#i should do more pixel stuff later

[fragonreal]

a full of my previous pfp my first pixel art too, actually @plaugeoffur inspired me to try pixel art super cool person :^)

anyway do you guys like my new pfp :3

[pumaskulls]

Yoinked @neo-wolfe 's gal for a little bit of pixel animation practice!! :>

[the-bugsnax-journalists]

Just watched the mario movie yesterday, it was super fun but for some reason it drained me more than I thought, barely got any sleep today because of it.

I'll try to color in at least two of the remaining journalists to make up for the lack of stuff as of late.

[tofupixel]

Do you have any advice on how to get into pixeling larger scenes, or how you go about the process? I dabble in pixel art occasionally and am interested in pursuing it more, but whenever I try large scenes I always tend to fall flat

Love your art, by the way!

thank you!

my first step i always go get a ton of references. i think if you are struggling with pixel scenes it can help you to get some pixel art references too. for example if you arent sure how to render a tree, look it up on pixeljoint hall of fame im sure you can find something that inspires you.

this is the moodboard for my current knight crowley/statue azi piece im working on (software is called pureref btw. i have a dedicated monitor just for this but you can do transparency and overlay it if you lack space)

i think this is mostly preference but i always begin working with large areas of value/colour rather than an actual line sketch

i usually only save the wip process if im sending it to clients, so here is an example of how i worked through a commission

at this point im just going for the vibes. colour is more important and shape/size and having random pixels everywhere doesnt matter cos u can just remove them later !!

its kind of an anomaly/doomsday thing so i wanted the red sky and chaos all over

i work really quickly at this point and try for energy

just beginning to work my way through and detail things up. im still changing things around and adding more stuff in different places. its digital art so you can change things however you like, just keep moving forward

final ver sent to client after some revisions. pixel art is 99% rendering so you just need to keep pushing forward

i also want to say i did like 3+ years of sporadic studies. mostly studio ghibli and shishkin. if you have someone who inspires you you can study their work and figure out how they do it.

it cant be overstated how many of these i have done lol and im still not even close to where i want to be (its a process)

anyway sorry for the long post but you really should go for it. ive done the same concept like 3 times over my career (so far) cos i enjoyed it and want to come back to it now that im a little better. so u dont have to make it perfect the first time but doing it is better than not doing it!

sorry for the long post but i kinda got carried away anyway lmk if u want more specific tips i like talking about pixel art :--3 GL with your art

[matan4il]

That CUPE poster is fake. I don't know why someone would try to frame a Canadian workers union like that, but that is NOT the kind of thing they post, ever. They are in support of minorities and deal with Canadian issues and working conditions, not international conflict. And they would absolutely NEVER make a horrific poster like that. See for yourself: instagram . com/cupeontario/ and instagram . com/cupe_scfp/ and they're on Twitter and stuff too. The pixelatedness of that poster speaks to how fake it is too, none of their other material looks anything like that. And while Fred Hahn has posted/retweeted some stuff about the conflict on his twitter, he has never posted anything inflammatory like that and the reply of his that is in the screenshot is replying to something completely different.

Hi Anon,

I'm gonna reply to you and to the following ask together.

https://www.tumblr.com/matan4il/742531713829404672 This is a faked image; CUPE may have problematic opinions, but it doesn't help anyone to falsify atrocious posters when the reality should be more than enough.

Here's the post in question, showing a poster with the photo of Shani Lock's stripped, raped and murdered body being kidnapped into Gaza. The poster has CUPE's logo, as well as a text that legitimizes the Oct 7 massacre. CUPE, as mentioned above, is a Candian workers union.

Here are the links to the two IG accounts of CUPE from the first ask. To fthe first anon, you're right that the poster in question does not currently appear on either, you're wrong that they don't touch upon international conflict, they def weighed in on this one (more on that later in my reply).

The poster does use the pink filter and the CUPE logo with the right font, but it's true that someone skilled enough with photoshop can fake that. At the same time, if that person was good enough to be able to copy that well CUPE's visuals, I doubt they would be "exposed" through pixelation, so rather than proof of photoshopping, the pixelation seems to be a result of zooming in on the poster to show just a part of Shani's body along with the text. That would make the pic appear pixelated, and then a screenshot was taken that way.

So far, I would say nothing's conclusive one way or another. The poster isn't on the IG accounts, but it could have been there and deleted, or could have been posted on another social media site to begin with, the visuals being the right ones doesn't prove anything, and neither does the pixelation. BUT since I noticed the dialogue about the poster seemed to have taken place on Twitter, I went to have a look there.

I found the post where someone quote retweeted Fred Hahn, asking him about that Oct 7 poster, along with Hahn's reply that CUPE had nothing to do with it, and then he added the false accusation of genocide, telling people to "focus" (because apparently Jewish pain is never the main focus, not even when we talk about the Holocaust, which is the term for the genocide of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis... there's a reason I mention this, I'll get back to it later). I will keep my mouth shut about how many ignorant, antisemitic, anti-Israel tweets I had to see as I was scrolling in order to get to the relevant one, I'll just say that workers unions that want to be safe for Jewish workers as well should do better than that, including when the heads of these unions post on their "personal" accounts (since they're not posting as a private person, they're posting as the head of said union). Here's the exchange, dated Feb 14:

But the person who challenged Fred Hahn did mention where this poster was supposedly originally shared:

Apparently, CUPE has local branches, with numbers, and each has their own Twitter account, so I went to CUPE 3906, and went all the way back to their tweets around Oct 7. Needless to say, this official account is full of anti-Israel, antisemitic propaganda, too. Now around the relevant date, what does their timeline look like? There's one last pre-war tweet on Oct 6, a general anti-colonial one re-tweeted on Oct 7 (even though the timing makes the context obvious, the wording doesn't explicitly mention either Israel or Gaza), and then the next, VERY interesting tweet is on Oct 11. Here's the relevant segment (obviously the tweets appear with the latest at the top, older below):

Here is that Oct 11 tweet, which is a statement made in response to backlash they got for a tweet that they say was "made in solidarity with Palestinians."

Only the first paragraph is truly relevant, but the last one is also telling. "As the death toll rises," they said, just a day after Israel's counter action started, and while Israel was still counting its dead from the deadliest day in the history of this conflict, and the biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Still, the more important part is that if there had been nothing wrong with the tweet they refer to in the 1st paragraph, it should have still been up on their account, but it's not. Something was there and deleted, because there's now NO TWEET between Oct 6 and this statement, that could explain getting backlash... Deleting the tweet indicates they KNOW something was wrong with it, and they no longer wish to be publicly associated with it. But what was it? Have a look at this tweet, replying to CUPE 3906 on Oct 11:

It explicitly mentions rape. If the above poster was a fake, photoshopped and shared online in February 2024, how did someone posting in October 2023 know to mention rape specifically, and not just CUPE 3906's general justification of the massacre?

I can't prove anything one way or another regarding a deleted tweet, and with the progress of fake images, no one else can either. But I feel like the general progression of events indicates to me that it's more likely the poster is real, CUPE 3906 realized they won't get away with it, deleted it, and then they all closed ranks, claiming the screenshot is fake. Again, whatever they posted in the deleted tweet had to be real bad for even people as one-sided as they are (with all of the anti-Israel and antisemitic stuff they do proudly still have up on their accounts), that they were compelled to delete it. And justifying not just the massacre, but the rape specifically, might just do that.

