#i might tweak the design a little more

[headfullof-ideas]

Introducing more characters for my HTTYD/The Deep story! Only this time it’s supporting cast! I’ve decided there’s three overall casts in the story. The main cast (the dragon riders and their dragons, whose story and travels this lengthy project follows), the secondary cast (all their allies and enemies; Eret, Dagur, Heather, the Berkians, the Nektons, etc, etc.) who are there through most of the story, but not all of it. They’re pretty involved, but not every character is there for every episode. And then there’s the supporting cast. Minor characters. Characters a step up from background characters. They show up for a few episodes every once in a while, not near as often as everyone else, and they’re not as important to the overall story as the main and secondary casts, but they have names. They’re involved in certain arcs and episodes, but don’t repeatedly show up throughout the story like say, Dagur, Eret, Heather, the Berkian teens, and the Defenders and Wingmaidens.

But without further ado, here’s who I’ve got so far

And some closeups of each person, cause I like doing so

[nighty-night-nh]

I do feel some type of way when I see people go through my old sona art cause i dont know if im that lynx woman anymore man, I'm in a transition state cause bad shit happened while I was that lynx. Old life's gone now and they might be too, but there's this rabbit that I hope you'll enjoy someday

[skreebat]

The OUAW brain rot continues.

I love their designs! And I wanted to have a little fun figuring out how I want to draw them, with my own little tweaks and self indulgent details. :)

Originally, I only meant to draw Frost, to figure out what kind of body type I wanted to give him. Then I ended up drawing the whole part, partially as a reference to myself. Also got their canon heights on a chart and put them all together for fun and for reference. c:

Some design tweak notes under the cut, if anyone’s curious! These aren’t redesigns or whatever, I just had some ideas in mind while sketching them in a way that fits my art style.

Design notes copied directly from my server:

🔥Gid THICK BOY. He's not really a bodybuilder but he exercises and is very muscular. And he eats! A lot. So, thick boy. Scars from all the fighting. The wrists and ankles are because of his past.

I like giving his hair and beard a lot more fire. Body hair also glows fiery, it's just less bright.

🐊Kremy I figure he's the skinniest of the group after Torbek. Most of what I did is a happy medium between references of alligators, the official art, and just my art style. Mostly game him scale patterns, more alligator-like feet, and changed the tail a bit, but it's hard to tell from this angle. Not much body definition because he's a squishy magic user and a gator lol

🐯Frost Fit but not defined. Kinda thick-ish, since he's a tiger, so there's loser skin and thick layer of fur. Digitigrade because I say so.

☹️Torbek Not much changed, mostly gave him more tubes, gave him bald patches where they connect to his skin (and didn't make those are infected looking as I imagine tbh), made him fuzzier, and gave him bigger ears because I like em. Also you can't see it in this angle but I like giving him a small fuzzy tail.

🐾Gricko Fit arms, but he doesn't exercise, so he gets a bit of a tummy. Scars because of his interest in monsters, and his various accidents. Wilder hair. Freckles and moles because I say so. Decorated hair (including feathers from Hootsie!)

🍄Twig Not much really?? Went by her description, the plushie and an emote of her that exists. Made her chubbier because I wanna. Originally made her hair all curls…might go back to that. Also freckles because cute.

Do you have your own headcanons for details of what they look like? :)

-- [BTW I do commissions]

[beefycupcakes]

I watched the Cars trilogy recently and with that came a wave of nostalgia and a strange desire to make my own designs for the cars as humans. Aka taking all the charm out of Cars but scratching the brain itch.

So, no need to drag out the intro any longer, I have some notes written out about em for those who might be interested or just bored.

Lightning McQueen:

I tried to make his suit look as professional as possible, with references pulled straight from McQueen's paint job/stickers, while also keeping in mind that I do intend to draw him more so I didn't want to go too crazy with the design. In a perfect world I would've let my maximalist cravings win, but alas let's keep it digestible for my sanity.

I feel like everyone's kinda on this unspoken agreement that McQueen as a human would pretty much look just like Owen Wilson, and that's the big picture here. I used Wilson as inspiration while tweaking and exaggerating a few things to my preference. (Okay, well not everyone, lmao.)

The chevron markings on the front cut off at the side seams not wrapping around the entire suit as to not clash with the sponsor logo on the back.

Also, he's wearing special gloves to help him grip & have control over the steering wheel. I think sometimes that looks a little weird when his sleeves are down & cuffed, but I just feel like he needs to have the gloves there— especially when he comes out of the top half of the suit. (It's also lowkey supposed to mirror his 4 tires when you consider his shoes are also black.)

So yeah, that's basically all I have to to say regarding Lightning McQueen's page. I feel like a lot of my design choices are self explanatory and, honestly probably shared universally... I mean, he's really cut & dry. (But I love him ⚡︎)

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Mater:

I'm not gonna lie, Mater was a bit challenging for me. I definitely had to step out of my comfort zone but I wanted to stay true to the character and not butcher anything.

My first thought was to give him a fishing pole to substitute for the tow hook— but then the more I was thinking about it, the more that felt so... out of place? Radiator Springs is in Arizona, which is (not entirely, but mostly depicted in the movie as) a desert. And even though there are beautiful bodies of water in Arizona, in the movie I don't recall seeing any prominent ones, at least in relation to Mater. So, scratch that, instead I gave him a lasso, which isn't supposed to entirely substitute for the tow truck— no, he still drives a tow truck, but the lasso is so he can grab people/things similarly to Tow Truck Mater (very cartoony). My explanation for this is the cattle ranch. Yeah, Mater is a tow truck driver but perhaps he has a side hustle, or hobby, if you will.

