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sketchfanda · 10 months

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Chestnut Stud across the Multiverse:Amazon Crown

Krillin checked his watch as he waited under the shade of a large tree, waiting for his appointment. It was more or less a tradition he maintained ever since that period of time when he trained for the 23rd world martial arts tournament, particularly around the point he and yamcha,then and chiaotzu went their sewerage ways. Naturally he’d told 18 about this little annual routine of his,to which his ever hot wife understood and more than encouraged him. All she asked for in return as always for every explicit, juicy detail to which he gave a deadpan glance up at the capsule corp camera drone hovering uo around in stealth mode. His attention caught as he saw some bushes rustling and the sound of foot steps as a figure emerged from the nearby forest. Suffice to say if you were to see this person now you’d think only one thing. She was drop dead fucking gorgeous!! The definition of the term of amazonian beauty,as she had the fsce of a supermodel, the curves of a pornstar and the glorious physique of a muscle goddess. Her sculpted arms effortlessly hauling a massive twin-headed axe as her armoured plated leather boots moved with a graceful powerful stride. Her legs exquisite tree trunks of powerful meat with those wonderful hips and thick,juicy thighs sporting exotic tribal tattoos and a flowing mane of platinum blonde hair. Her exquisite physique highlighted and showed off by a scalemail pattern two piece bikini,overall she had the look and aura of someone out of s fantasy adventure novel. Krillin had never quite gotten a name from her, she omly ever seemed to prefer being called by her job title as the bombshell looked his way, noticing him and cracking a soft small smile on her serious yet pretty face. “On time as ever,aren’t we little man? Then again,who am I kidding,like you ever miss this…” The stunner quipped as the compact fighter and off duty cop clad in his turtle school gi as he tightened the blue belt around his waist.

The shortstack martial artist walked behind the woman, eyes glued to her backside as he couldn’t resist drinking in the view. Her powerful back and shoulder muscles flexing snd her bubbly,juicy meaty thing clad ass jiggling and shaking with every step as the blonde babe shot a glance over at him his way. A catlike hum and smile on her face as she blew him a kiss, making him blush. “W-well You know me Amazon, I like to be punctual…” he humbly replied in good humour and nature, blushing as Amazon,as she was known,giggled cute and melodically. Walking with a distinct sway and sashay to her hips. Her meaty thighs rubbing together as she flexed and clapped her booty cheeks. The pair walking deep into lush jungl like greenery around them. A labyrinth of trees, vines and bushes with the odd boulders and ruins here and there. Every year since thst time training for the 3 years until the next tournament Krillin would meet up with Amazon on this,the very date they first met. It was by chance during his wandering snd travelling the world when he had come upon this muscle mountain woman facing a hoard of wild vicious dinosaurs and helped her out of a messy jam. The warrior woman more than appreciated the help snd feeling indebted to Krillin, decided to help him out on his training journey by having him tag along with her in some quests rounding up bandits and hunting down beasts and monsters to slay for food and money. But for the thicc swole work of art who sensually licked her lips at the short ming, this day of the year was something she looked forward to for a different reason. Soon as they came to a nice shaded clearing, the sunlight shining through the mesh nest of leaves snd branches and making the nearby waterfall sparkle as she placed her axe against a nearby tree. Her smile soft,seductive snd sensual as she turned to face Krillin.

“That’s one of the things I just love about You, really. So modest, humble…but so strong..and so…” the muscle queen spoke, her tone becoming teasing, seductive as she reached behind her back and began to undo the clasp to her bra. Removing ti to expose snd flash her naked tits before him. Krillin blushing yet not poking away as this vision of sexy muscular art stripped before him, shedding her gloves and boots, watching on as she hooked the string of her thong,sliding it down her powerful tattooed legs as little web trail of arousal stretched from her slit. The warrior monk turned cop not wasting time as he she’d his gi, Amazon biting her lip sensually as she admired his atlas class muscular body. Those Herculean features of course nothing compared to his cock and balls as the former rose to erectness. The pair of warriors taking in the sight of one another in the nude, their arousal growing as Amazon closed the distance between them, leaning her statuwese frame to his 5 foot own,cupojng his fsce in her hands as she caressed it. “So damn good at making me feel like a woman…” With that said, the platinum blonde stunner pressed her lips to his as she began making out with Krillin, moaning as she felt his hands grab and squeeze her glorious ass. Their tongues dancing as they felt the memories of taste and sensation flow between them and into their bodies. The only sounds between them being the chirping birds and cicadas and the stealth drone watching and recording this union.

You see that day fateful day years ago,on their final week or so together, before Krillin was ready to move in and continue his training journey, as they sat at a campfire together, Amazon had learned he was a virgin. So she decided as a thank you for being such a great fighter and strong companion and the comfort and warmth his presence had brought, she would give him his first time. Her own bit of experience ensured she woild give him the experience to truly become a man and know how to please a woman, but her shock and delight at how surprisingly well endowed he was was quite the surprise and oh how she came to love their union. Long into the night, then the morning and into the very next evening. For a full day, sunset to sunrise to repeat, two or 3 days had it been? The shirt king the muscular bombshell made love, their bond of trust making for a sensual experience,tantric even as amazon’s sexual experience honed krillin’s own quite gifted intuition and instincts as they mated like animals. Amazon had been with her share of men and plenty of women too, often both at once. But that day with Krillin was a whole other matter as every orgasm they shared deepened their bond, as she felt her bidy develope the desire to have him outright breed her. To have him claim her like the alpha male he was and use her as he saw fit, until she was overflowing with his seed and her womb carried his young. Their parting had been a bittersweet sorrow but didn’t become goodbye forever,as they basked in the afterglow and Amazon swore to promise that every year on that day, the two would meet up and spend the day fucking like primal beasts. Suffice to say Krillin more than stuck to that promise to make time and keep to this appointment even long after having married. Hell of course he had to let 18 know about his little tradition snd surprisingly she not only understood but encouraged him to plow thst not piece of ass like he did to her on their honeymoon.

‘That wife of mine,honestly….’18 was one majorly kinky woman who was of the idea thst since he could satisfy her, a cybernetic bombshell with infinite stamina, then ore than one woman was needed to sate his own libido. She practically got off on the idea of him sowing wild oats,but he digressed as he returned to reality to resume making out with Amazon,moaning into each other’s mouths as their tongues danced and swapped spit. Smacking and clapping her ass like a set of bongo drums as she ran her own hands alon his back to his shoulder and torso. Purring as she massaged his muscles, wondering if he’d gotten buffer since their last time together. Before shamelessly purring sensually as she grasped his cock and balls, stroking and jerking thst rigid shaft in her hands. The grip she normally held her axe with applied to his length and girth as she felt her palms and fingers become soaked and slick with his flowing pre cum. Taking delight in his reactions before he in turn coaxed deepthroated moans forth from her as his own hands began to move and caress along gorgeous,muscular form. Shuddering as he cupped and squeezed her glorious tits, tweaking her nipples as he moved his head to nuzzle and kiss those twin orbs,suckling and licking away at them,as he and Amazon moved to kneel together on the soft lush grass. Making out sensually as they groped one another’s bodies. Heavy petting exchanged between them as soon Amazon laid backflat on the ground, purring as Krillin straddled her upper torso, hands grasping her tits as he sandwiched them between his cock. Thrusting and pumping between the valley of that firm,juicy cleavage as she kissed and licked the exposed tip whenever it came near her lips. Before she soon sat up,moving him to sit on her shoulders as her arm and back muscles flexed. Hands grabbing his ass as she shoved his cock into her mouth,deepthroating him right off the bat as her lips kissed the base and balls of his cock. Making Krillin shudder as rode the momentum to commence facefucking the muscular work of art of a warrior woman. Amazon’s moans muffled as she felt her pussy gush with sticky,warm nectar while Krillin pumped his length and girth like her mouth was an oral pussy. Her neck swelling and bulging as his balls smacked against his chin,the force of this fellation making her tits bounce and slap against his toned rear.

Once Amazon had achieved the goal of getting a nice mouth snd face full of his jizz, she was soon on her hands and knees, muscles flexed and tensed as her skin glistened with a luscious sheen of sweat. Moaning and rolling her head,tongue out like the bitch in heat she was as Krillin knelt behind her, his fsce pressed against her loins as his hands grasped and spread her juicy ass. Rimming her pucker and lapping away at her slit as he drank uo her juices. Practically making out with her cooch before deciding he’d coaxed enough orgasms out of her as he adjusted position. Grasping her waist as he lined uo his shaft, running the tip against her not,sloppy pussy and pumped his hips. Amazon throwing her head back to let out an orgasmic howl as she felt that familiar,wonderful sensation of his cock penetrating her, his size enabling him to not just hit her G spot but the entire alphabet as the tip kissed the entrance of her womb. But when he started moving his pelvis like a jackhammer, she truly knew what pleasure was as her ass shook and jiggled with every impact of their loins smacking together. His balls smacking her clit, juices splashing as she grasped the grass, her sensual muscles tensing as her spine arched and her toes curled. The exquisite familiar bliss of mating with Krillin flowing through her body as she the short king commenced the ancient primal dance of man and woman, their little spot in the woods filled with the sounds of their passion. No need to keep count of her own orgasms, only his as every instance of his cock erupting and flooding her womb woild they shift and change position. The warrior woman relishing every instance as he came so much inside her without ever pulling out. His stamina and staying power godly as they made use of their special day to go through their own personal kama sutra of lovemaking positions. The drone hovering unseen as it transmitted to its voyeuristic viewer.

How Amazon loved and cherished every instance of their lewd erotic bonding. Holding hands with her short king as she rode him cowgirl style, his gaze locked on her bouncing tits as she wore a facial expression of sexual ectasy as her juicy bubble butt milked that cock. To wrapping her arms and legs around him as she found him holding her up in the air,arms hooked around her powerful legs he pumped away vigorously into her gushing snatch, their tongues dancing together in a sloppy kiss before they soon rolled around and about in the grass battling for dominance in a mating or Amazon press,pun unintended. The warrior woman accepting her defeat with gusto as either way she won by never losing her union with her stud. Hearts glowing in her eyes as they laid together in missionary, her studly friend with benefits laying atop her as his hips sacked into that hot,overflowing pussy. The platinum blonde hottie wondering if this might yet be the day her little ma would bless her with a child. She woild yet have that army of strong sons and daughters yet but the fact their baby making involved such fun only helped motivate her desire to be knocked up by her short king. The sun at high noon as the lair showed no signs of stopping, as they aimed to go all day and all night to dawn itself. As back in Krillin’s home, 18 sat naked in her bedroom, shamelessly masturbating as she pumped her Warrior Monk dildo into her pussy. Grinning as she moaned without shame and plenty of pleasure as she indulged in her voyeurism. Nothing rocked ehr more tha seeing her little man sow his wild oats,as she glanced at the calendar to see what other regular fuck buddies he had an appointment due. Oh yes,the universe would see plenty of Krilln’s babies and they’d be glorious!, the future would be chestnuts!!

#sketchfan85 #sketchfan #sketchfanda #krillin #krillin smut #dragonball krillin #krillin dragonball #amazon #dragons crown #amazon dragons crown

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frodos-bizarre-adventure · 3 years

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@gingerreggg just some fluff

Heads Up- Part 12 (Joseph x Bust!Caesar)

▪▪▪▪▪▪▪▪

"Are you ready to go out?" Suzi asked Caesar, as he sat atop the kitchen table.

"Really?" he replied skeptically. "I thought you didn't want anyone to see me?"

"And that's why we've got this!" Joseph exclaimed joyfully as he pranced into the room with a small carrying crate. It was quite lightweight, and across the top of one side a narrow, horizontal slit had been cut into the hard cardboard material, to function as a viewing window.

Caesar felt uneasy, somewhat queasy to the stomach if he'd had one. This was the first time he'd see the world, beyond the confines of Joseph's apartment. Well, of course, aside from that one escapade, but he didn't really get far.

"You really mean it?" he said nervously.

"Look, if you're gonna go bouncing away at night to see the world then I thought I'd let you have in on the fun with the two of us! We picked a nice place, I bet you'll love it." Joseph smiled, as he lifted Caesar off the table and gently into the box, fitting him perfectly with just a little bit of room to spare. "Just remember to be very quiet."

"Joseph," Caesar complained, as he was laid snugly into the box. "You cut the view-hole too high."

"Aw shit," Joseph groaned. "I should have measured."

Fortunately it wasn't a problem a few layers of newspaper couldn't solve, and with some cushioning beneath his neck the peeping hole was perfectly level with Caesar's eyes.

"That should do the trick," Joseph huffed, as he gently covered Caesar with the lid.

"And now...it's time," grinned the sculptor, as he carried his created companion, tucked safely into the box, out into the warm light of late afternoon.

--------

Joseph mostly got around town, and to and from the university, in his trusty old bicycle he'd gotten as a birthday present from his uncle Speedwagon. It had seen better days, but still served him well, especially after he installed a small sidecar so he could carry his art along with him on the way.

"This is fun!" Suzi cheered, as Joseph pedaled along down toward the beach-view that he and Suzi had agreed on earlier.

"Just don't let go of me!" Caesar cried, from inside the box. He laid upon her lap as she sat in the sidecar, and each time she raised her hands in excitement the hapless bust feared he might fall off.

But at the same time, as he peeked out of the narrow slit, Caesar felt a strange elation.

He was seeing the world beyond.

Buildings, cars, streets and people rushed by, illuminated in the orange light of sunset, as Joseph came pedaling along, so quickly that Caesar couldn't keep up with seeing them all. There was just such a big, big place to see, and with a little help, Caesar was going much, much further than he could possibly hop by himself.

Caesar smiled, a hidden smile from within his box that no one could see.

Perhaps it was far nicer to see the world with friends.

Perhaps he didn't have to be alone.

And yet, at the same time, Caesar felt a hint of sorrow as he admired the sun-kissed landscape gleaming in its tangerine illumination. There was a vast world out there, full of people, full of experiences, of stories in the making waiting to be told.

And he knew he could never be a part of it.

--------

"We're here!" Joseph said excitedly, as he halted near the parkway by the beach.

"And look!" Suzi exclaimed. "We're just in time for the sunset!"

"I can't see!" Caesar complained. "Get me out of this box!"

Dismounting from the sidecar, Suzi stood up and with Joseph's help, removed Caesar from the box, after glancing around to make sure nobody was around to witness them unloading their unusual cargo.

