the gods only watch us when we make mistakes

So, pretty frequently writers screw up when they write about injuries. People are clonked over the head, pass out for hours, and wake up with just a headache… Eragon breaks his wrist and it’s just fine within days… Wounds heal with nary a scar, ever…

I’m aiming to fix that.

Here are over 100 links covering just about every facet of traumatic injuries (physical, psychological, long-term), focusing mainly on burns, concussions, fractures, and lacerations. Now you can beat up your characters properly!

General resources

WebMD

Mayo Clinic first aid

Mayo Clinic diseases

First Aid

PubMed: The source for biomedical literature

Diagrams: Veins (towards heart), arteries (away from heart) bones, nervous system, brain

Burns

General overview: Includes degrees

Burn severity: Including how to estimate body area affected

Burn treatment: 1st, 2nd, and 3rd degrees

Smoke inhalation

Smoke inhalation treatment

Chemical burns

Hot tar burns

Sunburns

Incisions and Lacerations

Essentials of skin laceration repair (including stitching techniques)

When to stitch (Journal article–Doctors apparently usually go by experience on this)

More about when to stitch (Simple guide for moms)

Basic wound treatment

Incision vs. laceration: Most of the time (including in medical literature) they’re used synonymously, but eh.

Types of lacerations: Page has links to some particularly graphic images–beware!

How to stop bleeding: 1, 2, 3

Puncture wounds: Including a bit about what sort of wounds are most likely to become infected

More about puncture wounds

Wound assessment: A huge amount of information, including what the color of the flesh indicates, different kinds of things that ooze from a wound, and so much more.

Home treatment of gunshot wound, also basics More about gunshot wounds, including medical procedures

Tourniquet use: Controversy around it, latest research

Location pain chart: Originally intended for tattoo pain, but pretty accurate for cuts

General note: Deeper=more serious. Elevate wounded limb so that gravity draws blood towards heart. Scalp wounds also bleed a lot but tend to be superficial. If it’s dirty, risk infection. If it hits the digestive system and you don’t die immediately, infection’ll probably kill you. Don’t forget the possibility of tetanus! If a wound is positioned such that movement would cause the wound to gape open (i.e. horizontally across the knee) it’s harder to keep it closed and may take longer for it to heal.

Broken bones

Types of fractures

Setting a broken bone when no doctor is available

Healing time of common fractures

Broken wrists

Broken ankles/feet

Fractured vertebrae: Neck (1, 2), back

Types of casts

Splints

Fracture complications

Broken noses

Broken digits: Fingers and toes

General notes: If it’s a compound fracture (bone poking through) good luck fixing it on your own. If the bone is in multiple pieces, surgery is necessary to fix it–probably can’t reduce (“set”) it from the outside. Older people heal more slowly. It’s possible for bones to “heal” crooked and cause long-term problems and joint pain. Consider damage to nearby nerves, muscle, and blood vessels.

Concussions

General overview

Types of concussions 1, 2

Concussion complications

Mild Brain Injuries: The next step up from most severe type of concussion, Grade 3

Post-concussion syndrome

Second impact syndrome: When a second blow delivered before recovering from the initial concussion has catastrophic effects. Apparently rare.

Recovering from a concussion

Symptoms: Scroll about halfway down the page for the most severe symptoms

Whiplash

General notes: If you pass out, even for a few seconds, it’s serious. If you have multiple concussions over a lifetime, they will be progressively more serious. Symptoms can linger for a long time.

Character reaction:

Shock (general)

Physical shock: 1, 2

Fight-or-flight response: 1, 2

Long-term emotional trauma: 1 (Includes symptoms), 2

First aid for emotional trauma

Treatment (drugs)

WebMD painkiller guide

Treatment (herbs)

1, 2, 3, 4

Miscellany

Snake bites: No, you don’t suck the venom out or apply tourniquettes

Frostbite

Frostbite treatment

Severe frostbite treatment

When frostbite sets in: A handy chart for how long your characters have outside at various temperatures and wind speeds before they get frostbitten

First aid myths: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Includes the ones about buttering burns and putting snow on frostbite.

Poisons: Why inducing vomiting is a bad idea

Poisonous plants

Dislocations: Symptoms 1, 2; treatment. General notes: Repeated dislocations of same joint may lead to permanent tissue damage and may cause or be symptomatic of weakened ligaments. Docs recommend against trying to reduce (put back) dislocated joint on your own, though information about how to do it is easily found online.

Muscular strains

Joint sprain

Resuscitation after near-drowning: 1, 2

Current CPR practices: We don’t do mouth-to-mouth anymore.

The DSM IV, for all your mental illness needs.

