#countthelions

[murkshade]

Portrait and Fullbody commissions for @countthelions!

Commission info is here!

[tj-crochets]

Question!! Do you have any suggestions on how to start pattern crafting for a plushie?? I got this little pixel dragon that I think would be an ADORABLE plushie but i've never done that before. where do I even begin???

Absolutely!!! If you have reference photos you want to share I can give more specific advice (I'm not totally sure what a pixel dragon is?) but I do have some general advice, in no particular order but numbered for ease of referring to them:

1. Determine the scale of the plushie you want to make. For me, that usually means picking either the smallest or the biggest piece of the finished plushie, deciding how big that will be, and scaling the rest to fit. On the tiny spider I made recently, the tiniest piece was the pedipalp, so I made that as small as I thought I could sew and scaled the rest to fit. On some patterns, if I only have a little bit of the fabric, I scale the biggest piece to fit the fabric and go from there 2. Figure out the main shapes you want to make. For some plushies, that's basically different sized spheres. For some, it's rectangular prisms. For some, like my grizzly bear and the octopus, I kinda draw the side profile of the animal and use that as the shaping? Sorta difficult to describe, but easier to do

3. I’d pick a seam allowance and keep it consistent. Not everyone does this, some people prefer to have no seam allowance, but I keep mine at 1/4”. When I was starting out, I’d use a ruler and make dots 1/4” out and then connect them, then I got 1/4” square dowel and used that, then I taped a pen to a pencil so that the points were 1/4” apart and after drawing pattern pieces I’d trace them with the pair to add seam allowance. These days, tbh, I just eyeball it. With enough practice 1/4” gets pretty easy to draw

4. When you’re creating pattern pieces where you’re matching a curve to a straight line (like making a cylinder where the end piece is a circle but the side pieces are rectangles), using a pipe cleaner to mold to the curve, bending the pipe cleaner to mark how long it is, and then straightening out the bent portion to use as a measurement for the straight line can make matching pieces way easier. You can also use string to do it, but in my experience pipe cleaners are easier to make follow weird curves like octopus tentacles

5. You can absolutely use existing patterns as a base to modify! I would not do this if you intend to sell the finished pattern or share it online, but you don’t have to work from scratch, you can find a pattern that has some of the shapes you want (especially basic things like spheres). Even if you don’t use them to directly modify, making lots of plushies (or even just looking at patterns and seeing how the finished plushie looks) can introduce you to a bunch of different ways to make different shapes

6. If the pixel in pixel dragon is literal, I’d start with the same starting point I did when creating the minecraft bee pattern: figure out what the smallest pixelated piece is, and then figure out how small a piece of fabric you are willing to work with. For me, I think I decided each pixel would be an inch? Might’ve been 3/4 inch, I don’t remember off the top of my head

7. If you are working with stretch fabric, you’ll need to decide which direction the stretch will go in. If you are working with non-stretch fabric, you will probably need more darts in the pattern

I’m sure I have more tips and tricks to share but I’m blanking on them lol

Feel free to ask more questions!! I love talking about this, there’s so many different ways to make different shapes and pros and cons to all of them

[ryvenarts]

Hiii i would love to learn about Bernard pls 🥺🥺🥺

Hello!! I'm very happy to hear you'd like to know more about him ❤️

Bernard is a Neutral Good, War Domain Cleric! A very protective and polite fellow, but a little emotionally closed off and never likes focusing on himself. I have some refs of him and a character token I made, and below the keep reading is his backstory!

Bernard was created to be a personal guard for General Thomlin, acting as his constant protection during the war, Bernard was also expected to act as a personal butler to care for his every whim, including as a healer.

He was bound to be a cleric devoted to Torm to serve better as a protector, to heal and support for the war efforts.

Many soldiers viewed him harshly due to his rank, purpose and the way he talked. (He talks like a proper english butler) During the limited downtime he had, he befriended the cook and various soldiers through the recipes that he learned to prepare for General Thomlin.

Sometime after the war ended. His services were no longer required and he was scheduled to be dismantled the following week to be melted down for all the valuable metal and armour they gave him so he was able to use his body as a shield for the General when needed.

The soldiers that Bernard befriended rallied together with a plan to try and sneak this impossibly large and heavy fellow outside the walls, pulling around a 200kg warforged sneakily would be a challenge.

That's all I got so far :)!

[krshush]

WAIT WHEN DID KITTY APPEAR!!!!!! CAT?? CAT YOURS?????

cat mine! cat mine for a while now, since fall of last year. I hadn't mentioned it like the big celebration it should be because, to be honest... I'm rather ashamed of the way my family (my grandmother, specifically) wants to treat cats.

