#this also is not in the teal mask map

[camping-with-monsters]

🔥SET FIRE TO THE SKY🔥

I think this is the best scarlet and violet photo ever taken I think I win the contest

[greenroze2]

your rendering is so good how do you do it

Thanks, I love your rendering too!! Gonna try and make a tutorial ^^

To start off, I'm on Clip Studio Paint and these are the brushes I use! First two for rendering characters (round brushes) and the other two for mostly backgrounds (square brushes)

I used to do lineart, but it takes too long >:( now I just make a sketch and sorta clean it up!

Next I fill it in with a gray color. For simpler pieces I just put in the flat colors, but for more paint-y pieces I do grayscale -> color! I'll be doing that here :)

Also, I make 3 clipped layers on top of the gray - two are multiply, and the top one is screen. On the first multiply, I do a soft gradient using an airbrush

On the next multiply layer, I fill everything in with either a cool-ish or warm-ish gray, depending on the mood ^^

I also determine a light source, and use the lasso tool on the screen layer to block out where (I think) the light hits! Tbh I just do wherever feels right lmao, but I recommend having a reference! I like doing it in triangle patterns

Then adjust the opacity of each layer to whatever feels right, and merge everything (I don't merge the sketch/lineart yet, I do it before adding colors in!)

Now... rendering. Some tips I have are color pick (greys) off of the canvas and use them to paint! Clean up the sketch more, erase edges, but I save details (like Galaxia's red gem, his eyes, etc.) for the end, or during coloring.

After I'm sorta happy with it, I merge the sketch layer, then duplicate it, and add a gradient map! I did this sunset-y one but changed the hue to yellow-ish, then lowered the layer's opacity ^^

Play around with the hue-saturation-luminosity setting!

Now go crazy with blending modes! Multiply, overlay, color, glow/color dodge, etc. Feel free to layer them up on top of each other too, and this is to add the character/piece's actual colors in. For example, I used a white-blueish overlay layer for his mask and glove, blue for his cape, blah blah

Now I clean the sketch up/refine it more. Also, to "harmonize" the color palette, you can add a colored gradient on top. Then set it to multiply, and add overlay/glow dodge layers with any colors you see fit! I like using teal and light/warm orange! Here is an example of a colored gradient:

Another tip is to add saturated colors on the edges of both lighting and darker shadows, before blending it:

Also I usually add in a light blue/grey in shadowy areas, and lower the opacity for reflective light:

Also! You can lasso + use an airbush with a light blue to block out parts of the background (his cape here, for example). It helps with more depth!

Finally, I like adding sparkles on low opacity :3 And gaussian blur to certain areas! I'm using radial blur on this piece though ^^

For the background, I like doing blocky shapes!! I use my square brush on 90% ish opacity, to color pick different hues from the piece. For lighting I use a glow dodge layer, here's a mini timelapse as well as the finished art!

At the very end, play around with the hue/saturation and contrast tools to change the colors :)

[neo-trinity]

gif tutorial

@bakedbakermom requested a tutorial on how i made the gifs in this set, so i've put together a little walkthrough of the process for this gif under the cut!

(disclaimer: this tutorial assumes that you already have basic photoshop/giffing knowledge - i.e. how to make and colour gifs using correction layers, how to use things like layer masks, etc. if you don't, i recommend these tutorials, they're very comprehensive)

alright! so as stated before, i'm not going to go in-depth here on the basics of gifmaking. for this one in particular, i blended three gifs, but we'll get into the third one later.

(i should also mention that blending gifs as i did here is usually easier if you have scenes with shadowed/dark areas like the ones above, so to keep that in mind when picking your scenes! i also find it easier to use scenes where there isn't a whole ton of movement going on- again, not a requirement but it's easier to plan and position gifs if the characters aren't moving across the whole canvas)

first, i started by making the base gifs of mulder and scully in "paper hearts". both are cropped to 540x540 px, and the same length (around 50 frames). i did some standard sharpening, brightening, and adding contrast (my usual process is curves, a b/w gradient map set to "soft light" at around 20% opacity, and messing with the levels a bit) before using selective colour and hue/saturation layers to highlight the teal and peach colours in the gif. sometimes this is enough colouring on its own, depending on the gif and the look you're going for, but in my case i wanted to add more.

so, on top of my colouring, i used a combination of layers set to "colour" and "hard light" to paint over the background of my gifs in teal and peach. on mulder's gif i also used a gradient fill layer in the two colours set to "colour" and used a layer mask to erase anywhere i didn't want the colour to be. the opacity levels for all of these layers again just depends on how vibrant you want your colours, i just mess with that on a gif-to-gif basis.

so we have our two gifs, cropped and coloured to fit the palette we want. next, i converted each coloured gif into a smart object, by selecting all my layers, right clicking, and hitting "convert to smart object."

once that's done, you should be able to click and drag one of the gifs onto the other gif's canvas, so that it's sitting on top. then change the blending mode of the top gif- most people use lighten or screen, this again depends on the look you want and the gifs you're using. for this one, i used screen. it'll probably look something like this:

at this point you can move your gifs around and position them as you like. for mine, i just moved scully a little off to the right, as you can see. in order to get rid of the part that's covering mulder's face, i added a layer mask to the scully gif and used a large, soft brush set to black to erase it.

(another note: i didn't need to do it here, but if you want to move/erase parts of your bottom gif, add a layer of solid black underneath both gifs.)

usually i would stop blending here, but for this set i decided to add a third gif, so i made and coloured the gif of mulder and scully holding hands, using the same methods as the first two. this one was cropped to 540x405 px to make it fit better on the canvas, since i knew i only wanted it to cover the bottom part.

i converted it to a smart object and dragged it onto the same canvas as the other two gifs. this time i used "lighten" as my blending mode, positioned it in the bottom right corner, and again used a layer mask to brush away the parts i didn't want.

on top of all three gifs, i then used layers set to "normal" and "hard light" to brush some extra colour onto the gif. this part i also just play around with on a gif-to-gif basis, but for this set i mostly used a combo of colour, hard light, and normal layers at varying opacities until i got the look i was going for. i generally just like to use big soft brushes to add colour around the edges, as i did here.

now, i have a bunch of texture/grain pngs saved on my laptop that i like to add to gifs for some extra flair, so i opened one of those and cropped it down to 540x540px. i then added a gradient map to give it that peach colour. (any textured png/jpg should work fine for this, as long as you have your gradient map set to black and white/your accent colour)

like i did with my gifs, i converted the texture + gradient map to a smart object and dragged it onto the shared canvas. i set the blending mode to "screen", with the opacity at 70%. i like to put these textures underneath the extra colouring i've done on the gif, as seen here. i don't always do this, but i feel like it sometimes helps the texture blend into the finished gif. you can also use a layer mask if needed to erase any unwanted parts of the texture.

now for the text!

for these gifs i used the font "IM FELL DW Pica" in both regular and italic, in black, at 16px. i didn't do anything fancy with the text itself besides adding a drop shadow in the blending options (right click on the text layer and hit "blending options).

then, underneath the text layer (i was working one word at a time) i used the rectangle tool to draw a small rectangle around the text- i wasn't too picky about the size or evenness since i was going for a collaged look. i set the colour of the rectangle to a light cream colour, and added a drop shadow in the blending options.

then i just selected both the text and rectangle and duplicated them using ctrl+j, changing the text for each word and adjusting the size of the rectangles as needed. once i had all of the words on my canvas, i just moved them around until i found a positioning i liked. again, since i was going for a purposefully scrapbooked look, i didn't overthink this part.

i exported my gif the way i usually do, with these settings:

and that's it! i used pretty much the same process for all the gifs in this set, give or take. hopefully this little walkthrough made sense, but i know i'm not always the best at explaining my process, so if anything needs clarifying feel free to shoot me an ask or dm!

[daily-wof-designs]

Design Process - Guidebook

Sawgrass - pretty standard mudwing design. i gave him embedded emeralds and a tail band to signify him as royal

Egret- trying to incorporate pale mudwing designs. i gave her orange to represent the "beak" of an egret.

