#i might be insane oh well

[kiennjio]

This has probably been said before but I just realised that Touya's street sekai item is "a pair of mics" BECAUSE HE WANTS TO SING BY HIS AIBOU'S SIDE FOREVER it could have been a single mic it could have been four mics but no ITS A PAIR BECAUSE AKITO AND TOUYA ARE A PAIR

[carnivalcarriondiscarded]

obsessed with the prospect of Howdy Figuring It Out via the neighbors enjoying non-food items

[eyrieofsynapses]

why Aurora's art is genius

It's break for me, and I've been meaning to sit down and read the Aurora webcomic (https://comicaurora.com/, @comicaurora on Tumblr) for quite a bit. So I did that over the last few days.

And… y'know. I can't actually say "I should've read this earlier," because otherwise I would've been up at 2:30-3am when I had responsibilities in the morning and I couldn't have properly enjoyed it, but. Holy shit guys THIS COMIC.

I intended to just do a generalized "hello this is all the things I love about this story," and I wrote a paragraph or two about art style. …and then another. And another. And I realized I needed to actually reference things so I would stop being too vague. I was reading the comic on my tablet or phone, because I wanted to stay curled up in my chair, but I type at a big monitor and so I saw more details… aaaaaand it turned into its own giant-ass post.

SO. Enjoy a few thousand words of me nerding out about this insanely cool art style and how fucking gorgeous this comic is? (There are screenshots, I promise it isn't just a wall of text.) In my defense, I just spent two semesters in graphic design classes focusing on the Adobe Suite, so… I get to be a nerd about pretty things…???

All positive feedback btw! No downers here. <3

---

I cannot emphasize enough how much I love the beautiful, simple stylistic method of drawing characters and figures. It is absolutely stunning and effortless and utterly graceful—it is so hard to capture the sheer beauty and fluidity of the human form in such a fashion. Even a simple outline of a character feels dynamic! It's gorgeous!

Though I do have a love-hate relationship with this, because my artistic side looks at that lovely simplicity, goes "I CAN DO THAT!" and then I sit down and go to the paper and realize that no, in fact, I cannot do that yet, because that simplicity is born of a hell of a lot of practice and understanding of bodies and actually is really hard to do. It's a very developed style that only looks simple because the artist knows what they're doing. The human body is hard to pull off, and this comic does so beautifully and makes it look effortless.

Also: line weight line weight line weight. It's especially important in simplified shapes and figures like this, and hoo boy is it used excellently. It's especially apparent the newer the pages get—I love watching that improvement over time—but with simpler figures and lines, you get nice light lines to emphasize both smaller details, like in the draping of clothing and the curls of hair—which, hello, yes—and thicker lines to emphasize bigger and more important details and silhouettes. It's the sort of thing that's essential to most illustrations, but I wanted to make a note of it because it's so vital to this art style.

THE USE OF LAYER BLENDING MODES OH MY GODS. (...uhhh, apologies to the people who don't know what that means, it's a digital art program thing? This article explains it for beginners.)

Bear with me, I just finished my second Photoshop course, I spent months and months working on projects with this shit so I see the genius use of Screen and/or its siblings (of which there are many—if I say "Screen" here, assume I mean the entire umbrella of Screen blending modes and possibly Overlay) and go nuts, but seriously it's so clever and also fucking gorgeous:

Firstly: the use of screened-on sound effect words over an action? A "CRACK" written over a branch and then put on Screen in glowy green so that it's subtle enough that it doesn't disrupt the visual flow, but still sticks out enough to make itself heard? Little "scritches" that are transparent where they're laid on without outlines to emphasize the sound without disrupting the underlying image? FUCK YES. I haven't seen this done literally anywhere else—granted, I haven't read a massive amount of comics, but I've read enough—and it is so clever and I adore it. Examples:

Secondly: The beautiful lighting effects. The curling leaves, all the magic, the various glowing eyes, the fog, the way it's all so vividly colored but doesn't burn your eyeballs out—a balance that's way harder to achieve than you'd think—and the soft glows around them, eeeee it's so pretty so pretty SO PRETTY. Not sure if some of these are Outer/Inner Glow/Shadow layer effects or if it's entirely hand-drawn, but major kudos either way; I can see the beautiful use of blending modes and I SALUTE YOUR GENIUS.