Caesar couldn't believe his eyes. They were at a quiet little corner of the beach, with the floor a smooth, wooden viewing deck. Beyond him was a view of the ocean, stretching all the way into the horizon, and hovering just above it was a brilliant orange orb whose rays Caesar felt onto his clay skin for the first time in his newfound life.

"So, what do you think?" Joseph asked as he gently laid Caesar down onto the deck, and sat cross-legged next to him.

"It's...it's beautiful," gasped Caesar in pure amazement, as he made a few hops forward.

"Whoa, easy there, Cae," Joseph cautioned. "Try not to fall in the water, I doubt you can swim," he said with a snarky laugh.

Caesar nodded, but was too absorbed in the splendor of it all to heed Joseph's dry wit. He could smell the refreshing salty breeze, feel the warmth of the descending sun, hear the waves and the wind and the calls of the birds. Just like the one time he'd left the house, except this time, Joseph wasn't trying to stop him.

And never before, in his short existence as a bodiless sculpt of clay, had Caesar felt so free.

Joseph shifted himself forward so that he was next to Caesar again. "I thought you'd enjoy this," he said, gently cradling the bust onto his lap.

The sun's rays were fading in warmth, but Joseph's arms felt warmer.

Soon the brilliant orb began to sink into the horizon, fading away into the distant mists as the deep pinks and purples of the sky began to crowd out the oranges and yellows of the sun's final rays. Caesar was awed. It was something that happened every single day, sure, but it was no less of a glorious spectacle to behold.

It wasn't long until the stars began to appear.

A few bright points, here and there, gradually emerging from the darkening sky. There were scarcely any clouds, to Joseph's delight, and soon, the night had come: enveloping them in a calm, peaceful darkness lit by the thousands of glittering pinpricks up above.

"Caesar," Joseph said softly. "Look."

He laid down onto his back on the wooden floor, after he took the newspapers from Caesar's box and gently laid the sculpture's head onto them so that Caesar could also recline comfortably. Side by side, artist and artwork lay down gazing skyward, into the infinite vastness of the night sky above.

"You know, Cae, my grandpa Jonathan used to tell me," Joseph began. "He said that as the night comes it paints over the sky, swiftly and in a rush, leaving a few spots uncolored in its hurry. I'd always thought it was a silly story," he laughed.

Caesar chuckled. "Your grandfather?"

"Yeah..." Joseph sighed, sadly. "I miss him."

"Now it's just Granny Erina and me, and really, just me, after I came to live in my flat. Mom was always away, and I'd never met my dad. But Grandpa Jonathan...he was the best part of my childhood."

He gestured to the sky.

"I like to think he's up there where he belongs, up among the stars. We are Joestars after all," he said with a mix of a laugh and a sigh, gently running his finger over the birthmark on his neck.

One he remembered his grandpa also had, which Joseph imagined was a mark, a promise, perhaps, of where he'd since returned.

There was a moment of silence as Caesar momentarily pondered.

"Do you think I belong among the stars too?" Caesar asked, after a pause.

"Huh?" Joseph turned to look at him. "Why would you think that?"

Caesar gave a melancholy pause.

"Because...because if I really am Anthonio Zeppeli, as Suzi said...shouldn't I be up there? And yet, I am here."

That one word, that had struck Caesar earlier, hit him again.

Purpose.

"I mean, if you really think about how big the universe is, and how small we are to it, it's downright humbling, and a little bit frightening," Joseph mused.

"But we're tiny specks that simply exist, and maybe, we make our own existence worthwhile," he added, stroking Caesar's shoulder stub.

"Then I guess I don't really need a purpose, then," Caesar mumbled, watching the unimaginable vastness twinkle far beyond.

"I mean, do you?" Joseph answered. "You exist for the sake of existing, and that should be enough."

Caesar smiled.

Joseph was right. Why did he have to bother figuring out why he was alive, or who he was, or why he was where he is today?

He was alive today, even though he shouldn't be.

His existence was an unexpected blessing.

He existed for his own sake. And, looking into his sculptor's brilliant blue eyes, mesmerized at the heavens, he thought, perhaps for Joseph's sake too.

"I'm glad you made me, Joseph. Whether or not I really am Anthonio or not. I'm just glad to be here today."

"However way you created me."

Joseph chuckled. "You know what they say, Caesar. Yesterday was history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift."

"That's why they call it present."

Caesar groaned.

"Oh come on, Jojo," he grumbled. "You stole it from that turtle from the panda cartoon."

Joseph burst out a hearty laugh. "So you have been watching the movies Suzi brought, huh?"

"I was bored," Caesar said, embarassed.

Joseph was just glad for the time they were enjoying together, by the beach, under the night sky, with only the glimmer of lamp posts and the now-rising moon lighting the way. It felt peaceful, and very calming, for both weary artist and lonely creation.

He wished they could do this forever.

Just the three of them.

Oh yes, Joseph remembered, three.

"Say, where is Suzi, anyway?" wondered Joseph after a few moments. "We'd gotten too busy with our little talk there... Suzi?"

A faint snore came as the only response.

"Oh great," Caesar moaned, rocking back up into an upright position with a little help from Joseph. "She slept through the whole thing, and this whole trip was her idea."

"You can't blame her," Joseph explained. "She's pretty tired."

He couldn't help a small giggle as he saw Suzi splayed out awkwardly onto the sidecar seat, dozing away like she was on her sofa.

"I think it's time we went home." Joseph said.

Rousing Suzi to make sure she was safe throughout the ride back to Joseph's apartment, the three friends made their way back, Caesar once more tucked inside his box.

As Joseph pedaled home Caesar peeked out at the view of the city through the hole in the box. The city at night looked so different.

Thousands of brilliant lights shone through the darkness, outlining buildings, illuminating streets, marking the passage of cars.

The city's lights were like the stars on the earth.

And in a way, they were among them, after all.

A sudden halt to the gentle motion of the box indicated to Caesar that they'd reached home. Soon he felt himself being lifted back into the house, as Joseph had done the night he snuck out. Yet this time, it didn't feel like a punishment, as it was when Joseph had forced him back inside. It felt like a reward, at the end of a long, grand adventure.

And at the night, Caesar knew he could look forward to end his day with another night in bed lovingly cradled in his beloved maker's arms.

Suzi sleepily staggered her way into the house and flopped onto the couch with a yawn. "Sorry about that, I hope I didn't miss too much," she said to Joseph, a little regretfully.

"Don't worry, Caesar loved it," Joseph reassured her. "We had a little talk."

"Hmmm?" she hummed drowsily.

"Oh, just stuff, about the stars and the world and the niceness of being alive, he had a lot to say." Joseph explained. "Also he's been watching your movies, he gets references," he laughed.

Joseph felt a strange warmth to Caesar that he couldn't quite explain. His feelings had been all over the place since the handsome little piece of clay came into his life. He'd gotten to know him, and he'd come to like him.

He'd come to love him.

And Caesar, sitting close by on the floor, gazing up at his relatively-towering form, felt the same.

He loved him for granting him life. He loved him for the care and affection, and all the numerous things he'd done for him, even if he couldn't return the favor.

And he loved him for just... being Joseph.

Their gazes met, and two shy smiles crept across their faces.

Perhaps Caesar belonged with a certain star after all.

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(Previous Chapter)

(Next Chapter)

#jjba #gingerreggg #battle tendency #caejose #caesar x joseph #jojo's bizarre adventure #bust!caesar #sculptor!joseph #hands of life au #heads up

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nomanwalksalone · 4 years

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FOUR SCULPTURES IN FLORENCE

by David Isle

I have Florence (not the one in Georgia) on my mind, having just bought my plane tickets for Pitti Uomo 86 this summer. Florence has produced not just the 85 previous Pitti menswear shows, but also two of the greatest sculptors ever: Donatello and Michelangelo. Donatello predated Michelangelo, but in some ways they followed similar paths as artists – at first defiantly virtuosic, at last sagely humble. The four sculptures above, all of them now in Florence, tell this story.

Today, Donatello is, depressingly, most famous as the namesake of the most punctilious Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle (Where were Botticelli's people on this? Did they not grease the right palms to get him into the show?). But more than 500 years ago, he brought sculpture out of the Gothic period with the above bronze sculpture of David, now at the Bargello. Whereas earlier sculptures portrayed their subjects as undistinguished worshipers hidden in robes, here the subject is lascivious, nude, expressive, human.

Michelangelo's famous David - finished, unbelievably, before its creator was 30 years old - represents the graduation of Donatello's boy-David to manhood. It is three times the size of Donatello's, gazing out instead of down. Whereas Dontello's David is lithe, carrying a sword he might struggle to lift without divine assistance, Michelangelo's David dominates his weapon. It is a mere accessory.

Both sculptors, like David himself, won major victories as very young men by the sheer brilliance of their talents. Michelangelo was brash and arrogant. When admirers of the Pieta' he sculpted as a 23-year-old doubted that a man so young could produce something so beautiful, he carved his name into Mary's sash.

Michelangelo's last Pieta', produced nearly sixty years after his first and on display at the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo just behind Florence's main cathedral, is very different. Mary, her beauty sanded away, almost crumbles under Jesus's weight. The Nicodemus figure, often thought to be a self-portrait, is shrouded and downcast, his features rough and weathered.

In the same museum resides Donatello's Penitent Magdalene, which he finished at the age of 69. Could there be any figure more disparate from his youthful David? The same man who gave the Renaissance its rebirth makes it old where it was young, mendicant where it was prideful, haggard where it was glorious, in rags where it was naked. This is the sculpture I'm most looking forward to seeing again this summer.

Quality content, like quality clothing, ages well. This article first appeared on the No Man blog in April 2014.

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hanayuki23 · 5 years

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Sunkissed

There wasn’t a single person on that island that had not heard of Roxas and his statues.

Despite his young age, the boy was an established sculptor and was respected by all the inhabitants of his village. Many of them visited his household to admire the marvelous sculptures exposed by the artist in his own garden: there were dogs, cats, birds on the verge of spreading their wings, so neat and detailed that they were able to convey life through their hollow eyes, girls dressed with such light and delicate dresses that the bystanders, delighted, had to touch the folds over and over again to be sure that they had really been carved in marble. People found it hard to tell fact from fiction, and they often stood perfectly still by the works, eyes widened, as if they were the true statues, avoiding to blink and hoping to be able to grasp the slightest movement of the sculptures.

It was actually rumored, indeed, that the statues could come to life, and there was even someone willing to swear to all the gods of Olympus that they saw them moving and changing expressions. The most sceptical assumed that it might had been just a trick of light and shadows that were constantly moving according to the position of the sun, while the most devoted claimed that Apollo was so in love with the boy’s art that he moved the sun itself just to animate it.

It was undeniable that the young sculptor had a talent never seen before, and the islanders were firmly convinced that such a talent had been bestowed to him directly by Apollo himself, of which the boy was a fervent devout, and it only took a look to the boy’s features to confirm this theory. Roxas was without a doubt the most beautiful boy on the island, with unruly hair golden like the weath, eyes blue like the sea, sunkissed skin covered with freckles that created a smooth contrast with the candid robe he used to wear. He wore a crown made of golden leaflets on his head, and golden bracelets with little suns carved on them on his arms, to honor his guardian, and to the inhabitants it looked like the young man could radiate his own light. A true blessing.

And it was almost a shame that the boy didn’t seem to like showing his face in public if not to attend the religious services related to Apollo, since he’d rather stay hidden in his house to refine his art and bring new sculptures to life, through which he could almost establish, unknowingly, a sort of connection with the islanders, that could easily guess the feelings which the artist poured in his works as he was carving them.

Needless to say, the young man didn’t have friends, but he had plenty of admirers. The lucky ones who were able to catch a glimpse of him during the services were so bewitched that tried to talk to him or to draw his attention by all means, and sent him long letters where they professed their love and manifested the desire to get to know him better, but Roxas, that had always tried to avoid making contact with other people, was totally indifferent to them. He wasn’t ever interested in love or other people, and he thought that it was foolish for total strangers to claim with such lightness having this kind of feelings for someone they barely knew.

Roxas only had eyes for his art and his sculptures, but Aphrodite’s ways to reach someone’s heart were insidious – and that’s when his first love came to life.

He didn’t remember how or when he had bought it, but he ended up with a huge block of marble sitting in a corner of his studio. He immediately felt a stupid to not have noticed sooner such a huge unused block, and the artist came closer to feel its texture. As soon as the tip of his fingers brushed the cold surface, Roxas felt suddenly permeated by a strong inspiration. He took hammer and chisel without even thinking, and let his instinct lead him. For the first time, he felt like his mind had left his body, and let his hands run free on the figure that was desperately trying to emerge from the marble. First came the torso, and then the legs, and as time passed, the body of a human being took shape under the skilled hands of an artist who was becoming more and more curious and eager, like an avid reader that can’t wait to know how the story is going to end.

When Roxas finished, he took a step back to have a better look of his latest work, and hammer and chisel fell from his hands, reverberating in the silence of the room.

He had never seen anything, or rather anyone, more beautiful, and he couldn’t believe that his hands could have created something so stunning. There was a boy carved in marble – judging from his aspect, he was about Roxas’ age – sitting on a tree trunk with the head slightly facing downward. His features were very delicate, and so was his build, lean and firm. A thin branch covered with leaves and little jasmines climbed up his right leg and left forearm, wrapping them in light twirles, and a flower crown was barely sticking out from his unruly and messy hair.

The boy’s body was dressed in a light robe, similar to his own, while his hands were both placed on the sides of the trunk, as if they were supporting the boy’s weight. And his face. Roxas couldn’t find the words to describe the other’s face. He had a peaceful expression of a unique sweetness, the lips were full and curved in a gentle smile, and he had such an intense look to pierce right through the artist’s heart, who felt defenseless and stolen at the same time, and Roxas cursed with his all his might what had caught the boy’s attention and that was keeping him to lay his eyes on him.

He had sculptured so many nymphs in his short life, but if they would have been real as people rumored, he was sure that they would have turned pale and run away from the shame at the sight of a so perfect creature.

How could they state with such lightness to feel strong feelings for someone they barely knew? And inanimate, no less? Roxas had now found the answer.

Since the mysterious boy had been freed from the marble and had entered his life, mind and heart, Roxas couldn’t sculpt no more. The young man sat on a chair and contemplated the sculpture all day long, imagining a possible life, a possible voice and a possible name.

“What’s your name?” he asked him at first, right after he got over the bewilderment and was able to connect the brain to the mouth. The statue, of course, kept quiet, and Roxas had to remind himself that if it didn’t answer was because it couldn’t, and not because it didn’t want to talk to him. But he could swear on all of Apollo’s arrows that when he averted his eyes from the work, the mysterious boy smiled to him, and when he drew closer to the other’s chest, he could hear a heart beating, and no, it wasn’t his own that he could feel thundering in his ears that was confusing him. That sculpture was alive, and Roxas wouldn’t have let the truth of the matter crush him.

