#for the ones that did not have visual references I drew them how I saw them in my head. I hope they're more or less accurate | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

whateverdays-art · 22 days

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art... tutorial? backgrounds

but really i'll just be outlining my process, probably. if it works for you, take it! if not, we probably just work differently, and that's okay!

so! now we will get a glimpse into... whatever the fuck it is that i do. i'm going to be honest with you all, i'm not even entirely sure how i do this sometimes! i honestly surprised myself with this one, but i think i know myself well enough to piece apart what was going on in my head.

so.

let's dissect my art, shall we?

okay. i don't have any wip shots for this, BUT i can tell you when i started, it looked something like this (by the way, i do this gray background to reduce eye strain):

(anatomy video: Karina Teaches Anatomy from Drawfee Extra)

i started with the head. i only had a rough idea of what i wanted (kaneki sitting on something like a wall). so i had to then figure out:

what kind of wall?

what goes around the wall?

what shortcuts can i take, here?

that last question is my favorite, because i am a low-energy, constantly tired, disabled son of a bitch and even drawing things i love tires me the fuck out. SO. here's where it gets fun:

when you look at manga, and there are fences, sometimes whatever's behind the fences will be not drawn, because that'd get too visually cluttered. if i can find a reference, i'll put it here. if not, just keep an eye out for it. (this is part of what i love about manga. you have an entire book of art at your fingertips, even if you just have one volume. find a series whose style/story you love. art tips bayybeeee)

that's shortcut one. i drew in the wall, added a bevel to the edge to make it look more. wall-like. i also had part of the fence sketched in at this point BUT forgot to add it to the next THREE SCREENSHOTS and had to redo some of them. i'm using a layer mask and had to redo it so that's why it looks all wonky later on.

then bricks. now i honestly do NOT know why i chose this brick design? i think i was just tired and thought, "i need something. vaguely brick-like to indicate bricks. how would a more cute-style artist draw this?"

and when you look at manga/comics/even old cartoons, they don't draw in every single brick!!! not always!!!! PLEASE don't make yourself sit there and draw every single brick. draw an INDICATION of a FEW bricks, because here's the thing: the human brain fucking loves filling in what it wants to see. when's the last time you went apeshit about an optical illusion, if you like optical illusions? when's the last time you HEARD/SAW someone going apeshit over an optical illusion, if you don't like them? i rest my case.

*pounding fists on table* we!! love!!! shortcuts!!!!

but. a brick wall is BORING we don't want JUST a brick wall, fuck that. maybe this place is a bit overgrown? maybe it's a lil worn down or abandoned or gets less foot traffic and that's why there's a fence. so let's spice it up with some bushes, and make it look more fitting.

by the way, cracks are only something i've started to figure out recently. i'm in my late 20s. don't worry, you'll get there.

see the grass? again, indications. all i or you need to do as the artist is draw a few hints for what we want the brain to see, and the brain goes, "oh okay, there's grass there, and that's bricks. awesome. got it." we are not just artists, we are masters of illusion.

so. this is what we have so far.

and now... this. the background. this is where things get more... esoteric, in my head, maybe? we'll see.

artists talk about "flow" sometimes. a variety of professions do, actually. i'm a visual thinker, and with my particular brand of autism, my "flow" is like i'm wile e. coyote falling down a painted black circle that's actually an endless pit but also he's on acid, and i'm not actually paying all that much attention to what's going onto the paper? i'm more "in my head" than anything, and not in a bad way. even my own brain can break me out of it though :')

but yes, i know there's something wrong with me.

SO, where did my brain pull THESE things from, and what can we learn from them?

the two buildings in the background, slightly curved:

old cartoons (again!). tom & jerry is the one i can think of. looney toons. anywhere animators went, "wait! real physics doesn't matter, here! let's fuck around with THAT," and got really excited about it (i notice it most in the old stuff). keep an eye out for scenes with lots of buildings to catch this.

no windows on those buildings!

the video, How to use Foreground, Midground, and Background to Clarify Depth - Ian Roberts, is where i pulled what i was Possibly attempting from. i might've also just been Tired and saw an opportunity to test it, whether or not it was the best one. (i do this a lot ^^; )

building directly underneath/road:

shop of some sort. i started to draw fabric over the top as well, so possibly it was going to be a ramen shop? but also it's ambiguous because we're masters of illusion, remember? now if you're not sure, it's only because i told you! ha! (aaaand, this goes for your art too, dear reader! no one will know of your mistakes unless you... make a.... tutorial... post. shit. /lighthearted)

the roof towards the wall:

i both started the blue period anime and a la autism absorbed that into my personality but i also used to have dreams when i was very tiny about flying over japan and so it just kinda. happened? i. do not know what to tell you here besides use refs. and research i don't even know what period that roof would be from or if it's Accurate it's. i just went with what felt. right but also what i had the energy to draw, ehegh.... since i don't have much more than that i will add more things at the end about perspective.

the staircase:

night in the woods! my brain rembered the staircase from a scene in night in the woods and. staircases exist.

(i just read from "the unabridged journals of sylvia plath" something about [paraphrasing, here] how "it's funny. there's all this wonder and beauty in the world and it all just comes down to staircases.")

further notes just in general: do research about where you're drawing! don't just look with an artist's eye but with an analytical eye or a storyteller's eye. both relax and enjoy it and watch it passively but ALSO ask yourself questions about it sometimes. go see if you can find videos of the place! sometimes people just record their walks?? like in different countries????? one of my favorites is Nomadic Ambience

perspective? is a load of bullllllllSHIT. sometimes, you draw curved buildings because it's Fun and Dynamic and adds to the mood or just because it looks good. sometimes you draw a horizon line because it helps, sometimes you NEVER DO because it fucks you up more than you care to admit.

sometimes you learn the rules, and then break them, and sometimes you stick to them, and sometimes you have never learned them in rhe first place and all that matters is, does your art make you happy? at the very least, does it make you feel what you want to feel?

if not, don't worry. my first try on my "casual conversation" work? wooooohhh hoooo hoooooo wee it was NOT what i wanted to get down paper. tablet. screen, whatever. i HAD to go and find a ref and do something different and you know? i'm still not happy with it. i don't think i'll ever be at a point where i'll be able to get down exactly what i have pictured in my head. i think i'll be always lagging behind at least a little bit, BUT. i can try to close that gap, too.

instead of looking at the incredible artists on here and wishing i was one of them? i am! i'm here, posting with you all! and for now, i can be happy with that.

also BLENDER. if it's not too intimidating, i use it for general shading references for solid objects like tables purely out of spite because when i first tried to learn it my developmental eternally youthful disorder (autism) brain was. literally not developed enough for it, i think. i frustrated myself to the point of tears more than once with it YEARS ago but now 😎😎😎👉 i can make some things. which is WAY more than zero so small victories 😂

tl;dr think critically/analytically, look for shortcuts, if it sucks hit da bricks, if it ain't broke don't fix it, and fucking draw what you want to draw and what makes YOU happy

#art tutorial #art ref #art reference #backgrounds #art tips #whateverdaysart #“stair railings” i said and laughed. “all this- all life- is reduced to stair railings.” pg. 49 of the unabridged journals of sylvia plath #FOUND THE QUOTE

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coulsonlives · 9 months

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As requested by @sidsskullshirt, I watched Ruby Gillman and here's my review for it! This isn't the most positive review because I'm super conflicted, but it's my honest opinion. :)

First, the main thing that stood out to me: Ruby Gillman lifted a lot from Turning Red.

The opening sequence about sea monsters was intriguing and drew me in! After that, there was a minute or two of basically the same as Turning Red's opening titles, where the main character explained things in a quirky, 'welcome to my life' way. She even had the same voice affects/lilt as Mei, I wondered if she had the same voice actor until I checked.

I liked how Ruby went all tentacle-y to grab things at home, like the rest of her family, it was a nice bit of worldbuilding compared to how they had to act in public. I liked the comment about the protest and the ASMR video thing was funny lol.

Unfortunately, the opening of the movie kinda set me up to view the entire rest of the movie in a comparative RG vs TR way, so I noticed lots of other similarities:

Ruby had three friends who were like Abby, Miriam, and Priya. They had similar character tropes, ie one friend was the 'chill one', one friend was the 'exuberant' one, one friend was the 'tomboy one'.

Ruby had to hide her monster-y ness from the world.

Ruby said she's from Canada.

Ruby talked about her mom ruining her life.

Ruby turned into a big monster version of herself, just like Mei turned into a monster.

Ruby's mom could also turn into a monster.

Only the women in Ruby's family turned into monsters, just like in Turning Red, where only the women on Mei's side of the family turned into monsters.

In both movies, they were 'gifted' the ability to turn into monsters.

Ruby freaked out because her mom hid the monster thing from her, and her mom was only forced to explain things after she monstered-out.

The 'your body is going through changes and blossoming like a flower' low-effort puberty reference.

Ruby's mom saying 'don't let them tell you how to live your life and raise your children' to her clients, just like how Mei's mom was told something similar by her own mom.

I totally don't mind if movies are inspired by other movies, but this many similarities and within a year of Turning Red's release, it felt super derivative and distracting. 😭

I saw a lot of Luca in the premise too, as in the, 'sea creatures are hated by humans, they blend in to avoid persecution, also, being in contact with the water reveals what they are' thing. This wasn't as obvious to me as the Turning Red stuff, but it was on my mind for a bit..

It was weird how Ruby somehow blended in, despite being blue and having tentacle hair/ears, because visually, people wouldn't buy that. I wish the writers did some kind of charm thing, like having a lil bag of sand in her pocket, to make her look totally human and bypass the 'would people really be convinced by this?' deal. That said, there was obviously commentary on how some people are painfully, obviously different in some way, but they try hard and manage to convince people they're normal, and it's exhausting to them, and Ruby even ranted about this, and maybe the blue skin was a super overt way of showing that, but idk, it was so hard to buy.

'I don't even know you!' lol.

Ruby's friends seemed like peas in a pod with her at the start of the movie (her 'squad'), and significant because of the whole prom thing. But once they caused the inciting incident and Ruby-kraken appeared, they were relegated being part of the town's whole kraken conspiracy, and prom subplot, which took a back seat to everything else. Idk how I feel about this.

There was some kinda xenophobia allegory in the movie, between the ship captain dude and the townspeople. I liked this, but it wasn't the main focus, and it felt like it got lost among the other storylines?

We had the 'princess' storyline, the 'fighting mermaids' storyline, the 'becoming friends with chelsea' storyline (which for most of the time seemed like a totally unrelated storyline to the 'mermaids' one), the 'fighting with mom' storyline, the 'three friends' storyline, the 'fitting in' storyline, and the 'prom' storyline. Omg fam. There were so many competing things! The movie felt unfocused, especially once all the storylines started getting mixed into each other.

I personally can't do radio pop music in movies, it always dates em. The pop music playing during Nerissa's reveal was especially out of place to me.

I loved the part where Ruby's mom told her with authority to talk to her, but then was sympathetic and tried to cheer her up. It seemed like a realistic mom thing to do, I dug it! I also liked how Ruby quietly called out her mom's hypocrisy when she said she didn't have to hide anything from her. I think that'd be cathartic to see onscreen for kids who have (or had) shitty parents.

Chelsea saying Ruby was super lucky or whatever in the bathroom struck me as tone-deaf lol, it definitely didn't take into account how isolated Ruby felt and kinda invalidated how she was feeling. But I could see how Ruby would get sucked into that and want to obey what she was saying anyways.

The kraken-training scenes were probably the coolest part of the movie between the colours and just. the creativity? That said, the luma on the white parts of the shots seemed super overexposed or blown out?? I was like ?? is this supposed to look like this?

So the ship captain had a panic attack once he learned the guy was a kraken, then somehow magically got over his kraken-phobia as soon as he slapped him once?? Ugghh. The movie set up the captain with obvious prejudice against krakens, and by resolving it in a comedic scene like that, there wasn't any chance for payoff. The townspeople had a better payoff, it actually felt warranted (Ruby saved the ship from Nerissa which was a big deal, they had a right to cheer her on). And then, obviously, when she defeated Nerissa.

The character models were ugly to me. They were just solid colours with unappealing proportions, noodle arms, and no texture on the skin. The big Kraken designs had glittery/scaly skin which was better than their small designs, which had no texture, but this doesn't look like a cohesive design to me. The legs look super heavy, the neck is just a cylinder, the head is a ball, then there's arbitrary fins and those weird tentacle legs, which have tentacle toes at the ends.

I really liked Nerissa's character design though. It was appealing in a proportions type way, and the colours didn't clash, the water hair was cool too.

I really liked the bait-and-switch they pulled near the end! I can see how some people would call it, though. Also: I feel like the bait-and-switch undermined the concept of how a popular teen can also feel left out for varying reasons, which is how Chelsea was presented at first, and I kinda wish they explored that instead, and explained that she was acting out because she felt alone etc. The way she was introduced and how the movie until that point centered around high school, I was convinced there would be something like that instead of what we got. So I'm conflicted.

Every time I think about how something could've gone different I can't help but think, there was way too much happening in this movie..

I didn't like the deus ex machina where Ruby suddenly said they could destroy the trident if they combined their powers or whatever. There was no indication or Chekhov's gun about how their laser eyes could do serious, significant damage in the rest of the movie, so the whole thing seemed like they just pulled a random way to destroy the trident out of nowhere.

I liked the ending, ie how they embraced their differences from the other townspeople and saw it as a net positive, instead of something to hide/a net negative.

As requested, I didn't watch the trailer before I saw the movie. I did watch the trailer afterwards and oml, the entire movie was spoiled! I wonder if that's why the movie was considered a box office disaster on top of the advertising.

Those are my thoughts, sorry for the essay <3

#i'm a sucker for animated movies n cartoons and i wanted to like this! but it was hard.#ruby gillman #ruby gillman spoilers #ruby gillman teenage kraken #ruby gillman: teenage kraken #dreamworks #long post

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anon-bunny · 1 year

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I love your work! Do you happen to have any tips for artists looking to get into digital art using procreate?

