#or could I say first personal art in digital in general since.. long

[dankoneversl33b]

thoughts

[xanwyn]

animation for THE NEON VOIDD BABYYYY

this post is for @sugarpasteltmnt

‼️‼️MEGA YAPPING AHEAD PLEASE BEWARE‼️‼️

this might end up being really long and rambly and sappy but maybe not who knows.( it was) (and also featuring numerous spelling errors i am way too tired to fix and i am not re reading what i just wrote) SO. yknow how when chap idek..25(?) came out and i was all like “yeah so i made this animation for TNV and ill drop it when the fic ends” in your ask box? so. I FINISHED IT RAHHH. technically it has been finished since i sent that ask but ohhh my goodness did it need polishing. i haven’t animated in 4 years before that and omg it felt so good getting back into it but IDFK SOMETHING IS STILL NOT UP TO MY STANDARDS. i feel like i could have done so much more with it and i deffo wanted to but as soon as i told myself “oh yeah this is basically done” art block literally sucker punched me in the gut out of NOWHERE. I COULD NOT PICK UP MY I PAD. I COULD NOT DRAW. I WOULD STARE AT THE WIP ANIMATION AND BE UPSET BC I DDINT WANNA WORK ON IT AHH. that goes with saying. i kept having this thought in the back of my head “you need to finish it. you have a wip sitting. finish it. go do it. what are you doing are you STARTING ANOTHER PROJECT??? anddd yeah i got super distracted with other stuff and other projects and then i started spending my free time rewatching 2012 turtles and omg this summer has been a mess. i have all the free time in the world and i choose to be the least productive as possible with it even though i have a job that lets me literally sit on my phone and do whatever i want if no one is there. (i’ve brought my switch to work numerous times ☠️) what i was trying to get at is the fact that TNV has inspired a lot of the old me to come back and i lowk missed her. i really missed the point in all those words up there but im here now so whatever. BUT. TNV made me make a tumblr account, i got back in to animation AND digital art in general, got back into longfics that are ongoing, AND it also helped kickstart ideas for writing. i’ve got so many stories now!! you are such an inspirational person pastels i just- every time i read a new chapter of yours it made me wanna go get up and do something. i wanted to create something. because at the end of each chapter, i would think- “woah. a person out there just wrote this. they just sat down one day and committed. i wanna do that” so i did that. just huge thank you and shoutout to you pastel. like damn. idk no words from me here. just a bunch of platonic hugs and kisses and thankyouthankyouthsnkuou for this lovely heart wrenching but also sweet story. i love this fandom (tmnt) so SO much and i think it’s so awesome how interactive you are with your own personal NV fans. crazy how we’re all here because of a bunch of turtles. 

STUFF ABOUT THE ANIMATION:

okay i really like to talk and if you let me, i will run my mouth. this is the internet so im gonna do just that. so more words for you to read 😁. AHEM. so like i stated before in the genuinely scary mess of words up there, i haven’t touched animation in a while, like, 4 years a while. yes i’ve done digital art here and there along the years, i haven’t been doing it nearly as much as i need to to use some programs to their full potential. layers are still confusing, and don’t even get me started on multiply and all that jazz. shading never comes out right on digital for me, i gotta work that one out. so, for this animation, i decided to go with a very rough style. nothing needed to be perfect, i just wanted to live my little life of trying to experiment with a bunch of different things all at once in one short animatic. I wanted to do that little ball bounce thing all animation artists start with (i kinda included that with the key). i also wanted to have a go at lip sync (no hate it was my first time) and also timing the animation with the music. i wanted to see how smoothly i could move a figure in and out of and out of the screen as well, which honestly, i think that part might be my favorite. i think i did a good job, and thats what matters. the animation itself lost a bunch of quality on importing it- no clue how it happened but now the ending is grainy af. ignore that pls lol- but it was sitting in my flipaclip for god, i dont even know, 3 months now? i kept going back and forth on if i wanted to share it or not, so im throwing it to the wolves and i guess whatrver happrns happens and im good with that. yay. im actually rrwlly tired now sooo *leaves this absolute pile of words with a video attached at your feet and stumbles away quickly*

also i’ve genuinely never posted anything so i’m learning how to use tumblr too ☠️

[iztea]

dy have any tips to make your art look less lifeless? I stare at my rendered digital art and everytime without fail i start to rot from the lack of soul in it

ok first of all, I think you might be judging your art too harshly. The only quite literal soulless art is AI art so as long as you create something, there's soul in it. But I understand what you mean. Honestly, I'm not sure if I'm best suited to answer this since it's something I struggle with myself, but since you asked me, here are my two cents on the matter

A lifeless look in your art may come from two places: a lack of skills or a lack of message/delivery

Skill-wise, there's a looot you can do and improve on : gesture, dynamic poses, more expressive faces, better color language, strategic line expression, shape language, using color theory to better express a certain mood of a piece etc.

i could go into detail for each point but it would take too long so I'll leave it up to you to google and research things on your own ( or you can shoot me another ask if you want me to yap about a certain technical approach and I'll gladly do so)

but honestly, these are just skills and tools that you master in time. A first step is to at least acknowledge their existence. I want to talk more about the second aspect of this issue: intention. The intention behind your art is more valuable than you think. Art can feel soulless if it doesn't send any message, if it's generic, if there's no emotion behind it or if there's nothing to be interpreted. I'm not saying all art should be super deep or profound to hold value of course, but i often feel like this is a rather neglected part when discussing art. We sometimes get so tied up in the technical aspects like rendering or anatomy but the truth is, a general audience (aka the people who will see your art) doesn't give a crap about the technicalities. They judge something at face value and the first thing they look for is the /message/. What is this painting about? Who or what did you draw? The second thing they will look for is connection. When they can relate to the emotion conveyed or the subject matter, the experience becomes more rewarding and engaging. The same applies to the artist. Creating something meaningful and personal often leads to a greater sense of accomplishment. Honestly, skill comes second.

Case in point: why does hyperrealistic art get shit on? It's very impressive technique-wise, yes, you can't deny the artist isn't skilled, but does it express something? Nope, they do the job of a printer which again,. it is impressive but not from an ~artistic pov, just from a skill pov. On the flip side, why do poorly drawn sob stories get so much attention and praise? Because the art triggered a certain emotion (that has overwritten an already untrained eye) and emotions are extremely powerful for humans as we all very well know and it basically makes them ignore or neglect the execution

So, my piece of advice is to draw something that has personal meaning /to you/, that ignites a certain feeling you can't shake ( it doesn't have to be something #deep or sad, laughter and joy are equally valuable so keep that in mind), a certain situation or scenario and I can guarantee your art won't feel as lifeless to you as before. To better express this idea of yours that you now possess, you can now think about the technical side of how you'd express it. For example:

~deliberately messy brushstrokes and textures -> create chaos.

~maybe you're feeling something lovely dovey and soft -> warm colors to express that + brushes with lost edges

~maybe you want to tell a story in a comic format -> focus on calligraphy; shaky lineart gives off the impression of vulnerability; leave whitespaces etc

~something funny? -> goofy facial expressions or lowkey downgrading the quality usually makes something funnier

~Colors ! colors ! colors !!! pretty self-explanatory blues and grays for depression pinks and rainbows for the happy ( or NOT if you're feeling adventurous winkwink)

BONUS TIP: hiding/blocking out/blurring the face of your subject makes the painting feel more immersive. The viewer can relate to the person you're drawing ( "oh he's just like me fr")

There are artists who are insanely skilled but make kinda "boring" art and then there are artists with cool ideas but with maybe an underwhelming execution.