That’s how the young artist started talking to the sculpture. He told him stories (“You’ll never guess what Aesop has come up with this time! A hare and a turtle, can you believe it?”), he played the lyre for him, he talked about his art and how he didn’t feel like such a great genius, because he was just sort of doing what he liked, people were probably overestimating his skills and that was why he couldn’t understand all that interest towards him. His parents were always busy in long travels, with the aim of selling and making his works known all over the world – as much as he was grateful to them and perfectly understood their good intentions to make of his passion a living, his art was keeping him away from both his parents and the others. He felt so frail and unsure, and since he couldn’t establish relationships with people, he started to surround himself with statues to prevent loneliness somehow.

“Talking to you is so easy, I can be myself. To you I’m not ‘the great sculptor’, ‘Apollo’s favorite’ or ‘the one that shines like the sun’. You don’t know how much it means to me” he told the statue, flashing out a big smile. But the statue didn’t reply, it would never do that. Realization assaulted him vehemently, and the boy broke down and cried with his head in the hands.

Although it looked like he wanted to make fun of him with that sweet smile, the mysterious boy made him feel so vulnerable – and yet, Roxas couldn’t help but fall madly in love with him.

“I love you. Please, say something, anything.”

Days passed and Roxas slowly stopped eating, speaking, doing anything else that wasn’t sitting on that chair and stare at the statue by day, and by night he couldn’t sleep at all. The pain of an impossible love and the hope that his love could start talking to him were keeping him awake, numbing him. But if there was something that had actually changed on the expression of the sculpture, it was the smile, that was gradually fading. Or maybe not. Roxas didn’t know, he couldn’t be sure about anything anymore.

The islanders started worrying. It had been so long, too long that they didn’t see his new works, and Roxas didn’t show up during Apollo’s celebration days. The boldest of them had knocked on his door to make sure that nothing serious had happened to him, but Roxas never opened.

One day, tired of begging the statue, he started praying his god. He prayed every minute, every moment, Roxas constantly prayed Apollo to do something. The artist asked him to rip his heart out, to take back his talent to not suffer any longer, to turn him into a statue if he couldn’t give life to the other, or to end that torture, because he couldn’t live like that anymore.

It was after the umpteenth prayer that Roxas got up from the chair and got closer to the statue. He bent down a little and caressed his face tenderly. He whispered “I beg you, don’t make me give up on you”, and kissed it.

Despite the love he felt for the sculpture, Roxas had never kissed it. It was just a statue, after all, and as far as he knew the truth in his heart, having any kind of contact with that cold stone would have been a further and useless confirmation of what he was stubbornly denying. But he was now desperate, and as much as he didn’t want to admit it, the harsh reality was getting the best of him. At that point, what else could he lose?

But, for who knows what absurd reason, the marble wasn’t as cold as he had expected it to be. He probably had gone mad (and this time for good), or maybe the warmth of his lips was warming the stone, but the other’s lips felt like they were getting warmer and even softer. He started to think that Apollo had listened to his prayers and was having him dead, and Roxas couldn’t have been more grateful to his god – He was granting him death in the sweetest way possible.

The artist kissed him a second time, then a third, and he felt the lips of the statues getting warmer and warmer, more real. His breath was starting to die in his throat, the legs couldn’t hold his weight anymore and the eyes stayed perfectly sealed, as he was scared of breaking who knows what spell if he had opened them.

He realized he was dead the moment he felt hands holding his face and lips moving and kissing him back with the same passion and heat, if not greater.

“Roxas, please open your eyes” a voice begged him in a whisper, the loveliest he had ever heard. From the tone he noticed that his owner was making a great effort, as if he didn’t want to break the kiss. Those lips now so familiar actually got back kissing him desperately, while the hands moved from the face to bury themselves in his blond hair.

Roxas, as he took a breath, felt the intense smell of jasmines invade his senses, and the other’s taste was making its way on his lips and his tongue.

“Roxas” he called again, but as much as the boy was begging him, the sculptor wouldn’t have let himself being deceived. He knew far too well what happened to Orpheus when he had turned back to look at his wife one step away from the exit of the Underworld, and he wasn’t stupid enough to make the same mistake.

“If I open my eyes you’ll disappear, won’t you?” he asked, pressing his lips against the other’s to make sure he was still there with him.

“Now that I can be with you? I don’t think so” the boy answered, kissing him back once again, “please look at me, open your eyes.”

And Roxas did. His eyes met immediately the other’s, now empty no more, but deep and blue like the sky, and his look moved on the boy’s features, on his sunkissed skin and the freckles that graciously decorated his face, shoulders and arms, on the red and slightly moist lips and on a raw white straight teeth exposed by a huge grin.

The hair was brown and messy, and Roxas reached out to caress it and feel its softness. He moved his hand on the other’s face, to feel the warmth of those ligthly flushed cheeks, as the other one, that was holding the boy’s hand, let go and slowly slid on his left forearm, touching gently the thin branch covered with white jasmines and bright green leaves that was wrapping it, reminding of the entwined crown hidden by his hair.

“You are beautiful, you know that?”

“Me? Well, thanks, but you’re the one that made me like this. You, instead! You are so beautiful that you look like a god, you’re literally the light of my eyes.”

The boy chuckled, a bit embarrassed, and Roxas found him adorable. But the smile faded from his lips and he gave the artist a look full of sorrow.

“I’m sorry. For everything. You don’t know how much I suffered watching you like that, how much I wanted to tell you that you weren’t alone. But I was just a statue, I didn’t know what to do…”

“I love you.”

The other was taken aback, astonished.

“You can’t interrupt someone’s apologies by declaring your love like this, that’s not fair! But I love you too.”

The two of them laughed and he took advantage of that to place another tender kiss on the sculptor’s lips.

“I still don’t know your name. Can you tell me?” Roxas asked, smiling.

“I don’t have one, but you could give me a name! Something that reminds of yours, though, maybe mixing the letters a little and taking out some of them, what do you think? It may sound stupid, I know that, but…”

“What about Sora?”

“Sora?” the boy thought about it for a moment, “Yes! Yes, I like it, you can call me that” Sora decided, showing off a smile so bright that Roxas was nearly blinded by it.

He really was his light. Sora had found him when he needed him the most, had took down the wall of statues that he had created and was able to expose all of his vulnerability. And he was there, with him, and Roxas couldn’t wait to show him the real world, to teach him everything he didn’t know, to figure out new things together and live with him out of that block of marble, out of that house.

As they were intensely looking in the eyes, madly in love, Roxas’ look was suddenly drawn to a mark imprinted under Sora’s right lobe. A little sun painted in red, the same one that was engraved on the bracelets that the artist used to wear to honor Apollo, and the boy smiled. He really was the god’s favorite.

Not so much time had passed, and the islanders were finally back to admire Roxas’ marvelous works of art. His garden was now full of statues even more beautiful, more real than before, and they noticed with peculiar interest and curiosity that the subjects were all paired, now. There were pairs of dogs, cats, birds on the verge of spreading their wings. Pairs of boys and girls so real that they radiated all the happiness and love they felt for each other, and people often stood perfectly still by the works, eyes widened, as if they were the true statues, avoiding to blink and hoping to be able to grasp the slightest of kisses.

Thank you for reading this fic, let me know if you liked it! That would make me so happy

Here’s the link to ao3: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18149819

#kingdom hearts #soroku #roxas #sora #ancient greece au #pygmalion and galatea au #roxas is a talented sculptor #sora is the statue #kissing #otp #fan fiction #my writing

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haught0pocket · 6 years

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Ficwritersweek Day 5

Day 5: Verbatim - Share some of your favorite quotes from the fics you’ve read or written.

So, I’m going to attempt to get some peeps in here that I haven’t mentioned yet.

Once again, it’s going to be quite long. So, once again, just chopping it off right here.

First up is from Knowing, by BaggerHeda (not sure if they have a tumblr!)

Waverly had started tracing light sweeping lines over the bones of Nicole’s body, drawing circles around her joints with gentle hands. Her mind wandered, deep and easy, with Nicole the centerpoint of all the far-flung details passing through her thoughts. She was visualizing half-remembered pages of an old anatomy text, skeletal structures, ghosts of annotated diagrams floating under her fingertips, imagination projected onto flawless pale skin. Learning the complex layers of her lover. “Lie on your side,” she said. “Hold still.”

“Bossy,” smiled Nicole, rolling up.

Waverly continued her journey over the body, her lips moving as she traveled, silently naming each part as she arrived, each bone, each muscle. Nicole watched her, fascination shining plain on her face, asking, “What are you doing?”

“Looking at you,” she replied. So much pleasure in the knowing. The knowing of the names of things, the knowing of how Nicole responded to the touch.

Ohhh, this is so godamn romantic and real and beautiful! Waverly - just examining and admiring Nicole, all of her, is such an incredible idea. And written by BaggerHeda, it’s a work of art. It’s the Sistine Chapel on a page. It’s what artists of old mused over when they sculpted stunning figures out of marble.

It’s just ... it’s art.

Next is a piece by @tigerlo , who destroys me and puts me back together again with every word she writes. This one comes from inside, an echo:

Her eyes are soft and concerned, but she’s smiling at the sight of Waverly, too, and Waverly can’t help but smile back like her chest is full of stars.

It’s strange, their interaction this time. It feels different .

Something has changed .

Because Waverly often feels shy around Nicole, but this is something else, and Waverly thinks she knows why.

Because there’s something between them now and they both know it. Even if Nicole doesn’t know things with Champ are over for sure, although Waverly thinks she can feel it, especially now.

Things feel different.

Neither one has actually said anything, but Waverly knows that’s just a matter of time now, once she can work up the courage. It’s just a matter of time before something happens.

Because the wool blanket around her shoulders is keeping the chill off, but it’s Nicole’s smile across the freezing distance between them that’s keeping her warm.

She half draws Chrissy inside, but she glances back up at Nicole, blushing when she catches her watching still, and she gives Nicole a little wave. It’s hesitant and almost cripplingly shy, but it means more than the others have.

Nicole smiles back and Waverly looks down and she means to turn inside, but she can’t help looking for Nicole once more, like she needs one more breath of air before a descent underwater.

She looks up and that rope pulls and Nicole is watching her in a way that Waverly’s never seen before, but she thinks she knows what it means regardless, and it stops her heart.

Because she looks like she could be falling in love.

I know, that’s a really long quote. But if we’re being honest, I could copy and paste every. single. line. from tiger’s works. I am not exaggerating.

The special thing about this one is that it really enhances the canon wayhaught relationship. It adds so much to what we see on screen. That’s the beautiful thing about tiger - her works add to the canon world, so very much.

Last, but certainly not least, is a piece by @tinyvariations called missing time:

The noise is delicate, more suggestion than reality, like an apparition, a ghost that flits in and out of the periphery, lacking shape and substance and all manner of things. The kind of sound that makes one question whether or not they heard anything at all.

Except for Waverly Earp, that is.

It’s a testament to the human body, to the survival mechanisms inherent in the human brain that one can attune oneself, so to speak, to the environmental stimuli that matter, to turn the volume up or down, to fiddle with the world’s contrast or dim the brightness as needed.

Mothers - or sisters, as the case may be - who wake in the dead of night from a deep slumber, bolting upright in bed and holding their breaths until they hear it again, the sound of the baby girl down the hall crying softly in her bed, another nightmare taking its toll.

A girl living alone in a one-room apartment over the town’s watering hole, the railroad tracks visible through the dirt-streaked windows along the wall. Day after day, night after night the train click clacks its way through the deserted streets of Purgatory, its bellowing horn shattering the somnolent stillness, rattling the windows in their frames on its journey. But she sleeps on, her ears dismissing the familiar sound as neutral. As unimportant, unworthy of attention.

Or a father with the uncanny ability to suss out alcohol in the world around him, to hear the crack of a can or the plink of a bottle cap being removed at a mile away. And the weakness to chase after it every time.

And so it is that when her phone trills, the sprightly glissando signalling receipt of a new text message muffled and distorted under a veritable mountain of clothes, Waverly still hears it clearly, and her heartstrings echo, an instantaneous slide up the scale.

The noise repeats itself, and her heart jolts another octave.

Nicole.

Okay. OKAY. Listen. I really tried to choose something shorter. But. DID YOU READ THAT?!??? HOLY. SHIT.

Every time I read something from tinyvariations, I am blown. away. with the Shakespearean like knowledge of the English language and just how to use those words so effectively. It’s prose, all of it, every damn word. The descriptions always make me stop and go “this is what words were made for.”

I know... you want one more. I know it. So here it is. This is from valley; low by wrackwonder (who I don’t believe is on tumblr...)

“You went scuba diving?” All thoughts of the sky disappeared. The closest Waverly had been to scuba diving was a worn-out VHS copy of The Little Mermaid she had found in Willa’s closet. Nicole had seen and done so much. Waverly had barely left the front porch. “Yeah, saw sharks and turtles, it was incredible.”

Waverly was about to ask for more details when the last candle flickered out, casting the room in sudden, inky darkness. She gasped, surprised, and that’s when Nicole scooted forward, her side coming into contact with Waverly’s side. In the blackness, Waverly could just make out the shape of Nicole, her silhouette, the only light coming from the occasional flashes of lightening outside. For all she knew, she could be in bed with a stranger. For all she knew, she could be in bed with the love of her life. Her heart thumped loudly.

“At first it can be so scary,” Nicole’s breath brushed past Waverly’s shoulder, across her chest, and her skin erupted into gooseflesh.

“People really aren’t supposed to be underwater, we’re not made for it, so it takes a few seconds for the body to get used to the shock.”

There were fingers tracing patterns across Waverly’s ribcage, electric touches that went right to Waverly’s core.

“The first thing is your ears, because the water fills up everything, every crevice.” With her index finger, Nicole made a line across Waverly’s abdomen, from one hip to the other. Waverly’s fingers balled into the sheets.

Give me a minute. I’ll expand. Just hold on.

.....

Okay. WW pairs the imagery of scuba diving with the action of Nicole and Waverly making love, and it is so. powerful. Everything means more. Every word has a depth to it that it wouldn’t have without this incredible picture of being submerged in water. It’s magical, really. It’s just magic...

Writer

Not even doing it. There’s enough. If you really like something I wrote, and you feel compelled to let me know - awesome! But, I’m stopping (... for now ......)

