The Creator's Creativity Depot

Howdy, this is where I launch my ideas directly into the void! Main is @original-character-chaos. Proshippers and other general DNI shoe-ins need not interact.

[i-wanna-be-eldritch]

Hey hi hello, all! Call me The Creator, and welcome to my blog for all things creative! Here you'll find a masterpost of my art from my main, creative tips, plus writing and posts about my OCs!

Please feel free to ask about my works, I'll be happy to answer any questions!

[adorkastock]

August Adipose is ON!

August Adipose is a month long drawing challenge started by kivanbay on Twitter which challenges artists to draw bodies not often represented in mainstream media!

So... why draw a fat model?

#1: Not everyone is skinny or toned. In fact, most people aren't. Drawing a fat model gives you real life practice for drawing realistic body types and shapes and helps you learn where fat can land on a human being so you're better equipped to draw convincing people!

#2: Representation matters! Since bodies vary in shape and size, seeing yourself reflected in the media you consume is important to developing a healthy body image. Fat doesn't mean unhealthy, and any little bit we can do to normalize different body types will help us unlearn years of indoctrination about skinny = healthy. You can help by including fat characters into your roster!

#3: Fat is fun! One thing I hear from people a lot is that they loved doing figurative drawings and gesture drawings of fat people the most. Let's face it - fat is really fun to draw. It gives you the opportunity to add new shapes to your artwork and can help you develop your overall understanding of light and dark.

Hope this pose helps you - happy drawing!

[i-wanna-be-eldritch]

Angora stood, paused, behind the thick red curtain that stood between the amphitheater and her. It was quiet, only one person in attendance. She knew that. By all accounts, to a seasoned performer like her, it should be a cakewalk! She'd performed to packed crowds in the capitol and far and wide as even her inscrutable mind could describe. Had princes and lords kiss her hand, enamored with her act.

Her… act, yes. It was an act, she reminded herself. And tonight was no different- just a show, a performance. The magical rabbit mask she wore- the one with one eye covered with a heart- was gripping her face like a vice… just like every night. Malvina had sworn up and down the whole circus tent that it needed to stay on- talking about how people just couldn't handle what was underneath. "We all wear masks, sweetie!", the old Harlequine ringmaster had said, electric smile beaming through her skin- "yours is just more literal!"

She'd found that out, alright. Angora had dared to dream before- manifold dreams of tearing off this damned mask, pressing herself against someone and feeling them against her skin… her true skin. The one that shimmered like oil on water and blinked with a thousand red eyes. The one that bristled with teeth and tails too numerous and shifting to count… the one she kept hidden under her red-and-black balanchine.

But all for naught. Just like Malvina said… they ran- screaming. Each and every time, Malvina would find her in her trailer, throwing the door open, raving about some exorbitant amount of money she'd have to pay to the lawmen to convince them that the "poor fool" had been so tipsy as to imagine a "nightmare". But Angora would make up that money, wouldn't she? She'd learn her lesson.

Angora hadn't HAD schooling, of course- and one of the magician-mathematicians had rather embarrassingly had to pull her aside the first time and explain what a "lesson" was. He'd somewhat-crossly asked if she'd LIKE a few, but Angora had simply shook her head and slunk off, leaving the man bewildered. He could never have understood- "nightmares" didn't get "lessons" like that.

So here she was, huh? Guess she never "learned". Just like Malvina's eldest son Jyre, who had run off with the fox- oh, that one smarted. Malvina had been drunk that time, drunk enough to forget that Angora ever entered the room, hiding in the shadows and listening to her increasingly-incoherent sob stories. The ones about how her prodigal younger son had abandoned her the first chance he'd got, designing starspokes for the flying trains which crisscrossed the sky islands… leaving her living a *financial* nightmare.

They'd halfway crashed on this island, she remembered. The island was urban enough to live decently, but she was their only big act left- a chance to repair the train and escape to a life of luxury in the capitol once more. Would Angora really leave behind the only people who could- would- help her?

It was foolish… But it just felt like too big of a chance to miss up. The voice inside her- her "heart"- could never bear to tell Malvina how unhappy she was… staying confined to this form even when no eyes were on her… She was happy with her voice, with her outfit, but couldn't she stretch every once in a while…? Angora steadied herself, praying that the stitches the seamster-machine had inlaid for the nth time would hold. Those kind of thoughts, emotions, were… dangerous to her clothing, and to the perfect mask she'd been gifted.

