#i lost a lot of detail in the painting process

[hikingofthenoldor]

Geralt of Rivia deep in meditation... His outfit and the flowers are approximately inspired by polish folk art.

#geralt of rivia #the witcher #acrylic paint is a pain in the ass #i had to remind myself that it doesn't work like water colours #the witcher fanart #geralt von riva #geralt z rivii #jack's art #Traditional art #fanart #i lost a lot of detail in the painting process #but that's ok #he looks way too young though

[vetyr]

hi, i ireally love your work and i don't know if you've answered this before but, what kinds of studies do you do or how did you learn color theory? i wanna get better at rendering and anatomy but im having trouble TT TT

Hi! Long answer alert. Once a chatterbox, always a chatterbox.

When I started actively learning how to draw about 10 1/2 years ago, I exclusively did graphite studies in sketchbooks. Here's a few examples—I mostly stuck to doing line drawings to drill basic shapes/contours and proportions into my brain. The more rendered sketches helped me practice edge control & basic values, and they were REALLY good for learning the actual 3D structure behind what I was drawing.

I'd use reference images that I grabbed from fitness forums, Instagram, Tumblr, Pinterest, and some NSFW places, but you could find adequate ref material from figure drawing sites like Line of Action. LoA has refs for people (you can filter by clothed/unclothed, age, & gender), animals, expressions, hands/feet, and a few other useful things as well. Love them.

Learning how to render digitally was a similar story; it helped a lot that I had a pretty strong foundation for value/anatomy going in. I basically didn't touch color at all for ~2 years (except for a few attempts at bad digital or acrylic paint studies), which may not have been the best idea. I learned color from a lot of trial and error, honestly, and I'm pretty sure this process involved a lot of imitation—there were a number of digital/traditional painters whose styles I really wanted to emulate (notably their edge control, color choices, value distributions, and shape design), so I kiiind of did a mixture of that + my own experimentation.

For example, I really found Benjamin Björklund's style appealing, especially his softened/lost edges & vibrant pops of saturated color, so here's a study I did from some photograph that I'm *pretty* sure was painted with him in mind.

Learning how to detail was definitely a slow process, and like all the aforementioned things (anatomy/color/edge control/values/etc.) I'm still figuring it out. Focusing on edge control first (that is, deciding on where to place hard/soft edges for emphasizing/de-emphasizing certain areas of the image) is super useful, because you can honestly fool a viewer into thinking there's more detail in a piece than there actually is if you're very economical about where you place your hard edges.

The most important part, to me, is probably just doing this stuff over and over again. You're likely not going to see improvement in a few weeks or even a few months, so don't fret about not getting the exact results you want and just keep studying + making art. I like to think about learning art as a process where you *need* to fail and make crappy art/studies—there's literally no way around it—so you might as well fail right now. See, by making bad art you're actually moving forward—isn't that a fun prospect!!

It's useful to have a folder with art you admire, especially if you can dissect the pieces and understand why you like them so much. You can study those aspects (like, you can redraw or repaint that person's work) and break down whether this is art that you just like to look at, or if it's the kind of art that you want to *make.* There's a LOT of art out there that I love looking at, probably tens of thousands of styles/mediums, but there's a very narrow range that I want to make myself.

I've mentioned it in some ask reply in the past, but I really do think looking at other artist's work is such a cheat code for improving your own skills—the other artist does the work to filter reality/ideas for you, and this sort of allows you to contact the subject matter more directly. I can think of so many examples where an artist I admired exaggerated, like, the way sunlight rested on a face and created that orange fringe around its edge, or the greys/dull blues in a wheat field, or the bright indigo in a cast shadow, or the red along the outside of a person's eye, and it just clicked for me that this was a very available & observable aspect of reality, which had up until that point gone completely unnoticed! If you're really perceptive about the art you look at, it's shocking how much it can teach you about how to see the world (in this particular case I mean this literally, in that the art I looked at fully changed the way I visually processed the world, but of course it has had a strong effect on my worldviews/relationships/beliefs).

Thanks so much for sending in a question (& for reading, if you got this far)! I read every single ask I receive, including the kind words & compliments, which I genuinely always appreciate. Best of luck with learning, my friend :)

#answers to asks #illustration #art advice #art help #drawing #digital art

[bangtanflirt]

(Un)natural Instincts (Part 12)

*Series taglist is closed.

angst, fluff, smut

Pairings: OT7 x Fem Reader, Human CEO Reader, Human Assistant Yoongi, Wolf Hybrids Joon, Jin, Hobi, Jimin, Tae, and Kook.

Basic premise: You and your assistant end up rescuing six wolf hybrids. No part of the process is easy.

Part 1 > Part 2 > Part 3 > Part 4 > Part 5 > Part 6 > Part 7 > Part 8 > Part 9 > Part 10 > Part 11 > Part 12

General Warnings: Hybrid abuse and lab experimentation, drugs, hybrids as second-class citizens/owned property (Minors DNI, 18+ content)

Specific Warnings: discussions around SA triggers (mainly boundary setting, not angsty), one brief mention of a gunshot, gunshot wound, fear of punishments, hints to street crime violence, vague hints to smut

____

Hoseok watches as Taehyung gets lost in the painting, fascinated by how he repeatedly goes back and fixes each detail. It’s endearing, watching him bite his bottom lip in concentration.

“What’s that stuff you’re adding to the paint?”

“Poppyseed oil. It makes the paint dry slower.”

“You want it to dry slower?”

The younger one nods, “This way I can retouch whatever needs to be fixed without worrying about it drying.”

He hands his hyung the brush in his hand, which Hoseok swirls into the paint thinner before handing back clean.

“I didn’t know you could add stuff to the paint like that.”

“They’re called mediums. There's fast-drying ones too, which I’ll be using for the clothes and hair since I want to work in lots of separate layers for those.”

“This is already all too complicated for me.” Hoseok laughs, preferring to mindlessly watch the paint go down than think about drying times and layers.

Taehyung laughs, leaning in to give his hyung a peck on the cheek.

Jimin walks in at the exact time, smiling fondly at the scene. He brings in a platter of freshly cut fruit, most of which are Taehyung’s favorites.

“Fruit delivery!”

Hoseok brings the boy close, holding him by the waist as he opens his mouth for a piece. Taehyung follows, stopping his brushwork to be fed.

“How much longer until the painting’s done?” Jimin asks while popping a cut strawberry into the younger wolf’s mouth.

Taehyung holds up three fingers, mouth too distracted by the sweet fruit to speak.

“Three days?”

He nods.

“So three more days until you stop cooping up in here and pay more attention to me,” Jimin pouts.

“Are you actually getting jealous of Y/N’s late grandmother?” Taehyung teases, causing Hoseok to almost choke on a grape laughing.

It’s the sound again. The sound of Hoseok laughing. He seems completely oblivious as to how much it affects his packmates—how much love it fills in their hearts.

___

Jin reaches for Namjoon’s hand, attempting to soothe the worried wolf as they both wait for Jungkook to come out from his bath.

This isn’t going to be easy.

Joon says with furrowed brows alone.

He’s going to hate this.

Jin agrees with a light squeeze to his packmate’s fingers.

It wouldn’t be hard to convince an outsider that Jin and Namjoon can, in fact, read each other’s minds. Wouldn’t take much convincing at all, with how well the two communicate with just looks. But there’s no mind-reading abilities at play, just years of understanding each other.

They were the first two members of the pack, after all.

Namjoon still remembers the goosebumps on his arms when he first met Jin—it was the first time he’d ever felt the pull of a pack bond. A rush of adrenaline, serotonin, and dopamine all creating a buzzing cocktail in his body when the older wolf smiled his way.

Jin wasn’t innocent either, he knew he was riling the usually-poised Alpha up the second he looked at him. It was a fun game, teasing and taunting the big bad wolf until he was taught a lesson behind some shabby hybrid bar neither of them remember the name of anymore.

Namjoon's mind wanders back to that night, amused at the idea of telling his younger self that he’d be starting his forever family with that gorgeous man he met in a rundown dive bar—that four more wonderful hybrids would walk into their life and make them complete.

He doesn’t think he’d tell his younger version about the lab. He wouldn’t want to know.

The bathroom door opens, and both pairs of wolf eyes focus in on the youngest.

“Hey Koo” Jin says in his sweetest tone.

Jungkook flashes a toothy grin to his packmates, shuffling over to give both a chaste kiss on the lips.

“We were actually waiting for you pup, wanted to talk to you about something.”

Namjoon’s solemn tone isn’t lost on the wolf, putting him on edge as he takes his place opposite them on the bed.

“Is something wrong?” His eyes nervously dart between the two older ones.

Jin decides to take the lead, going in with as much tact as possible.

“First of all, we just want to say how happy we are that the hormones effects are wearing off on you. It’s great seeing you be yourself again...”

Namjoon jumps in, feeling Jin’s nervousness take over, “…but we do have to be mindful of our situation pup. Pushing away y/n isn’t going to do us any favors here.”

“Or Yoongi.” Jin adds.

Jungkook almost rolls his eyes, but he manages to hold back.

“I’ll behave.” He grits out halfheartedly.

“I’m going to need you to be more convincing than that Koo.”

The wolf glares at his Alpha, a sign of defiance Namjoon is not in the mood to entertain.

“Stop being bratty before I spank it out of you pup.”

Jungkook’s gaze changes in an instant. The challenging glint in his eyes is replaced with something far more devastating—hurt. Jin’s hands reach for Namjoon’s shoulder, pulling him back before the situation escalates even more.

“Why stop at a spanking? Might as well put the Obedience collar back on so you can have the docile and well behaved pup you want so badly.”

He doesn’t wait to be dismissed, almost running out of the room before the other two can see his glossy eyes.

Jin lets out a dejected sigh, “You shouldn’t have brought up punishment baby.”

Namjoon knew it was a mistake the second the words left his mouth, but it was already too late then.

“I-I know…it was just instinct.” Guilt overtakes his features, regretting not thinking twice before speaking.

The moment Jungkook looked at him with that defiant stare, he couldn’t help but respond in the way he had a thousand times before the lab. Back when punishments were just a tool for an Alpha to reign in a bratty wolf—not synonymous with physical and psychological torture.

He knows he can’t discipline his pack the way other Alphas do anymore, not when they’ve had enough punishments to last three lifetimes.

Jin tugs on the younger wolf’s sleeve, pulling him back to Earth, “Go apologize and make it up to him.”

“What if he wants space from me?”

“We’re talking about Jungkook here, your clingiest pup.”

Jin isn’t wrong. Jungkook isn’t the type to want to be left alone when he’s upset.

Namjoon follows the scent trail carefully, grimacing at the smell of salt mixed into Jungkook’s signature vanilla. Salt meant tears, and tears meant his pup was cooping himself up in some corner and sobbing. It doesn’t take the Alpha long to find which corner exactly, as the not-so-small wolf can’t exactly hide behind a dresser the way he thinks he can. But that doesn’t stop him from trying—bundled up with his knees to his chest in one of the spare bedrooms.

“Koo, sweetheart…” He keeps his voice soft.

Jungkook simply sniffles in response, not daring to look up with the wet streaks on his face. If this was Taehyung or Jimin, he’d have heard a “go away” by now. But not his Koo. Despite his willful attitude, there’s nothing Jungkook wants more than to be babied when he’s crying.

Namjoon cautiously sits in front of the boy, leaving space to keep their bodies from touching.

“Hey pup, can you look at me please.”

With his face still buried in his knees, the wolf simply shakes his head in refusal.

“I’m sorry about what I said Koo. I shouldn’t have brought up punishment…and the last thing I want is for you—or anyone—to be on those drugs again.”

“You’re lying.” Jungkook finally raises his head, eyes watery and puffy, “I was easier to deal with when I had the collar on. I know it. You know it. Everybody knows it. Hell, even I wish I could turn off all these thoughts and just behave. But I can’t…that’s not me.” His voice breaks towards the end, sobs threatening to spill from his throat.

