#no rendering. only flats and chunks

[payasita]

covet thy neighbor

[morlock-holmes]

Okay, guys, after reading a post by @centrally-unplanned I just took that ACX "AI Turing Test" that Scott Alexander did, and I am screaming, as the kids used to say.

You guys are way, way overthinking this.

I thought I would do better than average, and I guess I did; excluding three pictures I had seen before, I got 31/46 correct.

Not great if you're taking the SAT, but I feel like if I could call a roulette spin correctly 2 times out of 3 I could clean up in Vegas.

So, what is the secret of my amazing, D+ performance?

You have to look at the use of color and composition as tools to draw the eye to points of interest.

AI is really bad at this, when left to its own devices.

For example, here:

Part of the reason to suspect that this is AI is the "AI house style" and the bad hands that I literally only noticed right this exact second as I was typing this sentence. Even if the hands were rendered correctly, I would still clock this as AI.

The focal point of this piece ought to be the face of the woman and the little dragon she is looking at (Just noticed the dragon's wings don't match up either), but take off your glasses or squint at this for a second:

Your eye is being drawn by the bright gold sparkles on the lower right side of the piece. That particular bright gold is only in that spot on the image, but there's no reason to look there, it's just an upper arm and an elbow. The bright light source highlighting the woman's horn separates it out as a point of interest.

Meanwhile, the weird aurora streaming out of the woman's face on the left side means that it is blending in with the background.

In other words, the way the image is composed, and the subject matter suggest that your eye should be drawn here:

But the use of color suggests that you should look here:

That's a senseless place to draw the eye towards! It would be a really weird mistake for a human to make! In fact, I think there's a strong argument that the really close cropped picture of the face of the character is a strong improvement. It's still not a particularly good composition, but at least the color contrast now draws the eye to the proper points.

In fact, I would say that a good reason for my performance not being even better was this alarming statement at the start of the test:

I've tried to crop some pictures of both types into unusual shapes, so it won't be as easy as "everything that's in DALL-E's default aspect ratio is AI".

Uh...

So how about this one:

This is a lot better anatomically and in terms of the use of color and light to draw the eye towards sensible parts of the painting. The lighting makes pretty good sense in terms of coming from a particular direction and it also draws the eye to effectively to the face and the outstretched hand of the figure.

It's also a really flat and meaningless composition and subject matter that no renaissance artist would have chosen. What is this angel doing, exactly? Our eye is drawn to the face and hand, and the figure is looking off towards the left side, at, uh, what exactly?

But then I thought, "Well, maybe Scott chopped out a giant chunk of the picture, and this is just a detail from, like, the lower right eighth of some giant painting with three other figures that makes total sense"

This makes sense as a piece of a larger human made artwork, but if you tell me, "Nope, that's the whole thing and this is the original, un-cropped picture" I'd go, "Oh, AI, obviously.

All of the ones I had trouble with were AI art with good composition and use of color, and human ones with bad composition and use of color. For example, this one:

This has three solid points of interest arranged in an interesting relationship with different colors to block them out. I'd say the biggest tells are that the astronauts' feet are out of frame, which is a weird choice, and looking closely now, the landscape and smoke immediately to the right of the ship don't really make sense.

But again; I had to think, "Maybe Scott just cropped it weird and they had feet in the original picture."

Here's another problem:

StableDiffusion being bad at composition is such a known problem that there are a variety of tools which a person can use to manually block out the composition. In fact, let me try something.

I popped open Krita (Which now has a StableDiffusion plugin) and after literally dozens of generations and a couple of different models I landed on ZavyChromaXL with the following prompt:

concept art of two astronauts walking towards a spaceship on an alien planet, with a giant moon in th background, artstation, classic scifi, book cover

And this was the best I could do:

Not great, but Krita has a tool that lets you break an image into regions which each have different prompts, so I quickly blocked something out:

Each of those color blobs has a different part of the prompt, so the green region has "futuristic astronauts" the blue is the spaceship, the orange is the moon, grey is the ground and pink is the sky, which gives us:

Still way too much, so we can use Krita's adaptive patch tool and AI object removal to get:

I'm not saying it's high art, or even any good, but it's better than the stuff I was getting from a pure prompt, because a human did the composition.

But it's still so dominated by AI processes that it's fair to call it "AI Art".

Which makes me wonder how many of the AI pictures I called out as human made because one of the traits I was looking for, good composition, was in fact, actually made by a human.

[emperor-kumquat]

Sincere suggestions for commissioned artists, from a client's perspective

I am an artist myself, but I don't do commissions.

However I do commission artists and pay them $1000s of dollars USD every year! My project Transformers: Mercy has included around 100 artists and I look for new ones all the time on Tumblr. After all, I just couldn't complete my project without some help. In the Transformers fandom, I guess I could be a top fan artist employer! Screw AI art, right?!

(Feel free to DM me if you would like to be commissioned by me or volunteer art for my big Transformers: Prime sequel game.)

When everything goes well, I am a repeat commissioner and you have me as a permanent client. But what might turn me or another client away from commissioning you initially or a second time?

If you...

... Ask for email-only communication/ have any barriers to direct and fast communication [X]

If we're on Tumblr, I would just like to message you all the details for my comm and get quick updates here. Emailing is not swift! Or sometimes, you have a setting where only blogs you follow can message you. I'll try to leave a comment or an ask, but I might not be seen and the opportunity passes. Consider turning DMs on if you are looking for commissions!

I am also not a huge fan of downloading a comm question sheet, filling it out, and sending it back. It is so much faster for me to just dump all the details of my request (and by now, I know how to be specific). If anything is unclear, I would like the artist to just reach out and ask.

2. ... Give no regular communication and updates [X]

If someone has paid you for a service, please respect that. Give an estimated time for completion and if something comes up, update the client. Clients get nervous waiting days or weeks without updates and they should not have to reach out to ask about what they paid for. Give progress updates too... sketch phase, line art, flats, rendering, what have you. If the client wants changes, it is less grief for everyone to make the change before too much effort goes into the comm. Please, reassure your clients!

3. ... Don't refer to given instructions and reference pictures [X]

I give very specific instructions and reference pictures for my artists. Sometimes, time passes. They forget what the instructions were and send me a work in progress that is not what was requested. It's frustrating when with a scroll up, they would have seen all the instructions again. Please look back to your instructions constantly throughout the process, not just once. Double-check for details as you work.

Client story: Sometimes it's as silly as me asking for a night scene and getting sent a day scene. Sometimes it's characters doing the wrong action. Sometimes it's the wrong angle from what I asked for. Sometimes it's forgetting that I wanted a character to be holding a certain item. All the instructions were given, and the chunk of text which describes the scene, but they were not carefully read.

4. ... State "no changes" or "limited number of changes" in your comm sheet [X]

This worries a client like me. What does that mean, I wonder? What if I perfectly expressed my request but the artist didn't get it right? Will they get upset if I request a small change? I have come to understand some people mean "no major changes from the original request", but it can sound like I don't have a say in the production phase and I could be stuck with something I don't like.

Client story: One time, an artist forgot a piece to a character's arm. It was a wing and blaster, clear on the reference sheet. I only noticed later after the comm was done, so that was on me. I reached out, hoping they could add in the missing piece even for a reasonable quick price because it took me so long to notice. They told me it would cost $40 USD to add in the piece of the arm. I declined. $40 USD, for a piece of an arm?? It was unreasonable. Because of that, I have not returned to this client and otherwise would have.

5. ... Ask for payment up front [X?]

It's a stand off! Because no one wants to be scammed. The artist is afraid of spending so much time and effort to not be paid; the client is afraid the artist is a fraud and will run away with the money.

Now I haven't been scammed yet and I have paid many artists up front many times. But I saw their blogs and they seem trustworthy. Whereas those bots on fanfiction.net, never trust them. But it is still uncomfortable as a client to pay upfront. Sometimes I pay an artist, then 6 months later, I get my art. If you need a lot of time to finish a piece, inform the client and consider getting your payment after. Care for your client and ease their worries. It isn't fun to pay someone then get radio silence for a quarter or half a year... imagine being in that position!

The best solution I've seen? The client pays full or half the payment after the rough sketch phase. The artist hasn't committed too much time yet and the client can see if the artist is capable or not of completing the request. I think it makes us all feel more at ease.

6. ... Are strict/inflexible with pricing [X]

An artist can decide their prices. This isn't about how to value art. But consider this story for nuance:

Client story: This artist I was working with, like most, had set prices per added character. However, I wanted some very tiny background characters who would be lower detail. Characters about the size of a pencil eraser. They wanted to charge full price for each character as though they were like those in detail in the foreground. We tried to negotiate a lower price, but I felt it was still ridiculously high for tiny background characters (around $25 each, if I recall). Because of this, I didn't return to this artist.

