art books on the internet archive for you

morpho books

figure drawing for all it's worth (+ creative illustration)

framed ink

will eisner comics and sequential art

will eisner graphic storytelling and visual narrative

understanding comics (+ making comics)

folder of various animation production art

burne hogarth drawing dynamic hands

perspective for comic book artists

michael mattesi force drawing

the animator's survival kit

color and light james gurney

be free

I've recommended this one before, but for all the non-human vertebrate likers out there... the art of animal drawing

V.E. Schwab's advice for creating memorable characters - works for both protagonists and villains

source post: X

This is really good advice.

It also ties neatly into the simplest version of the formula for getting people emotionally engaged with your characters: or how to build the moment in which your character starts moving from their initial state to the state in which they'll start changing their own lives.

First, you figure out the one important thing the character believes that they're wrong about. There's usually a core misperception that they haven't examined. Once they're forced to engage with it, it'll start to change everything about their perception of the world they're inhabiting and/or the people in it.

Then, as V.E. says, you identify the character's great desire and their great fear: the thing that character wants more than anything, and the thing or situation that terrifies them, and that they'll go to any lengths to avoid.

And having identified these two objects or situations, you build a situation in which the two forces will be in close, direct opposition to one another... then drop the character down in between them, and squeeze. Those two opposing forces become the jaws of a vise... and you crank the vise more and more tightly closed until the character has no choice but to acknowledge those opposing forces, and start (even in a small way) to deal with the pressure being exerted and push their way through.

This does not have to be, initially, a great climactic moment. In fact, it works better if it's not. It's more effective if your character has a brief low-intensity brush with these conditions-in-conflict early on. That way, when your big resolution scene comes along about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way along through the story arc, you'll have set up a resonance between that earlier hint or intimation of what's to come, and the really big blowoff. Your readers will recognize the resonance—the throb of tension between the two occurrences, like the vibration of a plucked string—and will find satisfaction both in the true resolution having been partially telegraphed earlier, and in how it's now being experienced and resolved in full.

This approach also allows you to set up more minor resonances between the realization of the conflict and its final resolution. These can serve to bind the structure of the work more closely together: to make it look (and be) less like a series of loosely strung-together plot events, and more like a unified whole, in which ripples of story business flow backwards and forwards, interpenetrating and influencing one another, and hinting at the big one to come.

But none of this can happen until the paired and opposing what-do-they-most-desire, what-do-they-most-fear axes have been defined. So that's a subject it's smart to spend some while thinking about (and for all your characters, not just the major ones), to be sure you're getting it right.

It's not unusual to get the wrong answers, or merely superficial ones, while you're still working out what's actually going on with the characters. So take your time. Eventually you'll find a set of answers that feel unquestionably right... and you can then nail those down in your notes and get on with making the kind of "good trouble" for your characters that will see them made complete.

Quick Tip on Giving Characters Flaws:

Turn their best qualities completely upside down. Turn those traits around on them. They’re compassionate? Maybe they’re way too easily forgiving and get screwed over by it repeatedly. Extremely outgoing and extroverted? Maybe they’re apathetic to those who struggle with even having small talk, and make those people highly uncomfortable. Brave? Maybe they can be reckless and often get themselves in unnecessary danger.

Don’t sprinkle in flaws at the end. Base them on something. They should enhance your character and make them more three-dimensional. They shouldn’t be an afterthought, and the goal shouldn’t be to make your characters “relatable”.

Back up your LJs!

I know this post is for a very small audience here on Tumblr but some of my oldest friends I met on LiveJournal are still here, so I'm making it anyway just in case.

But there have been some changes at LJ recently that do not bode well at all. Rahaeli made a thread about it on bsky with some more worrying details. For a bit of background on this, LJ is surprisingly big in Russia. Like way more than on the western side, and it's been owned by a Russian company for a long time now (it wasn't always - there was a big controversy when LJ got sold to the Russians back in the day).

The Russian side of LJ dropped a very big change on Dec 29th without warning on their users, essentially making it so they'd have to register their ID or bank info with LJ to post or comment. Any posts from people outside of Russia, or without Cyrillic services turned on, are invisible and can't be interacted with by people inside Russia. It's nearly impossible to turn Cyrillic services on if you're not in Russia either, so there's a big wall now between both sets of users. Rahaeli speculates that this could mean the Russian company that owns LJ could be considering selling off or just shutting down the western side of LJ soon, thus why they're sectioning it off. There's been no mention of this on the western LJ news comms or anything which is also worrying.

Fandom's moved on from LJ now, but that doesn't mean that a large chunk of old fandom didn't take place there before, and if LJ does go down then tons of fic, fanart, meta, communities, kinkmemes, discussions, rp, goes down with it. Everything up in smoke! I think people underestimate sometimes just how much stuff went on there. LJ being dead is much different than LJ being gone... the thought of it really disappearing after all this time breaks my heart. I've spent so much of my life there, even after everyone else left. ;_;

But how to do your backups? Dreamwidth is an easy answer as an LJ clone, with an automated importer that'll snag all your stuff and move it over for you. Another tool I've been using is ljArchive, specifically this fork of it which will also save comments and communities, although it won't get userpics. There's also LJ Archivr, although that one costs money, and I think some others are mentioned in the bsky thread. Whatever you pick, I'd do it sooner than later.

decentralize and clean up your life!!!

i exist and i love you

This may be a very lukewarm take, but I think one of the most important ways to establish tension in a story is to give actions consequences.

