This Is REALLY Cute, I Saw This On X, I Find This Concept Really Adorable

I love their dynamic.

We all feel that way about Doey I think we can agree with that.

Doey || Kofi | Commission Info | Threadless Shop | Redbubble || Do not edit, trace, or repost!

new comfort character hit me out of no where

Animation tips 2

Got any tips for someone who wants to get into storyboarding or animation, or just any career involving drawing? 😂

I can really only speak for (television) storyboarding since that’s what I’m doing. Like I said in my last post, have a social media presence! I was hired because the showrunners liked my art style/the things I was posting on twitter(?)/tumblr(?). Because they liked my drawings, they reached out to me and asked if I was interested in testing for their show. My sense of humor managed to match theirs and my storyboards were easy to read and clear so I got the job.  Again, I got lucky with that and I’m super happy they found me. My last post has a link to a helpful YouTube video~

Some general tips for people wanting to go into TV storyboarding below the cut. 

Keep reading

Sketch help

fat bodies tutorial!

ALRIGHT SO my pal @kalreyno wanted help with drawing fat characters and as a fat artist i felt like i could give a bit of helpful insight on that. there’s also been a lot of complaining about “boo hoo fat characters are hard to draw so i can’t include them in my work Ever” goin on lately so if that’s your case then this is for you too!! and also just for anyone who would like help with fat bodies in general, ofc. anyway, let’s get this show on the road!!

let’s start with some common misconceptions. these are the two main attempts at chubby bodies i run into, so i’ll focus on them. 

the Anime Chubby i see everywhere, and it’s just……so wrong in many ways. first of all, there is almost no additional body fat compared to your average thin character - except for where it’s added in “attractive” places (breasts, hips, thighs). the breasts are way too perky, and don’t have the realistic shape fat would give them (though how to draw accurate breasts is another tutorial all on its own lmao). there is still a thigh gap, which usually only happens in very thin people, and bones are still visible on the surface of the skin, which also rarely happens in fat people.

the Michelin Man is better in some ways, but still not that great. it’s a slightly better attempt, but basically all that’s done there is taking a thin character and blowing them up, while giving no thought to fat distribution. the thigh gap is usually still present, and they look a lot more hard than soft - and fat is very soft and pliable.

here’s a chart on how fat usually distributes (if you can’t read my messy writing, “1. next to no fat, 2. moderate amount, 3. most of the fat distribution”). basically, the more muscle an area has, the more prone it is to develop fat, such as the abdomen, thighs, and upper arms. it’s important to note that fat sits on top of muscle, and that it does distribute in different levels, and not evenly across the body as shown in the Michelin Man. 

now, here’s an accurate fat body with all of that kept in mind!! notice how the fat isn’t only kept to aesthetically pleasing areas, and how it sits realistically on the character’s body. their breasts sag a lot more, which happens even in thin people with larger breasts, and the nipples are pointing more downwards than straight out. there is no thigh gap in sight, there are no bones in sight, and most importantly, they have fat rolls, which are very important in drawing a convincing fat character!! as far as i know i’ve never met a single person with no rolls at all, and everyone has them, whether thin or fat - they’re just more prominent and more consistently present in fat people. pay close attention to where they are and how they’re shaped.

here are a couple of drawings showing how fat is affected when sitting vs stretching. as seen in the first, the fat specifically on the stomach is distributed a lot more evenly and stretched out, so it becomes “flatter”. the love handles are still pretty visible, though, as well as the fat on the thighs and arms. the breasts are raised with the shoulders, and the fat on the shoulders and near the neck forms rolls as it’s being pushed together. 

in the second, there is a lot less room for distribution, so the fat is all pushed together. the breasts sag and the stomach forms rolls and spills into the lap. a good analogy for the way fat works is to liken it to a water balloon, and thinking of how its shape would change when resting flat on a surface, hanging off of a ledge, held upright, etc.

here are a few extra tips i find a lot of people miss!

first on the top is the hip/pubic region. the first circle is showing the way the bellybutton is folded in fat people, as opposed to stretched out in thinner people. the second is the stomach fat spilling over onto the pubic region and creating a separation in the two areas, which is something that’s missing in a lot of art. in addition, the pubic mound also gains fat, making it round as seen in the profile drawing i did up there (i’ve heard people refer to it as fupa?). the last in the hip region is the lack of a thigh gap. i can’t stress this enough!!!! if you’re trying to draw a convincing fat character, make sure their thighs are pretty much always touching!! for reference, mine literally don’t separate until my feet are about 2ft from each other.

the bottom right is showing the double chin, which a lot of people are afraid to draw!! fat does distribute itself here too, and there’s nothing wrong with it, so don’t feel like you shouldn’t give fat characters a double chin in your work for fear of it looking like a caricature.

in the bottom middle, it’s showing how fat affects different types of breasts with the presence of more or less breast tissue. 

lastly, at the very right are stretch marks with their usual locations and directions, which i also can’t stress enough!!!!! i sometimes forget to add them honestly, but they’re so important in accurately portraying fat characters, as they literally come from the skin being stretched from fat being gained (and they’re also just rlly neat lookin like why wouldn’t you lmao). some people have less and some people have more, feel free to experiment with them!

the last thing is body types!! there isn’t one single way for a person to be fat, so feel free to experiment with shapes once you’ve learned the basics!! 

so there you have it, a tutorial on how to draw chubs!! now go forth and make some accurate fanart or some rad fat characters, because the world could always use more of both. hmu if you have any questions or concerns, and thanks for reading!!