And it was almost starless-hour.

She'd called in so many favors tonight- to make sure the ringmaster wouldn't find out, to make sure that the "audience" could get in without any trouble, to make sure that nobody else would get near… this was a private show. Old, gentle Monsoirno had closed his eye- his biological one- and gently put his powerful hand on her shoulder, sighing as he'd promised to make sure security was given a different patrol tonight, if she would just please not take too big a gamble?

And one of those favors… had been to the chief mechanic, who'd said she'd set the automatic spotlight and music to go off… now.

The lights along the amphitheatre steps dimmed, leaving the audience in darkness… well, it would have. Fetch was a Phantasm- and peeking around the curtains, she could see his grey ecto-flames still peeking out from under that wide-brimmed hat he wore. The one he liked to pull down over his face to hide the fiery blush he produced whenever he said anything "improper". The one that clanked with little silvery trinkets he'd collected from scrounging and high-end shops alike. The one he'd held between them and the screen when he'd kissed her on the nose at the end of the imprompteau motion-picture she'd managed to pull together.

…and he was poised with anticipation- she could feel it. Phantasms still had hearts, and it was beating awfully quick as the mechanical violinist behind the stage put bow to string. A slow, simple piece… impossible to foul up… right? It was now or never!

Angora threw aside the curtain, "legs" propelling her out onto the theatre with an overexaggerated spin- powerful form beneath expelling the kind of movement most could only dream of. With a curtsy and ribbons arcing out behind her, the diva felt the solo rise within her- a solo joined by a singular cheer and ecstatic clinking, clapping of hands. Fetch beamed at her from in the dead center of the audience, clunky metal work boots propped on the bench below.

Those boots, which somehow matched his long, silken dress- STOP with the thinking, you're in the middle of a performance, Angora scolded herself! The violinist pulled back its bow, launching into a lilting melody- there, her "legs" saved her, throwing her high into the air where she caught herself on one of the near-invisible steel wires which crossed the amphitheatre. It was child's play as she flipped over it, falling back down to earth with a spin and another great leap, caroming off the floor into the wall back onto the wires, form making more minute movements per minute than muscles could ever muster.

The show went on and on, desperately keeping her left "blind" side to the audience so she wouldn't get lost in that smile- DANGIT! Thinking about it again! But still the violinist played, stanza by stanza of the song she'd picked for this very occasion. It had a big, dramatic finish… and so, she hoped, did this night. Fetch had been more involved than any other acquaintance that she could remember, pulling off far more risky meetings within the bigtop grounds than even her favors could shield him from. Talking about how his father owned the biggest forgeworks in the city, and even outright threatening repercussions on the few times one of Malvina's private guards had found Angora outside the wire fence. He'd been terrified, his heart pounding, but had still shielded HER, in spite of the two-foot height difference.

He deserved to know, didn't he?

That he was dating a monster.

It was all very self-destructive, she allowed herself to admit. Just like those doomed romances the storytellers had told when the show was off for a holiday. She'd never known anything else, so how could they end otherwise? Well, just this once, she'd rip the bandage off and bring herself back to reality… with a suitably grand end.

The music spiralled and swirled, one violin doing far more work than it had to as the solo neared its end. she'd practiced this, spiralling along with the music as the ribbons wrapped her in a halo of red. The seams the seamster-machine had put in, the seams she'd intentionally weakened in just the right places, felt ready to burst. It would be so easy to put back together this time, to slip back into her costume. But now… they split!

Inky void, sharp as a butcher's knife and smooth as shattered glass, burst out in an explosion of scarlet and sable as her true form piled out onto the stage. Large, clean tatters that split cleanly along the seam lines. Her form was feminine, yes, she'd gotten quite fond of that, but there was nothing "proper" about the tendrils that ended in heart-shaped hooks with beaming red eyes.

Nothing "ladylike" about the jagged mouths, lined with coal-colored teeth that fit together like puzzle pieces.

Nothing "beautiful" about the half-dozen unevenly-dispersed humanoid arms which grasped at the world around them.

All that was left was the mask… hopelessly small on her equally small false head. She basked in her own eldritch glory, stretching up and around the wires and then back down into the audience… looking into the startled eyes of her newest dashed hope.

Well, she would, if he'd just move that hat up off of his face.

But… it stayed there. Just… shaking a little bit. Had she finally gone too far, could this one even take to their feet and flee?

