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Tomorrow (Feb 22nd @ 12pm EST) is our Birthday Party Stream!

YES YOU, LOVELY PERSON LOOK AT THIS... Hai o.o Sorry for yelling... How're you doin? I hope you're having a good time ^.^ So um, I just made this Twitch page where, if you like awkward nerdy soft-spoken foxes who play video games, you can come hang out and we can be like friends or something...maybe... if you'd like <.< If that's not your thing, no worries! Thanks for reading this and Maybe you know someone who would like that and you could send this over their way, that would be real cool :)

Gimli, a dwarf who has lost most of his people’s cultural artefacts: ... I’m sorry Bilbo was given what and did what with it

Frodo, secretly wearing Bilbo’s mithril mail at that very moment but only after nearly 70 years of it sitting in the Useless Dumb Artefacts Museum gathering dust because Bilbo had no idea his cool shirt was worth approximately the net value of their entire country:

Being older now and having an art job it’s…kind of essential. 

So: a quick primer for those of you who are like ‘ok but how do i actually go about doing this warmup thing.’ 

1) you may be tempted to do ‘a warmup drawing’ which is just a drawing that will take longer than it needed to and probably be frustrating and kind of bad because you didn’t warm up first. It’s tempting but always a trick your brain is playing on you! Do not trust! 

2) warmups will vary based on what feels good to you/what task you’re about to do/what motor skills you want to practice. That being said, some good standbys:

a) circles. Just a whole page of circles on whatever drawing surface you’re going to be using, whether that’s your tablet or your sketchbook or a drawing pad on an easel. For these circles you should make sure that you’re drawing from your shoulder and not your wrist. In fact, you want to be drawing from your shoulder rather than your wrist most of the time! forever! your wrist is delicate please preserve it! 

In order to ensure that you’re drawing from your shoulder, when you’re holding your pencil or whatever drawing tool you’re using, the only part of your hand that should be touching the drawing surface is part of the last two fingers–some people prefer the finger tips, but I tend to favor the first knuckles. Either way, the fingers should really be ghosting over the surface, providing guidance rather than support. 

I usually start with big circles and then go to smaller circles and lines of ellipses, and then try to fit circles and ellipses inside other shapes i’ve already drawn as a precision exercise, but i don’t do that unless i’m feeling loose

b) spirals! i don’t always do spirals, but if i’m stiff and the circles just aren’t cutting it, spirals are a good fall back. I start from the center and work outward, going both clockwise and counterclockwise until i feel comfortable with the whole range of motion. Some people really care about getting perfect spirals but for me it’s all about making sure i’m comfortable with how i’m moving so who really even cares about how the spirals look. Not me! 

c) lines! straight lines! in parallel! i do a mix of vertical, horizontal, and diagonal. These are often more from the elbow than the shoulder, especially if I’m working on a smaller surface. For this exercise, I recommend holding the drawing tool perpendicular with the surface

d) connect the dots. This is a precision and accuracy exercise and takes two forms. The first is to draw two dots and then draw a straight line between them. The second is to draw three dots and draw the curve that connects them. This sounds a lot simpler than it is in practice. Take time to ghost over the line you plan to draw before actually committing to your line. (I don’t always remember where I picked up my warm up exercises, but I’m pretty sure I got this one from Scott Robertson. His how to draw and how to render books are very technical but also accessible and worth checking out)

e) cubes, spheres, cones, and cylinders. These help get your brain into a more volumetric space. I draw multiples of each, rotating the forms around, and I’ll often take the time to do some rough shading on at least a few of them

f) spidermans! This one is really good if you’re going to be storyboarding or working on dynamic poses. Just fill a page full of spidermans doing all sorts of acrobatics. 

g) beans. I don’t do beans too much anymore, but I know a lot of people like it so I’m mentioning it here. Fill an area with different size bean shapes without lifting your pencil off the paper. 

h) short medium and long line repetition. draw a short, medium, and long line on your page, and then draw directly on top of them 8 to 12 times, doing your best to exactly trace what you’ve already drawing. Repeat with a wavy line. I’m bad at this one, which means I probably need to do it more. 

