Man I Love Vine And I’m Gonna Miss It! I’m Totally Jumping On The Bandwagon But Hey Why Not? Here

me writing: i am a god and reality bends to my whims

me proofreading: im too stupid to be alive

They make me feel single in a good way🧌

What makes an outfit practical or impractical to fight in? Would an acrobat's outfit with some decent shoes be okay to fight in? Any suggestions on how to make an outfit frilly/girly without sacrificing (too much) practicality? (Trying to come up with practical[ish] Magical Girl outfits - know it's not your genre probably - there are certain expectations for frilliness even for tomboyish characters)

You’re, basically, looking for three things: How well canyou move in it, does it give potential foes anything to grab, and does it offerany protection?

If you can’t move freely in your clothes, you can’t fight inthem. It doesn’t matter if we’re talking about them being tight enough torestrict movement, or if they make it difficult to walk around. Tight skirts,high heels, tailored suits; it doesn’t matter; they’ll all limit your abilityto fight.

With footwear, you’re looking primarily at how well you canstand and move in it. Shoes and boots designed to grip the floor are (usually)the best options here. So, things like sneakers or work boots are good options.Rubberized soles will help you keep your footing far better when you’restanding in someone’s blood than a dress shoe or high heels.

Things like long coats, ties, free flowing skirts, scarves, hoodies,or of course capes, won’t usually limit your mobility, but they can give anopponent something to grab. Once that happens, that article of clothing willlimit your mobility (some). This is also a factor that’s difficult tocompletely eliminate. Practiced martial artists can, and do, go for collar orlapel grabs on clothing you might think would pass. That said, there are somespecial cases here.

If the article of clothing will tear away freely, it’s (kindof) a wash. You’re still talking about losing clothes, which isn’t usuallysomething you want, but it means you’re not getting dragged out of position byan attacker.

If the combatant is ready for it, it’s possible to usesomething like this as a firing point to retaliate. If you know, roughly, wheretheir hand is, it’s much easier to extrapolate where the rest of them is inrelation to you. This still doesn’t make fighting in long flowing garments a goodidea.

The final factor, almost by definition, doesn’t really applywith magical girls as a genre, and can get a little weird when you’re talking aboutany superhuman characters.

Ideally, if you’re planning to get into a fight, you’ll wantdurable clothing that will take a few hits, and hopefully shield you from harm.Materials like leather and denim hold up much better than lighter fabrics.Insulation in a jacket will take some kinetic force from a strike (not a lot,but still), so it’s better than just jeans and a tee, or even a denim jacket.This also gets into a discussion we’ve had before. Protection is often about makingtradeoffs.

An insulated leather jacket will (slightly) reduce yourmobility. It will give an opponent something they can grab. But, it will alsooffer protection from stray hits and while parrying incoming strikes. It won’tprotect against gunshots, or against a sword, and if that’s what your characterwas likely to face, they’d need armor to deal with those threats instead.

Somewhat obviously, exposed skin isn’t offered anyprotection. Technically, skin itself is protection for your body, and it doesfunction as your first line of defense against infection, but that’s mostlyacademic in this context.

This is also where, magical girls, and most superherosubgenres, deliberately start straying from reality, without actually being unrealistic (in theliterary sense). What matters is if your character has some kind of protectionfrom the threats they’re facing. It doesn’t matter if that’s an ancient alienartifact, a mystical gemstone, or the weaponized power of friendship. That is what protects your character,not her denim vest. You’re also talking about characters where the threats theyface are, effectively, impossible to mitigate through mundane means. Again, aleather jacket, no matter how snazzy, won’t do much against a death beam fromsome snarling murderbeast, or blows from a sword with an enchantment thatdrains the soul from anyone who touches it. As I’ve said before, you selectyour armor to deal with the threats you’re likely to face, and when it comes tomagical girls, those threats are (almost always) going to be far beyondanything you could physically protect against.

Normally, you wouldn’t want to fight off an arisen god ofwar in a school girl uniform, but it’s not like a flak vest would offer anymore protection against a threat like that.

-Starke

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A little Doodle i did a few weeks ago

Writing advice from my uni teachers:

If your dialog feels flat, rewrite the scene pretending the characters cannot at any cost say exactly what they mean. No one says “I’m mad” but they can say it in 100 other ways.

Wrote a chapter but you dislike it? Rewrite it again from memory. That way you’re only remembering the main parts and can fill in extra details. My teacher who was a playwright literally writes every single script twice because of this.

Don’t overuse metaphors, or they lose their potency. Limit yourself.

Before you write your novel, write a page of anything from your characters POV so you can get their voice right. Do this for every main character introduced.

Hello!

Your art is so gorgeous and inspirational!

Do you have any tips on drawing body horror and character design? When I've tried to design some characters with body horror they all end up looking rather friendly 😅

Hope you have a lovely day and thanks in advance!

Thank you! I'm happy to hear that! Here goes!

NEZ GUIDE TO BODY HORROR

(Disclaimer; this is my advice, not rules. Break them as you wish)

Despite not doing it on purpose, a lot of my art is tagged as body-horror. I've embraced it. Here are my 3 pillars for frightening art. I don't have to follow them all at once, at least one is enough.

Nature

Get inspired by nature. Not necessarily by gore and wounds, but by things that look normal in one context but might appear unsettling in another. A great example is my pumpkin creature; everyone has seen the insides of a pumpkin but adding that texture to a living body made everyone react more strongly to it. I highly recommend natural things with strange textures and patterns (especially seeds)

Book Recommendation; The Art and Science of Ernst Haeckel

I recently bought this for all the gorgeous pattern and creature drawings. It's a beautiful book for those who want to draw horror based on nature. Careful if you have tyrophobia, this has some INTENSE patterns.

Subtlety

In either execution or concept.

In execution; give the drawing other recognizable characteristics. The gore is NOT them, it's just part of them. An example would be my cowboy creature. They have the coat, the hat, the boots, the smile...and then you notice the heads. Give your character more than their frightening parts.

In concept; If you want the bright reds and obvious gore, follow one simple concept. In the example below, the concept was a wound surrounded by mushrooms. That is all. If I were to add 'but also mushrooms leave their eyes, and bloody tears fall from them, and they have gashes in their skin, and'' it would have made the impact of all of those concepts collapse. Like a bed of nails. The more nails you add, the less a single individual nail will hurt.

Feeling

It follows the theme above. I noticed horror works better when it's not an abudance but also when it's relatable. I've seen people react more intensely to an animated character brushing a line of yarn against their eyeball than an animated character having their head explode in blood, brains, and bone. You can draw from emotional feelings as well, turning your mental pain into a physical manifestation of it.

This is not a must follow because I do plenty horror art without being vulnerable nor making myself uncomfortable, I just notice people react when they can relate and feel it too.

I hope it helps anon!

you disagreed w me in an intellectually honest way. we're friends now.

HII my character & shape design tips PDF is now available! ^_^ hope you enjoy !!

BUY HERE or HERE

Ohh, so I was looking at my storage and found these! I originally shared them on twitter before yeeting the platform. Anyway, feel free to use! Art memes for your oc :D