I keep looking at some of this stuff and go "is that a layer effect or is it done by hand?" Because you can make some similar things with the Satin layer effect in Photoshop (I don't know if other programs have this? I'm gonna have to find out since I won't have access to PS for much longer ;-;) that resembles some of the swirly inner bits on some of the lit effects, but I'm not sure if it is that or not. Or you could mask over textures? There's... many ways to do it.

If done by hand: oh my gods the patience, how. If done with layer effects: really clever work that knows how to stop said effects from looking wonky, because ugh those things get temperamental. If done with a layer of texture that's been masked over: very, very good masking work. No matter the method, pretty shimmers and swirly bits inside the bigger pretty swirls!

Next: The way color contrast is used! I will never be over the glowy green-on-black Primordial Life vibes when Alinua gets dropped into that… unconscious space?? with Life, for example, and the sharp contrast of vines and crack and branches and leaves against pitch black is just visually stunning. The way the roots sink into the ground and the three-dimensional sensation of it is particularly badass here:

Friggin. How does this imply depth like that. HOW. IT'S SO FREAKING COOL.

A huge point here is also color language and use! Everybody has their own particular shade, generally matching their eyes, magic, and personality, and I adore how this is used to make it clear who's talking or who's doing an action. That was especially apparent to me with Dainix and Falst in the caves—their colors are both fairly warm, but quite distinct, and I love how this clarifies who's doing what in panels with a lot of action from both of them. There is a particular bit that stuck out to me, so I dug up the panels (see this page and the following one https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-20-30/):

(Gods it looks even prettier now that I put it against a plain background. Also, appreciation to Falst for managing a bridal-carry midair, damn.)

The way that their colors MERGE here! And the immense attention to detail in doing so—Dainix is higher up than Falst is in the first panel, so Dainix's orange fades into Falst's orange at the base. The next panel has gold up top and orange on bottom; we can't really tell in that panel where each of them are, but that's carried over to the next panel—

—where we now see that Falst's position is raised above Dainix's due to the way he's carrying him. (Points for continuity!) And, of course, we see the little "huffs" flowing from orange to yellow over their heads (where Dainix's head is higher than Falst's) to merge the sound of their breathing, which is absurdly clever because it emphasizes to the viewer how we hear two sets of huffing overlaying each other, not one. Absolutely brilliant.

(A few other notes of appreciation to that panel: beautiful glows around them, the sparks, the jagged silhouette of the spider legs, the lovely colors that have no right to make the area around a spider corpse that pretty, the excellent texturing on the cave walls plus perspective, the way Falst's movements imply Dainix's hefty weight, the natural posing of the characters, their on-point expressions that convey exactly how fuckin terrifying everything is right now, the slight glows to their eyes, and also they're just handsome boys <3)

Next up: Rain!!!! So well done! It's subtle enough that it never ever disrupts the impact of the focal point, but evident enough you can tell! And more importantly: THE MIST OFF THE CHARACTERS. Rain does this irl, it has that little vapor that comes off you and makes that little misty effect that plays with lighting, it's so cool-looking and here it's used to such pretty effect!

One of the panel captions says something about it blurring out all the injuries on the characters but like THAT AIN'T TOO BIG OF A PROBLEM when it gets across the environmental vibes, and also that'd be how it would look in real life too so like… outside viewer's angle is the same as the characters', mostly? my point is: that's the environment!!! that's the vibes, that's the feel! It gets it across and it does so in the most pretty way possible!

And another thing re: rain, the use of it to establish perspective, particularly in panels like this—

—where we can tell we're looking down at Tynan due to the perspective on the rain and where it's pointing. Excellent. (Also, kudos for looking down and emphasizing how Tynan's losing his advantage—lovely use of visual storytelling.)

