Out of Eden, Into the Fire

"In the end, all we have are stories."

Reblogged from tyrannosaurusjess

human-spectre:

ex0skeletal:

Zodiac Angels by Peter Mohrbacher

1. Hanael, Angel of Capricorn:

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2. Advachiel, Angel of Sagittarius:

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3. Ambriel, Angel of Gemini:

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4. Muriel, Angel of Cancer:

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5. Verchiel, Angel of Leo:

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6. Hamaliel, Angel of Virgo:

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7. Zuriel, Angel of Libra:

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8. Barbiel, Angel of Scorpio:

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9. Cambiel, Angel of Aquarius:

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10. Barchiel, Angel of Pisces:

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11. Malahidael, Angel of Aries:

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12. Asmodel, Angel of Taurus:

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Just wanna point out that this was a collaborative art and musical project between Xan Griffin and Peter Mohrbacher. You can listen to Xan Griffin’s full Zodiac album on his youtube page. It’s really good music.

CielChimeric on DeviantArt

Welp, I did it.


I made a DeviantArt profile again. Just so I have a place to dump sketches and stuff for one of my side projects *coughtheonewithallmyoldhighschoolOCscough*

Reblogged from tyrannosaurusjess

comicstore:

The Blues Brothers (1980)

Reblogged from raphae11e

lightwolf:

lightwolf:

Editing? Oh you mean fic patching.

  • Protagonist now has more complex motivations.
  • Protagonist now remembers key facts about important people. He no longer develops convenient amnesia between cutscenes.
  • Protagonist now has a cooldown on certain adverbs. Adverbs have been buffed by 30% to compensate.
    • Developer note: Adverbs are important to writing but they are sometimes overused. This change keeps adverbs relevant while encouraging the use of adjectives and verbs.
  • The horse now has a name.
  • Deuteragonist snark power has been increased to 150, up from 75.

Reblogged from unapologeticallydorky

glasmond:

weirdandblack:

80sanime:

how do I unlock the cat player job class

Me: What instrument do you play?

Fucking Gandalf in a night club: “I play the cat.”

M: …I’m sorry?

G: “Acoustic long hair. Excuse me, my set’s about to start.”

no but what the actual fuck am I looking at

When you multiclass as a bard AND a druid

Reblogged from viktormaru

princeofcake:

‪When I was approached by my Monster Prom dude to do an art trade w/ Darkest Dungeon, my initial thought was WUUT FUCK YEAH OK. He then added he’d pay me for it, to which I thought “oh. I mean I’d have done it anyway, but yes I like paying my bills”‬

Bones and Bourbon

While I prefer to keep this laidback little Tumblr and my professional work separate, I figured you all might want to know that my debut novel “Bones and Bourbon” is out.

Unusual magical creatures? Check. LGBT+ rep, including one ace protagonist and one bisexual transgender protagonist? Check. Action-packed urban fantasy with carnivorous unicorns? CHECK.

If you can give it a read and maybe even a review, I’ll love you all forever~
*returns to lurking*

For anyone who wants a free pose-able human reference for drawing

Reblogged from wellroundedcharacter

nick-nocturn:

thebookskeeper:

piraticoctopus:

The other day I came across this awesome program by accident (I don’t even remember what I was actually searching for, but on the several times I’ve looked for a program like this I’ve had no luck). It’s cool enough that I wanted to share it.

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It’s called DesignDoll (website here) and it’s a program that lets you shape and pose a human figure pretty much however you want.

There’s a trial version with no expiration date that can be downloaded for free, as well as the “pro license” version priced at $79. I’ve only had the free version for two days so far, so I’m not an expert and I haven’t figured out all of the features yet, but I’ve got the basics down. The website’s tutorials are actually pretty helpful for the basics, as well. 

Here’s the page for download, which has a list of the features available in both versions.

There are three features the free version doesn’t have:

  • Can’t save OBJ files for export
  • Can’t download models and poses from Doll Atelier (a sharing site for users; note that the site is in Japanese, though)
  • It can’t load saved files

The third one means that if you make a pose, save it, and close the program, you can’t load that pose/modified model later. You have to start with the default model. I found that out when I tried to load a file from the day before (this is why reading is important…). Whether saving your modifications (and downloading models and poses) is worth $80 is up to you. 