Anhinga - I gave her both orange and pale markings to tie her to egret's design

Bayou - pale blue teardrop gems because shes a nervous wreck :heart:

Copperhead - i gave him copperhead snake patterning and blue flowers from his rainwing bf

Possum - i tried to invoke possum patterns in his design. did it work? eh

Olive - standard green mudwing but the red represents how sometimes olives are stuffed with red peppers. i have never eaten an olive in my life

Coypu - have you guys SEEN coypus. they have orange teeths

Moccasin - i assume tui meant moccasin as in the snake and not the. shoe? so i designed her after the snake

Taupe - i designed her after taupe (animal) but also a little bit of taupe (color)

Warthog - pig boy

Wisemind - ew. gross

Python - python patterning. i kind of made her similar to anaconda's design

Jacaranda - PURBLE. i love her design. in my hc ancient rainwing queens had skeleton markings. shes so silly i love her :heart:

Comet - I gave him the markings i usually give prophets but blacked out instead

mindhealer - purble^2

Bonecruncher/Greentalon - the wiki lists them as 'bonecruncher' but they wanted to be called greentalon so that felt mean : (. potted plant bc gardener

Beryl - pink skywings i love you

Jasper - im really proud of the lighter stripes he has. like a jasper

Tailwind - blacksmithing skywing. so cool. basically a desaturated canyon design

Canyon - i gave him p similar colors to tourmaline just to add onto that extra layer of hate scarlet had towards her daughter. gaudy.

Firestorm - Basically my scarlet design with a slight orange gradient. Scarlet was the only daughter she ever liked so it makes sense theyd be similar

Snapper - red snapper

Cardinal - baby boy :heart:

Igloo - brick pattern bc igloo

Snowstorm (Father) - white snowy pattern bc snowstorm

Snowstorm (Brother) - the cloak i gave him signifys he works at one of the temples mentioned in this section

Caribou (Bard) - standard icewing with caribou horns. and brown eyes bc i couldnt resist

Caribou (Mother) - same cloak as brother snowstorm. teal icewing. brown eyes.

Caribou (Sister) - similar design to her father, just with caribou horns. and brown eyes

Caribou (Grandmother) - green icewing real...

Caribou (Daughter) - babey... i made her slightly more purple than the bard

Caribou (Friend) - orange icewing omg....

Caribou (Princess) - one of my fav designs ever. brown icewing. im love her. her horns are so big.

Snowstorm (Advisor) - at first i wasnt sure about the dark blue but i think i dig it

Monarch I - I made those gradient face masks indicative of silkwing royalty, plus the frilly antennae and the massive wings and silk glands on ankles. eye wings bc thats p common in moths

Monarch II - sun lady : ]

Diadem - literally my monarch design but blue

Cicada - my lady cicada design but more pink

Tawny - technically they never say her tribe but considering this is before the hivewings split off i can assume shes a beetlewing. lightning pattern on her elytra bc shes mentioned during a lightning storm.

Magnolia - white and pink frill like magnolia flowers. lichtenburg scar on her face and neck

Tortoiseshell - similar to my tortoiseshell i design but with more hivewing features. map holder and aviation goggles bc clearsight said shes good at aerial mapping

Zelkova - split down the middle bc twins.

Silverwash - literally my monarch design but greyscale minus the wings. since shes the first "silkwing" mentioned in the book of clearsight i figured shes probably one of the early queens from when the tribe first split and gave her some slight beetlewing vibes (the extra snout horns)

The Prophetess - clearsight inspired, also a little baphomet coded maybe? it didnt come through in the final design but whatevs

Rowan - clearly based on romeo from romeo and juliet. red and heart patterns

Juniper - clearly based on juliet from romeo and juliet. blue and heart patterns

Ash - clearly based on anne from anne of green gables. ash trees are not orange but anne had orange hair

Guava - clearly based on gilbert from anne of green gables. guavas are pink : ]

Linden - linden trees have yellow flowering so i tied her to my sundew design. also i think she and sequoia were in lesbians with each other

[cyberdragoninfinity]

Can I ask about your thoughts on the Teal Mask DLC? I really liked it and genuinely can't wait for the Indigo Disk to come out in winter.

YESSS I HAD SUCH A GOOD TIME WITH THE TEAL MASK!!!! i havent played in a hot minute since i didnt take my switch with me while i was out of town but wahhh i liked it more than I thought I would and I'm excited to get back into it (I need to go catch the Loyal Three; I love them...I love when Legendaries are just huge dbags HJFDHGDFS)

Kitakami and the whole cast really grew on me more than I was expecting... this map is BIG and I still haven't found everything roaming around it!! (also bonus points for getting vulpix and ninetales back in the dex....im FREE!!!!) I really like Carmine and Kieran, they're fun characters and I am fuckign SCARED. OF WHAT'S GONNA HAPPEN. WITH KIERAN. LIKE. HELLO?!??! AND OGERPON!! i didnt think i was gonna care much about her but she won my heart over so hard. she has so much personality!!! I'm gonna take her with me when Indigo Disk drops :^)

(i am also. SUPREMELY excited for Indigo Disk--I really like that TM gave us just enough little plot nibbles to make me start pacing and spinning and biting thinking about what this is all going to lead up to. I LOVE Crystal Pool's theme, it gave me chills when I first heard it, when That Part in it first played. So good. terrified to go back in that hole (Area Zero) again. slash pos.)

(cant wait to meet that cunty peach people have been theorizing about, the Loyal Three's little wish-granting buddy, too)

i also really loved Perrin's side quest--love seeing PLA stuff getting mixed into the "present day" pkmn lore, LOVED the music that plays when you do her little photo taking mission, and Bloodmoon Ursaluna just kicks so much ass. Love this gigantic violent grizzly bear. I named mine Michelin :]

TEAL MASK FUN!!!!

[reides]

even though i said i wasn't going to, i ended up shiny hunting for an all-shiny team to play through the new pokemon scarlet teal mask dlc! :D meet aske the gallade, chiyoh the sinistcha, syrup the dipplin, laz the munchlax, marrow the mandibuzz aaaand crossbun the heracross! i love this lil gang so much and am so hype to progress further in the actual plot now dkfldskg

i'm gonna ramble about how each of my hunts for these pkmn went under the cut! :3c there'll be no plot spoilers because i have pretty much only scratched the surface of that!

ok so... syrup the dipplin was the first shiny that i collected for this team! i got her in a random applin outbreak a few weeks before the dlc dropped. i wasn't sure what to evolve her into (or if to just keep her as an applin), so i ended up procrastinating on that... but i realized that she was the perfect candidate for my teal mask team, since dipplin is a brand new pkmn. i generally don't keep track of encounters during outbreaks, but she showed up really fast! i was worried that i'd miss her since applin is SO small, and it's also green so it tends to blend into the grass ;_; either way, i caught her in a luxury ball o7

the second shiny i got was laz the munchlax! munchlax has been a dream shiny of mine so i was extremely hype to take this hunt on. ik it's on the more subtle side, but i think the rich, darker blue is really cute on munchlax, and a shiny is a shiny, u know? i started it off in pkmn shield a few days before the dlc dropped, since the pkmn twitter posted a screenshot with a munchlax in it hehe. i decided to try for a moon ball munchlax via the masuda method (somehow i have a TON of special apricorn pokeballs in shield?!?! we were eatin good back then wtf). i ended up going over-odds in shield for munchlax the NIGHT that the dlc dropped... i'm not sure about the exact number, but i was definitely over 512. once that happened, i transfered the parent snorlax over to scarlet and resumed the hunt over there, since i figured it'd be more fun to explore the new region as i hatched eggs. i hatched roughly 150 more of them before laz hatched on egg 668! (i also got the item finder mark on him, so his full title is 'laz the treasure hunter' - sooo cute. ;_;)

after laz, i decided to try for some more outbreak shinies, since i thought those would be quick and easy. by full odds standards, they totally were!!! but by outbreak standards, i def faced... a few little challenges! LDFGKD;GK

the morning after the dlc dropped, i had a ralts outbreak so i figured i'd go for another dream shiny of mine - gallade. that'd mean finding a male ralts, since gallade is gender-specific. i tried to hunt for a male ralts back in legends arceus and ended up finding a female one as well as a female kirlia, so i figured that i'd have some better luck in another game. i ended up finding FIVE more female ralts before finally getting a male one as ralts #8. i caught him in a net ball and named him 'aske' after a character in the dnd campaign that i'm in with my friends!! iykyk!!! LSDKFDSLKG but i really do enjoy catching pkmn that are themed after other characters so i'm totally thrilled to have this gallade!!! ;v;

shortly after nabbing aske, i got marrow the mandibuzz during a vullaby outbreak! this shiny was such a standard fun little outbreak shiny - i knocked out around 60 vullabies and she turned up very quickly after that. i think if you have the teal mask dlc and enjoy outbreak shiny hunting, the paradise barrens portion of the map is gonna be really, really good for them, since theres barely anything to obscure the pkmn that are outbreaking (and there's no grass, so there's like, no lag at all LMFAO). i caught the beloved lil birdy in a luxury ball.