Panic flashes on Namjoon’s face, composed demeanor becoming harder to maintain as Jungkook lays all his insecurities bare. There’s a quiet rage bubbling in his stomach—pointed a little at Kang but mainly at himself. Rage for letting Jungkook’s self esteem get to this point.

He knew from the day that Jungkook came into their lives that he’d need to be extra careful with him. Unlike the others, who jumped eagerly into his arms at the promise of a pack bond, his youngest pup was nothing but stand offish and distrustful for months.

It’s not hard to see how little love Jungkook has known prior to the pack, but things aren’t supposed to be like that anymore. Namjoon knows it’s naïve to think that all of Jungkook’s scars would be healed by now—knowing just how many he has—but wishful thinking got the better of him.

The boy in front of him looks just as insecure as he did when they first met. Except he’s not hiding it with sarcastic remarks and cold stares anymore…at least not to his packmates.

Namjoon makes sure to not let his frustration show in his words, needing to be as calm as possible to not spook the distressed boy.

“But this you is the one we fell in love with baby, how could we ever prefer any other version over it? I’ll admit you’re not the easiest pup from time to time, but I’d rather you be the most difficult wolf in the world than put that collar back on you.”

“Then why do you keep taking y/n’s side? She wants me back on the collar. I can tell. Wants me to be the sweet sweet angel they brainwashed me into being.”

“She doesn’t want you on the collar either Koo, she just doesn’t know this version of you…and you aren’t exactly letting her in either—which I know is hard for you, I understand it’s asking a lot, but I’m not doing this because I’m taking her side. I just think we have an actual shot of being happy here. You trust me, don’t you baby?”

Jungkook nods. No matter how upset he is, it’s instinct to nod when Namjoon asks that question. Of course he trusts his Alpha. He’d follow Namjoon to the ends of the world if he asked him to.

“I…I’ll try. But please…d-don’t punish me if I c-can’t.” The last part is whispered, as if it’s a shameful declaration. It is, to some extent, shameful for Jungkook to admit—that he shivers at the mention of the tamest punishments now.

Namjoon’s heart drops to his stomach at the helpless bundle of nerves in front of him.

“I won’t baby. I promise. Will you please come to me?”

Jungkook doesn’t waste time to scoot his way over, making himself small as he seeks safety in Namjoon’s embrace. Namjoon breathes a bit lighter, relieved at Jungkook’s lack of hesitation—the last thing he wants is his pup to be wary of him.

___

Hoseok looks over from one brunette to the other, both fidgeting as they try to find their words.

“What is it pups?”

Jimin clears his throat, tightening his hold on Taehyung’s arm before speaking up.

“Um..we just wanted to ask…” no matter how hard he tries, he can’t get the words out, “it’s nothing hyung! Forget about it.”  

Taehyung, although disappointed, follows in understanding. The two are ready to retreat, but their hyung isn’t having any of that.

“Wait!” their hyung pouts, not wanting to be left out, “whatever it is, you can ask me.”

“It’s selfish” Taehyung takes the words out of Jimin’s mouth.

Hoseok raises a brow, waiting for further explanation only to be met with an awkward silence.

“Since when have you two ever thought twice before asking me for things?”

It’s true. They normally didn’t hesitate to ask their Hobi hyung for whatever they wanted. Why would they? He was their hyung and they were his precious pups to spoil.

But this wasn’t a normal situation.

“Whatever it is, I won’t get mad. You know I never get mad at you guys.”

Jimin wishes Hobi didn’t add that part, as it only makes him feel more gross in the moment,

“Fuck, I can’t do it. Please, let’s all drop this.”

Hoseok, however, isn’t ready to drop the subject.

“What could it possibly be that you’re so scare—” he stops as soon as the realization hits.

Truthfully, he’s been preparing for this conversation. With everyone else going back to normal, Hoseok knew it was just a matter of time before intimacy would come back into the equation for the rest of them.

“Oh pups, you don’t have to worry about me. I’ll be fine, really.”

Jimin raises a brow, wanting to make sure everyone’s on the same page. Hoseok continues on, assuring them that he isn’t misunderstanding the situation.

“If we’re being completely honest, I’m still not comfortable with the topic. There’s still a lot I need to work through to handle triggers around it, but whatever anyone else does is fine as long as I’m not asked to be part of it.”

“A-are you sure? With you tuning into your hybrid he—”

“I don’t tune in to anything in the house. Really guys, it’s fine! The only thing that’ll make me feel bad is if you hold yourselves back because of me.”

“We don’t want you just saying that for our sake hyung.”

Hoseok shakes his head with surety, “I’m not. As long as it’s away from me, I don’t mind.”

He punctuates with a smile, ruffling Tae’s hair to lighten the mood. It works on Taehyung, but Jimin’s brows are still furrowed.

“What about during our heats? Will you be okay next month?”

“I’ve talked to Y/N and Yoongi about it already. I’ll be staying with them at Yoongi’s place, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it. Right now, I’m telling you that I’m more than okay. Please don’t walk on eggshells around me.”

Jimin nods, deciding it best to trust his hyung’s judgement. Hoseok knows what’s best for himself, and it’s not Jimin’s place to decide what should and shouldn’t bother the older wolf.

___

You take a step back, huffing at your sixth failed attempt before diving back in.

You’re Shin Y/N.

You’ve made businessmen shake in their boots at the sound of your heels clicking. You’ve revived dying companies with one meeting. So why can’t you move this pesky little bookshelf to the other side of your office?

It’s been over fifteen minutes, and you can’t get the thing to budge at all. However, if it’s one thing you are, it’s stubborn. So you close your eyes and focus all your energy on pushing. To your surprise, the wooden shelf actually starts sliding this time. Ecstatic, you open your eyes to navigate the room--only to be met with the last sight you’re expecting to see.

It’s Jungkook, covered head to toe in black, with a detached expression you can’t quite read. He nonchalantly drags the piece of furniture, waiting for you to tell him where to stop.

“Right there is fine.”

He props it next to the standing lamp, making sure it’s flush against the wall before letting go.

“Thank you.” You want to say more, but you’re afraid of saying something wrong.

“Whatever.” He stuffs his fists in his hoodie before heading towards the door.

“Wait!” You panic, realizing you said that out loud. You don’t want him to leave but have no clue what to say next. Instinctively, you say the first thing that comes to your mind.

“You’ve been wearing that hoodie a lot…I can buy you more if you like—”

“No thank you.”

Your shoulders shrink. You know it’s not right, but throwing money at your problems has worked out pretty well for you thus far. Not to mention, it’s a lot easier than being emotionally vulnerable. But if money wasn’t going to solve this, your hand’s been forced to try the other way.

“I miss you.”

The words hang heavy in the air, with your fear of being rejected growing by the minute.

The wolf simply scoffs.

“Miss me? You mean you miss having a little pet following all your commands.”

You take a deep breath, reminding yourself of Namjoon’s words to keep composure.

Relax. Jungkook’s a bit difficult to win over, but it’s not impossible. He’s still a sweetheart once he lets you in—really lets you in, without the drugs making him.

Drugs or no drugs, you’ve seen the way he looks at his Alpha with stars in his eyes, or the way he pouts to his Jin hyung when he wants something. Despite the cold front he’s put up with you, he’s as warm as ever to his packmates. There’s still hope as long as you keep trying.

“That’s not true, Jungkook. You can’t just decide what I’ve been feeling and make your judgements based on that. It’s not fair.”

He narrows his eyes, bringing his arms up across his chest in a defensive stance.

“You can’t miss what you’ve never known.”

“I miss you telling me your favorite parts of the shows you’ve watched…or ranking the snacks in the pantry…or just coming by to tell me about your day. Was all of that really just the drugs? Would the real you really be so miserable hanging out with me? Do you hate me that much?”

You try to hold it back, but your eyes start watering right as you say the last sentence. Luckily, no tears spill.

Jungkook is taken aback nonetheless, not expecting the answer he got. His eyes soften up ever so slightly, but not enough to douse the fire of unease you’re burning under.

“I don’t hate you,” he huffs, playing with where his hands meet inside the hoodie instead of meeting your gaze, “and I like living here. But I’m not going to wait for you at the door like a little puppy anymore. And I’m not going to expect you to treat me like my packmates do. You’re not a part of our pack.”

He’s not giving you a lot, but you’re grasping tight at the little assurance he does give. For now, a “I don’t hate you” seems like the best thing you’re going to get from him—and you’re not in any position to complain.

“I understand!” This time, you seem like the lost little puppy, wagging your tail for any approval you can get, “I’m not trying to impose on your pack. I know it’s not my place. I just…want to be friends? Whenever you’re ready to consider me one, I’ll be here.”

You don’t give him any time to respond, as the tears threatening to spill down have you brushing past before the hybrid fully processes what just happened.

Friend.

Somewhere between packmate and total stranger.

Jungkook’s never had a real one before.

He’d never had friends or family before the pack. Just an abandoned stray moving from one back alley to the next. The last time someone asked him to be “friends” was a couple months after he’d just turned eighteen—a wealthy Alpha looking for a fighter to make money off of. He’d agreed, desperate to get off the streets. It wasn’t a bad gig, but it didn’t exactly leave him feeling good either.

Days of nonstop practicing, and nights of nonstop fighting, all so his “friend” could squeeze every last dollar from the matches.

The other fighters didn’t want anything to do with him, with his constant wins getting on everyone else’s nerves. And everyone else in town didn’t want anything to do with him either, with his bloodied and bruised appearance not doing any favors. He got used to the routine—accepted that real friends weren’t in his cards, and that there was probably no pack waiting for him. A true lone wolf.

And he would’ve lived his entire life that way if his last opponent wasn’t such a sore loser. Well, specifically, if his sponsor wasn’t such a sore loser. He still flinches at the memory of being chased down those alleys, hearing gunshots followed by car alarms and shattering glass. It was ten on one, with half of them being wolves he’d defeated in the ring—all working to get their sponsor his money back.

He’d barely managed to escape, gripping where a bullet wound grazed his bloody leg, as he ran without looking back. He only stopped running when the adrenaline couldn’t keep him going any longer, finding himself lost in a neighboring town when his knees finally gave in.

That’s the first time he met Jimin and Taehyung, fingers interlocked and lost in each other’s company. They would’ve missed him if the streetlamp had fully gone out, but thankfully, the little flicker in the night was enough for Jimin’s eyes to meet that of the injured wolf.

If he wasn’t in searing pain, he would’ve felt the pull of the pack bond right when the other two did. But he couldn’t feel anything other than where the bullet ever-so-slightly missed, causing him to kick and scream the entire time the wolves tried to help.

“Relax, please relax. We need to stop the bleeding. What’s your name?”

“Get the fuck away from me. I swear to God I’ll break your bones if you keep touching me.”

Saying he was difficult is an understatement, but the two managed to pin him down just long enough to give emergency first aid.

That was the beginning of the long and messy road to adjusting Jungkook to the pack, navigating his hot temper and short fuse as the rest assured him the pull wasn’t temporary—that this pack, this family, would embrace him with enough love and tenderness to make up for all the years he’d been alone.

To you, to everyone outside, this Jungkook might seem difficult…but only he and his pack know just how gentle he is compared to his old self.

But the idea of this not being enough—of having to compete with the docile imitation of himself that the hormones made him—it was terrifying.

You said you wanted to be friends, but could anyone not bound by a pack bond truly accept Jungkook for the way he is? When there’s really nothing in it for them?

That’s never happened before.

____

A/N: It's good to be back!!!

