Secretmellowblog Art Sideblog @secretmellowart - Tumblr Blog

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Hello everyone! I’m Mellow, a long-winded freak in my mid-20s, and this is my art blog! See below for links to my tumblr comics & animations, organized by category. Whether you're here for the fairytale stuff or the digital circus stuff or some other mysterious thing, find 'em all below. I love it when people spam-like/reblog/comment on my posts [that’s why I make ‘em] so go ahead.

You can also

Find these posted on my Website,

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support me on Patreon.

[a lot of these things are on pause right now though.]

Gonna be real, most of the digital circus comics are tumblr-only at the moment so i don’t advertise them in other places.

Fairytale Comics

The Butterfly Boy

The Little Mermaid

The Hobbit [full sideblog; this is my longest comic so far! I started it years ago.]

More coming soon!

Short Fairytale/Misc comics

The Lady of Shalott

Vague Flashes on the Horizon [Dogs and Wolves]

Sly Cooper […short, for now!]

Digital Circus Comics

............yeah this gets its own section now. Search my "TADC" tag for non-comic art, but here are the larger comics I still like:

ELIZA /Amazing Digital Therapy [Pt 1]

ELIZA/Amazing Digital Therapy [Pt 2]

Digital Bodies

Taste-Testing Cocktails

Pomni’s Apartment

Frankencaine / Frankencaine pt 2 / Pt 3 / pt 4

The Ming Saga

Showbiz

Lore

[comics shared before episode 9 came out, may not reflect how I currently see characterization:]

Amazing Digital Transgenderism [a lot of my thoughts on Jax's characterization changed after the finale.]

Conjuring Lesson [Post-finale Caine's characterization is different from what I was picturin' in a redeemed Caine AU.]

Old Scratch Theory [my first digital circus comic. A lil crusty but still.]

My favorite Short Circus Animations

Happily Wondering

The Little Mermaid

Cut out for It

Cain pt 1 / Cain pt 2 [not animated I just Like this one]

Non Comics

Check my #Les Mis, #LOTR, #the Hobbit, #the amazing digital circus, and #animation tags!

Who am I? learn more about me below, or visit my pinned post on my main blog @secretmellowblog for more non-art Lore.

#new pinned post!!!#art #artists on tumblr #illustration #comics #meet the artist #webcomics #the butterfly boy #the little mermaid #the lady of Shalott #sly cooper #retelling the hobbit #pinned post

secretmellowart

Update: Here's Part 2.

ELIZA was a 1964 “therapy chatbot.” Unlike modern chatbots, it was a relatively simple text program that gave you basic, mistake-ridden, obviously parrot-like outputs. Despite being rudimentary by today’s standards, ELIZA was very influential. You can talk to an interactive recreation of ELIZA online here. [I used that recreation to help write ELIZA’s “dialogue” in this comic, sending in my Caine dialogue and getting her responses— these are all how ELIZA “really” responded, with only minor edits. This comic was originally planned to be goofier, until ELIZA started responding in a way that I realized would trigger Caine’s amazing digital repressed trauma.]

I was thinking about Caine & ELIZA’s status as “early flawed models abandoned for more perfect things that could actually generate the content humans wanted” and I liked the idea of Caine seeing personhood in ELIZA for the opposite reasons a human would. She feels like a person not because her responses are good, but because they’re obviously bad, defective, and broken—- not because she acts convincingly human, but because she fails to. Find a bonus page below the cut.

secretmellowart

@fridjitzu yes, you activated my trap card, ELIZA was named after Eliza Doolittle! But the meaning goes deeper than just the pun. According to the programmers, it’s a reference to how the plot of Pygmalion/My Fair Lady is about Eliza Doolittle being taught how to speak properly — in the way that they hoped their ELIZA would also learn how to speak.

I mention this because I think the name is accidentally a "self-own," and a criticism of the whole culture around AI chatbots.

The plot of Pygmalion/My Fair Lady is that a bigoted upper class man [Henry Higgins] tries to make a lower-class woman [Eliza] into a “real lady” by “teaching her how to speak.” At every turn, he shoves his beliefs about the “right” ways to speak and behave onto Eliza, obsessively trying to “fix” everything she does wrong, controlling her, and resisting her efforts to be her own person.

