main: @runasulienadanika ; the Corruption wants me so bad it makes it look stupid; Gertrude Robinson's apologist; Gerry Keay = the Guy Ever; Agnes Montague is the Fool in her wedding gown and my favourite sacrificial lamb; i don't ship jmart, sorry not sorry; i sometimes reblog tma criticism so if you don't want to see it, block #tma critical and #anti jmart
michael fans when he tortures and murders plethoras of people to feed himself: omg silly arcade carpet man, he’s literally me!
michael fans when gertrude kills one man to save the rest of the world from a lifetime of torture: no bc she’s actually evil, i hate her so much, i can never forgive her for what she did to him
I'm gonna say something about Jon's asexuality in TMA:
It bothers me a bit that some people are so quick to be like "ace is a spectrum, he can be ace and still have sex" because like..... that's true, but the only canonical in-world confirmation of his aceness is somebody saying "Jon doesn't have sex". Which! Certainly comes from an unreliable source ("I heard from a friend who dated him years ago" is never a good way to start a large assumption about somebody's personal info). But still.
I mean, do what you want I'm not your mom, it just kinda bugs me
the fact that melanie no longer has eyes to speak of is sort of devastating to me, because that means the only person who truly can ever remember what sasha looked like can no longer provide a rendition of what was once a person.
Agnes Montague was called a Messiah, she lived her whole life trying to become the Desolation's perfect manifestation, and eventually she was corrupted by the human emotion of hope.
Jonathan Sims was called an Antichrist, he lived his whole life trying to cling to his humanity, and eventually he was corrupted by his reliance on the Eye.
every time jonah magnus is publically referred to as elias i must be held back by 2 burly guards as i thrash and foam at the mount screaming THAT'S NOT HIM THAT'S NOT HIM
Director's cut of my TMA animatic because there's a lot of random stuff I included/that happened in the process that I want to talk about :D
HEAVY yapping under the cut
Basically I've had the idea for this animatic since I first heard the song. One listen through and I went "that's literally just gerry" and now I've finally actually done it! I don't think any of the exact frames/ideas stayed consistent throughout the entire process (maybe the pass the parcel/wrap/unwrap with a leitner? I don't exactly remember). And once I'd made the first Jon animatic I realised one random night that I could just... make another one. So I drafted basically the entire thing in one afternoon on a google doc in one sitting.
As for the planning phase, I split the animatic into 5 rough parts (copy-pasted from the document):
Introduction, Gerry considering his family/lineage
Gerry’s statement
Gerry’s early years, first rejecting Mary’s work than accepting it and hunting Leitners
Mary's death and control
Gerry working with Mary (Gertrude, don't know why I wrote Mary)
So basically it's just MAG 111 + a bit of extra exposition on the front.
I'm gonna go through it in order, a few pictures but not for every frame/scene because I don't remember the max for tumblr and there's upwards of 50 drawings
The main idea was obviously Gerry/Mary's dynamic, but as I was thinking I realised pretty quickly that the Von Closen/Keay line has had connections with the Eye way more than that, which is where the first bit came from:
In order that's Albrecht Von Closen (his autopsy in 127 described his body as being filled with eyes), Mary's mother (yes I know the closed eye is a symbol of the dark but it's meant to be more of how she sort of ignored Mary when she was a kid [quickly checked MAG 62 to verify this, actually didn't really ignore Mary, just worked two jobs so Mary was alone a lot of the time :/]), Mary, Eric, and Gerry (I think those ones are self explanatory. I was deciding between censor bar and x eyes for Eric, ended up picking the bar based off pure visual appeal, similarly why Gerry has no knee eyes, [literally sent a friend a with/without because i wasn't sure i was making the right call and she agreed])
Don't really have anything to say about the second bit, the most interesting thing about it was trying to decide how to do child Gerry's hair. Initially it wasn't a silhouette so it was curly hair (sorta mullet esque) but with the same bangs as my adult Gerry design (I don't know), and then a light brown since it's pre-hair dye. Ended up straightening the hair to make it more clear it's still Gerry + you can't see the bangs with the silhouette.
