounds... text... other things!

one important thing is also getting those papery, dirty effects... which i'll cover in a reblog! (image limit :,]) alongside that, i'll list all my resources for download there!!!

[anon-bunny]

I love your work! Do you happen to have any tips for artists looking to get into digital art using procreate?

Sure! I absolutely love using procreate. For whatever reason it’s considered a lowbrow art tool by major studios and companies??? But I can do pretty much anything I’d want to do in Photoshop in Procreate at a fraction of the cost. Plus working on an iPad means portability— If I want to draw in the car, on a plane, in a cafe, etc. I totally can. Glad to see more people are getting into using it! 💖 Alright, onto some tips.

The best way I can think to give tips is leading by example and offering points of reference through my own work and process. If you have follow up questions or are looking for something specific definitely send them my way. ✨😊✨

1. Know Yourself; Know Your Art Style

Whether you’re a long time digital artist or a traditional artist porting over to the digital medium it’s very important to know your work, your strengths, and your personal style. For example, I was very much a traditional artist who delved into digital artwork to keep up with career demands. For a LONG time there was stylistic dissonance between how I drew on paper and how I drew on SAI (the desktop paint tool where I got my start) because what I was subconsciously doing was keeping my style to myself traditionally and just mimicking the artwork I saw online when trying to make digital art.

Here are two pieces I made back in 2018, one traditional and one digital. They're both nice pieces, but if someone was asked which one was definitively one of my pieces they're much more likely to say the traditional piece because it's consistent with my style: limited colors, lineart heavy, etc. I kept trying to divorce from my traditional style when what I should have been doing was taking the extra time to learn how to do what I could already do traditionally in a digital program.

It's especially important to know your style and practice maintaining it regardless of media because the next tip is

2. Invest Time In Watching Others

In nearly every hobby, profession, skill, or interest one of the best ways to hone your craft is to see how other people do it. Hozier said in a recent interview when he's not writing or performing his music he's listening to someone else's music. It's very important to our ability to learn to see how a task can be done to help influence how we ultimately do it. I of course do not mean try to copy someone else's work, which was something I had to learn the hard way when I was starting out in digital art. One of the things I frequently did early on was tried to copy someone's painting technique as closely as I could which resulted in some less-than-inspiring artwork that didn't look much like my usual body of work.

Which is again, something that is easily prevented by just knowing your style.

Some places I go when looking to see how other people draw are YouTube, Tiktok, Artbooks, and Pinterest. Youtube and Tiktok are fabulous sharing platforms usually dealing in quick media where a single search for "procreate" or "speedpaint" yields THOUSANDS of results. Artbooks require a little more financial dedication, but they're great visual references that frequently come with some kind of tutorial in them. Some in my personal collection are Gothic Lolita Punk, Japanese Comickers, and The Complete Masters of The Poster. And Pinterest is frequently painted as a digital piracy war zone, but searching "art tutorial" or "digital art techniques" yields lots and lots of valuable information.

I've been professionally illustrating since 2017 and I STILL go back to these points of reference to see how other people are drawing, painting, etc. Who knows? I may learn something new that takes my art one step further.

3. Explore Brushes!

There are literally Tens of Thousands of brushes that are available all across the internet and I highly recommend taking the time to search google for packs of them. For the first year or so of working with procreate I ONLY used the default brushes that came with the program and while the art was decent I definitely could have used more experimentation to make more cohesive pieces.

As of right now I use a Frankenstein pack of lining and painting brushes that are a mess of brushes I made myself, brushes I got in art packs I found on itch.io or etsy, and some default brushes I've heavily modified to match my style.

I highly recommend playing with brush settings, searching for new brushes, and trying literally every brush you come across to see if you can find a use for it.

I've mentioned it several times throughout but it deserves its own bullet point, so my final tip is

4. Don't Ever Be Afraid To Google It

No artist knows everything. No one who claims to be an expert on Procreate knows absolutely every function, every application, and every trick all on their own--- but between all of us you can find practically anything just by googling it.

I have found super specific pattern brushes, youtube tutorials for pattern creation, configurations for pressure sensitivity, ideas for color palette building, templates for sticker making-- whenever I personally can't figure out someone else likely knows what to do. That's what community is all about!

You are not beholden only to your personal knowledge, so remember google is your friend!

I hope this helped! I tried to pair down the tips as much as I could but I just love getting asked about how I draw. 💖 If you or anyone else reading this has any specific questions you're more than welcome to DM me or send another ask. 😊 Have fun! Good luck drawing!!!

[bluepoodle7]

#MyAdventureTimeOcs #MyOldArt #PoodleArtMyArt

This is Fade and he is faceless prince in Adventure time he is a blank person.

Blank persons come in many skin tones.

They love to steal faces of other people and things.

But Faceless prince or Fade does not do that unless he is threatened to do so and once he takes a face he can copy the move set of the foe if he wins he gets to keep the face as a prize if he loses he won't be able to take the face of the foe he lost too.

He has a anti gravity head that is not connected to his body and his crown floats also.

Blank person's can lightly shapeshift their bodies to be stronger but the species are still learning how to change into other forms.

He only goes buff when he can't steal the same face twice because he lost the battle to his foe.

When he was younger he wished for muscle then the next day he had them.

He now uses his new buff form to bet up evildoers and help his kingdom build when disasters appear.

His abs are as hard as steel, he is very smart, has super speed, has tons of stamina, and has super strength.

Fade is friends(in love) with sweet egg sushi princess but rivals with Spriup.

These are my Adventure time Oc's i just made up.

Sus or Susan is a Sweet Egg sushi princess.

She has her food form and a human form.

She wears a ramen bowl royal hat on her head.

She has a pet Spriup which is a puppy that is made out of just spirals and that dog has a human form also.

Spriup is a male.

Her "skin" is brown rice and the purple band is the seaweed nori wrap dyed purple.

I drew both their Human and Normal forms.

Sus or Susan is the princess of Manga Kingdom.

Her pet is actually another prince from another land called Sketcher.

Spriup is her protector.

He is a dog made up of curls and spirals.

He has the ability to drain people's lineart to nothing by just touching them with either his hand's, feet or his tongue. (That's that gold S in the middle of his feet and under his hands. On the middle of his tongue.)

Most of the time Spiral dogs are genderless at times then slowly gain a gender when they are in love with a certain person only with a strong bond.

If you are lineless the sketch dogs will be shocked but will remove their own lineart then use it as a weapon to morph it.

But they tend to fight with one another for fighting experience and to challenge other species. (Spriup is secretly in love with Susan or Egg sushi princess but never shows it around her.)

He likes to act tough around the princess in battle and Spiral dogs only fight genderless in battle so they won't be distracted.

He has only lineart eyes but he can see fine.

The curls on his body are all the assassin's and all the evildoers he has defeated and drained of all their lineart which kills them.

He also has the powers of each of the enemies he and Susan has encountered but also the weakness.

He can be a serious character unless Susan gives him a chew toy he gets a little distracted when she gets in the room.

He may blush or pretend to do royal work and make up excuses to why he is blushing.

Sus is Susan's nickname and she is a laid-back princess.

She enjoys the music of the different places.

She doesn't want to do any work at all.

All she wants to do is have fun and hangout with Spriup if he has free time.

( Spiral dogs come in different colors but when they are born they are just like lineart scribbles without color with a dog nose when they are older they lose the dog nose but they can still smell while also gain colors.)

And Spiral dogs do not have fur it's skin.

I drew Zagiup in human and normal forms.

He also has a tailmouth. (A tail with a mouth on it.)

Zagiup a dog made up of Zigzags.

He has the ability to drain people's lineart to nothing by just touching them with either his hand's, feet or his tongue and on his chest.

(That's that Silver zig zag design in the middle of his feet and under his hands. On the middle of his tongue.)

This is another scribble dog type from Sketcher.

(That's that Silver zig zag design in the middle of his feet and under his hands. On the middle of his tongue.)

Some scribble dogs can have tailmouths and some don't.

Most of the time Zigzag dog are genderless at times that gain a gender when they are in love with a certain person only by a strong bond.

They tend to fight with one another just for fun and experience.

He has only lineart Zigzag eyes but he can see fine and the zigzags on his body are all from the good guys he has defeated and drained of all their lineart that kills them.

He also has the power of each of the good guys he has faced but also the weakness.

He is the older brother of Spriup and he is evil since he uses his powers for evil.

Past me found this sketch unfinished in the trash at school so I did finish him up.

I colored him and put him on silver mirrored paper.

(I want to redraw him.)

This is Elmer and he is the Emo Prince in Adventure time he is a half beast/human but this is his human form.

The X symbol on his hand is his transformer so he can change into a eldritch monster but this is his human form.

He loves to hear the despair and woe of people.

And mess with their heads a little.

He feeds on the worry of others but sometimes tries to help people with their problems if he's full.

He likes spicy and sweet foods if sadness is low.

He loves to play the drums and guitar.

He likes werewolves or whywolves more than vampires.

I drew both her Human and Normal form.

And Curl poodles do not have fur its hair and skin.

Puffodles a dog made up of curls.

This is another scribble dog type from Sketcher.

This is Pomuckles.

Pomuckles has the ability to makes people laugh uncontrollably but by just touching them with either her hand's, feet or her tongue just like her brothers Spriup and Zagiup but she can also have the ability to drain people's lineart if the comedy charm doesn't work. (That's that copper C in the middle of her feet and under her hands.)

(On the middle of her tougue and the blue her side is the lineart drain side.) Most of the time Curl dog are genderless at times that gain a gender when they are in love with a certain person only with a strong bond.

She is a very shy and a kind girl she tends to try the make whole world love one another and make peace while also laughing.

She doesn't like to fight unless threaten by a person or a animal.

She loves to bake and cook but mostly cupcakes.

She loves to make up new flavors that pop into her head.

She secretly loves Faceless prince but he doesn't notice her.

(She always brings him sweets whenever he meets Sweet egg sushi princess.)

Spriup loves is sister and would never let anyone hurt her.

Zagiup would destroy anyone that broke his middle sister's heart.

She would love to date any monster but found out Hug wolves exists.

She later gave up on Faceless Prince since he never notices her.

I hand drew Urn Daisuki and he is a pure blooded Hugwolf.

This is the before episode fanart of a hugwolf and it's just my take on a Hugwolf.

He is fast, strong he also has more features than a normal hugwolf.

He has a heart tail, has hearts on his ears, hearts on his knees and a heart tongue.

He can also talk only if he wants to.

He likes Puffoddle but is too scared to ask her out.

I used a base as a ref for Urn Daisuki holding a sign.

I hand drew her myself and she is Prismo like in my lore.

This is Mortal Retrospectra and she is Dream Traveler.

She travels through dreams to fight people's nightmares.

But she needs the bring the nightmares into the real world to tame them.

She also helped all the oc's I explained before hand with wishes to improve themselves or add on.

She has a yellow tongue and a green ear mouths with pink teeth.

Her eyes is light green with raspberry triangles around it with black pupils.

She has light brown skin, metallic blue pajamas with like blue cloud tips on her shirt and pants.

She also has a cloud in the center of her shirt. 

She has a raspberry six stared tail.

She feet are curved pointed.

Her hair is silver cloud hair with a Z symbol on top of her head and a purple bang. 

Her hair is long enough to cover her mouth.

I hand drew her myself and this is her wishcaster form.

She uses wish orbs to teleport things or give powers to wishermakers.

I did this myself on Ms Paint.

Her skin is raspberry with a star design with a light green eye with a khaki colored background.

This is Retrospectra's brown cone shaped time room.

Her mortal body slumbers at the curved bottom of the cone in a room.

I hand drew her myself.

Issick is a half human and her beast form is a deer/werewolf hybrid.

Her beast form is metallic purple, blue, and green with red eyes with green.

(Need to add more to her story.)

Her half human form has light brown skin, metallic blue ears and purple hair, a gold collar, silver shirt with a green spiral with a orange triangle also with metallic green bands with metallic blue sleeves, metallic green claws, metallic yellow pants with gold button on the top of the her pants, pink pockets with purple on the top, pink bands on her pants with light green bands.

Also she doesn't wear shoes the blue things are her hooves that look shoe like.

She has a blue and purple tail with a red >3 ribbon with a gold band on her tail.

Her tail kind of looks like a devil's tail. She also has a metallic red backpack with a :3 face on it with a curly leather head strap like hair.

 In her left hand she is holding a gold dagger with a red blade and in her right hand she is holding a yellow hook.

She is single.

I hand drew him myself.

I also bought this candle holder from a thrift store too.

 He is Issick's "brother"/best friend.

Chiaroscuro is a candle holder being that can change forms like animal candle holders and humanoid shaped candle forms but only in a silhouette like form.

He has all black metal skin and has a silver eye.

He floats instead of walking and he eats candle wax by his holders.

Chiaroscuro means the treatment of light and shade in drawing and painting.

And the candle holder cat was also from a thrift store but instead of silver and black it was originally gold and black.

I made this a new candle holder form.

I based Walton is this broken playmobil toy I own. 

I got them both from a thrift store.

I wanted to see if I could even draw him.

The Items I drew from.

A blog about obscurity stuff, plushies and food. on Tumblr

[strink-family]

What are some of your favorite drawings you've ever done

Oh wow. That's really hard. Excellent question.

So I went through a bunch of my old art, all the way back to early 2021 (anything older would have no shot at being on the list), and gathered some of what I think are my favorite drawings I've done.

Note that these might not be in chronological order, nor in order of favorites. I don't think I could rank any of these over another (except for one that'll be at the end).

Putting this under the cut because it's really long ♡

Let's start with this one (October 2022). Technically it's two pieces, but they go together. Obviously I like these because they're my header image, but let's get into it a bit. I'm very proud of the coloring on these, especially Chuuya. I think his hair looks really nice. This was back when I actually did colored lineart rather than what I do now (black lineart and set it to overlay), and I matched the colors really well to where it looks almost lineless. I continue to be proud of these almost two years later.

Next up are my GLOOM DIVISION pieces (at least, so far. I plan on doing more~) (May 2024). These are very different from how I normally draw, but they came to me very naturally. I really love the look of these. These pieces are some of the closest I've ever come to matching my visions for pieces, especially with SPKOTHDVL. I honestly find myself going back and looking at them a lot. I'm super proud of these. These are definitely in my favorites.

