Art Sideblog :D

23 💫 any pronouns 💫 Illustration BFA💫 Commissions open!

[hazel-drawthorne]

Commissions!

In addition to the two above, I also offer:

Icons - Similar to a bust, but with a simple background and a smaller size, $40.00

"Build a Ref" - Custom reference sheets with set prices for each part; contact me for further details.

Experimental - You tell me a character and I go wild and try new techniques, PWYW

Will Draw: Humanoid, OC/DND, Anthro/Furry, Robot/Cyborg, Fanart Won’t Draw: Real people, Heavy Gore, Hateful/Offensive Pieces

Terms of Service

I reserve the right to refuse any commission for any reason.

My art may not be used for NFTs/Blockchain projects.

My art may not be used for AI training or datasets.

I prefer to be contacted through email ([email protected]). You’ll get a consultation after the sketch phase and I will accept payment once the sketch is to your liking. Feel free to request more consultations, though. I accept payment through both square invoices and ko-fi.

I’m a college student, so please anticipate longer wait times for updates, but don’t hesitate to check in on how it’s coming along.

[broncoburro]

Stay dark to stay light / Stay light to stay dark

[foone]

some of my OCs are trans but I don't know their deadnames. that's personal, they don't need to tell me that

[foone]

yeah I never expected this to be one of my posts with the longest legs, but I didn't realize that people were never gonna stop reblogging this with their OCs, and every time they do that it gets exposed to a new audience of people, who then tag it with their OCs

[officialspec]

draw more fat characters ok. i love you

[godteri-takk]

Ayyy thankssss!!!

[gloamscribe]

God help my poor readers, I've discovered the Snowflake Method X)

Decided to turn this into a full-blown post after it blew up in Fanfiction Writers Unite! What is the Snowflake Method?

Created by Randy Ingermanson in 2002, the Snowflake Method is a way of outlining novels before the large-scale writing begins. Since I've been struggling with a lot of things while working on my longfic (like context blindness), I decided to see if there was some way I could reduce that.

Here's the Cliff Notes version I wrote up, and there's more detail below:

Start with a 15-word sentence explaining your entire story. Like those blurbs they put on the backs of books.

Turn that sentence into a paragraph, with the same goal.

Make one page summaries of your MAIN characters. Name, motivations, goals, ALL of it.

Go back to your summary paragraph. Turn every sentence in that paragraph into its own paragraph.

Make half-page summaries of all your SIDE characters. Done correctly, all of the character pages you've done should briefly tell the story from each character's POV.

Those paragraphs from step 4? Turn that 1-page plot synopsis into FOUR pages now :)

All your character sheets? M O A R D E T A I L. birthdate, description, history, motivation, goal, etc. Most importantly, how will this character change by the end of the story?

Back to the plot synopsis now--time to make scenes! Randy Ingermanson (the guy who came up with all this) suggests using a spreadsheet to map out all your scenes, what happens in them, whose POV it is, etc. (You could probably pull off something similar in Scrivener. IDK about other writing software.)

OPTIONAL: In your main story doc, expand those scenes from general descriptions into multiple paragraphs. Ingermanson says EVERY scene should have conflict, but for fanfiction I disagree. Nothing wrong with a bit of fluff sometimes :D

(FINAL) Write the thing. All the pieces are in place, just put 'em together!

Under the cut, I have more info on each of these steps, as well as my own analysis of them.

(Full disclosure: some of this is directly copied from Ingermanson's page. This is just for simplicity's sake and nothing more.)

While it’s perfectly valid to write a fic entirely as improv (and often more fun lol), for longfics you’ll want some kind of framework. It’s the same thing as artists transitioning from line art to flat colors to a full-blown painting. The Snowflake Method is the writer’s version of that premise—and only one potential way of many to go about it! Ingermanson calls his method the Snowflake Method because you essentially design the novel in ever-increasing stages; you start small, then build stuff up in ten(-ish) steps, until it looks like a story.

Note that all of this is recommended to be completed over the course of about a month. Each step supposedly should take at least a week, but the original Snowflake Method was also written in 2002—a long, LONG time ago ^_^; Some of the things listed here can now be completed in a much shorter time (or in much easier ways), but the concept itself could still be quite helpful. Without further ado:

Step 1

Come up with a one-sentence summary of your fic. Ingermanson’s example was “A rogue physicist travels back in time to kill the apostle Paul,” the summary for his first novel, Transgression. Where it’s intended to be a simple selling tool to publishers and literary agents, it’s also the foundation of the Snowflake Method. In fanfic context, think of it as your fic’s first impression. What do you want readers to feel before they even click on your story?

