#so it's time to finally do some work on my visual novel

[blackcatanna]

With all these timelapse videos, quick tips and "quick sketches" (that are actually beautiful fully rendered illustrations) constantly being waved in our faces on the internet, I thought I would issue a reminder to myself (and to others) that making good art takes a lot of time, effort and often it is hard.

Spending time with other artists I know, particularly my friend who is a full time concept artist, always helps remind me of this but the internet often makes me feel like all art should be completely effortless.

SO, if anyone else is scrolling through tumblr and feeling shit about their art, this is to remind you that often professional artists can spend even hundreds of hours carefully constructing and rendering a beautiful illustration. The best artists use references effectively; rarely do perfect drawings spring fully formed from the head of an artist with no references or construction.

This applies to all art forms as well. When I first started my career as a 3D artist, I was worried that I wasn't working quickly enough but was told to chill out because it is normal for making a nice prop to take a (40 hour) week or more. People who do art professionally get so much TIME to develop their craft so never beat yourself up if you feel like you are not measuring up. <3

Anything you create is beautiful and we are lucky to witness it! <3

[colleendoran]

Great Big Good Omens Graphic Novel Update

AKA A Visit From Bildad the Shuhite.

The past year or so has been one long visit from this guy, whereupon he smiteth my goats and burneth my crops, woe unto the woeful cartoonist.

Gaze upon the horror of Bildad the Shuhite.

You kind of have to be a Good Omens fan to get this joke, but trust me, it's hilarious.

Anyway, as a long time Good Omens novel fan, you may imagine how thrilled I was to get picked to adapt the graphic novel.

 Go me!  

This is quite a task, I have to say, especially since I was originally going to just draw (and color) it, but I ended up writing the adaptation as well. Tricky to fit a 400 page novel into a 160-ish page graphic novel, especially when so much of the humor is dependent on the language, and not necessarily on the visuals.

Not complainin', just sayin'.

Anyway, I started out the gate like a herd of turtles, because  right away I got COVID which knocked me on my butt. 

And COVID brain fog? That's a thing. I already struggle with brain fog due to autoimmune disease, and COVID made it worse.

Not complainin' just sayin'.

This set a few of the assignments on my plate back, which pushed starting Good Omens back. 

But hey, big fat lead time! No worries!

Then my computer crawled toward the grave.

My trusty MAC Pro Tower was nearly 15 years old when its sturdy heart ground to a near-halt with daily crashes. I finally got around to doing some diagnostics; some of its little brain actions were at 5% functionality. I had no reliable backups.

There are so many issues with getting a new computer when you haven't had a new computer or peripherals in nearly fifteen years and all of your software, including your Photoshop program is fifteen years old.

At the time, I was still on rural internet...which means dial-up speed.

Whatever you have for internet in the city, roll that clock back to about 2001.

That's what I had. I not only had to replace almost all of my hardware but I had to load and update all programs at dial-up speed.

Welcome to my gigabyte hell.

The entire process of replacing the equipment and programs took weeks and then I had to relearn all the software.

All of this was super expensive in terms of money and time cost.

But I was not daunted! Nosirree!

I still had a huge lead time! I can do anything! I have an iron will!

And boy, howdy, I was going to need it.

At about the same time, a big fatcat quadrillionaire client who had hired me years ago to develop a big, major transmedia project for which I was paid almost entirely in stock, went bankrupt leaving everyone holding the bag, and taking a huge chunk of my future retirement fund with it.

I wrote a very snarky almost hilarious Patreon post about it, but am not entirely in a position to speak freely because I don't want to get sued. Even though I had to go to court over it, (and I had to do that over Zoom at dial-up speed,) I'm pretty sure I'll never get anything out of this drama, and neither will anyone else involved, except millionaire dude and his buddies who all walked away with huge multi-million dollar bonuses weeks before they declared bankruptcy, all the while claiming they would not declare bankruptcy.

Even the accountant got $250,000 a month to shut down the business, while creators got nothing.

That in itself was enough drama for the year, but we were only at February by that point, and with all those months left, 2023 had a lot more to throw at me.

Fresh from my return from my Society of Illustrators show, and a lovely time at MOCCA, it was time to face practical medical issues, health updates, screening, and the like. I did my adult duty and then went back to work hoping for no news, but still had a weird feeling there would be news.

I know everyone says that, but I mean it. I had a bad feeling.

Then there was news.

I was called back for tests and more tests. This took weeks. The ubiquitous biopsy looked, even to me staring at the screen in real time, like bad news. 

It also hurt like a mofo after the anesthesia wore off. I wasn't expecting that.

Then I got the official bad news.

Cancer which runs in my family finally got me. Frankly, I was surprised I didn't get it sooner.

Stage 0, and treatment would likely be fast and complication-free. Face the peril, get it over with, and get back to work. 

I requested surgery months in the future so I could finish Good Omens first, but my doc convinced me the risk of waiting was too great. Get it done now.

"You're really healthy," my doc said. Despite an auto-immune issue which plagues me, I am way healthier than the average schmoe of late middle age. She informed me I would not even need any chemo or radiation if I took care of this now.

So I canceled my appearance at San Diego Comic Con. I did not inform the Good Omens team of my issues right away, thinking this would not interfere with my work schedule, but I did contact my agent to inform her of the issue. I also contacted a lawyer to rewrite my will and make sure the team had access to my digital files in case there were complications.

Then I got back to work, and hoped for the best.

Eff this guy.

Before I could even plant my carcass on the surgery table, I got a massive case of ocular shingles.

I didn't even know there was such a thing. 

There I was, minding my own business. I go to bed one night with a scratchy eye, and by 4 PM the next day, I was in the emergency room being told if I didn't get immediate specialist treatment, I was in big trouble.

I got transferred to another hospital and got all the scary details, with the extra horrid news that I could not possibly have cancer surgery until I was free of shingles, and if I did not follow a rather brutal treatment procedure - which meant super-painful  eye drops every half hour, twenty-four hours a day and daily hospital treatment - I could lose the eye entirely, or be blinded, or best case scenario, get permanent eye damage.

What was even funnier (yeah, hilarity) is the drops are so toxic if you don't use the medication just right, you can go blind anyway.

Hi Ho.

Ulcer is on the right. That big green blob.

I had just finished telling my cancer surgeon I did not even really care about getting cancer, was happy it was just stage zero, had no issues with scarring, wanted no reconstruction, all I cared about was my work. 

Just cut it out and get me back to work.

And now I wondered if I was going to lose my ability to work anyway.

Shingles often accompanies cancer because of the stress on the immune system, and yeah, it's not pretty. This is me looking like all heck after I started to get better.

The first couple of weeks were pretty demoralizing as I expected a straight trajectory to wellness. But it was up and down all the way. 

Some days I could not see out of either eye at all. The swelling was so bad that I had to reach around to my good eye to prop the lid open. Light sensitivity made seeing out of either eye almost impossible. Outdoors, even with sunglasses, I had to be led around by the hand.

I had an amazing doctor. I meticulously followed his instructions, and I think he was surprised I did. The treatment is really difficult, and if you don't do it just right no matter how painful it gets, you will be sorry. 

To my amazement, after about a month, my doctor informed me I had no vision loss in the eye at all. "This never happens," he said.

I'd spent a couple of weeks there trying to learn to draw in the near-dark with one eye, and in the end, I got all my sight back.

I could no longer wear contact lenses (I don't really wear them anyway, unless I'm going to the movies,) would need hard core sun protection for awhile, and the neuralgia and sun sensitivity were likely to linger. But I could get back to work.

I have never been more grateful in my life.

Neuralgia sucks, by the way, I'm still dealing with it months later.

Anyway, I decided to finally go ahead and tell the Good Omens team what was going on, especially since this was all happening around the time the Kickstarter was gearing up.

Now that I was sure I'd passed the eye peril, and my surgery for Stage 0 was going to be no big deal, I figured all was a go. I was still pretty uncomfortable and weak, and my ideal deadline was blown, but with the book not coming out for more than a year, all would be OK. I quit a bunch of jobs I had lined up to start after Good Omens, since the project was going to run far longer than I'd planned.

Everybody on the team was super-nice, and I was pretty optimistic at this time. But work was going pretty slow during, as you may imagine.

But again...lots of lead time still left, go me.

Then I finally got my surgery.

Which was not as happy an experience as I had been hoping for.

My family said the doc came out of the operating room looking like she'd been pulled backwards through a pipe, She informed them the tumor which looked tiny on the scan was "...huge and her insides are a mess."

Which was super not fun news.

Eff this guy.