#ficwritersweek #day 5 #verbatim #well this is a bit long #I'm just super passionate #about the fics I love #wayhaught fic recs

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robotnik-mun · 7 years

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Robotnik Art Historia- Part Four: Age of the Eggman

Welcome one and all to the Robotnik Art Historia, where we examine the visual depictions of Robotnik over the years! Well beautiful friends, we’re close to the end here, and it’s rather appropriate given that the particular ‘era’ of the books covered here is where things really began to end for the old Robotnik, with a new Robotnik emerging to take the place of the old- Robo-Robotnik, an early one shot villain, who after devastating his own Mobius was moving in to the current one in order to re-live the thrill of conquest. Uploading his consciousness into a body modeled after the modernized Eggman design from Sonic Adventure, he would take over as central villain to the book, and usher in a time when SEGA would finally start exerting more and more control over the book in order to align things more closely to the games, having decided that they wanted a more consistent depiction of their mascot and his world. To sound off that declaration, an adaptation of Sonic Adventure would become the first major plot after issue 75. Afterwards came what I like to call ‘The Dark Ages’.

Now, for each person, when and why ‘The Dark Ages’ started up is a matter of interpretation. Personally, I place the deterioration of things as happening after the Sonic Adventure adaptation finished- this is era that would give us Green Knuckles, the Love Triangle, Freedom Fighters In School, and the thrice accursed art of Ron Lim (more on him below). It was an age of uneven storytelling and even more uneven art. Yet despite having long since been permanently killed off, Robotnik managed to linger on all the same. Fittingly, this era would feature some of the crappiest art of Robotnik yet, and at the same time would signal his temporary return to the books... in what was probably one of the worst Sonic issues ever.

19. Chris Allan

A former regular on the Archie Ninja Turtles comic, Chris Allan theoretically should have been a perfect fit for the book, having demonstrated more than enough skill in drawing anthropmorphic animals that would qualify him to handle Sonic. Unfortunately, Allan was a rather prominent example of what I call ‘Sonic Complacency Syndrome’- it’s when an otherwise skilled and competent artist’s abilities turn to complete shit when they try to do Sonic. It has felled more than a few, and serves as a good illustration as to why it takes effort to do this shit right- Allan’s Mobians were poorly, poorly executed, and try as he might he could never quite get them right. He was selected to illustrate the ‘Tales of the Great War’ stories, which helped to flesh out the (underwhelming) details of the Great War and how Robotnik came to be Warlord. While his Mobians were sub-par, he managed to do a pretty good job with Robotnik. There was nothing in particular that stood out about his take on the guy, but given how the rest of his work ‘stood out’, that’s prolly for the best.

19. Frank Strom

Frank Strom’s enduring legacy on the Sonic Book was the creation of the Dragon Kingdom and all the characters associated with it, including the infamous Monkey Khan. Frank Strom before working on Sonic was heavily involved with DC’s Looney Tunes comics as a writer, and worked extensively in Adult Comics. When it came to drawing for Sonic, he was.... not really all that good, at least when it came to Mobians. He had more luck with humans, including Robotnik, and was among the few to draw the guy before he had the bionic earsa nd eyes. While there is nothing especially bad about how he drew Robotnik, there’s something very... off, about the way he looks. Bit of an uncanny valley thing going on there. And as many before him did, Strom is yet another to draw Robotnik with a bulbous nose. Out of all the features that artists drawing the guy seem to mess up, it’s more often than not its his nose- which is ironic, given that this design has the least exaggerated nose out of any Robotnik and Eggman out there.

20. Suzanne Paddock

Susan Paddock is a bit of a mystery- she has only two Sonic works to her name, only one of them being a proper story, and I can’t really find much of anything about her career outside of the hedgehog. Still, the one story she illustrated for was perhaps one of the most out there ideas in all of the book- a story where Sonic winds up in a rules obsessed zone and has to clear his name with the help of a lawyer Sally Acorn called “Sally McAcorn”. Yeah, that’s not dated or anything (for those of you who weren’t children of the 90s, Fox in those days had a comedy tinged lawyer show called ‘Ally McBeal’, best known for birthing the ‘dancing baby’ meme of the early internet).

Anyway, Paddock’s art style in general was really weird, and her depiction of Robotnik was no different- in this Zone an AI called ‘J.U.D.G.’, at some point in the past there was an organic Robotnik, and just... look at him. He has teeny tiny T-rex arms! And his body looks like it was glued onto his legs! Damn this was a weird ass story, and I’m still not clear if it was meant to be implied that the past Robotnik became J.U.D.G.E or not... yeah in addition to being weird, this was a crappy story in general. It was also the last time Robotnik in any form would appear in a Super Special, as between this stinker and the even worse ‘Naugus Games’ the line was cancelled.

21. J. Axer

Jeffrey Axer was one of a number of artists on the book who started out as a fanartist, and easily one of the most well regarded- bringing to the book an incredibly detailed anime-influenced aesthetic, he was responsible for some of the most gorgeous artwork to grace the early 2000s era of the book. Which is why its such a crying shame that the only times he got to draw Robotnik 1.0 where in a pair of Pro-Art pieces, both of which were miscolored. Seriously, why is it so hard to remember that his eyes are red against black??? Why??? Ah well- Axer’s Robotnik was cool looking, taking much of the SatAM Robotnik and making it fit into the anime aesthetic very nicely. I especially dig the fang-like eye teeth and attention paid to his cheek bones.

22. Ron Lim

Hooo boy, Ron Lim... I still wonder if he was a victim of Sonic Complacency Syndrome or if he just didn’t give a shit. Either way, Lim was a former Marvel hotshot who was particularly well known for his work on Silver Surfer. I am convinced that the reason he got the job at Archie was purely on the basis of having been a big name at Marvel, because lord almighty his artwork was just horrendous. Well, that’s not entirely fair- Ron Lim is in fact a very skilled artist, but the problem was? He was a poor, poor, poor fit at Sonic with a near total inability to even vaguely grasp the kind of style you’d expect for a Sonic book. What was worse though was that despite how awful his work on the book was, Ron Lim stuck around for a long, long time, to such an extent that he was practically the main artist for the book for much of the early 2000s. Yeah, not fun times.

Naturally, his touch of dung extended to his art for Robotnik. Much like Penders, Lim struggled to reconcile the realism he was used to with the toony exaggeration required of the book, and ended up failing on both counts. Ron Lim’s Robotnik as an end result was a stubby, wrinkly looking guy whose appearance made it seem as though he had been sculpted from butter and was in the process of melting. Not helping matters at all was the fact that the story he appeared in was one of the very worst of the series, and a personally despised one. Lim’s Robontik is noteworthy in that it might be the most realistic looking of the various attempts at drawing Robotnik... this however was not a good thing, as much like Penders, Lim’s Robotnik was caught in an awkward area between realism and tooniness, and executing neither well. Still, this wasn’t the worst drawn Robotnik on the book. That distinct honor would go to the next on our list...

23. “Many Hands”

Many Hands. A name which will live in infamy. Okay technically ‘Many Hands’ wasn’t a person but a bunch of people, but twice this name has popped up and twice the end result was just odious. Look at this. Just... look at this. Do I really have to explain why this is awful? He looks like a deflated baloon, his shoulder pads are all wrong, and the coloring and shading is just *garish*. This is probably the worst drawn Robotnik in the entire series, and given all the shitty art that came before and after that’s REALLY saying something.

24. Dawn Best

Another of the ‘New Wave’ of fanartists-turned-pro that hit the book in the early 2000s, Dawn Best was a much anticipated addition to the books, having made a name for herself in fan circles as a superb artist. She showed a great deal of promise, much of which was unfortunately squandered thanks to Ken Penders’ absolutely abominable inks making a hash out of the bulk of her art. While he slowly improved down the line, the damage was done. Regardless, Best remained pretty popular. She only managed to draw Robotnik once- her take on Robotnik was an especially chunky and brutish looking specimen, with a shaggier and more unkempt mustache than most. As I say far too often than I like, its a shame we could not have seen more from her... both regarding Robotnik and in general.

And thus we bring this chapter of the Historia to a close. Well friends, it’s the beginning of the end now- after this there will only be one last post to this artist retrospective, as we exit the Dark Age of the book and enter into what was a bright and shiny renaissance- the Flynn Era!

#Sonic the Hedgehog #Archie #Robotnik Art Historia

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forcedoctor-a-blog · 7 years

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About Masterpost

TAGGED BY: @mynameisanakin

RULES: Post a song that reminds you of your muse!

Getsumei Fuuei--Mika Arisaka

WHAT ARE YOUR MUSE’S AESTHETICS?

[COLORS] red. brown. orange. yellow. green. blue. purple. pink. black. white. teal. silver. gold. grey. lilac. metallic. matte. royal blue. strawberry red. charcoal grey. forest green. apple red. navy blue. crimson. cream. mint green. grey green. [ELEMENTS] fire. ice. water. air. earth. rain. snow. wind. moon. stars. sun. heat. cold. steam. frost. lightning. sunlight. moonlight. dawn. dusk. twilight. midnight. sunrise. sunset. dewdrops. [BODY] claws. long fingers. fangs. teeth. wings. tails. lips. bare feet. freckles. bruises. canine. scars (mental; physical). scratches. wounds. burns. spikes. feathers. webs. eyes. hands. sweat. tears. feline. chubby. curvy. short. tall. normal height. muscular. piercing. tattoos. [WEAPONS] fists. sword. dagger. spear. arrow. hammer. shield. whips. poison. guns. axes. throwing axes. whips. knives. throwing knives. pistol. pepper sprays. tasers. machine guns. slingshots. katanas. maces. staffs. wands. powers. magical items. magic. rocks. mud balls. words. bat. [MATERIALS] gold. silver. platinum. brass. copper. lead. diamonds. pearls. rubies. sapphires. emeralds. amethyst. metal. iron. rust. steel. glass. wood. porcelain. paper. wool. fur. lace. leather. silk. velvet. denim. linen. cotton. charcoal. clay. stone. asphalt. brick. marble. dust. glitter. blood. dirt. mud. smoke. ash. shadow. carbonate. rubber. synthetics. [NATURE] grass. leaves. trees. bark. roses. daisies. tulips. lavender. petals. thorns. seeds. hay. sand. rocks. roots. flowers. river. meadow. lake. forest. desert. tundra. savanna. rainforest. caves. underwater. coral reef. beach. waves. space. clouds. mountains. [ANIMALS] lions. wolves. eagles. owls. falcons. hawks. swans. snakes. turtles. ducks. bugs. spiders. birds. whales. dolphins. fish. sharks. horses. cats. dogs. bunnies. praying mantises. crows. mice. lizards. unicorns. pegasus. dragons. rats. [FOODS/DRINKS] sugar. salt. candy. bubblegum. bread. wine. champagne. hard liquor. beer. coffee. tea. spices. herbs. apple. orange. lemon. cherry. strawberry. watermelon. vegetables. fruits. meat. fish. pies. condensed milk. desserts. chocolate. cream. caramel. berries. nuts. cinnamon. burgers. burritos. pizza. rice. ambrosia. soup. stew. [HOBBIES] music. art. watercolors. gardening. smithing. sculpting. painting. sketching. fighting. writing. composing. meditation. cooking. sewing. training. dancing. acting. singing. martial arts. self-defense. electronics. technology. cameras. video cameras. video games. computer. phone. movies. theater. libraries. books. magazines. cds. records. cassettes. piano. violin. guitar. electronic guitar. bass guitar. harmonica. harp. woodwinds. brass. bells. percussion. playing cards. poker chips. chess. dice. mahjong. motorcycle riding. eating. climbing. running. [STYLE] lingerie. armor. cape. dress. tunic. vest. shirt. boots. heels. leggings. trousers. jeans. skirt. jewelry. earrings. necklace. bracelet. rings. pendant. hat. ballcap. crown. circlet. helmet. scarf. brocade. cloaks. corsets. doublet. chest plate. robes. bracers. belt. sash. coat. jacket. hood. gloves. socks. masks. cowls. braces. watches. glasses. sunglasses. visor. eye contacts. makeup. [MISC] balloons. bubbles. cityscape. light. dark. candles. war. peace. money. power. clocks. photos. mirrors. pets. diary. fairy lights. madness. sanity. grief. happiness. optimism. realism. pessimism. legacy. loneliness. family. friends. assistants. co-workers. enemies. loyalty. smoking. drugs. kindness. love. hugs.

You can tell a lot about a person by the music they listen to. Put your mp3 player, itunes, spotify, etc. on shuffle & list the first 10 songs & then tag 10 people, no skipping!

((all my cloud stuff was unauthorized on this comp, so I only got the stuff I put on itunes manually in the playlist))

1. Fuushun--Kunihiko Hari 2. NOW I KNOW (Yuu Miyake Remix)--Shihoko Hirata 3. Your Affection (Daisuke Asakura Remix)--Shihoko Hirata 4. Kuni ~ Touhou Reiin (Traditional Version)--Kunihiko Ryo 5. Genkou Shinsou--Kunihiko Ryo 6. Getsumei Fuuei (slow version)--Kunihiko Hari 7. Like a dream come true ("NEVER MORE"P4D-EDIT ver.)--Atsushi Kitajoh 8. Choukuun--Kunihiko Ryo 9. Junigenmukyoku (piano solo)--Kunihiko Hari 10. Kehai-Yakudou--Kunihiko Hari

Last Movie I Watched: – I don’t even know Last Song I Listened To: Beneath the Mask--Shoji Meguro Last Book I Read: something about a quilt? Last Thing I Ate: candy If You Could Be Anywhere Right Now:in bed, sleeping Fictional Character You Would Hang Out With For A Day: why would a fictional character, who would naturally be famous, hang out with someone like me? Tagged by: @mynameisanakin Tagging: I dunno, people.

#ooc #memes #about the mun #about the muse #stuff

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raimon-as · 5 years

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CINE1102: Research Portfolio

Introduction

This portfolio analyses all of the research I have made, which are accompanied by annotations on why I made those design choices and what was working well and what wasn’t, as well as any changes that I have made to my project based on what feedback and what I thought wasn’t working well. Along with the research, this portfolio also contains large amounts of experimentations in Unreal Engine, which I will be showing multiple examples through images or videos.

In this assignment, we were asked to form groups and come up with an idea and create and animation based on that idea. The idea we have agreed on revolves around pollution in the ocean caused by plastic; we wanted to create something that had meaning is a serious topic because our goal in this project is to not only create a beautiful animation, but also to raise awareness on what plastic is doing to our oceans.

