#it was weird to work in a less rendered style

[kingycrow]

[darantha]

How to Spot AI images (Hopefully)

So, I did see GailyNovelry's excellent post on this (Link here), but saw that there also were some confusion and they were using a environment image as their example, so I thought I'd do a breakdown that was more character centric.

The key thing with AI images is that the program does not know what it is making. And, arguably, they thrive on that we are currently conditioned to not really look at things for too long before we hit that engagement button and/or just scroll onwards to whatever next the algorithm feeds us.

It's hard to fight that urge, I know, but if you just pause and look, you'll soon start spotting things that just do not make sense, and I don't just mean that the pretty booby elven fighter is sporting seven fingers on one hand. Those are the obvious things. I'll try to cover the general sort of artefacts that tend to tip me off to the fact that a image is generated rather than actually hand-made by someone making informed design decisions as opposed to trust what amounts to RNG. I think this is important as there's those who do not tag their images as AI generated, and try to scam people with commissions.

And, as the saying goes... The devil is in the details.

To start with I picked this image from deviantuser CeiEllem. At first glance, it looks... very impressive. Sharp looking elf lady with killer hair. 10/10 wish I could rock that haircolour.

But, it is AI generated. Aside from the general tell that is this hyper rendered, near photorealistic style that AI images often have, there's a lot of details that tips it off to just not having been made by a human who actually made the decisions.

Since AI is just working off patterns and not actual decisions, things like hair is a immediate giveaway that you're looking at a AI image.

(Deviantart users: daralyth, DavidZarn and lunayokai)

In all these three images you can see just how hair whisps off into weird nonsense shapes or even meld into the background or clothing. Because, again, the AI doesn't know what its doing, just working with shapes. Similarly, background elements that just stop and start randomly is a dead giveaway, like the tail in the first image.

As I've said, details is the key to spotting these images, and another giveaway is the sheer density of details that is just noise.

This is from users Rigtorok7, and the details are so noisy, absolutely miniscule in scale, and hypersharp, yet have no actual design to them. Artists imply details all the time. We don't render out every single nook and crevice, and since we actually know what we want the viewer to look at, we'll pull back and simplify things so you don't want to look at the big chunk of very noisy hair ornament or necklace instead of the face of the character.

For comparison, this is how it looks when I, personally, indulge in doing 'overdetailing' of something (because I am forever weak for painting jewelry).

BUT I want to stress that the key here isn't that detailing equals AI generated. The key is the lack of design choices IN the details. There's a lot of artists out there, and someone painting out all those nooks and crannies in something doesn't mean they are a AI user. This painting by Leighton is super detailed but you see the intent with all the details. You have a focus with the people in the boat and secondary read of the figure in the door, where the details are a lot more implied and less sharp.

AI can't do that, because AI isn't making any decisions.

I couldn't find any good example once I went looking, but if you're into fantasy art: look for people just holding weird 'swords'.

AI is rapidly evolving, so who knows how much this'll help in 3 months, but for now, this is how I spot things.

But, in the end, the biggest giveaway that someone is using an AI generator is that they've filled up page after page on deviantart/artstation/wherever in the past like... six to nine months, and often swing between wildly different styles. If you're unsure, look up the source of a image. Another clue can be generic 'untitled' or just 'elf lady' sort of titles, since someone uploading 30 images a week isn't going to make unique titles for each image.

Also, commissioners. ... you should ALWAYS get a sketch and progress image from a artist that you hire. My art directors would have my head on a plate if I didn't send them a rough sketch and progress shot before finalising the image.

[abyssalzones]

C-PTSD as a diagnosis makes so much sense for Ford because he really does fit almost all of the criteria, ESPECIALLY if you take the stuff in J3 into account in conjunction with his traumatic childhood (bullying, bad dad, etc.). It just makes sense in regards to his motivations and his issues with interpersonal relationships (like with Stan). Also buring yourself in your work (like he does) is a very common 'flight' coping mechanism to trauma in adults

I'm smiling like this right now

ford's whole.... mental health deal is extremely interesting to examine because Oh my god this man is the textbook image for "reacting to ongoing, continuous trauma". intentional or otherwise (I'm inclined to believe it's both).

like. okay hang on I'm about to get very in depth with it

I feel like there's no way this entire guy's life and in some ways his lasting identity haven't been defined by and constructed around various forms of trauma, maybe the most obvious and true-to-canon-intent being peer abuse/bullying from childhood. a lot of people downplay the impact of this type of abuse but it's... responsible for a lot of social ills in shocking ways. (if you're more interested in this topic here is an article my friend mer linked me a while back, it gets into it very deeply)

(a lot of this is going to be sourced from the wikipedia page for CPTSD [and my own experience Living with it] which I realize isn't very professional of me but Whatever this is tumblr)

one of the core tenets of ford's personality is that he's Different. he owns it, sure- his six fingers become a point of pride rather than something to be ashamed of- but they make it extremely clear that from a young age he associated being different with being a social pariah. ford's generation was characterized by notoriously cruel bullying, and anything that remotely made you stand out rendered you a target. ford could've been bullied for being nerdy and jewish (and failing to perform socially, ie dating) alone, having such an obvious mutation definitely was not winning him any points.

so it's honestly no surprise, when from childhood ford feels like he has One person in the world to trust and confide in, that he would go on to form very unhealthy attachment patterns typical of CPTSD. as you elaborated on regarding AvPD (which I know far less about but seems to have comorbidity with CPTSD): if you're hard-wired to believe socializing with others results in failure or betrayal, then you're not going to make an effort. but what does end up happening is that you're going to pour all of your trust and dependency into one person at a time, one person who is "safe".