But, the default model is pretty nice and honestly if all you’re looking for is a basic pose reference it should work fairly well as it is. Here’s what it looks like:

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There’s a pose tag that lets you drag each joint into place and rotate body parts. The torso and waist can be twisted separately, and it seems like everything pretty much follows the range of movement it would have on an actual human.

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Even the entire shoulder area is actually movable along with the joint! See, like how the scapular area of the back raises with the arm:

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The morphing tag is one of the coolest features, in my opinion. It lets you pick and choose from a library of pre-set forms for the head, chest, arms, legs, etc. It has some more realistic body shapes in addition to more anime-like ones. Don’t like the options there? Mix a few to get what you want! Each option has a slider that lets you blend as much or as little as you want into the design. 

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So you, too, can create beautiful things like kawaii Muscle-chan!!

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The scale tag lets you mess with the proportions and connection points of different joints. This feature combined with the morphing feature not only allows more body shape variations, but it also means that you can do things like make a more digitigrade model if you want. (The feet only have an ankle joint, but for regular human poses that’s all that you really need, so whatever.)

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Or you can make a weird chubby alien-like thing with giant hands and balloon tiddies if that’s more your thing.

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The ability to pose hands to the extent it allows is far more than I could have hoped for from a free program. Seriously, you can change the position of each finger joint individually, as well as how spread out the fingers are from each other. Each crease on the diagram below is a point of movement, and the circles are for spread between fingers. 

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And to make it a bit more convenient, there’s a library of pre-set hand poses you can pick from as well, and then change the pose from that if you like. 

In both versions, you can also import OBJ files from other places for the model to hold, like if you wanted to have them hold a sword or something.

Basically, this program is awesome and free and you should totally check it out if you want a good program for creating pose references.

I just wanted to add a little more to this. If you have trouble figuring out how light sources work in your drawings this also allows you to choose where to have a light source.

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That shaded ball on the left is your light source. You can see how moving the point changed the shadow cast.

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Oh and all those other nifty looking things in that bottom bar there, yeah it’s what you think. You can change the model color to one of these presets or even customize your own palette.

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Plus for all you lovely people who want something a little more simplified to use as a pose reference

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You can turn your model into the classic wire frame.

Why reblog this? Because for more visual creators, this will be like the lumberjack discovering chainsaws. “Reblog to save lives” as the saying goes.

Reblogged from shiisa

dearophelia:

susie grits her teeth and grinds her jaw and spends the entire spring of their fourth grade year plotting how to get back at calvin for stealing mr. bun and dropping him in a mud puddle.

(it involves putting hobbes into a dress and taking polaroids; she still has the photos, even thirty years later)

she does her homework. does his homework too, sometimes, because mrs. wormwood gives them different math problems to discourage cheating, and susie likes math. his mom finds out when they’re in sixth grade, and offers her four times the going rate to tutor calvin in math. she agrees, because even at twelve she knows college isn’t cheap (not the ones she’s eyeing, anyway).

she has to learn quickly about superheroes and dinosaurs and aliens, because calvin won’t listen unless there’s at least one. she has her own opinions of aliens (real, but not the tentacled fanged monsters calvin draws in the margins; her aliens are gorgeously strange monsters, elegant, like a degas painting reflected in rainy puddles, glittering in distorted neon), and dinosaurs are cool, but they’re a boring sort of cool, not black hole kind of cool, so it’s only superheroes she lets him go on about.

this turns out to be a mistake. though he draws aliens and ray guns and flying saucers on the back sides of his homework, he has a whole thing built up around stupendous man. she’s seen the costume, but didn’t know there was lore. she doesn’t want to know the lore.

it’s stupid. no one can just fly. that’s not how the world works. capes are dumb. she can’t believe his mom made him another costume after he hit a growth spurt.

she still tutors him, but they drift apart in high school. calvin and moe somehow become friends, become even bigger assholes together, and susie discovers calculus and girls. she gets into harvard and yale and stanford and others, chooses to go to california. he waves at her from his driveway while she drives away in the moving truck.

“you were never stupid,” she tells him on the phone when they’ve drifted back into each other’s lives her senior year. “you just didn’t care.”

