Translated From Ishida’s Personal Twitter (X):

Having your main anxiety response be Avoidance is crazy cause you'll think you're chillin and then one day you're like waitttt I've been paralyzed with fear this whole time. Damn

would you consider dropping some tips on how you color? your art always has such a nice feeling to it

Thank you so much, and yes, absolutely! 

So... I have been agonizing over how to answer this question for over a week because I tend to make a lot of my major decisions based on what looks and feels good to me in the moment. It’s sort of hard to explain. Then I started getting philosophical with it (“how does one color? How do I explain aesthetic?”), and I started rambling, and had to cut the answer way, way, way down lol.

But here’s what I can help with right now. I think the most important part of how I color is my tools and what they allow me to do. These are currently my favorite brushes to use: 

From top to bottom, I use Kyle T’s Gouache for just about everything. A lot of my recent pieces are done entirely in that– I love the chunky texture and how the pressure mimics traditional gouache. It’s great for children’s book illustrations, and filling linework, and realistic portraits. She is my soft wife and I love her. 

I practically never use the default hard round. Ignore that. 

The roller brush is another one I use for painting. It was my go-to before KT’s gouache, so you’ll find it a lot in my older work (and as a big texture thing in my current works). The “Sampled Tip” below that one I usually use for children’s book styled illustrations. It’s like a really dense, waxy crayon, so it’s fun for textured lines and details.

I always paint in my own shadows and highlights, but I like to use the soft round if I want to blow the shadow or highlight out. It’s for extra large areas.

And finally my pencil. I use it for sketching as well as linework, if I plan on doing a linework-centric piece. I don’t think there’s much of a difference between the two there… one is probably smoother than the other. 

______________

The reason why I like textured, pressure-sensitive brushes so much is because they’re important to how I paint. When I blend, I don’t use a blender brush or a smudge tool. What I do is layer two colors– lightly– then use the eyedropper to select the color between them and continue painting with it. That’s probably the key to most of my work. I’ve gotten pretty fast at it, so I’m constantly selecting colors from the painting and reusing it throughout my painting. 

I still use the color-wheel to hand-pick what I think will look best, though. This is probably going to be a really frustrating answer, but I choose color palettes based on basic color/lighting theory combined with personal aesthetic preference. It can take some studying (of both theory and other artists’ work). If you’re ever looking for a really great reference on the former subjects, I highly recommend Color and Light by James Gurny. Even if you’re not into watercolor or dinosaurs or realism, the guy is a master at explaining all that different stuff in depth. 

Shape and negative space are also pretty important to me, but that's a whole other thing. And as a side-note, I recommend following more children’s book illustrators. Their work may look simple, but a lot of intention goes into how they use color, shape, space, and texture. 

Also, on texture, I hand-draw most of mine. I love to add little scratches and drops and splashes when the painting is almost over. It's one of my favorite things to do :')

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Now, the other most important tip:

Once I’m happy with the sketch/linework, and once I’ve laid down the basic colors of my piece, I do a Really Terrible Thing. I become a graphic designer’s worst nightmare and collapse everything onto one layer. 

Then I paint directly on top of it, linework and all.

I do this for a lot of reasons, but mostly because 1) my tiny brain is overwhelmed by the clutter of too many layers, and 2) it forces me to approach a piece as if it was traditional media– a process which I find a lot more comfortable and rewarding. I paint right on top of the base colors, and right on top of the linework, effectively redoing and cleaning up what I already have there. Even if I'm working with a blank background, I'll paint a new blank one on top because it gives the feeling of a more unified piece, if that makes sense.

Basically, I approach my drawings as if I’m using traditional media. I like chunky brushes, utilizing (what I personally think are) interesting color combinations and textures, and smashing everything down onto one page so I can just paint. 

Anyway, please let me know if there’s anything specific you’d like me to go into detail on, any pieces of mine you’d like to know how exactly I went about it, etc etc etc. I’m happy to answer ^^

I keep seeing critics talking about the fnaf movie being poor but i literally isn't for them. I saw someone else saying the movie's a love letter to the fandom and i WHOLEHARTEDLY agree.

This is how i took it: We, the fans, are Anton Ego, the critic from Ratatouille; the ratatouille was special to us because it was our childhood. I hate ratatouille (the food), but to Anton Ego it was everything. Critics don't like the fnaf movie because they only have the movie as context, but to fans, the fnaf movie is everything and we love it even though it's a little cringey. In fact we love it BECAUSE it's cringey in some cases.

