#process stuff

[wibblus]

wiggliestwobbliest girl

(godot wigglebone addon vere good :thumbsup:)

[meredithmcclaren]

how I set up colors

[earthykinous]

After overthinking for over three months... (edit: it actually was for five months) I decided that I'll change Crafter Dee's name to Tinker Dee because it is more accurate to what she is since at first she was something akin to a carpenter but now she is rather a handyman.

And Tinker Dee sounds a little more playful just like her.

Let's just say that Dedede address her as such because at first he just requested her to make hand-made decorations for his castle and she went from crafting decorations and furnitures to mess around with machinery, gadgets and clockwork???

She is a fairy now/j

[m0r1bund]

hello! I was catching up on reading NAKAQUOI! and the essay from the most recent entry was such an inspiring method of storytelling. enough so to make me reach out and ask about your website in general (if you're comfortable answering!). what is it like running a lore/gallery site for your work? how and why did you get started? and lastly, what about it keeps you going?

thank you, cheers! -Winn

😭 Thank you so much for the kind words, this means a lot to me. I really enjoyed writing that little essay.

This is going to be a weird and vulnerable sidebar, but I promise I’m going somewhere with it. Honestly, it blows my mind that anyone reads them. I think it’s because I’m still operating on the assumption that this form of storytelling is for n=1 (yours truly) and other people are merely tolerating it, LOL. I used to be way more sensitive about sharing my characters / stories / worlds, because the forms of storytelling that came naturally to me were often received as incomprehensible, dense, and unintuitive by other people. At a certain point I decided that I just had to accept this and become my own hype man. People could enjoy the pretty pictures out of context, and they could be a vehicle for me to journal about the pretend people who live in my head. Good compromise 👍

for someone who talks big about making weird art and finding the 6 people in the audience who truly get it, I don’t think I realized that this could include my deranged essays about things that aren’t real. And yet. AND YET!!!! I think this desire to present my work in a way that’s “more” than just pretty pictures with text attached to them has been simmering for a long time, even though I dismissed it and was kind of embarrassed about it. Which is wild. Because I grew up on bestiaries and warrior cats lore compendiums and video game wikis and morrowind. There was clearly a precedent. And Yet.

Anyway, this desire started rubbing shoulders with the technical limitations of blogs and gallery websites, and also a general disillusionment with social media during the enshittification of the internet. Like, yeah it sucked that my whole body of work could vanish overnight. But mostly I had worldbuilding neuroses that made me want to scratch at the walls, and I knew just enough html + css to be dangerous. In 2018, I had also finished some longer works that made me more confident in my ability to deliver a cohesive Moribund, and these works weren’t intuitive to share on social media… So… I guess that gave me the impetus to stop flirting with the idea of getting my own website and start actually working on it.

M0R1BUND.com used to be a pure html + css + js website hosted on Neocities. It was ideal and I miss it in a lot of ways, because yeah, that IS the most unadulterated control you can have over your webspace. Had a blast with it, experimented a lot, learned a lot, hosted galleries and twines and webfiction and digital collages and ARPG stuff and interactive maps and a webcomic. And it was mine as much as it was the work of kind people sharing sample code on stackexchange, LOL.

Eventually, I felt the growing pains of managing this by hand. Updating ate hours out of my day. There are definitely more intuitive ways to build and maintain a pure html + css + js website, but I was working with what I knew. I started learning wordpress for basedt.net with the hopes of automating certain operations, like posting art to a gallery or pages to a webcomic. It felt intuitive enough that I later rebuilt M0R1BUND.com in wordpress.

It took a long time and a lot of work, like almost a year? And I still haven’t mirrored everything. Wordpress has made things easier to maintain, but I learned the hard way that it doesn't avoid the pitfalls of simpler website-builders… which is to say… whatever it does to make life easier will also make life incredibly difficult if you decide you want to do something manually. And it’s never the stuff you expect.

These days there’s also the baggage of Automattic’s nonsense. Wordpress is open source, so I don’t think it will go anywhere, but it’s still the corporate clownery that I wanted to escape by making my own website. Blech.