Now let me get back to the IG accounts that the first ask pointed to, because even though they post less frequently than the multiple Twitter CUPE accounts, they're still very clear regarding this union's bias, and I'll also get back to that Holocaust mention, as promised.

I did not find a single post of solidarity with or compassion for Jews on either IG account following the Hamas massacre. I did find, on the Ontario account (and cross posted to Twitter, too) shared on Oct 10 a post that states they stand with the colonized over the colonizer, while the image (as well as their anti-Israel tweets) makes it clear they're erasing Jewish history and native rights in the Land of Isral and Jerusalem. The image could have been inclusive, show both mosques and the Western Wall, but nope. Jews are excluded from this image of our holy city and historical capital.

I also found a post about Holocaust Remembrance Day, which presents the Holocaust as including Jews. To make it clear, as someone who works in the field of studying this: "The Holocaust" is a term which is meant to reflect the Nazi intention to fully annihilate the Jews, something that didn't characterize their policy with other minorities. This is why we distinguish the Holocaust, the genocide of the Jews, from the persecution of other minorities by the Nazis. BOTH matter, and we talk about and educate against both, but they do have different characteristics, and so these are events, which are related, but CANNOT be reduced into one framing term. It is so problematic, talking about an event that was specifically about the Jews, as 'including Jews.' But let's say maybe that was ignorance, a lot of people don't get this distinction. CUPE's text doesn't mention antisemitism once, in a post about the most extreme antisemitic event in history, at a time when antisemitism is reaching its peak since WWII. When CUPE posted nothing else about this rise in Jew hatred, this text is just NOT good enough.

And what makes it even more obvious that CUPE is not treating Jews as it does other minorities, is that the same account DOES include posts that are specific to other communities, and does center the term for their hatred and persecution. They shared a post about a mosque attack that occurred in 2017, and in the text, they don't hesitate standing in solidarity specifically with Muslims, and against Islamophobia. So, to CUPE, 6 murdered Muslims are worthy of centering in the post about them (rightly so), but at least 6 million murdered Jews are not. Worse, the post then goes on to repeat the false claim about a genocide in Gaza. It also mentions the rise in Islamophobia following the war, even though they posted NOTHING, on NONE of the accounts I looked at, which recognizes the much greater rise in antisemitism we've seen over the same period of time, and which was launched by an attack on Jews.

The bilingual account, which I guess is a national one, didn't even mention Holocaust Remembrance Day. But on the very same date (Jan 27), it did mention the 2017 mosque attack, as well as Islamophobia, anti-Palestinians, but not a word on antisemitism.

All of this together is so upsetting, shows such a deep lack of concern for the well being of Jews, such a strong bias against the Jewish state and Jewish identity, that I honestly wonder whether that one poster is truly an issue. If it was posted by CUPE 3906, as I tend to believe by all signs I've seen, it seems to be a continuation of everything CUPE is completely unashamed of. And if they didn't share that poster, well... I guess there's a certain amount of poetic justice about being accused of something you didn't do, and no one listening to you protesting against the lie, eh CUPE?

You're welcome to do with this what you will.

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[initial-lime]

Stardew valley “lore” ramble for my own game below the cut,, I’m like halfway trough my second year (first time playing) and have just been making shit the fuck up, if you correct/spoil me on ANYTHING I will hit you with my car. Applause and intrigue only

So,, farmer “hunter” (me :3) comes to the valley after being given the farm by mysterious dying grandpa with the shitty bed (I’d be dying too if you bed looked like that)

Spends the first 3 weeks of the game chopping down trees and weeding in a haze, as you do,

Eventually goes “oh yeah I should probably talk to these villager people a little,,”

I end up walking into the clinic after almost dying in the mines for the first time, like maybe,,, 3 pixels of health left, accidentally give Harvey a granola bar trying to talk to him (I did not know you can’t be holding items when talking to people) he asks if it’s “healthy” (Harvey doesn’t like my granola bars ): )

I obviously think that’s fucking hilarious, guy walks into the clinic practically bleeding out, gives the doctor a granola bar (that he hates) and then leaves.

I make it my mission to piss off harvey more so I get him a coffee the next day because y’know,, caffeine is “bad” for you, which APPARENTLY he LOVES, which is obviously where I fall in love with the nerd because he’s stupid and adorable.

I keep up my “charades” of buying him coffee twice a week, saying various things such as “this one’s poisoned for sure” meanwhile building up my farm and my skills, getting to know some of the other villagers also, like Linus and stuff (Linus is my bff)

Around fall I finally buy Harvey a bouquet and we start dating 👁‍🗨👁‍🗨 (yippie) winter passes without seeing him much (grinding money in the mines/fishing)

Eventually the first rainy day in spring I propose to my boy (he says yes obviously) and we get married (yippie x2)

Me and Harvey now live together on the farm (:

Specifically farmer “lore” vv

I like to think the farmer isn’t human, or at least not fully,, y’know we never hear about a “grandma” and like??? Stuff in the valley grows SUPER fast and the farmer is inherently very strong (can carry a bunch of stuff) all’at

So. The farmer is a supernatural creature sort of like a nature?? Protector?? Kinda thing?? (Inspired by ye’ Scandinavian trolls, because I’m Danish so y’know obviously my main viewing lens is from that perspective) we’re once they’re given/take a piece of land (grandpa giving me the farm) they’re bound to it and act as a protector and amplifier for that land, everything in the valley grows so fast because the farmer is passively magic.

The farmer can either have a “monster” form or a human disguise, for the first half of the game the farmer is in human disguise because people are generally distrusting of the supernatural but as he befriends the villagers he’s in monster form more and more (since that’s his natural look)

Since I’m Romancing Harvey I like to think Harvey had a suspicion but only found out about the whole monster thing after they got married but before everyone else finds out, he probably gets super excited about it since he’s a doctor and he’s like “omg,, you could study this” (nerd lol)

Uh yah 👍 there’s more but I think I’ll save that for later lol

[fountainpenguin]

"I'm not the kind of girl to get messed up with you- Hello! ... You're all right, but I'm here, darling, to enjoy the party..." (x)

---

New Dog's Life chapter today! ~ 3rd Life series fan-season

Chapter 31 - “Flame (Etho, Skizz, Pearl)”

❤️ Read on AO3

💛 Start from Chapter 1

💚 More Pixels Imperfect fics

---

Scar files a microaggression complaint with the HALO team. Pearl helps Scott settle in while he recovers from glitchy code. They have a spat that's not about a sticker.

Meanwhile, SnifferMyFeet and Etho separate their souls… and start an honest talk about Sniff's identity as Sniff, not Joel. It was needed. It's for the best.

(First 900 words under the cut)

---

Etho - Fox

Status: Resting

Self-taught programmer, full-time hero

💙  💙  💙

He gets it now.

It's like ice in your water. It's like marshmallows in your cocoa. It's like wind beneath your wings. The final week before he's due back in Between (reluctantly, but definitely due), Etho flops on his bed and sprawls his arms to either side. Is he giddy? He doesn't mean to be, but this feels…

… Oh, it's a game-changer. Which is exactly what he texts Cleo after scooping up his admin panel. They won't see it if they've left their private server, and since Session 2 of Dog's Life could be starting any day now, there's no telling how long that may take.