Sure! I absolutely love using procreate. For whatever reason it’s considered a lowbrow art tool by major studios and companies??? But I can do pretty much anything I’d want to do in Photoshop in Procreate at a fraction of the cost. Plus working on an iPad means portability— If I want to draw in the car, on a plane, in a cafe, etc. I totally can. Glad to see more people are getting into using it! 💖 Alright, onto some tips.

The best way I can think to give tips is leading by example and offering points of reference through my own work and process. If you have follow up questions or are looking for something specific definitely send them my way. ✨😊✨

1. Know Yourself; Know Your Art Style

Whether you’re a long time digital artist or a traditional artist porting over to the digital medium it’s very important to know your work, your strengths, and your personal style. For example, I was very much a traditional artist who delved into digital artwork to keep up with career demands. For a LONG time there was stylistic dissonance between how I drew on paper and how I drew on SAI (the desktop paint tool where I got my start) because what I was subconsciously doing was keeping my style to myself traditionally and just mimicking the artwork I saw online when trying to make digital art.

Here are two pieces I made back in 2018, one traditional and one digital. They're both nice pieces, but if someone was asked which one was definitively one of my pieces they're much more likely to say the traditional piece because it's consistent with my style: limited colors, lineart heavy, etc. I kept trying to divorce from my traditional style when what I should have been doing was taking the extra time to learn how to do what I could already do traditionally in a digital program.

It's especially important to know your style and practice maintaining it regardless of media because the next tip is

2. Invest Time In Watching Others

In nearly every hobby, profession, skill, or interest one of the best ways to hone your craft is to see how other people do it. Hozier said in a recent interview when he's not writing or performing his music he's listening to someone else's music. It's very important to our ability to learn to see how a task can be done to help influence how we ultimately do it. I of course do not mean try to copy someone else's work, which was something I had to learn the hard way when I was starting out in digital art. One of the things I frequently did early on was tried to copy someone's painting technique as closely as I could which resulted in some less-than-inspiring artwork that didn't look much like my usual body of work.

Which is again, something that is easily prevented by just knowing your style.

Some places I go when looking to see how other people draw are YouTube, Tiktok, Artbooks, and Pinterest. Youtube and Tiktok are fabulous sharing platforms usually dealing in quick media where a single search for "procreate" or "speedpaint" yields THOUSANDS of results. Artbooks require a little more financial dedication, but they're great visual references that frequently come with some kind of tutorial in them. Some in my personal collection are Gothic Lolita Punk, Japanese Comickers, and The Complete Masters of The Poster. And Pinterest is frequently painted as a digital piracy war zone, but searching "art tutorial" or "digital art techniques" yields lots and lots of valuable information.

I've been professionally illustrating since 2017 and I STILL go back to these points of reference to see how other people are drawing, painting, etc. Who knows? I may learn something new that takes my art one step further.

3. Explore Brushes!

There are literally Tens of Thousands of brushes that are available all across the internet and I highly recommend taking the time to search google for packs of them. For the first year or so of working with procreate I ONLY used the default brushes that came with the program and while the art was decent I definitely could have used more experimentation to make more cohesive pieces.

As of right now I use a Frankenstein pack of lining and painting brushes that are a mess of brushes I made myself, brushes I got in art packs I found on itch.io or etsy, and some default brushes I've heavily modified to match my style.

I highly recommend playing with brush settings, searching for new brushes, and trying literally every brush you come across to see if you can find a use for it.

I've mentioned it several times throughout but it deserves its own bullet point, so my final tip is

4. Don't Ever Be Afraid To Google It

No artist knows everything. No one who claims to be an expert on Procreate knows absolutely every function, every application, and every trick all on their own--- but between all of us you can find practically anything just by googling it.

I have found super specific pattern brushes, youtube tutorials for pattern creation, configurations for pressure sensitivity, ideas for color palette building, templates for sticker making-- whenever I personally can't figure out someone else likely knows what to do. That's what community is all about!

You are not beholden only to your personal knowledge, so remember google is your friend!

I hope this helped! I tried to pair down the tips as much as I could but I just love getting asked about how I draw. 💖 If you or anyone else reading this has any specific questions you're more than welcome to DM me or send another ask. 😊 Have fun! Good luck drawing!!!

#my asks #my art #how to #artists on tumblr #tutorials #art tips #art advice

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tatatatatara · 1 year

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1, 2, 4 and 11 with TG!

1. What originally drew me to TG

Uhm I read TG when it was on going in 2015 but I wasn't really into it back then so let's talk about the present

Okay so in 2021, I was in another fandom and into a character that doesn't have any backstory, only appeared in very minors scene and is basically forgotten by the developers and fandom. So one day, I was scrolling through my feed and saw a photo of Tatara, who looks like that favorite character of mine. After a small lookup in the wiki, I found out that Tatara's description is similar to that character too so I read TG and fell in love with HouTata, thinking that since TG is a big fandom I should have more contents to scroll through.

I have never been so wrong in my life.

2. What I like most and least about TG

Most: HouTata

Least: HouTata's ending

Most: I like the symbolic meaning of things in TG. In my country, TG was a really big fandom until 2019 but no one even talked about the tarot number, the literature reference, the flower reference. There were only fake quoters and the war between people who hate KenTou vs people who hate slash ships of Kaneki. So when I seriously got into TG in 2021, I was really surprised and captured by the meta posts on tumblr and reddit. If only people know more about this side of TG.

Also I think this is a common opinion but I love the artstyle

Least: The fact that Houji didn't have any introduction pages in :re and have his own profile, even in the volume that he died.

Alright aside from the HouTata stuffs, I don't like how Ishida Sui handle the LGBTQ+ and mentall illness in this. I mean I don't expect much from a manga, but the whole Mutsuki things and Kaneki's "DID" make me reluctant to recommend it to my friends. Not the best representation, don't you think?

4. A character I couldn't care less about

Uhm, maybe Rize? She's not visually appealing to me, she doesn't have any character development and she mostly existed as a plot device. She was there to be the reason of the main character's tragedy, and then her next appearances were just to push his character development, and her final appearance was to mark the end of his tragedy. I don't know how to put it, but to me she's barely a character, she was created for the sake of Kaneki and Furuta's motives. Sure she had potentials, I think her side story is very interesting but overall she's just plain to me.

11. A ship that makes me want to look into the camera like I'm on The Office

I don't have one, I think. I don't like the idea of Tatara x Tomoe but so far I haven't seen anyone ships them (thank God).

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annaviscom · 7 months

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A Different Point of View Project

Making the Text.

03.10.23 That day, I was tasked with creating a small text for which I would later need to create an illustration. This involved picking two books, 3 random lines out of each, and merging them together to create a small text. I loved this exercise as I love serendipity, and it posed a challenge for me as I did not know what my project would be about.

I looked into themes I worked with often, like photography, film, graphic design, advertisement, and information depiction. In terms of film, I immediately thought of David Lynch, as he has been a huge inspiration to me. So, I picked out the book Room to Dream, which had amazing quotes I used. The second book is called The Land in Between, which called out to me immediately as I often came across art about abandoned buildings in post-Soviet areas. The two combined very well to create a story about loss (at least that is what I saw in it).

B: In the dark interiors of small chapels,

A: He was crying out to the cosmos for help.

B: Celebrated for its ability to create an indexical imprint of the world.

A: To persuade him that it was not an illogical thing to do.

B: 27 April, 08:25-10:35, Incidence of light from the east.

A: No, she’s dead.

Investigation.

I started brainstorming. Everything I associated with the little text I wrote down on paper in a little mindmap. I knew I wanted to do a digital collage of old texture photos I had left because of the "indexical imprint of the world" bit in the text. While the cosmos for me has always reminded me of a spiral. I also wanted to include the interiors of chapels in there as well. In terms of composition, I came up with the sketch on the left. I had the idea of making it in a photobook format, but I did not have much material (e.g., photos of the couple I was going to depict) to work with, and I did not want to make it with simpler silhouettes. So, instead, I decided on a black-and-white illustration as my medium.

Research

For visual inspiration, I made a small moldboard compiled from Pinterest images, which I picked out very intuitively to mimic the whole creation process. If I felt like they could accompany the text I saved them. The was no indication that I needed to look into an existing artist so I referred back to my old work, digital collages and film photography.

Process.

It was quite difficult to begin with. I've done digital collages before, but they were of faces and flat. In this case, I needed shadows and dramatic light. First, I made a small sketch and put together the cosmos and the field. I made them out of photos I took at the Natural History Museum. I also added the cosmos spiral and learned how to use the outer glow effect.

Then I started adding smaller bits of the chapel together. I drew in the woman and the man (characters of my story) and added small details of a brick wall and some grass near the entrance. I left the chapel with only two walls because the book that mentioned them was about abandoned buildings, so I thought this could be a very old run-down chapel.

The line mentioned "incidence of light" I thought could be the name of the piece, so I put it on a separate art board. I chose the color red for the background because although a common color of love, often in combination with black, is used for distressing scenes. I thought it would be great to depict the color of loss that makes this man cry out to the cosmos. I also added a paper texture to both artboards because I thought this could be like the man's personal journal about his life. I have a small one with occasional notes, photos, and drawings.

This turned out to be my final piece. I added a couple of old notes on the side to signify their past relationship. These are my notes for my boyfriend, which I keep in my wallet so they're well run-down and look old. I think it added to the piece well.

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mermaidreject · 3 years

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Luke’s prosthetic hand from @jackdaw-kraai ‘s Guides Verse.

I’ve been obsessed with the Guides verse for awhile now and I finally have a piece of fan art that my perfectionism will allow me to post 😆

I ramble about my art below the cut

Ultimately, this is just what I see in my head but I tried to only include design elements that were described in the text.

•The circles in the middle are Tatooine’s two suns and three moons. They are placed were the fingernails would be (the suns on the thumb and the fore finger) The text describes them as stylized celestial bodies so I threw out random designs until I found some I was happy with. 3 squares for the suns and 3 circles for the moons. I thought I was quite clever with letting the squares fit outside the base circle to convey light shining thus keeping the moons’ circles inside their base circle to show that they were the “lesser” celestial bodies.

•The star path on the back of the hand was tricky at first because I had no idea what it looked like. I looked at other people’s fan art to get ideas and saw that they had to same design of the star path so I decided to follow the crowd on this one lol. Except I did flip it so the wings would look like they were flying onto the path.

•The wings were the last thing I drew because I couldn’t visualize what flying bird wings would like. I’m glad I was able to show that the wings were lifted by the storm. That part of the description in the text stood out to me and I wanted to get it right.

•The storm was my favorite part to draw. I originally just had swirls but then I read that the storm had sand depicted along the swirls. I went a bit crazy with the sand lol. I knew that the storm had to be eye-catching so I went for beautiful chaos and I think I got it!

•Fingers are hard to draw 😆 I like the left hand but I kinda just gave up on the right when it got to the point that my perfectionism wouldn’t oppose it’s existence. The joints on the left hand are white like the rest of the hand. The joints on the right are the brass color described in the text.

•I don’t know how to convey the grip material on the palm and fingers so I went with “vague impression that the material has changed”

I’m really proud of this fan art! I had fun combing through the story and saving any and every reference to Luke’s prosthetic. I’ve been enjoying the wild ride that is this ‘verse and I can’t wait to see how much crazier it gets ❤️❤️❤️

#decided to post while my perfectionism is taking a nap #The Guides Verse #my art #pencil drawing #Star Wars #luke skywalker #i made this

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felassan · 3 years

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Mass Effect development insights and highlights from Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

This is the Mass Effect version of this post.

[In case you can’t read it the subtitle in the bottom left logo above is “Guardians of the Citadel”]

Note: Drug use is mentioned.

Cut for length.

Mass Effect 1

ME began its life in a vision document in fall 2003

Codenamed “SFX”

Conceived of by Casey Hudson and a core team from KotOR. Its genesis was the intention to create an epic sci-fi RPG in an original setting that BioWare owned (so they could have full creative control), and in a setting that was conceived of first and foremost as a video game

Initially players could control any squadmate, but they wanted it to be about Shep and for players to be focused on Shep being a battlefield commander, rather than on switching bodies

By the start of 2004 its story was shaping up. Initially humans landed on Mars in 2250 and discovered evidence of an ancient alien race and a powerful substance, Black Sand, which rapidly advanced tech to the point that FTL travel was possible. (My note: obviously now the Prothean artifacts on Mars & associated mass effect force tech enabled this in the final canon, but I wonder if aspects of the ‘Black Sand’ naming-type & powerful substance stuff was rolled into red sand from final canon) Humans were suddenly capable of travel to multiple star systems and made contact with a multitude of other species. At the start of the first game, these species together with humans had a fragile peace, with focus placed on the political center of the galaxy, a hub known as Star City, later renamed the Citadel

Multiplayer was a vision for the series as far back as 2003. The plan was for ME1, an Xbox exclusive at launch, to take advantage of the platform’s online components. Early designs saw players meeting in one of the central hubs to interact and trade items in their otherwise SP adventures

By 2006 it had the name ME and the story was more specific, with the theme of conflict between organic and synthetic lifeforms. The story’s scope now stretched across 3 games and included scope for full co-op MP

They tried to do MP in every game, discussing it from the get-go, but it always just fell by the wayside. “When you’re trying to build something that is a new IP, on a new platform, with a new engine, you’ve got to really focus on the core elements of the game.”