Really though, I love running M0R1BUND and it’s the closest thing I have to an ideal “home” for my work. Going to a dedicated website is unintuitive and out of the way for a lot of people, but (indicates generally) what have we just learned about me. This one’s for n=1 and the, like, 6 people who pop in and say hello. You are my people...

Looking forward, things cook at the rate of 2937728839 irons in the fire, and they are all getting done, but they are all getting done sooooo slowly… I’m having fun. Besides having a general compulsion to make art and tell stories and be Understood, I think that’s what carries me thru this. I want to have fun. and I want to trick people into caring about my characters and also the Sonoran Desert. And as Bjork says, I have to get the wiggles out or else the dark times will come.

It’s getting late and I don’t have a denouement for this. Thank you for your kind words! Thank you for asking! hope this answers? hope this helps (???) take the best and leave the rest.

[thebrutaliste]

I have the tendency to get anxious when I am spending a lot of time working on something but have nothing to show for it, and unfortunately I have the sort of adhd brain that cannot be trusted to post chapters as I write because the satisfaction of having posted the first chapter will obliterate any motivation to complete the story SO here is a list of some of the things I searched to write this story and an accompanying (non-chronological) sample to compare how much research I did for the amount of fic it led to (no NSFW, though if by some chance someone is curious, send me an ask and I'll give you some juice):

When Orazio returns, he finds László nibbling on a piece of cheese. 

“It’s good,” László murmurs in response to Orazio’s bemused expression.

“Of course it is,” Orazio replies, shutting the door behind him. “I was worried about your appetite. Please.” He gestures for László to help himself to more, and sets the shortening on the table. 

[...]

It really is a good cheese. It shears instead of crumbling like younger parmesans. The usual funky small seems cleaner, and the crystals developed from age add a crunchy texture. László helps himself to another piece.

Orazio’s home is lined with well-placed sconces on the walls, guiding their way with soft yellow light. László removes his shoes by the door and scrambles to keep up with his host. He feels like he’s been transported to a contemporary fairytale cottage as he steps softly through the short passageway.

“Here’s the guest room.” 

Orazio turns on a Tiffany lamp on the nightstand. The room is bathed in a pleasing warm glow with speckles of color here and there. László enters and sets his suitcase on the floor. It’s much cozier than his shared room at the hostel. There’s a desk in the corner abutting a window, and a tall chest of drawers flanks the wall opposite the bed. The furniture is solid wood shaped with gentle curves typical of the Nouveau style. The iron drawer handles are cast with graphic flower motifs, complementing the pattern on the stained glass lampshade.

A feeling of romanticism fills László. This is the kind of room he imagines consumptive artists would spend their last days in. He smiles at the idea of writing letters to his family at the desk. [...] It’s a sparse room, more inhospitable than the hostel László spent the last few weeks in. There’s a bare mattress on a simple wooden frame along one wall. A wide window sprawls above the short headboard. He doubts both of them would fit on the single-sized bed. There’s a small sink on the other side of the window, with a mirror mounted on the wall above it. Along the next wall, across from the bed, a flimsy card table serves as a desk. László takes off his shoes and sets them next to a narrow armoire that completes the mismatched set of furniture. (note: I did not find anything useful for me regarding what Italian homes looked like during 1920s-30s so I just made it up to move on. as i write this I had to spend like five minutes researching whether electricity in the region was actually common for the time.....)

László purses his lips. “And you never wanted to leave?”

Orazio shakes his head. “This is my home. This is where I belong. I’ve visited the cities, but it’s too crazy out there. Too rushed.” He shakes his head in disdain. “You’d have to be insane to choose that.”

[prudenceanagram]

Doing panel prep! feat. my good friend Miffy

[themightyhumanbroom]

My average writing experience:

"Alright I think I'm almost done actually-"

*Google doc grows second health bar and a choir starts singing in latin*

[rae-butter]

Honestly, I love it when characters relapse. When someone who’s gotten over their anger issues falls into a situation so out of their depth they fall back on their old habits. When someone who’s learned to open up becomes a recluse again in order to cope with something outside their control.

