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ltleflrt · 2 years

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This whole backlash against printing fics irks the fuck out of me, and I got some shit to say about it. Mostly "Fuck You" but here's some nuance:

On the surface, I understand where the naysayers are coming from. It's a legitimate fear that making a profit from fanworks will bring down the C&D Hammer on fandom. I get that. Do not put on the One Ring, or you'll risk the Eye of Sauron.

But here's the thing. Fuck capitalism. Fuck digital only. We're living in the digital dark ages, and 100 years from now huge swathes of our history, fact and fiction, will be lost to our descendants because there will be no physical copies of our lives for them to find in old libraries and boxes in the attic, etc.

Creators deserve physical copies of their creations, and so do the other people in the world who love them.

I don't want to profit from letting people print my fics. That's why I use Lulu, since they have an option to set zero profit and make the links hidden so only fans in the know can get a copy. Other printing sites I've looked at in the past don't have those options. In fact, the first time I ever even thought about printing one of my stories was when I won NaNo for the first time and one of the prizes was a coupon for 3 free printings of your story. HELL YEAH, that's a copy for me, a copy for my beta, and a copy for the artist who made the cover for me. Perfect! But I ended up not using that coupon, because the site required I set a profit margin, and did not have an option to make it private. Ummm, no thanks. Not worth the risk. And even though the profit margin could be set as low as ten cents, I did not want to make ANY money from my fic, because I know that would be breaking Fair Use rules. I found Lulu instead, and decided to let other people get copies too, because I'm nice. And if I don't, it's not like I can stop them from doing it themselves, no matter how much I'd rather they not do that.

But that's not good enough for the Reporting Trolls. Their argument is that it's not possible for it to be completely profit free, since Lulu makes a profit on the printing costs and the shipping carriers make a profit off the shipping costs. Someone is making a profit, and that's unacceptable, even if that someone is not Me, The Person Who Made The Printing and Shipping Worth Paying For.

I would like anyone who thinks that to delete your accounts where you read fanfiction. AO3, Wattpad, FFNet, LJ, Dreamwidth, hell even Tumblr for the short ficlet stuff that only gets posted here. Because even if the website it self isn't profiting, (AO3 for example), the companies that sold them their server hardware made a profit. Since utilities are privatized, the electric company that runs those servers are making a profit. IF YOU PRINT IT ON YOUR PRINTER AND PUT IT IN A 3 RING BINDER, the paper, printer, and ink manufacturers made a profit from your dinky little print out. The companies that build all the parts for your computer or your smartphone made a profit on your portal to the internet, who profits from your monthly subscription, just like your electric company profits from the power it takes to run your pc or charge your phone battery. IT'S A SLIPPERY FUCKING SLOPE, AND YOU NEED TO LEARN WHEN TO BACK AWAY FROM THE LEDGE.

We live in a Capitalist Hellscape, and if a company could figure out how to charge you to breathe and for every single beat of your heart, they'd fucking do it. So get off your goddamn high horses with this "wELL SoMEonE iS makINg PrOFit" bullshit. Or if you truly believe that, shut off every account you own, turn off your utilities, and go live in the woods and make up your own goddamn stories, which you can only share orally to the local wildlife. They give kudos by biting you and giving you rabies.

(not to mention; these assholes don't go after fanartists who are ABSOLUTELY making a profit off their work. but noooo, Flirty can't format a fic for print and allow other people to pay for the printing service and shipping, while never seeing a penny of that herself, despite all of the GODDAMN WORK I HAVE PUT INTO IT, WRITING IT IN THE FIRST PLACE INCLUDED FUCK YOU VERY MUCH. fuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufuckyoufucky--)

#ltleramblings #printed fic

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ribbonetteart · 4 months

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Tribute to one of my favorite movies of all time + the franchise that has me in a death grip 💖

a bit late for Christmas but at least Valentine's day is around the corner ^^;;

Process below if that interests you:

AS I SAID EARLIER, I had been working on this piece as early as December of 2021 😱!!!

This was the original sketch! I was inspired after learning about Blaze's own design inspiration coming from Takarazuka theater, as well as it being the Nutcracker season so this film was in bouncing around in my head.

and this was allllll the way back in 2021 ^^; I had put the idea to paper to capture the image in my head immediately. But the idea in my head was extravagant and beautiful and would certainly take time to complete, as well as the patience and skill to work with watercolor 😔 I've certainly done my share of watercolor, both physical and digital, but I still feel like my physical watercolor work is a fluke, and I was still a novice digital artist at the time of this sketch.

In short, I was confident my skill could live up to the vision.

So I would put this on the back burner. It wouldn't be ready in time for Christmas, and I could use this as an opportunity to hone that digital art experience so it could be ready next year!

2 Years Later...

It's December 5th. Fuck it. Let's crack this open again, I tell myself.

SO starting with the line art, it's actually 2 different brushes layered over one another.

I also changed Sonic's expression to be more love struck-looking, because I'm a sucker for romance.

The image on the left is a watercolor line brush, while the right is a pencil brush. The reason I wanted a water color look was because I thought it would make the illustration look dreamy and fantastical, and I wanted that to extend to the line art as well. However, my usual lines on traditional usually veer more towards thick and cartoony from years of studying the Sonic art style, so I really felt like I was working against myself here. I had also asked friends for their input and they preferred the lines on the right as well. If my followers actually do read these blog posts, I'd love if you could comment which line art style you prefer drawing or looking at.

The happy medium was to just combine the 2. Here's a better look at that:

I like it! I think it combines the solid line with the rustic water color grain. Best of both worlds :]

For the actual painting, The most notable thing I can say is that getting the right pastel-y color was VERY difficult to achieve for someone like me who often loves to use bright and saturated colors in her art. I feel like I really set myself up to do one of those "evil art style" or "opposite art style" challenges I've been seeing around. I had to repaint Sonic at one paint because the blue of his fur was WAY too saturated for the style I was going for:

I started with painting Sonic and Blaze in first and then working on the background. I think that's probably the backwards way of doing it but one of the perks of digital art is you can do stuff any order you want when you have layers.

The background wasn't actually as difficult as I thought it would be. I wasn't going for any difficult perspective, and I was using a reference so that could be it. I'm usually averse to backgrounds but I really wanna tackle more of my weak points in art. I actually had way more fun than I was expecting, painting the sky and adding texture to the grass. I think I had the most fun rendering the water coming from the fountain (which you can't even see too well anyway, lol).

Funny enough, I had just about finished painting the characters and background by early January. So why am I posting this in February?

The Flowers...

In case you don't know. I love flowers. I love looking at them, I love learning about flower languages, I love drawing them. so seeing that my reference image showed flowers circling the fountain, I was excited! I was already having more fun than I expected to be, working against my usual style, rendering a background, so how could this be a pain in the ass?

Well, I am my own worst enemy 😞I couldn't exactly identify each flower offhand from this screenshot alone. The texture of the flowers is kinda grainy, since I don't think the animators were expecting viewers to look too closely at the set piece to use as reference for my lovingly crafted crossover fanart. If anyone has this in high quality though, please tell me.

(I think I actually got this reference from a tumblr post but I can't find it on my blog for the life of me nor can I find it in the tags I'm so sorry)

I'm a huge stickler for details so I really wanted to be as "accurate" as possible in my illustration. I can hardly identify some of these flowers with confidence. I think there are roses in there? or tulips? I'm not sure if those yellow flowers are roses or some kinda petunia or if I'm way off.

I'm sure these details won't matter to most viewers but it was EATING AWAY AT ME. Eventually I decided to try drawing in flowers that might look similar to the ones in the reference. Or some based on their flower languages. I was certainly overthinking it ;;;; It led me to going "fuck it" and just throwing in whatever I wanted. There are no irises visible in that screenshot but I made it the centerpiece of the flower ring. Who give a shit.

I made some guides for me to follow: The blue ring was so I could make sure the flowers make a half circular border around Sonic and Blaze. I was envisioning how it could look as like an icon or sticker or something, which is why it's framed this way. then the second guide is the sketch of the flowers I made. I always do line art and I'm not great at just improvising with color to paper, or color to screen in this case.

The rest of this process is then just working on each flower piece by piece (with the help of the mirror tool of course) with varying degrees of detail. Some flowers are more abstract than others, and I had debated if that would look jarring and disrupted any kind of harmony I was trying to maintain with the style parameters I set for myself. And then I decided I was overthinking it once again which is why this was taking me nearly 2 months to complete.