We are also required to create a research portfolio on an idea for an animated product that focuses on any recognised specialist area of the animation process. The role I have chosen to focus on is being the Unreal Engine developer because I had a lot of fun in working on Unreal Engine last year in Games Design Principles and would love to continue working on it this year for this project.

Since our idea is based around oceans, I would need to do a lot of research to be able to create a realistic and accurate water simulations because although I am already comfortable using UE4, I have never created an underwater scene before so I immediately looked at tutorials about creating underwater scenes in Unreal as well as looking at oceans in general for reference so that I could carefully study the ocean, its movements and everything it entails. I bookmarked any related video that I could potentially use in the future and watch them when working on the next element.

Roles:

Maninderpal Rajbansh – Pre-Production Artist/Animation Director

Benedict Kpaku – Character Artist/Designer

Eduardo Gal – Secondary Character Artist/Story Designer

Maris Zaharevics – Environment Artist/Designer

Raimon Wenz – Unreal Engine Developer

Darren Pagado – FX Artist/Lighting

Samuel Fagboyegun – Sound Designer

Callum Watt – Sound Designer/Supporting Environment Artist

Mood Board

I searched online for various images and possible reference points for my initial draft of the underwater scenery and put them together to create a mood board. I chose different types of images related to the ocean and most of these helped me during the early stages of the project.

1: Polluted Ocean

I added this image of a dying/dead coral reef here because that’s what the environment of our animation is going to be due to the pollution caused by plastic. I was mainly interested in the colour scheme of this image; it had that ‘gloomy’ feel to it so I wanted to capture that in my scene by having that same colour palette of bluish-grey hues to amplify the effect that pollution has on the ocean which would not be achieved by having a colourful coral reef or a colourful environment in general.

2 & 4: God Rays

Although the god rays are more on Darren’s side of work, I still added these to my mood board. Since I am the person who is in charge of putting everything together in Unreal, I will also need to look around the different areas of Unreal that Darren is doing (which are mainly particle effects and lighting) because it is important for me to know how they will look so that I will be able to determine whether they fit into my scene and if they don’t then I can adjust the values to make them more suitable and more compatible with the rest of the UE4 project. #4 also includes bubbles, which Darren is also creating so I wanted to see how bubbles look underwater when being shined on by light from the sun.

3 & 5:��Caustics

I am also creating the caustics which is why I needed to look at reference images and place them into my mood board to see how they look when being reflected onto the ocean floor, mainly sand. I also included an image of caustics being applied to a moving subject, which in this case is a sea turtle, which is perfect since the main character in our animation is also a sea turtle.

6: Plastic Bag in a Coral Reef

At first glance, it appears that the blob-shaped object on the left is just a jellyfish but after closer inspection, it is a plastic bag that is floating in the ocean and it merely resembles a jellyfish. I thought that this was interesting due to the glance value it has; while brainstorming, an idea was brought up where we could have a scene where we have a silhouette of a coral reef or a marine creature in the distance but once approached, would turn out to be plastics that are clustered together to form the shape of a marine creature or a coral reef and this image is a perfect example for that idea.

7 & 8: Ocean Waves

Waves are an important factor of any ocean scene so I made sure that I would be doing research on waves and looking for references for different types of waves and deciding which kind of wave would work for our scene; perhaps maybe use stronger waves during the climax of the story? And also perhaps use calm waves on scenes where our main character is simply just exploring the ocean. I will need to take these different scenarios in mind when choosing what height/colour/intensity of waves to use in different scenes of our animation.

Post-Processing

The post process volume arguably has the biggest impact on making a realistic underwater scene because it’s what gives the screen a blue hue to simulate water as well as having other nice effects such as depth of field, specular bloom, ambient occlusion, lens flares and more, which is why I will most likely be focusing on this factor the most in this project so that I could get the perfect balance and correct values in order to create a convincing underwater scene.

To start things off, I sculpted a placeholder landscape and moulded it to make it look like the land around a lake - although our idea was set in the ocean, this was just a first draft so I wanted to create something small just to see how things would look together and how doable this idea actually is in Unreal. I also added a Rock Basalt material that is found in the Starter Content provided by Epic to the landscape so that it wasn’t just a monotonous colour.

The next step in creating my underwater scene was to add the “water”; In order to create a convincing illusion of being underwater, I added a post-process volume into the scene and played around with the colour values for a couple of minutes to get that right shade of blue I wanted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5UKw_Crlr4

(Matt Taylor, 2016)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr5BDGahdEA

(Gamedev1909, 2015)

I mainly watched these two tutorials to help me create my water volume and I combined some parts from one video to the other to achieve the effect I wanted and also to see which values they used for the different variables and played around with those values to see if they would have an improvement. Matt Taylor also had other videos on his channel which have other factors that would further make the scene look more realistic which I also used for some of the sections that I will be talking about below.

Depth of Field

“Depth of field is the effect in which objects within some range of distances in a scene appear in focus, and objects nearer or farther than this range appear out of focus.”

(Joe Demers, 2007)

I added depth of field because during the animation, there will be some parts where the viewer’s attention should be targeted towards the sea turtle, so adding depth of field would be a good way to blur out the coral reef in the background and focus more on the turtle to give the scene a better sense of depth, but want to achieve a good balance in the blur strength as I prefer effects to be subtle since I will be combining multiple effects at once and I don’t want to overload the viewers with on-screen effects.

One of the main things that I noticed from those two tutorials above was that their depth of field values were too high and was causing everything to look very blurry, which is not the result I wanted so I reset the depth of field values and set my own values in the parameters and also tried out the other depth of field methods since they were using the GaussianDOF (which was too strong for my liking) and I wanted to see if the difference between each method. I liked the BokehDOF the most since the blur wasn’t too strong and it was only a subtle effect, which I really liked. These values will change over the coming months as I continue to play around with the values since I tend to always change the values of parameters every now and then to try and get a better effect, so the values I have above aren’t permanent.

Screen Distortion

youtube

I also added a subtle screen distortion to the post processing volume which gives the screen this slight wobble effect to further help simulate the feeling of being underwater. The values can easily be changed in the blueprints which I will be changing on and off during some parts of the final animation to prevent odd looking scenes e.g. when the camera is focused on the turtle.

The screen distortion effect is only a material and it was applied to the screen by adding it as an array element to the post processing material, which means that it covers the whole screen as long as the camera is within the post process volume.

Although it isn’t really an important feature to add in the underwater scene, I really liked the effect and like the subtle impact it had but I might turn off this effect during some scenes in the cinematic, especially when the camera is focused on the sea turtle character we have since we don’t want to distort it’s shape and it might be a bit too distracting once the turtle is moving around the environment and will most likely only be kept once the turtle is off screen and the camera is just moving around the ocean. I will have to wait for Ben to finish creating an animated turtle before I can test the impact that the screen distortion material will have on the turtle, but am in no rush to do so as it is only a small, subtle effect, so I want to prioritise other more important areas first and test the bigger factors in the scene, such as the waves.

Comparison

The post processing volume’s impact on the scene is clearly shown in the image above because with it turned off, there is no connection between that image and an ocean and it looks like a completely different environment but with it on, it looks a lot more like it is set underwater, although there are still a couple of things missing like the caustics and the waves but it is a good start so far.

Fluid Dynamics/Water Physics

Waves are one of the first things you see when you are in an open body of water so in order to create a convincing underwater scene, I wanted the water plane to be one of my priorities in this project. To do this, I will need to do more in depth research about fluid dynamics and water physics to create something that’s accurate and visually appealing.

(Mia Shargill, 2018)

A friend of mine recently went to a beach in Lanzarote, Spain so I asked her to take some pictures of the beach and mainly the waves because it would be another good reference point for me when creating water planes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPmRV1Z9ikY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRnKO1z4WZs

(Pub Games, 2014)

To create my initial water plane, I followed Pub Games’ two-part tutorial carefully, but just like I did in the previous tutorials for the water volume, I also played around with the values of the parameters in the nodes of the blueprint to see if I could create something that is more to my liking.

youtube

The recording above shows the water plane from my first draft. It has a spanner node in the blueprints that makes the material move from right to left. This helps it give an effect of moving water and it also has this “rise and fall” movement which can be clearly seen when up close but hard to notice when zoomed out, which improves water simulation.

The texture I am currently using is the “T_Water_N” texture from the “Water Planes” pack that is provided by Epic on the Learning Tab in the lancher and is temporary because there is something about the water plane’s texture and movement that feels a bit “off” to me, but can’t quite pinpoint which is the exact problem so it will be replaced by a different texture in the future.

Gerstner Waves

The water plane I have right now isn’t as good as I want it to be, so I looked online for more water planes to see if I could make something more convincing and realistic. I found a tutorial on YouTube and an article on Nvidia’s forum (GPU Gems) about Gerstner waves and they look much better effect than my current one, which is why I did a bit of research on this topic.

“In fluid dynamics, a trochoidal wave or Gerstner wave is an exact solution of the Euler equations for periodic surface gravity waves. It describes a progressive wave of permanent form on the surface of an incompressible fluid of infinite depth.”

(Wikipedia, 2018)

(Hailey Williams, 2017)

The image on the left shows a sine wave while the image on the right shows a Gerstner wave. A sine wave is a mathematical curve that describes a smooth periodic movement while a Gerstner wave is basically a modified sine wave, just with sharper peaks and flatter valleys and Gerstner waves are used in a lot of CG water and fluid simulations and was theorised by German-Bohemian physicist and engineer, František Josef Gerstner.

(Finch and Worlds, 2007)

There are large amounts of studies and research about Gerstner waves, fluid dynamics and water simulation that revolve around mathematics and physics and I will need to carefully study some of them, although the Math and equations that they use are very hard to understand since my background isn’t in Math, but the diagrams that they include with these equation help me understand them a bit more and I am looking for ways on how to implement these equations into an actual object.

(Hailey Williams, 2017)

After looking at a number of articles and forums, I found this blueprint screenshot on how to apply the Math from the Gerstner wave equation into my project in Unreal. Williams goes step by step through the nodes and talks about how she translated the equation and created a material so I will be looking into her project closely in the future when I change my water plane into one with Gerstner waves.

(Jerry Tessendorf, 2001)

I came accross this incredibly thorough and detailed research by Jerry Tessendorf about simulating ocean water and there in one of the pages, he talks about Gerstner waves and a similar equation is seen her and just like Williams, Tessendorf also explains the equation and splits them into parts to make it easier to understand and to tell us what each parameter means. His report also contains chapters about water volumes, caustics, god rays and Fresnel reflections (which I used in one of the nodes of my water plane material), so I will probably mention him and his research again in the next sections.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ3D0Q5BlOs

(Ryan Brucks, 2017)

While looking more into Gerstner waves, I found this beautiful shader that Ryan Brucks created and it has a very realistic scene the way the water splashes around, the way the waves impacts the rocks and how the water moves in general. I want to achieve this level of realism in my own water plane and I hope to amaze anyone who sees my water simulation the same way I, and lots of people in the comment section on his video were amazed by his work.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y7Z0MbGOMw

(DokipenTech, 2016)

Aside from reading up on the research available online through articles, forums, documentation and more, I also want to actually create something and not just look into the theoretical side of things. To help with this, I plan on watching and recreating the Gerstner waves that YouTube user, DokipenTech has created in Unreal and like the tutorials in the post processing section, I plan on also playing around with the values of the nodes that this material will have and see if I can make any improvements and adjust everything to my liking.

Caustics

(Guardado and Sánchez-Crespo, 2007)

(Jerry Tessendorf, 2001)

Caustics result from light rays reflecting or refracting from a curved surface. They are these subtle white reflections and refractions of light which dance around the seafloor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9KivVEy5Ck

(Dean Ashford, 2017)

To create the first version of my caustics, I followed the video tutorial above and the .gif below was my first attempt at creating caustics.

As you can see, it doesn’t look natural due to its jumpy movements, which isn’t what I wanted at all since I was imagining something that was more flowy, so I looked around for more tutorials and continued watching more tutorials of Matt Taylor as I already watched his first tutorial of a 3-part tutorial for creating an underwater scene (link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8u7GONZzoY).

This tutorial had a much simpler code, yet it was more effective than the previous one and it is a lot smoother and more natural, which I am happy with. I have been tweaking with the values of the caustics too just like I do with every other tutorial-based material I have created to suit my scene better and the main value that I’ve been changing is the contrast and disturbance since these two parameter nodes control how “bright” the caustics are and in the image above, I think it looks a bit too “faded” and slightly unnoticeable but I concluded that it may have been due to the texture of the landscape that was causing that look and I was right because the caustics look a lot better in the improved version, which you can see later in the “Version II” section, especially in the screenshot that’s zoomed in on the sand.

To apply the caustics, I created a deferred decal/decal actor into the scene and placed it onto the scene and it’s boundaries and what is affects can be adjusted by scaling and moving the box (similar to the volume boxes). But unlike the volume boxes, the deffered decal box doesn’t require you or the camera to be inside it’s bounds to be able to see the effects, so I can adjust its scale when the caustics are not needed in the scene - for example, the camera focuses on the turtle but we don’t want any caustics on it, so I can just lower the caustics so that it only affects the ocean floor and not the turtle.

And here you can see a slight difference between the two images if you have caustics on/off, although its only a small one here, but the caustics are much more noticeable in the newest version of the project.

(Evan Wallace, 2011)

Above is a screenshot and a .gif from an interactive water simulation created by Evan Wallace (which can be found here: http://madebyevan.com/webgl-water/), which showcases real time fluid dynamics and caustics that adapt to the movements of the sphere that is on the water’s surface and I found this interesting because of the water plane it uses and the caustic lighting.

(Timothy Cole, 2017)

While doing more research and looking for inspirations and tutorials for better caustics, I came across this beautiful setup made by Timothy Cole; he created this in UE4 using materials just like I did, but his looks much better and although he doesn’t provide a step-by-step tutorial on how he created this, I will strive to replicate caustics of this quality.

“I cheated and broke this light up into 3 lights, slightly offset from each other. Each one has the same material function, but are coloured red green and blue.”

(Timothy Cole, 2017)

His article included a video showing the caustics in motion and the movements were pretty similar to mine, but what makes his the better than mine is that his includes the minor details such as the small rainbow coloured effects that are next to the white light and I would like to mimic that same spectrum breakup and his article says how he did this, so I will be doing that same method.

Cinematics

youtube

I created lots of cinematics in Unreal last year by using the Matinee tool but since I haven’t created any in a few months, I wanted to practice by creating a short cinematic where we explore the underwater scene using two different cameras and camera angles with a quick cut in between them as a transition. I also included one of the sound effects that Sam uploaded on Basecamp.

