#ignore how my artstyle changes alot

[qiqinal]

Aw shucks

I would like to think that compared to normal Banban, Bittergiggle can lift him up

Also a lil head cannon of mine is that Bittergiggle can stretch his limbs.

[minmin-pal]

woah, it's definitely going on my watch list now, few posts i've seen talking or reviewing jjba always used complicated gargon so i could never properly pay attention to what they were saying but reading your post was v nice and i can assume you like it a lot, when did you start watching if i could ask?(/notforced)

also thank you for avoiding the spoilers lol, i'm tempted to search up spoilers but now i just wanna enjoy this series and the manga properly so i'll avoid those (really the only 'spoiler' i've ever seen is the "it's me dio" meme, if that even counts as a 'spoiler'?) 

out of curiosity i just searched what j giel looked like, interesting design choices? ig? ;; (/halfjoke) but once again ty for the major spoilers warning, i'm kind of itching to find out for myself now haha

i never realized the artstyle of jjba has changed so much actually? i've seen late 3-early 4 artstyle so finding out about this style diversity is actually so cool, it really matches the years they were in well, early part 1 reminds of me some of the hero comics i've seen from around those years as well. this chart manages to show the changes v well though, it looks so pretty

and now that you mention it, kira dude does look like david bowie now that i think about it, and woah he has an entire season/arc? is he a major character or some kind? (/genquestion) i'm looking forward to watching that season now, the 'slice of life/detective drama' combo sounds interesting and i've never thought to combine those before so i'm hyped (/gen)

i just searched rohan and joseph's designs too, they look super cool! could I ask whose your favorite and disliked characters in csm?

(long post,,,,, dont press read more if u dont really care cuz . long post)

yes it should!!!11! i started watching/reading it in... 2019/2020 i think. it was when i lived in my old house so it was sometime around there my brother actually recommended it to me!! we watched it together, and we've watched every season (other than the latest- stone ocean. we watched it separately for that one) together and it honestly probably is part of why i love it so much because i generally associate him with it haha

you shouldnt spoil it AT ALLL its such a great series and stone ocean was so bad for me because i already knew the entire ending (cuz i read the manga) so watching the anime. was intensely sorrowing because it was all so stunningly beautiful and heart moving and yada yada but i knew what was gonna happen!!! all the suspense was gone!!!

and and and. i feel like even with j geil it just shows how DYNAMIC or whatever the art style is.. like

hes DISGUSTING but it fits!!! even when you watch the show the overall style change may really not register until you sit back and think aboutit because its like a gradual switch, a really pretty switch though since it really just shows the magaka (hirohiko araki) growing and learning with the series its really beautiful

im slightly sure kira was based off him but i really cant be sure his design can 100% be since alot of things in the show starting part 3 i think are like references to bands and songs-- kira for example's power, killer queen, like the song by queen has a power called bites the dust and sheer heart attack, just like the albums/songs from queen aswell its really smart isnt it?? and kira really is important. i wont elaborate but hes really important in season 3/part 4 (season one has the first two parts, "phantom blood" and "battle tendency" then every part after is its own season-- probably because part 1 and 2.. well.. are different to the rest- youll see why) if u watch it youll either love him cuz hes kinda lovable when u ignore his Biggest "Flaw" (a character flaw, like a trait not flaw as in story flaw). or youll love him cuz every scene with him atleast to me is really. uhh i forgot the word in english : D enthralling? rohans designs are honestly. the best designs in jojo to me and the main reason for that is kinda cuz theyre pretty not bizarre (in comparison.)