Electrical shock

Human response to electrical shock: Includes handy-dandy voltage chart

Length of contact needed at different voltages to cause injury

Evaluation protocol for electric shock injury

Neurological complications

Electrical and lightning injury

Cardiac complications

Delayed effects and a good general summary

Acquired savant syndrome: Brain injuries (including a lightning strike) triggering development of amazing artistic and other abilities

it’s 50% me finding lazier ways to make details and 50% me just liking detail work a lot! here’s stuff that might make things easier for you tho~

Fancy Easy Lace (clarification! this is a FireAlpaca thing; make your life Super Easier by adding a Border Layer Mode if you’re using Photoshop!):

Gold Details:

Roses:

Sheer Cloth:

Then mix and match and put them all together:

Late last year I wanted to start a series of short tutorials called Tip Jar, as a way of saying thanks to my fans and giving back to my patrons. This is the first of the series I have made, showing my technique on quickly filling in lineart so you can get to painting without coloring outside the lines faster. 

Someday I hope to turn these into video tutorials when I have the income and the time, but for now I hope that I will be able to share useful tips in this infographic format.

Full tutorial image

So alternatively step 1.5 is to click on the channels tab, and create a new layer. Fill the areas that you magic wand(ed) with black (leaving the characters/whatever you want to fill white). Click out of the marquee and use gaussian blur (i use 3.0 on a huge image, sometimes you need to go down for a smaller image)

Then you go to image/adjustments/levels and put in–and this is where I sound like a mad scientist–88 1.42 and 122. Which cleans up the edges so they’re pretty clean! 

Then all you do is click on the circle at the bottom of the channels area (”load channel as selected) and then go back in to layers and click on a layer to load your original view again! and then do the rest of the steps. It will cause you to clean up corners a lot but it saves me a whole heck of time since i have a rougher inking style. This step takes all of 3 minutes at most but otherwise I’d have to base everything by hand :I Or spend a good 40 minutes cleaning up jaggies.

TL;DR alternative step if you have rougher/sketchier lines.

Oh! Since my lines often don’t join correctly, I create a layer underneath and fill any holes before i do selection (with “select all layers” ticked off) which is admittedly tedious but again. Way quicker than doing it by hand! So yeah if you see this and are like oh gee whiz this doesn’t work with how I do stuff, try this added step?

Primary Sources

The Key of Solomon. I’ve heard a lot of good things from several ceremonial magicians, including @thedesertgod , that the edition to go for is Skinner’s. He’s compiled, edited, and added scholastic commentary to The Veritable Key of Solomon, as well as The Magician’s Tables. Joseph Peterson, also recommended, has worked on The Lesser Key of Solomon and the Clavicula Solomonis (or Key of Solomon). I probably would read it in its original Latin, if you have the means. 

Agrippa, Cornelius (false attribution). The Fourth Book of Occult Philosophy. 1655. Stephen Skinner also worked on an edition of this book. Unlike the actual Agrippa’s original three books, this volume does not hold much in the way of theory but offers plenty of practical instruction.

Casaubon, M. A True and Faithful Relation of what passed for many years between Dr. John Dee…and Some Spirits. 1659. As a record of the seances held by Dr. Dee and Kelley, it recounts the techniques used to conjure spirits. 

Chamberlain, Richard. Lithobolia. 1682. One family’s account of witchcraft perpetuated by the fetch of a neighbor.

Culpepper, Nicholas. Complete Herbal. 1653. It provides a comprehensive description of the herbs, along with their medicinal uses and instructions on preparing them to treat illnesses. 

Culpepper, Nicholas. The English Physician. 1652. The first medical guide published in the American colonies (apparently), it is intended for the average person. 

Defoe, Daniel (assumed). A Compleat System of Magick; or, The History of the Black-Art. 1727. As a skeptic, like Reginald Scot, this anonymous author (who we’re pretty sure is Defoe) provides much information on the work of witches, conjurors, and cunning-folk. 

Hale, John. A Modest Enquiry into the Nature of Witchcraft. 1702. After the Salem witch trials, he challenges the legal proceedings and religious principals of witch hunts in general. 

Magnus, Albertus (false attribution). The Book of Secrets. “Provides a portrayal of the magical culture that predominated in the 16th century. This work includes secrets which are divided into five distinct parts: Of the Virtues of Herbs, Of the Virtues of Stones, Of the Virtues of Beasts, Of the Planets, and The Marvels of the World.”

Mather, Cotton. Memorable Providences. 1698. Having fanned the flames of the Salem hysteria, this book discusses several witchcraft cases in New England before the Trials arose.

Mather, Increase. Cases of Conscience. 1693. Intended to vindicate the Mathers’ involvement in Salem, it was intended to prove that witches and devils could assume the shape of an innocent person. 

Scot, Reginald. The Discoverie of Witchcraft. 1584. By attempting to debunk witchcraft as a hoax, it managed to record a good cross-section of their formulae. 

