Gemstone/Jewel Tutorial By Noqimir

Art By IG: @floortjesart

Instagram: @artwoonz

A Twitter thread of mine that I think some of you may find useful here as well! I’ll update this periodically when I update the Twitter thread.

Cleaning out my filing cabinet, I found this handout that I made for my mini-comics class.  Hope it’s helpful!  Remember, it ain’t only for comics.  Self-publish short stories, collections of drawings or sketches, or blank for journals/sketchbooks, etc.

This week: Form follows function! You can tell a lot about a bird by its wings.

Some advice for drawing people who have both hair… and horns!! :O

Also, you may feel more comfortable drawing the whole horn first, and that’s fine too! Mostly the point is just to try to draw the hair growing around the horn, rather than under it.

Hope this helps!

I’m playing DBH

I finished New Dawn and couldn’t bring myself to kill Joseph at the end.  From videos I’ve seen, if you take Judge with you for the mission and do end up killing him, they kneel down and weep.  On the flip side though, I wanted to write something Judge/ Joseph focused that deals with what happens when Joseph lives, where he goes and what the Judge thinks/ does about it.  This was also partly inspired by when I went back to Dutch’s bunker and found the door was now closed.  Both of my characters were female, so I’m going to be writing using female pronouns in this story.  Also going to issue a warning that this story makes several references to suicide attempts.

                                                   Forgiveness

No one had seen or heard from Joseph since Ethan’s death.  Captain seemed quite convinced that after how adamantly he’d wanted her to kill him; that he’d gone away somewhere and committed suicide.  With the remaining members of New Eden scattered to the wind, the people of Prosperity seemed to accept this assumption and get on with their lives.  A few even seemed pleased by the idea.

Not Judge though.  Without Joseph around, the masked shadow seemed to be lost, and her former friends noticed.  Though they didn’t fully understand how the fierce Deputy they’d once know could have bonded with the man who had essentially been her arch enemy, that didn’t change the fact that she had and now she was suffering with him gone.

Judge had been spotted multiple times wandering through Prosperity and the surrounding area in the dead of night when everyone but those on guard were asleep.  She never seemed to have a goal in mind, just wandered aimlessly picking flowers or picking up handfuls of dirt and staring at it in her hand before tossing it back on the ground.  Though the behaviour was, odd, to say the least all of her former friends agreed to keep an eye on her and do their best to help her deal with whatever grief she was feeling.

One night, Nick found himself unable to sleep and decided to go out to the garage and tinker on a buggy that the Captain had brought back after her latest outing.  Stepping out of the main doors, he paused at hearing a soft sort of crying noise.  Figuring it was likely just an animal, he headed to the workshop but the sound kept getting louder and as he entered the workshop, he found Judge huddled in the corner near some boxes; knees drawn up to their chest and sobbing.  The sound was heartbreaking; so strangled and painful sounding.

“Hey, uh, you … you alright Ju- Dep?” Nick asked, approaching carefully and crouching down a short distance in front of them.

Judge continued so sob as she held something out to Nick that was wrapped around her hand.  It was a simple set of rosary beads and he assumed that they probably once belonged to Joseph.  Had he given them to her as a gift, or had she picked them up years ago and claimed them as her own?

“You, miss him don’t you?” Nick asked quietly as Judge retracted her hand, cradling the rosary across her heart as her body continued to shake.

Judge nodded before a fresh wave of despair seemed to overcome her and she wailed again, scrambling forward and holding onto Nick like her life depended on it.  He was slightly taken aback but after a moment, he closed his arms around her and hugged her tightly.  The only time he ever remembered hugging Dep as she cried was after the Marshal shot Virgil and himself at the prison.  Everything she’d endured at the time; everything that she’d been holding in; had just gotten too much and she’d broken down.  How much was one person supposed to endure?  He hated seeing his friend in that state back then, but somehow it was even worse now.  Nick couldn’t believe he was even considering it, but if being with Joseph was what made Judge happy … then he would just have to find him for her.

It took getting Sharky to agree to answering all of Bean’s sex related questions, no matter how embarrassing or awkward they were, before the young man agreed to temporarily divert his scouts from gathering information to looking for Joseph.  He hadn’t told Judge yet, didn’t want to get her hopes up in case they couldn’t find the old man.  Each of her former friends as well as some new ones were taking turns looking after her.  As it turned out though, Hurk and Gina were the ones that came up with what seemed to calm her most.  The first time she held baby Blade, Nick could see her whole body relax and he wondered if it was bringing back memories of Carmina as a baby.

She would sit for hours with Blade, playing with him or just laying in the flowers gazing up at the clouds.  She even made him a simple flower crown, the boy shrieking with delight and dissolving into giggles as she placed it on his head.  By the end of that day, almost everyone in the community was wearing a flower crown.  The night always came though, and every night Nick would pass by her room only to hear the soft whimpering coming from the other side of the door.

It was almost three weeks before Bean came to Nick, telling him that one of his scouts had received word from a wandering trader that he had seen Joseph in the vicinity of Dutch’s bunker not long after Ethan died.  It made sense really, and if he was holed up in there, it would explain why no-one had seen him since.

