#these two make me so happy. my break inbetween work and commissions

[sirazaroff]

Coco’s only big spoon

[writingquestionsanswered]

Heyy :]

I hope you're having an amazing day, because Im certainly in a dilemma for quite a while now. Do you have any tips on writing happy scenes? Not how to actually write them once they happen, but how to MAKE them happen.

When I first started my book, it was very lighthearted, but in the last years it became too dark & full of pain. It's not like I won't keep the sad scenes, it's just that it's not fun reading a book with very few lighthearted scenes inbetween a bunch of pain. It's just hard for me to come up with many nice scenes.

Thank you alot in advance! Your advice is very helpful and I hope it can help me once again :>

Have a nice day!

Incorporating Lightheartedness Into Sad Story

Grief and misery are exhausting enough in real life, most of us don't want to consume a story that offers nothing but grief and misery. That's why it's so important to incorporate a little happiness in your story wherever you can, in whatever way you can. There are a few different ways you can do this.

1) Create Hope - Even the most miserable moments can be more bearable if you can see "a light at the end of the tunnel," so it's important to give the characters something hopeful to strive toward, and to show periodic glimpses of that hopeful thing being in reach.

2) Embrace the Little Things - At the end of the day, we're simple creatures and the "little things"... the beauty and joy that can be found in the every day... are so often the fuel that give us life. The smell of a book, the taste of a ripe strawberry, watching children play, cool rainfall after a sweltering day, a crisp starry night, laughing with friends, seeing two people in love... find ways to incorporate little things like these into little happy moments to break up the monotony of grief and misery.

3) Find Beauty in the Surrounding World - This is an extension of the above, but it's more about the environment. The world around us can be so beautiful if we take a moment to see the beauty. It's the single yellow wild flower that blooms in the smoking ruins of a palace devastated by an evil wizard, the double rainbow that paints the sky after a massive thunderstorm, cricket and frog song mingling in the swamp in the dark hours after a battle, a sky riddled with stars after saying goodbye to a friend lost in combat.

4) Work in the "Everyday" - Even in the midst of a drawn out war between two kingdoms, there's downtime between battles, and during that downtime, "everyday" stuff has to happen. The horses need to be fed and watered, food needs to be prepared, weapons and armor need to be polished, wounds need to be mended, people need to bathe and go to the bathroom, tents and shelters need to be put up, cook fires need to be built... you get the idea. When you show your characters engaging in the business of everyday life in the midst of whatever turmoil they're experiencing, you bring the volume of the chaos down--for just a moment--so that your characters and reader can catch their breath. It's a reminder that life goes on, that no matter how bad it gets, the laundry still needs to be done and the plants still need to be watered. It can also serve as a reminder for the "status quo" the characters are physically and/or emotionally fighting for.

5) Weave in Some Humor - There's no better way to break the tension of a dark moment than to add a little well-timed levity. A witty comeback, a sarcastic comment, a joke, a little bit of slapstick... whatever works. This can be tricky if you don't feel like you're good at humor in real life, but watch some funny movies or some funny movie clips on YouTube and try to recreate that in some moment in your story. The Marvel Cinematic Universe is exceptionally good at this, in my opinion.

Have fun with your story!

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[llamagoddessofficial]

Thank you @eldritch-and-tired for commissioning this lil’ /Reader piece of @megalommi‘s Sans, Baggs. I will ALWAYS be a simp for this sexyman. Enjoy!!

Tw: injections, unwilling hypnosis/mind control

...

You giggled.

The light was so pretty. Swirling, undulating, cyan and magenta warping and shifting in and out of one another in an endless hypnotising rhythm. It made you think of a funfair... spirals everywhere, from the tops of the stalls to the decorations on the rides, to the signs leading you around to those huge lollipops that tasted tooth-meltingly sweet. Happy memories, carefree, far away and non-solid but still wonderful. What were you doing? You couldn’t remember anything. You liked blue and purple, they were everywhere, all around you, such pretty colours. 