Permanent Taglist: @skyys-universee @morelovefortn @seagulljk @shadowyjellyfishfest @m4gg13-g @wittyreader

Series Taglist [CLOSED]: @welcometomyworld13 @kalala22 @fxirytaetae @btsfluffsworld @belikejk @shycreationdreamland @danielle143 @singukieee @blackrockshooter780 @g-b-artist @i-have-no-life-charlie @sopemee @no-regrets-just-confusion @acciocriativity @ldysmfrst @amara-mars @caelumwrites @estrellaburnxd @borahaetelevision @on-1ce @fuckthinking @jaiele

#bts hybrid au #bts hybrid x reader #bts ot7 poly #ot7 x reader #bts angst #bts smut #bts fluff #hurt/comfort

[soaringthroughthegalaxy]

hi!! just read both of your wrecker works and rineicbeijcwjkdjs LOVED THEM!! wrecker’s my fav of tbb and i really feel like he needs more love😭 i'm gonna be checking out some of your other works later lol

anyways i saw that you were taking requests, so i went through your prompt list and saw two that caught my eye. they're 24. “You need to wake up because I can't do this without you.” and 18. “I almost lost you.”

i was wondering if you could write something with those prompts for wrecker please? like tbb + reader were able to rescue omega, crosshair, and tech (i am believer in tech surviving season 2 finale), but the reader got seriously injured during the rescue and is now in a coma. wrecker would be the one to say the prompts and it would be angsty like wrecker thinking the reader might die. but please let this end happily.

other than those details i trust your writing skills and process for anything! take your time writing, there's absolutely no rush!! and again your writing is soooo awesome!!😊😊

Well hello there!

I'm so glad you enjoyed those fics, and thank you for popping this request in - so sorry it's taken me so long to write it! I had a lot of fun with this one, and I hope it hits the spot 😁

I guess it's also technically canon divergent now S3 is out, haha 😅

Through the Darkness

No one said rescuing the rest of the Batch from Mount Tantiss would be easy - you just didn't expect it to go like this.

Pairing: Wrecker x F!reader

Word count: 2.7k

Warnings: canon typical violence, reader in a coma for a bit, little bit of angst, but also dashes of hope, happily ever after.

Translations: sarad - flower

Hemlock has his hands on you, his blaster pressed to your temple. The sounds of fighting cease. Dead TK Troopers litter the floor. Wrecker and his siblings freeze, slowly lowering their weapons.

Your back is pressed to Hemlock’s chest, and there isn’t a clean shot at him.

“Anyone moves and your dear liaison will pay the price,” Hemlock states.

Rage flows through Wrecker. You were in danger, too far for him to grab and shield, and he had no idea what to do. He glances at his siblings – Omega curled against Hunter’s side with weariness painted on her face, Tech leaning heavily against Echo for support as his body protests the prolonged time standing. Crosshair had peeled off from the group earlier, searching for what or who none of them was sure. They were all back together again. A family again. He wasn’t about to let Hemlock take you from them.

Shakes start in your thighs, slowly creeping up your body until your arms and hands tremble, too. You’ve been in dangerous situations before, had your life threatened before - but you’re certain Hemlock would do it. The man is crazy and will stop at nothing to get his hands on your family. The sound of his verbal back and forth with Hunter is like white noise.

The slightest movement in the rafters above catches your attention, and your eyes dart up. Battered and bruised, Crosshair has found a vantage point and a rifle. Those hawkish eyes meet yours, and a silent conversation is shared. You do the maths. There’s only one way out of this. Thank the Maker you still trust him, even after everything.

You give an almost imperceivable nod, knowing he’ll catch it. You flick your gaze to the others, taking one last look, just in case. Echo, who’d joined you all near the end of the war and had so seamlessly slipped into the fold of your family. Tech, worse for wear after his fall on Eriadu, but with that same solid determination in his eyes. Hunter, the man who’d welcomed you into the squad all those years ago, listened when you shared your thoughts and didn’t make a fuss when you broke terrible news to them about the next mission. Omega, trying to hide her fear through bravery – so much for a young girl with such a pure heart to endure. And Wrecker, the imposing force of a man who’d always put himself between you and danger, who reached for you at every opportunity and consoled you when things had gotten too much – the man you’d quietly loved for some time.

With a shaky breath, you close your eyes, placing all your faith in Crosshair. The quiet sniper who’d at first sneered at you and flicked toothpicks in your face before he’d thawed out and helped perfect your aim, taught you how to use his rifle, and what to look out for when scouting.

The sound of his shot reverberates around the hanger, and milliseconds later, searing pain tears through your shoulder, pulling a piercing cry from your lips. Legs giving out, you crumple, welcoming the cold durasteel you hit.

You don’t know if they all made it out, but you pray they did.

Wrecker hasn’t moved in weeks, refusing to leave you alone. The memory of you being shot won’t leave him; the sound of your agony is stuck on repeat. You’d been in bacta for what felt like forever, the shiny skin on your shoulder a testament to its healing power, but it wasn’t enough to wake you from the coma you’d slipped into. Pabu’s only Doctor had insisted on removing you from the tank once your physical wounds had healed, transferring you to a standard medical bed.

Crosshair’s shot had torn through your shoulder, but the angle had been perfect. Wrecker hadn’t expected any less from his little brother. The bolt had exited you and entered Hemlock, hitting him straight in the chest. A kill shot. That hadn’t killed you. Or so Wrecker hoped. Even if you woke, your shoulder would likely ache for the rest of your life, and your arm would not be as strong as before.

The sound of the door opening pulls Wrecker’s gaze from your prone form and across the small room in Pabu’s clinic. Crosshair slides through the crack in the door, thin lips pressed together, brow pinched. He visits often, guilt in his eyes every time he looks you over. You might’ve okayed the shot, but it still tore at the sniper’s soul to have hurt you.

“Nothing?” Crosshair rasps, sticking close to the door as he glances between you and his brother. He’d never admit it, but fear was starting to settle in his gut. If you didn’t wake…

“Nothin’.” Wrecker confirms, shoulders slumped. “Been talkin’ to her. Doc said she might be able to hear us. Not that it’s doin’ much good.” He sighs, gaze shifting back to you. “Told her we all got out okay. That you and Tech and the kid are alright. Don’t want her worryin’.”  

Crosshair makes a slight noise, acknowledging his brother’s words as his gaze lingers on your prone form.

“You stayin’ a bit?” Wrecker asks, using one foot to push out the spare chair at his side – the rest of their siblings often visited, too.

Hesitating, Crosshair lets out a small sigh as he moves across the room, lowering himself silently into the chair. He hadn’t stayed before, preferring to flit in for any news before disappearing. It hurt too much to see you this way, knowing he’d caused it. That and he was still working through everything that had happened during his time with the Empire, trying to fix his relationships with his siblings. But Wrecker needed him, so he’d stay.

You’d always hated the dark.

The shadows surround you, pressing in from all sides. Yet amidst the inky darkness, you find yourself standing in a solitary spot of light, its glow offering a semblance of warmth amidst the chill of the void. The lights kept appearing, and you’d learned quickly that when a new one glistened on the horizon, you had to run for it before the light you were already standing in disappeared. 

You’d lost track of how many lights you’d chased so far. 

Each one varied in intensity – sometimes brilliant beacons, other times mere flickers barely piercing the gloom. Yet, regardless of their brightness, they all held a magnetic pull, drawing you forward with an unyielding force. And each time you reached one, a brief respite washed over you, a fleeting moment before the next journey into the unknown began.

Scanning the horizon, you spot another light starting to beckon, its faint glow a promise of safety. With a heavy heart, you know what you need to do.

Taking a deep breath, you burst into a sprint. Each step forward is a battle against the darkness, its tendrils reaching out like icy fingers, eager to drag you into its embrace. Goosebumps prickle your arms, heart pounding as fear gnaws at your insides, but a stubborn determination fuels your movements. You can’t afford to falter, to succumb to the darkness, not after everything.

Worry lingers at the edge of your consciousness, a constant reminder of uncertainty. What lay beyond the lights? Will you ever find your way back to the world you once knew? The questions taunt you, echoing in your mind relentlessly the longer you spend here.

Yet, a glimmer of hope remains amidst the fear and uncertainty. Though the darkness threatens to overwhelm you, there must be a reason for the light. There has to be something causing it. Blessing you with it. Giving you these small moments of respite and keeping you in one piece. 

You keep going. One foot in front of the other.

A shove yanks Wrecker out of sleep, and the big man jolts awake with a small yelp.

Crosshair snickers, leaning back in his seat, drawing his hand back towards his chest. “Sleeping on the job, vod.” He can’t help but jibe, his smirk melting into a frown at the sound of Wrecker’s stomach growling. “When’s the last time you ate?” He asks. He hadn’t wanted to wake him, seeing him finally getting some rest, but the sun was high in the sky now, and Crosshair knew it wouldn’t be long until Omega and Hunter swung by.

Blinking, Wrecker’s mind takes a moment to catch up with the fact he’s awake. “Urm, yesterday? Maybe?” He guesses, not really sure. The days were starting to blend together.

With a huff, Crosshair stands, long legs unfolding. “Will get you something. Can’t wither away before she wakes.” He mutters, grateful for the opportunity to leave and not have to sit any longer in silence with his feelings – he’d done enough of that for the day.

With a slight nod of appreciation, Wrecker watches as Crosshair heads out the door, hearing the gentle click of it shutting behind him. Hand wiping over his face, Wrecker shifts in the chair, stretching a little. But he can’t avoid the inevitable forever, and although it pains him, he looks you over for what feels like the millionth time. 

Despite his imposing stature, he feels powerless.

He hadn’t been able to protect you - the woman he loves. He’s loved you since the moment he first met you in the hanger of a Venator, as you’d been assigned to him and his brothers as their liaison. You’d offered them a smile that had rendered him speechless, and his booming laughter had then filled the hanger when you’d quipped back at Crosshair as he'd sneered about them not needing a babysitter.

You kept them on their toes and blended in so seamlessly with their chaotic lives.

Without an audience, Wrecker clears his throat, leaning forward in his seat to gently take your tiny hand in his much larger one. “I hope ya can hear me, sarad.” He starts, voice mellow. “Been a few weeks now since we got ’em back.” He’s not sure how much you’re aware of, if the passing of time is something you’re experiencing. “Cross was just here. Finally sat for a bit. Think he feels guilty.” Wrecker pauses, brows furrowing, face pinching. “I feel guilty. Should have protected ya, kept ya close.” Wrecker’s voice cracks a little, emotion seeping through. 

“We’re all here, though. Ain’t leavin’ ya, no matter what. Can’t wait for ya to wake up and tell us all how much trouble we’re in.” He chuckles softly, a hint of sadness in the sound. “Just...ya need to wake up ’cause I can’t do this without you.” He admits, a well of emotion pressing down on his chest.

Wrecker’s words hang heavy in the air, the weight of his emotions palpable even in the silence of the clinic. He wishes he could shake this feeling of helplessness and do more than just sit by your side, waiting for a sign of life. But for now, all he can offer is his unwavering presence and a steady stream of conversation, hoping against hope that somewhere within your subconscious, you can hear him.

Keep going. You need to keep going.

The darkness claws at you, desperate to slow you down and draw you into its embrace. But the light grows closer with every step you take, with every thud of your heart as you race forward. Amidst your footsteps echoing in the void is the faintest whisper of something familiar.

No.

Not something.

Someone.

“Wreck!” You cry out into the darkness, feet faltering for a second as you recognise the deep voice. The darkness tries to take advantage of your momentary hiccup, but with a yelp, you pick up your pace. The hope that lingers in your heart explodes. As you draw closer to the light, Wrecker’s voice comes into focus. “Ain’t leavin’ ya, no matter what.”

With renewed determination, you push yourself harder, every muscle in your body screaming for rest, but you refuse to give in. The light grows brighter, its warmth now palpable against your skin.

And then, just as you’re on the verge of stepping into the light, a sudden force knocks you off balance, sending you sprawling onto the cold, hard ground. Panic grips your chest as you scramble, desperate to continue your pursuit.

But the darkness has other plans, closing in around you like a suffocating blanket, obscuring the light. Amidst the coldness creeping through your body, you cling to the memory of Wrecker’s voice, a lifeline in the darkness.

Body straining, you crawl forward, ignoring the pain and exhaustion, determination burning bright within you. You don’t belong in the darkness. You belong in the light. With them. With him.

Straining, you reach out an arm, trembling fingers skimming the edge of the light as Wrecker’s voice comes through loud and clear. “…ya need to wake up ’cause I can’t do this without you.”

The darkness recoils. 

With a final surge of strength, you propel yourself forward, breaking free from the suffocating grip of the void. The light envelops you, wrapping you in its warm embrace as the shadows recede into the distance, getting further and further away. Relief floods through you, tears of joy mingling with sweat on your cheeks.

