well i did

look at her she's so cute and happy i love this photo

You can learn how to make them here, but this video is in Japanese. If you have basic sewing knowledge, you should be able to get it.

There is no pattern, only a cutting guide. 2 meters of fabric is able to do it perfectly with no fabric waste whatsoever.

Perfect for people who always feel like their clothes never fit! If you are concerned about the size, here are the pants on me (5', 90lbs) and my husband (6'1, don't know but he looks like fanart of Laios).

if you think you are bigger than my husband, all you have to do is scale the rectangles up so this measurement is 1/4 of your waist measurement.

But don't worry if it isn't perfect.

You can wear them as regular pants, or over kimono.

I want you to make these pants. Make monpe and experience the joys of adjustable clothing that will stay with you for years. Experience the joy of sewing something you know will fit and be well-made and usable, with no precise measurements besides hemming them to your height. Put on these pants and feel superior because you made something that the store could never give you.

for environments:

shot deck is a massive database of film shots searchable by grading, tod, shot type, characters and content! Studying from films really helps improve your values and composition as the shots are usually very carefully constructed! It helps you find ways to maintain realism while still packing mood and narrative into your work!

master paintings! I recommend the orientalists like Jean Leon Gerome in particular their environments had great compositions and throw around a ton of colour and light! I like the modern artists Craig Mullins and Richard Schmid also, as there is so much impressionist lost detail and simplicity yet the environments feel so real.

The 1960s era disney background artists like eyvind earle are a masterclass in stylisation and simplification and make a wonderful choice for studies. (That being said modern disney visdev artists like Nathan Fowkes are just as fantastic to study for the same reason)

architectural photography can be a great resource too- I love to look for work by urbEX people!

thumbnailing and comp studies- trying to break down a photo into as few values as possible and still have it be readable- this really helps train your brain in the relationship between light exposure and local value.

Im begging you if doing it in colour is too hard to start with just do it in black and white!!!!! Greyscale painting is an essential step in learning to paint and understand lighting scenarios!! Colour is hard!!!

there is no substitute for going outside and doing some plein air painting- really looking first hand at how the light effects different materials and objects, how it bounces around, what edges your eye naturally loses in certain lighting scenarios. Just go outside and draw and try to notice stuff.

for characters:

figure studies!!!! from life if you can but if you cant there are a ton of great resources out there- personally I love croquis cafe and posespace, but if you can afford it (and are interested in intense anatomy study) then scott eaton has a site called bodies in motion which is fantaaaastic. I think by now everyone knows nyx and senshistock, I also use a lot of grafit studio photorefs to study more complicated poses!!

Master studies (again). I particularly like to study the work of John Singer Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla, Edwin Austin Abbey, Alphonse Mucha (his le pater compositions are out of this world), any of the New Rochelle artists (e.g rockwell, tom lovell, those 1950s illustrators REALLY knew their shit).

I literally have a resin skull on my desk that I've used to do quick studies with different lighting, just 10 mins a day back when I was doing it and it levelled up my skill a lot!.

Material studies are essential to leveling up your character painting!!! Look at fur, look at metal, look at the way something embroidered reflects light vs tooled leather!!

gesture studies! Look at a dynamic pose and see how you can exaggerate the motion in away that captures the sense of movement. This is tricky to start with but its really worthwhile especially when you combine it with other exercises. Mixamo is a cool library to look into for this kind of thing as you can pause and rotate the models in the middle of their actions!

breakdown the work of artists you admire- it's ok to study other living artists (and try to reverse engineer how they are making their decisions) it's a very effective learning tool! Really figure out what it is about that persons workflow you like, and how you might incorporate that element into your own. Obviously, dont post studies of living artists work!

The most important thing is that when you do a study you go into it knowing what you want to learn. Dont try to do everything at once! It's ok to focus on the muscle structure and not give a damn about the gesture. It's ok to focus on the texture of the fur and completely ignore the characters face.

The best way to keep doing studies is to find refs you like- things you are interested in and that capture your imagination! Follow your curiosity and remember that just a tiny little bit a day makes a huge difference.

I've started treating myself like I would a dog that's going to chew through the house when it's bored. I walk myself. I seek activities that make my brain feel less like depressed sludge. I ask my body what it needs; I rest, I enjoy rest. I don't see it as a waste or unproductive. I see it as allowing my body to do its job of working better. I lean into appreciating my natural features. I'm a hunk of flesh. I can be ugly. I can decide that ugly is appealing. I can not care. Whatever. I started emphasizing little things that nourish my relationship(s), shelving distractions more, so I can relish the time I have with loved ones. I specifically pursue pleasure--dopamine--not just quick hits from scrolling social media but getting off my ass. Engaging. Cooking myself nice meals and making fucking art, man. Things that make my spirit feel more alive than I have for years. I ask myself what it is I want rather than only doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And it doesn't mean shirk every responsibility, it means recognizing you're one of your fucking responsibilities. It's reordering. I realized I'm going to die happy or unhappy and either way I'm just as dead in a given amount of years, and I choose to die happy and fulfilled.