Pretty, pretty...

“... there we go. easy now.”

... You didn’t realise he was even there until he (somewhat cautiously?) spoke. Your senses were just colours. The voice was odd and a bit disembodied at first but slowly, slowly, you became aware of its source- a face hovering just over you. The awareness spread to your body, too... you were bent at an odd angle with your feet just barely lifted off the floor, your back flat on a rather uncomfortable table, gravity pulling your hair and cheeks. And he... he was just a few inches over you, pinning you by one of your wrists.

...

A tight and tense, cutting smile, clear signs of stress around his face and shoulders making it obvious that this was the smile of a man on the edge and not one of any particular joy. Deep sockets, so wide they looked borderline painful, glaring down at you with so much intensity...

... You could feel his body heat. And his breath against your face. Your heartbeat, your slightly itchy nose, how tight he was holding your wrist.

“... Mh... Huh?” You said, ever-so articulately, vision spinning in the same direction as the swirls emanating from his left socket. A similar way to how the world rocked when you were dizzy... except for you, it never righted itself. It just kept spinning and spinning and spinning. Everything was so bright, as you fell under a pleasant fuzzy sensation burrowed into your chest and mind, blanketing your thoughts as if you were just in the middle of a nice dream where nothing much mattered.

“shh...” 

When he gently closed his gloved fingers around something you had gripped in your pinned hand, you put up no fuss, loosening your hold and allowing him to take it... when did you pick up a scalpel? What an odd thing to have. The back of your head hurt and your knuckles felt the telltale aches of having been tense a few moments ago, even though they were now just an unwound coil like the rest of you.

... Dr. Baggs let out a long slow, breath. You could feel it against your nose and neck, he was that close... his mouth open barely a crack, the magenta hue of his tongue glinting against his fangs. 

“... alright.” He said, voice silky, gentle on your thrumming ears and head, sockets easing around the edges as he calmed down. The bluish shadows of sleep deprivation under them became more apparent as the tension in the room, face and posture waned. “that’s better.”

... Yeah. You thought, relaxed and calm. It is.

... He gave you the bare minimum of personal space, leaning back and helping you to sit, lifting you with the perfect combination of gentle but firm as if he knew you’d immediately feel so dizzy when you became upright. Your hands moved up and held onto his shoulders to steady yourself- the fabric of his lab coat was surprisingly soft, it was very nice to touch. 

... He was so close. Supportive but strict hands on your elbows, your knees on either side of him, he smelled like... the artificial flavouring they added candy that just wasn’t quite natural. And a specific, scented brand of antiseptic; clean and sterile and prepared.

“... well.” He hummed, reaching out of sight for something with one hand. Your forehead would bump his collarbone if you leant forward any more. His voice was so soothing and calming, especially since you were only a few inches from his clavicle... you were getting pretty close to shutting your eyes at this point, but a prick in your arm kept you from completely nodding off- you barely noticed it, too busy studying the aesthetically pleasing purple trim to his coat and enjoying the funny fuzzy sensation in your chest and temples. Oh, he suddenly had a full syringe in his hand that he was putting a cap on... where did he get that? 

“i knew from the start you’d be uncooperative, but... not that kind of uncooperative.”

He held something up to your face. You opened your mouth, (wait, why am I opening my mouth...) and he quickly placed it on your tongue. You swallowed, again, without knowing why... it was like your body was following a list of instructions that you couldn’t see or hear. Someone else had taken the wheel; tugging the right strings to make the right parts of you move when they were needed. 

... You didn’t think about it much. No panic, no confusion, no considering the implications. The thoughts were disconnected... just ships in the night, sailing by your muffled brain. All you could really think about was how whatever he’d given you was very strange and bitter and ew, you cringed, an odd acrid taste lingering in the back of your throat.

... Another prick in your arm. That’s weird, he keeps pricking me. Oh well. This time, you looked just in time to see him removing a now-empty syringe; he wiped where he’d poked your forearm with something very cold, then placed a little circular red band-aid over it.