Some hints on what makes a good sentence:

Shorter is better. Ingermanson says to try for fewer than 15 words.

In a fanfic context, character names are optional (though Ingermanson says not to put them). This if FAN fiction; readers want to know who you have doing what!

Tie together the big picture and the personal picture. Which character has the most to lose in this story? Now say what he or she wants to win.

Read some one-line blurbs from books you like to learn how to do this. Writing a one-sentence description is a lot harder than it looks, especially when you want to info dump about your fic so bad X)

Step 2

Expand that sentence to a full paragraph describing the story setup, major disasters, and ending of the novel. This is the second stage of the snowflake. Ingermanson suggests a three-act structure (or as he calls it, “three disasters plus an ending”), with each act taking up a quarter of the story. The final quarter should be devoted to the ending and epilogue (if you’re doing one).

It’s not like you have to be precise about it, though—this is still fanfiction. No sane person is gonna be like “Uh akshually yuor secund act wuz 2.034587 words longer than it shuda been!!1!1!!” Please block people who leave comments like that, seriously XD

Step 3

This is the part where you map out storylines for each of your characters. Write a one-page summary sheet that includes:

The character’s name

A one-sentence summary of the character’s storyline

The character’s motivation (what does he/she want abstractly?)

The character’s goal (what does he/she want concretely?)

The character’s conflict (what prevents him/her from reaching this goal?)

The character’s epiphany (what will he/she learn, how will he/she change?)

A one-paragraph summary of the character’s storyline

My personal suggestion: if you have an action-heavy story and want to get even more creative with it, try using DND character sheets for this! They’re still helpful even if your story doesn’t involve magic—just use the first 2 pages of this one and forget the magic section altogether.

IMPORTANT: You may need to go back and revise your one-sentence summary and/or your one-paragraph summary. Go ahead! Tweaking things is an inevitable part of the design process; better to do them during the planning stages now than when you’re 25k words in. (Ha ha. Ha ha. Ha... 🥲) You likely won’t get it right from the outset—and sometimes things will need to change to keep the story manageable, or even as you learn new things during the writing process.

Step 4

By this stage, you should have a good idea of your fic’s overall structure. Getting to this point can take some time, but if the story is broken, you know it now. From here, you keep growing each “node” of your story. Expand each sentence of your summary paragraph into a full paragraph. The final paragraph should say how the fic ends. At the end of the exercise, you’ll be left with a one-page skeleton of your longfic (or 2, or whatever—it’ll likely be single-digit). The idea is to expand the overall story.

Step 5

Write up a one-page description of each major character and a half-page description of the other important characters. These “character synopses” should tell the story from the point of view of each character. If needed, go back to the earlier steps and make revisions as needed.

TIP: If you're dealing with a story that has a large ensemble cast, rate each person in that cast on a scale of 1-10 (or a star rating) in terms of importance to your story.

If we're using ATLA as an example, Aang would be a 10 on the 1-10 scale (since he's the MC) and the cabbage guy would be a 1 or 2. And yet, both characters have distinct storylines; Aang is trying to master the 4 elements, and the cabbage guy just wants to sell his cabbages. Just because a character is a 1 or 2 in plot relevance doesn't mean they have to be boring! (This also tells you that not every storyline has to be overly complicated!)

Step 6

By now, you have a solid story and several story threads, one for each character. Next, expand the one-page plot synopsis to a four-page synopsis. Similar to the last step, you’ll be expanding each paragraph from step 4 into a full page. This is to help you figure out the high-level logic of the story and make strategic decisions. Here, you will definitely want to cycle back and fix things in the earlier steps as you gain insight into the story and new ideas whack you in the face.

Step 7

Expand your character descriptions into full-fledged character charts detailing everything there is to know about each character. The standard stuff such as birthdate, description, history, motivation, goal, etc. The most important thing you want to note is this though: how will this character change by the end of the story? Change can be literally anything from "He masters the 4 elements and becomes the Avatar" to "he finally sells a cabbage". (I must be in an ATLA mood today lol)

This is an expansion of your work in step 3, and it will teach you a lot about your characters. You'll probably go back and revise steps 1-6 as your characters become “real” to you and begin making petulant demands on the story. This is good — great fiction is character-driven. Take as much time as you need to do this, because you’re just saving time downstream. (It may take a full month of solid effort to get here. Longfics are long for the authors too, y'know?)