As for this section, I'll admit it's one of the ones I'm happiest with, honestly all the hand frames. This one, as with the rest, was literally drawn with my hand outstreatched for reference, which is a lot of the reason it actually looks like a human hand and is more realistic than my normal style. The sketch lines are actually added in after the lineart because it felt too flat. I don't draw circles on the knuckles typically, but it looks better with them. This was also initially a full body shot of Gerry running, but I switched it to reaching because? I don't remember. I also wrote "Gerry runs towards away from the camera" in the initial note so it's probably for the best that it was changed. I think the initial plan also had a bit more End symbology, as in Gerry's reaching for the End, trying to die normally, but he's caught up by the book, but it felt a bit overt so it got scrapped. Although ended up using black backgrounds as a shorthand for the End/emotional distress so I guess that counts at least a little bit? Also considered adding writing, or at least "and so Gerard Keay ended" to the pages but it just made it visually cluttered and didn't really add anything.
Next bit's just straight out of 111, actually one of the bits I struggled with a bit on planning, but I got the idea from the line "oh don't you find it strange". Most of the yous refer to Mary/Gerry but that one didn't feel like either so who else would Gerry be talking to, you get the idea. I do quite like how it sets up the rest of it as though it's Gerry's statement though.
As for Gerry/Mary's statements, I tried my best to have them in slightly different handwriting because it's Gertrude vs Jon's, but they ended up really similar anyways lol. The tape recorder's just there to fill empty space tbh but it fits. The rabbit hole I went down to get the archives logo was quite fun. Didn't know there was an official one. Then I saw the official one and was like :/ but there was thankfully a secondary official one so I used that.
For Mary showing the fears, anyone with eyes can see that Extinction is in there even though Mary probably wouldn't know the Extinction. This is because I wanted the Eye in the middle and 14 doesn't give you a middle. Tbh I don't love just having a person for the Lonely but I already did clouds for the Vast and nobodies really looking at it (hopefully). Similarly not super sure about how similar Buried's coffin and End's tombstone look, but it's not a huge issue. Initially Buried was a shovel but i think the coffin looks a bit better and is a more simple design even with the similarites. Also fun was the Corruption's worm. I drew a wavy line for this and called it a day on my rough pass. This gave me exactly 0 clue as to what it meant on the good pass, and it took me longer than it should've to figure it out.
For Peter and Simon, I knew that I wanted to show some of the avatars, and these two were my first choice since they're two of the more prominent members of the "older" generation of avatars. Also on the list was Julia/Trevor for the Hunt, maybe someone from the Lightless flame, but it was discarded because none of them have really recognizable designs save for Jude, and I wanted it to be the entity's most prominent avatar (so probably would've been one of the leaders/maybe Agnes, but she didn't really choose to be an avatar so it was unlikely). I had decided to switch to the hunt halfway through because the Lonely's fog and Vast's clouds are quite similar, but since I was showing the domain (since the lonely and vast are sort of places) I was trying to draw a wolf's jaws like is common on Daisy fanart and just could not get it to work so I switched back to the Vast. There was also a debate over whether to do Martin/Daisy or Peter/Trevor/Julia but when I gave up on the Hunt I went back to Peter/Simon. The landscapes were scrapped because they looked terrible, and Simon was initially flying but the pose was giving me hell so he's standing now, I made an angry post about friendly fire and I now have a picture of me flipping off a bad sketch of Simon Fairchild on my camera roll. Fun times. The covered faces? I didn't want to draw faces. Also made a post about that funnily enough. Go find it if you want to learn more I've already talked a lot about this part.
The next really interesting thing I have to talk about is Gerry smoking outside pinhole
if you look closely the "pin" doesn't look the same as the rest of the shop's name because the rest of it was drawn days earlier and had a blur on it but i wrote keyhole not pinhole and didn't fix it until I was taking screenshots of the frames to edit. Also this pose, too, was hell to draw.
Wanted to capture the lyric "divided" pretty literally here. with a wall. I'm a creative genius, I know. The design for Mary's half is actually based off of a sketch of Gerry at that desk I did a while ago + I included a spider web because the Web is everywhere always (I do it whenever I draw the archives, it's basically just a habit atp). Gerry has a little easel because I wanted to show more of his interests outside Leitners. That's also why the headphones + posters. The weird shape on the wall is supposed to be his trench coat hung up since he's not wearing it. I did have quite a lot of fun with Gerry's outfits actually. There's four pairs of pants: ripped skinny jeans, basic trousers, sweats, and cargo pants (+ young gerry is wearing shorts but you can't really tell), and then the top is either tee or tee/trench coat. generally the tee is when he's more comfortable in a space (his room, smoking at pinhole, eventually the institute). Jewelry is a variety of earrings + necklaces, kept relatively consistent, but the choker appears/dissapears/moves wildly because it doesn't line up super well with smaller shots and the neck tattoo. Also I wasn't paying a ton of attention to how consistent they are.
