#nonbonart post

[pengosolvent]

really frightened that i am lacking something essential and will never be able to be a skilled or creative artist no matter how hard i try. equally frightened that i have sabotaged my own progress in various ways and have wasted years backsliding and will never “get back” any skill i did previously exhibit. do you have any suggestions for how to continue to produce art and improve even when constantly suffocated by fear

anon this is a common but unfortunate occurrencei feel this a lot too this is a very long reply because i think about this kinda stuff often, so there’s a readmore

i’ve got some advice for you, though i’m sure you’ve probably already heard some if not all of this before, so i don’t mean to talk to you like this is new magic info, but just reiterating stuff that i try to keep in mind that might work for you tooalso i want to point out that i’m not a professional remotely, so the things i’m stating are completely from my own personal experiences ….. and also i struggle with perfectionism and other things so while i give this advice i also still have trouble with the problems noted and also i use a lot of examples and comparisons when i talk because its easier for me to understand things that way

anyway:

1- you are the person who sees your art the mostthis is a very obvious thing, to state but it ties directly into a lot of what you’ve statedyou feel you lack something essential, you feel you’ve backslid and lost previous skills, and youre afraidbut think about the other art you seeyou ONLY see the end result of what everyone posts… or even if people do post in-progress pictures or speedpaints, you’re not really seeing the “scope” of it with in-progress pictures, you don’t know how much changed or how much was erased how much time was spent how much etc with speedpaints, you see all the progress but its sped up and it’s easy to feel like all of that was done faster than it really was even if youre aware its sped up

and even if you watched a realtime video of someone drawing… theres thousands of hours outside of that video of this person doodling, and even THINKING about their art that you havent seen it makes other peoples art feel a lot more.. confident? secure?

for your own art however, you are fully aware of the struggle of every line because you’re the one doing it and thinking about itit might make you feel like you’re trying so hard when everyone else has just Got it

2- experiencing art as a consumer vs a creator is a different feelingthis is directly tied to the previous idea but it’s easy to feel like you lack something essential when, instead of consuming the art, you are the one producing it 

here’s an example: i love horror contentnot all of it of course, but i love horror that really makes me think and makes me see a characters motivations and really digs in deep psychologically and sticks with you even after you’re done experiencing the media

however it is very very hard for me to make anything that is strictly horror. for a long time i thought i was just bad at it, but i realized later that i’m not missing something that helps to write/draw horror … i just experience horror different based on if i’m consuming it vs making it part of the horror appeal to me is the MYSTERYif i am writing/drawing horror, there is NO mystery! i know everything there is to know about the situation i am making! i know all the character’s motivations, i know everything there is to know about every tiny detail and even if i am writing something where i don’t know what happens so it’s a purposeful mystery (such as in this comic where i don’t know what happens if you take off the tinier beak) it sometimes feels less Cool Mystery for me and more like “oh no i don’t know this thing, oh god, i’m a bad writer”i’ve gotten over that little by little, but it’s still hard to shake that i’m “missing” something with work that ISN’T mine its easy to put meaning that may not have been totally intended and THINK that the person meant it, and thus feel like that thing is more thought-out than it actually is

you might be experiencing something similar with art… where it feels like when you see OTHER art, you feel happy or like theres a meaning there etc but with your own art, you can’t capture that same feeling… it could literally be because you know what youre going for and what youre doing because youre the one doing it

3a- old art feels better sometimes because it is more removed from youyou know better than i do in this regard if this is true to you, because sometimes people can genuinely get rusty and lose but for the most part older art tends to feel better due to the fact it is becoming more and more removed from your current state and mindsetold art starts to slowly get treated the way you read Other people’s art because you’re not staring at it constantly and you start to forget the process and effort behind the old art

sometimes you can’t see well if your new art is “better” or not because it is too current on your mind and you know how hard it is to make and if it does or doesnt match what you were going for or etc etcmeanwhile your old art starts to be viewed more objectively because you dont remember every difficult line with it, and you can see it as a bit better because you’re not bogged by the negativity

3b- even if you fell off, you can regain the skill

even if you DID get worse over time… you did it once before and you can do it againyou can learn from your old works, but also try to learn from your old mentality a lot of my old stuff was more expressive and emotivei could learn to do that again mechanically, imitating my old stuff, but a big part of why my art was that way was because my mentality was different back then i was louder, more open, etc etcthink about what’s changed within you to see reasons for things changed in your art

4a- fear only works if you’re afraid of being badit is important to be able to see ways you can improve… but it’s also important not to fear that you have areas that CAN improveif you view “making something bad” as a punishment/negative outcome your fear directs itself through all your art

the easiest point fear can attack is starting to draw at allbefore you start drawing its very easy for your mind to go “why do this? why try if it’s just going to be stressful” and all through out the process that ramps up like “see it’s just stressful why do it”

your fear seemingly offers you something to gain if you don’t even try: avoiding the pain of art altogether

but what if you were unphased by that pain? if you don’t care about making something bad, that fear can’t manifest

some artists start their day by drawing the shittiest thing they can to shake off rust and have fun doing it … drawing a cartoon character from memory, drawing and overly rendered shitpost etc now i’m not saying not to care about your quality and take a ton of shortcuts and blablait’s still good to want to learn and improve it’s just that you have to start rearranging your perspective on your steps to achieve that