Next up, this piece from my cosplay redraw project (July 2023). I straight up think this is one of the best pieces I've ever drawn. If I may self-serve for a moment, the shading is immaculate, the posing is really nice, and so are the proportions. I'm extremely proud of this, and I think I'll continue to be for a long time.

Another one of my favorites might be this piece (July 2022). I feel like this piece was a huge milestone for me. It was the first time I did colored lineart, which really jumpstarted my whole "semi realism" style, which led to my art improving a decent amount. The anatomy isn't the greatest, but that's fine. I love the coloring, she looks really pretty, and my art likely wouldn't be what it is now if it weren't for this piece. Thank you red queen Algérie~

This one is another one (November 2023). I really like the shading, the poses, and the anatomy on this. It took me a long time, and it also has sentimental value to me because it's part of an AU that I made and really like.

Next, I really like my Implacable pieces (March 2023). I'm really happy with the shading and the anatomy and just generally how they look. I picked this one of her in her teacher skin rather than her in her normal outfit because I think I like this one more. I'm really happy with her pose and her hair and her face and the shading and the background...it goes on. This is one of my favorite Azur Lane works I've done. I feel I did her justice.

Next up, I love this entire Akutagawa project (October 2023). Akutagawa, in my opinion, is not easy to make look really pretty, and I think I succeeded. I specifically pick this piece out of the four because this one is my favorite. I love his pose and his outfit. The glasses look really nice on him.

Next, we've got this lovely piece (January 2024). This is my most recent Azur Lane work and, obviously, one of my favorites. It took ages and a lot of trial and error, but I'm very happy with the result. Both Hindenburg and Kearsarge look gorgeous, and while the background is kinda simple, I feel like it brings more attention to the characters. Also I'm a sucker for bunny suits and everything bunny🐇

Before we close off, I'd like to share these honorable mentions that weren't quite high up enough to be talked about (and Tumblr also won't let me include any more pictures), but are also up there as some of my favorites. Obviously these span a wide range of time, but they all have their own special charms and elements that make me love them.

Lastly, I'd like to talk about my most recent completed project (July 2024). This right here might be my magnum opus. One of the greatest drawings I have ever done. For those unaware, this is a redraw of a photo of my second favorite musician, Dallon Weekes. It was a bit of a trend to redraw the photo, and I, like many in the I DON'T KNOW HOW BUT THEY FOUND ME community, absolutely adored the photo, and so, while I was very late, I hopped on the bandwagon and made this. It took a month, and because it was so late, that might be why it didn't get as many notes as I might've hoped. But you know what? I don't care. This is my favorite drawing I've done, probably. I think I did an amazing job. I'm incredibly proud of it.

I received this ask and started writing and compiling all of this before I completed this drawing, funnily enough, so I had no idea what my number one might've been. But now, I think I can safely say it's my Manic Project Dallon photo redraw. I know I wasn't asked specifically what my number one was, but I thought you might enjoy knowing.

Thank you for the question! I had a lot of fun thinking about this and answering it~

Anyone who read all of this, thank you. I hope you enjoyed seeing my art, going all the way back to 2021, all the way forward to now. Love you all ♡

[that-g3-artist]

Palette challenge #3, from @zeldadou! and hoo boy, did this one fight me lol! the other two i did took 2 hours or less, this one took me closer to 5 or 6. I just could not get the colors as bright as i wanted, so I absolutely cheated and used a shit ton of overlay and glow layers. they are all from the palette, i promise!

I’ve got one other request sitting in the inbox rn (which i will definitely go back to my regular painting style for lmao), after that i’ll probably take a break from these. if anyone else sends in a request, i’ll probably just hold onto it until i feel like doing it :)

[ace-in-a-shopping-cart]

Jewel of the Sea: Chapter 18: A Long Overdue Talk

Chapter 17

Word Count: 1,594

Virgil woke the next morning curled around Elliott, who was trying to get out of bed. Virgil gave a soft groan before untangling their tails and rolling over. “Five more minutes.”

Elliott laughed. “Looks like someone got used to sleeping in.”

Virgil sat up, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and floating slightly before sinking back down into the natural bed. “What time is it?”

“Just past nine.”

Virgil nodded, and moved to grab a fresh covering from the closet. He opened his jewelry box for the first time in a few moons and decided to go all out. He was home, he was royalty, and he wanted to show it. Before he slid the first armband on, his eyes caught on the bracelet Roman had given him. His smile was tinged with sadness at the edges but he kept it on, brushing his thumb over it. “Thank you.” He whispered.

“What was that?” Elliott asked as they turned back around.

Virgil shrugged. “Nothing. Nothing, let’s get to breakfast.”

They headed down to the dining room and took their places. Virgil’s mother commented on him being gone longer than normal but the family was used to him disappearing for moons at a time so no one made too big of a deal out of it.

Toby and Ember were talking about Ember’s crush and how she thought a Necklace was in her future. Nate and Jasper were discussing plans for the crops. Andy, as usual, was just sitting off to the side. Virgil bumped their shoulders together as he sat. “How are you doing?”

Andy just leaned his head on Virgil’s shoulder. “I should be asking you that.”

Virgil chuckled. “I’ll be fine. How have you been holding up?”

Andy closed his eyes, looking exhausted. Virgil knew his twin like his own mind and there was something they needed to talk about. “I’ve been taking it one day at a time, Virgie. Don’t worry about me.”

Virgil laughed. “It’s my job to worry about you, silly.” He squeezed his twin’s hand as they began the meal. “We’ll talk about that later, okay?”

After the meal, Andy said he was going to be in his room so Virgil went to the garden to try to sketch out the Necklace design. He picked up the slate and writing utensils, bemoaning the loss of paper and pencil. Just as he was getting somewhere with the drawing, a knock sounded at the arch.

He looked up, hair floating in the midmorning current. “Yes?”

One of the royal guards was there, looking slightly annoyed. “Someone found a royal-finned out by the edge of town. He says he wants to talk to you.”

Virgil nodded, putting his drawings and thoughts aside. “Send him in, won’t you?” He tried to put on the princely mask he’d always worn for affairs of state like this but he found that it was eerily similar to the polite mask he’d worn at the party. An event he would rather not think of at the moment.

He had no idea who he was expecting to see but it certainly wasn’t the very person, the very human, he was trying to forget. Logan swam in, his hair a mess the current had used as a toy, his shirt rumpled and barely coming far enough down, and his legs in the form of an indigo tail that, despite Virgil’s best efforts, his brain categorized as complementary to his own and a color that looked very nice on the human prince. Logan smiled at him, his hand coming up for a tentative wave. It was the meekest Virgil had ever seen him and, despite all that had happened in the past day, it hurt.

Part of him was elated to see him again, to know that he was here with him instead of with the-. He couldn’t bear to finish that sentence. Instead, he waved the guard away and rose to stand. “What are you doing here? Better question, how did you get here?”

Logan didn’t respond, his eyes scanning Virgil. The mer crossed his arms, acutely aware of just how many bands he had and how few rings. When Logan’s eyes met his again, the human took a deep breath with a wince, clearly not used to breathing water.

“It started at the cliff. I talked with the . . . entity that you gave the stone to. They gave me a tail for three days and I set off to find you. So, I swam for what must have been three hours before time and exhaustion caught up with me and I fell asleep. I woke to a . . .” His voice trailed off as he searched for the right word before eventually just gesturing to Virgil’s tail.

“Mer. We’re called ‘mer’.” Virgil supplied in a tone that conveyed more anger than the hurt he truly felt at seeing Logan here.

“Right, a mer. She asked me which blessing I came from and where my contingent was, claiming she’d never seen me in town before. I have no idea what she meant by blessing so I just asked for you and they brought me here.”

Virgil held up a hand. “What name did you ask for specifically?”

“Virgil. I asked to see a Virgil. I described the purple tail and the side fins,” he gestured to the ones that lined his own sides, “and they brought me here.”

Virgil nodded. “And why are you here?”

Logan frowned, awkwardly moving forward until he was as close as Virgil normally allowed. “Why wouldn’t I be here?” His tone made him sound as if he had no idea what he’d done wrong.

Virgil scoffed, throwing his arms wide. “Maybe because you played with my feelings for a few moons before asking to kiss someone else?”

Logan huffed out a breath, turning to the side slightly before turning back. “How about the lying? How about the consorting with that entity, leading me on all summer, the fake amnesia? How much of that was the truth?” He paused, hurt in his eyes. “Do you even truly care for me?”

That made Virgil snap, his heart shattering. “Out of all the questions to ask!” He had to take a second to run a hand down his face, batting at his floating hair. “Do you even know what I’ve been through in the past day, let alone the past four moons?” He paused for breath, sending a glare toward Logan when the human opened his mouth to speak. “I’ve been captured by pirates who wanted to sell me for profit, made a deal for my life with Remy, faked amnesia just to get that trinket of a necklace, fallen in love with a human and I might as well have betrayed my entire blessing in the process!” Only at the end did Virgil realize he’d been raising his volume the whole time and was now shouting at someone he’d once thought he’d never hurt.

Logan opened his mouth to give a rebuttal but paused. “Fallen in love? How would you be betraying your entire blessing by doing so?” His voice was softer and at a lower volume.

Virgil shook his head, feeling the headache that comes with tears. His voice was shaky but he managed. “No. You don’t get to hear all of my secrets and pain while I know you’re in love with someone else.”

“But I’m not!” Logan ran a hand through his hair uselessly. “I thought he was you!” This was quiet, barely drifting to him.

It was Virgil’s turn to pause, hand reaching to rub his aching eyes. “What?”

“It’s a story that most people would question the sanity of but suffice it to say that the person you saw, or think you saw, was a shapeshifter using your likeness.”

The space was silent for a time before Virgil sniffled. “Does that mean . . .?”

Logan nodded, coming just shy of Virgil’s personal space. “I had wanted to ask if I could kiss you before I professed undying love.”

Virgil smiled, feeling heat rise in his cheeks. “Is it too late to accept the kiss?”

Logan shook his head as his hands came up to cradle Virgil’s cheeks. Virgil’s head dipped down and their lips connected. In that moment, Virgil could have sworn time had stopped. The kiss was sweet and short but it was also everything Virgil had dreamed it would be even before he’d known he wanted it.

“Now,” Logan said when they broke the kiss, “what was that about you betraying your blessing? And, what is a blessing?”

Virgil settled back down in his seat on the sea moss, turning the slate over and hiding the picture that now served a new purpose. “A blessing is a group of mer.” He waited as Logan settled by his side, tails intertwining. “The reason I might have betrayed my blessing by falling for you is that I was willing to give up my life here and live with you on the land. Typically, once a mer chooses to leave their blessing, they aren’t allowed back in.”

Logan took his hand and gently rubbed his thumb over the back of it. “I’m grateful that you are willing to do that.”

Virgil leaned into him, his free hand sliding through the water to hover over Logan’s cheek. The human leaned into his palm and Virgil could have melted. “May I kiss you?” Virgil’s voice was a whisper that was almost a purr.

Logan smiled and leaned in.

Chapter 19

Main Taglist: (Send an ask to be added or removed!) @antisocial-xxxpert, @lizluvscupcakes, @more-fandon-than-friends, @i-cant-find-a-good-username, @vindicatedvirgil, @star-crossed-shipper, @justaqueercactus, @gayboopnoodle, @the-sympathetic-villain, @8-writes, @lizzy-lineart, @lila-lupus, @battlebunnyteardropsinthesun, @punk-academian-witch, @princedarkandstormv, @sirprplsnail, @sarcasmremovedsoul, @private-snippers, @mygenderisidiot, @mistythegirlfluxmess,

JotS Taglist (Send an ask to be added or removed!): @5-falsehoods-phonated, @vindicatedvirgil, @viva-la-pluto-dam-you, @acetatertot, @silvarraven, @logan-positivity, @virgil-positivity, @luella-the-homosexual, @positivitykitty, @akatsuki-no-katira, @ironwoman359, @winterwynd, @lookingforaplacetosleep, @lonelyanxiousbean, @modsnow, @pansexualpuppet,

[sakimeihime]

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━   Sakuya Kakashi Gaiden Settei ━━━━━━━━━ 藤神咲夜下忍設定 ━

「✿」Sakuya graduated the Ninja Academy at age eight, a more common graduate age for her generation as the ongoing wars had such a high demand for shinobi.

「✿」 Despite this, she was never placed on a proper four-man team like most other students. Sakuya immediately joined the Medic Corps following her graduation and began training as a medical-nin. Her father continued her training in combat and other shinobi skill.

「✿」 Sakuya was promoted to a Chūnin at age ten.

「✿」 Because of her father’s relationship with Hatake Sakumo, Sakuya was close friends with Kakashi in her early childhood. She became extremely close friends with Rin Nohara, and eventually developed feelings for Obito Uchiha during her childhood years.

I’ve been wanting to make a settei sheet for Sakuya’s design in the Kakashi Gaiden for a very long time, but I could just never come up with a good outfit. When I finally did, it was a struggle to finally finish a proper settei. I was frustrated with this piece in particular, since I had livestreamed a large portion of the process (you can follow me on Twitch.tv here to catch my streams!) and towards the beginning, I was unhappy with how pixelated my lineart was. I decided to double the canvas resolution and start over, but my lines were still pixelated. The canvas, to my knowledge, was nearly 7,000 px wide, and my computer can’t handle much larger of a canvas, so I decided that I would just stick through the remainder of the drawing. It turns out that the program either didn’t register the command, or I accidentally must’ve hit “cancel” instead, because the canvas resolution never changed, and I didn’t realize this until I was nearly finished with the drawing. Trying to enlarge the resolution later on caused a lot of the colors to bleed through the lineart, and it was just too much of a challenge for me to go back and fix that. I was able to fix it for the back view of the settei, so hopefully that helps a little.

I hope you enjoy it!

┊⠀⠀┊⠀┊⠀⠀┊⠀┊⠀✿⠀⠀┊⠀⠀┊⠀┊⠀

┊⠀⠀┊⠀❀⠀⠀┊⠀┊⠀ ⠀⠀ ┊⠀⠀┊⠀┊⠀✿

❀⠀⠀┊⠀ ⠀⠀⠀✿⠀┊⠀⠀⠀❀ ⠀⠀✿⠀┊

⠀⠀ ✿⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀❀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀ ⠀❀

･ 認定する ･

Credit

───────────────

Illustration and Character Design © @sakimii Credit to @hebi-no-josei for their lovely Settei Help!