At some point during this process, my wifi went out for a whole week! Of course, I could still work on this illustration offline, but I had a lot of tabs open with a bunch of reference images on there (plus I like to listen to music while I draw otherwise I lose focus and I had neglected to download a varied selection on my phone or laptop 😭 Learn from my mistakes).

The most tedious of this process was making each set of gladioluses a unique color.

Was it worth it? You tell me! I think they're pretty, at least.

Along the way, I repainted the grass because it wasn't symmetrical (It didn't need to be but I had been using the mirror tool for a lot at this point and it was bugging me). I made other little final adjustments, like color adjusting the leaves on the flowers, lowering the flower ring border, and so on.

Ultimately, I'm extremely satisfied with the final product. I had my heart set on doing something like this for a long time. I had so much fun just experimenting throwing on color or not worrying about technical stuff. Of course, I did do what I usually do and overthink it at some points, but I'm working on it!

I've wanted to do an extremely indulgent AU illustration and other drawings for a Sonic x The Nutcracker story for a long while. I will be totally honest, I'm still a little embarrassed to share stuff like this, even after years of posting fan art online. It feels like the more self indulgent something is, the more people might judge me for it ^^; But I wanna practice what I preach and kill the thing inside me that cringes at my harmless attempts at joy and whimsy.

I would love to do some more drawings for this AU, but maybe post them around December when it would be more seasonally appropriate. I hope you'll stick around for it!

If you read this whole thing to the end, thank you. Whether you follow my blog or not, I hope you have a lovely day :3💝

#Barbie in the Nutcracker #Sonic the Hedgehog #Blaze the Cat #Sonaze #Jess's Digital Odyssey #Sorry for not posting frequently it may happen again

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lilythesingingwitch · 4 months

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So I may have created a trolls AU based the show Julie and the phantoms (which I highly recommend you check out)

In this AU, instead of being a simple boy band like in the movie, they a literally a band, with JD on the lead guitar, Bruce on drums, Clay on the bass, Floyd on keys, and Branch is the second guitar in training. Poppy and Branch are still best friends, and are gonna become a couple eventually, but in the beginning, just friends.

So, without further adieu, let me introduce you, to Poppy and the Phantoms!

First up we have Poppy (Please don't mind the fact that she doesn't have tail in the drawing, I forgot to add it here but it will be present when I digitalize these)

Poppy is a University student still mourning the death of her mother, who is desperately trying to fix her inability to sing and play music since her mothers passing. She still loves music, but the grief is sadly stronger. When her dad brings up the thought of selling the house in favor of helping her, Viva and himself with moving on from her death, she goes to clean the garage, aka her moms old music studio. Where she finds an old CD, for a band called Brozone. When she puts it in the player and lets the first song play, three familiar ghosts pop out of nowhere.

(Things written on the paper, without my spelling mistakes and some minor stuff I didn't write down)

Lives in the house that John Dory and his new band would live and practice at

Discovers the phantoms when looking through her moms stuff in the garage

Figures out pretty quickly who they are, with Branch being her best boyfriend

They make a band to help the guys ascend and Poppy to mend her relationship with music

Lives with Viva and her dad

Next up, John Dory

Back when he was in his teens, he and his brothers made a band called Brozone, which, despite was pretty popular all things considered. However, when they were preparing for one of the biggest concerts of their live, they get into a fight about John Dory being too bossy and demanding of his younger siblings. After which, John Dory leaves the house and his family at the age of 17. In the span of his time alone, he makes a new band with some of his new friends. In a short span that they've been a band. John Dory wrote pretty much all of the songs that they sang, and though trial and error, they got an opportunity to play on a stage that has made a lot of underground artists mainstream. However, John never gets the chance to play on that stage, for her dies from a poisoning 30 mins before the show.

(Things written on the paper)

He and his brothers were in a band called Borzone, where he played the guitar

Until he, SpBruce and Clay quit, leaving Floyd and Branch alone (Well, they all lived with Grandma, you get what I mean)

Regrets it, deeply

Wrote all the Brozone songs, including songs for his new band

Also wrote "Unsaid Emily", which was originally named "Unsaid Family" as a tribute to his biggest mistake in life and an apology to his brothers, but renamed it.

Died right before his big performance on the same day and Bruce and Clay

Died at the age of 23

Bruce next

When his brother proposed the idea of making a band, he had his doubts, since they were all in school and had their own stuff to do, but then again, up until then, he and JD always did crazy things together, and band was by far the most tamest of his brothers ideas. And with everyone else on board he thought "fuck it, why not?". And it was fun for a while, until he noticed how controlling JD had become, always telling him to go practice instead of letting him hand out with friends, telling him to watch his shape, giving him a work out routine for that, Bruce had enough and finally stood up to his brother and claimed that he's quitting the band, to which Clay joined in on, and which prompted JD to leave all together. And soon after, he leaves the house at the age of 16. He rents a small house by the beach, works at the cafe near it, changes his name from Spruce to Bruce, and takes up surfing. Which also becomes his downfall on a particularly bad day, and he takes his surfboard out for a quick swim, gets swallowed by a wave, and never resurfaces.

(Things written on the paper)

Was the drummer in Brozone

Was the first one to declare he's leaving the band and feels like it's his fault for causing the butterfly effect of others quitting as well

Left to live by the beach as soon as he could

Wanted to reach out to his brothers, but only ever sent a single post card to each

Died in a surfing accident on the same day as John Dory and Clay

Died at the age of 22

Cried when they all realized that they're dead

Last but not least (for now), Clay

Clay was, surprisingly, very on board with JDs idea about the band, despite being the nerd and bookworm of the family. He just wanted to spend more time with his brothers and have fun. That quickly changed when John completely stopped paying attention to Clays interests, hobbies and dreams. And especially with the forced title of "The fun one". He finally snapped when John kept trying to push them beyond their limit for their important concert, the time they should've spent relaxing after all the hard work they did to get this far was instead spent with their instruments like that's all that mattered. When Bruce brought up quitting the band, Clay happily joins that train, and walks out the door as soon as John and Bruce do. And so, Clay leaves the house and goes to stay with his friend at the age of 14. He finishes high school, gets accepted into a very good university, and moves into a dorm as soon as he can as to not cause more trouble for his friend than he already has. And life is good again, he's doing what he wants, works at a local library, studying to be a licensed CPA, and is gathering his courage up to confess to Viva. However, he does the latter too late, for he confesses to her and dies in a fire at the university while saving her, pushing her out of the burning building before it collapses on top of him.

(Things written on the paper)

Was the bassist in Brozone

Stayed with a friend after leaving the band and moves into a dorm as soon as he got accepted into uni

Was going to be a licensed CPA

Was best friends with Viva before he died

Died on the same day as John Dory and Bruce in a fire

Died at the age of 20

Was also in a sad book club

There's still a lot I need to write out about this AU, and a lot of characters to draw and design, but I hope you all like what I have so far! Here are some redraws of certain scenes from Julie and the Phantoms with this crew (again, excuse the lack of tails on one of these, I once again forgot to add them, just imagine that they're there)

#art #my art #trolls #trolls 3 #trolls band together #trolls brozone #trolls bruce #trolls poppy #trolls john dory #trolls jd #trolls clay #trolls dreamworks #poppy and the phantoms au

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eshbaal · 11 months

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Character Sketching Basics (for total beginners)

I've never really made art tutorials, but I do actually semi-routinely teach digital art classes to local kids in my area. As a result of this, I have also now signed up for a volunteer character sketching workshop for such kids that I am hosting tomorrow.

I figured that since I will have 15 kids there and I can't possibly introduce them to the base concepts one by one, I should make some easy to understand slides that try and teach them the basic thoughts that go behind a good character sketch. Aaaand I figured I would share them here. They are in danish, but I will translate underneath each pic. And before any other of the amazing artists on here start pointing out that this is possibly a bit too simplsitic to be a "proper" tutorial - the workshop is for the 11-14 crowd that may have never heard these things before. That's why it's kept as completely simple as possible. Anyway, here we go:

When we draw characters, we usually talk about three pimary stages - Sketch, Inking and Colors/Shading. That's a lot of stuff to learn, but we'll focus on sketching for today, alright?

