#helpfulstuff

Never seen this one before.

I got a nice message on one of my really old fanfics over on Fanfiction.com asking for permission to make fan art, and then I get this back when they contact me over here.

Every time I forgot to share this, but NOT TODAY!

Writers, fanficers and curious friends alike, it's my favourite event of the year: Escape the Plot Forest! An online writers summit full of talks by very knowledgeable authors.

I've been doing these since they started in 2020, and they are a fantastic and very insightful way to help drastically improve your writing. And this is not just for novelists using words. The learning here can be applied across the board to animation story writing, or comics.

I made the mistake of updating last night and got greated by this shit this morrning:

So apparently, on vs.12... whatever Firefox's latest update is, good old Youtube decided 5 second delays & annoying pop-ups to complain about add blockers wasn't enough. Now they won't let you watch higher than 360p or 720 p (how generious of them).

And no, it's not my computer, because on Safari I get this:

And it dose seem to be a latest Firefox version thing because, firstly, there's no reson Firefox would do THIS on purpose, & I got the old version back and...

The good news is, a quick google search and you can find the last version to redownload & install over the updated version you have.

You will get a warning window upon lauch about needing to make a new profile or quit, I did that, logged in to my account and seemingly everything is there. So asides from having to log back into everything & change preference to dark mod, everything seems to be where I left it.

Also, changing auto updates to manual, is a great next step :P

I'm still really peeved tho.

I'll tollerate the ad noncess, but videos in 360p. On a new-ish computer display they're practically unwatchable! If I wanna watch a video in 360p & have it look good, I need to go dig up my old Mac White!

This. This is a step too far with you and your monopoly-wanting-coperate-bullshit. I won't switch to Chrome, and I won't stop using my ad blocker. But what I will do is stop using Youtube. So fuck you Youtube, here's my 2 minutes notice!

I'm switching to Freetube.

I always forget to post about this, but not this time!

Escape the plot forest is an online writer summit hosted by Daniel David Wallace. The summit goes for 5 days, each with a range of authors and writers giving advice & resources related to the summits theme. This one is plot (, my personal favourite of three yearly summits he does).

To give you an idea of what talks there are, here are today's talks (today is day 1 btw)

To attend, you need to buy a ticket, however, do not fear my fellow empty pocket holder! There is a free option :D

24 hour access to all videos for free or $67 usd (early bird tickets, which are still available) for forever access to the videos. And don't fear if you want to do it free and are coming in late, day 4 or 5 is jubilee day so you can watch any videos you've missed.

I do all the summits on the free ticket, and you can watch all the videos in the 24 hours period, (it normally means a couple of late nights for me, (due to timezones as you can see), but it's totally doable).

I highly, highly recommend this for any budding writers, hobbists or enthusiast. It's a great event and you learn & get so much insight into writing and the art of storytelling.

Heres you link, https://forest.plotsummit.com/, Go check it out

No, this isn't sponsored or anything, I just genuinely love this event so much!

An Imposter’s Fate Chapter 4 + How To

-Chapter 1

Chapter 2/3

Chapter 4

Hello folks, as you know I'm starting my Bachelor of Screen Arts this week, and I thought because I love to learn and share that knowledge, it would be fun to share some of what I'm learning :)

Today, we learned about genre & log lines, which, might not sound interesting or pretty basic at first. But there's surprisingly a lot of cool stuff here & EXAMPLES! :D

Genre is a style or category of film, art, music & literature with a defined set of characteristics that allows examples to be grouped by others.

For video games, the same goes, except genre also includes how the player interacts with the game. E.g. RPG or FPS.

What's interesting, is that genre changes over time. An action movie today, won't be the same as an action movie from 30 years ago. It's how they evolve, change and develop which keeps them new and interesting. What elements are repeated is what keeps audiences feeling safe with something they'll like, and what elements are different (whether it's abiding by or subverting standard conventions), is what keeps in interesting, so the audience doesn't get bored by the same carbon-copy films.

Log line are a summary of a story's essential ingredients in a way which isn't bogged down with details, but is able to capture the listener's interest.

E.g. 'A plucky hen struggles to escape a cruel farmer. When a rooster from the circus arrives, a crack team assemble - Can they get out before the chicken pies get cooked?'

-> Chicken Run

I thought this was really cool. I've tried to do this in the past, and mine always sound washy and long.

So for fun (& practice), I wrote the log line for Lost Children of the CCC:

'A reformed criminal with the power to reverse time is unable to save his friends from a notorious clan of criminals. Desperate to change their fates, he rewrites reality, unknowingly unearthing a dark secret of the past. Can him and his friends survive? Or will they be the next victims of Project Harmonious?'

That sounds SO COOL! Like, this is what I currently have on A03 for the same story:

'It was meant to be the perfect ending, It was meant to be a happy ending with his closest friends Charles & Ellie, It was meant to be HIS happy ending... ... and then the Toppat's happened. But not this time. Henry Stickmin is getting his happy ending, no matter the consequences.'

My current version, it sounds cool like an awesome blurb, but it's very cryptic and unclear. It gives us character names and tells us that someone or thing, called the 'Toppats' ruined this guys happy ending, and he's out for revenge. But that's it. It just tells us a revenge story.

The log line on the other hand is very clearly and easily presents the main character, the stakes, and enough of the plot that you know what happened, and a little bit of how.

The log line clearly has elements of an action/thriller (Ex- criminal vs criminal clan & hints of survival or death), sci-fi (time travel) and mystery ('dark secrets of the past').

So...

This picture, is to date one of my most hated pieces. I did this one for the 2019 Undertale Birthday Community Project over on DA hosted by Arerona every year. 

I think the reason I have always hated this one so much is because of the potential it had at the start. That’s probably why I have so many screenshots, because I was convinced it was going to be one of my best pieces. Like by the 6th screenshot, it looked really really good...and then I tried digital painting. 

This picture was my first attempt at digital painting, which...speaks for itself, even without my negative feelings towards it.

Looking back on it now nearly 2 years on and I know where I went wrong because I’ve now got this style of art under my belt (as you can see with my latest work ‘Can’t Dodge the Truth Forever’ or, WIPs). A lot of what’s wrong here is more with lack of knowledge than skill, because very clearly on that totem pole in the middle I demonstrated good digital rendering skills.

So, very recently I learned that when rendering textures to quote my notes from the ‘Cinematic Design: From Idea To Finished Concept Art’ course I’ve been doing since last years pandemic nightmare started; “Texture adds detail + interest, BUT! If you don’t pay attention to how it interacts with it’s surroundings it can fall flat and lose effect. You HAVE TO understand how light interacts with surfaces.”

That’s the biggest problem with this picture, asides from me shading the two main characters with only soft shadows (by using only an airbrush and not either softening the edges of a pen or watercolour/gouache brush) is the lighting. 

There’s two main sources on both sides: the amulet and side lighting, both of which are competing with each other and render’s what should be a cool glow from the amulets very flat and dull looking.

There’s also a lack of reflective lighting from the two amulets which should be illuminating areas and near and causing harsher shadows, as well as no bounce light.

Below I sketched out red (for areas where the shadow should be more intense) and yellow (for where there should be bounce/reflective light).

You tried to ruin me.