TESTING TESTING 126!

(Startup Initiated: Please Stand By) 

[finch-bewitched]

Aight, so I've been thinking...

I wanted to be all cryptic and cards-to-my-chest with this site and the project(s) I'm working on, but that's not really how you get people invested in your stuff.

There's plenty I don't wanna yap about just yet, but as for what I'm doing here;

This is Boltzmann Expy. He's wants to be a supervillain.

And the best way to learn is by teaching, so he's gonna teach you how to do it too!

Bex here is making a tutorial series. His "lessons" range from evil lair design, to espionage, to philosophical inquiry as to what makes an action qualify as evil. He's got cartoon logic on his side and a penchant for chaos.

This series is set to take place within the world of Minecraft (so, I don't have to draw backgrounds, but can instead build the sets) and expand on it's world building in ways similar to the way the MCYT fic communities do whereas the movie failed spectacularly (seriously, that thing gave me so much more confidence in my own project).

(Their name is Marbles, they make the end of each episode. They happen to be glitched, but they're doing their best. This is also one of the finished scenes I have so far) The hopes is that the series will last a dozen or so 15-25ish minute episodes where I can practice/ teach myself different animation techniques and tell the story I wanna tell along with some other... fun stuff that I'll reveal when it's time (cough 1-19-7 cough).

Every character uses a different animation style;

Bex is animated in After Effects through puppet animation, his 2D assets all being premade in Krita and then manipulated in a 3D environment

Pack is a PNG who gets physically drawn with markers before being squashed and stretched

Sprite is made with pixel art

Marbles is a sketchy animatic with outlines shown and proportions left loose

??????? is fully cleaned and animated smoothly in 2D

(This is concept art of Pack, she's based on Pack.png and she's here to investigate some suspicious activity. She also happens to be a living piece of the UNIVERSE who wanted to better understand players.)

I've got a ton of concept art for this thing, but it's wayyy off from being ready yet.

So I was thinking, Why not start showing my concept art, my works in progress? I've always been nervous about doing that, but that seems to be how indie creators find their footing; they show their rough stuff so people can see how they grow.

(This is Sprite. They're on the same mission as Pack, but have a very different point of view than she does. They both work for the Administration, or Admin for short.)

I'm really excited about this project, but it has a long way to go before I can even air episode 1 and I've already been working on it for a year!

...

Well, that's not entirely true... Technically a large part of this project was started in January of 2021, but for the sake of what I'm talking about right now, this batch of stuff...

... has been in the works for about a year with a ways to go before episode 1 is ready.

Imma keep at it and imma show y'all how I'm doing. Feel free to ask questions or check in on my progress every once in a while.

Sincerely,

[REDACTED}

(Feel free to call me what you will, I like to collect names. None ever feel right so why not have a collection!)

[finch-bewitched]

My kids are real!

[finch-bewitched]

I've got a masterdoc for this project

called it a "pitchcronomicon" instead of a pitch bible lol

the master doc has a master doc of the other master docs too

The voice guide is probably my favorite of the ones shown.

It covers diegetic game mechanics and how they shape the development of language, player slang, and each individual character's speech patterns and motivations.

Here's an example;

"Dye the town green and gold," instead of "Paint the Town Red"

Vanilla MC doesn't have paint, but they do have dye

Entities flash red when they take damage, but they don't really bleed. They DO drop green and gold Exp when they die.

It still needs to roll off the tongue and be snappy enough to be used often, so gold fits better than yellow and it has the bonus of alliteration and sticking to the monosyllabic trend

With PVP and MC's difficulty mechanics, there would be a demand for a phrase of this nature to still exist

This would also trickle into players and mobs associating specific shades of those two colors together with death in addition to red (heck, in the creaking's reveal trailer xp was used as a short firm for someone dying off screen, so that aspect is canon already

...

I like linguistics and etymology okay... Its just a hobby, but I've always been interested in how language works

[finch-bewitched]

Pfft

Realizing how much of my original concept art was on the rotation slips and spare receipt tape of my old job. Not ready to show most of those yet, but there's a lot.

17? Maybe 20? drawings and script excepts if I remember correctly???

They range from episode one to the series finale.

Here's one for reference.

