warm me up in a nova's glow

main blog: @carbonated-cosmo | the one-stop shop for all my art! because i need a better way to keep track of it all

[radiantcosmonaut]

hey hey hey! i've dusted off my art blog! my main blog is @carbonatedcosmo and that's where i do all my doomscrolling, so i've dragged this blog up from the depths, renamed it, and reblogged some art previously posted on my main blog to this one!

additionally, i'll be posting my future art here instead of on my main blog! this way i can have a dedicated space for my work, talk about project ideas, and reblog other art i find without any of it getting lost in all the noise of the main one, haha 😅

also, ignore anything my main blog might say about commissions being open. as much as i'd like to take them, i am Far Too Stressed by life to even try to right now and would simply like to prioritize making art for fun and to improve my craft!

more about what i do and goals i have for this blog under the cut!

things i draw:

OCs, whether they belong to me or my friends

ttrpg characters (mostly DnD ones but i have some guys for other systems too)

fanart of things i like, very rarely

things i want to learn to draw:

backgrounds/environments

animals

monsters

multiple character compositions

projects i might post about:

animatics for my DnD OCs

a still-simmering story involving OCs who were not originally DnD characters but are now because i decided to transplant them into the DnD universe

[radiantcosmonaut]

fallen london virgil suddenly manifested in my mind again tonight. i had to draw him. i made an account for him a few years ago now because i thought it'd be funny to put the lizard in the underground victorian city, and it WAS >:]

he got the webbed hands (and feet, not pictured) from a Red Science procedure preceding an underwater cave dive job early on, and much later got the frill around his neck from Rubbery Science when he found his way to the rubbery men's city!

im sure it's normal that i do as much body transformation stuff with him as i do. don't worry about it :]

[shinesurge]

gentle psa to new comic artists about a problem i also suffered from: slow quiet pacing is totally fine BUT if that's not what you're deliberately going for, you CAN fit more Story Progression on the page. no, more than that. more than that even. i promise if you don't want it to a single action doesn't need to take a whole page to illustrate each of its steps, a lot of connecting magic happens in the gutters i /promise/ if you draw someone pulling up in a car then skip to them walking in the door with groceries we will Understand that they unloaded the car and unlocked the house you feel me

[shinesurge]

#I am not a comic artist#but I had a similar problem when I was in film school#I call it “the door problem”#in my thesis film I had written that two characters walk out the back of the club into the alley behind the club#and my club location did not have a back alley but did have a side room that we used as the door#but that door opened in#and the location I used for the alley had a back door but that door opened outwards#and I knew it looked weird#I struggled framing the shots#and blocking the actors#and I got really really caught in my own head about how to make this door work#because to me it was really important that you saw every step from club to outside#because even though we had learned in school that you could transition it didn't feel right because it didn't feel like a new scene to me#(this being one of the struggles with a short film. It can all feel like one scene if your script is short!)#AND THEN#when we got into the editing room we just...cut the door transition entirely#initially not on purpose#what happened was that we decided to tighten up the timing by cutting non-linearly to the custom music I had commissioned#which made it much more experimental especially in comparison to my fellow classmates#however it showed me that the story still absolutely worked without needing to show how they got into the alley#the audience can infer the door#so now anytime I can feel myself getting stuck on something when I'm filming I think#“Is this a Door Problem?”#as a storyteller it's always a question of what is the absolute bare minimum you need to convey what you're trying to say#and sometimes that means you just need to already be outside the club

(via @currentlycreating )

Exactly! Film and comics are VERY similar mediums in this way, I love this. We should always be considering Door Problems

[radiantcosmonaut]

i like how well the color blocking of mark's suit works with how i sketch characters out :]

[radiantcosmonaut]

quick invincible sketch before i have to go back to work :]

[radiantcosmonaut]

small sketch dump of fantasy virgil ideas, ranging from figuring out what he's Shaped Like to designing an outfit and giving this version of him a unique last name from the """main""" version of him! the modern new york city boy will remain Virgil Williams, and the sharn city boy pictured below is now Virgil Whitlock! for the sake of keeping the virgils distinct, future posts i make about them will be tagged with the name of whichever virgil is on display in a given post!!

sharn is a pretty neat city and i fell in love with the idea of virgil living there, so he's a resident of the Smoky Towers district of the Middle Menthis ward! the district is known for its variety of entertainment options, and virgil himself even performs at one or two of the venues (entertainer background, baybee) rather frequently! he's not filthy stinking rich like the folks in the upper wards and skyway, but middle menthis does pretty well, so he gets to live comfortably — at least, until shit starts going down when i eventually get around to writing the story 😅

[radiantcosmonaut]

*reaches into the depths of my "OCs in Dire Need of a Makeover" pool*

*swishes my hand around, violently displacing all dirt and gravel at the bottom*

*drags river wilcox up by the back of their shirt and drops them in front of a doofenschmirtz-style contraption with a huge sticker on it that reads "CHARACTER-REDESIGN-INATOR" that's been charging up this whole time*

