Latest Posts by sparkysparkfire - Page 2

This year we are pleased to announce that we will be taking a break from our traditional Saturday evening script reading and instead treating you to something a little special. Replacing it, Marty Isenberg, along with some of this year’s voice actors, will help give you a sneak peek into what could have been. Join us as Marty and crew will be reading through the extensive outline of the three part opener to the unreleased Animated Season 4 “Trial of Megatron”.

I made this banner purely for myself but I know y’all love them too. 💙💚

Wolf pup howling for the first time

An artist : Aw man! I saw my arts were reposted on Instagram. I’ve asked them to take my arts down but they ignored me.

Me : Say no more! Click this link, then click ‘fill out this form’. Fill the form and wait for about 1-2 days, the staffs will remove the image you were reporting from the reposter’s account :^)

Abortion is a human right. No other living being has the right to use someone’s organs without consent (yes even if you will die otherwise) so why should a fetus? I am not a life support machine. I have my own life. That’s why I’m pro-choice. That’s why I’m pro-abortion.

If your brother is dying of kidney failure and only your kidney can save him, you still can’t be forced to give him one for a transplant. He will die otherwise but your right to your own body supersedes that. So why should a fetus get to use my uterus without my consent? Why should a fetus get more rights than any other living being?

If someone dies, their organs could be used to save so many people. But we still can’t use their body unless they gave consent before they died. Why should I have fewer rights than a corpse?

It does not matter whether the fetus is alive. You can call it a baby if you want. But no other living being is allowed to use someone else’s body without consent so why should a fetus? There is no way to argue around this. Being anti-abortion is about misogyny and control.

You have the right to give consent for the use of your own organs. If you don’t want an abortion then don’t have one. But you don’t have the right to give that consent on behalf of anyone else. Let us make our own choices.

i needed the full songs worth of this not 15 seconds

30-Day Character Design Challenge

This might be helpful if you’re stuck in a rut with your designs! You can do them in any order you want, as long as you do #30 last.

Put your iTunes library, favorite Spotify playlist, etc. on shuffle and design a character inspired by the first song that comes up. Bonus: do this with a playlist of music you’ve never listened to before. Extra bonus: use an instrumental-only song.

Design a character in a genre you don’t normally draw (example: if you normally high fantasy characters, you could do sci-fi, steampunk, etc.)

Draw five mouths, each of which reveal a unique character. Bonus: all are making the same expression.

Grab your oldest sketchbook that you can find and pick an old character to re-design. Bonus: pick the character by opening to a random page instead of hand-choosing.

Design ten unique hairstyles. Bonus: do a turnaround of each one.

Go to this random aesthetic generator and draw a character inspired by the result. Bonus: make the design 100% serious, even if you get “dad wave” or “soap flapper.” 

Design seven pairs of shoes. Bonus: for some of the pairs, make the left and right shoes different, but still recognizable as a pair.

Draw a non-human character— the less human-looking, the better (so avoid things like elves, vampires, etc.). Bonus: Make up their species instead of using existing mythological creatures.

Design a character inspired by this poem. 

Create a color palette based on the colors in your bedroom, then design a character from this palette. Bonus: don’t use the colors of your walls or floor in your palette.

Pick your favorite mythological figure and create two designs for them: one that’s as historically accurate to their time period and culture as possible, and another that takes as many artistic liberties as you want (this could a modern AU, something in your typical style, etc.).

Design a high fantasy character whose outfit is based on whatever you’re wearing right now. 

Pick an order of angels and design a character based on/inspired by their description. The resulting character doesn’t necessarily have to be an angel. Bonus: pick Thrones, the giant wheels covered in eyes. 

Go to this random name generator and design a character for whatever name you get. Tip: you can click each name to learn its origin and meaning.

Design ten weapons. Bonus: Base each one off a real weapon from various historical periods, but with your own twist on it.

Create as many rough thumbnail designs as you can in half an hour. Then pick your favorite and flesh them out into a more detailed character. Bonus: don’t erase anything during the timed portion.

Pick an animal and draw a human character based on it. The final design shouldn’t have the animal’s ears, tail, markings, etc.— convey it entirely though the character’s build, clothing, hair, etc. Bonus: pick the animal from the ones featured in this video series.  

Design a character based on the weather wherever you are right now.

Create an outfit breakdown for a character from their underclothes to their outermost layers/armor/etc. This can be done either for one of your existing OCs or a new one.  Bonus: do a turnaround for this breakdown.

Design ten unique sets of eyes. Bonus: include makeup and/or eyebrows as well.