previously, that was his brother. and it's not really hard to draw the conclusion from there that fiddleford was a subject of ford's attachment style, considering he was his One friend from college, and... one of Maybe two people ford is friends with at all who he isn't related to. he cites him as the only person he can possibly trust to work on the portal project alongside him, and he still can't bring himself to tell him the full truth, because he's terrified of losing him. I love their dynamic (I do think they were mutual best friends, and there was no small amount of trust reciprocated between them. "fiddleford was weird as hell too" is something I keep coming back to) and I don't think it's built on entirely unhealthy terms, but that kind of pressure is... setting things up to crash and burn.

enter bill stage left. back to "continuous yearning to be liked and accepted"- this guy knew that and made every effort to prey on ford's insecurities to reel him in as close as possible. this is what really pisses me off about the idea that bill was just "inflating ford's ego", because it's way, way more insidious than that. throughout the entirety of journal 3 we see ford reintroduce someone to his life he has a very positive relationship with (fiddleford) and how that trust gets gradually broken down by bill's influence "winning out" over their friendship. I think it's safe to say ford was already vulnerable: from the start, he'd been isolated in his research for six years (and it's unclear for how long he'd known bill by 1982), and bill proved time and time again to be someone who wouldn't judge him, someone who would praise him for his hard work, and perhaps most critically, make him feel like being different was something special.

like that's... that's really not good!!!! and that kind of thing works wonders on someone who has already settled with the idea that they're inclined to be alone just by design.

trying to put a cap on this. in relationships like the one he's had with his brother or fiddleford it doesn't even necessarily have to be ""toxic"" (vague term anyway) or outwardly bad to be built on unhealthy attachment patterns, and considering for a good chunk of ford's life his attachment to others can be characterized as "I can only trust ONE person at a time" it feels essential to any discussion of his CPTSD or canon trust issues. That is something that happens a lot in Real cases of CPTSD (hi) and only further snowballs into More trauma by leaving you vulnerable to manipulation and abuse (see: bill.)

I've been going on for way too long now and I feel like I've only scratched the surface of the thing I wanted to elaborate on sorry. that post traumatic stress disorder can complex

[fever-project]

Four for the Pokémon AU! He has an X&Y inspired design. Gave him the hat with the feather pin that’s now a Minish Feather, and also gave him this kinda ponytail thingy that is covered by an Ezlo charm. It’s weird but I like it.

I didn’t put in all of his Pokémon because i just couldn’t make myself draw them(Swampert and Azumaril). I only recently noticed how short I made the tunic. The anatomy’s just kinda wonk, but I can’t really fix it now. I also tried a new rendering style. I don’t know how to feel about it. Anyways, Lore under the cut.

At the beginning of the Minish Cap, Link doesn’t get a starter. Instead, he gets his starter once he meets Ezlo, who suggests to get a Pokémon companion to help out, since he can’t really do much. Because at the moment, he was a hat. Link choose Mudkip because he thought it could help him get over the water easier. That did not work.

Link also transforms into an actual Minish, who are a Pokémon in the same vein that the Zora and Gorons are also Pokémon. Pokémon=species, more of less. Pokémon-Mystery-Dungeon-esk, but not as much as Twilight’s adventure was. Four’s adventure was more or less the exact same, and he didn’t really use Pokémon all that much, just the Pictori sword/Four sword. But he did catch a bunch of Pokémon, because he was really into collecting things back then(like how there were a bunch of figurines in the actual game).

He found a Maril near the beginning of his adventure and thought it was cute so he kept it. He specifically wanted a shiny Shedinja because no one in Castle Town had ever seen one up close. He did not that shiny after hours of hunting. So in the end, he just got a regular Nincada and named his Shedinja NotAShiny, because he was so annoyed. Link did come to love it tho, so he usually calls him Nota for short.

At the beginning of Four Swords(and let’s just combine fsa because who cares), Link became friends with an Eevee, right before the maidens got kidnapped. Stuff happened and both Link and his newfound Eevee end up at the Four Sword Sanctuary, where Link had stored the Four Sword after his first adventure. The sword had been accumulating more and more magic since Vaati’s imprisonment within it. I don’t know how the story works in LU canon, but that’s how it works here.

The 4Sword not only splits Link up into four, but Eevee as well, the sword reacting to the uniqueness of Eevee’s genes or something. Leafeon for Green, Flareon for Red, Vaporeon for Blue, and Espeon for Vio. Also because of Eevee’s wild genes, the 4Sword clings to it and its spilt eeveelutions, and can only be pulled out by the colors. I mainly came up with this because I couldn’t figure out where to put the sword on Four’s design.

Link found the Castform early on, his first shiny on this adventure(he found shinies before but he liked this one especially so he had it in his team at the moment he went through the portal). Link also found the Zygarde Core sometime during the adventure. His collecting instincts kicked in whenever he found the cells. He can make Zygarde become 100%, but he likes the Core form best.

Btw, Shadow never had any Pokémon of his own. He’d order around Pokémon provided by Ganon. He would befriend a Masquerain and would love it forever. He’d say he doesn’t but he does.

I don’t really have any ideas about LU specific stuff right now, but I can say that Four, Legend, Wind, and Hyrule are the only ones with Mega Stones. Four’s Swampert has a mega stone.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA of I want art trades to be of equal time/quality?

this is a weird one but I had a spat with someone recently because they wanted to do an art trade, which i was open to do, but we hit a weird impasse. When I do art trades I like to put forth as much effort as my trade partner puts forward first, and would prefer that if i put art first that my partner reciprocates the same amount of time and care.