Also, I didn't want to make him... dirty(??) Like, yeah, of course, Mater would obviously get a bit filthy from time to time, it's just in his nature, but that is NOT going to be the core of my design. In regards to the rust happening on him, I felt like instead I would substitute this with being very tan. Again, Arizona is a desert. Because of this, he would take off his shirt often, and this would substitute for the missing hood like on Tow Truck Mater. The removal of the shirt also reveals just how tan Mater actually is.

It's his uniformed overalls that have his original aqua color, but from years of wear & tear they've been patched up with brown patches, this would also reference the rusting. The one strap is supposed to mimic the one headlight being broken, and I know that's a stretch, believe me, I wanted to do something with his eyes but eyes are not the headlights in the Cars universe..... think about this. Think about it really hard... if you know what the headlights are in the Cars universe then this actually makes perfect sense.

He is taller and wider than McQueen, which is a reference to the literal frame of their vehicle counterparts. (A little hard to picture with these images, but eventually I'll draw them together!)

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That's all I have to say really, but do let me know what you guys think! Gas it up and it might encourage me to make a part 2 with some of the other characters! Who would you like to see next? ♡ Thank you so much for reading & have a great day, Kachow!!

[lillified]

love love love ur artstyle, just wondering if you have any designs that you haven’t shown off yet/ haven’t shown in a while. Any excuse to see more of ur art lmao

thank you so much for the kind words!

i have designs i haven't shown off yet, but I'll make dedicated posts for those when theyre done :)

in the meantime, here's a few we haven't seen in a while!

Knockout:

Lockdown's defacto favorite apprentice!

Tarn:

a gladiator, and Megatron's former friend! Well, they were kind of friends. The kind of friends what wish for eachother's downfalls, anyway. You take what you can get!

Speaking of gladiators:

Overlord:

This one's probably the weirdest! Overlord was a famous adversary of Megatron's, who the latter disgraced in combat by sparing. Held a grudge ever since!

Thrust:

Nobody too important. Just a garden variety conehead!

Megaempress:

The true and rightful ruler of the Decepticons, according to some people.

Arcee:

This design isn't canon, but I like the idea. I might tweak it a bit and bring it back!

Optimus Prime:

He doesn't need an introduction. He might be due for an update soon, though--his design is a little outdated

And lastly, but not leastly:

Shockwave...?:

something is missing here...

[reasonsforhope]

"At HarperCollins, a lot of attention and thought is given to deciding exactly what combinations of margin measurements, font, and layout feel most appropriate for the genre, and writing style.

But in a case of do-your-part environmentalism, designers at the publishing house have now standardized a series of subtle and imperceptible alterations to normal font style, layouts, and ink that have so far removed the need for 245 million book pages, totaling 5,618 trees.

Telling the story in Fast Company, representatives from HarperCollins, one of the four largest publishing houses in the world, explained that the idea first arose in Zondervan Bibles, HarperCollins’ Christian publishing division. Being that the Bible is 2,500 pages or sometimes more, saving ink and pages was not just an environmental consideration, but one of production costs.

A new typeface called NIV Comfort Print allowed Zondervan to shave 350 pages off of every Bible, which by 2017 had amounted to 100 million pages, and which, as Fast Company points out, would be four times higher than the Empire State Building if stacked.

The production and design teams then wondered how much they could save if they applied the same concepts to other genres like romance and fiction. Aside from the invention of the eBook, publishing hasn’t changed much in the last 100 years, and the challenge was a totally novel one for the teams—to alter all their preconceived ideas and try and find a font and typeface that resulted in fewer pages without being harder to read.

They eventually standardized 14 different combinations their tests determined were the most environmentally friendly, and which delivered an unchanged reading experience.

But the challenge didn’t stop there. Printed books, one might not know, are printed in large sheets which are then folded into sections of sixteen pages, meaning that Leah Carlson-Stanisic, associate director of design at HarperCollins, has to calculate the savings of space, words, and ultimately pages with the help of her team to fall in multiples of sixteen.

Nevertheless, they have been successful with it so far, and in the recent print run of one popular book, 1 million pages (or a number near 1 million that coincides with the 16 times tables) were saved.

“We want to make sure our big titles, by prominent authors, are using these eco-fonts,” Carlson-Stanisic said. “It adds up a little bit at a time, saving more and more trees.”"

-via Good News Network, April 4, 2024

--

Note: Great! Waiting to see this on the rest of their books and at the other big publishers!

Actually, though, it's worth noting that this may not come quickly to the other large publishers, because Harper Collins almost certainly owns that font - meaning that other publishers would have to pay HarperCollins in order to use it, on an ongoing basis.

More on publishing shit and more realistic solutions here below the cut!

What I'm hoping for and think is more likely is that this will inspire the development of open source eco-friendly fonts, which would be free for anyone to use. That would make it far more likely other publishers would adopt eco-friendly fonts.

I'm also hoping it would inspire other publishers to create similar eco-friendly fonts of their own.

Ideally, there would be a whole new landscape of (hopefully mostly open source) eco-friendly fonts. And/or to see calculations of the eco-friendliness of popular existing fonts, compared to each other.

If we could have a publicly accessible list of calculations for different fonts, including fonts designed to maximize eco-friendliness, I really do think that it would affect which fonts publishers choose to use. Here's why:

Most people in publishing are on the left (notoriously, actually) and really do care about the environment

People in publishing are plenty aware of these issues re: paper and trees, I promise

Shorter books means smaller production costs - and possibly smaller shipping costs as well, over time! So it would save them money too.

Eco-friendly fonts could also be combined with other measures for greater effect, such as bamboo paper (already in use for a lot of projects where page color/quality is more flexible) and thinner paper (aka paper with a lower weight) that uses less trees.