after marrow came home so fast, i was emboldened, so i started my hunt for chiyoh the sinistcha(/poltchageist). i decided to see if i could get an artisan poltchageist outbreak to trigger, since, at the time, there were rumours about all-artisan outbreaks - and i suceeded in doing so!!! but then i couldn't find a shiny like... at all... to the point that i was genuinely wondering if it was glitched or something. i hunted in it for a full day and by that point i was like, Convinced that something was wrong, so i ended up giving up on that outbreak. i now realize that the shiny is REALLY subtle, though, so it's possible that i walked right past SEVERAL and didn't know... but i was being ridiculously careful when i hunted it, so i'm honestly not sure about that. anyway, while i was looking for the shiny poltchageist, i phased on TWO different heracrosses. i love heracross' shiny SO MUCH that i succumbed and decided to add one to my team! and that heracross ended up being named crossbun!

by that time, i decided that i didn't really care about having an artisan or counterfeit version of the poltchageist shiny (and tbh i kinda agree with the notion that artisan outbreaks sort of ruin the appeal of hunting down a rare forme), so i ended up doing a few encounter power sandwiches instead. when i finally ran into the shiny, it was huge relief LMAO. chiyoh was my 6th team member, so, with that, my teal mask team was complete! o7

i gave everyone mints, hyper trained them and ev trained them (using lots of mochi from the new ogre oustin' game hehe) and they're now ready to take on the plot! ik that it's definitely not all that necessary to build a team from scratch for the dlc but i had a blast doing it. the time i spent gathering these pals and exploring kitakami was really special. i'm definitely planning on doing this again for the indigo disc dlc!

[kyogreblue21]

Thoughts about the DLC

Just saw the reveal on the Teal Mask and the Indigo Disk. Really excited on what’ll they’ll entail!! The new Pokemon in the Teal Mask are based on Momotaro, with a dog, a monkey, a pheasant, and an oni. The designs are all just “eh...” except for Monkidori, love that monke. Look at him.

Really wacky thing to do for making the player go back to Japan, especially since basegame SV takes place in Spain?? Carmine and Kieran, the new kids, they’re cool, basic designs tbh. But where’s Penny?? Where’s Arven??? Where’s Nemona!???? WHERE’S LARRY?????

The Indigo Mask is very interesting as well, since it takes place at the “Blueberry Academy” note how its not in Spanish like the other two.

Judging from this map, I’m hoping this is the southern France region. I wonder if they’ll be new convergents or regionals in either of the DLCs speaking of which... or just new non-legendary Pokemon. Carmine and Kieran appear to relevant in this story. Basegame trio erasure again!! Nemona and the others still have mysteries about them!!

Terapagos is a very very enjoyable design, it’s also very interesting, it doesn’t have that intimidating feel like the other third legendaries we have. It doesn’t feel as eldritch and monstrous as Necrozma or Eternatus. They look more like a scrunkly mythical!! I wonder if they have an alternate form much like the other third legendaries.

[mithrandirl]

Your Lord of the rings gif is AMAZING! Can you please give any tips/hintd on how you achieved the colouring, mostly on the first gif. I am just doing my first ever blended gif set, thankfully its almost done, so I know how really hard these gifs are to make, yours are sooooo beautiful!

Its this set.

https://www.tumblr.com/armchairaloof/740180861385900032?source=share

hi! thank you!!

the first one of that set really turned out the best for me (as in it became what i set out to create), but it was mostly due to getting the right scenes for the gif. i've found that for blending that's the most important aspect. in general, for me it helps to approach blending with a "less is more" mindset. since you're combining so much, it's easy to overwhelm your canvas with everything you want to show so you have to be a little heartless in cutting the colors/frames/whatever that don't work without getting lost in the regret of what could have been. that's my approach to it, anyway!

luckily i hadn't deleted the psd yet so i can give you some more specific examples below!

as for coloring, i went into that set knowing i wanted black to be a main feature (servants of darkness and all), and i played around with the secondary colors before landing on pink/red and that cyan/teal/blue/green color, which is actually just what you get when you set it to difference/exclusion when the base color is the pink.

the base gif (the rider silhouette on the hill) was already mostly black with a white-ish highlight, so my coloring on that was changing that to pink/magenta. base without coloring ⬇️

then i used a gradient map of a magenta gradient i liked, set to overlay to tone it down a bit on everything but the highlights, and then i added a hue/sat layer just for the magentas to make that pop.

base with coloring ⬇️

you can see that there's some wonky lines now in the pink from messing with the little light the scene had in the first place, but for this case i don't really care because it's going to be covered up with the overlay anyway. what i needed from the base was sharp contrast and pink, and that's what this is giving me.

then below are the layers i used for the overlay (which is the close up of the nazgul). the folder itself is set to exclusion instead of overlay or screen (i could have done screen, but i found that exclusion gave a better depth of color in this instance). and the adjustment layers are just upping the contrast and minimizing the leftover colors - basically just playing around with it all until i got something i liked 😅

there's a layer mask to help paint over anything else in the clip so there weren't as many distractions. and then as i said earlier, i set the folder to exclusion and again tried to minimize other colors with a selective color layer. i always use a levels layer on my gifs as the first step, then brighten/contrast if it needs anything else. you can fix a lot with just levels though! this is the levels setting i ended up with ⬇️

which got me to this! ⬇️

and with the lettering (which i had to add in my own tiny upside down v for the û because the font didn't have that 🙄) set to difference to get that green/cyan color again, this is what i ended up with ⬇️

i hope that helps! feel free to ask anything else! i've never walked through my blending process before so sorry if it was confusing lol. here's a tutorial that also deals with this kind of blending (focusing on black space/silhouette) that's similar.

the best advice is to just have fun with it :) and when in doubt, add more layers :) :)

[candy8448]

Had a crazy dream that could actually be a pretty decent story/fanfic:

So there are a bunch of characters from video games or shows and stuff (most i think i might hv made up) and they are all on an island. They are all somewhere different on this massive island and there is a huge mountain that also has some hollowed out bits and tunnels.

So during the dream, some people were in different situations and they basically started to pair up and stuff. The things i remember most are there was a boy who kept on being trased becausd he kept on making bread buns but someone always savotaged it without him knowing so people would always force him to eat the altered bread buns. On this island he is told by two knights who tell him to make bread buns as a joke so he goes into a kitchen inside the mountain to make the buns. Some other character has sypathy and goes in to help him, breaf bun boy also has flashbacks to when a girl who my mind said was Marin from links awakening but looked older and more mature and a bit more like Malon, about her giving him an actually nice bread bun for once. She also sings her song.

Camera then cut to Aurora from sleeping beauty that kinda also looked like Princess Peach who was singing that song too but in kinda shock, as if she unlocked a memory and i think she realised that she was Marin or something? She is near the top on the mountain in a little open cave near the top. Now that i think of it, Aurora was probably based off of botw link in my mind because in this context, they both were put to sleep, slept for 100 years and woke up and both unlocked memories on who they used to be

There is a character who kinda looks like imp Midna from twilight princess and she pairs up with a character who is also tiny, also floats but she like ladders because they make her tall, and she is just pale white, everything is white but she also reminded me of super paper mario chaeacters and also Cia from hyrule warriors in the luttle map story time cut out style from the begining of the game. They pair up eventually but i dont think they were getting along, it was just kinda out of nessesity.

So eventually, i think different groups were starting to find eachother (there were a lot more people, i just couldnt remember)

Then camera cut to Ray fron TPN who is in a slowly flooding tunnel in the mountain. He tried to get out but the tunnel is completely flooded and he is taken by the current. Also there is a fairy who looks like Tael from Majora's mask and she is unafected by the water. She tries to lead Ray out. When they are getting away, Teal is running way ahead while Ray is kinda still stuck in the current. She runs into bread bun boy and guy helping him and warns them to leave the tunnel now. She opens the door to the tunnel (dorr cassually in the side of a mountain like in minecraft) and the tunnel water floods out into the river on the island. We see a guy, i dont remember who he was, but bread bun boy and other helping guy manage to leave the tunnel before the water catches up to them and calmly go down. Midna and other imp also find these three, running up to them while also yelling at eachother. The water then bursts out of the tunnel and Ray in in the middle of the river and rescued. They all start to hear Ray's tragic backstory and apparently the water in that tunnel was acutally some kind of black oil that felt like water but he couldnt rrally see in the tunnel cuz it was dark.