💥🔫

BEHOLD, RIVER WALKER

river is A Bit Different than how they were first conceived, so here's some key changes:

river began existence as an eldritch weirdo with vague cowboy theming; she is now a beautiful wild west woman who's gonna get plunked into the eberron setting for 5e along with virgil and certain other OCs slated to be involved in a project im planning little bits at a time

on that first note: no longer an eldritch weirdo (for now), she is but a humble transmutation wizard and the Token Human of the group

she's trans! she started out as an AMAB nonbinary character but my recent rotation of her in the cosmic microwave has revealed to me that she's actually a lady (inspired by MY personal experience with being trans: started by exploring the idea of being nonbinary until eventually realizing i am just fully the opposite gender of my assigned sex)

her name also got a change, as seen above: initially, she was River Wilcox but now she's River Walker, because i am the funniest person on earth

for a peek behind the curtain at the process of how i got to this look for her, here's some screenshots of the hero forge model i made to work out her outfit:

and the vibe i'm going for with the skirt here:

[wizardarchetypes]

I want to write a book called “your character dies in the woods” that details all the pitfalls and dangers of being out on the road & in the wild for people without outdoors/wilderness experience bc I cannot keep reading narratives brush over life threatening conditions like nothing is happening.

I just read a book by one of my favorite authors whose plots are essentially airtight, but the MC was walking on a country road on a cold winter night and she was knocked down and fell into a drainage ditch covered in ice, broke through and got covered in icy mud and water.

Then she had a “miserable” 3 more miles to walk to the inn.

Babes she would not MAKE it to that inn.

[pixelartpeach]

Are there any other particularly egregious examples?

[theglintoftherail]

This book already exists, sort of! Or at least, it’s a biology textbook but I bought it for writing purposes:

It starts with a chapter about freezing to death, and it is without a doubt the scariest thing I’ve read in years (and I read a lot of horror fiction).

[wandercuriosity-deactivated2024]

This book can be downloaded for free on Researchgate, posted there by the author himself:

The Biology of Human Survival: Life and Death in Extreme Environments

[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 👍🏾

[radiantcosmonaut]

adding casimir to my Favorite OC Designs list that totally exists

[thewriterswitch]

I know can’t be the only one with a million and one WIP’s

[radiantcosmonaut]

it's an OC i haven't shared yet! his name is Casimir Brassclaw and he's virgil's dad! this man's been floating around in my brain for about as long as virgil's existed as a character (about 10 years now) and i tried to draw him on two separate occasions during that time, but it was only january of this year that i FINALLY figured out his look — with the help of a character model made on the very handy website Hero Forge!

this is specifically the fantasy/D&D version of him — like virgil, he's a tiefling draconic bloodline sorcerer with brass dragon ancestry, but unlike virgil, he's also a circle of wildfire druid! i'm sure that's not a very dangerous combination At All

casimir was raised by the very same brass dragon he gets his sorcerer magic from, and he's got a BIG ego because of it. im not quite sure i know how to write a character like that, but it's not like im writing an entire comic yet anyways, so i have time to figure it out!

bonus casimir art + hero forge model from earlier this year:

[radiantcosmonaut]

this 👉🔨 is my DILF hammer. watch me smack tracy with it repeatedly until he becomes the hot dad he was always meant to be

🔨💥

🔨💥

🔨💥

BEHOLD. a man.

(and some bonus doodles of his husband and their daughters under the cut!)

[radiantcosmonaut]

trying fun stuff with ink color choices for franz :]

teen franz is mostly green with blue eyes and adult franz is blue with green eyes (based on @filibusterfrog 's elf eye headcanons!), and his cloak is green with a silver lining! pun ABSOLUTELY intended.

of course, my digital art of him that i've posted before reflects his full color palette but working with pens in my physical sketchbook has opened my eyes to a whole new world of stylistic choices and who am i NOT to explore that?

[radiantcosmonaut]

tracy had to fight his dad a couple times toward the end of the campaign! and i have finally managed to kinda draw one of those moments! woo! not overly confident in my ability to draw people from behind, so devil dad is just a looming silhouette in the foreground lmao

matthias goldglow is a devil from the nine hells who made a pact with the man in black to become human, which was what allowed him to have a son with his angel wife who made her own pact with zuggtmoy to also become human :]

but then matthias refused to repay the favor he owed the man in black and was transformed back into a devil and bound to rick's service, and tracy learned the truth about his dad from a magical all-seeing O R B and had to kill him during the final fight :[ (he got better, though)

[radiantcosmonaut]

some sketches of virgil!! oh my god!!

the fun thing about shifting to the pen doodles is that there are some OCs i feel like im learning how to draw all over again, haha 😅

it's almost like im actually developing an art style..... 🤔

[radiantcosmonaut]

bonus sketch of what he'd look like with dragon wings and tiefling horns for the fantasy comic i wanna hopefully eventually make with virgil as a main protagonist

[radiantcosmonaut]

some sketches of virgil!! oh my god!!

the fun thing about shifting to the pen doodles is that there are some OCs i feel like im learning how to draw all over again, haha 😅

it's almost like im actually developing an art style..... 🤔