questionstar.org & questionstar@deviantart. I like to make art, friends, costumes, trouble, and history this is an art/creativity/rambling blog where I complain about art more often than I actually post it!
176 posts
Latest Posts by quantumqstar - Page 4
hoss. (Taken with Instagram)
I use HDR Camera+ app to tweak exposure/saturation/etc. I do actually own a real camera but lol who uses those anymore :p it kinda makes me want a camera phone with real HDR and the fancy cases that let you attach real camera lenses geez. I don’t have room to take an actual camera with me when I’m out on bsns, despite some sweet photo ops out in The Nature. To think I used to view camera phones as the silliest thing ever (I still find them silly, but let’s be honest, the thing smartphones are worst at now is actually being a phone).
Instagram sure took their sweet time coming to Android so now *I* have to make up for lost time. Everyone loves filters, amirite? PREPARE FOR INSTASPAM.
Prof. shaggyAndre LeClare, physicist. Scruff. Cowboy boots. Cajun accent. Tweaked to be a Designated Love Interest, obviously. He invented a supersciency energy conversion device that was stolen to be used for evil and Monica intercepted it and was vaporized (she got better though) BUT as you know superscience accidents totally cause superpowers.
Not honestly satisfied with this, but I go... months without drawing sometimes :c Skill plateau is depressing sometimes UM anyway. Long art backlog is long. I am happy to be able to color again, and even happier to be able to do so in the laziest way possible geez I've gotten comfortable enough drawin on this thing I haven't felt the need to plug in my tablet or nothin. So NO I didn't get off the damn couch all damn weekend.
I noticed that this raised some questions, lol. I did waffle on it for a while but yeah there was some reasoning behind it (no really)
a. rubber bullets.
b. she is a cop (detective NOPD anti-gang, coast guard reservist instead of full time) and feels naked without it /stereotype
c. she has great aim with firearms, not so much with powers.
d. edited her abilities so she has to switch her entire mass to energy form to use her power, no laser hand-blasts.
e. this version of Monica is when she is very new and doesn't have precise control over her ability, her resting energy state is basically a glowy white-light energy being that is diffused over a fairly wide area so she doesnt risk incinerating everything/one around her. When she concentrates it she can tap into the cosmic background radiation to boost her intensity but its like opening power floodgates. This is great for battle against superbeings and giant monsters, not so much against humans. She CAN manifest at more midrange intensities but no matter what area of the spectrum she's at this would be either very annoying to downright dangerous (disrupting radio communications, internet and wifi, being too blindingly bright. Or uh giving everyone around her radiation poisoning/cancer... not really an acceptable form of collateral damage. Everyone tends to draw the line at weaponized throwing cars)
f. IN CONCLUSION, her two current settings are essentially "light show" and "atom bomb".
/nerd
PS- later on she learns to reign it in enough to work as an Active Denial System though :p but takes a level of precision she doesn't initially have and would just microwave everything.
got infected by marvel brainworm for le reasons obvious. Everyone's got their character they want to see join the Avengers next, mine is Monica Rambeau/Photon which is never gonna happen. Its not like she led the Avengers or anything. BUT still I wanted to imagine her fitting into Earth-199999 continuity, costume redesign, fiddling with origin story etc. I aped her sexy detective look off Lisa Bonet's character in the US Life on Mars cos I loved her, don't judge me.
It's just that UGH she's such a cool character and her powers are AWESOME and because I am a huge nerd who's been reading a book about quantum mechanics (I'm not as smart as I think I am but I don't let that stop me) it did occur to me that using the powers to their greatest creative potential would require extensive working knowledge of quantum electrodynamics and radio physics. Thankfully she has help from resident radiation expert Bruce Banner :3 I can also imagine her tapping into Tony's uplink with J.A.R.V.I.S and asking him to calculate the best wavelengths to cause maximum damage and it would drive Tony so, so crazy. I just can't help but imagine him being a little possessive of his butler supercomputer :p
*~ the most beautiful bromance ~*
this makes deciding on color schemes a no-brainer! I'll definitely buy when the beta is over.