7. ... Want to be paid by the hour [X]

Look, I understand wanting to be paid minimum wage for your work. Art is a worthy job! Unfortunately, I have no way to monitor how many hours you actually worked on something. And what if you are slow on purpose? What if you personally are slow at art and not improving on your speed? I am not an employer at an animation studio or anything like that. This is too uncontrollable (and their estimated prices jump up to around $200+ USD for a scene that on average would otherwise cost me $50 USD). I think you should set your prices how you want then let people decide if that price suits them.

8. ... Want a signed contract [X]

Once again I understand not wanting to be scammed. I think the "pay upfront or pay after sketch" thing could protect you as an artist. Maybe you believe the contract comforts us both, but to me, it feels too suspicious or accusatory. No one wants to be treated as a scammer if they are sincere, right? It makes me too uncomfortable and the interaction too business-like. I prefer working with artists who are passionate about Transformers like me, which is why I only commission Transformers fan artists. That way we have real heart in the project. Let's not make it strictly about the money or a tight suspicious business interaction. If I see a contract to sign, I don't commission.

9. ... State "no posting or using the art" [X]

I commission art so that it can appear in my story game. If I pay an artist to make something that I can't show to others, it's a no go for me. I would like to reblog our commission or post it on social media while crediting the artist properly. Your clients are probably very excited to show their commissions (but the clients should never post the art without the credits and never sell that art for their own gain). I let my artists know what the art will be used for, but if I see a statement like this in a comm sheet, I don't reach out initially. It makes me think we'll have a conflict and aren't compatible.

10. ... Argue about how a scene or character should look [X]

This is an odd one, but here are two examples:

Client story: There were two characters in a scene. I asked if one of them could be smaller. The artist insisted they wanted the character to be larger (by this, I mean in height) because they liked big robots. I explained that this character wasn't particularly tall. For some reason, I had to push to get the character the height I wanted him for my story. It was unpleasant.

Client story: I like TFP Starscream without fangs. Some people like to add fangs. No biggie, until I'm the client paying you to draw him for me. They added fangs, I requested no fangs, it turned into an argument on why he should have fangs because he had jagged teeth in RID2015. Whatever it is, respect the client's preferences. Isn't the picture for them?

Please make your client happy and fulfill their requests.

11. ... Are rude or snappy! [X]

Client story: One time I reached out to an artist intending to do a huge commission. But I like to make the commission as fun as possible for my artists so I ask who their favourite Transformers characters are and if they prefer action or calm scenes. That way I can select a good scene for them off my giant list. And for this artist, I explained I had lots of options because it was a big story game. The artist demanded I just give my request, they said they just wanted to make money, then went on a rant that I was poorly organized. Well, we didn't do a commission and they missed out my $100 USD request.

Other suggestions to help you attract and retain clients:

Have someone proofread your comm sheet for typos and grammar (I have never turned someone down for this, it's just an idea)

Provide invoices that don't require addresses

Have a fun and positive comm sheet without passive aggressive statements. Do's and Don'ts are ok, but please don't seem bitter/fierce about something that may have happened in the past. Some terms and conditions really seemed to treat me like a troublemaker or threat!

Have a positive/non aggressive blog that avoids foul language

Appear open to discussion, flexible, and reasonable

These are just my suggestions: the suggestions of a client. It's up to you to accept or reject them as a paid artist. We all have our reasons. They are however, my secret reasons for not returning to certain artists or initially reaching out to them!

[heirhonkful]

Commission Info!

This post is going to go over my commission information. Mostly for character illustrations, but there will be other kinds of commissions included. I'll be breaking up the information and prices into chunks based on: - Art Style - Pose - Additional Elements (i.e. backgrounds, props, additional characters...) - Experimental Commissions (i.e. comics, animations, etc...) - Terms of Service. There will be example images provided and a short paragraph explaining the information. Should be a long post so it will all be under the read-more.

Art Style

The style decides the base price of your commission. Sketch: $15

The sketch style means I only do a sketch of the character. I generally will keep it clean but they will often have a rough feeling to them still. I am generally okay with the inclusion of one, somewhat sparse color in a sketch commission used for occasional detailing. Colored Doodle: $20

With a colored doodle, you get a rough and sketchy drawing but with some simple coloring. The amount of detail and complexity depends on additional commission add-ons. However, I get a lot more say in how the end result looks with these, meaning the general "roughness," presence/amount of shading, etc are all at my own discretion. Flat Colors: $30

This style means I keep it to flat colors only. The line art will be cleaner than the sketch or colored doodle. However, there will be no shading whatsoever. Rendered: $50

A fully rendered commission includes full color and shading. I will often use textured brushes in these, but if you want something smoother then you can ask for that. I include Disco Elysium styled portraits here and not in "style imitation" (further down) generally because I feel better attempting that style as I've had attempts with it in the past.

Pose

From here on, prices are considered "add-ons" meaning they are added on to the base price from the selected commission style. Bust: +$0 A bust commission includes the head, shoulders, and sometimes chest of a character. Half Body: +$10 Half body commissions can include hips and above on a character. If you want a bust commission but also wanted to include a character's hands in the pose, it is considered a half body commission. Full Body: +$20 Generally includes anything beyond the hips. If you can see the whole body, it feels self explanatory that a full body commission is what you are looking for.

Additional Elements

Backgrounds Transparent/Single Color: +$0 If nothing is specified for the background, the commission will simply have whatever color my default "paper" layer current is set to as the background. If you want something different feel free to ask, you can even send a specific hex code if you'd like. A transparent background is available to all commission levels, just ask me to also send a version without a background. Simple Design: +$5 This generally includes things like simple shapes or more complex multiple color backgrounds. Complex Background: +$20 A simple background can include a few objects/background elements. Generally if you want you character sitting in a chair, at a table, under a tree, leaning against a wall, etc, you'd be asking for a simple background. Scene: +$50 If you would like a whole scene, covering the entire background with many complex and sometimes intricate elements then would like a Scene background. This would also include whatever props your character would have, so if you get a Scene commission, you can ignore the next "Props" section. Props (Price covers one to three props) Simple Prop: +$5 A simple prop often just includes something the character is perhaps holding or a larger prop with a simple design. Complex Prop: +$10 If the design for the prop is more intricate then the price is increased. Additional Characters: +$15 Any additional character is another $15.

Experimental Commissions

Experimental commissions are commissions I would like to start doing, but don't have much experience doing for other people. As such, they generally include a few additional caveats when compared to a normal commission.

Style Imitation: +$20

I can attempt to imitate a style, the "Style" base price is dependent on the style I will be imitating. This is just something I'd like more practice with to be honest. I also really only would consider imitating the styles from famous cartoonists or the styles of certain games, comics, or animated shows. I won't imitate another random online illustrator's style. Simply because it feels a little rude lol. Examples provided include: Peanuts and The Far Side (both showing scenes from the Maia Kobabe memoir, Gender Queer), Deathloop, Darkest Dungeon II, and Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff. Comics: $20

The styles are limited to Sketch, Colored Doodle, and Flat colors for the time being. They are also intended to be more like a comedic webcomic, and not something like a comic book or graphic novel. I may include stuff like that in the future though, priced per page. For now, the base $20 includes up to 4 panels and another $10 per additional panel. Animations: $35 per ten frames I am still somewhat new to animating, so the style for these are limited to only the Sketch style. Since this is a skill I am learning you should keep the request somewhat simple. (For now there are no example to show because my only animations are NSFW in nature. When I have more SFW examples to show off here, I will add them. For now, you will just have to look for the animations I have already done in my #animation tag) PNGtubers:

The price for these can vary. The style is limited to Flat Colors and the poses are limited to Bust or Half Body. Those decide the base price. Additional expressions (blinking, open mouth, etc) are +$5 because these are often simple and easily made changes just on the face. Additional poses (hands up, additional props, etc) are +$10 The backgrounds are of course Transparent.

Terms of Service

I am fine drawing most anything (so NSFW is allowed), just ask to be sure.

I can refuse a commission for any reason

Please have references for me. - If you are having me design a character with no official design be sure to bring reference of examples of what you want your character to look like (like hair and facial features).

Delivery time - Commissions will be done in the order they were received. - For especially complex commissions, expect a few months for completion simply because of my schedule. I do these in my free time. - Simpler commissions can take a few days or maybe weeks. - Please be aware, just because I upload a personal drawing does not mean I am not working on commission.

Revisions - I will check in with you on occasion to ask for input or desired changes. - Please keep bigger changes towards the early parts of the process. As the commission progresses I will be less willing to do larger changes to the commission.