4b- no-stakes neutral is no problemhow do you get rid of that fear? how do you stop feeling being bad is.. bad?

try to view arts range as neutral to positive (as opposed to negative to postive) because at it’s base that’s exactly what art is what i mean by that is…let’s say you’re trying to draw a cat (and it’s not a commission or anything). your first attempt does not look anything like a cat this is not a “bad” thing though it may feel that way your failed attempt at a cat has not stabbed you or taken money or food from you or in any way truly inconvenienced you

the base idea is that you drew something and it wasn’t what you wanted this is completely neutral.. it’s like going to look for a new shirt. if you see shirts you don’t care for, you move past them until you get to the shirt you want.your “bad art” is just that. a bunch of shirts you don’t want til you find the one you’re looking for… you don’t have to pay anything for those “bad” attemptssure they take a bit of time and if you don’t have a lot of energy you might feel bad to use it on a drawing that you don’t enjoy and it can be frustrating if you keep trying to no avail, but all in all it’s not a stark negative

art isn’t a straight pathit’s winding, it’s really confusing , and it can be tiringbut if you go down a path that’s a dead end, you just try another pathdon’t fear reaching dead ends, there are always more paths

chuck jones (an iconic animator) said he had to draw multiple drafts to get expressions just right failure is in the eye of the beholder… he felt the first drafts for those expressions did not fit what he wanted, but he didn’t fear failure because of that even if the art was not by his standards, he continued until he got the one he felt was appropriate

it takes patience to get to where you wantif you stay patient you will eventually arrive there

5- drawing and thinking go hand in handart is a blend of being able to draw and being able to problem solve through what you already knowwhen i get stressed with art it’s usually because i don’t know what the hell i’m doing with no way to check myself if i’m close to what i want or not with me it tends to happen with backgrounds or animalsthis is why ppl typically suggest learning to draw cubes, cylinders and spheres from any angle because then you can transfer that base knowledge into other objectslike, cubes can be used to draw rooms, boxes, screens, fences, etccylinders can be pipes, water bottles, arms and legs, etc

transfering base knowledge is essential in art and understanding that you can do that, even if only as a base, helps a lotwith learning how to draw a mouse, you have a starting point for learning how to draw a rat (comparing the headshapes, sizes, ears, etc)… then you can use these two as a base point for drawing a squirrel, then a rabbit etc

another example could be maybe you know how to draw claws but not fangs… you can interchange the shape of a curved claw for a curved fang easily

starting with something you know and figuring out how to transfer the knowledge is very important and can help lessen that stress because instead of not even knowing where to start, you can problem solve to figure out what you already know under different termsits just all about knowing what connections you can try and learn, and working “smart”

on that vein… 6- perfecting things doesn’t make perfectit’s very tempting to make every tiny detail as good as you possibly can… but it’s very daunting and time consumingyou should try to work “smart” here too and now what i mean by that is … say i’m making a comic. i can make the comic to the absolute best of my current ability and take forever and become extremely drained Or… i could decide to try but still set a deadline for myself, and not worry TOO much about the smaller details why is the second one better? because i will get it done. if i try very very hard my ABSOLUTE best on a comic, making sure every single line is perfect, in a few months that comic will still be outdated. it will still get old and the amount i learned from it is limitedif i give myself some leeway (still trying of course, still learning and challenging myself) and set a deadline, i learn to be disciplined in my comics, i get a comic finished, AND i learn more because i am finishing more work in general

this is a really helpful video that explains this point more in depth 

this isn’t to say you need to take the easiest routes for art that are availableit’s more like… back to the comic example, let’s say it’s like making a cake i can be a huge perfectionist about my cake, carving everything exact and putting every drop of frosting as exact as i can… but i’m still not a “master” at this i’m still learning the next time i make a cake i’m going to have to do the same situation … take forever to try to make the perfect cake

if i make a cake and still try, but accept when i don’t know how to get the exact result, my first cake is going to be a bit of a mess, but the next cake i make, i’ll be a little closer and in the time it takes Perfectionist Me to make 2 cakes, i might have already made 10 and i’ve sped up the process now and improved because i’ve learned a lot with those 10 cakes

there’s probably more that can be said about art, but i’m hesitant to try to dictate too much about how you experience your art and go about it i hope that this can help you at least a bit though

[pengosolvent]

I absolutely love your rat comic. What happens to them? Do you think they’ll ever leave? I know it was metaphorical but I sort of feel attached to them.