The tumor was hiding behind some dense tissue and cysts. After more tests, it was determined I'd need another surgery and was going to have to get further treatments after all.

The biopsy had been really painful, but the discomfort was gone after about a week, so no biggee. The second surgery was, weirdly, not as painful as the biopsy, but the fatigue was big time.

By then, the Good Omens Kickstarter had about run its course, and the record-breaker was both gratifying and a source of immense social pressure.

I'd already turned most of my social media over to an assistant, and I'm glad I did.

But the next surgery was what really kicked me on my keister.

All in all, they took out an area the size of a baseball. It was  hard to move and wiped me out for weeks and weeks. I could not take care of myself. I'd begun losing hair by this time anyway, and finally just lopped it off since it was too heavy for me to care for myself. The cut hides the bald spots pretty well.

After about a month, I got the go-ahead to travel to my show at the San Diego Comic Con Museum (which is running until the first week of April, BTW). I was very happy I had enough energy to do it. But as soon as I got back, I had to return to treatment.

Since I live way out in the country, going into the city to various hospitals and pharmacies was a real challenge. I made more than 100 trips last year, and a drive to the compounding pharmacy which produced the specialist eye medicine I could not get anywhere else was six hours alone.

Naturally, I wasn't getting anything done during this time.

But at least my main hospital is super swank.

The oncology treatment went smoothly, until it didn't. The feels don't hit you until the end. By then I was flattened.

So flattened that I was too weak to control myself, fell over, and smashed my face into some equipment.

Nearly tore off my damn nostril.

Eff this guy.

Anyway, it was a bad year.

Here's what went right.

I have a good health insurance policy. The final tally on my health care costs ended up being about $150,000. I paid about 18% of that, including insurance. I had a high deductible and some experimental medicine insurance didn't cover. I had savings,  enough to cover the months I wasn't working, and my Patreon is also very supportive. So you didn't see me running a Gofundme or anything.

Thanks to everyone who ever bought one of my books.

No, none of that money was Good Omens Kickstarter money. I won't get most of my pay on that for months, which is just as well because it kept my taxes lower last year when I needed a break.

So, yay.

My nose is nearly healed. I opted out of plastic surgery, and it just sealed up by itself. I'll never be ready for my closeup, but who the hell cares.

I got to ring the bell.

I had a very, VERY hard time getting back to work, especially with regard to focus and concentration. My work hours dropped by over 2/3. I was so fractured and weak, time kept slipping away while I sat in the studio like a zombie. Most of the last six months were a wash.

I assumed focus issues were due (in part) to stress, so sought counseling. This seemed like a good idea at first, but when the counselor asked me to detail my issues with anxiety, I spent two weeks doing just that and getting way more anxious, which was not helpful.

After that I went EFF THIS NOISE, I want practical tools, not touchy feelies (no judgment on people who need touchy-feelies, I need a pragmatic solution and I need it now,) so tried using the body doubling focus group technique for concentration and deep work.

Within two weeks, I returned to normal work hours.

I got rural broadband, jumping me from dial up speed to 1 GB per second.

It's a miracle.

Massive doses of Vitamin D3 and K2. Yay.

The new computer works great.

The Kickstarter did so well, we got to expand the graphic novel to 200 pages. Double yay.

I'm running late, but everyone on the Good Omens team is super supportive. I don't know if I am going to make the book late or not, but if I do, well, it surely wasn't on purpose, and it won't be super late anyway. I still have months of lead time left.

I used to be something of a social media addict, but now I hardly ever even look at it, haven't been directly on some sites in over a year, and no longer miss it. It used to seem important and now doesn't.

More time for real life.

While I think the last year aged me about twenty years, I actually like me better with short hair. I'm keeping it.

OK. Rough year. 

Not complainin', just sayin'.

Back to work on The Book.

And only a day left to vote for Good Omens, Neil Gaiman, and Sandman in the Comicscene Awards. Thanks. 

[the-doomed-witch]

BOOP!

Wanda Maximoff x Reader

Summary: The cuteness aggression gets insufferable once you get some time with your wife after a long day of work.

Word Count: 0.8k

Warnings: tooth-rotting fluff, bc wanda is just so cute also not proof read

Author’s Note: another one i wrote in like 30 minutes… welcome to skye-should-be-studying-but-they-keep-writing-short-fics episode two 🙏 (gif is mine)

MASTERLIST // NAVIGATION // READ ON AO3 // REQUESTS CLOSED

— ✦ —

Both of you sit on the couch, snuggling together after a long hard day at work. You nuzzle up against her neck, finally having felt her tangible presence around you after weeks. Work has been so tiring for you as well as Wanda, that both of you had begun to live together vicariously through memories. Hell, all of her features look so interestingly novel to you.

But when you look at her closely right now, after so long, she never fails to pass as the most adorable person you know. Her eyes still focus on the sitcom playing on the television. Oh Wanda’s mesmerising green eyes…

Her nose scrunches up as she smiles. The curve of her smile, the laugh lines. She’s the most lovable being to you.

You cannot control the feeling, you want to just keep on looking at her. So you immediately straddle her waist and grab her face in your palms. “Baby, what are you doing?” She speaks between little laughs. Oh my God. Stop being so cute.

You kiss her lips, hands finding their way around her neck. Wanda giggles between more kisses, her laughter is churning your insides. You adjust your seat around her waist, but she gets it wrong. “Y/N, detka, I’m sorry I don’t…”

“Oh no, no, I didn’t mean that. I know you’re tired, so am I.”

“Then?”

You stare into her eyes, viridescence engulfing them. A smile is given to her, which she reciprocates. “Goodness, Wanda. You’re the most adorable person ever.” She laughs gratefully at your compliment.

“Am I now honey? You think I’m adorable, hm?”

“I can’t comprehend how to describe it. I’ve felt your warmth around me after so… so long. I think I fall in love with you every single time I look at you. You’re just so-”

You boop her nose with yours. “What’s going on baby? What’s all of the sudden-” She gets interrupted by another boop.

You boop her nose with a finger again, and it makes you chuckle. Wanda looks at you with a blank red face, the blood rushes into her cheeks. She’s never been treated like this before, so tender, so light.

“I. Want. To. Bite. Your. Red. Cheeks.” you say, punctuating each word with further booping. Her face burns - she feels noticed under your gaze, as if she’d been invisible all her life.

“Y/N, I’m so confused…”

“I don’t know either Wands. I just want to bite your cheeks, squish them, boop your nose, give you so many kisses. I don’t know!” You pull her face close to yours and place little pecks on her freckles, “Can I call you pookie?”

Wanda throws her head back, laughing. “Oh dear, I love how you’re being so affectionate around me. I missed you. I missed us.”

You reply to her, “I missed you more, pookie.”

Her forehead rests over yours, as she cups your face between her warm hands. “I love it when you call me that.”

“Okay. Pookie.” You kiss her again, and again, and over again. Your teeth grit against each other in a tight smile, your visual focus on her. Her auburn hair is tied up in a lazy bun, and she’s free from her regular makeup. Just natural, sitting beneath you.

You pull strands of hair away from her face, a gaze filled with nothing but adoration. When you’re done playing with her hair, you hold her hands and kiss each of them softly. Throughout your little efforts, Wanda stares at you, occasionally giggling.

“I cannot eat you. That’s sad for me. But…” you smooch the tip of her nose, “I can kiss you all over. Lots of kisses, all of them for you.”

She wraps her hands around your waist, “Oh dorogaya… What’s going on today?”

“I love you so much.” you speak before planting more loud hearty smacks on her face. She’s adorably captivating. Wanda tries to hold you in place, saying, “Stop, Y/N! It tickles!” But it only ever encourages you.

“Darling, please…” Her hands entwine with your hair, pulling your face a little away. Reluctantly, you pull yourself back to see her precious smile.

“You’re my pumpkin pie, sweetheart, my dearest darling, absolute ray of sunshine, honeybun, sugar plum, my most beloved, littlest pookie!”

“Oh my, my, thank you for showering me with so much love. I love you very much.”

“You look like a strawberry with your red cheeks. I love you berry much!”

“Stop- I can’t help smiling!”

“I’ve been gifted with the best wife ever. Like, ever. My heart is just exclamation marks when you’re around.”

You kiss each of her cheeks and hug her tightly, snuggling in her arms. She kisses your forehead, wrapping the two of you in a heavy blanket. Patting your head, she says, “Good night, Y/N.”

Lightly, you kiss her shoulder and rest your head on her again. “Night, pookie.”

“You’re not letting that name go, are you?”

“Mhm.”

