OOC/Semi-IC/Headcanon FFXIV blog of Ruran Vas, Madoc Parnell, and a few others.– Balmung Server–I talk in tags a lot. CHARACTER SIDEBLOGS Ruran Vas: @weepingknight Madoc Parnell: @thrillofbattle Withdrawn Drifter: @laying-the-odds
Join us for a fun, spooky*event! Enjoy an afternoon of scary storytelling, refreshments and good company!
We are seeking STORYTELLERS! We would love to hear your scariest All Saints' story! You're free to sign up in advance - if you get inspired at the event, we will open the stage for you to share as well!
“Choose to do good. And then choose it again, and again, and again… That is the only way to be better person. That is the only way to make amends.“
It's been a bit since we did a headcount, kupo! Especially in the wake of social media being weird; this might serve as a good way for people to connect with each other. Please like and reblog this post if you are an active Final Fantasy XIV blog focusing on one (or more) of the following: roleplay, writing & worldbuilding.
It does not matter how active you are at all three, only that you participate in some of it and would like to follow more likeminded people.
The bigger this post gets, the more people can have a look through and follow people they like the look of! You can also use the reblogs to give a little blurb about yourself or even make you're own separate post tagging @mooglemeet that I will reblog for extra traction!
This headcount was posted 8/19/2023, to help gauge overall activity of users on it!
Yes hello I felt it was about time I open my normal commissions again! At the moment I will only offer sketch or lined works however as I'm trying out a new site to manage orders through.
Only accepting 5 orders!
Please visit my Artistree for more information and orders!
One of the in-game activities I enjoy the most is trying to replicate real-life photography techniques in gpose, and it’s surprising how much can be achieved. So today, let’s play around with composition!
Leading Lines
Leading lines can help guide the viewer's eye through an image. They’re visual elements that form lines, like buildings or roads, or even an area with high contrast, like the horizon line. So by aligning convergent lines to create these ‘focal zones’ you build a sense of depth and lead the viewer's gaze toward it.
Framing
You can use elements within the scene to enclose or surround your main subject. These elements could be natural, like branches or foliage, or architectural, like doorways or windows. This adds depth and context, and helps the viewers immerse themselves in the scene:
Symmetry
Symmetry creates a pleasing sense of order and balance in an image. You can do this by dividing your frame equally and positioning similar elements on either side:
Depth and Layering
Adding depth to your virtual photographs enhances the sense of immersion. By placing objects of interest in the foreground, middle ground, and background, you can create a layered effect that adds depth and dimension to your composition. DoF (Depth of Field) shaders are particularly well suited for cases like these:
Point of View
Experimenting with different and unusual camera angles and perspectives can yield surprisingly dynamic and engaging shots. For example, positioning the camera at a low angle and looking up at the character can create a very impactful composition:
On the other hand, top-down pictures can not only give the viewer a sensation of being ‘in the scene’ but also help put elements together that would otherwise be scattered around in a horizontal shot:
Negative Space
Negative space refers to the empty or minimalistic areas in your composition. It provides breathing room for your main subject and can evoke emotions, or create a sense of balance and calmness.
And let’s not forget the most important rule of all:
Break the rules
These principles serve more as guidelines than anything. Sometimes trying to force a composition into one of those categories can detract from an unusual yet powerful shot, so trust your eye and aesthetic sense.
I'll cover more composition techniques like the Rule of Thirds, Rule of Odds, Rule of Space, Golden Ratio, and others in part 2. Enjoy!
You can play it here, for free, on desktop, most mobile devices, and gameboy hardware via ROMs! With new color palettes, reworked graphics, QoL improvements, and music for each zone, I hope the Redux update is one both new and returning players can enjoy!
I am trying to help a friend with their creative block around creating a FFXIV OC. So I thought I might try putting together a quick Ask List on the topic and maybe they would find people's responses helpful. Also it might be interesting to learn about how people approach the creative process!
How did you decide on the sex and/or gender of your OC? Was it important that it was the same as yours? Or the same as what you personally find attractive? Or did it not make much difference either way?
To what degree is your OC a self-insert? Are they in any way an aspirational version of yourself? Or perhaps a way to explore feelings and behaviours you suppress in yourself?
Is it important to you that you "like" your OC (as in consider them likeable)? Or is it more important to create a distinctive character, even if they are unpleasant or evil?
Do what degree did you intend your OC to be canon-compliant? Did you end up sticking to this or did you veer off into unforeseen territory over time?
How important is it to you that your OC is attractive? Does that mean attractive to you personally (sexually or just for purposes of playing dress-up!)? Or do you aim to make an OC over which others will inevitably thirst?
To what degree do you use the OC creation process as a way of exploring your own strengths and flaws?
Is your OC based upon another character or person? Or aspects of several? Is this just in terms of their appearance? Or also their personality?
Do you create the OC first and then the backstory? Or do you have a backstory lined up and then create an OC that will fit this?
Have you ever retconned your OC's story or situation? What inspired this? Did you just fancy a change? Or were you bored with them as they were? Or did you regret your decisions on first creating them?
To what extent does your OC function as a mouthpiece for your own views when it comes to describing their opinions or reactions? Do you quite like exploring how someone with very different values to your own might respond to a situation?
What is your main focus when creating an OC - making a character for yourself and your own enjoyment? Or do you try to create a character that will be popular with others or attract a lot of attention?
How much importance do you attach to humour when creating a character? Are there inevitably comic elements? Or are you more focused upon angst or drama?
Does your OC need to be believable (within the context of the fictional world in which you place them)? Or are you more interested in pushing the boundaries of what you can invent?