The conversation system prototype was made in Jade Empire, and some of ME’s earliest writing was done in an old JE build. At first there was no conversation wheel. Paragon was “Friendly” and Renegade “Hostile”. In the prototype Shep was a silent unnamed Spectre. Many conversations in the prototype about the player’s choice in smuggling a weapon through Noveria made it into the game

In said prototype a merchant referred to themselves as “this one”, though the word hanar never appeared. The PC in it also had the option to end a conversation with “I should go”. In the prototype also, Harkin was voiced by Mark Meer

An early version of the Mako got used as the krogan truck in ME2

Early concepts of the Citadel were drawn in pencil by CH. A piece of concept art of its final design was painted based on a photo of a sculpture near Aswan, Egypt

As with any new IP naming it was a struggle. They put out a call to all staff for ideas, did polls, made a name generator that combined words that they liked in random ways and made pretend logos of ones they liked in Photoshop to see if they could make themselves love the name or find visual potential in it. (Some of these names are in the pic at the top of this post.) CH liked “Unearthed” as it was a reference to Prothean ruins dug up on Mars and humanity’s ascendance going away from Earth. They knew the game would have a central space station featuring prominently so some of the ideas were based on that - “The Citadel”, “The Optigon”, “The Oculon”. “Element” was another one they had in mind due to the rare substance in the game

CH: “I was a big fan of John Harris’ book Mass, which had epic-scaled sci-fi ideas, so that was a word that came up often. Many of the names came from the idea that the IP featured a fifth fundamental physical force (in addition to the known four of gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear) so the word ‘effect’ came up pretty often.” Ultimately none of the ideas really felt right. One Monday morning they were going over the names and Greg Zeschuk said he had an idea on the weekend: “Mass Effect!” CH: “I said, ‘I don’t hate it’, which in the naming process is a high compliment. And it stuck!”

CH on Shep’s Prothean vision from the beacon: “It was hard to imagine how we would do this. CG was - and is - really expensive. Instead I wanted to try doing it through photography and video editing. So I went to a local grocery store and bought a few packages of the weirdest looking meat that I could find. Then I set up a little photoshoot in my basement, complete with some electronics parts and some red wine for juicyness.” He used these props to create a video sequence where the photos were rapidly cycled and blurred, along with production paintings, to create the scary vision an organic/machine experiment on the Protheans. These mashups were also used as inspiration for concept artists and level designers who were working on these themes

Tali used to be called Talsi

On the licensing side they often joke that they’re licensing N7 not “Mass Effect” due to N7′s popularity

There was a confidential internal guide to the IP in 2007 to help devs along and summarize/synthesize the vision etc. Some excerpts from it are shown in the book and this is the first time the public have ever seen them

Early versions of Asari had hair

Asari were designed as a nod to classic TV sci-fi (with human actors wearing obvious makeup and prosthetics to play aliens)

The turian design guideline was “we want them to be birds of prey”. They also wanted a range of alien types, some close to human like Asari, while others were to be a lot further away, like turians

BioWare patented the conversation wheel, which was a first for them. CH had been frustrated with reviews of Jade Empire that said that the actioncentric game was too wordy [with its list dialogue]. “I’m like, story is words. [...] What is it about our games that is making people feel like they’re wordy?” Then he thought “In a game you kind of need to feel like you’re continuing to play it. Maybe you should continue feeling like you’re playing it actively into the dialogue.” “[The wheel] kind of gave a new experience with dialogue when you did start to react based on emotion, and that’s ultimately what we’re trying to bring out in our games”

The original krogan concept was based on a bat “with a really wide squidgy face. We just used its face on top of this weird body and it kinda worked”

Geth musculature was based on fiber-optic cables, with flexible plates of armor attached

The vision for the IP was 80s sci-fi inspired space opera

The concept art of Saren lifting Shep by the throat inspired a similar scene in-game. The staging wasn’t planned til designers saw that art

A squadmate with Shepard on the way to meet Ash in an old storyboard was called Carter. Early name of Kaidan or Jenkins?

Bono from U2 was kinda instrumental in bringing us ME lol

Finding the right cover art for ME1 was notably tricky

Matt Rhodes got his start drawing helmets for ME1, including one which would become Shep’s “second face”. He estimates he drew between 250-270 different ones

Some of the sounds in-game were people smashing watermelons with sledgehammers and sticking fists into various goos

The audio team had fun trying to slip the iconic main theme into unexpected places throughout the MET. “We were very aware of how powerful that track was for the fans and it was tempting to overuse it for any moment we wanted to make really emotional”.

The theme was creatively repurposed in ME3: slowed down and reworked as the ambient sound for the SR-2. “If you listen to it for a really long time, just stand in the Normandy and listen, you’ll actually hear the notes change slowly. It doesn’t sound like music, it sounds like a background ambiance, but it’s there.” (My note: Well no wonder the Normandy feels so much like home?? 😭 sneaky..)

Bug report: “Mako Tornado”. There wasn’t enough friction between the tires and the ground, causing testers to lose control of the vehicle and send it spinning into the air like a tornado. “As it turns, the front end comes up, and then it starts spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning faster and faster and faster until it just flies up in the sky” (My note: Sounds like a regular day in the Mako to me)

Cerberus originally had a bigger role in this game. It was cut but they had a whole explorable outpost. “I called it Misery,” says Mac Walters, “It was this planet with a little outpost that said ‘Welcome to Misery’”. Everything on the outpost was shit - dirty worn stuff, no windows, no kitchen, the vehicle bay was open to the elements etc

The Reaper sound is literal garbage. Some audio designers went on a recording trip to a national park. One of them got fixated on a garbage can, “a metal bear-proof receptacle with a heavy lid that creaked horribly when opened”. “It was like, ominous, spooky, tonal and almost musical. I decided to throw a mic into the garbage and record it moving. I didn’t know what it was going to be until later”

They were making lots of noises to record like throwing logs and rocks around. An old couple peered at them through the window of their camper van in the woods and must have called the cops because then the cops showed up, pulled them over and told them to stop. The cops towed their car (the driver’s plates were Cali plates and expired), drove them to Edmonton outskirts and then the audio producer Shauna got a call and had to go pick them up “like three little boys”. “We got a stern talking to”. Once back they were playing around with the garbage sound, editing it etc. Casey heard it and proclaimed “That’s the sound of the Reapers”

Preston Watamaniuk: “There are things I could have done to Mass 1 to make it an infinitely better game with better UIs” and some simple cuts and changes. “But when you’re living with it, it’s very hard to see those things”

BioWare Labs

As social media and smartphone games exploded, BioWare dedicated a small team dedicated to exploring opportunities here - BioWare Labs

Mass Effect: Galaxy used a unique graphic art style and static visual presentation common in visual novels. It has the distinction of being the only iOS game BW have made during their first 25 years

Scrapped ideas were a 3rd person space shooter called Mass Effect: Corsair and 2 DA titles - a strategy game and a top-down dungeon crawler starring young Wynne. (My note: Maybe the corsairs stuff was rolled into Jacob’s backstory in 2, the Alliance Corsairs)

Corsair was a very short-lived project that never got its feet under it. It was a spin-off on Nintendo DS featuring a behind-the-ship perspective and branching dialogue. At one point it had MP. The idea behind it was basically “ME: Freelancer” - fly your ship around, do missions, get credits. It had a limited branching story but was a gameplay-centered experience intended to fill the gap between ME1 and 2. That gap ended up being filled by Galaxy

Galaxy and Corsair’s smaller screen allowed concept artists to use bold colors and a simplistic character design style to help those games stand out from Shep’s story

Nick Thornborrow did some art for Corsair but was worried his art style didn’t fit ME. He moved to DA where he feels his art style fits better

Lots of BioWare VAs and even a lead writer and the VO director are drawn from Edmonton’s local community theater scene, which is vibrant. Think this is how Mark Meer got involved

Mass Effect 2

Player choices carrying over was a first for BW

Dirty Dozen-inspired plot

Its plot is a web of conditionals (see Suicide Mission)

Was more of a shooter than anything BW had made since Shattered Steel

There was 2 camps on the team, those who wanted to push combat and systems forward and redefine the ME experience and those who wanted to make a true sequel, with the same gameplay and systems but a new story. Karin Weekes: “I think it ended up being a good push-pull. It felt like a pretty healthy creative conflict”

“ME2 was a game you could hold up to someone who argues that games aren’t a serious medium and go ‘Oh yeah, then why is Martin Sheen in this?’” Sheen was their first pick for TIM

The idea for TIM came from a mash-up of concepts CH had collected over the years. The name “Illusive” originally came from his pitch for naming DAO’s Eclipse engine, a word inspired by Obi-Wan’s line “It’s not about the mission, Master. It’s something... elsewhere. Elusive”. “I thought, what if we called our next engine 'Elusive', but used an ‘I’, and then it’s like ‘Illusion’. [...] I still really like the word with an ‘I’ and what it conjures”

When ME1 DLC was in production, CH had been watching a lot of CNN, specifically Anderson Cooper. “How is one guy travelling to all these places and never looking tired and always being able to speak with clarity?” CH says it seemed almost superhuman. “What if there was someone who is the absolute maximum of the things you would aspire to be, but also the worst of humanity?” Cooper, though not evil, became an inspiration for TIM down to the gray hair and piercing blue eyes

Inspiration for TIM’s behind-the-scenes role pulling political strings came from Jack Bauer’s brother Graem in 24. Graem “can call up the president and tell him what to do and hang up, because he’s so connected and so influential”. Sheen had played a president and his performance brought gravitas and wisdom to the role. He had quit smoking, but the character smokes. He didn’t want to fake it, but he also didn’t want to smoke, “so he actually asked for a cigarette” to hold so he could stop his words to take drags with natural cadence

Writing was still pushing to write and revise lines hours before VO started. A series of problems like injury and some writers leaving for other opportunities left it so that Karin, Lukas Kristjanson and editor Cookie Everman hand to land the story safely, with PW helping where they could. Lukas: “We took over the writing bug and task list, and I can’t stress enough how much [Karin and Cookie] did to get ME2 out the door. There’s no part of that thing we didn’t touch”. Karin: “That was the most dramatic 2 weeks of my life”

Initial fan reaction when they started promo-ing ME2 was very negative because people didn’t want to know about new chars like Jack and Mordin. “[fans were like] ‘Get them out of here. We want our characters from the first game’. But then when they played them, those became some of the most popular chars [of the series]”

Concept art of Thane has an idea annotation saying “Face can shapeshift?”

At one point when designing Thane concept artists sent multiple variations of him to the team asking them to vote on which was the most attractive

Most of the Normandy crew was written by lead level designer Dusty Everman. Lukas gave him advice in the evenings between bugs

BioWare Montreal made ME2 and 3 cinematics

CC for Shep was based on tools used by char designers to create in-game chars. Under the hood similar tools existed to create aliens

Aliens were much easier to animate than humans. When something is human it’s very difficult to make it look realistic and you can see all the mistakes and everything

Over the holiday period in 2007 CH worked out a diagram on a single piece of paper that would define the entire scope and structure of the game. The diagram is included in the book

Bug report: “I shot a krogan so hard that his textures fell off”. At one point shotgun blast damage was applied to each of the pellets fired, and shot enemies ended up with just the default checkerboard Unreal texture on them after their textures got blown off

Blasto was meant to be 1 step above an Easter egg but his fan popularity prompted them to bring him back in ME3

They rewrote chunks of Jack 2 days before she went to VO. She was the only one they could change because all the other NPCs were recorded. They redesigned her mission by juggling locked NPC lines and changing Shep’s reactions by rewriting text paraphrases to change the context of the already-recorded VO

Lukas snuck obscure nods ito ME2′s distress calls. In the general distress call for the Hugo Gernsback, there’s BW’s initial’s and Edmonton’s phone number backwards. In a fault in a beacon protocol there’s the initials and backward phone number from Tommy Tutone’s “Jenny”. In 2 other general distress calls there’s initials and numbers from Glenn Miller Orchestra’s “Pennsylvania 6-5000″ and initials and numbers from Geddy Lee and Rush’s “2112″ respectively

Mass Effect 3

“The end of an era marks the beginning of another”

ME3 “marked the end of Shep’s story”

Saying bye to Shep was as difficult for devs as it was for players

JHale’s final VO session included Anderson’s death and romanced Garrus’ goodbye. “We were in the session and we both just started crying”, Caroline says. “I couldn’t come on the line to give her notes because I was crying, and she was crying. And so there was just this minute-long pause of like, nothing, nothing, nothing - just silence through the airwaves. And then I came on and just told her that I was crying and she said ‘I’m crying!’” They talked about these anecdotes also here on the N7 Day reunion panel

The Microsoft Kinect voice support required devs to teach Kinect hundreds of commands in a variety of accents across multiple languages. The result was useful but made for some awkward moments. Numerous players accidentally said “geth” or “quarian” while making a particular decision and accidentally killed Tali

MP chars were voiced by cops and military people

The helmet on one of the MP chars was originally designed for cancelled project Revolver

The payload device at the end needed to attach to the Citadel while essentially serving as a giant trigger. “It ended up becoming quite the engineering feet just to visualize how this thing would move and connect to the Citadel”

Concept artists explored creating an anti-team, where Kai Leng was almost an anti-Shepard essentially, with an elite squad to counteract your team. This idea never went beyond concept phase

ME3 Special Edition was released on Nintendo Wii U exclusively. This exclusive version of the game includes Genesis 2 (a sequel to the original Genesis comic) and unique gameplay features that took advantage of the touchscreen GamePad. For years Sonic Chronicles: Dark Brotherhood had had the honor of being BW’s only game made for a Nintendo console

FemShep regrettably didn’t feature in major ME marketing til ME3. Later releases like DAI, MEA and Anthem have taken increasing care not to gender their protagonists in cover art

To capture combat sounds they took a trip to CFB Wainwright, a military base southeast of Edmonton. They got a big tour of it and were allowed to record anything they could find. The tour ended with them getting to drive and shoot tanks (real shells). The force of doing that sent waves through Joel Green, he felt his whole chest compress when it went off; the perfect sound for the Black Widow! After the trip the soldiers let him keep the shell he fired and it’s been passed on like a torch to various devs since

Kakliosaurs began life as a joke in the writers’ room after John Dombrow placed a Grunt figure on a t-rex toy he had on his desk. Lore was brainstormed to justify the mash-up before someone asked, “Why don’t we put this in the game?” They loved it so much Karin had custom coffee mugs made

Bug report: For a while Tali’s final romance scene would fire when she was supposed to be dead

“Balancing combat: how designers in ME3 entered an ‘arms race’” - the solution to players feeling OP vs players feeling frustrated by really strong enemies is to find a good middle ground, but for designers Corey Gaspur and Brenon Holmes, it was war. Brenon designed enemies, Corey designed guns. Corey “was obsessed with bigger, heavier guns. We had this sort of informal competition where he’d make this crazy overturned gun that would just murder all the enemies, and then I tuned some stuff up to compensate”

Brenon had to invent new ways to “stop Corey” and this led to the Phantoms. Corey had in turn designed consumable rockets that could wipe out entire waves of enemies. He must’ve figured this would make short work of Brenon’s space ninjas, but Brenon had other plans: “I had just added the ability for her to cut rockets [when Corey was playing MP and he was watching]. She cut the rocket in half... Corey just turns and looks at me and is like: ‘Really dude? I just shot a rocket at this Phantom and she’s fine? Not even damaged? Zero damage?’”