Nick felt nervous as he approached Judge to tell her the news, knowing that if she left to find Joseph, he may never see her again.  He didn’t want to loose his best friend a second time, but it wasn’t about what he wanted.  It was about what was best for her. She didn’t move or say anything as he told her; the rosary now secured around her right wrist, and they sit in silence for almost a minute before anything happens.  Slowly, she got to her feet and shuffled over to a small pack made of leather and furs that she has stuffed in the corner and rummaged in it for a moment before pulling something out and turning back to him.  There clasped in her hand were a pair of aviators.  They had a slight crack in one of the lenses, but they were almost identical to the ones he owned when they first met.

Judge walked over quietly, her head tilted as she placed the glasses on him, and Nick was almost certain she was probably smiling behind that mask as she did so.  She’d always liked giving people things, back before the bombs fell.

“Thank you,” Nick said quietly as he stood and pulled her into what felt like a final hug.  “Just know, if you do find him and I can’t believe I’m god damn sayin’ this … but if you do and want some place nicer to live than a hole in the ground, you can come back here with him.  You’ll always have a home here.”

It didn’t take all that long for Judge to reach Dutch’s island.  She’d managed to avoid any remnants of the Highwaymen entirely and was now walking up the familiar muddy path to where she hoped she would find Joseph.  She more than anyone knew what grief and guilt could do to a person, and what it could make them do to themselves.  

She subconsciously rubbed at her neck as she walked, remembering the feeling of the rope tightening around her neck all of those years ago in the bunker.  That had been the final straw in rendering her unable to speak, her vocal cords and larynx already damaged by then from constant and prolonged bouts of screaming and attempting to drink anything in the bunker that was even slightly toxic.  Judge could remember Joseph rushing in and cutting her down, then holding her and singing softly as he cradled her against him.  He’d told her several times that he had forgiven her, but it was in that moment when she saw the fear in his eyes at the thought of loosing her that she truly believed him.

Eventually she reached the bunker, finding the door firmly closes.  She tried pulling it open a few times with no success, even tried knocking hoping in vain that Joseph would answer.  However, she had been prepared for such and since she couldn’t call out to him, she would have to let him know that it was her on the other side of the door in another way.

Reaching into her pack, she pulled out a small cassette player and set it on the ground before pressing play.  The lyrics to Amazing Grace started drifting through the air as loudly as she could make them before she sat down on the damp earth and waited.  As cliche as it was, this was their song and if it didn’t work, she didn’t know-

Judge’s train of thought was interrupted at the sound of creaking metal and she scrambled to her feet as the bunker door began to open.  Moments later, the older man stepped out into the sun, surprise and confusion all over his face as he stopped and stared at her.

“I … of all the people I expected to come looking for me, I never thought it would be you,” Joseph said after a moment before taking a shaky step forward and placing his hands on the side of her face as he had done so many times before and touched their foreheads together.  ““I was wrong, and in my arrogance I hurt you; blamed you and drove you to-”

Judge drew back suddenly, shaking her head at him before pulling a small slip of paper from under the rosary and handing it to him.  Confused, Joseph unfolded the piece of paper and read it.

You forgave me, now I forgive you.  You saved me, now I save you.  Prosperity is hope, and it is home.  Let’s go home.

“Home, I rather like the sound of that,” Joseph said with a slight smile.  “However, if this is to be our fresh start, I think we should seize it as our true selves, don’t you?”

Judge shrunk back slightly, shaking as Joseph raised his hands and gently removed her mask before dropping it on the ground.  She was beginning to panic before she felt him take her right hand and all the nerves seemed to dissolve as the warmth of his skin that seeped through her glove seemed to calm and centre her.  His thumb brushed gently over the rosary beads as he looked at her and smiled, remembering giving them to her on this very spot when they emerged from the bunker 11 years prior.

“Your forgiveness will be my light when my thoughts grow dark,” he says to her as they turn away from the bunker and start walking down the trail.  “Let’s go home … Deputy.”

Wow, did that turn out WAY longer than I thought it would.  Apologies for any tense/ spelling mistakes.  I was very sleepy when I wrote this but I pushed through because I wanted to share it with all of you.  Let me know what you think.  As always, tagging @nick-rye-the-pilot-guy and @theeonlyroman so they can enjoy the feels.

Thank you everyone for lifting us up to new heights. We are getting writers together and making plans for 2020. We do want to shed some light on burn out, which is something our visual artist is facing at the moment! Remember to take care of yourselves. For that reason it will be quiet from us till January when we come back with renewed strength! 💖💖💖🌈#thankyou : : #rise #studiokillers404 #cherry #jenny #dynamink #goldiefoxx #edm #music #animation #mentalhealthawareness #burnout #love https://www.instagram.com/p/B6TpEDqHint/?igshid=wo77yb0iy30t

Imagine it's 7am, you haven't slept yet, and you have a fever. What happens then? This. This happens.

Process of drawing - https://t.co/Q3QM0pw3Iy

+40 Pixel Art Tutorials

A growing collection of animated Pixel Art Tutorials by Pedro Medeiros (@saint11) of Studio Miniboss (they previously worked on TowerFall and are currently working on Celeste and Skytorn)

All +40 Pixel Art Tutorials can be found on blog.studiominiboss.com/pixelart (10 Pixel Art Tutorials are posted below)