A good way to learn how to draw characters is by learning to understand two great tools - the STICK FIGURE and the BASIC SHAPES.

The Stick Figure helps you understand what a body looks like and how it fits together (anatomy), and makes it easier to portray a body in motion. (This also goes for nonhuman creatures - consider the stick figure their "skeleton")

Once you have your skeleton, you can use basic shapes (triangles, squares and circles of all kinds) to build the rest of the body. Your choice of shapes and their sizes can make a massive difference! Notice, how blocky Superman looks compared to the skinny Anne here, even though their skeletons are built basically the same way.

You can also use basic shapes to create some really unique characters, and maybe even tell us something about their personality at the same time. This is called "shape language". Take a look at how some famous characters use very simple shapes. The always friendly and happy Mickey Mouse is round and friendly-looking. With just three circles, he became famous worldwide. The skinny, refined Pearl's body consists primarilly of triangles and long circles - this works really well for a dancer, who is also a bit of a perfectionist. She even carries a spear, which is a pointy weapon that really needs the one wielding it to be precise! Almost every character in "Phineas and Ferb" consists of simple shapes that make them easy to recognize. Phineas and Ferbs' heads consist of just a big triangle and two squares respectively. And with Isabelle and Candace, you can even spot a couple of half-circles!

If you learn how to see these shapes and where they are hiding, you can learn to draw almost any character you can imagine - even the ones that look super difficult and complicated. Shredder here looks almost impossible to draw, but even he has a lot of squares and triangles you can find if you look close enough - and if you drew a solid enough skeleton to start with, so you can tell where certain things are supposed to go on his body. You also use these techniques to draw harder parts of the body, such as hands. It's really difficult, but it'll come to you with practice.

Okay - let's use what we've learned! Pick a character or make something up yourself. Figure out the characters' skeleton. Go ahead and draw them in a different pose, if you want and if you feel you can. Find and add the characters' basic shapes and add them on top of the skeleton to make a body. Add details and start erasing the lines you no longer need.

A FEW LAST PIECES OF ADVICE - Draw softly and loosely. It's hard to erase your lines if you pressed down hard on your paper. - Try not to choose a character that's too complicated to start with. We all gotta start somewhere. - Don't worry about your sketch looking a little messy. After all, it's just a sketch. All it needs to be is a good starting point for when you ink it later. - Your sketch does NOT need to look 100% like the original. The important part is that you can spot how their bodies are constructed, and find all their most important traits. - If there's a part you are having a hard time drawing, take a break and work on something else. Sometimes your brain just needs a little break. - Ask for help! That's why I'm here! - Remember to take breaks now and then. It's good for your hands and for your backs. ----

Soooo yeah. That's my tutorial for ABSOLUTE beginner kids. I hope this will land well tomorrow.

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captain-mj · 1 year

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Angels of Digitalism

I have the Rock Star AU y'all ordered! Changed it a little to explain why Soap is interacting with them. Will do a part 2 if asked. Very heavy on the GhostRoach

Soap saw the ad and almost flipped. Simple ad honestly. Digital artist needed. Decent pay but there was a line that said they would be open to negotiation. All of that was interesting sure.

But the thing that drew his attention was the name of the band asking.

Angels of Digitalism.

His favorite fucking band was asking if someone could help them with some digital art.

Something he did all the time!! He was looking for jobs right now and this was perfect.

Soap applied immediately and almost immediately got a reply back. A little surprising just how fast they responded.

“Can you get transportation to this location?” He followed it up with an address.

Soap checked the distance. “Yeah, it’s not too far.”

“Good. Be here as soon as you can. Like…. Right now.”

“Oh! Okay!” Soap rushed to get dressed. He tried to find some of his better clothing that followed the aesthetic of the band. Ripped jeans and a black t-shirt. After some thought, he decided to do a plain one. He didn’t want to wear a band shirt in case it came off weird. Wearing one of their shirts may seem obsessive but wearing someone else’s may be off putting. A few minutes later and he realized maybe he was putting a little too much thought into his shirt.

Soap rushed over there and while in the car, he thought over the band. So on paper, there were three members. Ghost, the back up vocalist and guitar player, Roach, the main vocalist, and an unknown masked member that goes on stage and fucks with a computer occasionaly. All of them wore masks, covering all of their faces but occasionally letting their hair down, but the third member didn’t even have a name. There were also drums and other instruments, but they weren’t done by a person, but by algorithms and bots. It was part of the appeal. A mix of techno and old style punk that was the whole point. Soap genuinely loved the music, but there was also the performances. It made sense that they’d need a digital artists. A lot of it was based on lights, colors and costuming. Well… So were most performances Soap realized after thinking about it for a minute. But he loved watching their concerts.

The two of them danced so well. Both of them being so attractive did not hurt. During the last performance, Roach had been shirtless and he did some… Soap had watched Magic Mike and that had been the closest thing he had seen to the dancing he had done on Ghost, all while he continued to play guitar like nothing was happening.

Also, there was occasionally a person that appeared. It was always confusing because they could never be photographed but

Soap already knew he didn’t really have a chance. He was not going to be the y/n in a fanfiction who gets either of them. Let alone both of them.

He got there faster than he expected and rushed out so he could go inside.

There were two men standing out front. One of them looked… vaguely like Ghost. A little smaller, but he supposed the stage may make him look bigger. The other could be Roach. A little bigger, but… stage stuff.

Yeah. Stage stuff.

The smaller one was Hispanic and had a grey hoodie on while the other had a long sleeved tan shirt on and jeans. Both smelled like cologne, but the taller one smelled like he drowned himself in the stuff.

“Hey.” The American accent out of “Ghost” caught him off fucking guard. “Soap?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. I’m Alex. This is Rodolfo.” Neither offered their hands to shake so Soap kept his by his sides.

Soap nodded. “Ah. Little surprised you guys told me your names.”

They stared at him blankly before Alex laughed. “I’m not fucking Ghost. He’s inside. Still wearing a skull mask. Roach is also inside. I’m just the guy running the computer.”

“Oh…”

“I’m their manager. You think I look like him? He’s a twink.”

Alex glanced at Rodolfo and motioned to him. “I mean… aren’t you also a twink?”

“Get fucked. Anyway, no. I’m not Roach.” Rodolfo sighed. “We have a laptop that’s hooked up to the backdrop. Anything you draw on the laptop appears there. We need you to design some things. Also, do you do traditional art? Like painting and stuff?”

“Yeah.”

“Cool. We’ll double your pay to also paint the backdrop. Three colors that correspond to the lights. Each disappears when a different light is on.” Rodolfo started to walk and Soap quickly followed to keep listening. “You paint the stuff. You made the designs. We have three weeks to do.”

“What designs do you need?”

“Ghost and Roach will tell you. Basically they’ll show you the routine and you design something around it. They seemed pretty excited about this one since Ghost won’t be playing the guitar.”

“Oh? Why won’t he be playing?”

“Injury.”

Soap stared at him for a moment before realizing he was being serious. “What?”

“Injured his wrist so he can’t play.” Rodolfo looked at him.

“Won’t that prevent him from performing?”

“Oh, it’s fine. It’s not in a cast.”

Soap frowned and just vaguely nodded after a minute. “Yeah, okay…”

“Anyway, come on stage.” Rodolfo stepped up on to the stage and Soap followed. Silks, like those from an acrobatic performance, were hanging above them and there was someone wrapped around them high above their heads.

“Roach. Come down and meet Soap.”

Soap looked up and watched him spin down, twirling and he tangled the silks right before he hit the ground.

Okay, that was the exact size he expected. Roach only had a medical mask on. He had medium brown hair that fell around his ears and bright green eyes. Right now, he only had sweatpants and socks on.

Yeah, definitely a twink. Though he was toned. Probably from his performances and constant practice.

“Nice to meet you.” Soap kicked himself for his awkwardness but also was happy he didn’t stutter.

Roach looked him up and down before meeting his eye again, just staring.

“My name is Soap. Like Rodolfo said.” Soap tried, feeling a bit awkward.

“He won’t talk.” Ghost, he could tell by the fact that his voice was both really deep, gravely and clearly from Manchester, spoke right behind him. Soap definitely did not jump out of his skin. He glanced around but Rodolfo had disappeared.