Head tilting back, you look up at the light, a bubble of laughter escaping as you bask in the glow. Eyes fluttering shut, you savour the moment. Yet this time, when you open your eyes, there’s no darkness or blinding light anymore. 

You blink. Once. Twice. The soft hum of medical equipment fills the air. And there, beside you, is Wrecker, head bowed, the weight of his hand wrapped around yours. 

Everything seems to freeze except the frantic thudding of your heart. “Wreck…” You whisper, your voice hoarse from disuse as you dare to hope you’re back. Really back. 

Wrecker’s head jolts up at the rasped sound of his name, his good eye widening as he meets your gaze, your name falling from his lips as his features crumple, a heaving sob of relief escaping him.

You slowly sit up, wincing at the ache that shoots through your shoulder. It’s still tender, but the pain is nothing compared to the overwhelming flood of emotions that wash over you at the sight of Wrecker’s tear-streaked face. 

You reach out, cupping his cheek in your hand, the warmth of his skin grounding you in reality. “I’m here.” You murmur softly, your voice barely above a whisper, unsure if you’re trying to convince yourself or him.

Wrecker’s grip tightens around your hand as if afraid you might slip away again if he lets go. He leans into your touch, his words catching in his throat momentarily before he stands, leaning over the bed to envelop you in an embrace, protective yet gentle, conscious of your shoulder. “You’re back.” He murmurs, his voice thick with emotion. “Thought I almost lost ya.”

Weak but grateful, you return his embrace, feeling the warmth of his presence washing over you, grounding you in reality. A lump forms in your throat at the thought of him worrying about you, thinking he would lose you. “Not going anywhere, big guy.” You reassure him, sniffling as you try to keep a lid on your emotions. “The others?” You ask cautiously, dread curling in your gut. 

“All made it,” Wrecker confirms, arms slowly uncurling from around you as he sits back in his chair, hand scooping up yours so he can maintain some contact. 

Your dread is swept away and replaced immediately by relief; this time, you don’t bother holding back your sobs.

“No cryin’, pretty girl. Please.” Wrecker’s heart aches at the sight, his free hand moving to cup your face and wipe away the tears.

You smile through your tears, overwhelmed by the flood of emotions. Wrecker’s touch is like a lifeline. “Sorry.” You manage to choke out between sobs, trying to reign in your feelings. “Just...so relieved.”

Wrecker offers you a tender smile. “No need to apologise, sarad,” he murmurs softly, his voice filled with warmth and reassurance. A bolt of courage has him leaning forward to gently kiss your forehead.

As Wrecker’s lips meet your forehead, warmth seeps through you, chasing away the last remnants of the dark coldness. He pulls back a little, his gaze meeting yours, and the air feels electric. Without a word, you lean forward, closing the distance between you as your lips finally meet his in a soft, tentative kiss. 

And you realize that amidst the chaos and darkness, love has always been the guiding light, leading you back to where you belong.

Tag list: @clonethirstingisreal @starrylothcat @cw80831 @dreamie411 @issa-me-bry-blog @leftealeaf @isaidonyourknees

Sign up to be tagged in my future fics.

#Soarings Ask Box #the bad batch x reader #the bad batch x you #bad batch x reader #bad batch x you #tbb x reader #tbb x you #tbb wrecker x reader #tbb wrecker x you #wrecker x reader #wrecker x you #tbb wrecker #wrecker the bad batch #wrecker bad batch #bad batch wrecker #wrecker #the bad batch #star wars the bad batch #star wars clone wars #clone force 99

[sanctus-ingenium]

WIPs of some of my drawings where i made a full little painting for the sketch to nail colours or values first. i thought it would be fun to do a Behind The Scenes and also show u how some drawings changed, what i kept and what i discarded and at what point i just started adding unplanned details

all these were done using a mixture of sai and procreate

more comments on The Process under the cut

eye of the otherworld is inspired by a real photo i took two weeks ago!

i soooo wanted to draw water that looked like this, weeds and all, so the original colours of that sketch were picked direct from the photo. but i wasn’t satisfied with it so i changed it using a gradient map (you can see it’s crunchy on the borders between colours). for the final, i re-painted everything again using the sketch colours as a guide so that i would not end up with the crunchy edges a gradient map will give u, and so that i could add in extra contrast over the top. the black swirl pattern in the final was an ad lib lol but i’m really happy with how it gives the impression of water or liquid even if it’s not realistic... i will try again to recreate something like this photo tho because i am obsessed. the birds were originally swans but the necks were driving me crazy i needed a bird with a shorter neck and grebes are associated with this location in canon so it was perfect. they have very funny feet. the last detail i added to this was the white flashes in their primary flight feathers (which do not occur in nature btw)

hanged man was an interesting one because it’s based on a sketch i made in 2020 when i first wrote this fun impalement scene

here is félix being impaled for the first time in 2020 by a rusted harpoon that essentially rips his human disguise off to reveal the black carapace underneath

for the coloured sketch in the photoset i re-lined this exact sketch in sai to update it to match my current lineart style, but as you can see i realised the pose itself needed work and not just a re-line so i completely redid it in procreate to exaggerate the pose and gestures. i went into this one already knowing exactly what bg colours i wanted so that was no issue but the hardest part was weirdly figuring out what he was going to be standing on. in canon he is standing on top of a very high wall and leaning back over a fatal drop. the black pencil lines in the clouds and the bird were ad libbed but i liked the idea of throwing the bird in as some extra symbol of freedom the likes of which you will not experience if you have been shot with a harpoon. the green was not working at all so the swap out to more purpley pink tones was last minute. i unified the different colours by using a colour-shifting brush (you’ll see that his gaiters are different colours - i didn’t hand pick those, the colour jitter did)

for Big Pascal... originally it was going to be a confrontation between the guy on the ground and pascal but i wasn’t feeling the standing pose and it ended up being... if not restful then at least maybe a little more benevolent than the shadow of colossus shit it was before. the white cracks in the sky were originally going to be black but it just didn’t work. a lot of people tag this one as some form of cowboy aesthetic which is funny to me. there’s no cowboys here

i do like the lens flare effect in the b&w thumbnail tbh and i think i kind of lost the low camera angle effect in the final

i drew a bonus comic of the two characters interacting during this scene (mostly the lil guy just trying to ignore what’s happening in the sky)

[synthetropy]

Shadow the hedgehog

Sketch + Details under the cut

First post here on tumblr! Pretty proud of this one actually- I think it’s probably my best drawing yet, if I’m being honest

I tried out a few new things with the rendering and texturing that I think I’m going to incorporate into my style going forward!

I also tried to focus a lot less on perfection in my sketch so I could properly preserve my general idea without getting lost in the details at first like I usually tend to, and reserve the detailing for rendering- that also helped with creating the dynamic lightning forms for Shadow’s chaos energy as well

The first hour or so was basic sketching and color blocking (shown below), and then I spent about eight more hours painting and rendering over the sketch

Overall, I’m really happy with the result, and found a few methods that make the process of creating much more enjoyable for me :D

#my art #shadow the hedgehog #shadow the ultimate lifeform #shadow the hedghog fanart #sonic the hedgehog #sonic the hedghog fanart #sonic fanart #shadow fanart #sth fanart #illustration #digital painting #digital art #sonic art #sth #syntheart

[feathernotes]

BACKGROUNDS IN WEBCOMICS

I want to talk about sustainability in your work process, featuring our fave: Backgrounds. How to simplify, convey, and deliver in comics! (examples include Phantomarine, Wychwood, Shaderunners and Ghost Junk Sickness) The usual suspect to burnout is often the workload involved. Many ppl who FULL HAM on pages that def need a detail cut for many reasons Main one being: You don’t need excessive detail to tell whats happening in a small panel, in fact, less is better. When you observe a page in its entirety, where does the eye travel? Where does the eye stop? Having a fully rendered BG in multiple panels can actually be a huge distraction, on top of the time it takes to get there. So how do you balance?

In Phantomarine, the most detailed panel is the establishing one, it holds our characters and allows readers to understand the positions they're all in/standing at. Its one panel that provides a specific telling detail: the railings behind Phae indicate we're on the boat.

In the bottom left panel,the artist uses the railings again, but doesnt have to render the lights, floor boards, or sea to show where we were, then uses the colours of said BG and mood to paint the rest of the page. This is where colours/gradients and small objects save the day! The same example is here, just flipped. The establishing shot shares DETAILS that you need to show the readers where we are, then the BG of Pavel eating food isnt over whelmed with background characters or other details that get in the way of the ACTION that is to be conveyed

it would be rather distracting if we were to see Pavel eat that bowl, with sooo many more details involved in the panel- instead, the drapes, hues of light, and clever sound effects tell us what is happening. Wychwood does the very same with establishing shots, then KEY DETAILS to provide the reader with where the character is standing, without sacrificing the facial expressions and details of the CHARACTERS that we need to get across

Most detail is in the top panel, the BAR that Julian holds onto is a KEY PIECE to show where they are in the BG already established. Perfect use of BG! Get used to thinking of those key details when changing scenes and establishing shots!

Pick those key details to tell the reader where they are and draw that. If you have a library scene, please just draw that BG once! Take a specific bookcase or key feature, use blocked shapes and colours, and make it less detailed than the provided establishing shot. I also wanna talk about : Action Scenes Focusing on the ACTION of the scenes is SO important when you have them, and often details get lost when a creator focuses on details that can distract a reader! My advice? Most action scenes are best without/need little backgrounds. A few shots from Ghost Junk Sickness demonstrate this. We're paying attention to the action- we've been established where we are before, so let's play in the sandbox now.

Have a panel or two peppered in there, with the same principal as above to ground where your character is, but do not add a BG in every panel. It instantly takes away from the action when it's not integrated as well, and it takes SO MUCH MORE TIME to draw that sequence!

Read More amazing tips: Here are some GREAT examples by the creators of ShadeRunners, HERE who break down how they do backgrounds ( AND CROWD SHOTS!!!!)

TL;DR: Comics are a MULTITUDE of skills and needs. It takes a lot of time and work to pull it off, so working with methods that make it easiest for you as the creator is what will help you maintain that momentum and stability you need! Good luck and get comicking!

#webcomics #advice #backgrounds

[genericpuff]

On this week's episode of "Webtoon Controversies That Could Have Been Avoided If Only They Had Some Damn Quality Control"-

Oh boy, prepare yourselves, there's some TEA on this one.

Quantum Entanglement, a new Webtoon Originals series from creator Arts Angel (aka Sarah Ellerton) is uh... a teeny weeny painfully obvious that it was made with AI.

AI is getting better, but when it comes to comics, there are still a lot of "tells" you can pick up on once you know where to look. Hands are certainly one of them.

Not knowing how to draw hands efficiently and consistently is definitely an Artist Problem(tm) but it becomes a lot more obvious it was made by AI when you get weird little off-putting mistakes like a fingernail being just a little too long or missing joints (hot dog fingers, eyo) or the distinction between fingers not being clear.

But there's also hair and other detailed parts that are often lost in the translation process between prompt to final piece. Jewelry, text on a screen, phones, that sort of thing. The insinuation of a 'thing' is there, but it's like looking at it through a fishbowl.

And ultimately, a lot of AI art tends to just be a little too 'perfect'. Everything is just a little too smooth for it to look like it was naturally made by a person. Faces end up veering into the uncanny valley territory and there are inconsistencies between the eyes and the rest of the body. Backgrounds become lost in what I like to call "AI goop", becoming nothing more than weird blurred/filtered out insinuations of what's supposed to be behind the character.

Basically, at this point, it's undeniably clear that AI is being used to create this comic. While there are also plenty of signs in the handiwork that show a human was involved in some parts, there are other places that are undeniably filled in with the use of AI. So it's not necessarily a 100% made-by-AI comic, but it's absolutely AI assisted.

But what's REALLY absurd about this whole situation? The creator denies it. To the point of including a disclaimer in the first episode trying to "get ahead" of people who are assuming it's AI by saying, "No, it's not made with AI, here's the proof! Don't look at the blood on my hands or the body in the trunk of my car!"