How do you want other people to view or react to your OC?
Is there anything you regret about how you designed your OC or their backstory?
Do you have the same OC (broadly speaking) across multiple fandoms or settings?
Did you design your OC with a specific aspect of RP in mind? Such as shipping, NSFW things, attending in-game social events, hosting events or entertaining others?
Has anyone ever reacted badly to your OC? Why was this?
Do you want other people to become invested in your OC? What would this look like ideally?
Is it important to ensure your OC has flaws or negative traits? Or do you try to make an idealised character as far as possible?
Do you want or enjoy your OC having in-game interactions with other people's characters? Or do you prefer to keep things more distant (like Ask Games on Tumblr!)? Or is your OC private and just for you?
How do you feel about others making art of your OC or writing about them? Do you feel like you need to vet their creative process? Or does anything go?
Was there a location in-game that inspired your OC (like Ishgard or Hingashi etc.)?
Was there something in the MSQ or even a side-questline, that inspired you to create them? Perhaps meeting the Sylphs or the Namazu? Or visiting the Unsundered World? Or even something to do with crafting or gathering?
To what extent does their appearance in game match your vision of them creatively? Are there things you wish you could change about them in this regard? Or possibly do, if you knew of a way to do so...
Do you have a voice claim for your OC? Did you have this before you did anything else? Or did you decide on it later?
Which OCs that are not yours do you most admire? What is it about that character that you find impressive or engaging?
To what extent have other people's OC influenced your own? Perhaps in the sense of inspiring your ideas? Or giving you "permission" to create a character you might not otherwise have done? Perhaps a lore-breaking one, or an overtly sexy one, or a self-insert, or a villainous one etc?
What do you try to avoid when creating an OC? Are these things you dislike in other people's OCs? Or purely your own personal preference?
What is your favourite thing about your OC or OCs? Is there something about them of which you are particularly proud?
To what extent does it matter that you are being "original" when you create an OC? Or is it OK to base them on an existing character or celebrity, so long as you enjoy it?
If you're stuck for ideas when creating an OC, what do you do to inspire yourself? (if you never have this problem, then what would you advise to someone that did!)
Is there an OC you would love to create in-game, but currently you are unable to do so, perhaps because that race is not playable or that sex is unavailable (hello female Hrothgar)?
How many OCs do you currently have? If you have multiple OCs then how different are they from each other? How often do you create new ones?
What things do you most want to see in someone's OC? Or what do you always find the most interesting? Or stimulating, if you're in that sort of mood?
So you went and took that perfect screenshot! Now it's time to share it around, but you noticed a certain graininess, a certain fuzziness when posting it on Twitter or Eorzea Collection.
So what's going on? Well, let's understand some concepts related to digital images: namely formats, how they influence images in simple operations like crop and resize, and how to prevent loss of quality.
Resolution
This is the easiest concept to explain; the higher the number of pixels, the more detail the image will have. For example, a screenshot taken at standard 2K resolution (2048 x 1090) will have 2,211,840 pixels, while a 4K (4096 x 2160) will pack more details at 8,847,360 pixels.
That also affects file sizes, if you ever hear me crying about the size of my screenshots folder.
There's a myriad of resolutions and formats out there; for more information, check out this Wikipedia entry about display resolutions.
Digital Image Formats
There are many different digital image formats, but the 2 most common for XIV photography are JPEG and PNG - each with its own advantages and disadvantages.
PNG is a lossless format, meaning no data is lost when the image is saved. This results in higher-quality images, but also files that are larger.
JPEG is a lossy format, meaning some data is lost when the image is saved. This data loss can result in artifacts, such as blockiness and color banding. However, JPEG files are smaller than other formats.
The issue with JPEG is that its data loss is cumulative: Each time that you edit and save the file, a little bit of information is lost. Also, depending on the chosen compression level, the loss is quite noticeable. The image below shows how much noise (wrong data) is actually introduced by each compression level:
Crop and Resize
When you crop an image, you are removing pixels from the edges, often to give focus to a specific subject. In this scenario, the loss of information is irrelevant.
But when resizing- often to decrease the size of the image to better adapt it to a target site- you're losing detail, and the chosen interpolation algorithm may influence how much of the original image is used to help determine the result. Here's an example with a 20% resize, using raw pixel mapping on the left and linear sampling on the right. Notice the antialiased result that creates a much better effect:
Keep in mind that different programs may present the interpolation options in different ways. For example, this is how GIMP displays its options when resizing:
So with all that said, how should we proceed to preserve as much as possible of the original data?
How to Prevent Loss of Quality
Use a high-resolution image. The higher the resolution, the more detail the image will have, and the less likely you are to lose considerable quality when cropping or resizing. Nya Nya has an excellent guide about resolution upscale (a method that allows you to take a 4K screenshot on a 2K native resolution, for example) here. I highly recommend a read!
Use a lossless image format. Lossless formats, such as PNG, do not lose any data when the image is saved. This will help to prevent loss of quality when cropping or resizing.
Keep resizing to a minimum. The more you resize an image, the more likely you are to introduce artifacts or jitter. If you need a close-up, for example, take a close-up screenshot and resize it a little bit instead of cropping around a small area in a larger full-body image.
When scaling down, use interpolation methods that take more data from the original image into consideration, like Linear or Cubic, instead of raw interpolation.
Resize and save images in the expected resolution of a target site. For example, Eorzea Collection uses 339x570 for its vertical shot; cropping and resizing your image to this resolution will prevent artifacts from being introduced by the site's own resizing algorithm.
TL;DR: Keep the resolution high, the changes to a minimum, and save as PNG.