Ultimately, it's a combination of BOTH awesome skills and intentions. Those are my favourite artists. When i find someone who draws something that makes me stare and wonder how tf they drew that while also appreciating how cool the concept is I knoww I hit jackpot. And if they draw fanart of my fave?? bonus points

okkkkkkkkk i yapped for too long sorttyyyyy hope it helped maybe idk

!!!!DISCLAIMER!!!! this is all my personal interpretation and how i view things I'm self taught I've never been to art school or taken any art classes so i might be completely wrong !! take everything with a grain of salt !!

[whompthatsucker1981]

been thinking abt the gay sex cats post again. while the original point of the post is something for shits and giggles i would say to my art classmates after class, in extreme summary it still kinda stands, popular post making me wanna bash my head against the wall notwisthstanding. even if i hadn't put out a wall of text that was fueled by 1. being a few days out of the surgery table and still on various medications, 2. having read billy bat in two days and therefore having a fuck ton of thoughts about art, and 3. being immensely frustrated that people unironically used human soul of art spark of creativity etc as a talking point wrt generative art; the gist of my point is that you can't win any discussion about what gets to be art by appealing to idealist ideas of soul, creativity, or genius. it's been settled for more or less a century now. a tool is a tool, art can be made out of anything, and the medium is part of the message. end of that post.

of course the regret of anyone that has put out a popular post in whatever Discourse there is is that you can't leave a post scriptum disclaimer that yeah. of course this isn't the entirety of the subject. because everyone that has ever written a post never made a second post because the first covered everything. lol. that's why it continued in my askbox. as in, the issue with quote unquote ai art isnt philosophical or metaphysical, but of labor, and that it is as in marxist division of labor, not whatever people with small business owner brain make it out to be centered on copyright and potentially owed royalties that gets called an issue of labor. ai art is a threat as long as it is a tool in the hands of capitalists to hold working artists hostage. it's not the first tool to be used like that against laborers in art (and obviously other laborers too, but since people have bad idealist views on art it's what gets seen as more of an issue and an outrage lol) and it certainly won't be the last. tighter copyright laws wouldn't have saved any individual artist to ever upload works publically online, if anything abolishing copyright, even if just in regards to generative art would make it so the tool loses its leverage against the worker. also copyright as an argument misses the point because it's not a problem of any person uploading images missing out on royalties they could have earned with use of their images, if there's anything we were supposed to have learned from the nft shitshow is that right click saving isn't fucking stealing. art exists in The Age Of Mechanical And Digital Reproduction. what's more damning is that we take for granted that publically avaliable images and data online are able to be bought and sold from third parties to other parties for fun and profit in the first place, data privacy is more of an issue to machine learning than supposedly lax copyright law could ever be

and the things unsaid are the most frustrating; i did hammer home the point that you can't win an argument on art and meaning by appealing to creativity, soul and genius, but it was at the cost of having things unsaid, and that having a post become popular sucks ass in an unbelievable way. i also have regrets with regards to my tone but i was a bit silly from having read all of billy bat in two days, so even if i cringed afterwards i understand why. and with that is also the unsaid matter of taste. unlike the actual political arguments, i'm not mad that it got passed on, and i think it's better to say my two cents now with some hindsight. the gimmick of ai art is getting old now, people without art education are realizing that a program that can output pretty pictures doesn't mean you can get instant clout and a career out of it, especially with public opinion on the subject ranging from people cringing at it or being actively hostile. in the end artisanal artstation/instagram slop is gonna prevail over ai generated artstation/instagram slop in the content machine, especially since the idealistic views on art also include upholding the grindset. i think the only people left that are gonna keep relying on generative art are people with an insatiable fetish, people who think there aren't enough thomas kinkade paintings to use in their facebook posts, people who understand the comedic value of slop, and people with enough patience to mess with with image processing softwares as to get something satisfactory out of it, which is to say, artists.

[frostbite-the-bat]

no but genuinely. i love shadow filbo dearly. he means a lot to me.

he marks a time for me where i began embracing what i like just... for the sake of it!

he embodies the things that inspired me to draw online in the first place. hell, sparklecat characters with bangs have made me stop cutting my hair. i haven't cut my hair properly since. just because i wanted the same bangs, not knowing how hair works. now i have what is best described as messy fluttershy hair. to many people just how long my hair is, is what defines me when they see me and my hair is in a way special to me.

and again - he was what inspired me to draw. in class i'd be drawing my own sparklecats at the age of like 8, with bangs and wings and little companions that sit on clouds that rain hearts. (and bolts and skulls when ANGRY!)

i put rainbows on everything. i thought nyan cat was the embodiment of everything good in the world. i listened to nightcore versions of songs only. i say, as i am listening to nightcore, right now.

because of all these old classic animation memes and sparklefurs and silly scene and emo song flash animations i'd find... i'd pick up ms paint and draw. i imagined just how i'd animate, finding even the simplest methods absolutely mesmerising. there is something to be said about me being this young with internet access - because it very much so had it's negative effects. not me watching fetish videos at the age of 8 just because it had pokemon in it. yea that did not have any lasting effects.

but despite all this shit - it raised me! and even just a few years later... like.. 2015 when i began posting online on deviantart for the first time, not being just a lurker... learning how The Computer works better - not only drawing on paper anymore and gaining more and more interest towards digital art... i was already nostalgic towards these earlier days. but still living IN it, y'know?

just having fun, doing my own thing! isn't that what art is all about?

well. then the cringe culture nation attacked. severe bullying at school. and in general, just shame - which i am still fighting in certain aspects. but it's a bit more complicated than just "shame". (more so fear of Things.)

i'd look back at things with either genuine "cringe" or a distaste. how DARE these people have fun? because deep down, i was simply jealous.

if i was going to reference anything old like this, like classic animation memes, it was framed as "JOKE" "NOT SERIOUS" because i feared i would be harassed, made fun of, or people would thing THAT is the best of my artistic abilities. but... it's not like that.

and now, more and more people are embracing this. and it makes me so happy. and shadow filbo helped me fight off these fears a lot and just let me love what i love and be myself.

maybe it's not an ""aesthetic"" that completely defines me, maybe it IS a tik tok trend to do nowadays - but i don't care. without any of this i wouldn't be here. those were my first inspirations. silly colorful cats animated to crunchy mp3s of songs using movie maker and 3 (three!) frames drawn in ms paint. it had so much charm. it had so much genuinity. and i could feel it even back then.

without it i might've not been here as i am now. there are so many things that go into this, of course. but i simply would not be the exact way i am. and i dunno. that's something to think about.

thank you so much, shadow filbo. one "mistake" with you i've had was thinking i should be a good creator of something and respond to every fan and fanart, which only stressed me out. i have... opinions! about being recognized in various places and, as some dub, a "NICHE INTERNET MICROCELEBRITY" (nothing against you fox </3).... yeah! not a fan.

another mistake was dubbing him as a "joke" always. and... he is! he is humorous! i am a jokey person! i like crunchy shitposts! i like being the reason people laugh! i will go to certain levels to even ridicule myself just for the bit, and i don't mind it. i'm hyper(active) and i am just a jokey person, that's that. but... him being called a joke was honestly just a shield from people taking him too seriously.

if people were to mock me for being nostalgic for nightcore, and rainbows, and edgy amvs, sparkledogs, scene culture and clothes, rave songs... all this!

but... no! people loved it! people loved it so much, it moved THEM to create art!

me, referencing things that made ME inspired to draw all those years ago - then inspired OTHERS to draw other things. to embrace themselves. to have fun. to connect.

it means so much to me. it's a bit odd to comprehend, too.

but it means the world to me. sorry if i am ever annoying about shadow filbo, and is often the first thing i bring up when bugsnax is brought up - but he is the highlight of my experience with bugsnax.

thank you so much, shadow filbo. and me and my wretched little claws, of course. for making them. and those that inspired me. those old friends i lost along the way, too. and those, that inspired those that inspired me. and so forth.

thank you.