it also has to do with part 4's coloring aswel, like i cant find the image but his hair is just. blue one time (and purple i think) just cuz they never really do that uch after part4 which is so sad.. but its okay because it makes part 4 more unique also. rohans outfits change it might not seem like much but rohans outfits. change probably becuz hes araki's self insert so hes always making him cool (like in stone ocean where,,, uhh.. basically something happens and time is speeding up a bit, and no mangakas can make manga becuz their ink drys up too fast, and rohan is the only mangaka whos still pushing out manga- cuz of his powers) Im. rambling. UHH ive started chainsaw man only recently so i cant go as in depth as jojo but once ive finished. well if i finish ill definitely have new opinions for now though i love kobeni

shes just. she shes!! MEE :sob: shes just so relatable i love her so much (SAME WITH ASA. BUT I JUST. LIKE KOBENI MORE) i also HAVE to say i like denji for the same reason i like joseph really hes just hilairious (though it really depends on your sense of humor. if u dont like dark...? i wouldnt say dark... humor, but definitely not for like. 12 year old or something you know. u might not like denji- or csm in general

the character i dislike has to be...... uh makima i guess i wont say why cuz. MAJOR SPOILERS!! but shes kinda :thumbsdown: to me HER WRITINGS GOOD AND I LIKE. HER EXISTING but as a person.......

[exocynraku]

heyyyy!!! i was wondering, do you have any advice on making heavy stylisation look good? I really like your art style and I want to stylise my art in a similar vway (obv not actually copying) but it looks weird. how do you make it good? ( i'm sorry if you don't do asks like this pls feel free to ignore my stupidity )

hmmmm i think i kiiiinda get what ur tryna say but im also not very smart so if i answer this wrong then i am sorry 👍 also this is rlly long sorry again LOL

when it comes to heavy stylization you can be pretty free as long as you make sure the thing u drawing is still recognizable as what u want it to be, so maybe if u struggling with people not being able to tell what ur drawing, ask them/ur friends how to make it look like what ur tryna draw. if that makes sense.

u also gotta keep the MAIN things that represent what ur drawing. like. whats the first thing u think of when u think of it, for example: when i think of cats, i think of long tails, unique faces, and funky poses. so when i draw a cat those are the things i KNOW i NEED to add or else it wont make sense. when i think of a dog, i think of expressive eyes, big mouths & snouts and strong legs. when i think of birds i think of very different beaks and lots of types of feather patterns & colours. that makes sense? i think? if u arent sure what the thing ur drawings main things are, LOOOK AT REFERENCES!!!!!! LOOK AT REFERENCES EVEN IF U KNOW WHAT UR DRAWINGS MAING THINGS ARE ACTUALLY!!!! TRUST ME, IT HELPS!!!!!

when it comes to MY artstyle, specifically when i draw cats, i always like to make the head the most interesting part. the head is the beginning, where i start. the head can either be a circle or a square, with a little chin added to the bottom. then on the cheeks i add the fur. the fur, imo, is one of the things that can either make or break a good design. if you make a soft, kind, motherly, cute character spiky and over detailed, people wont recognize it and it wont make sense to then, so u gotta make the character soft and round. the ears are… the ears. they are simple in shape, but strong in the emotions they convey. to me, ears down means sad, ears back means angry, ears pointed up mean interested/shocked and then a relaxed looking ear means. they are relaxed. i try to over exaggerate this alot because it helps the character show their emotion better

the face of the character is the hardest & most important to me. the size of everything on the face is very important; younger/ “cuter” characters have bigger eyes, and a less detailed muzzle while stronger/menacing characters have small eyes, a bigger muzzle & more detailed facial features. i LOVE to use eyebrows to exaggerate the emotions the character is feeling. thats also why i believe the eyebrows are one of the MOST important parts in ur art, because just changing them slightly can alter the entire way a character looks. the nose is. idk the nose is the nose i dont add anything special to it other than in i want to make a character look bratty/mad i add a little…. uhhhh… line above the nose that looks like snarling ??? i hope that makes sense. the mouth is also pretty important. i like to make the mouth extra big and think about the way a HUMAN mouth expresses emotions, instead of a cats. try not to add too much detail to the inside of the mouth aswell, UNLESS your trying to get that to be the main thing people look at