And there are lots more options too! Hit up youtube to see what other people recommend, put together your own go-to list, mix it up when you’re getting bored, etc. 

This is a long list, I know, but I usually don’t take more than 10 to 15 minutes to warm up, and I can warm up one handed while I’m drinking coffee, so, multitasking hurrah. 

Sometimes I’ll advance to a precision warmup and find that I haven’t loosened up enough yet; it’s totally ok to go back to an earlier exercise! Also, all of this has the added benefit of kind of ritualistically getting you into the drawing mode so even if I’m not feeling it before I start, by the time I’ve gotten to the end I’m usually Ready For Drawin’. Brain hacks. 

Passover: They enslaved us, God freed us. Remember this via a big ceremony/feast and then don’t eat bread for a week. This is a big one; you’re going to have to clean your house and host all your relatives.

Tu B'Shevat: It’s Earth Day, let’s eat some fruit.

Simchas Torah: We read the entire Torah every year, and we got to the end! Let’s have a dance party and then start all over again!

Tisha B'Av: They destroyed our temples. That sucked.

Rosh HaShanah: Happy New Year! It’s time to ask (and grant) forgiveness for the wrongs done in the past year, pledge to do better, and wish for a sweet new year. And go to synagogue for HOURS.

Yom Kippur: Rosh HaShanah’s somber counterpart. God decides on this day your fate for the next year. Repent your sins, hope for forgiveness, and fast. (And go to synagogue for HOURS.)

Yom HaShoah: Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Sukkot: Harvest festival! Sleep in a hut under the stars.

Shemini Atzeret: Man, I don’t even know?

Shavuot: God gave us the Torah! That was pretty nice of him.

Doctor: [singing 'Come and Get Your Love' by Redbone to oneself]: Tka tka tooh, do do do do do do, de do do do do do beow beow beow beow beow beow buh nuh, bah dah buh buh buh buh, hey!

Someone else: Hey!

You know... I really miss the Jedi of my youth.

Before countless writers and fan-fic authors tried to turn them into a stand-in for whatever childhood problems with authority / the church / their parents they have.

"We know the Jedi failed, lets work from that." Works once. Just once narratively. But if you use that as a springboard for a million stories, even in fanfiction, it begins to define the fiction as a whole.

And now it's canon that Luke thinks the Jedi were fools. Canon that the Jedi were fatally mismanaged.

It's popular opinion that Yoda was a war criminal and that they failed all these youngsters.

Because really.... That's what people WANT from the Jedi. They want a swift allegory as to why the last generation was wrong and that the evils we allow now for ourselves in the present are somehow less tenable.

This cultural shift in fandom I've been witness to over my life, toward blaming the Jedi for their own downfall has actually done nothing but make the Empire and the Sith far less intimidating and far more... Domesticated and easily adoptable. "Which child murdering, xenophobic, genocidal Sith Lord are you? Take our test."

Before the prequels, when the blame was put squarely on Vader & Palpatine, you assumed "Ok, powerful order of mystic knights couldn't take these guys down, they're just that dangerous."

But no... The real answer is every kids favorite thing... Politics.

And the problem with that is people juxtapose. And the problem with juxtaposing political mismanagement with say... Murdering children or Genocide... Is that you can either drag politics to the depths of murder, or you can elevate genocide to something as fucking necessary and logical as having politics...

And that is exactly what Star Wars fans (Mostly Sith apologists) have done.

Somehow in their minds Anakin's murderous fall from grace, the destruction of whole planets... These things have become a necessary result of the Jedi's ideology and political mismanagement.

Or else the Jedi are "Just as bad" for "abducting children" and forcing them to live "emotionless lives devoid of humanity"

As if not allowing children with godlike power to wield it with the fury of a tantrum is the same thing as say... Murdering children with godlike power during a furious tantrum.

Look I'm sorry that the Jedi you grew up with were the ones who hurt your boy by not letting him get married.

I'm sorry that the wise Jedi Council you knew was the one who didn't apologise to Ahsoka Tano for doing her dirt... I'm with you there.

But maybe Anakin's fall from grace proves why emotional attachments should be dissuaded in people with Godlike power... Maybe I don't know, it makes them manipulatable by old ballsacks in black bathrobes?