Don't expect books to all move to just one or two different fonts, though. Publishers and typesetters and font designers will innovate to create more options instead, though it will take longer. This is because different books really do use different fonts for various different reasons - one new font to rule them all isn't really a solution here.

"Every book is in the same font" may sound like a "whatever" deal to a lot of people, but as someone who works in publishing - trust me, it would actually make your reading experience worse, even if you could never quite put your finger on why.

[dailyadventureprompts]

The Mechanics of Baldur's Gate 3

As someone who's constantly tinkering with the mechanics of my favourite RPG, I LOVE a lot of what Larian has done with D&D; not only accurately translating the base system but improving upon in ways I never thought of.

Playing BG3 feels good, and I want to see how much of their work I can adapt for my own table. As such, here's a breakdown of a bunch of little tweaks they've made to 5e (taken from the bg3 wiki) and whether or not I think they're a good fit for regular pencil and paper d&d.

Shove is not a part of the attack action. It is a bonus action available to all characters. Shove only pushes the target back an amount that depends on the shover's strength and the target's weight. It normally does not knock them prone unless they are shoved off a high ledge.

This might be THE best design Larian implemented and is instantly going in my games. Bonus action shoving is such a natural addition to combat, gives so many more tactical options. My one protest is that I am NOT calculating the weight of every creature and object ( mainly because I'm terrible at guessing weights for things) so I'd go with the distance calculation based on the creature's size and con score.

Gaining inspiration based on backgrounds

Gee, a mechanical reward for roleplaying your character, one that's way more straight forward than the DM arbitrated "ideals, bonds, flaws," system. From now on I'm going to give each of my players an upfront " You gain inspiration when you ______" note on their character sheet based on their backgrounds.

The party is limited to two short rests per long rest. Short rests restore each ally's hit points by an amount equal to half their maximum HP (rounded down). There is no hit die rolling. Long rests require camp supplies, which are food items that must be looted or purchased. In towns you will be able to rest at an inn.

This is a mixed bag for me only because I like hitdie as a mechanical abstract and I don't want to see them removed. Tbh I wish more mechanics interacted with them and they were called something abstract like "stamina" or something. That said I ADORE the camp supplies idea because it not only gives you something minor to reward exploration with besides GP. On the otherhand tracking all those supplies without the game's inventory management would be tedious as hell so it'd need to be highly simplified.

I especially like the idea of limited short rests/supplies in larger survival based adventures where time isn't at a premium like it is inside a dungeon.

If you hide while not in a creature's sight cone, you automatically succeed. If you try to hide while in a creature's sight cone, you automatically fail. If you are hidden and enter a creature's sight cone, you must roll stealth against the creature's passive perception. This may be a straight roll, advantage, or disadvantage, based on the creature's senses and the level of lighting. Some creatures with different senses such as blindsight may follow different rules

Congrats on fixing stealth rolls Larian. No notes.

LOTS more opinions under the cut.

When a creature is at least 10 ft above their target and makes a ranged attack, they receive a +2 bonus to the attack roll due to high ground. When a creature is at least 10 ft below their target and makes a ranged attack, they receive a -2 penalty to the attack roll due to low ground.

This is fine, and quite inline with a lot of fixes I've seen for flanking rules. I'm fine with a little extra battlefield math in order to make moments of advantage (spending inspiration, reckless attacking etc) shine.

The game does not stop a character from casting a leveled spell with both an action and a bonus action

Mixed on this, on one hand I've played enough clerics to know how much it sucks to have to use your bonus action to do a necessary spell and then be stuck with a so-so cantrip or melee attack for standard. On the other hand there's some design balance issues at play here.

Help is an Action. This ability allows characters to aid an ally in combat and remove negative Conditions. Using the help action on a downed ally brings them back to 1 hit point and leaves them prone.

Love the idea of help doing multiple things AND being a solution to minor status conditions. and giving everyone the ability to help means I can be a lot more aggressive when it comes to knocking character to 0. if I had to further patch this, I'd say that this also allows for a medicine check to allow a creature to spend a hitdie when they're downed, or allows the helping character to make a "SNAP OUT OF IT, WE'RE YOUR FRIENDS" charisma roll for charmed allies.

Jumping is a bonus action which consumes 10 ft of movement speed. With a Strength score of 10 or below, a creature can jump 15 ft, and this increases by 5 ft for every two points in strength above 10. At 20 Str a creature may spend 10 ft of movement speed and a bonus action to jump, and can travel 35 ft effectively increasing the creature's movement speed by up to 25 feet.

This, combined with the prone rules (see below) is JUICY, as it allows for risk-reward battlefield mobility . That said I'd add some caveats/clarifications: The jump always succeeds in moving you, but if you're taking damage, jumping up or down more than 10ft, or into rough terrain you need to make an acrobatics check not to beef it and fall prone (ending your turn). Your jump is likewise a buffer for how far you can willingly fall before taking damage, but if you fall after your jump, you always land prone.

Weapon actions, 'nough said.

It's more complexity than I'd give to first time players but HOT DAMN if it isn't a great idea to give the martial characters some options instead of just making the same attacks over and over again. I've actually been sockpiling 3rd party versions of this for a while now and I can't wait to add them in.

All The conditions are great:

Blinded: In addition to the other effects, ranged attacks are limited to 15 ft range. Blinded creatures can also make opportunity attacks.

Frightened: Creatures which are frightened are unable to move at all (rather than being unable to move toward the source of their fear), unless the effect instead makes them "fearful" which gives them the frightened effect as well as making them flee.

Prone: Being prone gives disadvantage on Strength and Dexteritysaving throws, attacks against a prone creature have advantage out to a range of 10 ft rather than 5 ft, and ranged attacks against a prone creature do not have disadvantage. Your character cannot do anything while prone. Starting the turn while prone will cause you to automatically use half your movement to stand up. Becoming prone during your turn automatically ends your turn.

