Since the Wanted arc aired, I’ve been thinking about Blue Diamond a lot lately and after seeing this video, it made me want to draw her.
In this video, @swaggythunder brings up a very great point about Blue Diamond’s appearance change from her mural depiction in the moon base to what we’ve seen so far.
In the mural, she wears what looks like a long flowing dress that exposes her gem and arms. Her hair color is depicted as darker than that of her skin. So we all expected her to look somewhat similar to that. BUT she ended up like this.
Why is that? Because she’s been mourning the loss of Pink, of course. So because of this, I wanted to draw what she could have looked like before Pink’s shattering.
Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love Blue’s design so much! I love the way she contrasts Yellow’s jagged and sharp design, but I don’t think Blue has always had the white flowing hair and mourning attire she has now.
Let me now turn my focus to another favorite minor
character of mine, Clara Whiting, who appears in episode 2.9, “Framed for
Murder”. The wonderful Jane Harber plays
Raymond’s assistant, who “looks after the props, script pages, everything
really”. Although at first glance she
seems a plain and unassuming sort of young woman, we soon learn that Clara is
intelligent, quick, and possesses a marvelous photographic memory.
So I went to an art conference at my school. We discussed things there, like how colors can be very powerful and our subconscious picks up the subtlest of hints. Pixar’s UP was a very unforgettable example. The colors of UP had a lot to do with why we cried. You all know what I’m talking about, right??
Ellie’s death.
We were told that her color was pink. That’s why her hospital room had pinkish hue.
And the next scene had strong pink hues. He misses her. I think it’s got strong colors because of her personality.
Also, It’s like her presence is still lingering.
When he got home, only a small part of the frame (window on the right) has a pink hue as the sun is setting. By now, we know her presence is drifting away.
Mr. Fredricksen walks up the porch and goes into his house.
And when he shuts the door, the final frame looks like this:
Ellie is gone.
The entire frame is desaturated and cold because the warmth in Mr. Fredrickson’s life is gone.
And that’s another reason why this masterpiece is heart-wrenching. And that’s how powerful colors are in films.
scribbled down a quick sanity check of the two giant women in the TF2 comics to make sure I wasn’t just drawing the same thing twice.
They’re not spectacularly differently proportioned, not showing off any skills in character/silhouette design here but I thought it might be interesting…
I’ve read a lot of fics, and written a few myself, and I’ve found that the weaker ones – not bad fics, but ones that could have been even better – usually have one thing in common; their characterization and portrayal of some of the Mercs can be more shallow than it should be, especially with all the personality we’ve been given with these characters.
Demo and Soldier, though, have been having it worse from what I’ve seen, especially since there’s so much potential to be had with them.
Keep in mind that I am not bashing any fics in particular, nor will I ever be, but Demo is a character that deserves a little more respect then he seems to get, imho, so I wanted to make the post at least going over his bio, why he’s more awesome of a character than you might think, and why you should think about including that in your writing.
This turned into a longer character study post than I anticipated, and keep in mind that my opinion is also to be found in here, so if you’re cool with that then buckle up and get ready for some reading.
It bothers me so much when people are like “ugh Plague knight is only nice to his love interest; typical.”
No stop that he’s nice to other ppl too you just gotta look. Also he’s not nice to Mona because he’s in love with her; he’s nice to her because she’s nice to him…and because of that he’s in love with her (among her absolute brilliance which I’ve described in detail in other posts). See, Plague knight’s rude to everyone but Mona and Tinker knight probably because they’re some of the only characters in the game who have consistently treated him well, but don’t tolerate his bullsnit when he’s out of line.
Everyone else either insults belittles him
(whether or not they intend to), barring Mole knight, who seems to have only
just
met Plague knight in the dlc. Mole knight doesn’t tolerate that sort of thing either, which is probably why we can see him working with Plague knight at the end of the game.
Tinker knight is perfectly courteous to Plague knight until Plague is like “lol so how about u gimme that essence and I won’t beat u up”; then he gets staunch about not just giving Plague knight his essence without a fight.
Mona shuts him down before he even starts; she has no patience for when he’s being a frick, and he trips over himself because people being nice, but scolding him for an actual action instead of his entire identity is not what he’s used to.
Plague knight is used to people either giving him what he wants out of fear (his minions), ignoring or just being oblivious to his attention-seeking behavior (Percy and Magicist), or seeing him as huge disappointment (the other knights of the Order). He is used to being scolded and feared. He is not used to people treating him well, but then holding him accountable when he is in the wrong.