This friendly rivalry helped elevate ME3′s gameplay. Corey had a knack for making a gun feel so good to fire it had his fellow designers scrambling to keep up. It was his version of balancing. Before Corey sadly passed away he mentored Boldwin Li in all things weapon design and the arms race continued

Corey designed the Arc Pistol. It was causing problems for enemies because it was too powerful. It seemed hell bent on staying that way, Boldwin would tune down all its stats and it was still doing 3x the damage it should have been doing. “I was like ‘What the hell?’, and then I looked closer. It secretly fired 3 bullets for every pull of the trigger! Corey, you sneaky jerk”

The day it launched there were midnight launch parties across North America including one near the BW building. Numerous devs sat at long tables greeting fans and signing autographs as the fans picked up preorders. When midnight struck the line was long enough that it took several hours for some fans to get their game. One particular fan is remembered: “It was 3am. Some guy drove up from Calgary with his friends. He was like one of the last people in line. I think he was sort of tired-drunk. He threw himself across the tables, pulled up his shirt and shouted ‘Guys, sign my abs!’ And like I did, because he waited so long. It felt impolite not to. So I hope he enjoyed his copy of ME3″

For designing Protheans concept artists had free reign to design something that read as ancient

Before the concept art team had the story of the game to work toward, they explored wild ideas of their own including an image of the crew stealing back the Normandy to go after the Reapers

Jen Cheverie was testing scenes and was initially excited to be testing Mordin scenes, til she saw she was testing the Renegade version of his death. “This is even before like all of the audio and everything was in, so you didn’t even have the sad music. I remember sitting at my desk and my hands just went to my face when I saw that the gun Shep pulls on Mordin is the gun he gives Shep in ME2. I burst into tears and was crying for the rest of the day. People are waving to me as they walk by and I’m like, ‘It’s ok, I’m just killing my best friend’”

There’s a segment called “Shepard’s story ends”. Casey on the ending: “There’s a whole bunch of things that come together to make it incredibly tense and emotional for players. I think the biggest one was the sense of finality, that whatever it was that happened in that very last moment... was it.”

Wrapping up the story was a massive feat. In a way all of ME3 is an ending. Its final moments were the players’ last with a char they’d been with all the way from Eden Prime

“And while the critical reception of the game was extremely positive, many fans were unsatisfied with the ending, which became one of the most controversial in the history of games.” CH: “We were, on one hand, at the end of a marathon trying to finish the game and the series. But as devs we also knew that there would be more. We knew that we would continue to tell the story. In retrospect, we didn’t fully appreciate the tremendous sense of finality that it would have for people”. He envisioned an ending that posed new questions, something in the tradition of high sci-fi that left players dreaming about what that particular galaxy’s future could hold. “Frankly, there’s a lot more that we could have and should have done to honor the work players put in, to give them a stronger sense of reward and closure”

AAA games are massive undertakings with a million moving parts. Somehow they come together but even the best-planned projects don’t turn out quite like devs hope. From start to end video game production is a series of compromises. It’s rare if not impossible for devs to ship a game they’re entirely happy with. “I think that people imagine that when you finish a game, it’s exactly the way you wanted it to be. But whether people end up loving or hating the final result, we work hard to finish it the best we can, knowing that there’s a lot we would have wanted to do better. I think that’s true of any creative work”

As the dust settled after the initial reaction to the ending and later its epilogue, meant to show the wide-reaching ripple effects of Shep’s final choice, “players emerged mostly asking for one thing”. CH: “Now, most of what we hear, after both ME3 and MEA, is ‘Hey, just go make more Mass Effect’. And that to me is the most important thing. Knowing that players want to return to the ME universe is what inspires us to press on and imagine what comes next”

Mass Effect: Andromeda

By creating a new ME in a new galaxy the team was challenged to put their own visual stamp on the game while keeping it true to the franchise

Being the first ME game on a new gen of consoles meant for more detail

“Massive transport ships called arks populated with salarians, turians, humans, asari and quarians” made the risky jump to the Cluster

MEA was the first time BW had truly codeveloped across 3 studios: Edmonton, Montreal and Austin. The bulk of the work especially early on was done in Montreal, which was composed of a handful of Edmonton expats and heaps of experienced devs who joined from elsewhere specifically to bring a new ME experience to life. Series vets in Edmonton then came on to contribute writing, cinematics, design and QA, along with leadership from creative director Mac Walters and the core Production team. Austin writers and level designers also joined the fray

“It took a new team to take ME beyond the Milky Way”

Mac: “A lot of people in Montreal joined BW as fans of the franchise, so they just had this passion, and it felt like it was more like the days of Jade Empire, where a smaller younger team gets to do something for the first time. Even though it wasn’t necessarily a new IP for me, it felt fresh and new because of that. The team was just super excited to be working on it”

Early plans had the player exploring hundreds of worlds, procedurally generated, allowing for a nearly infinite variety of experiences. But as development wore on, it became clear that the game narrative required more specific, hand-touched level design on each world to keep the story focused and the experience engaging. “The plan was to give players numerous uncharted worlds to explore. Designers worked hard to come up with procedural elements that would make such planets special. Eventually the team made the difficult decision to abandon procedural planets in favor of more memorable hand-touched alien worlds, each with a specific story to tell”

One challenge was defining what ME meant without Shep. Care was given to include many of the MET’s key species. “Ryder recruited turian, asari, krogan and salarian followers”. Like Shep Ryder represents humanity’s hope for a peaceful coexistence among aliens who had long operated without human contact

Beginning with MEA the team decided that with few exceptions vehicles in ME have 6 wheels. Early Nomad concepts were bulkier. Later ones focused on its ability to move over its ability to protect itself from hostile fire, underlining the themes of exploration

German concept designer and auto-motive futurist Daniel Simon was contracted to create the Nomad and Tempest. The Tempest’s final design took inspo from the Concorde

Concepts for angaran fighter ships have the following notes: “Two doors swing open, wings rotate down to function as landing struts, the landing struts split open. It has a spinning turbine engine

Despite being set a galaxy away and some 600 years after Mordin’s death, there was a time when he had a cameo. It wasn’t cut due to running out of time however, it was cut due to drug references. John Dombrow explains: “One day I had to write a small quest for Kadara. I thought it’d be amusing if these 2 guys living way out on the fringes in a shack were growing plants for uh, medicinal purposes, and needed Ryder’s help with it. It occurred to me, wouldn’t it be amusing if Ryder had the option of actually trying ‘the medicine’ to see what would happen? And I thought, what if it turned into some hallucination that somehow involved SAM - like maybe SAM would sing? But why? How could I motivate that? Then it hit me. Who else in the ME game sings unexpectedly? MORDIN. As a nod to him I wrote SAM singing Modern Major-General. It got even better when our cine designer John Ebenger wanted to take it even further. Bless him, he came in on a Saturday to do a special hallucination showing Mordin himself. It was great. Til the fateful day we were told MEA had already been submitted to the ratings board. That’s when you declare things like drug references in your game. Mordin fell under that category which meant it was a no-go. We were too late”

Ryder’s white AI armor contrasts Shep’s iconic dark armor (intentional design)

Concept art for Ryder involved experiments with cloth (cloaks, ponchos, capes - “Pull here to release cloak”) and asymmetrical design elements

For alien design, there’s a few exceptions but humanoid figures are the ME standard and this persisted into MEA

Kett and angara concepts explored striking lines and textures

– From Bioware: Stories and Secrets from 25 Years of Game Development

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washidashi · 3 years

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Part 3 of me explaining the Basil Brothers Propaganda

Welcome to Part 3!! of this longer-than-needed explanation on my Basil Brothers Propaganda which is kindly sponsored by the anon who asked about it 😎🔥 I think this will be the last part for now until there are major developments on this movement in which I'll gladly update soon mwehe :3

Here's Part 1 and Part 2 in case you missed 'em and need the full context of this whole thing

[insert disclaimer and spoiler copied from Parts 1 and 2 oK LET'S GO🏃‍♀️💨💨💨]

So the months of May-mid June were my 👌peak👌 of Rowan and Basil content, I would just talk on Twitter nonstop about them and my followers and mutuals had to sadly witness it all

Eventually, it did die down because of a lot of things: I got busy working on my thesis, people were slowly losing interest for Rowan, and times were just changing P-:

Then in comes this amazing artist who drew just as amazing art of Stranger, I don't want to repost their art here but their Twitter handle is @/strange_fl0wer and they just make the most art ever !!!!!!! 💥💥💥

You can head to the Media tab and search through his art and you'll find it eventually, bUT THEY'RE A BIG ENJOYER OF STRANGER AND ROWAN TOO MY HEART SOARED 💗💗💗

I got so inspired I tried to make art of his Stranger design bc it was that good but ofc I can't compare waha :"-]

As you can see by the lower right doodle (aha yeah you do) my brain just started seeing him as an addition to the brothers :-]]

Eventually, my brain went back to its brainrot of Basil and his brother but now with an added 's' to the end bc they gOT BIG BRO STRANGER NOW WITH THEM EYYY WOOHOO 🥳🥳🎉🎉🎉

I just went kwazy again now with the addition of @/strange_fl0wer's Stranger as a big brother figure to them. Here, have some doodles on them!

Like with the conception of Rowan I didn't think too much of his concept and identity yet except for the fact that he'd be the older brother to the twins

I'm sure I made some hc of him in my Twitter somewhere but I can't recall kjsdfbkds gl finding them ig..🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️ but here have some more art to give you an idea on how I visualize their dynamic as brothers!

I think that's all the art I've made on them (for now). So, my objective to dump all that here is accomplished 😌👌 I will just share a few more things tho to wrap this up!

As much as I love to use 'Stranger' I think my mind really wanted to come up with another name for him especially with this human/non-cryptid version, and I just came across some tweet on how he would go under the name Sage in the real world and my gOD it clicked on me so fast you wouldn't know

Verbatim from this one tweet I made on Twitter:

Just saw someone say that Stranger would go under the name Sage if he was in the real world and I'm. Feeling Things 😳 how we feeling about that boys i think it sounds cool and fitting with the theme of them having plant/herb/tree names 🤓

Adding that the sage personality/archetype is often associated with being the "seeker of truth" and is described to be knowledgeable, assured and guiding KEKLRLADK PLEASE I CAN'T SEE BIG BRO STRANGER IN ANY OTHER WAY BUT THAT 😭😭 but idk idk i could be reaching idk idk 🥴

So, yeah!! I'm just gonna refer to Big Bro!Stranger as Sage in any future instances that I'll talk about him with my Basil Brothers Propaganda 😎 and....yeah that's about it for now, dear Anon! I hope this.....explanation helps in a way :'-] thank you for letting me indulge in it skdjfbsdf

ONE MORE THING. while I did say that I'm not planning on making some full-fledged story/AU with these characters, the artist I mentioned above has something akin to it in the works! If you'd like to know more about it I suggest you head to his twitter to find out :-]

#washidashi answers #washidashi rambles #omori #omori fanfic #omori basil #omori rowan #omori stranger #basil brothers propaganda #my beloved #ok this is the last one for now again Terribly Sorry to the Anon who probably didn't expect a lot for prns question #I just Like to Talk and Explain a Lot KJSDBFKJDSFB

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corpsentry · 3 years

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january: an art retrospective

i did some stuff last month (but it’s a lot of stuff and there’s a photodump + some Serious Fucking Reflection, so it’s all below the cut)

so ok, let’s start with this. here are some heads. each head has a red arrow. that red arrow is what i call the red line of the devil. it’s the slope of the face from the side of the eye to the cheekbone and then down towards the chin. up until like 2 weeks ago, i couldn’t draw it. i couldn’t fucking draw it. i would edit over that part of the face over and over again until i was frustrated and tired and i had a raging homosexual headache and it still never looked right. notice that each head is different. notice that each head looks wrong.

at the start of 2021 i finally admitted to myself, as per the image above, that i was deeply, deeply unhappy with my art. what was the problem? i dunno. but i decided i was going to fix it and i was going to do so via another one scribble a day event wherein for every day of january i would find a photo of a human head, and i would draw it.

january 1st, 2021. i was embarrassed to tweet this even on my private account where like 5 friends and a rock would see it. in retrospect, you can also see all of my bad habits emerging like dicks from a hole in the ground. it’s disproportionate. the brows look flat. the eyes are slanting upwards. the entire drawing looks flat, like this isn’t a 3d person but a caricature of one.