Like no new viewers would get the chica's magic rainbow part, or the MatPat reference, or the whole ongoing bit about Dream Theory sucking, or understand how hype the whole ending part was.

I was lucky to be in a cinema full of fnaf fans, and we were cheering and laughing, and screaming at the references. People got up when the movie ended and SAT BACK DOWN when the living tombstone came on. We shouted the letters of the code, and screamed when Matpat said his line. People clapped and cheered at the end, and people were crying at the parts where they were treating the animatronics with love and affection.

No critics would understand how much fans want to interact with the animatronics in a positive way, or understand how much importance the five seconds of its me on the mirror means in implications of the lore. They wouldn't understand because they haven't been waiting a good part of a decade to see this movie. They came, they saw, and that's it, it was a second of their life, but to us it was everything. This is our ratatouille, made to impress us, not the other people in the restaurant. This was our movie, a love letter to the fandom, not the critics.

I like the changes to the story, because it puts us back at square one. We're fumbling to rearrange lore and timelines. We have to rearrange names, and start with a blank slate, and it feels like a homecoming where to critics, it might feel a little messy.

We've been given a chance to start the journey all over again and i fucking love it so much. Because i'm an adult, and all of a sudden, i'm twelve years old again and we're trying to figure out if phone guy is chica, and struggling our way through whatever the fuck was happening in fnaf 3 to get the good ending. The critics don't get this.

They don't understand how hype the midnight motorists reference is, nor did they care about the references on the chalkboard. Or the code at the end, or the song choices, or the lore implications. They don't understand the sudden lore drop of william afton, or the way he's acting, but we do. They don't understand the vengeful spirit, but we do. Nothing is explained to the audience, because we don't need it to be explained.

This is our ratatouille, and we love the rats in the kitchen.

I used to be a hero like you

Then I took a blow to the knee. But maybe if I just believe in mysel-

🐟✨MY LEG, MY LEG✨🐟

One-legged Barnaby on his way to save his roasting hot dilf:

All of a sudden he feels no pain

[Warning: This post is FULL of spoilers for the new episode.]

I just have to say, this may be my favorite episode. The storytelling was so tight, and there was a perfect mixture of build-up and payoff.

The emotional connections were so good, from huge turning points like The Big Kiss to small exchanges like Gus and Hunter's secret handshake, which really emphasizes how much these characters care about each other.

There were so many moments that showcased how much growth has occurred over these last two seasons. Willow went from meekly trying to scrape by in her track to cracking her knuckles and absolutely demolishing several members of the Emperor's Coven. Eda went from being a self-interested lone wolf who prioritized having her magic over anything else to giving up her wild magic in order to protect the ones she loves. Even Ed and Em went from trying to post their sister's diary around school to risking everything for the chance to blow up their parents' weaponry factory. The character arcs are starting to resolve in ways that make my heart ache, and it's brilliant.

At the same time, the plot continued moving forward in a way that is going to set up these next 3 episodes p e r f e c t l y. Reiterating allies, revealing weaknesses in the heroes' plan, AND leaving on a heart-thumping plot twist??? I couldn't ask for more.

The final twist of this episode was amazing because there were so many hints along the way, and yet I was completely blindsided. I remember seeing Luz flash to save Willow and thinking "oh my god, when did she get THAT glyph?" before immediately getting distracted by everything else going on. I remember seeing Gus's wrist glowing in the background and assuming that it was just an indicator that he was ready to fight, despite the fact that we'd just seen that the wristband forms when he's actively casting something. Even the taunt to Kikimora was super out-of-character for Hunter (and SO in-character for Luz), but I didn't manage to connect the dots. There were also smaller details that I missed, like the tooth gap and the priorization of Willow's safety, which clicked so well when I learned about them. This was a textbook example of a great twist, putting everything in front of your audience but presenting it all in such a precise way that they don't make the connection.

With the truly incredible story-telling elements, character arcs, and visuals (I could write a novel on the art, animation, and character design in this episode), I honestly think this is one of the best episodes of TV that I've seen in a long time. Extra kudos to the TOH crew for managing to create a season finale with impeccable timing when the original show was outlined for three full seasons.

I cannot wait for season 3, and yet I know I'm going to be devastated when this show actually ends.

Royal

Trigun Stampede Ep 10 → 👋

An unmotivated Yuuya slug gif, for all your unmotivated Yuuya slug needs.