#i still love drawing dragons and dragon shaped things x3

[l48yr1nth]

noivern and swoobat are very similar when you think about it...........! swoobat feels like noivern's goofy cousin or something to me. love it!!

[emerald-amidst-gold]

WIP Wednesday

Wednesday! Wednesday! I love Wednesday because I get to shaaaaaaaaare! X3

Thank you @whataboutbugs for the tag! Let me show everyone what I’m working on! 

I’ve been doing a lot of prompts on Tumblr lately to help me develop my skills and style, but I finally managed to begin working on Chapter 10 of my main fic! Here’s a snippet!

The Keeper sighed. “Avan was not the one to break a nose, Fane.”, she pointed out, more shifting sounded as a far smaller body than his leaned forward, trying to draw his gaze in some way, but he kept his glare firm, burning, as he bore holes into wood and disgusting tapestries of silent beings and pathetic pride. “He is not covered in your blood, only his own, and I need to understand why before I pass judgement on him or you. So, this discussion is not pointless if you use your voice instead of your fist, da’len.”

The room was silent, stagnant, tense as those words hung around them, permeating the air with their delivery and echoing in the exhausted, but irritated halls of Fane’s fraying mind, the distant roars from earlier gone, but not the crimson lights or the blackened curtains that shaded them so they merely flickered forebodingly. He felt his fingers dig, claw into his arms, sharp pangs of pain surging up and down them, but he ignored it, let himself feel it because it was the only thing keeping him ‘calm’ as the crimson torches occasionally brightened, grew, taunting and teasing for him to lose control again. The Keeper wanted him to use his voice, but what good would it do? Would it help to yell, to scream, to throw around pathetic words like the clan did, like Avan had?! No, he would not stoop that low! He wouldn’t give these idiots the satisfaction!

He would be silent. Just like he had to do nine years ago, magic suffocating him as it poured down his throat, burning and hot, and as metal peeled back his flesh, the bearer of the blade hissing, commanding that he remain quiet or more blood would spill! The blood drying on his face and on his hand were nothing compared to the buckets of his that had been filled! But this..this disgusting woman would ignore that, turn her back, just as she and the rest of the clan had done, narrow minded and too concerned with their pathetic history to..to..

Look up at who was looking down. 

“Pass your verdict, Keeper.”, Fane growled low, the sound warped, primal as crimson danced at the edges of his vision with blackened ribbons. “I have nothing to say to you, to anyone. My voice only matters when you want it to matter. You’re saving face in front of your sheep.” His body began to tremble, fingers twisting into leather and minor cloth to try and ground himself, to control himself. “Too bad you’re just lining them up for slaughter the longer I’m around.” It was a threat, he knew, but he didn’t care. He didn’t care!

Fane finally, finally, found himself turning his gaze away from the wall as those words fell from his lips, something urging him to look at the Keeper, to observe her reaction. He didn’t know why, though. Why should he care how she would react? Maybe he just wanted her to lash out, to prove to him that they were the same? He didn’t know. Just like he didn’t know why she was looking at him calmly, fiercely, and unperturbed as wizened fingers folded themselves over each other on the table, a few drumming a beat he recognized from clan gatherings, but not because he had been directly present before she spoke once again.

And the words had him seeing blood red. Not darkened crimson. Not ruby red like the sweet apple offered by a friendly hand. Blood. Red. Red that had painted his hand, his arm, his face as an equally as bloody body crumpled to the ground like the pathetic trash that it was! Red that had his chest heaving, face twitching with a snarl as rage so potent made his body temperature rise and his hearing go distant, near deaf with distant roars and crackling flames upon heated glass!

“You are becoming more and more like your father with each passing day, da’len.”

***

And just for another tease, here is another snippet from my ModernAU! 

“Easy, Yune.”, Fane soothed, his pointed ears twitching from the sound of his own voice, the tone unusually soft, but not so unusually deep. He reached up with a hand to give the tiny white dragon a stroke, running his knuckles along thin, but sturdy scales. “It’s just the usual aches and pains. I’ll be fine once I get in the shower and get moving.”, he assured, a small smile gracing his features as Yune let out a tiny coo from his touch. “Now, come on. Let’s get our day started. Got a lot on our plates today.” 