⠀

必読。| Please read the following.  

My artwork and characters are *not* free-to-use resources.

You  may not use, trace over, edit, copy, heavily reference, re-distribute,  or re-upload my artwork, edits, designs, or characters without my explicit written permission, and a link back to one of my social media accounts.

You may not re-upload any of my works and claim them as  your own, no matter if the work is old, has been removed from my galleries, or if the character design has changed. You may not use my characters and designs as references or face-claims for your own characters, even if you credit me as the original artist.

You also may not utilize my characters’ biographies, stories, and traits for  your own characters. Do not heavily reference or take main elements  from my character designs and their character profiles.

[iggyalfi2319]

Between Borrower and Giant

BBAG: X/2/? - A/N A little idea I had on my mind after reading different G/T stories and different perspective. And I thought, “Why not crossing the perspecives in one story?”

The storyline isn’t really solid and expect me to use OCs and weird ideas. The scaling might fail me a lot, I’m not good at size appreciation ^^;

I’m all ears if you have questions or suggestion.

I hope I won’t drop it like other countless stories I gave up from laziness and block -_-; Also, English isn’t my native language, don’t be mad...

Hai, I stop rambling and let you enjoy that thingy.

=====BBAG=====

Giant: (noun) a person or thing of unusually great size

Tiny: (adjective) very small.

Borrower: (noun)  One who takes what belongs to another, and uses it as their own

Everything is just a question of perspective.

Patton hummed softly as he was cleaning his little cozy home.

It was located somewhere in the forest, few minutes away from the nearest town. He enjoyed the peace and calm from his place even though he kind of craved other’s company. Sometimes, he could be touch starving, causing him to be very clingy toward his friends.

Yet, he gladly enjoyed some time for himself in his little home too.

Being the “Dad” of the crew could be pretty tiresome.

Sometimes, he felt that he was abused for his kindness. He gave and gave. While he didn’t get much in return.

*tunk*

Patton got pulled out of his reverie when he heard a familiar clatter.

He quietly went to the kitchen while trying to contain his excitment of getting the visit of his favourite little guest.

Virgil came out from the teapot that was actually a secret entry specially made for him. The original hole in the wall being too small for him, he had widened it and hidden it behind a broken teapot, so he just had to lift up the cap for getting in or out from the pot/entry.

You see, Virgil was “slightly” bigger than the few Borrowers that Patton had caught the sight of before. The bigger male was curious about it, but the emo generally avoided the topic.

Patton got on his knees and slowly crept in the kitchen before watching Virgil dropping his bag outside of the pot and pushing the cap back to its place. Then he hopped down from his porcelaine perch, dusting himself off.

He looked around, noticing that the place was unusally quiet at this time.

“Odd...” He muttered. “Maybe Patton went out -”

“PEEK A BOO!”

Patton jumped out of his hiding spot, scaring the shitz outta the poor emo.

“UWAH!” Virgil yelled and fell on his butt. “HOLY FRIGGING SKET, PATTON!”

He grasped his chest, his heart beating like crazy.

“Oh I’m sorry kiddo!” Patton panicked. “I just wanted to surprise you...”

“Just don’t do it again...” Virgil muttered, trying to calm down.

“Any way I can help? Do you want some water?” Patton asked sheepishly.

“Go for water...” The tiny male answered, using the 4-7-8 breathing technique.

The young fatherly man went to fetch the small cup he got from a doll sized tea set he got specially for Virgil. While he knew he couldn’t force him to stay with him, he wanted at least to enjoy some time together. Virgil started to openly interact with him not this long ago, heck, Patton knew that the Borrower was still a bit weary around him. There was some days where the emo would sneak in, unannounced. Probably for taking some emergency stuff. In these occasions, Patton would pretend not to acknoledge him, despite really wanting to. He prefered avoiding raising up Virgil’s stress level. Though, that didn’t keep Patton from ostensibly leaving the needed objects or food.

“Here your water kiddo.” He came back with the little cup. “I brought some cookies too.”

He had been practicing on making smaller portions. Virgil’s unusually big small size made things slightly easier. If it was for standard Borrowers, making even smaller pieces would be too complicated. Especially with Patton’s bad eyesight.

Virgil thanked him before drinking up the cup. Then he picked up a cookie. To him, it was the size of a plate. He broke it into smaller pieces before eating it up.

“How is it?” Patton asked. “Do you feel better?”

“These are delicious, big guy!” Virgil moaned softly at the taste. “I feel a lot better already.” Patton gasped in delight, stars in his eyes while the smaller male finished off his cookie.

“You’ll have to thank Cara for giving me her recipe.” The glassed man chuckled softly.

He looked at the emo sitting on the counter, letting out a small sight.

Slowly but surely, he moved his hand.

As expected, Virgil watched his movements.

“M...May I?” he slowly approached his hand toward him.

The doll sized male leaned carefully against it.

Patton tried not to squeal in happiness.

Virgil was like a wild animal. Very hard to gain his trust and so easy to break.

The tallest gently ruffled the smallest’s hair with his thumb. The Borrower closed his eyes, enjoying it.

They stayed like that in silence, savouring the moment.

Patton must admit he loved Virgil’s company more than anyone else’s. For Virgil, Patton was someone nice to have around, even if he was a bit suffocating sometime. But that was a part of his personality, so he accepted it even though he voiced out or showed his discomfort, knowing that Patton would step back.

Soon, the Borrower moved away from the hand. Patton whined softly but he didn’t protest.

“I have a present for you, from the kids.” Virgil ruffled in his bag.

“Really?!” Patton bounced excitedly.

He had a soft spot for children. When he learned from Virgil that he was in a foster family with 8 kids, Patton wanted to know everything about them! Heck, he even wanted to meet them. Of course, Virgil downright refused. At first from the lack of trust toward the big guy. But then, from the dangerosity. From the travel from their place to Patton’s house, or from the hostile environment that Virgil had experienced himself.

While Patton pretty much immediately welcomed Virgil and the Borrower slowly growing close to him, he really didn’t like Patton’s friends and did everything to stay hidden from them. So bringing children was out of question.

Virgil pulled out was seemed to be a blanket to him, which ended up being like a small tissue in Patton’s palm.

“That was the biggest sheets they could get.” The emo scratched the back of his head. “Cara helped sewing them together.”

Patton vaguely hummed, admiring the artwork.

It represented one big purple and black person, a couple standing next to them, smaller in size, then 8 smaller figures surrounding the big purple one. The details in the lineart was impressive, and even the slightly crooked coloring was beautiful. “For Mister P” was written on the top of the artwork. “Mister P?” Patton chuckled.

“W...Well I wanted to keep it vague at that time...” Virgil sputtered. “But I promise I’ll consider introducing you properly to them...one day...”

“I’ll be looking for it.” Patton lightly petted him.

Virgil blushed lighlty.

“Guess who is here, Padre ~!”

Both of Patton and Virgil jumped out of their skin at the ceremoniously booming voice of one of Patton’s friend, Roman.

“It’s time for me to leave.” Virgil stood up. “Thanks for the cookie.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to stay for the night?” Patton asked, a bit disappointed.

“I have people waiting for me...” Virgil mumbled, packing the cookies in his bag, as well as some foil, toothpicks and other knickknacks that Patton would probably not need anymore.

Patton scooped him and brought him to the teapot.

“I guess I’ll see you later, big guy.” Virgil saluted.

“See ya, kiddo.” Patton smiled.

“Patton are you here?” Roman called.

Said glassed man just had the time to put down the cap on the pot.

“In here, Ro, I’m coming!” He called back, preciously cradling the present given by the Borrower.

“Ha! There you are.” Roman let out a princey huff.

Logan was apparantly here too.

“Greeting Patton.” He nodded slightly, before noticing the piece of fabric that Patton was holding. “What is this?”

“It’s a present from a little guest.” The father smiled

Logan and Roman eyed him suspiciously, but Patton was too busy admiring it to notice.

-

Virgil flew throught the forest, swinging his hooks from tree to tree like Spiderman. He had a long way to go and night was already falling.

While he enjoyed his little time with Patton, he cursed himself for not leaving sooner.

Cara, the foster mother, was surely waiting for him, a pan in her hand.

Though, she was used to it. Even before Virgil, because her husband, Amos, was the one going in the Giants’ realm for borrowing. He was the one who taught everything to Virgil.

The young man wondered how Amos could do that during so many years, especially when he was franckly smaller than him.

Soon, the trees were getting smaller and smaller, when Virgil reached the other realm.

Time for the change of perspective.

Virgil knew that he was near home, when the trees were just a few feet bigger than him.

He reeled back his hooks in his bag before continuing by foot, slowly heading toward the big old shacks, patched up here and there. Signs of expansions were very obvious.

A blonde woman around her 50s with glasses and green eyes, wearing a pastel green dress with a yellow apron and sandals was waiting for him outside, her hands on her hips.

“Hi Cara...” Virgil looked down at her.

“Virgil Andersen! What took you so long!” She said sternly.

Though her expression softened pretty quickly when he winced at her tone.

“Amos and I were worried sick, and the kids wanted to wait for you before goint to bed.”

“Because I’m technically their bed, right?” Virgil snorted.

“Don’t be so cocky young man.” She scolded him. “Amos was even about to get you himself.”

“What?” Virgil’s eyes widened. “But it’s dangerous!”

“Hey, don’t forget who taught you everything, kid.”

A man also around 50s with wild blond hair, a thick beard, greyish blue eyes and dressed like a lumberman joined them, dragging some logs.

“Since you’re here, get them on the pile before we can finally go to sleep.”

Virgil easily scooped up the logs and put them with the others.

Amos opened the entry made for Virgil, meaning the whole front walls in two big doors.

The shack was big enough in width for him to live in but slightly cramped up because it wasn’t high enough for him to stand in.

The young man shuffled inside on his knees, careful not to knock down anthing. Of course, the furnitures were pushed against the walls so Virgil could easily move around, but years of living here made him an expert in twisting and avoinding objects. Very useful when you live with messy and mischevious children.

He let his bag in the entry, Amos saying they would take care of it tomorrow before shuffling to the sleeping area.

The floor was a giant mattress and above there was 8 hammocks.

Assuming that the youngest inhabitants were asleep, Virgil carefully stripped down to his shirt and boxers before lying on the mattress. He couldn’t fully lie down, and shuffled as quietly as possible to find a comfortable position.

Suddenly -

“Virgil is back!”

“Get him! Get him!”

“Finally!”

8 smaller figures fell on him.

“Oof! Hey, slow down!” He groaned as the kids crowded him.

“So you went to visit Mister P?” One who looked like a younger version of Amos asked. “Tell us! tell us!”

“Did he like the present?” A red haired girl who seemed to be a native American piped up.

Are you two getting close? a voice rang through everyone’s head as a white haired girl had galaxy like eyes glowing softly.

The kids snickered at the thought while Virgil sputtered.

“What make you think that!” He hid his face.

“So it’s true?” a brown haired boy jumped in.

“Okay, that’s enough!” Virgil huffed and plucked them off him.

He set them in their respective hammocks.

“I’ll tell you everything tomorrow. Now, good night!”

He curled up and started to drift off.

When he heard a soft “THUMP”, before feeling a small weight against his torso.

He opened an eye, noticing that the smallest of the children as nestled up against him.

Soon, another child joined.

Then another.

Then another.

Till all the children were all cuddling him, peacefully asleep.

Virgil sighed soflty and protectively curled up around them.

Between Borrower and Giant, the 20ft tall emo had to find his place in this two opposite worlds.

=====BBAG=====

BBAG: X/2/?

Leave a comment and a like if possible ^^

[staysocky]

answering a handful of asks under the cut !!

answers & replies here are generally:

brush settings

misc. responses

(MANY OF THESE I’M ANSWERING...VERY LATE.... IM SO SORRY FOR THE DELAY I JUST WANTED TO WAIT A BIT SO I COULD COMPILE EVERYTHING ALL TOGETHER.....)

Anonymous said: Hello friend may I ask about your brush settings? Because I am in love with your colouring and line work!

Anonymous said: Your art is so cute! What brushes do you use?

Answer: i main SAI2 now, but here are the same settings when i was using them in the original SAI!! 

(i just copied my own settings in SAI2 now so they should work the same... also sometimes i use the marker tool for doodling nowadays)

Anonymous said: do you post speedpaints anywhere? i'd love to see your painting process! your art style is phenomenal hngh 

Anonymous said: Do you have a youtube channel? Just wondering, since I can't seem to find it. I'd like to watch some speedpaints or something .u.

Anonymous said: could do you a tutorial on how you color hair??? its so pretty and baffles me all the time

Anonymous said: Would you ever do a tutorial showing how you draw? I've see you post on how you color but not lineart (ps your style is super duper cute!!)

Anonymous said: Ayy ;3c hello stocky, your art is amazing ;; how is your process for color your drawings? Plz need to know! God bless you♥

Anonymous said: How do you color soooo well? Can I get some tips? ( ;n; )

Answer: i’ve sometimes done lil art streams for friends before! i could use the same capture software to make speedpaints sometime.... i’ve been considering it for a while actually! 

my process can be a lil sloppy when i try to break it down into steps for tutorials so i think the best way to show + explain is through art streams (& video process)... 

i was thinking of starting art streams on twitch in the near future too... it’s just when i’ll finally be able to get setup finally that i’d be able to set a streaming schedule

Anonymous said: I never played Megaman but I used to watch my older brother play it, and I finally started playing it because of your art too lmao (i love it)

Answer: MEGAMAN GOOD!!! im so glad you’re enjoying the series now too!!

Anonymous said: Socky, will you restock the sanic charms (the knuckles and tails link one) or make other characters?? i love them !

Answer: THANK YOU i’m glad u like em!! each time they sell out i do plan to restock them so no worries!! 👍 I AM AIMING TO MAKE MORE CHARMS OF OTHER SONIC CHARACTERS TOO they’ll come eventually when i’m able to make the designs & get them ordered!!