Etho: hey so Etho: remember after limlife 4 or 5 when we talked about burnout?

Grocery shopping. For a family dinner- he and Cleo both made one (like a peace offering) in a way that wasn't really flirty married life roleplay, but more like… regular, everyday person roleplay. Did all their shopping together so they wouldn't cook the same thing. Call it 'date night' if you want; he walked her home and there might've been a little 'dramatic logout' roleplay in there. We don't… We don't need to go into detail about it.

To some people that's romantic and to some it's completely gross. Not really sure why… It's a natural process, isn't it? Soul-eaters can't help being what they are, and you may as well snap at endermen hybrids for struggling with eye contact or shame unthreaded players if they expose their glitches instead of keeping them covered up. This world's too big and life too long for arguing. Do you really want to make enemies and be rude to people who are going to carry the echo of your words for the rest of their lives?

Lend a helping hand. Extend a little kindness. Be polite. Respond to the hurt. Try not to avoid responsibility when others are counting on your strength. Sit with the injured, even when the night is cold. They're simple goals, but so easily forgotten these days.

Etho: I think you said if I felt stuck then I should break my routine for a while

Nothing happens for several minutes. Etho rotates words without meaning through his head, then types out something else.

Etho: you were right. I get now why you go on adventures with Martyn. Why you let him and no one else log you out all the time. Thanks for the advice. Let me know next time you need a favor. Rating this cycle 10 of 10 and I owe you big xD

He takes a long, guilt-free nap in his cushioned bed. Catching up on block updates and videos really drains a guy (especially this close to the end of the Hermitcraft season, not to mention Vault Hunters and a Life series on top of it), but he spent all morning prepping the bed and it's already providing every agonizing tick of its worth. Two hours later, he's stirred awake by a buzz on the admin panel.

ZombieCleo: yay! So glad that worked for you <3 I want to hear all about it. Maybe in a couple weekends you can watch MCC with me and the kids + Martyn? If we catch a minute alone, I can recommend more stuff you might be into ;)

The kids refers to Bdubs and Scar, who skated through Limited Life like energetic teenagers spreading their wings. It's goofy, it's endearing, and Cleo's got her roleplay voice on because she knows it makes him snort. His tail gives a twitch as he tries to keep a smirk from creeping out behind his mask.

Martyn, huh? he muses, but doesn't say that. Cleo circles between lovers, friends, and exes like a pollinating bee.

Etho: whoaaaa Etho: inviting a fox? that's dangerous! ZombieCleo: nose out of your tail, fur boy Etho: dibs on Martyn, I see ZombieCleo: If you're serious about returning the favor, Martyn says Rhetoric's down here and this might be our best chance at smash and grabbing from your mum's museum Etho: Hm… ZombieCleo: I mean, you did leave my eggshell when you rescued Grian and that other soul

Yeah- it looked distressed. Now Sniff's down here. He can actually talk now when he couldn't before. Honestly, not the worst decision he could've made.

If anyone's going to try getting into the Fox Dragon's museum, a fox has the best chance of doing so. It's kept separate from the nesting cave where souls respawn, but even the deadliest traps won't keep foxes out since they'll just respawn. Unless they're traps that can't be dodged even with careful planning, or some sort of system that short-circuits code. The phantom roost is nearby, right? Frankly, phantoms are excellent trackers, they can fly, and they're probably the fastest of all non-swimming hybrids, so a phantom alone provides great security as-is.

Etho: I'll think about it. Not tonight, though. Full moon fox face isn't for me. Also if there are raiders there then that's probably the worst time to show up ZombieCleo: Fair ZombieCleo: I can think of something else, but if you ever get the chance, I want it back Etho: duly noted ✌️ ZombieCleo: btw say hi to Scar and Bdubs when you see them. They've been cracking nonstop jokes since you disappeared. One can only imagine they're attempting humor to bury immense throes of pain Etho: D:

[Full chapter on AO3 - Link at top]

[youredreamingofroo]

📩 Simblr question of the day: Who's your biggest inspiration/s on Simblr? Mention them! Tell us why you like them!

honestly probably could've made an 800 page essay on people who inspire me on simblr, but these are my BIGGEST biggest inspirations :P

@minimooberry : Honestly, she's the reason why I even pursued rendering in blender and her stuff is probably the only reason why I even joined Simblr to begin with 🥹

@stellarfalls : Bree, the LEGEND, has inspired me in a lot of ways but the biggest one was her GIFS... I remember seeing her post of Rohan and Hana's first meeting and that sparked a light in my chest... I wanted oh so badly to make Gifs as good as her... I'm getting there but we all have different styles so it'll never be exact and I know my gifs will be good in their own way 🫶

@birdietrait : Their overall sim style just... idk its so good and loved it when I first saw their posts 🥹

@groovetrys : Her general editing style was a HUGE inspiration for me, I can't quite explain or pinpoint it but I LOVE her editing its sooo aesthetically pleasing

@slightly-ludic : This is a bit of a smaller detail, but I just LOVE how Jade edits her globetrotter screenshots, I love the sort of narrator perspective in the text and I've started to try and do something similar in Make the Most of It :)

@mattodore : So i've always loved being passionate about my characters (hence why Roo still exists 5 years later), but seeing River's blog and how IN DEPTH they go for Theo and Matthias (and their other OCs ofc) and how much passion they have for their characters inspired me to get more into the blood and guts of my characters, I don't think I'll ever get there exactly cuz I feel like u could ask River what Theo was doing on February 9th 2018 and they'd have an answer and I would not LMFAOO

@rebouks : I am just overall VERY inspired by Becca, but she's one of the people who got me inspired to start making more poses (albeit I was already into making my own poses, she definitely bumped that inspo) and I'm very inspired by her storytelling, its SO good and feels soooooo human

@buttertrait @miralure @acuar-io : squishing these three together because all their vibes just make me so happy and inspired or at least allowed me to feel like I can be myself in this community (mainly cuz their vibes are similar to the vibes of people I like and am friends with irl)

@torissims : her whole aesthetic is just something that I ASPIRE to have... like the vibes of her yesterday save posts are just MWAH chefs kiss man

@missatan : (nat getting all my love today damn LMAO) I don't think my renders will ever be as 8K ultra HD 5 billion pixel quality as hers, but the symbolism behind them and just how good they look have inspired me to at least WANT to do/get better at rendering

some of these might not really be classified as "inspirations" but I still felt like sharing my adoration for these people - There's SO many more people I could've @'d but felt these were my very VERY best inspirations.

I should mention that all my mutuals inspire me one way or another, the community as a whole has inspired me to be kinder and inspired me to just spout my adoration for peoples' work

[scopostims]

stim gifs in photopea

[PT: Stim gifs in photopea /End PT]

Hello! This is my (lengthy) tutorial for how I make GIFs for stimblr using Photopea. It's not going to be as extensive as how I make for shows, celebrities, etc, because I have different processes for both, however I'm still aiming to cover everything I think necessary!

It'll be split into multiple sections with headers, so feel free to skip whatever you want if you don't find it necessary :•] Reblogs appreciated if you found it useful, but no pressure obviously!