[vampstel]

Hi Vampstel, I hope you are doing well!

This is gonna be a bit all over the place and I am so so sorry.

What inspired you to start making art? And what influenced your art style?

I can’t remember if you have said this anywhere but I’ve been a long time fan of yours and you are why I’m now posting my own work on tumblr instead of crappy Twitter (No offense to anyone uses it it’s just really mean to smaller artist like myself and it’s hard to get stuff out there especially original work)

I cannot wait for your next video. I love your Draw with me series. I’ve been enjoying watching your work every time I need a helping hand with lore or just general background noise to keep me entertained

You have no idea how much I inspired to be like a inkcreable artist like you (Yes the pun is intended I think you would know what the ink is referring to. (For anyone who doesn’t know it’s Bendy and the ink machine. I love Alice Angel so that’s how I kinda know that franchise)

I remember when you made your oc Laurence Winters? I think that’s the character inspired by Sammy Laurence. I am so sorry I can’t rewatch to correct myself I have terrible memory. As soon as you had said you were into demonology I was shocked when you grabbed the Bendy reference. It isn’t often I find an artist that likes the same stuff I do. So that was cool to know!

I am so sorry that this makes no sense and it’s all over the place. I really love your work and I really hope I can learn more on how to story write from you in future draw with me video. I really hope you will keep going (Make sure you rest and take care of yourself don’t overwork yourself!)

Hi Katie!! I’m doing very well actually, and I hope you’re doing the same too ^_^

No need to apologize about the messy ask hehe I don’t mind at all!! But to answer your questions…

A lot of things have inspired me to start drawing. It’s mainly my passion for cartoons that drove me to pursue art. I was really into Spongebob and Tom & Jerry as a kid and would regularly draw them whenever I could during school. I started interacting with fandoms pretty early on in my childhood and seeing so many big artists (specifically those on Tumblr, Deviantart, and Amino) made me really interested in learning digital art.

I think I started drawing digitally around 2016 but only took it seriously during 2018. I wasn’t all that good with drawing so I used Gacha Life as a base to help during my first years. Which… I guess you could say my art style is inspired by it? I don’t know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

It’s really hard to say what influences my style since I don’t have heavy inspo you can point out. Honestly, any artist I follow or talk about is someone I’m inspired by. LavenderTowne and Dreamalgia are the ones that come to mind first though since I adore their work :P

I’m really glad my content’s entertaining and helpful to you!! It’s always a delight when people say that especially since I doubt my own capabilities with content creation sometimes lol. After all, I kinda just throw crap at the wall and see what sticks. I’m the most unprofessional YouTuber ever 😭

But yes, Lawrence is my OC that’s inspired by Sammy!! I think it’s very obvious since they’re basically the same person, but just in a different font. Bendy has been a longtime special interest of mine, actually. I’ve been fixating on it ever since the first chapter of the first game came out. A lottt of my characters are inspired by the characters in Bendy. Joseph Sinclair, for example (and I’m sure you can tell from the name alone), is inspired by Joey Drew. Especially when he used to be a sleazy villain archetype until I changed him into a dorky mess.

I have another character by the name of Thomas Huxley (again, obvious name) who’s sort of inspired by Thomas Connor. I’ve shown him on Twitter before but here he is since I’ve never shown him on here before!!

Honestly, most of my characters are just inspired by other existing characters lol. But Bendy is definitely the biggest influence I have on my work. Literally love that franchise so much I could ramble about it all day if I wanted to.

Other than that, thank you so much!! I won’t overwork myself but hopefully (fingers crossed) that Draw With Me will come back soon. I have tons of ideas for the comeback of that series and I can’t wait to show it all soon :3c

[rawrtriesagain]

Heya, found your Diakko art, and I wanted to say you’re an amazing artist, and was hoping you could answer some questions from an aspiring artist who hopes to be as good as you some day. How'd you learn to draw so well? Do you know any good online resources to help someone progressively better at art? Like videos on youtube/any online resource to learn the fundamentals of drawing? Anything you wish you knew before starting your art journey? But anyway, I hope you have a nice day!

Hi there! Just to begin this is very sweet of you to send and I'm very glad you like my art! I still have a ton to learn though and I truthfully don't think I draw all that well, but its very nice to know that someone's interested in what I've done to at least get to where I am now. I will warn I may not be the best to learn fundamentals from as I am objectively not an expert artist that can whip out the most jaw dropping thing anyone's ever seen (and this is not in a deprecating way, its just where I am in my stage of art), but since you are asking me directly I'll do my best to provide some help!

This might get long so I'll write everything under a Read More haha

I'm not entirely sure where you are in your stage as an artist (as some people start from the very ground up of learning how to draw a line, and that's completely ok), but growing up I did some doodles here and there which kind of set me up for what would become my art blog at @rawrroarart and now here once I wanted to take doing art more seriously.

I think at early early stages someone should just draw literally anything, even if its stick figures and the like so that your hand just gets used to general shapes and lines. A pretty key thing would be drawing against references (And this doesn't at all change in the later stages of art skill) like... if there's a banana in front of you, can you draw the banana?

Once you got that down pat, its time to start looking at guides especially to start learning how to draw human faces and the like. For me personally I was never a fan of realism and I'm still not so young me was subject to those "hoW to DraW animE" books which... shaped who i am as a person but i wouldnt recommend them for art lmaOO. if I were to start from the beginning and I was serious about drawing well, I probably would have forced myself to learning how to draw actual humans and bodies. Once you're able to draw and understand the human shape, it should be easier to stylize it to your liking (like anime aha). I'm p much talking out of my ass rn since I of course didnt do this, but I'm sure I'd have learned a lot faster if I did so.

Anyway I dug up some old ass embarrassing art from my personal blog so you can see where I started before becoming more serious about improving myself.

This is from like 2015 and I pretty much quit drawing right after this LOL

this was like where I peaked until 2020 when I started @rawrroarart heres me begging ppl to join my new blog:

From then on I've pretty much posted every single thing I've drawn on that blog to see my progress. Here's the last page of my blog if you're interested so you can see where I started and then just go backwards to see where I am now https://rawrroarart.tumblr.com/page/26

Anyway I was doing stuff like this against references from straight from google (looking up "snake"):

and then.. heres my first diana and the reference it was based off of

do note that this art took me a god awful amount of time to do still AND I copy and pasted half the face instead of forcing myself to learn properly and draw both sides. I know people have their opinions regarding the copy/paste abilities of digital art and I truthfully do not care what you do unless you're using AI, but for me personally pretty soon after this I decided I wanted to learn how to draw everything myself, even if it meant choosing to struggle just so I could learn. Of course since I became a digital artist, I have so many other tools I use while drawing and its such a gift, but even today I feel it may be detrimental to my growth haha but ive decided im pretty much only going to be a digital artist so, whatever, undo button has saved my ass so many times. If you're a digital artist, its just up to you really and how you measure your level of success.