Anonymous said: ((whispers, this may have been asked before and I wasn't sure where to ask it, but what does "i tried my best x5" mean? is it a reference to something? ;;))

Answer: OH NO WORRIES I’LL CLEAR IT UP!! it’s in reference to a youtube user’s rp comments as “kagamine len”. i’ve seen it MANY years ago & at that time it became sorta an inside joke between me & my friends. 

later i referenced/used it as a response a few times on my len askblog to keep it going.

it’s a small lil thing i guess but i’ve sorta adopted the saying now haha

Anonymous said: socks r gr8 doncha think

Anonymous said: ookay im going to sleep now sorry

Answer: no come back you are valid !!

Anonymous said: your aRT gives me heARTATTACKKKS

Answer: BREATHE, ANON

Anonymous said: I JUST FOUND YOUR BLOG AND I LOVE YOUR ART STYLE! <3

Anonymous said: Wanted to say I absolutely love your art and how you draw the Kagamines. Please keep it up!

Anonymous said: HELLO I JUST. WANNA SAY I ADORE YOUR ART AND BLOGS !! KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK AND I ALSO WISH YOU ALL THE BEST !!

Anonymous said: your art makes me cry out of joy. I am actually crying because your style makes me so happy!!!! keep up the good work!! <3

Anonymous said: your artstyle. CUTE

@transjackatlas​ said: you art style is absolutely adorable 💙💚💕

@emmi-san​ said: I only wanted to say that I love your art style and the cute representations of the vocaloid songs ✨💕

@tyranart​ said: Your arts wonderful and I hope your day is full of nothing but enjoyment

@thekillermarti​ said: how do you draw so cute?!

@neykoart​ said: YOUR ARTSTYLE IS SO CUTE OH MY GOD YOUR TETO DRAWING WARMS MY HEART SO MUCH

@dumiz-hyper-saiyan​ said:  Hiya! I wanted to ask, how is your art so great!? You are so so talented (I know it’s not really a question but I love your drawings so much! I hope we can be friends cause you seem to be a amazing person!) hehe!♥️

@seraphofivorylight​ said:  (￣▽￣) i just found ur blog today and i want to say i really love how soft ur art is !! its super pleasing to look and i definitely wish i could have some of these as prints to slap onto my wall of posters ✨ keep doing ur good work !! i hope ur doing well !!

Answer: THANK YOU SO MUCHHCH!!!!! i’m glad y’all are enjoying my art u folks are the MVPs & it’s super motivating to get your nice feedback _(┐「ε:)_ 💕 💕 //sends you all my lov e

@moderndayoutsider​ said: Just thought I'd shoot a message and say that I absolutely ADORE your art and you're one of my inspirations <3 God bless! Keep on doing what you're doing! :D

Anonymous said: ahh i wana say that ive been a fan of you for years and youve inspired my own art sm T_T... bout time i told you how much i love ur stuff 💖💖💖

Anonymous said: Woah, I'm a bit new to your blog and I just want to say how cute your art is. I'm literally so glad this was on my recommended. If I hadn't clicked on your blog then I don't know where I would be. To be honest, I would send you this on my real account but I'm actually really afraid to talk to you, and plus I'm really shy heheh. But keep up the good work! You're an inspiration to us all.

Anonymous said: Hi socky!!! I just wanna drop by and say that I love ur art so so so much !! The coloring and shape of it is so appealing and sometimes I spend hours at a time on your social media just marveling your art. It's really pretty!! Keep up the good work ✨✨✨

Answer: sdfgFDGDdsf knowing that u folks are inspired by my works makes it all worth it, i hope u know (;__;💕 💕 thank you so much for sticking around & enjoying!!! it really means A LOT pleas y’all have a lovely week!!

Anonymous said: Do you take commissions?

Anonymous said: Commission?

Answer: I SORTA HAVE COMMISSIONS OPEN tho i take them by a commission form which puts you on a waitlist. i’m more active on my twitter and tweet updates, & handle most contact about them there...

here’s a link to the tweet about my current commission info + the link to the form is inside --> [comm info]

Anonymous said: Where are you from? Your art is so clean and stylish!! 💖✨

@mysticmangaanimepainter​ said: What year u start drawing???😮 

Answer: started drawing wayyy back when i was able to first hold a crayon haha. tho i sorta started paying attention to what i was doing around middle school? started drawing digitally between middle & high school iirc... im from the US also !!

AAAND AGAIN A LOT OF THESE WERE ASKED/SENT VERY LONG AGO.....  & IM SORRY FOR JUST NOW ANSWERING THEM... o+<

but to all who’s sent me nice messages & words of encouragement, thank you so much 😭💕💕💕 i rly appreciate em all & even tho i’m not very responsive here on tumblr i rly like to look at and read the messages from time to time;;;💖

[phoenotopia]

2019 October Update

Woops, I slipped by my stated blog date since I thought September had 31 days for some reason. So here's the end of September update, 1 day late.

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

Writing... And more writing.

That captures the majority of what transpired the last 2 months. The biggest cutscenes have been scripted as well as most towns, so we're really close... I estimate that the writing will conclude within the next 3 *weeks* and we will actually have a game that can be played from start to finish... Don't get too excited though, because then begins the game's vigorous playtesting phase and more polish. And since I've never launched a commercial game before, the next steps (PR, marketing, lot checking, ESRP rating application, trailers recutting, release date finding, etc) are uncharted territory. The only experience I have is launching a flash game 5 years ago, and that was a lot quicker and a lot less complicated... And so, I can't gauge how long it'd take nor give an accurate release date yet. However, as soon as I do know, it'll be sure to post it here first!

--- COMPUTER BROKE DOWN ---

Among the events that transpired in the last 2 months, my computer actually broke down. It would manifest as the computer shutting off about 10 minutes after turn on. And this was really worrisome because if my computer croaked, it would be a huge blow to the game's development. The time it would take to restore the specific dev environment I had set up would be considerable...

Luckily, it was repaired after 4 days of intense troubleshooting. I'll spare you the long list of events that transpired, but eventually my brother and I were able to narrow the problem down to non-spinning fans on the graphics card. I was able to zippo-tie two chassis fans together, and insert them below the Gfx Card's heat sink. Much cheaper than replacing the whole graphics card!

(please hold until the game's done)

--- MORE PLAYTESTING CHANGES ---

I'll discuss here some additional fixes/changes to the game based on my brother's previous playthrough (still going through that list, heh...)

F. Remember you can climb roots

I remember from a public demo I attempted (3 years ago?), that a lot of people got stuck at these roots, not realizing they could be climbed. Since then, we did a few things to ensure that the first encountered roots would be climbed. The roots' colors were brightened so they would stand out. A character, Ernest, comments that others have climbed the roots. And finally, standing in front of the roots will cause the "Press UP" tutorial prompt to appear.

So how did my brother fare when I did the playtest 2 months ago? He climbed the roots, thankfully. He climbed the next few sets as well. However, later on, in a dungeon, he forgot that climbable roots were a thing. Back to square one. So there's a lesson here... Even if you teach a player something, there's no guarantee that it'll stick.

So in the picture above, you can see my next attempt at an invisible hand to remind the player. In the red circle, notice there are 4 blue dots. These blue dots pulsate wherever there are climbable roots (They're a lot more visible in motion). The idea is to tie an unusual image to an action. I anticipate when the player sees 4 pulsating dots, they'll react by attempting a variety of actions, before eventually concluding that you can only climb them. And that this experience will be more memorable for it - to be conjured up whenever the player sees 4 blue dots. I look forward to observing what happens with the next blind playtester. (Btw, in reading this blog, you have disqualified yourself from playtesting :P)

G. Instant Food Eating

As stated in a previous blog post, the player can't eat from the menu. Food must be eaten in real-time. It's up to the player to find a safe spot to eat, away from interruptions. Some foods can be eaten more quickly, proving more valuable in a fight.

However, what about on the world map?

You can't use tools or items on the world map, which means no healing at all! I saw my brother opening the menu and tinkering around, confident that it could be done. Because why couldn't you?

Indeed... he didn't say anything, but I wrote it down as a feature to be added. And after adding it, found that eating from the menu was  fun! After years of using the new system, to have the old flash system's implementation of healing again was refreshing.

And so I decided to add it as a possible new characteristic of food. There's now a special class of food, "candy", that actually can be used from the menu (world map or no). Rest assured, candy items will be balanced - costing more than regular food, and their healing effects will tend to be less than other more timely items.

(the “eat” subcommand appears for "candy" class items. The candy icon on the bottom-right denotes a candy class item)

H. Fishing Hud finally updated

This wasn't something discovered through playtesting, more of an unfinished task that sat around for far too long. 

(Old fishing hud on left. New fishing hud on the right)

In the old fishing hud (perhaps an example of minimalism taken too far), the fish's health is represented by 10 white dots. In the new fishing hud, the fish's health lines up and mirrors the player's own stamina. Whoever outlasts the other wins!

I had actually been sitting on the finalized graphics for over a year. For some reason, the last 10% implementation of a feature tends to be the most boring. In game development, I find myself jumping around often, working on whatever can catch my interest. That's good for ensuring that the game's development is always moving forward in *some* capacity. But now at the tail end of development, only the most boring tasks are left...

--- WRITING ---

So I mentioned writing. One of the things written in the last 2 months was the entirety of the "monster" village's NPCs. This time I also roped in Pirate (formerly artist, now also writer), since she's quite familiar with their lore having drawn them and their town.

When I wrote trolls, I wanted to give them a unique speech, not unlike the Mr. Saturns from Earthbound. My idea was to capitalize all words and then strip away as many unnecessary words as I could, while keeping the meaning identical.

Pirate then took the result and improved upon it, establishing rules their language could follow to be consistent:

Simplified negatives (no instead of not/don’t/can’t/etc);

Object pronouns replace subject, possessive and reflexive pronouns (me/name instead of I/my/mine/myself). 

No ‘be’ verb or it’s conjugations (am, is, are).

No verb conjugation.

No articles.

(A sample of troll language. Harpy language is similar, but no caps, and a few other variations.)

Another neat thing that happened naturally over the past two months was a construction of a "timeline". The timeline takes the form of a 2D chart, with the major players lined up on the left, and the years up top. There are new characters this time around, and having the timeline as a reference, helps to make sure the lore is on point.

(the timeline, blurred. An internal tool to aid writing)

--- FIVE YEAR ANNIVERSARY ---

Speaking of which, it was the game's 5 year anniversary this past August 20th. Thank you to Firana for reminding me!

Five years... Five Years... T_T (I thought I'd be done by now)

It'd be neat to do a longer in-depth retrospective on this game's long development, but I'll wait for the game to be properly finished first.

--- FAN ART ---

We have 3 lovely fan arts that came in the past 2 months.

(Art by Amaury Lorin)

I like how this picture selectively colors the night sky, comet, and fire. Very artistic! Amaury also submitted a poem (in French). Here it is!

Parmi cette clarté que la nuit seule émet, Au-dessus des radis géants qui s'épanouissent, Nonobstant sans souci les herbes qui frémissent, Sous un ciel calme et sombre, un village dormait.

Éprise de liberté, une puki part Là-bas, quelque part où des prés plus verts la tenant. "Oh, s'écrie un enfant, une étoile filante!" Veille, enfant : pour tes grands yeux curieux seuls, ce soir,

Indifférente au sol précipité sur elle, L'étoile tombe... Écoute, enfant, elle t'appelle; L'étoile : "Suis-je un ange, un messager du ciel?

Avec mes feux, suis-je augure, ou suis-je étincelle? Gloire d'un monde haut, d'une nuit éternelle... Et j'arrive!" --Dors, enfant, tes yeux ont sommeil...

                                                         ...mais demain...

(Art by LittleLys Owo)

Gale smiling and flashing the peace sign. Nice! I like the skillful use of vectors to draw the lineart.

(Art by Shafiyahh)

Shafiyahh, who also drew fanarts in the last update, returns with this cool picture of Gale sporting the katana, a hidden weapon that... JK. I Love the composition of characters, and the flashy background - very anime-esque!

That's all for now. Next update will come at the end of November!

[franeridart]

Hiya dude! Sorry if this ask is annoying, but I was wondering if I could make an oc with a similar quirk to Akane? I was considering making an oc that can control color, but if I do actually end up posting about them, I don't want to make a character that seems like a copycat. :')

Sure thing! I don’t own the concept of that power after all hahaha

Anon said:Will there be any of the KiriBaku kids on your red bubble? :) They’re so cute!! 💕💕

Why not!!! Just gotta draw something with them that’s actually worth uploading first 💕💕

Anon said:Your blog is so.... therapeutic??? I think I went through it at least four times by now. I'm absolutely in love with your drawing style and even better au ideas.

Anon said:akane would be dangerous with red paint bombs

Anon said: Akane could shoot or throw paint balls of red paint or even powder to cover things and villains and since the paint isn't alive she could control it.

Anon said:Pertaining to the question of blood, red blood cells live approximately 120 days. If she kept blood in a tube and waited until the cells are dead, can she control them? Is one of her tools going to be capsules of red dye that she can use to paint her enemies?

!!!!!!!! Many people have mentioned that and it makes me actually super happy because that was something I thought about too, for when she’ll be a hero! The paint should be fast dry though or else she’d end up just moving the paint off the things she threw it on hahaha also about the blood thing, yes she’d be able to control it but, I mean, why would she do that hahaha

Anon said:Do you have any ideas for an older Akane? I image that she would get into UA and that she would have the coolest hero costume! With different shades of red so that she could possibly use it for defense or mobility, and a cloak that could withstand attacks. I LOVE the idea of her having red knives and weapons that she can use for offense hidden under her cloak, probably attached to her pants. OH and also she could have a red chalk pallet on her thigh so she could color things so she could move em

I do have a bunch of ideas!!! But since she’s a kiddo in the AU all ideas don’t really matter all that much yet, so I’m totally up for everyone imagining it however they wish! And I like all of your ideas so so much!!!!!! Thank you for liking my kid enough to think this much about her!!!! 💖💖💖

Anon said:i love your new bakushima parents au thing with akane!!!! it's so freaking adorable!!

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!! 

Anon said:What is your sexuality?

