#like thumbnails and memes of my favourite panels

[crabsnpersimmons]

hi @flinxypie i'm your Valentine Secret Santa! Secret Valentine? Secret Cupid? all of those!

i read your prompts and you and i both love some good ol' DCA shenanigans, and i was reminded of this wild song! so i hope you'll enjoy this little animatic of the DCA boys just trying their jest!

Happy Valentines, friends! know that you are loved dearly by your loved ones and these silly jesters!

and if you wanna read the frame-by-frame break down, i've compiled it into a google doc this time (because there's too many images for 1 Tumblr post). it's a lot less heavy this time as i went more by fun and energy, but there are still some parallels and things to note, so if you're curious: https://docs.google.com/document/d/18zydwGFFRJyHTvkG7MDqPI8GphUzzFzGsFCt6diFrsk/edit?usp=sharing

[lord-shitbox]

part 2 of this ask

📝Process for hurt mezu drawing 

here are the steps i dug out of an art server's wips channel lol

1. initial sketch

2. refine sketch. thats lines now babey. (omitted "the sleeves are KILLING ME WAHHH" stage that led to this)

3. grayscale, to use with gradient map (this is a more polished grayscale than I started with, i dug the working file out to get better images)

4. find nice gradient map (ended up being the same one I'd used for the piece i made right before. the goal is to make what's essentially an underpainting, not to color the whole thing with one map)

5. tweak and add colors that arent in the map with hard light layers & also sneak in a layer for special effect and atmospheric/ scenic perspective while you're at it

6. shading & more finishing effects. pretty much all of the shading was done with hard light layers! the only non-hard light layers I used for the shading were the particle effect layers & like one faint glow layer to fix some values. blood was done with linear burn

✨Inspiration for hurt mezu drawing 

the coloring method (grayscale -> saturated gradient map underpainting -> additive color adjustments) is something I tried out with the piece i'd made right before (the one where gozu is holding mezu from behind) & turned out really well, so I wanted to keep going with it

I also wanted to draw them angstily again because it'd been a very long time. like half a year at least. angsting them is very enriching for my soul so I try to do it regularly, this one was overdue

subconsciously referenced the poses in the initial sketch from this old thing (feb 2021). i love doing this. all my for-fun works recycle old elements in some way. my favorite game is "what old art reminds me of what im doing rn" im so good at digging stuff out of my archives for it. everyone loves when i do this

the gangi-kozou panel also

i went through a "shade in bold red-orange & dark blue with hard light layers" phase in like..april/may of 2021. i still like that stuff a lot so I wanted to revisit it

💚Things you like about hurt mezu drawing

repasting the link there but the sixth image in the process is essentially the final so you can just look at that

the colors are nice!! I'm real happy with using more saturated colors n I think the warm vs cool balance works really well

the sleeves (man being dramatic on the sand meme)

no like fr look at the 2021 piece's kimono sleeves vs the one I just did 2.5 years later. so satisfying

Gozu's expression came out nice

i think the claws and flash lines successfully added Emphasis to Gozu's expression & the piece overall

the poses … the drama …. the brush textures are also good

⏳Things you’d do differently with hurt mezu drawing

add in a liiitle more contrast...aka use a wider range of values. Some lighter lights and darker darks. I miss my 2021 hard neon lighting

a bit more distinction between the characters and the background also

the composition isn't bad but it could be better. Should've thought more about the way the eye would flow around the image in the drafting stage (solid b&w color block thumbnails are good for this)

Moar Sparkles. (I put a solid amount of large & low opacity light bubbles in there & some finer brighter dots especially around the claw stems, but I think more clusters of tiny bright lights on the characters themselves would've gone hard)

💌Some favourite feedback on art

as the wise man Austin Kleon once said: keep a "praise file" of all the positive feedback you get (if you've never read "Steal Like an Artist," you must). so. i am prepared for this question hold on

tastes like sugar glass

multiple people have told me my art is soft & dreamlike

jayce you reblogged my touchstarved art with nice tags on april 10th ive got that saved love uou

umm theres a lot...anytime someone keysmashes or feels emotional because of my art i get happy ,,, lys messaged me about the hurt mezu piece that made me happy also,,,,,there is so much joy in the world

[philcoulsonismyhero]

@squireofgeekdom tagged me in a 'share the titles of your WIPs and let people ask you about them' meme, and I was actually thinking about doing something like that anyway with the various original comics ideas I've got going at the moment, so I'm bending the rules slightly and giving you a little bit more than just the titles:

No Place For A Doctor - a short (24 pages) backstory comic for my beloved old DnD character Sam Harnendil, featuring his days as a conscripted army surgeon and how he accidentally got cleric powers from yelling at a god for not doing her job. This is the one I'm currently thumbnailing, which is exciting, because it's starting to resemble an actual comic

The Woodsman And The Wolf - a queerplatonic fairytale-ish thing about a woodsman and the injured traveller he finds in the woods one day who, spoilers but not really, turns out to be a werewolf. It's a story about monsters and what makes one and I'm very attached to it, and I'm currently at the stage of turning a pretty thorough outline into something resembling a script

Untitled space hero thing - a shorter thing, hopefully, that came about from bouncing some of my favourite mentor-mentee relationship tropes off of Captain Marvel. The space-disaster equivalent of a firefighter crash lands on Earth and ends up teaming up with an engineering student in order to save the planet and maybe herself in the process. Still needs the plot properly outlined after a certain point, but it's got Themes already (grief, mostly, and new beginnings and letting people back in)

Red Shift Blue Shift - beloved long-in-development sci-fi webcomic project with @yourfriendlyneighborhoodenby, which you can find a bunch more about over on the blog we made for the project @redshiftblueshiftcomic. We've got a bunch of short character backstory comics at various stages of figuring out that I really want to actually make this year, as well as finally getting together a proper script for Chapter 1, which is about saving a sentient generation ship from unscrupulous scavengers

Untitled gay detective thriller - this one spontaneously manifested in my brain the other day in the format of a movie, but I can't make those so now it's a comic I guess. It's a serial killer investigation starring a police detective who used to be a spy, whose life gets increasingly complicated as he starts to suspect the killer is someone from his past, who may even be trying to frame Our Hero for the murders... Also he's gay, because action-y crime thriller heroes so rarely are, and his partner is a forensic pathologist working on the same case. Still just broad strokes for now, but getting places, and something of an exercise in writing something that fits into quite a specific genre But Gay This Time

I'm very much in the mood for talking about any and all of these, so send me a title and I'll tell you a bit more about that one! (Or ask specific questions if you've got them, that's also good!) You might also get some character design doodles or panel thumbnails for some of them...

[living-the-fastlife]

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and Bookish where we get a new topic for a top 10 list.

Not so long ago I wrote a post on my dream book conference panel. We all have authors we’d love to meet in person. Unfortunately for me, most authors that do a UK book tour tend to stick to the major cities, meaning that I’d have to commute at least 2/3 hours to the closest destination. One of these days I will go to a bookish event, so with that in mind here are the authors I’d love to meet.

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1. Victoria Schwab: Who wouldn’t want to meet her? Her books tend to put me in book comas and her characters are all morally ambiguous and wonderful. I’d love to pick her brain about anything and everything and see if I can squeeze some post A Conjuring of Light info about my favourites.

2. Leigh Bardugo: To start, I’d make sure she knew how I felt about a certain characters fate in Crooked Kingdom. My heart is still in mourning. I’d also take the chance to see if I can check in with Kaz and the crew. I’d also love to know how she creates such a complex world.

3. Neil Gaiman: The master of fantasy. Gaiman has definitely left his mark on fantasy literature. As a veteran author I’d love to ask him how fantasy fiction has developed and been commercialized over the years.

4. Pierce Brown: Who wouldn’t want to gaze into those piercing eyes? If I knew I’d get to meet him it’d probably give me the motivation to pick up Morning Star and power through the emotional turmoil the book is bound to put me through.

5. Heather Demetrios: One of my go-to authors. I’d read anything by Heather Demetrios. She covers some really tough topics in her books and you can see the time and care that’s gone into exploring the topic on hand. I’d also like to check in with Skylar and Josh, my OTP.

6. Melina Marchetta: When it comes to characterizations, Marchetta hits all the right notes. Whether it’s been her fantasy work or her contemporary ones, I’ve never not been able to connect to her characters.

7. Markus Zusak: His books have always packed a few emotional punches but I’d love to know about how he came to the decision to use Death as the narrator for The Book Thief.

8. Sarina Bowen / Elle Kennedy: My go to New Adult authors. I’d love to go to an event featuring these two authors. I can see it being such a fun event to attend.

9. Ryan Graudin: Two words, Luka Lowe. I will never get over his fate. It hurts to even think about it and I want her to know just how much pain she put me through with that choice.

10. Adam Silvera: Who wouldn’t want to meet this guy? His books are just as amazing as he is.

Those are the author’s I’d love to meet. Who would you like to meet?

Top Ten Tuesday: Must Meet Authors Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by The Broke and Bookish where we get a new topic for a top 10 list.