Everything else can get fucked ad infinitum.

senshi stock

croquis cafe

line-of-action.com

quickposes.com

posemaniacs

clip studio paint models

pexels.com

sketchdaily

eggazyoutatsu atarichan drawer

designdoll

Freeimages: You can use the images in digital format on websites, blog posts, social media, advertisements, film and television productions, web and mobile applications. In printed materials such as magazines, newspapers, books, brochures, flyers, product packaging for decorative use in your home, office or any public place or personal use. The rights granted to you by FreeImages.com are: Perpetual, meaning there is no expiration or end date on your rights to use the content. Non-exclusive, meaning that you do not have exclusive rights to use the content. FreeImages.com can license the same content to other customers. Unlimited, meaning you can use the content in an unlimited number of projects and in any media. For purposes of this agreement, “use” means to copy, reproduce, modify, edit, synchronize, perform, display, broadcast, publish, or otherwise make use of.

Stocksnap: Every single image on StockSnap are governed exclusively by the generous terms of the Creative Commons CC0 license. Specifically, that license means you can do any and all of the following: Download the image file.Publish, revise, copy, alter, and share that image. Use the image (as-is or as you’ve altered it), in both personal and commercial contexts. Moreover, you can put StockSnap CC0 images to any of these usages without buying the right to do it, acquiring written permission from the image’s creator, or attributing the work to the image creator. In other words, there’s no fee to download or use these StockSnap images in accordance with the CC0 license. They’re free to download, free to edit, and free to use - even in a commercial project! You don’t even need to attribute the image to the creator, the way you do with other CC or traditional copyright licensing schemes. (However, even though it’s not required, we here at StockSnap do encourage you to include an appropriate attribution. It’s a nice thing to do.)

Burst.Shopify: Burst is a free stock photo platform that is powered by Shopify. Their image library includes thousands of high-resolution, royalty-free images that were shot by their global community of photographers. You can use their pictures for just about anything — your website, blog or online store, school projects, Instagram ads, facebook posts, desktop backgrounds, client work and more. All of their photos are free for commercial use with no attribution required.

Pixabay: Images and Videos on Pixabay are released under Creative Commons CC0. To the extent possible under law, uploaders of Pixabay have waived their copyright and related or neighboring rights to these Images and Videos. You are free to adapt and use them for commercial purposes without attributing the original author or source. Although not required, a link back to Pixabay is appreciated.

Viintage: All images hosted by Viintage.com are considered to be public domain images, each image is presumed to be in the public domain. It may be distributed or copied as permitted by applicable law. Viintage.com assumes no ownership of the images and they may be downloaded and can be used free of charge for any purpose. They may be downloaded and used for commercial and personal use. Understand “public domain” as the permission to freely use an image without asking permission from the photographer or the illustrator. Thus, the creator of the work will not sue you for violating his/her copyrights. It is your responsibility to make sure, displaying the image does not violate any other law. Viintage.com assumes no responsibility for how or where you use the images found on the site.

Morguefile. Big old free photo archive from the dawn of the web. “We are a community-based free photo site, and all photos found in the Morguefile archive are free for you to download and re-use in your work, be it commercial or not. The photos have been contributed by a wide range of creatives from around the world, ranging from amateur photo hobbyists to professionals.”

Open Access at the Met. The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York: “Whether you’re an artist or a designer, an educator or a student, a professional or a hobbyist, you now have more than 406,000 images of artworks from The Met collection to use, share, and remix—without restriction.”

Smithsonian Open Access. Download, share, and reuse millions of the Smithsonian’s images […] from across the Smithsonian’s 19 museums, nine research centers, libraries, archives, and the National Zoo.

Posing Sites and Apps:

Adorkastock. Stock photos for pose refs. DeviantArt gallery started in 2007.

FreePhotoMuscle.com. (translated page link click here) Japanese stock photo pose site that includes buff people, but in funny poses and costumes.

CroquoisCafe. (NSFW, nude model poses warning) A stock photo pose site. You should be aware this org has been linked as pro-Trump. I leave it to y’all to decide if you want to use the resources or not. I highly encourage not financially supporting them and trying to support the individual models if you can.

