me: can you help me promote my book?
mum: 🫡🏃🏻♀️💨💥🥰🧚♀️
My first artbook, ‘The Art of Kelogsloops’ is out now! If you'd like to check it out, you can find more info here: The Artbook
With October just around the corner, NASA has released its latest Galaxy of Horrors posters. Presented in the style of vintage horror movie advertisements. As fun and creative as all three posters are, they're based on real phenomena. 🎃
Can you hear this exoplanet screaming?
As HD 80606 b approaches its star from an extreme, elliptical orbit, it suffers star-grazing torture that causes howling, supersonic winds and shockwave storms across the planet. Its torturous journey boils its atmosphere to a hellish 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit every 111 days, roasting both its light and dark sides. HD 80606b will never escape this scorching nightmare.
This bone-chilling force will leave you shivering alone in terror!
An unseen power is prowling throughout the cosmos, driving the universe to expand at a quickening rate. This relentless pressure, called dark energy, is nothing like dark matter, that mysterious material only revealed by its gravitational pull. Dark energy offers a bigger fright: pushing galaxies farther apart over trillions of years, leaving the universe to an inescapable, freezing death in the pitch black expanse of outer space.
Cygnus X-1 Presents:
It’s Dinner Time and You’re The Meal!
Lurking in our galaxy, approximately 6,000 light-years from Earth, is a monster named CygnusX-1. This black hole, which has about 14.8 times the mass of our Sun, will stretch and squeeze anything it captures in its immense gravity. Cygnus X-1 is waiting, snacking on its neighboring star. Don’t get too close, or you’ll become its next meal!
This chillingly haunted galaxy mysteriously stopped making stars only a few billion years after the Big Bang! It became a cosmic cemetery, illuminated by the red glow of decaying stars. Dare to enter, and you might encounter the frightening corpses of exoplanets or the final death throes of once-mighty stars.
Something strange and mysterious creeps throughout the cosmos. Scientists call it dark matter. It is scattered in an intricate web that forms the skeleton of our universe. Dark matter is invisible, only revealing its presence by pushing and pulling on objects we can see. NASA’s Roman Space Telescope will investigate its secrets. What will be revealed?
In the depths of the universe, the cores of two collapsed stars violently merge to release a burst of the deadliest and most powerful form of light, known as gamma rays. These beams of doom are unleashed upon their unfortunate surroundings, shining a million trillion times brighter than the Sun for up to 30 terrifying seconds. No spaceship will shield you from the blinding destruction of the gamma ray ghouls!
These doomed worlds were among the first and creepiest to be discovered as they orbit an undead star known as a pulsar. Pulsar planets like Poltergeist and its neighboring worlds, Phobetor and Draugr, are consumed with constant radiation from the star’s core. Nothing but the undead can subsist in this most inhospitable corner of the galaxy.
This far-off blue planet may look like a friendly haven – but don’t be deceived! Weather here is deadly. The planet’s cobalt blue color comes from a hazy, blow-torched atmosphere containing clouds laced with glass. Howling winds send the storming glass sideways at 5,400 mph (2km/s), whipping all in a sickening spiral. It’s death by a million cuts on this slasher planet!
We all know Tumblr and artists go together like peaches and cream. Welcome to our new Artist Alley: empowering artists to sell their work straight from their own storefronts, on their own terms.
Artist Alley is where you can browse and discover a small selection of the many outstanding artists on Tumblr and support the art you love by buying directly from the artist who makes it.
Are you an artist? Do you want your storefront promoted all across Tumblr for free? Submit an image of your work and a link to your storefront to Artist Alley for the chance to be featured, to be revered, to be loved, and—most importantly—to sell your stuff.
🗣Calling all artists! We want to promote your digital storefront.
After you submit your storefront for consideration, head on over to @artistalley to see all of the wonderful axolotl crochet patterns, mushroom stickers, miniature CD charms, and runner duck greeting cards our current rotation of artists have for sale.
If you google Line Mileage you'll see relatively few search results. Why this term has come to be so obscure to the public is everybody's guess. Regardless; it is an incredibly important concept for artists working with visual storytelling to understand, as it informs them of how labour-intensive a design or composition can be.