thank you for the kind wordstruthfully i’m unsure how to answer this questionwith self-contained short comics (especially ones that have characters that mull over a specific point), i tend to not think beyond the ending because i write the ending as its own strong point with the rats specifically, i feel the ending benefits from being open/unresolved... it poses a question rather than presents a full narrative or inherent “morals”more thoughts under the readmore cuz i wrote a lot

like, on that moral point, i could write continuations on either sidelike, on one end i could write that the that the darker long evans rat tries their best and one day escapes and leads a much more fulfilling life because of that, etcand the long evans cinnamon rat (lighter one) is a fool, blissfully unaware of the possibilities outside of living in a box even if they're happy just having food and shelter...

but on the other end, i could write the ending from a more "dont fix what aint broken" situation, where the darker rat escapes, only to find themself woefully unprepared for the outside world, and yearning for the safety/consistency of the cage or . i could go full disney where everyone escapes and the scientists are all super badguys and everyone wins somehow.. or full plague dogs where no one wins even remotely... or write that the darker rat never even escapes at all and is miserable having spent their whole life planning for something that never happened or etc etc etc

there's a wide variety of endings i COULD take, but they feel too... specific compared to the reason i made this comici feel like adding a concrete "ending" will dictate too much what i believe is the "right" answer, when in this specific comic, i don't feel like there is a concrete all encompassing correct answer

like, not that it's wrong to make a comic where you feel strongly about something and write a concrete ending.. its just that when i wrote this, i specifically wanted to pose the question that i think about day to day due to my living situation, just told in a way that is more abstracted

the lighter rat being a more positive "live in the present" type of person, with the darker rat being more "planning for the future"to the white rat, the fear of lack of food had never even crossed their mind until the darker rat told them of the possibility and to the dark rat, the fear of failing their opening/there not being an opening at all had never even crossed their mind until the lighter rat asked about it

both have their pros and cons and blind spots... i personally wrote this more from the darker rats perspectivewithout making this post more words than it already is, in my living situation i don't tend to take advantage of many... "safety blanket" type of things i guess i personally dont push levers for food and instead take the long way around... but in my situation, i wrote this comic specifically because of my own inner dialogue where i wonder if its okay for me to take the easy route sometime.. what if the hard work i try for only burns me out faster and i never really have a big "yes!!" moment? what if its easier to just do smaller, easier, less intense work and stay more secure? etc etc

of course the real "answer" for my personal question is probably some kind of middle result! but its hard to find one... hence the more stark contrast in the comic itself

however i do understand though that lab rat narratives (and animal experimentation narratives in general) tend to have the element of how unhappy and tortured the animals are and how Evil the scientists are for what they do and such though, so i understand wanting these rats to be happy and escape

i just.. did not write it with that intent so i have no real answer for you i guess the lab rat set up is more so a vehicle to set up the opposing ideals and resulting question, rather than something i wanted to be taken literally

if it makes you happier to think that they escape, feel free to believe that

also a last note, the reason the scientists have horns and such is because they are nonhuman and are these types of characters https://pengosolvent.tumblr.com/post/148271034956/good-evening-tumblr-i-made-new-characters-and-puthttps://pengosolvent.tumblr.com/post/172462028053/murder-misery-the-comic-is-finally-madebased

i don't like to draw humans in my work in general so i just made them another type of "species" (so to speak) i had sorry this is a ton of words to basically be like “yeah idk!”

[pengosolvent]

music poll (edit: closed)

Thank you to everyone who voted!

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i gotta make a vid or two about songs of mine that changed over time sort of like a progress vid where i play old versions of the song and point out changes 

id appreciate if you voted in the poll! https://twitter.com/PengoSolvent/status/899020488512598017

[pengosolvent]

So tumblr is being weird about blogs and content

I know a lot of people are leaving tumblr

I will most likely still post here but if you’re leaving and wanna know other places I’m at:

My Site

Patreon

Deviantart

Art Twitter

Non-Art Twitter

Youtube

Bandcamp

Soundcloud (inactive cuz I can’t pay the subscription fee)

Furry Twitter

Furry FA

[pengosolvent]

i reeeally liked the designs for the folks in murder misery. i think it's my favorite comic of yours hehe. i especially liked the detective, he looks so kindly and sincere. does he have a name?

thank you!the name is ynstrualso, for those who didn’t see it on twitter, this post talks more indepth about murder misery trivia stuff such as mentioning that name https://www.patreon.com/posts/read-below-first-17887827(its on patreon but it’s a public post)(also please read the thing before pressing play on the audio post or you’ll be very confused on what the audio even is)

[pengosolvent]

ellychnia replied to your post “Do you have any headcannon voices for the Bridges?”