for the body, you can be pretty free with the body, ESPECIALLY when its a cat. remember this; cats are VERY flexible, so u can have alot of fun with the pose. ive seen alot of artists sketch out their poses with boxes and circles, but imo, it makes the character look stiff (unless its a person). try to sketch your cat with lots of curves, less sharp angles (unless thats what ur going for), DONT draw the fur in your sketch; it wont help and will probs just confuse u. body SHAPE is also rlly importan. similar to what i said earlier, if u draw a cat whos meant to be muscular and menacing and big, drawing them with soft, little legs and a small, round body will confuse the person looking at ur art. cat bodies irl are kinda all the same but thats BORING so u gotta mess with it. make legs and necks tall and skinny, make neck fur way too big and make ur cat look like its a body builder, make it look like a munchkin cat. HAVE FUN WITH THE BODY!! thats all im tryna tell u here. if u limit urself to realism, you’ll never develop your own special artstyle. youve gotta put a bit of creativity into ur art, yknow? make u cats look like theyre from a cartoon! make it look like a kid did it! who cares!!!!!

other important things u gotta watch out for; you MUST. size the body up enough that it looks like it could hold the head. what im saying is try not to make ur cat look like a funko pop (unless thats what ur going for then thats fine). you can still make the head big, but dont make it look like a toy (like i said, unless thats what ur going for). and when it comes to patterns & fur colours, i like to try to make the patterns look semi-realistic but i go CRAZY with the colours. ive found no matter what colours u give ur cat its probably still gonna look like a cat, so have fun!!!!!

i hope this sort of makes seense ?????? if it doesnt then im sorry

[metalempire]

Kingdom Hearts 3: A Review

This one is gonna be long as shit probably but since I finally finished the game on standard, proud and critical mode, and with DLC on the way I’m going to try and review the basegame for KH3 and see how it stacks up. Most of this under readmore for the sake of ur dashboards.

So I want to clarify a handful of details, KH2, its final mix especially, is my favourite game in the series. The gameplay is almost fucking perfect for an action game and is accessible to so many skill levels and did all of its difficulty modes quite well (though proud has not aged well compared to critical). Not only this but Sora’s moveset and animations, their speed and frames and iframes after actions and also interaction with abilities is almost perfect (I have eternal issues with how guard’s timing works compared to KH1′s guard it’s just slightly more delayed by enough to throw me off) and I have played KH1, CoM, BBS, DDD, Re:Coded and 0.2 so I have enough experience with the games overall.  Also as for story, KH1 was the only game that did it well, CoM is fine, and KH2 is a bit like that but still decent. After that point story has been going downhill thanks to Nomura’s writing dying a fiery death so KH3′s awful story pacing, fairly disappointing execution and dumping of things all at the end don’t bother me as much since it was doomed from the start considering it has to conclude stuff set up by BBS and DDD which were stories that don’t hold up well anyway. Plus at this point I just accept that the story of KH isn’t going to be good anymore. No I don’t play the gacha game, I keep up with the cutscenes time to time to stay in loop and that story is just long winded and cryptic. Gameplay is what I care about since that’s what makes a video game a game, funnily enough. (Though I think KH3 has a bad habit of making cutscenes either too long or stacking too many on top of each other) Also I want to state I am completely neutral on attraction flow. I neither like nor dislike them all that much. They serve a purpose and they can be ignored too. They’re more or less a matter of personal preference and I don’t feel strongly about them. Aside from the choo choo train no one can slander the train. 