Line of Action. Fantastic site that includes posing refs, community discussions from other artists, figure study, anatomy, etc. So much stuff in here.

PoseSpace. Extensive library of poses. Some free resources others are paid. I’ve not fully evaluated both, but you should be able to use this all mostly free and get great use out of it.

SketchDaily. This one is one of the better ones out there. You can time yourself, search by pose, clothing options, body type, perspective, etc. All real models.

JustSketch.me. A pose app for any device. Has apps for most devices and a webapp. Customize and pose models/props/scenes.

Quickposes. Pose site that gives you timed challenges to become more proficient at poses.

POSEMANIACS. Ref site with anatomical poses. All the ref pics are of 3D models with only the bones and muscles. Can be helpful for seeing how muscles behave in certain poses. limited to two body types tho.

MagicPoser. A wonderful app that’s great on mobile. Lets you choose size of models, number of them, style, etc. Significant features are use of snap point with the physics engine, adjustable lighting, multiple perspective, 360 angle, articulated hand posing.

Clip Studio Paint Modeler. Free 3d tool that works with Clip Studio Paint. You can import your own data or other models you find online. Not quite an alternative to Blender, but the integration with CSP is very nice.

Egg a Zyoutatsu Atarichan Drawer. (requires enabling flash player or downloading and using standalone flashplayer) Drawing tool for pose practice. The developer is working on an html5 version.

DesignDoll. One of the best pose tool apps out there. You can customize so many things. They also have an extensive collection of ready made poses here. You can use the free or pay once for life and have the poses integrated into the client as well as the ability to export your obj to other programs like blender or smt.

Stock Photo Sites:

Unsplash. Giant free stock image site.

freeimages.com. Another stock photo site, less features than some others.

StockSnap.io. Stock photos with a creative commons CC0 license, which essentially means you can use the photos however you want and don’t have to attribute to them. (though its nice if you do attribute)

Burst.Shopify. Tons of royalty free high quality images. Similar licensing to StockSnap.

pixabay. I feel like most people know about this one, but it features entirely free CC0 licensed Photos, Videos, and Music. No attribution required, but still nice to support a giant site with all this content.

Viintage. Big collection of public domain vintage photos.

Gratisography. For commercial or personal use. They specialize in odd, quirky, wild stock photos.

pexels. Great free stock photos and videos. Only a few stipulations of what they don’t allow, but their license info can be found here.

Faestock. An artist and model with a huge amount of fantasy and fae and other types of photos available. Their terms for use are here.

MorgueFile. Old stock photo archive that’s been around a long time.

Museum and Institution Open Access sites:

USA National Gallery of Art. Over 50k works available for download.

New York Metropolitan Museum open access. 490k works to browse. Even codes for Animal Crossing New Horizons patterns.

The Smithsonian Institution open access. Probably one of the largest open access collections available online. Around 3.9 million items available to view.

Sorry if it’s a little cramped- had to make this all fit in ten photos. Hope you guys like it….. and again…. sorry Andrew

Follow me on Webtoons

Here are amazing deer skeletal references by Rico LeBrun! They were created during production of Disney’s Bambi, to help aid the artists.

The link to download the images in their full glory:

Edit: oh wow I just looked at the URL and it’s.. hmm. Hmmmmmmmm

At the time premature babies were considered genetically inferior, and were simply left to fend for themselves and ultimately die.

Dr Martin Couney offered desperate parents a pioneering solution that was as expensive as it was experimental - and came up with a very unusual way of covering the costs.

It was Coney Island in the early 1900’s. Beyond the Four-Legged Woman, the sword swallowers, and “Lionel the Lion-Faced Man,” was an entirely different exhibit: rows of tiny, premature human babies living in glass incubators.

The brainchild of this exhibit was Dr. Martin Couney, an enigmatic figure in the history of medicine. Couney created and ran incubator-baby exhibits on the island from 1903 to the early 1940s.

Behind the gaudy facade, premature babies were fighting for their lives, attended by a team of medical professionals.To see them, punters paid 25 cents.The public funding paid for the expensive care, which cost about $15 a day in 1903 (the equivalent of $405 today) per incubator.

Couney was in the lifesaving business, and he took it seriously. The exhibit was immaculate. When new children arrived, dropped off by panicked parents who knew Couney could help them where hospitals could not, they were immediately bathed, rubbed with alcohol and swaddled tight, then “placed in an incubator kept at 96 or so degrees, depending on the patient. Every two hours, those who could suckle were carried upstairs on a tiny elevator and fed by breast by wet nurses who lived in the building. The rest [were fed by] a funneled spoon. The smallest baby Couney handled is reported to have weighed a pound and a half.