“Oh. Like a pre concert thing? Makes sense.”

“No. He’s mute.”

Soap frowned. “I… I feel like I’m missing something.”

“He can’t talk. Is that a problem?” Ghost growled at him and Soap looked up at him.

Oh.

He was a little scarier up close. Tattoos went all the way up his arms and he had his skull mask on.

“N-no! Not at all! Just how do you guys… sing?”

“He uses a vocaloid. Obviously.”

“Oh. Yeah, no one knows that.”

Ghost laughed for a second. “Seriously?? No one?”

“There’s an entire conspiracy theory about it actually. Because his jaw doesn’t move.” Soap glanced at Roach, noticing he was blushing. For a second, he thought he may have embarrassed him before noticing that no, he was just laughing. Roach looked at him, clearly smiling and happy and Soap started to feel flustered.

Ghost hummed. “God our fans are stupid. Im retiring.”

“NO YOU’RE FUCKING NOT SIMON.” Rodolfo screamed across the venue. “PUT WAY TOO MUCH MONEY INTO THIS. OUR LABEL WOULD KILL US.”

Soap frowned. “Man i really thought it was just the three of you guys…” So his favorite band had more hands on deck than he thought.

“Nope. Anyway, since Rudy left, I will show you where to go.” Ghost showed him the laptop and both him and Roach watched over his shoulder. Soap quietly opened it, deciding not to bring up how unsafe it was to not have a password.

“So what did you guys want me to do?”

“So we’re going to have lights flashing on and off that will change the coloring. We’re going to be covered in different paints so there will be tons of color. We need a background in black and white that’s going to follow us during our routine.”

Soap nodded. “Let me see your routine real quick. I want to draw the lines of movement so that I can make sure I match it.”

The two of them nodded and a second later he heard music he didn’t recognize. Before he could get excited at potentially hearing brand new music, he realized it was Mitski.

They practiced using Mitski.

Soap had a lot of feelings about that.

The two of them circled around each other, both of them masked but wearing much less clothing. There was also the fact that there were no bright lights or makeup to obscure them.

Soap recorded their performance and watched them.

Ghost grabbed Roach suddenly and spun him, Roach’s legs going around his waist as they moved. They separated and Roach started to dance along the beams with Ghost all but chasing him. Roach grabbed one of the silks and jumped out of Ghost’s grasp, slowly twirling. They slowed for a second, but Soap wasn’t sure if it was part of the routine. The two of them had made eye contact and they seemed to be enveloped in each other before they went back to moving.

Their dancing was beautiful. Soap wondered if they were professional dancers or just picked it up due to their performances. Roach moved like a gymnast, twirling in the air and moving with an unearthly grace.

Finally the song ended and Roach ended up in Ghost’s arms, the two of them just staring.

Soap paused. He thought Alejandro, the artist they occasionally hung out with, was dating Roach.

Well, now that he was thinking of it. Alejandro said he was dating someone in the band and Soap had just found out there were a lot more members than he thought.

He thought so hard that he almost missed the quick kiss Roach gave Ghost’s cheek before stepping away and looking at Soap.

Soap gave him a thumbs up and cut off the recording. He then drew a mockup of the general lines of motion, making them a little big so if there were slight deviances, the designs would still follow their movements.

Soap sat on the couch in the back stage area and started to draw. They moved around him and occasionally one of them would look at what he was doing, give criticism and then keep going. He kinda thought that should’ve gave him more instructions if they had opinions but so far all Ghost said was “Get creative”. So a black and white canvas that follows their movements. No theme. There would be colors. Fantastic.

Soap tried to put… something together. He was interrupted by a tap on his shoulder by Alex.

“Want coffee?”

“Oh. Sure?”

“Good.” He handed Soap forty dollars. “Go get coffee for everyone please. I’ll text you our orders.”

Soap stared at him but Alex was already wandering off. Look, technically everyone else seemed to also be working hard. Alex was clearly coding something, Ghost and Roach were still practicing and working on music and Rodolfo had a small pile of paperwork in front of him that he clearly needed to get done. Some of the slips of paper had giant red letters and that didn’t look promising.

But he was also working!! What gives??

After silently fuming about it for a minutes, but ultimately deciding that Alex already gave him the money, Soap went and got the stupid coffee. Rodolfo had an iced caramel macchiato with six extra shots of espresso, Roach had a white chocolate mocha, Ghost had a shaken espresso and Alex had a black coffee. Soap stared at him for a minute to see if he was being pretentious, but he seemed to genuinely like the coffee.

Like a freak.

Who likes black coffee from coffeeshops? You make it at home or its just not good.

While staring at Alex, he watched him kick his leg into the table and it bent. In Half. Not at the knee.

Soap gagged and Alex laughed. “It’s just a prosthetic. Don’t worry.”

“How did you lose your leg?” Soap asked before wincing. “Oh, sorry. Don’t answer that.”

“Nah, it’s cool. I lost in the war.”

Soap blinked, trying to do the mental math to think of Alex’s age versus the wars in the area.

“Not like the military. It was me, a dumpster and some raccoons.”

Soap stared at him, trying to figure out the joke here. There was a joke. What was the joke?

“Yeah… the Dumpster one. Lost two raccoons that day. What a waste. They were good dumpster diving buddies, ya know?”

“I’ve never went dumpster diving.”

“Really?” Alex looked so genuinely surprised Soap felt like he should be offended. Instead, he just walked away.

Soap settled down with his own drink, something unfortunately low in caffeine since he had to be careful with his meds, and started working again. He wanted to get rough sketches of the animations for the background, animations would work better plus they were projecting anyway, he wanted this to be cool and impress these guys even if they were… much more…

Alright, so they were kinda losers. Still hot though. Even the scary small one.

The lights went out across the entire venue and Soap let out a… less than manly scream. A phone flashlight lit up in front of him and he blinked.

“Uh… Which of you is it?”

Roach tilted the light so it illuminated his face. He smiled at him and offered him his hand. Soap took it and Roach gently led him outside. It had gotten dark and only now did he realize how long he had been there.

Roach looked at him for a moment before punching his shoulder and texting him.

“See you tomorrow - :)”

Soap felt so giddy at having the Roach’s phone number now. “See you tomorrow. When should I come by?”

“We’ll be arriving at 12 so any time after that works.”

Ghost, Soap could tell because who else would have a helmet with a skull on it, turned on his motorcycle and waved to them. Roach rushed over and got on the back, arms wrapping snugly around Ghost’s waist. Ghost gave a two finger salute to Soap before they both left, leaving Soap to stand there.

Not the most eventful first day, but they would be working together for at least two weeks. Maybe longer if he could convince them to keep him around.

Soap finally let the little freak out he had been holding in since that morning in.

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ofstaigweek · 10 months

Text

Pst!

It's really happening!

Gooood day, staig enthusiasts! The time has finally come, and it's here! Staig week 2023! We're so glad that we were able to pull this off, with the three teasers presented we hoped it had made you look forward to this wonderful event.

SEPTEMBER 18 — SEPTEMBER 24

Now, let's get to it! But first, a set of guidelines for this week.

• PRIORITY RULE NO PLAGIARISM / AI ART / HATE SPEECH OR ANYTHING OF THE SORT. staig week is friendly not to just artists, but to everybody else.

• submission any form of submission is acceptable! art on paper/digital, literature, edits, etc! as long as it honors the priority rule. + late submissions are fine!

• tagging if to submit, use #staigweek2023 or tag us so the world may see your contribution!

• themes the first six days have two choices to choose from, and you are to pick one. or, if you're feeling motivational, choose both! why not?

• it's more than okay if you draw/write staig as their genderbent, headcanons, or post-covid versions throughout the week! whichever you're comfortable with.

• and finally, have fun!

.... And with confidence, here it is,

• SEPTEMBER 18TH, DAY 1: to when it all started

first confession - they say confessions make the best memory — or the worst.

rivalry - staig's infamous rivalry.

• SEPTEMBER 19TH, DAY 2: my impressions of you

fanfiction - is there a particular fanfiction of staig you always wanted to illustrate? a oneshot that captures their endearment perfectly that you just want to draw it?

theme song - a theme song should be interesting, no? ever found a song you've listened to one day, and thought, 'hey, i can imagine 10 different scenarios of staig with this song'. or maybe it's just them listening to your favorite artist? it depends on how you see it.