Art style, quality, experience, follower count means nothing to me in the exchange, just the level of effort. It feels unfair to me that I would put in hours/days of work on a painting to only receive something done in less than a few hours, especially since that would basically be doing a free commission. I'm willing to give smaller/newer artists with less experience or cheaper software more effort in my half on the account that I trust they're doing their best with what they have. It's meant to be fun!

This is not an instance of that. I've checked this artist's gallery and they were perfectly capable of producing extensively detailed pieces, so I agreed to do a more detailed piece, as long as they do the same.

This is where things get weird. They were perfectly fine with me doing something bigger and were very excited, and I brought up that in my listed art trade rules, I'd like them to do the same. They agreed, and we both went to work. I'm a slow artist, so it's been taking me some time, and I'm well into working on colors and rendering. in the middle of this time is when I get my half. it's just lineart with some shading. it was very beautiful, and I'm grateful! but it's not necessarily a level of detail that we agreed on. So I kiss my flat colors and rendering goodbye and just quickly rendered the lineart to match.

They get excited and ask when the final of my half will be done. Confused, now assuming what they provided was just a WIP, I say when they finish theirs. They go "oh but this IS my final :)" and I am... still very confused.

I brought up our agreement to do equal effort and they go "but I did that, this took me a long time" to which I point out I've been working for a few days now to produce a fully rendered painting, which wasn't even finished by the time they posted theirs.

They start getting defensive saying that exertion of effort varies from person to person which I fully agree as a chronically fatigued person! but I still feel really scammed that I'm putting in all this work and they can only provide what their commission form claims is a "colored sketch" (and on the cheaper end too.)

They keep getting weird and defensive and I decide to just call the whole thing off, giving them the art I did and that it was final. They get pissy and call me an entitled asshole for wanting to "break their back" over a free art trade.

I would be perfectly happy getting a rendered sketch, if that were what we agreed on in the first place!

I don't think I'm the asshole here, but being called "entitled" really got to me, especially considering we WERE doing work for free. So here I am. Am I the asshole for wanting equal parts effort? Or am I just being entitled? I'd share the art pieces we did here but I won't out of privacy for both me and the other artist.

What are these acronyms?

[notsodailycake]

My kofi

Here's a drawing that was supposed to be a simple doodle, then bcame a oractice doodle, to a fully rendered drawing XD

I decided to try out this new style of shading, and i really love it, so i might be drawing like this more often, it's quite easy to do if you know where to add the light/shadow and i had alot of fun doing it. Tho i did struggle a but trying to figure out where to put it, bc it looked weird as i did it, but as the say, trust the proces! Harder than it looks, tho, but in the end, it turned out better than expected! The less i tried to make it look perfect, the better it got.Who knows tho, that might change my style by next month lol

Although i have my general stlye figured out, how i shade has been a struggle 😅

Oh, and obviously, i had to share a version without his visors to show off the eyes bc I'm super proud of it.

I also wanted to try and work on electricity effects(?) and they are surprisingly easy to do XD

Was expecting more of a chalange, but i went quite wellm i kinda had fun doing it, it was and still is my favorite part! Obviously, there is still stuff to improve on, but i think i did quite well

Anyhow, here's a little something from a fnaf sb au of mine. This is Gregory, hero name Breach. The au is called "Hero's Breach" and currently, i have nothing published about it, and imma keep that way till i feel like i can share more of the au

It's currently under works, and i have no clue if or when it will ever come out to the public, but i love drawing this little guy so yall can have this

And on a final note, have a few doodles i did of him these past few months (not many, but hey, i haven't been able to draw alot recently YwY), as well as kinda of a reference drawings for him, they're quite old tho, but i haven't really changed his desing lol

[nanistar]

Any advice on how to draw backgrounds? Gotten to the point in my art where im semi confident in drawing poses and expressions but backgrounds?? girl help i can only somewhat draw a tree

oh hell yeah i love backgrounds, ive been working on more interiors lately (when not overburdened by sbc work lol) but im assuming you're asking about nature so that's how im going to answer it as okay so: -first of all find yourself a good TEXTURED blending/smudging brush because it will save your life. i use these rock texture brushes from This Studio Ghibli pack, it's $6 and i HIGHLY recommend the whole pack because it's the main one i use for most of my bg foliage/grass ect and i love it dearly

-find references either in irl photos or other artist's work. if using another artist's work watch their speedpaints or look at what you like about their art style and techniques and steal it. im serious. obviously don't trace it and pass it off as something of your own but look at how they do the aspects you struggle with, and try to incorporate that

for me, that struggle is forest foliage because i have a hard time filling out the spaces without everything looking like same colored blobs, so i looked at how my buddy hannah mudshadow does bgs because she's really good at filling out a scene and making it look natural, and i noticed she uses a lot of abstract shapes instead of trying to render every leaf, so rather than doing my base work for bushes/trees with a leaf brush, i use a chunky scatter brush now and it looks really good, and then i can go and add some leaf brushes on top of that for more definition in areas that might catch light ect so that will give it the thick, bushy .. bush look without looking crowded or too shaped