Sections:

Getting your video

Importing into Photopea

Making the GIF

Sharpening the GIF

Coloring

Exporting & Optimization (in EZGIF)

End results, and misc tips and comments

1. Getting your video

[PT: 1. Getting your video /End PT]

Short section! These are the ways I download and source videos for use

Youtube - yt-dlp (installation instructions)

Instagram

Tiktok (Allows without watermark)

Pexels

For yt-dlp, check out this basic list of commands I made solely for downloading material to GIF! If you have further questions, either send me an ask or refer to the github page.

2. Importing into Photopea

[PT: 2. Importing into Photopea /End PT]

There are two ways to import into Photopea, the first is importing footage directly, and the second is screencapping (which I won't cover in detail, but this tutorial is for installing the program I use on mac & how to use it, and this is for installing on windows)

Option 1: Importing footage directly (see end for comments)

On the home page of Photopea, you'll want to click "Open from computer", and select your clip, upon selecting you'll be presented with a popup like below

All that really matters here is where you see "30 FPS", that's the videos native frame rate. I always put whatever that number is as my frame rate because I find it to be the best, but you can use different presets (Like ezgif, which gives you 12, 20, etc). The less frames you have, the chopper it will be. If you plan to slow it down later, I'd also recommend having more frames so it looks smoother after slowing.

Now you just have to wait for it to load all the frames, then you're set!

Option 2: Importing screencaps

This is my personal way of doing things, so this is assuming you've installed a screencapping program and already have your frames ready.

For this, when you click "open from computer", select the first frame and open it by itself. Once that's loaded, look in the top left at the "File" tab, select "Open & Place", then ctrl + shift to select the rest of your frames. Once they've all loaded in, you can either rasterize them now, or wait until after cropping and resizing (goes faster then).

What's important though, is ctrl + shift to select all your layers, in the top left open the "Layer" tab, hover over "Animation" at the bottom to expand it, and select "Make frames". With your frames still selected, hit the folder button in the bottom left.

Without this, Photopea won't recognize this as an animation, therefore you'll be unable to export it as a GIF.

3. Making the GIF

[PT: 3. Making the GIF /End PT]

3A. Cropping

To begin with cropping, select the crop tool, which is the fifth one down on the left bar (if you hover over, it will say the name), or the "C" key on the keyboard.

Along the top now, you should have some new options. The dropdown menu that says "Free" is going to be how you select an aspect ratio or fixed size, and I always set to 1:1 since most people on stimblr use square GIFs, but you can do whatever works for you! Make sure to leave "Delete uncropped pixels" unchecked, because that lets you move stuff around later without having to recrop.

Crop your animation down as you see fit, then either hit the enter key, or the check button along the top bar. If you're unhappy with the placement, you can undo it OR, select all your layers, then use the move tool (First icon on the left, or the "V" key) and drag it around as you see fit.

3B. Resizing

With all your layers selected still, open the "Image" tab in the top left, towards the bottom select "Image Size", then select what you want to resize to.

Tumblr's exact GIF sizing

1 per row: 540px

2 per row: 268px

3 per row: 177px

HOWEVER. For stim GIFs, I find the quality difference so negligible, you can resize to what you want. It's also better for it to be bigger and scale down, then smaller and scale up. For this reason, I typically do 268px no matter what, or 300px.

As far as resampling goes, leave it turned on, and I personally leave it on bilinear, but the different options vary slightly, so experiment and see what works for you!

If you're happy at this step, go ahead and skip down to exporting! But when doing this way, I do recommend sharpening for better quality at smaller size.

4. Sharpening the GIF

[PT: 4. Sharpening the GIF /End PT]

The fun thing about this section is you get to experiment and find what works for you! I'll give you my personal method, but you can play around, add and remove bits, etc until you get something you're happy with!

4A. High pass

High pass is my personal favorite way to sharpen GIFs, and for stim GIFs I'll often use only this.

(Steps 1-3 in image) To do, start by right clicking the *Folder* all your frames are in, and select "Duplicate Layer". Select all the frames in Only the folder on top, then go to the "Filter" tab along the top left, hover over "Other", and select "High Pass". The grey look is entirely normal! I normally set my high pass at 2-4, but play around with this step and find something you like!

Select the *Folder* all your high pass frames are in, and change the blending mode (fourth step in image) to "Soft Light", it should be on "Pass Through" initially. With that done, you've used high pass on your GIFs! If you're content here, skip the next section about smart sharpening, and see about merging animation folders under it.

4B. Smart Sharpen

Note: I recommend testing your sharpening settings on one layer BEFORE applying them to all layers, as it will be easier on your computer.

I utilize this in addition to high pass usually, but you can do it all by itself as well! To begin, select all the frames in your folder (if you used high pass, select the frames in the *Bottom* folder). Open the "Filter" tab on the top left, hover over "Sharpen", and select "Smart Sharpen". Now find what you like!

For stim GIFs, if I used high pass, I'll go for 75-110% amount, and a .1 radius. I personally don't like the look of an over sharpened GIF, so I only use smart sharpen if I want to enhance some small details high pass didn't touch enough, which is why I use so little. If you don't like high pass, you might use more here!

4C. Combining animation folders

If you used high pass, you'll notice you have two animation folders. To fix this, select both folders using ctrl + shift, open the "Layer" tab, hover over "Animation", and select "Merge". It will give you a popup to confirm, and you can go ahead and accept!

If you don't merge these, Photopea will think they're two GIFs in one document, rather than only one, which is why this step is so important.

As a note, once you merge these folders, you can no longer shift the frames around to change where they are in the crop like you could earlier.

5. Coloring (Image Heavy)

[PT: 5. Coloring (Image Heavy) /End PT]

This section is going to be less of a tutorial and more a basic rundown of the adjustment layers and what they do. Coloring will change from GIF to GIF, and you can do light or intense coloring, so this is just a guide to begin with, but really just play around and find what you like!

To access the adjustment layer menu, in the bottom right where "New Folder" was, the one directly next to it that looks like a circle made of two half-circles, will bring up your adjustment layers.

As a note, I always group my adjustment layers in a folder above my animation, for ease of hiding to compare with and without.

5A. Levels

Levels is one I almost *Always* use on a GIF because it makes it look cleaner to me. In the first box, sliding the black square on the left *increases* the blacks, sliding the white square on the right *increases* the whites, and the one in the center changes the general brightness up or down.

Sliding the black box on the bottom bar *decreases* the blacks, sliding the white box *decreases* the whites.

If you change the channel from RGB to another option, you can change the balance of reds/cyans, greens/magentas, or blue/yellows, I personally don't touch this for stim GIFs. In the RGB channel, I set the top black box at ~10, and the top white box at ~245 usually.

5B. Curves

This is another way of adjusting brightness, blacks and whites, or color balance. By adjusting the dot in the bottom corner you adjust blacks, the top corner adjusts whites, and if you make a dot in the center, it adjusts general brightness! You can also make multiple dots to separately adjust some values. By changing the channels, you adjust color channels rather than white/black.

5C. Exposure

This is another way of adjusting the lights and darks of the GIF. Sliding the exposure up and down will add/take away light from the lighter parts of your images. Adjusting the gamma correction up and down will add/take away shadow from the darker parts of your image. Offset increases/decreases the brightness of the whole thing but I almost never use it.

