recents

ocs belong to me, @kindredsuffering, @numbersninja, @theshiningdiamond, @sugaryspooks

Blog Stuff

^ Like, "FYI if you want to block tags" stuff

Little announcement here: Factor It In is on hiatus for now, probably for the rest of 2023. I know where the story is going overall and I know where the next chapter's going, but I struggled more than expected with the "Torus" voice (took like 6 weeks longer than the other chapters and all of it painful :'D)

I don't want to face a timecrunch struggle with TJ and Rose POVs (two characters who will be new to me), so I'm taking the bi-weekly update stress away and putting the 'fic on hiatus for now. But I wrote 77k before a hiatus was needed so I'm proud of that <3

We've got some 130 Prompts coming up as well as "Unicorn Years" for Origin in September (and hopefully a special Friday the 13th piece in October). In other words, FOP stuff is still bi-weekly as usual.

-> As a reminder, the 130 Prompts are posted in the order they are for a reason. You don't have to read them all if you don't want to, but extra context is always nice. If you've been dragging your feet on "Looking Back" by any chance... I might recommend that before the next update, which is "Sentry" ;)

On the "off" Friday I'm planning one-shots for various fandoms, especially shorter character studies. Really want to practice capturing a variety of voices, some quicker one-shots, and maybe I'll try some characters I don't use a lot. Or I'll be self-indulgent and focus on my faves... who knows.

Hoping to post more Come What May as well since you guys were excited to see it back <3... and it would be nice to actually finish a non-one-shot 'fic for the first time in. 7 years.

It's probably been obvious, but I also took a long hiatus from digital art. Traditional art is more comfy for me and I've been trying new digital programs, but haven't fallen in love with anything (i.e. I've been a vector artist for 10 years and moving from my safe space to different programs and styles is... painful).

I think I'm ready to start pushing my comfort zone, but be forgiving of my digital style because I'm playing around with new tools and this is a big jump for me, ha ha. I think I'm going to do some silly, low-stress fanfic doodles with very little attempt to make them look good, just testing stuff out.

I miiiiiight have a few PMV / animatic ideas, so we'll see

By nature of me posting art for my own 'fics, spoilers be upon ye if you're not up to date with my writing. Relatively recent stuff and/or stuff I consider "big" will get the #ridspoilers tag, but stuff I wrote 6+ months ago is less likely to get the tag, so that's how that goes.

-> #Dog's Life spoilers will get a unique tag because the weekly updates and drama make me say "Yeah, a special tag makes sense," so if that's a 'fic you think you want to read someday without spoilers, consider blocking that sooner rather than later :)

-> I'm also adding a #Pixels Imperfect tag to stuff from that universe (and I'll go back and add it to the chapters I already posted). "Pixels Imperfect" is the series name on AO3 for my digital gremlin Traffic SMP content (Everyone can freely wander around New Star Station outside the game and just puts on their roleplay hats when they go in, everything under this series fits under one umbrella of universe canon, etc.)

-> #Neighborhood Watch is the series name for "we take the roleplay lore seriously, this is their life, no digital world and no roleplay hat to take off" Traffic SMP content. I haven't posted anything for it yet, but I've got stuff in the works (I'm playing with a couple "making every season as canon as possible in one storyline" pieces and </3 it's big divorce speedrun hours for Clocker fam rn)

As for the other 'fics, I've been posting stuff like Origin, the 130, and Knots for 7 years and I feel okay about how that's going- I don't normally get spoiler Asks, but my general rule is to wait 1-2 weeks before I say anything spoilery on my blog. I think that's been working fine and we've got a good system, so I'm not changing anything there.

Lastly - and this is also part of the reason Factor is going on hiatus - it sounds like Traffic SMP Season 5 is just around the corner. For my followers who don't know much about this Minecraft deathmatch series, the creators only play for a few weeks - I think the shortest season was 6 weeks and the longest was 8 - and each creator puts out one episode a week (usually Friday).

So, it's a pretty short chunk of time and I don't want to be juggling too many things while it's coming out. I think this year I want to jump in and create some nice content while it's ongoing instead of just doodling off to the side and keeping it to myself... I need to dig up my old liveblog doodles I never shared, hm.

-> The traffic story canon gets reset every season (i.e. it's unscripted play, there's no continuous plot, and each season starts relationships from scratch), so if you've been enjoying any of my Traffic SMP reblogs, consider looking into it and riding that wave while episodes come out for a couple weeks and we can be hype together <3

-> Stuff for that season will be tagged #traffic spoilers, which is the tag I use across all the seasons, and I'll make a new post with my Season 5 spoiler tag once we get the name reveal.

-> As is traditional when I liveblog, I'll also use the tag #Riddle watches Traffic so you can block that too if you like. Just wanted to let people know in case I have any Traffic SMP followers who want to go in blind and don't want to risk seeing my posts before they have time to block my spoilers tag. #traffic spoilers still covers everything, including new season.

-> I also need to look into maybe switching from Traffic Life SMP as my blog tag to Traffic SMP because I think that's. the right name and it would probably be smart to tag properly... hm.

I think that covers everything I wanted to say. I'll add a list or link to my pinned post as well so people can figure out what to block for spoilers and stuff.

Thanks for enjoying my blog!

hey, about this one post with the me inside of me video- can i ask why this was the first one you liked? honestly just curious because lately i've been watching a bunch of different ones and i saw quite a lot which actually seemed pretty neat and all

i feel like i should preface this by saying that they aren’t bad. i’ve seen a lot of heathers animatics and most of them are good but i think they shouldn’t really be classified animatics. it was pointed out to me that they are usually sketchy pmvs and are done by people with no animation experience and with no intent to ever animate it so they make it like one would make a pmv. it didn’t used to bug me but it’s been getting in my nerves more and more recently as they get further and further from being an animatic. there are also really specific things about some that bother me like once someone made an i am damaged animatic then made a post saying something along the lines of “whoo, there were forty frames in that. i am beat” which, yea, is a lot of work, but shouldn’t be able to cover ninety seconds of song. animatics don’t have as many frames as an animation but it should have more than one per every two seconds (especially when a lot of those frames weren’t drawn from scratch and was just changing the expression). i also once saw someone who clearly just saw a timing chart in another animatic, didn’t know what it was, and decided that they wanted to include one in their animatic, so they included a chart that seemed to be timing nothing, left the frame with the chart on for about three seconds, and the chart was a seven frame timing chart. they had a seven frame timing chart for three seconds. i don’t want people to stop making animatics because i agree that they are neat and i want people to have fun and do things that they enjoy and i know that people like making animatics. i just get annoyed that they are so far removed from animatics nowadays. i did really enjoy that animatic that you’re asking about there were so many nice touches and it made me smile.and if you’ve read this and are worried about an animatic you’ve made then stop worrying. this is just my personal opinion and you shouldn’t let it affect how you work. whether or not one person likes it shouldn’t even factor into it because my opinion doesn’t matter. i think the only case in which this could matter is if you want to become an animator one day but even then you shouldn’t worry about this post because as you grow and become more comfortable with animation, you’ll realize what you need to do in your animatics to make your animations better and you’ll learn as you go on. don’t let this post affect you at all just keep doing you.