-nature is messy as hell and things are never going to be perfectly shaped and toned unless you're drawing perfectly managed hedges or something. got some dirt brown on your green bush? those are dead leaves now. accidental weird texture on your tree? the bark is gone there, something ate it. bushes and trees have dead branches that just hang out there in them, grass grows long and sometimes a deer or whatever doesn't eat the whole patch so there's long uneven sprigs sticking up. petals fall off flowers. trees have huge webs of branches

-don't try to detail everything. make things further away more abstract and messy to give the illusion of detail. throw a gradient over it for some slight tone variation or something so it;s not completely flat but ppl are going to look at your subject and see the rest of it with the corner of their eyes, so you don;t need to fully render every flower in the field. here's some examples of that

the cactuses in the far BG are just V and Y shapes, the joshua tree in the middle distance is dark with some light blobs right on the edge where the needles would catch light.

this is from 2021 so be nice to me but as the flowers go back in the distance, i stop rendering their petals and start doing blue dots with white dots, and then even further away i just sorta blend blue and green together to give the illusion of a field of flowers.

-i dont know what your style is, but i personally hate using a ton of layers and tend to merge them as i go, but for the most part i draw every panel of SBC bg on the same 1 layer, going back to front (start with sky, mountain, bg grass, foreground grass and cactus, then go back and scatter foliage as necessary) and it keeps my stuff loser and i tend to get less precious about making things look perfect. i also work very fast because i am unironically really lazy at art and am desperate for shortcuts.

-oh yeah one more thing. assuming you draw cats, cats are SOOOOOO small in comparison to literally everything. as warrior artists i think our perspective gets a but confused sometimes (i am certainly guilty of this too!) and there is absolutely nothing wrong with this because sometimes that's just how you have to build your scenes, but it really makes me laugh when i see scenes of like, rusty jumping off his fence to go into the woods, but the fence is only a bit taller than him. so try to remember things are huge and cats are small as hell

na'ni's a huge cat, all things considered but look at her compared to my small aloe plant

or the cedar tree in my front yard.

absolutely microscopic. don't look at my slippers.

so yeah. i hope this helps, it's not so much a tutorial because i don't think i'm the best person for tutorials because honestly i dont know much and this is all stuff i've picked up on, like i dont know shit about composition or values or color theory but this is important stuff to keep in mind about the environments themselves. don't worry too hard about colors at first because you can always change it by adjusting your curves n stuff. or slap a filter on that bad boy. or dont. also pay attention to your horizon line because it helps angle the rest of your piece. but look up tutorials for that because i only started learning about it like a week ago

[pqrachel]

So like my last mARTch studies I picked an artist who has a style similar to what I'm aiming for. This time I'm studying @rxsiki! My main issue has been not rendering my pieces and even though I kind of know how to do it, I need to learn how to have fun doing it so I've been looking for artists whose style seems fun so maybe I can incorporate some stuff.

(Pictures on the left are from them, pictures on the right are my own.)

I started with a little warmup with these stuffed animals. This let me see that their style is a lot more loose than I originally thought and it was fun to copy that. Really makes me think I've being a little too perfectionist with my art cuz if their art can look this good and still have little mistakes, then maybe I should embrace my own mistakes a bit more. (Mistakes prob isn't even the right word but just little imperfections that are purposefully kept.)

I also made a new brush to use that's a little more variable compared to my own, so while my last mARTch study I used a brush with no line weight differences and used color to change their apparent weight, here the line weight is actually changing a lot and the line colors are more stylistic when used. It's really noticeable on a bigger piece but not so much on the stuffed animals.

I saw this pose on their art a few times so I wanted to use it cause I thought it'd be a good representation of their art. I made the character more my own instead of fully copying and then because I wanted to color pick to see what their colors were doing it ended up being a little weird to have a purpley-grey colored human.

The shading was less subtle up close than I thought and I didn't do a good job emulating their style with this one. I did more of my usual dark tone and blending one side of the shadow into the flats, but they have an in-between color and instead of blending like it looks from a distance, up close it's distinct and done well. So with this next piece, I'm gonna focus on that specifically and try what I've learned on my own character.

(And obviously no artist always has a consistent style, the intermediate color in their shading isn't present in all of their work but I still think it's cool and want to try it for myself.)

I do really like the concept of using a shading line for blending instead of actually blending the colors, even though I'm not entirely proud of this piece I am gonna use that going forward at least for a while. But I do feel like I learned some stuff and that's the main point.

[astralartefact]

in another branch, on a less lonely moon... are nier reincarnation ocs even allowed?

yH ("Waiha") - Sentinel Surety Character Story

In another branch, on a less lonely moon... He is one of the 7 to 8 YoRHa models stationed at the moon base. Tasked to monitor, document and organize weapon stories he finds himself reading countless accounts of humanity's folly - much to the dismay of the easygoing Pod assigned to him who can't bring himself to scold him for taking far too much time.

Ashen Confidence - Light Staff Weapon Story

The Pod I work with behaves in weird ways. He keeps making references to a non-existent girlfriend - that I should hide her when he comes into the room. Why would he say that?

Working through archival data I understand it to be a customary greeting male authority figures use towards younger male relatives. For some reason they seemed to hold great pride in the relationships of their young.

I asked Pod who he thought my girlfriend was and he just replied he was joking and that I shouldn't take what he says so seriously. Another time I told him that I could just as well have a boyfriend but he ignored hearing me say that.