Positives 

I think KH3 competes with KH1 for second most fun gameplay in the series. They took alot of things and rebalanced them and brought them all together in a way that I liked, shotlocks, flowmotion, counters, forms, magic, summons, grand magic and even a little bit of reaction commands and limits. Aside from the combos which are a given of course, as well as being able to cancel into magic and other actions being fairly competently done, though guard has some oddities to it where it doesn’t always work and it might be down to the game’s buffering system. More on that later. The keyblade transformations stand out as a real strength to the game, with a wide variety of movesets for each playstyle (my favourite is the Happy Gear and its’ transformations) and they make both horde and boss fights dynamic and fun, not to mention their interactions with guarding, dodging and magic and how they change it up as well as little bonus abilities forms give you. I do like that they brought back all sorts of enemies, Heartless, Nobodies and Unversed, with only Nightmares not returning. The variety is appreciated. On a mechanical note, I am very fond of being able to store a keyblade transformation by switching to another Keyblade, and I like being able to equip and shift between three of them. This is the first game where keyblades feel incredibly distinct from one another, and also the only game where Kingdom Key is viable from start to finish. This was something Re:Coded played with and I’m really glad to see the direction they took it in KH3. The addition of up to five party members is also appreciated, having everyone fighting at once in the larger battles KH3 has overall brings a nice sense of scale to it. Wallrunning and massive areas allow for some big levels to traverse and honestly thats’s mostly a strength since it adds greatly to immersion. There are boss fights in KH3, namely those in the Keyblade Graveyard that function perfectly for the game’s overall combat pacing, and they also amplify the strengths of the game on Critical mode.I like the little detail of magic now doing little status effects too now.The gummi ship is a nice blend of KH1 and KH2, and the open world flying around is a fun aspect that makes it feel like a real journey through the stars.The world’s are a usually of great quality, with Olympus being the best tutorial level/first level in the whole series, and the Caribbean providing a really enjoyable open ocean exploration style, Monstropolis getting the linear level style right properly, Kingdom of Corona building itself character wise very well to endear you to Rapunzel’s journey with its’ interactivity and Toy Box throwing a few decent challenges and very well put together mech combat. Also, graphically KH3 is one of the most impressive games I’ve ever seen, flexing on all the films, the older games, and real life itself, making the presentation fit the artstyle and rendering to a degree that’s frighteningly good. Game looks wonderful. The music is also good but that’s true of every game, Yoko just be like that, though 3 has some great compositions and remixes of its’ own to stand on. 