Then… she felt it. The heartbeat. It was fast, startled, yes- but… it was still… holding on? To…-

"A-angora…?"

The voice was soft and scared, yes, but also… feebly gentle. Like it was reaching out, to something deep within her she'd sworn she hadn't had. "Yes?" answered the thing-that-called-itself-Angora, speaking in a thousand tongues.

"Is that… still you?"

Angora didn't even know how to respond to that, tapping her tendrils on the benches rhythmically… she registered with some dull surprise that she was still tapping out the melody she'd just been dancing to.

An aeon of silence passed in a second… until slowly the hat was lifted. The flames had gone almost white with shock, but still, beating at the heart… was still that grey-blue faint tinge of a blush.

Angora- shocked despite herself- stood still as a statue as Fetch, termoring like an earthquake, barely peeped out from under the hat… and touched her mask.

Touch.

What…?

The next thing that touched her mask were his ghostly lips. That black lipstick of charcoal and magic which left marks that never came quite clean. That… were pressed so firmly to her mask.

The violinist finished its last flourish, going still and silent as the sky. The spotlight dimmed and faded as the amphitheater lights came back on. What…? Was she still… dreaming?

No. This was real.

"I… thought those stitches on your outfit always looked oddly-placed." Fetch stammered out. Slowly, Angora began to shrink once more, no tattered clothes over her compressed form. She stared, dumbfounded. He… what…?

"…"

"…"

"…wh-why aren't you saying anything, A-Angora?"

"My… name…?"

"Yes. your name!" he sputtered, cross in spite of himself. "I-I… really enjoyed your performance, and- Eep!"

Another recoil. Not of fear, but startling at her proximity. For once, Angora could not move her ever-moving form. They shared a breathless moment, there… beneath the moonless night… until she collapsed into his arms. He startled, but grasped her close on sheer instinct alone. An instinct… she could not imagine until this point.

With a feebleness she'd never imagined herself displaying, Angora wrapped her arms and tendrils around Fetch and held him close. This had never happened before… and quietly, the acrobat let her many eyes weep. Somehow, some way… that dream… felt just a little bit truer than before.

[jojo-the-dogg0]

Equiping an armor tutorial

i'll prob make more bc i love talking ab armors

[teashoesandhair]

One hot and cool writing tip that I wish more people knew is... you don't have to write out people's accents phonetically. You just don't. You are not Dickens. You are (hopefully) not Rowling. There are so many other ways you can make someone's speech feel authentic to their background, or just make it clear that they're speaking in a certain accent, not limited to:

literally just saying 'he spoke with a Welsh accent'; sure, it's a bit blunt, but it gets the job done in a pinch. "He's completely drunk," he said, his southern drawl lingering on the final syllable as if to highlight the extent of the offence. Y'know, something of that ilk, but not as shit.

learning the specific vocabulary and syntax that someone with that accent might use. Sticking with the Welsh theme, because it's objectively the best accent*, there's a bunch of things that differentiate a colloquial South Walean accent, outside of our famed tendency to elongate a vowel to the point of death. The way we use prepositions (where to by is he?), the vocabulary borrowed from Welsh - saying that someone daft is twp, or something small is dwty - can easily signpost our speech as being from that specific area, without needing to type something like "'e's absolutely 'angin', man, pissed as a faaht 'e is!" Something less jarring, such as "He's absolutely hanging, he is." is just as clear. A character who says "Do you want a cuppa?" is coded or located very differently to one who says "You'll have a cup of tea, so you will."

ditto if there are specific ways that someone from a certain area might refer to a well-known concept. Regional words for mother and father, for example, or words that are class-specific; your character who calls his parents 'mater and pater' is likely inhabiting a different socioeconomic strata than your character who calls them 'mam and dad'. See if there's a colloquial way of saying 'yes' and 'no'; a lot can be signposted if your character says 'nah' rather than 'no', or 'aye' rather than 'yes'. A character saying 'couch' is inherently coded differently to one who says 'sofa'.