Coworker introduced me to a really awesome little Photoshop plugin. Took a screenshot of me playing around with it at work that I blurred to hell for NDAs. Gone are the days where I have to open up the color picker window to sample colors!! I definitely recommend at least trying it out.
grabendolch said: Hey there, what’s that second tool panel just next to your taskbar? it looks like it’s from some art program but not a part of SAI
It's called Paint Dock, it's for slate PCs (samsung series 7 & asus eee slate) to make drawing programs actually useable. I have spent... a while... since getting my eee slate trying to basically work as something where I can be a couch potato digital artist :p WHICH REMINDS ME I did intend to properly review the computer. At least a little :p
Downside is that the harddrive is seriously 64GB. I bought a 120GB to replace it with but I'm not quite ready to bust open a $1k machine yet!! I did get a 128GB sd card for it though (yes they totally make those now!) which is enough to cram all my art-related stuff on so I'm good. The other downside is that the drivers are REALLY fussy and it took ages for me to get pressure sensitivity working properly and across different programs. I got it working in SAI and Photoshop, I haven't got it to work with Inkscape though I don't want to mess with it anymore. A few times I lost pressure sensitivity at the drop of a hat and the last time I spent FOUR HOURS uninstalling and reinstalling drivers to get it working again UGH. I was able to carefully write down all the steps I took this time so hopefully that will do the trick. The pressure curve utility makes it good enough for painting, it only has 250 levels of sensitivity compared to 2000+ on the intuous tablets but so far it's been good enough for me. My hand gets crampy a little more often due to having to press a bit harder (less sensitive means its harder to get really really light strokes) but I think with tweaking the settings a bit further I can get that a little better too!
The other other downside is that the MSRP is $1000 but for the most part it's only available for $1400, I got super lucky and it was $1k at the microsoft store but it's not anymore last I checked (plus getting it thru them it came with win7 ultimate and no bloatware!). It's definitely worth it at that price... at the higher price ehhhh, I'D still have bought it but that is what being a couch potato digital artist is worth to me XD becase it's basically a laptop w/o a keyboard it is a TRUE digital sketchbook that is fast enough to run photoshop! So yeah. it's awesome.
cbt!
What about Character Building Thursday (Thorsday), because question: What type of character is more difficult for you to write convincingly? For me, it’s villains.
- cthonicseraph
Oh sweet I didn't know there was a specific character building day, I'm definitely going to have to switch to this for a while. I have a hard time with grey protagonists, sympathetic villains ok, but heroes with shitty personalities are tough! I think making a villain likeable is easier than giving a hero some really unpleasant traits and still making them likeable. Lots of people take for granted that you're just supposed to like the protagonist by virtue of them being the protagonist and we know how well that works :p Though I haven't really tried it with main characters I do have a few goodguys who kind of suck. Either selfish or cowardly, even have one that is unapologetically racist. There's two characters I really struggle with in my fantasy because I don't LIKE them, and I'm trying to decide if I have to like them. You have to have some empathy for characters to make them three-dimensional and believable right? And it's not like having a villain who gets redeemed thru character growth to become good or at least... less... bad. How do you redeem someone who is already supposedly good? A lot of it is so relative and "good" maybe just means "winning side" but there's a lot of assumptions that come with it. Like... likeability. So hard.
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tyuran answered your question: Are there any beloved stories/series you’ve read/watched that have heavily influenced the feel or content of any of your own ideas?
Definitely Dinotopia... and DEFINITELY everything Myst. Oh dear god Myst, Riven, URU, even the novels (tho I wasn't impressed with the... quality of writing... just the world itself is so so so so so so so wonderful). I replay all the games every few years because they are just so much everything I love. EVERYTHING. I loved it when I learned the D'ni civilization was in a cave in New Mexico, I love all the damn soundtracks, I love that the ten thousand year political history of the entire civilization is plotted out, I love the beautiful language, the base5 number system (which I will admit I did NOT solve in Riven on my own), and of course all the wonderful wonderful art that has gone into creating the cultures and the Ages. Nfffhfhfhhfhahajdfhkas. MYST.
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alexds1 answered your question: What kind of things inspire you to worldbuild?
Honestly? I just feel like it is the default form of my imagination. My mind just automatically goes to possible alternate realities and worlds and timelines what-if cause/effect stuff. It happens a lot when I think about my own life too which is a problem :| I have trouble existing in the present...
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pooryorickdraw answered your question: I know AEM takes place in a sort-of magical Ottoman Empire, but does that mean other “real” countries exist in the setting?