His nurses all wore starched white uniforms and the facility was always spotlessly clean.

An early advocate of breast feeding, if he caught his wet nurses smoking or drinking they were sacked on the spot. He even employed a cook to make healthy meals for them.

The incubators themselves were a medical miracle, 40 years ahead of what was being developed in America at that time.

Each incubator was made of steel and glass and stood on legs, about 5ft tall. A water boiler on the outside supplied hot water to a pipe running underneath a bed of mesh, upon which the baby slept.

Race, economic class, and social status were never factors in his decision to treat and Couney never charged the parents for the babies care.The names were always kept anonymous, and in later years the doctor would stage reunions of his “graduates.

According to historian Jeffrey Baker, Couney’s exhibits “offered a standard of technological care not matched in any hospital of the time.”

Throughout his decades of saving babies, Couney understood there were better options. He tried to sell, or even donate, his incubators to hospitals, but they didn’t want them. He even offered all his incubators to the city of New York in 1940, but was turned down.

In a career spanning nearly half a century he claimed to have saved nearly 6,500 babies with a success rate of 85 per cent, according to the Coney Island History

In 1943, Cornell New York Hospital opened the city’s first dedicated premature infant station. As more hospitals began to adopt incubators and his techniques, Couney closed the show at Coney Island. He said his work was done.

Today, one in 10 babies born in the United States is premature, but their chance of survival is vastly improved—thanks to Couney and the carnival babies.

https://nypost.com/2018/07/23/how-fake-docs-carnival-sideshow-brought-baby-incubators-to-main-stage/

Book: The strange case of Dr. Couney

New York Post Photograph: Beth Allen

Original FB post by Liz Watkins Barton

This walrus is fucken lost.

But Wales has lost its collective shit about it. They’re generally keeping its location secret to keep people away, but we get updates every day if it’s still here, if it’s happy, if it’s healthy. We think it was in Ireland about two weeks ago, which is interesting, because it is not actually native to Ireland either. Why is it here? No one knows.

In attempting to climb aboard a dinghy in Tenby it capsized it.

It then proceeded to Tenby harbour where it tried to climb aboard a fishing boat.

Some facts about Wally:

She is named after Where’s Wally because she is hard to spot

She was previously in Ireland, and then secluded beaches in Pembrokeshire, but has really taken a shine to Tenby, which is a delightful village

She has a scar on one flipper but it’s long-healed and doesn’t seem to bother her

She is the southern-most walrus ever spotted in the wild!

The current theory as to how she got here is that she fell asleep on an ice floe that drifted south, but she’s not bothered about returning yet

She’s believed to be two years old

Her gender is still a bit of a mystery but we seem to be leaning female

The Western Telegraph has opted for male pronouns, and is being very firm that Wally is male, although other news outlets are still all over the place. But what has Wally been up to the past few days?

He is rapidly gaining weight, and is still giving no cause for concern to either of the organisations watching him (which are the RSPCA a bit and Welsh Marine Life Rescue a lot; this is funny though because a walrus is so far outside of the wheelhouse of either of those organisations like we’re all just guessing here, lads)

His delinquent ways have continued - he has now attempted to climb onto multiple buoys (all unsuccessfully) and at one point nearly got a mooring rope stuck around his neck. 

Has he learned from this?

FOLKS HE HAS NOT!

He is now a Fashion Icon. He has surfaced multiple times wearing accessories in his moustache. Mostly this has been shells, but three days ago he upped his fashion game by wearing this starfish:

What an Icon.

Friends, I took the shittest photo there has ever been of a Walrus. But I absolutely did get to see em.

A lifeboat wandered by to check em out at one point, and ey just… sank. Just dropped below the surface like Homer Simpson moving backwards into a hedge. After a while the boat left, and Wally surfaced again.

I can now confirm that ey really, really likes blowing water around like a whale, and also kept eyeing up that buoy next to em.

It’s only a little one, but apparently we’re getting Serious about this walrus, lads - the police are now stepping in to say that anyone interfering with Wally (examples of this interference to date: throwing things at him, taking boats and paddle boards out to him, throwing fish overboard to tempt him closer, etc) is committing a criminal offence and we must send evidence of Assholes to them. So that’s fun!

Meanwhile, the tense stand-off between the RNLI and Wally continues over Who Gets To Use The Lifeboat Slipway. Here is a picture of Wally in full delinquent mode.