5D. Vibrance

Vibrance is what I like to think of as a "softer" way to increase intensity of colors, instead of using a Hue/Saturation layer. It affects warmer colours more intensely than cooler colours, whether you use the vibrance or saturation slider. The saturation slider here is more intense than the vibrance one, but less intense than saturation in a Hue/Saturation layer.

5E. Hue/Saturation

This one is simple! Sliding the hue slider changes the colour, sliding the saturation slider increases/decreases saturation, and sliding the lightness is basically like directly adding black/white to a color. I use lightness only sparingly.

What's cool here, is you can adjust the range to target a specific batch of colours! If you find your reds are too bright compared to everything else, you can target the saturation of them specifically.

5F. Color balance

This is a simple way to adjust the base colors of an image, by changing it to be more cyan or red, magenta or green, or yellow and blue. This can be useful for making a GIF appear warmer or cooler!

I almost only touch the shadows & midtones, and highlights sparingly. "Preserve Luminosity" preserves the highlights and shadows of the image, so by unchecking it, you can achieve some more intense results.

5G. Black & White

The black and white layer is useful because you can change exactly how light or dark a color appears after making it black and white. For that reason, I prefer it over a gradient map if I need to make something black and white.

5H. Photo filter

Photo filter is a simple way to add a color filter over the entire image, and adjust how strong or weak it is. "Preserve luminosity" once again just keeps the darks and whites of the original GIF.

5I. Channel mixer

I couldn’t even begin to cover channel mixer here, but this is for very intense color edits (I typically use it when I'm trying to make a GIF fit a board). However, here's another tutorial solely about channel mixer if you're interested in taking a crack at it!

5J. Selective color

Finally, selective color allows you to adjust the amounts of color or lightness/darkness of a specific batch of color.

By changing the color channel, you can affect different batches of color. The cyan slider controls cyan/red, the magenta slider controls magenta/green, the yellow slider controls yellow/blue, and the black slider controls black/white.

Checking the "absolute" is essentially like "Preserve Luminosity" in the other layers. With absolute, it's like shifting the color one way or the other, and without absolute, it's like adding to the pre-existing color.

6. Exporting and Optimization

[PT: Exporting and Optimization /End PT]

6A. Exporting

With all that done, we're ready to finish it up! To finish your GIF, open the "File" tab in the top left, go to "Export As", and select GIF!

Here you can rename, adjust the size (WILL ruin the sharpening you did), the quality (I leave at 100%), and the speed.

Another important thing to note is the "Dither". If you leave dither off, you can potentially encounter color banding, which is where (typically gradients) with look like strips of color, rather than smooth. This is because GIFs only have 256 colors they can render, so if something has too many, it bands.

By checking dither, it can get rid of color banding, at the cost of dots on the image (around where the worst color banding is usually). Sometimes the dots aren't noticeable and this is the better option, however it will Also increase your file size. It's up to you if you want to use it!

6B. Optimization

This is technically an optional step, as tumblr's GIF size limit is 10mb, so as long as you're under that, you can post, however, smaller GIFs load faster and I personally find are better for use in stimboards where you're loading a lot of GIFs! So to help this, let's head on over to the optimize section of ezgif. My personal goal is UNDER 4.5MB, ideally under 4MB.

The two main things I recommend are Lossy GIF, or removing frames, and I always start with Lossy GIF. I do anywhere from 5-15, and usually this will bring down GIFs a lot if you made them in Photopea! My example GIF was 6.7 MB to begin with, and afterwards it was 4.2MB.

However if you find that to be not enough, you can remove frames. When you remove frames, it speeds the GIF up, so I also recommend slowing it down (this is why I set my frames high in the beginning as well). I typically do "Remove every 4th frame" and slow it down to 75%-85%.

7. End results, and misc tips and comments

[PT: 7. End results, and misc tips and comments /End PT]

(source) The first GIF is without sharpening/colouring, the second is with sharpening but no colouring, and the third is with sharpening and colouring. I didn't color it much besides making it slightly warmer, but I hardly ever do much anyways!

As for misc comments:

In firefox, when you import footage directly, sometimes it glitches and tries to load 4000 blank frames, which is extremely resource intensive on a computer. The solution is import the footage in chrome, save as PSD, then open the PSD in firefox. (Or work in chrome but why do that /half silly). The other solution is screencap which I do since I do this often, but both work fine.

In firefox, sometimes you're unable to slow the GIF down upon export and it will export faster than it actually is. Slowing the video down to 50% restores it to native speed I've found, and you can do this in ezgif before other optimization.

When colouring, my number one tip is slide something all the way up first, then adjust down! By seeing it at max, you have a better idea of what's getting adjusted.

If you have any questions, drop me an ask :•]

And that concludes our tutorial! My apologies for the length, but I wanted to cover every possible thing here. It definitely seems like a lot, much more than working in ezgif, but when you get used to what you're doing, it goes extremely fast (even if you spend extra time screencapping). I personally find it worth it for the ability to sharpen GIFs alone, but as well as more detailed coloring opportunities.

Thank you for reading, I hope this has been useful!

[serabiet]

It’s been another 84 years good grief, so might as well go over the basics when it comes to my uploads! Everything’s been compressorized, textures reimported in to reduce pixelation, morphs included, and other ages are repositoried to adults to save space and headache (mine). Let me know if something’s wrong so I can get defensive about it and then maybe fix it.

I’ll probably sooner or later revisit the mesh conversions I’ve made if I spot lumps or bad bones or any other eyesores and update the files as I do.

 Ok ready!

umfb ichabodcoat 12/20:

It’s just a classic full body outfit from a few years back I made for Ichabod because I couldn’t be bothered to make the coat into a separate top at the time. I’m pretty sure I never posted it before though!

The coat’s something from the game I always wanted to use and edit, so now it’s been used and edited a little and there’s a new collar texture on it.

Just the two color options because that’s all I needed.

Polycount: 2270/1714

Available for adults and enabled for elders, has only fat morph because it was mainly intended for elders.

Credits: Pyxis for inspo, Fanseelamb for lots of the parts

Download umfb ichabodcoat (SFS)

uft 4t2 nolansims mocked mulberry 05/22:

Conversion of this sweater by Nolan-sims, but none of the original color options feature. Another version by MegaMassikaLove already exists, too, which has the original recolors! These do not conflict.

Here’s a Bodyshop swatch of the colors on teens. They’re named pretentiously (but in a cool way) so just go through the adult files to check what you want and what you don’t. Teens and elders are repositoried to those, as mentioned above.

Polycount: 2470/1753

Available as everyday/outerwear, ages teen to elder

Credits: Nolan-Sims

Download uft mockedmulberry4t2 (SFS)

uft mmnt 4t2 oversized cardigan recolors:

Back when I first discovered you could and should utilize the normal maps from Sims 4 in recolors to liven them up I experimented how to best do it. I don’t know if these first recolors were it, but they have existed since so might as well share!

The color range is four earthy and slightly depressing variations, categorized as everyday

Adults only, mesh included was edited by MegaMassika to float a bit further away from the butt and a preg morph was added as well.