Payment - I only accept payment via Paypal Invoice (you don't need a Paypal account, it will be sent to you via email and you can pay in the link sent) and Ko-fi. - Also, if you are especially happy with you commission, you can even leave a tip on Ko-fi ;3

[sillyzlaurr]

What is your process for rendering? All of your pieces are PHENOMENAL, I seriously cannot get enough of your work. As someone looking to practice and improve on that aspect of art specifically, anything will help.

Thank you!!!!🥹🥹

I'll try to explain how i render on piece with Flowey but if u interested, i uploaded csp timelapse with Tails. Actually wanted to put it here but how do people even upload vids on Tumblr lmao

Some more info you can find in this post

So, we have this doodle with evil Flowey

It's depends on background what colours i will use or what mood of a character i want to create. This time it's just the dark depths of the underground and the light falling from the surface. I'm roughly layering the colors as if they were just chunks of paint. I'm painting directly on the sketch layer, so I'm getting messy shadows. Not tryna to make any details yet

Then, im adding colors in shades. So far it's just gray-blue shadows on his face and petals what im blending into those messy black shadows

Then the light. It's just brighter colors for his adorable face and petals. I also changed color for shades on his petals

And then the details. I used only one brush when coloring Flowey himself, similar to a paint brush, but now I took a basic flat csp marker to circle his eyes, enhance the light on his face, teeth and add other details. I also removed the sketch off his petals to make them look cleaner with sharp eraser brush, added some light yellow reflections on his cheeks and jaw

I'm adding highlights and filling in the gaps in his teeth (bc Flowey has the money to go to the dentist obviously) and.... We're almost done

Colors look pretty okay but something's seems off to me. They're not warm enough so i filling Flowey with warm yellow and change layer mode to color burn and reduce the transparency to 25%

Still, i wanna add more lighting. I cover his top and part of the stem with a light yellow tint and then i change layer mode to glow dodge, 50% transparency. Adding dust particles and.... Finally, Flowey is cooked and Toriel can shoot him with fireball!

I hope this helps, good luck!!!🫶🫶🫶

[exhausted-undead]

Hi! I'm a fellow artist and I only just recently found your blog

I'm really curious about how you layer textures and stuff in your art?

Thanks for reading <3

~🔥🍞🧈

hiii!!! AA thank you so much for the question - I actually don't use too many layers in my art for textures, but I also merge quite a lot so that might not be accurate.

I usually have separate layers for rendering (so lighting, cleaning up things from other layers, effects, composting), then line art, then flat colours (which I texture in chunks).

like i am doing a thing ATM and. legit i delete the sketch halfway through because it's putting too much pressure on me and render things in chunks like a toddler

BUT THANK YOU FOR ASKING!!!! i love yapping about my process lol

[pseudonymphomania]

Yuki’s Newsletter 1

I’ve been trying to write this Newsletter for a million years, and maybe it’s because Tumblr blesses me with such a generous word count, but my brain unloads too much info into the grain elevator at once and clogs the mental feed, thus, writing one of these requires me to sit and think about structure, and words, and if I want images- when really all I want is for you to Know Things. For example, if you followed me on Bluesky (or Twitter), you would get my thoughts as they come to me and I make sure to thread them logically, but when I tried to do the same on the Tumblr a few times I always found it so messy. Not sure why I’m so precious with my Tumblr. Welp here we go!

1) MY STORE

I made an Instagram (… another social media for the hoard yes). It’ll be used for my shop only. I’m planning on recording production asmr there; things like printing, cutting machine, making buttons. It’s all wordless but the vrrr brrrr clunk clunk shhhhhh is very satisfying from the preliminary videos I filmed and put on twitter. That way I’ll still have a presence without letting the platform AI eat all my stuff. Please follow me if you already have an Instagram, but I’ll be uploading the same things to my tumblr in chunks when I can. I'll bless you to be patient with me since I manage all of my social media and pages myself and it gets to be a lot sometimes.

My storefront will open June 1st for pre-orders in honor of Pride Month. I finally got my button machine(!!!) and I’m all ready to go on that front. I just have have to pick my art for it and measure my envelopes and check the shipping (Canada, USA, international) with those metrics. Please be patient with me as my store grows and changes especially with the tariff situation. I just splurged on Big Cartel's Platinum Tier (annual) for acces to features that, imo, are pertinent to even having an online shop. Working on the listings! :>

I’m currently remastering some of my art to make prints. These flat items and stickers will be sent by letter mail (cheap!)

My rendered commissions are closed for now, but my Kofi doodles are still open. AND! I'm planning on an upcoming Pride Month special for simple coloured couple art which includes the price of a button sent to you with that art featured. Limited slots due to the custom nature of it. (See Solotan below for example)

2) My Art

DiaLuci Strawpage: Lots of you have sent me gimmicks and asks! Thank you! I put a lot of effort into my responses and I have been unable to get to them yet. Don't worry, I have not forgotten! Making comics and doodles in response takes work!

My Tumblr Asks: Same as above! I love putting effort into my responses as I feel that anyone who bothers to talk to me deserve it. There is even an ask that has been sitting in my inbox since November and it's currently a draft and... at this point it constitutes its own Longpost. (orz) Maybe I'm just too damn wordy for my own good.

3) My Fanfics

The next chapter of This Memo Means I Love You [Rated E] is very long. When me and @ruewrites first decided to write it, we thought it would be a simple multi-chapter Valentines story. lol. Truly. But when you care so much about something, you can’t help but keep it going. I’ll share an excerpt soon as thank you for following the story. I don’t have a date on when we would release this chapter, but we have 4 key scenes to finish. The plot threads weave tight. It’s already 8k words and we anticipate that it will double before it’s done. (For comparison… we are currently at 5 chapters totalling 33k)

I’ve been working every now and then on my 2023 fanfic The Sex Shop [Rated E] a sentence or two at a time. I still think of it everytime I open my AO3 and it’s been on my mind for two years. I want to finish it, but it’s got so many threads to untangle and I’ll have to reread the whole thing to understand where my mind was at and that stops me from making true progress. (Look at this newsletter and tell me I have that kind of time right now haha) But it is my pride and joy and I must write them their hard-earned happily ever after. I already have the epilogue.

4) My trello scrolls sideways into hell. Here's half of it.

Thank you everyone for Two Years of Support for my works. You being here and letting me know you enjoy them has kept this one-man production line going, whether arts, Doodles, fanfics... now merch. Seriously, thank you. ♡ You deserve my best, now and in the future.

[ceilidho]

tell me something nuclear winter ghoap NOW!! (bo)

BO!!!!! ok you wanna read what i've got so far?? it's not very much but here's what i have for my project that's tentatively titled "permafrost"

At first, it comes as a series of lights in the distance, a gentle rain like a cascade of falling stars. And then, it goes dark.

It happens over the course of several hours. By the time the dust settles—and it never settles, never really settles, always hangs in the air and renders it unbreathable, unlivable—and the sirens quiet and the last few screams die off, there’s hardly anything left. Hardly anything left living. 

The initial blast doesn’t reach up the country and, for that, Johnny lasts the months after the first nuclear bombs are dropped. Somedays, he can barely recollect the hours after the initial impact; they come back in foggy chunks, stumbling out of his house, boots crunching over the glass that had been blown clean out of the windows, covering his eyes against the flash of light and staring out into the distance at the mushrooming cloud of smoke just cresting the horizon. The bottom falling out of him at the sight.

More bombs hit other parts of the continent, several in Russia, throughout Asia and down into Africa, and across the pond as well. The world goes up in flames in an hour. In his cabin up in the Scottish Highlands, crutches jammed under his arms in his haste to limp his way outside, he sees the blast and then hears it a minute or so later. A roar rippling through the air. 

It shatters the world. 

In the present day, the boat sways where it’s roped to the wharf, the waters choppy. Johnny sits on the deck in a foldout chair, fastening a new head onto his ax, fixing the metal wedge over the eye to hold it in place. The blade is cleaner than the one that’d just cracked, sharp from being run over the whetstone. He pulls his scarf back over his nose when it slips down his face.

His cabin in the Highlands hadn’t been a viable choice for longer than a few months, not after the cold had finally begun to set in. Too far up north. He’d made his way down south over the course of weeks, bringing with him only as much as he could carry. A bittersweet goodbye to the summer home of his youth, a hand laid flat against the door before turning on his heel and starting the long trek south.

It’s not any warmer farther down south, particularly around the coast where the wind gets bitterly cold, sinking into the bone. He’d found the boat on a whim, the only structure still relatively intact and, most importantly, isolated.

Making his home on an old boat might not win him any awards for brightest idea, but the downside to traveling further into the country, away from the untenable glacial weather up north, is that it coincides with the areas where the bombs were dropped, leaving limited options for shelter.

Months pass. Years pass. 