Here is the problem with 2,500 lbs of predatory sea potato using the slipway of a lifeboat station as a spa bed: sometimes, canoeists get in trouble near Stackpole and need rescuing and then some underwhelmed Welsh coast guard is going to have to try to chase said predatory sea potato off the slipway so they can launch the boat.

Here is the problem with that scenario: an underwhelmed Welsh coast guard basically views 2,500 lbs of predatory sea potato as a sort of ornery gelatinous cow, and so will try to do this with, and I am not making this up, a broom. But a ton of overgrown seal has no fear of brooms, so the attempt is not entirely successful under time-sensitive conditions while canoeists are actively drowning 10 miles away.

Solution? An air horn.

Which did work long enough to get the boat out, and then Wally clambered back aboard barely minutes later and fell asleep again. So trick learned, I guess.

Anyway, since I’ve apparently become Tumblr’s primary Wally journalist, I thought I’d go for a cheeky visit again today so I could report on their condition FIRST HAND (you’re all welcome, I have incredible integrity). Today I tried using a binocular over my phone camera with was extremely stressful and moderately successful - and I have two pieces of NEWS.

Story the First

Two dinghies with divers aboard suddenly turned up and sailed right up to them. There are Welsh Marine Life Rescue volunteers everywhere, and one woman immediately yelled “YOU ARE TOO CLOSE. MOVE AWAY.”

Everyone on the cliff went silent. The boats went closer.

“YOU ARE BREAKING THE LAW,” yelled the beachmaster. “MOVE AWAY.”

Tumblrs, they did not.

“CAN YOU HEAR ME?” she yelled. “MOVE AWAY.”

At which point, the whole fucken cliff starts joining in, because Welsh people are Like That.

“Move away!”

“Leave ‘im alone, mun!”

“Move away, butt, what you doing!”

“He’s the size of an ‘orse, bois, can’t you see ‘im from here?!”

“Bloody move you fucks, you’ll scare ‘im away again!”

(That last one was, I swear, an eighty year old woman.)

The boats, suddenly being yelled at by a whole cliff of Welsh people, sailed away. Later, we followed the beachmaster who was now on a mission, and found her with a couple of community police officers ripping the shit out of the divers. It was very satisfying.

Story the Second

I mentioned my binocular and phone trick. It came in handy. At first it gave me some very satisfying shots for a distance picture on a phone camera:

But, you know, whatever.

But THEN I got this picture:

which I got 0.256778 seconds before that majestic Arctic beast of purest beautiful nature untamed FELL OFF THE SIDE OF THE SLIPWAY LIKE A CAT THAT GOT TOO CLOSE TO A TABLE EDGE

1. When did this happen?

I have included many links in this thread to news articles on Wally, each of which is dated, so you can check those for accurate dates; but, xe turned up in Ireland in March 2021, and then made hir way to Pembrokeshire, Wales end of March. Xe reached Tenby a week or so later in April, and now refuses to leave. As of this update (6th May, 2021) xe’s still there and chillin’ - my friend Chris’ louche photo there was taken on Sunday the 2nd May. 

I shall date all updates from now on. Apologies for this uncharacteristic lapse in my journalistic performance. I have let Wally down.

2. “Oh my god do you guys call Waldo Wally?!??”

Folks!! Folks so many of you are doing this!!! But here’s the thing!!!

Where’s Wally is a British series and that’s the original name!!! It has been translated and regionalised around the world, and the name was changed in 28 of them!! A sizeable number don’t even sound like ‘Wally’!!! In France he’s Charlie! In Lithuania he’s Jonas! In Arabic versions he’s Fuḍūlī!!!

Yet only one nationality is repeatedly reacting with astonishment while assuming theirs is the one true original version!!! Guess which one!!! You have to stop!!! Especially the few who have responded with out and out swearing and aggression when I’ve explained!!! THIS POST IS ABOUT A WALRUS!!!!

3. Is Wally okay in Wales? Does xe need to leave/be moved?

Xe’s currently fine - an Arctic walrus can handle water temperatures of up to 15 degrees celsius, which West Wales is certainly currently accommodating. Xe was also distressingly underweight when first spotted fresh off the ice floe, but we’ve been monitoring hir health and xe’s roughly doubled hir bodyweight and is very healthy. I asked the fishmonger in Tenby if xe’s affecting the catch and the nice man said no and sold me a lemon sole for my mam. So right now, Wally is doing great, all needs met, with no real clashes with other stakeholders (i.e. fishers and that) except for, you know, the one (i.e. the lifeboat people).