...

There were six other band-aids on that forearm. Two green, three navy, one black... and now the red one.

Hm... I feel like I should be alarmed by that...

Again, all you could think about was how nice you felt right now. Dizzy, warm, safe. Like you’d had a little too much to drink, but now you were laying out in the sun with your friends... I miss the sun...

“most of my ‘patients’ are at least... consistent.” Baggs hummed, continuining to hold you carefully by the elbows, predicting your post-jab swaying. He didn’t seem to realise he was talking aloud, just a scientist observing his experiment, and you weren’t really paying enough attention to what he was actually saying- too many words to process, boooring. “uncooperative awake, uncooperative under. you’re always displaying aggression toward me... and yet as soon as you have no control, there’s an obediency so immediate it’s borderline subconscious. rather fascinating.”

Instead, you...

“... Sexy voice.”

...

...

“... what?” 

Apparently, that was enough to finally break him out of his thoughts. You glanced up at Baggs’ face, still only a few inches away, you kept forgetting where things were around you... the cushion around your soul never wavered but for a moment there was a little blip in the swirls. A slight interruption.

“Mmmhm.”

...

... His expression sort of... well, ‘melted’ was the wrong word. It was more akin to the sun peeking out from between two clouds. The detached, observational, scientific air to him thinned and began to evaporate... revealing something a little more warm.

The razor and unfriendly edges of his smile were rounding into something organic. Perhaps even, daresay, resembling forward. 

“my.” He purred. “how forward of you.”

“S’very nice. Very smooth...” Your tongue felt... eh. And your arm, where he’d poked you, was starting to itch. “And you have a nice face too... handsome man. I think so.”

...

His smile started growing even more, and he leaned back an inch or two as if to look at all of you and make sure you were really the same person he’d brought into this examination room less than an hour ago. “... oh really?”

“Yeah...” ... Your hands had been just holding onto his coat... but, spurred on by your sudden drunken confidence, you properly looped them around his neck.

... He blinked, but he only let himself appear taken aback for a moment or two. Despite how ominously his magenta eyelights glowed in his dark, shadowed sockets... you could tell he was enjoying himself, and this sudden turn of events. “i’m flattered.”

You laid your head on his chest. It was getting kinda hard to stay upright. 

... Your nose scrunched.

“Funky smell, though.”

That was enough to get an actual laugh out of him- albeit shortlived, his skull cocking like a curious mirthful bird. “are you... genuinely telling me that i smell, darling?”

“Yeah. Because it’s true. You’re gremlin.”

 “i’m... gremlin?”

“Mhm.”

“stars. i wish i could tell pap about this.”

Your body shifted, enough to make you lightly squeak- things were spinning so much that it took you a minute to realise Baggs had picked you up, an arm hooked under your legs and another around your back.

“you’re all done for the day, pet.” His eyelights had become a thrumming, almost amethyst colour as he looked at you, a far gentler shade of purple than his previous headache-inducing magenta. You weren’t sure what’d caused that but you weren’t complaining. You weren’t sure what’d caused him to carry you either, considering he usually just brought someone to collect his ‘patients’ for him... but, again, not complaining. “it’s time to get back to your room.”

“I feel funny.” You mumbled.

“that’s normal.”

He started walking. The halls all looked the same, as he moved through them, blending into one another... white and sterile, a few doors dotted inbetween if you were lucky but mostly just the exact same tiles and patterns and lack of anything that would clue you into the fact that people had actually (at some point) existed in this area. 

“Hm... is this where you work...?”

A little chuckle. He was sounding further and further away. “yes. this is my job, dear.”

“It’s so g... ug-ly.”

“oh? you think so?” Baggs’ tone had become... light? Perhaps a little teasing. 

