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I have a question for fellow Moonchip / Nightmare / Eclipse x Moon shippers..

Say Moon and Eclipse hide their relationship.. Who would find out about them first? (!TSAMS CHARACTERS ONLY!)

Sun☀️

Solar🧰

Cosmos🌌

Molten🐻‍❄

Terra🌎

Monty🐊

Voting ended onSep 7, 2025

I'll make a EAPS version later.

hiiii! i just wanna say, i adore your art. second, im teaching myself to draw and while i can draw simple basics (mouths and sometimes eyes if im lucky), im still a beginner. ive watched many art videos and im still a bit confused on wtf im doing. so i just came here to ask if you had any words of wisdom for beginners? could be anything from what tablets to buy to simple mistakes to avoid. ive read some of the other posts here and have found it all extremely helpful so far! Thx for all you do!!

Hey there! Thank you so much!

I would put a read more but tumblr is broken. I’m trying to cover a lot of varied thoughts in little points, so if there’s anything you would like me to elaborate on or otherwise have questions on, feel free to shoot me an ask or dm me!

General

I think the biggest thing to remember is not to compare yourself extensively to others. A little bit of comparison is healthy... But too much will destroy your confidence, motivation, and take the fun out of art. Particularly if you are comparing yourself to someone older than you (life experience and coordination come into play here) or that has been drawing much longer (practice).

Additionally... If you’re not having fun (and you’re not getting paid to do it), don’t force yourself. If you find yourself being frustrated or bored with art, don’t force yourself to do it. That’s how you burn out and get art block! This applies to parts of a peice, too! If you don’t feel like drawing a face or a hand today? don’t force yourself to finish it. Come back to it later when you aren’t as frustrated or are getting better results. Even if its a week or a month from now. Honestly, at any given time I have probably ten headless bodies in my drafts. That’s okay! I just come back to them when I’m ready to do the face. And don’t be afraid to abandon something if it doesn’t feel right!

Something that also doesn’t get said enough.... take care of your body! I never knew when I started art, but artists are supposed to do warmup sketches and stretches and muscle exercises! I didn’t do any of this, and i went through a period of a few months where I was drawing for 5ish hours every single day. I developed carpal tunnel from it! So remember to take care of yourself. Take breaks, stretch, remember to eat.

Practice

Practice!!!! Even if its just for fifteen minutes every day. Or twice a week. But if art is something you really want to get good at, you have to put in the time and effort!! You can’t expect to draw an hour per month and be on the same level as someone who draws an hour a day!

I know I say this a lot but I think the biggest thing is just reference! If you don’t know what something looks like, look at a picture of it when you draw it! To go hand in hand with that, though, don’t just copy what you see! Learn from it and apply it! So take, for example, a shoe! pay attention to the way the heel is shaped, the location of the eyelets for the laces... how large the toe is, how steep the top! While you’re at it, look at other styles of shoes as well, and compare them! See what makes it look like a boot versus a trainer! And then the next time you draw it, hopefully you’ll remember all the things you learned the first time around!

I do lots of studies that serve no purpose other than to teach me things! I use referencing/studies to learn about color theory, shapes, and anatomy in a real environment. For example, hands or fabric folds! Oftentimes I’ll do them timed (20 or 45 minutes) so that I don’t fixate on perfecting things, just on the process itself and what I can learn from it. This also helps with getting better acclimated to your software and more coordinated with what you’re doing. Repetitive learning, like with playing sports.

I’ve realized a lot of people don’t quite understand what a study is? Basically you just look at a photo and try to replicate it so that you can learn about lighting or color theory or textures or anatomy or whatnot. So here’s an example of a timed study.

Additionally, don’t avoid!! We, as humans, have a tendency to avoid things that make us uncomfortable or are difficult. But it will make you a better artist in then end. When I first started, I absolutely hated doing fabric. I felt like I wasn’t good at it. So instead of avoiding drawing clothing, I sat down and did studies and sketches of different kinds of fabric. By the end of this learning period, I became comfortable with it and grew to enjoy it. These days, I adore sketching clothes, and it’s why my pants and shirts and things tend to be detailed instead of stylized in line art. If you don’t like drawing hands because you feel like you aren’t good at it? Sit down, look at a bunch of pictures of different hands, and practice it. By the end, you’ll be more comfortable, you’ll have learned something. Even if you feel like the drawings you ended up with aren’t good, you’ll still have learned, and that’s what matters!

Style

I worked on basics before I tried to develop a style. I made sure to start with a very realistic method at first, so that I could be sure I understood how fabric folds, anatomy, and realistic expressions worked before I tried to stylize them. I think in the long run this approach really paid off for me. It also allowed me to be conscientious of what elements I was absorbing into my artwork. I hear from so many artists that they started drawing when they were younger and into anime or cartoons or things like that, and tried to emulate it. Because those styles became so ingrained into their artistic skillset, it becomes near impossible to iron out those influences and get rid of them later. So starting with realism is a way to ingrain proper anatomy and other good practice into your artwork.