• SEPTEMBER 20TH, DAY 3: nostalgic memories

SOT - stick of truth; the warrior and the thief, marshwalker and feldspar. how do you imagine their story?

TFBW - the fractured but whole; yet again toolshed and super craig remain rivals, what is it with these two?

• SEPTEMBER 21ST, DAY 4: troublesome

detention - with their reputation, why wouldn't they be in detention? always getting into fights, disasters they've caused.. but for what purpose exactly?

bad habits - sneaking out at night to party or to their secret meeting place, drinking, smoking, skipping classes, the typical rebellious teenage stuff which could be romantic if you think hard enough.

• SEPTEMBER 22ND, DAY 5: so happy together

indoors - staig date! indoors bonding — video games, cooking, card games, or spending time with stripe? who knows.

outdoors - another staig date? ridiculous. but this time it could be different and unique, maybe? like an aquarium date, a stargazing date, or stick to the basics. maybe go into the alphabet of dates to see what would go well with them? you decide.

• SEPTEMBER 23RD, DAY 6: up to this special day

graduation - their graduation! could be their graduation picture together, or a sentimental moment they could share.

prom night - a final moment to perfectly end their senior year in a success or a disaster; depending on your mood.

• SEPTEMBER 24TH, DAY 7: happy staig 2023!

FREE DAY - have a particular AU or prompt you wanted to draw that wasn't included? then with the 7th day you are free to do so! tons of possibilities and nothing to stop you. happy staig week 2023! thank you so much for letting us host this year, and of course, thank you for participating!

#craig tucker #craig x stan #sp craig #sp staig #sp stan #staig #staig week 2023 #staigweek2023 #stan marsh #stan x craig #cran #sp cran

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getinthehandbasket · 13 days

Text

Cross-disciplinary training for artists

My entire life I thought of myself as a writer. A nearly-failed author, because I had such a hard time writing, but a writer all the same.

I had no framework for writing anything more than drabbles or vignettes. Anything more than 2k fizzled out. Let's not even talk about papers when I was in high school and college. I thought I had to get it all out mostly-perfect all at once, the first time, and that was so overwhelming that I just.. didn't.

No one taught me about stages. No one taught me about outlining, filling in, refining, etc.

About ten years ago I decided I wanted to branch out beyond my fiber arts (a thing which I am good at) and my writing (a thing which I was not good at). I decided to learn how to paint, how to do multimedia art journaling, how to draw, how to do anything as a visual (but not digital) artist because I like making things.

The thing that surprised me the most was this: artists work in layers. The first few - hell, sometimes even the first MANY - layers are foundations. Underpaintings. Sketches. Blobs of color. Things that look nothing like what the final will be. Art is built up in layers, even fiber arts. All art, I have found, is made of layers and stages.

Now I'm back to writing. I write fanfic. I am now writing it using a "layering" strategy.

I laid out a very VERY vague timeline, and a few notes about a couple of scenes that made me want to write the fic to give those scenes a home.

Then I started noting down beats, and assigning them to different spots in my timeline. Now I had an actual outline.

NOW I'm filling in the outline with scenes. They're not necessarily good. Sometimes it's just a sentence or two saying something like "first threesome here" or "X goes to Y's house to hang out - reason??". Sometimes it's a 2k scene where I meant to do one thing and the characters decided to flirt prematurely instead. I'm not even writing in the perspective (or possibly the tense) I plan to use in the final. I'm currently writing everything from a 3rd person present-tense somewhat omnicient POV. The final fic will have first-person probably present-tense limited omniscience POV, bouncing between my MCs as the POV character.

I'm not even calling it my first draft. To keep that pressure off of myself, it's entirely within a "planning document" and I'm informally calling it my 0 Draft. I'm just telling myself the story, and not necessarily in order.

When I'm done with it, I will open up a new document and start retyping everything, editing in the process, rewriting a bunch of stuff, changing to the correct tense/POV, etc. That will be my first draft, because for some reason (*cough* bad English teachers who thought they weren't the ones responsible for teaching their students how to write essays, papers, or anything else, who required us to turn in "first drafts" of our papers basically for copyediting and that's it *cough*) I have it drilled into my head that a First Draft must be complete and ready to be copyedited. A First Draft can be a shitty draft, sure, but in my head it also had to be nearly the final form. So now I'm calling what most people would call their 1st Draft my 0 Draft.

And once I am done with my "1st Draft" (which is really my 2nd), THEN I will retype it one more time to catch any spelling or grammar or plothole mistakes. That's the version I will have betas read for last-minute checks, and that's the version I will post.

TL;DR - setting writing down for a while and learning other artistic disciplines, even if I nowhere near mastered them, has granted me so much insight into a better way to write. It's given me joy instead of anxiety in my most treasured creative hobby.

I'm not even halfway through telling myself the story and I'm already 13.5k in. After cutting some of my darlings out and moving them to a different doc.

"Cross-training" makes everything easier.

#writing #fanfic #fic author #fic writing #writing fiction #creative writing #artistic cross training #Life Lessons

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carpisuns · 2 years

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Do you have any advice for someone who wants to start posting Miraculous Art or digital art inngeneral? I want to make a tumblr for it, but I feel like I need to be good enough to do so in a way?

Yes! My advice is: just post it :) go for it! there is no “your skill level must be this high to post” rule.

honestly, sharing work can be scary for people of any skill level. it’s good to learn how to get comfortable with your own mistakes and just learn and grow and improve without feeling shame about where you’re starting. and you might be surprised by how supportive people are of beginners and how much they genuinely enjoy your work even when you don’t really know what you’re doing! Haha

here look at this

I drew this like 3 years ago and I was proud of it at the time but i despise it now and I think it’s one of the worst things I’ve ever drawn because chat’s arm is like TWICE as long as it should be 😂 the anatomy in general is Bad but that arm haunts me to this day!!!! Omg

But you know who commented on that mistake? No one!! This post got like 100 notes and it was just people being nice (and this was back when I had just started my blog and had hardly any followers).

^ this was one of my earliest pieces of ML art, which I drew on paper and then took a photo of and colored in with my finger on my phone bc I didn’t have a drawing tablet lol. I specifically remember flipping out bc buggachat reblogged it 😂 it is not a good drawing!!!

The point is that art doesn’t have to be super well done for you and others to enjoy it! posting your stuff is a great way to share what you love, make friends, connect with other creators that you can learn from, and just feel supported in your art journey. Improvement will come automatically as you just keep creating and having fun with it!

Sometimes i actually get excited when I see art that was drawn by a beginner because it’s just cool to see people learning new things and sharing things that they enjoy even if it’s not perfect. I know it’s intimidating to share your work when there are other artists who are more skilled than you, but realistically there is always gonna be someone who’s better than you, no matter how good you are, so you might as well get used to it now 😂 also, even artists you look up to make mistakes! i remember when I first started learning I thought everyone else’s art was flawless lol but when you train your eye better you notice mistakes more. Which isn’t a bad thing! It’s nice to remember that we’re all still growing and we can support each other as we do that. I could go through every one of my art pieces and point out mistakes I’ve made or ways I could improve lol and that’s just the stuff I even notice! Sometimes that’s a little intimidating bc I’m like “omg XYZ artist is SO good, they’re probably judging me” but honestly that’s probably not the case(?) haha. In my experience fandom artists are very supportive of one another whether they’ve been drawing forever or are just starting out. So don’t sweat it! Just share your stuff and see where it leads you :)

good luck!!! I am cheering you on! 💜

(also I’ll let you in on a little secret: if something is stupid/funny people don’t care how ugly it is. yesterday I posted something that looks like this and people reblogged it. amazing)

#anon #ask #positivity

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eerna · 3 months

Note

Hello! This is incredibly random, but as a fanartist, enjoyer of critically examining media, and critic of capitalist corporations (*cough* Disney), do you have any thoughts about fan art being a form of unpaid labour?

Context is I’m writing an essay about digital labour and how fan creation is basically kind of like free PR for big corporations… and now whenever I do fanart I can’t get that thought out of my head uGH. I want to believe that drawing fanart is my own form of creative expression and way of showing love for the media, but at the same time I’m like “am I being exploited???” since I’m helping advertise smth for free and these corporations are just capitalizing on my love for said media??? and I can’t reconcile these thoughts 🥲🫠

Also I’m struggling with the essay LOL my eventual conclusion is that we as fans do have agency but we kind of still are being exploited… so it’s not a very optimistic outlook haha. Doesn’t help that the scholars’ articles I’m reading are all very negative about this digital labour thing. Help.