Make up a god/goddess/deity for a nonexistent religion, then design them. Bonus: describe the symbolism of each aspect of their design.

Design a normal, modern-day character, then three genre AUs for them (e.g. cyberpunk, fantasy, Renaissance-era, etc.). They should be clearly recognizable as the same character in all four versions.

Create a character whose design combines the aesthetics of the last three movies/TV shows you watched. 

Design five pieces of jewelry. Pick your favorite and create a full character design based around it. Bonus: incorporate a couple of the other pieces of jewelry into the design as well.

Pick a vehicle and design a character inspired by it. A human character, not a transformer. Bonus: use something other than a car or truck, like a plane, boat, tank, etc.

Create a character inspired by your favorite childhood stuffed animal.

Design four sets of hands. They don’t necessarily have to be human hands.

Design a historically accurate character for a decade between 1900 and 1990.

Design a haute couture-style dress based on one of your existing OC’s designs. Bonus: draw them in this dress.

Wildcard! Use everything you’ve practiced thus far to create any character design you want. The only requirement: fully flesh out their design, from sketching to line art to colors.

Go forth, have fun, and create some awesome characters! If you post what you create, feel free to tag them ‘characterdesigninspiration’

A little comic prompted by a Patron request for ‘Mordecai being tickled’. With his sisters involved, though, it couldn’t be that straightforward.. The first English translations of Sun Tzu’s treatise, which most of us know as “The Art of War”, were published in the early 20th century. 

——————————————— Lackadaisy is on Patreon - there’s extra stuff!

Tips for Illustrators (and other artists too!)

I’m an illustration major at MICA (please check out my blog here as a way to support me for making this post!), so this is catered towards what I learned in my illustration critiques and from professional illustrators. I think these tips can go for other artists too, though!

None of these are things that work all the time, but they’re general “rules” I’ve been taught. You can break them, just know why you’re doing so! These are just things I copied from my critique notes, so most are general tips I’ve heard and copied down.

General

Enjoy what you’re working on, but be okay with changing it.

Anatomy, and accurately trying to portray it, is really important.

Time and space can be portrayed through focus and distance.

When working digitally, make some of your own textures (traditionally) and scan them in. Adding them into a picture adds an element of your own hand and makes your work stand apart from other digital work.

Contrast is a great thing.

Saturation is a great thing, especially in watercolor (soak that brush with pigment!).

Your style should never draw an obscene amount of attention to itself; it should just work fluidly.

Consider what medium(s) work best for your idea.

Cover your paint palettes (particularly reusable ones) to make sure dust doesn’t get in the paints.

Spin the page when you’re working. The time is takes to do that will show some major improvement in your art!

Use dark watercolor and then a light colored pencil on top, never the other way around (it will look muddy and ruin clarity).

Make sure to sometime pin or place you piece far away and step away so you can see the whole composition (or zoom out a lot digitally).

Consider the genre and audience of what you’re working for (and if it’s yourself, then you’re your own audience!).

Illustration is a branch of fine art, don’t forget that.

Fantasy art usually needs a lot of high detail.

Coloring

Pick an overall color palette to work in, then add in other colors as needed.

Complementary colors (ones opposite on the color wheel), when placed next to each other, can pop an object forward or draw attention to it. (Think of a red ornament on a green Christmas tree).

Designate the shadows to be either warm or cool, and the highlights to be the opposite. Stay with this throughout the entire picture.

All colors have a warm and a cool hue (cool and warm blues, cool and warm oranges).

The more saturated a color is, the more it will pop forward in the picture plane.

Don’t use colors right out of the paint tube.

When making a shadow, tint the color with the complementary tone (it makes it a little more grey).

Colorizing backgrounds lines makes them recede in a colored image with line art.

Blue and pink tones are great for use in skin tones.

Flats need to be fairly differentiated colors.

Drawing

The reference should never be an excuse for a misleading or awkward pose. You have the artistic license to alter an awkward pose and not just draw from a photo.

With scratchy or textured line art, find some places of solid black too, to allow the eye to rest (or where you want something to pop out).

How you render all the elements of the picture is what makes your own individual style.

When something is illuminated, it should be the brightest part of the composition.

Anything with a straight angle (like the corner of a room) has one wall/side being lighter in value than the other. There is a crisp distinction.

Sometimes adding more lessens the strength of the image.

Fabric folds are crisp, if they’re too soft they’ll look like clay.

Line heaviness and weight can determine depth.

Anatomy/Characters

Anatomical consistency is very important.