The reasons that writing accents phonetically is Generally Ill-Advised, In My Opinion are as follows:

quite simply, you're probably not being as clear in conveying the sounds of the accent as you think you are. Taking JK Rowling's work as the best possible example of this, her attempts at writing a Cockney accent phonetically come across like someone is chewing a mouthful of cheese curds and struggling to contain them. There's no consistency, no proper understanding of how to transcribe syllables into writing in a way that coherently conveys the accent she's trying to portray. I mean this so seriously, but what the flying fuck is: 'Well, 'e 'ad these 'ead pains and 'e was def'nitley nervous. Depressed maybe.' It's a crime, is what it is.

it's just plain hard to read. Trying to wade through sentences full of apostrophes and elision, parsing what's actually being said, gets tiresome. It asks the reader to do work that you're actively making harder for them. And that's not always a bad thing! Making readers Put Some Fucking Effort In can be very fruitful! But do you really want them to be struggling to understand every single thing that your Character B is saying for 350 pages?

which leads me onto the last point, and the most important in my mind: writing out accents like this always, always affects accents that are already in some way Othered. They're either racialised or working class, or associated with certain local regions that have negative stereotypes - think the deep South of the US, or the Welsh Valleys. They're never the 'default'. And this raises thorny questions about what the default is, what the standardised accent is, the accents that do and do not merit differentiation from the norm. You're relegating Character B to being hard to read because he's from, idk, Sunderland. You've decided that he isn't speaking 'properly', and therefore the reader needs to understand that other people think he's speaking weirdly. That, to me, is the principle issue. Because returning to JK Rowling (a sentence I hoped never to type), the only characters who speak like this in her work are working class, or they're from other countries. They're never from, you know, Surrey. Wonder why that is. And it's easy to be glib about it, but I do think it reifies class and regional boundaries in a way that's ultimately harmful.

This isn't to say that there's never a place for eye dialect in writing - Trainspotting (edit to respond to some legitimate comments in the reblogs: I bring up Trainspotting because it's written in Scots and Scottish English, not just Scots, but I agree that this isn't the best example as the Scots portions are not part of this conversation in the same way; consider Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston as a better example, and apologies for the confusion!) wouldn't be what it is without it, and there's definitely a different conversation to be had when it's your own accent and you're making a deliberate point about identity by differentiating through eye dialect - but I think that the blanket assumption of 'oh shit, my character is from Ireland, I'd better type that out phonetically!' can actually be both damaging to your writing and to your character representation, and I think that instead doing the work to really understand the vocabulary, speech patterns and unique aspects of a language or dialect always makes a work feel more authentic and lived-in.

To wit, less of this shite:

There’s mony a slip, an’ I’m no losin’ sight o’ any o’ my suspectit pairsons, juist yet awhile. (One of the Lord Peter Wimsey novels by the very English Dorothy L. Sayers, if you were wondering, and yes, that's supposed to be a Scottish accent; I'd not be bringing it up if it were a Scottish author writing in Scots)

and more of this:

"Are we straight so?"

"Aye, we're straight," said Jim.

"Straight as a rush, so we are." (Jamie O'Neill, Irish, from At Swim, Two Boys)

*objective determination made via a sample size of one: me, in an elaborate hat.

[yesterdaysprint]

Arkansas Gazette, Little Rock, August 16, 1918

[cookietastic]

We need to bring back the athletics body type post

[cookietastic]

This one

[cookietastic]

Tumblr has 10+ image limit had to add these on too

[thewriteadviceforwriters]

🍖 How to Build a Culture Without Just Inventing Spices and Necklaces

(a worldbuilding roast. with love.)

So. You’re building a fantasy world, and you’ve just invented: → Three types of ceremonial jewelry → A spice that tastes like cinnamon if it were bitter and cursed → A holiday where everyone wears gold and screams at dawn

Cute. But that’s not culture. That’s aesthetics.

And if your worldbuilding is all outfits, dances, and spice blends with vaguely mystical names, your story’s probably going to feel like a cosplay convention held inside a Pinterest board.

Here’s how to fix that—aka: how to build a real, functioning culture that shapes your story, not just its vibes.

─────── ✦ ───────

🔗 Culture Is Built on Power, Not Just Style

Ask yourself: → Who’s in charge, and why? → Who has land? Who doesn’t? → What’s considered taboo, sacred, or punishable by death?

Culture is shaped by who gets to make the rules and who gets crushed by them. That’s where things like religion, family structure, class divisions, gender roles, and social expectations actually come from.

Start there. Not at the embroidery.

─────── ✦ ───────

2.🪓 Culture Comes From Conflict

Did this society evolve peacefully? Was it colonized? Did it colonize? Was it rebuilt after a war? Is it still in one?