january 2nd, 3rd, 4th:

on the 2nd i decided to start a separate thread for doodles and applied learning. here’s the first set of tests

the rest of the week is kind of uneventful so we’re going to skip those. fast forward to january 11th

this one is especially bad. i am acutely aware, suddenly, that i am not changing anything at all. i’m stressed and miserable about it because i’m still trying to see people as people and trying to draw people that look attractive and proportionate and hot. my friend, leny, reminds me that i need to think about faces in terms of planes. i have a moment. my other friend masha sends me some links to anatomy tutorials. i have another moment.

january 11th. applied sketch

january 13th is when i start the troubleshooting process. the link above drives me mad because i’m pretty happy with the face but then i realize that there’s something very fucking wrong with the shape of the head LOL and then i realize that i’ve never had any idea what the proportion of the face to the rest of the skull is so i grit my teeth and i open a new canvas and i

bald studies. it seemed like the right thing to do. can’t draw heads? ok draw some heads. look at some photographs. i traced each photo but tried to stick to straight lines so that i could replicate the shapes more easily. i broke each face down into shapes. i thought about airplanes

i got really excited. i started doing studies, then applied studies, then stylized studies.

sketches. i’m not sure what’s going on (as always) and it’s very rough, but they look different from the sketches i did on january 2nd. that’s a start

january 16th’s daily study. looks more like a person now. juuuuuust a bit

more applied studies

on the 18th i take a break and go stare at some lips because i don’t understand how the fuck they work. again, i focus on shapes, on volume, on the fact that these things exist in 3d. holy fuck lips exist in 3d. holy fuck we are real

january 19th. i’m working on it.

january 22nd. some sketches + a daily study. it has finally occurred to me that heads can tilt up and down and that things look different accordingly. yes i was not aware of this before. yes i have been drawing for over a decade.

january 23rd. by this point after doing my daily sketch i almost always go back and do an applied study which is basically to say i drew a lot of fucking links. this one looks kind of okay. i’m kind of proud

january 25th. links. trying to make sense of everything i’ve learned

26th, 27th, 28th. daily studies

january 1st. january 31st

The End Of The Photo Dump (dab)

ok NOW i get to talk about what i discovered while studying the shit out of human beings

FIRST OF ALL, there is something precious and magical about drawing shit without the explicit knowledge that you’re going to tweet that shit out to 45 people later. it takes the burden of perception off your shoulders and that does something to you, or at least that’s my theory. i told myself i wouldn’t post any of this stuff until the end of the month (if i wanted to post it at all) and kept everything off my public social media accounts and that meant i could draw ugly as hell without worrying about who would point and laugh, which i absolutely fucking did. a lot of these are fucking trainwrecks. most of these are fucking trainwrecks. why do they look like that?? why??? this doesn’t look like the work of someone who’s allegedly been drawing since they were in kindergarten, does it?????

here’s why: because that person took a huge motherfucking swing at everything they’d ever known about art and spent a month building something new in its place. the abstract explanation is that i grew up on shoujo and weird old anime and my understanding of anatomy was unironically kamichama karin and while i love kamichama karin, when kamichama karin is your rule even if you try to break it, you’re going to end up going nowhere. “you have to know the rules to break them”, yeah? well i didn’t know shit. the abstract explanation is i’ve been miserable about my art for a few years now because i saw other people doing things effortlessly which i couldn’t and instead of going back to the basics, i tried to do what they did (not plagiarism, mind you, i mean i literally tried to copy the red line of the devil i mentioned above because i couldn’t even make that happen) and then i fucking failed.

the simple explanation is this. i had to unlearn everything, and relearn it again (like some kind of new renaissance clown, what the fuck is this?)

take this for example. all my life i’ve drawn faces in the order: eyes, nose, mouth, face shape, head. this works for some people, im aware, but it was something central to how i had always drawn, so i decentralized it. i said fuck you to the old me and changed the order up. now i start with the nose, then the eyes, mouth, the chin line, and the sides of the face. now i force myself to think about the human head as a series of parts interacting with each other instead of a bunch of disparate features which i want to look pretty.

or let’s use this zelda from last year. something about this looked wrong last october, the way something about all of my drawings looked wrong, but i couldn’t pinpoint it for hell the way i couldn’t articulate Any of my feelings about the visual arts. now, looking back, here’s what i see. that nose is sticking out far too much given how she’s not really facing very far away from the camera. that ear at the back shouldn’t be there. her forehead is too big. she doesn’t have a forehead. what the fuck is up with the shape of her head?

so apparently reject modernity embrace tradition has its roots in alt-right terminology and i’m not very horny for the alt-right (you understand), but the spirit survives here. you know sometimes you have to admit that you have no idea what the fuck you’re doing and draw people for 31 days. i’ve spent my whole life drawing stylized people and while again there are artists who have no issue with this, i veered off the track of the Good and the Holy and couldn’t get back on. i had no point of reference because i’d never thought about what an actual human being looks like, so i had no way to fix what i knew in my gut looked wrong but wouldn’t come out better.

this was hard. this was like oikawa tooru swallowing his worthless pride and admitting that ushijima wakatoshi had gotten the best of him for the last time in his high school career, but in haikyuu!! by furudate haruichi oikawa tooru fucks off to argentina and then joins the argentinean national team, and you know what, i think i’ve made it to argentina (not the team just the country). as per the golden rule of dont fucking move until you’re at least two thirds of the way through the month, i only started trying to draw Shit shit on like the 22nd or something, but i was happy with that i created. i am happy with what i’ve done. i’ve posted like 2 things this month that involve people with what i now call ~applied Knowledge~~ and they’re, like, not perfect obviously (perfection is an unattainable ideal), but i’m fucking proud of them. i didn’t spend 5 hours hunched over my laptop adjusting the red line of the devil because it’s not a devil’s line anymore. because i finally sorta get how people work. because i sat down and i said ‘we are not going to fuck with this misery shit anymore’ and then i did that. it’s just a line now.

here are 2 collages tracking my painstakingly carved out progress from january 2nd to february 2nd because i’m a slut for collages

and here’s what i’ve done to my art! the same person drew these but also Not Really! you know! for the first time in a year i don’t immediately hate what i’ve drawn. you know what guys? art is fucking fun. zelda’s forehead doesn’t scare me anymore because i know how foreheads fucking work now, and i don’t know everything, and i’m going to keep troubleshooting stuff as i go (i want to draw a skeleton. like a. i want to draw a goddamn skeleton guys) but i’m honestly and genuinely proud of what i’ve done in the span of a month, and i’m also in disbelief. i started this month-long challenge out as a last ditch effort to make peace with my art because i’ve been tired for a long time and i was ready to kick the bucket on drawing people altogether. i didn’t think anything would happen. nothing’s happened for years. i’ve been miserable for years.

this was the caption for january 1st, 2021. i was super, super fucking embarrassed and it looks like super fucking shit, but you know what, i think i did in fact triumph over the bullshit. surprisingly enough, when you put in consistent effort into something, You Will See Results. didn’t see that coming, did you? i know i didn’t.

this isn’t a success story. it’s a happiness story. i never gave a shit damn about the institute of art or whatever, i was just mad at myself because what i saw in my head didn’t match up with what was on the canvas. and now it’s getting better. now i’m calibrating the compass. now drawing not just backgrounds but also people is exciting to me, and i can stick my links in your face and tell you ‘they hot’. i’m going to keep doing that. i’m going to keep going until i drop off the side of the earth and then spiral towards mars like some kind of fairy, and then i’m going to create something beautiful.

thanks for reading. here’s a pr department link for sticking around until the end

#my stuff

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pyreo · 3 years

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deltarune megapost

I wanted to make a Deltarune post about the lore and the things that aren’t obvious. And once I do that I wanna focus on why Mettaton is incredibly important to this setting

And also why he poses a problem

Why did Toriel and Asgore get divorced?

Without the setting of Undertale, Asgore and Toriel’s marriage still broke up after they had Asriel. There needs to be a reason though. In UT it was Asgore’s ‘worst of both worlds’ decision regarding killing anybody that fell from the human world, including children. We saw how close they were before this happened. Only something deep and serious caused that rift. In Deltarune, what on earth did Asgore do?

What happened to Dess?

Mentioned a handful of times by Noelle, Dess was her older sister and is mentioned In Undertale.... in that Xbox exclusing casino thing. The way Noelle talks about her, the conspicuous way Noelle gets locked out of her big house - it implies Dess is gone or deceased. Berdly recalls a spelling bee when he and Noelle were younger where she, despite being smarter than him, misspelled ‘December’, allowing him to win.

In the two-player spelling puzzle, it also spells out ‘December’ as Noelle recalls the past and her silhouette regresses to a child while she does so. Being distracted by her sister’s disappearance, rather than pure shyness, could account for her misspelling her name on stage, and it clearly left a big psychological mark for her to have this visual regression in the Dark World.

However, there’s a graveyard in Hometown with no Dess. I heard another theory that she has been missing for years, because where each character’s personal room is made by Queen to reflect their tastes via their search results, Noelle has a calendar where every day is December 25th. This could imply that Noelle continually searches the internet for ‘December Holiday’, her sister’s name, to see if there are clues to her disappearance, but of course the only result you would get is the date of Christmas.

Who is the Knight?

It’s now implied to be Kris, who has been forcibly removing the player’s influence to act on their own. By all accounts the Knight is the game’s main antagonist. Spade King and Queen both mention the Knight as someone who influenced their position - they brought Spade King to absolute power, and showed Queen that creation of new worlds was possible.

We’re led to believe that Kris was doing this, because they’ve been acting outside of the player’s control. Eating the entire pie between chapter 1 and 2 might have been a red herring to cover that they also went to the library and used that knife to slash open a dark fountain there.

However. This has issues. How would they even manage to shuffle slowly all the way to the library and get in the computer lab? The Knight is also the one creating the hidden bosses. They talked to Jevil until he realised he was in a game and he lost his mind; they ruined Spamton’s life by elevating him to success and then crushing him. Whatever the Knight is doing seems to be deliberately planned with key players in mind.

Kris opening the fountain at home at the end of ch.2 can be explained in that you just figured out in Cyber World that anyone determined enough can do this, and so, Kris decided to. So a better question might even be...

What does Kris want?

We have no idea. They are capable of removing the SOUL, ‘us’, temporarily, and putting things in motion we cannot influence. But they also keep putting us back in control afterward. This is hinted at right when ch.2 starts, where if you inspect the cage in Kris’s bedroom they threw us into, the description says it’s inescapable. Meaning Kris came back and took us out, willingly.

They allow us to pilot them through the game. Why? Because they cannot live without the SOUL for long for some reason? Because they’re bad at bullet hell? Why did they slash Toriel’s tyres before opening the fountain, making sure nobody could drive away?? Why did they specifically open the door?

You can find out details about Kris through the creepy way you interact with the townsfolk, who think you are Kris. They play the piano at the hospital waiting room - better than you. They used to go to church just to get the special church juice. It’s all normal, relatable things, not like someone who’s trying to plunge the world into darkness. Judging by their search history portrayed in their Queen’s castle room, they really want to see their brother again. However the castle has a room based on Asriel’s search history too, and Kris (not you) closes their eyes and won’t look at it.

What is Ralsei?

His name is an anagram of Asriel. Is he an extension of Asriel? The slightly flirtier dialogue in ch.2 would point to no. Is he an extension of Kris themselves, given the link between Kris’s childhood habit of wearing a headband with red horns on it, to pretend to be a monster like their family?

Ralsei knows exactly where the Dark World in the school is located, and unlike regular Darkners, knows the world is folded up inside the ‘real world’. There’s a certain whiplash to Ralsei telling you to hop out of his reality into yours and go down the hallway to retrieve all the board game items.

How does he jump from one Dark World to another, without assistance? How does he not get petrified like Lancer and Rouxls? Is this a power level thing because he’s a prince or something else? We definitely do not know enough about Ralsei.

He also says this incredibly suspicious thing after you spare Spamton NEO. Susie was also curious but accepts that maybe it ‘didn’t mean anything’, which is a sure tell that these optional bosses do mean something.

Someone is orchestrating what’s happening, opening fountains, manipulating the rulers, and influencing NPCs to become the optional bosses. Why? I suspect Ralsei for both knowing too much, and pretending something doesn’t matter when it clearly does. Until Asriel actually comes home from college I’m going to suspect he’s involved in this too.

How much does Seam know?

Seam on the other hand knows a lot about what’s going on but is openly withholding information while helping you. He’s nihilistic. He says things like:

One day soon... You too, will begin to realize the futility of your actions. Ha ha ha... At that time, feel free to come back here. I'll make you tea... And we can toast... to the end of the world!

Either this ‘end of the world’ is a reference to The Roaring, where opening too many dark fountains dooms the Dark World and the real one... or, I can’t get out of my head the idea that Deltarune takes place in a fake, or weird reconstruction of Undertale where things don’t match up, and eventually it will have to disappear. After all, powers of determination and creating and manipulating universes are Undertale’s basic bread and butter. How can we look at an Alternate Universe containing the characters we already know and not suspect that? Seam also uses Gaster’s key words, ‘darker, yet darker’, seemingly to clue us in that he’s not off track here.

Why haven’t we seen Papyrus?

This is a bright neon flashing ‘something’s not right’ sign. It’s not like Papyrus’s voice actor was too busy or anything. His absence is noticable and for a reason. Nice of Sans to promise we could meet him despite being aware we’re piloting a child’s body around, though, even if he didn’t follow through.

What locations in town could be used for dark fountains in the next 4 chapters?

If the sequence continues, we have chapter 1 in the school games room, chapter 2 in a computer lab, and chapter 3 in front of Kris’s television, where the aesthetic of each setting influences the world, characters, and enemies in the Dark World created there. Future possibilities include the church, the hospital, sans’s grocery store, Noelle’s house, and the closed bunker.

What the hell’s in the closed bunker

This one’s too obvious, honestly. I think it’ll open for no reason in chapter 7 and a little white dog will bounce out and steal one of your key items and nothing else happens.

Why does Asgore have these

Unlike the bunker feeling like a joke teaser, I gotta believe this is foreshadowing something weird. For example, what does opening a dark fountain in here with the seven flowers do? Does it just take you into Undertale?