Sorry if this is unexpectedly deep!! 😅 just really curious to hear a fellow fanartist’s thoughts, and I respect you a lot for being unafraid to criticize media 🙏🙏

Hi! First of thank you for your kind words~ Second off, what a cool concept to discuss. Your message is pretty much how I feel. It is very frustrating to remember that so much of the media I love is so closely tied to the harmful cycle of capitalism. I grew up in a country that didn't have access to merch or much in the way of official media so piracy was my go-to most of the time. This means I was introduced to the concept of consumerist aspects of fandom via the Internet as a teenager and started feeling bad about "not supporting" stuff I love, but I told myself "Well I pay back by doing fanart and talking about it online". And then I found out about the way capitalism shapes the media landscape and started feeling bad for playing into it, the same as you. It gets even more conflicting when I am talking about something I dislike made by a company I dislike - yeah, I am probably preventing some people from interacting with the media for themselves, but I am also probably making others interested. What makes me feel better about the entire thing is that the "digital labour" I do is that I'm doing it for other fans like me, and to express myself. I love things so much that it makes me feel like I am going to explode, but pouring it out onto paper helps with it! Of course, I don't have to post it online for it to be worthwhile, but sharing it with others who feel the way I do makes the feelings even better. BUT one of the most important aspects of the issue is how willing those companies are to let me gain something monetary from the relationship. Are they ignoring fanworks being sold as fan merch, as commissions? It is illegal, but I feel like it should absolutely be allowed as a sort of unmentioned perk of being a fan worker, and the companies that don't allow that are evil. My audience gets bigger, I sell more prints, and so do they. (This is also why I never accept money for fanworks made by small creators, such as webcomics)

There's also the fact that lately I've been seeing the rise of "If you REALLY love this piece of media, it is your DUTY to consume it as much as possible and spread the word about it as much as possible and make the company as much money as possible if you want to see more things like it!" takes. These are utter bullshit and where enjoyment of media goes to die. The moment you reduce your love for something only to how much money it can make the evil capitalist overlords who allowed it to grace your eyes, you completely deny any kind of artistic worth. Media should exist because we deserve to have our hearts touched by stories, not because it makes someone money.

I don't have a clear answer or feel like my approach to the issue goes entirely along with my morality. But I don't think we can find a way to feel good about the entire situation as long as our media is dictated by capitalism. It's the sad reality of loving something in a system that will squeeze any money out of you that it can. But we gotta march on, remember that we are the ones allowing them to survive and not the other way around, and love while we do it. Good luck with your essay, stay positive!

#eernask #elsartzz

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icedmetaltea · 5 months

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I've been feeling discouraged about my art recently. Could you possibly give me some tips?

Ok I wanna preface this by saying I am by no means a professional or even "good" artist, BUT I shall try!

These are all tips by a digital artist so I can't help much when it comes to other forms

This got long so under the cut, 20 ART TIPS TIME LETS GOOO

1.Try to draw most days, or at least once a week. The more often the better BUT I don't mean like hardcore, a complex drawing every single day (recipe for burnout right there). I mean like even just 30 seconds of SOMETHING. You can draw shapes, maybe fill a page with circles. There are programs u can find online that give you like a min to sketch something and challenge yourself in a really short time frame. Guess what?? When you draw often you're building those neural pathways (I think) and the more you do it the easier it'll get

2. Don't obsess over making stuff look perfect on the first draft... or at all. I recommend making a "draft" layer or 2... or 3 over the initial sketch. The more you go over it and change stuff, the better it'll be. Also, If you spend hours on it and still hate it?? Who cares! You put in the work and now you have an idea out on paper that you can go over some time in the future and improve if you chose to.

3. DON'T DELETE STUFF!!! Unless it's literally just mindless scribbles, save everything you draw. Like I said, you can go over it again and improve it someday. You can also look back at it in like a year and compare your art to see where you've improved! I deleted all my old art from beyond like a year ago and regret it so much. Don't berate yourself for the stuff you need to work on, be proud of what improvements you've still made

USE REFERENCES!!!!!!! Please just do it, I know it's annoying but I promise it helps so so much

4. Invest drawing tablet, preferably one with buttons that you can map to undo, sketch, fill and such. This will make drawing sooooo much easier (and faster). My quality of art has improved just from drawing the same thing and redoing it like 20 times at a time, and it takes way less time when I can just click a button to do that. It might seem daunting at first but it quickly becomes instinctual. This is the one I got and I'm quite happy with it! It's got good sensitivity, a pen you don't have to replace batteries for or even recharge, and it's mid-range so not wayy too expensive. However, if you're just starting out, I'd recommend this (I got the corded version but I assume it's about the same) since it's small, cheap and you can focus on just learning basics like improving lines n such.

5. Use a bigger canvas size. I started out with 1000x1000, and that's still fine for smaller stuff and doodles, for better quality I recommend bigger sizes. If it's too small it'll look all weird and pixel-y

6. THERE ARE LITERALLY SO MANY FORMS OF ART, maybe the one you're trying just isn't something you vibe with! There's mosaics, digital, traditional (and all the many sub-categories of that), sculpture, photography, etc. All are equally valid and you will improve in your craft if you choose something that 1. you enjoy, 2. are consistent with it!

7. SEGEMENT OUT THE LIMBS drawing DCA stuff for over a year has helped me improve on anatomy sooo much literally just because it forced me to think of each part of a limb in terms of segments, shapes- for instance, instead of an upper arm, I think of a tube which connects to a circle that allows it to rotate and another tube... followed by a weird shape for a hand that connects 5 smaller tubes, whiCH ARE THEN SEPERATED IN TO 3 TUBES EACH. Yes it sounds confusing but breaking it down like that instead of just trying to figure things out helped an absolute shitton

8. Have some kinda hobby that makes you draw frequently. For instance I have a discord sona I draw a new pfp for every month or so. It's a simple design and since the pfp won't show many flaws I can pump out lots of art for it in a small timeframe and I find it relaxing. I've actually improved a shitton just drawing pfps This is one of my first pfps from maybe 2 yrs ago compared with one of my most recent ones

(yes I'm a bit of a furry deal with it) It's cute, there's nothing wrong at all with it! However, you can see how things have changed.

See how the lines are a lot more even, less jagged? The proportions of the shoulders are much wider, the ears aren't just popping out of the hair, the shading makes a bit more sense and isn't just thrown around at random. There's also a broader range of color, with a few bright highlights to catch the eye, colored shading I think as well. The former is just like 3 simple colors. These are all things I learned from drawing pfps consistently.

9. CONSISTENCY IS KEY!! And FUN, if you have fun drawing it'll be a lot easier to do frequently

10. Whether it's drawing pfps, blorbos or landscapes, find something that brings you joy and it'll be MUCH easier to stick to. Draw, draw a lot, do not worry about "good" art and "bad" art cause there's literally no such thing. Compare what you draw now with what you do in like a year or two from now and I promise, if you're consistent, use references and are patient, you WILL amaze yourself with how much you improve.

11. Challenge yourself! Join secret santas (assuming you know you can complete it within the allotted timeframe), draw your friends' sona/ocs (if they're cool with it), do palette challenges, do monthly stuff like drawtober or whatever it's called (BUT I don't recommend doing something every single day for a month cause again, gonna cause mega burnout)

12. Draw when the inspiration comes, it will move your hand. These days I make much better quality art that I'm proud of when I just let inspiration flow through me instead of begrudgingly making myself draw. You shouldn't be forcing yourself!! If you are, you probably are burned out by either drawing too much, feeling a lack of confidence or some other stuff going on irl. Inspiration comes naturally, and when it doesn't it's prolly your mind trying to communicate that something's up. If resting a week or two doesn't help, take a deeper look at your life and see if the artblock is a symptom of something else (for me it's most often depression).