And then i woke up and started noting this down because this is an actually pretty good story. Also im not spell checking this and the spelling is all over the place cuz i litterally just opened my eyes

[gorematchala]

I'm basically finished with the Teal Mask, I fought the last boss as far as I know. I need to go talk to Carmine again to see what Kieran's problem is but I kinda have final thoughts already. I love what SV have done with boss fights. In teal mask they dont even bother explaining why the loyal three are bigger or stronger, and thats great cuz I dont care, those were like real boss fights from a real RPG. The Ogerpon fight where you have an endurance run against all 4 terra forms was awesome. I really loved it. The fucking Ursaluna fight with the PLA music was so godlike. But besides the new Pokémon, the new moves for the new and returning mons, and those boss fights, the rest of it was kinda like, I was just playing it to see that other stuff

The new region is cool and well constructed. There's a hidden cave I didn't know about till I fought Fezandipity that was really deep and interesting. But the problem from the main game bleeds over, which is that Miraidon/Koraidon controls like shit. When youre driving Wyrdeer in PLA basically nothing halts your momentum. You can jump and make turns and switch to Braviary and you just keep moving. And Braviary launches you up quite a bit so you dont always have to climb everywhere. Miraidon comes to a complete stop for like two full seconds if you fall from too high, its flight isn't very smooth, if you stop flying to drop faster you cant start flying again, theres no dive button during flight and theres no way to ascend, bumping into anything while moving has a bonk animation that lasts forever. Its literally the problem that every open world game except MGSV has which is that you have this massive open area with some stuff to do in it kinda, but traversing the map sucks dick. Monster Hunter Rise and PLA got away with this by having smaller maps and better shovment. MGSV got away with it by having D-Buddy/Gear Walker. SV have you wading through the muck of the games framerate and input lag on a bike that drives bad and its so frustrating because there is good stuff in there

The dialogue was also surprisingly weak this time around too even for Pokémon. It was just kinda more boring than anything but there's no mystery to it so you're just kinda like yeah yeah lets get on with it. In Shield I genuinely didn't know what was up with Eternatus so even if the writing wasn't anything special I was at least engaged. But thats why now I'm at the go talk to Carmine part and I'm just like, I got Sinistcha, I got Blood Moon, I got Ogerpon, thats basically all I was here for. And I need to catch the Loyalty Trio mostly for my home dex. Also all of you freaks who hated Hau and Hop need to apologize to them after Kieran's behavior

I just hope I feel more into it when indigo disk comes out because I love Archaludon a lot and I want to enjoy using it in game for a while. I keep forgetting Dipplin exists I need to catch him too. I sure hope they dont try to make the next gen games look like "Nintendo hire this man" again!!!!!!! I knew this style of game was gonna be a bad idea years ago, thats why I shit on PLA before it came out!!!!!!!!!! I hate you Breath of the Wild!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[rebeljyn]

Oh and how do you isolate colors in gifs? Like you want to color a whole gif color without changing the skin color?

Color Focused Gif Tutorial!

Ok there's more than one way to do this and it depends on the colors of the shot you're giffing. Sometimes one gif requires more than one of these tecniques to reach the desired coloring. I'll go throw some of the ones I use and try to link a few tutorials from other creators at the end as well.

I'll use this gif as the base for this tutorial(I've already changed the values of this gif to make it brighter and sharper):

And we'll make the background a green/teal without changing luke's skin color using three different methods with these being the results:

0. Vibrance Layer:

This isn't a method, it's just something I do everytime I make a gif and it makes it way easier to manipulate colors. Make a new adjusment layer set to Vibrance. I usually set mine to +80, it makes everything way more vibrant but without giving the image that "fried" look:

This is what it did to my example gif's colors:

(Obs: sometimes you can use the Color Balance layer to make sure your gif colors lean less into the same color group.)

Now we can start going through the actual methods you can use.

1. Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer

Arguably this is the easiest one, but it also works with very few gifs. For this method to work the background and the character's skin color need to be different enough for photoshop to recognize them as completely separate color groups. In this case, since luke's skin is more yellow/orange and the background is magenta/blue it works perfectly.

First of all make a Hue/Saturation layer. Then go to Layer Properties and look for the color group that matches your background the best(in this case it's magenta) and use the Hue slider to change the background color to what you want it to look like:

You can also use the slider at the very bottom to change the spectrum of colors that are being aftected by this filter and how abrupt the change from one color to another is. The final look of the gif is this:

After you have this you can use other adjustiment layers to make your gif look better.

2. Selective Color Layer(s)

This method gives you more control over the colors of the gif but might also take a few layers to get to where you want. Like the Hue/Saturation method you also need your colors to be different for the background and character, but you have a bit more leeway.

Make your Selective Color layer and go into layer properties and find the color you need, again for this gif it's magenta:

Now start changing the sliders to get to the color you need. This is what it looks like before and after:

As you can see the background color looks too gray for us to fit it into a color group properly so I use a Color Balance layer underneath the Vibrance layer to make the colors a bit bluer and changed the sliders in the Blue tab of the Selective Color layer and this is what we get:

Now we can make more Selective Color layers and change this blue color into a green, and this is what we get:

When compared to the Hue/Saturation method the edges between colors look much better but I also needed a Color Balance layer as well as three Selective Color layers:

3. Layer Masks(and Keyframes):

Depending on the gif this is the method that takes the most effort, since you have to account for the movement in the gif when changing the background color.

First you make either a Gradient Map layer or a regular layer you've filled with the color you want the background to be. If your background has more contrast between dark and light areas it's worth using the Gradient Map to give it more depth.

Once you've made your layer change the Layer Mode to Color or Hue:

Your gif should now look something like one of these depending on which Layer Mode you chose:

If you've made a Gradient Map layer it should have a Layer Mask automatically, if not you'll have to create one.

Now we'll use a Layer Mask to erase the areas where we don't want the color to change. If your the are you erased is relatively still in the gif timeline you can end your process here and it'll look great, but as you can see below Luke moves around enough that the area I've erased doesn't align with him anymore.

To fix this we'll use keyframes. In the timeline tab, you'll see an arrow on the left side of your layer names, when you click on it you get the options for you to keyframe:

We'll be using Layer Mask Position. Go to the frame where you originally erased your layer and click on the circular icon to the left of Layer Mask Position, this makes it so Photoshop remembers where you left the Layer Mask in that frame:

Then go to the other end of your gif, move your Layer Mask to fit your frame and check other frames in the gif to see if they need adjustments as well. It might happen that to be precise with this you'll have to make more than one layer mask for the same gif because of part moving in different ways, if that's the case follow the same steps with each layer mask until you get the desired result. For this gif, for the sake of precision I used 3 different layer masks.

This is the final result:

This method also makes it so that the number of frames in parts where keyframes are used is doubled, so you'll have to export the gif and open it again to delete the repeated frames and fix the time per frame back to what it was.

That's it! Hope it helped! I didn't focus on how to make the overall coloring of these look better, only in the background color changing, so the final gifs showed here aren't actually what I personally would consider ready to post, I'll leave that part to you to follow your preferences.

Now some tutorials from other creators:

Coloring with Color Mode by @captain-hen

Coloring with Gradient Map by @sashafierce

Cutting out subject using rotoscoping in After Effects by @antoniosvivaldi

Rotoscoping and masking in After Effects by @usergif

[doubleddenden]

As for my review of Teal Mask, I think its fine enough, but could have used a bit more story to it and a few small towns. I feel like I tried to pad out the experience as much as I could on my own, but it was still a lot shorter than expected.

What's still unacceptable is the performance and glitchiness. Slow downs, clip ins, and other glitches are still present- some are a little worse than you'd expect. Now granted, it's not as bad as SV at launch, but it's still very, VERY noticeable when they didn't even bother to polish shadow pop ins or map clipping in actual cutscenes or important trainer battles. And this is the thing- slow downs had been fixed a little until they dropped Teal Mask, so idk what's wrong. They could have waited til October and polished it up a bit, but I guess they REALLY wanted to catch the tail end of summer. At this point, they must no longer give a damn about performance at all and just want it to be done and over with- which on a certain level I can say "mood," but on a level of someone that bought the game, I can say "hey what the fuck???" And no, boycotting wouldn't have worked- Pokemon is at the point where saying "i'm gonna boycott" actually helps their sales, so there's no point in bothering.

But still, I will point it out again, and so will others so that the next games will be polished a little better.

As for the actual content- I did enjoy what was here, but again, I feel like they could have added more.

More under the cut:

Carmine and Kieran are the main new characters you'll be focused on, and they're decently entertaining and likeable for different reasons.

Carmine is a bitch- She hates you because you're a foreigner tourist, she's vain, she's full of herself, she's cocky- and it's enjoyable actually getting to go from such a rough welcome to becoming her friend. She's a fun asshole that made me laugh more than once, and it's always fun to knock her down a few pegs. In a way she's similar to Klara, except Carmine isn't quite as much of a pushover and has valid reasons to be a bitch. But again, her growth is fun to watch- not in the sense she ever stops being a bitch, because thankfully she just stays that- No she just becomes Bitch, but Friendly, and that's fine, great even! She's snide, rude, and competent, and I like it.