Now, first off, the absolute absurdity of making yourself look guiltier by trying to prove your innocence before people have even started to suspect you... I'd like to think that this was edited into the first episode after the initial accusations started rolling in but considering it's an Originals series, it's hard to know if it was, as creators typically don't get as much control over just editing their episodes on the fly like Canvas creators do. Typically it's their editors who do that sort of thing for them. And even if it was edited in afterwards, it's still there for people who have no idea going into the comic blind and might not automatically assume it was made with AI, so it just looks like you're bringing up the potential of AI being used completely unprovoked. By planting the idea in your audience's brain that AI is even a question, you're making them suspect everything.

It's kind of like when Dream was suspected of cheating in a way-too-lucky-to-be-real speedrun of Minecraft a couple years back, so he went to all these painstaking efforts of hiring a quantum physicist to "prove" his innocence with a straight up THESIS documenting all of the reasons he couldn't have cheated through math and figures and jargon. Ironically, this just made Dream look guiltier, and sure enough, he eventually admitted he had cheated.

That said, did you notice something in that "art process" pic?

That finished panel isn't even what showed up in the final comic.

So the absurdity of this all, again, just makes Arts Angel look a lot more guilty of actually using AI, especially when it's basically undeniable in so many of those panels above. People don't paint like that.

But that brings us to talking about Sarah Ellerton, aka "Arts Angel", the creator. Many long-time readers of her work are defending this, claiming that she has, in fact, "always drawn like this".

What's insane? She actually is who she says she is. This isn't like some kid who came out of the woodwork with AI and claiming that they had 20 years of experience, Sarah Ellerton's main site, The Seraph-Inn, has been live and crawled by Wayback Machine as far back as 2005.

And you can see the art evolution over the years, starting with Inverloch-

-into Phoenix-

-and all the way to Immaterial-

But here's the thing about that last comic. The main protagonist is, apparently, the same girl from Quantum Entanglement, the newest installment in this series where it becomes abundantly clear the creator has started using AI.

You can see the effects of this being parsed through AI, because she's gone from being a unique character with two-toned hair and darker skin, to being turned into a generic Instagram anime girl. And lemme tell you, AI used in comics has NOT gotten better at depicting darker-skinned characters (I actually tested an AI-coloring tool WT was planning on putting out a year or two ago, it was uh... not great.)

But the most damning thing about Sarah?

She works in IT.

That on its own wouldn't be so telling if it weren't for the 20 years she clearly spent actually honing her craft, only to suddenly switch to using AI as a crutch.

Quantum Entanglement was picked up for Originals in July 2023. It launched two days ago, with four free to read episodes and 6 more under the FastPass paywall. Three months after it got picked up. That turnaround speed is insane for an Originals series. Now, I'm more inclined to believe that maybe she's using the exact same pages she used in the Canvas version (there's unfortunately no way of checking through Wayback, it never crawled the Canvas version, so unless someone has backups of the Canvas pages they're willing to share, we'll never know) but that short turnaround time is insane for a comic that's this insanely detailed. It likely means they didn't need much pre-production time to get a strong buffer going, and that it doesn't take them as long to produce these episodes on a weekly basis so they could be under way less crunch than creators who do this by hand.

By comparison, the winners of the Call to Action contest from last year are STILL working on their pre-production. Many other greenlit Canvas series are known for getting picked up and stuck in pre-production for several months and even a year or more simply due to how the company operates with when it chooses to launch these series and how much pre-production is necessary. Some creators have literally said that their pre-production was done, but WT still kept them waiting to launch. So three months for a freshly greenlit Canvas series to launch is NOT the norm.

All that said, I feel for the people who are trying to defend her. But it's so undeniably AI with the creator herself providing fake proof that it makes it really sad to think that this person was honing their craft for 20 years just to wind up utilizing AI. Being a good artist does not make you immune to the temptation of using cheap methods or developing bad habits. Going through "the struggle" does not make you immune to taking shortcuts that wind up cheapening your work or taking advantage of the work of others.

Now, maybe Sarah trained AI around her art. If this didn't play out the way it did, I'd be willing to give her benefit of the doubt and assume that. Training AI off your own work, while still up for debate as to how ethical that is, at least doesn't hurt other artists, because it's your own work the AI is "stealing". There are definitely ways AI could be used to make life easier for artists without replacing the art process entirely, the same way artists have learned to use 3D assets and digital art filters to make their process more efficient and boost the quality of their art up to the next level.

But the fact that she's being so cagey over it, claiming she's not using AI period when she very clearly is, providing "proof" that actually proves she definitely used AI, while operating under a penname that's strangely similar to a name Grimes - former tech wife of Elon Musk and staunch supporter of AI - used for one of her studio albums-

- that's what makes it a lot more clear she's using it maliciously.

The AI is very likely trained off another artist's work. Maybe someone whose art style is similar enough to hers that she could integrate it into her own and pass it off as legitimate. Someone whose art style is cartoonish but still modern, like if Disney made anime. Someone who's so prolific and consistent in their stylization that training an AI off it would seem like a no brainer to those who want to replicate that style quickly and easily.

Damn. What a disappointment. Do better, Sarah.

And for god's sakes, Webtoons, pay more fucking attention. I've been steadily picking away at moving the entirety of my comics over to other platforms on a weekly schedule, but at this point I kinda just wanna dump the last 30 or so chapters onto ComicFury all at once so I can ditch this platform for good, especially if it turns out AI comics getting greenlit is a feature, not a bug. The ratings for Quantum Entanglement have dropped significantly overnight, now sitting around 5.09 and still dropping, but is Webtoons going to do anything about it? That remains to be seen.

#webtoon critical #anti AI #quantum entanglement #quantum entanglement webtoon #webtoon controversy

[foxglovebells]

Lost Star

Azriel x Rhysand!Sister Reader

Summary: Rhys’s mother and sister, Y/n, were kidnapped and murdered by Tamlin’s family centuries ago. Everyone mourned their deaths but especially Azriel. His mate’s death had changed him and he was never truly the same, he still held onto the hope that you were still alive. Turns out he was right.

Warnings: Slight mentions of torture/blood/violence

Notes: This doesn’t follow the plot of Acotar exactly, many small details are also changed. This will be the part 1 of I don’t know how long of a series yet. Ignore any typos 😬 Enjoy:)

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4

****************************************************

Azriel had seen and experienced a lot of violence in his life. He had felt so much pain and suffering. His wings had been shredded on multiple occasions. He had been held in a dungeon and tortured for days. He had come to deaths door step more times than he can count.

But nothing, nothing, compared to the pain of feeling his mating bond with you break. The pain of his heart collapsing as yours stopped beating. The feeling of his soul shredding and his humanity being ripped away from him. You were his everything, and you been taken from him.

Your death was the first time he had cried in centuries. Azriel and Rhys cried together, for the loss of the person they both loved the most in this world. Your beautiful soul too pure for this corrupt world.

Since that day Azriel has been in denial. He felt the bond break, he felt you die. But somehow he still felt a whisper, a small shadow of the bond still remained. The beautiful golden string gone, but as if it still lingered. Perhaps it was his minds way of coping, of giving him hope that you were still out there.

When he has told Rhys of this, he had shut him down. “You’re in denial, brother, I know it’s difficult to process, but we both felt her die, we both felt her heart stop. She’s gone.” Rhys wrapped Azriel in his arms as he cried again, and again, and one day he just stopped. Stopped feeling.

Over the decade he’s started to heal, he’s started to let himself live again, rather than burying himself in him work. But even as he did begin to heal, the whisper of your bond still never went away. His shadows were always restless when he thought of you. It was as if they were telling him that something wasn’t as it seemed. Azriel ignored them though, they mourned the loss of the bond just as much as he did.

****

The first time Azriel met Feyre and had heard that she was Tamlin’s bride he wanted to throw up. How could someone love the monster that took away his soul.

But Rhys had told him of their mating bond, and Azriel was happy for him, he was happy that Rhys would finally get to experience the greatest joy in the world. If he couldn’t be happy, he was glad that at least his brother could be.

****

“Rhys?” Feyre asked one day while they were in bed.

“Yes, darling.” He unconsciously stroked her hair.

“Who is the girl in the picture?” She asked gently while staring at the painting he had of his family hanging above the mantle. It was a painting from before he had started his high lord duties. He was still young in that picture, maybe around 16. Your mother stood behind him from where he sat on a stool, one hand was on one shoulder and the other was placed atop his father’s hand on the other. His father was standing as well, he had you propped up on one of his hips as you laid your head on his shoulder with an innocent smile. Your hair was long and black and your eyes were the same violet as Rhys’s.

He froze, his hand stilled over Feyre hair as he decided how to approach the topic. His hesitance caused Feyre to quickly tell him, “You don’t have to talk about it, I’m sorry for asking.”

“No, darling, that’s all right.” He took a deep breath. “That’s my younger sister, Y/n, Tamlin’s father murdered her and my mother a long time ago.”

“You said your father was a cruel man, he looks so happy in that.”

“He had a soft spot for Y/n, she was a daddy’s girl and could do no wrong.” He smiled fondly at the memory. “Whenever my dad was in one of his nasty moods or would push me too hard, all Y/n has to do was flash her innocent little smile at him and he would drop everything for her. I was envious of her at times, but also thankful.”

“I wish I could’ve met her.” Feyre says and looks into his eyes. She sends love and adoration down the bond and he kisses her gently in response.

“Her death hit Azriel harder than anyone.” Rhys continued.

“Harder than even you?”

Rhys nodded his head solemnly, “They were mated.”

Feyre pulls away and gasps. “They were.” Her eyes full with empathetic tears for Azriel. She knew first hand exactly what it felt like to feel the break of a mating bond. Luckily, she didn’t have to deal with it for a centuries. She couldn’t even imagine how Azriel felt, how he still feels.

“Is that why he’s so closed off.” Feyre asks as she settles back into Rhys.

“Partially, a little bit it just because that’s how he is, but it’s mostly because of her death.” He tries not to think to much about her death because it still brings him so much pain. “Feyre, Darling.”

“Yes?”

“Why did you ask now? You’ve seen that painting so many times.” Rhys asks curiously while looking at her.

“If I had known I would tell you sooner.” Feyre starts.

“Tell me what?”

“She used to appear in my dreams every night when I was in spring. I didn’t even realize it was the same girl until a couple days ago.” Feyre tells him.

“Your dreams? Will you let me see.” Rhys asks, a little bit unsure. Feyre nods and closes her eyes, trying to conjure a memory of one of the dreams.

Feyre was walking through the halls, the image hazy because it was a dream. Everything was silent except for the a banging coming from the floor.

“Help me” it was quiet the first time.

“Help me” it was louder now.

“Help me” louder, urgent.

“Help, help, help.” Pleading, begging, crying.

And then you appeared like a ghost. Your dress was bloody and ripped, the same one you’d been wearing the day you were killed. Your hair was in a matted braid and your eyes were dull and bloodshot. You were bony and deathly looking, your cheek bones were too sharp and you’re eyes too sunken.

“Help me, I’m in the—“

And then it was over, Feyre had woken up.

When Feyre opened her eyes she hadn’t expected to see tears cascading down Rhys’s face. “Oh baby, I’m sorry.”

“Feyre, this is going to sound crazy, but I think that she’s alive.” Rhys looks into her eyes and she wipes away her tears.

“I believe you.”

“I need to talk to Azriel.” He sits up and looks at her apologetically.

“Of course you do. I wouldn’t expect anything else.” He graciously pressed a kiss to her mouth before pulling on pants and rushing out of the room.

Cass, Az, Mor, Amren, office now. It’s urgent.

Rhys waits restlessly in his office leaning over a floorpan map of the spring court manor. Azriel and Cassian walk in together, both sweaty and dirty from training. Mor and Amren follow second later.

“What so urgent?” Amren breaks the silence as everyone waits for Rhys to start talking.

He doesn’t respond just yet. He just raised his head and looks directly at Azriel. Everyone can see his red rimmed eyes, proof that he had been crying.