→ What was destroyed and mythologized? → What do the survivors still whisper about? → What do children get taught in school that’s… suspiciously sanitized?

No culture is neutral. Every tradition has a history, and that history should taste like blood, loss, or propaganda.

─────── ✦ ───────

3.🧠 Belief Systems > Customs Lists

Sure, rituals and holidays are cool. But what do people believe about: → Death? → Love? → Time? → The natural world? → Justice?

Example: A society that believes time is cyclical vs. one that sees time as linear will approach everything—from prison sentences to grief—completely differently.

You don’t need to invent 80 gods. You need to know what those gods mean to the people who pray to them.

─────── ✦ ───────

4.🫀 Culture Controls Behavior (Quietly)

Culture shows up in: → What people apologize for → What insults cut deepest → What people are embarrassed about → What’s praised publicly vs. what’s hidden privately

For instance: → A culture obsessed with stoicism won’t say “I love you.” They’ll say “Have you eaten?” → A culture built on legacy might prioritize ancestor veneration, archival writing, name inheritance.

This stuff? Way more immersive than giving everyone matching earrings.

─────── ✦ ───────

5. 🏠 Culture = Daily Life, Not Just Festivals

Sure, your MC might attend a funeral where people paint their faces blue. But what about: → Breakfast routines? → How people greet each other on the street? → Who cooks, and who eats first? → What’s considered “clean” or “proper”? → How is parenting handled? Divorce?

Culture is what happens between plot points. It should shape your character’s assumptions, language, fears, and habits—whether or not a festival is going on.

─────── ✦ ───────

6. 💬 Let Your Characters Disagree With Their Own Culture

A culture isn’t a monolith.

Even in deeply traditional societies, people: → Rebel → Question → Break rules → Misinterpret laws → Mock sacred things → Act hypocritically → Weaponize or resist what’s expected

Let your characters wrestle with the culture around them. That’s where realism (and tension) lives.

─────── ✦ ───────

7.🧼 Beware the “Pretty = Good” Trap

Worldbuilding gets boring fast when: → The protagonist’s homeland is beautiful and pure → The enemy’s culture is dark and “barbaric” → Every detail just reinforces who the reader should like

You can—and should—challenge the aesthetic hierarchy. → Let ugly things be beloved. → Let beautiful things be corrupt. → Let your MC romanticize their culture and then get disillusioned by it later.

─────── ✦ ───────

📍 TL;DR (but like, spicy): → Culture is not food and jewelry. → Culture is power, fear, memory, contradiction. → Stop inventing spices until you know who starved last winter. → Let your world feel lived in, not curated.

The best cultural worldbuilding doesn’t look like a list. It feels like a system. A pressure. A presence your characters can’t escape—even if they try.

Now go. Build something real. (You can add spices later.)

—rin t. // writing advice for worldbuilders with rage and range // thewriteadviceforwriters

Sometimes the problem isn’t your plot. It’s your first 5 pages. Fix it here → 🖤 Free eBook: 5 Opening Pages Mistakes to Stop Making:

5 Opening Pages Mistakes to Stop Making — A Mini eBook for Fiction Writers

✦ A free (and actually helpful) guide to leveling up your first 10 pages ✦If you're unsure whether your opening is ✨doing enough✨ to hook re

🕯️ download the pack & write something cursed:

Write the Darkness: 75 Dark Academia x Horror Prompts

A gothic prompt pack for writers who love cursed universities, secret societies, and scholarly rot.✎ Write the Darkness ✎A 75-prompt horror

[fallout-lou-begas]

do you have any advice on character design?

watch The Sopranos

[fallout-lou-begas]

i actually wanted to elaborate on this and say that i think it’s a really bad habit of a lot of artists, influenced by current media casting practices, to unconsciously or consciously make every single character they create super pretty, like everyone is just hot in that very boring, homogenous way, and this also comes as a result of people using actors and celebrities as character references or faceclaims and AI facial generation programs like Artbreeder being trained on people who are generally very pretty-looking. it results in alienating, uncanny worlds and drawings completely devoid of people who just look like regular people. it results worlds populated by mannequins fresh off the CW. I feel like whether a character is attractive or not should actually matter, be part of their character, because that kind of thing absolutely affects the way you move through the world and the way the world treats you.

