#counterbalance

hello! ‘m back with an error drawing!

🎶 Sunday’s episode of @trilunis’ Counterbalance was gorgeous. What started out as some genuinely scary spirit shenanigans smoothed out—with Lyn’s typical good humor and luck—into a downright workable situation. I admire how Counterbalance is approaching Lyn having magic powers. In an isekai sort of situation like this, it’s tempting to make Lyn into some kind of Chosen One, but she never stops sharing the main character spotlight with Raka and Malaki or loses her sense of goofiness. In this episode too, the sound design really shines. This echo spirit is so lovingly crafted, and emphasizes the good work of Peter J Lewis, who I know from Someone Just Like You. Lyn's music taste is so good and funny, I love it.

📞 Ohhh Marisol. Marisol. Good lord, Marisol. Honestly, that's the mood with every episode of @wgc-productions' Small Victories, but this one was especially wrenching. The fact that Marisol can't imagine a future without Nina suuuuucks, and the fact that this fact might be the one that ruins Future!Marisol's life is tragic. Add that to Past!Marisol's confrontation of Marisol's self-loathing, and this one was a toughie. And I loved it. Like I've said before, Small Victories doesn't flinch. I can only hope this ends up okay for her, that she doesn't end up ruining her own life. Again.

🎭 This week I started listening to The Peek with Samuel Pepys (obligatory tag: @thepeekwithpepys), and this show is hilarious. "Valentino" is a guy I've met so many times before, a real LA lowlife, and if this was a slightly different kind of show, I'd be very worried about his safety. Luckily the Actual Historical Figure Samuel Pepys is a sort of plot armor to the world's worst podcaster, as well as a fun foil to him. Samuel Pepys carries a lot of period-typical misogyny and classism (proudly, well, and wielded occasionally like a knife), but he's so much more fun and likeable than Valentino. Samuel, you see, likes himself. All that aside, a historical period piece with a time-traveling audience stand-in to study the beginning of the concept of celebrity is a remarkably good premise. I can't emphasize enough that Samuel Pepys was a real historical man who kept real historical journals that you can read now. This show is delightful.

The concept of counter balancing forces were often quite abstract for me to understand. They say to conserve energy, or momentum there are often counter balancing elements. From mechanical physics to electronic, from counter balancing torque, towards normal force to counter gravity, to eddy current which opposes the magnetic field it created.

Life has already given so many examples that it would be in vain to not consider it aligned with human emotions. 

Our behavior and response to events are always predicted by our mindset and our experiences. Those who claim to be responsive and not reactive often had the time to think before decisions or might as well have train themselves in such a way. Understanding the responses and patterns, it is not only important to observe their thought process but also the actions that are derived from it.

The only counter balancing emotion which often disturbs is the push and pull of the same person, we train our mind to be used to a person for so long, and then in an instant we no longer have the same emotions. The pull of keeping this person and the childish urge to get everyone back together is often counter balanced with maturity which understands reality. We cannot really keep someone with us just because we want it, It always have been mutual and forever has to be. Not sure whether maturity is what hinders most human relations or is it really childish to fight for the ones we desire.

Two might have the same emotion of hunger, but one might try to resist it for some cause and one might give in . In the world of gray, it is individuals perception which make one black and white. We often are biased with our though process which leads to alienation from others point of view. We often hold back or provide information we deem is necessary for our thought process. Our thoughts are always balancing each other, who is always working might have thoughts of taking rest as well as finishing the work which is in progress. 

1: sketch phase! I like using a giant brush to get down my ideas first. I don't get too detailed in the sketch.

2: base colors! Almost everything is a separate layer. I'll do more layers for this style than for my usual lineless just to keep things cleaner. I won't do much in the way of gradients, and will reuse colors when I can. I primarily use ibispaint's lasso fill tool for this. I'll keep shapes pretty blocky and angular in general.

Base shapes down, some refining of shapes and colors, and the final layer structure. Every detail is a shape, not lines or gradients. I do gently shade blush and some hair though, as if I was using chalk on paper. This picture doesn't have any ripped paper parts, but those are just erased with a textured brush.

3: shadows!! Ibis has a drop shadow filter that adds a new layer beneath the colored layer. Every layer gets a shadow, some get warped to simulate different depths, and this can get complicated as I try to not double up on shadows anywhere. I'll use clipping and selections to get the effect of layering that I want. The shadows do a lot of heavy lifting. I'll keep light sources in mind and mess with depth: bigger shapes that would be on top of a lot of layers get bigger shadows, little details like in the eyes get smaller shadows.

4: texture time. There's a particular repeating pattern ibis has that I'll put on an overlay layer and clip to the colored layer at a low opacity. Since this picture is sectioned out into 4-5 main groups, I just put texture on the groups instead of each individual layer. The texture is a grid so I'll rotate it slightly to get more of an off-kilter look.

5: final touches. I added a pattern to the background like a piece of scrapbook paper. I added a big shadow to the whole figure. There's a paper texture I put over everything with the soft light blending mode, an overlay gradient, and a vignette effect, along with some filters and my watermark. That's it!

ChibiBalance. CounterChibi. CounterChibance. The main cast of Counterbalance in chibi form!