gloomy

he/they | 23

[valentines-stray]

I might as well post this here but!!

hi me and a good buddy of mine are running an OKKO fan project! We’re looking for artists, animators, writers and sound designers that are interested in creating a fan-animated episode of the series with us!

You can contact us on Twitter or Instagram ;

@niftyskulls (Twitter/Instagram)

Or

@in_completeanimations (Instagram)

@animations_in (Twitter)

It would mean a lot if you could share this video around! Ty!! ❤️💚

[valentines-stray]

🌹✨

[valentines-stray]

I might as well post this here but!!

hi me and a good buddy of mine are running an OKKO fan project! We’re looking for artists, animators, writers and sound designers that are interested in creating a fan-animated episode of the series with us!

You can contact us on Twitter or Instagram ;

@niftyskulls (Twitter/Instagram)

Or

@in_completeanimations (Instagram)

@animations_in (Twitter)

It would mean a lot if you could share this video around! Ty!! ❤️💚

[valentines-stray]

I might as well post this here but!!

hi me and a good buddy of mine are running an OKKO fan project! We’re looking for artists, animators, writers and sound designers that are interested in creating a fan-animated episode of the series with us!

You can contact us on Twitter or Instagram ;

@niftyskulls (Twitter/Instagram)

Or

@in_completeanimations (Instagram)

@animations_in (Twitter)

It would mean a lot if you could share this video around! Ty!! ❤️💚

[valentines-stray]

finally made some more art

the quality between all these doodles varies so drastically for literally no reason

[thejakeformerlyknownasprince]

Writing advice #?: Have your characters wash the dishes while they talk.

This is one of my favorite tricks, picked up from E.M. Forester and filtered through my own domestic-homebody lens.  Forester says that you should never ever tell us how a character feels; instead, show us what those emotions are doing to a character’s posture and tone and expression.  This makes “I felt sadness” into “my shoulders hunched and I sighed heavily, staring at the ground as my eyes filled with tears.”  Those emotions-as-motions are called objective correlatives.  Honestly, fic writers have gotten the memo on objective correlatives, but sometimes struggle with how to use them.

Objective correlatives can quickly become a) repetitive or b) melodramatic.  On the repetitive end, long scenes of dialogue can quickly turn into “he sighed” and “she nodded” so many times that he starts to feel like a window fan and she like a bobblehead.  On the melodramatic end, a debate about where to eat dinner can start to feel like an episode of Jerry Springer because “he shrieked” while “she clenched her fists” and they both “ground their teeth.”  If you leave the objective correlatives out entirely, then you have what’s known as “floating” dialogue — we get the words themselves but no idea how they’re being said, and feel completely disconnected from the scene.  If you try to get meaning across by telling us the characters’ thoughts instead, this quickly drifts into purple prose.

Instead, have them wash the dishes while they talk.

To be clear: it doesn’t have to be dishes.  They could be folding laundry or sweeping the floor or cooking a meal or making a bed or changing a lightbulb.  The point is to engage your characters in some meaningless, everyday household task that does not directly relate to the subject of the conversation.

This trick gives you a whole wealth of objective correlatives.  If your character is angry, then the way they scrub a bowl will be very different from how they’ll be scrubbing while happy.  If your character is taking a moment to think, then they might splash suds around for a few seconds.  A character who is not that invested in the conversation will be looking at the sink not paying much attention.  A character moderately invested will be looking at the speaker while continuing to scrub a pot.  If the character is suddenly very invested in the conversation, you can convey this by having them set the pot down entirely and give their full attention to the speaker.

A demonstration:

1

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

“What?”  Drizella continued dropping forks into the dishwasher.

2

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

Drizella paused midway through slotting a fork into the dishwasher.  “What?”

3

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

Drizella laughed, not looking up from where she was arranging forks in the dishwasher.  “What?”

4

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

The forks slipped out of Drizella’s hand and clattered onto the floor of the dishwasher.  “What?”

5

“I’m leaving,” Anastasia said.

“What?”  Drizella shoved several forks into the dishwasher with unnecessary force, not seeming to notice when several bounced back out of the silverware rack.