[sanctus-ingenium]

another one of these posts lol... sketches vs final. not much changed for these ones, i kind of went into them with a very solid mental image already in my head. all of these were done start to finish in procreate

thoughts below the cut

horse fight .... this is based off a really really beautiful sky i saw while driving home one evening. i'm really proud of getting the colours i saw exactly right, this kind of greenish yellow fading to dark blue and with grey clouds low over it that looked very dark against the yellow by the horizon, but very pale against the dark blue.

i thought it would be a cool backdrop to draw a scene i've been thinking about for a while. The little cartoony horses are there to provide some tonal whiplash but also because these are two immortal shapeshifters who can fight violently without it being a huge deal. the little horses represent the actual gravity of the fight (that is, kind of a slap fight between two drama queens) which contrasts with the visuals of two animals brutally tearing at eachother. also i got the two horses at the bottom mixed up, Pascal is the one with the skinny plumed tail and Macha has a more traditional horse tail and i put them on the wrong sides.

i had a LOT of trouble shading this. i didn't want the horses to be too shiny but that meant a much lower contrast in shading and even with my screen brightness turned up i could barely see what i was doing. but i wanted it to read as realistic. mixed results i think. if i did it again i might try a different shading style because this one didn't really do it for me

--

spooky van!!! the post i deleted by accident (rip. i will repost it soon). this is a picture of the barrow (the field) taking a different shape - in this case a cool van. the van contains every single thing the field does (including the human victims that get lost in there...) but compressed down into a manageable shape. the void is Pascal because the field is inside him. he did this for his human bf to provide novel way to travel through the Otherworld. don't ask how this works like, spatially, because the answer is: i don't do hard magic systems in this setting

i loooove shading things with pencil hatching and i really like contrasting it with smooth colours/shading so that's mainly what i did here. it was simple enough. the van is of course heavily referenced and i wish i had been able to stylise it a little more.. maybe next time. i want to draw a kind of cutaway illustration of the van showing exterior and interior (like an old blueprint schematic), which i might use as a cover for the book/comic/whatever but that will require a very intimidating level of precision so i think i'll work up to that.

--

RUA magazine. this is my third time doing a rua magazine cover (first time posting tho). this is an in-universe magazine distributed throughout the Otherworld to an audience of fairies. in the sketch, the illustation was originally the King of Pentacles tarot card (the pentacle being the disco ball). but i decided to make a different King of Pentacles card for him instead, since I try hard to move away from symmetrical composition for the tarot cards (it's boring). so i repurposed this one into another magazine cover. like i said Pascal is a self-absorbed attention whore and has a habit of giving bullshit interviews just so that he can be on the cover as much as possible. he dresses like this all the time (the year is 2017)

the disco ball took 15 years off my life and it's not even the first disco ball i've drawn! i finished my actual king of pentacles card before i finished the rua cover sketch, so i can show u this

which is much better even if i did reference so heavily that it isn't exactly stylised. but this card needs some serious revision before i even think about posting it. i'm just not happy with his face.

original intent was for it be mysterious with emphasis on the neon lights but it ended up far more suggestive than i expected. that's life!

[thankskenpenders]

It's a bit late, but I figure I have to touch on the big news from today, which is that for an (early) April Fools celebration Sega went and released a free visual novel about Sonic getting murdered

Here's a thing you should know about me: I am deathly allergic to ironic visual novels, and the related trend of announcing dating sims (which are synonymous with the medium of visual novels as a whole to many people) on April Fools

Aside from an incredibly small selection of titles that have seen wider success, it feels like much of the game industry is only willing to acknowledge visual novels as a punchline. And said jokes about dating sim stereotypes have been done a million fucking times by now. They're parodies of parodies of parodies. Even when these prank dating sims actually go and get made rather than just being a few fake screenshots, it feels like it's just because VNs are seen as cheap, disposable entertainment compared to "real" games. Companies can afford to commission some bullshit like the KFC dating sim and write it off as a marketing stunt. And it works. These games will get widely reported on for being so ~wacky~, while devs pouring their hearts into doing sincere, interesting work with the medium of visual novels are usually out of fucking luck. It's so, so tiring. The fact that this happens like clockwork every year has made me come to dread April Fools Day

So imagine my surprise when The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog drops out of nowhere and it's actually one of my favorite Sonic games in years

Aside from the intentionally tongue-in-cheek, attention-grabbing title (and Sonic doing the Family Guy Death Pose), there isn't an ounce of irony here. It's just a straight up whodunnit VN set on a train, albeit a lighthearted and pretty easy one. It's still a Sonic game, after all, and Sonic games are for kids. But it's so clearly made out of a place of love, both for the characters and for murder mysteries, rather than being a parody that's constantly winking at the camera and going "haha, isn't this absurd that this even exists at all?" Forget that. This wants to tell a genuinely good little Sonic story. Not to mention how gorgeous all of the artwork is throughout, with character illustrations from IDW cover artist Min Ho Kim (AKA deegeemin)

Like, for real. I've wanted the Sonic games to explore the supporting cast more for years, and I can't believe the game to finally do it is a murder mystery visual novel released for April Fools. This might be one of the best showcases of the cast... ever, in the games? The script from Ian Mutchler is so, so great, with fun and cute moments for everyone involved. And, smartly, you see the cast through the eyes of a new character (I named them "Blorbo") who isn't necessarily familiar with things like Blaze being a princess from another dimension, making this a surprisingly valid way to introduce people to the supporting cast. I'd say more, but it's a short game, so I think everyone should just go out and play it if you haven't already

There is still part of me that wishes a Sonic visual novel like this could've been greenlit for release any other day of the year, rather than being yet another April Fools visual novel. But regardless of the excuse they used to make it, I'm extremely happy that this exists

[mosaickiwi]

Hi, hope you had a great new years ^^

If it's okay can I request a fic of Redacted teaching Angel how to ride their bike or just Angel just riding their bike in general?

Hiiii my new year was good! I hope yours (and valentine's,easter,etc) was good as well!!

the date callin me out for how long it's been since jan i'm sobbing /silly

I feel like emo boy would be extremely thorough about teaching them so... Maybe I'll do a part two where Angel actually drives... 👉👈

14 Days With You is an 18+ Yandere Visual Novel. MINORS DNI

~A Riding Lesson~

[REDACTED] was in their personal garage doing some maintenance on his bike when you arrived a little early for your date. All he could offer in greeting were a few sweet words and a quick kiss, due to their grease stained fingers. You chose to silently observe them for a while, sitting at the bench they left their toolkit on. You found yourself leaning forward, watching with pure fascination.

There was precision to each movement as they went about their work with expert hands. Were it not for the occasional smiles he threw your way when he picked up a different tool every so often—smiles that somehow still sent your heart aflutter after so long—you would’ve been completely absorbed.

You'd always been curious about how it worked. But there was never really a good time to mention said curiosity. Especially since you were more focused on holding on for dear life whenever they drove somewhere, even at a snail’s pace. You supposed now could be a good time.

“Can you teach me how to ride it?” you suddenly asked once he came over to pack his tools away in the box at your side.

Their scarred hand that was idly twirling a wrench stilled as he looked down at you, light blue eyes glittering with the beginnings of something. “...Yeah, love? Y’mind saying that again f’me?”

Much too late to take it back, you noticed your mistake. You were so absorbed in your thoughts that it felt like you were picking up a conversation. In reality, it hadn't even started. “The bike, Ren,” you hurriedly corrected yourself. “Teach me how to ride the bike.”

“‘Course. My bike,” [REDACTED] nodded along and continued putting away the tools. The smirk on their face was unmistakable, but they surprisingly held back from teasing you any longer. “Maybe a quick lesson, then.”

“Really?” You perked up.

He nodded towards the bike with an amused smile as he closed the toolbox and wiped off his hands. “We’ve got time.”

Excited as could be, you hopped over and quickly sat in the cushioned seat, immediately fidgeting with the handlebars. It already seemed weird being in the front, let alone by yourself. But your heart got a little louder when your dark haired lover sat behind you on the bike.

You were certain he could feel how you shivered as his hands wrapped securely around your waist and his head rested on top of yours. Stumbling for words, you almost shouted, “So! …Where am I taking us?”

“Nowhere. Y’need to know where everything is first, Angel.”

“Boooo.”

💜🖤💜🖤💜🖤

After fifteen grueling minutes of quizzing, he finally agreed to let you ride around the parking lot. They hopped off the back of the bike, swinging the key around their finger.  

Without his weight to balance you, you suddenly felt a little unsure of yourself. You thought he was going to ride with you, so you asked, “Did you only sit on the bike to hug me?”