“Jus... put up some nice posters, or something.” Your head was so heavy. Since when was it this heavy? You had to rest it against his chest, feeling that nice fabric against your cheek, hearing an equally nice humming sound from inside his ribcage. “Paint the walls. It’s so... white. Clini... ...clinicic... Calic...” 

“clinical?”

“... Yeah.Tthat.”

A gloved phalange touched your arm. It was probably an attempt at a comforting gesture- stroking the skin. “good to know. i’ll make sure to pass that eloquent advice along to the decorating team.”

“Good.”

He brought you to a cell-like room. It was... vaguely familiar? A bed with one pillow, thin white sheets... some strange posters and a window with bars over it. You felt like you’d spent a long time in there, but it was impossible to think straight enough to actually muster up any memories.

Baggs laid you down on the bed, slowly, handling you like you’d fall apart at any moment. You made a little noise- it wasn’t a very soft bed... but it was good enough. And your body felt so strange and tired that any soft surface honestly was nice enough to lay down on forever.

“comfy?” He asked. Since when did he inquire if you were comfy?

“M... no. S’whatever.”

...

You peeked at him, crouched by your bed... and you reached out, pressing your inexplicably heavy finger against the top of his nasal cavity in a booping motion. You mumbled a little victorious “Silly skeleton.” 

...

He took your hand in his gloved one, gently, before it could go limp and flop down. You couldn’t really make out his expression at this point.

“don’t tell the other subjects...” He murmured... he sounded amused, at least. “but i think you’ve become my favourite.”

“Course.” You shut your eyes. “I’m... m’amazing.”

“... yes. course.” 

A feeling, like a kiss on your hand, before he placed it by your side.

“... go to sleep.”

...

And just like that, your body obeyed him before your head could even process what he’d said, and you were asleep.

[nighttimepixels]

Heyhey Night! I have a buncha questions after seeing all your animations and they're just so cool so! I hope this is ok!! Can u animate normally too, or only pixel? Not that that's bad, just wondering! What's ur preferred kinda animation? Do u prefer lipflaps or lipsyncs? What's the hardest part of the animation process?? What's ur favorite?? Any part u don't like? What's a thing people don't see that u put a lotta time into? Do u have a fave animation u've done? Thank u btw for all ur art!!

Oh stars, okay, yeah- I’m happy to answer all these!! I’ll break them up so it’s easier to read X) And awww geez thank you so much for your support, sweet anon! It really makes my day when people say they like anything I’ve made, and stars knows it’s all the more true with the sweet sweet time sink that is animation   (´•̥̥̥\\ヮ\\•̥̥̥` )

I’ll also put this under a cut since it gets a bit long :)

Can u animate normally too, or only pixel?

This one cracks me up a little, don’t worry about it XD I totally can! In fact I enjoy it a lot - and... gods, animation software is a nightmare and a half, to be honest. That’s the biggest hurdle.

I do just straight up love pixel art and the aesthetic I can achieve with it, but I do at times miss ‘normal’ (non pixel?) animation, heh. Especially sound-syncing! I do all my pixel art in Asesprite which imo is the best pixel art program, not to mention made by an actual pixel artist - buuuut it doesn’t have a sound file option. Which makes sense! Er, frankly, most pixel artists wouldn’t... use it to animate like I do? More for games, or for looping gifs? So I can’t complain much, it makes a lot of sense that it’s a low dev priority.

Now, when it comes to other animation programs... I’ve tried a lot. Unfortunately, the ones that are preferable for the feel I like are either way out of budget (stares at TVPaint in the distance) or... well, have too high a learning curve for my single-person workflow, really. (OpenToonz, sigh...) And a lot of the free programs are good for getting a start in animation, but once you get to a certain point you really feel the limitations (whether it’s workflow, sound import, exports, trying to make something more finished than a rough...).

Then... there’s animation programs I just don’t like, and a lot of those are angled towards bone-style animations (nothing wrong with those, they just don’t fit my style? and are too much time investment for a single artist to output more quickly...), or are, well, freakin’ Adobe Animate.