Polycount: 3298/2961

Credits: Mmnt, MegaMassika

Download uft 4t2 oversizedcardigan (SFS)

uft amaryll harajuku cardigan recolors:

Awhile back I did some stuff for Bobsterosa, and these cardigan recolors came about on the side. Amaryll’s good old cardigan recolored for teens and adults, categorized as everyday

Four recolors, as seen here on teens.

Renamed meshes are included, so watch out for doubles in your downloads!

Polycount: 2236/1666

Credits: Amaryll

Download uft harajukucardigan (SFS)

ufb slacks + moccasins 04/22:

So these boots were originally a TS3 Store item for kids, called Pantucket Pat Moccasins. Then Rukisims converted them for adults and I guess got rid of the bow on the texture? And then maybe chocolatesims converted them for the SIms 2. And some time ago I finally made some edits to the mesh, and combined them with the slacks I made uhh four years ago?

Four recolors as seen on elders in bodyshop, ages teen to elder, categorized as everyday/outerwear

Polycount: 1715/1612

Oh man yeah I promised a useful recolor psd to go along with these! Here, catch! Genuine Yeti Fur from Yeti Salon floors!

Credits: Rukisims, chocolatesims

Download ufb slacksmoccasins (SFS)

ufb 4t2 GP10 workpants 05/22:

I think these were converted by someone else already but I can’t find them right now. But again, these come in colors a bit (if not exactly a lot) different to the original Sims 4 ones, and certainly not all of them.

The mesh shape goes along my Anatomy V2 body. More or less. Hard to find a balance between TS2 blockiness and TS4 gummy limbs. In progress!

Five recolors, ages teen to adult, categorized as everyday

Shoes are edited H&M sneakers (to be a bit more dynamic than just a flat sole) with misomoso’s textures

Polycount: 1428/1014

Credits: uhh EA I guessss

Download ufb 4t2GP10workpants (SFS)

OKAY END OF POST FOOTER HERE and the soundtrack to it

This got so long wow no wonder i dread uploading things because it always piles up and takes me an hour+ to write this all

[galactic-knightmare]

MercyTale Rewrite Redesigns

AIGHT! the MercyTale redesigns. ARE DONE! Mild warning- there is blood. and some bones through someone. which is why I'm putting this under a cut lmao. its not the worst but better safe than sorry XD

Starting wiiiitthhhhhh THE FALLEN HUMANS!

Pssst- Soul Skill stuff and LV corruption are explained in THIS post! I was intending to do Pixel art 'Sprites' for all of them, but I kinda... gave up lmao. I might try again later...

As stated before, back when I originally made MercyTale on DA, Soul Remnants still have bits of how they died show on their forms- Chara has Buttercups growing all over them, and Frisk has been absolutely skewered by bones.

Also, as per the changes, Frisk is not entirely evil, and Chara is not entirely innocent. It'll be explained more once I get through the writing part... (also no, the 'Player' is not a factor here)

I'm still debating if I should make Melody trans, but we'll see. It might even end up being done AFTER I finish the rewrite completely lmao.

Anyway, Sans now!

yes I redesigned him AGAIN after having already redesigned him not long ago. I wasn't happy with his tail at the time, and he didn't match the other redesign sheets anyway.

I also added some blood and dust to him- Dust from his own injuries and Blood from the fight with Frisk.

...Also yes, that does mean he hasn't washed off the blood and dust in three years. Its fine- he can get a bath in the epilogue oneshots... XD

And Finally, the Soul Remnants!

They haven't changed enough to be stated, since, ya know, Soul Remnants- they kinda just keep reliving the moment of their death again and again, which is really kinda dark, but eh. It'll get fixed.

Anyway, I'm off to either Chill with some games, or start working on the Rewrite itself. ADIOS!!

[jbt7493]

game where you have to solve puzzles in real time while dodging attacks to cast different magics, list of magic types and corresponding puzzles

first off, obviously there are flaws with this to begin with as me and kwarrtz and also me and sanity's stream chat have been discussing. I think it is sort of appealing from the idea that different playstyles are incentivized not just by amount of damage and damage type but also the actual gameplay, the gameplay is symbolically linked to what you're doing, and the skill ceiling is very high. However. the skill ceiling might be a bit *too* high and it would be overwhelming generally, and while you could have a lot of different mechanics to interact with, the fundamental concept of 'do puzzles while dodging attacks and aiming' is gonna be the same, and unlike a normal rpg where the gameplay isnt thaat different and you can try out the different builds, it may be too hard to try new builds in this such that youre actually more constrained into a single build

but with that said. this post is me listing some ideas of what magic types correspond to what puzzles and so on.

Spatial magic and teleportation- rubiks cube, mazes

Fire magic- this one is a bit tough, i think maybe one type of puzzle to ignite and then another to sustain the fire, so a fireball would basically just be a tougher ignition puzzle but a wall of fire would be an easy ignite and a progressively harder puzzle to keep it burning for a while. was thinking the sustain puzzle would be a bullet hell?

Summons- Was thinking a chess puzzle for like, soldier-y summons, control of the summons post summoning would depend on the type of the spell but obviously like, you could just do RTS micros for them, swap bodies to directly control very strong summons, do more chess puzzles to buff up your soldier-y summons etc. kwarrtz makes case for chess game against an ai being good, i think its you competing against a demon to maintain control over your borrowed units

necromancy, box of bones you assemble to get on board, micro to control, box has some decoy bones but open enough and those turn from a decoy into a whole nother skeleton to summon.

fey summons use later written, constructs use later written, unsure about pure arcane summons

Buffing and/or healing- was thinking a sympathetic magic empath type thing where its a dating game. originally was thinking that for healing but then i thought oh maybe a Surgeon Simulator thing. someone else said surgeon simulator type minigame for dispelling and counterspells but i think you should need to counter elements with opposing elements.

kwarrtz makes strong case for dating game being for fey magic whereas i was thinking itd be you appealing to your god. idk what buffing is then...

right so fey magic druidic summons and stuff- animal spirit summons are autonomous, no micros. fey magic requires also using other magic type to trigger spells. i like the day trading and delayed-spell-that-triggers-when-you-do-a-thing thing, and its like, the fey give you a challenge for their entertainment

Debuffs/poison - was thinking like a papas pizzeria type thing, kwarrtz kinda thinks the idea of poison magic is weird and it should just be out of combat alchemy. hexes/curses are sort of like, you have preparation but want to do it fast- drawing minigame for a predefined hexagram, pixel match for efficacy level

Electricity - circuit diagrams! kwarrtz disagrees a bit, thinks circuit diagrams would be more of a crafting thing. kwarrtz suggests like you click on the points you want it to arc to, then do a little osu thing to chain between those points, i think that might be a little too simple and direct

hm okay im also undecided on like, how many of the more direct damage elements need to exist and if we should do the whole fire earth water air thing. still dont even have a good ignition puzzle for fire, dunno what would be good for ice at all, electricity i think you can make pretty intuitive ones, even if i dont love kwarrtz's. kwarrtz says if you're making your own magic system for this you dont need it to be aristotles elements, but idk what else then :p

light magic- draw mirrors, focus the light/collimate it for better range and effect, draw a shape with it- randomly generated field, but you decide the spell to cast on that field. fire is usually direct damage but in this case would also allow you to make fire walls and stuff; light would be very long range and pretty much just damage, i dont know what else you could even do that would make sense

pure arcana magic like magic missile and shield are just helldiver stratagem arrow key sequences. unsure if it is JUST cantrip level stuff or if you can do harder typeracer sequences for advanced arcana magic