Step 8

Take that four-page synopsis and make a list of all the scenes that you’ll need to turn the story into a proper longfic. At this point, Ingermanson suggests using a spreadsheet (like Excel). Keep in mind this method was written in 2002, so yeah.

He says to make a spreadsheet detailing the scenes from your four-page plot outline:

one line for each scene

one column for the POV character

another (wide) column saying what happens

(optional): more columns that tell you how many pages you expect to write for the scene

Note: If you have something like Scrivener, you can do something similar by making a file for each scene and noting the POV character, what happens, and so on in the Notes window.

If you use the spreadsheet method, you’ll want to make new versions of the story spreadsheet as you progress. Ingermanson suggests determining what scenes go in which chapters after you’re done; I like to do it as I go (since Scrivener lets me drag and drop anyway).

Step 9

Ingermanson says this is optional, but I thought I would include it anyway.

Switch back to your word processor and begin writing a narrative description of the story. Take each line of the spreadsheet and expand it to a multi-paragraph description of the scene. Put in any cool lines of dialogue you think of, and sketch out the essential conflict of that scene. If there’s no conflict, you’ll know it here. Ingermanson says that every scene should have conflict, but for fanfiction I disagree. Nothing wrong with a little fluff now and then :D

Step 10

Start the real first draft of the fic! About midway through a first draft (or if you get writer’s block) take a break and fix all the broken parts of your design docs from all the previous steps, if needed. Nothing left after that than to polish—if you want to!

...Phew that was longer than I thought it was, but I'm glad I got it out there! :D If this was any help to anyone, let me know! (And check out Ingermanson's website, too. It's mostly geared toward novelists that want to get published, and he does sell some books and things, but most of the stuff on his site is free! That's how I wrote all this in the first place! :D)

[myreitha]

Soooooo, I've fallen down the rabbit hole and now I made a stained glass window representing the fictional saint of journalists and dangerous truths who's honored in one of the cities in my D&D campaign.

. . .I totally didn't create another new alphabet just to make newspaper sheets for it. Not at all >.>

[myreitha]

@luvianblue is my favorite person today and asked to see the script/alphabet I made for this one (and more! But uh, I have to get those into a shareable state, so they'll take me a minute).

This script is based off of one I made two years ago as sort of a loosely descended from idea (as someone who's not studied how that happens specifically and is just leaning on my graphic design and puzzle background). For those looking to translate along at home, it's one-to-one with english! Here's the guide with the numbering system:

And here are the two newspaper sheets that are used in the Muckraker piece above! Headlines, ads, and anything larger than those is translatable while the body copy for the stories is not.

Very proud of the fact that I not only made use of two different styles of type for th edifferent newspapers, but I also made use of a condensed version of the alphabet for a number of the headlines.

The campaign is set in the Critical Role setting of Exandria, and in the city of Bassuras in Marquet and there are a number of references to setting-specific things in the translations, in case some words are unfamiliar!

[spicymotte]

after 4 years of drawing webcomics, this is my wisdom:

start now. now. now now now. or else you'll never draw this damn thing

it's fine if you don't have the entire story figured out yet, it'll happen naturally

draw what you want to draw!! webcomics often run for years, so you better work with something you like

don't overcomplicate things. a simple, efficient work flow is your top priority in order to stay consistent

bullshit some things. trace background refs. reuse poses. draw your character's face from different angles and just copy paste it in to save time. be smart about your work baby

take breaks if needed. webcomic burnout is real

sometimes, a panel or a page looks bad. shit happens. move on

lettering is actually really important and super hard to pull off

it's your comic. do what you want forever!!!

I'm begging you again to work smart, not hard. reuse backgrounds. use brush sets for webcomic artists. trace 3D objects. use 3D models to pose your characters

you may need hours or days to draw one panel, but people will look at it for 5-8 seconds. keep that in mind

a simple background is better than no background at all (avoiding the white void increases the quality of your work by a ton!)

sometimes the anatomy needs to be a little off to make an interesting shot/panel. that's fine, don't worry about it too much

at least 2000px canvas and 300 dpi for good quality results

it's okay to stop by the way. it's okay to move on from a project if you no longer find joy in it

[i-am-a-fan]

[moki-dokie]

Genuinely this is one of the most beautifully animated things I've seen since the golden age of animation. I could actually cry for how much love they put into this jfc what a beautiful homage

[moki-dokie]

Everyone say thank you gorillaz

[redstonedust]

pet peeve is when you look up fashion references from a specific era and you keep getting modern day '[era]-inspired' fashion like NO i want authenticity damn it. i can see your 2020 photo quality and your 2020 hair and your 2020 makeup. youre not fooling me.