I don’t mind saying, but why do you wanna know? :0

Anon said:Do you think if Akane was raised by her biological parents she could be somehow trained to use her quirk on living things? Like her morals and pure heart are what stop her from ever even thinking about doing something like that???? Sorry, idk I just tend to want sufficient angst when it comes to things I like, and I LIVE FOR AKANE!!! She could easily be a top hero and I LOVE to see more of her!! Thank you for creating her!!❤️❤️❤️

I’m gonna have to hold the answer to this question cause it’s actually gonna be the topic of a comic I mean to draw soon-ish >:]c

Anon said:That fire diamond Bakugou and Pearl Kirishima au is everything. Hope we'll get more of it in the future. I'm curious about what happened with kirishima :D

Aw anon, I’m so happy to know you liked those but I don’t think I’ll ever get back on that concept :( posting those ended up with a lot of unpleasant things happening so now they’re tied to unhappy things for me :(( sorry!

Anon said:aww Akane, give him a chance, maybe he can be your 2nd papa ^w^

>:]]]]] s o o n

Anon said:I give her like 5 years and she will like Kiri. Nobody can resist Kiri long.

>:]cccc sooner than that 

haha

Anon said:u have only been drawing akane for a while and i 110% support it i love her so much

That!!!!!!! Makes me so happy!!!!!!!!! Thank you!!!!!!!!

Anon said:I'm in love with this new au help

😭😭😭😭😭😭 thank you so much!!!

Anon said:God I am loving this please don't stop with our little red babbbey I wanna know what happens next 💙💙😔👌💙💙

AAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Anon said:I have known Akane for a day now but if something happened to her i would kill everyone in this website and then myself

You guys are gonna make me CRY FOR REAL!!!!!!! so much love thank you so so much!!!

Anon said:The way you draw bakugou is so amazing I can't even,,,z that undercut???? Beautiful. The way his treats little red???? Fantastic.

I’m GLAD you like the concept!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 💗💗💗💗💗💗

Anon said:I'm very sorry to say this but.... What if Bakugo had a quirk that when he says "DIE!" the first thing he sees after saying that explodes. And what he will do with it? Will Kiri still be with him?

...................anon I’m gonna be very honest with you that sounds like the most OP quirk ever omfg does the intensity of the explosion change based on how loud it is? If so it’s such a strong quirk it’s fantastic !!! and I don’t see why Kiri would have a problem with it tbh haha

Anon said:I know this may be weird or personal but, what's your race/where are you from?

I’m Italian! It’s actually written in my faq!!

Anon said:Hi, sorry to bother you but ... Can I please draw Akane, your OC, she is so precious ! I really like your work on her, her design is truly cute ... Obviously if I post it, I will give you credit ... ( Sorry for my broken english, it's not my mother tongue )

YES!!! Thank you so much for wishing to draw her!!!!!!!!!

Anon said:You definitely don't have to stop this au any time soon. I love so it so much :D As always, your art and stories are incredible

Anon said: There is no need to apologize for continuing with this new AU, it's your blog and you can post what you want. Plus, the idea is really cute and your drawings are great! I think any kind of post of any AU is great, so don't worry about it, we're thankful for what you do, no matter the AU

You guyssssss!!!!!!!!!!😭😭😭😭😭😭😭 thank you so much for enabling me!!!

Anon said:I fcking love kirishima's hair in your latest comic, that undercut with vibrant red hair Is everyhting

THANK YOU!! I’m glad you like it since it was entirely self-indulgent hahaha

Anon said:The phone case I bought from you recently arrived and I love it a lot! You're my absolute favorite artist and I check your tumblr everyday to see if you've posted. I was wondering if you'll be connecting Akane with the other krbk kids cause it's really interesting. Plus Ultra!

Thank you so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And no, she’s a separate AU! I was actually unsure in the beginning (which is why Baku has the same hair in both aus!) but after I asked it seemed like people would have preferred it to be a separate AU so that’s where it went!

Anon said:Did you start using a different brush for lineart?

If this is about the pencil tool, no! That’s not a lineart tool, it’s just a sketch one :D I use it when I don’t feel up for detailed work and wanna be fast about what I’m making~

Anon said:Did Bakugo adopted Akane or is kinda like a teacher to her?

At the very first he was just a temporary guardian, but after a while everyone grew attached and he decided to adopt her! :D

Anon said:Ah I just had that image in my head of Akane training with her quirk so hard she can style her hair with it like super quick, like, at first she'd do it in secret then call Baku over and show him how she can make it braid itself then just has to tie the end (it's a messy braid but he's so. so proud.) (Btw I don't mean for you to draw this, I just thought it was p sweet :0 )

That’s!!! such a cute image oh my god TT0TT and I actually have half an idea for a comic for something on this line!!! well, vaguely haha maybe soon! 💕💕💕

[katzirrart]

Art Growth Compilation

I really enjoy doing posts about improvement in art.

It makes me feel better about my work, especially with how busy I am these days.

I wanted to compile all the comparisons I’ve made over the years and kinda discuss the posts, for myself or others.

I thought it’d be funny to start with comparing how I first drew on a tablet, using dodge and burn tools, to how I do now which is using layers and actually painting. It’s funny to look back on that, you know?

I linked the post I made, compiling all the month to month memes from 2003-2017 that I try and do yearly. And everything else is under a cut ;w;’‘/

Most artists have done a drawing of themselves and a few Pokemon, or their team. I did that in 2010, and was dissatisfied with my work...

I took a crack again in 2013 after I’d learned to draw more animals and not be so Edgy(tm) I really liked the results. I still didn’t use references though, because I was lazy. I just didn’t want to. I still was on that boat feeling like I was CHEATING. I wasn’t being CREATIVE if I looked at references.

Artists get stuck on using reference and it’s AWFUL. USE THEM. USE TWENTY. LEARN!! It’s so HELPFUL, I wish I had started sooner.

In 2014 though -

I tried again.

I had gotten better at anatomy, but most of all, I started to work off references more. I started to really focus on not stylizing so much, but to work on actually making things look like things. I started to work on caring about COMPARISON sizes. Composition!!

While Pokemon reference sizes are -wiggle hands- and while my team changed up, I was satisfied that I could draw Arbok ACTUALLY like a cobra now, Meowth is easy given it’s just a noseless cat so to speak, Haunter is literally a triangle cloud - I was satisfied having drawn that team.

My secondary team in the new games? I was excited to draw them. It was fresh and new and FUN and it turned out PRECIOUS.

I learned better how to proportion things in an image for layout, and just... making characters feel COHESIVE in the same space.

It was a nice thing to keep visiting. I have a sketch in the works for an update even hopefully.

These pieces are kind of interesting to me too, because they’re towards the end of my era of THIN lineart?

My lineart has gone from this, and THIS,  to this.

Literally I use to not believe in line weight, I can still do thin work of course, but I’m not a fan of trying to FORCE it like I use to? Even the second link, I went from the SMALLEST brush in Sai, to using a marker brush that had barely ANY give, to a custom brush on Sai that acts like a Paint Chat brush I use to use with friends online!

That’s what I mean about style too, like you may reserve yourself about things - like not coloring black in and outlining with white, or certain ways you do things. But the growth and changing and figuring FUN ways to color that black etc is where the fun of art comes in, to me??

Learn. EXPERIMENT. PUSH!

A few months ago, I did my first redraw. Of this piece from 2012.

Six years difference.

This was interesting for a number of reasons. There’s aspects I like more in the old one, but not many. I really like the pose a bit better, but I like the casual closeness that I did in the new one because that’s more my Shepard.

But technically speaking, it’s worlds better because I took time. I paid attention to details. I did fun things instead of rushing. I took time with my coloring and didn’t SMEAR it around. I had a friend who use to complain I drew so fast and they felt so SLOW, but I love what that taught me. I started taking more time on my art, and enjoying it more since I caught more mistakes and vastly improved. By leaps and bounds.

It’s amazing what a difference six years makes in not only style, which is often a FOCUS of these things? My style has come awkwardly and naturally to me over the years of critically picking certain things apart? but I really love where it’s gotten.

I have things I want to get back to, but I love... where it is, and CAN be?

But it’s wild to me how much change happens in technical handling? It’s a hand in hand thing, you can’t focus on one or the other only, or the other suffers.

Honestly this has been my favorite improvement to notice though?

Kisame was a character I felt I should be able to draw EASILY? Not so much. Itachi? ALSO EASY. Not so much??

Kisame has weird eyes to grasp how to draw? Thus focusing on them kept making them wonky to me!! On top of that, he’s everything I’ve been use to drawing for AGES because he has a muscular body, with a smaller waist? ... that was something I was use to drawing? I still was awkward getting back into the swing of that... Drawing HIS HAIR though? NOT SO EASY....

But like, Itachi should have been easy, but I have a thing about him appearing too feminine as he gets drawn because his eyelashes, and I’ve really found a nice... medium at this point?

But even still like my face styles and eye styles are finally to a comfortable point for me? I have stopped focusing on some weird things with Itachi’s hair and just... DO IT? But even still like...

The improvement here is literally just if I don’t know how to do something, or I’m not satisfied with how I do it? I just keep at it.

It’s a theme of this post honestly... repetition, persistence.

Keep drawing it. Keep trying to figure out what it is that’s catching you off about how you do it. Don’t like how you do eyes or how they fit on the face? Look at facial structures and references and figure it out. Draw them separate and figure out how to apply them to what you are.

Remember there’s a skull in there. I draw the holes in the skull like the eye sockets, and the nose area to help my proportions for SURE.

I’ve also gotten to a nice marriage in my lineart? The piece before the recent one, those lines feel HARDER or HEAVIER? The newest piece seems...softer? Like I’m lighter handed again?

I really like critiquing my own growth on what is good or working better for me? Older pieces it looks like I’m putting lineweight for SAKE of it versus where it goes now?

INTERESTING.

Like this lineup -

My style shifts so RAPIDLY, it still is noticeably MY style to people, but parts shift so VIOLENTLY because I’m constantly picking at what I don’t LIKE.

It’s funny too in the case of Kisame and Itachi because consistently I’m drawing the SAME character over and over - can make you REALIZE how you’re doing something wrong?

Like, here’s a difference of eight years, and it’s all the brush I use now, and it REALLY shows how my style has changed - in the aspect of one point of reference?

I have a childhood favorite character too, of Daisuke, and I use to be bad at drawing boys, and I use to be SUPER bad at drawing fluffy hair?

It was something I specifically started to learn to do? And I started to draw Daisuke every few months or years for a while. Especially when I started to first REALIZE I didn’t like my style that much?

But the middle one was July 2009, top left is less than 6 months later, and the last one is about a year later. DRASTIC DIFFERENCE. But next -

This one was in 2012, when I started to do more with teeth, or first dipping my toes into anatomy. I started to focus more on HANDS too, I was super bad at them. Overall I started to focus more on making my art have...ages? Like a boy versus a man. Facial features being DIFFERENT.

I can look at this boring little bust and see that he comes off more of a teenage boy to me now. I need to work more on figuring how to draw asian features especially the eyes. Sometimes I hit the mark, other times I don’t.

but between this and 2012? Not too much has changed. I do hair fluffier now, and I angle the eyes better. The teeth not being outlined doesn’t give that weird effect where I might give him TOO MANY TEETH....

People do that and it’s easy but whoof.

So there’s still learning and adapting to do in QUICK drawings, you know? but I can still see there’s good things. That took me like 5 minutes to draw? Not bad honestly.

In it’s own bracket is original characters though too?? But also divergent of STYLE shifts because like...

OKAY. Nightmare Syndicate’s story.. started for me in 7th or 8th grade, that was when I was...14? 15? I’ve been fleshing it out for like 13 years, that’s wild haha!! I love my kids and all.

But okay so SIALI. She’s still fairly similar but I restructured her face for SURE. She’s gotten less edgy, she’s.... a teenage girl.

FELIX?? CHRIST. He’s been such a long journey!! More on that later?

Rot and even Cor?? Rot and Cor are a shorter span of development, but Rot started in Highschool so almost 10 years ago, and Cor has been fairly solid - but even just DRAWING him over three years? Go look at how much he changes.. I’m not married to concepts easily. haha!

People act like making a character you’re STUCK with it. Like Oh boy, I better make this character good, from the get go!!

I only worry about that with small potatoes like my Pillar(Gods) designs I just made for the comic?? Even still, small things will change with them I’m sure.

But not only has Felix and Siali changed, but they’ve GROWN with my style and DEFINED it even. I’ve had to adjust my style to support Felix’s look honestly a LOT. Bend my rules. Break my anatomy stickler attitude - and honestly, that’s the thing.

You have to learn the rules and anatomy BEFORE you can break them. A style built upon broken anatomy will fail you down the road if you just excuse everything with style.

Learn to draw the hands. Learn to draw the feet. Figure out the face. Bones exist. You can break the FUCK out of it once you learn how to do it, you know? Like I’ve seen so many styles I LOVE who are cartoony and BROKEN AS FUCK, but there’s still some STRUCTURE to it. Most of those people can still structure a face just fine, and the reason exaggeration works so well is because there’s like unwritten rules for what works and doesn’t based on that?

Idk.

Felix has a very elongated torso, he’s like 7′ or 8′ tall so I mean?? He’s... broken anatomy, but he’s... lanky - but his muscle is LITHE and stretched. It makes contextual sense. That’s the important part.

But even designs, it’s important to understand designs YOU make, or like... to understand they’ll CHANGE and that’s growth within your art too?

Like okay, example. Felix has a millipede inspired monster form. But with designing that? I still have to know how millipedes and SNAKES work because there's bones and vertebrae in there??

But there’s also the difference of like... CONCEPT, versus execution. You can design a fucking badass character, but understanding your own concept is SOMETHING.

I had no idea how this would play out, until I was mapping out his ‘midsection’ spikes? and man. MY STYLE WAS MADE FOR THIS CHALLENGE NOW. Which is so interesting how smooth my style has always been? Felix has defined ANGLES in it, and it’s hilarious tbh?

But even too, I’ve had to work with Felix’s monster form FACE, to break the rules to make it WORK the way I need it too?

On the anatomy subject too, like when I first got into Marvel comics 6 years ago or so? I had no idea how to do muscle structures?? I was so BAD at it.

I can look at this left image and CRINGE so badly at how NONE of those are muscles?? THOSE ARE THINGS I PERCEIVE AS MUSCLES. Like...

A course I took taught me to draw what I see, not what I know. That’s the whole point of that post that goes around about drawing a shrimp. Look it up. It’s hilarious and cute.