Additionally, the misting here:

We see it most heavily in the leftmost panel, where it's quite foggy as you would expect in a rainstorm, especially in an environment with a lot of heat, but it's also lightly powdered on in the following two panels and tends to follow light sources, which makes complete sense given how light bounces off particles in the air.

A major point of strength in these too is a thorough understanding of lighting, like rim lighting, the various hues and shades, and an intricate understanding of how light bounces off surfaces even when they're in shadow (we'll see a faint glow in spots where characters are half in shadow, but that's how it would work in real life, because of how light bounces around).

Bringing some of these points together: the fluidity of the lines in magic, and the way simple glowing lines are used to emphasize motion and the magic itself, is deeply clever. I'm basically pulling at random from panels and there's definitely even better examples, but here's one (see this page https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-16-33/):

First panel, listed in numbers because these build on each other:

The tension of the lines in Tess's magic here. This works on a couple levels: first, the way she's holding her fists, as if she's pulling a rope taut.

The way there's one primary line, emphasizing the rope feeling, accompanied by smaller ones.

The additional lines starbursting around her hands, to indicate the energy crackling in her hands and how she's doing a good bit more than just holding it. (That combined with the fists suggests some tension to the magic, too.) Also the variations in brightness, a feature you'll find in actual lightning. :D Additional kudos for how the lightning sparks and breaks off the metal of the sword.

A handful of miscellaneous notes on the second panel:

The reflection of the flames in Erin's typically dark blue eyes (which bears a remarkable resemblance to Dainix, incidentally—almost a thematic sort of parallel given Erin's using the same magic Dainix specializes in?)

The flowing of fabric in the wind and associated variation in the lineart

The way Erin's tattoos interact with the fire he's pulling to his hand

The way the rain overlays some of the fainter areas of fire (attention! to! detail! hell yeah!)

I could go on. I won't because this is a lot of writing already.

Third panel gets paragraphs, not bullets:

Erin's giant-ass "FWOOM" of fire there, and the way the outline of the word is puffy-edged and gradated to feel almost three-dimensional, plus once again using Screen or a variation on it so that the stars show up in the background. All this against that stunning plume of fire, which ripples and sparks so gorgeously, and the ending "om" of the onomatopoeia is emphasized incredibly brightly against that, adding to the punch of it and making the plume feel even brighter.

Also, once again, rain helping establish perspective, especially in how it's very angular in the left side of the panel and then slowly becomes more like a point to the right to indicate it's falling directly down on the viewer. Add in the bright, beautiful glow effects, fainter but no less important black lines beneath them to emphasize the sky and smoke and the like, and the stunningly beautiful lighting and gradated glows surrounding Erin plus the lightning jagging up at him from below, and you get one hell of an impactful panel right there. (And there is definitely more in there I could break down, this is just a lot already.)

And in general: The colors in this? Incredible. The blues and purples and oranges and golds compliment so well, and it's all so rich.

Like, seriously, just throughout the whole comic, the use of gradients, blending modes, color balance and hues, all the things, all the things, it makes for the most beautiful effects and glows and such a rich environment. There's a very distinct style to this comic in its simplified backgrounds (which I recognize are done partly because it's way easier and also backgrounds are so time-consuming dear gods but lemme say this) and vivid, smoothly drawn characters; the simplicity lets them come to the front and gives room for those beautiful, richly saturated focal points, letting the stylized designs of the magic and characters shine. The use of distinct silhouettes is insanely good. Honestly, complex backgrounds might run the risk of making everything too visually busy in this case. It's just, augh, so GORGEOUS.

Another bit, take a look at this page (https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-15-28/):

It's not quite as evident here as it is in the next page, but this one does some other fun things so I'm grabbing it. Points:

Once again, using different colors to represent different character actions. The "WHAM" of Kendal hitting the ground is caused by Dainix's force, so it's orange (and kudos for doubling the word over to add a shake effect). But we see blue layered underneath, which could be an environmental choice, but might also be because it's Kendal, whose color is blue.