Each chapter will have a hidden boss with a ‘soul mode’ from Undertale

Chapter 1 let you stay red, but I think each subsequent chapter is going to change your soul mode to one of the seven colours and design the encounter around that. Purple, yellow, green and blue were used in Undertale, leaving the light blue and orange modes yet to be revealed.

How does Spamton emulate Mettaton Neo’s name, body, and incorporate his battle theme, and the ‘Dummy!’ theme, with no actual connection between them ingame?

This is a really fun one that’s explained over in this post here. Swatch is the Dark World creation from the paint program on the library computers, so he’s able to explain that a Lightner made the robot body decaying in the castle basement that way.

Mettaton went to the library and drew his ideal form, Mettaton NEO, in MS Paint, and the Dark World formed that into a puppet body which Spamton was able to hijack temporarily. So by doing that Spamton was able to channel Mettaton’s appearance, attacks, music, and SOUL mode for the fight.

This might mean that the future hidden bosses, each with their own SOUL mode, might be based on the associated character for that mode (Muffet, Undyne, and Sans or Papyrus), and the boss will take on some aspect of them from their world to leech their fight mechanics.

The Problem With Mettaton

We don’t exactly know what Deltarune is about. It’s an alternate universe where the characters from Undertale already live on the surface, have completely normal lives, but diverge from the storyline of Undertale and, crucially, have not lived through the changes Frisk brought to their lives.

Remember how Undertale had a dozen different ending routes depending on who you befriended? The constant reinforcement in Undertale was that your choices mattered. Through Frisk, you chose to bring Alphys closure about her mistakes, you chose to befriend papyrus instead of attacking him, you chose to help Alphys and Undyne realise their feelings for each other and it’s only doing that that leads to the golden ending and escape to the surface.

Deltarune is the opposite, your choices do not matter. The only thing you can do to force the route of the game to change is to force Noelle into a No Mercy run, which is indirect, and also, a total desperation to mess with an otherwise set course. This version of the characters have not been helped by Frisk - Undyne and Alphys are not together, Papyrus has no friends, Asgore cannot get over himself, and they’re clearly the worse for it, but potentially, you COULD still do these things. In fact it’s hinted that you already are.

But there’s Mettaton.

He’s still a ghost and does not leave his house. In Frisk’s world, Gaster deleted himself, promoting Alphys to royal scientist by bluffing with Mettaton, and she then build him his ideal body. In Kris’s world... Alphys is a school teacher. There’s no barrier to break, no reason to experiment on souls, no Flowey mistake, and no body for Mettaton.

It was sad in Ch.1, but now with the Spamton NEO fight in ch.2, it’s unmissable. Mettaton wants that body and he cannot get it. Alphys in this universe is not going to leave her teaching job and suddenly be able to build a robot. Mettaton is just... screwed out of his happy ending and cannot get it.

So what resolution could this have? If it wasn’t for Mettaton I might believe in the vaildity of Deltarune and Hometown. But. How can you doom this character? If Undertale was the only way Mettaton could be befriended, then Undertale is Primary Universe A and Seam is right - the world of Deltarune is doomed as some kind of aberration. It all relies on how this gets explained in the future, but the core mystery of Deltarune is how exactly this universe intersects with Undertale and whether one is an offshoot of the other. How the Dark World links into that is another complication. But even as we get more fun characters and neat stuff in the Dark Worlds, let’s not forget we have absolutely no idea why Undertale’s characters are living here with no mention of underground or why there are no other humans beside Kris.

#undertale #deltarune #welcome to my giant essay post

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quaranmine · 2 years

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Hi quara I am once again overcome by the urge to learn artTM and I was wondering, if you could tell, how did you actually learn art?

Hi!!! Short answer? practice

Long answer? spite

basically, I always liked arts and crafts as a kid. but i was not super interested in it, and instead began to focus away from visual art to stuff like writing. my 7th grade notebook had so many stories! Then, in 8th grade, I asked to have art as an elective, and was denied. They wouldn't let me take the class. I had already bought a sketch book for the class since I knew I wanted to take it. I didn't want to take the sketchbook back to the store, or hoard it with all my other notebooks.

So, driven by spite because of my school administration, i decided to fill it anyway by myself. and fill it I did. and another, and another, and so on.

I'm mostly self-taught. I drew anime based on tutorials I saw on pinterest. I joined a group board/community of novice artists on pinterest and posted there for people to critique. I started using markers primarily because I saw them all over the internet, and they're still my primary medium. I had very little formal instruction partially because the art program at my high school was a trainwreck (too complicated to explain) and by the time I had proper teachers I was like...beyond the rest of the class in ability. I went to a small school, the same teacher taught grades 6-12 at different times of day. we didn't have advanced classes, and i was so advanced beyond my classmates that the teachers just let me do my own projects. i dont say this to brag i just say it to mean i literally did whatever i wanted in class and never got taught anything (since the projects were too easy). the only formal art education i have is one (1) college class on 2D design and color theory which definitely did help me in composition.

to actually give advice though...? i used a lot of internet tutorials, many of which were probably pretty bad. But i think what helped me the most was probably drawing based on photos--not tracing. I used to carry a mini sketchbook with me and some pens (because i felt my lines would be more certain if i couldnt erase) and draw people i saw around, or pull up a reference photo on pinterest. i did this constantly when i was bored or waiting somewhere.

I would recommend paying attention to underlying shapes and guidelines. when i was a kid i thought drawing circles before you drew something was dumb, but I think it genuinely helps. break things into shapes and pay attention to how much space they take up. draw from photos and from life, and make sure you draw what is actually there rather than how you think it should look. make a reference library of pose photos/people to draw. and then fill up many, many, sketchbooks because what really helps will just be doing it over and over again.

and pay attention to other people's art--pieces in museums, fanart on tumblr, etc. what do you like about it? what do you notice about the lines, the shapes, the colors? what about the composition? look at nature/real life too--how the sun hits that leaf or how someone tilts their head. everything is art!

#this is long and idk if i even properly answered the question haha #the ref photos are especially powerful i think #i have several competitions pieces i did in highschool #that are better than anything i have posted here but i dont dare post them #since they like won a state award and exist on the internet under my name and high school/hometown LOL #but for one i had to take 42 reference photos of people i knew irl. another i had like 30 references of plants #unfortunately the past year i have had so little time to draw and i know im rusty #im not particularly proud of any art i've posted recently or at all on this blog--i can and have done better. im just. tired. busy.#thanks!#quara asks #long post

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antidotenurse · 3 years

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How did you mimic the yugioh zexal style? I want to start practicing and I have no idea where to start. How did you study?

First off, thank you!! :,) 💕💕💕💕 plz dont mind that im gonna be using hyperbolic objective language to explain this so i 😭😭

Well. How did I study?? You’re gonna hate it, but there’s literally no other way around it.

Copying it.

HEAR ME OUT: That’s just how learning works. That’s how learning any style ever works. If you’re trying to draw in a particular art style, you have to learn how it’s drawn. And the only way really understand to do that, is by trying to recreate it almost exactly. WHICH YEAH, this is an internet space, once you say the work “copy” next to art suddenly you have no skill or are doing something inherently immoral just on principle. Which is just a really bad faith read. It’s a lot like “master studies” in art classes, where students have to recreate the same drawing/work from some previous artist and try to get it as close as possible to the original. Which seems dumb at first, but it’s not without a point- y’know?

As a wack teenager, I used to practice trying to “master” the look of the zexal style by drawing on paper a loooot. At the time I didn’t know how to draw digitally (i didn’t have access to a lot of things). Zexal model sheets were rare if almost nonexistent, so I could only use the anime. I must’ve did a decent enough job since to this day my old art floats around with no one realizing that some idiot teenager drew them in her room. I just really wanted to learn it for some reason. Honestly, I blocked out most of my life from that era, so I can barely remember my own reasoning.

So I think I’d suggest, at least since the resources are much more readily available now, to refer to the model sheets and probably try redrawing what you see in those. I don’t have the old sketches anymore, but back then on my own time, I’d try recreating stuff like this as I saw it:

Or, HECK!!! If there’s an art style from particular episodes you like a lot, try referring to those and use that. There’s a ton of elements in the model sheets I don’t much care for, or elements applied by certain animation directors I like more than others that I’ll incorporate into my own work. So in the end you kind of do learn more about your own style and tastes. BUT, I personally wouldn’t jump straight into this right away. Maybe just keep it in mind until u get comfier.

THIS post that illustrates what I mean visually in regards to different directors and their styles a little better lmao. They’re all “on model” but u can tell them apart despite using the same “style.”

SCREENSHOT REDRAWS are a more fun kind of practice!! When I was in the more active learning stage I’d often try redrawing my favorite shots on paper and try to get as close as feasibly possible. I only did that because I wanted to learn it.

Nowadays, I just target weirder looking shots because. Lmao. You know 😩 after years of learning what I like in the style … … it’s a fun self challenge

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

[drops exhibit C below]

Screenshot redraws are also just good practice for me even when I’m just goofing. Because when I’m not actively practicing, my muscle memory starts to fail me.

Or, if you aren’t directly recreating an existing image and still want to practice, I’d suggest keeping the model sheets (or whatever influence u refer to) with you and try drawing within the realms set up. References are your friends and wanna help u. Even the best homies out there will use them, plz don’t undersell them. You aren’t any better or worse for using them 😭

AFTER A GOOD WHILE OF DOING THAT SORT OF THING you’ll probably get a feel for it a lot more. Then, as per how art works, the style will shift more into your own take on it, and then you can just do whatever you want and take your personal liberties as u see fit

Or just clown. Who knows! I use my time to clown! 🤡🤡 thanks for coming to my weird TED talk

OH RIGHT, DIGITAL OR TRADITIONAL??? …Idk. When i was learning i always drew on paper (mostly due to circumstance). It varies from person to person on which is more “effective,” but I don’t think it ultimately matters lol

#antidote ask #IT’S BEEN A WHILE SINCE I THOUGHT ABOUT MY PROCESS #but it just does boil down to wanting to recreate a look #then as i get comfier it becomes easier to take my own liberties #a part of me still feels uneasy when trying to explain this sort of thing cuz then i remember how mean ppl were about it #just residual effects rly.#THAT FANDOM WAS NOT FUN LMAO i mean it had it’s moments but my final moments were particularly awful

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gaawachan · 3 years

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Critical Role 127 Discord Discussion

*Content warning, discussions of trauma, toxicity, toxic masculinity, implied projection, violence, strong language, etc*

*this is a conversation between two AFAB people with PTSD about Critical Role. It is a bit uncharitable at times, but try to understand that it's coming from a place of hurt and frustration. There are brief references to our own trauma, and discussions about social pressure and unsafe handling of traumatized individuals. Please note that NONE of this is directed at the Critical Role cast*

Also, sorry to any Veth fans we’ve offended, but it’s not so entertaining when you’ve had people like that in your life messing with your ability to heal in a healthy way. Sometimes the media we consume is unintentionally hurtful... as is the meta surrounding it. Please try to remember who might be reading your posts.

Sibling: (regarding a post about how Veth drew first blood in sanatorium) That's TRUE! VETH SHOT FIRST "oh wow what a cold-blooded murderer" fuck off with that lol

Me: ngl I dislike Veth at this point. She's outright toxic to Caleb in a way that makes me really uncomfortable.

Sibling: How dare she call him that when her first impulse in ANY SITUATION is to kill... and she dragged him to the hall he was abused in and condemned him for killing people as swiftly as he could.

Me: She's by far the most bloodthirsty, the whole group (but especially her) keep pushing him into situations he doesn't want to be in and then they clutch their pearls as he mops up the mess THEY pressured him into.

Sibling: I honestly wish Caddy had gone instead of Jester, but I understand why he couldn't.

Me: At EVERY TURN, even before Molly died, they pushed him and put him in dangerous situations he didn't want to be in and then they're like GASP he kills people really fast oh no!

Sibling: I mean, what I don't get is that... yeah, visually the deaths seem horrible. HE MADE SURE THEY DIED AS QUICKLY AS-AS THAT LADY FROM HITMAN WHO GETS SQUASHED IN THE GIANT PRESSER.

Me: No one else in the party gets pressured to do things they don't want to do quite like Caleb does. Maybe Caduceus, early on. But they are CONSTANTLY doing this to Caleb at every turn. Fjord is probably the only one who consistently tries to avoid doing that. Everyone else gets the whole "we'll support whatever you choose to do" treatment. Not Caleb.

Sibling: but yeah, Beau seems... okayish about it? But I wish she'd kept her mouth shut about Astrid. Why should he have to hear what someone complicit in his abuse and others' is "feewwing"? She's using him and she's using the 9.

Me: It makes me so angry, because Caleb, more than any other member of the party, really ought to be given respect for his own autonomy and wishes, ESPECIALLY with regards to his past! They don't just pressure him to do things he doesn't want to do with respect to his past (and other situations, too) but they demand that he do what they think he should while holding the motives they think he should have while doing so. It's not enough that he go after Trent, he has to police his own feelings and do it for the right reasons. Which is really disgusting because all of them are clearly chomping at the bit to kill Trent out of revenge, but Caleb's supposed to want to kill Trent for the greater good. Like seriously FUCK OFF.

Sibling: EXACTLY. HE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO MAKE HIS OWN DECISIONS. It's the expectation of: "You should feel and do these things in regards to your trauma, because doing anything else makes us uncomfortable." Don't we know that fucking feeling. You don't even have to like how you're feeling and other people still get to dictate what is and isn't acceptable. It's genuinely appalling.

Me: I think it's really gross how supportive the group is of each other when it comes to all their various problems, but with Caleb, they are constantly pressuring and challenging him and NOT IN A GOOD WAY.

