With All The Recent News RE: Rooster Teeth, I'm Gonna Share Some Standard Operating Procedure Documents

Things I’ve noticed are essential in plotting and would probably have saved me a lot of time if I had considered it earlier

The START of your story - how fucked up flawed is your premise/character at the start? what do they have to change? why are they HERE?

The END of your story - How do you want your main character/theme/universe to change after your story? Does it get better or worse? THIS SETS UP THE TONE DRASTICALLY.

What you want to happen IN BETWEEN - the MEAT of it. What made you start writing this WIP in the first place. Don't be ashamed to indulge, it's where the BRAIN JUICE comes from. You want a deep dive into worldbuilding and complex systems? Then your start and end should be rooted in some fundamental, unique rule of your universe (what made you obsess over it?). Want to write unabashed ship content? Make sure your start and end are so compelling you'll never run out of smut scenarios to shove in between scenes (what relationship dynamics made you ship it in the first place?).

The ANTE - the GRAVITY of your story. How high are the stakes? Writing a blurb or interaction? start with a small day-in-the-life so you can focus on shorter timelines and hourly minutiae that can easily get overlooked in more complicated epics. Or you can go ham on it and plot out your whole universe's timeline from conception to demise. Remember: the larger the scale, the less attached your story may get. How quickly time flies in your story typically correlates with the ante (not a hard rule, ofc, but most epics span years of time within a few pages, while a romance novel usually charts out the events of a few months over a whole manuscript.)

Everything else follows….?

HOOO BOY IM OVERWHELMED

In a good way! Thank you all for watching and for all the kind words and support. I was very much crying in my room this morning and feeling the love.

I especially wanna thank all of you here on tumblr! All your asks and questions and investment got ME more invested in my own characters. Like in a way I’ve never felt about my own characters.

But yeah there’s too many messages for me to get to so im probably gonna take a little break today but gaaaah I hope you enjoyed!! I’ll try to sporadically reply to stuff but my phone’s blowing up everywhere hahahaha

Also HAPPY BLACK HISTORY MONTH!! Our stories deserve to be heard and we should be able to exist in ANY genre. I hope this pilot shows that people wanna see Black magical girls and I hope to see more of it, even if im not the one to do it~

Houseki no Kuni, Chapter 107

Advice to aspiring 2D animators/storyboard artists/concept artists etc.:

Don't go to expensive art school

Don't work for low pay indie productions in hope of boosting your resume

Don't do cheap commissions

Don't post traced or AI art ever

Don't make animation your career

Stop telling yourself artistic skill = money

If you are in high school right now, do not go to college for animation. I'm so so serious. The animation industry is crumbling right now, and the last thing you should be doing is racking up college debt for a degree that will fail you.

Here are some things that you can do:

Use your creative skills for jobs outside of the entertainment industry

Work on personal projects

Do not feel like you have to spend your time marketing yourself on social media if you don't enjoy it

Collaborate with other artists on projects you actually want to work on

Widen your creative influences

Try new mediums

Keep private sketchbooks/journals

Allow yourself to flow through periods of creative highs and art block

Even if you 'make it' in the animation industry. It is highly likely you will get laid off, be overworked, or underpaid. Most likely all three.

I've been laid off by two studios, underpaid by all of my animation jobs with exception of two, and I'll name them so no one thinks I am accusing them. One was a small short film called Emaho where I got to set my own rates and pick my workload. And the other is Wild Card, which was commission based and priced by me. I have had three animation studio jobs, and all of them have either not paid me or paid me very little.

The last studio job made me finally quit the industry. It was the largest most prestigious studio I had ever worked for. And, with exception of the studio that paid me nothing as I was an intern, this studio paid me the worst wages of any job I've had. I had calculated my pay, and it was less than minimum wage in my state. The studio had hired me promising part time hours, but would often leave me without work for days. The managers were hard to reach. I had little to no contact with the other animators working at the studio. But it was my first and only credit in an animated show, so that's something.

This expierience has been echoed by my animator friends and coworkers. It is not a sustainable industry. It profits off of worker exploitation. Don't feed it with your time, money, and creativity.

I drew my persona as a Pretty doll, very proud of this piece. I like to imagine that Lou wouldn't like how wild my hair is, and forced me to tied it back as he finds it a bit distracting. This will also be used as my new profile picture.

I have something in the works. I should be done with it soon, so here's a sneak peak.

You know what, if we don’t ever get any more content of Camp Camp I won’t be shocked because we already know the outcome of RT’s decision to make Camp Camp S5 an RT-exclusive; people are gonna pirate the show to HELL LMAO.

We waited for 5 years (excluding the special from July 2023) to get an official season and the fact that they decide to announce that it won’t be free ever on the VERY day the new season is supposed to drop is a very poor choice.

The RoosterTeeth site will be deleted May 15th 😔 do yourselves a favor and start archiving EVERYTHING you can now. RageQuit, RvB, X-Ray & Vav, the Minecraft Let's Plays, RWBY, etc. RT is warning us as nicely as they can that there's a p good chance we won't be able to access ANYTHING by next year, including the YouTube channel. Download!

