Anonymous asked: it really weirds me out that i've never heard your voice before
I’ve had a couple of requests for what I sound like recently, and I’m a bit too shy to record anything right now, but I did do some reading of Alice in Wonderland an age ago so if you’re absolutely desperate to hear my weird accent (and horribly bad attempts at other accents) then you can have a look at this lot
some of the audio files seems to have corrupted or gone missing but I only got 5 chapters in anyway so \o/
Anonymous asked: You reboogged some of soviet animation lately and I'm just so happy you appreciate it I can't help smiling. I grew up on soviet cartoons since I'm Ukrainian and the trippy music box cartoon is one of the most quoted thing in my family
dude are you kidding I love Russian animation like Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales are exquisite, and Lev Atamanov’s The Snow Queen is still my favourite visualized version of that story
Anonymous asked: hello mod, I am having trouble- I always seem to draw very slowly, and my friend says it is because I listen to music, do you think that's true? should I not listen to music when I draw?
Interesting problem, and the answer is that the answer depends on each individual; Richard Williams gives that same advice in the Animator’s Survival Kit, and while I do see the benefit (no noise = no distraction), I actually disagree and do listen to music and find it helps me. Sometimes if something is complicated or I have a headache I turn it off, but not very often! I do, however, have some rules about the music I listen to;
1) Do not listen to sad, slow music! You will draw much slower than usual- my digital ink and paint teacher taught me this, and would even go around pulling out our headphones to check we weren’t listening to slow music. Listen to tragic music all you want when you’re coming up with ideas by all means, but it will slow you down when it comes to doing stuff!
2) Listen to music without lyrics, or at least music that you know so well that you don’t have to ‘listen’ to it. If you start focusing on the words you will stop focusing on your work! I find that film soundtracks in particular are great for drawing.
3) Try to match the mood of the music with the mood of what you’re making! If you are drawing something exciting, get some epic adventure music, if you are drawing something funny, try something upbeat, if you’re drawing something sad, go for something big and powerful rather than slow (see above). Music affects our emotions, so this is where my argument for drawing to music comes in; it can give you just that little extra inspiration in what you’re looking to visualize.
Art and music are inherently linked, experiment with it! Don’t feel that anything I’ve said or anyone else says is the law; these are just things I’ve observed myself, try things out and find the path that’s right for you.
Anonymous asked: hello! sorry, I am a new follower, and I heard you draw a comic? could I have a link to it please? thank you very much :)
this is literally the politest anon message how adorable of course you can here’s the first page
also if you look in the FAQ on my blog’s mainpage there are links to the comic and other things!
Anonymous asked: man I loved AA Dual Destinies but I really felt like that ending lacked proper emotional resolution- like, all the bad guys were 'just' villains, y'know?
I’ve had a few messages asking me on my opinions of the game and damned if this one doesn’t just about nail it; I felt the same way, and being a giant nerd about villains and character motivation in particular I honestly felt frustrated with that finale (as much as I loved playing it, which seriously I did I’m playing through it again as we speak). I enjoyed the plot twists and how the case was planned out, but it just felt like it wasn’t ‘complete’ as story in the way that some of the AA games have been. It just missed that human empathy mark that they usual hit on the head so well, particularly as it had the potential to be kind of massively poignant and a means of tying up the whole ‘emotions’ and ‘justice’ dynamic of the game (but that’s just my humble onion and hey who am I to talk like I could make a game like that hot bananas no way no how).
buuuuut having said that it’s going to bug me forever so I’m going to be an obnoxious brat and draw an alt ending comic for my own conceited self-indulgent satisfaction because I didn’t spend five years of higher education learning to draw in order to create sensible things that make a profit damnit
Anonymous asked: sorry but I'm new- who are those characters, the guy with the TV head and the kid? are they your characters? :o
they are! they’re from a webcomic I write called The Property of Hate which is very weird and updates once a week which is horrifyingly slow but I’m working on that :|b
also if any more of you are new followers and you’re curious there’s some info about me and some of my other stuff in the FAQ!
Anonymous asked: my teacher says that I can't design characters with a good range of expressions without them having a face, do you think that's right?
Hard question; if this is an exercise for the purpose of learning to draw expressions they’re probably trying to help you, so keep working on those faces! It’ll be good for you in the long run, but in terms of declaring characters that don’t have faces to be void or incapable of expression I would argue against that very strongly; body language, gesture, and timing are just as if not more important than facial expressions!
Don’t let conventions limit your imagination, in terms of character design or anything else. Giving yourself boundaries can be helpful (if you get a brief for a character design you should try to follow it), and can be constructive in channeling direction, but it can also be horribly stunting and condemn you to having a narrow field of vision in what is acceptable in your and other people’s work. It all depends on context, but no, personally I don’t think that statement is ‘right’ at all.
Anonymous asked: what are your hairs looking like today? :D
my hairs are looking like this
and I can’t do a damned thing with them
Anonymous asked: can I ask- do your characters go through a lot of changes? or do you just land on the 'right' design and stick with it?
Actually it’s a bit of both! All designs change over time, even if it’s just due to the artist getting better at drawing. For me, some characters appear out of nowhere, while some have to be chiseled away at before I feel like they really look like themselves. People who have been following me since the start will know that RGB has more or less remained the same in essence, and he was a pretty spontaneous drawing! Hero took me a few goes to get her right, but I had a good general idea of the elements to put together (round shapes, toy-like, massive eyes etc.). I knew who she was already, so it wasn’t like I was starting with a blank canvas.
A character who took more honing was Dial- he had a very different look altogether at the beginning! It’s usually the character or personality which is the grounding constant for me, I just had to keep redrawing him until I ‘found’ what he looked like. It’s hard to explain, but sometimes you draw a bunch of versions of a character, and suddenly you get this one drawing and you’re just like; “yeah, that’s him, that’s this person.” Maybe I’ll release those first sketches and the evolution of Dial’s design some time (perhaps when I start up a patreon!), so you can see just how much faffing about that took. The same happened with Arthur- I just had to keep trying until I got to that magical ‘DING!’ moment.
In contrast, Julienne was one where she just popped into my head and stayed more or less the same since day one. The only thing that changed was that originally she had normal ballet shoes, but when I realized she should be made of sugar and chocolate it just made sense to have her ‘feet’ and ‘head’ made of knives; hence why I changed her name to Julienne (originally it was going to be Julliard, after the school, so I still feel like the name stemmed from dance aspect of her).
Anonymous asked: Curious, what would Hero's, RGB's, and your western zodiac signs be?
Hero is an Aquarius (February 10th), RGB is a Gemini (May 21st) :D
oh and I’m a Pisces sorry missed that the first time