vewu

morpho books

figure drawing for all it's worth (+ creative illustration)

framed ink

will eisner comics and sequential art

will eisner graphic storytelling and visual narrative

understanding comics (+ making comics)

folder of various animation production art

burne hogarth drawing dynamic hands

perspective for comic book artists

michael mattesi force drawing

the animator's survival kit

color and light james gurney

you're an antique rover abandoned by the galactic empire who originally deployed you to a remote moon but now a princess from an opposing polity is stranded here too so to bound you show her old cave art you discovered in the moon's lava tubes....

a nice long break from all the action (:

back then i made a bunch of these but by now i lost the pic and dont know how to find the original post anymore

so anyway here is the diagram for anyone else who is interested!!

this requires pretty big carboard pieces, if you have a really big box or something you can make it from one piece, but if you don't, you can also just make each of the pieces individually and then tape them together

and then in the end you put it together like this!!

and then when you make a bunch you can put them all next to each other and stack your books like crazy

what do they even think a fortification is for???

what do you think a shield is for. what do you think ranged weapons are for????

if your tactics are dumb and reckless but you usually win and it's just you punching people that's one thing. or even if it's you and five guys who've decided they like how you roll!

but if you are put in charge of soldiers. and you throw their lives away because you don't know what you're doing. that's not okay.

it's not always avoidable! one of the basic problems with armies! but when it happens in fiction it needs to be on purpose, to make sure the military elements of the narrative remain thematically congruent.

when you have a bit where Main Character is in command and then makes avoidable bad decisions and people die who didn't have to. either the protagonist has been put in a horrific position by whatever authority figure thrust them into a role they didn't want and weren't competent to handle, without support.

or the protagonist, voluntarily assuming a management job they suck at, has committed a grievous harm against others by not recognizing their own limitations.

even if they win! i don't want to be watching a movie where the main character squanders every tactical advantage and loses 40% of their forces totally unnecessarily for Narrative Tension, but the enemy retreats or gets eaten by a dragon or loses the MacGuffin or whatever, and then there's triumphant music and a party because They Won!!!

For example, in the American Civil War, the tactics used of soldiers, marching into open fueled, and exchanging musket fire was not all that different than the tactics of the American revolution a little under 100 years prior. However, the rifles that infantry men were armed with were significantly more accurate. As a result, casualties, both in terms of lives lost, and soldiers, injured were horrific.

The concept of trench warfare in World War I was not all that different from wars, fought all over the continent in the century prior, and were designed to try and curb advantages of cavalry. But again, of mortars, more accurate, rifles, and chemical warfare meant that charging trenches resulted in truly grotesque numbers of casualties.

There is certainly evidence that World War I era generals were fairly callous when it came to casualty figures. They were more interested in territory gained. And it mattered very little how many lives that cost since soldiers were replaceable.

I agree that there should be some narrative coherence when protagonist squander advantages due to bad tactics, but when you look at actual history, it’s very clear that even if there are “good guys“ and “bad guys“ in war, there’s also just a lot of waste. That doesn’t make for a very sexy narrative, but it’s the nature of the beast. Militaries in particular are conservative institutions slow to change. you do things a certain way because that is the way they are done. That will always get people killed. But that’s also excepted as the way things are done.

At the end of the day, I’m just not sure there is a good way to organize two groups of people trying to kill each other.

thereby creating major ruptures in the narrative logic and characterization for anyone who knows (for example) what the point of a wall is.

this is a writing complaint, about failure to adequately situate motive within character and maintain internal consistency.

i'm not going to ask every piece of fiction that wants to have swords in it to engage in a meditation on the nature of conflict. that sounds boring, and also like it's asking too much of people. i'm aiming way lower here.

Make her shorter if you must

Make them exactly the same size and shape but different colors

Give him a huge flock of babies following him around to show off what a great lay he is

Surprise mPreganté

Exactly the same but one of them has a cool hat (you decide which)

Give her a sensible haircut for successful hunting while he has a big dumb mullet so big and dumb the food can see him coming and book it

But on other its very telling on Homing & MomQuixote parenting style that his idea of raising kids is giving them whatever they want and indulging in their unhealthy behavior and dealing with consequenses.

Because part where he rigorously trains them and gives them devil fruits come from his experience of "only power they cant take away is your own".

DQ parents being "traditional high class parents" where they see kids only at dinner and all other times they managed (not raised) by nannies and maids does explain big chasm of Homings considering himself human and Doffy being that casual about slaves. In culture so self indulgent as Celestial dragons, no way they expected to do so much labor as rearing children themselves.

I also feel like CDs are extremely traditional and patriarchal, with a side dish of “fit into the structure, and then you can do whatever you want”. And isn’t it ironic, that even among the Celestial Dragons, the role of the oldest sibling never changes? Doffy takes responsibility for Rosi the moment he realizes that his parents cannot protect or feed them. He even takes Rosi to gather food for their mom, completely taking over the role of the “man of the house”. (Their mom was sick, so no shade there, but Homing was never depicted doing anything active to help them…)

I fully agree with your analysis on the expressions of love: Doflamingo is extremely indulgent with his family but never tries to “fix” them, neither when it’s real mental issues that require help (like with Baby 5), nor when it’s things people cannot change and thus shouldn’t be bullied for (Pica’s voice). Plus, he learned from his Executives that when you defend family, you go all out, and destroying a town for a slight offense is how family acts, actually.

I think the DQ parents were definitely your typical noble parents who mostly left child-rearing to others. The fact that Homing never taught them that slavery is wrong before moving to the North Blue proves it. Although I do think DQ mama was closer to her children than your typical noble lady, judging by how Rosi clings to her and how attached Doffy was to her. I personally like to think that she spent time with them and built strong emotional connections with them, but only the “fun” parts. All the unpleasant things like tantrums and diapers were left to the servants.

I give myself deadlines, and it works. but — and this is important — I personally do not recommend this to anybody. not because I want to gatekeep it but because it’s not exactly healthy. and I am aware that it’s not healthy. because, assuming you’re talking about fanfics, fanfic writing is a hobby. so I still think it’s better to just go at our own pace. since we’re doing it for ourselves and our own enjoyment.

but yeah I still do give myself deadlines. and that’s mostly how I got my chapters (or my one-shots) done. is it healthy? not really. do I put unnecessarily pressure on myself? absolutely. but does it work for me? unfortunately yes.

Word minimums are great. You write 500 words? 250? 100? That’s doable right, and if you feel like it you can keep going!

But the keep going bit would trip me up. Suddenly it didn’t feel like 100 words. It felt like if I started, I had to do the whole chapter.

Enter word maximums. If I have a word maximum of 1000, and I’ve hit my minimum of 250, well I’m a quarter of the way there and that’s not so intimidating. If I want to stop after 250? Well I’ve only lost an opportunity to write another 750, not an entire chapter.

Also if I got to 1000, and I had more in me but had to stop, it made me more excited to return to it the next day.

i got sidetracked looking at car posters on pinterest and the way my jaw DROPPED