“Yeah, y’looked so cute I couldn’t help m’self,” he admitted shamelessly. They didn't give you the key just yet, merely circled the bike a few times with a careful gaze. “Clutch?”

You frowned. The quiz was supposed to be over. “Left lever.”

“Throttle?”

You remembered that one easily. He always revved the engine with it before leaving. “Right handle," you said confidently as you grabbed it.

“Front brake?”

“Uhh…” you started, quickly panicking at the resigned look in their eye. “Right pedal.”

“That's the rear brake. Maybe next time.” They gave a swift denial of your short-lived dream.

You stubbornly stayed put on the bike, though your hands were no longer holding the handles, instead resting in front of you on the seat. “I could drive it down to the street, at least."

“Y’really think so? It’s a lot t’handle,” he cautioned. He reached in front of you with the key in hand, quickly putting it in the ignition. The engine purred in that quiet way you were used to.

You watched as [REDACTED] held firmly on the clutch at one handle, and slowly guided your hand to the throttle on the other. With the lightest turn of your wrist, the engine roared loud, vibrating the seat more and more. But he turned it even further and you could hardly hear yourself think.

It made you nervous. If you weren’t sure where the break was—or which one to use—it’d really spell disaster. “Okay, I get the point,” you sighed. They let go of your hand and the engine died back down to its usual purr. “I’ll try harder to remember where everything is. No crashing your bike into a stop sign for now.”

“Good. Just wan’ you t'keep that pretty little head right where it is, love,” he hummed and kissed said forehead. “Now, scoot. Or we can head upstairs so ‘can teach ya how to really—”

“I meant the bike!!”

[piccolos-bigtoe]

POV you're a betta fish in an already shitty tank and some annoying asshole is trying to get your attention

Short little cute little Scout animation WIP I am working on....... Perchance I am enjoying animating, mayhaps... I had to do a whole project for my class and make an animation (I'm a studio art major, so liek I am just somewhat tech skilled and can use photoshop jussstttt well enough but I know little to nothing, the most animation experience I have was me at 14 making frames one by one in CSP and throwing them into EZgif one at a time LOL) and it was liek super frustrating at first but after seeing the final result I was actually like "you know what.... perchance this is cool..." So hes gonna have a little talking textbox visual novel moment. I also wanted to animate because I watched Quazzies Lil' Pootis FINALLY and it has my whole heart mannnn

OH also I LITERALLY accidentally deleted the fucking file for the Scount one because of COURSE I did, BUT I saved all the initial frames so not all is lost!!! Sobbing tho, my lief is soooooo hard...

I am still working on that comic from forever ago, and I actually plan to make it into a screen print given I have enough time and bookbind it into a physical comic LOL.

If anyone is curious... This is the animation I was working on for my class. The actual lineart wasn't an issue, it's just that my dumbass didn't clean the keys enough and like it worked as a sketch but not as an outline, and I was lazy and didn't want to redo them (but I did eventually w.e.) This is my character Joey Hottdog..... He hates his dad and he is a sigma loner emo in a normie world... I always wanted a cartoon of him and so I made a Cartoon network style TV bumper... I used Clip Studio Paint to make all the frames, and then Opentoonz (free animation software, it's zupah cool) to put it all together.

I hope that people enjoy my little rambles, tbh it's really fun to ramble I wish more people did it becoz I look at my mutuals (or just anyones) stuff and I liek love it all and I wanna hear people talk about their stuff or maybe I am cray-zee

[yuurei20]

Greetings! How true is that Yana is not involved in the writing of all events? Or is it only for the most recent one, Playful land? I'm a little confused.

Hello hello! Yana shares via Twitter what parts of what cards/events/stories/etc she was involved in every time something new is released, so I went through tweets from January of 2020 to November of 2023 to compare and contrast how she has described her role throughout the years, and compiled them here!

⚠️JP-server Only Visuals Spoiled Under the Cut⚠️

Vocabulary Review

・シナリオ: The English word “scenario,” this is an industry term that means “a written outline of a film, novel, or stage work giving details of the plot and individual scenes. It describes the sequence of scene changes, dialogue, and actions.” If Yana says she was in charge of the scenario for something, it is probably ok to assume that it was her project.

・原画(genga): The original artwork/initial visual concept upon which the final work was based

Ex: In this tweet Yana says she was in charge of the scenario, costume design and original card artwork for Fairy Gala.

・担当(tantou): The person in charge of something

・ディレクション: The English word “direction.”

Ex: In this tweet Yana says that she was in charge of direction for Malleus’ Birthday Jacket card.

・D-6th: This is Yana’s personal studio, which existed long before Twst and is also in charge of producing her manga (there seems to be a lot of overlap between the team that creates Black Butler and the Twst team, which she will sometimes reference in tweets). This seems to mean that there were multiple people involved in the creation process. It is unclear if she includes herself amongst the "D-6th" team, as sometimes she will specify that something was by her, something was by D-6th, or something was by both her and D-6th.

・弊社(heisha): a polite way of saying “my company,” this references Yana’s studio D-6th. 

Ex: In this tweet Yana says that while she did the scenario herself, the backgrounds and prop designs were by her studio.

The Main Story

Starting with the release of part 1 of Book 3 on JP server, Yana explains that she did the scenario, original artwork for the SSR cards, directed the vignettes and was in charge of character design.

For Book 7 she says she did the scenario and original character art/character designs, while some prop designs and background visuals were done by her studio.

Card Art

For Ortho’s dorm uniform design Yana explains that both she and her studio did the original art from start to finish (she did the original concept and story for the vignette), while she alone was in charge of the before/after groovy art from start to finish for Idia’s dorm uniform card.

She did the art for Leona and Riddle’s tsumsted cards (and direction for the other cards in the series), Sebek’s dorm uniform art from start to finish and and did art direction for the cards in the 2022 New Year’s set, while costume design was done by her studio.

Rook’s Clubwear, Ortho’s Cerberus Gear, Lilia’s General card, Rollo’s card and Grim’s D100 card are all credited to both Yana and her studio.

(We got a rare comment with the release of Ortho’s Cerberus Gear where she said, “We have an artist working with us who spent almost 20 years doing backgrounds for a certain, extremely famous robot anime. She oversees a lot of the background art designing. The background for Ortho’s Cerberus Gear card, the aircraft catapult, the facility seen in the groovy art—that is all her work. It really captures the moment of take off! Professional background artists are truly amazing, capable of designing everything from S.T.Y.X.’s futuristic aircraft catapult to homages of famous watercolor masterpieces." That is one of the artists that Yana is referring to when a design is attributed to D-6th.)

Birthdays

Yana was credited with direction for the Birthday Boy series, while Ortho’s design and direction was credited to her studio.

Yana credited her studio with the Birthday Jacket designs and scenario creation, saying that she was in charge of direction for the series (with Ortho’s gear design, direction and room design all credited to her studio).

For the Broom/Bloom series Yana says that she participated in concept/costume design and was in charge of direction (with D-6th credited with the art direction and gear design for Ortho).

The art for the platinum series (including the backgrounds) is credited to the staff of D-6th, with Yana in charge of direction.

Events

Yana explains she did all the original art for all of the cards, the scenarios and direction for Beanfest, Fairy Gala and Phantom Bride (she also created the scenarios for all the vignettes).

She also created the story and did all of the card art and direction for Terror is Trending and Spectral Soiree.

For Port Fest she specified that she did the original art for Jack’s SSR and did direction for the remaining cards, crediting her studio with costume/background designs.

Yana created the scenario, character design, SSR card art (from start to finish) and did art direction for the R and SR cards of Glorious Masquerade, crediting herself and her studio with the costume/mask designs, background designs, and opening and ending screens.

She says she participated in card art direction for the R and SR cards in the Lost in the Book with Stitch event, crediting the costume designs, scenario creation, background visuals, SSR Lilia, SSR Floyd, original card art and creation to her studio.

Stage in Playfulland character design, costume design, scenario creation, card art direction, background visuals and Opening/Ending art are also all credited to her studio.

(To answer the initial question: the only difference seems to be that Playfulland is credited entirely to her studio without Yana specifying how she was involved, whereas she took credit for the scenario writing in Glorious Masquerade, Spectral Soiree and Terror is Trending. While not the first time this has happened in the game (Yana also did not specify her role in the Tamashina Mina event, attributing costume design, background visuals, the Opening/Ending, the setting/card art direction and character design only to D-6th), this was the first time it’s happened with a Halloween event.)

Novel

Yana says she was in charge of the concept, the in-novel art, cover and fold-out art in the novels, while Hioki Jun (a Twst vignette/event scenario writer) created the novel scenarios. 