But it’s like, asking an artist to draw a bike, you can tell who uses reference and who WINGS it. It’s funny, but like it’s what you know versus what you see.

I started to study anatomy like crazy and was seeing improvements days at a time. The right image was done like... a month later? already I can see the muscles under the pectorals? those look normal now. the abs aren’t dough lumps under the skin in a perfect 6 pack, they’re the actual plane shapes.

I was trying to find a good reference for myself of learning to make men ‘thicker’ too in terms of the waist etc since the left is really...thin.... but...

A bit better, but even still, comparing these two - they’re 2 months apart? and I can see understanding more about arms and how they connect to the body, where the planes ACTUALLY lay for the chest and obliques and such?

I can see improvements from July 2012 up there, to - WHOOPS. I FORGOT TO CHANGE THE YEAR LMAO... TO FEBRUARY 2013...omg

I mean, I could go on and on about improvements I see, when I go through my art though? Gosh.

Like I’m seeing so SO many bad hands and feet in my old stuff, and just CRINGING because tricks I learned for myself by now?

I give so many pointers and streams and screenshares on discord still to help people with art and it cracks me up?? Like...

I dunno. I’m pretty mediocre tbh, but god damn.

[universal-kitty]

Aki’s Commissions- OPEN

   You know, it’s been forever since I’ve ever brought up the fact I do commissions? And that they’re open? And have been open since I first wanted to do them, but have never had the offer taken up?       (I also added my Ko-Fi on my page, too. Apparently, I never did that here.)

   So here’s a reminder that I do commissions~ Read all about what I can make for you under the cut!!

.: Art :.   Sketches [ Example (BLOOD WARNING) ]   Pencil [ Example ]   Lineart [ Example ]   Colored [ Digital/Traditional ] { Traditional || Digital }       -Bust       -To Waist       -Full Body   Icon [ Example ]   Character Design [ Example 1/Traditional || Example 2/Digital (NSFW warning!! Kinda? Nothing too graphic, really) ]   Music Comics [ Example ]   Animation [via Flipnote Studio] { Example }       -Simple       -Complex .: Stories :.   One-Shots   Chapters   Scripts   Character Bios .: Will Do… :.   -Writing~NSFW (both smut and gore, though I am unsure how good my violence writing is)   -Couples/Pairings [ OC/OC, Canon/Canon, OC/Canon, Self Insert/Canon, etc. ]   -Animals/Furries   -Robots (Art-Selective; Writing-OK!)   -Selective kinks (Art-Depends; Writing-Probably, please ask me via message first)   -Writing~Reader Insert   -Art-Bases (I can create bases for you; I won’t use em, though!) .: Won’t Do… :.   -Art~NSFW (actually this is more of an ASK ME kinda thing; I might, I might not)   -Incest   -Triggering topics in general (by that, most awful things like rape)   -Art~Drawing complex robotics   -In general, just ask about what I will and won’t do

.: Prices :.    Now prices all depend on what you’re requesting of me and what it involves. At the moment, art costs more than writing, for example; so that commission of your character with their significant other will cost you more as a drawing than if I had written a story about them. This is mainly because on a good day, writing for me is a lot easier than drawing, since I can focus on writing more without tiring, as on the other side… It goes on and on, so it’s easy for my attention to scatter.    A full, traditional art piece will most likely go from $20-25, with sketches being $10, pencils being about $15, and lineart settling at a price most likely around $17. Though again, this depends on the commission placed. A pencil drawing of Wheatley from Portal 2 isn’t going to be the same price as say, a Zora from Ocarina of Time, also done by pencil.    Animations also work on this basis, though with the added element of how complex or simple you want it to be. Simple is limited movement; hair in the wind, blinking and smiling, blink-and-blush, etc. Complex delves into wider movement, like a turn of the head to the viewer to make a facial expression, smiling and waving, drawing a sword, etc. Anything that draws out body movement will probably be considered complex. Since this will be done on Flipnote Studio and not an animation program, coloring is unlikely, but open to request. However, I will hold my right to notch up the price for a request for proper, digital coloring and not the FS color palette. (Mainly because the latter is a lot easier to use than the former.)    There’s also now an option I recently added called "Music Comics". Depending on tune and break, they’re usually about 70+ pages, but… You know, that varies. Seeing as these projects will take awhile and shift in price with the complexity of your character… I might shoot these up to at least $35 ~ $45+ at a base price. It’s going to vary a lot depending on page numbers, if you want animation parts done (only parts, it’s a “comic” for a reason!), complexity of the character(s), how many characters, and way of coloring. (These will be made on Flipnote Studio, most likely, so price is lower if you use FS coloring or slightly higher if you want me to use Photoshop colors.)    Character design will likely stay in the $20-25 range, as they will have full body shots and colors to go with them, which can be edited slightly by the owner, of course.       These also can apply to customs! I will gladly make you an OC- fandom related or not- as long as you specify you want this and a custom character! Outline as many or as little details as you want and I'll get right on it!!    Digital art is also an option, as I own a tablet now! However, my personal laptop is down, so while I can still complete these commissions, they will take longer than others, due to not having use of my personal laptop. The prices will probably stay in the $15-20 range as well, as I feel I am not up to standard with my art in that area as of right now. Icons are about $5 at the least! Might alter a bit depending on complexity. –    Story writing! As with the above, prices vary on subject matter and length.

One-shots will likely be placed at $10-15 at most, seeing as how it’s a straight plow-through to an end goal. 

Chapters will hover at $10-15, though may jump depending on what you need me to write and for how many chapters. 

Scripts (often for voice acting) may drop to $5 or even hop up to $15, again, depending on length and details needed. 

Character sheets would go up to the $10-20 mark, as it raises the question of what character, for what, and if any templates I already use would suffice. Like the reference sheets for art, they are welcome to slight alterations by their owners if my choices don’t suit the character they envisioned. (Just don’t go nuts on me, here.)

–

   Also… I do voice commissions! If you ever need me to voice something, I am up for just about anything! Check this tag on my Tumblr for the voices I have done in the past or this list of voices I can do for easier browsing. Voices vary depending on request, with the most basic sitting at $5-10. I can’t image that they’d get any higher than $15, but… I am also open to being hired, as well! Just ask about that, my Ghosties~!

–

   On a final note, I am also open for being hired for writing solely. If you feel my writing is good enough for a story you envision, but have trouble expressing? I’d love to write it for you! Need a BETA reader for a chapter coming out? I’d love to read it over! I’m also open to helping with plot details from books to gaming and, on the latter note, am also open to writing things as a script for games as well.

   (What separates this from commissions is commissions being a one or two-shot thing; I do the work you ask of me, done! Being hired by you is me sticking with you on a project until it’s hit completion and we all go out for a celebratory drink…whatever you fancy, LOL.)

–

   On the last note I shall give you all before you can either stop reading and run away (or maybe actually stay and commission; that’d be rad as heck), a format kind of like the one I’m about to lay down when asking for commissions from me would be awesome! It saves me from questioning everything and dragging out the order longer than it should be.

   What you want (art/story), with what/from what (your OCs/a fandom/a canon), with details of commission, followed by specifics, reference, and then a send off. Feel free to add more/less, depending on the commission you’re asking of me. Alter to suit your needs!

EXAMPLE

“Hey, Aki! I wanted to commission you for a drawing of my proxy OC! I wanted it to be a bust drawing in digital, with color and transparent background. Nothing special, but maybe have them give an intimidating look would be nice? You can find her reference here! [LINK] Please message me back with a price when you can, thank you!”

[keithbyrneart]

Da, da, da, daaaaaaaa...... that’s a little more dramatic than I had intended. I love all these wonderful Sai tutorials that get posted on here but I haven’t seen much attention payed to Sai’s Lineart tool which I can’t get enough of. I’m sure there probably are Lineart Layer tutorials out there - I just haven’t come across one so I’m just adding to the pile. The Lineart tool is so awesome it deserves any number of tutorials anyway. It’s so easy to use, it saves me so much time, and it offers so much control which I really love. Honestly, the tool is so easy to use that this is less of a tutorial and more of just a general encouragement to just whip it out and start playing with it. Yeah. So say we start with a simple line like this swirly-wirly thingy that I drew with the marker tool. Well, the first step would be to create a linework layer by clicking the linework layer button.

There we go. Now, a lineart layer in Sai is different from any other regular layer in Sai and it will bring up a completely new range of tools. I’m gonna briefly go through them but the best way to understand exactly what each does is to just try them out for yourself. There’s no substitute for experience or however the saying goes.

Pen - This is your freehand lineart tool and to best honest I don’t really use it that often. That’s just me personally. I have an expensive gaming rig that has all sorts of magic running under the hood but we all know that Sai’s memory management is pretty crappy and I don’t need the lag or crashes that come with this tool when working at a high DPI. You may have a different, entirely pleasant experience with this particular tool but for me, if I’m doing freehand inking, I’d much rather just use the regular Pencil tool.

Eraser - Kinda speaks for itself.

Weight - This one I do love. Say you’ve drawn a line - or a path as Sai calls it. With this tool you can adjust the thickness of the particular line by simply selecting the brush size and then clicking on the line.

Color - Same as Weight. Simply select your desired colour and then select the desired line you’d like to change. Very useful. For the aesthetic.

Edit - This one comes with its own subset of mini-tools that I’ll get into in a moment. But this is definitely a useful tool - for me it’s probably the most useful.

Pressure - This is the one that adds the character to your linework. I’ll explain further below.

SelPen - A selection tool. Pretty standard. Since the Lineart layer works in ‘Anchor’ points (which again, I’ll get in to further down below) I don’t really use this one.

SelErs - Selection Erase. Goes hand in hand with the SelPen. I can’t say that I personally use this one  much.

Curve & Line - The Curve and the Line tools are the cornerstones of the Linework layer. I’m explain both further down.

The Edit tool, as I mentioned, brings up its own list of sub-tools. And they definitely have their uses. Again, it’s best to play around with them to truly get a grasp of what they do but I’ll just run through them quickly before I get on with the main tutorial.

Select - For selecting anchor points of paths. Honestly, I don’t really use this one too much simply because hovering over a point or path and clicking will select it.

Move/Add - Now this one I use a lot. Moving an anchor will affect the curvature of your line if you’ve used the ‘Curve’ tool, or you can add curves to a straight line by clicking and dragging in between anchor points.

Delete CP/Curve - Kinda speaks for itself. It will delete an achor point in your line. Sometimes this can be useful for making your curves rounder if you’ve added too many points to it.

Deform Path - Again, kinda self explanatory. It will warp your line. I don’t really use this one myself but that’s not to say that it couldn’t have its uses.

Deform Anchor - See above.

Move Path - Instead of moving just an anchor or adjusting the curvature of your line you can move the entire line at once. Can be useful.

Duplicate Path - Does exactly what it says - creates a copy of your line. Haven’t found much use for this simply because I don’t particularly like copy/paste stuff in linework. Faults or differences add character.

Delete Path - deletes a line you’ve drawn independently of other lines on your linework layer. Can be useful as well.

Connect CPs - This is difficult to explain the benefits of. It’s one that should be experimented with. It basically joins lines together. I use it quite often. Just pick this option and drag from one anchor point to another to join them.

Pointed/Rounded - See the diagram below for this one. I find it very useful.

As you can see I used the Curve tool to draw a simple curve (left) and then I used the Pointed/Rounded tool to convert the curve into a point (right) by selecting the tool and then clicking on the anchor point at the height of the curve. I find it very useful. Anyway, back to our swirly-wirly thingy.

Because our swirly-wirly thingy is basically one long curve, I simply select the curve tool and start clicking. Starting at the centre point on one end, I click to add anchor points as I trace the shape of the object. Each point adjusts the curvature from the last point. It’s kinda hard to explain verbally or even visually but try it out and you’ll quickly see how it works.

Once I have a line over whatever I’m inking done I like to adjust the weight to suit my preferences. I like to work with thicker lines because they give more room to play around with weight. So to adjust the weight you click on the Weight tool, select a brush size and then click on your line. If only it were that simple in life.

Once I have a good weight selected I move on to the Pressure tool. The pressure tool gives you two options. Pressure for width and pressure for density. Width is like controlling the weight of the line at individual points and density controls the transparency. I don’t usually use the density option. As with traditional inking I prefer to denote depth, shadow, etc. with weight as you can see in the image above. To adjust the pressure, simply select the pressure tool and then select an anchor point. Click, hold and drag to the left to make the line thinner of more transparent and to the right to make the line thicker and more dense. As you drag, a percentage will appear over the anchor point you’ve selected. This can be useful for keeping things consistent.

That’s all well and good for curved lines but what about straight lines? That’s where the line tool comes in. It works exactly the same way except it won’t add a curvature to your anchor pints. Still very useful though. Especially when combined with the Weight and Pressure tools.

Here’s an example of one my drawings. It’s Dark Empress Kitana from Mortal Kombat. The one in red is the pencils which if converted to black would probably make a pretty good linework layer. I’m a firm believer in taking the time to clean up your sketch/pencils layer because it will dictate your entire drawing. The one below in black was done using Sai’s linework layer feature. Although not entirely. As much as I love Sai’s linework layer, it can look a little too clean which is not great when you're drawing people. Although, it's all art so it's all up to personal preferences and personal style. There's no wrong way to do it. For me though, I prefer to do skin, facial features, hair, etc. by hand using Sai's Pencil tool on a normal layer and reserve the Linework Layer for architecture, clothing or any non-organic substances. I inked Kitana's eyes and eyebrows freehand ( or as freehand as you can be with Sai's amazing stabilisers) but everything else such as her armour or her fan weapon thingy was done using the Curve and Line tools on the Linework Layer. I hope this tutorial has been useful. Or if not useful - then at least encouring to try out Sai's linework layer. It's such a robust feature that I don't see get much attention and I can't even begin to describe how much time it saves me or how much I adore it. If you have any questions (because I'm well aware how unsuited I am to writing tutorials - this is so damn rambly - sorry!) then feel free to drop me an ask here at keithbyrneart. P.S, sorry about my handwriting in the stills. It's gotten a lot messier these days.

[tuchimuchibrainvomit]

EPISODE 3:

Aloha, fellow Sakuga Seedlings!

Welcome to my case study series, Brain Vomit.

