•they/them I'm just a tired enby that likes drawing and writing. i tag most things, let me know if you need something specific tagged. Icon by @yosukesheadphones!
I love that four different people on my feed scheduled this joyous person to reblog by 8am on June 1. I look forward to seeing this a dozen more times today.
hey you said companion tarot cards usually use really specific and limited color schemes and i was wonder what you mean by that? like what kind of colors or what kind of schemes do you mean?
Hi anon! This is kind of a complicated one so I drew some diagrams : D
From my observations, most of the cards seem to be built on a warm/cold contrast over a spread analogous palette. It’s the ratio of these colours that is important to the overall tone - while some are fairly even analogous, others are instead simply complementary with an accent or even complementary without an accent (e.g. Varric’s lyrium card).
Typically, one colour will come strongly saturated with the other less so, but they will remain within a sort of ‘traditional’ range so as not to look too obviously digital. I would stress the use of hue and saturation gradients and shifts as you paint or fill in your shapes, but the shapes should remain clearly readable as a single colour. Most shadows are also full of colour - for example the ambient occlusion shadows on Hawke’s arms are full of cold greens and warm reds. Blend in some of the opposite cold and warm colours into the highlights and shadows to give the image more coherence where it is painted (this is particularly the case in the Bull/Qunari card).
Bear in mind this is just colour stuff and of course there are a lot of other steps to the cards, but I hope it helps : D Good luck!
re: your thoughts on legendaries (which is very cool and based) what’s your take on the differences between legends:arceus giratina and platinum giratina, especially since you defined them as hating the world? specifically the bit where giratina (at least seemingly) actively defended the world from cyrus trying to destroy it, after trying to do the same thing with volo’s help centuries prior?
Weird ghost worm upon yee (AND MORE ART BELOW CUT!)
Anyways, here’s my mad ramblings about Giratina and Arceus’s backstory.
Tldr: Giratina’s a conglomerate of angry souls scorned by Arceus.
(Here’s the playlist. It’s all about worms.)
How it Started.
The original one has chosen favorites over the passage of time. Heroes, legends, protagonists…
Arceus intervenes for those it loves, and the consequences of a god touching the mortal world is devastating in its entirety. One act of divine intervention causes entire civilizations to collapse. One whispered suggestion drives an entire legacy insane.
So Arceus, paralyzed by its love for the mortal world, acts very little, learning from its mistakes. Apathy soaks through every motion. And thus is the way of the world.
But people love the Originator. Religions are born from Arceus’s rare deeds, and generation on generation taught its benevolence. Imagine spending your entire life chasing after that golden light. Imagine knowing its real and there, and it loves you.
Imagine begging it for help, and seeing it turn away when you need it most.
I think those people would feel very abandoned indeed, if they spent their lives worshipping, and receiving no response at all.
Giratina is born from the abandoned, the lost, and the angry. They’re a hundred thousand souls who’s adoration turned to spite. They’re an entity who demands for Arceus to look at them, so they can finally rest.
Arcues can not look at them in full, because if it does Giratina will fade.
(Scio, beloved. For I can not let you go.)
So the Original One banishes the Unwanted Beast into the distortion world, and Giratina seethes, and starves, and screams.
(Here are two truths about the Beast Between Dimensions—
1. Some part of them still loves Arceus. Arceus is their anchor, after all— the sole reason why they exist, why they are. But Arceus can not love it back in a way that matters, and that hurts.
2. Giratina is made of a thousand voices. Some of these voices remember that there’s a world above. They miss it.)
Why Giratina attacked Hisui in PLA:
PLA Giratina’s not a new god, but they’re very, very bitter and barely coherent on a good day. Volo serves as a conduct to help unite the broiling mass of ghosts against Arceus, and thus Giratina’s hatred overcomes any flickering affections they have for the land.
It doesn’t help that Arceus intervened for Hisui, sending Akari to directly stop Volo from summoning Giratina.
(As for Volo, well.
Imagine being a child who was thrown into the future due to Palkia and Dialga’s fits, who learned his people (his world) no longer exist beyond a shadow in the history books and a single, bitter lore keeper.
Volo doesn’t remember his original culture beyond vague imprints and singing praises to Sinnoh, but he knew he was loved, and he knew his family is dust four hundred years in the past. There’s a special sort of rage in him that echoes Giratinas.)
(Why did you abandon my people, Arceus? What kind of god are you, to leave those who love you so callously behind?)
(Maybe some part of Giratina recognizes Volo, beyond a feeling of kinship.
Maybe some part of Giratina grieves because it recognized the child Volo was.)
When Volo gets his pound of flesh, (when he realizes Arceus is not beholden to him, that the inherent alien morality Arceus holds is not a personal slight), Giratina will finally rest.
Anyways what I’m trying to say is: Arceus is never a person, but a nebulous embodiment of the connection shared between pokemon and humans. It tries to experience what it’s supposed to embody, but millennia of watching people be and cease has given it choice paralysis, apathy, and a hoarding issue. If something lasts forever next to it? Good.
Giratina was once a person. (Correction, a LOT of persons.) They don’t think very linearly either, but they have context on mortal matters and are thus the more benevolent and malicious of the two. One day, time will smooth them into something like Arceus. We can only hope the two keep each other in check.
THE DIFFERENCE OF LEGENDS ARCEUS GIRATINA VS PLATINUM PEARL GIRATINA
If the ancient version of giratina is an angry conglomerate of ghosts scorned by Arceus, the modern iteration of Giratina’s a creature that’s more settled in its skin and more assured in its duties. Giratina still has beef with Arceus, but they unionized into one being who’s love of the mortal world has triumphed over its ancestral grudge. One might even postulate they have shifted their anchor from Sinnoh the god, to Sinnoh the place.
((We call this character developement. Good for you, weird ghost worm!))
(((FULL DISCLOSURE, VOLO BEING FROM THE PAST IS INSPIRED FROM FOXFALL. You know. The fic that got me into this fandom. Please give it some love.)))
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