>>Analysis: The requested parts for Unit 16H's repair are once again missing from today's shipment. >>Hypothesis: He will likely find him before we can revive him. >>Proposal: I should write Logistics a strongly worded message.

xH ("Exha") - Sentinel Shepherd Character Story

In another branch, on a less lonely moon... She is one of the 7 to 8 YoRHa models stationed at the moon base. Beloved by all of her colleagues she tries her best to fill their days with smiles. Though nobody has ever seen her work the disorganized Pod assigned to her has yet to scold her for any sort of laziness. In her private quarters, away from the other androids, she harbors secrets.

Bebi

An experimental canine droid living in xH's room. His baby face makes him look very sweet, but he will stop at nothing to protect his Mama.

Ashen Alliance - Light 2H Sword Weapon Story

"She has brought over some cookies again." "I wonder how she has the time to bake for everybody. I can't even stop and eat between work units without Pod telling me off."

"Last month's report says she has the most work hours." "I don't believe it. I never see her work. If it wasn't for this Pod I would follow her around all day to know how she does it."

"She told someone off for trying to come into her room." "I tell you, she's hiding something in there. I'm pretty sure her room is bigger than ours, too. I bet she works with the Pods behind our backs."

>>Analysis: Deletion of Memory Data successful. I will bring these two to maintenance. >>Inquiry: Will you be okay, dearie? This is the 3rd time you are the reason they found out.

Notes

I called them Shepherd and Surety because of JESUS CHRIST (no but really, if the cage contains "humanity's sin" then 10H died for our sins - she IS the savior)

I gave them pieces of Hina and Yuzuki's Mechanical Outfits, yH has Hina's sleeves and xH has Yuzu's belts and cape

xH's is also to some degree inspired by the YoRHa Girls 1.1a uniforms

I started these before 10H came out, so that's one of the reasons they barely resemble her uniform

Their weapons are Ashen versions of the respective Virtuous/Cruel weapons. I wanted to call them after the things Papa and Dark Mama 'provided to' Hina and Yuzuki (Confidence // Community -> Alliance)

I haven't decided yet if: a) Bebi is Babe's true form and he can't talk irl (=the Babe in the cage is actually just a dog talking) or b) Bebi is Babe's corporeal form and the dog can talk (=his voice is really deep) both are equally as hilarious to me

Initially I wanted to give them all the costumes 10H gets, but then EoS happened and now... welp

I don't really have a hang of xH's hair yet, it doesn't really look like how I wanted it to look and it's even harder to figure it out while also trying to evoke an existing art style - but I will keep trying!!!

Rendering is so fcking hard. How do people do it. I start and my brain just stops thinking and just does whatever and what I'm left with is a mess. I hope you still like it because I kind of don't, but without it it looks even less like the reinkane style

[bzedan]

Last Year's Flash Fiction: Dreams of Falling

Storytelling Collective does a yearly challenge for flash fic, with prompts and a nice community format. Every year I complete a run I pick my ten favourites and collect them into what is basically a zine. I've got 2024's up, so now it's time to share some faves from 2023.

[ID: An image rendered in faux-photocopy style of a hand holding a pocket-sized steampunk-style watch face with multiple dials and a twist of wire along the top exposed screws. End ID.]

Dreams of falling

The worst thing about probably falling for eternity is that she remembered an incredibly mediocre short story she’d read once. Before she’d remembered the story, her main concern had been what her options were going to be if she needed to go to the bathroom. Worries about a theoretical full bladder—or worse—were wiped away by the sudden memory of some story in a collection she couldn’t remember the name of.

Like most collections of short stories, the end value was fine, more or less. The main reason she’d picked up the collection, a short that had been turned into a movie, had been disappointing. There had been a good story or two in the first section of the book but as the pages went on the quality seemed to degrade.

The one she remembered while falling had been near the end and halfway through it she’d just been skimming the words. It was about Alice falling down the rabbit hole, but the hole was endless. There were lots of descriptions and possibly? She wasn’t certain, but the text may have switched back and forth between the lyrical descriptions of the White Rabbit’s hole (she allowed herself a laugh at her phrasing) and an essay about Lewis Carroll’s work.

It made sense to have suddenly remembered this less-than-par short story as she fell. Though she wasn’t, technically, falling. Her body was pretty certain she was, but the human body is a fool and a compulsive liar. The lead that kept her safe and attached to the station had been severed and there’d been a small explosion and now here she was. Falling, or flying, or moving maybe was the most correct description. Her suit didn’t have thrusters; it was a basic mechanic’s onesie that didn’t even have accommodations for using the toilet.

The upside to the whole thing was that, as a basic mechanic’s onesie, the air supply was small. Enough in the tanks to let you pop out and take a gander at what was going on and tighten some screws or realign a whatever. Which was what she’d expected when she stepped Outside.

But when she’d got to the problem sector, she saw that it was going to be a much more involved fix than a couple of screws or the incredibly illegal but commonly used combination of a kick and a well-crafted curse.

She’d seated her magnetic soles against the hull and thumbed her radio to transmit a heads up, so her apprentice could ready what they called her Big Business Suit.

And then there’d been a weird judder through her tether and, as she’d turned to look, it felt like the hull had hiccuped. The metal skin buckled, breaking her magnetic grasp, and off she’d gone.

And now she was in the middle of nowhere, remembering a mediocre short story. Which was worse, she’d decided, than remembering a bad short story. Something that truly sucked could still get some passion going. Anger at seeing where a story could have gone, at the author’s complete pratfall of a piece, all satisfying stuff. The boring stories didn’t give you that. It would be nice to drift out into that cold nothing with some sort of vibrant feeling.