so i wanted to throw in some suggestions that, whenever I’m trying to find a character reference or otherwise draw very interesting-looking yet regular-looking people, which i usually have to do for bit characters in @ikroah​ or something, I tend to look for references in the following places. these are far from the only reliable way to get inspiration, this is just a non-exhaustive list of places i’ve looked before for visual inspiration when needing to create a character, whether starring characters or background ones:

pre-2000s television (The Sopranos and Twin Peaks especially having incredible character design)

extras in comedy sketch shows

esports players

real photos (not staged stock photos) of line cooks

70s baseball players

athletes from more obscure olympic sports like the javelin toss or greco-roman wrestling, especially if you’re looking for a specific body type

ska, jazz, and blues musicians

firefighters

improv troupes

for teenagers, searching “high school english class project” on youtube and sorting by Upload Date

state senators, small-town mayors, and generally obscure local government positions like comptroller or treasurer (yes i know politicians can be bad sometimes but smaller elections especially don’t really depend on looks)

people who walk by your window (if you live in a city like I do)

and again these are just, in my opinion, deep and easy wells to dive in if you want to get a good idea of what regular people look like. these suggestions aren’t the limits on where you can possibly find inspiration for character design

[roganaut]

Fellini’s movies have remarkably interesting and unique looking actors

[fallout-lou-begas]

Yes!!! There’s an entire book called Fellini’s Faces that’s nothing but portraits of his actors that’s phenomenal for this kind of thing, though it’s fairly rare to get a hold of today.

[sartorialadventure]

(Since I know a lot of writers/artists follow me for costume/character design ideas!)

[creatingblackcharacters]

THE LONG-AWAITED WEBSITE!!!!

It's not perfect- Strawpage's design tools are... not great- but I did my best to bring you all a Tumblr-free transcription of all my lessons. This is probably the most labor-intensive thing I've done for this page (next to the character polls). Four months of blood, sweat, and tears... and now, she LIVES!!!!

Some Notes:

I created it with the intent of Desktop use, so Mobile might have some issues. If it's not working on your phone, try desktop.

Out of the multiple browsers tested (Firefox, Google, Edge, Brave, Safari), Firefox had some issues sporadically.

I'm still going to post lessons on here, first. This page is priority to me, and the website is more of an archive.

The fonts are normal past this opening page.

I will be adding a portion to send funds soon, if'n you are feeling kind and generous.

Thank you all for your patience while I worked on this. It was a labor of love and I hope that it shows. 🙏🏾 Happy scrolling!

[creatingblackcharacters]

Reminder that if you get sick of Tumblr but still want to create Black characters, I have a website 👍🏾

[boilingheart-archive]

Y’all little writers go on and have fun now

[mcapriglioneart]

how to draw arms ? ? 

[swagginsloths]

holy fuck

[shoutsofthunder]

holy fuck is right… but… does it work with legs???

[mcapriglioneart]

yes !!

[empresspinto]

but how much extend

[thunar]

^^^^^^^^^^

[kvothe-kingkiller]

[gabbyzvolt25]

I NEARLY CHOKED

[lifeofcynch]

ENJFDFNFATFVFDF

[deactivated-blog]

finally. i can be accurate

[shiny-charming]

This is too fucking great to not reblog

[wishem]

I give it MASCLES

BIG MACHO

[keithislactoseintolerant-deacti]

🤣🤣

[urhella-gaychloe]

LMAOOOOOO

[fernacular]

Okay but for anyone who legit wants to know how to calculate it correctly:

The elbow joint on average rests a couple inches higher than the navel, so if you measure how long the distance is from the middle of the shoulder to that point then you have the length of the upper and fore arms!

[fernacular]

So if anyone’s wondering about legs too, the simplest rule of thumb is that the length from the top of the leg to the knee is equal to the distance between the top of the leg and the bottom of the pectorals:

And I wanna stress that when i say “top of the leg” i’m not talking about the crotch (please don’t flag me tumblr it’s an anatomical term) i’m talking about the point where the femur connects to the pelvis, which is higher up on the hips:

It’s easier to see what I’m talking about in this photo of a man squatting: 

So yeah if you use that measurement when using this technique you should get fairly realistically proportioned legs:

But remember! messing with proportions is an important and fun part of character design! Know the rules first so you can then break them however you please!

[im-a-hyperion-vault-hunter-deac]

HOW THE HELL DID I FIND THIS POST OMG

[erasaure]

[i-am-corbin-dallas]

Licherally in the midst of drawing a guy and crying at how bad the arms are. Thanks Tumbles

[drrockbell]

I only ever saw the part where people started drawing the limbs outrageously long and genuinely wanted to know how to fix that, so I’m really thankful to see the rest.