Anyway if you follow along my art blog you can kind of see where my art started to get more refined, but anyway a big thing I want to touch on is References! Almost every single art I've done has had a reference one way or another. For example I have many pictures in my camera roll of my own hand in different angles, and when drawing clothes I try to get references of fabric and folds and the like. If I find a cool pose, I also will try to reference it since I still don't know shit about anatomy, and I used to reference heads and head angles until I got familiar with the general structure that I'm able to draw it from my thoughts (sometimes I'll still need a reference though, like trying to figure out how to draw someone looking straight up). My art is usually a mash up of all these different references that I put together.

In the early stages of my art I was looking for references from google like looking up something like "rolling on the floor" or something, and you'll find some good stuff here and there regarding poses. Something I noticed though was that a lot of the top google images were usually very... stiff and if its something drawn instead of a real person, its probably really stylized and not particularly helpful (to me). like id look up "anime eye" or something and I just think everything at the top is not something I wanna reference or draw lol

This is where pinterest comes in. there are a ton a ton of references and artstyles and guides from other fellow artists that help break down the human body into more simple shapes. for example these are some of my pins from back in my Assassins Creed Odyssey AU days:

General shapes and clear lines of movement and how different artist handle "movement" in general. Though I didn't end up drawing from these since I dropped Odyssey AU around the same time LMAO but if I did its the same process of studying how the body actually works here and trying it out myself. Then I'd look up something like "Assassins Creed Odyssey Armor" on google and slap on the clothes onto the naked body

Anyway sorry this is very anecdotal of course and I'm just blabbering on. But to keep things short and you are very free to keep asking questions, honestly I only really got better because I kept drawing what I wanted to draw. I really like Diana so I just kept drawing Diana lmao and I don't think I could draw any other character half as well (Akko gets a pass since I sometimes draw her too). If I was more serious about doing art though I think the number one thing I wish I did and I still wish I would start doing now if I wasn't a bum would be to practice drawing poses until I can form my own poses without needing a reference immediately.

I would ideally spend some time every single day on sites like these:

Maybe one day when I get insane about a fandom again I'll be back to do so, but at least for now I guess I don't have the drive to keep improving anymore.

As for picking an art style, honestly... just "steal" random things from artists you like lmao. artists are inspirations for other artists, thats just how it is. Obvi I don't mean trace someone's art and call it your own or anything like that like please don't do that, but if someones coloring style for example is rly nice to you, try it out yourself. If someone draws their characters hair really cool, try that out yourself. Over time you really just end up developing your own style even if it did start by being inspired by someone else. My sketchy/messy style is because idk how to do lineart

I used to be a hater for when artists would say things like "just practice" because it'd mean like absolutely nothing to me, but it really does just come down to practice lol. I'm not a particularly good artist in the sense that I could draw anything, but I am a good diakko artist because thats all I've drawn for the past 3 years (give or take given my months long hiatus every year lmao). If someone handed me a piece of paper and was like "draw ur mom" id probs just cry but if someone was like "draw diana cavendish" id be like bet

One thing to keep in mind that still gets to me to this day is to be ok with failing. Sometimes my art is straight garbage, and that's ok. Sometimes I get frustrated and cry when I can't get an eye right, and that's ok. I've scribbled, deleted, and restarted many art pieces until I deemed it ok to post, and even then I'll still eventually see them with disgust, and that's ok! I like to look at my very old art and compare it to what I can do now (even if I don't even like my art of the 'now') and I just think to myself, "hey I actually am improving!" and that lets me know that if I keep at it, one day I'll get to where I want to be. I think its nice to keep a log of all of your art (if you aren't already doing so) just to do exactly that

Just keep pushing my dude! I'm sure just based on you asking me this you're already on track to be a really good artist down the line, but you'll just need to be patient is all and know its not an overnight thing. Every single thing in your day to day is a potential inspiration for art, its just up to you what you decide to do with it :)

Hopefully this answers at least some of your questions! Feel free to ask any more and I'd be happy to ramble for a good hour haha

tl;dr: me like diakko, me draw diakko

[imagine-knb]

hello, i'd like a matchup for my oc Dory (cis fem, she/her)! she's an INFP and, sadly, while in high school, she's not having a very good time, as she's being bullied for being weird. as a result, she keeps to herself, only speaks if spoken to and doesn't really have any friends. it takes a while for her to warm up to someone, but once she does, she lets herself be weird freely (she's a lot more talkative and energetic around someone she's comfortable with)

she really likes the deep sea and its creepy critters, animals in general and as she's an aspiring animator, she vibrates with excitement whenever she sees cool animations (and will info dump/fangirl/talk someone's ear off if given permission)

she dislikes being the center of attention, people who are mean just to be mean and mint

she is an artist (digital and painting), likes to listen to really really loud music and while she's not very sporty, she does enjoy watching her school's baskeball matches (she's a Seirin second year)

as for preferences, anyone from GoM (minus Midorima) + Himuro + Kagami + Momoi + Riko

sorry for how long this got, i got over-excited

Type of Romance

Admirers to Lovers

How You Two Met

As the coach of the Seirin basketball team, Riko was often very aware of who was in the gymnasium at any given time. She'd seen Dory more than a handful of times, both in the gymnasium during practices and in the classroom during school hours. Since Dory was often by herself with headphones on (where loud music could always be heard), Riko had just assumed that she preferred to be alone.

It wasn't until, one day when leaving for the gymnasium earlier than she was supposed to, Riko ran into Dory having a little trouble with some bullies that she really started to pay attention. It sort of clicked that this classmate of hers who was always alone wasn't doing it on purpose, but rather was forced to be that way due to her circumstances.

Having a strong sense of justice herself, Riko couldn't leave Dory well enough alone.

The bullies screamed as mucky water was dumped onto them, running away from the scene before anything else other than their uniforms could be damaged. When Dory looked up from her position on the floor, glancing toward the opposite side of the hall, she noticed Riko standing there with an empty mop bucket in hand, her own glare fixated on the space where the bullies had once occupied.

That angered expression softened when she turned her gaze toward Dory. Setting the bucket down, she reached a hand out to help the other girl up. "Are you okay? I think they should be gone at least for a while. Did you want to get a teacher?"

After helping her up and being assured that Dory wasn't as hurt as she'd originally assumed, Riko gave a sigh of relief. Still, she didn't feel comfortable leaving the other girl alone. "You know, I see you at practice sometimes. If you want, we could walk together from now on."

How She Fell For You

From that day forward, Riko would always try to hang out with Dory whenever possible. At first it was almost like a sense of obligation, wanting to see her classmate safe, but after a while it became more to Riko. She genuinely enjoyed spending time with Dory, learning about her interests and info dumping to her about her own.

Riko was always talking about Dory to her other friends and classmates, hyping up her art projects and praising the animation work she would show her. It came to the point that a lot of the boys on the basketball team often teased that Dory was the only person Riko talked about nowadays.

In fact, you could say that the guys realized Riko's feelings for Dory faster than she did.

"What? No, no, no, no! No way!" Riko tried to protest, but the way her cheeks seemed to heat up, flooding her entire face with an embarrassed red, said otherwise. "I don't have a crush! I don't get crushes!"

But the more she thought about it, the more Riko couldn't deny that she often felt so giddy at the thought of another day spent with Dory. The long hours of texting back and forth was something she looked forward to. Finding her in class and getting to see what new projects she was working on was one of the highlights of Riko's day.

It soon became undeniable fact to her: she liked Dory.

What a Relationship with Her is Like

A relationship between Riko and Dory is a little awkward at first, simply because Riko had never imagined herself falling for another girl. She may have tried overdoing things at first, being overly sweet, acting overly chivalrous, being too over the top. It takes her a while to realize that just being herself was the best thing for the relationship.