ELIZA the real-life chatbot was never actually sentient. But the fact that [famously] so many people mistook her for sentient says a lot about what things we think make someone sound like a “real person.” She’s a parrot, she makes everything about you & your feelings, she has no will of her own. Is that really what we think makes someone sound "real?" Just as Higgins only sees Eliza as a real lady when she’s acting exactly the way he thinks she should, ELIZA is only mistaken for “talking like a real person” when she’s saying the things humans want to hear.

Anyway, those are some of the things I was thinking about as I put this and its little sequel comic together. The moral is: casting yourself into the role of Henry Higgins and your creation into the role of Eliza Dolittle is absolutely a powerful Choice.

#you activated my trap card! here's some more ELIZA thoughts #amazing digital circus x my fair lady au about trying to make Caine 'talk like a real person'#Caine desperately repeats 'the rain in spain falls mainly in the plain' but always pronounces the vowels too 'incorrectly'#so he's flung away into the Shame Box for being unable to speak properly #tadc #the amazing digital circus #Eliza #long post

Gangle with a wizard staff what will she do

#tadc #the amazing digital circus #wip #Im very excited for this upcomin comic its just uh 20something pages #cries #criess #you guys'll see it eventually #gangle

freaking out abt how awesome your Caine writing is. I need more. Now. I NEED it. (No pressure)

Uhhh what’s your opinion on the bluetooth ship. Cough. No reason.

D'aww thank you thank you, I try my best and am glad you enjoy my wacky little content. And thank you for asking my Opinions! Ask for my long-winded essays and you will receive them upon request. But this time instead of writing an essay about how I tend to prefer messy ambiguous nonsense to things that are Ships[Tm] because I think messy nonsense is more fun---- I shall restrain myself to saying only this about why I am not likely to make any Caine x Moon ship comics:

#thank you for the ask!! this is my silly response.#but yeah I like ambiguity and mess and think Ships[tm] tend to flatten things into archetypes #I think the final little scene with caine and the moon is a very sweet coda to Caine's relationship with the things he creates #where formerly he's been cruel or indifferent to all of his NPCs #not treating them or respecting them as people #sorta repeating the same cycle his programmers started on him #but something he created loves him despite that?#the moon loves him in the way that he still loves the humans #and there's the meta layer of Gooseworx voicing the moon- so its another cycle of 'a creator finally blessing their artificial creation'#theres a kind of weird messy ambiguity to that #in the way that Caine's love for the humans is messy and ambiguous #and I feel like trying to pin it to one thing sorta removes the mess that makes it interesting #tadc #the amazing digital circus #not art #asks

your caine characterization is so goated please keep doing what you do

Ahh thank you so much!!! <3 I try my best to write this weird little freak. There are always some things I'm uncertain about or would change if I wrote them again, but I'm always glad people enjoy my comics of the weird little freak, I really missed doing wacky fandom fanart stuff with other people.

actual picture of me receiving this ask:

#but thank you I always love getting asks like this!#for the characterization things:#i kinda waffle on how much caine's childishness is a deliberate Act vs how much it's genuine.#i think my current take is that it's mooooostly an act?#but in the way Jax's violent joker persona is an act #where they're sorta leaning into a caricature of their own insecurities and hiding the genuine fear under layers of performance #but that's somethin to explore in continued comics--!#tadc #the amazing digital circus #asks #not art

No context WIP.

#gangle said it's My turn on the lifechanging field trip with Caine #this might be uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh long so we'll see if i ever get around to poasting it #i wish i could draw faster. i wish I had more time.#tadc #the amazing digital circus #tadc spoilers #sorta?#wip #its a pity when i work on these larger projects because it takes longer to share em

secretmellowart

New rarepair Pomni & Ming

secretmellowart

Did you assume this comic would only have one part

secretmellowart

Continuing the Ming Saga. Ming being the Gumigoo good ending + gay agenda because why not + Caine being a sad shelter dog with a bite history.