“Rhys what’s going on.” Cassian tries to push again.

“Az,” Rhys starts lowly. Azriel look confused but there’s something it the back of his head telling him that he’s about it say something about you. “I think,” a deep breath, “I think that Y/n is alive.”

Sharp intakes of breaths are heard from each one of them. “That’s as awfully big assumption Rhys.” Cassian is the first to speak.

Rhys’s eyes are still locked on Azriel who is frozen in place, he might not be breathing. “Let me show you guys.” And so he does, Rhysand replays Feyre’s dream for all of them, holding back tears as he rewatches your face contorted with pain.

When it’s over Azriel stumbles as he falls into the nearest chair, his fingers press against his eyes as to stop to flow of tears. “I knew it,” Azriel breathes out, “I knew it and you told me I was in denial!” Azriel points an accusatory finger towards Rhys.

“Calm down, Azriel, this is just as hard for me as it is for you.” Azriel knows this, but after all the pain he’s suffered thinking you were dead has caused him to act irrationally.

“We’re going to get her, right?” Mor asks, stepping forwards to look at the map that Rhys was leaned over. “Would she be in the dungeons?”

“No.” Azriel said simply. “I’ve scoured every inch of those dungeons repeatedly with my shadows, she’s not in there.”

“Wha about if we went even lower.” Amren suggests, “Some High lords had magic shelters built even further beneath the dungeons. During the first war when none of you were alive yet, there were metals that stopped the frequency of magic. If you combine that metal with a low altitude, magic may be almost, if not completely blocked off.”

“Holy shit, Amren, I think you’re right.” Mor adds, “Gwyn was telling me of this old text in the library about ancient materials. There was a metal that blocked all physical magic and the only loophole is spiritual magic at short distances; which was probably how Y/n was able to appear in Feyre’s Dreams.”

Amren looked to Azriel, “It blocks bonds to, makes it appear as if it’s broken. That’s why you and Rhys thought you felt her die.”

“Oh, cauldron.” Cassian mutters in astonishment.

“How do we find out where it is? Everytime my shadows were down there they didn’t sense any other door.” Azriel a tried to think of any possibility that he missed something, but he couldn’t come up with any.

“Maybe the magic blocked your shadows too.” Cassian added, “if it blocks everything else there’s no reason it wouldn’t block magic shadow.”

“We have to get down there and look with our eyes, no magic will find it, that was the original purpose of why this metal was used to build rooms, it’s magically untraceable.” Amren informs.

“So we have to get Azriel in there.” Rhys says, “the next high lord conference is at the end of the week. Tamlin will be away long enough for Az to sneak in a look for any door in the dungeon.”

“What of his borders though? He’ll know when someone enters them.” Azriel tells Rhys.

“I’ll get into his head and block his conscience.”

“I don’t know if I can wait 4 days until then, Rhys.” Azriel looks at him with so much sadness in his eyes.

“I know, Az, but it’s our best shot at getting her home to us.” Rhys walks over and places a reassuring hand his shoulder.

He could do this, he waited 2 centuries already, what’s 4 more days?

#azriel #azriel x reader #acotar #cassian #rhysand #Feyre #Mor #amren #azriel x female!reader #azriel x oc #azriel x you #rhysand sister #night court #foxglovebells

[hoonfication]

. . . TWO TIMES A CH✶RM

━━━ 「 truth unfold 」

— ♪ currently playing afterglow

In the soft, fading light of evening, you stood alone on Afterglow Avenue. The street was named for its breathtaking sunsets, and tonight was no exception. The sky painted shades of orange and pink as the sun dipped below the horizon

You stood patiently just outside a quaint café, with "Frozen in Time," a bustling restaurant, on one side and the charming "Daylight" flower shop on the other. As you observed the surroundings, you spotted Xiao outside the flower shop, clutching a fresh bouquet of pristine white tulips. It took him a few moments to notice you, but when he did, he made his way over.

"Name," he murmured, his face flushed, extending the tulips to you. "I wasn't sure if you still liked tulips," he added, a small smile forming on your lips as you accepted the gesture.

"Let’s take a walk?" he asked, and you nodded. The two of you walked in silence for a while until he suddenly broke it, asking, "Do you remember that restaurant over there?" You replied, "Frozen in Time?" He nodded in response.

"We went there for our 2nd year anniversary," he blurted out, and the flood of memories returned. It was the place where you and Xiao used to celebrate your anniversaries, but that tradition abruptly ended after that night, when he started acting cold and distant.

"Oh..." you whispered, your voice tinged with nostalgia. "Well, I only came here because I want to know the truth," you gently reminded him.

He sighed, his eyes filled with regret. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, his words heavy with emotion. "I really don't know where to start..."

You leaned in, pressing for answers. "The week before you left, what happened?" you asked, seeking clarity on the events that had led to your separation.

"The week before..." he repeated, struggling to recall the details. "Ah, the week of my mom's death," he finally voiced, and you listened intently.

"[Name], I don't know if you're going to believe me," he mumbled, his words laced with uncertainty.

But then, he dropped a bombshell. "My mom isn't dead," he suddenly declared.

"Excuse me?" Your jaw dropped, and you had to stop walking to process this shocking revelation. "Xiao, I know you miss your mom, but—" You began, but he cut you off abruptly.

"No, [Name], she's alive," he blurted out. You stared at him, wide-eyed, wondering if he had lost his sanity.

"I know it's a lot to take in, but I promise you I'll tell you nothing but the truth," Xiao assured you as you both continued walking. He took a deep breath and continued his shocking revelation.

"She ran away, the day before she was marked dead," he said with a heavy heart. "She was unhappy in her marriage with my father, and she tried to divorce him, but my father refused to sign the papers. In the end, she ran away with her ex-girlfriend," he explained, and you gasped at the unfolding story.

"But what made my father even more unhappy was when he found out my mom had still been in touch with me and my sister," he paused, looking at you to gauge your reaction before he continued. "My mom promised she was going to get me and my sister, so my father came up with a solution—he brought me and my sister to the States."

The shock and confusion filled the air as you tried to process this complex and unexpected turn of events.

You were still in a state of shock, processing the incredible revelations that Xiao was sharing with you. He maintained an unbothered look on his face as he continued to unravel the family's intricate history.

"I only came back three years later because my father wanted me to inherit his company," he confessed, shedding light on the reason for his return. "Ganyu is more suited for being the CEO, in my opinion. She's currently studying at Celestia University, and she's doing much better than me."

As he spoke, you couldn't help but wonder about the fate of Xiao's mother. He didn't leave you hanging for long. "You might've wondered what happened to my mom. Well, from what I've heard, she's currently in Sweden, and her ex-girlfriend, the person she ran away with, is now my stepmom," he revealed

Your emotions swirled as you tried to digest this information. "But Hu Tao's your stepsister," you gasped, connecting the dots.

Xiao confirmed with a calm demeanor, "Yes, Hu Tao's mom was my mom's ex-girlfriend—the person my mom ran away with, who's now my dad's current wife." The family dynamics were indeed complicated, and you were left with more questions than answers.

"Oh my God..." You struggled to wrap your head around the revelations. "How did that even happen?" you asked, your mind still reeling from the complexity of their family history.

"I don't know," Xiao admitted with a mumble. He turned his gaze to you, a look of regret in his eyes.

"[Name]," he continued, his voice filled with sincerity, “I'm the one who burned us down. But it's not what I meant,” he confessed.

“I'm sorry that I hurt you.” His words carried the weight of remorse, and you could sense the genuine regret in his apology.

Xiao's plea was heartfelt as he gazed at you, his eyes reflecting a deep desire for reconciliation.

“[Name], tell me that you're still mine,” he implored, his voice filled with longing. “Tell me that we'll be just fine, even when I lose my mind.”

“Tell me that it's not my fault, tell me that I'm all you want, even when I break your heart.” His words conveyed his earnest hope for a second chance, and it was evident that he deeply cared about mending what had been broken between you.

— ✶ prev | m.list | next

NOTES | I’m not feeling my very best rn but here’s an update 🫶 there’s so much to take in tbh, like the Taylor Swift references, xiao’s “dead” mom, the plot twist

# IN WHICH — xiao, your boyfriend for three years suddenly breaks up with you through text and then leaves the country leaving you with no explanation at all three years had passed and here you are, you tell yourself you're over him and you're way more happy without him until you've heard that he's back oh that's fine you guys aren't even gonna see each other anyway wrong. seems like he's going to attend the same college as you and well you're just in luck turns out he's also your roommate

# TAGLIST — @thefandomcrow @sakiimeo @swivy123 @zappybatz @motherscrustytoenailclippings @chsyug @erisan01 @lylovw @scarletttcroww @retiredmommylover @sukunasrealgf @onmywaytoteyvat @mjtalksaboutanything @chronicfic @otomegame-oneshots @yukisluv @urdads @yuminako @etaerealboy @xxblackroses623xx @starringyau @dexocore @grvngexiao @tamikahoshiko @xoyumiqls @mechanicalbeat1 @ixromzi @lemo-nadde @moon-z0ne @articmaskeddemon @luvrzan @cayl33n @cupiro @lxkeeeee @rin-nyrasti-writes @nambii @livelaughlovekuni @quackimilktea @maxineshearts

#genshin impact #genshin smau #xiao x gn reader #genshin xiao #genshin impact xiao #xiao x reader #xiao x y/n #xiao x you #xiao smau #xiao x gender neutral reader #xiao

[judithan-fr]

Tutorial: How I Render Accents

PART 1: LINES

a quick disclaimer: as stated on the title, this is how I render accents and obviously a lot of it will not apply to whatever style/method/etc that you may use. Another thing is there are some aspects of my style that will seem obvious to me that I may overlook explaining. please consider this a more generalized guide than a step-by-step.

So, first things first: the lines themselves.

I'm going to be making an entry for Brightshine for this tutorial, so it'll be the example i use. I use Clip Studio Paint for all of my accents and I specifically use the asset found in the CSP asset store called SOIPEN for my lines, specifically on a size 3. I feel it does a good job of getting crisp yet soft lines and matches well to the line weight of the dragons line art. I typically do not zoom in very far and try to focus on making the outer silhouette ares bold and the inner lines soft. This gives a crisp edge to the work and a definitive line that makes it easier to color later on.

Something to note if I utilize the line method of going back and forth between opaque and transparent colors. It's a hotkey you can set that effectively turns the same brush you're using into an eraser. It allows me to carve away segments to create that negative space (as seen on the middle of the flower above) rather than trying to perfectly draw in that specific circle shape. Negative space is a huge tool to master that can give a lot of depth to your work. It also helps to sometimes fill in segments or widen out segments that are just Barely touching. The less complications in the lines the better.

For the main feature, the flowers, I will typically find a reference showing a good clear outline of how the flowers look and simplify the shapes. The flowers in question here are Delphiniums and I've decided to render them upside down as if they're hanging. Simplifying the shapes and giving the illusion of the petal bunching is more effective than genuinely drawing each and every petal in a 100% accurate way. (also since it's for Brightshine I've replaced the flower bulbs at the ends with light bulbs)

When doing line work that goes right up to the edge of the dragon, I'll typically start with the line for the edge, then build from that. Also when it comes to narrow areas (like the tip of the wing there) I'll leave it blank and typically fill it in with gradients or other small things to not make it too busy.

A very important rule for making accents is: Do Not Invest In Details That Will Get Lost In Resizing. I don't make super small details that don't matter, for example if you look at the innermost part of the flowers they are blocky and somewhat large compared to how they actually are on the flowers. When they get resized they will barely maintain that level of detail.

With all of the linework done I'd like to point out how I do composition for my accents. I tend to have 2-3 main focal points (in this case it's the two major draping areas on the wings, and the flowing lace on the arms) and everywhere else is filled in with evenly distributed small bits. Originally the butterfly on the bottom left wing wasn't there in the sketch but when I looked at the accent lines for what I had I noticed an empty spot and filled it in with a matching motif.