See how cheaply and easily we can get across Drizella’s five different emotions about Anastasia leaving, all by telling the reader how she’s doing the dishes?  And all the while no heads were nodded, no teeth were clenched.

The reason I recommend having it be one of these boring domestic chores instead of, say, scaling a building or picking a lock, is that chores add a sense of realism and are low-stakes enough not to be distracting.  If you add a concurrent task that’s high-stakes, then potentially your readers are going to be so focused on the question of whether your characters will pick the lock in time that they don’t catch the dialogue.  But no one’s going to be on the edge of their seat wondering whether Drizella’s going to have enough clean forks for tomorrow.

And chores are a cheap-n-easy way to add a lot of realism to your story.  So much of the appeal of contemporary superhero stories comes from Spider-Man having to wash his costume in a Queens laundromat or Green Arrow cheating at darts, because those details are fun and interesting and make a story feel “real.”  Actually ask the question of what dishes or clothing or furniture your character owns and how often that stuff gets washed.  That’s how you avoid reality-breaking continuity errors like stating in Chapter 3 that all of your character’s worldly possessions fit in a single backpack and in Chapter 7 having your character find a pair of pants he forgot he owns.  You don’t have to tell the reader what dishes your character owns (please don’t; it’s already bad enough when Tolkien does it) but you should ideally know for yourself.

Anyway: objective correlatives are your friends.  They get emotion across, but for low-energy scenes can become repetitive and for high-energy scenes can become melodramatic.  The solution is to give your characters something relatively mundane to do while the conversation is going on, and domestic chores are not a bad starting place.

[porcupine-girl]

I actually first learned this lesson when doing improv. Always have your character doing something, but don’t make the scene about what your character is doing. Come in and start putting groceries away and confront your roommate about sleeping with your boyfriend while you’re putting the groceries away. Be working in a clothes store folding shirts and be reunited with your long-lost cousin while working. Etc etc.

And then much later (partially bc I started writing regularly years after I started doing improv but even then it took me way too long to figure it out) I realized this can be applied to writing, and it’s great. Anytime there’s a long dialogue scene and it feels flat, rewriting it so they’re doing something else - something that on the surface is totally unrelated to the conversation - is a sure-fire way to make it more dynamic and open up whole new avenues for conveying thoughts and feelings to the reader.

[lazysmirk]

Just in case you forget this exists.

It exists.

[dragonofdarknesschaos]

With those “when you want to design a character but you don’t know color theory” posts flying around I thought this would be relevant again.

[secretsivekept]

SLAMs THE REBLOG BUTTON

[niyarest]

there’s also Coolors website that gives you randomized palettes!

[tf2humbug]

Don’t forget ColourLovers, either! It’s a social media-esque site where you can browse tons of palettes and share your own.

You can browse the most popular ones or search for certain colors, themes, and even specific hex codes!

When you find one you like, you can download a wallpaper swatch of it and also select the specific colors it uses to look at more palettes that use those same ones.

ColourLovers is my go-to for when I’m having trouble coming up with a color scheme! It’s also been around for over a decade, so there’s plenty to browse through.

[mysharona1987]

[valentines-stray]

cats ? ¿

[valentines-stray]

sleepy sheepy man gay ass sheep man

[valentines-stray]

gumball bear gumball bear gumball bear gumball bear

[valentines-stray]

request for someone on Twitter

[valentines-stray]

[valentines-stray]

still drawing just for me

I promise this is actually okko related

[homunculus-argument]

One thing I’ve learned about writing is ”give everything a face”. It’s no good to write passively that the nobility fled the city or that the toxic marshes were poisoning the animals beyond any ability to function. Make a protagonist see how a desperate woman in torn silks climbs onto a carriage and speeds off, or a two-headed deer wanders right into the camp and into the fire. Don’t just have an ambiguous flock of all-controlling oligarchy, name one or two representatives of it, and illustrate just how vile and greedy they are as people.

it’s bad to have characters who serve no purpose in the story, but giving something a face is a perfectly valid purpose.

[tlbodine]

This is the real heart of “show don’t tell”

[valentines-stray]

cannot stand when I’m designing a new oc and I have an incredibly specific yet somehow super vague idea of what they should look like and end up going around in circles trying to capture their essence

[valentines-stray]

back to posting only for myself