That’s right. Today would be a test and one Fane was mildly anxious about and one he knew the board at the University of Ferelden would not be happy about, but it was his lesson plan, his rules, his agenda. He was a draconologist, first, and a professor, second. He didn’t go to school in Nevarra and then Tevinter between the ages of twenty-one to twenty-three to cow every time a fat ass in a suit scowled and wagged their finger at him for breaking the mold. 

He didn’t spend time between the ages of eighteen to twenty just researching on his own, scraping together money and dipping his toes in any and every job that came his way to purchase the necessary supplies, about the functionality of dragons in ancient times and their significance to the world’s ecosystem, and their connection to the Fade to bend to what the masses believed dragons ‘truly’ were, and those fools believed them to be pets, servants, no more than a mabari, but not afforded the same prestige of intelligence. 

He didn’t begrudgingly adhere to the norms of propriety and professionalism in search of the truth that he knew Orlais was hiding from him to bend to them on a fallen knee whilst saying ‘Yes, yes. You’re absolutely right. I’m the fool. How dare I question you?’ 

He didn’t climb the ladder, listen to the disgusting term of ‘prodigy’, to live a life of opulence and complacency like many of the elders in his field did, most abandoning research and knowledge to simply reap the lush fields of others until they were barren, growing full off the wheat of discovery - discoveries like his.   

He didn’t do anything he did with the intent of surrendering, of breaking to placate someone else’s misdirected mind. Dragons were more than pets, and he would see them treated as they were meant to be treated; as equals, people just like the elves, the humans, the dwarves and the Qunari. They held just as much awareness and understanding, if not more, than other races and species. 

There were still mysteries he had to unravel, but again, he would unearth them so the leash on the world would be snapped like a thin thread, weak and transparent. Dragons would be able to do what they were made to do again, no matter the cost. And the only way to do that was to show people what a true dragon was like. So, yes, today’s class would be a test, a test to see for himself if people were willing to break their own leashes, just as he had.

***

Tagging under the cut! (lengthy one this time!)

@oxygenforthewicked @the-dreadful-canine @little-lightning-lavellan @shift-shaping @dreadfutures @noire-pandora @varric-tethras-editor @aymayzing @dungeons-and-dragon-age  @cartadwarfwithaheartofgold and anyone else who’d like to share! Show me the goods! (only if you want to, no pressure! <3)

[v-mundi]

Thar be dragons! Metalseadramon and Seadramon were re-posed by my lovely fianceé, Danielle and she’s also my art and design partner for this project. Snakes are super hard to fit in a square frame. You basically have a couple tricks you can do. There’s the S-shape as seen by Metalseadramon (and old Seadramon). Those old arts were just screenshots of DMO (Digimon Masters Online) cut out by someone, so not great. You have the C shape as Metalseadramon DATA and Seadramon above (C-dramon...?). And you have the corkscrew shape not pictured here. There are more but we are sticking to ones that still give good model visibility through perspective.

That DATA card is a preview for the upcoming TOY set, which has some heavy Dark Masters themes. It’s only appropriate that we rework the design of Metalseadramon as well. In fact, all the Dark Masters will now be present and upgraded. I’ve previously shown off the upcoming TOY set with Fakedrimogemon, so...go digging for it ;D

If you play the game, you may have noticed this DATA has “Any Support Phase” instead of just Any Phase. That’s a change that’s coming down the pipeline for many DATAs. There’s some logic errors with certain effects being literally any time you want them. Confining effects to the Support phase will bring a bit more importance to the choice of playing the card. For example, if you could play this “Any Phase”, then you could wait till the Battle Phase when attacks are revealed before throwing down Triangle to 0. Since this game is based a lot on wagers and bluffing, that goes against the spirit of the game and provides a disgustingly easy shut-down as a hand trap. I do not like hand traps. That concept is from Yugioh and means cards being played directly from hand in response to something, with no indicator that your move will trigger this awful response. Their existence usually leads to hand control, which is a death spiral for metagames. Once people are trying to remove and control each other’s hand, they’re trying to stop the other person from playing the game as hard as possible and that’s no fun for anyone. So just one word makes the difference in an entire game’s death spiral.

For Seadramon and many other cards, I’m trying to make it so mixing types is less punishing. During the base release of the game, there wasn’t a lot of actual support for cross-type decks. The ones that you could make would be creative and good, but limited due to type-limited effects. Ultimately, most of them sought out to make the most broken combos possible which is a nightmare to balance and anticipate. Now that the game has existed for about 5 years, I have some experience with what players are actually abusing or not. I’ve tried replacing most of them with comparable conditions that type has no problem making but others might have to bend over backwards to get. Clever girl.