I am very comfortable using Matinee to create cinematics since I used it a lot for Games Design Principles and Interactive Storytelling last year and have gotten good results by using it, however, the Matinee tool is old and has been a legacy tool for a while now, so I was thinking that I should learn the newer, faster alternative, Sequencer.

Sequencer notably includes the capability for users to drag and drop individual shots and change their order -- like in any other digital film editing tool. Special effects can freely be turned on and off from within the tool, even if they don't appear in the real-time game world. It also allows for multi-person workflows where different users can collaborate more easily on a single cinematic.

(Christian Nutt, 2016)

(Pub Games, 2016)

Based on a few pages I’ve read about Sequencer, it’s not too different from the Matinee tool so it shouldn’t be difficult for me to use it, but since I’ve never used it before, I will still need to watch tutorials like the one above and learn how to use this new tool. Aside from watching tutorials, I will also be reading Unreal’s overview and documentation on how the tool works and how to use it properly.

Aside from learning the technical side of how cinematics work, I will also need to study how other animators create cinematics and I immediately thought of Blizzard’s cinematics; Blizzard creates beautiful cinematics for their game trailers and I would like to achieve that level of calibre as well in my own cinematics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSJr3dXZfcg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ09xdxzIJQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72UbFQO5-m0

(Blizzard Entertainment, 2018)

Among are just a few of the many cinematics that Blizzard has created and they will serve as an inspiration for me, as well as research, since knowing which camera angle to use or how fast the camera is moving around the scene can be an important factor in storytelling e.g. in an emotional scene, I would need to know how close and how fast/slow to zoom in on the character’s face.

Lighting

Although Darren is the one working on the lighting, I will still be the one combining it with the other elements in Unreal and according to American cinematographer who was the director of photography at Pixar:

“Lighting is an important aspect of computer cinematography, in which lights and shadows are used to convey mood and support storytelling.”

(Sharon Calahan, 1999)

Lighting coincides with cinematics and is an important aspect when telling a story, so me and Darren might work closely together for this part of the cinematic, but of course since it’s his role, I will let him be in charge of the lighting and only intervene once adding lighting to the cinematic made in Sequencer as I’ll need his opinions on what lighting works best with the particular scene.

Ray Tracing

I recently purchased the Nvidia Geforce RTX 2070 and the main selling points of the RTX cards is that they have advanced real-time raytracing and I plan on using that technology in our animation for better lighting and shadows to improve its photorealism.

(Nvidia, 2018)

As Epic Games observes:

Renderers tend to use one of two methods for determining pixel color: rasterization or ray tracing. Rasterization starts with a particular pixel and asks, “What color should this pixel be?” Ray tracing works from the viewing angle and light sources and asks, “What is the light doing?”

Ray tracing works by tracing the path of a light ray as it bounces around a scene. Each time a ray bounces, it mimics real-life light by depositing color from earlier objects it has struck, and also loses intensity. This depositing of color makes the sharp reflections and subtle, realistic color variations that, for certain types of materials and effects, can only be achieved with ray tracing.

Because it mimics light’s real behavior, ray tracing also excels at producing area shadows and ambient occlusion. (Epic Games, 2018)

The text above explains how ray tracing works in more detail and also added images from Nvidia to visualise how ray tracing works. Although Nvidia and Epic have confirmed that Unreal Engine will be supporting RTX cards and make use of it’s tech in its next version (UE4 4.22), there is no official announcement yet for it’s release date, but there have been rumours on forums about it being planned to be released by the end of the year and once it is released, I would love to see if I could apply this to our animation and see if it makes it look more visually appealing.

(NVIDIA GeForce, 2018)

Shown above is a comparison taken from in-game footage of RTX being used in Battlefield V and shows what ray tracing can do in a scene; to me to image on the left where RTX is on makes the scene more ‘alive’ and makes the flames seem more real due to the reflections on the car.

Version II

Since the project I showed a while ago was just the first draft and was essentially a practice run, I wanted to add a lot of improvements and give a big upgrade to the overall look of my project because the previous one wasn’t quite good enough to my liking and although it had some resemblance to an underwater scene, it certainly wasn’t clear that it was set under the ocean but more as in a lake.

I wanted to create something closer to the images I’ve seen online and those that I’ve seen in person whenever my family goes to the beach in the Philippines during summer and create something that is as realistic and as accurate that my skills and knowledge with Unreal would allow me.

I created a whole new project using elements from my first draft, but adding improvements overall to the scene such as a better post-process volume, caustics, water plane and a newly sculpted landscape which uses a sand material that was created by Maris in Substance Painter.

I based this new scene mainly on the image on the left which was also on my mood board and tried to be as realistic and accurate as I can. I definitely preferred this new version much more than the previous one because not only was I able to create a convincing scene, it also felt like one too.

Here are some more screenshots of the current version in different angles. I have made adjustments on all the previously talked about parts (post-processing, depth of field, screen distortion, water plane, caustics) to make all of them fit in together more and work better as a whole and improve the overall aesthetic.

I plan to continue tweaking the values of the different elements in the project to further improve the looks of this project in order to create a more realistic and accurate water simulation.

Future Plans

For future work, my next step is to add the initial assets created by my group members, mainly the god rays/particle effects that Darren created as well as building the environment by adding corals/rocks that Maris created. We may also consider creating a GitHub repository in a couple of weeks as by then, my other group mates would’ve made much more content, which they may want to add into the project themselves but then be adjusted by me later on to make sure everything fits together perfectly. I plan on finishing this on December.

Aside from that, I will need to look into perhaps adding a fisheye lens and whether this effect is achievable in Unreal Engine; a fisheye lens is an ultra wide-angle lens that creates this strong distortion that is intended to produce a panoramic image. I got this idea from the image above between my screenshot and the image I found online where the online image has this slight curvature whereas mine is flat and I think adding a fisheye lens would help further improve the illusion of having a camera underwater. I also plan on finishing this on December, since I expect this to be a quick addition.

I will also need to do more research on my own work to see if there are any other effects I could add to improve my work and add more realism to create an even more convincing water simulation. The main thing I plan on doing research on is the Gerstner waves, which I discussed in depth earlier in the “Gerstner Waves” section. I plan on finishing this on January/February.

I also plan on adjusting the caustics and trying to achieve the same quality as Timothy Cole’s caustics, which I talked about earlier and will be looking around to see if there are better alternatives to what I have now. This should be finished on January too.

I will be paying close attention to the release of Unreal Engine v4.22 and for the addition of RTX support on Unreal Engine since its release is rumoured to be by the end of the year, although realistically, I wouldn’t expect it to be released until January/February next year. Once RTX support is released in 4.22, I will be installing the new version of UE4 and copy and transfer our underwater scene that we have now onto it and will be testing out the ray tracing and comparing it with our current scene in UE4 4.20 and see if there is any major difference between the two versions. If there no difference or only a small difference, then I will be keeping the current scene in version 4.20 since it won’t be worth it to spend time transferring and potentially fixing any possible bugs or incompatibility issues that may arise when using the new version of UE4 but if there is a big, noticeable difference, then I will be transferring everything onto the newer version of Unreal and fix any incompatibility issues that may come up due to them being made in an older version of Unreal. If I do go through with the transfers and the fixes for the new version, then I predict that this might take some time and may take 1-2 months to fix/finish, depending on the issues (if there are any), which will be February/March (assuming that RTX support is released in late December/early January). Although not as important as the other factors, it would still be nice to implement ray tracing into our animation for the added ‘eye candy’.

Once the animators and modellers have finished their models/animations and are ready to export as an .fbx, I will be working on implementing them into my project and putting everything together and once everything is in place, I will need to check for any errors such as missing textures or buggy animations and if I find any, I will need to try fix them and let my peers know as they may have exported it wrong or didn’t include textures, etc. Once everything is imported in Unreal and ready with no problems present, I will be ready to create the cinematics for our project and work on the camera placements/movements and ensure that we get the perfect angles for each shot of the scene and make sure that it’s appropriate for the emotions of the scene i.e. during the sad scene at the start, camera movements should be slow. I predict that these will be done by March/April, depending on the speed/workflow of the animators/modellers and any potential problems that may arise, such as the errors that I previously stated.

The deadline for this animation is on the 20th of May so I expect everything to be ready and for May, I plan on only doing the final touches to our animation, so I will be refining everything, like the values of parameters in nodes or adjusting the direction of a light slightly or fixing any last minute problems that may come up. Once everything is finished and is of good quality and everyone is happy with how it looks, it will be time to render out the animation and export it, which shouldn’t take more than a few hours since it’s only a short animation and because Unreal renders out animations quick. After the animation has been rendered, the VFX guys (Paul, Darren, Ben) may plan on doing some final touches in Nuke for post-production and apply some minor, final changes to the animation and again, render and export it afterwards for submission.

Overall, I am very happy with my progress and of course the whole group’s progress so far. At this rate, we would be able to create an amazing final animation with a more realistic underwater scene and characters and will be looking forward to the final piece.

Feedback

We had presentations this week where we talked about our roles and contributions to the group and showcasing any experimentations we had in front of the class and I received some valuable feedback that have given me some ideas on any improvements I can make. Although most of the feedback I have received from my peers were praises, some of them were suggestions and questions, which I will address below.

First comment I will be addressing is Ryan’s feedback since his was the first one that asked a question. To answer the first question, yes, I do believe this is all doable for me to create within the time frame we are given since I am already familiar with Unreal Engine and I am very comfortable with the software and also enjoy using the software. Based on what I’ve done so far, I am already making good progress and am already at a good level in terms of building the scene since as of now, I have already created something that is a convincing underwater scene, upon which both my teammates and most of the class have agreed with, but of course, there are still lots of places that could be improved and that would require further research and experimentations. To answer the second question/sentence, I almost always create a moodboard during the brainstorming part of the project in the early stages since it gives me ideas on what I can do and how things will look, but I may not have explained it well, which is why it might have been confusing.

This was a very good question and I should’ve added a slide in the powerpoint and explained why we chose UE4 instead of other animation packages. One reason on why we chose to use Unreal instead of other software for rendering the animation is because we were using multiple different softwares - Ben was using Blender to sculpt, rig and animate his model while Maris was using Cinema 4D to model his environment and Substance Painter to texture them and Callum, I believe, used 3ds Max to model his props, so I suggested that we try using Unreal Engine to put all these models/animations/materials/etc together created in a handful of different packages because by doing it in this way, we were all using software that we are most comfortable with instead of, for example, Ben compromising and using Maya to animate even though he is much more comfortable animating in Blender just to fit in with Ed’s animation in Maya to make everything streamlined due to everything being only in one piece of software. By creating using Unreal, we are able to keep everything streamlined but not need to make compromises as to what software to use as you can just export the models as an .fbx and import them into Unreal and work from there.

Another reason on why we chose to use Unreal Engine was that after I “sold” the idea of using UE4 to my group, we told Ryan about it and he informed us that it is an interesting idea to use Unreal instead of the usual animation packages and he also said that some studios are actually starting to use Unreal when creating TV shows and other animations so it may be a good idea to use Unreal now because if the industry moves towards that direction of primarily using Unreal for animations, it would be good for “future-proofing” as we could use this animation as part of our portfolio to show those companies that we have experience in animating in Unreal when looking for a job and since we’ve already used it beforehand to create an animation, we would have an upper hand over other potential animators since they might need to learn this software from scratch whereas we already know how to. It is also good to expand our knowledge of different software knowledge since artist need to be flexible and learn to adapt to any changes in the industry in the future because if you only know how to use one software now and it becomes redundant in the future and you are unable to adapt and learn the new software that everyone is using, you would have a really hard time finding a job in that field.

What Ryan said about the studios starting to use Unreal for creating TV shows interested me since I really enjoy using Unreal and would love to continue working on using it after we graduate. I haven’t heard of any studios using UE4 to create TV shows before so I searched online for studios that use Unreal and I found an article about a Pakistan-based studio, 3rd World Studios, creating the first ever animated feature film that was rendered entirely in Unreal Engine which is titled “Allahyar and the Legend of Markhor” (trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=162VCDUndT0). This is proof that despite Unreal Engine being a games engine, it can also be used outside games and create a film, just like 3rd World Studios did.

“Unreal has saved us months and months of rendering time. On average in a traditional pipeline, film quality renders take around 3-4 hours per frame and depending on the scene’s complexity this time can increase exponentially. In UE4, we never worried about render times.”

(3rd World Studios, 2018)

The article was an interesting read as the writer interviewed the studio on how and why they used Unreal and what benefits it provides and the studio said something that I forgot to mention before; when I finished creating a short test cinematic, the render times were much quicker in Unreal compared to other 3D packages and it will save us a lot of time once we have put together everything in Unreal and start the rendering process.

To answer the distortion comment, the video that I used to show the distortion effect was from the previous version of the project and I also bumped up the values on the speed slightly as I was worried that it might be too subtle when presented on the big monitors so I wanted to ensure that they were noticeable. The screen distortion effect looks much better in the newest and current version of the project (same one as the version that’s in the “Version II” section) and is a lot less fast/strong as it was on the presentation. As for the bubbles question, those would be particle effects, which is what Darren is working on and he also presented it, so the commenter might have missed that slide when he was presenting it. Caustics are on a decent level but I want to try create a better one if possible so I will continue working on that too and playing with the values and also do a bit more research online to see if there is a better alternative with a nice look. Finally, the lens flare is still a work in progress and was still in the early stages so I will tone that down a bit as I agree that it was a bit strong.

I didn’t include it in my presentation but like I said in the “Cinematics” section above, I will be doing research on the other types of cinematics that Unreal offers, especially the Sequencer since Matinee has been a legacy tool for a while now, so it’s an old method and 3rd World Studios also used Sequencer in making their film in Unreal.

“The latest version Sequencer is faster and more stable than ever and proved to be a lifesaver as we approached the end of our film’s production.”

(3rd World Studios, 2018)

I agree with this comment; the scene definitely needs more work to make it look more realistic and I am planning to achieve that roundness effect in the future which is similar to the fisheye lens that cameras have, but I will need to do research on this as I am unsure whether or not this is doable in Unreal, which I talked about more in the “Future Plans” section of this portfolio. The current seafloor isn’t the final product yet and I agree that the seafloor does need more variation, so I am planning to sculpt the landscape more to create some bumps to add some variation and prevent it from looking too flat.