His ankle healed funny all those years ago from prolonged bouts of starvation before desperation kicked in and from traveling miles on foot. He’d driven a portion of the way down north until the roads had outlived their usefulness—asphalt cracked, chunks of bedrock spiking up out of the ground. The rest he’d managed with his crutches and a single backpack, leaving the car to rot some three hundred or so miles up the country.

It's some strange occurrence, Johnny thinks at age thirty-something (he’s lost count), that his lot be murky, for death to miscount. He witnesses an apocalypse and comes out the other side. Happenstance. Coincidence, that he’s discharged from the military not a month before the first bomb hits London and leaves a crater that never fills, that never heals. A pockmark in the earth. 

His lips twist bitterly. The price of a long life is a barbed and slick soul. 

​​Immortality sometimes occurs to him, or godship, but neither option rests well with him and Johnny wonders if this is how gods are born: not of sea foam but of inevitability, of miscalculation, of death's err, of smallness, of acorns he carried as a child through pastures behind his summer house.

He sniffs. Cuts that memory off at the quick.

Johnny gives himself a couple more minutes to fiddle around with the ax before looping it into the gear loops on his backpack and buckling it in.

[MISSING STUFF HERE]

Much of the city has returned to nature, rubble encased in snow and ice; the stores have long been looted or reduced to ash from the blast. 

[oddygaul]

Zenless Zone Zero

Well, I’ve been playing the shit out of this game, so fair warning, there will be significant brainrot ahead.

Overall, I really dig it. I’m a huge mark for character action games, and well-done life sims tend to suck me in; Zenless Zone Zero is nailing both those aspects pretty damn well. In fact, it’s nailing them well enough that… how do I put this… it starts to slip into the territory of being A Good Game Generally, rather than just a gacha. And while this is a big accomplishment for ZZZ, this also puts it into direct conversation with other full-price games, resulting in its gacha elements causing more friction than Honkai Star Rail’s ever did*.

*I’ll be comparing this to HSR a lot, because I play way too much of both and they’re made by the same developer. I recognize that it is pretty odd and potentially even problematic to A / B compare them when I could be looking at the game through the lens of, you know, Gaming At Large. But hey, that’s why this is a subjective journal and not a holistic review blog! It is what it is.

So, the aesthetic of this game fuckin rules - it’s like, late 90s to early 2000s VHS-core. The main characters run a Blockbuster, for Christ’s sake. Presentation-wise (and systems-wise, and, hell, music-wise), ZZZ is obviously borrowing a lot from the Persona series, but like… great? I’d love it if more things cribbed that style and made it their own, from the confidant hangouts, to the small but comfy explorable areas, to the dynamic menus with edgy character poses. The character design itself is all superb, all the way down to the crowd NPCs - some the shopkeepers here have cooler designs than the main characters of some other games. Even aside from the designs, ZZZ is doing a lot with lighting and color desaturation that really lends it its own unique vibe. They actually have a cohesive artstyle in here! wild.

The presentation of the story is also killer. Sure, a decent chunk of the conversations are just models lip-flapping at each other - although they at least emote and pose a bit here, unlike the Star Rail dialogue scenes with their demure princess waves. In the main story, though, we get not only a heap of fairly lengthy cutscenes, but also this really cool comic panel-style presentation.

I feel like there was a bit of a trend in the PS3/360 era of games to present a game’s story in this comic panel / storyboard style. I understood the motivation: games increasingly demanded a more involved, consistent storytelling approach, rather than the ‘One big rendered cutscene at the beginning and end’ they used to get away with, and the generation’s increased visual fidelity meant that doing even basic, in-engine cutscenes took a lot more resources to make something half-decent. In Spyro the Dragon on PS1 you could get away with a fun little 15-second gag with a barely animated polygonal yeti or whatever; in the PS3 era, you were going up against tryhards like Metal Gear Solid 4. Amidst this landscape, the pitch of having your illustrators pretty up some storyboards and put them in the game sounds like it’d save a lot of work - plus, consoles were finally outputting a high enough resolution that this sort of flat image wouldn’t be compressed to hell.

Thing is, I always kinda hated that approach. In some cases, I think that’s the popular opinion - I fuckin love Bayonetta, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone defend its weird slideshow cutscenes. Even in games where the execution is perfectly fine, though, it rubbed me the wrong way. I think of Infamous - objectively, the art’s solid and fits the tone of the game, and the motion graphics aim to capture some of the dynamism typical cutscenes would provide. Despite all that, it still feels cheap to me - all of the panning, effects, and graphic imagery feel like they’re trying to polish up something that inherently doesn’t fit.

In ZZZ, though, I’m loving every one I come across. It’s obviously still done for efficiency reasons - there’s already a handful of characters that exist only in these panel scenes, saving the team the effort of having to model and rig them. But the freedom this allows for staging and storytelling is huge; the characters are more expressive here than anywhere else in the game, and we’re able to see situations with huge crowds and new locales much more often than would be possible in typical cinematics. And the illustrations are genuinely good, too - full of character, cool poses and creative compositions/angles.

if everything actually had to be modeled, there's no way we would've gotten Legally Blonde Nicole

Plus, the cutscenes are constant, and boy do I love the animation here. It feels so rare nowadays for a high-budget game to do stylized 3D animation of this ilk. Your biggest budget games are all going for the cinematic look, and pushing realism as much as they can - and while I know an immense amount of work and craft goes into animating something like The Last of Us, boy, I just could not care less about something so lacking in flair*. Even bigger properties that use a stylized artstyle these days, like Breath of the Wild, still tend to lean towards fairly naturalistic animation. Zenless Zone Zero’s cutscenes, on the other hand, spin and stretch motherfuckers around like we’re back on the PS2, are filled with forced perspective, and I am absolutely living for it. It’s not even reserved only for bombastic action scenes, either - we get honest to god character acting-focused conversation cutscenes.

*Seriously, take me back to the Naughty Dog that animated Jak & Daxter. Jak’s hero animation is top tier to this day

Of course, the combat animation slaps too; each of the playable agents is absolutely dripping with character. Even characters whose designs initially left me cold won me over once I saw the amount of care put into their movement and combo strings. It’s honestly shocking to me that this is the same studio that made Genshin Impact, a game I dropped after about 2 hours because of how lifeless all the animation felt*. Unique run cycles for every character, actual non-human designs, the flourishes everyone has when stopping mid-combo to snap them back to idle, the absolute synergistic audiovisual bliss of the parry… it’s really impressive stuff from a young team.

*Same studio in name only, totally different team, I know, but still

Mechanically, I have some mixed feelings about the combat as a whole. Zenless Zone Zero is, without a doubt, aiming to present complexity and depth as a team battler - that is to say, it’s more about team synergy, tag combos, and knowing who to use when, rather than soloing as any particular character. Nonetheless, I really would’ve appreciated individual characters having a bit more depth to their movesets; a jump, a launcher, cancels, anything. As outstanding as all the animation work is, there’s some characters that only have a normal attack string on square and one special attack on triangle. Like, sub-Dynasty Warriors level of complexity here. It’s rough.

This is where ZZZ’s gacha nature gets a bit ugly: so far, more complex kits and skill expression are mostly locked behind rarity, which is kind of scummy. In Star Rail, for the most part, 4-star characters are defined as such due to their numbers: they still have mechanics and complexity, they just aren’t tuned as high as the limited characters. Hell, in some cases they have more complexity. Ruan Mei is an almost incomparably stronger unit than Asta, but Ruan Mei’s play pattern is fucking boring: you use skill every three turns when it runs out. Asta, meanwhile, basically has her own risk & reward minigame that demands more thoughtful SP management.

In ZZZ, on the other hand, the lower-rank characters straight up have less going on in their kits. Nicole has like… one tech, sorta. Anby has one single animation cancel to chain her normal into her special quicker. Lucy’s only skill expression is choosing whether to tap special or hold special. Meanwhile, Zhu Yuan, a limited character, has a normal string that bounces between melee and ranged attacks, can be dodge-canceled at any point in the combo to branch into variations of the string, and a hold-normal attack string that’s completely different and has the same branching dodge-cancel tech.

It’s one thing to lock raw damage and meta viability behind a gacha, but locking the characters that are mechanically more interesting to play straight up sucks. If I hadn’t been lucky enough on the standard banner to pull exactly the two characters I find the most mechanically satisfying, I don’t know that I’d still be playing - and this is the point where ZZZ begs comparison to other, non-live service character action games. Sure, it’s probably not fair to compare a random A-rank’s moveset to Devil May Cry V’s iteration of Dante, a feature-creeped nightmare of a kit 3 console generations in the making. But what about Sengoku Basara Sumeragi, my personal character-action GOAT? By all accounts a mid-budget title, yet it offers 40 full characters chock-full of more unique mechanics and animation cancels than you can shake a stick at.

Fuck, can we please get a new Sengoku Basara? Please? I’m desperate out here. I’ll take anything, y’all.

