Art, life & learning @assassiowl - Tumblr Blog

Hi! I'm assassiowl (aka: owl) - digital artist

art | outer wilds | oc art art tips | mental health

Welcome to a living sketchbook. (hate not welcome)

I'm working out what I draw, you'll find lots of game related art in the meantime

Late start in art? In life? Healing? Grab a drink, I have a lot of notes. Commissions: closed Requests: open

buy me a coffee: ko-fi

#owl #introduction #pinned post #intro post #introductions #blog intro #digital art #my art

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Outer WIlds oc orchestra: Final call!

Deadline: June 22nd 2026 22:22 UTC Info post

We're slowly approaching the cut off deadline, this is the time to think about getting submissions in Do reblog to help share the word, there won't be another post about it ::)

#outer wilds oc orchestra #outer wilds oc #events #projects #I have learned events are something I need help with lol #it is so difficult how do you guys do it #so much energy needed jfc #life offline is in motion for the month do excuse me if there's a period of radio silence I'll communicate asap

World of Warcraft - Westfall

(process vid under cut)

#fanart #world of warcraft fanart #world of warcraft #environment art #digital painting #digital art #my art #process video #a trip through warcraft #westfall

maureen2musings

Madeira, Portugal

michael.paramonti

#inspiration #dark forest #foliage

Fans of OW + PHM, and similar - it's time to play Control, I'm not coming back

It's free on steam, takes less than an hour

My buddy got me to play it yesterday out of the blue, and he was absolutely correct to do so

Source: just trust me

#control im not coming back #owl talks #not art

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doyoulikethis-videogame-song

Visit Original Link

Do you like this Video Game Song? #3120

I like it and I've definitely heard it before

I like it and it sounds familiar

I like it and this is my first time hearing it

I don't feel strongly about it or have a complex opinion

I don't like it and I've definitely heard it before

I don't like it and it sounds familiar

I don't like it and this is my first time hearing it

Remaining time: 5 days 15 hours

#video games #video game music #music poll #I will make art for it one day

hacvek

reminder to worldbuilders: don't get caught up in things that aren't important to the story you're writing, like plot and characters! instead, try to focus on what readers actually care about: detailed plate tectonics

olyia-stories

@dragonpyre any chance you could elaborate on this

dragonpyre

I grew up learning about land formations. Seeing fictional maps that don’t follow the logic and science of them makes me upset

serinos-kitt

What are the most common sins you’ve seen relating to this? I wanna know

dragonpyre

Mordor.

Why is the mountain range square. How did the mountain range form. Why is there one singular volcano in the center. Why does it act like a composite volcano but have magma that acts like it’s from a shield. If it’s hotspot based volcanic activity why is there only one volcano.

And then the misty mountains!!!! Why isn’t there a rain shadow!! And why is there a FOREST where the rain shadow should be!!!!!!!!

serinos-kitt

So what is a rain shadow?

lethalbutterfly

Wind blows clouds in from the sea, but mountains are so tall the clouds can't get past 'em, so you get deserts on the windward side of mountain ranges because clouds can't get there to water the land, or do so only very rarely.

roach-works

this is because, as clouds are forced upwards by rising land, they cool and dump their rain. so the side of the mountain facing the ocean (or an inland sea, or a great lake) gets all the rain as the clouds are squeezed out, and the opposite side gets nothing.

my favorite thing is the american great lake snowbelts! so, the 'flow' of weather across north america, in very general terms, blows from the northwest on down south and east to the gulf of mexico.

so the wind is blowing from west to east, and in the winter it's a dryer wind than in the summer because it's colder. but after blowing across a great lake for a hundred miles, the wind is wet again. and that wet turns into snow. so for all of these lakes, the big cities are on the west side, not the east sides, because the east sides absolutely suck to live on.

the sole exception is buffalo, NY, which literally has to be there because, unfortunately, that's where all the important canal stuff between lake ontario and lake erie is happening.

also this always strikes me as cool, check out where cleveland is:

it's right at the edge of that snowbelt. and you see way more cities west of it than east, too.

beatrice-otter

#but again. mordor looks like that becaue sauron made it#and he's an ass

On a Watsonian level, sure.

On a Doylistic level, Mordor looks like that because plate tectonics was a fringe, ludicrous, laughable theory that nobody outside serious geology nerds had ever heard of until scientists proved seafloor spreading in the early 1960s. The first edition of the LotR trilogy was published in 54-55. We literally did not know that plate tectonics was real until almost a decade after the book was published, so obviously, it was not something Tolkien could have been considering as he made his maps.

I don't know enough meteorological history to know when white people figured out about rain shadows and added it to geology classes, or what would have been taught about volcanoes and such. But any education Tolkien got on the subject would have been in childhood/adolescence; his college education focused on the liberal arts, not the sciences, and his professional study was linguistics and the middle ages. So anything Medieval and earlier European authors wrote about he had a pretty good chance of knowing about. But not much exposure to modern science. So his science knowledge was probably limited to "what English schools taught at the turn of the 20th Century."

whetstonefires

I mean, it's true he didn't know about plate tectonics, but he did know what mountains look like, and that it's not normally That. And it wasn't his style to break that kind of norm without cause.

LotR has recurring themes of the reckless imposition of one's will on the natural world creating ugliness, an order you thought was inherently an improvement that in fact is inferior to what you have displaced. (Typified by reckless tree-felling; a reflection of the despoiling of the English countryside and the world by Progress.)