One way to develop style is to take a look at the artwork of someone you admire, and try to list out the things you like form their style - perhaps the thickness of their lines, or the way they do eyes. Do this with several artists, take all those little details you like and try them out! See if you enjoy using them in your own drawing process! Think of it like a grab bag or a pick-n-mix, sprinkling in the elements you like here and there to create something new and your own - not just copying another artists style word for word.

Don’t worry too much about it though; don’t allow yourself to become anxious or fixated on “achieving a style”. Its a natural ever evolving process that comes with time and practice. I know a lot of people get hung up on style, but just take it one day at a time!

Also try to keep in mind what style you’re going for as you begin drawing. And I don’t mean that like sailor moon vs. ghibli. I mean that as in, is this piece going to be a painting, a lineart, a lined painting, cell shading...? It will help you in the longrun if you narrow down the broad kind of style you use, and refine from there.

Workflow

My workflow for paintings is very different from my workflow for lineart and cell shading. A full tutorial on how I do paintings can be found here! A process video for how I cell shade can be found here!

Everyone is going to have a different method that works for them! You just have to experiment and find out how you like to draw! For me, personally, I use color blocking for painting (see the tutorial above) and a spine method for lineart. How the spine method works is that I will draw lines that represent the legs, arms, back, etc. so that I can determine the placement, length, and composition. From there, I’ll add a dark outline that actually shows the shapes of the body. Then, I’ll use thinner lines to add details. This is the method I’ve found that works for me. Another commonly used method that I’m sure you’ve seen is representing body parts with cylinders and cubes. There are lots of good tutorials out there on breaking down bodies into shapes like this!

Something that I do is if I’m not quite happy with a part of a drawing, I don’t just erase it. I duplicate the layer so that I always have the original copy, and then I make changes from there. Sometimes I can end up with five or six different versions of the same arm or face that i’ve made minor changes to. And then I compare and pick the one I like best, or condense all the parts I like from each version to make a “best” version.

Tools

Currently I use Procreate and the standard Ipad with Apple Pencil. Prior to March I was using a Wacom Bamboo Touch and Photoshop Elements 2008. I find its harder for me to do full paintings in procreate, but its made my life a million times easier for lineart and cell shading. The pen pressure is phenomenal, and I also adore that its wireless / active screen instead of plug in like the wacom. The programme itself is intuitive and easy to get the hang of; it simply lacks a lot of the neat tricks that photoshop has, like rendering (lens flares, for example), gradients, and gradient maps. Try testing out different trials of programmes... firealpaca, photoshop, autodesk, whatever it may be! What works for me may not work for you!

#thegodbucky #asks for ts #t talks #long post #art reference

You ever get into something real complicated, ask yourself why the hell you’re doing this, and then realize the simpler version is right there >_<

For some reason I got it into my head to make a hardness scale for magic. And I was piling in all this stuff for a spread sheet, with Gandalf in Lord of the Rings as a control and... why the hell am I doing all that. When if I look along the bottom, there’s a much more usable scale.

So... my noodling for a Hardness of Magic - a scale of 1 to 10; 1 being least hard to 10 being most hard. ...I believe that softness should actually be a different scale instead of 1 being the ultimate softness. I feel like hardness measures a likeness to science while softness measures something like the explorations of psyche or society. But I dunno. I’ll deal with that later. Hopefully much much later or never.

1) INFERABLE - The Magic happens in a way that is inferrable but not observable The phrase “Peice of Cake” in the movie The Labyrinth.

2) OBSERVABLE - The Reader can observe the magic that is cast The Force is an energy field created by all living things. It surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together - and somehow it lets you hear ghosts, predict your enemies, and use telekinesis. You can see it. There is a spell X. How it works or how it relates to other magics may still be unclear.

3) RELATIONAL - The Reader can infer how multiple magics relate Gandalf keeps casting light spells all the time - it’s almost as if light is a theme of his magic. Perhaps his ability to make fire and fireworks is related. But we are never told for sure. X and Y relate, so Z that shares some features may also relate.

4) RUBRICAL - The Reader can observe the rule by which multiple magics fit together Vancian Magic in D&D with its classes and levels of magic or how Voodoo Dolls work in fiction to control a person’s motion or give them pain but can’t hypnotize them - it’s about the explicit rule of spell X fits into magical school Z but spell Y doesn’t because only Z-ish spells fit. The school of Necromancy is the school of magic relating to death. A light spell wouldn’t fit.