I was so delighted by this it took me a few minutes to realize it's pretty weird to ask the creator of a character about "headcanons" like they're not the one who determines what's canon?? lmao

i’m so unused to questions like these that i didn’t even notice that woah

[pengosolvent]

Do you have any headcannon voices for the Bridges?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tysvNGGFN3Mcross is james but lighter/higher (the awkward pauses and speech habits are a 100% must), fall is maria and angela but lower and sounding like a ytp, burn is every frame of this video converted from audio into sound, then overlayed to play together while being autotuned to mimic speech mannerisms poorly, like when animals try to imitate human words

[pengosolvent]

If I may ask, how do you go about choosing a personality for your characters? It may sound silly but it confuses me a lot. I feel like I have to explain /everything/. If let's say, I wanted to make a short tempered character, I'd feel like I must give that a valid reason,like, i dont know, something that happened in their past and stuff. I feel like I need to explain /everything/ from a psychological (?) point of view, from their attitude to their favourite color, which is.. way too hard. end me

tl;dr i start with something simple and slowly break it down into more complex rules and exemptions, always aware of the fact that characters (like people) change under different situations

readmore bc long

well… i’ll start off by saying that i’m not really sure how to answer this question with something “easy” as an answer, cuz i love to think about my characters and their psychology haha… 

however, i feel like maybe you’re not actually thinking of the important parts of your characters psychology first… you’re just thinking of absolutely EVERYTHING about your characterto me, if you get the important parts down, then everything else falls into place… and even THEN, some things are completely inconsequential

like if people met me, they dont need to know my favorite color to know how i act(unless like, it was important in some way for some reason??)i dont know any of my characters favorite colors or drinks or anything because it’s just… not important to know to me(and i personally cant even figure out my own favorites)theyre unimportant in the long run… unless the story has to do with something like that, which my stories barely do(an example of it being important would be a story where a character has a color they absolutely hate because of personal events, so they have a visceral reaction to seeing it at all… then that would make the information relevant to know, but overall you don’t HAVE to think about it if it doesn’t matter

i mean if you have fun doing that then feel free i guess? you dont have to NOT do that either, this is just what i focus on)

uhhhh anyway, using math to explain this because i’m not good at metaphors:if you have two important parts of your character, then you can figure out how they will act in reference to those two parts…1 + 1 = 2!

if you have an important part of your character, and you know how you want them to react but you’re not sure how to get them to react that way, it’s easier to figure out because you already have one part of the “equation” and you have the answer to the “equation”1 + x = 2you can work backwards and figure out what the X is storywise, just how you can figure it out number wise

it’s not ALWAYS that simple, but let me try to apply it in terms of what you described in your ask

let’s say you have some important aspects of your character (temper, some bits of their past, etc) and a lot of minor aspects (fave color, fave food, fave xyz)

the equation would be more like…1 + 1 + 0.05 + 0.003 + A + 0.00002 + B + 0.000903 + (…) + Y = Z

like… it gets hard to actually figure out what you’re going for because you just have so much bulk you’re trying to think about all at once…

for me, it’s much easier to start with broad and easy ideas and then break them down smaller and smaller and more specific, keeping the end goal in mind.

(for those who enjoy the math examples, think of it as breaking down 1 + 1 = 2into(0.5 + 0.5) + (0.25 + 0.75) = 2 … it still adds up to the same thing! and it’s easier to handle because you started from an already established easy “equation”)

to explain breaking things down in an actual character example, imagine i have a character who is timid/anxious presented with the following situation:Someone has invited them to go to a cafe… Will they go?

lets say that for the sake of the story, i WANT the character to go there! …but the character is timid and anxious about going out, so they might not want to go to the cafe. i have to think of what would make the character actually go there in a believable and not forced way… this means i have to make sure that the character feels like they did it of their own accord. i need the character to make the choice here, or the reader/viewer/audience will sense somethings not right (it will be Out of Character)Right now, I have 1 + x = 2, where 1 is the fact we know (the character is timid), x is the missing component of the story that will get the story where i want it to go, and 2 is … where i want the story to go! (the character going to the cafe)

thinking about it, i decide that maybe the character is being invited by a friend, so they DO want to go!

however, will this push them enough to go or not? the answer to this question depends on how much they value their friend.

is this friend important enough to them that they want to go, or are they more an acquaintance? if it’s an acquaintance, then maybe the character wont go, but what if it’s a super close friend? now the character decides to go!

we solved the “equation” but it was a very very simple one… let’s complicate it a bit and say the Timid character just recently had an argument with that friend.

it gets more complex now… is the timid character made too anxious by this? was this argument super hurtful to them and they’re too scared to go? or maybe they’re timid, but they’re actually very optimistic and would like to use this opportunity to set things straight?

the way i see it, characters are basically made up of a bunch of rules, and by breaking down large events you’ll figure out what these rules are, eventually pitting them against one another, and figuring out which “rules” the character’s value more than others.in the above example with the timid character and their friend, you could say the timid characters main two rules were 1- character is timid/anxious2- character values friends

these two rules clashed when the character’s friend invited them out… the character, who would normally not go out of their own accord according to Rule 1, is being invited by their close friend who they value, according to Rule 2. I chose that Yes, they value their friend enough that they would choose to go out… i’ve just figured out that in this characters rules, friendship (Rule 2) is stronger than their timid nature (Rule 1)… this means that in a situation of similar conflict levels, Rule 2 will win over Rule 1.However, the rules clash again when I add that the characters have actually argued recently… will friendship (Rule 2) still be stronger if the character’s anxiety (Rule 1) is boosted due to an argument? 