And speaking off, take a look at the right-most panel on top, where Kendal grabs the spear: his motion is, again, illustrated in bright blue, versus the atmospheric screened-on orange lines that point toward him around the whole panel (I'm sure these have a name, I think they might be more of a manga thing though and the only experience I have in manga is reading a bit of Fullmetal Alchemist). Those lines emphasize the weight of the spear being shoved at him, and their color tells us Dainix is responsible for it.

One of my all-time favorite effects in this comic is the way cracks manifest across Dainix's body to represent when he starts to lose control; it is utterly gorgeous and wonderfully thematic. These are more evident in the page before and after this one, but you get a decent idea here. I love the way they glow softly, the way the fire juuuust flickers through at the start and then becomes more evident over time, and the cracks feel so realistic, like his skin is made of pottery. Additional points for how fire begins to creep into his hair.

A small detail that's generally consistent across the comic, but which I want to make note of here because you can see it pretty well: Kendal's eyes glow about the same as the jewel in his sword, mirroring his connection to said sword and calling back to how the jewel became Vash's eye temporarily and thus was once Kendal's eye. You can always see this connection (though there might be some spots where this also changes in a symbolic manner; I went through it quickly on the first time around, so I'll pay more attention when I inevitably reread this), where Kendal's always got that little shine of blue in his eyes the same as the jewel. It's a beautiful visual parallel that encourages the reader to subconsciously link them together, especially since the lines used to illustrate character movements typically mirror their eye color. It's an extension of Kendal.

Did I mention how ABSOLUTELY BEAUTIFUL the colors in this are?

Also, the mythological/legend-type scenes are illustrated in familiar style often used for that type of story, a simple and heavily symbolic two-dimensional cave-painting-like look. They are absolutely beautiful on many levels, employing simple, lovely gradients, slightly rougher and thicker lineart that is nonetheless smoothly beautiful, and working with clear silhouettes (a major strength of this art style, but also a strength in the comic overall). But in particular, I wanted to call attention to a particular thing (see this page https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-12-4/):

The flowing symbolic lineart surrounding each character. This is actually quite consistent across characters—see also Life's typical lines and how they curl:

What's particularly interesting here is how these symbols are often similar, but not the same. Vash's lines are always smooth, clean curls, often playing off each other and echoing one another like ripples in a pond. You'd think they'd look too similar to Life's—but they don't. Life's curl like vines, and they remain connected; where one curve might echo another but exist entirely detached from each other in Vash's, Life's lines still remain wound together, because vines are continuous and don't float around. :P

Tahraim's are less continuous, often breaking up with significantly smaller bits and pieces floating around like—of course—sparks, and come to sharper points. These are also constants: we see the vines repeated over and over in Alinua's dreams of Life, and the echoing ripples of Vash are consistent wherever we encounter him. Kendal's dream of the ghost citizens of the city of Vash in the last few chapters is filled with these rippling, echoing patterns, to beautiful effect (https://comicaurora.com/aurora/1-20-14/):

They ripple and spiral, often in long, sinuous curves, with smooth elegance. It reminds me a great deal of images of space and sine waves and the like. This establishes a definite feel to these different characters and their magic. And the thing is, that's not something that had to be done—the colors are good at emphasizing who's who. But it was done, and it adds a whole other dimension to the story. Whenever you're in a deity's domain, you know whose it is no matter the color.

Regarding that shape language, I wanted to make another note, too—Vash is sometimes described as chaotic and doing what he likes, which is interesting to me, because smooth, elegant curves and the color blue aren't generally associated with chaos. So while Vash might behave like that on the surface, I'm guessing he's got a lot more going on underneath; he's probably much more intentional in his actions than you'd think at a glance, and he is certainly quite caring with his city. The other thing is that this suits Kendal perfectly. He's a paragon character; he is kind, virtuous, and self-sacrificing, and often we see him aiming to calm others and keep them safe. Blue is such a good color for him. There is… probably more to this, but I'm not deep enough in yet to say.