5) CLASSIFIABLE - The Reader can observe the reasoning of the operation of the rule by which multiple magics fit together A Voodoo doll works by the laws of contagion and sympathy, what has been a part of someone is always connected to them and what you do to an image of someone is done to the real person. So because a person’s hair is separated from them but on the doll, the doll is now connected to the person by contagion. And because the doll is now a image of that person what happens to the doll happens sympathetically to the person. So the reasoninng of the rules - this connects to that, and manipulating this manipulates that - is explicit. Spell X fits into school Z and Spell Y doesn’t because of principle A. Only spells that directly affect the currently dead fit into the school of necromancy - so a spell that would kill a living person wouldn’t be considered necromancy in that paradigm. While a spell that made a body look alive would still be necromancy.

6) PREDICTABLE - The Reader can use the reasoning to predict another peice of magic that would fit the rule(s) by which the magic fits together Because a doll works in part by the law of contagion, the hair of the victim allowing a connection between doll and person, we can assume that you can use hair as a method for a different spell that connects, like a tracker because the laws of magic tell us that part of a person is always connected to them, and we can guess that before we are explicitly told that ultra-conservative jewish women burned their hair to prevent magic being used against them before they had any contact with the stories of Voodoo because an idea like contagion is in both cultures. The rule is predictive. Because of principle X we can expect magic Y to cause Z effect. If saying someone’s true name gives you power to control them, and you learn the true name of a river, the reader can expect that you can exert control over the river.

7) ASSESSABLE - The Reader can use the essential reasoning of the magic to evaluate different uses in relation to each other - allowing you to judge whether one iteration is better at a goal than another. In Fullmetal Alchemist, the same transmutations cast at the opposite ends of the story have radically different results and the story displays why they are different. Edward has a different understanding of the tools at hand. In such a way that the audience can observe and infer things that make certain transmutations better than others. This is even in the beginning though with Edward able to make a circle with his arms as opposed to drawing a transmutation array on the ground. It’s recognizable as the same basic art, he’s just showing an expertise that others, even skilled others, don’t share. Because of that information, the audience can recognize the power of varying alchemists by the complexity of their arrays and that more complex spells require more complex arrays. A more complex array for a simple spell would show us before we were ever told that the user was an inferior alchemist. X is true, therefore Y is superior to Z for purpose A.

8) VALIDATABLE - You can determine relevant or true information from irrelevant or false information. Let’s take FMA again. The power level, sophistication of magical array, and knowledge of the subject are all important to the ability to transmute. But the fundamental driving force of magic is the law of equivalent exchange, you cannot create something that requires more than what is put into the exchange. This is the real reason why resurrection spells fail, because no one puts enough in to the exchange to equal what they want out of the exchange. Life is more than matter. And because of that principle we can spot improper spell use without being told it is improper spell use. If someone does something that otherwise looks completely correct but violates that most relevant piece of information, we know that something else besides just transmutation is going on. Which is also why some of the later big twists in the series make perfect logical sense, the fundamental relavence of information has been shown, so we have been prepared to logic out truth from appearances. If X is absolutely true and Y contradicts X, we can expect Y to be false even if Y feels generally right.

9) MODIFIABLE - The principles are understandably transposable for use in different expressions. This is a little like #6 in that it is predictive. But more than being predictive it is showing an underlying core principle of multiple effects. In the same way that light is different colors for the same reason that sound comes in different pitches and also that if you drop a rock in water you will get ripples. While they might appear on the surface to be very different, the fundamental way things work is the same - disturbing a fluid causes a wave, bigger disturbances cause bigger waves, more waves in a given period produce higher frequency phenomenen, less waves produce lower frequency phenomenen. And yeah, that’s science but I can’t think of a book that does this. Avatar the Last Airbender brushes against this with the idea that the principles of flow mechanics of water bending carry over into the principles of direction mechanics of pure fire / lightning. Energy redirection was essentially the same no matter what element was being bent or what type of bender was doing the redirection. But where this sort of thing is most common is in Role Playing Games where it is possible for the player to design their own powers / magic. Pretty much the entire GURPS Powers book is about using this level of hardness in a single system to produce radically different expressions in a game space that will interact predictably for the purposes of arbitration.

10) PARALLEL - An Alternative Science. At this point there’s not much hardness to be gained anymore. The fiction presents a set of fundamental laws and extrapolates from them to get the effects the audience percieves in the fiction. The laws are identified in such a way that the audience can determine for themselves how magic works in such a way that they can, if they choose, extrapolate and predict powers before those powers appear and are demonstrated because all the tools to do so have been given to them. Character errors in how magic works can be caught because the established rules provide an error-check framework. If a reader knows fire can only be created or controlled with a magic word that starts with an I because human magic was stolen from a latin speaking demon, we know the guy who promises a village an ever burning bonfire by speaking the word Aeternum into the bonfire pit is either a charlatan or an idiot. But he may possibly be an immortal charlatan or idiot since he knows the latin word for eternity.

Or, in nice chart form for my Mohs sci-fi scale rip off:

A Proposed Hardness Scale for Fantasy