Mordor is a rectangle because Sauron is an asshole.

beatrice-otter

#the rain shadow thing otoh was undoubtedly total ignorance#but those mountains were made as the fortress of a demigod#too steeped in evil to understand beauty#it's *supposed* to look like something that Shouldn't Exist#like quite often this is something that happens in worldbuilding yes#things are arranged Wrong because a person doesn't grasp the underlying logic#but mordor is a bad example for the same reason it's an obvious one#it's So Very Wrong because it was designed to be wrong#to give you a bad feeling with how much it shouldn't look like that#if he just wanted it unapproachable on all sides it could've been in a caldera formation it didn't *need* corners#the corners were a choice#tolkien's job involved lots of looking at maps and things okay#meanwhile people whose lives revolved around the weather generally knew where the rain happened#long before it was formalized into 'rain shadow effect'#people not having The Science doesn't mean they don't have eyes and brains

maryellencarter

I wrote an entire paper in college analyzing the geology of the Misty Mountains and to a lesser extent the White Mountains (the Misty Mountains are easier because we get a cross-section via Moria). One thing I discovered that still knocks me for a loop when I think about it is:

Moria is the only place in Middle-Earth where mithril is found, right? That's kind of a big deal. So, why? What makes that location so special? Is it just random?

I found a paper that had just been published *that year*, 2011 or 2012 as I was writing it, that studied the locations of precious-metals mines in the Pyrenees, the similarly long skinny mountain chain that divides Spain and France. This paper discovered that where there was a bend in the mountain chain, from one of the continental plates having an awkward corner in it that got subducted under the other plate, that had dug deeper into the mantle and caused precious-metal-bearing ores to flow up to the surface in ways they didn't do anywhere else in the Pyrenees.

There's a conversation in The Fellowship of the Ring where one of the hobbits -- I don't have my copy handy or I'd get the direct quote -- asks why they can see the Misty Mountains ahead of them at one point if they're still heading south from Rivendell, and it's explained that south of Caradhras (which you may recall is the surface mountain under which Moria runs) the mountain chain bends and runs southwest instead of due south for a while.

Tolkien had absolutely no way to know *why* this particular feature of a mountain range was associated with intrusions of rare and unique metal ores, but he had gone backpacking in mountains enough to know How Things Should Look.

(And as prev excellently points out, when Jirt made screwed-up geology it was very much on purpose. Mordor shouldn't be square! Mount Doom shouldn't be doing any of the things it does! A composite volcano shouldn't even have especially hot lava! Even the Gulf of Udun, the circular feature at the upper left corner of the square, shouldn't be like that -- perfectly round features should be impact craters or calderas, not The Mountains Just Do This In A Suspiciously Convenient Way. These are all the way they are because Sauron forced them to be, in defiance of the laws of nature. Remember, he's akin to Balrogs and was a Maia of Aulë -- he's a volcano spirit in many ways.)

sunflowergardens-world

Amazing work by the LoTR fandom, as always.

mysteryteacup

This also serves as an excellent example of why worldbuilding needs - more than realism - to be cohesive and work with the themes of your story.

#world building #reference #lotr

OC art - Petaline Fontaine (artfight)

#oc art #artfight prep #artfight 2026 #digital art #my art #fox oc #butterfly

Msg from a friend

I think you should see it too

#owl talks #not art #random thoughts

OC ref sheet - Green February (artfight)

Cloud dragon scholar Scholar by day, dragon by night

#oc art #oc ref sheet #artfight prep #artfight 2026 #dragon oc #digital art #my art

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Outer Wilds - It's a new day (process video under cut)

#fanart #outer wilds fanart #environment art #digital painting #digital art #my art #process video #outer wilds #timber hearth #hope

rosieandthemoon

ruins of St Andrews Cathedral in Fife, Scotland

#inspiration #architecture

pigin-is-so-rad

Eyes that have seen the universe die

(v Version without purple v)

#outer wilds #outer wilds spoilers #time buddies #yeah they were right #it's beautiful #the tired expression is perfect #the eyes of wonder and possibility #you've nailed it in every way #the colors the textures #i love it #relating very hard to the gabbo

rosieandthemoon

Grotte de Choranche (Choranche Cave) France

#inspiration #caves

Outer Wilds x Pokemon - Anglerfish + Lanturn is this anything??? Am I cooking or have I finally gone too far?? I can't tell anymore

#fanart #outer wilds fanart #outer wilds #pokemon #lanturn #anglerfish #dark bramble #digital art #my art #process video #doodles #sillyposting

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Watch Anya Live on Cam

Anya is live and ready to show you everything. Watch her strip, dance, and perform exclusive shows just for you. Interact in real-time and make your fantasies come true.

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660percent

I hear you're leaving us to seek adventure amongst the stars.

#outer wilds #timber hearth #outer wilds gifs #it's time to go home #the stars were nice but it's not where I need to be

Drawing art for other people is my favourite thing to do

These were the two comments from the OOPs who made rowlets that made me want to draw them I appreciate it a lot when people tell me which ones they enjoy most - I can make anything appear now, it helps me shape what I'm doing Thank you all for all the comments and the likes when you stumble upon things I do, it means the world. The social media numbers mean nothing, but: I had a very rough day, and the words were enough to make it much more tolerable. I would like to pass it on - creatives remember comment tags like no other, they cling on the words someone left months ago. When you read things on ao3 that you like, you must leave a kudos and comment, tell your creatives you like things they're making - if you don't, they will stop posting fun things It's not us older artists that need to hear it, it's people just starting out, be sure to give extra encouragement to newbies, the friend that randomly says they want to start drawing, that's when it's the most difficult, when there's the most things to learn, they will remember your kindness and support, forever. They have it roughest - people tell them to quit because it's 'bad' and 'ugly' and they're beating themselves up because it doesn't match what they can see in their head, the encouragement helps them through it.

#owl talks #not art #thank you #random ramblings #rowlet #ao3 #creativity

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