"Line Mileage is a term that means how much line you have to draw. if you were to take a traditional drawing and stretch out the lines end to end, you would see what your Line Mileage is. Every millimeter more of pencil or digital line takes more time to draw. Intricate character designs may look good as still images, but the reality of animating such a character is time consuming. A long, curly headed character wearing a wrinkly overcoat, multiple ammo straps over his shoulders, and a striped shirt has extra Line Mileage. It is difficult to keep so many lines moving well without them seeming to crawl, pop or distract from the animation"
Tina O'Hailey: Hybrid Animation: integrating 2D and 3D assets
As O'Hailey mentions in her book: Hybrid Animation: Integrating 2D and 3D assets, Line Mileage is the total amount of time it takes for an artist to draw a character (and by that extension prop, background, etc). Animators have used this term to deduce whether or not a design is adequately balanced in its amount of details in terms of artists being able to reach their deadline by drawing it the amount of times necessary.
Line Mileage is most commonly used in the world of 2D animation. The use of the term has fallen somewhat out of favour now that the entertainment industry has skewed heavier towards 3D animation, but it's still a concept well worth grasping if you work in 2D, particularly in disciplines such as comics, animation or serial illustration where the volume of drawings you need to produce exceeds more than just a handful of images.
It sounds simple enough to consider whether or not your character design is too complex to draw multiple times. But you will find, especially if you're just getting started, that your stamina drawing your character will drastically dwindle once you've been through with it a few times. If you've committed to a comic project, the first 3-4-5 times of drawing your character might be perfectly easy and motivating in enough of itself. But when you get to frame 10, 20, 40 - your design will most likely have lost a good bit of its excitement to you. Now you're in for the long haul of gruelling work, and if you have not made the design suitable for that kind of long-term labour, it is going to be absolute hell to pull through. Moreover your lack of motivation will surely come to show in the final product.
There's not one 'correct' amount of detail or Line Mileage for anyone or anything. But is understood that the average artist can undertake a certain amount of Line Mileage without overworking themselves or even worse, causing themselves long-term injuries. Yours will never be like anyone elses, so never rely on what other artists might be able to manage, you'll end up hurting yourself (I've been there and that injury still sometimes keeps me from working for days on end).
How to account for good Mileage
Milt's rough animation drawings from Thumper's famous scene: "If you can't say something nice..."
Check your medium
Accounting for your Line Mileage in a sustainable way comes down to researching and making conscious decisions about the complexity of your design. This decision should be made based on your own speed rather than anyone else's, as you will be the one drawing your character again and again. So forget what industry professionals or other hobbyists can do. You're the illustrator/animator/storyteller, you make the decision (unless you're working as lead of a team; naturally you'd want to get a feel for your teams capacity first before making any decisions in that case). Your design's complexity should also be based on how many times you're supposed to draw the character. It's logical to assume that a character that you're supposed to draw once or a handful of times can be a lot more complex than a character that needs drawing dozens or hundreds of times.
Be honest with yourself when making a decision on how high your Line Mileage should be. Always give yourself a little less work ( in this context: a little less detail) than you think you can manage.
Trust me; you will thank yourself later!
The following examples are based on my capacity as an artist and is not indicative of yours or any other industry professionals.
Pay attention to the difference in detailing between them and notice how their complexity lessen significantly the more frequency the character is supposed to be drawn.
Illustrations
Drawings: 1-5
When it comes to designs that I'm not supposed to draw a million times over ( say, a random character or creature that will pop up in the occassional leisure piece ) I don't hold that much back on the detailing for the sake of Line Mileage. Though, compared to other artists, I'm still somewhat conservative to details. Though this has all to do with my own personal stylistic preferences rather than Mileage.
In this design, meant only to be drawn very occassionally; The ribcage takes up a majority of the total Mileage. Drawing exposed bone structures is incredibly time-consuming, as it does not only take time to apply lineart to, but the construction of it and the sketch phases take a long time too, as every rib has to be lined up properly as to not break with perspective. I personally try to include as little structure that would require a lot of respective, when it comes to designs that are supposed to have low Mileage. Perhaps also a by-product of my less than stellar grip on perspective. I would recommend it for anyone who's not 100% comfortable with drawing perspective too. It's just really time-consuming from the onset.