13. At the same time, sometimes you just need to start. Kinda on the previous point of lacking confidence, often we scare ourselves out of even trying. It might feel insurmountable. Nah, try. If all you can do is a wobbly, vague sketch?? You got the idea out!! Start drawing fuckin eyeballs or something, just start. Sometimes the hardest part is just facing a blank canvas and putting a couple lines on it

14. Not all brushes are equal. Some just make drawing easier- at least for me. I dunno the science behind it but when I use my sketch brush (it's got a similar look to pencil) rather than my lineart brush it makes drawings just... look better. Also using thicker lines in general helps. Why?? NO CLUE, maybe thinner ones just show flaws easier or intersect better or something.

15. Music or some other distraction can help, idk why. Some days I like to have a movie/show/podcast going in the background for a mild distraction that keeps me slightly stimulated on other stuff even as I draw- maybe it increases brain activity or??? No idea. Sometimes just listening to music. Sometimes I need total silence. Do what works for you! Give lots of different stuff a try, you may love drawing while listening to a podcast in the background

16. Take breaks!! The pomodoro method works with art as well. Every 25 mins or so, take a 5 min break. Get up, stretch, get some water, maybe watch a yt vid. Call ur friend and tell them you love and cherish them. Then get back to it and you will feel oh so refreshed. After maybe 3 rounds take a 15 min or longer break and then repeat if you still feel like it

17. SLEEP IS INCREDIBLY FUCKING IMPORTANT you will see a deep decline in the quality of your art when you're tired, plus you just feel like shit and art is about feeling good and expressing yourself. Sleep is important, even tho yes I stay up too late drawing most nights, I do my absolute best to get at least 7 hours of sleep every night, as should you!!

18. DO NOT BE SCARED OF STICK FIGURES AND MESSY SKETCHES, they're actually the best way to start bc 1. it's a quick way to get an idea out before you forget it 2. the finished piece will actually look a lot more fluid since you weren't spending all that time obsessing over making the first draft look perfect- which often just makes it look stiff. You can do a whole lot with stick figures. Focus on that good ol' line of action.

19. Random but when drawing the face, I like to first make a circle and then like a "mask" over it for the actual face. For me it just makes sense. Then two lines, one up/down and one left, right, it'll make it easier to align the eyes and ears. In general, the ears usually go where the "mask" begins and just below the left/right line

20. Finally surround yourself with people who encourage you. I grew up in an environment where people would gawk at stuff my sibling drew and ignore me bc they were ~naturally talented~ and it made me not want to draw at all.

Well guess what?? Now that I spend time with people who encourage me and genuinely care about my interest in art I've improved a lot bc I have the motivation, the joy of showing ppl who care about me new pieces. If people in your life aren't encouraging you, or gods forbid insulting your art (excluding constructive criticism that you've explicitly asked for) then TOSS EM OVERBOARD THE BOAT OF LIFE and find people who will treat you with the love and respect you deserve

P.S

This isn't a tip, just a recommendation: Chicory, a colorful tale. It's a game where u play as a cute lil dog who gets a magical paintbrush that lets you color the world. The only issue? You have no ~talent~. My gods, this game struck a cord with me.

Feeling like you don't have any talents that come naturally to you. Being overlooked even when you try your best. Feeling like a complete joke when you try to pick up the brush (or in this case stylus) because there are so many "real" artists and you're not one of them.

Also the things people say and how they can affect you even when not intentional. Damn. It's just a beautiful game. It's made by the same people who made Wandersong, another absolute banger game with a character who is seen as a joke and I cannot recommend them enough.

bonus tip bc why the fuck not: OVERLAYS!!!!!!! In clip paint studio you have all these layer options, I can never memorize what they all do so I just make like an ombre color layer over my base colors and try all of them to see what looks cool

#Answer tag #Metaltea Talks #ref #art tips #long post #*gives anon a thousand tiny cartoon hearts in a bottle*

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kinderedgeisc00t · 1 year

Text

Okay, how do I do this,

Let's see uh

Okay I have nothing to copy and paste really, so I'm just going to write from scratch. Bear with me.

Hiiiii I'm Edmund Endless. I'm 18, as of last February. Seems important to put out into the world.

I'm a little weirdo. Or, well a tall one according to some people (is 5'8" tall?), But either way, I fully admit that I am in fact rejecting the term normal when it comes to my identity. I'm in fact very eccentric in between the fact that I consider things like slacks to be casual pants and almost always wear some kind of Hawaiian shirt out in public because I like the design of a short sleeve button up with desgny stuff, that definitely counts.

As far as hobbies go, I've had a bit of time to accumulate some, such as being an artist on paper and digitally, a rudimentary writer in the works, and then I look cooking and playing Minecraft (I am most certainly not a gamer but that will hopefully be something I can work on)

I also like to dress super femme [though, also, I see clothing as a thing all should be able to enjoy free of gendered norms, sooo-]. So far not anything huge since I'm working on getting a job as we speak, but once I have money flowing in, I plan to do more. I think skirts, fishnets, and makeup are all amazing things, and that's not even the start of it.

Edit: I've been considering Gothic Victorian attire... I think it's also called Gothic Lolita? Outfits I've found look cute and i wish I had them now-

Anyway, as mentioned in my blurb at the top, I am neurodivergent. As far as I know I Do have an official diagnosis but I don't know where they are because I was not the one who got them- but anyway I have Autism and ADHD. I like to think of them as additional overlays over my brain (I imagine ADHD as like the weird additional RAM space over with my left hemisphere for example) that have a few drawbacks but generally make me who I am. Everyone is a unique individual and I think that's one of the best things ;]

Formerly I was a proud owner of a surprisingly old cockatiel whom I love and cherish- he got to be 31, nearly 32, this year. And throughout the last summer, I also care for two cats- neither of which have any problem with my bird. Usually it's more a concern of if he'll bite them lol

Since my birds passing I've adopted two rescues who needed a new person and while they're not fully tamed yet, we all enjoy each other and I hope to further the bond with time and effort.

Anyway it's a fair warning that because of that I may or may not understand certain social cues, sarcasm, certain jokes, etc. I definitely understand text tones a little better even before people started employing the /srs or whatever stuff, but it's better to put that out there. I can also be a little blunt, but between autism and experiences, I do try to not be harsh if I can.

Anyway I'm running out of long things to list so I'm just going to put some additional facts down here

- I currently have at least one experience working on an alpaca farm, and as a result I have a couple vague understandings of the stuff that goes on there and why they're quite profitable.

- I really really want to dye a bit of my hair hot pink. I think it would be awesome and very outside the box. [Edit: I DID IT! I'M GONNA DO IT AGAIN eventually]

- I like scary stuff and I like silly stuff, and I especially like it when both are involved. Mainly because I see a lot of the same humor nowadays and horror doesn't always phase me (I was one of those kids who got into FNAF when I was younger so a lot of the feeling of being scared over those kind of things desensitized me a little.)

- I at one point wanted to be a YouTuber as a career, but most likely that will not happen due to the ridiculousness of the platform not likely going to mesh very well with my vocabulary at least half the time consisting of Fuck here and there- which is to say I will probably still eventually get back into that because I wanted to post things on there too.

- I've been getting into baking and I really want to try to make creamy jalapeno popper stuffed chocolate donuts from scratch. I also want to make a pizza from scratch :]

- I love Legos and I like making transformers out of them when I can figure out how to do it.

- I like music that is either from the 50s jazz era, older rock, shitposty songs, and then will wood. I/me/myself babyy :D

- I have read the entire Twilight series and shamelessly admit that I used to think it was the coolest thing when I was younger. Not So much Anymore.

- I'm a big fan of books by Rick riordan, James Patterson, and other obscure artists that right strange cool stories- such as The hitchhiker's guide which I also read the entire trilogy of four books.

- for some reason my default thought to looking cooler involves spikes and leather and you know I can't entirely say why. But I think it makes anyone look instantly cooler to be dressed in at least a cool leather jacket and heeled matching boots.

- I am in fact the person behind the two projects R.O.O.T and Enduralt. The former (Root) which I work on more because that's a long-term project and an original project. The other one (Enduralt) was just something me and an old friend kind of jumped back into for fun and I figured I'd keep the ball rolling as long as I can since I felt like it deserved to have its ideas shown in some capacity.

- I have a C shaped spine last I checked. It doesn't affect a whole lot as long as I'm careful, but I think it's an interesting fact to mention.

- through very roundabout means I am related to Johnny Cash, but not by blood.