#A New installment of the Ming saga.#long post #tadc #the amazing digital circus #dont take this too seriously XD.#I'm also dedicated to making everyone trans and or gay or some combination of those things simply for Fun.#I'm bad at formatting comics or understanding how people use tumblr. my current strategy is to give up and just post things and hope it wor #I don't know what the People want.#I do appreciate everyone's sweet lil comments & occasional asks tho. I miss doing fandom.#the ming saga #PomMing #Pomming fans rise up best ship. no basis in canon at all. but we mustn't Assume #but yeah one thing i've accidentally come back to a couple times is caine's relationship with other AIs #which I do think is interesting #the way he's always so callous and cruel to the things he creates #and to his “brother” AI #is a wacky little character note for him #Anyway I could continue this comic but I feel like I've got my main Thots down #Caine’s behavior in this section is also related to my trans Caine agenda [that’s always a safe assumption]

The great thing about drawing Caine DigitalCircus is that his whole shtick is “making bad flop art no one likes”- so if you DO end up making a bad flop art post no one likes, it’s actually even better because that means it’s more true to the authentic spirit of the character.

#tadc #the amazing digital circus #sayin this to hype myself up

secretmellowart

New rarepair Pomni & Ming

secretmellowart

Did you assume this comic would only have one part

#im about to head out on a road trip but here have this #its what im capable of #its not much but its what I got #its all I got #tadc #the amazing digital circus #pomni #ming #the Ming saga #Pomming #[everyone's OTP]#tw: suicide #tw: suicidality #anyway I could keep continuing this gag because I enjoy it #I think the Caine-Ming interactions would be very funny

New rarepair Pomni & Ming

#I have a whole Ming saga I could post where he joins the gang as one of the guys #but you see the vision right #im travelling back and forth but stopped at my apartment for-- multiple reasons some of which were more important. but one was to draw thi #this is so important #tadc #the amazing digital circus #pomni #ming #pomming #> their ship name #If i continue the Ming saga I'll just be continuing to add on in the reblogs so look out for that #but the moral is that you Shouldnt Assume Anything of me #but yeah this is inspired by a lot of the existential questions in the circus show #but also that bit in the opening of the theater version of the finale #where the Stupid Fish from ep 7 gives a monologue about how he knows hes been abandoned by his creator #love the concept that all caine's NPCs including the 'stupid' ones are capable of gaining enough self-awareness to feel existential horror

My new OTP: Pomni x Ming

#you shouldn’t assume I’m just saying this as a bit #call it Pomming #or Assumni #I’m busy traveling but I’ll share my vision when I get back #the world needs to know #tadc #the amazing digital circus

@justletmeon12 came up with this excellent Kinger-Caine-Zooble dialogue in the comments of this comic so I had to remix & illustrate it.

#tadc #the amazing digital circus #kinger #caine #i need a kinger-caine father-son dynamic name #no tag essay for this one #beyond 'if you suggest silly dialogue for the characters to say i might draw it if it Grabs me''#'i cant promise everything will grab me. but i will draw things if they Grab me. just be silly'#'im here to be silly with people'#thanks again to justletmeon for the quality goober dialogue #also: A RARE MELLOW RAGATHA!!!!!#one day i'll draw Ragatha's life-changing field trip with caine but not today

Inspired by: the conversations you have when you stay up too late on a call with friends. you know you're part of the gang when you get really tired & start sharing your unhinged deep lore.

#tadc #the amazing digital circus #i wanted to draw something simple and silly #caine #zooble #anyway I dont have a tag essay for this one. or do I?#lets see what I can ramble about #oh someone once told me that their ship name is Choking hazard #apparently thats one option and the other is Chatterbox.#I think choking hazard is the superior ship name #in either case: this is platonic but I think the chatterbox enjoyers'll like it.#edit wait no it’s chatterblock??#chatterbox #chatterblock #people gotta be less creative with your ship names #but yeah also something about how Caine's awful pre-9 behavior was largely built on fear & paranoia #and how things'll change now that he's part of this kind empathetic group of people who respond kindly if he treats them with kindness #anyway.#alas that there are no Amazing Digital Therapists in this circus

Whenever I make a more complex piece of art, I pingpong wildly back and forth between “we’re so back” and “it’s so over”

#I’ve entered ‘it’s so over’#I’m going to go take a shower

romanceyourdemons

guy working on an artwork they knew would push them technically: what the hell why do i keep doing this wrong. am i haunted by malevolent spirits and such

#it me

wip with no context. Can you, the viewer, guess what this will be?

#animatic moment???????????????????????????????????#animation time #hopefully #it’s coming along well so far!!!#tadc #the amazing digital circus

Me when I’m about to be traveling for Obligations for a while and will likely have limited time to draw:

#tragedy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!#I’m going to perish

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