Turner, Richard. Botanologia The Brittish Physician: or The Nature and Vertue of English Plants. 1664. Another guide to British herbs and medicine, by an astrologer, occultist, and botanist.

Modern Accounts

Davies, Owen. Cunning-Folk: Popular Magic in English History. Hambledon and London, 2003. 

Demos, John. Entertaining Satan: Witchcraft and the Culture of Early New England. Oxford University Press, 2004. 

Godbeer, Richard. The Devil’s Dominion: Magic and Religion in Early New England. Cambridge University Press, 1989. 

Merrifield, Ralph. The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic. Batsford, 1987.

Semmens, Jason. The Witch of the West: or, the Strange and Wonderful History of Thomasine Blight. Semmens, 2004. 

Thomas, Keith. Religion and the Decline of Magic. Peregrine, 1978.

Weisman, Richard. Witchcraft, Magic, and Religion in 17th-century Massachusetts. University of Massachusetts Press, 1984. 

Character Ideas:

Character creation masterpost

Character Alignment Chart

More character alignment descriptions

Muslim Character questions

Characters with magical powers

Building a new character advice

How to create a character for an online or tabletop RPG (also a good guide on creating characters in general)

Royalty/nobility TV Tropes page

Basic character profile

OC masterpost

Random character generators - (1), (2), (3), (4)

D&D Character Building Tool

Character Design Ideas:

How clothing affects a character’s personality

Character Design Inspiration blog

Concept art, fan art, cool art to be inspired by

Character design references and inspiration

Sources for POC character design ideas and models

Create your own character model using HeroForge

For horned characters

Body and hair types guide

Random outfit generator

Naming Help:

Amazing site with an endless amount of naming resources

General advice on avoiding naming appropriation

Hispanic Surnames

Gothic Victorian names

Huge master list for character things in general

Masterlist of names of all types - including but not limited to ancient/old world names, Celtic, African, Northern European, Southern and Central American Native names, Japanese, Chinese, Mongolian, Polynesian, and more

Another name masterlist

How to pick a character name guide

Yet another names masterlist

Creating Background/backstory:

Character Sheet/Development Sheet

Another character development list

In-depth character personality, motivations and traits sheet

320 talents and passions for characters

On writing likes and dislikes that aren’t frivolous

Why you should write non-human characters non-conforming to the gender binary

Stereotypes, tropes, and archetypes

Random backstory generator

Assassin and thief character tropes to avoid

Character Interactions and putting your character into your world/story:

Comparing character height/height references

Characters who are scientists and writing about them doing science

Describing what different voices sound like

Describing skin tones

Writing friendship interactions that are platonic

Why having one character knock their friend unconscious to prevent them from doing something is a bad idea

Advice on shipping OCs with canon characters and what to avoid doing

Sweet Polly Oliver and Sweet on Polly Oliver situations (think of Disney’s Mulan for an example)

How to write multiple viewpoints/juggling a main cast of more than 4 to 6 characters

How to make readers care about your morally gray hero/anti-hero

On platonic OC and canon character relationships

How to avoid Godmodding in RPs

When it’s cheap to kill off a character

Writing dialogue

Things you shouldn’t do to canon characters

Avoiding purple prose in writing and RPs

Slang resources

Dialogue tips

Websites to chart your story/plot/character relationships

Hey guys! A lot of you are asking about my recent textures and how to do them. I’m normally a cardboard-photo-texture-set-to-overlay-on-a-layer-above-your-drawing kinda gal, but lately I’ve been messing around with new grittier stuff.

so here’s my hard pixel airbrush made in photoshop. It’s super fun.

(THE FULL IMAGE SIZE IS HERE. USE THAT)

Load the image in photoshop. Select the whole canvas and go to Edit> Define Brush Preset. Select this brush from your brush menu.

Now go to brush settings and use these settings:

I would just upload the brush file itself but I don’t know how to do that. I ain’t a wizard. I don’t know how all the world works! Whatever! Learn how to make brushes yourself!! It’s very useful!

This brush is best used in high resolution (always work in high res!) It looks like soft grit when zoomed out, but when you get up close, you can see all the hard pixels.

Intuition on Behance by Carsten Witte

ArtStation - HUNT: Showdown - Badges ingame, by Ivan Tantsiura

YES! 

I’m talking as a 2D animator/cartoonist who looks for studio work+applies to zines and projects in illustration+animation, so all of this may/may not apply to you if you’re in a different field or work in freelance or whatever. LOOK AT WHAT PEOPLE IN THE SAME FIELD AS YOU ARE ARE DOING!!!! hopefully this will help a bit though

please imagine i put “imo” at the start of each tip ok thank you

✨✨✨a few random tips in no particular order to make a good website/portfolio (it’s pretty long so this goes under the cut)✨✨✨

by stuz0r