As she settled back into a sort of space approximation of the sort of posture you were supposed to take if you were capsized in a river, seated back with legs ahead, her bladder twinged. She wondered if it was uncouth to place bets on if you’d piss yourself before your oxygen ran out. Maybe. But it wasn’t like anyone would know. She smiled. This was better than remembering that story, at least.

[dwn024]

have you ever created um. like a map or layout for the city cmy2k takes place in? if you have an i’m missing something i am. SO sorry, & if you could tell me where to find it i’d be grateful. i’m also wondering- and sorry if this is an odd line of questioning- how industrialized the world in the cmy2k universe is in general. does it follow the same rules of our universe (the more technological, the more highly industrialized + polluted the world is) or is clean energy primarily used, therefore preserving natural ecosystems and things like that? does the natural world in cmy2k even react to industrialization like our world does? because yaknow. as far as i can tell human greed is a massive undertone to various in-universe problems that the characters in cmy2k may or may not encounter, so i’m wondering if it plays out in a way that reflects real life or is it different? at least in relation to the whole industrialization thing, though any elaboration is welcome. also. i do my best to keep up to date with the established lore of the characters + story + rules of the universe that you share on your blogs, i’ve read hibiki’s wiki page and read through the post about him from the ‘OC of the day blog’ BUT are there any other like. short stories or things like that you’ve written about hibiki or other characters that you’ve posted anywhere? i’d be interested in reading them if there are, but i totally understand if there aren’t any or if you aren’t comfortable sharing them. thank you 0046 :}

HIIII ANON THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THESE QUESTIONS these are JUST the kinds of CMY2K questions i love answering so thank you so much

regarding a map of the city, iiii have not made one. i keep intending to, but i’m like REALLY bad at geography and um. city planning. so i don’t quite have the skillset to design A Whole City and knowing me i’d go WAY more in depth than necessary.

BUT i won’t leave you Completely hanging on that front, because acid city is basically just jersey city with different architecture style. the face it’s Called acid city is like 10% a joke because the idea is the like, welcome sign into the city y’know the “welcome to jersey city” sign has been vandalized and graffiti’d over changing jersey to acid, cuz it’s a play on how new jersey [especially the big cities] is unfairly given the false reputation of being extremely absurdly polluted [even though that’s NYC’s fault but i’ll spare you the rant] so it’s a joke in CMY2K that jersey city just gets called acid city cuz it’s like “oh it’s so polluted the rivers are all acid!!” but that’s completely not true in reality. and it’s a reference to the music genre see it’s multifaceted^_^

but yeah short answer to that is acid city = jersey city with blobbier buildings

and as for industrialization, it’s basically equivalent to the real world 1990s! it isn’t necessarily More Advanced than the real world, it’s just like “hey you know how PCs got super popular in commonplace in the 1990s? in CMY2K that happened parallel to consumer androids getting super popular and commonplace”. and i make a very serious effort to keep halosoft technology As on par with windows 98 as i can, which is why the way their eyes work is so weird. but basically it’s still pre-9/11 Y2K so it isn’t like there’s flying cars or even More pollution or less nature or that kinda thing.

if anything, since the rules of it being an alternate history function on “Y2K futurism” and “the 90s were the best decade the economy rules” optimism, pollution and environmentalism is actually maybe Slightly better than it was in the real world! like, a huuuuge thing in a lot of CGI renders of Y2K futurist cityscapes is that they all had a TON of greenery either surrounding them or along the streets. there’s also a ton of examples of like cities built on small grassy islands like this:

so in CMY2K canon i take that as there is a concerted effort to protect the environment and greenery and plant more where it can go, because hey it’s Y2K it’s a brand new millennium 9/11 hasn’t happened yet the future looks bright and to an optimistic 90s futurist’s mind that looks like cities built harmoniously alongside plants instead of just razing everything to the ground. if that makes sense

BUT humans greed is obviously still a problem. and obviously not everyone is gonna care about actively putting effort into that because the downside of that optimistic worldview is “oh it’s the future everything is already great so i don’t have to try that hard to make things better so i will not put effort into improving myself”. case in point, the main halosoft android production factory is like literally right on the edge of acid city and is absolutely to blame for a lot of smog and gross icky polluted river water. it isn’t like exaggeratedly bad like to the point there’s never a blue sky cuz of all the smog it’s kind of just a background problem and an additional reason halosoft is a shitty corporation. environmentalism and moves to protect things from excessive industrialization mostly exist in the form of beautification, because it’s easier to care about making things look pretty, but otherwise why put extra effort into doing a REALLY good job. if that makes sense hopefully sorry;;

and there aren’t [yet] any short stories or anything i’m sorry!!!! but like now that you bring it up smaller side comics about individual characters or themes are ABSOLUTELY something i should totally do before i can make it a full series holy fuck this is a great idea i should totally do this and then get people invested in the world and characters before i can mqke the full thing i’m a genius. but as it stands right now unfortunately nothing like that exists:( BUT there is the ask blog @cybermindyear2000 where you are ABSOLUTELY WHOLEHEARTEDLY ENCOURAGED to ask lore or backstory questions for ANY character in the whole cast, and my next student film i intend to make a CMY2K thing! though it’s mostly a dialogueless “music video with a plot told through visuals” as far as i’m planning at the moment, and also nothing exists for it yet.

thqnk you so much for these questions anon!!!! i love getting CMY2K questions that mqke me think

[seeminglyseph]

I hate when like. Discourse seems to place skills as if they are simply a choice.

Like. “Why did you not simply choose to be better at drawing?”

“Why did you not simply choose to be multilingual?”