There’s also the inherent issue that plagues every action RPG (usually deftly avoided by the character action genre), which is the delicate balance of player success depending on the numbers vs actual mechanical skill - a balancing act made even more noticeable due to the gacha genre-standard of characters taking weeks of grinding to level up. This is a topic for another day, but suffice to say, a big part of the reason Honkai Star Rail works for me as a very pretty version of Cookie Clicker is because of the Autoplay option. In Zenless Zone Zero, if you’re not willing to grind out the same mob fight for a week or two, you’re gonna hit an endgame roadblock of doing chip damage to a boss you’ve mechanically mastered because you’re underleveled, and boy, that never feels good.

For all those issues stemming from the gacha, I will say, it’s great that the story missions let you use the characters that are actually supposed to be present for those missions, even if you don’t own them. Aside from how nice it is to have an opportunity to put the whole roster through their paces, it goes a long way for actually getting invested in the story. Honkai Star Rail’s storytelling is a hot mess for many reasons, but it’s always particularly jarring rolling up to a sidequest at like, a local theater troupe with a wanted space criminal, the sitting president of a completely different planet, a ten year old child, and a shirtless cyborg cowboy, none of whom have canonically met each other; ZZZ’s approach sidesteps this issue. The proxy angle even provides a pretty valid diegetic explanation for why agents that don’t know each other might be working together.

Now that we’ve sort of meandered back to the story after talking about animation led us on a long detour - the story is surprisingly solid. In particular, I really appreciate how straightforward the writing is. I don’t know if the issue lies with the original text or the localization, but Star Rail’s dialogue, even in simple missions, tends to be incredibly meandering and overstuffed; ZZZ is a lot better about letting all its characters talk like actual humans. It also helps that the plot so far is a lot more grounded, and spends more time focusing on each faction’s group dynamics rather than the overarching plot. These games live and die by their characters, so leaning into those strengths is a smart move.

Zenless Zone Zero is, unfortunately, fully in line with Hoyo’s weird conservative politics - in particular, 1.0 and 1.1 are absolutely stuffed full of copaganda. With how many safety regulation jokes they made at the construction company, I initially hoped they’d lampoon the police faction a bit, or make a commentary on how comically heavily armed New Eridu’s police force are. In a vacuum, Zhu Yuan shouting combat lines like “Stop resisting!” or “Freeze, hands up!” while blasting someone with her gigantic, ‘JUSTICE’-emblazoned rocket launcher shotgun feels like it ought to be satire. Every time we talk to the officers, though, it’s just line after line about their solemn duty to protect the people of the city, how essential and important they are for the community, and so on and so on.

This wholehearted embrace of the world’s current power structure is something Zenless Zone Zero approaches in nearly the exact same way as Star Rail. In both games, your playable character is someone that’s sort of operating outside the law - in Star Rail, as the maverick organization that is the Astral Express, while in ZZZ you work as an illegal proxy. Despite this setup, any time the protagonists come into contact with a governing body, they are no less than thrilled to help them enforce the will of the law.

In Star Rail, you aid the local governments (one of which is an undemocratic monarchy) in committing massive cover-ups to hide their failures from the populace not once but twice. In ZZZ, you aid the police to an obsequious degree - playing along with them to not arouse suspicion is one thing, but helping them organize a fucking community day on Sixth Street? Fuck that. Hell, said community day is even shown to initially be DOA because none of the local residents trust the police - and you best believe we get two full scenes of the MCs changing the resident’s minds, resulting in them spouting shit about “Oh, it was our fault for judging the police too harshly - they really do have our best interests at heart!”

is it tho

There’s an argument to be made that the N.E.P.S. are a little different, given that they exist in a post-apocalyptic world with monsters popping up every day - and ZZZ’s copaganda is certainly a little less flagrant than something like Spider-Man helping the NYPD install civilian surveillance networks in Insomniac’s Spider-Man. And, sure, perhaps this can help excuse why they post fully armored, rifle-wielding soldiers in the Lumina Square DMV, and provides some justification that their existence is more helpful than the real world’s civilian-murdering property guards.

Thing is, though, at every turn you’re hit with dialogue and situations which make it clear that, no, they’re the normal cops. Every other sidequest seems to involve calling the N.E.P.S. in on somebody or helping with an investigation, and for every time we see them handle ethereal activity, there’s two instances of them being called in for petty property theft or something similarly minor - even the playable character has heaps of dialogue choices threatening to call the police on someone*. Much like Star Rail’s reactionary politics were strangely at odds with the ‘blazing a new path’ ideals of the trailblaze, Zenless Zone Zero’s obsession with the police puts a damper on its underground, counterculture aesthetic.

*Including a case where both options threatened this, leaving me without a non-narc dialogue choice.

illustration by Lv01KOKUEN

And finally… I don’t know where to fit this in, so I guess it just goes in its own little section at the end here. Lots of people, myself included, have touched on the Persona inspirations - and they’re certainly significant. One thing I’m surprised I haven’t seen anyone mention as a huge influence is Yasuhiro Nightow’s Kekkai Sensen / Blood Blockade Battlefront. From its sense of style to its worldbuilding, ZZZ damn near feels like fanfic to me. Hell, it’s right in the name - BBB? ZZZ? And this is on top of the dimensional crossover / big city vibe, the retro fashion, the different factions. Victoria Housekeeping might as well be Libra 2.0 - Von Lycaon is a damn near perfect 50/50 expy of Klaus and Stephen Starphase. And then Belle / Wise, who assist these powerful fighters in a noncombat role just like Leo, also turn out to have some sort of special magical eyes granted to them by untold powers from within the dimensional rift??

I’m here for it, don’t get me wrong - love Nightow. But that can’t be coincidence, right?

[i-can-kazoo]

Did my annual rewatch of Megillas Lester! Thoughts are under the cut, so as not to clog the dash.

the new york accents are STRONG in this I forgot about that

Right off the bat we refuse to mention death except in an oblique way.

OH the janky animations and flat lighting..... they barely rendered these backgrounds guys...

Like any good bad movie, the pauses between lines are just long enough to be awkward

For those who do not know: megillas Lester is an isekai about a boy who ends up ruining the purim story.

Oh I forgot about the b-plot where their school play is being graded by some sort of... county officials? State inspectors? People in authority, anyways.

You know, I find it fascinating that the antisemitic caricature of long nose=evil has been divorced from its original meaning to such a degree that even jewish media gives the bad guys hook noses.

Also the officials are from the government, if they like the play their grant gets approved

Alright Lester got hit on the head by a box in the prop room! Our story begins! Also the first song of the musical.

EvErYoNe In ShUsHaN iS hArD oF hEaRiNg

Wait why is the bartender a leprechaun

I can't put my finger on it but these drunk guys sound like they're being voiced by someone who never heard of alcohol and somehow managed to do a passable impression anyways

Bigsan and Seresh pig latin tarshish my beloved

Okay I don't NEED to lambast achashveirosh's Persian accent because I've already gone over it with a Persian friend

Advanced drinking game: take a shot every time someone makes a joke about everyone in shushan being hard of hearing

Points for putting him in the bigdei kehuna though

Oh hey fatphobic character design! And we're only 16 minutes in! She has the JAP-y new york accent too, unforchies.

Lester fucking things up immediately by telling vashti that she's gonna fucking dieeee

Why do vashti's hands look backwards. (Also vashti isn't the JAP-y one, she spends the whole movie hanging out with Zeresh)

This kid's face is too expressive AND too flat

Ishes eeny, yemini, miny....

Also not showing Mordechai's face, as is common in frum media. He is in a rather modern outfit though.

Mussar schmooze so he has the lesson in mind for later, call that a mussar mousketool

Next song! Not gonna lie this one isn't so bad. I actually like it more than the reprise.

OUGH I forgot that for a solid chunk of time, every frum kid's show would awkwardly shoehorn in exposition via anachronistic news report

"This dude is gonna be so dead by the time we kill him!"

Bigsan = big son joke

Its him we're after when we're through WE'LL GET AWAY WITH MOIDER

Bigsan and seresh might have the most earwormy song in the movie tbh

HAMAN 🔔🔔🔔🎷🎺📯📯✔️

Why is the random market guy....Indian?

HAMAN BARBERSHOP AD!!!!!!!!

Haman villain song, which is literally called I Am Evil. The lyrics are.... roughly the same level of subtlety.

EVIL IS MY GAME SO HARASHA'S MY LAST NAME I AM EVILLL

Casually dropping the fact that Mordechai technically owns him and then dropping BARS (they are not bars. However ☝️ they are catchy)

Obligatory "calling all of haman's sons in one breath" joke

Also everyone wants a problematic woman until that woman is zeresh....

The spa is called... porous and mudeye. Ha, ha.