Inside of the mouth is usually dark.

Show character motivations with actions and poses.

You can crop a face or figure to set a mood.

In any and every picture, pay special and close attention to the hands, feet, and face.

Learning musculature, even if you use reference, will help you create the body you want for your character. Understand the human form…it’s easier to alter if you understand it in the first place.

To pop a figure forward, add a little bit of rim lighting (great with backlighting).

Composition

Avoid spots where a line or shape comes really close, but doesn’t cross, the edge of the paper. This is called a tangent and tangents are bad (they suck the eye into just that one spot and stop the composition).

Nothing in the picture is accidentally there, it is all drawn by you, so make sure everything has a conscious placement.

Don’t crop anything that shows essential character expression (including essential parts of the pose).

Never crop a figure at a joint (it makes the limb look amputated unintentionally).

Consider how you show detail with smaller characters…what are the essential characteristics?

Shapes of color or tone can make great framing devices.

For the most part, render the foreground with more clarity than the background…you want atmospheric perspective to be used to make it look like it’s receding.

Line heaviness/weight can combat (in a good way) any very dark areas.

When the character breaks a border (shape, line, panel etc), it shows dominance.

Make the shape of your negative space visually interesting.

“Cornerstops” are great. They are a compositional element that visually blocks your eye from running off the corner of a page.

Shadows can be a great compositional element.

Narrative Illustration (Portraying the narrative)

It is a successful illustration if the story is told.

Use every element of the image to tell the story.

Sometimes you have to take out elements you love for the sake of storytelling.

Think of images as being fast/slow, quiet/loud. What techniques portray these senses for you, and why are you using such techniques? What areas of the picture are slower and faster, why those areas?

Indicate how lavish or simple a place is by the details you choose to include in the background.

Don’t make it obvious that you “curated” the picture; it should look natural.

Cover illustrations don’t always need big and bold text, as long as there’s a strong narrative being portrayed.

Something mid action carries the narrative better than pre or post action.

You should be able to tell a story without relying on text.

Sequential Art (Comics, etc)

Color between panels can draw the eye around the page.

Big jumps in narrative can add humor and excitement, just make sure to think of why you are having the jump there.

When starting a sequence, make it obvious where you start (establishing shot; biggest to smallest, etc).

Make sure panels can read as separate images even if you took the gutter away.

Smaller panels are frequently used for faster/quicker actions.

Removing the background in certain panels allows the scene to be read faster; you only need one background per page (unless the scene in the background is changing).

Style, readability, and timing are key things to keep in mind.

Does the punch line/climax happen at the right time on the page?

Before planning a page, ask yourself: “How much time is elapsing between the first and last panel?”

Consider panel shape and size.

The composition, and where the eye flows inside every panel, informs where the eye travels to next…compositionally lead the eye from panel to panel.

The more panels you have, generally the more time goes on.

Don’t rely on speed/action lines to make things dramatic.

Give word bubbles a little breathing room.

When doing a graphic novel, you’ll usually have to redraw the first few pages since the characters will come more naturally to you by the end pages.

There is a design element to sound effects.

Digital Art (Mostly Photoshop based, but some are general tips)

Before printing, you usually want to switch your file to CMYK (though save a file in RGB too). Print at 300 dpi.

Before printing, you can up the brightness, saturation and contrast until it just starts to look awkward. You’ll learn the best settings for the printer you print at.

Don’t place digital textures anywhere. Consciously arrange them.

Don’t overrender. Digital art tends to be the most successful when it feels less digital than someone would expect.

If your color scheme doesn’t look cohesive, you can use a fill layer of one specific color to unify everything (Layer->fill layer). Lower the opacity to around 15-30%.

TRANSFORMERS ANIMATED

Transformers Animated

Goldbug come on tell us about the ex-con you like. At least tell us their name please!

#revivetfa Day has returned for next month of May 11th! Help spread the word to all TFA fans!

MAKE SOME NOISE!

#revivetfa! Look for it on tumblr and spread the message to all TFA lovers out there!

YAAAAA FAM!

#REVIVETFA

Btw yall I’m posting my tfa art on twitter cause today tfa fans are getting together to make transformers animated trending! hopefully, have our beloved show get revived.

BRING IT ON!!

This show has rocked my childhood and now I’ve come back to it and I love it more than ever. I’m glad I decided to rewatch it. And if there’s even a small chance we can get this show to be revived, I will be extremely grateful.

Tumblr, I have a gift for you.