Yeah... other than having my story take place in a tiny kingdom that splits off from the Ottomans, not much is different politically, mainly because it's outside the scope of the story. If I had it spanning more countries I'd definitely consider what might be different. I know WWI happened a lot sooner, and technology would advance faster with the ability to harness a really powerful versatile energy source (MAGIC). Steampunk is based on the idea that there was an energy revolution in technology and analog/mechanical tech, instead of what happened in our reality where there was a digital/information revolution. I figure there's still roughly a British Empire, Austro-Hungarian, Spanish, etc. But yeah other than having rough ideas of where different characters come from and whether or not its plot relevant, there's a bit of geography gap in that area. One that... kinda makes me want to work on it...
Worldbuilding Wednesday
I'd like to keep this going as often as possible. Especially lately because drawing has been... well. What I've been doing looks like the activity of drawing, but the results look like I shoved my pen up my nose and repeatedly slammed my face against the pages. Ngh. ANYWAY here are past ww posts for perusal, maybe it'll spark some interest.
Discuss?
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cthonicseraph said: Question: Do you find it harder to build a world from scratch, or to build characters and situations in our own world? Like Furies of Calderon vs. Dresden Files (if I can use my extensive Jim Butcher knowledge for anything).
I don't think I've tried anything terribly close to our world to count, Shae's story is just such a distant, distant future that anything goes, and Edie's story is alternate history but I take an... obscene amount of "creative liberties", since steampunk is such an anachronistic mess anyway. Though I would say its still been the most challenging so far, because pulling handy answers out of my butt whenever its convenient won't fly. AU earth stuff is going to usually need SOME basis in our history and geography. Which also means some history or geography nerd is out there ready to point out mistakes and glaring omissions. Scary :|
And totally not the question but I definitely prefer Dresden Files (major bias from living in Chicago for four years, he does it so well!), they're funny and exciting and I enjoy his takes on mythology and magic. I couldn't get into Furies- it's pretty usual srs bsns style of dry high fantasy that bores me to tears. Also its kinda rapey
Aaaaand of course the designs I finally settled on. It seems to have stuck cos I haven't been interested in changing them much for a few years now (actually I just checked, about eight years holy shit that's not a few at all!). Like I feel it reached some kind of creative maturity because they incorporate everything I learned about actual functional outfits over the years, but of course I still make them as fancy and stylish as possible. Because they are elves.
Uploaded as many old pics of elfclothes as tumblr would let me. I suppose SOME kind of progression is visible here...
man i draw a lot of clothes
I will ask you a thing for WW. Where do you find your inspirations for all the rad awesome outfitery for your elf dudes? So many mixes of different textiles and structures.
Inspiration is just seriously everywhere, movies, thrift stores, magazines, historical clothing reference books (especially these!). My favorite strategy is picking elements from a few different cultures and time periods and smashing them together. I think it works because I have clear ideas about the world, the sets of cultural inspirations (use a LOT of japanese, victorian, indian, and modern western styles), and the technology level (there's mass production... retail catalogs... zippers...). Errikan has this pleated samurai pants thing, leather jacket with coattails thing, and hiking boots (but taller) thing. Naroth has jodhpurs that turn into spats, a utilikilt, and a goddamn cowboy hat. Sounds ridiculous written out but I Tim Gunn that shit and make it work
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alexds1 said: "What area of worldbuilding do you find to be the most challenging in terms of getting it believable enough to your satisfaction?
Oh geez. Actual storytelling I guess. Plot? Does that count? I do ok with character motivation cos I find that fun as all get out. But when it comes to creating Interesting Times and Mysteries™ and Shocking! Plot! Twists! I get a bit frustrated. All that writer advice to write the story you want to read? Well I'm PICKY. I'm very insecure about my writing even tho 99.9% of my drawing motivation comes from it. The majority of my ideas come to me as scenes with characters interacting, and then I struggle to piece that shit together into something coherent with a minimum of plot holes and not-boring. So hard.
Hmm ok something more specific to worldbuilding is when I'm trying to do something with alternate history and I do TONS of research but can't tell at all if I've done enough. Or what details might be higher priority or more relevant? I guess I can manage to avoid some rookie mistakes, but I personally loathe Did Not Do The Research and really really, really don't want to fall into that trap myself. Then there is the tricky issue of cultural appropriation when you're working on something that's not based on your own cultural experiences. So hard.