I... gods, I do not like Animate (formerly Flash). And I made a whole 2 minute+ animation in it a couple years ago! (It’s very rough and bad and doesn’t make sense, pfff, not gonna link it XD) It’s... clunky, and vector oriented, and freaking lines don’t go where I want them too, and it tries to predict too much?? It’s hard to put to words, gah. For me, my animation style would be much more... raster oriented. Flow, hand drawn inbetweens, yaddayadda. Animate’s great for... plenty of things, but not for that kind of animation. There are far better animators than I who make it work with freakin’ aplomb though! So really, it’s just my taste, haha.

.... Er, that got long! I’ll cut off more rambling about animation software and tl;dr boil it down to “I love animating period, but turnaround is something I have to keep in mind as a freelancer, as well as budget, and my current focus is pixel animations for a number of reasons.” X)

What's ur preferred kinda animation?

I’m not exactly sure what this one means! Between pixel and non-pixel? Er, they both have their pros and cons, so I couldn’t say! But if I have to break down my current animations into categories, I’d say I have cutscenes, loop environments, and the broad game-like animations...

The first would be something like this animation feat. teasing Edge, the second would be something like this one with skesgo’s Starlan and Cinnamon, and the third is... everything else! From headsprite loops to ‘small’ characters running and so on.

Honestly, they’re all a lot of fun for different reasons! Cutscenes are generally the most challenging, but they give me the chance to push my limits and try and pull off something cool, whether I’m having to conserve frames (to keep the cost of a commission down) or whether I’m going more all out (which is a pricey commission, or a fun personal project, lol).

Loop environments are their own challenge - it may not look like it, but I put a lot of thought into how to make them look as natural as possible! From timing of talking characters, to where to place a blink, to exactly how many frames it’ll take to ‘soften’ a motion (so people aren’t just snapping between major poses) and so on - it takes... a lot of time to animate even simple scenes well, so I do a lot of mental math on how I can keep things affordable when someone approaches me for a commission. And frankly, I totally undercharge;; but I do my best!

Game-like animations are just fun. They range, they’re silly, to intense (I’ve animated fight animations before for game concepts), to indulgent, and beyond! Headsprites are always a delight, especially if I get to push the expression X) and I love tiny things (I mean... I am a pixel artist...) so getting to make lil tiny babs even just walking can be fun - and also, a lot more time consuming than you might thing, esp if you wanna make it smooth, like this lil Frisk I did last month or so:

Do u prefer lipflaps or lipsyncs?

oTL

B... both??

Okay, lipsyncing basically is very time consuming. AND, I freakin’ love it. I love puzzles, and when it boils down to it, that’s what super fun & expressive lip syncing is (some Ghibli animations are the heckin’ best for this)...

and, I’m a pixel artist, without sound-syncing capabilities in her main art program oTL Yeah, I can export frames and line them up and check but... gods, it’s so time consuming. I’ve tried it out of desperation - but for even five seconds of sound (sayyyyy a lil Vine...) that’s hours upon hours of transferring back and forth just to check.

So even though I love lipsyncs, they’re too time-consuming (and ergo, if I’m being commissioned, often too expensive) to do often! Someday I’d like to get back to doing them more often, but for now, practically I stick to/’prefer’, in the loosest terms, to do lipflaps. For the layman, this is that ‘two frame’ (maybe three) open-closed style of animating mouths- however, I’m working on ways to keep that style, but make it more expressive! It depends on the project - and in commissions, I’ll pretty much always prioritize giving the client a little more body animation than mouth animation, unless it’d really fit what they’ve requested.

What's the hardest part of the animation process??

.... damn, this is a tough one! Sometimes I’d say it’s the initial concept work - but it depends on what I have to work with. Sometimes that parts a breeze - and honestly freeing, bc I can take the time to try and push what I’ll do with it!