Clerical magic- You Have A Book, answer quiz questions from it, type as fast as you can, high level spells make you decipher the question before answering it, highest level you speak in tongues and answer back *in the cipher*

Qi martial arts- Where's My Water

I want conjuration magic because there's a lot of gadget-y things you can do with it and you can be both control and buffing your team by like, literally conjuring new stuff into their puzzles maybe? but idk how to do that one

crafting: alchemy mechanics, runestone language for a coding api maaaybe? kwarrtz says that's overplayed and i'm inclined to agree, plus the level of balancing for a coding language is rough because what can you do when someone writes literally the perfect script. make automatons and other gadget type things with like, one of those machine building type games, but as an out of combat minigame. dunno what to have for more direct item enchantments rather than magitech Devices, though. that's more of a thing for an api coding minigame thing but as mentioned. maybe you just need to time trial do a shitload of puzzles of the matching elements to put the enchantments on it? and then the crafting process has a skill ceiling of its own + the effect matches the school of magic, and it incentivizes a market where if you're not good at the spatial magic puzzles but want a teleportation item you wanna trade for it

[jolikmc-stuff]

Did I ever show these off here? Maybe I did in bits and bobs… Maybe I didn't. I don't remember. In any case, these are a bunch of my characters, in no particular order, from Essence of Ragnarok, an ongoing story that I sometimes add stories to. They're all drawn in the style of Mega Man 7 sprites. That's kind of my thing.

03/18 Edit: I added a little more info. Doesn't help the already-circulating reblog, but eh.

In order, they are:

Carlos Magnus He's a grumpy wolf who doesn't like Joseph. He's highly skilled with alchemy. He later dates and marries Kris.

Joseph Lithius A flirty fox who's unusually lucky in love. He gets around… whether he intends to or not. He creates music professionally.

Kristian Sanders A fox who likes to maintain distance. She can be unapproachable at first, but if she likes you, she'll offer a smile. She teaches Language Arts ("English", basically) at Masamune High.

Hope North An android who's seen it all. Calm and friendly, never swears. Gave up being a nurse to work on cars. Hates her robot body, sometimes.

Professor Marcus A stern man with a dark past. Knows magic and knows it well. Always wears the same outfit with different colors. No one knows if "Marcus" is his first or last name.

"J" A "bunnycoon" with seemingly no name. Always friendly, sometimes cuddly. Completely mute, even when excited. Creature of chaos. Also serves as the mascot for my stuff (as one can see) outside of the story. And yes, she's dressed similarly to a certain Crimson Demon mage on purpose.

Jessica Ingmann (sprite by Jessica U. Ingmann) Bat lady extraordinaire. Likes pretty much everybody. Loves tacos and flirting – both quite shamelessly. Enjoys punching things and teaches boxing in Muramasa City.

These aren't all the characters of my story. Just the ones that have sprites drawn. Incidentally, some of these sprites are quite old and could probably use a redo. I'm not sure the heights are what they should be, for one… (Carlos is 6' 2" while Hope, Marcus, and I thought J were all 5' 3".)

Anyway, yeah. Maybe one day, I'll fix the sprites that need it and do more pixel art of other characters. If you're interested in the characters based on this small glimpse into their personalities, though, there's a whole butt-ton of stories on my literature site.

Cheers, J (but not that one)

[dancer-nguyen]

Why artist should write?

Why tho?

Because I hate my art most of the time, and I think you hate your art most of the time, too.

Stress, pressure, self-doubt, comparing to others, all these stuff fill my mind when I try to draw something. "I must make something good, I have to, as good as the 5000 pins I saved on Pinterest".

These thoughts overwhelm your mind, basically.

Arts are supposed to make us feel better, they are supposed to be our instrument of expressing our thoughts and clear the burden in our mind. So why are we, artists, always filled with negative thoughts?

Have you ever felt this way: constantly changing the sketch, fine-tuning the smallest pixel of the lineart while thinking that this piece will go nowhere and you are a terrible artist, and finally you block down some color+shadow and whoaaaaa it suddenly clicks: "I actually feel something from this piece"

The "click" is something I would like to call "the-stage-which-your-art-begin-to-express-your-ideas-and-feelings". Until we reach this stage, we cannot express our ideas, gestures need to be drawn, line art needs to be polished, colors need to be blocked, shadows need to be shaded, and I-don't-know-why-but-it-looks-good filters like grain and chromatic aberration needed to be added.

We have to go through everything so that our art becomes "something". Until that something appears, our mind just keeps filling with our own negative thoughts to the point that it is overwhelmed. I give up most of the time before my art actually becomes something. Thousands of sketches and line art are wasted just because I cannot push myself a little bit more.

But hey, who said the only way to dump our negative thoughts is by pushing ourselves to finish the piece?

The way I choose is writing

(ironically, another form of Arts).

Writing is a great way to express yourself! Unlike art, where the learning curve can be tough and a bit discouraging, writing is more forgiving. All you need is the ability to write, and you're good to go.

Don't be afraid of writing. It's a personal medium, so there's no need to polish your writing to the same extent as you do with your art. It's like sketching - just put your thoughts down on paper. However, not all artists can express themselves through sketching alone. So while telling them to "just sketch and don't worry about how it looks" may not create any more negative thoughts, it may not necessarily get rid of existing ones.

I have a notebook where I write every thought in my head down. And so far it has been filled with neat writing, bad writing, skeletons, nude figures, random shaded spheres, letters I want to send to my favorite YouTuber but I just don't have the courage to do so, and so so much more. And so far, it has been nice. Sometimes I'm just too tired to write (literally every day lol) so I just flip back and forth and see all the things I have made, unpolished, unaffected by my crippling perfectionism. And oh boy after that I just had more motivation and ended up writing anyway.

You can just journal random stuff that pops up in your mind, both negative and positive, no need to polish anything. And done, your mind is clear now and you can focus on the piece of art yayyyyyy.

Actually you're just gonna fall into an endless cycle of being stressed, finding something to relieve it, pushing yourself to finish the piece, being happy after completing it, and finally being stressed about the next piece.