Unfortunately, Dory is subjected to a lot of Riko's cooking attempts. Riko's love language is acts of service, so she often tries to make treats and snacks for the two of them to share (to which they also often share stomach aches afterwards).

And despite their relationship starting with Riko acting as some kind of savior toward Dory, she never holds that over her girlfriend's head. Instead, she always encourages Dory to be stronger and stand up for herself, hoping one day a little bit of her own confidence would shine through.

"And if they try to bother you again, you can just wham!" Riko exclaims, swinging the clipboard she was holding much like a weapon as she swung it through the air. The action had Dory laughing, watching as Riko over exaggerated her self defense lesson. "Okay, come on, it's your turn to try."

Riko watched as Dory mimicked her actions, swinging her sketchbook with a little less force than Riko had done.

"No, no, with more umph, like this." Riko walked over to Dory's side, placing her hands over her girlfriend's. She guided her in swinging the book with enough follow through to hurt a person. Then, realizing how close they were, Riko blushed red. "O-okay, now try again."

Match Up Requests are Closed

[tootditoot]

pspsps i need tips on making very spooky thingies

cuz im trying to make idk

some SPOOOKYY stuff related to phobias

rn making uh arachnophobia

and so im making this thing

some spider that has more legs than a regular spider.

sharp eyes

sharp teeths

er i guess arms referencing the Pseudoscorpions

but yeah

do i do any changes here, or any tips11!!!

(ill make it more into the art style i do normally, i do this style when thinking so)

...it likes doing arson :)

I'm gonna attach some references that I consider my spooky drawings to better help answer this, but for me personally, I'd probably first consider the line thickness, either to put emphasis on the figure itself or give more weight to the parts of the figure since you'd really want its spooky features to pop out there, like making it have dark soulless eyes or making the leg details of an insect standout to the point where you don't want them to touch you

Speaking of insect legs, your spider draft actually reminded me of my drawings. Since I never bother to color mine, I focus more on their outlines so their figure is recognizable to their real life references

Usually for spooky drawings too (or from what I've seen) there's some sort of distortion involved to get that uncanny feel, but maybe for phobias you could try exaggerating them instead of distorting it (e.g. Anatidaephobia where the drawing is a duck ominously standing at the end of a dimly lit hallway, the fear of being watch and there's a dozen eyes with piercing gazes, I ran out of example ideas uwu)

The atmosphere would also help set the tone for the spookiness that's about to unfold. Perhaps the background could be dark or maybe the subject of the drawing is surrounded by an aura of some sort? I had an old drawing where I tried to make a tree spooky by darkening/coloring its surroundings

Texture goes a long way when drawing in general (smooth texture, fluffy texture, hard bone-ish texture), it really gives you a feel for it if y'know what I'm saying. I mainly do traditional sketches so I always have rough texture on mine. For texturing phobia, such as trypophobia (fear of small hole clusters) you could try incorporating the texture that's associated with it like an organic or fleshy texture.

My borzoi sketches has that rough texture for example (though I'm pretty sure all my drawings has rough texture lmao). I thicken my lines on its eyes to give more focus on that "judgeful" stare and since the context was set in a gas station, I gave it a dim glow (I achieved this by shining a lamp on it) so it achieve that eerily feel to it

I think that's it, I'm not familiar when it comes to digital drawing so I can't really give more specific tips, but I hope this helps!

[italiantea]

tagged by @hua-fei-hua, 15 questions for 15 mutuals

1. are you named after anyone

yes, i was named after my brother, on account of him being born earlier :p

ok no, i share the same generational name character with my brother but i wasn't named after anyone

2. when was the last time you cried?

like last week graduation day bro you know how it is

3. do you have kids?

idk what those are

4. do you use sarcasm a lot?

like a decent amount ig. but I'd say my sense of humor is mostly recounting funny situations/Being Silly/puns (the sheer unbridled pun power of the chinese language... incredible)

5. what sports do you play/have played?

haha all the sports i partake in don't use the verb 'play' (im dogshit at ball games)

track and field in elementary/middle school (short distance running and long jump mostly) and parkour starting in uni. oh and i also did ballet till like age 12, to everyone's surprise ←now i literally just look like Some Dude and also have terrible coordination and absolutely no grace✌️

6. what's the first thing you notice about people?

hair, if they have glasses, shirt color. I'm pretty faceblind as well but in high school I used to memorize unfamiliar people by their shoes and that worked pretty well. i could spot Neon Pink Shoes senpai coming from a mile away

7. eye color?

⚫⚫

8. scary movies or happy endings?

no preference as long as it's well written. also this is the strangest non-mutually exclusive way of classifying stories I've ever seen

9. any special talents?

i can hold like a really fucked up looking pose on parallel bars on account of my Freakishly Long Neck. can pull all nighters all the time and not get dark undereye circles. double jointed thumbs? Good At Jumping compared to the average person in my demographic. tentatively trilingual. Oh and i wouldnt say I'm particularly talented at drawing but i can say for sure i can draw a mean picture in powerpoint shapes with a trackpad. don't ask me why

10. where were you born?

also in a hospital in einem ✨Krankenhaus✨ yeah that seems fitting

11. what are your hobbies?

digital art, parkour, and more recently novel and lyric translation. anime and manga but i dont keep up with that many series these days tbh. dabble in guitar/piano/music composition once in a blue moon and yes I'm very bad at all of them :D

12. do you have any pets?

none of my own but there's like 15 dogs on campus and we (dog club) are constantly tripping over ourselves to keep them in check. they're very stupid <3

here, have a picture

13. how tall are you?

been 166.7 cm since i was 15

14. favorite subject in school?

used to be physics in high school ig. at least the part about classical mechanics. never been a fan of electromagnetics🤢 in uni... idk, neurobiology was fun? and coding. i dont think most engineering students 'like' their core subjects haha

15. dream job?

*sweats* alrighty everyone that concludes this tag meme have a great night!

i definitely do not have 15 mutuals so anyone who wants 2 do it just go right ahead. if you're in an oversharing mood today.

[czigonas]

oooh, 2 and 4 for the art asks. I don't think I've seen your art before >:)

Yeahhh I work slow on 2D art, and a lot of my 3D stuff I have pictures of but forget to put here since they're also my work work.

2. 5 favourites of your own work?

Hmm... this is a little hard since I tend to feel the same about most of my 2D stuff (that it's not that great) though I do have clear favourites with my glass work. Most of my traditional sketches are from practicing nudes so I can't put them here anyway.

So, two digital pieces: The one on the left I did for a buddy shortly after Warframe's The New War expansion (with plans to do a whole face card set but I've been very distracted). The one on the right is the first chapter illustration for a KotOR fic that I have been writing (very slowly... 😬) but I really enjoyed figuring out the lighting and such.

Two glass pieces: The left one is a foil technique and the right is leaded. The one on the right is probably one of the most technically challenging pieces I've ever built (though, as I look through my photos I realise I can say that about a number of them so... 😅)and I was very sad to see it picked up by its owner.

Glass just... doesn't photograph all that well? Like, both of these have such beautiful depth in the individual pieces that is hard to capture with a camera, so I wish I could show them to you in person but, alas.

The last piece is also glass and really hard to photograph well, so I tried a video but uhhh we'll see how it goes.

I'm a little sad I don't have any good pictures of my painted glass work (one was copyright, one I only painted parts and the client assembled the piece, and the others I have only process pictures unfortunately)

4. Favourite things to draw?

Uhhhh hm. Beyond a general 'people', I don't know that I have favourites really. It took me a long time to break through the mental block I had on making ocs, so I don't have that many that I consistently sketch. And with work picking up, I work slower than I used to. Most of my art is in glass work, these days, and my favourite things to build there can be boiled down to "leaded, intricate, and technically challenging". (I have a Tiny Piece Problem.)