Comic

The artist and designer behind the 1st and 3rd comic arcs are both from Yana’s studio D-6th, doing background and card art for Twst (and work on Black Butler).

Yana says that her role is overall collaboration, character design and character creation (she says that in addition to creating the basis for Trey’s parents she also designed Riddle’s mother, including her face, but they ultimately left her in silhouette).

It is difficult to tell what Yana means by “overall collaboration," but she has shared a tweet about drawing the characters out herself for the actual artists to base their work on. (This might not apply to the artist of the Savanaclaw arc, who is not a member of D-6th)

[roachemoji]

A “Guide” to working with Artists with Aphantasia

DISCLAIMER: 

I KNOW ARTISTS WITHOUT APHANTASIA ALSO USE REFERENCES

This is not going to be applicable to ALL artists (with OR WITHOUT aphantasia)

I don’t speak for everyone!!!

PLEASE Read the information artists provide you THUROUGHLY

ASK ARTISTS WHAT KIND OF INFORMATION THEY NEED

I’m sorry about the typos I am dyslexic and no one is beta reading this :3c

HERE IS THE OG TWITTER POST

I made this guide out of frustration. I was having a hard time communicating with commissioners how much visual information I needed, and that giving me creative freedom doesn’t, personally, work for me. It all comes down to the why; Aphantasia. 

... I realized a lot of people don’t understand what that is, and how it might affect an artist. 

Note: I am a character artist!!! I do personal commissions!!!! I don’t do commercial work!! This guide is about things that I have found extremely helpful!! This may not work for everyone!!!!!!!!!!! 

So, here is the official written guide to what I, personally, have found helpful when getting commissions:

A healthy dose of both written and visual information is needed, but the percentage of which heavily depends on the type of commission and how familiar I am with the characters. 

- Is it an illustration of a scene between two character? Descriptive information on the scene, the emotions, general vibe, dialogue are more important to the composition - but visual references on each character (and their characteristics), the space, the palette, and any objects would be needed. 

- Is it a reference sheet commission? Descriptive information is no longer as important, and the main focus is on the visuals. Descriptive information would be limited to a brief description of personality, placement of certain markings, and/or the written information on the reference. Visuals would be EVERYTHING - every single aspect of that character would need a reference. 

Google Docs, Google Drives, PDFs, Character pages (Toyhou.se or Refsheet.net) is an easy way to compile both written and visual information in one place! 

What is some good visual information to compile for your characters? 

Physical

Age/Race/height/body type

Skin colour/ scars/ freckles/ skin conditions etc

Eye colour/shape

Nose shape

Hair colour/texture/style/decorations

Any additional details (prosthetics limbs/no limbs!/tattoos/piercings/wings)

Face Claims are extremely helpful - and it’s okay to have more than one!  It’s good to specify which parts of what reference are important to your character

Items

Clothing/Jewelry/Accessories

Weapons

Personal Items

Companions

Here is an example of how I organize my Pinterest boards for my own Ocs:

Appearance: Every single visual reference I would need for their physical appearance. Faceclaims, hair styles/texture/colours, facial hair, body types, hand shapes, nose shapes, lip shapes, eye shapes

Aesthetic: Helpful for illustrations. Palettes and aesthetics that I attribute to these characters. Art styles, symbols, colours, settings, etc...

Outfits: Outfits and accessories. Full outfits or single items, textures, colours, patterns.

NOTE: It’s important to remember that some artists can only work with certain references (ie. drawn references vs photo references). If you’re unsure/your artists hasn’t stated which works best for them - ask!  

I cannot work with drawn references in simplistic styles (anime specifically), and I struggle with using nothing but Final Fantasy screenshots. They’re important when it comes to providing colour or even outfit references - but facial features are much harder for me to translate.

Some artists are okay with things like piccrews and can translate them very well! I can’t.

What is some good visual information to compile for your characters?

Written information can vary from commission to commission; unless the illustration is based off a story, I don’t need a novel to be written about the piece. 

Being dyslexic also makes it a struggle for me to parse through written information - I tend to have to break it down outside of the initial commission submission to fully understand what. I also tend to ask a ton more questions when I’m provided more written information than visual - revisions take time and energy.

It’s important to have visual to accompany your written info; 

( shout out to @moki-dokie​ for letting me use their info as an example!! )

Commission information examples 

DESIGN COMMISSIONS:

Info given:

Outcome: 

Easiest character design commission I have ever done. The information given was so concise that the only revisions were my own suggestions on the design itself. 

---

Info Given:

Outcome:

a TON of written information was given to explain the characters backstory, to further drive my understand of the aesthetic and setting of the world the character lives in. The pinterest board provided had a lot physical references, outfits, aesthetics, and colours.

---

ILLUSTRATION COMMISSIONS:

Info Given:

Outcome:

I had a lot of previous information on both of these characters (I designed the top one myself), but I was provided limited written information for this; Holiday Discord call where Toad (character one) is getting a present from Zalem (character two). Zalem is barely hiding how they feel about Toad who is excited.

 All other information provided was visual; Outfits and room aesthetics. 

We discussed poses in Dms and collaboratively found references.

---

Info Given:

Outcome: 

Absolute favorite example of the PERFECT amount of information given and the PERFECT amount of creative freedom given. 

I was handed character references with all angles as well as their armor + how to simply the armor. Pose + expression references. A general aesthetic + palette to work with. The setting. A doodle to lay out exactly what they were visualizing. 

I have all the information you could need! Now what?

I am very privileged to no longer need to take first come first serve commissions, and it’s given me the ability to really sit back and filter through the commissions that I want to do, and those that I immediately do not consider. 

I think it’s important that,  before commissioning anyone, you should ask yourself a couple important questions:

Does this artist’s style suit what I want?

Does my character suit what this artist usually draws?

Do the references I have provide the right amount of information for the specific artist I want to commission?

Sometimes the answer to these questions are; No.

... and that’s okay?

Unfortunately, not every artist is going to be able to bring your vision to life, or feel happy with the completed piece! 

If you’re someone who has Big Buff Demon Men characters that are drawn in a heavily realistic style - you might not ask an artist who draws smaller, softer characters with squishier shapes and a general aesthetic that doesn’t match your Ocs! 

If you’re someone who has characters and all of their references are in an anime style (including other commissioned work), and you have no realistic face claims... maybe commissioning that semi-realistic artist and not providing them with the references the need to translate your character into a semi-realistic style isn’t a good idea? 

I don’t understand when some people get upset when they commission an artist who clearly doesn’t draw characters that look like theirs and they clearly... don’t translate them as well.  I am making this extremely clear RIGHT NOW before anyone says anything:  Everyone can and SHOULD learn to draw the entire spectrum of humanity. From facial features, hair textures, body types, etc...

But some artists struggle to draw characters with certain aesthetics? Outfits? Accessories? You wouldn’t expect an artist who draws soft pastel art to suddenly translate your extremely rough, hard, and hot character properly?

Now, if all the answers are Yes? 

Read all information provided thoroughly 

Ask questions for clarity

Provide what you can, collaborate on what you can’t

Resources

@anonbeadraws​ post: Reference sheet for your commission references!

JAMIErightmeow’s video: I have APHANTASIA

Aphantasia Dot Com

[mashioca]

OB boys and aphrodisiac influenced Fem!MC PT 1

|CW! NSFW, AFAB!Reader, drug use (?), not proofread, reader wears a skirt|

MINORS & AGELESS DNI

NSFW UNDER THE CUT

Lucifer, Mammon, Leviathan

—————————————————————

Author’s note: it’s been a bit! I’m sorry for the wait. If there’s any requests any of you want me to write go ahead and comment it :3

Lucifer

He is working on paperwork, as usual when he isn’t dealing with his brothers’ shenanigans. His office door is kept unlocked just in case his brothers do something that needed immediate action.

He takes notice of your figure stumbling into his office, and welcomes you. As you walk over to his desk the smell of lust fills his nostrils. He doesn’t let it show, but the smell alone gets to him.

You take a seat next to him. The smell of lust getting more intense by the minute. He crosses his legs in an attempt to hide his growing erection.

“What happens to be the matter, MC?” His voice was deep and cool. He let his hands venture up to play with your hair. He noticed your figure slightly shaking, and your breathes were heavier than usual.

“L-Luci.. I need you..” MC’s hands hooked onto Lucifer’s arms as she looked up at him. Her eyes were practically begging for him.

Lucifer’s eyes narrowed and a chuckle erupted from his throat. “MC, may I ask.. what happened?”