[luckeclover]

This is just reminding me that I need to pick up a pencil. But I know I’m not going to ever finish the drawing. 🤷‍♀️

[lizzy-s00]

So we went for somewhat helpful to really helpful to “wtf, why can arms be so long?” to “hahaha this is hilarious” to “um actually! 🤓” *Gives us a whole essay and explanation on how this works*

Still though, that’s very useful

[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.

[luna-azzurra]

So nice of my brain to have absolutely no thoughts the second I sit down to write.

[bucketofdeltav]

So my beta reader for the Big Fics is an astrophysicist, right. Who is currently also writing a hard sci-fi novel about the exploration of Phobos (more power to them, I cannot with the physics required for that, best I can do is soft sci-fi/fantasy and that reminds me I should finish that story).

Anyway I was bitching about how hard it is to come up with feasible planets in Star Wars because sometimes you need a new planet from scratch and sometimes you need to know more about a planet than the 'has jungles, is probably a moon technically' than Wookieepedia will give you, and they're like 'oh yeah I can do something about that'.

So they've written (in Matlab but they swear it will run as a .exe as well and I may be conscripted to embed it as a web tool at some point) a star system generator.

You input what you know about the planet (ecosystem, population, sun colour, does it have liquid water, does it have a moon or moons, is it a moon or moons, temperature averages, atmosphere, you get me) and it will give you the... everything else about the star system, in obedience to real-universe physics. And if you input nothing you get a randomly generated star system.

And I’m like oh I know people who will be into this with a vengeance, and they're not on Tumblr, so this is me seeing who exactly would be keen on, and I cannot stress this enough, a real-physics comprehensive star system generator.

It's still in the debugging phase (last error fixed: every planet wants to have a population of exactly 5000 regardless of other factors, turned out to be a missing equals sign somewhere), but I'm psyched for this and trying to gauge interest for how high a priority 'make this an accessible web tool' needs to be.

[melyzard]

[elodieunderglass]

@bucketofdeltav says the URL is here: http://tumblr.com/star-system-generator

okay it has its own blog now (@star-system-generator) on Tumblr

Follow @star-system-generator and get more of the good stuff by joining Tumblr today. Dive in!

[whyenn-reader]

good art doesnt exist. you can't make it.

[whyenn-reader]

you're free now.

[humanofmicomage]

What with bucket hats, bare midriffs, and flared jeans having been resurrected by some irresponsible necromancer with frosted tips, I figure there’s no better time to resurrect some of my favorite Y2K fonts. I typically only see the same three or four pop up in discussions on the subject, so maybe this will be helpful to nostalgic designers. Click though for links.

Keep reading

[humanofmicomage]

Golly! That post sure was popular. I’m happy to share some more.

Astro (2004, T26, Commercial) Crystopia (2000, BrainReactor, Commercial) Crystopian (1998, About Type Foundry, Commercial) LVDC Fool 22 (2003, Lovedesign Co., Freeware) Frigate (2001, Apostrophic Lab, Freeware) Neutronica (2000, BrainReactor, Commercial) Pornomania (2000, BrainReactor, Commercial) Proton (1995, T26, Commercial) Rephlex (1998, Lineto, Commercial) Solar2000 (1998, Cyclone Graphix, Unknown)

[humanofmicomage]

How does this have so many notes?

LVDC Cobra 4 (2000, Lovedesign Co., Freeware) Contour (1992, Device, Commercial) FUTU (2002, Fenotype, Freeware) Intergalactic (2000, BrainReactor, Commercial) Omicron (1997, Beyond Design, Freeware) Photonica (2002, Liew Keng Huat, Freeware) SF Quartzite (1999, ShyFoundry, Freeware) Republika (2000, Apostrophic Lab, Freeware) Unite (1997, Image Club, Commercial) Warzone (1999, Glitch, Freeware) Yagiza (2001, B-Rain, Freeware)

Honorable mention to Yeoman Jack, an excellent free modern face by Iconian that looks more like it’s from the early 2000s than many of their actually 20 year old fonts. I tried to stick to fonts that I was pretty sure were not based on an existing typeface. I only left out Typodermic because Ray Larabie’s work is already so popular and well known, but Neuropol is obviously a classic. Check out his stuff if you’re nor familiar.