[bincliff]

hello i'm a historical fashion researcher and i have a lot of experience looking up things! this is a very widely experienced irritation and you're definitely not alone in this, but i am here to share everything i know!

so, ways to get around this:

turn off AI results. they're literally nonsense to us

don't use pinterest because the sources/provenance is often hard to trace

a standard internet search can be okay, but museum collections are the top tier (list of collections below this list)

instead of broad terms like victorian, regency, tudor, renaissance etc. try using the decade you're looking for. if you're not sure of what decade it is but have a vague image in your head, look on the fashion history timeline and just jump around until you find it. but even changing to e.g. 19th century will give better results than victorian

including terms like womenswear/menswear, daywear, formal wear, evening wear, court dress should increase the value of your search too

including "fashion plates" in your search can give you a nice impression of the intended silhouettes of the era. some of these might be a little stylised but will show you what was considered in vogue

for pre-fashion plate eras or things like makeup and styling, you'll have to look at portraiture or manuscripts. these are harder to actually find what you're looking for, but searching museum collections and limiting results to specific date ranges will be your friend

when looking at art, do bear in mind sometimes artists would paint fabric extra flow-y to show off their skills. it might not have been exactly like that in terms of fabric weight or drape. so, a pinch of salt required!

if you find something on image search where the provenance is dubious, reverse image search and you might find a source! i've been able to trace random pinterest images to real sources, but this does take a lot of time and effort and is often not worth the headache

some online resources and museum collections:

fashion history timeline is an invaluable resource if you're trying to get a feel for everything and should be your first port of call. it'll also link to good examples

the met has a vast number of extant examples of clothing, as well as fashion plates

costume institute fashion plates is a subcollection of the met for fashion plates (1800s-1922)

v&a also has many extant garments, fashion plates, and incredible articles on clothing and aesthetics. read the details of the objects because they'll often reveal a lot about the piece

lacma is good for C19th-20th pieces

nypl digital collection for photographs

national portrait gallery or similar for portraiture, or literally any museum in your country that has historical art

national museums scotland can be useful situationally but might be oddly specific

stout style history is a great collection for finding image references for fat people wearing historical clothes. survival bias of a lot of museum pieces tends towards smaller clothing that couldn't be repurposed, but this aims to counter that. it's not sortable, but is still a really nice resource

wikimedia commons is surprisingly handy! and the images, if you should need to link/repost them, are public domain

auction websites sound like a funny one to recommend. some won't have mannequins and some will. just look up historical garment auctions and you'll find some!

anyway, i hope this has been a good place to start for anyone interested! there are probably some i've missed because there are so many museums across the world and i don't know about all of them or can't remember them. but these are the ones i've used the most! (my specialisation/jobs i've had to research for have only really been in western fashion, so my resources reflect that)

[haemey]

Wikipedia has a list of fashion museums. Unfortunately, the page itself is only available in German, but the introductory paragraph is very short and after that, it's organised by country, and then it's a simple list. If you click on a museum's article, the website is usually linked in the overview table.

[odinsblog]

“First season of LEVERAGE - so he's 21 years old - he shows me his watch designs. I'm expecting, y' know, celebrity strap branding or faces. No, it's engineering schematics of GEARS and shit. Pages of them. Even then, there were none so cool.” - John Rogers

[hazel-drawthorne]

Iron lung fanart versions A and B!

[caemidraws]

[ Kasia and Łucja for @littleladymab ❤ ]

[antiqueanimals]

Paul Bransom (1885 - 1979). Bear Head Sketches / Bear Paw and Claw Sketches. Charcoal and pastel on paper. 1952.

National Museum of Wildlife Art, x / x

[thiingamajiig]

different, but the same

[kait-draws-stuff]

video of my peregrine falcon animation. hopefully this works better than the GIF

[wizardarchetypes]

trilobites aren't extinct btw there's like 30 of them who live in a puddle and only i know where and we hang out every day