[finch-bewitched]

made a test of Sprite dancing too

[finch-bewitched]

[finch-bewitched]

sketches for what the title card. I like the current version, but I'll probably still modify it at some point. Also a little group doodle of the cast.

Just gonna mark out anything I don't want spoiled.

[finch-bewitched]

The back of Pack's page has doodles of Sprite.

Its hard to see, but they have some gold and iron teeth due to a history of getting into fights.

Where Pack's page uses marker and colored pencil for a smooth and colorful look, Sprite's is mostly crayon and pen to be rougher and muddier.

As for how they act... Sprite's an interesting case that I'm still trying to figure out how to write properly.

They're directly inspired by a friend of mine who's politics are my complete opposite... except she's part of the demographic(s) those policies target and oppress. She's adamant in her belief in them despite them being actively to her detriment. It's a fascinating dichotomy and I want to capture something like that with Sprite; someone who doesn't fit within a system but believes in it to the point of trying everything they can to do so and uphold it.

Sprite is someone who by their very nature doesn't fit the mold of the organization they revere, but desperately wants to prove they can and should be a part of it. They're not like other glitches. They're one of the good ones...

They also take inspiration from my time working with neurodivergent adults as a studio assistant. When someone was having an off day or an episode, some of the others would insist they weren't like that or that they were better than that and then have something similar happen to them in reverse later that week. They would tear each other down and distance themselves due to stigmas and anxiety instead of trying to lift each other up. It was sad, but... fascinating to see the effects of long rooted prejudice echo out of the mouths of the people it targets.

Sprite is a glitch who can't stand glitches.

They are a living "error" who believes all errors can and should be corrected.

They are someone who mistakes order for peace and prejudice for sympathy.

They're also a snarky asshole when they actually manage to loosen up. Plus, they're not just loyal to the Administration. Sprite cares about Pack and Marbles. They see the two of them as EXCEPTIONS to the rule instead of proof against it, but it's... something.

Can't stand Bex though. HATES him to no end.

[finch-bewitched]

Some concept art of Pack.

Her skirt is a handkerchief skirt of the pack.png map and her tie is meant to be the waterfall in that image.

Her eyes are all skyish like that because she sees from the top down. She sees the world like she's looking at a map. To her, players are the little arrow-dots. She can't see what's directly in front of her the same way someone with first person vision would.

Her malar rash is due in part to her being disconnected from the UNIVERSE and her code's reaction to playerhood, but also because players can't get the seed for pack.png anymore through natural generation since the mechanic changed. Her code tries to read the ported data and it manifests as a rash. Plus, it looks like the little line of stone on the cliff face.

She's meant to look both like a modern young lady, but also like an old timey princess since she's from a bygone era but also actively working in a high tech agency.

She acts like it too. She has a lot of older wisdom due to being around since beta (she misses how brightly saturated everything used to be), but she's also in the know about modern updates, player slang, and building standards/trends.

At one point I thought about giving her wrinkles, but to be honest she still acts pretty childishly (her immortal self giggling about the silly little modern players) and she's not THAT old. Her knowledge and memory is, sure, but her playerhood isn't. So... imagine being conscious years before you're actually born, seeing and hearing everything without being able to touch or say anything, and then when you are, you're stuck in a body that hasn't matured enough for your brain yet (a baby who already knows quantum physics but has never walked before). You've lived for decades, but only been physically able to interact with the world for a few months. High INT with low WIS except... she's also watched players build stuff on her seed and listened to how they've grown and interacted with each other before it was no longer viable. She knows the concepts behind social interaction, but hasn't gotten to practice them herself much yet.

Regardless, she's a sweetheart and wants to make a positive impact on those around her.

[finch-bewitched]

The ref I used for this goober for art fight. I also posted a little about his mindset over there. Ehem...

"Boltzmann "Bex" Expy is the embodiment of "we have Bill Cipher at home."

… Let me elaborate.

Bexpy is the titular character of my upcoming series, Bexpy's Guide to Evil and Supervillainy. He is a trans man who has taken it upon himself to make a tutorial series on how to be a supervillain a-la Saturday morning cartoons. His "lessons" range from lair inspirations, to trap construction, to philosophical inquiry on what makes an action "evil."