“You should choose to be able to write better.”

Like we’re really just out here like “Get Good loser” like none of this is difficult or inaccessible or something that takes time to learn???

“Smh fanartists don’t draw body hair.” Like that is not one of the more difficult things to draw and make look *good*. That is a skill not everyone has. It’s not like you just push the “turn body hair on” button. You have to be able to draw a lot of small details the right way and understand how body hair grows. Because body hair flows in certain directions and you have to have steady line control and hatching skills to get steady body hair to look right.

It’s easier to render in 3D or in sketches, in realistic styles, but if it’s very simple you run the risk of “your hair has more detail than the rest of your art and it’s jarring and unnatural” or “the body hair and the head hair are such dramatically different styles it takes me out”

It takes work and learning to develop a skill to adapt to a style. It’s not easy and it doesn’t always work. And that doesn’t always factor in how colours are going to work, how the full render works, what medium you’re working in.

And not all fanartists are professional artists. Most, in fact, are not. So like. Probably they’re not sitting down doing exacting studies where they get uncomfortably close and figure out how hair works, and how to adapt it into their style. A bunch are probably kids who get nervous and uncomfortable at the idea of body hair because some of them are still growing their own.

I know some of us grown ups got so much it’s embarrassing but some folks still feel squeamish and uncomfortable because it’s new and weird. Making people feel guilty about feeling guilty doesn’t make them feel less guilty, it just makes them guilty squared. There’s a whole skill tree that needs filling out.

[patiann345]

Ok but... why are they so uggglyyyy????

Just gonna dump some of my ROTB thoughts here before the movie releases. Long post, very ramble-y,, >3<

I haven't kept up with all the news about it I'm sure, but I have been looking out for the designs and. Oh my...

Look, I have no doubt ROTB will be a good movie. A great one? I'll have to see, but I don't think it can ever get as bad as Bayverse. I've heard (word-of-mouth, no source sorry) that Cullen is really happy working on it, and that he thinks it's gonna be the best of the movies so far, which like,, it's Peter Cullen, man's been here since G1 I trust his judgment slkhasdkg

And real quick, before I get into the meat of what I wanna talk about, I do wanna make something clear; I fucking love Beast Wars. I binged it when I was first getting into Transformers, and yeah there's a reason it's in such high regard.

And I'm more than aware the animation is dated. And I'm more than aware there are a lot of people who would never think to watch BW or any show like it cause "Ew it's so old, it looks grosssss"

That's always been a really stupid argument to me. If you can rewatch Toy Story for the 5th time at your family reunion, you can watch some slightly dated-looking cartoons. I firmly believe that the WRITING and STORY ultimately makes a show. It can look pretty "yuck" or weird, but if it's well-written and engaging, I think it's worth more than it's visuals y'know? A movie or show can look beautiful and stunning, but that won't change it having bad writing and plot.

Anyways it's 2023 and uh, yeah why do Optimus and Megatron look like thatttttt???????? Girl there is no excuse

Megatron particularly like, that face could work on another bot but... Not MEGATRON, not when his Bumblebee concept stuff looked like THIS:

LOOK AT THIS MAN. WROW. Could use some color, the body's a little cluttered, but his face looks good! Great even! He fits the style that Bumblebee (2018) had set up and built. ROTB though? Christ-

That's not even getting into Optimus who's got that Bayverse crap going on with his face, which is,, so disappointing. He looks just fine with the mask on, but it comes off and it looks bleh. There's no reason for them to look like this! Seriously, cause everyone else (at least the autobots, haven't seen the maximals) look great!!

I particularly love Arcee's design, think she looks great, and I actually kind of prefer her design here over her Bumblebee (2018) look

Oh and hey speaking of that, Wheeljack what the fuuuuucckkk????

Sorry I've only got the toy image on hand but... That's not Wheeljack, I dunno who that is, but it ain't Wheeljack. Let it be known I'm not seething with rage like other people may be over this design, I don't mind deviation from the norm, just look at Armada or TFA. You can deviate from a character's usual look or schtick and make it work!

But when you look at his Bumblebee (2018) design,,,, We were robbed. We were robbed blindddd

I bring up all these examples because the designs are so. Hit or miss. And I don't understand why or how they ended up this way. Bumblebee (2018) had amazing character designs, that's evident enough by Bee's design in ROTB, he's still using that same helm and face and his body is still very much inspired by his look in the last film.

I brought up the dated animation in shows and films earlier because I don't want anyone to think I'm going to think less of this movie for its designs. If the writing and story and characters are good, then that's a good movie in my book. BUT there is,, no reason for half the characters to look like THAT, not when the other half look so GOOD. It is not 1996, it's 2023. Which like, Beast Wars had problems with age in its animation and rendering, NOT in character design. The CGI in ROTB looks amazing from what we've seen in trailers! But,,, the desssiiiggnnnnssssssssss. Optimus' Mouttthhhhh.

I'm gonna see this movie, that's a promise. When it hits theaters? Maybe, I'll have to see, y'never know what'll happen. But at SOME POINT, I'mma see this movie. And I really really hope it's good, I hope it's great! Hell, I hope it'll be the best movie in the catalog! But... I also hope it doesn't set a standard in terms of design.