Wet: This is a new condition that prevents the character from burning (e.g. from Searing Smite) and grants resistance to fire damage, but also makes the creature vulnerable to lightning and cold damage

[meltymoth]

i make shirt! it'll be ~30$us plus shipping. i'm in canada so shipping here and to the US shouldn't be too expensive but internationally it could get up to like. 15$ from what i've researched. i might also tweak the colors a little more but the design is pretty much set if you're 100% sure you want one drop your sizing in the replies!

[autumnslance]

Benchmark Tech Notes

Running the Benchmark

If your Benchmark isn't opening, it's an issue with the executable file, and something not completing properly on either download, or extracting the Zip file. The Benchmark is designed to run and give you scores for your potato computer, I promise.

I actually saved my Benchmark to my external drive, and it still pulls and saves data and runs as it should. Make sure you allowed the download to complete before extracting the zip.

Resolution

Check your Settings; in Display, it may be defaulting your monitor Resolution to something than you might otherwise use if you aren't on standard 1920x1080.

To check your monitor Resolution, minimize everything on your screen and right click anywhere on your Desktop. Go to Display Settings and scroll down to find Resolution and what it's set at.

You can set the Graphic Settings 1 tab to Maximum, or to Import your game settings. Display Settings tab is where you set it to be Windowed, Bordered, or Full Screen, as well as select Resolution to match your monitor in the dropdown (or customize it if needed). I speak on Resolution as some folks in my FC noted it changed how their characters looked.

The Other tab in Settings is where you can change the text output, or even check a box to disable the logo and score; I do this on subsequent plays, once I have my scores at various settings, to get the clean screenshots.

@calico-heart has a post about fixing graphics settings, with screenshots of the settings tab. Basically, change graphics upscaling from AMD to NVIDIA, and/or uncheck Enable Dynamic Resolution. Also check the Framerate Threshold dropdown.

Screenshots

The benchmark auto-saves 5 screens each playthrough. In the Benchmark folder there is a Screenshots folder to find the auto-images taken of your characters.

Character Appearance

If you want to get your current in game appearance, including non-standard hairstyles, make sure to load up the live game, right click and "Save Character Settings."

Then go to Documents/My Games/Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (this is the default in Windows 10 so mileage varies). The file will have the date you last updated their settings and be named FFXIV_CHARA_01.dat (or however many saves you have/made).

Grab those newly updated DAT files for your character(s) and copy them, then in the same base folder, go to Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn (Benchmark).

Paste the copied DAT files in there, and rename to FFXIV_CHARA_BENCH01.dat (the number doesn't matter, and you may have more).

When running Benchmark Character Creation, use the dropdown menu.

If you do Create a Custom Character and Load Appearance Data, it will give you default hairstyles again. Meteor's Dawntrail hairstyle is a new default.

In Char Gen I am finding that a very pale hrothgal reflects the green scenery around her, giving her white skin/fur a green tinge. The other zones do not have this problem, or at least not to the same degree.

They added a Midday vs Evening setting in outdoor areas as well to test lighting. The lighting in the Gridanian innroom is better; not as bright as outdoors, to be expected, but not completely useless.

New voice type icons to clarifying the sounds you make.

Remember we're getting a free fantasia with the expansion, so some tweaking may be needed; Iyna I felt like I needed to adjust her jaw. Other colors--skin, hair, eyes, tattoos, etc--are showing differently in the various kinds of lighting.

Uncertain if the limit on hairstyles for the Hrothgals so far is just a Benchmark thing; they do have set styles for different head options. Everyone gets Meteor's hair though, so it may be a temporary/Benchmark limit. But which clan and face you choose drastically alters what hair and facial feature options you have access to.

Check your settings, tweak them a bit, play around with chargen, and remember this is still a Benchmark; they always strike me as a little less polished than the finished game, but so far I'm actually pretty pleased with having defined fingers and toes, the irises in the eyes, scars looking cut into the skin, and other improvements.

[artbyblastweave]

Okay, Time for that belated Shrinking Rae post-

In the comics, Shrinking Ray's "arc" (bearing in mind an extremely liberal definition of that term, they had exactly one scene showcasing this) was that he was implied to be developing an inferiority complex; he's not necessarily incompetent, but he's out of his niche, his clever shrinking-based plans kept getting upstaged by brute-force solutions from the more conventionally powerful heroes like Invincible. He's the scrawny, nerdy little guy with the joke powers, he never gets a win, and in most fights he literally isn't visible. In the fight with the Lizard League his death is framed as pathetic and ineffectual- there's one or two panels between "I'll make you pay!" and getting eaten alive by Komodo. All of this is doing a couple of things- it's emphasizing that again, this is in fact a story and setting where superheroes sometimes just die really badly with limited fanfare- a thing that IIRC hadn't happened since the original Guardians team wipe in issue 7. Second, it's an indicator that the new Guardians are structurally kind of on the ropes. They're heavily staffed by second stringers, they exact second they have to split their forces they suffer a 66 percent casualty rate, and that's with backing from two capes who aren't actually part of the team. Grim! Anyway, when they do the adaptation Shrinking Ray becomes Shrinking Rae, because they want to tweak the gender balance of the cast and the pun is too good to pass up. But I think that there was a reasonable reluctance to transfer the "arc" from the comics one-to-one, because to be blunt, "Ineffectual Nebbish Glasses-wearer who whines a lot and dies pathetically," paired with absolutely nothing else, is gonna read as misogynistic if the character is a woman now. So in the adaptation Rae is markedly more competent. We're introduced to her taking down a much larger opponent by fucking around inside his ear canal, which becomes a favored trick of hers. There are traces of the self-esteem thing- the visual gag where she physically shrinks about a foot when getting chewed out in the briefing- but the overall throughline isn't "look at this loser who somehow ended up on the guardians." In the Lizard League fight, she doesn't get eaten- she's deliberately trying to execute a Thanus maneuver and just fucks it up, seconds after successfully killing a different villain the same way. And there's a second where it looks like it might work, too, before hope is cruelly yanked away. Which makes for a markedly cooler death scene- but who died? What was actually going on with her? Anything? In some sense she's cooler, but it's kind of an undifferentiated cool. She had what, Six lines? Seven? On balance I think Rae is still doing her fundamental job in the story, which is to pad the Guardians roster for a while and have someone who actually dies and stays dead as a result of the Lizard League fight- but I think they definitely missed an opportunity to give her some more texture than her comic counterpart had. Part of me thinks that the show would have been a good place to go even harder on Shrinking Rae being in over her head, but in a considered way, to emphasize that the Guardians aren't well managed- maybe tie it into the tensions between Robot and Immortal regarding sustainable team management practices. Part of me thinks you should go the other way, that if you're gonna do away with the idea she's underwhelming you should blow up her role, have her actually say and do some things that affect the story or the team dynamic in any noticeable way, because as it stands she's kind of visibly siloed as the designated mauve shirt. I'm definitely of one mind that this showcases something I suspected was gonna bite the show in the ass, which is that they're (laudably) diversifying a secondary and tertiary cast whose main role in the source material is often to die badly or fade out of focus.