Sibling: I felt Veth and Caleb's personal exchange was sweet, but I'm right back to feeling that she needs to go when they go to Nicodranas, just... just stay with your family. Bring back Taryon or something.

Me: If this last episode was proof of anything, it's that forcing Caleb to confront his past because others in the party want him to is nothing short of abusive behavior on their parts.

Sibling: Not to mention the condemnation of how he handles the thing they pressured him to do.

Me: And I have thought this even before he told Beau and Molly about Trent, because Caleb didn't want to participate in that tournament thing in Zadash that put him back on Trent's radar. And after he told them, did he ever get an apology from those who pressured him to participate in that? No.

Sibling: ... I just don't understand the 9. Caleb... It'd be like how they treated Fjord in regards to Avantika, honestly.

Me: But frankly she (Veth) has been repeatedly very cruel to him in a very casual way.

Sibling: Totally, wtf, she says she loves him but she acts like she thinks he’s an awful person- a useful awful person.

Me: And I should be clear, I've tried really, really hard to give her the benefit of the doubt, and she just keeps doing it over and over.

Sibling: Dude, same. I thought we got Nott back, and was feeling good until recently.

Me: And the thing that pisses me off most of all is that Caleb HAS made clear what HE wants at this point, and the party just... glossed over it. Caduceus said he approved of Caleb's stance, but... That doesn't mean anything if you don't actively push back against the pressure the other party members apply.

Sibling: As I've said before, I want Caduceus and Caleb to have this talk and yet I realize that he's not that kind of counselor. I don't see Ducey as an advocate... he has no idea what Caleb went through and doesn't have the skills to help him cope; he's a grief counselor, not a therapist.

Me: What Caleb needs is input from people who aren't so pushy about this. Fjord is a good choice but, like Caddy, he's shown that he won't step in and be like "how about we do what CALEB wants?"

Sibling: And... they're able to semi-acknowledge Beau's trauma but not Caleb's? Fjord honestly is the closest thing to an advocate Caleb has but he... he's also too passive. He doesn't care if Caleb does something he'll regret and also doesn't care that other people are pushing him into doing things he'll regret.

Me: Honestly this is why I was HOPING that Essek would get to know the party better, because for all his faults, Essek generally has a cool head and I think he WOULD push back against the others and say that, especially with his experience with the Assembly. I think that Essek would definitely support Caleb's perspective more than the others and he's not afraid to push back with his opinions.

Sibling: Shadowgast forever. Even if it dismays the Widojest fans, who apparently don't like shipping Caleb with people who are morally questionable. Despite the fact that Jester was willing to dupe a ton of people into putting their lives in danger for an imaginary friend.

Me: (not touching ship wars with a ten foot pole, tyvm) I think if Essek saw the way the party members were pressuring Caleb with respect to Trent in particular, he'd be a bit taken aback because he's seen how amenable to the wants of his friends Caleb is.

Sibling: Essek did what Essek wanted to and it got him into trouble. Caleb is helping other people and doing exactly what others tell him to, feeling what others want him to, trying to please them, and it's getting him into trouble. They could do with a bit of reigning in for each other.

Me: Ngl, if this mess gets Caleb killed, I'm going to lose it.

Sibling: Well, I mean... If Caleb dies at all, I'm going to lose it... especially because his blood will be on the 9's hands and I'm not sure if, like Molly, he would want to come back. Which is awful to say but I wonder if someone so... hurt wouldn't just... let it happen.

Sibling: I sort of got it from a player's perspective in regards to Ducey? The cast was bored and weren't really interested in Cad's story so they messed around and ignored him... But like, this? This is... "We need to see Caleb's story arc because we haven't yet, even though it doesn't make sense right now and we're already on a time limit"

Me: That's true... IT MAKES ME SO MAD. When they finished the spell for Veth and tricked Isharnai, Cale let her take time to think before they removed the curse. He didn't even fully understand why she needed that time but he gave it to her. And again, on Rumblecusp for Jester, he was like "here is what I can offer. What do you want me to do for you? I am here for you." AND THEY NEVER DO THE SAME THING IN TURN. WHEN IT'S HIS TURN, THE PARTY IS LIKE "HERE IS WHAT WE WANT YOU TO DO AND HOW WE WANT YOU TO FEEL ABOUT IT."

Sibling: It's true. I'd go so far as to say Caleb's self-destructive in that respect.

Me: Maybe I'm being uncharitable, but this has been going on for 127 episodes and it hasn't gotten any better! They're STILL doing this and they're not even being half as supportive about it the way they were with Jester's angst about Artagan! And Caleb is almost as young as Jester mentally!

Sibling: No, I don't think you're being uncharitable. They treat Caleb like they know what's best for him and not one has bothered to ask him- SERIOUSLY ASK HIM- "Do you want to deal with this now, later, or not at all? because it's okay if you don't want to deal with it. That's your choice."

Sibling: Can you imagine if they were as supportive to Caleb as they were to Jester about her "pedoy-creeper" imaginary friend? Meanwhile Caleb's backstory has ACTUAL TONES of sexual abuse and they're just like hahaaha, don't you want to go back to the torture prison?? You can get some anti-spy necklaces, it'll be good but don't kill anyone there even if they were complicit in your abuse...

Me: AND THEN RESPECT THAT CHOICE. They do not, DO NOT, get to clutch their pearls over Caleb killing people in the sanatorium after all this time. THEY pressured him to do this, THEY ALREADY KNEW this would be awful for him, THEY'VE ALREADY SEEN WHAT HE'S LIKE in these situations, and THEY ARE JUST AS MURDEROUS AS HE IS. When other party members kill people, it's no big deal, but when Caleb is faced with people who imprison and experiment on and torture people like him (ONLY FIVE-SIX YEARS AGO HE WAS IN THERE) and he kills them and they have the audacity to be upset as if they haven't killed dozens of other people for far weaker reasons!

Sibling: ... Actually, do you think it's a sexism thing? They're not addressing Caleb's massive elephant in the room because there's a cute gal who has mild creeper overtones in her backstory?

Me: Yes, I absolutely do. If Caleb was a cute girl, they would be far more emotionally supportive and would not be pressuring him in this way. It absolutely wouldn't happen.

Sibling: Like, they punched the crap out of Artagan, which like, cool, but what did he do to Jester? He screwed over other people and there's some mild undertones of gross manipulation when she was little. Trent canonically abused the Blumentrio when they were children and then stripped Caleb's ability to say "no" from him for 11 years...

Me: It's not just because he's a boy, but he also looks older than he is- early thirties instead of early twenties, and I'd argue that his five years on the streets barely count for mental maturity, too- so they don't give him the same kind of unabashed emotional support, because they still code him as someone "unstable/misled" who needs to be "guided/controlled," hence the constant pressuring and questioning.

Me: No, and that's the thing. The thing that hangs over this in particular. The party barely knows anything about the abuse he suffered and they, including Caleb, know almost nothing about what he endured in the asylum. I can't even imagine how horrifying it is to be there. Just think about it.

Sibling: I have, and I can empathize

Me: Every time he saw one of those guards, you know he had to think... "Did this one hurt me? Did this one? Do they know? They have to know. There's no way they don't know even if they didn't participate... I was here just a few years ago... Did one of them hurt me? Did one of them touch me? Did one of them see me?! I CAN'T EVEN REMEMBER IF THEY HURT ME BUT THEM JUST BEING HERE MEANS THEY ARE HURTING PEOPLE LIKE ME." How is anyone, even someone who wasn't tortured and brainwashed as a teenager, supposed to handle that?

Sibling: I know how much it can fuck you up IRL to be abused. Can you imagine 11 years of that??? Fuck no, it was awful just the few times it happened but that was his TRAINING before it was his PRISON. And then his "friends" call him a murderer. Cold, cruel. And that's the thing... I don't know if Caleb will ever open up to anyone about it. Maybe Essek, but certainly not Veth. Veth doesn't care unless she can get something out of it.

Me: It's shocking to me that no one in the party seemed to even consider what a horrible thing it was to do to bring Caleb back there. It speaks to how little consideration they actually have for his feelings on any meaningful level.

Sibling: The only person I can think of who might have an excuse is Caddy because I don't think he's had that specific talk with Caddy. And he never will, because those characters never fucking talk.

Me: No, when they were in Rexxentrum, he clarified some things. He told them that Trent would hurt him and then apologize after the fact, and about his parents, and in Felderwin he did tell them about the experiments, and they knew that he was kept in the asylum for eleven years.

Sibling: Ugh, you're right. I mean I feel like I just don't understand the 9 right now. Caleb... It's a lot like how how they treated Fjord in regards to Avantika, honestly. In fact, I keep drawing parallels to Fjord.

Me: Yeah, that was terrible.

Sibling: It's another "ughh he's a boy he needs to deal with it" rather than "that was awful and I'm sorry" "what can we do to help" And honestly fuck that mindset.

Me: And remember; Caleb was the only one to consider that what happened with Avantika would be hard on Fjord, and even said to Beau and Nott that they needed to be supportive... and then they just ignored him.

Sibling: How dare they treat Jester, who... I'm sorry, what's her trauma again? She was stuck inside for a while... nvm, why is she being treated with more care than Caleb and Fjord, who've both had actual abusive experiences... and the answer is that they've got dicks, and that means they don’t need concern and care. They can deal with it themselves, they have to be MANLY and cope with violence, but also violence is bad and you shouldn't engage in it... "how dare you strike back at the abusers we told you to strike back at?"

Me: Yes. That is exactly it, and don't forget this: When the party first met Nott and Caleb, they assumed that Caleb was a FUCKING PREDATOR preying on Nott. Why? Because he's a homeless man in his apparent thirties, and she was small.

Sibling: Critical Role and the Assumed Nature of People w/ Penises

Me: The best thing Nott ever did for Caleb was correct the record on that bullshit.

Sibling: But again, that's Nott, not Veth. God I miss Nott.

Me: That was back when he was a surrogate for her family and her hope for becoming herself again.

Sibling: I just.... I don't understand what changed; she cared for Caleb even if it was for her own gain... why is she still manipulating him if she has nothing more to gain?

Me: It was Felderwin (when it started to change). But she's doing it now because it will make it easier for her to leave guilt free.

Sibling: Then leave... Don't hang around with a "murderer" if you're going to pretend you haven't done your fair share of slaughtering yourself- fuck, she even drew first blood in that fight, WHY?!

Me: You don't get to put someone into a position where they have to kill people and then get upset and call them a murderer when they kill people. If Veth had just shot and killed the guy in one turn, do you think she'd get that kind of reaction? No. But because it's the traumatized young man who was trained to be a murderer as a teenager, it's somehow particularly bad when he kills... when he has no choice but to do so?! Ridiculous.

Sibling: I just find it so weird that the ACTUAL murder hobo of the group is pointing at another member and calling him the murder hobo. He has killed people, he was a hobo, but the people who have truly done disgusting things over the course of the campaign is not the hobo who is a murderer. It's the Chaos Crew. Beau killed a person with acid when she had a knife readily available... and you know... could have snapped his neck to begin with... not that the party knows that but.

Me: That's what I EXPECTED Beau to do!

Sibling: The GROUP was all horrified and shocked when Caleb quickly and swiftly took out the guards of the torture dungeon but Beau let a man suffer for fucking MINUTES while acid burned out his throat and he suffocated and STILL DIDN'T DIE until she had to finish him off... and Beau killed that man near Caduceus' family, threw his head in the water.

Me: Remember when Nott killed that guard in Uthodurn?

Sibling: Veth has killed so many people when they didn't need to, but no. Using quick, lethal methods to dispatch guards (much, MUCH BETTER than burning) is too far.

Me: NONE of them are pushed back on in the same way, and none of them are pressured to act/feel a certain way, and ALSO... The party has ONLY benefited from this side of Caleb. It is the ONLY reason that Fjord, Yasha, and Jester are alive, because he went into that space to save them in the Sour Nest. It is the ONLY reason they took down Avantika as easily as they did, because he went all out in that fight. It is the ONLY reason they got Yeza out and made friends with the Dynasty, because he was willing to do something that got him scolded- SCOLDED- by the group even though it saved them and HE was the one losing out more than any other by giving up the beacon! And it is therefore the reason they were able to use their clout in the Dynasty to END THE WAR. They benefit from this headspace Caleb falls into and then condemn it at the same time. Don't want him to be that way? Stop putting him in situations where he HAS TO BE THAT WAY.

Sibling: Caleb is the glue for the M9, has saved them more times than they can count. Time, traveling and in combat, and they're still demanding he address his trauma in ways that make them comfortable. Despicable, and honestly? Toxic.

Me: And now he may fall back into the hands of his abuser because of it. I've been thinking of this ever since the peace talks that it was such a shame that Essek was the traitor because Caleb really, really could have benefited from having a true safe space in Rosohna. What a shame it is that Essek was working for THEM, and broke Caleb's trust, and now Rosohna doesn't feel like a place he can really go to anymore.

Sibling: He still can. If Essek survives, go live in your wizard tower, resummon it every single day, and live life away from both sides of the war.

Me: No, I agree. Probably the worst thing that people keep pressuring Caleb on is not revenge. It's what they keep implying he ought to do after Trent is dead. He DOESN'T WANT to be part of the government. He just wants the scourger program to stop.

Sibling: He owes the government NOTHING. It has only hurt him. He doesn't need to be forced to pick up the mess that OTHER PEOPLE CAUSED because he was affected by it.

Me: He just wanted to teach magic ffs. That breaks my heart. Like, what a terrible thing... to tell someone who already thinks he doesn't deserve to be happy, that he should spend his life in a job he DOESN'T WANT in order to fix things that PEOPLE WHO WRONGED HIM DID. Because he could cave in and do it; he hates himself, and that's the true grossness of all the pressure the party puts on Caleb. His self-loathing makes him inclined to just give in and do what they say, because his own desires will end up stifled by theirs.