You'll also notice that every single leaf in the mane of the creature has been drawn in pretty meticulously. I would never do this for a design that would only need drawing occasionally. You can definitely simplify the likes of the mane down to a more uniform green mass though to lower your Mileage.
Storybook
Drawings: 5-12
When we get into storybook (and later comic book and animation) territory, I will personally start scaling back on details majorly. Instead, I'll focus heavily on incorporating large, dominant, and interesting shapes into the design. Seen here with the tall, lanky anatomy, the big trench coat and the furry collar. The bag was added to pad out the silhouette and give a secondary shape as well. This bag and the gasmask are the only elements that require somewhat thorough construction in the sketch phases. The machinegun is drawn using a hybrid method of 3D and 2D assets, more on that in a later essay) Therefore, the majority of the design can be freehanded pretty easily with little need for reference.
Comic
Drawings: 15+
Now we're getting to the more scarce designs in terms of detail. Once we reach comic level, I personally like to scale back the designs almost to the bone. Keeping only the most major shapes intact and generally simplifying the design down to its core ideas. In this particular example, that meant scaling the details down to a simple robe and overcoat/vest, along with a relatively simplified version of a sword. The character has a few details in the form of facial stubble and two scars, but aside from that, he is pretty simple when compared to the designs above. Just like the gun from above, the sword is worked into the illustrations by applying 3D and 2D assets in order to expedite the process. Therefore it isn't considered an integral part of the design itself from a Line Mileage standpoint.
Animation
Frames-
2D animation is among the most laborious disciplines of 2D visuals and storytelling that you can do. This makes it incredibly expensive to produce as well. Many newer shows tackle this incredible amount of labour by simplifying their designs ( see Steven Universe, Adventure time, etc ). If you're a single artist working on something, I highly recommend you think about the economy of your details through a very conservative lens. At least if you want to animate long-form sequences. Disney and Dreamworks had success in animating relatively complex 2D characters back in the 2000s by organising in teams of up to 30 working on characters alone (in the case of The Little Mermaid) working full time to produce over one million drawings before release. If you're not Disney, you don't have 29 other people with you and enough money to pay yourself full-time along with your other animators, then you need to think very critically about how you spend your time. Granted, you can absolutely go as detailed as you want as long as you plan your animations legnth and your time-frame for making it accordingly.
Anyway: Above is a very basic idea of what a design for an animation could look like. Many indie-artists currently lean towards these highly simplified by effective designs. though, we are seeing a resurgence of semi-realism in adult cartooning ( See Netflix' Castlevania. The Boondocks, The Legend of Voc Machina. Technology is allowing artist to draw more complex designs more efficiently ). You'll see that many of the structural details of the character's anatomy ( facial features, toes, etc) has been removed completely or simplified down to very minor shapes and volumes. The majority of the character is covered in one shape (the cape) and the texturing on the leaves and flowers is random splatters of a brush. This design is almost as simple as it gets, but still clearly conveys a few ideas. I'm by no means saying that you have to go this scarce with your detailing for animation, I would personally maybe shoot a little above it as well if i was to make an animated project, but from a pure Mileage point of view, this design would be very optimized for animation.
Take breaks: even with good Mileage
No matter how low your Line Mileage is, taking care of yourself should be at the forefront of your mind when drawing characters multiple times. Drawing takes a huge toll on your hands, your elbows, your posture and your overall health. I'm not going to preach too much in this particular post (though expect it in a future essay) But being conscious of your Line Mileage is not only going to save you time, but spare your body from excessive repetitive work, which can cause RSI's (Repititive Strain Injury). These can completely mess with your scheduling and in worst case scenario become chronic.
So don't even try it. I can personally attest that giving your projects a little more runtime is going to suck a lot less than being unable to draw for long periods of time. Certainly suck less than dealing with chronic pain and deformities because of being too ambitious with your Line Mileage.
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