“yeah,” he laughs, and she pretends she can’t hear the desperation in it; his girlfriend kicked him out, he lost his job, and he’s now in the unfortunate position of acknowledging that his father was right and education was important. she has two finals to study for, the nasa interview next week, and a grant application to finish, but he’s had a rough week. she can take an hour to listen.

“the community college isn’t bad,” she suggests, though she knows it sounds patronizing coming from someone set to graduate stanford with honors.

“you mean i can’t just put on my stupendous man costume and live off the media attention?”

susie snorts. “not spaceman spiff? there’s a tv show there, i’m sure.” she’s been watching a lot of star trek in what little spare time she has.

“nah,” he says, “spiff’s always been your territory.”

they drift apart again, she goes to houston and he goes to art school. she loses track of him entirely right around curiosity’s landing. she skips their twenty-year reunion; she’s in the middle of a move down to chile for a three-year stint at atacama.

a package arrives the middle of her second year in the desert.

it’s a comic book. spaceman spiff, volume one. hardcover, full color. one of his signature tentacled fanged aliens takes up most of the entire cover, while a small astronaut with a ray gun hides behind a rock. he’s gotten much better, but it’s still unmistakably calvin’s art.

except - she squints at the astronaut. she flips open the book, thumbs through a few pages.

spiff isn’t the calvin-insert she remembers from their youth.

it’s her.

mousy brown hair, button nose, mr. bun tucked away in the back of her rocket ship.

she flips back to the first page.

thanks for not giving up on me. - c

We’re Ready

Reblogged from shiisa

gnelliswriter:

shannonhale:

I was presenting an assembly for kids grades 3-8 while on book tour for the third PRINCESS ACADEMY book.

Me: “So many teachers have told me the same thing. They say, ‘When I told my students we were reading a book called PRINCESS ACADEMY, the girls said—’”

I gesture to the kids and wait. They anticipate what I’m expecting, and in unison, the girls scream, “YAY!”

Me: “'And the boys said—”

I gesture and wait. The boys know just what to do. They always do, no matter their age or the state they live in.

In unison, the boys shout, “BOOOOO!”

Me: “And then the teachers tell me that after reading the book, the boys like it as much or sometimes even more than the girls do.”

Audible gasp. They weren’t expecting that.

Me: “So it’s not the story itself boys don’t like, it’s what?”
The kids shout, “The name! The title!”

Me: “And why don’t they like the title?”

As usual, kids call out, “Princess!”

But this time, a smallish 3rd grade boy on the first row, who I find out later is named Logan, shouts at me, “Because it’s GIRLY!”

The way Logan said “girly"…so much hatred from someone so small. So much distain. This is my 200-300th assembly, I’ve asked these same questions dozens of times with the same answers, but the way he says “girly” literally makes me take a step back. I am briefly speechless, chilled by his hostility.

Then I pull it together and continue as I usually do.

“Boys, I have to ask you a question. Why are you so afraid of princesses? Did a princess steal your dog? Did a princess kidnap your parents? Does a princess live under your bed and sneak out at night to try to suck your eyeballs out of your skull?”

The kids laugh and shout “No!” and laugh some more. We talk about how girls get to read any book they want but some people try to tell boys that they can only read half the books. I say that this isn’t fair. I can see that they’re thinking about it in their own way.

But little Logan is skeptical. He’s sure he knows why boys won’t read a book about a princess. Because a princess is a girl—a girl to the extreme. And girls are bad. Shameful. A boy should be embarrassed to read a book about a girl. To care about a girl. To empathize with a girl.

Where did Logan learn that? What does believing that do to him? And how will that belief affect all the girls and women he will deal with for the rest of his life?

At the end of my presentation, I read aloud the first few chapters of THE PRINCESS IN BLACK. After, Logan was the only boy who stayed behind while I signed books. He didn’t have a book for me to sign, he had a question, but he didn’t want to ask me in front of others. He waited till everyone but a couple of adults had left. Then, trembling with nervousness, he whispered in my ear, “Do you have a copy of that black princess book?”

He wanted to know what happened next in her story. But he was ashamed to want to know.