See, my grandmother likes cats, but only really wants them outdoors to keep pests away, and not really indoors because of all their hair to vacuum up and bc of my and dad's allergies (as if we don't smush our faces into cute cats when we get the chance and know the consequences)

Because of this, grandma continues to put food out and lure strays around, and we've had at least two mama cats have us help tend to their kittens (with... mixed success, unfortunately), but no cat is allowed inside at all times, and I try not to get particularly attached when anything could happen to these cats

Little Bit and her brother Tabby are one half of a litter left with us after our last mama (Sweet Pea) seems to have left with the others. However Tabby passed in the winter, so now we're trying our best to keep Little Bit healthy and happy now that she's (mostly*) alone. She's imprinted on me hard and insists on being near me most every day I'm home (and screams at gran and dad when I'm not here and she's not allowed in my room)

(*another from a litter we helped raise, Bug, has come back, but she's more skittish than ever, so it's unclear if she and Lil Bit are friends)

TL;DR sadly due to lady of the house's restrictions, Lil Bit is a half-in half-out cat, but she loves me and I love her So Much

[halfangs]

i would love, my friend, your thoughts on CR4. your faves so far? any cool moments living rent-free? any lore you're excited to get into? general vibes???

alright this took me a couple days because i've had the longest weekend of all time but YES OBVIOUSLY OF COURSE I WILL TALK C4

putting it under a cut because it's really long

i'll start by saying this is definitely the most promising cast of characters we've seen so far. nearly every campaign there's at least one where a few episodes in i'm like "oh no" -- in a long suffering "i know this character is gonna irritate me" way. but we've got some REAL bangers out of basically everyone here (if i said who that character was for one of the previous campaigns i would get drawn and quartered so i'm not gonna elaborate)

VERY excited for murray - marisha was KNOCK OUT as patia in Calamity (btw - watch calamity if you haven't. absolutely the best thing CR has ever put out) AND i fucking love a wizard! i LOVE a wizard!! what's sexier than wizards?? nothing!!!! the sketchy poor man's wizard thing she's got going on, her teeth being a casting component, the fact that's she's a divination wizard, a natural TWENTY!!!!! so hype about it.

love her relationship with bolaire so far, loved her trying to explain frog boiling to azune, loved the moment with kattigan - truly devastated that they didn't have time to bone before he had to skip town. i think that every campaign one person truly FINDS their character, like the character they'll never be able to top because it's so dead on, and i do think this might be marisha's.

of course i would be remiss to not mention julien davinos. i think it's such a fascinating character choice for matt, who's often struggled with the fandom being mad at him, or possibly disliking him, who tries to be really soft spoken and gentle in general, building a character who's a prick and at odds with basically every other person across all the parties. insane work. it's soooooo sexy of him because, despite everyone being like "oh julien's a piece of shit," it's very clear that julien is NOT a bad person at all, he's just chock full of daddy issues and ended up on the opposite side of the rebellion from the charming thief-with-a-heart-of-gold (?) that was thjazi. julien is SO prickly but he's got a genuinely strong sense of right and wrong. HONOR matters to him, and beloved thjazi fang -- thief, cad, traitor, goes against everything that he understands to be true of the world.

and then - putting himself against the rest of the group AGAIN by being anti-occtis. and i mean. let's look at this from his perspective. he's charged by his father to bring the youngest of house tachonis, necromancer extraordinaire, to the Royce house, because the tachonis' are desperately searching for him. that's all he knows about the whole situation. then, when he succeeds in doing that, the tachonis' SHOW UP, RED WEDDING THE WHOLE PLACE, AND THEN OCCTIS COMES BACK TO LIFE????? yeah brother, i wouldn't trust that shit either!!!!! he's so right!!! that's not a miracle! that's a fucking trap! and like, if he is in the seekers party with occtis like i assume he is, how the actual fuck is that gonna work? SO JUICY, MATT MERCER. came out of the gate absolutely SWINGING with julien davinos. justice for julien. i could fix him but also - he's right!

can't wait to see more out of thimble and teor, laura because this is so firmly in the wheelhouse of "this character is going to make me cry all the time" and travis because i don't know that we've gotten a character out of him that's so...earnest? fjord was the closest but he was so many lies in a trenchcoat that it wasn't always sincere. thaisha and vaelus are also buckwild because they both have very little mystery to them - they're so straightforwardly what they are but they also have the most FREAK relationships with other people, specifically occtis. hello? are you guys good???? occtis you're in danger i think

bolaire, wick, hal, are all in the "likely thing for you to be playing" out of tal, sam, and liam. love tal and sam's concepts, of course, but again - likely thing for them to do. i will admit i'm kind of surprised that liam is going for "everyman" two campaigns in a row. i'll be interested to see how that plays out.