There are a lot of additional things that can change the way a characters choice is made.Let’s say the character hates windy days for personal reasons and we add that as the new Rule 3… this arises another conflict where, even if the character decides to go to hang out with the friend, if its windy, you’re going to have to decide if their fears (Rule 3 and Rule 1) outweighs their value of friendship (Rule 2)… so on and so forth.

uhhh… on top of that, i’d say story and character go hand in hand… sometimes the story dictates whats important and sometimes the character does

to me, there are active and reactive aspects of characters in reference to the story and other characters and sometimes even themselves, and it’s important to have some awareness of these points because they will either show personality in your character through their reactions/actions, or they will change the story thanks to the action.you have to consider if the story is causing your character to react to it, or if your character is acting upon the story(i mean if you break it down far enough EVERYTHING a character does is an action, but for the sake of this let’s make it a bit more simple)generally i’ve found that if there’s two or more characters (and they aren’t acting in unison) one will be active and the others reactive (and the story can be either), and if there’s only one, either the character or the world/story will be active and the other will be reactive.

in What is Scary?, Bridgecross is reactive to Burn/Fall being active… Burn starts the idea of a picnic and continues the weird little discussion, while Cross tries not to be involved. Burn and Fall have the reigns on the direction the story is going, while Cross doesn’t change much… now, if Cross stood up and walked away and Burn and Fall followed, THEN Bridgecross would have Acted upon the story and the other characters… instead, we are seeing parts of their personality through 

like in Long Way Home, S being lazy and wanting to avoid of work leads to taking the long way home (lol) and ends up changing the story… S acted, and the story “Reacted.”  

the additional reason why i explain the above process is because it’s hard for me to develop a character that just exists alone in space… I mean every character has a set of innate traits, but I think that every character also has aspects that will change depending on the situation, just like peopleit’s a nature AND nurture thing to me haha

they have a starting point, but their life (people they meet, situations they endure, etc) molds them and we’re along for the rideso I can’t really think about characters flatly like “their fave color is green and they do this and that” because… there might be some kind of a start, but there’s no progressionI have to think of characters in terms of an innate thought or personality or idea they have (like a character who really likes dogs) and then figure out how they would act when this idea is challenged and by who (friends, enemies, etc) or what (acts of nature or things generally out of control of characters)… also most of these thought processes i have automatically, so i don’t sit around going “is this reactive or active” or whatever, but i guess i’m just trying to explain what i do into words that make sense to people who aren’t mebuilding characters for me is basically learning rules and learning EXCEPTIONS to those rules… I have never been good at interacting with people, so I grew up constantly considering tons and tons of rules and pros and cons and thoughts to try to figure things out in daily life… it comes really natural to me, but it probably isn’t very easy haha… sorry if it’s way too hard still

sorry for droning on again

[pengosolvent]

Pengo, what makes a character sympathetic or unsympathetic in your opinion?

this is something i could talk about forever…

what i personally enjoy in characters is entirely based on how the author sells the character to mei mean of course if a character is absolutely terrible and an awful person with zero redeeming qualities and just the lowest of the low, then there’s probably no way to make them sympathetic to me, but over all it’s personally heavily dependent on if the creator makes the character believable (NOT “realistic”! i’ll explain the difference in a bit) and if the tone the creator chose to portray the character and their actions in aligns well

TL;DR i see characters less as a stand-alone concept and more as the sum of a lot of a creator’s efforts. When the creator can set up a strong setting and tone that is unified, i tend to gravitate towards their characters a lot more. When a creator does not realize that their story and characterization is not adding up, I tend to find their characters much less likable.

Long version:

(Readmore because a LOT of text)

i wanna start off by reminding that this is my personal opinion and i am not a formal/professional writer or comic artist or character designer or anythingthis is entirely stuff that i have come to believe through reading/watching a lot of media and a lot of people talking about media 

Realistic vs Believable

I tend to use the word believable instead of realistic because i firmly believe that (in terms of story-telling) there is a difference 

this is something that really stuck with me when i was watching a chuck jones documentary. he mentioned that he stayed away from making things “realistic” and that he rather make things “believable”

