#firstfallenflower

[ask-chef-arven]

Woah hi chef back! You're married to Nemona?????

Arven: She is a wonderful mother and I am so glad I am raising paldea future with her ❤️

Link to Pokemon community discord server

[shimmershy]

Eyyy! An Undertale blog in 2023!! Greetings!

Hiii! I'm still Undertale's biggest fan in 2023 fr 🎉

[ask-chef-arven]

Hey chef, Your Julianna seemed..upset. is it possible that you never met a Florian because rather than not existing, he just..didn't make it?

Arven: But you may be right no matter how ditzy she may seem she’s always not open book when it comes to serious situations

Link to the Pokemon community discord server

[shimmershy]

Hiya, random bs question, Any advice for writing fanfics? Thunderstorm has quickly become on of my favorites so I wish for advice please!

Wow ha ha, I'm really glad you liked it! Unfortunately I'm....horrible at advice, especially when it comes to art and writing. Mostly because I've just been doing it for pretty much my whole life so I kind of just... do it and try to make it look/sound right as I go. Plus there's just a lot that goes into it, so it'd probably be easier to answer like a specific question or something.

I guess one thing that's good to keep in mind is to vary your sentence structure throughout the story because it makes it more interesting to read. Like, have a variety of long and short sentences, and change up the way you phrase things a bit. You can break traditional writing rules too, especially in fanfiction where it's easier to get away with, and use sentence fragments for effect, for example.

Another thing I love doing is giving a line that's supposed to have a lot of impact its own paragraph. Like, you have this really long paragraph explaining a character's feelings or something, and then there's this one sentence that gets broken off from everything because it's meant to be impactful. That's just a lot of fun to me. And then, of course, you have the ellipses (...) with their own paragraph when there's a lot of tension or just a pause. Or just...regular ellipses hehehe. I rely on that way too much to help with pacing and stuff.

If you have a lot of monologuing/character thoughts/dialogue in one place, it helps to interject a sentence or two that keeps it grounded in the present moment. Just take a moment to describe something the character's doing while they're saying/thinking these things because they're probably not going to be sitting still as a statue the whole time. (And if they are....mention it!) Maybe they glance to the side or brush their hair behind their ear or walk over to the cabinet to get a cookie. It just helps with pacing and also to make sure things are still happening, I guess. I tend to struggle with remembering to do this so I always kind of have it on my mind. I get caught up with explaining things a lot and forget about the "things happening" part. For example, Thunderstorms had a lot of paragraphs of Chara just thinking about stuff so it felt really clunky to read through, I guess? So from time to time I tried to add in a description of them doing something, like pulling their blanket tighter around themself. When I was first writing this, they were just going to stay in their room the whole time, but then I was like, that's boring! Boo! Make fun stuff happen! So yeah. I don't know, it's kind of hard and it's more something you just have to feel out.

And I guess, just generally, it helps to know the characters you're writing really well. I feel like the fact that I've been hyperfixating on Undertale, particularly Chara and Frisk etc., for years has something to do with how well I write them lol... But yeah. I don't know, when it comes to fanfiction, the most important thing is to have fun with it. :) And usually if you enjoy writing it, surely there will be people out there who enjoy reading it.

[shimmershy]

You are a gift, you art fills me with serotonin!

Aww, thank you so much! I'm glad you like it! :)

[shimmershy]

Heya! I'm a big fan of how you draw your characters! Do you have tips for drawing people and finding your style? I suck at it

Hi! Hmmm...trying to think of advice to give is difficult because for me, it kind of just developed over time and I never did anything specific to find my style, necessarily. I know that like, everyone says this when giving art advice, but I think this is genuinely one of those times when giving it a lot of time and practice is the best thing you can do. It's really cool to see your style develop into something more recognizable over time, because at this point it kind of just comes naturally to me? I don't know if it happens like that for everyone but it makes sense that the more you get a feel for drawing, the more you get comfortable drawing a certain way, I guess.

So I mean, another thing you could do is try drawing in a lot of different ways! That may seem counter-intuitive, but if you do that, you get better at noticing all the different factors that makes an art style distinctive, and you can figure out what you like drawing the most because you're trying a bunch of different things. Sometimes I like trying to imitate other people's art styles in my sketchbook. You could try taking parts of other people's styles that you like and incorporating it into your own art. Like, say, you like the way someone draws eyes or hands or something. You could try focusing on getting really good at that specifically. Just, of course, don't trace other people's art and post it or anything, ha ha.

In terms of drawing people and characters in general, though, using references and practicing anatomy helps a lot. I don't do it a lot honestly because I get bored of it really quickly lol, but usually I grab some photos of complex poses and sketch them in my sketchbook to get a feel for how the poses work. If you're struggling with anatomy, it might also help to trace over the image and break it down to simple shapes beforehand (I do that sometimes, too).

But that's about all the advice I have. Practice, try using anatomy references, and take inspiration from the art you like.