[littlebatgames]

Cowboys + Vampires = yes please

When I first started writing Vampire Therapist, this guy was the player character.

Andromachos is 3000 years old. He's experienced, strong, and intimidatingly good looking. When I started putting him in front of the game's therapy clients, I found that Andromachos was so wise, he sucked all the humor out of the room. Beyond that, I think his clients were a little afraid of disappointing him.

I recast him in the role of mentor, and as an experiment, I recast the therapist as a cowboy, doing a silly voice in my studio. But it stuck. It turns out that a cowboy was just what the Vampire Therapist story needed. Cowboys are more attuned to the earth -- they "touch grass." They're more folksy, much easier to approach than a character like Andromachos. I also needed a character that would learn along with the player, which is how I came up with Sam Walls.

Here are some of our earlier renderings of Sam. Since he's *been through it*, we wanted to show some world weariness and humanity.

He looks great! He's a very handsome fella, crushworthy in his own right. But the core of Vampire Therapist is in compassion and humor, so we needed to lighten up Sam some. If you've played the game, you know he's a pretty lighthearted fella!

These are some of @nomnomroko's first renderings of Sam. You can see her style coming through here, retaining Sam's humanity but with the harder line style that we use on Vampire Therapist to make characters extra characterful and expressive. We decided on a mix of C and D, and got to work on some of the first pose renderings.

You can see the benefits of the Vampire Therapist style coming through already in the highly expressive faces we needed to depict a truly compassionate therapist! Also, @nomnomroko's extraordinary hands.

Costume choices. This was feeling a little formal, and we thought we could play to our strengths even more by showing a bit more skin. After more tweaks and shading, we had our man.

It's incredibly gratifying to see players resonating with Sam's sweetness, patience, and compassion, and his character design really helps reinforce those characteristics. The most common word we get associated with him is "adorable," and although that might make him feel awkward, I guess one can't argue with reality.

Check out our Steam page to learn more about Vampire Therapist! We've made something fun and heartwarming and I'd love for you to wishlist it. If we do well, I've got some crazy ideas and characters planned for the sequel!

[mintsuwu]

please how did you come up with her design I've been trying to make a design for my poppy playtime oc but it always ends up looking like rubbish please give tips😭😭

Hello, thank you for asking! Truth be told is that it took me a bit to figure out how to do LoolaLamb in general, she didn't come out too well on the first try xD I had to tweak a couple of things in her like the hair, colors or snout.

Initially, I wasn't quite sure of what animal picking for her, but then I went with the lamb idea for a few reasons:

- When I was little, I used to have a lamb plush I used to love dearly. Sadly I don't have any pictures to show since I no longer have it with me so I tried to look for one that looked similar on the Internet- But that was the main inspiration for her character. And since the Smiling Critters have their own plushies as well, I thought it would be interesting to make one of them after a real toy. I also took reference from other characters in media that were based on sheeps, like in Pokémon (Flaaffy & Whimsicott).

I would always recommend using references if you ever don't know where to start with a design. And in the case of a Poppy Playtime OC, you can look for references if you desire as well, or even turn a beloved toy of yours into a character, anything works!

In many cultures, the lamb is a revered symbol of innocence, purity, and sacrifice. It is often associated with religious connotations, particularly in Christianity, where it symbolizes the embodiment of Christ's innocence and the sacrificial lamb offering redemption and atonement for humanity's sins. I simply liked the symbology of this because I'm always a sucker for that when it comes to creating characters;;

This was mainly due to lore reasons, her association with Catnap, a follower of an entity, the Prototype, whom he workships and would do anything to get its blessing. LoolaLamb "sacrified" her voice for the Prototype (well, it actually was that Catnap took away her voicebox with that excuse).

Her name "LoolaLamb" is a word play for "lullaby", given the role she was going to have in the Smiling Critters line, a replacement for Catnap who would have a similar role as his, except that instead of using a gas to make people fall asleep, she would use her voice. Sheeps and lambs are also heavily associated with sleep and dreams, given the advice: if you can't get to sleep, just “count sheep” until you drift off into a peaceful slumber.

Sheep are wanderers. It's their nature. Even in the best and safest of places, places that provide protection, water, and food, sheep are known to wander off, get lost, and sometimes eaten by predators.