Kieran, however, is a rival that does something I've wanted Game Freak to do for YEARS- but unfortunately, it's just for a small time dlc rival. Still, his growth is unique for a "friendly rival" in that he goes full reverse, and you get to watch him just actively lose his god damn marbles. It's great! :D I look forward to seeing him again one day, because his team was actually super strong.

The rest of the characters- if we can call them that- are just basically NPCs- with the exception of Briar.

Briar doesn't really do too much, but she's... suspicious. Thats about how I can describe her.

Now I'd also add Ogerpon here- I was shocked with how on the mark I was with my predictions. I won't spoil anything but I do like him a lot.

OH SHIT, I forgot Perrin, which is weird because I actually really liked her. Perrin doesn't get a whole lot of stuff, she's literally for a mission, but she is entertaining in that she finds cuteness in any Pokemon she sees. Her whole side mission is really fun too, and I think she might be hinting that she'll return in a future game? Unsure.

Oh, there's also an annoying side quest with rich people- they're annoying, but you'll want to do it for another side quest. trust me.

Story is decent enough- definitely not as in depth as the base story, but unlike IoA and CT, Teal Mask actually sets itself up properly for Indigo Disk to be a continuation of the story. The story here is pretty small though, but its interesting to see how Carmine and Kieran grow and interact with the main character. The story of Ogerpon and The Loyal Trio, while not the most eloquently written, is actually not quite as front and center as we were led to believe. Kieran's obsession with Ogerpon is actually weirdly refreshing- I can't think of a single rival that actually competed with us for the right to catch a legendary Pokemon.

That being said, again, it is short lived and not nearly enough was done to justify all the promotion. I think we could have had The Loyal Trio be alive and living in the lap of luxury and see how they're actually jerks- that would have helped cement the "alternative story" we were told, and could have padded out story by giving us missions to either rein them in or fix problems they cause. Maybe have Perrin play a slightly bigger role in helping us find Ogerpon, have Briar actually do something besides be a suspicious chaperone-

Hell, instead of the 3 nameless NPCs that come with us, more could have been done story wise by having Arven, Nemona, and Penny with us as a group trip instead of it being "a lottery." Nemona could have been a battling menace, Arven could have been looking for new ingredients, Penny could comically struggle to find good signal, etc. Or heck, make them actually characters that have smaller arcs. I guess they couldn't do that because technically you can play Teal Mask as soon as you begin the treasure hunt, and in fact you can battle Ogerpon at both level 30 or level 70, so I guess maybe they couldn't outright connect it too much to them- but I still say maybe a post SV main story bit could have been added for those three plus us, and maybe Carmine.

I think all of this is going to pick up a tad more with Indigo Disk- I just hope it's not as quick as Teal Mask was.

Now as for other things:

Music is good- I think though they swapped to some older music making style that doesn't sound as good quality wise as Paldea music. But I absolutely LOVE Carmine's theme, and the wild battle music is a cool mix of Hisui and Paldea. The legendary music is also fun, and I'll definitely go back to listen to Ogerpon's. But Carmine and Kieran's music sounds a lot like it was made with the same DS soundfont style that you'd hear in Bede's theme or something. Crystal Pool, though, is hauntingly pretty and reminiscent of Area Zero.

Graphics have a more saturated color and are improved in some areas- but other than a few locations, there's just not really a lot to look at. Crystal Pool, however, is a really pretty place, and there's some very strangely unique cave areas that look like you're supposed to DO something in there, but nothing came of it. There's certain areas where textures look great, certain where they look bad. Actually, I find that I have similar issues as I did with Legends Arceus, where the textures and graphics just don't load until you're right in front of them, and you can visibly see the bubble range when grass, trees, and mountains just suddenly appear or gain texture. Hell, flowers just spawn less than 2 feet from you. Again, shadows and textures clip and glitch sometimes too- even in talking scenes, and that just isn't acceptable. Overall, texture work feels like they stretched out certain outdoor textures to make them look gross and pixelated or really realistic in others.

That being said, I think Indigo Disk might look better- I only saw a snippet right at the end, but there's a room I think I've seen as part of Blueberry Academy in the trailers and it actually looks like it comes from this decade, so I hope it looks that good when it eventually comes, because a lot of the rest looks unfinished. Charming enough in some places, just... could be better.

Now that's the environmental graphics- character and Pokemon models look pretty decent and have some good texture work. I suspect that's a different studio making those, though. But god damn, someone was paying attention to Perrin's ass and legs, and Briar's ass too. Not a complaint, I'm glad they had fun- you can just see the creases in the pants though is all I'm saying lol. The new character models look really good overall, and Carmine, Kieran, and Briar have really interesting eyes.

Animation isn't really much to write home about except what I think are mocap animations in regular talking- which is about par per course for base SV. That being said, it's kind of stiff in some scenes, particularly in some scenes with The Loyal Trio, where you can practically see them moving robotically as they move in scene to run away. It gets a bit worse when you see the frames drop from npc's within very close range.

the new Pokemon and forms are... Okay, I guess. Ogerpon is definitely one of my favs and her masks are very fun, and Okidogi is easily the better of the trio. Blood Moon Ursaluna also looks great, although I do prefer og Hisuian. The rest are... ehh to bad. I have slight hope for Dipplin since, apparently, it can use Eviolite- Pokemon that can't evolve further can't use it, ergo it must be able to evolve, just not until Indigo Disk.

One more complaint is that I feel like the map being smaller than Paldea probably helps it run better, but I think a few towns or villages are necessary, just full stop. Kitakami having 1 town just doesn't vibe right with me. In that regard, it almost makes Paldea feel smaller in comparison, because this one village has all of this land, you know?

I know I've done a lot of complaining, but I did honestly find stuff I liked. First of all, once you progress enough in Carmine and Kieran's story, you can get the Teal Card which unlocks more hair styles and a shit ton of more accessories to Paldean stores- Clothes wise, though, you only get new Jinbei outfits, and you don't get the other two until you beat the main story, and then a special one until you do one more side quest. But, more customization is always nice. and I finally have a hairstyle that I'm somewhat okay with.

The pokemon variety in Kitakami is also surprisingly done well. I've used Pokemon I wasn't really expecting to use, such as Poliwrath, Yanmega, and Morpeko. Even then, I'm surprised to see some Pokemon like the Conkeldurr or Tandemaus families here- mainly because this is WAY far away from Paldea and back in Japan.

That's another thing I like- outright confirmation that this is way, WAY far away from Paldea and not just a repurposed European area to the north. A plane and bus ride are required to get here- this makes it the furthest new area a main character has ever traversed, and to me? That's really cool. Further still, they tell us point blank at the beginning that Blueberry Academy is in UNOVA, which I am excited and a little scared for, but don't expect to really get to explore all that much. Idk, stuff like that feels very soulful to me.

Speaking of Soul, there's a decent amount of Hisui love in the Blood Moon quest. I won't spoil it, but something happens that made my jaw drop, and it was really, REALLY amazing.

Finally, difficulty is subjective to each player and how they approach this dlc, much like IoA. I think, however, they tweaked it way better to be beginner friendly AND very challenging for post game content with npc characters and wild pokemon you can encounter VERY EARLY (if you're not careful or go venturing too far off) being around level 70+. Personally, I brought along some Pokemon around level 60 and 50 to get me started and had some difficulty, then I went further and caught local pokemon and trained them up too with even more difficulty. But it was still pretty fun, the fights were challenging, Carmine and Kieran actually use strategy to win, and the NPCs can kick your ass if you're not prepared. I actually lost a battle to a bitch in a cave of all things.

Overall, a 6/10 is passing, even if barely. I dock points because of lack of polish and glitches, and then dock a couple more because of things I wish they'd have done differently. I enjoyed it, but they seriously needed to let it cook longer. No, you did encounter glitches and I am not exaggerating or making it up, you're just not paying attention to the slow downs or floor clipping in battles or you're just outright lying to yourself. Make your concerns heard so GF will actually do something about it- They do listen sometimes, believe it or not, even if most of the time they plug their ears up and hum gen 1 music to silence most criticism.

I actually look forward to Indigo Disk. At this point, I hope it releases in January and not November. They need to take their time with it, because I have a feeling things are going to be a bit more story heavy.

[pocketbelt]

Pokémon Violet: The Hidden Treasure of Area Zero Part 1: The Teal Mask (Switch)

Pokémon Violet's first DLC acquits itself way more than I expected it to, honestly.

Going into it I was expecting just a smaller map to sprint about and a barely present story about the local legendaries, akin to the DLC of Sword & Shield (which at least balanced out by having cool legendary designs and particularly useful mechanical purpose, like the Dynamax unlock method). Going in, the seeming main three legendaries (the 'retainer' trio) didn't do shit for me, so I assumed the DLC would purely be providing through new terrain to scarper about.