“Why do they want it to be realistic? I mean Bugs Bunny doesn’t look anything like a rabbit and Daffy doesn’t look anything like a duck. They’re not realistic, they’re believable. That’s the key.” from a visual design perspective, realistic vs believable would be something like how 3d movies these days are trying to render every pore and hair strand on a character (realistic) vs a more stylized look 2D animation developed over years that focuses on the movement of the characters than the large amount of detail of their designs (believable)it takes a lot of skill to do the realistic, but in the end, it isn’t NECESSARY… it’s just a “bonus” (…well, depending on who you ask) in telling a story, it’s a bit more abstract, but it’s still the same concept

in real life, the world has a set of rules, but it is ultimately chaotic due to the fact that everything has the same amount of “relevance” as anything else. anything can happen at any time, and i won’t know unless i go read the news or look outside etc, because i don’t have anything helping me recognize relevance.for example, if someone tried to break into my house, there isn’t a dynamic camera angle angled towardsmy window (or an ominous sound track etc) pointing out that someone’s trying to break inif there’s some kind of danger outside, i won’t have a dramatic camera angle zooming into a newspaper on my desk with the headline about this danger, etc(i mean there will be signs, like maybe the sound of my window rattling etc, but it’s not as pronounced as a comic or show or book)likewise, i don’t have anything telling me what’s irrelevant. i won’t know if something in my life is “irrelevant” because there’s not a time skip to the next important scene or whatever. every time i blink, every time i scratch an itch, every time i yawn, every time i stretch… it all happens equally.this is “realistic.” everything is the same as everything else, there is nothing inherently getting more attention than anything else (as a side note: more media coverage on X or on Y is not The World itself… it is people who are reporting something in the world, and thus fall into story telling)

In a story, the creator has full control of what happens, so the world is NOT chaotic… it’s the creators job to make sure everything that happens goes smoothly, and to trim down the details to only what’s relevant either for the plot or for character development the creator wants to show.in other words, the creator has to build a world that feels “alive” while making sure it makes sense within the confines of itself, AND while making sure only the relevant information is shown in a way that aids the plot and doesn’t detract from the pacing. what the creator is showing us is the tip of the iceberg of their world: the audience sees only what is relevant to the story, but still has to believe that there is more iceberg under the sea.Here’s a quick example using myself replying to this anon ask:Realistic- I am writing this post. i breathe and blink a lot. my eyebrow itches and i scratch it. i hit every key necessary to form the words i wish to write. I typo a lot too and have to erase and rewrite things almost every other word. i push my chair back to stretch, and then i continue writing. i kick my feet a little and go to youtube to turn on some music but i realize i cant write with music on, so i go back to this and keep writing. i pause a lot because im unsure how to say things. i look around my room because im bored. after i write all this, i read over it again and again and keep finding typos so i correct them. etcBelievable- I am writing this post. I goof around a bit (like kicking my feet and looking around boredly) for humorous effect, but i eventually finish. i notice typos and fix them, then post this.

The reader/viewer/audience understands the situation perfectly even if they don’t have all the details… this is what being believable is.making something super “Realistic” isn’t always BAD, but it often can make a scene drag on too long or even confuse the audience because they might think something is relevant when it isn’t. it’s like a red herring, except it’s not on purpose and there’s tons of them and none of it matters and so when the real thing is revealed it doesn’t have as much impact as it could haveeverything is based on reality, but it doesn’t have to be realistic basically

anyway, ALL that is to say that realism vs believability applies to characters as well.just like with stories, the creator has to “trim the fat” so to speak, to make a character believable. a character may like coffee, but if there’s never any coffee in the story, nor any discussion of coffee, nor any reason for this to come up, then shoving this information with any importance into the story might feel a bit odd.(OF COURSE that isn’t saying there is only ONE right way to make stories and characters! what a creator may choose to trim is always up to them.)

two of the most important things to make believable in a character (to me) is their wants and fears. want is more important as everyone wants SOMETHING. if its too hot, you want it to get a little colder… if you’re hungry, you want food, etceven if it’s a small want, it’s still therefear is more subjective, and can be loosely related to the opposite of want (the character most likely does Not want what they fear to happen)if these are believable, then the rest of the character will most likely fall into place.. but that’s a bit of a tangent

back on track, when a character is believable, it’s much more likely the audience can understand them. even if the audience doesn’t like the choice the character made, the audience can understand why they made that choice and sympathize… hell, even if the audience doesn’t like the CHARACTER, they can understand the character and won’t dislike the writing or the story, just the character itself.(this is assuming the character in question hasn’t done something completely unforgivable, there are exceptions to every rule etc)

Tone

because fictional worlds are completely within an artists/writers grasp, creators will insert tone into absolutely everything… this happens whether the author is aware of it or not (though the goal is to do it on purpose!)

using my own art as an example, this page vs the last panel in this page (from “What is Scary?”) portray the same exact characters in the same poses, but the tone is different due to the way i chose to draw it. the first link is more “shocking”… Bridgeburn is center-stage, the lighting in the background is darker to make him pop, the angle is more dynamic, you can’t really see the other two character’s faces as clear as Burn’s so your focus is on Burn, etc…In contrast, the last panel in the next page is the same scene with Bridgeburn still on the table, but the lighting is no longer intense, the angle is very flat, you can’t even see Bridgeburn’s face anymore, etcthis is my tone in the comic cooling down from “DUN DUN DUN!!!!” to “alright guys, it’s chill”(in literature i think that’s going from the climax to the falling action haha)even if you don’t watch it with the music, it (hopefully) still comes across

the same thing applies to a character and their actions!