Her color pick was mainly because even if the smiling critters have more or less the colors of the rainbow and there are already two blue colored critters (Bubba Bubbaphant being more of a neutral blue or azure and Craftycorn cyan or aquamarine), I noticed that there were no dark blue or indigo colored ones. My first idea for LoolaLamb was to give her more violet colors, given her correlation to Catnap, but at the same time I wanted her to stand out amongst the others, being a little more of her own character, so that´s why I ended up picking a different color pallete for her.

And those are pretty much the basic things I had in mind when creating LoolaLamb! Of course it doesn't always have to be so elaborated with all characters, but I'd always recommend to find references, information, symbolism, anything that might help you with the creation of your character in case you don't know where to start or are simply stuck!

I might not be the best when it comes to explaining things but I hope this has helped you and I wish you the best in your creative process, anon! 🙏🏻💖

[saytrrose]

Can we see More about your racing AU please?

Looks so amazing and i love It so much

I do suppose I could share the character design line up!

I really just need to finish designing all the go karts, (atleast most are done!) and then I can make proper cards for them and really get into the written details.

To be honest it’s a little hard to just ramble about info and details without specific questions to go off of, so I’ll try my best hhh

for starters, the tent? Not a tent!

It’s actually a stadium, the amazing digital race!

And rooms? Sort of tweaked, they are more like each character owns a personal garage, a large open space where they store their vehicles and then have a loft above that showcases their cozy safe havens. Bed, entertainment, basically a small room in a much larger one.

I haven’t revealed Ragatha, Zooble or Gangles karts yet but I’ll go ahead and just talk about all of them!

Caine:

Caine has a motorcycle, specifically one inspired off of the motorcycle I’m saving up for this summer, a Kawasaki Eliminator. It’s a cruiser, I’m thinking he has a 600cc model but considering Bubble is his right hand man and operates as the races pit crew- he’s definitely tinkered with Caines bike, making adjustments and improving the engine. God only knows what the little psycho did, but it’s a damn good bike that’s not supposed to rev as loud as it does.

Pomni:

Her kart is inspired off a Volkswagen Beetle, seemed very VERY Pomni to me. Her car mimics her outfit design a lot, I might do some color changes to be honest but it will be super minimal, it’ll be final when the cards are done! She definitely stops at the pit the most often despite her placement in a race, are my tires okay?? Do I need my oil?? I know you just filled it but it went down- is anything damaged?? Sweetie you did one lap..

Jax:

Jesus Christ he has a giant supercharger on the hood of his car, and he is absolutely one of those annoying mfs that reva their engine OBNOXIOUSLY loud all the time like he’s super cool. If you’re wondering who most of the skid marks on the track are from, that’s also Jax. Hes the best as drifting, and he loves to show that off. His car isn’t based too much on an actual vehicle?? I stared at Mario karts and pieced it together, but also gave it a very sports car look, the wing on the back fr fr I think Jax would dig that.

Kinger:

OHHSOSK I was so creative with his little wagon,,, it’s castle shaped!! And the best part? Operates like a rocket. In the back past the battlement (the crown looking thing you see atop castle pillars) ARE GIANT exhaust pipes and yes, they do spit fire !! Operates like a rocket. It’s very cool! (Also he has a great muffler because unlike Jax he’s considerate of others hearing 💔) Oh also, he has one of those silly horns, I forgot how to describe it but you can just look at how I drew it on his kart and you’ll know heheh!

Zooble:

Our second motorcyclist, owns a trike! If you don’t know what that is, picture a bike with training wheels but super badass. 3 wheels! It’s inspired off the Harley Davidson freewheeler, I like that design a lot but it’s def not actually a Harley because istg when you buy those bikes your just paying for the fancy name brand- expect it to be in the shop all the time, smh not good- BUT ANYWAY!! The looks are inspired off it though and I can’t wait for this one because it’s just as crazy kooky as Zoobles design is.

Gangle:

Her kart is based on my favorite car, classic style but not too cool because you can bet she has anime stickers on the back and a decal that says “please let me merge before I start crying.” It’s similar to a karmann ghia convertible, 1963. Cherry red (so so pretty) She always has the top down, unless competing because damn you gotta go fast. That car itself is really slow, top speed normally is 68mph, however people have modified them enough to get up to 120mph. Thats still pretty slow compared to others, but her kart only reflects the appearance of the ghia! It’s much faster and I assume Bubble works on all their vehicles if asked to.

Lastly, Ragatha:

Our 3rd motorcyclist. 4 Karts, 3 cyclists. Her bike is a futuristic style, if you want a good idea then look up “icare bike”! Not so much a straight forward posture, she leans over ofc, you’ll likely get the idea when you see her bike. I’ll be honest, I haven’t gotten too into her design yet because I haven’t started drawing but!! Dark blue leds,, everywhere yes yes so cool ❤️

Sorry that’s so much 😭 but yeah! Just need to finish 3 kart designs for you guys and I can make official ref cards 👀

[artist-in-training-wheels]

I'm sorry to the people who follow me because I am knee-deep in the SAMS/LAES lore, and Dazzle Deer owns my heart. I would die for her in a heartbeat; I can AND will be drawing more of them! Aaaaaand I might tweak their design a little, owo

I have ideas for her outfits, including a Sunrise themed outfit because she's gotta match her dad! Anyone who tells me that she won't call him dad- I'm sorry but you're wrong, it can and will happen! Whether by accident or intentionally, that is so going to happen, IMO!

[kaiannae]

It is time- (Or: It Has Begin XD)

Greetings, my dear readers, it has been quite some time. First and foremost I would like to assure you that yes, I'm alive, and no, I have not abandoned my writing. But, I HAVE been distracted by somehing in the last few months, and I think its time to reveal it. I made a game! And not just a game, a Shadowgast game. I would like to present to you:

Beacon Run.