So I left Tumblr after the infamous content purge, but I’ve still been lurking my favorite tags, and since it has come to my attention that today is Make Some Noise About TFA Day (in some parts of the world by now. timezones and all), I figured I may as well come back and do a little something.

I give you complete scans of the TFN 2017 exclusive graphic novel, Trial and Error!

Sorry this has been a long time coming. I’d been planning to take scans for ages, but a bunch of factors (mostly being busy with real life stuff and not having consistent access to a scanner, but also mostly I just plum forgot) have put it off until now. (Definitely not being selfish like I’ve seen people say in the tags, god no. I couldn’t even go to TFN because I live in the other side of the world, I got my copy from a passholder after they started letting people order extra copies.)

Since the comic is unofficial and non-profit (all the proceeds from sales went to charity) I should probably be fine, but if I have to take stuff down for legal reasons or common decency (or if any pages get flagged for some reason),

I also have it available on Google Drive as a .pdf (click through to download)

so feel free to grab that and tell your friends.

(If any of the artists/writers ask me to take it down, I will out of courtesy for them)

I have posted the pages to this blog in photosets of 10 and in reverse order, so if you scroll through the blog as it is you should get everything in order.

Since the fate of Season 4 is still up in the air (but not entirely bleak!), I hope this serves as a satisfying ending that answers most of our questions. And if you don’t like it, it’s non-canon anyway so feel free to take it with a grain of salt.

And finally, while you’re here, as a fellow illustrator and cartoonist I feel it’s only fair that I link to the blogs/webpages/etc  of the people who worked on it, so you can show some support if you enjoyed this (especially if they accept commission work or donations):

Josh “Dyemooch” Perez

Chris McFeely

Jim Sorenson

Ed Pirrie

Herzspalter

Gavin Spence

Andrew Turnbull

Happy TFA day, everybody. This happened because people love transformers, you’re reading this because you love transformers, and I did this for you because I love transformers.

It’s April 11 so:

ATTENTION HASBRO

👏 BRING 👏 BACK 👏 TFA! 👏 BRING 👏 BACK 👏 TFA! 👏 BRING 👏 BACK 👏 TFA! 👏 BRING 👏 BACK 👏 TFA! 👏 BRING 👏 BACK 👏 TFA!

This has been a public service announcement, please reblog so that Hasbro knows how much I desperately crave Season 4

HEY HASBRO

WE ALL LOVE TFA

IT DESERVES A SEASON 4

HEAR OUR VOICES

AND GRANT

OUR

WISH!!!!!!

tfa fandom april 11th

Signal Boost: Transformers Animated

Dear Hasbro,

It has been a decade since TFA ended and as a loyal fan and customer of your products since 2003, I would like to see at least an official tribute to the series. It can be an animated short or even a comic, just please do something special that lets us the fans know that you acknowledge the show and how popular it was and still is.

There are so many stories and plotlines left untold. It would be a shame if they were never revisited again. I loved the diverse character designs and personalities, and I love how the show even influences other TF cartoons to this day. I especially miss the lovable characters and interactions, because the cast and crew had so much fun creating this beautiful show and the fans enjoyed watching and supporting this show

Not to mention the toys were some of the most accurate models ever put out from the assembly line.

Again, TFA deserves the recognition it earned. Even though we might not get another season, I would still like to see more homages and actual, honest to God content from the Animated Continuity.

Signed, a loving fangirl

x x x / x x x / x x x 

Just some cute Wishbone costumes including: Journey to the Center of the Earth, 1,001 Arabian Nights, Robin Hood, The Time Machine, & The Count of Monte Cristo.

i’ve been wanting to draw this for the past 2 weeks

Reblog if anyone STILL likes Transformers: Animated

this is the post of christmas minimus rodimus and megatron reblog for pure transformers christmas feelings

THIS IS THE MONEY PRIME. REBLOG FOR FREE MONEY OR ELSE HE WILL STEP ON YOUR HOUSE

🌼 ! and 2, 4, & 6 for the transformers ask meme you've reblogged, if you feel like answering :)

Here you go!

And for the ask meme.

2. Optimus or Megatron

Depending on what universe. I like Megatron from transformers prime and transformers animated. It'd have to be Optimus for the others.

4. Favorite Deceptions

Soundwave, Megatron, Lockdown, and probably Starscream.

6. Favorite femme bots

Arcee, Anode, Nautica, Slipstream, and Black Arachnia

sleepy medic gramps, a chibi commission for someone on Insta <3 

he needs those z’s…

You’ve been visited by an angel from heaven.