Okay I actually HATE the way they rendered zeresh's lips

Anyways Lester wants to poison vashti, but she's at the spa with zeresh so he poisons hangover instead. And then saves achashveirosh.

And they named the horse Hangover..... when I first watched this I was young enough that I didn't know what a hangover was.

Groan. The horse doctor is named Dr. Soos. And he speaks in rhymes

I will say, these voice actors are giving this their all. It's nice to see that they've got passion for the project.

The book of records is in the Artscroll title font

Its kind of funny how Lester fucked shit up so bad that haman hasn't had a chance to pass the anti-jew law yet and they're already up to "this is what shall be done to the man that the king wishes to honor"

Oh but Hangover is dead, so they have to throw a party instead.

Haman canonically plays the accordion in this movie

CUZ ITS UPSIDE DOWN AND I DONT KNOW JUST HOW IM GONNA FIX IT UPSODE DOW N IM FULL OF DOUBT

Theres this trend where the kid's stuff always portrays achashveirosh as a foolish, incompetent man instead of the conniving king that he was. It's interesting, like there's only room for one real villain in the purim story. What's the thought process behind that?

WOW OK those dance moves are. Um. I'm gonna be charitable and call them incredibly jewish.

As with all foolish henchman-coded duos, bigsan and seresh can be read as gay.

See when they try talking around a plot point without spoiling it, it just sounds like seresh is gonna jerk off on the dance floor.

"Heigai, meet Heidude."

"Hey guy"

"Hey man"

Haman: "did someone call me?"

Haman canonically moisturizinggggg

Haman having beef with this isekai'd middle schooler is so funny to me

This movie is what introduced "Ey? Ey? My scepter??" As a vocal stim. One of mine, clearly

OHHHHHHHH RIGHT YESH TIKVA WAS THE POPULAR SONG WHEN THIS MOVIE WAS MADE

HAMAN!!!!! HAS A BOMB!!!!!!! okay lester chill out?

Anyways. Bigsan tripped on a wine bottle, the bomb he was holding ended up in haman's hands, haman threw it at a statue, the statue fell on vashti, haman gets dragged off. Not gonna lie at this point I don't think Esther actually needs to marry achashveirosh.

You don't NEED to do a flashback when the movie is ONLY AN HOUR LONG and he hasn't even been sent back from isekai Shushan!

Okay he's back in the prop room. Remember that, back before this fever dream of a movie? When he was writing a school purim play to earn a government grant?

Anyways as predicted he puts on the Lesterized megillah as a play, the government guys love it and he gets a good grade in Purim Shpiel. I think that's it at this point? I don't remember anything else, maybe another reprise of Upside Down.

FULL VERSION HAMAN BARBER AD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[iztea]

Something about my drawing feels off , i only got into digital drawing few weeks ago and I'm stuck at the same point and lost .. any advice?

mmm okay first of all this is really good- first impressions-wise, the proportions and anatomy look very solid so there are no major glaring issues so to speak

if you were to ask me, what i think this artwork needs is that sort of 'volume' or depth that most beginner digital artoworks lack. You can achieve this sort of volume in two ways depending on the style you are going for: either by improving the lineart, or by treating the lines just as part of the sketch and painting over them for a more.. ''painterly/rendered'' look if you want to keep the lineart in, what i suggest is adding some "line weight" so that the artwork doesn't look so flat. What i mean by this is to thicken the lines where body parts would naturally overlap (like the neck and shoulder, the nostrils area, the corners of the mouth as well as the tip of the lips etc) and where shadows would normally be for the illusion of volume. After that, i'd also add more shadows and color variation in the colouring layer so that the skin looks more lively and again, for that volume. You can do it with some dark blue or orange on a multiply or an overlay layer, just experiment a bit with colors and blending modes. If you want a more messy/painterly look (which is more down my alley or in line with my artstyle), what i'd personally do is i'd create a new layer on top of everything and just paint over the lines with broader strokes and a darker color in an attempt to add some volume to the shapes and to make the artwork look more cohesive and less "digital" because at the moment, i can tell that it is made up of a Lineart layer, then a Colouring Layer below, that very religiously follows the lineart layer and then maybe a layer on top of that for the other colors and the hair. This is a very common digital art process and a good one to keep in mind but a little secret i can give out that i've noticed in 80% of the artists who have this sort of drawing process is that they will always, always merge everything in one layer at the end and adjust things as they go. They will not keep the layers separated and just never revisit them in the process, despite what it may look like. There will always be something that needs fixing and they will fix it as they go so i suggest doing the same and being a bit more "freeform" with your layers

Anywayss, besides that, I'd also introduce some color variation like in the previous method. As a general tip, try to move the color slider around and don't just shade with a darker variation of the base color. I like how the hair is painted and the shine and everything, it looks very good and everything is pretty much set in place, i'd just render it even more, make it More voluminous. It's just missing a little pop a color: i'd add some blueish gray hues in the brown hair and for the purple hair i'd make it more rich by adding some deep dark blue hues and some faint yellow highlights (bc purple and yellow are complementary colors blabla) As for the shape, think of the hair as chunks of volume that reflect light and that are also affected by gravity.. or as spaghetti if u like flat hair like me bsjsjd That's all i could think of; Again, it's very good and promising considering you started just a few weeks ago, so keep going at it! I hope it was at least somewhat helpful and that i wasn't being too technical with the wording (and that it made sense)

[desertfangs]

Soul of an Artist Marius/Daniel - 1061 words - Prince Lestat Era Fluff

Marius paints flowers on the walls of an abandon house and he and Daniel discuss art.

My last entry for @vcmicroficmay for the prompt "spellbound." No Wal-Mart in sight. I cut 300 words and still couldn't get it under 1000 but at this point, I figure it's close enough.

This pure fluff with like... a teaspoon of angst. Sorry not sorry.

Whole text beneath the cut or cross-posted to AO3.

Daniel watched as Marius’ paint brush moved in swift, effortless motions and vibrant flowers sprang to life on the decrepit wall. Watching Marius paint was spellbinding, the brush dancing over the makeshift canvas in elegant movements. 

The flowers were beautiful colors: violet, orange, and yellow. It was incredible how quickly the empty wall became a lush garden. 

Marius stepped back to examine his work and then glanced over his shoulder at Daniel, who sat on the grimy floor with his back against the opposite wall. 

“You don’t have to stay,” Marius said. “You must be bored.”

“Never,” Daniel scoffed. “I could watch you paint for centuries.” 

Marius laughed, the sound low and rich. It washed over Daniel like a warm wave. “I doubt you’d tolerate it for even a decade.” 

Daniel smiled. “Is that a dare? Because we’d need to find a much larger house for that.” 

Marius made a sound, a mixture of amusement and exasperation. He continued adding flowers to the vines. 

“Why don’t you paint the walls of our flat?” Daniel asked. 

Marius’ brush stopped mid-stroke. “Would you really have me rendering gardens on the walls while you try to watch your television programs?” 

Daniel snorted. “I’d rather watch this than Star Trek. ” 

Marius’ expression turned dubious before he turned and examined his work. Satisfied the mural was done, he added more paint to his palette before rounding the corner. This next wall had windows, or used to, though the glass had blown out leaving only rusty, metal frames. 

Marius lifted his brush and then stopped.

“Come here, Daniel.” 

Daniel stood, moving to Marius’ side obediently. Marius dipped the brush into the paint, a mixture of red and yellow that made a deep orange, and handed the brush to Daniel.

Daniel stared at it curiously.

He was no stranger to paint brushes, of course. He’d gone through hundreds of them in the creation of his model worlds, small brushes that his deft, long fingers manipulated expertly to paint tiny houses, trees, and buildings. This brush was larger and the canvas before him was blank.

“What should I paint?” Daniel asked. 

“Whatever you wish.” 

He stared at the orange paint and suddenly a memory came to him of poppies weaving in the wind alongside a highway in California. He pressed the brush to the wall slowly, his movements stilted and uncertain. He managed to shape the petals into a convincing outline of a poppy. 

Marius smiled, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “You have an artist’s soul.” 

Daniel laughed. “I wouldn’t go that far.” He handed the paint brush back to Marius, who within minutes filled in the fine details, making the poppy burst forth from the wall as if it were growing there. 

“It’s astounding how you bring these things to life,” Daniel said. “It’s a true art.” 

Marius raised an eyebrow. “Like the worlds you built.” 

Daniel thought of his models, long abandoned and rotting in rooms in houses he no longer visited. Little worlds that sometimes looked impossibly real, as if a wizard had shrunk a chunk of the real world down to miniature scale. He’d been so proud of them. He’d spent hours painting and perfecting his methods, figuring out how to make the water look wet and the greenery lush. It had been an obsession that had captured his wounded mind, but it had been a passion, nonetheless.  