However, high summer in Wales is warm enough that the sea will top the temperature threshold. So, we’re expecting Wally to leave by hirself in a month or so, if xe doesn’t decide to move sooner. Whether xe decides to swim all the way back home, or xe starts just moving north along the western coast and next turns up in the Isle of Mann or Scotland to continue hir holiday of the Celtic Ring remains to be seen. But, xe’ll do it hirself eventually, so it’s down to us to just keep hir happy and healthy for as long as xe chooses to stay.

4. I think Wally is female!

Yeah, maybe

5. I think Wally is male!

Very possibly

6. I think walruses have no concept of gender!

Almost definitely

7. What’s Walrus in Welsh?

They’re not native, so the Cymricisation “walrws” is getting a lot of use - but, Welsh is nothing if not poetic, so in official literature it’s “morfarch”, which means “sea stallion” or “sea knight” depending on your dialect.

8. Did they really use a broom and an airhorn on Wally?!

Here is a forlorn coast guard attempting to shift hir with a broom:

And here is the same coastguard attempting to shift hir with an airhorn:

9. I cannot believe this walrus is a delinquent!!!

Very well. Here is Wally’s criminal case file, including photographic evidence of two boarded boats and hir mugshot:

Anyway, Wales is weathering a storm at the minute, so the sea is currently pretty rough - turns out, Wally likes staying out at sea during this time because they’re a sucker for a wave machine, and same, Wally, same, wave machines are banging. What this means is that they aren’t about much at the minute, but as the sea calms over the next few days the prediction is that they’ll return to the slipway, climb aboard and then drop spark the fuck out for a few days to rest.

SO, speaking of that SLIPWAY and the CRIMES of this delinquent…

And it may be the last! Or maybe not, it all depends on what Wally decides to do.

Anyway, it’s 26th May 2021, and to tempt you to click the Read More, I offer these two photos of Wally actually being induced to finally fucken move after the underwhelmed Welsh coast guard had the bright idea of spraying him gently with a hose to mimic rain:

Elegance and grace. What a majestic creature.

BUT, my friends, there have been DEVELOPMENTS!

Datestamp: 30th May, 2021. Uh, Wally has decided on more shenanigans, starting, I shit you not, with continuing that trip of the Celtic Ring by going even further south to fecking Brittany, in France, and yes! Yes, I did make that joke! I did not expect it to come true!! But here we are!!

In fact, he overshot Brittany and hit the town of Les Sables d’Olonne, a bit further south along the coast. Where, NATURALLY, he promptly found a brand new slipway to terrorise, and a brand new piece of maritime safety infrastructure to block.

French fishermen report that he seems “interested” in their boats, and we all know how that will end.

Except, it seems his crimes are starting to catch up with him. Warning for news of minor walrus injury under the cut (he’s fine, no pictures).

Datestamp: 3rd June, 2021. You’ll all recall that the last we saw of our hefty oceanic bandit, he got hit by a boat while trying to steal it in France, as he so often does. Oh no! we all thought. What if Wally is hurt! We hope he recovers! We hope he learns to leave boats alone, and also turns the fuck around and swims to cooler waters!

Folks, he has learned ZERO LESSONS.

HE’S IN LA ROCHELLE

Datestamp 5th June 2021, and he’s in Spain. He’s in Spain. He’s headed for fucken Galicia after all, lads. He’s heading south. Given that my every joking prediction has so far come true, I’m terrified to make the obvious joke that he’s heading for Patagonia. GO TO SCOTLAND, WALLY. GO TO FECKING SCOTLAND.

Anyway, here’s a clip of him in Bilbao, northern Spain, and also, there’s some extra news: after months of back-and-forth and guesswork, we do now have concrete evidence of Wally’s sex, including photographs. NSFW pics under the cut.

Here is a picture of him having climbed aboard yet another boat.

And this article has a link to a video of him boarding a pier back in La Rochelle, to the bemusement of some French fishermen (side note, it is very endearing that the Western Telegraph, a Pembrokeshire newspaper, is still closely following Wally’s adventures).

Anyway, folks I have MIXED news. The good news is, after spending a worrying month heading closer and closer to the equator and then vanishing for two weeks, our fave oceanic chongus has finally, mercifully, turned the fuck around! He’s coming back home apparently, and has turned up in the Isles of Scilly, a small chain of islands off the toe of Cornwall. Hopefully, he’ll take a week there to feed and rest and then continue his journey north. We may yet see him make landfall in Scotland.

Here’s the bad news:

DO YOU WANT TO SEE A WALRUS BEING TOWED?!?

YEAH you do, click the Read More

Well, his crimes were always going to catch up with him eventually.