Some main points of how I craft my accents include: keeping the main focal points and number of thematic motifs limited and deliberate. I could add a bunch of like, jewelry trinkets or more lace and really clutter the accent but by not doing that it gives the flowers room to breathe and be the star of the show. Also using references for flowers creates a much better image than winging it.

In the next part I'll go over my coloring/rendering process!

#flight rising #dragon share #my accents #user made accents #custom umas #tutorial

[duncandonuts06]

Yippee!! I’m finally done with this massive drawing! I am so happy to share with you all Schatzi’s complete ref sheet! Character information and lore dump under the art! Its going to be a lot to read but bear with me. I have a lot to share. Schatzi is my first “thomas oc” so he holds a special place in my heart. I have spent months researching Trench Railways, and I am so excited to finally get to publicize some details from this big project I am working on.

TW: War, and Death

Schätzchen (can be shortened to Schatzi) is a German trench engine. He was built in 1915 so the world has been at war for his entire life. Built for war, immediately sent to war. His personality has been shaped by the soldiers around him. He is brave, strong, and proud (but not vain). He understands how important his work is and gives it his all. He can be stubborn and pop-offish around his crew but holds his tongue around strangers. He is very gullible and naïve which is occasionally taken advantage of by people in his unit. He is considered a fellow soldier by his crew and the other soldiers in his regiment, and they treat him as such.

Schatzi did not start off with a name. In this “universe” as you may call it, trench locomotives usually are never named. They are known solely by their numbers. They are machines made for war, and just like a soldier is known by the serial number on his dogtags, so are the engines known only by the number on their plates. They are seen as expendable and nothing more. If an engine has a name it is because they did something heroic enough to become loved and valued by their unit. In a similar way we only know the names of war heroes, we only know the names of engines brave enough to sacrifice themselves for their humans. The rest are lost to time.

Schatzi understands the fragility of human life and puts himself in harms way to see that lives are saved. He earns his name after saving his injured crew, and a very overloaded train of soldiers retreating from the front. He suffers severe damage in the process and is written off as scrap. However, his crew, who see him as their family, protest and get word out to everyone he saved on that train. It sets their entire sector of the front ablaze. The commander of the region is informed that his soldiers are threatening mutiny if this one trench locomotive is sent for scrap. So, instead of scrapping No. 1091 the engine is saved by the officer’s pen. Once they learn that their engine has been saved, the soldiers go to rescue him and in their jubilation scribble out “Unser Schatz” (Our Treasure) on his tank with chalk. He is repaired, and his crew lovingly paint Schätzchen on his tanks because he has and always will be their little treasure. 

Afterwards, he is adored by everyone. He is accepted by the soldiers as “one of them” and is addressed accordingly. They play jokes on him and tease him just as they would a comrade. He even gets the nickname “Scheissechen” (which is like calling him little shit) when he is taking them back to the front. A lot of “tough love.”

He does any job asked of him. He carries munitions, supplies, and troops to the front but the job he holds in the highest regard is serving as an ambulance. Derailment was very common on Trench Railways. Schatzi is a fully articulated locomotive which gives him an advantage over other engines. He can handle tight corners with ease which enables him to keep up a good pace while rushing to and from the front lines. However, the track was still incredibly rough, and he does derail on occasion. His biggest fear is derailment while pulling ambulance wagons. He knows how precious time is to injured patients and blames himself if someone dies enroute.

Another advantage he has is the ability to “hide” his face. Some trench locomotives have adapted and developed ways of protecting their faces from shrapnel and debris. In a sense they can choose to "hide" their face and appear like a normal engine while still having all the functions of a "living engine." He can still see and speak while faceless which he occasionally uses to play tricks on people.

He prefers the company of humans over engines. Once he was accepted as a fellow comrade he took an interest in how humans live and interact with each other. He enjoys listening to them talk about their families and loved ones. He even learns popular war songs and gets to share rations and drink beer with his crew on occasion. The war has caused him to suffer in his own right but, regardless of how difficult things are, he carries on through adversity and remains strong. Lives are counting on him and as long as there is someone in need he will continue to give it his all.

#tw war #tw death #ttte #ttte fanart #thomas the tank engine #thomas and friends #ttte oc art #ttte oc #ttte narrow gauge #trench locomotive #trench railway #trench engines #ww1trench #ww1train #ww1 #ww1 au #ttte oc: schatzi

[bryce-bucher]

Midwest Lost Post #5

Stepfather:

For the past month I've been pretty busy, so I've mainly just been focusing on working on Midwest Lost whenever I have a chance. In this time I finally got the character model for the stepfather mostly complete and in the game. In this fight he is "unwinding" after work so he's ditched his pants and put on a bathrobe, but he was too dejected to change out of his work shirt. He's an abusive guy with a messy life, and he often takes his anger out on whoever he thinks he can have power over. Unlucky for the protagonist, this often means he's the target of his rage. Luckily for the protagonist, he has a big ass sword.

The Face:

For a while now I've been pretty concerned on how I am going to handle face textures in this game. I need the characters to be expressive for the various cinematics and for certain emotional beats to hit properly, but creating proper detailed faces is a bit of a wild west territory for me. Because of this, I decided to try an experiment. Recently I've been trying to learn how to paint properly using a VR painting tool called Vermillion, It's proven to be a really powerful and relaxing way to paint, so I was wondering if it would be feasible for me to paint character textures in it. At my current skill level I honestly thought it wouldn't work out at all, but surprisingly it did!

As you can see here, I spent a good 4-5 hours painting this face texture in VR. It looked pretty horrible until like the last 40 minutes of the process or so. I guess that's how its supposed to go, but it really surprised me that it came together at all.

After I got that base texture completed, I exported it and touched it up a bit to better fit the model. I then added a pair of eyes and eyebrows on top of the texture in Affinity Photo. They are a lot more cartoony / simplistic than the base texture so that I can change them out and create new expressions easily. I was honestly unsure if that would clash too hard with the painted face, but I think it looks pretty good. This was a really fun process, and It's got me excited for the amount of opportunities it has afforded me. Character creation is my favorite, but until now I really never thought I'd be able to paint the more detailed organic aspects of certain characters / animals. Oh yeah I also painted his knees in the same way lol, but I think going into detail about that would be redundant.

Heavy Attacks:

The last major thing I did recently was finally implement some heavy attacks. Rather than have separate inputs for light and heavy attacks, the attack button causes a light or heavy attack to occur based on whether or not you are currently holding the stance/strafe button. The heavy attacks I decided on are meant to be able to close in a considerable gap between you and the enemy, so that you can get in there more easily after slowly strafing around. Alternatively, you can just use heavy attacks whenever as long as you just press the strafe and attack buttons at the same time, so really they are for whenever you feel as though you can afford the wind up and cooldown of the animations. But yeah, as you can see in the gif above, the heavy attacks currently take the form of a two swing combo where you can lunge forward with the sword pointing outwards and then follow it up by swinging it back over your head and slamming it down. I think they are pretty satisfying to use as of now, but I might consider extending the combo in the future.

Conclusion:

That is all 4 today. I really want to get more work done on all of these games. I'm really tired of being stuck in the same debug scene in all of them. Hopefully this year I can dedicate more time to all this, and maybe I can make a second scene for one of them lol. Next time I post one of these it will probably be midwest lost again, but if not I'll be working on J(a)SON next. A big part of me being busy this month is that I'm actually attending GDC alongside Quinn K. If any of u mutuals out there want to meetup at GDC lmk.

#screenshotsaturday #midwest lost #midwest #lost #american midwest #midwest emo #mall goth #soulslike #dark souls #soulsborne #y2k #y2k aesthetic #indiegames #indie games #indiegamedev #indiedev #lowpoly #psx #gamedev #game development #vermillion #vermillion vr #painting #oil painting #digital painting

[gamebunny-advance]

Kun3h0 Custom Doll Repaint

So, here's what I've been working on for the past month or so. I've wanted to do a custom doll project for a long time now, and I finally got the opportunity to actually do it. I don't think she's bad for a first doll, but there's a lot I feel I could do better and differently.

Once again, my pictures hardly do her any justice... mostly due to color balancing.

I tried to edit these pics to make them a little more accurate, but it also yellowed out everything else, so... yeah. A photographer/image editor I am not.

That said, aside from the poor quality of the images, I'd say that the pics capture both her good points and her jank.

(More about the process and other thoughts under the cut.)

So, she started with a Cave Club doll as the base (I believe her name was Fernessa).

I unfortunately didn't take any pics of this doll with her clothes on, but I'm sure you can search pics of the original base doll yourself.

Besides being very cheap, I really liked the proportions on this doll for Kun3h0. I like the short torso with the long legs and the huge feet. Even the face is kinda Kun3h0-esque (though, a little more on that later).

I've had the idea to customize a Kun3h0 doll for a while, and I always thought the best base would have been an LOL OMG doll since they also have the big head, small torso, and long legs. But, I was always on the fence about them because their hips are a lot wider than Kun3h0's, and I felt like that would always bother me. But once I found out about Cave Club and also found out they're bascially cheap as dirt for the amount of articulation you get, I knew that this was the best match for Kun3h0.

Sadly, the hands aren't as big, and I did consider resculpting them to be more accurate to Kun3h0, but I lack the materials to make that look good enough to be worth doing, so in the end I just repainted the original hands. So I guess this doll is gonna have the non-standard 5-fingers XP. (I forgot to take pics, but the back of the hands do have the heart detail on them. )

Because I have to tie this back to NSR somehow, I think this doll would be a great base for some NSR characters, or really any other stylized character like this. I could def see a cute Mayday coming out of one of these (but not from me~ If I made a Mayday, then I'd want to make a Zuke to go with her, and I just cannot imagine how to make a Zuke doll without him becoming way too top-heavy).

However, I did resculpt the legs to become her boots, so she stands a little taller than the base Cave Club. While I think doing this works for Kun3h0 since she's a robot, if I want to make some alternate outfits for her, they're gonna have to include these boots, or I'm gonna have to get another doll to make some alternate legs.

Unfortunately, my only material I have for body mods is air-dry paper clay, and it doesn't transition as well into the plastic the same way something like apoxie sculpt probably would have. It's not super noticeable at a distance when they're painted, but under scrutiny, you can see a clear transition. I also forgot to detail her heel, so the shoes are flat even though they shouldn't be~ They do help her to stand on her own though, so I guess it's not the worst thing in the world~

While I was doing the sculpting, I also made the wig.

Finding a yarn that would properly convey Kun3h0's hair color is nigh impossible, given the cartoony shading of them, so I settled for a median between the dark rasperry and hot pink and got this regular raspberry yarn. The unaltered pics make it look a little more purple than it actually is. It really is a warm raspberry color.

(I'd say that this is closer to the actual color, maybe a tad darker.)

Let me tell y'all, brushing out yarn wefts is not fun. I also felt like I wasn't doing it right since I lost a lot of material brushing it out. From the little research I did, this seems to be a common problem, but it doesn't sit right with me for so much of it to get wasted like that~

Another challenge I had is that there (of course) aren't very many resources for getting yarn wefts curly or how to make curly hairstyles using yarn wefts. I know that this is relatively easy to achieve with actual doll hair through boil washing, but that wasn't really a viable option for a yarn wig like this. Since I really wanted the hair to look naturally curly as opposed to looking like it was curled after the fact, I curled the hair before gluing it onto the wig cap, which was a mini-nightmare. I followed a video tutorial about how to make a pigtails wig, I just applied the methods to the curly hair.

I don't know if I just didn't make enough wefts to make the tails poofy enough, or if this method just wasn't suited for curly hair, but I just didn't get the volume I was looking for.

To achieve the fuller look that Kun3h0's puffs have, I glued some scrap yarn fluff in the center of the original puffs and just tried to manage the shape from there. It's not perfect, but I think I've more or less brought her original hair to life. It's hard to see since they get lost in the mess of hair, but I was even able to get those stray curls that she has to look nice~

However, for some reason, the wig really doesn't like to stay on. I dunno if it's the ears pushing it off, or if something else makes it loose, but it really doesn't like to stay on her head. I might try applying heat to the cap to see if I can get it to reshape around her head properly, but I don't have high hopes for that.