EDIT: someone pointed out the bad wording in the tutorial. thank you for bringing it to my attention and sorry for offending anybody. i’ve updated the tut, so please reblog this one!

I think I'll talk about this later

the happy end

A New friend

Beautiful, I wonder...

star bursts

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Writing tips

in my opinion, many modern greek retellings/stories inspired by greek mythology don't fail because they're inaccurate. they fail because they have nothing new to say.

i don't mind changes to the original myths, as long as they make sense and they have a narrative purpose! i understand that making changes is sometimes necessary to convey a certain narrative, especially to modern audiences.

is epic the musical mythologically accurate? hell no! but the changes serve to tell a specific story and to convey a certain message. also, epic the musical is self aware about its "inaccuracies". and the music just bangs.

is hadestown accurate? no! does it make the change that I always dread, removing the kidnapping from the hades/persephone myth? yeah. but hadestown is barely about them, and it uses greek mythology as a "narrative frame" to tell a certain story. it has a point. it has a message.

what are stories like lore olympus trying to say? what is the messagge of the hundredth persephone/hades retelling? what are we supposed to take from them? "don't listen to your mother she's a bitch"? "mothers are irrational and you should forsake her for a man"? very feminist.

why are we still doing the medusa "feminist" retellings? it's BEEN done. too many times. and they're ALL the same. it's a worse crime than being bad: they are boring.

i'm tired of retellings that are just "what if this very famous story was THE OPPOSITE and the protagonist was an ASSHOLE the whole time and the villain was MISUNDERSTOOD and the real VICTIM" okay but why. why would that be the case. what's the point of the story you want to tell. or do you just want to use shock value.

of course, i dislike retellings that are so different from the myth that they go AGAINST the spirit/message of the original, because in that case what's even the point of retelling the myth? just tell an original story. but i would take stabbed poseidon and capitalist hades any day over the same basic story of medusa being a girlboss or demeter being bad because of... reasons?

tl;dr: stop being unoriginal and tell a good story. or at least an entertaining one. i beg you

Based on the ask about the half greek person, as a greek person who lives in greece and who's whole family leaves here, I can see in Persephone's characterisation a lot of us here. I love how she may be naive sometimes, sheltered and all but by no means is she weak. She's feisty and can fend for herself. I also like how sometimes she is sassy (or cynical? If Imr describing correctly english isn't my first language).

In general, places locations etc feel different in LO rekindled - which by the way I've noticed the the mortal realm in LO feels very similar in almost every scene we see it idk how Rachel manages to make literal nature look static and uninteresting.

Tldr: as a greek person desperate for good representation I love this.

I read this back when you submitted it but haven't had a chance to respond until now ! I'm so happy to hear that our version of LO is also managing to be better representation. I'm not Greek myself and neither is my assistant, but we both have a lot of love for the stories and myths that come from Greek culture so I'm really relieved and happy to hear that those of you who are Greek are connecting with the work and find it to be more representative and accurate than LO was originally.

Ultimately Rekindled's version of the myth and stories that LO attempted to recreate is attempting to also be its own standalone thing, with its roots as a response to LO to be supplementary to the experience if you're someone who's read LO and was dissatisfied with its original interpretations. I don't want people to enjoy it just because it's "not LO", I want people to be able to enjoy it even as its own story! So it makes me so happy to hear that our efforts are paying off and it's actually accomplishing that <3

Key details

How do you draw colors-of-the-rainbow characters? (I mean like characters with blue or purple or pink skin, and so on)

Do you draw them with the color of their skin and then clean it up? Or do you draw them with black, color it in, and then get rid of the outline? I'm really curious!

I use base colors and 'sculpt' the shapes out that I need, then I go over them with lineart where necessary! Usually all my base colors are on one layer unless I need to make a separate one (sometimes for hair or props I'll do it to ensure I can mess with them as much as I like without affecting the base colors but they'll usually be merged by the end). Sometimes I'll have to tweak things during the lineart stage that don't work as well as I thought they would while flatting but I've gotten pretty good at blocking out poses and proportions with flat colors, it works really well for my brain :' ) After that I shade on a clipped layer (meaning the shading won't travel outside of the base color) by using the magic wand selection tool to select what parts I want to shade at a time (again the skin and hair and clothing are all usually on one layer). I have specific colors saved in my CSP palettes for base colors, shading tones, highlight tones, etc. so it all stays pretty consistent unless we need to specifically change the coloring to match mood lighting or whatnot (and even then we won't change the coloring itself, we'll just use post-editing tricks like color balancing and effects layers!)

Here's Persephone's as an example:

And even then I actually only really use the last 6 colors (so not the first 4 from the left moving right) because some of those colors were picked from the pilot episodes that I wound up not using but kept anyways for stuff like glow effects (you should see the amount of colors I have for Hades that I don't use regularly LMAO he's gone through sooo many palette shifts through the course of LO). The three shades of pink at the far right end (going from right to left) are for her skin > skin shading and hair > hair shading, the off white color is for the whites of her eyes (and I use this color for basically every other character as well), and the dark color is for the lineart (it's not black, just a very very dark magenta). Every character has a unique color for their lineart, usually just a very dark color of their base skin tone !