- at some point I really want to have the space to build the model of an old car but retrofitted for modern road safety stuff since nowadays you need to have at least a partially electric car to drive on the road. I'd like to have mine look nice and cool.

- this probably should have gone upwards by the cake idea but I really like mixing foods together and at some point I intend to create my ultimate burger I've always dreamed of.

- also my favorite color is magenta and I am frustrated that it is hard to find that color in the kind of clothes I like to get because if I could I would have a lot of nice sweaters and skirts and stuff in magenta and it would be amazing-

Anyway, that's all I can think of right now, so unless I something start reblogging and adding more to the list, that's everything relevant. Feel free to ask more about that stuff and I'll tell stories like the weird uncles/dad friend that I am to people.

How the hell do I pin this-

#intro post #if you see these #hi :]

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blurryfangirlansuke · 11 months

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Undescribed Pt 2

Duke grabs the leftover paper that hasn't been used to drawn and hums to himself while letting the pencil doing it's work. Once he was satisfied he hands the paper to sona.

Sona was feeling down from being lonely and having not so much notes whenever she posted maybe she wasn't trying hard enough maybe her drawing the same thing is making others bored what if she's not good enough. The truth is she needs to get that negativity out of her system and look the bright side of things. Very important message that Duke writes for her .

Sona done some stuff in the past that wasn't the greatest but she's still learning as an artists to do better and not let criticism or hatred take over. She looks more into the note .

One message not just to sona but to people and artists who need something like this. Duke maybe a bad influence and evil but he does has his sweet moments whenever someone needs a shoulder to cry on besides trying to sleep around .

Duke being smug looks back at Sona as she stays still the tears down her eyes. No one is not perfect we attend to screw up sometimes but it's part of learning also who's the tallest and handsome vamp of all Duke point out .

Duke press his hand caressing Sona's hair messy but still a sign of comfort closing her eyes feeling at ease. No need to pressure yourself or being the best. Just be you and you'll get by this is you're life. Okay I'll do my very best Sona said with a gentle smile

With the black and grey colors occur from the conversations and tears with emotions color started to show between these two a vampire embracing his care and love to this human girl doing better and making others and herself feel happiness. We can always try again .

Duke: I'm always here for you toots

Holding hands with each other developing a heart of the trust and understanding they have. They're going to start fun and memorable chapters from art, friends, creators etc.

A lovely happy ending for two or maybe you ~

Hey ya thank u for taking the time reading my digital comic between my sona and my hubby welp the character that always puts a smile and gives me inspiration Duke from " The Vampair Series ". He has honestly lift my spirits up whenever I'm down or need something to dabble and draw. There's lots of characters I see many artists draw as a comfort or to simp and it's absolutely inspiring because I want Vampair to be popular like Vivziepop animations Series that's how much the series means alot to me. I use to always rely on the numbers of hearts or notes I received having a like or followed by your favorite creators but that's not important what matters is that your doing something that you enjoy doing from the heart and soul and maybe you can inspire others. I hope I can try with the fanworks I draw my some of my characters and creators characters. I've gone alot better and this is meant for fun hell I'll be happy if I get zero notes I'm proud of posting what I love and enjoying simping for spaghetti man.

Thank you all and have a great day or night ❤️ ^^

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eigwayne · 6 months

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Today's Project: Creature Crafting!

This is a method of inspiration for creature designing, for any gentle readers who are writers or artists or game masters- or anyone, really, your purposes are none of my beeswax. If it looks useful or fun, try it!

I might have posted this method of monster creation before, but if I have it's been a long time and I'm almost certain I didn't include pictures last time. So please enjoy it today, despite the weird fish monster I greeted you with.

What you do is take parts of skeleton illustrations, mash them together, and draw a new form around it to turn this chimeric mess into a new creature. I primarily use illustrations of extinct animal skeletons, which adds a prehistoric feel and lets me decide whether and where to add feathers, fur, osteoderms, and spikes without the original animal informing the decision.

That is, in theory. If you've read about paleontology you'll probably catch your knowledge of the actual animal creeping in a little too much. It's one thing to go "The original's eye sockets are the middle ones, not the big ones in the back." It's quite another to get stuck on "This torso was a mesohippus so the front feet have to be hooves no matter what." If that's the case, purposely adjust the design to be different and that should reboot your creative juices. No one needs to know the original animal had hooves if they no longer appear in the final result.

Actually doing stuff:

TLDR Short Version:

Gather reference images. Suggested sources are extinct animal skeleton illustrations.

Cut into three pieces: heads, torsos with front legs/flippers, and hindquarters with rear appendages and tails.

Shuffle each category of parts up.

Select one of each type- one random head, one random torso, one random tail.

Sketch new creature based on the random parts.

Add details, embellishments, or notes based on the new creature from the sketch.

The Details:

To start, gather your references. I cannot supply mine because I printed them out and no longer have links, but search for things like "paleozoic skeleton illustration", "extinct animal skeleton", or "dinosaur skeleton reconstruction" to start. I advise using "extinct" or "reconstruction" and synonyms thereof in pretty much any search to avoid getting recent dead animals, human remains, or reconstructions with fleshy bits and exteriors that might influence your design. Also illustrations are easier to interpret than photos once they're cut up. Trust me.

Once you have your source images, you can go digital by slicing the images and saving the pieces as different layers or images, or manual by printing them out and cutting them with scissors. I cut mine into three parts- head and neck, front limbs with torso and spine, and hips/hindquarters with rear appendages and tail. Keep each type/category of part together and once they're all cut up, shuffle the stacks.

I suggest keeping the parts in a folder (or physical parts in an envelope) so you can use them in the future. Mine are separated like so:

Also if you're smarter than I am, you'll flip your images so they're all facing the same way. I have six envelopes instead of three because I forgot, resulting in "heads facing left", "heads facing right", "torsos facing left", etc.

To start creating, select one piece from each pile. I like to arrange mine at the top of a sheet of paper, photocopy it so I can keep the skeleton images but reuse the parts again later, and sketch the animal on the photocopy. I did one this morning and took photos to illustrate the rest of the process. First, my paleo parts:

I'm pretty sure this is a terror bird's tail and a mesohippus torso with that turtle head. First, sketch the basic shape this creature suggests. I usually start with the hindquarters and back, then sketch in the upper legs (because if there are issues, I'm most likely to change the feet over anything else, to make things more logical, but the shape of the haunches usually stays close to the same).

That torso tells me this is most likely a four-limbed creature. The tail is unfortunately from a photograph so parts are hard to make out. I'm not sure what that thick bit of pelvis in front of the tail is, so I'm most likely going to ignore it. Maybe I'll make the rear legs a little chunkier to suggest it's there. The front limbs have a slope to the shoulder blade so even if I didn't know this is most likely a mesohippus, I'd give it a horse's shoulder because that just makes sense with the bone shape.

After the shape of the animal is down, you can evaluate what details it tells you. This one, despite the claws in the rear, looks like a grazing animal so I decided it uses the strong beak and feet to eat grass and dig for tubers. It has high protrusions on the spine above the forelimbs, where the withers would be on a horse, but with the low head and neck, it doesn't looks very rideable. So I sketched a rear view showing the high spine compared to the round sides. Then I sketched the feet to sort those out (this is where the "This was a mesophippus" thought I mentioned earlier happened, which is how this creature got stumpy claws on both rear and front toes later). And I did a couple different possibilities for the facial horns, with the thought that maybe the males have big horns for defense and display. Then I figured, why leave the lady turto-rhino-phosrhaco-ponies out, and figured they can have out-sized horns too.

At this stage, I add notes to myself. I know my handwriting is bad so here's the most relevant ones:

maybe add some fur or fat

no good for riding if domesticated

-if adding fur, could turn into hump (this is in reference to the tall withers)

grazing and digging (with an arrow toward the hooked turtle beak)

floppy ears could work but it'd look even more rhino-like

And that's the gist of it! After this, you can move on to a new creature, try something different with the same skeleton, or polish this animal up a bit.

Want to see a similar method by a professional illustrator using just skulls (3D rendered, no real skulls involved), with dynamic results? I happen to have found one today! Try this video from Youtube channel Jazza: Drawing Insane Creatures from Mystery Skulls!

And here's another example from me:

Happy Chimera Creature Crafting!

#monster design #creature design #sorry not sorry for starting with the fish abomination #worldbuilding #descriptions in the alt text #my projects

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