Reference

Mood Board

Divetech, Inc. (2016). Mood Board Image #3. [image] Available at: http://divetechhouston.com/underwater-ocean/ [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Natural Capital Coalition (2018). Mood Board Image #2. [image] Available at: https://naturalcapitalcoalition.org/the-value-of-seagrass-in-securing-a-sustainable-planet/ [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Notre-Planete (2013). Mood Board Image #4. [image] Available at: https://www.notre-planete.info/actualites/3655-salinite_ocean_rechauffement_climatique [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Science Daily (2018). Mood Board Image #6. [image] Available at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180125140848.htm [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Unsplash (2017). Mood Board Image #7. [image] Available at: https://unsplash.com/photos/Ok7iNxjmQ1A [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Wallpapers Mug (2018). Mood Board Image #8. [image] Available at: https://wallpapersmug.com/w/wallpaper/sea-waves-calm-horizon-5k-255c5f [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) (2018). Mood Board Image #1. [image] Available at: https://www.worldwildlife.org/pages/in-nuarro-mozambique-a-partnership-for-people-and-oceans [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

World Wildlife Fund (WWF) (2014). Mood Board Image #5. [image] Available at: http://wwf.panda.org/wwf_news/?216410/Satellite-tracking-identifies-risk-zones-for-leatherback-turtles [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Online

Allahyar and the Legend of Markhor. (2018). [film] Directed by U. Khan. Pakistan: 3rd World Studios.

Blizzard Entertainment (2016). Overwatch Animated Short | “Dragons”. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJ09xdxzIJQ [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Blizzard Entertainment (2017). World of Warcraft: Battle for Azeroth Cinematic Trailer. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSJr3dXZfcg [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Blizzard Entertainment (2018). Warcraft III: Reforged Cinematic Trailer. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72UbFQO5-m0 [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Calahan, S. (1999). Storytelling through Lighting: A Computer Graphics Perspective. [ebook] Pixar. Available at: http://www.cmiresearch.org.uk/uploads/2/8/9/0/28906783/storytelling_through_lighting.pdf [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Cole, T. (2017). Working with Underwater Caustics in Real-Time. [online] 80.lv. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/working-with-underwater-caustics-in-real-time/ [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Cowley, D. (2018). Visually Stunning Animated Feature ‘Allahyar and the Legend of Markhor’ is the First Produced Entirely in Unreal Engine. [online] Unreal Engine. Available at: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/developer-interviews/visually-stunning-animated-feature-allahyar-and-the-legend-of-markhor-is-the-first-produced-entirely-in-unreal-engine [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Dean Ashford (2017). UE4 - Tutorial - Underwater and Caustics Part 1. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5a0w3gcdtKg [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Demers, J. (2007). Depth of Field: A Survey of Techniques. [online] NVIDIA Developer. Available at: https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/GPUGems/gpugems_ch23.html [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

DokipenTech (2016). Unreal Engine 4 Gerstner Waves Livestream. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_y7Z0MbGOMw [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

En.wikipedia.org. (2018). Trochoidal wave. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trochoidal_wave [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Finch, M. and Worlds, C. (2007). Effective Water Simulation from Physical Models. [online] NVIDIA Developer. Available at: https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/GPUGems/gpugems_ch01.html [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Gamedev1909 (2015). Water volume and Effects Tutorial Unreal Engine 4. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gr5BDGahdEA [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Guardado, J. and Sánchez-Crespo, D. (2007). Rendering Water Caustics. [online] NVIDIA Developer. Available at: https://developer.nvidia.com/gpugems/GPUGems/gpugems_ch02.html [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Matt Taylor (2016). Unreal Engine 4 - Water Caustics (Faking Light On the Bottom). [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8u7GONZzoY [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Matt Taylor (2016). Unreal Engine 4 Water Volume With Bubbles Walk Through. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5UKw_Crlr4 [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Nutt, C. (2016). Unreal Engine 4's new Sequencer allows for film-style cinematic workflow. [online] Gamasutra.com. Available at: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/268236/Unreal_Engine_4s_new_Sequencer_allows_for_filmstyle_cinematic_workflow.php [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

NVIDIA Geforce (2018). Battlefield V: Official GeForce RTX Real-Time Ray Tracing Demo. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WoQr0k2IA9A [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

NVIDIA. (2018). NVIDIA GeForce RTX. [online] Available at: https://www.nvidia.com/en-gb/geforce/20-series/rtx/ [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Pub Games (2014). UE4 - Interior Water #1. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPmRV1Z9ikY [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Pub Games (2014). UE4 - Interior Water #2. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRnKO1z4WZs [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Pub Games (2016). UE4 - Sequencer Basics. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rn6l_69cvu0 [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Ryan Brucks (2017). No particles. Gerstner Wave shader + analytical splashes. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQ3D0Q5BlOs [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Shargill, M. (2018). Playa La Peña Grande. [Photo] Tías, Lanzarote, Spain.

Tessendorf, J. (2001). Simulating Ocean Water. [ebook] pp.4-8. Available at: http://www-evasion.imag.fr/Membres/Fabrice.Neyret/NaturalScenes/fluids/water/waves/fluids-nuages/waves/Jonathan/articlesCG/simulating-ocean-water-01.pdf [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Taylor, M. (2016). Unreal Engine 4 Water Volume With Bubbles Walk Through. [video] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5UKw_Crlr4&list=PLogcsc-QeymRPyqOUFy06DjdDst1J-L2q&index=1 [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Unreal Engine Documentation. (2018). Sequencer Overview. [online] Available at: https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Engine/Sequencer/Overview [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Unreal Engine. (2018). Technology Sneak Peek: Real-Time Ray Tracing with Unreal Engine. [online] Available at: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/tech-blog/technology-sneak-peek-real-time-ray-tracing-with-unreal-engine [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Wallace, E. (2011). WebGL Water. [online] Madebyevan.com. Available at: http://madebyevan.com/webgl-water/ [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

Water Plane Texture. (2015). [Texture, Digital] Water Planes, Epic Games.

Williams, H. (2017). Tutorial: Ocean Shader with Gerstner Waves. [online] 80 Level. Available at: https://80.lv/articles/tutorial-ocean-shader-with-gerstner-waves/ [Accessed 16 Nov. 2018].

#animation studio #reserach portfolio #unreal engine

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shapcomp · 6 years

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The three turtles…

The pelican that joined our menagerie in 2016.

Larry and I have many “pets” in our home. A butterfly rests outside our front door, and two larger ones fly on our lanai wall. A two foot bear clutching his “Bear Feet Only” sign greets visitors on the front porch. Pedro the Parrot hangs on a curtain rod. And various bulldogs—stuffed, ceramic, and metal, are stationed around the house in honor of the nickname my boss gave me when I moved from the classroom to an administrative office.

However, I would have to say my favorite animals in our menagerie are three turtles and a pelican. These metal copper sculptures are the creative work of a talented Albuquerque, New Mexico, artist who made last year’s Chanukah very special.

In July 2015, Larry and I were spending the summer in Frisco, Colorado, with our daughter Julie, her husband Sam, and their newborn daughter Sylvie Rose. We had arrived in the Rocky Mountains less than a month after we had moved into our new home in Florida. We had brought several pieces of art for our walls, but many other spaces were empty by choice. We knew that much of the art work that was on the walls from our Upstate New York—much of it reflective of the Adirondack Mountains fall scenes, Early American accents would not work in Florida, especially since we had purchased the very Florida furniture in our resale from the previous owners.

One area that was tricky for us to decorate was a shadow box effect in the living room. We needed to find something to fill a recessed space in a hallway that would reflect our now Southern address. In August, we were at an art show in downtown Frisco when we noticed some colorful, unique pieces in copper. Many of the objects were reflective of the Southwest: lizards, snakes, kokopellli. We introduced ourselves to Greg Gowen, the artist manning the outdoor booth.

Greg, a native of Texas, was born in 1968 and began welding at age eight under the guidance of his father and mother, Mike and Martha Gowen, both well known artists and gallery owners.“My daddy showed me how to sculpt,” he wrote on his webpage, “and my mother taught me to make it beautiful.” At the age of eighteen Greg turn to the art world for his career. He began participating in art shows around the Southwest. Galleries quickly became aware of his talent and began exhibiting and selling his work. Today, Greg’s sculptures are displayed in private collections, galleries, and museums throughout the United States and abroad.We were lucky to happen upon his beautiful copper sculptures. We were especially attracted to his turtle design.

After we emailed the the dimensions of the shadowbox when we returned home, Greg suggested we purchase three turtles, a “mother” and two “babies,” to fill the space.

The family of turtles arrived as ordered within the next few weeks. The colors, the size, the way they fit into the space-they were perfect. We named them—Mother Turtle Tessie and her two children Tommy and Tillie—and posted a picture on Facebook announcing their arrival. The three turtles were a conversation piece when we showed people our new home.

It was time to fill more walls. We found a photo of a beach scene mounted on wood that fit over our couch. We added a palm tree clock to the laundry room and a fish clock onto the lanai. In Key West, we found two signs for our guest bedroom: One read, “Honestly now. What’s Your Hurry? You’re here!” The second was a colorful road sign showing the mileage to Boston, New York City, and San Francisco.

What was missing was a piece for our guest bathroom. I was the butterfly lover and bulldog-moniker nickname bearer of the family, but Larry loved pelicans. I knew from his website that Greg had not done pelicans before, In May 2016, I contacted Greg via email to see if he could work his magic in creating a version of Larry’s favorite bird to hang over the toilet. Greg responded a couple of days later with his answer. Yes, he would love to create the figure. As I had already missed the deadline for Larry’s May birthday, he promised to have completed by Chanukah.

Greg and I were in touch over the summer. In late October, however, I realized I hadn’t heard from him, nor had any pelicans flown our way via UPS. When he failed to respond to an email, I sent him one more. If he couldn’t get it to us in time for Chanukah, I understood. I’d give it to Larry for his May birthday.

On December 24,Greg emailed me his apologies. He wanted to surprise Larry and me with the pelican in time for Christmas but mailed it to the wrong address. He felt terrible as it won’t be under our Christmas tree.

I wrote him back immediately with the good news that we were Jewish. December 24 was not only Christmas Eve, but also the first night of Chanukah. Getting it on the third or fourth day of our holiday would be fine.

True to his word, the pelican arrived on the following Tuesday. “Peter the Pelican fits perfectly in our bathroom,” I wrote. “Larry and I are very happy with the newest member of our menagerie. How much do I owe you?”

“Nothing,” Greg wrote back. “I was late in getting it to you. It is my gift for the aggravation I caused.”

Larry and I were grateful for Greg’s generous offer, but we couldn’t accept. I wrote him a note thanking him but telling him we were very aware of the time he had taken to design and craft our pelican and ship Peter to his new home. I enclosed a check for $180. “The number 18 has special significance in Judaism,” I told Greg.”It signifies life. Use the money to do something special for you or your grandchildren.”

A couple of months later, Greg emailed me to tell me that he had used our money to treat Greg, his wife Debbie, and Martha and Del Pettigrew, two fellow artists, to dinner at a lovely restaurant in Scottsdale, Arizona. The four of them raised their wine glasses in a toast to the Shapiro’s. “I love creating metal works for patrons like you!” wrote Greg in his thank you. “May God richly bless you.”

I was happy to learn that our gift to him had created wonderful memories with his friends—memories that were more poignant when Del passed away a few months later. That special dinner was the last time they saw their dear friend. “What a profound effect your generosity has had,” Greg wrote recently. “I will never forget!”

Greg continues to sculpt, drawing inspiration from all over. He carries around a sketch pad in case something sparks an idea. “My favorite part of my art is when I see a customer connect with a piece,” he wrote on another art gallery website. And through his turtles, his pelican, and mutual generosity, we have connected with Greg.

First published in The Jewish World, December 7, 2017.

Chanukah Gifts…giving and receiving Larry and I have many “pets” in our home. A butterfly rests outside our front door, and two larger ones fly on our lanai wall.

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lavenderboxbakery · 7 years

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The process of closing Lavender Box, my brick and mortar bakery, and switching back to a cottage bakery has been, in all reality, very smooth; in the practical sense anyway. I am, however, discovering that my psyche is having a bit more trouble grasping the concept.

For one thing, I am not up at the ass butt crack of dawn everyday. Some days I actually get to sleep until 5am, woohoo.

The other major adjustment I am having to make is that I can take my time; I don’t have to have 4 different pastries, croissants, kouign amann and at least 2 cookie flavors baked and in the cases by 6:30am.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved it…Every minute of it. And the satisfaction I got from seeing a customer’s reaction to a flaky pastry made it all worth it.

But being at home now, without the hectic pace of running a made-from-scratch, every thing fresh, every day bakery with only myself and (the ever amazing) #1 daughter, I have come to realize the value of time. Time to dedicate to the tiniest of details, without worry that something, or someone, will walk through door and take away my focus. Time to set a work timeline and be able to adhere to it. Time to not have to rush to get the finishing touches on a cake. Time.

Now don’t get me wrong, I put every bit of myself into each and every thing I make; the simplest cookie or a 4 tier wedding cake with a ton of gum paste flowers, there is no difference in the dedication I put into each. But knowing that I have the time to dedicate to each task individually makes me a lot less crazy.

It is that time that made the 2 cakes I did this weekend seem almost easy. I was able to plan each step of each tier, and actually execute according to that plan. I even had each one ready to deliver with time to spare.

Cake #1 was for a “Diary of a Wimpy Kid”birthday party. There was some stress involved because I got the referral from another decorator who was unable to take the job. No pressure there right? Now I am somewhat familiar with the book series by Jeff Kinney, but let’s face it, my baby is 25 now, so I am a bit out of the loop. The only kids books I have in my house now are the vintage Dr. Seuss and Peanuts books that hold a place of honor in the book case. But with a lot of planning and preparation, I was able to get this beauty made, decorated and delivered for a very happy 7 year old.

And another angle, just because I can

Cake #2 was a customer from the bakery whose little one was turning 4 and LOOOVES Disney’s Moana. While #3 daughter has been dying to see Moana, we haven’t had the time, so I was flying blind here. Miss Lennie Lou (birthday girl) had the figurines (thank goodness, ’cause sculpting figurines is still a dicey proposition for me), so should be simple enough right? Oh, but no fondant for 4 year olds because they are picky about their cake.

Let me see now, have to put together a Hawaiian themed cake with waves and sand and flowers (oh my), and make it out of butter cream. Okay, confession time, the flowers and sea shells and turtles are fondant, but the waves are chocolate and buttercream. I was feeling so good about my timeline for this cake, I decided to make the little pig Pua from fondant, just because.