this page vs this example page i just made

in the first page, when bridgeburn grows four arms it’s barely noticeable, but then when bridgecross notices it, each change progressively gets more and more intense. I was trying to show that what Burn was doing (shapeshifting) was scary to Cross, especially compared to the mostly neutral tone the comic had going on in the rest of the pages. In the second page, nothing is really being shown by the tone. If I said the second page was meant to be scary to Bridgecross, it wouldn’t come across nearly as well… Tone is used to show what the reader should be getting from the story, and it is often in line with the main character’s feelings (though this can be subverted)Tone, when used well, will add depth to a character wordlessly and can establish an emotional connection with the reader through showing rather than telling.…and this brings me to what is probably the number one thing that causes me to find a character unsympathetic:when a tone does not align with the action/situation the creator is portraying, i am offput and do not like it

NOT TO SAY that it is impossible for something contradictory to be good, because that’s actually one of my favorite things!  there’s a lot of movies and games that use happy music during scenes that are very intense or sad… they do this ON PURPOSE because it is jarring! they KNOW it is jarring and use it to their advantage!what bothers me is when it’s ACCIDENTAL, in a way that intrinsically ruins the emotion the creator is attempting to share because the creator didn’t think it throughExamples of it done poorly:1- there’s a show that my friend and i watched that was pretty interesting, but there were two characters in it that i’m still bothered by… I don’t like to point fingers, so we’ll just call the characters Girl and BoyBoy was often the butt of jokes and the Girl was a “smart” character and she always had some kind of snark to give Boy. This was portrayed as funny and… whatever haha. In small amounts, Boy is just “comic relief” and i can shrug it off even if it gets kinda annoyingHowever in one of the later episodes, Girl starts ragging into Boy over a forced misunderstanding (forced being that there was absolutely no reason for this misunderstanding to occur! this goes back to Believability… it just wasnt believable and reeked of the creators needing some kind of conflict and just forcing it into the story at the cost of pacing and characterization)in the middle of this heated argument, there was a weirdly believable moment where Boy actually asks Girl to stop insulting him because it hurts him that she always calls him stupid and never actually listens to him or takes him seriously. Up until this point, these arguments had never really gotten this far, and had always just been portrayed as small jokes. from this, Boy now gained a new level of depth… which Girl proceeded to ignore completely, continuing to insult him (she actually even got angrier haha)

Now, this would be fine and dandy if Girl was shown to be in the wrong, or if there was some kind of resolution, OR at the very LEAST if Boy and Girl’s friendship was strained from that point on for clear reason (Girl did not respect Boy’s feelings whatsoever), so on and so forth.… but none of that happened.there was no resolution whatsoever, and later on, Boy and Girl even get together and have children. Boy’s believable concern and discomfort was just written away, never to be mentioned again, and that left a bad taste in my mouth.It showcased a complete unawareness on the creators part on what they had set up (an intense moment between two characters) and a complete unawareness on what this set-up could lead to in the future. it’s never mentioned again, and despite having been a strong moment, it ends up completely inconsequential.

now… It IS possible that maybe the characters resolved their differences offscreen, but if that’s the case, then it’s just lazy writing. it’s TELLING the audience something happened… “hey guys they’re cool now, believe me its totally legit!” I’m sure this could work in some cases, but it was very weak in this one.the TONE of the situation (everything worked out, they’re in luv, they had babbies) did not match the ACTION (Girl and Boy had a huge fight in which it was very obvious that Girl did not take Boy seriously which in the long run shows there’s an imbalance between the characters that needs to be resolved)It’s like instead of 1 + 1 = 2, it went 1 + 1 = 3 … The audience is missing the extra bit of story information that adds up the rocky relationship of these two characters to 3!You could even make your “story equation” 1 + 1 + X = 3 and it’d be fine! the audience can connect the dots on what the missing information is… but if you don’t even lead up to it, then it’s all for naught and just looks poorly(one could argue “Well its obvious that the missing part of ‘1 + 1 = 3′ is just another ‘+ 1′ !” but you never know… the “story equation” could be more like “1 + 1 + 0.5 + 0.000207 + 0.001 […] + .035 = 3″ for the sake of the example though, let’s not be too pedantic.)Without a resolution or additional story information, the happy picture that the creator of Girl and Boy attempted to paint is not believable… am i supposed to believe that Girl and Boy will be happy getting married and having kids when there was no healthy communication whatsoever? There is no assurance that arguments and discomfort like that wont happen again… in fact, it paints a very ugly picture of an unhealthy relationship will be in frequent turmoil!and i mean, not EVERYTHING has to have a happy ending… i love messed up sad stories and endings honestly.…but i have a problem when there is a lack of awareness on the part of the creator, where they don’t even KNOW that they’ve made an unhappy ending and swear that it’s a happy one. This makes their happy ending goal feel unbelievable (the characters being happy despite all these conflicts that went unresolved breaks The Immersion) or feel unhappy (if the characters DO act in-character, it’s bound to fail)I mean, everyone makes mistakes though. I’ve made a lot of mistakes in tone and setting up things in stories, so this isn’t immediately saying “EVERYONE WHO DOES THIS IS BAD”it just means i won’t like the characters involved most likely