Name’s

Tuchimuchi Yoshinori – or just Tuchi…

And I enjoy animation. Especially animation from the eastern archipelago of Japan, also called “Anime”!

In this series, right here, I’ll be exploring Japanese Animation Production and enlightening this growing community and myself to the power they have in this expansive animated medium.

For today’s episode, I’ve chosen to discuss one of our most important topics that I’d love to talk about in great detail. And I want to be as sensitive and open-minded as possible, so please do not take what I say as any standard or absolute. This series is meant to enlighten, not to judge or criticize. But today, I want to discuss character design -- !!

I hear you, I do, but there is a reason why. Hold your horses, guys!

So, Character Design---We understand the basic logistics, yeah? A character design is simply that, how a character is designed. What aspects of the character give them individuality and what aspects help relate to the world/culture they live in.

Are they young? Old? Human? Furry? Tentacle Monster? Whatever.

These are just the basic ideas...

Character Design is something some people understand it well and others… not so much. I refrain from putting up examples of bad character design as not to offend anyone. But, often things can get lost, over done or just a bit... lacking creativity.

Hence why today, I want to focus on breaking down character design--and not Character Design in a broad spectrum, but Character Design with the Animators in Mind.

Animators in mind meaning...?

Oh yes, character designing for an animator -- streamlined, easy to animate consistently and efficient.

So. let’s start broad and narrow it down, to help reinforce the points I want to explore…”

Q: What makes good character design overall?

First of all, I hate the idea of “good” or “bad” character design. It’s less about being good or bad, as those are more opinionated, rather more of a design being “successful”.

Depending on your perspective, design can be merely the aesthetic choices or a solution to a problem. But in reality, it’s a marriage of the two.

A: Since this is more opinionated than definite and I am not a professional by any means. Based on a multitude of different opinions across the net and through some readings that I’ll like below, these are the main 5 factors that in my opinion make for a successful character design:

1.) Silhouette

2.) Aesthetic and Style

3.) Reproducibility

4.) Exaggeration

5.) Fungibility

Let’s break all of this down…

Silhouette: The most straightforward. A silhouette is the basic structure of your character, most easily expressed when put into shadow or overlaid with a color that gets rid of lineart and detail.

Let’s perform a -- Silhouette Test-- on some characters, which I believe are all well designed.

(Insert silhouettes here)

What is the Silhouette Test? It’s simple really, take a character -- or a bunch. And turn them completely black, a silhouette. I recommend choosing a pose or a model sheet where the action does not overtake or mask important parts of the design.

Ask yourself these questions:

-- Does your character stand up to the silhouette test?

-- Can you tell which is which in a crowd of silhouettes?

Yusuke Murata of One Punch Man remake and Eyeshield 21 fame is known for having interesting background characters in his work -- fleshing out his world a bit.

Now see if they stand out from each other and that of it’s contemporaries. If you can tell who a character is from the silhouette, congrats. You have the makings of a successful character design. 

However, remember context is always important! Silhouette is not the end all be all.

Let’s try it out! Or better yet, let Extra Credits explain it every better with video!

(Check out their stuff! They have some great videos on Game Design)

There are many things that can help an artist create characters with different silhouettes.

For example:

-- Use different blocking shapes to build your character. Start simple and grow into complexity. Honestly, simple is always better.

-- Use the shadows of other objects to your advantage.

-- Study body types, I hear a collective group groaning--No. You can’t have every girl have the same huge boobs and not every guy can be a bara wet dream, if you want interesting and differing character designs, variation is very important -- OMNI-IMPORTANT -- even, let’s put ‘Omni” in front of it. This not a difference of opinion, this is just the basics of broad character design. I won’t name names, but many artists I love, realistically speaking, may not be good character designers--And that’s OK!

Build with shapes. Understand shapes and how they come across to the eye, I recommend this video by SuperEyePatchWolf to even go into that better than a couple of words from me ever could!

A bit of a tangent, but more my opinion: Here’s where Furry characters have a strong advantage, they can use animalistic features like ears, tails and muzzles and exaggerate them to make a more interesting silhouette without building up all this detail. Because I’ll be frank -- more detail to clothing and face without changing it’s shape is not gonna make your silhouette any stronger.

So when I see furry designs that are basic with just a lot of color or patterns, it doesn’t really work. As the silhouette test takes out the tertiary details and focuses on the form. If you’ve never heard of a sparkledog -- you are blessed.

Moving on!

Aesthetic and Style: This is where you get to get your creative side on. Be creative and show off your individuality! But focus on the character, think of their background and personality, make sure those are congruent to the world you are trying to build. This is where CONTEXT MATTERS!

Ask yourself these questions:

-- Do your characters have a distinct look? How does it compare to others with similar influences? How does it compare to my influences?

-- Can you tell what style is yours based on how they are drawn?

-- Does my character stand out from other characters I’ve designed?

-- Does my character's identity come through the basic design?

If so, then you passed! You probably have a strong aesthetic, and you may have also avoid plagiarism charges from other artists…

Seriously... I 100% understand having influences, but the “discount this artist” isn’t super appealing. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but at the same time -- most artists want to be seen for their individuality. Quite the double-edged sword. I recommend exploring yourself and your influences and expanding. Find new things in the world that intrigue you. Becoming better as an artist and designer is about exploring the world and yourself.

Always bloom proudly, as I like to say.

There are many things that can help an artist create characters with different aesthetic and styles.

For example:

-- Try understanding body differences and get creative with it. Life drawing. Life drawing is a necessity. Even if you cannot get into a class, sit outside and doodle people and their behaviors. There are plenty of sites with life drawing models with set time limits. I’ll put some links right here!

-- Understand character development. Understand your characters. A nerd probably wouldn’t have a suede jacket, a smug grin and greased back hair, unless the point of that character is dissonance of appearance and personality (And no, not all of your characters need to be this convoluted, most designs to speak for themselves. But in terms of audience expectations -- they should be able to tell some truth from a character’s appearance, Use those aspects in design.)

-- Keep your character simple before building complexity. Starting complex may leave you more in a rut than one would at first think. 

-- Study other artists’ styles, study styles of art in general! You may find something that inspires your direction in design aesthetic.

-- And stay passionate about what you do. It’s very easy to compare yourself to others in a destructive way. I won’t be that guy that says “always be drawing” as sometimes we all feel unmotivated from time to time and that’s OK. That’s life. But keep your mind active and be aware of both the self and the outside world. In the age of the internet, it’s easy to forget what fresh air smells like.

I believe every artist has a personal style inside of them that they can use to split themselves off from their inspirations. But in my opinion, when artists begin to blend, it screams red flags about those artists’ potential being wasted -- so the harder you experiment and learn from reality, the better off you’ll be in the long run.

I know, I didn’t hold any examples here -- but there’s no way to define what is a good or bad aesthetic. It’s all subjective, so that’s up for you to discover.

Third,

Reproductibility: Can you draw your character easily -- as in like 5 minutes maximum? This is more of an animation perspective, but if you cannot draw your character over and over again in quick succession, you may want to rethink your design.

(Burnout is plenty possible in any situation. Simplicity is merely a way to keep things moving.)

Is your style easy to emulate, but unique? You may have a style built for animation -- but with that does come danger from plagiarists. I know, I’ve been talking about it a lot today. And while I have never had the first hand experience, I’ve observed the feelings and it’s not a positive one. Maybe it’s out of my own fears in that regard. Who knows...

Character design. It’s a balance, really.

Repetition is key. That’s why simple is always best.

Got it down? Then you can design reproducible characters!

Things that can help you design reproducible characters:

-- Find things that flow with your hands. These characters will be drawn thousands of times, you need to enjoy drawing these characters!

-- Keep things simple, but not too simple that it loses aesthetic and style.

-- Look at model sheets and understand them. These are not tours to drive you to their destination, rather guides to finding the path for you.

Yeah... Reproductibility... This one isn’t too long or complex. Anime, while a bit full of it’s own tropes, tends to have great character at its best. While they may differ from the manga they may be adapted from, it’s all for the sake of animation in the end. As decades go on, anime is only getting better on a technical level.

Simple, cute as hell yet badass in it’s own right! I have a bit of a thing for PreCure, especially Heartcatch PreCure! (This is Princess PreCure, don’t judge me!)

Moving on!

Next up: Fourth,

Arguably the most important in animation (as it is also a PRINCIPLE OF ANIMATION, see Episode 2 for more) is Exaggeration: This is how far your character can go before they become unrecognizable. No matter how they are drawn, you should know which character this is at all times. This is CRITICALLY based on the last three concepts.

How do I know if my character can be exaggerated well?

-- Keep your designs unique, reproducible and simplistic.

-- Learn about the basic animation principles.

-- Experiment, Experiment, Experiment! Get wacky with it, try drawing them in another person’s style. Can you still identify them? 

-- Draw them in different poses and angles! You want to be able to draw them from any angle be it worms-eye, bird’s eye, dutch, over the shoulder... These are more filmography terms, but the point still stands. Animation is just film where your camera is imaginary and based around composition.

I may get some heat from this and there is a video that I’ll link that goes into pretty much all the points and go check out their stuff but -- Steven Universe while I love it -- does suffer from composition deficiencies... It comes off as if they cannot draw their characters from experimental angles and foreshorten well. There’s a reason why Mindful Education is such a successful episode composition wise -- Takafumi Hori is miles beyond the level of the Crewniverse in terms of raw animation skill and experience. Most high quality action shows take a lot of inspiration from anime in terms of composition because it set some lofty standards, which dates even further back to Asian action cinema then to American cinema and Disney.

It all comes back to Disney -- my mortal frienemy.

Anyway, got the basics down? Got your character take to the level that they can do anything in any way possible?

Then good, you can exaggerate your design because it’s very strong!

What if I need help exaggerating my character?

-- Don’t be so stiff. There’s a reason why Ash’s design was changed in Pokemon Sun and Moon! This is one of the major reasons why!

-- Imagine how they’d act in different scenarios… Now dial it up a notch! Get crazy! Artistic technique can be taught, but creativity and passion are talents! Animation is not for the faint of heart, but don’t give up if you feel the fire and desire in you! Chase it!! That’s why I’m here, encouraging more animators to flourish.

Lastly and an odd case,

Fungibility. 

Fungibility?

Fungibility is the congruence and comparison between an outcome and the effort or resources put into it. 

Think of a game for an example, let’s say Pokemon. This game is fungible to me in that the time I got out of it outweighed and exceed how much I put into claiming it. It was about $40-50 for Pokemon Sun and Moon and once the credits rolled and I reflected, I found it a worthwhile experience for how much I paid (and the effort the creators put into it to even have it exist on a shelf.) 

It was Fungible.

How does this work in character design? Ask yourself this:

-- Do I like this character?

-- Do I love this character?

-- Do I love this character enough to put hours into drawing them over and over again?

If you said “Yes” to ALL of these, then you understand the fungibility of your characters and aesthetic.

There is no real way to define an individual’s fungibility in a concept or character design. It all comes down to learning about yourself and what you--yes, YOU, find enjoyable in your art. Most animation is made to make a buck--but great animation is made because you wanted to make it and enjoyed it.

That is what makes animation truly fungible.

Now, let’s take these broad concepts and narrow them down to an Animator’s perspective.

Imagine it:

You have to draw this character for a 12-episode anime, each episode 22 minutes working on an average of 24 frames per second (the number of drawing that make up a second of time is 24, but limited animation techniques allow many ways of working with this).

That’s about 31680 frames that you may have to draw this character. Which do you think will be easier and more flexible to be animated. If you don’t believe me, the Canipa Effect had a great video about it that I’m linking down here!

While both are designed for animation, if you chose the Sun and Moon design, then you better understand character design from an animator’s perspective. While subjectively, it may not be the most appealing (or you are clouded by a sense of nostalgia, which only dillutes creativity.) Thinking about it objectively, animation serves a purpose, even as small as being a stupid comedy or trying to tell a wholly intertwined narrative.

Opinions aside (I F**KING LOVE HIS REDESIGN) -- it is undeniable the success of Ash’s Sun and Moon redesign for OLM’s production of Pokemon. It shows in how the show is animated -- it is an animated series after all with many passionate staff members including Masaaki Iwane and Ken Otsuka to name a few. 

Just watch the openings between each Generation.

Even if you think he “looks bad”, these are things to pay attention to and learn in Ash’s Character Design and its redesign:

-- What is the series trying to accomplish?

-- What has this series been notorious for?

-- What does this redesign change about that?

-- How successful has that been?

Character design to an animator is OMNI-IMPORTANT (there it is again, heh) hence why we are hitting this after Animation Principles -- because they need to be able to draw this character in any situation in any view, have them look cool while doing it and make sure that they understand the physics around the world this character lives in.

You may see people bring up poorly drawn in-betweens and the like during a critique of a new animation style (especially in Pokemon and Dragonball Super) but in those critiques, it is easy to tell the person does not understand how animation works. While having every frame be perfect is ideal, the focus in animation is not each still rather how they flow and convey movement. If you want fantastic stills read a comic. They are designed to look good when still.

When designing for animation, think of these:

-- How far can this character look off-model before it’s too much?

Let’s dip into that right quick. Off-model. The statement that a certain image or frame doesn’t match the model sheet. And in my opinion, it’s more contextual. For example, Naruto vs Pain... It may be off-model -- but it’s well animated... You love it or you hate it. But it’s important to understand it.

-- Have much can each piece be exaggerated?

-- What pieces are the most important to keep the overall design intact? This is where simplicity is important. You can warp a scene as a stylistic choice, but you know a character is strong that even when distorted, the character design is still clear. This ties back into silhouette.

The character designer has to be able to not only do all of this, but also know it from just a glance!

That’s crazy, right?

So, make sure when designing your characters for an animation screen, keep these things in mind.

Now then, what problems come from badly designed characters?

Well, let’s look from two design problems that are common in a lot of artists, once again, these are more my opinions than definite fact:

There is Over-Designing -- Where the character’s abundance of details not only make an animator’s job harder, but also shows terrible design sense.

And Under-Designing -- Where character designs blend without detail. Showing that there is not been enough detail in basic form to be unique.

What do I mean by Over Designed and Under Designed?

In simple terms, adding way too much to make a character stand out when the problem is on a design fundamentals level. This is often attributed to very erratic and complex clothing, patterning or other non-silhouette affecting changes.