Well. No, let me put it this way; I hope it doesn't set a standard for how certain characters will look in future installments. I love Arcee's look, I love Bee's, I hope they continue with that! cause. But man, Megatron is so ugglyyy, Optimus' mouth is gross, and Wheeljack just isn't Wheeljack. I'd hate to see them devolve into more Bayverse mess again, please Hasbro-

Lemme end this before I start repeating myself

[professorpski]

Baby Doll Sophisticate in 1966: Vogue 1885

This newly re-issued pattern from Vogue offers up an improved version of an unfortunate trend of the 1960s: the baby-doll dress. The reference is to the dresses worn by girl toddlers that had less fabric at the top of the bodice, either via a separate yoke, or via gathers that were smocked with cute embroidered motifs (think bunnies, birds, tulips, etc); then, below the yoke or smocking, the fabric flared out. This gave little girls plenty of room for their legs to let them run and play. Because they were hemmed short--to mid-thigh--again, in order to allow for free movement--they were often worn with matching bloomers. As a girl grew older, her dresses were lengthened, so that by the time she was a teenager, she was wearing whatever the current hemline was for adult women.

Women’s baby doll clothing that borrowed the toddler silhouette and its high hemline shocked people with both it’s weird cultural reference to small children and its brevity on adult legs. This version avoids both the very high hemline and much of the kiddy look by gathering the fabric over a strapless bust line, indicating that there is indeed a grown woman inside. The sheer version in black also reveals a slender silhouette of a strapless sheath underdress in taffeta, a look only associated with adults. The wearer gets to enjoy the play of a lot of fabric swirling about her without needing to worry that a stiff breeze will render her uncomfortable or embarrassed. Beneath the sheath dress you also create a foundation, something which strapless dresses need as they defy gravity: boning and a waistline ribbon belt form the structure which holds the weight of the dress up. These need to be fitted carefully to make them tight enough to do the job, but not so tight that they become uncomfortable. I would measure carefully and create extra-wide seam allowances to allow for some adjustment in the fitting.

So a fair amount of work, but it is a dramatic and luxurious style which you may find worth the effort. They suggest sheers or brocade, crepe, or satin, although I am thinking brocade might become too weighty especially for the long version which takes 5 full yards of fabric.

Find it at your local fabric store or online here: https://somethingdelightful.com/vogue-patterns/v1885

[ophelia-thinks]

For these homicidal aliens to speak in a crystalline modern idiom feels truer than for them to speak in a high literary style. But to sound modern at all feels, in its way, inescapably false. The older the work of literature, the tighter the translator’s bind: The authors’ and characters’ eras are gone, and the more they sound like modern men and women, the less they sound like the wild selves preserved in the Greek. Rendering them into approachable modern language, as Wilson has, brings them closer to us. But this exercise must always fail. Making them into speakers of contemporary English is like lifting up to sea level the bizarre creatures scuttling in the deepest ocean. They cannot survive the journey. You can see their ruptured remains. You cannot see them. I am aware of no literary solution to this problem, although some approaches make it worse. One way to handle it, I suppose, would be to defy Guy Davenport and invent what he warns against, a third language between the Greek and the English—“a treacherous nonexistent language suggested by the original and not recognized by the language into which the original is being transposed.” Call this the Snowman Dyer solution. Lean hard into the inhumanity, the weirdness, the foreignness. Make them speak some language never heard by man or lobster.

[whipplefilter]

When Lightning & Cruz started out as CC & racer, what was something outside of general inexperience that other race teams and crew chiefs noticed and thought "ah! - that's a chink in their armor that we can use in our strategy"? On the other tire, what was the first thing that the Ramirez/McQueen duo noticed about another racer or team that they actively tried using to their own advantage?

Lightning's tendency to default to coaching Cruz the way he'd run the race, rather than the best way for Cruz to run the race. Theoretically he knows that he and Cruz are different cars, and what setups and strategies work best for him aren't necessarily what's going to be the optimal options for her. But being able to execute on that in the moment is far easier said than done--Lightning's an instinctual being, and a lot of was he does operates purely on feel. There's a flow.

Crew chiefing Cruz is actually not that--and it's not something that comes naturally to him, particularly given how much of Lightning's career has been spent crew chiefing for himself (both by virtue of having fired his crew chief, or in the wake of Doc's death). It's a hard reflex to un-learn, particularly when the thing you're trying to do instead is something wholly out of your element.

The worst-kept secret in the garage: Lightning is not actually a great crew chief. He's completely average, and rendered even less effective due to inexperience. He will never be a generational talent when it comes to CCing--certainly not the way he very much was as a racer.

It's possible for the other teams to use this to their advantage, by being able to predict how the 51 team is likely to approach a given race (because the less experience/facility Cruz has with a track, the more likely it is Lightning is going to end up defaulting to his own strategies--strategies that aren't optimized for Cruz and that are at this point VERY well-known to any regular viewer of the Piston Cup. The small boon for the 51 team here is that Lightning's "usual" racing style is fairly unpredictable, so at least there's that). The other teams also know that if the 51 team already appears to be flirting with disaster, applying pressure to them will probably cripple their race strategy pretty well.

It would be a mistake, however, to write off the 51 team because of this, and to assume this means they won't be a threat to be reckoned with. Because here's the thing: Cruz was never meant to be a racecar, either. Neither of them have any business being out there in the roles that they are in--but they won the Florida 500 in their first stint out, and it will not be their last. Because they know that these are not the roles that they were built for, and they are smart enough to be smart about it. They have drive enough to work twice as hard to get half as far, to push their brains and bodies to places that don't come naturally, and to find the weird solutions that no one else could possibly have ever seen--because the path they're taking isn't one. And sometimes that added pressure is exactly the thing they need to sneak through that window.

That's what makes the 51 team dangerous.