Who did this to him? How will this affect how he feels about himself? How will this affect how he treats fellow humans his entire life?

We already know that misogyny is toxic and damaging to women and girls, but often we assume it doesn’t harm boys or mens a lick. We think we’re asking them to go against their best interest in the name of fairness or love. But that hatred, that animosity, that fear in little Logan, that isn’t in his best interest. The oppressor is always damaged by believing and treating others as less than fully human. Always. Nobody wins. Everybody loses. 

We humans have a peculiar tendency to assume either/or scenarios despite all logic. Obviously it’s NOT “either men matter OR women do.” It’s NOT “we can give boys books about boys OR books about girls.” It’s NOT “men are important to this industry OR women are.“ 

It’s not either/or. It’s AND.

We can celebrate boys AND girls. We can read about boys AND girls. We can listen to women AND men. We can honor and respect women AND men. And And And. I know this seems obvious and simplistic, but how often have you assumed that a boy reader would only read a book about boys? I have. Have you preselected books for a boy and only offered him books about boys? I’ve done that in the past. And if not, I’ve caught myself and others kind of apologizing about it. “I think you’ll enjoy this book EVEN THOUGH it’s about a girl!” They hear that even though. They know what we mean. And they absorb it as truth.

I met little Logan at the same assembly where I noticed that all the 7th and 8th graders were girls. Later, a teacher told me that the administration only invited the middle school girls to my assembly. Because I’m a woman. I asked, and when they’d had a male author, all the kids were invited. Again reinforcing the falsehood that what men say is universally important but what women say only applies to girls.

One 8th grade boy was a big fan of one of my books and had wanted to come, so the teacher had gotten special permission for him to attend, but by then he was too embarrassed. Ashamed to want to hear a woman speak. Ashamed to care about the thoughts of a girl.

A few days later, I tweeted about how the school didn’t invite the middle school boys. And to my surprise, twitter responded. Twitter was outraged. I was blown away. I’ve been talking about these issues for over a decade, and to be honest, after a while you feel like no one cares. 

But for whatever reason, this time people were ready. I wrote a post explaining what happened, and tens of thousands of people read it. National media outlets interviewed me. People who hadn’t thought about gendered reading before were talking, comparing notes, questioning what had seemed normal. Finally, finally, finally.

And that’s the other thing that stood out to me about Logan—he was so ready to change. Eager for it. So open that he’d started the hour expressing disgust at all things “girly” and ended it by whispering an anxious hope to be a part of that story after all. 

The girls are ready. Boy howdy, we’ve been ready for a painful long time. But the boys, they’re ready too. Are you?

I’ve spoken with many groups about gendered reading in the last few years. Here are some things that I hear:

A librarian, introducing me before my presentation: “Girls, you’re in for a real treat. You’re going to love Shannon Hale’s books. Boys, I expect you to behave anyway.”

A book festival committee member: “Last week we met to choose a keynote speaker for next year. I suggested you, but another member said, ‘What about the boys?’ so we chose a male author instead.”

A parent: “My son read your book and he ACTUALLY liked it!”

A teacher: “I never noticed before, but for read aloud I tend to choose books about boys because I assume those are the only books the boys will like.”

A mom: “My son asked me to read him The Princess in Black, and I said, ‘No, that’s for your sister,’ without even thinking about it.”

A bookseller: “I’ve stopped asking people if they’re shopping for a boy or a girl and instead asking them what kind of story the child likes.”

Like the bookseller, when I do signings, I frequently ask each kid, “What kind of books do you like?” I hear what you’d expect: funny books, adventure stories, fantasy, graphic novels. I’ve never, ever, EVER had a kid say, “I only like books about boys.” Adults are the ones with the weird bias. We’re the ones with the hangups, because we were raised to believe thinking that way is normal. And we pass it along to the kids in sometimes  overt (“Put that back! That’s a girl book!”) but usually in subtle ways we barely notice ourselves.

But we are ready now. We’re ready to notice and to analyze. We’re ready to be thoughtful. We’re ready for change. The girls are ready, the boys are ready, the non-binary kids are ready. The parents, librarians, booksellers, authors, readers are ready. Time’s up. Let’s make a change.

“the falsehood that what men say is universally important but what women say only applies to girls.”