And personally, I think it’s very healthy that he reacts positively to that kind of treatment. Mona, Tinker knight, and Mole knight all show him basic respect and even friendship, but the fact that they aren’t scared to say “real talk; you’re kind of being a motherhecker rn” is super important, and I think that Plague knight needs that. He needs gentle correction; not scolding for who he is and what he likes.
tldr: Plague knight treats people the way he’s treated by them.
Has anyone taken a closer look at Heavy and Medic’s chess game near the beginning of End of the Line? If you remember correctly, Medic has the white pieces, which means he starts first, and that’s the scene we saw in the video.
And it looks like he moved the Pawn that was in front of his King. Now when Heavy made his move, he took his King and captured the Pawn that Medic moved.
Now before that, you can see that Heavy didn’t move any other piece before this move.
Now Kings can only move one space in any direction. Which means this move is not allowed. Even if it was his Queen, they can’t jump over pieces like Knights can. So that means when Medic made this face…
It’s not a face of defeat (even though he wasn’t in Checkmate or even Check), it’s a face of “Are you fucking kidding me? Do you even know how to play chess?”
WH E EZ E OMFG
I did see this the first time watching, and in fact this is one of my favorite parts of the entire video.
It is not exactly stated where they came from, but it’s implied they returned from the BLU base.
Where they stole the int from probably nine BLU mercs.
But they left seven witnesses, so they managed to kill – two.
Who cleans up after them alone – Miss Pauling, a woman. Granted, she probably doesn’t have to battle the seven survivors all on her own, but she does a thorough job without flinching.
The mercs continue to mess things up while she obviously has her eyes on them on her day off. So even on her only free day she’s half at work and is ready to defend the int while the mercs (those who weren’t in the Scout/Pauling-scheme) – goof around despite the alert in their base.
This woman does a more professional job than all of them and the only person she really fears is – another woman. Not walking into the enemy base, not a bread monster, nope, her boss and figure of authority.
Two women rule the roost, they add to the overall humor and they manage to do that fully clothed and without having their boobs jiggling and wiggling all over the place.
Yes, it’s really, really difficult if not impossible to include women in a game’s universe without unnaturally oversexualizing them.
YES YES YES.
This is why I have a beef when people begrudge Expiration Date, saying Miss Pauling was only there as a love interest to Scout. No, so she wasn’t.
Being a love interest or involved with someone romantically doesn’t make a character less badass or feminist. The comics have a more fleshed out Miss Pauling, sure, but Expiration Date didn’t do a bad job with her, especially when looking beyond too-simple assessments of her purpose to the story.
King Knight, the knight adorned with gold armor, a gold crown, and red fluffy cape ruling over Pridemoor Keep.
Propeller Knight, the French fencer with a helmet I can’t really figure out how it actually works, commanding his Flying Machine.
Both knights are considered by the fandom as fancy and high in social status, but who actually outfancies the other? Well, King Knight isn’t true royalty to begin with, but the fandom appears to overlook one thing that could actually separate the two in terms of social status.
I’m not going to rehash the fact that King Knight is not true royalty, dammit. I’m going to give you some Tips For The Aspiring Social Climber. There is one detail that people are not aware of.
(Image credit: Shovel Knight wikia, Lessthan1337)
This is the Battle Royale. Anyway, the thing I wanted to talk about was what Propeller Knight and King Knight were doing.
King Knight is periodically lifting his goblet to sip his drink.
Propeller Knight is swishing his wine (well, the French are always associated with wine, and it looks red…) around.
What’s with this?
Propeller Knight is swishing his wine.
Wine tastes BETTER when it has contact with air, although it has to be consumed immediately. Wine, however, is best served cool, and Propeller has his palm under it. However, I believe that it is wine due to recurring examples of using misconception to actually point to something (Shield Knight’s helmet is similar to Valkyrie helms and since Valkyries are Norse aka Vikings, look at our shovelers being the prime example).
And in medieval times, wine was hard to acquire, especially good wine. The French in particular developed winemaking, they have been doing it for centuries. So, if it’s hard to acquire, you need money.
One more thing to note that you won’t really know how to make wine taste better by swishing and slurping (yes, you slurp it in order to taste its fullness) unless you are a rich person for a long time. Until now. You just sip the wine. You don’t swish it. The steps are see, swish, sip, slurp, and then swallow or spit.
It’s likely King Knight only had a taste of wine when he got to that throne and wrapped himself in that floofy cape blanket I actually want for myself. Propeller Knight, on the other hand, seems to have been born with the stuff.
AngelMihe 