Ko-Fi This game begun its existance as a homework project for a game dev course I took about a year ago. I was supposed to implement a simple chase and pickup game and I thought, "Why use some random sprites when all I can imagine is small chibi Caleb chasing small chibi Essek around while Essek is trying to nom beacons?"

This idea lit a fire in my brain, and I just had to implement it but I had a very short time for the assignment. Iended up implementing something very simple, but I just couldn't let it go afterwards and vowed I was going to finish that small game and get it out for the fandom to play.

It has since been rewriteen, refactored and recoded several times, until I had something workable to show others. This is the place to mention the major contribution the people fo AIFL had on this little game. As I was maing this game, I shared its early stages with the server, and people have been kind in thier enthusasm, gave me ideas and provided invaluable criticism and feedback. They kept me motivated and kept me going through the lows of frustration one gets when coding. I got @bumble-b-goode 's permission to use their designs for the Weezards and drew my own sprites using that as inspiration. I ended up creating most of the assets for this game. Drawing the art assets took quite some time and I've learned a lot in the process.

Beacon Run not big or complicated as a game. In essence, is a tribute and a love letter to the Critical Role community and the CR crew. To the people who brought to life the Mighty Nein and have shared, and continue to share their stories with us on a weekly basis throughout the years. For Liam and Matt, who have weaved the tale of two broken wizards mending each other into better people, and keep their children of ink and paper alive for us to enjoy. The game: You as a player, are randomly assigned a little wizard to play for each match, so you can play as Essek or Caleb. The board dimensions and obstacles and even the flooring art are randomized for each match so each match is different. Your goal: to collect as many Beacons as you can during the allotted time, and end up with more Beacons than your rival which is the other wizard played by the computer. You gain projectiles over time, which are fake Beacons you can throw at the other wizard. If hit, the rival wizard is stunned for a short time, and drops several of his picked up Beacons for you to gather. However, beware! The rival wizard can also shoot you and stun you for a short while, and make you drop beacons as well. (You might notice that Essek gets stunned by sour lemon Beacons, while Caleb gets stunned by hand-knitted wool Beacons XD) In addition, when the rival is hit, he may drop a Magic Abeyance Bead which contains a Chronurgy spell. if you pick it up, it will provide a short time bonus for the match. In short, the game is a small, cozy game, made out of love for the wizards and the fandom, and I hope you'll enjoy it! I it still in the late stages of testing and development, as the feedback players provide is invaluable and lets me find bugs, add ideas and content suggested and tweak the mechanics to make it more enjoyable. So I would very much appreciate feedback, suggestions, con-crit etc. I would be happy to head what you like about it, what you think needs tweaking, ideas of content to add.... you name it! (Note that currently, the game does not work on mobile. I am planing to revamp the input system and add touch suport for mobile in the near future) Also it is worth mentioning that as I fix bugs, add content and tweak things, I upload new versions of the game so its worth following the Devlog and updates. The game is avaliable for play in the embedded player on the page, and also available for download to play offline (Though you might need to redownload it with every new version as I don't have an auto updater for it.)

In addition, if you like my work, feel like enabling me to make more of these or just want to buy me a coffee, It is always very much appreciated as it sure helps me stay afloat! Tip Jar

So, I hope you forgive me for my lack of writing for the last few months. I really wanted to get this out. I am trying to keep writing in my spare time, but the muses haven't been with me lately. I hope that now that this is out I can finally get my mind off it XD Stay tuned!

[mistressroxielove]

Hey everyone~ I'm back, and this time with a new fixation!

Long story short, I've discovered the new Fairly Oddparents reboot, absolutely loved it and was inspired to make this AU idea for the show! With a slight reimagine/redesign of the characters as well. And the first one I decided to do was Peri!

Here's some more info about my AU:

Fairly Odd Parents AU/Rewrite

Au Name: FairlyOdd Brother

Summary:

Perri (previously known as Poof) recently graduated from Fairy Godparents School and is eager to start granting Wishes for his very own godchild! Only problem is that with his lack of experience Jorgen is weary of giving him an assignment and keeps finding excuses/reasons to not give him a godkid. Realizing it might be a 1,000 years before they give him a chance to be a Fairy Godparent, Perri decides he needs to be a little bold and perhaps, bend Da Rules, to get his foot in the door so to speak. And his answer comes to him from a new neighbor in his human home, a family with a sweet shy 10 year old girl who is absolutely miserable. Perhaps Perri might be able to offer this girl a little comfort and fun as her new Fairy Godbrother!?

(Basically the same premise of the show, except Perri’s first godchild is Hazel, and through a technicality in the rule book, becomes her god brother instead of her godparent.)

ALSO please note this AU is more of a slight reimagine of the original show, meaning I did tweaked / changed some of the characters personality to match the new story I made for them. Nothing majorly different, but again just a heads up before you read on. Hope you like it~

Name: Perri Poof Fairywinkle Cosma (He goes by Perri now but still keeps Poof as a middle name to honor it)

Age: Human equivalent of 22 years old

-Usually it takes at least 1,000 years for a fairy to grow from a baby to an adult, however since Poof spent his first couple of years being raised alongside Timmy, his body magically enhanced itself to basically go through a growth spurt and age as a normal human. But now that he’s fully mature he won't physically age anymore and will stay a 22 year old for at least a couple hundred thousand years.

Sex: Male

Human Physical Description:

-Basically just did a mix between Wanda's and Cosmo human designs. Something simple and fun, I also added some blue to his color design just to make him stand out more.