Not every consequence needs to be negative, and not every negative consequence needs to be catastrophic, but one of the easiest ways to kill the tension in a story is to teach your reader that it doesn't matter what the main characters do because everything will work out for them, and any setbacks won't have long-term consequences.

Because once you've taught that to the reader, then why should they care what the characters do? What does it matter whether they make the "right" decision because every decision will ultimately be the last one.

And once you've given your reader that for long enough, you can't really go back, because that will feel like a betrayal. You can't give the first negative consequence 3/4 of the way through the story, because you've already set up the story as one where actions don't have (negative) consequences.

When you're thinking about how to give actions negative consequences, consider that there are a many different types of consequences, including:

It can make the story more interesting (and more realistic) to not just focus on one type of consequence but instead to consider different kinds of consequences (positive and negative) a character would face for their actions. Maybe they end up better physically than they would otherwise--but they lose other people's trust by their actions. Maybe they save someone but lose time.

Make your characters' actions matter.

X/Twitter might have actually hit the final nail in the coffin this time. It's no longer a safe space for artists to post art.

I urge you if you know any artists from there, encourage them to make a Tumblr account and post their artworks here!

If you are still on that hell site, RUN.

If you're 20 or younger, and you want a binder, need a new one, get one now.

Links to free binders:

@factual-fantasy

i'd like to add that the shadow color isnt necessarily dictated entirely by the primary light source, but the bounce light! so for the example of a sunny environment, the reason the shadows are blue are because of the light from the blue sky reflects across the environment; but, if the character were to be under tree cover, the bounce light would be coming from the leaves and thus the shadow would look greener.

Yee yee!!! You got it right on the nose!

Bounce light is something I didn't cover but I adore it!

Gotta work on my bounce light 💪

My good friends this is called using a

(image via )

James Gurney is an absolute master and gives really good clarity on colour techniques. Yes, it is traditional paint focused, but the principles are the same. Yes it is informed by the environmental colour but as a painting technique it is achieved this way!

I would also suggest that in digital processing, rather than apply a regular colour layer at a mid opacity, try out the different types of layers, Eg. Screen or Multiply. This can give you at least a starting point to help direct your colour palette.

Layer Blend Modes are so so so important to working in digital art. There's a ton of math that goes into figuring out how the layers should blend together, which is why some of the modes you can pick are literally called Multiply, Add, Divide, and Difference (that's subtraction). The graphics software takes the color values of your base and blend layers and runs a calculation to get your resulting layer appearance. The ones that don't have specifically mathematical sounding names are still doing calculations, but they're more complicated (think linear Algebra and higher). Some of them, like dodge and burn, are named for actual photo editing techniques.

While it's not super important to know about the mathematical side of blend modes, I think it's worth knowing at least enough about how each of the categories of blend modes works and why they do what they do; if for no other reason than having a starting point when you start experimenting with them in your work.

An overview of the basic blend modes and how they work from Genevieve's Design Studio: Accessible with minimal color knowledge; practical and illustration focused. https://youtu.be/kMc87hQrJd0?si=TWCB365pKSfWS8p0. (16 minutes) This creator also has a ton of free resources you can download, including a Blend Modes cheatsheet, but fair warning: you have to create an account to get them!

Want to learn even more about the math-y stuff? It has great film visuals! A video from FilmmakerIQ: You need some basic knowledge of RGB color models, understanding of values/luma, and at least a tenuous understanding of Algebraic formulas. (26 minutes) https://youtu.be/F7_kaTP7_W4?si=x0urqXZ8f51nQVKl

People who comment on webcomics, y'all are the real heroes cause holy shit it's depressing to post work and get literally no response LOL

Thank y'all for putting in the effort! 💕💕💕

pinterest simulator

yall can turn them off if you want!

this keeps coming up, in all sorts of different discourse, so I finally gave up and made it a meme

discourses that this applies to, an incomplete list:

and the answer for all of these is *taps the sign*

THIS IS YOUR FINAL WARNING TO GET YOUR MEDS BEFORE THE PHARMACIES CLOSE

they are going to be CLOSED OVER THE HOLIDAYS and so will the DOCTORS WHO SIGN YOUR PRESCRIPTIONS.

if you don’t have enough meds to last the next THREE WEEKS, put in for your repeats and refills tomorrow! that’s Wednesday! do it! don’t go to hospital at New Year because you ran out of stuff!

it’s that time of year again! get your meds!

most fantasy books or fics i’ve read that contained a desert biome fell back on real world prejudice and misconceptions in place of authentic worldbuilding for a place and people, and it is so telling that the trope seems to repeat itself

things like

this isn’t worldbuilding, it’s just ignorance and bigotry

So true!

To anyone writing stuff set in the Mojave/Sonoran Deserts (and maybe the Colorado?) Please please please look up Palo Verde forests!! The trees are green but completely bare of leaves- they photosynthesize directly through their bark. And instead of leaves they have spikes! It's so trippy and cool to be walking through a lush green forest knowing that the nearest water is 50+ miles away.

Other Mojave/Sonoran specific things:

Source: I lived on the edge of the Mojave and Sonoran for a bit, and most of my job involved wandering around the desert for 8 hours a day

this is actually a really fucking cool idea