And here's the thing: I'm only scratching the surface. There is so much more here I'm not covering (color palettes! outfits! character design! environment! the deities! so much more!) and a lot more I can't cover, because I don't have the experience; this is me as a hobbyist artist who happened to take a couple design classes because I wanted to. The art style to this comic is so clever and creative and beautiful, though, I just had to go off about it. <3

...brownie points for getting all the way down here? Have a cookie.

[antigonesghosts]

What I loved about Cinderella's Castle is it is so entirely about Ella. We know starkid can handle a show with tons and tons of characters but I found it quite refreshing for it to be so wholly her story? I think it was a lovely choice for this show and man Bryce did such a perfect job of it, she is truly such a star

[kideternity]

Uhmmmmm soo. Over the past few months I've been seeing a lot of complaints or comments that digimon has too many designs which essentially boil down to “There are too many designs that are just humans in costumes.”

And for a while I just nodded my head and went Yeah Alright, because I Understood where it was coming from (the way most perfect + ultimate levels tend to become more humanoid over their predecessors) and thought it was a valid complaint even if I don’t agree. But eventually it got to the point where I got legitimately invested in wanting to know How Many Digimon there were that you could classify as “basically humans” and well. Here I am.

For the past week or so I came up with my own “categories” and counted how many digimon fit under each category to then later put into a graph like the one you see above ^

I did all of this for like, first and foremost My Own Interest, but I decided to share the results anyways in case someone else thinks this topic of discussion is interesting? I'll include as well under a read more a more in depth guide to the data i've accumulated as well

FYI, Important disclaimers: This is all highly subjective. Im not trying to claim these are any sort of objective categories canon to Digimon or that the results are objectively canon. You may think some or all of these categories are deeply redundant, or you will disagree with me over what counts as say, A Monster or A Furry or A Humanoid, and that’s fine. There are also digimon excluded from the total, most notably digimon that are cameo/minor characters in a singular digimon property, or recolours (ie Gabumon versus Psychemon) or which had minute design differences (Like, almost all of the different Agumons) because I thought including all of that was redundant or unnecessary. If there was a major difference in designs (ie Original Falcomon versus 2006 Savers Falcomon) however I did consider it as a separate design. Also, no X antibody designs were included, because oh my god there are already so many digimon and the X antibody designs could probably merit its own pie chart.

Baby 1 + 2:

Explicitly Creatures/Animals/Naturalistic Monsters/etc: 89

Inhuman/Monstrous in other ways (example- Robots/objects/undead): 17

Anthropomorphic animals/creatures (Furries, inclu robotic anthros): n/a

Humanoid but still inhuman/monstrous/weird in some way: n/a

Essentially humans/Humans in costumes: n/a

Rookie:

Explicitly Creatures/Animals/Naturalistic Monsters/etc: 73

Inhuman/Monstrous in other ways (example- Robots/objects/undead): 26

Anthropomorphic animals/creatures (Furries inclu robotic anthros): 7

Humanoid but still inhuman/monstrous/weird in some way: 7

Essentially humans/Humans in costumes: 4

Adult:

Explicitly Creatures/Animals/Naturalistic Monsters/etc: 96

Inhuman/Monstrous in other ways (example- Robots/objects/undead): 51

Anthropomorphic animals/creatures (Furries inclu robotic designs): 18

Humanoid but still inhuman/monstrous/weird in some way: 23

Essentially humans/Humans in costumes: 6

Perfect:

Explicitly Creatures/Animals/Naturalistic Monsters/etc: 64

Inhuman/Monstrous in other ways (example- Robots/objects/undead): 46

Anthropomorphic animals/creatures (Furries inclu robotic anthros): 39

Humanoid but still inhuman/monstrous/weird in some way: 46

Essentially humans/Humans in costumes: 9

Ultimate + Super Ultimate:

Explicitly Creatures/Animals/Naturalistic Monsters/etc: 68

Inhuman/Monstrous in other ways (example- Robots/objects/undead): 41

Anthropomorphic animals/creatures (Furries inclu robotic anthros): 48

Humanoid but still inhuman/monstrous/weird in some way: 95

Essentially humans/Humans in costumes: 17

Hybrid:

Explicitly Creatures/Animals/Naturalistic Monsters/etc: 7

Inhuman/Monstrous in other ways (example- Robots/objects/undead): 4

Anthropomorphic animals/creatures (Furries inclu robotic anthros): 6

Humanoid but still inhuman/monstrous/weird in some way: 8

Essentially humans/Humans in costumes: 7

Armour:

Explicitly Creatures/Animals/Naturalistic Monsters/etc: 40

Inhuman/Monstrous in other ways (example- Robots/objects/undead): 5

Anthropomorphic animals/creatures (Furries inclu robotic anthros): 11

Humanoid but still inhuman/monstrous/weird in some way: 7

Essentially humans/Humans in costumes: 1

[dimension-20-every-introduction]

Everyone Introduced in Dimension 20's Fantasy High: Junior Year episode 17

[coern-art-very-cool-and-nice]

sekai au 👊😔

[flowery-king]

HES IN MY BRAINN GAH

bonus furry form ideas for him and his brubber:

That Soleb drawing pokin out on the right was drawn by this bitch @wackulart mwah

[ambrwolf]

I cant figure anyone else out but if anyone else is thinking about a fancast for wmom i have two suggestions.

Kristen Stewart as Danny

(Im showing an incredible amount of restraint by only picking three pictures)

And Bryan Dechart as Father Victor Ardelian

(Unfortunately he's not short but look. at. Him)

[zetsubobu]

So what if I combined two mystery/angsty supernatural shows

So I handed lizzy a death note, let's see what she will do with it!

I honestly don't think she would use it unless it is to protect her loved ones and then after that it's mostly just her paranoid over getting potentially caught. Though I think it would lead to some good scenarios!

[can-of-slorgs]

caw 🦅

[sakitenmaenjoyer]

the sillies

[carbuckety]

Bob Dylan & Andy Warhol

Screen Test - 1965

[quietwingsinthesky]

you ever just think about. “You are diseased, albeit a disease of our own making. No more.” you ever just. oh, they made him and they discarded him. it���s never going to be quiet again for him, and that’s just collateral. they let the sound rot through his whole life, his whole timeline. because that’s the kind of easy sacrifice you can make when you want to save yourself above everything else, one that doesn’t ask anything of you. you dig open a child’s mind and you bury your survival inside him and when he follows the noise back home, when he does exactly what you groomed him for, you call him ruined for it. that’s. you ever just think about that.

[f3l1c1af0x]

2nd child! yet again no name since i can't think of any *ahem* anyway here's baby ??? he's a cutie and got mostly got Mothys genes! :DDD

bruh he's so cuuuuteee! AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

anyway any names? I have to do the twin baby sister then the older brother oh and he's freshly 1! (I'm cringe as hell omggg)

[tswwwit]

okay but being reincarnated!dipper's neighbour/classmate/acquintance who's familiar enough to him to chat for a while if they encounter each other but not being involved in each other's lives before he turns 18

i actually like the "my neighbour's son turned 18 and now there is a Fucking Demon??? the amount of times i had to burst out of my home buck-ass naked from a shower bc the fire alarm went off!!! weird banging noises (not sex!) at 3 am! plus the usual banging noises (sex) at 3 am! AND THE FUCKING DEMON."

bill's presence in any neighbourhood would immediately lower rent. idk i just like the idea of "my pretty decent neighbor's weird, off-putting boyfriend moved in and its (mildly) inconvenient for me now." but the boyfriend is Fucking Demon Bill Cipher.