Note: If characters aren’t supposed to look alike, make them look different. Just changing their clothes or hair without changing facets of their form and silhouette and saying from a stylistic perspective that these characters are very different is bad design. Period.

(I’m throwing the shade at you Negima, but you aren’t the only member of this trope... I honestly enjoyed you when you got to be an action series instead of a harem.)

Look up Six Face Syndrome for a more detailed analysis. TVTropes is an ally.

A good way to fix this is often the silhouette test. Try doing a base silhouette too, removing clothes and hair to the central design. How much is the silhouette different without the clothes and hair?

Now add the clothes back, how much has the silhouette changed?

Now add the hair, how much has the silhouette changed?

If the only differences are seen from the hair and clothes, you may want to rework your design.

Who doesn’t like swag though, but this shouldn’t be the only distinction between characters.

By Under Designed, the context is that not enough detail is there to make characters stand out.

This can often be from a lack of interesting silhouettes as well, but also can be from not enough detail. It’s definitely harder to under design compared to over design, but Six face syndrome is often a sign of Under Design. Once again, if I put up an example of a “bad design” it’d get too subjective...

I knew this episode was gonna be more dice-y...

OK. How can I work on characters that are under designed?

-- Look back at that Aesthetic and Style note from earlier. These are the essentials in adding the right things to an under designed character, taking them from bland and forgettable to great and memorable.

It’s truly a balancing act of not too much detail to become forgettable and frustrating to draw, but not too little detail to make characters blend in with each other.

My best advice is look at artists that truly have mastered this concept as well such as Character Designers in most well received anime.

For examples:

Sushio: Character Designer for Gurren Lagann, Panty and Stocking and Kill La Kill.

Toshihiro Kawamoto: Character Designer for Cowboy Bebop, Golden Boy, Noragami and Kekkai Sensen.

Chikashi Kubota: Character Designer for One Punch Man, One Piece Movie 6 and Robotic; Notes.

Akio Watanabe: Character Designer for the Soul Taker, Bakemonogatari and Popotan.

… And this is only scraping the tip of the iceberg.

All of these artist come in many shapes and forms from Sushio’s ability to exaggerate his designs, to Kawamoto’s realistic, sexy and cool designs, Kubota’s ability to make important features stand out and Watanabe’s soft and moe, yet varied designs.

But something important to notice is: ALL of these designers are veteran animators. So they understand what a design needs to both stand out and look well when animated.

Even in adaptations of existing manga, the Character Designers must be able to adapt characters that looked great in still images to look great in motion. Hence why illustrators and mangaka are most often NEVER Character Designers in Anime, but know that this is not mutually exclusive.

There have been a few healthy exceptions, i.e.) Shirow Miwa, character designer from Kiznaiver is an illustrator for the group Supercell.

“Well, I think that’s enough for one day…

Next week, I think I’ll take a break and just kinda relax a bit. I’ve been hella busy with adult life things. But I’ll be back at the end of the month with Episode 4. It’ll be a hefty one -- Where I can start diving into Sakuga and seeing how liberal I can get with “defining” tropes...

Ho boy -- why do I put this pressure on myself...?

ON THE NEXT BRAIN VOMIT!!

EPISODE 4: LIMITED ANIMATION -- THE BASICS, THE MASTERS AND THE STYLE OR I LEARN HOW TO CREATE ANIME SLANG FOR AN AUDIENCE...

I CAN EVEN DRINK SODA WHEN I WANT TO! JUST WATCH ME!!

Remember: Always bloom proudly,

– TUCHI OUT!!!

[ace-in-a-shopping-cart]

Day 19

Prompt: Everyone is born with a compass on their wrist, the needle of the compass points towards your soulmate.

Word Count: 2,161

Main Taglist: (Send an ask to be added or removed!) @starlocked01,​​​ @spoopy-turtle,​​​ @lizluvscupcakes,​​ @more-fandon-than-friends​, @i-cant-find-a-good-username, @vindicatedvirgil, @star-crossed-shipper, @justaqueercactus, @gayboopnoodle, @sanderssidesweirdo, @the-sympathetic-villain, @8-writes, @lizzy-lineart, @battlebunnyteardropsinthesun, sirprplsnail

Soulmate taglist:(Send an ask to be added or removed!) @elizabutgayer, @melodiread, @tsshipmonth2020, @mikalya12, @8-writes, @lizzy-lineart

Virgil’s thumb ran over the compass needle, comforted by the raised skin telling him he wasn’t alone. For as long as he’d been aware of it, he’d loved it. Loved knowing there was someone on the other end of it, loved knowing he wasn’t trudging through life alone, that no matter how broken and messed up he thought he was there was always going to be someone out there destined to love him.

He was jostled out of his thoughts by the sound of someone calling his name. Looking up, he found it was his turn to present. He took a deep breath, let his thumb brush over the compass one last time, and moved to do it. Once he was up there, he performed with minimal flaws.

He collapsed back into his chair, mentally exhausted already and the morning wasn’t even over yet. He stared at his compass needle, watching the tip waver slightly but stay steady in the same direction, off to his right and behind him slightly. He smiled at the thought of his soulmate being the north for his compass.

He tuned back into the meeting as his supervisor stood. “Now, we’ve only got one last order of business.” Roman said, hands on his hips as he tried to grab everyone’s attention. “We have a new member on the development team so if you could all give him a warm welcome, that’d be appreciated.”

Virgil shrugged and clapped half-heartedly. A man stood as Virgil watched his compass shift, following the man’s movements as he made his way to the front of the room and stood beside their supervisor. He straightened his tie, allowing Virgil to notice that his compass was covered with a wide leather cuff. “Salutations. My name is Logan Kelsey and I’m pleased to have joined the team.”

An hour later, Virgil was staring at his wrist. He twisted in his chair, watching the needle swing back and forth, staying steady on Logan across the room. He still had Roman’s voice ringing in his ears, asking Virgil to partner with Logan for the project the man was already halfway done with, showing the new guy the ropes and all that.

The man that was now advancing across the room, straight for him. Virgil turned his wrist over and put it palm down on his leg. “Can I help you with anything, Kelsey?”

Logan nodded, looking down at him. “I’d like to begin working on the project now, if you have the time.”

Virgil smiled, swinging the chair around and scooting into the desk. “Sure! Pull up a chair while I get this set up.” He wiggled the mouse, causing the screen to power on. Clicking through a few files, he set up the next stages of what he’d been working on before the meeting.

A chair rolled over and Logan sat beside him, a notepad propped up on his knee and a pen in his hand. “You’re going to have to brief me on what you’re working on as I was given no directions on what I am to learn from you.”

Virgil nodded, picking up a pencil to twirl between his fingers. “I’m just working on a simple graphic at the moment. Really, this could have been done by one person.” He glanced to the side. “Are you working more on the graphics department or the slogans? I’m asking because you look like you belong in the finances department instead of down here with everyone else.”

Logan looked at him then, eyes dragging over Virgil’s frame. The emo felt like he was being judged, as if his comfortable hoodie and ripped jeans were suddenly inadequate to Logan’s slacks and dress shirt and tie. Logan shrugged. “I don’t see the problem. I didn’t know the dress code was more casual than other departments. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Virgil couldn’t help but let out a laugh at that. “No, there’s no dress code here.” He paused. “Do the other departments have dress codes?”

Logan bobbled his head. “Yes and no. They don’t have official dress codes but everyone is pretentious and stuck up so they think they’re better than everyone else and dress like it.”

Virgil nodded. “I like you better than I thought I would.”

Logan coughed into his fist, his eyes darting down to the notepad on his lap. “We should probably get started.”

“Right!” Virgil directed his gaze back to the screen and briefly ran over what he’d done to get to this stage of development for the ad before explaining his process as he did the next few parts.

The next day, they picked up from where they left off. Virgil pulled Logan into the decision making, asking him what colors he thought would contrast well and why, asking where he would put the text, and slowly getting him used to making these kinds of decisions himself.

Soon, a month and two projects had gone by. The pair had bumped into each other in the parking garage and rode the elevator up, talking about personal interests and other things. When they got to the floor, they were pulled into a meeting by Roman. Most of the team was already there with a few others trickling in around them. As they waited, the conversation turned to soulmates.

Logan nodded to Virgil’s wrist, the compass covered by a leather cuff since that first day. “May I ask why you decided to cover it?”

Virgil shrugged. “I met him already and I have no idea how he feels about me. So, I covered it. I’d rather be accused of having a broken compass than actually have a broken heart.”

Logan nodded. “I can understand that. I’ll admit, it scares me a little, knowing there’s someone the compass points to. So, I cover it, not wanting to look at it. I don’t know why I’m so scared of the inevitable.”

Virgil internally released a sigh of relief, knowing now why Logan covered his wrist. “It’s not like that for me. In the beginning, I was glad to have the compass. I have pretty bad anxiety so it was nice to be able to run my fingers over it and know someone was there for me, that someone would always be there on the other end, waiting just for me. Now that I’ve met him, I don’t think he’ll feel the same about it. So, I covered it.”

Before Logan could respond, Roman called the meeting to order. “So, it seems that Mr. Kelsey now knows what he’s doing when it comes to graphic design. Is that correct, Mr. Storm?”

Virgil nodded. “Sounds right to me, sir. He’s a fast learner and a hard worker.”

Roman nodded, smiling. “With that in mind, it’s time to say goodbye to Mr. Kelsey as he’s now off to the advertisement department.”

Virgil looked at his soulmate. “Is that true? You’re leaving us?” He shouldn’t feel so hurt or betrayed by this revelation but here he was, his heart feeling like it’d been torn to pieces.

Logan had an apology in his eyes that never made it past his throat as Roman called attention back to himself. “I know it’s sad to see him go. However, we have to realize that he was always going to be with us for a short time. We should learn to appreciate the time we’ve had with him.”

Virgil smiled, sadness lingering at the edges and tears damming behind his eyes. “Yeah, appreciate him.”

Logan looked over at him, probably wondering how he was, but Virgil turned away. He ignored the man for the rest of the meeting, focusing on keeping the tears inside and trying to pay attention to Roman.

When it was over, he was the first to leave. Before Logan came that wouldn’t be abnormal but ever since the other man had been there, Virgil had socialized a bit more, he’d become friends with Logan in a way he’d never done with anyone else. He’d trusted the man, not knowing he was leaving.

He walked away, the heels of his hands swiping at his eyes. He heard a voice behind him, someone calling his name, but he ignored it and continued on. He pushed through a door, not knowing where he was going. The voice sounded again but he was barely paying attention.  A hand landed on his shoulder, spinning him around as Logan said his name for the third time. 

“Virgil, is there something wrong?”

Virgil covered his face with his hands, knowing he was being childish. “No, nothing’s wrong.” He lied.

Logan’s hand stayed on his shoulder. “Then why won’t you look at me? Or even say goodbye to me?”

Virgil squeaked at the mention of his soulmate’s imminent departure. His hand fluttered, wanting to curl around Logan’s tie, wanted to keep him from leaving, but he knew that wasn’t an option. So, the hand never landed, just went to his side as the other hand stayed over his tear-tracked face.

Logan sighed, pulling him into a hug, one arm around his waist and the other hand cradling his head. “Talk to me, please.” His voice was a whisper in his ear, easily making itself heard over the roaring battle between fears in Virgil’s head.

Virgil leaned his head on Logan’s shoulder, the hand covering his face coming down to grip weakly at his own belt loop. He wanted to explain, to say he felt betrayed, but didn’t have the words. So, he stayed silent.

They stayed like that as Virgil’s tears slowly dried and his breathing went back to normal. Some time into the hug, Logan’s hand had started rubbing the length of Virgil’s spine in a soothing manner, the other hand staying still on his head. When Virgil’s breathing evened out, he felt Logan pull away, hands coming to cup the graphic designer’s face.

“Will you tell me what’s wrong?” His voice was still soft so Virgil wasn’t sure if he imagined the tone of impatience hidden beneath it.

“Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?” Virgil had no way of explaining his feelings, so he asked about the root cause of them instead.

Logan’s face revealed his surprise before it softened. “Don’t you remember? You were told at the very beginning that I was only here temporarily.”

Virgil thought back to that day, when he was still in love with the idea of a soulmate rather than actually in love with his soulmate. He had a vague memory of Roman mentioning a temporary member of the team. He felt heat rise to his cheeks as he knew this was his inability to listen correctly that had caused this. “Oh.”

Logan chuckled. “I’m sure this is also a communication error on my part. I should have told you rather than rely on Roman’s less than stellar memory.”

Virgil giggled softly as he used his hoodie sleeve to scrub at the salt crusted on his cheeks. “So, what do we do from here?”

Logan looked around. “Maybe we should go back to your desk and talk about why you had this reaction to news of me leaving. Besides, I’m not leaving until the end of the day anyways so we might as well get some work done.”

Virgil nodded and the pair headed back to Virgil’s desk. Virgil dabbed a bit of water from his thermos onto a nearby tissue and scrubbed the lingering salt from his cheeks. Logan sat silently and patiently, waiting for him. When that was done, Virgil stalled by booting up the computer and flicking open the files they’d need for the day. Logan softly said his name to get his attention.

Virgil sighed, his hand moving from the mouse to unlatch the cuff on his wrist. Logan watched, curiosity in his gaze. He revealed the back of his wrist and quietly muttered, “I got attached to you, you idiot,” before turning it to show him.

Logan pulled it closer, turning it left and right as he tried to see if it was true, that he was Virgil’s soulmate. At last, he put Virgil’s wrist down and unlatched his own cuff. He chuckled at Virgil’s words. “To tell the truth,” his voice was louder than Virgil’s but no less sincere, “I developed feelings for you as well.” He turned his wrist to show Virgil his compass, the needle firmly fixed on Virgil.

Virgil smiled but it was still tinged with sadness. “But you’re still leaving.”

Logan laughed, reaching to draw Virgil close, pressing their foreheads together. “Two floors up. I'm heading to advertisement.”

Virgil frowned. “What do you even do?”

“I survey the different departments to see how they use their budgets. I actually have an office three floors up.”

Virgil laughed, pushing his shoulder just hard enough to rock him but not enough to push him away entirely. “You jerk.” Still, he tilted his head for a kiss that was quickly granted.