There’s just something so horrible, so toxic, about watching a character grow and then slip back into their old selves in order to cope, bc you know they still care, that they’re the same inside, but watching them hurt so hard they don’t know what else to do brings a sense of catharsis.

[milkamel]

AU idea: PV never regains memories, ancients don't reunite and the beasts are freed. Soul jam's powers are weak so SMilk aims to forcefully make PV remember and takes him to the spire (Little does SM know he'll get attached to this little compassionate Healer)

More details about this AU (currently called Slumbering Truth AU): Basically it starts off with Smilk being terrible and basically doing what he was doing in the 8th episode, trying to make PV remember and playing with his mind for his entertainment. He knows who PV used to be but PV knows nothing about him or his own past. He's confused as to why would this powerful cookie need him but decides to submit in exchange for the village being safe.

At first Healer is uncomfortable and nervous but gradually despite Smilk's intimidating look decides to play along his games and get to know him better. Smilk is surprised by the other's behavior (and unexpected wits and trickery) and what started with the urge to break PV down slowly became an urge to keep the other close since the other's intentions to know him were genuine and comforting and SMilk hated the thought of losing that (not that he'd admit that. he needs that Healer to see him suffer, right?).

Now he doesn't want Healer to remember, he doesn't snap at that cookie as much, he wants him to stay in this blissful lie because if PV knew the truth then he'd definitely leave Smilk and lock him again. If Healer knew the truth he'd turn against him instantly, Smilk was sure. For the first time in a long time, Smilk felt like he found someone to who he was connected and he wasn't going to let anything ruin that.

(It's a wip so I might change some stuff along the way)

[ruushes]

companions re-classed pt 2 - wyll 🗡️💘🐉

with thanks to @thedragonagelesbian and everyone who suggested drakewarden, i think the change made it a much better piece! 💛

karlach

[wibblus]

girl this might sound stupid af but do ya have any recommendations for skirt rigging? (a method i thought could work is just parenting the skirt to the bones with automatic weights but still)

srry for wastin ya time = 0-D

(not a waste at all, i've been on a roll with these asks :3)

getting skirts, cloaks, etc. to work well take a lil rigging magic; what i do is map the weights on the skirt to the nearest leg bones, and then use additional 'skirt bones' (typically 4 bones, one for each corner, parented to the respective leg bones) for additional control during animation.

example ^ the upper leg weights (left) control most of the skirt so it moves with the leg, and the skirt bone weights (right) have slight control for pose adjustments and applying a lil physics to the skirt. note that the leg weights fade smoothly from one side to the other so the skirt flows naturally between both legs.

my method for doing this is to first setup the weights for the leg bones (lining it up with the leg itself), and then i paint on the skirt bone weights at about 0.25 weight, using the 'Auto-Normalize' option in Weight Paint mode.

[hope this helps, feel free to leave a reply if something is unclear abgjkdsf]

[nutsack90]

goddamnb!!

chill out man!!!

[mediamime]

Been working on this on and off a few days…. Cas my beloved…

Edit: Available as a print now 🐸

And for a multimedia experience (because I’m annoying):

[m0r1bund]

this escaped my drafts prematurely but it's done now. here ya go o7

Things have been quiet lately on account of my house burning down. Nobody was hurt, and I haven't lost my physical / digital art pieces, but I have no way of working on them right now... which means I'm going a little stir crazy! haha! ha !!!

I had the foresight to draft a post with some of my favorite panels from my twine game, Threadbare. I was originally just gonna use them to promote the game, but this is all I can to work on right now, so you're getting the director's commentary reel I guess. but first

Play Threadbare!

Or don't, I can't control you.

I started making Threadbare so that I could weasel my way out of drawing comics. it was supposed to be a low-effort way of telling Frey and Kairos' story, which is, in the grand scheme of things, ancillary to everything happening on wasteland Earth.

(honks clown nose)

the art is also made to be low-effort, even if it doesn't stay that way. unremitting red/white/blue/black takes the guesswork out of painting in color, and also feels like propaganda art. mapping characters to certain colors makes simplifying them easier. Frey can be reduced to an angry blue smudge and Kairos can be a stupid red hat on a triangle.