Maybe apologizing to Tano wasn't prioritized in an authority who rightly built a culture around controlling emotions.

Maybe these aren't reasons to stan a Sith.

Maybe "because they let you feel emotion" is actually a terrible reason to.

I don't know man... I didn't sign up for this.

I signed up for peacekeeping hippy space wizards with laser swords who fought for altruistic reasons against an impossible enemy whose atrocities rendered their motives meaningless.

It's just such a shame that all this extra window dressing ruined your view

You love camp meaningless? Cool.

But maybe it's not the hippy wizards fault.

Then about a week into their journey like

Legolas: *in Elvish, for approximately the 20th time* ugh fucking hobbits, so annoying

Frodo: *also in Elvish, deadpan* yeah we’re the worst

Legolas:

Legolas: ugh fucking hobbits

Merry: Frodo what’d he say

Frodo: I’m not sure he speaks a weird dialect but I think he’s insulting us. I should tell him I can understand Elvish

Merry: I mean you could do that but consider

Merry: you can only tell him ONCE

Legolas: umm well your accent is horrible

Aragorn: *hollering from a distance* HIS ACCENT IS BETTER THAN YOURS LEGOLAS YOU SILVAN HICK

Legolas: y’alld’ve’ff’ve

Frodo: Good morrow to thee, frend. I hope we twain shalle bee moste excellente companions.

Legolas: Wots that mate? ‘Ere, you avin’ a giggle? Fookin’ ‘obbits, I sware.

english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.

they’ve had like. seven generations since the sun happened, max. frodo’s books are old to him, but outside any very old poetry copied down exactly, the dialect represented in them isn’t likely to be older than the Second Age, wherein Aragorn’s foster-father Elrond started out as a very young adult and grew into himself, and Legolas’ father was born.

so like, three to six thousand years old, maybe, which is probably a drop in the bucket of Elvish history judging by all the ethnic differentiation that had time to develop before Ungoliant came along, even if we can’t really tell because there weren’t years to count, before the Trees were destroyed.

plus a lot of Bilbo’s materials were probably directly from Elrond, whose library dates largely from the Third Age, probably, because he didn’t establish Imladris until after the Last Alliance. and Elrond isn’t the type to intentionally help Bilbo learn the wrong dialect and sound sillier than can be helped, even if everyone was humoring him more than a little.

so depending on how much of a role Thranduil took in his upbringing (and Oropher in his), Legolas may have some weird stilted old-fashioned speaking tics in his Sindarin that reflect a more purely Doriathrin dialect rather than the Doriathrin-influenced Western Sindarin that became the most widely spoken Sindarin long before he was born, or he might have a School Voice from having been taught how to Speak Proper and then lapse into really obscure colloquial Avari dialect when he’s being casual. or both!

considering legolas’ moderately complicated political position, i expect he can code-switch.

…it’s also fairly likely considering the linguistic politics involved that Legolas is reasonably articulate in Sindarin, though with some level of accent, but knows approximately zero Quenya outside of loanwords into Sindarin, and even those he mostly didn’t learn as a kid.

which would be extra hilarious when he and gimli fetch up in Valinor in his little homemade skiff, if the first elves he meets have never been to Middle Earth and they’re just standing there on the beach reduced to miming about what is the short beard person, and who are you, and why.

Pippin, confused: Is he not speaking Elvish?

Frodo, sarcastically: I dunno, are you speaking Hobbit?

Boromir, who has been lowkey pissed-off at the Hobbits’ weird dialect this whole time: That’s what it sounds like to me.

Merry, who actually knows some shit about Hobbit background: We are actually speaking multiple variants of the Shire dialect of Westron, you ignorant fuck.

SUNDANCER— this is actually a remake of the first thing i ever homebrewed over a year ago! introducing Sundancers— a ranger based around photosynthesis and alignment with the sun. Even though these are flavored towards sunlight, I think the concept is equally cool if you decide to flavor it towards moonlight or another source of light! 

edit: as usual, this is made for revised ranger!

Why are you threatened by anyone different from you?

White wolf