I’ll Be Making A Poll Later Today That’s Going To Be For Which Ones I Should Make Into Keychains,

Drew the new lemon demon plush! Very excited for this little guy to be shipped out in the summer.

Design of an important lore character for a world I'm working on. This is the first pass for her design, and I'll probably end up changing some things.

[Start ID. A digital drawing of a reference sheet of a dragon character named Oblivion. She is mostly a light golden yellow in coloration, stands on four legs, and has two pairs of wings. Her eyes are blue, and she has two golden horns on her head. Flowing down from her cheeks are two pairs of ribbons. She also has two pairs of ribbons flowing from behind her wings. Along her spine are golden spikes, and at the end of her tail are two larger golden spikes. Floating above her head is a glowing star. In the upper right side of the drawing is the name "Oblivion", with the title "God of Order" underneath it. Underneath the words is a color pallet of the characters design. At the bottom of the right side is a watermark with the username 'TheCraftyDragonC". The background of the piece is a cool grey. End ID]

Here's her Toyhouse profile Oblivion: God of Order on Toyhouse

Some recent Pokémon oc's I've designed! First one is a fusion of my 4 favorite Pokémon, Flygon, Scolipede, Rayquaza, and Leafeon. Second one is a Flygon and substitute doll fusion.

[Start ID: The first image is a digital drawing of a character reference for Viridian, a Pokémon fusion character of the Pokémon Flygon, Scolipede. Rayquaza, and Leafeon. They have features from all four Pokémon. They are bipedal and have a dragon like build similar to Flygon, with front arms, two pairs of wings, and a long tail. They have red visors over their eyes like Flygon, antennae like scolipede, and head fins like rayquaza. Their neck and body is segmented like a bug like scolipede, their underbelly is a dark gray, the segments are green with red circle markings. Their wings are rhombus shaped and have a red rhombus marking in the middle, the tips of the wings become leaf like. Their tail is a gradient from teal to tan yellow with gray stripes and red fins and a tail fin similar in design to the wings. At the top of the drawing is text that says "Viridian, Flygon x Scolipede x Rayquaza x Leafeon". Underneath the text is symbols for their type, a purple dragon type symbol, a green grass type symbol, and a yellow green bug type symbol. At the bottom of the piece is a rectangle with the color pallet for the design. There is a watermark with the username "TheCraftyDragonC". The background is a mottled dull green. The Second image is a digital drawing of a character reference for Comfy, a Pokémon fusion character of Flygon and the Whimsicott substitute doll. Their body shape is very similar to Flygon, a bipedal dragon with front arms, a pair of wings, and a long tail with three fins at the end. They have a monochrome green color pallet, most of the body being a medium light green with darker green and cream accents. They are very fluff and have tufts of fur sticking out in places. They have a teal visor over their eyes, which are squinted closed. The top of the image has text which says "Comfy, Dragon/???, only move is substitute". Beneath the text is a color pallet for the design. At the bottom right is a watermark with the username "TheCraftyDragonC". The background is a gray green with lighter fluffy accent shapes. End ID]

Fish

Bottom Text

[Start ID: A digital drawing of a Fish with the words "Fish, Bottom Text". The piece is in a monochrome dull blue pallet. The fish is drawn in a cartoony silhouette like style while the background is a very simple wave pattern and bubbles. The text is light with a darker outline. End ID.]

ITS APRIL 13 YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS

FETCH ME NEIL

(crawls on all fours with blood drenched on me) I have to do arts and crafts

tkkatkkatkka CHOMP ttkattkattka CHOMP

Neil Banging Out the Tunes (2023)

Air-dry clay over foil and wire armature, EVA foam, acrylic paint, paint marker

There's this sort of anthropomorphizing that inherently happens in language that really gets me sometimes. I'm still not over the terminology of "gravity assist," the technique where we launch satellites into the orbit of other planets so that we can build momentum via the astounding and literally astronomical strength of their gravitational forces, to "slingshot" them into the direction we need with a speed that we could never, ever, ever create ourselves. I mean, some of these slingshots easily get probes hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Wikipedia has a handy diagram of the Voyager 1 satellite doing such a thing.

"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."

Gravity assist.