Originally it wasn't bones but symbols for the fears here to more closely follow the pandoras box idea but I'd already done them for Mary so I switched to the bone leitner. I'm aware this isn't really how it works. Incidentally, I gave the bone leitner and the catalogue the same design and didn't realise until it was too late. oh well.
pulled out the ye olden red thread board for this one since i made a list of Leitners for god knows what reason. Gerry doesn't actually get all of these, especially not pre-book Mary but I don't careeee. He does get the bone Leitner as a teen so that's correct, but Ex Altiora he gets post-book Mary and burns rather than giving to her, and he doesn't actually get the Desolation book if i remember correctly. The Plague Year is just because I didn't want to double up flesh with the Bone Turner and I liked it more than the books Leitner had in the tunnels.
so i sent the rough draft of this animatic to my non-tma friends and had them guess what it was about. There was no real blood in the rough draft so without the context you couldn't tell what was going on in this scene. Which led to a lovely interaction where I noted that no one commented on the woman skinning herself alive and was informed that my friend thought this was a happy scene (I don't know, she also thought that Gerry + Mary were a couple?) and that I needed to put in a lot more blood. That's why it looks like a murder scene. Also that's kinda just how it's described in canon so yknow. I don't really draw a lot of gore so yeah. It doesn't look great.
"Help me finish"
needed filler. It's a fucking terrifying idea of being asked to help your mother skin herself alive. I liked it. It goes in.
Really like this segment. After I had already drawn it, I realised that Gerry was described as having blood on him so I had him drop a book in a puddle of blood that spilled on him. After adding that, I realised that he's described as slipping in a puddle of blood and crawling out. I didn't want to draw that again so i just didnt :)
why does Gerry have a halo? it looked cool. why is there wind? it looked cool. why is there no face? I didn't want to draw a face. I love making arbitrary decisions.
tbh this drawing of Mary gives me really strong Prentiss vibes. That's my entire comment.
drew this, went on a rabbit hole into early 1800s british architecture and Robert Smirke. Drew a much better institute design. Didn't change this one. I like the idea of the institute having a massive eye on the front even if their logo is an owl and this is incredibly heavy handed. Say it with me: I didn't care.
Literal hell to animate in capcut. I hated it. SO FUCKING MUCH. initially micheal shelley was supposed to be in this. and then i checked the timeline and he was already dead. And then i decided to ignore timelines and put him in anyways. didn't like it so i made him a ghost. that was all the way into being animated for the final cut when i decided that it made literally no sense to have micheal shelley become a ghost and i hate capcut. there were so many other ideas of how to get micheal in this shot. wish he could've but I think it works without him, although I did like the idea of "sold to fools" being about how gertrude's assistants were fools for joining the institute. unfortunate but I don't hate the end product.
Really really really like Gerry in a bun. I usually imagine tma Gerry with hair down vs tmagp Gerry with hair in a bun since he paints a lot and doesn't want it in his face. As such I associate happy Gerry with a bun and I like to believe that he was at least a little happy when with Gertrude. That's also why he's in a tee here, he's comfortable to take his coat off :D. the jewelry is also switched up for fun, he gets bracelets and a pendant. this is based roughly off of the recording in 162, although I don't think that he was really sitting on her desk in that clip, but I digress. The Travels is in the backpack and he burns it in the next scene.
The brain tumour is traced from an MRI (?) I'm sorry but I wanted it accurate
black represents more bleak moments. My poor boy doesn't get to be happy :( Empty chair because extra angst of Gertrude not being there for him.
Love love love how this turned out :D
"then I died :/"
there was supposed to be a shot of Gerry in a hospital bed before the flatline but i didn't like how the drawing came out so I cut it.
Back to talking more about the work in total, I'd started planning scenes on the 16th, so ten days of work, with thirty minutes to a few hours a day? SO much work, but it payed off and I'm really happy with how it turned out, especially the sort of chronological order swapped around, just feels like a fun touch and death is such a nice clean end.