Should have known better - the surprisingly strong and good character writing threaded throughout the main game is also here, and The Teal Mask ends up having a surprisingly compelling little tale whose conclusion in Part 2 I'm genuinely looking forward to. Kieran's arc isn't entirely new to Pokémon (especially in recent gens, we've been crushing souls as much as heads for a while now) but this is the best iteration of it, as it's interwoven with the plot about the true nature of "the ogre and The Loyal Three", which flips the Japanese folklore tale of Momotaro on its head. The two plot threads are bound tightly and gel practically perfectly, it's really well done.

The star of the show, tragically for Kieran, still ends up being his sister Carmine. She's just a fucking delight, she's petty and has an ego (she laughs at you if you use moves her mons resist and gets huffy if you hit weaknesses or score crits or do over X damage in one hit - even when you're teaming up against enemies) but she warms up to you quick and she's just fucking funny. Carmine's precious, and the gradual "polarity flip" of her and Kieran's starting dispositions is really well done.

Also Ogerpon is precious and the surprise special Pokémon tucked into a sidequest with its whole own dedicated zone is a fucking treat as well. The after-effects of Legends Arceus keep resonating and I hope we see its influence more.

Shit, I only hope they keep this standard up for future Pokémon games. They're on a roll with the characters and designs in Scarlet & Violet, player character's ugly plastic "children's show" style looks aside. Roll the player character style back to Sword & Shield and keep the gym leader/main cast designs on the level of ShSw or this and you've got gold.

[pahrak-the-sinnoh-slizer]

[Games in 2023: Pokemon DLC "The Indigo Disk"]

Here it is!  Part 2 of the Scarlet and Violet DLC!  As a refresher for context: I really loved base Violet, and appreciated what Teal Mask had to offer despite it not entirely living up to expectations.  Will Indigo Disk close things out on a high note?  What is the Hidden Treasure of Area Zero?  And how much did I abuse the feature to invite your favorite characters to Blueberry Academy for my own nefarious purposes?

This will contain spoilers for base SV, Teal Mask, AND Indigo Disk!  If you want a tl;dr: Indigo Disk gives you LOADS of fun (and challenging) stuff to do, and despite its story plays things safer than I was personally expecting after the resolution of the base game, I’m still glad I bought the DLC.

Accessing the Indigo Disk content requires beating both The Way Home and The Teal Mask.  This is full-on postgame material, and the levels of the Pokémon you’ll find and fight reflect that, ranging from high 60s on lesser trainers up into the early 80s on the final story foes.  Not to mention all trainer battles here are Double Battles, which adds a significant new wrinkle to how fights are approached.  This is Serious Business.  We also get new TMs, new clothing and accessory options, and more Pokémon!  I felt like there were fewer options unlocked by the Indigo Style Card than the Teal one, but I really liked what was there, plus there are quite a few other options found through other means.  As for Pokémon, the new Blueberry Dex is slightly larger than the Kitakami Dex, and only overlaps with Paldea by around 60 Pokémon as opposed to Kitakami’s Dex being only half new.  Lots of Pokémon are back, including several that are on the Switch for the first time—if I recall correctly, the only ones still left out are Patrat/Watchog, the Elemental Monkeys and their evolutions, and Furfrou.  We’ve also got Dex entries for Walking Wake and Iron Leaves now, which is especially nice alongside the introduction of new Paradox Pokémon rounding out both of those Legendary trios.  As for other new Pokémon, we’ve got new evolutions for Duraludon and Dipplin (surprisingly), DLC mascot Terapagos, and…a new Mythical?!  Huh.  Kinda thought we were done with those to be honest.  I haven’t looked too much into it, but it seems like this guy will actually trigger a sequence of events, which we haven’t seen since…Victini?  Do we count BDSP, or PLA?  Whatever, I’m excited!  There are also old Legendaries to catch; I’d say they’re more accessible than Dynamax Adventures, but the list isn’t quite as comprehensive. (Also they’re all shiny locked.) And, as advertised, every single starter from Generations I through VIII can be caught in the wild here!  …After grinding enough points to purchase an upgrade.  More on that later.

The new map is a special facility called the Terarium, contained within Blueberry Academy in the Unova region.  It’s sort of an artificial nature preserve, divided into four different biomes each full of various species of Pokémon, bigger than Kitakami but not as massive as Paldea itself.  Feels like just the right size!  Each biome is fairly meaty in its own right, with lots of interesting landscapes to explore and some well-designed caves to boot.  One in particular is a reimagining of Chargestone Cave, and it does not disappoint!  The music changes a bit depending on the biome but stays recognizable, mixing in some Unovan inspiration with slight hints of Area Zero to reflect the influence of Terastal energy in the facility.  Oh, and the Flying Taxi on the loading screen is carried by Skarmory this time!  It’s a nice place, a wonderful setting for a miniature Pokémon adventure.

So, the story.  You’re escorted to Blueberry Academy by its Director, Cyrano—I like the guy, reminds me of Cabanela from Ghost Trick, and I LOVE his Honedge scarf! (Sadly, the Honedge line is not in this game.) You explore, meet the school’s self-styled Elite Four, and reunite with Carmine and Kieran, the later of whom has completed his evolution to Jerk Rival and become the academy’s Champion.  The previous Champion, uh, “arranges” for you to challenge the Elite Four for the right to fight the Champ, and we’re off.  The BBE4 can be fought in any order, though they do have listed ranks to suggest a sequence; I wouldn’t be surprised if this was in response to fan reaction over the lack of communication of boss levels back in Paldea.  Each is holed up in a different biome with a different “trial” for you to pass before they’ll fight you.  Not a single one was easy, though I struggled the least with Crispin, true to his #5 rank.  Lacey was the one who gave me the most trouble, though.  They’re all likable characters in their own way, though if I had to pick a favorite…probably Amarys?  Anyway, after beating them you get a shot at Kieran, which was another extremely close call for me, but I managed to pull through!  It was a satisfying little boss rush.

Things then abruptly shift when Briar finally reappears, gathering a small group of students for an emergency scouting expedition into Area Zero, approved by Geeta herself.  It ends up just being you, Briar, Carmine, and Kieran, which…yeah, that makes sense.  Though having Geeta and Rika suddenly show up made me hope a little.  Kieran’s only coming because he thinks catching a Legendary Pokémon of his own will let him finally beat the player, but as this scenario progresses he starts to act a bit more like his old self.  The scenario in question involves returning to the Zero Lab, finding a secret path leading even deeper, and diving into Area Zero’s Underdepths.  Remember how sick it was seeing Area Zero for the first time?  The Underdepths are like, twice as sick.  It’s great.  As is standard fare, you need to defeat a few Pokémon to open gates forward, but what makes these Pokémon interesting is that they’re all Tera Pokémon with the brand new Stellar Tera Type, a type which contains the powers of ALL types.  Stellar-type Terastallization does not change the Pokémon’s defensive Type interactions, only offensive, giving a boost to one move of each type per battle.  So, you use a powered-up Rock move?  Further uses of that and any other Rock move are standard-power.  It’s an interesting way to build upon Terastallization’s versatility, and when used in Tera Raids, it just boosts every single move the Pokémon uses while Terastallized, which I imagine will be immensely helpful if one were to grind Raids for any reason.  Very interesting, and this gauntlet gives you ample opportunity to acquaint yourself with it before you get ahold of it yourself.

At the very end of the Underdepths, your party finds none other than Terapagos…who Kieran chucks a Master Ball at.  Uh, okay, cool.  You then have a boss battle against Terapagos in its Terastal Form, the one with the flat shell made of pentagonal plates, which is way smaller than I imagined it being.  I dunno, I thought it’d be more on the scale of like…Kyogre?  In any case, this round is easy, and Kieran and Briar are both confused and decide to Terastallize Terapagos and see if that unleashes its full power.  It does.  Terapagos takes on its final form, the one Heath depicted in the Violet Book…also weirdly small.  Maybe twice as tall as a person?  Not planet-sized.  I mean, I didn’t think we’d actually get to catch a planet-sized Pokémon, but…y’know.  This is Stellar Form Terapagos, which has an augmented Stellar Tera Type that boosts every move even outside of Raids, and it’s no slouch: it was a close match, but my level 100 Ceruledge with Bitter Blade and Leftovers was able to conquer it, especially with help from Carmine at first and Kieran at the end.  What’s interesting is that this round has multiple phases, with Terapagos taking away your Terastallization to create a barrier several times and changing its defensive Type for good measure.  After a long, hard fight, you’re able to catch Terapagos (it broke out of Kieran’s Master Ball), and as you return to Blueberry Academy, Kieran apologizes and asks if you can still be friends.  Roll credits.