He was inspired to do all of this by the storybook villains he read growing up and the open hostility shown towards him by the locals of the place he now lives. They saw him as a monster, welp, good thing he knows all about how to do that! He'll be the best villain they've ever seen and he'll show you how to do it too! At his core he's an entertainer, but if you ask him he'll attribute that to a true villain's natural sense of charisma.

His queerness, appearance, and ideology are all directly linked via feedback loop that ties itself in knots. He uses visual illusions to mask his real appearance, down to how many fingers he actually has. The towns people saw him as a monster so he leans into that narrative instead of trying to fight it. His favorite villains didn't look like him so he made himself look like them. The tropes traditionally assigned to female antagonists didn't resonate with him at all and he found himself relating more towards male, queer coded villains. By trying to make himself monstrous, he unconsciously makes himself look less like a monster. He associates the queer coding of villains in the days of the Hayes Code, less as censorship and vilification of the oppressed, but as its own kind of persistent resistance and its own expression of identity. His gender is as much a performance as his villainy and he is a showman who puts a lot of effort into his performances.

His story is still being animated, but it takes place within the world of Minecraft (so I don't have to draw backgrounds)."

[finch-bewitched]

Some future location lighting tests

[finch-bewitched]

Some head shots of the main cast.

Fun facts:

Bex's entire outfit, down to his roller skates, is all based on clothing items from my own closet. Even his hair and eye shape are modeled after a wig and a set of contacts I regularly wear to conventions.

Pack's hair is meant to read like strips of paper since her outfit is based on both the seed for pack.png, but also its overhead map image. I was debating on whether to make it green to be like the iconic hill from that image, but it didn't look right with the little pompoms she has for the trees. She's meant to have a weak chin.

Sprite's outfit also comes from my closet, but I modified my sweater into a vest for them and gave them my old yellow middle school uniform shirt to wear underneath it. Their hair has the same awful split ends like I used to when I was in grade school.

Marbles technically has stubble, but it's pretty faint and doesn't usually show up. They also have four ears, the two on the sides of their head and the two on top.

This drawing is one of the few times I've given these characters noses... ew.

[finch-bewitched]

I have a Patreon now!

Don't have too much to show yet, but it does in fact exist! Here it be! I'm excited! Hopefully one day it'll be really cool and stuff!

[finch-bewitched]

trick or treat!!!

TRICK!

[finch-bewitched]

WHY IS THE SCREEN BLANK? I COULD HAVE SWORN I PUT SOMETHING HERE...

[zerozerozio]

bring back tumblr ask culture let me. bother you with questions and statements

[boimann]

reblog to let people know it's ok to bother you with questions and statements

[bacony-cakes]

please bother me with questions and statements

[finch-bewitched]

OH WOOOOOW WOULD YOU LOOK AT THAT!

[finch-bewitched]

ATTENTION PEOPLE OF THE INTERNET! THIS BLOG HAS BEEN HIJACKED BY NONE OTHER THAN THE (SOON TO BE) RENOUNED MENACE OF THE WEB!

(For those of you fretting your worried little heads right now, firstly, awwwwwwww you care, secondly, it's unfiction! Come into my playroom, these toys are meant to be shared.)

MY NAME IS BEXPY AND THIS ACCOUNT IS NOW UNDER MY CONTROL! SEE, I'VE GOT BIG PLANS FOR THE FUTURE AND THIS... IDK, IS THIS A HUMAN? A SALAMANDER? I THINK THEY'RE A PERSON. FOUND 'EM IN THE VOID AND BEGGERS CAN'T BE CHOOSERS, SO EITHER WAY, THEY'RE MY NEW VESSEL!

I'VE TAKEN THE LIBERTY OF ACCESSING THEIR ACCOUNTS AND SLAPPING A NEW COAT OF PAINT ON 'EM. FUNNY ENOUGH, MOST OF THEM ARE BLANK! MIGHT AS WELL, RIGHT?

ANYHOW, I'VE GOTTA RUN, BUT STICK AROUND, WOULDJA! I'LL KEEP YOU UPDATED AS I GO. LET'S SEE WHAT MISCHIEF WE CAN GET UP TO!

~B. >.)