He’s now sunk multiple boats, and England is a very different place to Wales, so they’re trying to evict him.  “He may prevent emergency response vessels from being immediately operational,” say British Divers Marine Life Rescue, as though he hasn’t already done this repeatedly in Tenby and the solution hasn’t been found to be an airhorn and a garden hose (the results of hardworking Welsh scientists are oft-ignored). In any case, The Walrus Must Go.

Anyway, how to get him to clear off?

Apologies for being so lax with updates, I’m trying to wait for a chunk of news these days in a vain bid to keep this post to a slightly more manageable length (cue hysterical laughter). But, as the number of messages in my inbox demanding news hits twenty three, let’s see what Wally is up to! And lads, there’s some big news!

FOR I BRING GLORIOUS TIDINGS

Okay so last time I posted, Wally had made his way back to Ireland and was having a grand old time finding new boats to sink. That was back in August! So long ago.

Datestamp: 22nd September, 2021, and have I got news for you.

Joey Batey is really approximately the same size and shape as Henry Cavill, and there are a number of clever techniques in pretty much all Jaskier’s costumes to hide this fact and make him look about three or four inches narrower than he actually is. The costumers work really really hard to make him look that twinky, often with cleverly cut shoulder decorations that pretend he’s trying to look bigger than he is and have the actual effect of making him look a lot lighter.

On a Doylistic level this makes sense, because it’s hard to make Geralt look Huge and Imposing next to your non-combatant harmless sidekick if said sidekick is a jacked six foot burly man.

“But, sir, you could look ripped!”

“Absolutely not! I must look slim and gentle and unassuming!”

“As you wish, sir… So do you wish it to be cut with much excess fabric, so that you look small and also very wealthy to afford so much?”

Creating an illusion like this has two main components: shape (the style lines created by the clothes), and fit (the way the clothes hang on the person’s body), and is the result of close collaboration between the designer and the production team. 

We’re going to talk about season one, because that’s where the difference is the most obvious. Take a look at Geralt:

First, let’s talk about shape. The goal here is to make Geralt look strong and imposing, and the best way to do that is to exaggerate the triangle of his upper torso. See how much broader his shoulders look than his waist in both images? A loose shirt over tight pants is a classic way to establish this, because the shirt blousing at the waist (note that the pants sit high up at the natural waist) makes the hips looks narrower in comparison. Note also that his shirt has an asymmetrical closure - a centered vertical line down the shirt would make him looks slimmer, while the off-center one adds width.

His armor does this by giving him those massive shoulder pieces, which both lengthen and raise his shoulder line. I would estimate that they raise Henry Cavill’s shoulder line by a good two inches just from the bulk of the leather alone. His torso armor also does a really clever thing by having a very subtle V shape to the vertical lines, making his waist look smaller. If you count the number of stripes above and below his belt (again, sitting high at the natural waist), you’ll notice that the narrow stripe at the front edge of the armscye disappears, which allows the side stripes to make that V shape.

Now let’s talk about fit. The fit of Geralt’s shirt looks simple but is actually super specific. It’s very easy for an actor to get lost in a shirt that is too loose - if there’s too much extra fabric then it will just make the actor look smaller by drawing attention to how baggy it is. This shirt fits just right: the sleeves are full enough to allow for movement but still relatively fitted (and rolling up the sleeves actually also helps add breadth to Geralt’s torso by continuing the horizontal line at his waist). The body of the shirt fits smoothly across the shoulders and chest, and has just enough fullness to drape at the waist without feeling baggy.

Now let’s look at Jaskier.

We’ll start with this look. Shape and fit are very interconnected here so it’s just gonna be a jumble. First thing I notice: the jacket. Unlike your traditional fantasy/historical doublet, all of Jaskier’s jackets end at the waist, rather than continuing into a peplum/skirt like Geralt’s armor does. This cropped jacket is evocative of childhood/immaturity, an association that is generally considered to have its roots in schoolboy uniforms of the 19th and early 20th century (see the image of schoolboys wearing “Eton Jackets” below)

Jaskier also tends to wear his jackets open. This creates a vertical line down his torso, which is generally slimming, but it also totally obscures the shape of his torso. The brain is going to take the line of his hip, which we can see, and the armscye of his jacket, (which actually looks to be cut ever so slightly artificially narrow but it’s hard to tell) and fill in a line between them, which is likely going to end up being slightly narrower than his actual ribcage. He does have poofs at the top of his sleeves, which can be a technique used to add width, but if they’re cut and fit carefully you can actually hide some of the breadth of the shoulders inside the poof and make it look like the fullness comes from the poof and not the body.

Note: the “armscye” is the technical name for the armhole, but specifically the torso part. The corresponding sleeve part is the “sleevehead.”