HNK 94 SPOILERS

i will just. word vomit all my emotions and feelings first… like the way adamant finally shattered at the command of phos… and hearing adamant say his final words to phos kinda snapped my heart in half ^_T at this point, phos has lost everything, including their comrades, their true self and identity, and now, their only master who had loved them unconditionally. I’M… i’m going insane…. it’s pretty nuts to know how much phos is burdening in every update… ichikawa is over here like, “but wait, there’s more..! ;-)” (and not the way she lost her ps5 raffles rip sensei… someone help her)

all sadness and despair aside, i found this chapter to be incredibly compelling not just with ichikawa’s captivating visuals but with another interesting development with phos. aechmea has been an interesting “antagonist” since the beginning, and i appreciate his role in driving phos forward, for better or for worse. their dynamic is insanely interesting!! it’s very likely that aechmea appeared to manipulate phos into putting adamant’s eye on. i think… he might have been there to distract phos in order to take all of their broken companions, perhaps to provoke phos and force them to pray. i’m only guessing, as they’re now left entirely on their own (literally can’t go anywhere either; they have no means of lunar transportation? and i am like, so sure aechmea ain’t coming back lol)– and it just feels like the only thing they can do now is…. pray. that would ultimately be what aechmea wants, so maybe?? i also found it really peculiar that phos hallucinated the six impacts, and it makes me wonder if adamant had suffered through these visions during his time on earth ;; i’m not sure why phos is seeing them now, but i’m curious about its symbolism to the story and what this could mean for phos here on out.

i was relieved to see phos’ anguish for their broken friends dissipate, but upset that they can’t make amends since aechmea took them all away LOL…. like ok great, cool ^_^!! i almost cried when phos desperately tried to search for adamant, shinsha, and the others so they could put them back together, but they were all missing…. also, to address the ask above, i wanted to give my perspective on the earth gems! everything ichikawa writes is never black and white, meaning there are many perspectives that deviate from a single story. phos has valid feelings of emotional turmoil, but it doesn’t mean their actions were moral. to the earth gems, phos appeared to be corrupt and became a potential danger to their society and adamant. all gems struggle with communicating their feelings and can’t comprehend what they need in order to tend to their emotional grievances. their natural “solution” is to bury issues; they went through centuries doing that in the time of war, and they would continue to do so because it’s what they know. everyone has their own agenda of “right” and “wrong”, so being angry at the earth gems for their reaction towards phos felt a bit bias. anyway, i hope we get to see the earth gems come back before the series ends!! they’re technically ok….though, i wonder what they’ll decide to do with them…if anyone has more 94 thoughts to share, i’d love to know!! thank you for reading my thoughts and cries!

PS to the anonymous: thank you so much for appreciating hnk and my art for it! i don’t have many friends to talk about it either, so i appreciate expressing it with you guys ;_; i love discussions…

Writing tips for long fics that helped me that no one asked for.

1.) Don't actually delete content from your WIP unless it is minor editing - instead cut it and put it in a secondary document. If you're omitting paragraphs of content, dialog, a whole scene you might find a better place for it later and having it readily available can really save time. Sometimes your idea was fantastic, but it just wasn't in the right spot.

2.) Stuck with wording the action? Just write the dialog then revisit it later.

3.) Stuck on the whole scene? Skip it and write the next one.

4.) Write on literally any other color than a white background. It just works. (I use black)

5.) If you have a beta, while they are beta-ing have them read your fic out loud. Yes, I know a lot of betas/writers do not have the luxury of face-timing or have the opportunity to do this due to time constraints etc but reading your fic out loud can catch some very awkward phrasing that otherwise might be missed. If you don't have a beta, you read it out loud to yourself. Throw some passion into your dialog, you might find a better way to word it if it sounds stuffy or weird.

6.) The moment you have an idea, write it down. If you don't have paper or a pen, EMAIL it to yourself or put it in a draft etc etc. I have sent myself dozens of ideas while laying down before sleep that I 10/10 forgot the next morning but had emailed them to myself and got to implement them.

7.) Remember - hits/likes/kudos/comments are not reflective of the quality of your fic or your ability to write. Most people just don't comment - even if they say they do, they don't, even if they preach all day about commenting, they don't, even if they are a very popular blog that passionately reminds people to comment - they don't comment (I know this personally). Even if your fic brought tears to their eyes and it haunted them for weeks and they printed it out and sent it to their friends they just don't comment. You just have to accept it. That being said - comment on the fic you're reading now, just do it, if you're 'shy' and that's why you don't comment the more you comment the better you'll get at it. Just do it.

8.) Remove unrealistic daily word count goals from your routine. I've seen people stress 1500 - 2000 words a day and if they don't reach that they feel like a failure and they get discouraged. This is ridiculous. Write when you can, but remove absurd goals. My average is 500 words a day in combination with a 40 hour a week job and I have written over 200k words from 2022-2023.

9.) There are dozens of ways to do an outline from precise analytical deconstruction that goes scene by scene to the minimalist bullet point list - it doesn't matter which one you use just have some sort of direction. A partial outline is better than no outline.

10.) Write for yourself, not for others. Write the fic you know no one is going to read. Write the fic that sounds ridiculous. You will be so happy you put it out in the world and there will be people who will be glad it exists.