-I also gave him crocs, I just found the idea cute and thought it would give him a more casual look for his human design

-I was originally gonna give him glasses similar to Cosmo but for the life of me I couldn't make the design work with his hair style, so I just gave him a earring with the same design his wand has

Personality:

-Similar to Cosmo Swavy car sale business man personality from the pilot.

-He’s a smooth talker with a deep rich voice to match, could sell a refrigerator to a eskimo

-Knows his way around rules and is always eager to grant wild and crazy wishes with the most imaginative interpretation possible, this eagerness to break rules can be a blessing and a curse, as this is what gets him in trouble the most

-Is a bit of a smart ass (But in a nice and lovable way), always has to have the last word, can be really petty when he’s mad

-Is really good a persuading people into doing things, though he doesn’t use this power to be malicious, only uses it to get small favors and mostly for Hazel to wish for crazy stuff, again it's never meant to be malicious

-Though he still has a lot to learn before becoming a godparent, he’s extremely sweet and caring to hazel and his friends, and will do anything to keep them safe and happy

-Is eager to proof himself to be useful and mature, is tired of every fairy treating him like a kid despite being older now

-Is a bit flamboyant and cares about his appearance, likes to paint his nails and wears earrings similar to his mother

-Though he does have a good head on his shoulders, he does have a tendency to interpret wishes in uniquely bizarre ways sometimes, something he inherited from his father.

Other fun facts:

-Peri really likes marine life/fishes, since he spent the first couple years of his life living as a fish, he has an appreciation for the creatures. And even has a pet goldfish!

-Despite being 22 years old, the fairy’s still treat him like a baby since a normal fairy baby would have taken at least 1,000 years to grow to maturity. This is what caused him to change his name, desperate to make the other fairy’s take him seriously and to not literally treat him like a baby

-Lives in an apartment building in the human world that is also connected to the fairy world, he’s the first of his kind to have a home like that. For most fairies it's extremely hard for them to ‘act human’ 24/7 which is why most prefer to turn themselves into childhood pets whenever they’re living with their god kid. As being human means they have to walk everywhere, not being able to use magic, and if they mess up once it could expose the existence of fairies and magical creatures in general. Peri however, once old enough to move out of his parents house was vocal that he wanted to live among the humans. He told Jorgen and the fairy council he wanted to live there to understand humans better to be a better godparent to them, but he mostly did it because he missed earth. Missed all the stuff that he grew accustomed to when he was a kid and also likes being able to find people ‘his own age’ to talk and relate to. After his endless demands and persuasion the council finally budge and allowed him to live on earth. But was warned if he was ever discovered to be a fairy, he would lose his godparents license and would never be allowed back on earth ever again.

-He wears a curler in his hair similar to Wanda when he sleeps, just a cute detail I wanted to mention

-Also just like his mother he has a tendency to call the kids/Hazel Buddy similarly to how Wanda likes to call people Sport but still has his own fraze, just a small detail that I thought would also be a cute nod to his parents

-He's also crazy for Chocolate, this is based off an episode in the original show where Wanda went insane just to eat some chocolate. It was just a one off gag but I really love that gag and decide to include it. He loves chocolate and has a dangerous addiction to it, but its still not as bad as Wanda's addiction to the stuff

Short summary of how he ended up with Hazel:

Peri has just recently graduated Fairy Godparent School and is eager to get a godkid, since his parents are still on their 10,000 year old trip he wanted to surprise them with the news of him having a godkid to make them proud of him. However Jorgen is extremely reluctant to give Peri a kid due to his extremely young age, inexperience, and his tendency to always try and bend ‘Da Rules’ as he pleases. So he puts Peri off again and sends him home, much to his annoyance. Irritated and now back at his human home in Dimmadelphia, Peri begins to hatch a plan to get himself a god kid since he knows it would take 1,000 years at least before Jorgen would finally give him a chance. But how could he possibly bend the rules to allow him to mentor a kid without Jorgen assigning him?

The answer comes to him from his new neighbors, a small family with a sweet but shy 10 year old girl who’s having a tough time adjusting to her new surroundings. Due to some hijinks Peri ends up babysitting for Hazel as her parents are now busier than ever with their new jobs and don’t have as much time to watch Hazel. They don’t mean to leave her alone so often, and actually apologize to her constantly for the unforeseen high work time. But it does little to help Hazel with her adjusting to her new environment. With the addition of her having a bad day in school and her brother, do to the storm, is unable to come up and visit until his next break (which is a few months away) Hazel, being miserable and finally had enough and in a fit of rage and desperation, wishes she could just fly to her brother. This wish for the first time activates Peri magic, before he can stop his wand appear and grants Hazel's wish, turning the girl into a fly.

The part of the episode happens similar to the original first episode, with Peri trying to get Hazel home before her parents come back from their work. He eventually does but again similar to the first episode Hazel gets stuck in a venus fly trap as Peri tries to get her to wish to turn back into her original form. After the talk with the ant Hazel realizes her mistake and finally wishes to become human again before her parents could discover what went wrong.

After the commotion, the next day Hazel goes to Peri’s apartment to question who he is and what the heck just happened. Peri tries to deny it but during their conversation he realizes that technically speaking…..Hazel did have good and caring parents. They weren’t the reason why she was sad and miserable, she was miserable because her brother wasn’t with her anymore and she desperately missed him. And technically speaking, there was no rule or need to ask Jorgen or the fairy console to become a kids Godbrother. He only needed their permission to be a Godparent. And besides……..he more than understood the feeling of missing a big brother.

Making his decision he officially introduces himself as Hazel Godbrother (In a similar manner to Dev introduction) and promises to bring a little magic to her life~ Much to Hazel shock and joy, as for the first time since moving to Dimmadelphia, she felt true joy and happiness.

Sooooo ya, tell me what you guys think! Any questions or suggestions for the AU I would love to hear, good to be back!

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