General chat thread

Uh... last time I checked, sharks had skeletons.

 

They do, but it's made entirely of cartilage.

 

Well, the more you know. I genuinely didn't know that.

 

Hey, I'm fishing for advice.


I'm commissioning a piece of art, of Wuya from Shaolin Showdown. Current sketch is this:

Spoiler

http://i.imgur.com/lDaYhWI.png

Basically, I asked them to make a sexier more animesque version of the cartoon character (https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D686sSbU0AAnbPB.jpg:large ).

Just fishing for advice. At the moment, the only real flaws to me seems to be that the non-thumb fingers feel too short in comparison to her hands.

And her feet. I'm wondering if maybe I should ask the feet be changed from barefoot (which is admittedly like canon Wuya), or have her wear some chinese heels instead to make them look better. Either that, or what to ask them to adjust the feet to make them look better, as I can't pin down exactly what's bothering me about the feet and making me prefer to have them be covered instead.

 

Whats wrong with the feet? Barefoot seems nice.

 

Well, that little toe is drawn strange, the forth one too. The third and the forth toe seem like they are bent, while the others aren't.

 

Yeah, the toes aren't symmetrical in their position/how they shrink in size.

Looking for a second opinion, does the foot itself's size look weird? Like, does it look a bit too large, or is that just me?

 

The little toe looks like a little finger attached to her foot, only a lot smaller.

The right foot (the one that can be fully seen) looks a little too long. The foot could be made a little shorter.

 

Yeah, I'll need to get a reference of a better-drawn foot in a roughly similar position for this.

So it wasn't just me.

EDIT: CHecking length, if I make a red box the size of the foot length, both feet are the same size. So both are long, it's just only the front foot has enough shown to give the impression of being too long.

 

The back foot should be smaller, just because of perspective.

And, yes, the hands are off as well.

.... This is pretty damn commonplace, hands and feet are a royal pain in the ass for artists.

 

I'm not a real artist, but I can attest to that. They're very, very delicate instruments and have a wide range of "shade".

 

Right, I guess the back foot should also be adjusted.

I would prefer she be kept barefoot since that's how Wuya is supposed to roll, so I guess I'll just ask for changes and hope the result is good at the end.

They've been pretty cool for multiple commissions now anyways, I should trust them.

 

What's the name? I like the art.

 

Well, I've sent the email. Basically asking for the non-thumb fingers to be drawn longer (it really stands out when I check her other art. As the hands there clearly have longer fingers), those definitely are a thing to be done.
The feet were harder to explain, but I think I got it (basically asking to make the toes look better, and shorten/define more the feet). Added at the end that if it's a pain in the ass to edit, they can just go with some fancy chinese heels, it'll work just as well.

Had to remember to reassure them it's all minor stuff, since overall it is legitimately a great draft already (I literally had no complaints about the outfit, the face, the hair, the body, etc.), and these are just tiny fiddly bits.

I hope I passed on the message well enough. I always feel nervous asking for edits like this.

---

In other news, I have discovered the internet has some pretty good image enlarger.

https://bigjpg.com/

For free, it's 20 images per month. For 12 dollars for six months, it's 1000 pictures per month. Potentially a steal if you end up wanting highdef versions of various images you see on the internet that are paywalled at lowres and you realy do spam using it a lot (or there's some lowres art of old you want to be boosted up). I'm quite enjoying it, truth be told, mostly in the sense that I can look at reasonably good quality upsize versions of various pictures that I was annoyed were too small.

There's a limit to them of course, if the original picture has only a few pixels for say, a pair of earrings, it's going to end up mostly a minor haze of coloring around their neck or cheek for example, like a bit of mist.

But overall, it ends up surprisingly good for a lot of things. Technology really has progressed far.

 

What do you do when someone likes something you don’t?

 

Ignore it or discuss why. If someone makes liking something a personality trait there can be issues, but otherwise it can be a point of conversation or a topic best avoided.

If someone likes zucchini, which I hate, I kinda just ignore it. If it’s a movie or show I’ll try to ask why, but sometimes it’s better to just leave it be.