Again, we have another open jacket, this one with strong vertical lines. See how the line of Jaskier’s hip flows up through the edge of the doublet all the way up through the armscye? This makes his torso look narrower despite the jacket’s shoulder tabs. In contrast, this line is always broken on Geralt’s outfits, whether at the waist with his shirt or with the giant shoulder pieces with his armor. Jaskier’s pants also tend to fit more loosely, which de-emphasizes the triangle of his shoulders to waist.

Okay this is my favorite image to illustrate everything we have going on here. Look at Jaskier’s jacket. What’s the first thing you notice? The bright yellow inset slashes in his chest. The high contrast in color draws the eye inwards and distracts from the breadth of his shoulders, where we have another cleverly cut poof. His jacket is again cropped, with strong vertical lines, over the baggiest pants he wears in the season.

Now look at Jaskier and Geralt together. Jaskier is all about long vertical lines, while Geralt’s predominate lines are either horizontal or diagonal. Additionally, Jaskier’s hips look even to his shoulders, even if they’re not, and Geralt’s shoulders are exaggerated. The two characters have a very different presence, even if the actors underneath are similar.

one thing the tags have been quietly driving me nuts about on this discussion is also… look okay, my original shitposting from last year? is very much based on the belief that the body you’re born with does not define who you choose to be. Jaskier’s costuming choices are most interesting to me as a conscious choice for several reasons, and I’m gonna rant for a sec because look I had a point there I wanted to jokingly but very seriously talk about and the costuming shit is all very well and good but I wanted to talk about what it means for the character to choose to dress and present himself this way. what does it mean in story fucking terms to have a big buff dude that presents himself as non-combatant, as vulnerable, as gossipy and a little swish but not a physical threat?

see, masculinity is often defined negatively, as “whatever isn’t feminine”, and the constructed artifice of deliberate appearance modification is pretty clearly coded feminine in mainstream Anglo culture (which is what I have access to, gender is complicated, but I’m going off here). what this means is that visibly trying to control your appearance and the way that people perceive you is something that is often assumed to undermine masculinity, which has all kinds of super special social drawbacks for men/AMAB folks who don’t perform masculinity well because misogyny+sexism+transmisogyny do fun things together. 

you’re allowed to control your appearance if you pretend that the reason you’re doing so is totally divorced from the way you look (I’m lifting weights to be strong/lifting weights because I want to be hot) and the artifice you use to execute the effects is completely invisible to the viewer (not wearing any kind of visible makeup, for example). so just from that perspective, the fact that Jaskier dresses consistently to make himself seem a certain way is interesting to me. his gender presentation is a deliberate choice, and it is a deliberate choice that erodes his social status in masculine posturing rather than shores it up.

the fact that Jaskier’s size also makes him a potential threat to other people and that he acts to minimize that is also interesting in the context of the way he earns his income. it’s heavily implied that he probably secures some of his patronage through a form of sex work (i.e. his patron the Contessa, who is both paying him and sleeping with him, which ends when she throws him out of the sexual relationship). moreover, he’s an entertainer, and being muscular and large isn’t very helpful when you earn your living via your fine motor skills: damaging your hands is potentially devastating if you earn your bread playing a lute, and getting into fights is therefore dangerous for his livelihood. threatening entertainers don’t relax people into parting with money and food and shelter.

we think of being threatening as an asset in all circumstances but that is fundamentally not the case. a large, hulking, threatening Geralt will incur a certain amount of posturing from dudes who want to feel big and scary and important in their home communities; Jaskier is likely to get ignored by coming across as meek and fairly non threatening. it’s a deliberate strategy, and we know it’s deliberate because he has the bulk and body size to present himself the way Geralt does if he wants. so he doesn’t want to do that, he must want to be perceived as expressive and a little swish and not dangerous at all and approachable, and he has clearly worked hard enough to get that across that it fooled a really ridiculously high fraction of the folks in my notes here.

this post has been really resonating with delighted surprised trans folks among other things and hey! I see y’all! you are still whatever gender you feel most comfortable in even if your body isn’t cooperating right now. you can choose a lot of the way you will be perceived by thinking about your clothing, your movement, and your postures, and you can learn to do all those things with practice and thought.

and I just think it’s neat seeing a character who easily has the body type to do a very normative gender thing choose to do a non-conforming thing in a way that you absolutely do not see much in media, because usually they fucking hire the twink instead of doing all that work to get the right gender presentation, and the story fucking suffers for it and people who aren’t naturally skinny waifs don’t get to see nice things that look like them in the show.

so.