But the thing is not about the endless cycle of pain, it's about how we deal with it. After all, living itself is painful, but by dealing with the pain and finding ways to enjoy our lives, our existence becomes meaningful. P/SS: Writing is actually really good for noting down inspirations and composing your future pieces. Sometimes I just write prompts for my character designs or environment designs because I don't wanna sketch them out. Later I will re-read the prompt and imagine all kinds of different stuff I can make. (I learned this from that chapter of Bakuman, when the illustrator tells the story writer to use only words to describe his ideas instead of using sketches, the illustrator can have more freedom in designing the pages)

[frankiistein]

ok time to do my usual breadpost of the christmas chapter, even if its a bonus chapter i think it points to some rly neat stuff 🤔

first things first. matching hairclips <333

i rly love the lineless style used in this page (tbh it influenced my last art of sar its such a nice look and smthng i should do more often myself). also the cookie at the center is the generic demon clipart from ch4

bonbien nation is having a christmas miracle tonite ‼️ seeing their human-ish forms is always so cool and also i love the little detail of bien wagging his tail there lol

the idea of them decorating the cookies morbidly to make use of bien breaking all the cookies is rly cute and i think its nice to see bon sort of just working around bien like that hehehe

but anyway time for the evil part of the comic

almost missed this but this cookie resembles reception (ear muff, green eye and mouth) and we already know bien is probably gonna fight reception eventually so 🤨

SAR MENTIONED!!!!! my evil unwilling kinnie boiii

its fascinating that he becomes more polish anselirian each update, i think his love for his culture leads some more evidence to the idea of marginals being cultural colonizers. the chapter already defines oplatek which i searched more of, the definition he gives is accurate and its a polish catholic tradition. (also its interesting that poland is mostly catholic because maldevara, which is said to be loosely based on the philippines is also a catholic country, i wonder if catholic imagery gets more significant later). besides the oplatek his outfit seems to be based on traditional polish costume (the female costume ofc)

the format is similar to i1-p5rd but with more art, as in instead of sar speaking "in comic" his words are in prose. similar to i1-p5rd too bien doesnt speak at all (in fact i just realized even in the part with bon he also doesnt speak, which iirc its the first comic in breadavota without dialogs) we also still dont see what bien looks like, the atmosphere of sar taking control of bien feels perpetuated here again from how we know bien is there and we can assume he CAN still talk because sars dialogs show him responding to things bien said but we never get to see bien himself

Judges don't celebrate any holidays, so I haven't actually celebrated anything with anybody since my mother died.

sar mom mentioned again, almost thought this was new but remembered she was mentioned in the study paper in i1-p5rd

the drawing in i1-p5rd had the same glitchy bg effects but i thought it was stylistic for that illustration, but them being used again in this chapter implied this might have to do more with how bien perceives the world itself. like look at that chair those r a fucking minecraft chair

interestingly, the bg in i1p5 also has a somewhat glitchy appearance albeit it still looks "drawn" (unlike in the newer drawings where they look more pixellated). the narration in i1-p5 itself does directly state that the world "sounds" weird to bien with things specifically he describes colors as "grating" and things looking "scratchy" which fits how to describe the stylistic differences in this drawings compared to most of breadavotas art.

ignore shitty yt quality but sar himself looks the same as the background but without the blur, and in the narration bien says sar is the clearest thing in the room. its notable that after the unseen Spinal Cord Surgery sar became rendered in the usual cleaner art style of the bread illustrations but the background became even "scratchier" with more "grating" colors. makes u think

the oplatek shows probably mary and jesus which is a usual picture printed on oplateks. idk if on purpose but i think its intersting that sar specifically splits between the mother and the son here

on top of that, sar also specifically eats the piece with the son and gives the piece with the mother to bien. eating already is a minor but consistent theme in breadavota, like for bread consuming the "breadlings" and getting the power to use their body parts, or with marginals learning how to reconstruct what they "consume" eating in breadavota fits some traditional beliefs in cannibalism where its said that its a way to "absorb" attributes of the person ur eating. on top of that for the marginals at least eating is also treated as an act of obsessive love, w/ anthony repeatedly shown to take after media/marginals as a whole most likely from living around them since he was a kid he would definitely be aware of this and it fits his yandere like vibes alot tbh

the symbolism of bien eating the mother (or in his case probably symbolizing bon) is very curious. thinking emoji times one millions

Say "ah!"

literally two words but love this line for two reasons: one is it continues the tradition of sar telling bien to say __ in a funny way but also it implies sar didnt even give the wafer for bien to eat but he FED it to him. hes so normal

[spinningbuster98]

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (1992) Part 1: Emerald Hunting

Now we’re getting to the fun stuff

I love Sonic 2. It’s not even my favorite in the whole series (though it most certainly is in the top 5), but it’s a game that I can’t help but appreciate for its overall simplicity

This is a no-nonsense kind of sequel: take the ideas introduced in Sonic 1 and actually flesh them out by jacking up the speed, improving the physics and making the level design a helluva lot more appropriate for this kind of gameplay

Granted: the level design is definitely still more on the simple side, I’ve even seen some claim that it’s borderline “hold right to win”. Yeah sure, do that in Aquatic Ruin without falling in the water. Or in Oil Ocean and Metropolis without getting hit every 2 seconds. (No defense for Emerald Hill though, but tbf that’s the first level). The platforming is also generally less focused than in Sonic 1 but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Sonic may ideally strike a balance between speed and platforming but if he really has to veer into either direction I think it’s best to veer towards the former because 1) That’s what makes Sonic stand out and 2) Sonic can’t do pure platforming as well as the likes of Mario. His physics based movements, while great for speed, are generally not ideal for the kind of pixel perfect jumps that hardcore platformers often require, which is why, if you notice, Sonic games usually have pretty big platforms for him to jump on and the platforms themselves don’t often move too quickly and the few times the games do throw smaller platforms at you, like the ones with retractable spikes in Metropolis, it feels awkward even though those would be pretty standard in most other platformers. You probably wouldn’t be able to put Megaman’s Yoku Blocks and make them work in a Sonic game for example. Besides to say that Sonic 2 has no platforming is just silly: Aquatic Ruin is litererally built on the concept of trying to stick to the upper route so as to avoid falling into the water, which instantly makes it a much better water level than Labyrinth Zone

Casino Night Zone feels like a more fleshed out Spring Yard what with its more focused pinball mechanics. I do wonder though if any pearl clutching mothers back then had any issues with their children playing a kids’ game that featured literal slot machines...

I don’t even think that Chemical Plant needs any introduction, though I will say that act 1 is way too short and underwhelming

Are there issues? Oh yes. Because of the increased speed there’s now also an increased chance of running into enemies that come from offscreen. Granted this is an issue in all 2D Sonic games, even Sonic 3 (Marble Garden says hi), but I can’t say that this game does much to mitigate it, especially with things like Chemical Plant featuring stuff like flipping floor boards at points, which may just flip right as you’re about to approach them plunging you to your death through no fault of your own! And who could forget the Pit of Doom?

The way Special Stages are accessed is undoubtadly much better: yes having to collect 50 rings without getting hit is still a pain, but now you get so many more chances to actually play a Special Stage

The Stages themselves are full of issues, don’t get me wrong: the frame rate is super choppy, the controls laggy, you pretty much have to know in advance when some bombs are coming and from where because the stage itself gives you little to no heads up, having Tails with you is like having a literal ball and chain strapped onto you. Hell I think it’s quite telling that one of my clearest childhood memories of this game is...going on GameFaqs to look up the Super Sonic cheat code, not to mention the fact that, even 20 years later, I STILL have muscle memory of these stages, like a sixth sense telling me when I should turn or when to jump.

Despite this however I would still much rather contend with these than those of the previous game: these Special Stages are made to be mastered on repeated playthroughs, which is encouraged both by the amount of attempts you can possibly make throughout the game and the fact that, when you fail, the next time you warp in you’re going to retry the one you failed in rather than moving onto the next one like all the other Classic games do for some stupid reason.

I can get better over time at these Special Stages and get more or less consistent results. With Sonic 1′s, even after 20 years of playing them, it still feels like a luck of the draw half the time

It also certainly helps that, this time around, you actually obtain something worthwhile by getting all the Emeralds and not just a slightly different ending