 

Oh, you meant cucumber 2.0.

 

Defective pickle, you mean.

 

Does anyone know what the hell the proper Onomatopoeia for a Westminster Chime is? I am trying to write a new chapter, and the lack of ability to proper phrase it is driving me nutty. I might just end up linking a sound clip at this rate, but I don't want to admit defeat just yet.

Edit: To give more context, that is the alarm which is used in most if not all Japanese schools.

 

In Japanese, or Overall?

In Japanese (at least according to some guy on Quora), I think it's called "Chaimu", since it was loaned from English, while "Shurei" refers to the chime of a class ending.
Then, in the same context, there are "Yorei", which means a class starts, and "Honrei", which means a class will start soon.

For Overall, you can simply use "School Bell", or something, if you don't want to toss highly-specific terms around that probably wouldn't be used in actual dialogue (at least when it's written in English).

 

He's asking for an onomatopoeia, not a name.

 

Sorry, brain is a bit mush. Feeling a bit sick lately.

In that case, you could simply go with "ring", "gong", or "chime". There isn't really a specific term for the sound of a Japanese school bell, as far as I know.

 

*Ding-Dong* to simplify it and leave the reader's imagination, or perhaps focus on the last four notes and go *Dong! Dong! Dong! Dong!* and then add whatever description is appropriate. Linking is pretty easy though.

*Dong! Dong! Dong! Dong!* The school bell continued to reverberate as the students and teachers began to filter back to their classrooms.

 

Yo, has anyone read Domination of The Draka? I want to ask some small stuff on it.

 

Microsoft Word is truly an interesting piece of software. This is now the fourth time it has told me that a regular statement in dialogue should have a question mark, and the second time it has told me that a question should have a period. Truly arcane in its wonderous machine intelligence.

 

Really enjoying the Slayers light novels. Better characterization than the anime, and I think the fights are a bit better. Not sure if I'd recommend it in place of the anime, but definitely to supplement it.

Edit: Oh, and it has an original plot after the Hellmaster Phibrizo plotline. Pretty good, so far. I feel like it follows the theme of the previous arcs better.

 

I now understand what others meant when they talked about how a chapter just got away from them, and ended up way bigger than originally planned. My 2k word update has now grown to almost 4k, and I might still have another thousand words before I get to my planned chapter end.

 

On a whim, after over 5 years of relying on EN subs, I decided to check out one of the local (well, technically Czech) streaming sites for anime. I did not expect THIS, of all things, to get Slovak subtitles (even if unofficial). And it has no other subs on that site.
As a Slovak, I am used to having to make do with Czech translations, so this fills me with strange delight.

Spoiler

 

Is it a normal experience to feel like one needs to thoroughly read/re-read and note-take both the Bible and The Lesser Key of Solomon when writing a DxD fic? Because that is kind of the feeling I am getting as I plan out future events and try to think of ways to properly characterize people and world build.

I could also do with a re-watch of the anime, and to actually get around to reading more than the first light novel, despite how dry most translations of it I have tried made the story.

Not sure how much of that is just me stressing out and trying to come up with reasons to procrastinate writing and planning.

Also already slightly hating myself for including actual numbers in my system, as it means I have to actually learn how to spreadsheet properly. It is nice in some ways though.

 

I wiki-walked at 4 AM...
>99942 Apophis
>The Armin Meiwes Cannibalism Incident.
>"boy in the box" (Philadelphia)
>Crescent Hotel (Eureka Springs, Arkansas)
>Disney utilidor system
>Donner Party
>From Hell letter
>Genie (feral child)
>Hotel toilet paper folding
>Human trophy collecting
>Murder of Artemus Ogletree
>Murder of Junko Furuta
>Nose tomb
>Rhythm 0
>Sirenomelia
>Spontaneous human combustion
>Tiger versus lion
>Timeline of the far future
>Travis (chimpanzee)
>Tsujigiri
>Kuman Thong
>Axis of evil (cosmology)
>South Atlantic Anomaly
...

never doing that again.​