The idea of Kieran, a character who snaps in his obsessive pursuit of strength, is sound in theory.  However, I feel like it was lacking in punch.  The key factor is almost certainly just time: Teal Mask speedruns the formation of Kieran and the protag’s friendship and then immediately shows it fall apart, with little to no time to let it sink in and actually matter to the player.  I stuck to the “Kieran is my friend��� angle throughout Indio Disk, but it did feel like an act, and when he says he looked up to you for so long (like, an entire day!) it rang somewhat hollow.  That being said, I do rather like the way he stamps down his sense of failure to help you in the final round against Terapagos.  I guess I like Kieran about as well as I like a good chunk of Pokémon characters at least.  He can’t compete with Arven, though.  Oh and Briar doesn’t go nuts or turn evil or anything, she’s just excitable I guess.

I wasn’t entirely satisfied regarding Terapagos and Area Zero either: there wasn’t a clear definitive answer to any questions that had been raised.  Upon rewatching the ending and the postgame scene at the Crystal Pool, I think what we’re meant to take away is that Terapagos has been sleeping deep in the Earth for a long time, and the impact that formed Area Zero caused its power to leak out.  It is able to manipulate spacetime to some extent: Turo says that his time machine specifically pulls Pokémon from other timelines, which seems to be the truth about Paradox Pokémon.  How this enables advanced robotics and AI, I still don’t quite know, nor does it explain why Paradox Pokémon existed in Area Zero before the time machine was built.  But, it seems that Terapagos did not in fact come to Earth on a meteor, and there’s no particular reason for its abilities to terraform its environment, transform itself and other Pokémon, and bend time.  Which is…kind of a bummer, honestly.  The Way Home took Pokémon out of its comfort zone in a great way, and the Team Star Bosses and Arven were all written surprisingly well; to go from that high point to a standard, lukewarm story about finding and catching a powerful new Legendary…I can’t help but be a bit disappointed.  I hate the idea of getting mad at something for not conforming to my own expectations, so I’ve been trying to consider different angles and find one that leans the most in the story’s favor…but, maybe it’s fair that my expectations were where they were?  I don’t know.  I’m curious to find out how other players feel.

Oh, one other story-ish thing: if you’ve completed the Bloodmoon Beast scenario, Perrin shows up in the Terarium!  Apparently she’s just been hired to take photos for Blueberry Academy’s promotional material; she has another cool thing to show you, but tells you to catch 200 Pokémon in the Terarium first, justified in that she’ll follow you and take pictures for said promos.  I like that there’s a reason this time, her just saying “catch mons first” in Kitakami was fine, I could accept it as a video game thing, but it was very transparently that and I appreciate the effort to dress it up here.  Once you’ve caught enough Pokémon, she’ll show you two photos of strange, unidentified Pokémon in the familiar setting of Area Zero: two new Paradox Pokémon, obviously version-exclusive.  You need to search Area Zero for the locations in the photos, where the Paradoxes are standing there just waiting to be caught.  Unfortunately, there’s only one of each, complicating the process of trading them to complete the Dex…which is a little odd.  You can catch multiple specimens of every other Paradox—they even gave you a second Koraidon/Miraidon!  Personally I’m hoping these will be in Raids later like Wake and Leaves, because I really, really want to train a Gouging Fire…

Anyway, it wasn’t until I completed the story that I really began to interact with the other major feature at Blueberry Academy: the League Club.  I took an initial glance at it and decided to save up my BP (which stands for “Blueberry Points” now), but at this point I had no goal other than to grind for it.  You obtain BP primarily (near exclusively) through completing Blueberry Quests, abbreviated to BBQs, which is terrible but also hilarious.  Whenever you’re in the Terarium, you can bring up a menu that shows your current BP and a list of 3 active BBQs; these include things like “catch a Pokémon,” “take a picture of a Pokémon in X biome,” “pick up X items off the ground,” and such.  When you complete one, you are automatically rewarded BP and get a new BBQ to refill the list.  After completing 10 BBQs, you are additionally given a fourth, special quest for a larger amount of BP, which tend to involve things like picnics and Raids.  There’s a lot to like about this system: it provides constant rewards for microachievements similar to the research tasks in PLA, always giving you a few directions to follow if you so choose, and are much more digestible here.  One thing arises that frustrates me, however, that being repetition.  BBQs are chosen randomly, so if it’s not already on your list, it’s fair game no matter how many times you’ve already seen it today.  There have been several times where I’ve completed task A, to see it replaced by task B, to complete task B, only to see it replaced by task A again.  The first day of doing BBQs I was told to photograph swimming Pokémon at least a dozen times in a few short hours. (And let’s not forget that these photos clog up you Switch album.) I also dread seeing the “make a TM” quest, because in the entire Terarium there is exactly 1 TM Machine and I don’t always want to drop whatever I’m doing to head over to it.  The sandwich-making missions also feel like a hassle, but I’m not the biggest fan of the picnics as is, that one’s definitely just me.  I’ve also seen people say they really enjoyed grinding BBQs, so maybe this entire irritation is just a personal problem.

But once you have your BP, what can you spend it on?  Well, in addition to being used in the school store and cafeteria, there’s a computer in the League Club Room where you can access a list of requests for donations from other clubs, all of which come with a reward.  Essentially you’re paying to unlock or improve features, ranging from throwing styles to camera settings to League Club Room design.  What caught my eye immediately, however, were the options to “improve biodiversity” in each of the biomes.  This is how you unlock the previous gen starter Pokémon as wild encounters.  It costs 3000 BP per biome, with BBQs only very rarely giving you more than 100.  Admittedly it’s not as bad as I initially feared, but since these are more or less required to get enough Dex entries to satisfy Perrin, I would recommend saving up as a priority.  I feel like I should’ve expected at least one more hoop to jump through to get wild starters, but it isn’t really a huge deal.  Small price to pay for unlimited babies.  Additionally, after catching Terapagos you unlock the ability to invite characters from Paldea to visit Blueberry Academy!  The eight Gym Leaders are available right away, but you can also unlock the teachers from your old school, the Elite Four, and even Geeta.  Your guests will hang out in the League Club Room for a bit, and you can speak with them (or the members of the BBE4) to have rematches, get some items, and trade Pokémon with them; sometimes they’ll even have interactions amongst themselves.  I’m a huge fan of this feature: rematches were limited in the base game, and this amends the situation while expanding upon the bonding sequences that gave Uva/Naranja a lot of its charm.  The first one I focused on was Raifort, of course; naturally she hates being in a place as new-fangled as Blueberry Academy, but now you owe her a favor, and she keeps giving you bribes to further butter you up to become her puppet.  She’s great.  She also talks about the Abyssal Ruins, that’s a callback I’m quite pleased with. (Conversations about going swimming in Unova…my gosh, she really is Cynthiacore…)

Catching Terapagos also unlocks a few more things.  Briar calls you to her classroom and explains that your Tera Orb has been upgraded from being exposed to the intense Terastal energy in the Underdepths, enabling you to Terastallize in consecutive battles without ever charging it.  Oh.  Cool!  This gives you the chance to play around with the feature a lot more, and won’t intrude on the online experience at all since you can still only Terastallize once per battle.  And, as teased in the trailers, you can speak with Amarys to upgrade Miraidon to fly freely anywhere.  Forget that crappy glide, you can soar across all of Paldea from high above Glaseado’s peak!  You know that impassable rock wall in the northeast?  I flew all the way up that!  You can perch on the edge, but an invisible wall keeps you from going any further, BUT that’s okay because just being able to get up there is so cool!  I will say, the controls not inverting the Y-axis is weird and unintuitive, but that’s something I can cope with.  The game really sets you free, and it’s so, so great to experience.

Indigo Disk is extremely fun, extremely rewarding, and gives you plenty of new reasons to keep playing SV going forward.  The story is serviceable, a notable downgrade from where SV ended but inoffensive on its own.  Pokémon does tend to be lopsided that way, doesn’t it?  Nevertheless, SV almost immediately became one of my favorite games in the series, and now that we have both waves of DLC, I’m confident in thinking I’ll remain fond of it for a good long while.

It should be noted that an “Epilogue” to the DLC has been announced for January.  The files are there already; I’ve been trying to avoid spoilers, but I’ve seen enough to know this won’t be anything large scale.  We’re NOT getting a secret third wave of DLC here.  But it does seem like this will involve the new Mythical Pokémon, potentially clear up some lingering questions about Kitakami, and expand upon a certain feature of Indigo Disk, so I’m looking forward to it.  Hard to say if I’ll type up a full collection of thoughts for it, but one thing I am fairly certain of is that it’s going to be a fun time.