Overall, having made the wig and seen it in real life, I've confirmed something that I've kinda felt for a while: Kun3h0 really needs something on her head between her antenna. I feel like her antenna and the top of her head create a sort of "empty box" that is just asking to be filled with something. I recently did a drawing of Kun3h0 where I have her an ahoge, and I think it helps a lot.

It's a little too late to add this to the doll (and I don't even know how I'd go about it), but I think from now on, she's gonna have a curl that sticks up on the top of her head.

Moving on: the face.

I really wish I could get some clearer pictures here, because the eyes really aren't as bad as the pics make them look.

While I am trying to keep her right covered as much as possible, I did still paint both of them with acrylics. I don't have MSC or watercolor pencils like most of the pros do, so I made use of what I had. I'm certainly not getting that "crisp lineart" look that Kun3h0 is basically built on, but I don't think the results are horrible. They're sealed with a gloss varnish, so they don't photograph well, but I do like how the texture is very different from the skin, it almost sells that they're made of glass.

As for the other details, I did do the lining in dark purple, like I usually do for her lineart. I'm on the fence on if this works IRL or not. On the one hand, I feel like the purple lineart is a part of the character design, it helps balance out all the pinks, but when I only use the purple on the doll for the face (and her stomach paneling), I do wonder if it looks strange, and if I would have been better off lining her with dark brown instead.

In fact, I did the original sketch with brown for the paneling.

(Right eye not canon.)

But when I made the actual doll, I wound up doing purple anyway to match the eyelashes, so they wouldn't look as out of place.

Other details I wanted to mention are that the upper eyelashes/eyelid is actually a piece of painted foam that I glued on. I really wanted to achieve that cartoony look of how I usually draw the lashes over her hair, even if it doesn't make logical sense.

I wasn't able to do the same thing for the brows, but I still did something a little "special" with them.

Instead of making myself cry trying to get an accurate color-match with paint, her eyebrows are actually flocked using some of the leftover yarn. I've hardly seen anyone do this for a doll repaint, but I don't think this look would suit most brows anyway~

Overall, I'm only a *little* unsatisfied by the face-up, but my disappointment is mostly in the eye-shape. I didn't want to go against the face mold too much, but that meant that I couldn't really make the eye taller like Kun3h0's actually are. If the eye was any taller, the brows would have been right against the hairline, and that wouldn't be a great look IMO. I feel like 80% of Kun3h0's identity is in her face, so having it be even a little inaccurate does bring her down a little.

Lastly, I think all that's left to talk about is clothes and accessories.

I am personally really in love with the shorts and it's why I chose them to be the preview for this project. I added the beltloops after I took that pic, and I think they turned out so cute, even if you can see the stitching of the belt to the shorts.

I went through quite a few patterns trying to get them right. The Cave Club dolls don't seem to be super popular in customizer circles, so there aren't many if any patterns out there for them. At first I was just eyeballing a shorts pattern from this video and going through some trial and error trying to adapt them to the doll's body.

I made 3 or 4 pairs of shorts this way, but they all ended up too tight. In the end, I wound up using the "wrap-and-tape" method of pattern making, and made the shorts from there. I honestly wasn't too confident in the results, so I very haphazardly made the trial pair with this new pattern, but they fit so great that I wound up using the test shorts for the final product.

The top was not as successful. Unlike the shorts, I didn't start making test tops until I'd already done the wrap and tape. So the pattern making wasn't actually the hardest part: it was putting it together that was a nightmare.

While I was making the top, I would of course have Kun3h0 put it on to test the fit, which stretched out the fabric to a noticeable degree. This was one of the last things I worked on, so I was getting really fed up with working on this for so long, so I told myself that I would probably just hide it with paint later.

That was mistake number 1.

As I should have learned from painting Green's face, the paint hardened the fabric tremendously, giving it almost no stretch. Originally the plan was to use velcro to close the top in the back, but the pattern didn't account for the lack of stretch, so it's actually too small to close edge to edge. So, I had to cut velcro to extend beyond the actual clothes to close it up. So basically, there's a gaping hole in the back of her outfit and is the main reason why I refuse to post back pictures of this doll.

For the time being, I do consider this top to be a "prototype" and I'll probably remake it in the future with some improvements. But, painting the fabric after stitching it together is not the only mistake I made.

Since this top is a prototype, there's a lot of other things that I did in a bad order: I really should have done the hemming and put on the accents before putting the pieces together, but since I wasn't sure if the pattern would fit first, and thought I would have the energy to make a second better top, I didn't bother with it. This included the cuffs of the sleeve.

That was mistake number 2.

The way I made the sleeves is that the arms are really just a large trapazoid with the shoulder shape at the top. The idea was that I would just sew the large side to a piece of shorter elastic band which would serve as the cuffs. I figured this would cause the sleeve to look "ballooned" at the end. And it kinda worked. You can kinda see how it turned out on her right sleeve in the first picture, but actually sewing it together was kinda terrible because the only way I could think of to do this was to sew the cuff and sleeve separately first, then sew them together, and that just seems ass-backwards to me, but I couldn't think of any other way to do it, and it came out with the cuff being mostly obscured anyway. I tried a different method on the left sleeve, so the cuff is more visible, but the sleeve shape is worse.

So if/when I remake this top, I'm still gonna do this in my ass-backwards way, I've just got to figure out how to keep the sleeve from eating the cuff.

Otherwise, I think the top would actually be pretty cute. I was really getting tired of working on it at the end, so a lot of the details are actually hot-glued on instead of being sewn. The faux-zipper pull is a *little* large, but it's something I had that I thought would work, and I actually really like the oversized look. It works for the proportions of the doll and helps bring in the heart motif that's getting a little lost in the sloppiness of my painting~

The last thing I think worth talking about is the mini GAB.

I thought I'd taken a pic of it by itself, but I guess not. Anyway, the only thing I wanted to say about it is that there's a little "clip" on the back made from wire that allows it to hook onto Kun3h0's belt and be held in her hand. I dunno, I just really like the little accessories, and that little feature amuses me~

But that's it for now. I am actually working on two other accessories for her:

The doll came with a pet dinosuar that I'm currently turning into her GAB.

It's just about the right size to be in scale with Kun3h0, and the hair is basically already the same as GAB's. I've already modified the base with clay and cut off the bits I don't need. It's mostly a matter of sanding and painting right now. I have no idea how or if I'm going to get the collar onto it without it looking bad, but I'll give it a try. If all else fails, I'll just make a tiny bow-tie like GAB!classic~

I don't have a pic of this one, but the doll also came with some sort of flower pot thing that I'm turning into her drill using a metal piping tip for the drill head~ I'll post about them in an "accessories DLC" when they're both finished.

But wait... if you've made it this far, and you saw my preview post, then you might notice that there's one accessory missing.

Well, this mask doesn't actually fit Kun3h0...

But it does fit someone else.

#gbunny draws #gbunny makes #OCs #kun3h0 #doll custom #custom doll #doll repaint #she's 'done' #she's finally 'done' #well I seriously need to remake the top #but she's practically done #i know that this post is gonna underperform compared to the amount of work i put into it #but i don't really care this time #i'm really happy that i get to hold my second child in my hands #(the first was GAB) #but this isn't the thing that I thought was going to haunt me #you'll have to wait just a little longer for that one #and then the accessories DLC wil hopefully be coming soon #ah i didn't mention it in the main body #but the reason some pics have her knee pads and others dont #is because i literally forgot about them until i started thinking about #how it was a shame that you could see the paint chipping at the knee joints #but then i remembered 'wait. doesn't she have something that covers her knees?" #so yeah. put those on last minute #Youtube

[jp-nichts]

A Quick and Nowhere Near Comprehensive Guide of My Art Process

The Longest and hardest part of making art for me is the sketch and planning phase. This will include rough thumbnail sketches of poses and ideas, and an accumulation of reference images. My art is nothing without solid references for me to refer back to for shadows proportions and such.

For my recent AC artwork the planning phase has been a bit easier since I've just been collecting screen shots from the game. I took elements from different photos and sketched them together to get something I liked. (Rusty's ref photos would have been a lot easier if I just recreated his build, but no I had to follow him around in my own AC like a lost puppy XD )

Once I decide upon a pose and reference images I start to draw with pencil and try and get all the proportions and details right before I move on to inking. Usually just using microns, but will use ink and brushes for larger parts (I usually don't have photos of just the sketches. They tend to be light and rough)

Then the watercolor! I'll start to layer up the watercolor paint and TRY to be careful not to over work the painting especially in places I want to stay light. This doesn't always work out, but I try to do a little editing on the computer as I have to.

Once I'm done with watercolor I'll scan the painting into the computer. One thing I do to almost every piece is switch the black into some kind of color. I usually have this color planed in advance before I even started painting. I'll go to the "Selective Color" adjustment in photoshop and play the values as I need.

I'll also touch up the general color values and levels because photos and scans tend not to the the IRL colors a justice. (or in Rusty's case, I made all of Steel Haze blue instead of blue and grey. So I had to desaturate specific parts to get his mech more accurate)

But yeah, ART! Once I'm done editing and fine tuning I'll post and share so long as its a project I can do so. I'm really bad about taking WIP pics. A lot of the time it's because it doesn't accrue to me to do so.

#art process

[dross-the-fish]

Thoughts on AI I was talking to some people about AI and generally I've been pretty neutral on AI as a tool. I've seen people bring up that it could be used as a good way for disabled people or people who generally aren't good at art to bring their ideas to life and honestly I'm pretty ok with that on principle. I am pretty firmly against AI being allowed to indiscriminately scrape the work of artists without their input or say so and I'm against Ai being used by the entertainment industry as a replacement for actual artists and writers. However what I really want to talk about is the use of AI as a tool, assuming it can be used ethically. I really hate the argument of "It's soulless," or "It's cheating" (used ethically it's just anther medium like photography or collages. Art is not measured by the amount of effort or the tools used. I am really tired of that take) and a particular scaremongering argument I've had directed at myself "It will replace you."

Because I do draw that's the one I get leveled at me the most. That AI will do what I do and do it better so there will be no point to me or what I make. They like to paint artists vs AI as John Henry vs The Machine and I just do not care for it. I think it's reductive to art and to artists to frame the value of art as a matter of effort vs quality of product. AI cannot make what I make because it's not me. It won't create my characters, it can only output what it's fed. The work it creates may be of better quality, more complex in texture and composition, more precise or more detailed but it can never build my characters because it doesn't know my characters like I do. I got curious and tried to use an AI image generator to see if I could make art with it and I could not. I have no idea how to input the fucking prompts in a way that makes something worth looking at and I lost the motivation to learn how to do so very quickly. As a creative outlet there was something so joyless about it. I felt like I was doing paperwork or coding and that's the shit I regularly get paid to do at my soul killing day job. I don't want to do it for fun. Also the intimacy was gone? I didn't feel like I was spending time with my creation and there was no sense of bringing something to life. None of the pleasure of watching a face take shape line by line and filling in the details until my character was looking back at me, imperfect due to the limitations of my skills but still fully realized and in some strange way "alive". Working with an AI generator felt so tedious. Even if I could learn how to use this tool and do it properly so that I get "better" looking results I don't want to. I feel so disconnected from the end product that I can't envision it ever bringing me any kind of fulfillment to make use of this tool. But I think, again, assuming it can be used ethically, as just another tool for making art it deserves to exist and be accessible to people who might enjoy using it to be creative. It's not the process or the software that's the issue, it's the way it's being abused and no amount of people trying to scare me with "AI could do it better than you" is going to frighten me away from preferring to draw by hand.

The point of art is not to be good, it's to create, it's to make something and to bring ideas to life. As much as I have my criticisms about AI I feel like a lot of the language used to condemn it presents a narrow view of what makes art "worthy" and it sets a goal post where none should exist.

Everyone should be allowed to create, and they should have access to whatever tools they are comfortable using and when we talk about AI vs Artists we should focus less on the quality and ease of use and more on the dilemma of using other people's work without consent and the potential for mass production of cheap and lazy products for profit from the entertainment industry at the expense of employing writers and artists.

#Ai discourse