Lastly we got EBEmon or as the contest winner that created it said “Vademon Kai”. Again, all done up nice and neat by Danielle. If you’re wondering why there’s proportionally way more art from her lately than me, it’s not because I don’t have time. It’s because she’s way faster and better at this than me. She can usually do 3 to 4 poses in the time it takes me to get one right. We actually figured out that brown xenomorph bubble on its head isn’t just a Freiza reference, it’s supposed to be translucent and contain a long brain. No thanks. So...as it’s a rebuilt mecha Freiza...I mean Vademon, I wanted to do some cool stuff with the errata. Originally, it would get a DNA to increase the use of Omekamon’s effect, but instead I realized this is unnecessary since almost every Enigma Level U or M is getting one. So I stuck to the path. Forget DP -20 cost reductions, those are boring. Let’s remove the concept of your own hand size while you have access to draw 2! :D And I buffed every one of its “response probes” in the Passives section. They were all pretty good, since it’s not really a question of if an opponent will do these things but when. But more importantly, you don’t get to choose which ones happen. It’s completely dependent on what effects your opponent has (except the draw). So instead, it has a built-in Attack Chip and Recovery Floppy. Yay! The x3 VS was also reworked. We have cute little element names for each combination of types. When something has an attack that gets powered up versus something else, we give it x3 VS [that thing] mixed from our types, as if they were elemental blocks. Marine + Nature + Metal is “Grand” and refers to planetary things. EBEmon’s gun is a Planet Destroyer. Oh no.

Anyway, enjoy the new art and card preview!

[pepperstrawberry]

Anime or not to Anime...

This post got looong. So, yeah Pepper rant and ramble. Going to put it all under the cut. X3

So... a post thing that happened earlier reminded me of one of my biggest pet peeves: What is and isn’t an ‘anime’.

So... while ‘anime’ can -generally- be used as an identifier of animations made in Japan, it’s really just another word that muddles the conversation.

Anime is literally a borrow word from English: A NI ME SHION. Animation.

Yes, I know for the most part this is common knowledge, but it isn’t often -applied- as common knowledge.

Often when folks are in a discussion, a debate, or even an argument about Anime, it’s often used as a hard line ‘style’ or ‘medium’.

Anime is neither.

Animation is a medium the world over. And every part of the world has different approaches, attitudes, and styles within the medium that effects the local ‘crop’ that is produced.

but we live in an interconnected, global world. Have for many years. So we effect each other, by trope, by culture, by style. Hell even before ‘Anime’ came over here, Osamu Tezuka was inspired and influnced by Disney. ‘Anime’ was effected by American cartoons (which weren’t always a word for ‘animation for children, that connotation came later, and even became a bit of a degragotory term. as if ‘cartoons are for kids and we don’t have to try to make it quality’).

Now, I can’t remember if one came first or the other (and I”m too lazy at the moment to do a google search), but either things like the Hanna Barbera cartoons where influenced by the cost saving tricks that Anime learned, or the other way around, but America and Japan have actually been very influential for much longer then what we think. 

Trying to draw a specific line between what’s Japanese and what is American (or even what comes from anywhere else) as a specific way to categorize what should and shouldn’t look a certain way only muddies the conversation about animation.

Yes, when it comes to talking about certain works, or cultural impact, or how culture can effect a work, place can matter. But when arguing what is and isn’t an ‘anime’, I want you to remember one thing:

In japan? IT’S ALL ANIME.

They might say American Anime like we say ‘Japanese Anime’, but the only reason why they would use something like Cartoon is similar to how we use ‘anime’, that is to short hand -where- a show comes from.

That’s it. Where. Not animation style or anything. Because there is no reason. Sure, some of our stuff they might look down on, and some of thier stuff isn’t all that hot too.

You know why?

Because there isn’t a single monolithic animation studio in American OR Japan. We both have many animation studios. Plural. With many different styles tackled. Some focus on specific styles and tropes, some can be all over the place.

Like, Disney tends toward pretty homogonistic work (tends, not always), and similarly, Kyoto Animation (kyoani) tends to be the same way.

But the on the other hand, we have things like Cartoon Network Studios and Bones that handle a lot of different styles.