After giving a very short explanation of how you ate a pudding without reading its contents, he gave you a teasing look.

Without having time to process what was happening you were suddenly flipped on your tummy against the desk.

“Your so wet.. Makes me wonder what I should do with such a needy slut”

As usual, Mammon is playing pool by himself in his room. After all, he has to practice for his casino rush in a few days.

You walk in his room, and he doesn’t notice you. You decide to sneak on him from behind.

He jumps and lets out a quick yelp before looking back at you.

“A-Ah, hello, human! What dares you to surprise the GREAT Mammon? I shall request ten thousand Grimm in damages.”

“Mammon.. I-I can’t take this feeling any longer…” He immediately takes notice of your blushing and lidded eyes. The sight makes his pants feel tight around him

“I-I, the great Mammon.. Shall indulge in my human’s desires..” He immediately grabs you and throws you onto his bed. His hand ventures down to your soaked panties

“You’re so wet…”

He is in his room like usual. He is playing his visual novel games when a knock comes from his door. He takes a minute to save his game and close it.

When he finally opens the door, your gaze meets his. He welcomes you and let’s you in the room.

“So, What are you up to, MC? Are you hiding from Mammon LOL” he is practically beaming with light.

You put your hands against his chest, and rub your cheek against his body. He blushes and looks away in shame and embarrassment.

“Levi.. I want you..” He almost collapses when those words come out!

“M-Me?! I—How could someone like you want some loser shut-in like me—?” He can’t even look at you. This feels like a dream to him

“Please..” you lift your skirt to show him your need.

His demon form comes out of nowhere, and his tail attacks your pussy through the soaked fabric.

“D-Don’t tease me like this MC…”

[bluedeedeedoop]

My Thoughts on Tales of the Empire; mostly Barriss (spoilers ahead!)

Ah hello all, i have had some days or so to think since watching the show and to say it has completely wiped me of my life force would be... pretty accurate tbh. BUT I HAVE FINALLY DECIDED TO POST MY THOUGHTS. will this cover my entire though process that im sTill working through? PROBABLY NOT! my thoughts are very unorganized and very unstable! ANYWAAAAYS.

Now I just gotta say overall, the show itself definitely passed the test. To be completely honest, i wasn't really paying attention to the Morgan parts as i was the Barriss parts, since it was literally what I was looking forward to this entire time.

Though I will say that the first Morgan episode was pretty neat! it was crazy seeing that perspective of the Nightsisters again and god did they make Grievous fucking terrifying. Honestly, bravo to them, it was amazing. I diiiiid end up just.. kinda spacing out the rest of it tho unfortunately cuz i just wanted to see barriss..

Visuals 10000/10. stunning, amazing, phenomenal, gahdamn. the animation was so smooth and fluid and uGHH it was amazing throughout the entire show. Acting amazing as always. BUT GOD I CANT GET OVER HOW AMAZING THE ANIMATION WAS.

NOW.

In my opinion, they got her character pretty on the dot. I am SO glad they did. I was rlly rlly worried they were totally butcher her character and make her unrecognizable to all of us but oml they didn't completely disappoint us, she has her morals, SHES STILL A HEALER! Im so happy from that.

Now although i did enjoy it, i do have my own little complaints.

Now okay one i noticed since the trailer and has REALLY been bugging me; where are her hand tattoos??? idk i guess i just wasn't expecting them to just be gone?? they couldn't have just forgotten them.. right? I dunno, but unless someone has a genuine answer for that, imma just keep drawing them on her in the future.

??????

Alright another thing i've been seeing ppl post about is how come she looked so old at the end? I am also confused on that and i've seen multiple theories. She should only be like 30-35 max right?? Because i'm assuming the last episode took place a the time in Rebels where the inquisitors were after the force sensitive children, and Ahsoka was around that age a the time, so why is Barriss any different?

I suppose the one i think makes the most sense is the force healing? I guess it could take a toll on her over the years causing her to look more aged, but still, i'd really prefer an explanation. Also what happened to her hair coverings?? Is that not her culture?? I dunno, again, i really need an explanation. I suppose that maybe her perspective has changed since trying to come to terms with her new life, and her ditching the coverings is a way to free herself from her past? Honestly i have no clue but i just need a lot of things answered.

That's mostly my complaints on it! I just felt things weren't explained enough but to be fair, they only gave her like 3 15-ish min episodes?? I really think they got some explaining to do. Which brings me to my next points.

I'm like... 98% sure that the "old friend" is Ahsoka that she was talking about. Who else would it be?? Like cmon. And if it is Ahsoka, why did we not get to see anything about the moment of confrontation? or at least more of a mention? I guess they wouldn't rlly wanna rush that scene, and tbh, im glad they didn't. It's not some "we talk for 5 min and everything is fine" type of situation. it'll take time. time to rebuild that trust. time to discuss. YEAH. I've heard many people state how it would be more likely and realistic to see a novelization of that and i agree. I would want it to take time, showing the build of the relationship over time, going on further into the story as we watch their strong bond mend from the trauma it's faced. I'm not saying this as a crazed Barrissoka shipper, i mean it that I would genuinely want to see how that confrontation is handled, as do many others and not just as a ship!! It's been a decade! the fans wanna know!

And my last point.

I.believe.Barriss.is.alive.

The more i rewatch it, the more i believe it. the first time around i had my doubts, but something tells me they are NOT done with her character. At least before the stabbing scene anyway. There's too much stuff that's left unanswered for it to just end that way! I dunno man, but Lyn's "i'm going to get you out of here" sounded way too determined for a "im going to move your body out of here" type of thing yk? maybe she could sense she was still alive, just barely hanging in there? I don't think they are done with Barriss Offee, and I wont think so unless we see her corpse being fucking BURIED. Not to mention the UNGODLY amount of parallels of that scene along with them exiting the cave. I've already seen so many point it out. Post-Vader and Ahsoka fight on Malachor?? Back when we all thought Ahsoka may or may not be dead?? sounds familiar hello?? Also a parallel from earlier in the show itself when Barriss saves that unnamed jedi! she HEALS them when they were going to be left there. Something tells me the same fate may happen to Barriss. Idk call me crazy but i will say it again, i don't think they are done with her story.

Thank you for reading my very unorganized thoughts! this has taken me longer to write than expected because i did not predict this to make me have to step away from making SEVERAL times- but yeah! lmk what yall think! and yes you can be expecting some art here and there! i know i've been slacking- Also lmk if u want me to post my crazed Barrissoka thoughts! because aHa i have them. i have them a lot. send help.

ALSO KEVIN KINER I GOT MY EYE ON YOU. BRO NEEDS TO RELEASE THE SOUNDTRACK BEFORE I DIE.

[tangibletechnomancy]

How To Use AI To Fake A Scandal For Fun, Profit, and Clout

Or, I Just Saw People I Know To Be Reasonable Fall For A Fake "Ripoff" And Now I'm Going To Gently Demonstrate What Really Happened

So, we all know what people say about AI. It's just an automatic collage machine, it's stealing your data (as if the rest of the mainstream internet isn't - seriously, we should be using that knee-jerk disgust response to demand better internet privacy laws rather than try to beef up copyright so that compliance has to come at the beginning rather than the end of the process and you can be sued on suspicion of referencing, but I digress...), it can't create anything novel, some people go so far as to claim it's not even synthesizing anything, but just acting as a search engine and returning something run through a filter and "proving" it by "searching" for their own art and "finding" it.

And those are blatant lies.

The thing is, the reason AI is such a breakthrough - and the reason we memed with it so hard when DALL-E Mini and DALL-E 2 first dropped - is because it CAN create novel output. Because it CAN visualize the absurd ideas that no one has ever posted to the internet before. In fact, it would be a bigger breakthrough in computer science if we DID come up with an automatic collage machine - something that knows where to cut out a part of one image and paste it onto another, then smooth out the lighting and colors to make them fairly consistent, to make it look like what we would recognize as an image we're asking for? That would make the denoising algorithm on steroids that a diffusion model is look like child's play.

But, unlike the posts that claim that they're just acting as a collage maker at best and a search engine at worst, I'm not going to ask you to take my word for it (and stick a pin in this point, we'll come back to it later). I'm going to ask you to go to Simple Stable (or Craiyon, or the Karlo demo, if Google Colab feels too complicated for you - or if you like, do all of the above) and throw in a shitpost prompt or two. Ask for a velociraptor carousel pony ridden by a bunny. Ask for Godzilla fighting a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man. Ask for an oil painting of a capybara wearing an ornate princess gown. Shitpost with it like we did before these myths took hold.