2- a comic started out with a relationship that was blatantly abusive. one character (X) did not seem to care for the other (Y)X would only use Y for sex, would be incredibly controlling of who Y could interact with, would yell and break things, etc.By all accounts, Y was in a terrible situation. Y meets a new character (Z) who is actually a genuinely kind person and they hit it off. it looked like it was going to be one of those stories that encourages dropping the people who are toxic in your life, but then suddenly Y is in trouble and X and Z have to save them.X and Z end up getting together along the journey, save Y, and now they’re poly and… nothing was ever addressed about X’s behavioryes, people can change, but the comic did not SHOW us that people change! (although i mean if i’m honest, i would have rather X not change at all and just been written out but that’s my personal opinion) 

The comic rewarded X for doing absolutely nothing, leaving the past events looming ominously over what is supposed to be a now-happy relationship.what’s stopping X from continuing to hurt people? there was no development, no acknowledgement by the creator that what this character did was bad, there was NOTHING there to show X changed… and honestly there was nothing there to show why Z would even like X at all. The believability of these interactions and characters plummeted to meit was once again a 1 + 1 = 3 situation except this one was more like 1 + 1 = 5it’s like the creator just gave up and wanted to make a love triangle without starting a new story

(…Why are both my examples romance based…? )Examples i think are good:

This is going to have spoilers for the anime Kaiba (by Masaaki Yuasa) and the game Final Fantasy 91- Popo is a villain i like a lot, because the tone around him is soft at points when dealing with his past, but once he starts to be cemented as a villain, the story punishes him by his own hands (literally)after losing his friends and stepping all over innocent people to get to the top, popo finally thinks he’s won and gets cocky, holding out the one thing of value he still had (which is also the item that the viewer most strongly resonates with in terms of finding him sympathetic): the chip that holds his mother’s memories.… then suddenly the ship he’s on rocks, and he drops the chip straight into the ships engine on accident, obliterating it.popo’s reaction of begging to shut off the ship and almost jumping into the engine in despair is completely believable. the chip was the one thing he still had… the one thing that still made everything he had done worth doing!even if the viewer does not like popo as a character, it is still understood that what just happened is completely aligned with what the story has built up to. Masaaki Yuasa, aware of the circumstances around the character, successfully set up 1 + 1 = 22- In Final Fantasy 9, there is a shy character named Vivi. To quickly summarize relevant information, he’s a young boy who (due to events in the story) is weighed down by people hating him for things he hasn’t done, and often deals with figuring out if he is a person or not.

Early on, you learn that Vivi was raised by his grandpa (who has passed on), and doesn’t know much about the world. Vivi speaks kindly of his grandpa here and there, and you eventually learn that his grandpa’s name was Quan. At one point, you can explore the overworld before continuing the plot line, and tucked away in a corner, you can come across an area called Quan’s Dwelling.https://youtu.be/wVCdcMHRdIM?t=218When you enter it, the happy overworld music stops, immediately giving the cave a solemn feel to it. Going in further, you find the room where vivi’s grandpa lived… and on the wall is a mark measuring height with writing:

“Six months since I adopted Vivi. Still too small to eat”

This is a well done moment of establishing a contradictory tone… It contradicts what you had been assuming earlier in the game (that the grandpa had been nice, as Vivi alway wants to know more about him and mentions him nicely) but it still gently leads into this contradiction (changing from happy friendly music, to silence (or well… atmospheric bubbling sounds))

The game doesn’t fully spell everything out for the audience, rather it let’s the audience finds this small strange spot of the game if they so choose, and gives a tiny more insight into Vivi’s life that maybe even Vivi didn’t know. It makes you worry for Vivi, but most of all, it raises a lot of questions and makes you want to know more. It’s the teensy tip of the iceberg that implies there is more beneath the water (and yes, there is more! you can come back to this area for cutscenes later in the game.)

I’m honestly not sure how much of what i spent too-long writing actually made sense, but… yeah

that was a whole bunch of words to say that I can’t really go “i think characters are sympathetic when XYZ and unsympathetic when ABC” because it’s really really subjective to me and relies entirely on what the creator has chosen to do with the character, rather than the character at face value existing on its ownEDIT: this took four hours to write what is wrong with me

[pengosolvent]

Commissions are OPEN! and finally more organized lol ALL PRICES ARE IN USD AND PAYMENT IS ONLY THROUGH PAYPAL! Wanna read more for some reason? here ya go https://www.pengosolvent.com/art-commissions.html  Prices increase based on the complexity of the design requested (lots of markings, giant wings, so on), whether you request a background, how many characters there are per commission, etc.Shipping is not included if you want a traditional piece shipped. Digital pieces can be printed and shipped as well if so desired. Additionally, it's possible to get a timelapse video of your commission (if it is digital) for an additional $5-$10!  (longer commissions take more editing time so are $10) Thanks for reading!