Negatives

One thing to preface this with is that a strength to KH2 is your options, how balanced they all are, what they all do, how they can interact with each other (such as how magic can be integrated into combos and do their own or using different buttons to change a combo altogether, or how certain moves fulfil different functions in a fight) is all very well structured and seamless. In KH3 your basic combo game doesn’t have as many modifiers to how it works outside of formchanges and even then it doesn’t quite feel as complete. Not only that but your options end up doing the same thing alot of the time, heavy damage that leads into strong AOE. The core design of the game is built around huge hordes of enemies, and that tends to mean its too easy to get hit out of nowhere or annoyed to death or sniped out of nowhere on critical, so you need to use magic and then grand magic to clear or links and attraction flow if you’re on critical to thin out hordes. While in boss fights this changes the game feels a bit too focused on large fights and has movesets less focused around smaller groups and suffers for it. Tying into this, animations are grander and longer, leaving you open to interruption. The camera in this game is also awful, and one of the worst, either not zooming in enough or too far out, or on more mobile enemies (or teleporting ones, looking at you Goatnort) it fails to keep best track of them and angle properly and you can get blindsided too easily or put in a vision style that makes depth perception for projectile blocking too iffy for my tastes.KH cameras are always a bit off but this one needs work. Base Sora’s animations tend to be very hard to work with compared to KH2′s, he’s alot slower, has more delays, less invincibility frames, attacks don’t follow together and follow up nearly as quickly, item usage is overall a slower process which can fuck you over on critical, guarding still has a delay to it, leaf bracer can be rendered useless due to cure having no iframes during the ending portion of the animation and on critical you can just wind up needing to heal again if you get hit trying to use leaf bracer to slip through an attack. There’s also a very odd way the game handles Sora’s hitstun, where he can’t do anything out of it unless he uses aerial recovery which has a rather narrow iframe window and a bit of lag on actions that can be performed out of it that means you cant do anything in some lategame boss fights once hit half the time since no button input does anything especially if you’re hit in the air. The game is far too unclear on when you can and can’t act out of a hit or a block. Also, while I like being able to retaliate once its’ unlocked after aerial recovery, the animation for the attack has a set direction and often ends up missing more mobile bosses and lacks control. The game’s overall balancing is a bit of a mess as well, with grand magic and magic being far too strong on all modes except critical, and links being too strong on critical since there is far too much of a reliance on AOE overall in the combat. As for difficulty, it has a strange Fire Emblem Awakening parallel, where standard is too easy, proud is the true normal mode but not a hard mode, and critical is a bit too hard at times though not all the time. I’d say critical eases up for a bit though it favours cheap shots and delivers its true delights right at the end, it’s weird and I’ll talk more about it later but it starts out unfairly hard with the tutorial boss two shotting you in seconds. There’s a real lack of postgame content overall, with the battlegates being alright but not grand, and only one superboss in Dark Inferno who is alright all things considered but isn’t a Sephiroth really. Speaking of which, no Final Fantasy characters in the series that’s supposed to be it crossing over with Disney. What the fuck. Also I will say that while the worlds are huge and long now, there’s still not that many of them, and while quality over quantity is a factor, quantity is nice too, and making Twilight Town that small and short feels like a kick in the dick to KH2 fans who love that place, me included. Ultima weapon is a pain to get, all the minigames in KH3 are either bad, terrible, awful, or dull and not worth playing, and you need to do some of the worst ones to get it though thankfully it’s not really all that necessary to have unless you want a trump card for critical mode which you’re better off using new game + to get from an easier save file anyway. The cooking minigames are also very odd with their timing and the controls are a bit unresponsive or too sensitive at times and discourages you from cooking. Look at what they did to 100 Acre Woods, it makes me sob salty tears at how small and gutted it is. In general enemies have difficulties telegraphing their attacks in both audio and visual style and you get cheap shotted alot. There is a particular Unversed enemy in Monstropolis I’m sure we’re all familiar with by now who is guilty of that sin the most. And finally, the game’s biggest sin of all: Armoured Xehanort (who I call Goatnort). This fight is a travesty. Teleporting, unclear telegraphs, unclear hitstun, random super armour, long combos that cannot be interrupted, wonky interactions with dodges, guards and reprisals that makes him get free hits on you sometimes even when successfully executing a block or dodge. He has a lack of clear telegraphs, acts at speeds that give KH2FM superbosses a run for their money despite you being slower than that game was, leading to things Sora’s animations aren’t equipped to deal with, as well as shifting the fight constantly to underwater combat and then forced aerial combat with very confusing controls interactions and pair that with AOE magic attacks with magnet powers, lock on wind magic with warping properties to ensure he lands his hit, alot of teleporting out of the camera’s range and warp strike sucker punches that really stretch the human reaction time when paired with the shit camera and you just get an unpleasant boss fight that while proud and standard can mitigate to just being annoying as all hell, on critical its a nightmare fight and you cant even observe the fight and learn it well either due to how much shit is going on, the camera being against you, unclear mechanical aspects, speed above what you can reliably output as base Sora who you are stuck as for most of the fight. It boils down to a spammy clusterfuck with too much going on, with so few openings to do anything, and bad interaction with Sora’s options and the animations tied to them with alot of damage that feels forced on you half the time. The Final Xehanort phase with the X-Blade is much better though.