[skeptical-bear]

September 2023 Shiny Pokemon Log

I got back into shiny hunting this month. I have caught 9 shinies this month and 1 more at the end of last month. That's a new record for me :)

I got mostly bug types which was unplanned lol.

I only played Legends Arceus (LA) and Violet this month. I'm going to go over it all in order found. Open if you want to read more!

First, I'm going to answer the question

Which Pokemon Should I Use?

In LA, I just chuck pokeballs at the little guys until they are caught, so there is no strategy there LOL.

My trusty partner for Violet has been Breloom. Named after Sister Minnie, the internet cat that will unsubscribe you. Breloom will destroy all of your pokemon. With false swipe and spore, she can easily get anything to its highest catch rate. Max EVs in HP and Attack (+ 6 in Speed) allow her to be bulky and much more powerful than most wild pokemon. She is holding a poison orb to activated her ability poison heal. The constant healing keeps her alive almost indefinitely with no effort on my part. She is the only pokemon in my party 90% of the time.

Also I love Breloom in general. Look at that hat! So cute!

Gallade 8/27/23

I was stuck at home and sick in august so I started casually looking for shinies in LA to have something to do. I didn't have a target for this and I wandered around all the maps aimlessly. After a while I Ended up in Alabaster Icelands during a Massive Mass Outbreak. This guy spawned after a Kirlia outbreak ended. Despite not being the full 1/4096 odds, It was my first hunted shiny in this game so I like Moose a lot!

At that point, I had not done any research on how to shiny hunt full odds in this game. Now that I know more about the game, I think that on my save file it is impossible to get full odds on every pokemon at this point. I don't think that I will start a new save to make it full odds huntable, just because it sounds like too much of a hassle for such a casual game. If you want to make your file of LA full odds compatible, check out this video from Absolblogspokemon:

Applin 9/10/23

So A few days before this, I started a hunt for Rellor. I then had the idea from a youtube short to catch a shiny applin before the Teal Mask DLC launched so I can immediately have a shiny Dipplin. I dropped everything to go to Tagtree Thicket. I made a sandwich with level 2 Dragon encounter and would just reset after 30 minutes when the sandwich ran out. After a day, I found Candy! When the DLC dropped, the first thing I did was find the Syrupy Apple item and evolved her. I was so happy with this Dipplin shiny, so worth it!

Buneary & Kricketot 9/11/23

After doing some research on hunting in LA, I went back to play before the Teal Mask DLC released. I wanted to catch an alpha shiny of some kind.

After only a few laps around the Obsidian Fieldlands, I see Buneary. satisfied with finding a shiny so fast, I finished up my lap around the map and get Kricketot too! I was amazed that I got 2 in a single run. I still wanted a shiny alpha, so that concluded phases 1 and 2.

I also saw this cat stuck in a tree

Combee & Shinx 9/11/23

After wandering around all day, I figured out that I wanted to target Alpha Heracross. I stopped searching the entire map and only ran over to the Heracross and then would leave the map to respawn the pokemon. I only realized I should do this near the end of my third phase, where after 2 trips, I get a female shiny Combee!! So cool! 2 trips after that find, I get Shinx as the first pokemon seen on that trip! It was an exciting 20 minutes lol

and yes, this is what my Shinx is named after

Munchlax 9/14/23

Yes, this is the gift Munchlax from beating the hard mode of Ogre Oustin. Yes, I am counting it to show off I beat the hard mode of Ogre Outing. It was so annoying until I learned that there are people online that also wanted to play LOL. Then it was pretty easy to win, I think it was my second or third match. I do not like that minigame, but I guess I need to play it more if I want the mochis.

Heracross 9/17/23

After getting the Kitakami national dex to get the tera shard charm, I was bored with the DLC, which sucked because I wanted it to be interesting. While looking for something to do, I saw a Heracross outbreak on the edge of the town in Kitakami. I knew that would be a super fast hunt and jumped at it. And it was! It was full odds too, so I didn't KO any pokemon in the outbreak, I just entered and exited the town to despawn and respawn the pokemon. While I still don't have an alpha shiny Heracross, Pepto Bismal here is pretty cool too.

Spidops 9/23/23

Paintball was completely random lol. I realized that despite having done everything else in the main game, I forgot about the sealed pokemon. While running around the map pullling stakes, I spotted this guy and was like, "That's a weird Spidops...OH!" It's pretty interesting looking so I can't complain lol.

Rellor 9/24/23

After starting and forgetting about this hunt, I returned to the desert and found shiny Rellor. I also learned that I'm terrible at making sandwiches. Trying to make a bug Encounter Level 3 sandwich is the worst! The cherry tomatoes are not your friend!

The ingredients are:

6 cherry tomato

3 Potato Salad

3 Curry Powder

1 Bitter Herba Mystica

This makes a sandwich with bug encounter level 3, Title power Bug Level 3, Item Drop Steel Level 3.

To test out sandwiches, I used this simulator!

I started off by using level 2 encounter sandwiches, but then changed my mind. It took an hour to get the level 3 sandwich right. I was about to give up and stick to the level 2 sandwiches until my partner said they wanted to try making the sandwich. They made it 2nd try! I was so jealous lol. Then I found the Rellor 5 minutes into the sandwich so that was lucky. I looked for Larvesta until the sandwich was over, but didn't get any other shinies, booo.

Conclusion

This was a good shiny month for me! It was really fun hunting in Violet, despite the horrible lag. The lag was almost unplayable at times and kinda made me sick at some points. That makes the game hard to play, but the fast phases make it worth it. I think I will start a hunt in the older games next month. I am going to buy a charger for my DS Lite so I might start a dream team quest in Emerald or Black 2. We will see! I still need to get alpha Heracross too. Rumble Weekend is next week, so I will post about that when It happens! I have never participated in that before so it should be fun!

Thanks for reading! I don't think anyone will ever see this post, but I wanted to start making blog posts like a diary for my games and other media like books. I want to treat the media I interact with as more than something I'll forget about in 2 weeks. I feel like I'm stuck in a cycle of sleep, work, eat, repeat. These posts will be a reminder that I am having at least a little fun every now and then. So yeah, hi future me, enjoy yourself!

Bye for now!

[quartings]

More thoughts on Scarlet and Violet before the DLC drops:

These are just minor thoughts I've wanted to get out while I anticipate the DLC and its content. Sorry if I haven't been posting much art by the way, life has just been pretty hectic recently with my new job and all.

I haven't bought SV yet, and I'm waiting for the DLC to come out to decide if I'll buy it.

As someone who really wants to use Kingambit on a playthrough team, I really hope there's underlevelled Bisharp in Kitakami. USUM and the Isle of Armour had lv30~ Bisharp, so I hope the same will happen in the Teal Mask, too. And catching one there around badge 3/4 would be much more ideal compared to levelling up a Pawniard to lv52, waiting until badge 7 to catch one of the Lv52 Bisharp in Paldea, or waiting til badge 6 to hunt for one in raids.

As someone who really wants a 3-segment Dudunsparce on my playthrough team as well, I hope there's decently-levelled Dudunsparce in the wild at Kitakami, too. That way I can catch one in the main game (Wild Dudunsparce are only in Area Zero so far), transfer Hyper Drill onto regular low-levelled Dunsparce, and start farming for a 3-segment!

I've heard that one of the reasons SV suffers from lag is because the game is trying to render too much of the world at once. Hopefully a patch that comes with the DLC might fix this, but even if it doesn't, I wonder if the Teal Mask DLC will even have these issues? Kitakami will probably be on a different "map" compared to Paldea and will probably be much smaller, making the lag much less frequent I think? Early reviews have praised Kitakami for looking surprisingly great, so I hope I'm right on this!

In SwSh, the wild area and Isle of Armour trainers had a weak sort of "level scaling". Which was that everything was Lv10-30 pre-Eternatus and Lv58-70 post Eternatus. But the teams themselves remained the same. So Klara's "early game" team included a Lv10 Venipede, but her "late game" team wasn't a Lv58 Scolipede- it was still a Lv58 Venipede. Which is why I waited til now to even consider getting SV.

Also in the Isle of Armour, you are given a mandatory Exp Charm early on that doubles all Exp gained in battle. I heard that this was frustrating for people who started the DLC early-game, since it completely overlevelled their team when returning to the main game. I totally get why that could be annoying, so I hope that if this charm does return in the Teal Mask, it'll be in an optional area.

And I do hope Ogre Oustin' gives lots of Tera Shards. It would be a really cool experience to freely change my team's Tera types through the campaign without having to do 5000 raids.