“You think my models are art?” Daniel asked. 

Marius tilted his head, taken aback. “Of course. What else would they be?” 

Daniel shrugged. “You just never seemed very impressed by them. Or that I used kits sometimes.” 

Marius was silent for a moment. Then his shoulders sank. “I may have been a little wary of being too indulgent of your fragile mental state.” 

Daniel frowned. Marius had provided him the means and space to build his models. That had certainly been indulgent.

 “Supportive and tolerant, yes,” Marius answered his thoughts, “but I wanted you to come out of your obsession. Those model worlds captivated you so totally.” 

It was true. Daniel remembered hours upon hours focused on only making the worlds as he saw them in his mind, the houses on the hills, the train tracks laid just so, the little roads winding over the landscape. He would pass out at his work table or on the floor of his work room when sunrise overcame him. He remembered nights where Marius spoke to him and he didn’t register more than the sound of his voice. 

“The models were a distraction. Sometimes too much so.” Marius set his brush on the edge of the palette and placed a hand on Daniel’s shoulder. “It doesn’t mean they aren’t art. They were created with great passion, that much was obvious.” 

Daniel smiled. He was proud of what he created, and though at times the memory of his single-minded obsession felt strangely alien, he missed having an ongoing project. 

“Perhaps we can come up with a project together,” Marius suggested. “You can build a structure and I’ll use it as a canvas.”

“Yeah, okay,” Daniel says. The thought of building something with his hands again was exciting and frightening all at once. He knew his fixation was a symptom of his madness, not the cause of it, but it was hard not to see them as linked. 

Marius smiled, easing the knot in Daniel’s stomach. He would never encourage him to do anything that might jeopardize his hard-won sanity. He lifted his hand and ruffled Daniel’s short, ashen hair. 

From outside came sound of mortals approaching. They were down the old dirt road a ways, far enough no mortal would hear them yet. Marius growled in annoyance. Daniel helped gather the paint and supplies into a bag, while Marius collected his brushes and tucked them beneath his arm. 

They slipped out of the abandoned house and made it all the way to the main road long before the mortals arrived. Marius frowned as he walked, clearly frustrated at the interruption. 

“Like I was saying, our dining nook could use some color,” Daniel said.  

Marius turned, almost as if startled. “We don’t use the dining nook.” 

“All the more reason to decorate its walls.” Daniel bumped him playfully in the shoulder with his own shoulder as they walked and Marius smiled. 

“As I said, the soul of an artist,” Marius said. 

[thecreaturecodex]

Protean, Yexhul

"Naga" © Igor Klymenko, accessed at his ArtStation here

[This monster is picking up a plot thread I laid down years ago: how to introduce slaadi into the Pathfinder cosmology. It also continues me use of anagrams as the namesakes of proteans. This one is fairly short, so I suspect it's going to be one of the more solvable ones.]

Protean, Yexhul CR 16 CN Outsider (extraplanar) This serpentine creature has four arms, each ending in a clawed hand. Instead of a single head, a riot of dozens of small necks and heads grow from its shoulders like the branches of a great tree. The scales of its chest have eyespots, like the feathers of a peacock.

Yexhuls are the proteans that observe and meddle with animal evolution. Yexhuls push animals in new directions, both by introducing organisms into new habitats and by physically altering organisms, taking what is typically a slow and orderly process and interjecting sometimes bizarre flights of fancy. The touch of a yexhil can alter the abilities of an organism permanently, and the transformations they imbue are heritable. A number of the magical beasts found on Material worlds, especially those that are incongruous hybrids of two animals, are yexhul creations.

No two fights with a yexhul are likely to progress the same way, as these creatures can alter their bodies on the fly. They also have an experimental approach to violence, changing their abilities in different ways for different fights, and summoning different animals to assist them in combat. Although they have many heads, a yexhul can only bite a single target at once, striking with all of their jaws simultaneously (unless it gives itself more bite attacks with its acclimation ability). If their enemies are gaining the upper hand, a yexhul will turn them into something harmless with baleful polymorph, or use primal regression to disable their ability to cast spells.

Most other types of proteans distrust yexhuls, as they were the creators of the Spawning Stone. That continent-sized chunk of reality brought to the Maelstrom was an enormous experiment in the survival of the fittest, and its “fittest”, the slaadi, swiftly escaped the Spawning Stone and eventually the Maelstrom entirely, running amok through the planes. Yexhuls, for their part, consider the slaadi a resounding success, and they are among the proteans more likely to work with slaadi than against them. Annunaki are a species that have a great dislike for yexhuls, and try to exterminate them when their paths cross.

One of the great philosophical debates among yexhuls concerns domestication.  Some yexhuls consider it a natural outgrowth of evolution, and use their abilities to make unusual species more likely to associate with humanoids and start the process of becoming domesticated. Other yexhuls consider artificial selection by any hands other than their own to be a grave insult. Some even “un-domesticate” animals, rendering livestock and pets aggressive and uncontrollable or helping feral populations adapt better to the wild. Other proteans encourage this infighting, as it keeps the yexhuls from conducting any more experiments as far-reaching as the Spawning Stone.

Yexhul    CR 16 XP 76,800 CN Large outsider (chaos, extraplanar, protean) Init +10; Senses all-around vision, blindsense 60 ft., darkvision 60 ft., Perception +26

Defense AC 31, touch 15, flat-footed 25 (-1 size, +6 Dex, +16 natural) hp 241 (21d10+126) Fort +15, Ref +18, Will +17 DR 15/lawful; Immune acid, electricity, sonic; Resist cold 10; SR 27 Defensive Abilities amorphous anatomy, freedom of movement

Offense Speed 40 ft., fly 60 ft. (perfect) Melee bite +27 (3d8+10 plus 1d6 cold), 4 claws +27 (1d6+7 plus 1d6 cold), tail slap +22 (1d12+3 plus 1d6 cold and grab) Space 10 ft.; Reach 10 ft. (15 ft. with tail) Special Attacks constrict (1d12+7),powerful blows (bite), probing bite, rend (2 claws, 1d6+10), specialization, trample (DC 27, 1d8+10) Spell-like Abilities CL 16th, concentration +22 (+26 casting defensively) Constant—speak with animals At will—atavism (DC 20), hold animal (DC 18), magic circle vs. law (DC 19), pup shape (DC 19) 3/day—animal growth, baleful polymorph (DC 21), quickened chaos hammer (DC 20), summon nature’s ally VII (animals only) 1/day—animal shapes, plane shift (DC 23), polymorph any object (DC 24), primeval regression (DC 23)

Statistics Str 25, Dex 23, Con 23, Int 24, Wis20, Cha 22 Base Atk +21; CMB +29 (+33 grappling); CMD 46 Feats Combat Casting,Dodge,Flyby Attack, Great Fortitude,Greater Vital Strike, Improved Initiative,Improved Vital Strike, Mobility, Power Attack, Quicken SLA (chaos hammer), Vital Strike Skills Acrobatics +24, Bluff +27, Climb +25, Fly +18, Handle Animal +27, Intimidate +27, Knowledge (arcana, religion) +25, Knowledge (nature, planes) +28, Perception +26, Spellcraft +25, Stealth +26, Survival +26, Swim +25 Languages Abyssal, Protean, speak with animals SQ acclimation (7 points, energy attacks (cold), reach (tail), rend, trample) change shape (animal or magical beast, beast shape IV), wild empathy +27

Ecology Environment any (Maelstrom) Organization solitary, pair or council (3-6) Treasure standard

Special Abilities Acclimation (Su) A yexhul can alter its physical traits on the fly. It has a number of evolution points equal to 1/3 its Hit Dice, which it can spend on any evolution as if it were a summoner’s eidolon. It may take any evolution legal for a serpentine shape, and treats its Hit Dice as its summoner level for the purpose of qualifying for evolutions. A yexhul can change its acclimations by taking 1 full round, and can carry them over into its alternate forms with change shape if it so desires. Change Shape (Su) A yexhul may change shape at will, but does not heal when it reverts to its normal form. Probing Bite (Ex) The many heads of a yexhul strike simultaneously, but reach around obstacles. A yexhul’s bite ignores any cover short of total cover, as well as ignoring shield bonuses to Armor Class. Specialization (Su) As a standard action, a yexhul may touch a creature to alter its ability scores. An unwilling creature can resist this with a DC 26 Fortitude save. The creature touched gains a +6 bonus to one of its ability scores, but a -2 penalty to two of its other ability scores, as chosen by the yexhul. This is an instantaneous effect, and can only be removed with a break enchantment, limited wish, wish or miracle spell. This bonus is passed on to this creature’s offspring. If a creature’s Intelligence is raised above 3, it gains the ability to speak and understand one language of the yexhul’s choice (typically Protean). These penalties cannot lower a creature’s ability scores below 1. A creature that successfully saves is immune to the specialization of that yexhul for the next 24 hours. No creature can be specialized in this way more than once simultaneously. This is a polymorph effect, and the save DC is Charisma based. Wild Empathy (Ex) A yexhul can use wild empathy as a druid with a level equal to its Hit Dice.