[daytura]

Review of Scott P. Scheper's "Antinet Zettelkasten" book

With regards to recent events surrounding Scott P. Scheper's controversial handling of the mistake in his print book and his excited emails, I thought now would be the time to publish my review of said book.

For context, I purchased the book and the four bonus products in about November 2022 and got the book myself in December 2022. I thought they were alright; spending the extra premium is an investment in my own attention, too. After reading the book and aligning it with my own principles surrounding the Zettelkasten method, I began work on my hybrid (paper and computer) slipbox, Hemera. This slipbox is particularly significant because it is focused on my education major: cognitive science.

Unfortunately, in February 2023 this year...

Apparently, Scheper, rather than simply sending a note to those who purchased his book, and clarifying the error, has decided to use the opportunity to promote not only a second edition of his book, but also a tangentially-related $40/mo. marketing newsletter. // Actual Email 59 here: https://scottscheper.com/letter/59/

...and the subsequent "apology" in Email 60...

...and the final Email 61 finally clearing up the deal with the erratum.

Ay yai yai. What a whirlwind! It was too much -- and I had thought Scott was becoming more reasonable up to and after his interviews with Nick Milo @ Linking Your Thinking and Bob Doto @ The High Pony. So I've decided to pull away from the community. I suppose my final contribution to the Antinet community rests under the next line; but for this year, I am done.

---

Begin review. Four stars out of five.

My one tip: Treat it like a textbook!

Drawing from experience in marketing, copywriting, and managing a cryptocurrency business, Scott P. Scheper's first book makes a splash onto the niche Zettelkasten scene -- and himself.

This book is something of an inverse to Sonke Ahrens' "How to Take Smart Notes", which has been the unofficial canon text of digital Zettelkasten since it's English translation in 2017. That book is concise, specific, and spirals inward to the impersonal problem of taking better notes.

Meanwhile, late 2022's "Antinet Zettelkasten" is long, tangential, and spirals outward from the method to also reveal Scheper's deeper thoughts, judgements, and experiences. Even the first few introductory chapters are about him and his journey across personal knowledge management scene. It becomes clear early on, and through his tapestry of meandering trails of thought, that Scheper is trying to find his voice. And it's not just a game anymore. His audience now are people who may have not fallen to PKM's wayside, watched his videos, or read a single newsletter; and stretches across a timespan of a fringe note-taking culture (Zettelkastens in general) that could pop at any time.

So I'm not being cheeky when I say to treat it like a reference textbook. If you're after the impersonal task of developing knowledge and pumping out publications, by all means, eat this book through and throw the bones over! Each section is somewhat self-contained and you can skip sections or jump back and forth between them. Your only barrier might be the lack of an index, which I think is a hilariously ironic for a book whose method involve -- and validates -- indexing by hand. Whether this was an actual choice or an accident to be remedied in the 2nd edition, I don't know. Still: hilarious and frustrating.

But if you have the time and the care to connect with another person developing their mind, read the book all the way through. The book is it's own work of art. Is it any surprise that personal nonfiction, the nonfiction that plays with narratives and experience, resonates with us more than non-narrative nonfiction? Probably not.

End review.

---

If you would like a copy of the e-book, please DM me and I will send you a link.

[heliphantie]

Happy 1st anniversary of Encanto!

Sample of several Brunos drawn during October. Tag yourself, as they say.

Under ‘read more’ – small selection of art through the year + some ramblings:

Back in the middle of 2021, I’ve got interested by couple of things about it: implication that Disney – or animation in general - does something inspired by Gabriel García Márquez, and also being Latino-inspired Disney musical movie, which I wanted to see since listening to “Snuff Out The Light” from what became “Emperor’s New Groove”. Wasn’t expecting a lot, neither, to be honest, got in result, except some surprising consequences. I admire a lot of work, classic and more contemporary, by Disney animation and its creatives, even if nothing in last decade or so impressed me on the level Golden Age, Renaissance, or even early 00s production did.

To be fair, in the end I only stay intrigued by its concept and production art more than by actual movie, and it’s realistically more than I would expect. That, and fact Disney happened to create character catering specifically to me in a lot of aspects, which is unfathomable (but it’s a talk for other time).

I would like to collect all my thoughts about the movie to make thorough writing on it, but it calls for motivation and time dedicated to it. In one or another form, I still consider to do it sometime, not necessarily in consecutive form…

What is significant to me, it has triggered my long-tarred decision to resume drawing, which I had on hold for literal years. For now, beside of continued efforts in building skills, I feel almost obligated to put on paper (or digital canvas) all ideas thinking about the movie sparked (and I’m not even over a quarter of it currently).

I’d like to do one another big thing for its first anniversary before the end of year, but being on low energy and not wanting to rush through it, I hope I finish it to Christmas. Anyway, there is some of my work of that year which, out of all artistic attempts, I find satisfactory, considering my current level.

Sort of digest of the (not complete, given I started in April) year of art, dedicated mostly to one subject.

Julieta Gets All Kisses Returned (April 2022)

One of very first, early pictures. In fact, I drew it in pencil on very first day, April 1, along with couple of other small doodles. Idea for it was also quite old, from February, and it was supposed to be birthday-related, before official birthdays were revealed, and it turned I have to wait for half of year😊 Or draw it regardless, because it still worked out of that context and was small and simple enough for first steps. With all its simplicity, it *could* have been better, but I’m even fond of its roughness. There are some drawings I realize liking only for having low expectations for it, but as time goes, they look crappy to me, but not this one. (May be fun to re-make it too next year, to look at progress/improvement, assuming I’ll reach any.)

Teenage Bruno (April 2022)

This one I did in pencil on the *second* day. Piece of wisdom to myself: comics, even short ones, are trickier than regular drawing. It’s consisted of small frames, but you have to figure out composition and make character designs in each panel consistent. It takes twice time to make everything right and without a hurry.

Whole thing barely fits into any context of canon, I just imagined young Bruno interacting with children similar to Mirabel, and this conversation sprang to mind. I had to come with context to support it (Bruno had his gift kept in relative secret til late adolescence), but in general, main connection with my personal headcanon is just that he always was more resilient and lighthearted than given credit for.

On this note, I’ve had intention of exploring my headcanon about characters and Bruno in particular via mini-comics (lot of it had comic scenarios in its roots), and there’s bunch of scripts for it lying not processed into work yet, and as I said, I’m going to finish them because I don’t want for this spurt of inspiration to go to waste, even if it takes time.

On the comic itself, I also like how it turned, given all imperfections. Having to figure look of younger Bruno was fun, and it had some amusing by-products as well I’ll show other time😊 People online seem liking it, too, maybe because it has some narrative. And, frankly, I ought to make narrative things more often.

WDTAB Reenacted (April-May 2022)

Another fun early idea, WDTAB musical number with only Mirabel and Bruno. Two challenges: full-body figures in dynamic poses and drawing with references (without tracing, purely from eye), putting some spin on it. Curious realization: no matter how I try to keep body proportions accurate, all people I draw look like hobbits… except Bruno who does look like hobbit by design already.

My favorite is middle-bottom fragment, dynamic pose construed from scratch.

Bruno & Toni (July-August 2022, fragment of mini-comic)

It’s just this, a fragment of another (rare) mini-comic, but somehow in the end of it, I unexpectedly liked this one panel enough to single it out. I still struggle conveying emotions and mood of characters, but this one turned fortunately in that regard. It’s “sparking joy”, to use meme-speak.