Sibling: I think the thing that's weird to me though? Is that... other cast members don't... seem to see that. Even in the Talks Machina segments. Liam has expressed how profoundly damaged Caleb is and the cast, not just the party just... doesn't seem to mind? And I honestly, HONESTLY think it's sexism.

Me: Yeah, remember how sweet they were to Calianna? >_> Less trauma with actions just as bad, and yet... "CALEB WHY ARE YOU DOUBTING AND DISTRUSTING HER" - said the people who non-stop doubt and distrust Caleb.

Sibling: I do completely agree that the way the 9 have been handling Caleb's trauma is encapsulated by last week's episode... I think it: 1) Has a lot to do with sexism and 2) Has a lot to do with the cast rushing his arc before the Eiselcross arc is completed. This doesn't feel like his choice to enter his arc. This feels like his hand was forced to address trauma before he was ready and I don't think that's a great look for the 9.

Me: It makes me sad, too, because I feel like with the careless way the Nein handle Caleb's past... I just don't see any way for things to end well for Astrid and Wulf, to be honest. There's no way these buffoons won't fuck up any chance at those two being redeemed. And I'm not even crazy about the prospect of them being redeemed, but if there's any chance for it... it won't be Caleb that fucks it up. It will be the other members of the Nein, I just know it.

Sibling: No, they'll force a romance that won't be any less toxic than it was before. Because a woman needs to heal Caleb's wounds. *pukes*

Me: GOD AND THEN... Like, they all want revenge on Trent even as they pretend that Caleb shouldn't and needs to do things for the greater good, but... the thing is that if they really, really wanted justice for Caleb... Why, why, WHY are they not coordinating with the COBALT SOUL to take Trent down?! That is their ACTUAL BEST AVENUE for doing so! And Caleb would be far more safe and comfortable doing that!

Sibling: "Because the Cobalt Soul is Beau's arc and we want to do Caleb's arc"

Me: Beau gets a trial for her trauma... Caleb gets called a stone-cold murderer for being forced to confront his directly. Then stop pressuring him into direct confrontations with his trauma!

Sibling: Sexism, I'm telling you. She's a laddyyyy

Me: And more and more I'm thinking that the 8th floor of the tower is actually a really healthy thing for him to do, because it's obvious that he's never going to be able to healthily process his trauma in a way that's under his control with the Nein constantly pressuring him to confront it in dangerous, unsafe ways that he doesn't want to. It's amazing to me that they balked at the 8th floor of the tower but have no problem MAKING HIM INTERACT DIRECTLY WITH THE ASSEMBLY AND THE SANATORIUM.

Sibling: And here's my thought regarding that... He can change the tower. When he doesn't need those rooms anymore, he will change them. As he has for his friends. That's a sign of healing. It's a scar that will heal, and that he has power over.

Me: Yes, yes, exactly! And the thing about it is... It's like photos, you know? And no one can actually hurt him in that space.

Sibling: He doesn't have the power over his place of abuse. Old photos can be used to safely address old trauma... walking into the torture-prison and whining about the people you hurt in there is just...

Me: ... It reminds me of the sequence in Tales of Berseria, where they torture Velvet simply by revealing hidden knowledge about the past to her, or Tales of the Abyss, where Luke finds out he was made to do something horrible and it breaks his ego. They are literally putting Caleb into situations where something like that could happen to him every time he meets Astrid or Trent or goes to a place where he will be triggered. I mean full-on total mental breakdown.

Sibling: Honestly? that's what I am expecting and it still could happen.

Me: All it would take is some sort of reveal about those eleven years. Or that night. Or something... and he could just shatter to pieces, and they haven't seemed to have even considered that. It's unbelievable. I'm terrified of a "You destroyed the pillar that supported Akzeriuth. You committed more atrocities you can’t even fathom" moment for Caleb. ;_;

Sibling: stop, god, I can't I would literally have a meltdown like this if Caleb was forced to regress because he wouldn't regress like Beauregard... he would regress, like any abused child to being hurt again.

Me: But we don't know WHAT THEY DID TO HIM... Not fully. I mean the asylum, too, because it's not just that they could have done anything to him in that place. It's that they could have MADE HIM DO THINGS.

Sibling: They abused him, experimented on his body with residuum, and broke his mind. Why would any of that have stopped, when he was literally at Trent's summer house?

Me: And worse still, Trent has ALREADY TRIED TO CAUSE SUCH A BREAKDOWN. He tried to blue-screen Caleb repeatedly at the dinner with comments about his parents. We ALREADY KNOW that he wants to provoke some sort of breakage in Caleb, so why, WHY would you pressure Caleb to go back to that place?!

Sibling: Not to mention, (fucking IDIOTS) THAT ASTRID SENT HIM THERE. SHE WORKS WITH TRENT. SHE WANTS CALEB OUT OF THE WAY. What better way to do it than another 11 years to plan?

Me: She told him Trent wasn't there, too. :-/ Now, that still might have been true in that... he might have been called to the place, but I doubt it.

Sibling: What I want to be said... nvm, I'll actually save that for therapy lol. That's too deep and I don't wanna type that out. That's the problem with characters with trauma: what you want for them might hit too close to home LMAOAOOO. Hurts your heart, especially when it's glossed over.

Me: Caleb getting justice shouldn't necessitate his trauma being rubbed in his face 24/7.

Sibling: TRUE. Truest goddamn thing I ever heard. Especially if his choice is to be done with it.

...........

We didn’t really touch on Yasha, who has actually been a good influence on Caleb, imo, and there were other things we could have talked about that are related to this subject, but *shrug*

Anyway, this conversation mostly came from a place of hurt. It’s frustrating to see characters who claim to love a traumatized character consistently, thoughtlessly behave in ways that are hurtful to that character, and in often brazenly selfish ways. We’re not saying you can’t like characters who do that... this conversation was actually prompted by frankly hurtful posts with respect to Caleb’s mental state.

Also sorry for those who are unfamiliar with Tales of the Abyss/Tales of Berseria. Both of these video games have traumatized protagonists and both games explore their growth (or decline) as a result of that trauma, and were useful in our discussion for making my point.

Edit: Okay, so the first comment I got was someone saying that I’m allowed to think what I want but they don’t want to see it. If you’ve read this far, I hope you noticed that this post criticized that sort of attitude... IN THE CHARACTERS OF CR... It’s bad to pressure a person into exhibiting their trauma in a way that makes normies “comfortable,” so of course the first responder to the post decided to prove just that. I deleted that comment... but not before doing what they wanted, like people like me and characters like Caleb almost always end up doing anyway. Thanks for that. I can see why my post upset that poster. *rolls eyes*

#critrole spoilers #critical role #critrole #spoilers #critical role 127 #caleb widogast #fjord stone #jester lavorre #caduceus clay #beauregard lionett #trent ikithon #essek thelyss #abuse #trauma #meta #autonomy #calianna #relevant tag removed upon request

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lorelylantana · 3 years

Text

Unconventional Observation Chapter 2; Gamble

Chapter Rating: M Overall Rating: E

First-Next

The first step of any reputable scientific inquiry was to establish a control group. This proved a tad difficult, as there was only one Link. But such a small setback didn’t deter Zelda for long, as she resolved to begin with recording the everyday behaviors of her knight. After all, you can’t identify deviations without first knowing the standard.

It was largely uneventful, in all honesty. Her knight’s trademark stoicism meant that any visual mannerisms were hard to come by, harder still to record with the consistency required for scientific revelation. The flip side of this bland undertaking was its simplicity. His countenance was so stable, so predictable, that she didn’t need nearly as much time putting it to paper as she anticipated.That wasn’t to say there weren’t roadblocks. One such aggravation came from the realization that Link reacted to her differently. Granted, this should be obvious, as she was his charge. What she didn’t expect was a discrepancy in how he reacted to her gaze.

Zelda had spent a lot more time staring at her knight than she had in the past, and he had noticed. He couldn’t meet her stare all the time, having to focus on their surroundings as her guard. Yet there was an undeniable tension in him, he stood straighter, and she noticed a light pink on the tips of his ears.

Zelda had a list of potential causes, though, narrowing them down should be simple enough. The first possibility was the obvious. Zelda thought that this was how he reacted to being looked at in general. It made sense, if his lack of spoken word was an indication of bashfulness. This conclusion was shattered with the discovery that he endured the brazen stares of smitten maids giggling as they passed with barely a blink. She knew they weren’t unnoticed, as the giggles started after he made eye contact with them, which sent her back to the drawing board.

Her second guess was Link’s reaction being a byproduct of her rank. He may be the Hero of Hyrule, but Zelda was still his princess, and he was still a soldier. Even the freshest recruit knew any special attention from a superior while on duty was negative. Certain instincts were tough to crack, even after his ascension to Champion.

In the end, all she needed was a week to get feel confident that she could effectively identify any differences he might exhibit during trials, where she knew her questions would be answered.

Then it was time for a gamble. Confident in her baseline recordings, Zelda set out to craft her experiment. Detestable as he was, he was still a person, and experimenting on him without his knowledge or consent was unethical. Thus, she approached him on a trek to the Dueling Peaks. Her studies suggested that his favorite meal was a prime meat and rice bowl, so she had some packed for their journey.

“I have a proposition, sir knight,” she said as they made camp. He didn’t answer, only stared. She felt a thrill flick at the bottom of her stomach at the look in his eye. A gambler’s high, perhaps. He gave no reply save for the tilt of his head, which she took as a sign to continue.

“I would like to ask for your assistance in a new line of scientific study,” she began, voice quivering slightly. He raised a brow but said nothing, so she continued, “I’m sure you know of my father’s insistence that my research is fruitless, however I firmly believe that my current subject of study could add to my efforts to gain Hylia’s power. If I can map out how energy flows through the body the knowledge might help me find the sealing power,” she said

“It’s not a waste of time,” he insisted, quietly but with conviction. It took only those few words to fill Zelda with optimism.

“You’ll help me then?”

He nodded. She clapped her hands in triumph.

“Excellent! Let’s get started right away,” she said, reaching for her notes and a measuring tape, “I have some experiments in mind, but for now I’d like to get some baseline measurements down so any changes will be apparent immediately.”

Link nodded, though he didn’t say anything, Zelda felt her cheeks flush a bit. She was no stranger to her knight’s gaze, but this interaction was foriegn to her. Unlike the obligated glance he threw her way as her guard, now Link was engaging in conversation. Undoubtedly one sided, but existent nonetheless. She continued, blush burning even brighter at her next request, “In order to have a comprehensive foundation to build off of, I’ll have to take a close examination of your physique, and how it reacts to certain stimuli.”

Link tilted his head again, only instead of a silent question, Zelda swore she saw a smirk grow on his face. Zelda needed a breath before she continued, the fluttering in her stomach knocking her off her stroke.

“Before we begin, I would like to remind you that you may bow out at any time without fear of repercussions,” she said, “I wouldn’t want my knight to break.”

Now that was most certainly a smirk. He looked her in the eye again, a rarity quickly becoming common, challenge burning in his eye.

Well, Zelda was never one to back down, and certainly not from the likes of him.

He sat on the desk in her study a few days later, pliant beneath her gaze. She’d emptied one of the tables to use as a makeshift examination table and dragged it out so he could sit on it without hitting his head. He’d shed his tunic and she’d locked the door, having no desire to explain this to any passing maid.

She put a hand on Link’s chest, gently pushing him down until he lay still beneath her on the wood. Zelda sucked in a breath, drunk on the quiet power of his compliance. She ran her hands over his stomach, blushing when the muscles clenched under her fingertips. She felt her face heat, but then her eyes flicked to his face. His jaw was set, and he stared at the ceiling.

She withdrew her hand, cursing herself for already making him uncomfortable.

“Sir knight,” she said, he looked at her, “I meant what I said, you can leave if you’re uncomfortable.”

“That’s not-” his voice broke, unprepared to be used so forcefully after his time he spent silent. He paused, trying to word his thoughts. Zelda waited, half in shock to have heard his voice at all. He took a breath, “I don’t get touched very often. When I do, it’s because I broke something, and fixing it’s going to hurt.”

Zelda felt sick. She’d imagined time and time again what his first words to her might be, if they ever happened. She’d imagined his patience snapping, his ire finally been let loose as he spewed a toxic deluge of hate and contempt.

Somehow, this was worse. It shattered her because it was the antithesis of the concept of him Zelda had crafted. She had wasted so much time focusing on how high his pedestal was. She spared no thought to how much it hurt him when he fell down.

She brought out a set of paints and a thin brush and brought it over to him. He’d stated his intent to stay, and she didn’t want to betray his vulnerability by shying away now. She ran the brush along his bicep. To her relief, although one that was painful, he didn’t flinch.

“How does that feel?”

He nodded, “Fine.”

“Okay.” Zelda dipped her brush into the jar of paint. “I found this recipe in the library. Apparently it’s supposed to augment your combative capabilities.” She rattled off the ingredients, anxious now that the man in front of her was made of flesh and bone instead of myth and steel.

She dipped the brush into her jar, tapping it out before dragging the brush down his arm. She had a chart of standard Hylian muscleclature that she used as a reference, tracing each major muscle with her paint. It started off strangely tranquil, as she worked, Zelda noticed him relax. His breathing slowed, and another glance at his face revealed him dozing off. Zelda’s heart fluttered, an unfamiliar, affectionate warmth growing in her stomach.

Things changed when Zelda finished with his arms and shoulders and moved to his chest. When she drew the brush under his collarbone and down towards his sternum he jumped. She looked at him, worried that he was uncomfortable, but his eyes were still closed and she continued. She began to circle each of his abs individually, going lower and lower.

Then she noticed that the bulge in his pants had shifted. Not that she’d spent much time looking. Link must have realized why she stopped, because he really did tense up, his abdomen crunching as he sat up.

“I’ll- uh- go down and do some drills,” he said, swinging down to stand on the floor. “I’ll let you know if the paint does anything.”

And then he was gone, leaving the door open behind him and Zelda standing flustered and confused.

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