Roughing is one of my favorite parts, tbh. It can be tricky, sure, but getting to go from keyframes to in-betweens & smears to adding the flairs of secondary motion (think hair swishing, or coats flaring, etc) is so exciting and satisfying.

From there it’s all refining, and tweaking...

Hm. Honestly, the hardest is probably the initial cleanup and lining. It’s cool to see it come together, but it feels so much slower, and it can drag - and then you find bits that actually don’t translate well from the rough stage, so you have to go back and rework, and oof it can just drag in this phase, heh. Plus, I’m always tempted to add more frames, but it’s not always realistic - I’m a perfectionist, to say the least, so I’m constantly having to leash myself back so I don’t turn a project into a half-a-year undertaking, pff.

What's ur favorite??

Probably gave myself away talking about the roughing stage X) It’s just loose and fun and free! But seeing it all come together is also damn satisfying too, so that’s not to say I don’t like the refining portions either...

Outside of that, I also really like the beginning of the color stage! .... Before having to translate shadows/highlights to each and every frame *shudders*. That gets tedious, but it’s so critical! Anyways, though, I heckin’ love colors. I always have a rough palette in mind at the start of the process, but I go ham and play with it as a little break and a true test when I get to actual slap together a full frame with full color, highlights/shadows included! It’s exciting, like a preview of the finished product, basically :D

Any part u don't like?

Heh, by the time I get to shadows/highlights, I tend to be getting impatient, I suppose. It’s not that I don’t like it - I definitely highly value it, and if it was the only thing I was working on in an animation that’d be different, but as a one-woman team I’m just raring to be done at that point; it’s very nearly the last thing I do, after all, so it’s a struggle to focus. X)

I suppose one that always gets me is more complicated backgrounds. It’s a work in progress, as I’m getting better and finding the fun in them for sure! But I’m still not where I want to be in translating ‘background concept’ to ‘finished background’ - it feels more stiff than my animations, I guess. So it’s a frustrating part... but hey, it’s part of it! And learning to embrace the challenge is a big help.

... I just always have to make sure I have a big cup of coffee and a good jam playlist going when I sit down to do ‘em, in the meantime.(=▿= ||||)

What's a thing people don't see that u put a lotta time into?

Definitely the coloring. This goes for both backgrounds and the animated characters themselves. It’s... never as simple as it looks? It’s time consuming, and while some parts of frames can be copy-pasted, I also put subtle work into the animations that mean that some pixels are off so it ends up being marginally faster to just recolor, but then there’s shadows, and working in pixels means that if I miss one then there’s a flickering pixel mid-animation, and sometimes there’s an unconnected line and then you bucket fill the whole damn thing, and gods know I’ve got colored lines so I have to be exacting with keeping the same ratios highlighted vs darker in shifting frames...

*deep breath*

... Yeah, basically the coloring is super time consuming. And balancing bg coloring with animated elements in the image itself is a whole extra challenge on top of that. For 99% of my animations, I can damn near guarantee I’ve spent at least twice as much time coloring it as I have animating it.

Do u have a fave animation u've done?

*looks at my goblin hoard of animations in horror like I’ve been asked to choose a favorite child*

... Stars above, I can’t choose! I love them all, and at this point a good portion of them are commissions- it wouldn’t feel right to choose!

*...carefully covers the hoard’s metaphorical ears*

... also, that said, I can admit a soft spot for any of them that involve humor. I tend to get to do extremely expressive faces and action there, even if I have to ration the frames, so it turns out really fun X)

And though rough and I’ve definitely done stuff I’m more proud of, I still crack up at this one I did a while back of the nonsense ‘ass’ joke between Red & Stretch... their faces were too much fun XD I’ve gotten waybetter since then though, Big Oof, I see so many things I can fix; might go back and redo it someday.

Honestly, though, I just freakin’ love animating! They all have their ups and downs andI always put a lot of love into them and find a way to have fun with it and try to push any emotion/theme (when applicable). I like to think it shows, but idk, that’s something I have to leave up to you guys X)