I had already written out most of the Frey-Kairos scenes back in 2023. The holding cell scene is actually one of the first things I drew LOL. Everything else sprang up from the twine game format. I knew I wanted some buffer between Frey breaking out of the Abattoir and Frey confronting the Oracle, so that we could learn more about the two of them, and also the Archive, without rushing into prophecide. This ended up changing the structure of the story more than I thought it would... and created a lot of self-inflicted scope creep... which is for me to unpack at a later date (when I'm done) (girl help im not even done)

but probably the biggest addition is

her

and ES I guess.

ES and Rhodes were originally funnie little nature spirits, but I long suspected that Rhodes would make a kickass ex-secutor, and I needed some NPCs to explore the Archive with, so. here ya go. I promise I'm going somewhere with them. Rhodes is filling the shoes for another old character concept I had (which was partly cannibalized by the Oracle of Caeres, funny enough.)

<more spoilery stuff under the cut. play my twine game.>

The other characters like Petrei and the Undertaker were designed on the spot, which is to say I just opened a canvas and started painting and hoped for the best. because this was supposed to be low-effort. haha.

I want to go back and figure out Petrei's anatomy because the idea of doing horrible manweevil origami is fun.

The other big surprise in all of this was having sound and music figure so strongly into things. My last twine game, Killswitch, had maybe three little songs to set the mood, and no SFX. I guess something broke in me and I decided I wanted to make an ace attorney game this time. You're all getting bespoke vox files now. my gift to you. and part of why this took like 9 months

I feel lucky that I found the musician ROZKOL, whose work is featured prominently in the twine, just as I was dipping my toes into audio editing and really scripting the meat of things. I was not expecting to find a musician in the Creative Commons scene who had totally figured out what a ceaselessly grinding imperial death machine sounds like. I have a hard time thinking in music, even though it motivates so much of my work... sometimes I feel like I have aphantasia but for compositions LOL. So I really enjoyed this kind of post-hoc surprise collaboration, it was cool to watch the scenes start to mold themselves around ROZKOL's music.

The slideshow-quicktime-event-fight-scene is especially molded to ROZKOL's song "Good Soldier." A fun return to the fine tradition of warrior cats AMVs that I was raised on. bringing in player participation is something that I would like to explore in a more elegant way in the future, I really like the idea of a music video being an active, participatory experience and not a passive one. and honestly I just want other people to feel the same unhinged rush that I feel when I put a song on repeat 70 times while painting.

There's I think four different routes in the first part of that encounter, leading to some variant panels like these.

depending on your choices, Frey gets roughed up a little more or a little less, ES may or may not stick their neck out for you, and the Oracle has choice words for you if you're a good soldier dancing partner.

(fun fact: if you don't choose to act during this scene, Frey picks a route and acts at random.)

I'm still learning what does and doesn't make a meaningful player choice. is there a branch because the possibility of choosing to / choosing not to see it is compelling, or is there a branch just to be a branch? I don't really think that you need to fundamentally alter the narrative to have fun with it. little things like ES and Rhodes remembering your name still feel meaningful to me, even if they don't change the outcome of anything. but I'm also bending to certain limitations that I cannot fully discuss until I finish this damn thing.

Speaking of finishing, I made the denouement in a deranged fever haze. I got sick twice in the span of, like, a month. It was pretty miserable. but hey, at least I had time to finish my twine.

^^^ how it feels to finish your twine (she doesn't know her house is about to burn down)

further in the vein of things burning down, I'm glad I found the song "In Your Mind" and didn't get cold feet about keeping it in the tracklist. I was struggling to nail down the tone of the ending scene, until I gave it a few listens and things clicked. but at the last minute, I nearly swapped it for "Burn it All Down." It's a really good song, too, but it's probably for the best I briefly possessed Kairos' gift of prophecy and didn't pick the one about uhhhhh. burning.

I think that's all I got for now. thanks for playing and/or flirting with the idea of playing by reading this post. kill petrei for me. and try not to be on fire.

[hinamie]

unconditionally