Well all in all, I think it turned out pretty good. I know, I know we have a pretty good lean here, but Lennie Lou’s Mom was very pleased.

There is always room for improvement, always something that could be better, and I don’t delude myself into thinking that I am any where near a cake artist. I am simply someone who loves to be in the kitchen. I love to bake and I love to see people smile when the idea for a cake becomes reality.

And for me, that is when time stands still.

Wimpy Kids and Waves The process of closing Lavender Box, my brick and mortar bakery, and switching back to a cottage bakery has been, in all reality, very smooth; in the practical sense anyway.

#Birthday Cakes #Cake #Diary of a Wimpy Kid #Disney&039;s Moana #Pua

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102anni · 7 years

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My media interview

INTRODUCTION:

As part of our ‘It’s not all Rock ‘n’ Roll’ module assessment, my peers and I were presented with the chance to enrich our understandings of how real life management crises are handled in the music industry. We were asked a series of questions in a set-up similar to that of a Television interview and – as the spokesperson of an event-gone-wrong – we had to explain the circumstances surrounding the incident.

The possible scenarios are as follows:

Scenario # 1 (Timing):

The headlining act at your show on Friday night went on stage at 10.45pm, more than 90 minutes later than advertised. This caused problems for the audience, many of whom had to leave before the end of the show in order to catch public transport.

Scenario # 2 (Sponsorship)

You are running a new festival in Lincolnshire this Summer and have agreed a sponsorship deal with BP. This is a new venture for them and they are underwriting all of the costs for your event. However, local environmental groups are unhappy with BP’s involvement.

Scenario #3 (Drugs)

The residents whose homes overlook your venue have complained to the police that groups of youths are gathering behind your venue and they believe that drug deals and drug use is taking place. Syringes have been found in the car park during the daytime.

Scenario #4 (Big mouth)

The artist you manage made a statement from the stage at last night’s show where he stated that the new Pope was ‘probably’ aware of child abuse by priests in his own country. That has been picked up by the media who now want to question your artist about that statement.

DESCRIBE YOUR PREPARATION AND RESEARCH PROCESS:

Timing:

Of course, I’d heard about the incidents when Axl Rose’s notorious ego-trips saw him skip shows to watch ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ and to this day, I recall how angry my high school friends were the morning after they were denied the chance to see Justin Bieber live as a result of one of his off-stage temper tantrums.

To consolidate my understanding of how promoters, react to incidents like this, I looked at case studies from the likes of Madonna, Rihanna and Led Zeppelin. One striking factor about the Zeppelin incident (they arrived 2 ½ hours late to a Kezer Stadium crowd in 1973) was the fact that promoter, Bill Graham (notorious for his erratic behaviour and forcefulness) seemed to be somewhat apathetic and powerless over the situation. He took a “this is led zeppelin so there’s nothing you can do about it” stance. It was at this point that I realised that within the music industry, there seems to be a breed of “untouchables” for whom venue curfews can clearly be slightly relaxed. This was taken to extremes at Hard Rock Calling Festival in 2012. Organisers were incredibly hesitant to pull the plug despite the fact that (naturally) Bruce Springsteen was still performing 30 minutes after the 10:30 pm curfew. Organisers knew that Sir Paul McCartney was in the wings, waiting for his cue to join Springsteen onstage. Hyde Park regulations were disregarded because:

i–organisers wanted to cash in on the publicity they’d get from uniting the music greats onstage

ii – Would you want to answer to that many angry fans? Equally, would you want to answer to the E Street Band, having deprived them of the opportunity to fulfil their teenage dreams and plan onstage with Paul?

Locals complained to the authorities. The microphones were eventually silenced and the singers were escorted offstage. This decision was greeted to a barrage of complaints from fans. As a direct consequence, live nation withdrew from promoting Hyde Park concerts and AEG took over.

I found this case study interesting but after further research, I discovered that it is an anomaly and government legislation is typically taken a lot more seriously. In any other case, curfew means curfew. This sculpted my response to the question “Were you aware of the venue’s 11:30pm curfew?”.

O2 Arena’s amazing generosity after the 2013 Justin Bieber incident sculpted my response – in part- to the question “Will you be compensating fans that missed their trains and had to pay for taxis to get home?”. The O2 held back some trains specifically for their customers. I learned that the venues cooperation during the incident and their willingness to help may have been a contributing factor to minimalizing complaints. If the venue shows that they are willing to help as much as they can during the crisis, it may eliminate the prospect of dissatisfied customers taking their anger out on the venue and seeking compensation.

Planned resposne :

Wil you be compensating

First and foremost, the issue of lateness is – literally – as old as time itself. It is Ingrained into human nature that – on occasion – and often as a result of forces beyond our control, we, as humans, may arrive late for an important arrangement. Quite famously, timing was an issue that Axl Rose struggled with back in the 1980’s and to this very day, it’s something that those who have had time to perfect their craft – i.e. Madonna – fall victim to. We like to think that the incident on Friday night could serve as a gentle, healthy reminder that everybody makes mistakes and whilst an elaborate stage production , pop culture , the internet and modern media may create the façade of “superhuman” celebrities , we all fall victim to simple human error. [Pause for note taking]

Through out the delay the audience were very well informed and continuously updated on the estimated arrival time of the artist . They were also treated to an extended set from the support act . Fans who left the venue before 11:45 could have also caught the free shuttle bus service running to the nearest tube station from the venue , so to eliminate the risk of them missing the last train .

Fans will be compensated. Upon leaving the venue, they were advised to keep their tickets .They can use their ticket reference numbers either to claim a £15 Addison Lee voucher or alternatively, it can be used to enter our exclusive competition , where they stand the chance of winning priority tickets to an intimate gig when the artist next returns to London . Further details can be found on our website.

Were you aware of the 11:30 curfew at the venue ?

The 11:30 curfew was something we were very much aware of in the run-up to the event . It may have restricted the show slightly but nevertheless , the artist arrived at the venue in time to perform all the fan favourites and even some new never-before-heard material .

Sponsorship:

There’s a painting of a Lincolnshire countryside scene which takes pride of place in my sitting room back home in Norwich. I realised this painting and what It represented was of great importance to my father when he painted over his beloved Jim Morrison Mural in the sitting room specifically to hang the painting. As a child, my father’s dramatic home improvements were a little bewildering to me - Back then, I thought that my family was religious because “the man on the wall” looked a little bit like Jesus - overtime however, I’ve grown quite fond of the painting which took its place because it opened my eyes to the beauty of the Lincolnshire countryside and the incredible culture of the county. This is something which has been consolidated by numerous family road trips. This personal resonance and Lincolnshire is something I wanted convey in response to the question “What is the value to you of having a sponsor involved with your event?”. In my answer , I wanted to make it perfectly clear that the promoters of this Lincolnshire event had good intent and their primary focus was to bring a resurgence of interest to the county and remind the general public of the beautiful landscapes and amazing culture Lincloshire has on offer. Having a well known brand associated with the event would inevitably boost public awareness of the festival and bring a resurgence of interest to the county.

To prepare for the question ‘BP have been linked with a number of high profile cases involving environmental damage. Are they appropriate partners for an event in the Lincolnshire countryside?’ , I initially researched the sponsors of other countryside festivals like ‘Really Wild Food Festival’ , looking for an indication of brands which would be more appropriate for the sponsorship of events like this . Then I investigated BP’s past sponsorship endeavours and I realized that how hard they are working to help the creative arts industry with their limited funding . They also worked closely with the Olympic games - which , in turn , will help inspire others to lead a healthier lifestyle . Whilst it may be inevitable that they cant change the environmental damage they’ve already caused , they do seem to be working hard to eliminate the threat of repeat incidents . I wanted to highlight the humanitarian and environmental work BP are doing as well as highlighting that this is a mutually beneficial endeavour for my festival and BP . By associating themselves with a countryside festival , the general public may realize that BP are trying to compensate for their previous mistakes .

Planned response :

What is the value to you of having a sponsor involved with your event?

This festival could have been hosted in a major city like London or Birmingham but we chose Linclonshire on the basis of it’s picturesque views and incredible culture . We felt that such a beautiful city was being painfully overlooked therefore, we set about with the sole intentions of bringing a resurgence of interest to Linclonshire . In order to achieve this , we understood that we needed the partnership of a majorly successful , renowned business like BP in order to gain exposure.

BP have been linked with a number of high profile cases involving environmental damage. Are they appropriate partners for an event in the Lincolnshire countryside?”

We maintain that BP are appropriate partners for an event in the Lincolnshire countryside . This is a mutually benefitial venture for us and our sponsors . We hope that their involvement in our linconshire festival brings to light that BP are more cautious that ever and they are doing work to combat environmental issues . This includes reviewing their approaches to minimising greenhouse gas emissions . To eliminate risks , they also carry out early screenings of potentially sensitive operational areas.

Drugs:

Admittedly, my initial research into drug legislation was very limited because I knew that all festivals should – at least advertise – a zero tolerance drug policy . At first , I thought this meant that my answers to the question “Are you aware of a problem with drug dealing at your venue?” Needed to be a straight up ‘No . We want our festival to be a safe , enjoyable environment’ . I soon realised, however ,that ignorance is not a defence when it comes to serious issues like this . I therefore looked into the measures that can be taken to eliminate the threat of drug related incidents at events . Their suggested the simple things like increased security around the premises and increased security checks upon arrival .

I understood that the obvious response to the question ‘Have you taken advice from anyone regarding dealing with this issue?’ would be the local authorities . As previously said , I looked into what measures they suggest should be taken to eliminate thereat of drug related incidents . I also wanted to show understanding that the best way to stop people from taking drugs is to look into why they do it . Therefore , I looked at various addiction related associations and rehab centres that the festival could work closely with help the organisers and the punters alike .

Planned reponse :

“Have you taken advice from anyone regarding dealing with this issue?”

We have taken advice from the police on how to eliminate the threat of drug consumption on our premises . They suggested increased security checks . We will also be installing more CCTV cameras around our premises . We have also been in touch with various associations which aim to help people who battle addiction . We think that in order to stop the consumption of contraband on our premises , we need to understand why people take drugs . At future events we will have representatives from these addiction charities and rehabilitation centres at our festival . Punters will be able to talk to these representatives in an enclosed tent .

“ “Are you aware of a problem with drug dealing at your venue? ”

We maintain that we were not aware of drug dealing on our premises . We strive to make our festival a safe , enjoyable environment . we are taking measures to eliminate the threat of reoccurring incidents .

Big mouth :

When I first looked at the ‘Big mouth’ scenario, what came to mind straight away was ‘this sounds the type of crazy thing Kanye would try to get away with’ . I soon realised I was mistaken partly because Kanye doesn’t have nearly enough personal involvement in this situation for him to talk about it , but mainly because I remembered that this case bares damming similarities to the situation Sinead O’Connor was in .

From a young age , my family have strived to give my sister and an education in strong , powerful women in music. Naturally , this included the likes of Joan Jett , Debbie Harry and Patti Smith . At the time , I thought that Sinead O’Connor was a strange addition to this list . I thought that Sinead was a lot less of “obvious badass” than the others . What’smore , I didnt really know who Sinead O’Connor was . I only knew of her ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ cover . It took me a while to realise that this was the exact price Sinead paid for speaking her mind and remaining undeterred in the face of so much adversity.

I consolidated my previous knowledge of this case by looking at various internet sources and interviews from the time .

I’d done enough research into artists who have made controversial statements (i.e The Dixie Chicks ) to know that these situations often result in a formal apology from the artist - whether they like it or not . I also learned that if the statement is particularly offensive , some brands may wish to disassociate themselves from the artist . However , I was so inspired by O’Connor’s resilience that I decided to sculpt my answers to these questions around how she reacted at the time of the movement that eventually cost her her career .

Planned response :

Has your artist apologised for their statement ?

The artist has apologised for potentially abusing their position as an influencer and making such bold accusations in front of potentially impressionable fans without substantial evidence to reinforce their statement. Whilst the artist wishes to inspire others to exercise their right to freedom of speech , they also think it’s important that individuals are capable of acquiring the knowledge to formulate their own opinions . The artist has not and will not apologise for their statement or the public discussion it has caused. The artist maintains that the power of the people is stronger than the people of power. All shows from this tour have been cancelled.

Does your artist believe that the Pope knew of the alleged abuse?

This is an issue which resonated with the artist . They have carried out substantial research to formulate their own opinions .

Evaluate your own performance in the interview :

Despite being very nervous , I was relatively happy with how I presented myself in the interview. I like to think that I read my scripted answers with confidence . The spontaneous questions were greeted to some hesitation and short pauses but I like to think that I refrained from using fillers and -eventually - offered some thoughtful answers . Having said this , I wish I conveyed them with more confidence .

Consider any factors that may have improved your preparation and performance :

During the preperation process , I think I should have spent more time looking at the legalities and legislations involved with topics like this. For instance : whether there are any fixed penalties involved with an invent surpassing curfew , and who is responsible for paying them ? If I was to redo this assessment , I would spend less time looking at anomaly case studies and more time investigating the formalities .

I think my greatest weakness in the interview was -quite simply- my confidence . I understand that making eye contact with the addressee

i- is simply a polite social convention

ii- helps the addresser build a rapport with who they are talking to .

A good addresser - addressee relationship is essential in situations like this and its something that I failed to achieve as a result of my confidence .

I have learned that the way I present myself is just as important as the way I present my material .

When talking about compensating customers with Addison Lee vouchers , the interviewer raised the question of why I chose Addison Lee .After some thought , I said I chose that particular brand because they are a well known , well trusted brand but I now understand that the interviewer was actually asking why I chose to compensate customers with London transport vouchers in general . This brought to my attention that I couldnt entirely justify why I was making some of these decisions . If I was to repeat this task , I would take more time to consider alternative solutions .

I’m concerned that a lack of exploration with pace and tone is another factor which may have hampered audience engagement. I brought cue cards into the the interview to use simply as a prompt on occasion. I didn't read directly from the cards but I do understand that not having 100% confidence in my material distracted me from measures which could be taken to boost engagement . In general , I wish I would have been more expressive and remembered to smile

I understand that my body language is one other factor I need to re-evaluate. In the future , I need to make sure that I do not slouch in the chair.

One piece of advice I was given was not to wait to be prompted for more information . For instance , when I was talking about the 2012 Hyde Park curfew incident , it was obvious that I was well informed on that particular topic but some information - like what happened in the backlash - still had to be prompted. In general , my answers were minimalistic. If I was to redo this interview, I will reconsider how much information I disclose without needing to be prompted.

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