Now take your favorite result(s) and reverse image search them. Did you get anything remotely similar to your generated image? Probably not!

So then, how did someone end up getting a near perfect recreation of their work? Was that just some kind of wacky, one-in-a-million coincidence?

Well - oh no, look at that, I asked it for a simplistic character drawing and it happened to me too, it just returned a drawing of mine that I never even uploaded, and it's the worst drawing I've done since the fifth grade even just to embarrass me! Oh no, what happened, did they change things right under my nose, has digital surveillance gotten even WORSE?? Look, see, here's the original on the left, compare it to the output on the right - scary!! They're training on the contents of your computer in real time now, aaaagh!!

Except, of course, for the fact that the entire paragraph above was a lie and I did this on purpose in a way no one could possibly recreate from a text prompt, even with a perfect description.

How?

See, some models have this nifty little function called img2img. It can be used for anything from guiding the composition of your final image with a roughly drawn layout, to turning a building into a dragon...to post-processing of a hand-drawn image, to blatantly fucking lying about how AI works.

I took 5 minutes out of my day to crudely draw a character. I uploaded the image to this post. I saved the post as a draft. I stuck the image URL in the init_image field in Simple Stable, cranked the init strength up to 0.8, cleared all text prompts, and ran it. It did exactly what I told it to and tried to lightly refine the image I gave it.

If you see someone claiming that an AI stole their image with this kind of "proof", and the image they're comparing is not ITSELF a parody of an extremely well-known piece such as the Mona Lisa, or just so extremely generic that the level of similarity could be a coincidence (you/your favorite artist do/es not own the rule of thirds or basic fantasy creatures, just to name one family of example I've seen), this is what happened.

So from here you must realize that it is deeply insidious that posts that make these claims usually imply or even outright state that you should NOT try to recreate this but instead just take their word for it, stressing ~DON'T FEED THE MACHINE~. It's always some claim about "ohhh, the more you use them, the more they learn, I made a SACRIFICE so you don't have to" - but txt2img functions can't use your interaction to learn jack shit. There's no new information in a text prompt for them TO learn. Most img2img models can't learn from your input either, for that matter! I still recommend being careful about corporate img2img toys - we know that Facebook, for instance, is happy to try and beef up facial recognition for the WORST possible reasons - but if you're worried about your privacy and data harvesting, any given txt2img model is one of the least worrying things on the internet today.

So do be careful with your privacy online, and PLEASE use your very understandable knee-jerk horror response to how much extremely personal content can be found in training databases as a call to DEMAND better privacy laws ("do not track" should not be just for show ffs) and compliance with security protocols in fields that deal with very private information (COMMON CRAWL DOESN'T GO FAR OUT OF ITS WAY, IT SHOULD NEVER HAVE BEEN ABLE TO GET ANY MEDICAL IMAGES THE PATIENTS DIDN'T SHARE THEMSELVES HOLY SHIT, SOME HOSPITAL WORKERS AND/OR MEDICAL COMMUNICATIONS DEVELOPERS BETTER BE GETTING FIRED AND/OR SUED) - but don't just believe a convenient and easy-to-disprove lie because it aligns with that feeling.

[theresattrpgforthat]

me and my frend has tried to hack KoB to make a dating sim ttrpg (becouse flirtig with our frends is why we do this) but its hard and I dont know if I will be abel to finish it.

I cant find a good game that woud work that isnt extremly explicit, do you have any tips.

THEME: Dating Sims

First of all, I did get both of your asks, and I'm going to be addressing them separately, even though they're connected. So never fear, I got both questions!

Hacking Kids on Bikes as a dating sim is a really interesting notion to me - it’s certainly not the first system I would choose for a game all about romance, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth giving it a shot! From what I understand about the game, it’s kind of meant to encourage the characters to play to their strengths, since your chances of success are rather swingy, and you’d rather be rolling your d20 skill to succeed over your d4 skill most of the time.

If you want to make the goal of the game to be finding a successful partner, I’m guessing that your characters would have to be playing to their strengths when it comes to looking for love - which means that every stat would have to be possible to use when you’re flirting. If I had a brawny character in this hack, I’d want to be able to woo by lifting things to impress them, while if I was an witty character, then I’d want to approach the situation by striking up a conversation about something that I’m an expert about.

If you want to make finding a date the end-goal of your game, then it might be an interesting endeavour to check out some games that focus on romance, and work your way back to Kids on Bikes with substantial additions, or perhaps using some core conceits but re-structuring how the game is run.

Hearts & Espionage, by samanthag168.

"Hearts & Espionage" is a tabletop RPG competitive multiplayer dating simulator set in a futuristic world where high-stakes espionage and technology collide, YOU are an elite agent navigating dangerous missions while attempting to secure a date for your final mission, the prestigious Grand Ball—an event shrouded in mystery and intrigue.

Academic rivals, enemies to lovers, fake dating, and more cliche tropes that you can use to describe your relationship with your love interest! Compete with other agents for love interests or compete to see who wins over their love interest. Sabotage your fellow agents to gain the upper hand and win more romance points! 

Hearts & Espionage feels like a cheesy spy drama or a romantic comedy in terms of tone, granting players romance points when they succeed on dates and/or missions. This is a one-page game, but if you wanted to flesh it out, you might be able to combine this with another game system - for example, if you’re running Kids on Bikes, maybe you have the goal of the players is to get a date by Prom night, and re-structuring each date/mission as a date/mystery instead. You can run each mystery as a standard Kids on Bikes game, but involve the characters’ romantic interests as central NPCs and wrap up each session with rolls to see which characters were the most successful at impressing their prospective dates. If you want a secret Russian spy agency as a threat for the kids to face, you can probably still make it work!

Routes of Love, by Flowergal34

Routes of Love is a TTRPG centered on the idea of playing through a visual novel from the perspective of the romantic routes.

The GM plays the Love Interest and narrator of a visual novel game, while the player characters play the “Routes” - the Love Interest’s potential soulmates, pining for the Love Interest’s affection. Players aim to gather Affection Points through having pleasant interactions with the Love Interest, and sharing special Moments with their prospective romance partner.

Routes of Love is inspired by anime tropes, so it probably fits best in a school setting. That being said, if you’re all playing teenagers in a romance situation, then you could likely modify the character features in order to make sense for a different genre; perhaps you want to re-style the tropes to fit a typical American high school, or perhaps you want to use horror tropes instead. As a group, you’ll collaboratively create three different locations that the Love Interest could potentially visit, and you’ll roll randomly to determine the kinds of meet-cutes that could lead to a future date. What is really interesting about this game is that the GM could be considered the typical “player” character, while everyone else is directing a piece of the game.

If you’re hacking this game with Kids on Bikes, then perhaps the goal is instead to become a beau that the central character wants to woo. Kids on Bikes has mechanics for making a powered character that the entire table has control over, with various aspects that each player will have control over. You could try doing the same thing with a central love interest, and have the players taking turns to embody those aspects when other characters are trying to have a romantic moment with them.

Monster Mash, by BoxDeer.

You and your friends are monsters seeking love and marriage before the end of the Monster Mash. But unfortunately, there are not enough eligible bachelors and bachelorettes to go around. So, in order to secure a matrimony with (hopefully) your soulmate, you must court, scheme, and scare better than your competitors.

There was a trend for a while where regency novels were re-written for film in the context of teenage drama in a high school. As a regency game, Monster Mash could likely be hacked to replace the regency flavours with high-school traits, and your social standing could be replaced with your reputation - considering everyone in a small town knows everyone, and dirty laundry is hard to hide. Each character in this game has to write down a dark secret that might be revealed throughout the course of play, and the game itself has the potential to be rather cutthroat, since the players will be competing with to find a suitable partner.

Making a dating game incorporate your reputation might re-structure it into something more akin to a survival game. Lose too much reputation, and you’re knocked out of the game - which makes sense for short-term games, or if you make the setback temporary. Either way, the route of play will feel a bit more hostile, with you fighting for a place in the ranking that makes you an eligible partner, just in time for a big dance or something similarly high-stakes. If you want a game where dating is the weapon by which you win or lose, you might want to check out Monster Mash.

Step Into My Coffin Babe, by Super Sardine Burial.

With a cohort of your immortal siblings, you have rented the Vlad mansion for a night. A night of debauchery, of elegance, of freely flowing blood… And perhaps more? You have until sunrise to overcome a formidable challenge: making an undead heart beat again. For you.

Generate a number of vampire crushes using card draws from a deck of cards, and move through 12 hours of dates in an attempt to find a vampire lover. If you play this as a multiplayer game, you can compete for a specific Crush’s affections, and you’ll have to come up with new date ideas of you want to increase your Crush’s Feelings.