Critical Mode

Since it didn’t launch with the game was added later as a free update and everyone made a big deal out of it and it’s exclusion seeming odd I might as well talk about it. Firstly, KH2FM has the best critical mode and is the only game to do it right really. It halves your hp and reduces the amount of mp you gain during level ups and increases to it, so you have enough to work with but never too much, enemies do the same damage as proud mode, but you do more damage than even standard mode, and you start with 50AP and a lot lategame abilities so strengthen Sora’s kit. This results in the best hard mode for the game, since fights never drag on too much and deaths are usually quick. It encourages and rewards you to use all your options and play both smart and aggressive to win. KH3 takes a somewhat similar approach. You start out with 50 AP and wide variety of boosting abilities mostly from endgame territory as well as unique critical mode ones that modify reprisals to reward proper dodge timing which is wonderful and even one to disable Attraction flow for those who hate it to build up transformations quicker. However Critical mode nerfs alot of things. Magic can’t be used as much and successive casts one after another especially rapid shots get a huge damage nerf so you have to use it sparingly making grand magic harder to get and magic de-incentivised outside of enemy weaknesses. There’s also wonky issues with damage scaling in relation to battle level and your level and all situation commands take much longer to build up to, even with the aforementioned boost to formchange buildup speed it still takes awhile and since base Sora is very hit or miss in fights this can be a very awkward change to work with. Enemy damage is also scaled very high and this could be one of the hardest critical modes earlygame, though DDD still holds the crown for hardest if we’re being honest. KH3 critical starts you out by Darkside two shotting you and most of the earlygame even regular Heartless kill you in two or three hits. Unless you use cooking to buff yourself you will die in two or three hits most of the time and some bosses can one shot you. The Gigas enemies in Toy Box are hard to deal with since magic is so nerfed and the Supreme Smasher boss can and will outright one shot you with all of its’ attacks if you don’t use a Gigas yourself. Even KH2FM critical wasn’t this unforgiving at times. The Kh3 critical mode experience boils down to a few things; most heartless bosses being easy as usual for KH3, getting randomly sniped in horde fights, boss fights that take awhile and usually 2 shot you, the mode and its’ particular challenge coming together masterfully for the Keyblade Graveyard fights to create a proper tense challenge that’s still fun, the Armours Xehanort fight being so frustrating it makes you want to launch your PS4 at Nomura, and Final Xehanort being a good but brutal fight that exposes a bit of flaws of KH3 but also plays to its’ strengths as well, unlike Goatnort who exposes all the flaws and needs to calm down. Overall I didn’t enjoy it as much as KH2FM critical mode but it was better than DDD and BBSFM critical mode. Definitely felt like it was trying too hard to be hard at times, did get me to actually use cooking though. Rage Form is king. 

Summary

Overall, Kingdom Hearts 3 is a well put together package blending together alot of the features from across the series into a very coherent combat system that oozes variety at its’ core, but is let down a bit by functional application reducing that variety to the same overall function. It’s a game with a bit of balancing issues, and ideally needs some overall core enemy fight redesigning, maybe a few more worlds and boss fights, and alot of tweaking to base Sora’s playstyle, requiring snappier animations, quicker flow between them, changes to hitstun interaction and options and iframe changes to be more fair on the player in critical mode. There’s alot to the combat overall that needs a little tweaking, and while it isn’t KH2 levels of good, it has alot of potential and is very fun to play, bringing together alot of what makes these games fun in general and pulling it off decently well. There’s alot to enjoy here, and the craft is up scratch, even if it is a bit wonky and rough around the edges on the more finer and precise aspects, it’s still up there with some of the best Kingdom Hearts games. I’m looking forward to the DLC and any future updates, and I’m hoping some more balance tweaking and a few changes might be all this game needs to be its’ best. It’s a good game through and through, and while some may find it disappointing, I’ve accepted that the series more or less peaked with KH2FM and I’m glad to see Osaka team have finally found a groove that fits them that they’ve clearly put some work into making as high a quality as they were able, considering the no doubt rocky development the game went through with all the business of engine shifts and other things going on in the company at the time. I know giving a numerical rating can devalue the qualitative aspects of a review but the quantitative is also nice to have so overall, I’d say that Kingdom Hearts 3 is a solid 8/10. KH3 competes with KH1 as second favourite in the series and even with all its’ flaws it’s a game I really do enjoy playing and putting time into.Story is still a fuckin train wreck tho lol. Good job the stupidity of it makes me laugh more than anything. Xemnas is still a better waifu than Ansem tho. MickeyRiku best ship.