Yes, I know there is a lot of hairs we can split about that, but my base point is: If I am asked is ‘Korra’ an anime, or if it’s not. I don’t know my answer.

Going by the approach of the style, I would say yes.

But going by country it was made, I would say no.

And in the end, does it matter? No. Because both answers are right. Neither is really wrong. Because, again, the word ‘anime’ is only really special to us in american. We try to pigeon hole it as if it described a style.

And sure, there is still that ‘country of origin’ argument... accept 1) Folks from japan worked on it and Avatar to some extent.

And more importantly, both have a lot of the grunt work done in Korea. Seriously. Like, the more you try to define it specifically to use the word, the more you either make the word meaningless or leave out things you thought were ‘anime’.

I’m not saying ‘lets not use it’, cause in general usage, it is useful. It’s easy to -generally- point to something and say ‘that’s anime’ and generally mean ‘it was created in japan’.

I’m just saying getting all pedantic and bent out of shape about it is a fruitless waste of time when we can have more intelligent and interesting conversations.

Like: Was an element or style used well in this or that show? Was there problematic elements. Was it fun? Well animated? Did whatever style was chosen, no matter country of origin, fit the tone needed to carry the story being told. Where did they cut on the budget and did it pay off or only make things worse?

Example: The Dragon Prince. Is it anime? I don’t care. It’s style works well enough for what they are going for. My issue with it is that they tried to use a trick to make it look like 2d animation by cutting out some frames. Worked well for the action scenes but made the slower scenes somehow way herky jerky and made the whole thing feel like a really cheep production.

(I would dredge up some japanese animation examples, but I’ve been out of the loop, and it’s been years since I binged much. only recently watched Heroman all the way through and working on My Hero Academia. And by the by, where does Heroman fall? Sure, it’s made in japan, but conceived by Stan Lee. And I’m sure if we dug a bit, we could find more fun examples of that.)

My bottom line here is, for general purposes, using ‘anime’ for what looks and feels like anime should be fine. It’s like using ‘sci fi’ or ‘fantasy’. It’s less about the exactness of the tropes or style used, and more like this difficult to define ‘that’ that we look at a thing and see.

Oh, also: Manga, also known as ‘Manhwa’ in Korea, means ‘sequential art’. I.E. COMICS. Same thing. And again, my entire spiel above? Applies here too. LIke, putting it all under ‘its manga’ only serves to try and say where its from... but the trouble with that is even more then with Anime/cartoons there are a crap ton of artists influenced as much if not more by those that created stories we like from japan as much as those from America.

And saying ‘manga style’ doesn’t help. Which style? Japanese influenced I can go for, but it is a mouth full.

I think my main argument is we are hitting a point of media saturation where the argument for Anime and Manga (aside from a very basic short hand) is loosing any real meaning.

Tropes, style, inspirations. These are more interesting to discuss. Which japanese or american artists (or even others) were you influenced by is much better angle of discussion if going deeper then the most basic general audience knowledge base.

If you are an artist, and I am an artist and we are discussing art, I think the second we start trying to parse out what is or isn’t anime outside of that layman level, it’s best to stop worrying about it. I think it’s more interesting to discuss what directly influenced RWBY beyond just ‘anime’. And how well did it use those influences.

I mean, look at WB. Teen Titans really -tried- to reference and be all ‘super deformed kawaii’ and in that ended up in tone whiplash with some of the more heavier story elements. Sometimes it does it well like Trigun did**, and many many other times? Yeah. But then look at all the other shows they have made since.I love Young Justice. Granted it doesn’t get as super looney tunes/super deformed kawaii silly with it’s jokey-ness, but it does still have a sense of humor at times and does very well. If we stuck with the ‘is it anime’ just going by style alone, I would say ‘yes’. The shading, the way they make many of the battles. It really works like that. It’s just it wasn’t created in Japan.

So yeah. Basically what I”m saying is, if you start trying to split hairs about what is or isn’t anime with me, your wasting your time. It’s not that it isn’t an interesting question on it’s own (that could do with a lot of research to see who influenced what. I’m sure there is more of a rabbit hole then I have already touched on); but when arguing about shows themselves, it’s just a waste of energy when we could be having more fun discussing the show itself.

(**I have always felt, no matter japanese, american, or anywhere, that show balanced its tone shift amazingly. top marks... granted, the ending was kinda... abrupt, but that is a common problem and I think it even handled that decently well given the situation)