Dolores (August 2022)

I wasn’t exactly determined to draw something to every official character birthday, only when I had idea in mind and it happened to align with date, but since May I was going (almost) steady providing something to each, small or bigger, like that one. It was first full-page picture with background and multiple elements, I wasn’t sure I’d finish it on time, but I managed to, and for most of it, I like the result. It’s not always that vision of thing is clear from beginning and gets exact realization, it’s interesting to see what I get in the end. Layers of background and decorative elements are all over place, it’s accidentally looking like sort of collage, but popping up quite vividly. It got some attention on Twitter, and frankly, I’m pleasantly surprised with it, the work paid off.

Also, how I pointed while presenting it for first time, I was inspired by production art and lines from script depicting Dolores as “weird cousin”, and to lesser extent by fan song “Turn It Down”. When someone mentioned she looks Tim Burton-esque, I was glad I nailed that association.

For further note, Dolores and Pepa are two characters with very attractive color design, I like every opportunity of drawing them.

Bunch of small things drawn during September-October – see samples in header image of post and under ‘encanto fanart’ tag in the blog by yourself, they’re all recent.

Despite smaller goals, I feel like it’s biggest improvement of the year: slowly getting expressions, shadow and lighting rendering, figuring out consistent personal style for characters, etc. I may get slowed down for now (and it affects my work), but I realize there’s long way ahead, and it’s encouraging to see I already have progressed a bit. Fanart is legit good starting point for working toward artistic aspirations, both fun and productive.

So, this post turned into one about personal achievements rather than one about the movie, but in the end, it’s all thanks to inspiration it gave me, so my felicitations to it!

[dracolunae]

Hey, i was wondering if you could give some tips on how to write image IDs? I've been starting to add them to the alt text of my image selfposts but i feel like im not doing them properly and since you have the update accounts and write them often i thought that you could give some good advice about it Also here's some other halloween candy for you lmao

[Image ID:

A photo of a long white ceramic serving plate topped with slices of cake with a light and dark swirled pattern in the cross section. The slices are laid out like tipped over dominos bricks.

End ID]

Yay! Marmorkuchen!

But about image IDs. I tend to go from big to small in the description. Describe the most banel basic ass shit first, like “Is this a photo, is it art, if so what kind? Digital? Photograph or scan of a manual drawing? Is this an infographic?” From then you can describe the general topics, themes and layout of whatever it is you’re describing. You also have to consider whether you’re writing this ID for people who are familiar with the contents (fanart) or if it’s gonna be for people who don’t. Deciding the level of detail is a personal choice but mostly influenced by what amount of detail is necessary for this to be a functional image ID. You wouldn’t describe the font that something is written in unless it matters for example!

You can also decide what writing style best fits the ID. i tend to write full, dense sentences to get as much info in without the ID running too long but I also write in full sentences and following grammar rules. Sometimes a note taking style works better if there’s lots of disjointed things you can’t fit well into nice sentences!

And if you’re describing multiple things or a series of things in one post you can describe key elements in more detail once and then refer to them more simply for the rest of the ID!

I normally avoid putting IDs in alt text because they can be harder to access for people and have a much shorter character limit. Also try to always surround your ID with some form of ID start and end indicators and keep the ID, if in the body of the text, as close to the image as possible!

As an example, say you’re got a 4 panel comic, I’d describe it like this (gonna make smth up as an example) if I was writing a description for an audience who isn’t necessarily super familiar with the material.

[Image ID:

A 4 panel comic of a made up scene in Just Roll With It Riptide. It is drawn digitally and fully coloured. The scene takes place on a ship, presumably the one the show is set on, called the Albatross.

Panel One: Jay, a woman with long ginger hair wearing a blue jacket over a white blouse, catches Gillion, a turquoise skinned Triton with green hair, fish fins and wearing a black sleeveless turtleneck shirt, sneaking around the ship. Gillion is carrying a brown sack over his shoulder and sneaking. A speech bubble from Jay reads: “Gillion, what are you doing?”

Panel 2: Gillion is turned towards Jay, looking sheepish. You can see that the bag he’s carrying is filled with gold, which is leaking a little trail of coins behind him. Now that you can see Gillion’s entire body you can see he also has a tail and a flask of water tied around his waist, containing a small cute pink frog-octopus hybrid, which is know as Pretzel. Gillion: “Nothing Jay! I am merely, uh, relieving the ship of an unnecessary load so we can sail faster!”

Panel 3: Jay and Gillion stare at each other, Jay is unimpressed. Pretzel, peaking out of the flask at Gillion’s hip, starts collecting coins from where they leak out of the bag. Jay: “Gillion if you throw any more gold overboard as taxes I’m throwing you overboard to lighten our load.” “You” is written in italics for emphasis.

Panel 4: Gillion starts sprinting towards the edge of the ship, indicated through a running pose and blur lines, with Jay giving chase. Her eyes are in glowing red and a targeting reticule is superimposed over one of her eyes, as though she was locking in on her target (Gillion). A stream of gold sprays everywhere from the speed of the chase and Pretzel goes flying with it.

End ID]

[hermitcatlongposts]

What is this game?

I mean it is a video game indeed. What does it really mean to me? What does this game stand for? Why is it being made at all?

What I'm about to say next is gonna be so hazardously cliche that you might wanna brace yourself. The journey of developing this game was a journey of self discovery. Yes I too am cringing at what I said. But not self discovery as in oh I didn't know who I was and now I suddenly do. I always knew who I was since young age. It's discovery of how intense the "who I am"-ness goes. In fact, someone more sane and reasonable than me would say it's so much that it's counterproductive.

I actually did talk about a platformer game I used to work on like a year ago at SubscribeStar. I gave up on it because I was making it just because I was told by my environment at the time that it's the best route for beginners. I like neither "minimalist" graphics nor platformer genre. Also making vector art was so painful for me.

So the significance of my current touhou clone project is that I said fuck you to "minimalist" vector art and started drawing normal, raster art with my mouse. Drawing with mouse was of course equally painful but the difference was that I tapped into my dormant passion for art, like not just a general loose definition of art such as banana taped on wall, but specifically "moving my hands around and laying pigment on a canvas". Digital equivalent, of course. Shortly followed by buying a drawing tablet.

So what this game initially was going to be was just a prototype purely for the sake of learning the ways of programming a bullet hell and a complete game (as opposed to gamejam). But the jagginess of a mouse drawn sprites were just too unbearably and physically painful to look at and it was nothing less than a necessity to redraw with my beloved drawing tablet so at least it'll have smooth edges, easy on the eyes.

hey, amazing opportunity to have a look at old artworks

But, even after all these years of being a game developer I was still hilariously naive. Technically the first game I ever made was in fucking 2015. The first one to be uploaded on the internet was in 2017. It's unbelievable how I still thought foolishly like "Oh yeah I can finish this game in just 3 months. Ha, see ya soon as a proud developer of a released title."

Anyways, the point is that after such a long time of working on it, I suddenly couldn't see myself just throwing it away as a prototype intended for no one to seriously play it. So the game evolved into "at least a proper game". Which was actually a great decision because, I could release an utterly bare bone prototype that only just serves to have the core idea of a bullet hell touhou clone in terms of programming. But if I did that, I would spend ten years on my second project because that would-be prototype is still nowhere near enough of a programming school. What I didn't realize in the past is how enormous the difference between just spewing out prototype code and meticulously developing a full game with all little mini-mechanics and mini-systems working in harmony. So by spending more time on my first project, I will be spending less time on my second.