I think there's a few characters that we haven't really seen much out of yet that have the potential to be really interesting - what the fuck is azune's deal??? what the fuck is KATTIGAN'S deal?? what is tyranny doing here, exactly?????

really the thing i'm really excited for is the actual story to unfold. i need to know EVERYTHING. admittedly, i'm less interested in the politics of all the sundered houses and their inevitable takeover, even though i'm sure it will be great, and more interested in THJAZI FUCKING FANG. what the FUCK was thjazi doing. brennan is so so so so good at building these nuanced NPCs with complicated reasons for everything they do, and thjazi's casting this huge shadow over the entire story. he collected the nightsong, which had to do with ferrying elves souls across the veil, and a celestial that was the halfling angel of death (god knows what's in the paint he left for hal. i have some wild theories, but none of them are really founded in anything. i can expand on that elsewhere). was thjazi trying to solve the "souls don't go anywhere after death?" conundrum? was he just trying to open the doors to fairy again? why was he playing this so close to the chest that even thimble doesn't know what the fuck they were doing??? and like, also, thimble, were you really equals when he had a thousand plates spinning behind your back??????? thjazi fang, what was going on with you?

[saphushia]

I would loveeeee to hear your weird creeper hcs 🙏🙏🙏

YES YAY THANK YOU 🌟

okay so i guess first off. i hc silverfish to be larval creepers. that, in addition with a creeper's diet (and silverfish's, of course) consisting of ore, is why creepers explode players. see, when creepers explode, their eggs are embedded in the surrounding terrain. as players often carry ores on them, a creeper managing to explode a player and drop their inventory means the silverfish that hatch are almost guaranteed a very generous meal upon first hatching. after that, silverfish burrow underground to continue eating, and to stay safe until they're ready to metamorphise into creepers

(bonus doc lore at the end of the post 🐐)

creepers emerge from the ground at night because that's when it's generally safest for them to finish the final stages of development and gather their bearings. creepers themselves cannot dig or burrow, so they stay on the surface (or in a cave, if that's where they emerged) for the remainder of their life.

the combustion is the result of a chemical reaction- they store reactive materials in chambers in their body, and when they're released and come into contact with each other it causes an explosion as a side note, creepers can eat meat, but are more scavengers than hunters, and only eat it when it's readily available with little to no risk.

moving onto doc (because i'll never pass up a chance for blorbo talk), his anatomy is somewhat different from a standard creeper due to all the modifications to give him a more 'human' bodyplan and appearance.

his forelegs were originally removed and reattached to act as arms, however his spine and leg joints weren't built for a bipedal upright stance, so it gives him back, knee, and ankle pain to walk like that too much. his retractable robotic forelegs were a later addition he made for himself as a mobility aid to help relieve that pain. because of that he has a slightly more 'taur' like body structure, vs standard creepers whose necks are centered between all 4 legs. originally both his arms had 3 digits each (as they were made by modifying his legs), but when he made his right arm prosthetic he gave it a 5-fingered, more human-like shape for easier manipulation of stuff designed for human use

his combustion chambers were also removed long ago, so he can no longer explode himself (which he doesn't really mind. not big on the whole 'one panic away from exploding himself to death' thing)

he can digest a larger range of food than standard creepers can, but he still needs to eat ores to keep a nutritionally balanced diet. mostly he eats non-mineral foods just because he likes the taste, rather than actual nutritional value. it's recommended not to eat anything he makes for himself, because even if it looks like smth a human can eat, it's probably seasoned with redstone or iron shavings (he is good at making human-safe food, but he has no reason to make his own meals human safe. only eat doc's cooking if you know it's meant to be shared)

his scales are also softer, fading into something more similar to rough skin on a lot of his body. his 'hair' is thicker than a human's but thinner than a creeper's scales- it has almost a quill like texture. he can still 'hiss' by rattling them, but it's a somewhat different pitch than your standard creeper.

he also has a lot of mods on his neck to allow him to speak, and his robotic eye sees far better than a creeper's (slightly above human average, vs creeper eyes which are far below a human average). also a lot of questional brain/head mods to give him a more human appearing face and human-level cognition. his horns however are purely aesthetic.

[iguessyouregonnamissthepantyraid]

bc its the Season(tm): top five favorite holiday foods

oh EASY

green bean casserole

my grandmom's crab bisque which she makes every holiday because we're all obsessed with it

stuffing, specifically boxed stovetop

a gobbler sandwich

green bean casserole again

[potionofinstantdamage]

16 with doc? Or whoever fits the song <3

You are my angel

Come from way above

To bring me love

-- Angel by Massive Attack