This is a game that requires a bit of bookkeeping, as you’ll have to track the Vices and Feelings of each of the Crush characters as you play. This is also a game specifically tied to vampires dating, so you’d have to do a lot of hacking to make it about teenagers or other kinds of people dating each-other. That being said, there’s a lot of typical vampire tropes in here, so you’ll find a lot of gothic horror moments inside this game.

The series of dates and feelings trackers feel very reminiscent of a dating sim ttrpg, and if you wanted to incorporate elements of this kind of game into a system like Kids on Bikes, I’d consider the central core of the game experience being the slow discovery of your crush’s likes, fears, secrets, and vices. It would be a mystery game where the mystery is how your crush truly feels about you, and incorporating your discoveries into the dates that you ask them on. Step Into My Coffin makes your characters kind of awful, but maybe that makes sense if you’re tracking them down and watching them to figure out what they like.

[flanaganfilm]

Hey Mike! I'm really sorry to hear about your experience on Hill House. I do a lot of work in VFX in pre/prod/post and I know that sort of production that feels like a sinking ship day in and day out. I do hope you have found some catharsis now that it's over.

The show shook me. Changed me. Made me reckon with myself as a storyteller and as a person. All for the better, I assure you.

I hope to one day tell such an impactful story of my own, either through one of my short films, or through the novel series I'm writing/illustrating. Which brings me to my question: How do you navigate the complexities of having authored a work that did so much harm to yourself but also did a lot of good for others? What lessons do you hope aspiring storytellers like myself take from your difficult experience? Thanks :)

Thank you for saying this.

It's true, HILL HOUSE was a very negative experience to make - but I will always be profoundly proud of the finished product. It's some of my favorite work. I may never again face down something as challenging as episode 6, and I love the impact it has on a lot of its viewers.

There's a weird thing that happens when you finish a project - it really ceases to be yours in any way at all. It belongs immediately to the audience, and they're given an experience that you will never have. When HILL HOUSE came out, I didn't watch it - I'd seen it hundreds of times by that point, but at the same time, I've NEVER seen it.

Every frame of it is informed by my experience making it, or my intentions, or the compromises we made here, or the line we cut there that I wish we'd kept, or a bad day on set, or a problematic actor, or a visual effect we never quite got right (there are a LOT of those in HILL HOUSE, some of them still make me wince.) So I'm never able to WATCH the show. It's a tradeoff we make all the time - if you're lucky enough to make a movie, or a TV show, that's the price of it - you'll never be able to watch it.

But, I get to see how it affects other people. More than anything else I've made, HILL HOUSE seems to have the largest and most passionate fanbase. (BLY is a close second, though that's a whole other blog entry - I could write a book about the complicated, fascinating experience of the BLY fandom).

But with HILL HOUSE, I'd hear a lot from people who lost loved ones, who navigate complicated family dynamics, and who have wrestled with depression or grief. It means the world to me. It's a strange divide, as I'll never see the show that they saw - but I am so grateful that it touched them the way it did.

I'm just about at the point where I think I'm capable of sitting down and truly watching HILL HOUSE. It takes years sometimes. I've watched a lot of my early work, like HUSH or GERALD'S GAME, and finally had the experience of really SEEING it. But HILL HOUSE has always felt a little too raw, and my memories still overpower my ability to separate myself from it. Maybe that's changed. Maybe I'll give it a shot this year. Half a decade seems like enough time.

But yes, it is complicated and strange with all of them. I so badly want to watch MIDNIGHT MASS, the project that was the most personal to me - but it flew off into the world just like they all do. I spent a decade working on it, and felt it flowing through me every day - like it was a part of me. But the moment the show was done and released into the world, it wasn't mine anymore, just like all the others. I remember feeling almost knocked over when it departed, for some reason I thought that one would always feel like a part of me... but no. They're like children, they all have to go live their own lives, and they don't belong to you. Not really.

[magicbench]

~ Fuji:RE update ~

Hello hello everyone !

Woah it's been a while that I haven't wrote anything there, since I generally use tumblr rather than twitter for longer posts. So, yup…today is one of those days where I need to share a wall of text xD

As some of you surely already know, I attempted to dev Fujiwara:REmake with RPGmaker because of the aspect of walking around and the system of shop/items which was really appealing to me. This was two of the main reasons I switched from Ren'Py to RPGmaker and it was very fun and fullfilling at first as I learned a good amount of new things, but…unfortunately, the more I worked on it, the more I started to struggle and get frustrated with things that my current skills can't cover.

I thought of going on hiatus for the time I'd learn a bunch of advanced features to make the game visually more enjoyable, but I realized it would take an awfully long time to do so until I can present something decent and in sync with what I have in mind. I'm sure most of you don't want to wait who knows more time for this project to be released. So it's a bit reluctantly and disappointed that I decided to go back to Ren'Py, as I'm more familiar with it and that it would also means I'll work faster. I'm really sincerely sorry for all of you who were excited to play a RPGmaker version of Fujiwara (you'll still be able to interact with your surrounding though !), but I really need to go back on a more visual novel type of game for the sake of the project. I hope you'll understand and continue looking forward for Fuji:RE when it's finally completed !

Thank you again all for your support and your patience, you are the bests, always ✦✿

[mosaickiwi]

Hey! Just a heads up, english is not my first language, so sorry if something sounds off! But first let me just say your writing is so good and the way you write [REDACTED] gives me so many feels like i can't even :') About the request, i've been kinda up to the neck in work (college likes to bury us in group projects, reports, exams, surgery preparations and hospital shifts all at the same time because time? what is that? :'D ) so if it's okay, could i ask for some [REDACTED] comfort where +

mialuna4 asked: + Angel, who's been trying to compromise by working close to him, finally gets a bit to properly relax with them? Thank you, take care of yourself and I hope you have a wonderful week! (Hope its okay to send this in two parts)

Thank you! School + healthcare work is tough so I hope you've been taking care of yourself as well. <3

14 Days With You is an 18+ Yandere Visual Novel. MINORS DNI

~A Little Free Time~

“I can't believe I'm done,” you sighed with relief. Even though you’d started in the morning, the sun was already setting by now.

The last assignment you had was finally finished. At least for the moment, there was time to unwind. [REDACTED] was quick to take advantage of it. Your bed creaked as he got up. The moment you shut your laptop, he dragged your chair away from the desk.

You weren't sure what you expected, but you were grateful when his hands came to rest on either side of your temple. Cool fingers began to massage in small circles to soothe the headache you hadn't noticed until then.

“Feel better?” you heard him say after a few minutes of bliss. The ache faded as you let out a pleasurable hum in response. “Good.”

His touch disappeared and your seat was gently spun to face him. You reached out for them, taking the chance to stretch as best you could once you were finally standing and tangled up in their embrace.

God, you'd been sitting in that chair for hours. “I never wanna use my brain again,” you jokingly whined into his chest before looking up. “Sorry it took so long.”

“S’alright, Angel. I missed you.” Dark hair brushed against your cheek as he leaned down to press his lips to yours. You were surprised by the fervent, almost desperate kiss he gave that took your breath away.

“But you've been here with me the whole time?” you wondered out loud once they pulled back to let you breathe again. Your work had absorbed the majority of your focus, but you were certain you would’ve noticed if he left the room outside of the breaks he made sure you took.

He didn’t answer right away, though the yearning in his eyes spoke for itself as he scooped you up in his arms and settled down on the bed. Your boyfriend didn’t miss you so much as your attention.

It’d been an exhausting few weeks. You couldn’t remember the last time you really got to do anything but work or projects, especially with him. All you could manage was letting him sit in the room with you.

Now that he had you situated in his lap, [REDACTED] seemed much calmer. His arms crossed over your front as if you were a doll he wanted to cling to. You felt the warmth of their breath tickling along your neck as they took their time to kiss and nibble any spot they could find. “Fuck, I really missed you,” he repeated in an aching whisper that you weren’t meant to hear.

“I missed you too,” you laughed. “There’s still a little bit of light out. Wanna head somewhere?” You couldn’t really think of anywhere to go, but surely you’d find something to do at the pier. The shops always stayed open well past midnight there.

He only groaned and rested his forehead on your shoulder. “Yeah. Jus’ let me recharge.” From the way he spoke, anyone else would think he was the one who’d been busy. You knew he was just happy to have you back.

You reached up to lightly rub the top of his head, and you swore you heard him purring. “On second thought, let’s just stay here.”

“Whatever y’wanna do s’fine with me,” he muttered into your back. But the way he clung to you kept you right where you were.