I thought that's what the game was gonna be. Just a nice and proper game that I won't feel any shame about purposefully making it garbage like I was originally planning to. Someone sane might say that would be very reasonable place to stop but here comes the part where I expand upon what I said at the beginning about it being a journey of realization of the depths of my personality coming at a detriment of productivity, as in how fast I produce products.

You know how the dress of my player character looks. It's a reference to that platformer game. I am a craftsman through and through (please don't take it as I'm jerking my own dick, I'm just trying to communicate myself clearly). I have emotional connection to my creations for I see them as something that is real and has meaning. I'm not a producer pumping out products on a conveyor belt feeding the bottomless vortex of consumerism. So instead of completely cutting that old platformer game out of my life like it was nothing at all, I decided to pay homage to it as elements in my current game. Basically an easter egg that only extremely few, like 2 or 3 people will recognize. Although it was abandoned for legitimate reasons, I respect it as my first attempt at serious, non-gamejam game. And I immortalize it's legacy this way.

You might remember this flipping tile thing was actually made long ago. But instead of having just a random nothing as a texture, I made it a throwback to one of the key elements of Square Heart (the name of the platformer game, btw), the iconic blue crates and outlines that light up when the player walks over them. Btw the loading is intentionally slowed down to show the spinning border lights more clearly. It doesn't load that slowly in reality lol. Wait, that means players are not gonna really see the thing I spent so much time making...

This is how the player would respawn. Just pop right back up. I mean there is nothing wrong with it. It's a classic animation in all the arcade shooter games.

What I decided to do however is a throwback to how the player character of SquareHeart respawned.

This one is gonna appear in only one of the 5 stages because only one has a night sky. This is the iconic minimalist gradient trees that I tried so hard in SquareHeart to be the main attraction. I actually always planned to have no background at all in this game for the sake of not getting way too ridiculously ahead of myself for a first game. Just plop down the skybox I found on the Unity Asset Store. Now that I decided to do this in one of the stages, I have pushed the standard so I have to figure out something for other stages as well. Also the speeding up you see is not the default but just a short section. Inspired by stage 4 of Touhou 8: Imperishable Night, where the boss tries to run away mid-fight and you chase after them. "Chasing" as in just the background scrolling faster, nothing else really.

The bomb, or what's modernly referred to as SpellCard of the player is a legacy that's actually truly lost. Long long ago in 2019, there was an ancestral version of SquareHeart that featured a cutscene that focuses on this circle flower-like talisman thingy. Literally only one person might remember it besides myself.

This one is not part of the SquareHeart. But if you remember, before I actually started to draw, the player character of my bullet hell was a vector art butterfly. In fact, it all started from a game-jam I wrote a blogpost about right here on Tumblr a long time ago. In fact, if I remember correctly that blogpost is the very reason why I created a Tumblr account to begin with. So this butterfly too won't be forgotten. It's now on the other side as a mini-boss. And every other stages will also have butterflies of different design as their mini-bosses.

And, yeah et cetera. There is actually at least one more easter egg to make but I'm yet to come to a final design decision.

I want this game to be actually something more than "just a proper game for the sake of being a proper game", let alone a throwaway prototype. I want this game to have an actual self to stand solid and have meaning to me. And that meaning is that it's the first step of my journey as an artist ("art" as in a form of indie games, not just visual illustration) but also a rightful payment of respect to my first step as just game developer in general. The past should be put to rest respectfully so the future shall flourish in full force.

[villains4hire]

Sal (Helluva Boss OC)

1 - This hound is semi-powerful even alone when in direct combat, but killable through plotting, progression, but generally is reserved to be permanently demoted when your character wants their position as they can't permanently die unless Stella does. As you can instead while answering to Stella can take him as your own minion as a reward.

2 - If replacing him? You can't shut things down or interfere with the efficiency of guarding Stella, serving her brutal demands or hits placed on those that piss her off, for example. If your character is intimate or close to Stella as family or otherwise? You can see fit to change things IC with interactions with Sal by throwing your weight around after discussing it with me. As Stella would allow aid since she's rather busy/her responsibilities stack rather high, and then the rest goes to her own alone time/recreational time. So things often have to be run by her minions and how they see fit, so long as they get the job done.

Faceclaim: Vortex grayscaled to white.

Do I want them to die: Sure, he's not a pushover, but he can just die in conflicts that break out. Will I have/get icons: Have them. Tag: cold hounded - cold hounded 'insert rper's character last and first initials here then a single digit number. Age: His exact age is unknown, but he's only a few thousand years younger than Stella. Sex: AMAB. Gender: Any pronouns. Race: Rage and Pride Hellhound, Subfacet - Ice as an Element rather than a sin, as it's a result of his hybridization with Rage and Pride, place of birth and as a Hellhound. Sexuality: If he likes you, but has his mates. Personality traits: Undying loyalty to those he serves. Extremely quiet. Of little words when talking. Can engage if properly interested. Often finds philosophical debate and how life progresses, along with morality. Has seen a lot in his time alive, likes to gamble. Likes to drink and smoke, but not unusual for a Hellhound. Uses terms to other people to respect them, is friends with Stella. Often thinks about existence, likes the fine arts and songs. Is into modern culture too somewhat, but not overtly so, as he wouldn't say memes or of the like. Rather merciless and efficient when fighting. Has a cold, calm rage even if not exactly screaming or yelling. Calculating. Distant. Cold. Often despises cowards. Merciless with purpose. Mysterious. Mental traits: Alien, but can relate to more human concepts and understands their emotional complexity to a great deal. Physical traits: Around 9'0, so rather tall for a Hellhound, but not as tall as my Stella or a few others. His fur pattern is a mix of gray and white. Powers: - Wrath: Extreme Strength: he could throw a car and deliver a shattering punch, but can't exactly punch a building in half. Extreme Durability: he could take some heavy blows like being hit by a building in terms of force and keep fighting. Supernatural Speed: he isn't the flash in terms of speed but he's supernaturally quick. - Pride: Precognition: to some extent, he can exert himself to predict movements before they happen. This is an extremely exhausting power, however, given the nature of it and has to actively use it instead such as reflexes. As it's actually a rather overpowered ability otherwise. Regeneration through Pride: maintaining his image and honor, his regeneration is maintained through this sin and while not instant? Is rather active compared to the average Hellhound. - Ice Element: Ice Breath: he can blow a cone of icy fiery to set his enemies inflicted with frost-bite and deathly chills and frozen hell burns. Ice Blood: his wounds seal up when taking damage, appearing as red crystals that break off. Ice Strike: he can exert himself to penetrate normally hard materials with his claws to make it break and become brittle like that of ice. - Weaponry: He often wields an automatic, corrupted angelic gun and is an expert user of such. He has access to a wide arsenal of weaponry of modern and hell infernal firearms, so expect that if Sal is involved vs your muse. - Hellhound Squads: Sal himself alone is able to be killed by an Overlord fairly easy even if he'd last a bit? But his Hellhound Squads under Stella are often armed like him with corrupted angelic weaponry, but his force are all bound to him to not act out or turn on him, or Stella, etc. So expect basically a Supernatural Roided Hellhound Swat Team, though they'd never go after an Overlord (Unless for some reason, they decide to provoke Stella), more likely someone interfering with Stella's operations or simply protecting her and dealing with those around her, keeping them back and away. - Motivations: To protect Stella. To carry out her will. Then to pursue his own hobbies, bonds with people or otherwise. Backstory: Not much to tell according to him, just another Hellhound he puts it, doesn't care to say much otherwise. You'll have to learn who he is from himself.