[nesta-natrix-rambles]

i cant post this to instagram for some reason so have an un rendered/flats only pinnup for Bunny girl Gail.

idk if this is sfw enough for tumblr idk i hate everything

Also heres some wip screenshots i took while drawing!!

I got rid of the arm sleeve bc I hated it ngl and wanted to have the more classic playboy bunny cuff. I also felt like the sleeve just didn't fit with the rest of the outfit, and was too white and weird, so i just removed it all together.

I chose not to render because I had intended to finish this piece in two days. It was a bit of a race, and i simply ran out of time to render as I usually do. So no rendering lol. Because it was a timed piece, I know now the how fast I can grind out a single piece (Or at least a good chunk of it). If I hadn't needed to work or sleep or eat, I def would've gotten a decent chunk of the rendering done.

Now I have to go back to the mines to finish the OTHER piece I'm working on. I've got until the end of the month and I'm still lining it. So wish me luck I guess lol

[yanderes-of-inkwell]

Tower, Magician, temperance and Empress for Anthony? Tarot asks are my favorites! Are they open?

Sidney the Snout - The Tower, The Magician, Temperance, & The Empress

Note: Just a heads-up for anyone new: the requests for the Moonshine Mob were sent in prior to the reveal of their canonical names, so I apologize for any confusion seeing two different names in the asks and in the requests themselves may cause. Word Count: 0.5k Warnings: Brief description of gore, mentions of violence, mentions of organised crime, obsessive behaviour, overprotective behaviour. Prompts: Can be found here.

The Tower - If this yandere saw their darling in danger, how would they respond/react?

"Hit first, ask questions later," has always been Sidney's instinctual response to danger, even in childhood. The threat in question doesn't even have to be physical. Just the knowledge that his darling isn't completely safe is enough to put him on the defensive, puffing up in aggravation as he curls his snout around them.

He prides himself on his competency as a protector, and if anyone so much as attempts to lay a harmful hand on them, they'll have him to answer to. If his darling doesn't step in, he'll often go overboard in defending them, rendering whoever it was that threatened them a mess of bloodied chunks of flesh and crushed bones.

The Magician - How would this yandere use their abilities/status on their darling?

The most obvious answer is intimidation. With his sheer size and strength, there are very few Inkwell residents capable of taking on Sidney, which allows him to scare away anyone he perceives to be a threat or rival.

When it comes to his darling, however, he much prefers pulling strings behind the scenes over using his intimidating physique to frighten them. His role in the Moonshine Mob and good working relationship with Harold make this easy, granting him influence over things such as their occupation and financial stability, which he can use to bring them closer to him.

Temperance - What made this person yandere for their darling?

If asked directly, Sidney would claim that he wants someone like him: a hard-headed individual who can hold their own in a fight and isn't afraid of getting their hands dirty.

And while this answer isn't a flat-out lie, in actuality, he is much more likely to fall for someone more meek and kind-hearted, as embarrassing as he finds it to admit. A part of him desperately wants to place practicality over preference, but he can't help himself. His darling's sweet nature draws him in like a moth to a flame, and he is powerless to stop the obsession that takes root and spouts from his heart soon after.

The Empress - Would this yandere want to have children with their darling in the future?

Yes, although he's hesitant. While not the brightest bulb in the mob's metaphorical house, Sidney isn't as dense as he makes himself out to be. He's fully aware of the dangers that come with his lifestyle, and how even those outside the criminal underground can get roped in by having a loved one with ties to it.

Thus, the thought of starting a family is enticing and nerve-wracking in equal measure. On the one hand, he often daydreams about it: living a calm, quiet life with his darling, bringing up their "little ankle-biter" together, or perhaps even several. But on the other, he doesn't want to risk something happening to them. His darling is vulnerable enough as is, and adding a child to the mix would only complicate things further.

If left to his own devices regarding the matter, Sidney would likely end up in a years-long mental war with himself, debating the pros and cons until it's too late and the chance to have or adopt a child has already passed him by.

However, he can be persuaded. If his darling truly wants one, he will cave, but this decision comes with them being stripped of their freedom and much of their autonomy, all in the name of "protecting their family."

[wildmendergame]

How we created the ideal water system for Wildmender

Over the last 4 years of work, we've created a gardening survival game in a desert world that let people create massive and complex oasis where each plant is alive. At the heart of a system-driven, procedurally generated ecology is a water simulation and terraforming system, and this post is to share a bit of how we built it.



We knew early on that the game would include some level of soil and water simulation, just as an outgrowth of wanting to simulate an ecosystem. The early builds used a simple set of flags for soil, which plants could respond to or modify, and had water present only as static objects. Each tile of soil (a 1x1 “meter” square of the game world) could be rock or sand, and have a certain level of fertility or toxicity. Establishing this early put limits on how much we could scale the world, since we knew we needed to store a certain amount of data for each tile.



Since the terrain was already being procedurally generated, letting players shape it to customize their garden was a pretty natural thing to add. The water simulation was added at first in response to this - flat, static bodies of water could easily create very strange results if we let the player dig terrain out from under them. Another neat benefit of this simulation was that it made water a fixed-sum resource - anything the player took out of the ground for their own use wasn’t available for plants, and vice versa. This really resonated well with the whole concept of desert survival and water as a critical resource.



The water simulation at its core is a grid-based solution. Tiles with a higher water level spread it to adjacent tiles in discrete steps. We broke the world up into “simulation cells” (of 32 by 32 tiles each) which let us break things like the water simulation into smaller chunks that we could compute in the background without interrupting the player. The amount of water in each tile is then combined with the height of the underlying terrain to create a water mesh for each simulation cell. Later on, this same simulation cell concept helped us with various optimizations - we could turn off all the water calculations and extra data on cells that didn’t have any water, which is most of the world.



Early on, we were mostly concerned with just communicating what was happening with simple blocks of color - but once the basic simulation worked, we needed to decide how the water should look for the final game. Given the stylized look we were building for the rest of the game, we decided the water should be similarly stylized - the blue-and-white colors made this critical resource stand out to the player more than a more muted, natural, transparent appearance did. White “foam” was added to create clear edges for any body of water (through a combination of screen depth, height above the terrain, and noise.)

We tweaked the water rendering repeatedly over the rest of the project, adding features to the simulation and a custom water shader that relied on data the simulation provided. Flowing water was indicated with animated textures based on the height difference, using a texturing technique called flowmaps. Different colors would indicate clean or toxic water. Purely aesthetic touches like cleaning up the edges of bodies of water, smooth animation of the water mesh, and GPU tessellation on high-end machines got added over time, as well.

The “simulation cell” concept also came into play as we built up the idea of biome transformations. Under the hood, living plants contribute “biomass” to nearby cells, while other factors like wind erosion remove biomass - but if enough accumulates, the cell changes to a new biome, which typically makes survival easier for both plants and players. This system provided a good, organic feel, and it fulfilled one of our main goals of making the player’s home garden an inherently safe and sheltered place - but the way it worked was pretty opaque to players. Various tricks of terrain texturing helped address this, showing changes around plants that were creating a biome transition before that transition actually happened.



As we fleshed out the rest of the game, we started adding new ways to interact with the system we already had. The spade and its upgrades had existed from fairly early, but playtesting revealed a big demand for tools that would help shape the garden at a larger scale. The Earthwright’s Chisel, which allowed the players to manipulate terrain on a larger scale such as digging an entire trench at once, attempted to do this in a way that was both powerful and imprecise, so it didn’t completely overshadow the spade.

We also extended the original biome system with the concept of Mothers and distinct habitats. Mothers gave players more direct control over how their garden developed, in a way that was visibly transformative and rewarding. Giving the ability to create Mothers as a reward for each temple tied back into our basic exploration and growth loops. And while the “advanced” biomes are still generally all better than the base desert, specializing plants to prefer their specific habitats made choosing which biome to create a more meaningful choice.



Water feeds plants, which produce biomass, which changes the biome to something more habitable that loses less water. Plants create shade and block wind-borne threats, which lets other plants thrive more easily. But if those plants become unhealthy or are killed, biomass drops and the whole biome can regress back to desert - and since desert is less habitable for plants, it tends to stay that way unless the player acts to fix it somehow. The whole simulation is “sticky” in important ways - it reinforces its own state, positive or negative. This both makes the garden a source of safety to the player, and allows us to threaten it - with storms, wraiths, or other disasters - in a way that demands players take action.