honestly? mostly a lot of assorted vocaloid songs... making music's been frustrating for me lately, but it at least has rekindled my love of trawling youtube for this stuff.

i'll link some below! not all of these are strictly vocaloid, but i use it here as an umbrella term.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HPJ7eUvU4o maiki p does it again with this one!!! miku sounds so interesting and cute here... her design is really sexy in the MV, and kind of reminds me of dmitri. i managed to find a translation of the song, too, and the lyrics are brutal! maiki p actually did a version of this with their real voice, but i prefer miku's vocals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F38EuG2dAyM this one's so cute and strange and funny. i've really loved watching the aesthetics of the genre evolve over the years. i love the interjections of various samples, and how everything is mixed... so thwump-y! i have no idea what the lyrics mean--google translate and deepL were both largely unhelpful--but i could listen to this all day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chSjybsg9UY this one is zundamon, so technically not vocaloid. but i found the MV's visuals irresistible, everything looks like it'd taste like sherbet. and the song itself is so aggressively adorable... it's like it's bludgeoning me over the head with how cute it is... T__T

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Or5lCqWyYE8 another zundamon. this one is just... insane, in every sense of the word. i love how her outfit is constantly falling off her shoulders, for normal reasons, but the visual/audio gags are also incredibly fun. i can't get this chorus out of my head, it's addictive! and the bit halfway through, where her voice distorts is... well. i think it's sexy. LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2y6t8q3GCLs finally... another not-vocaloid song. i'm really digging this artist's works! but i especially adore this MV, it's highly inspired. the comparative accessibility of synthesized vocals can result in some absolutely stunning and inventive work, and this is no exception.

i'm always grateful for opportunities to talk about the things i like. thanks! ^^

hmm... i'll preface by saying i feel like we come from very different environments and circumstances.

i've been drawing and posting whatever i want for at least 10 years. even back when tumblr allowed porn, their tos still didn't care for lolishota. in 2015, when i was drawing a lot of skeleton porn with frisk, i would just clickwall it.

i've tried a variety of tactics over the years, and clickwalling is probably the safest route on twitter to avoid getting banned. don't get too cheeky with the thumbnails, either--a censored fullbody lolicon pic could easily still get you in trouble. make sure the place you're clickwalling to actually permits what you're posting, though--to my knowledge your best bets would be baraag or aethy, both on mastodon. i'm not aware of any other places that wouldn't require some form of censoring or other hassle.

i don't feel like i have to conceal anything. i'm just working with the tools i've been given. i turn off notifications for non-mutuals. i disable replies entirely if i draw something for a contemporary fandom that's still "hot". i mute and block gratuitously.

you can't control people. you can't control who's going to want to follow you, or interact with your work, or see it in the first place. it doesn't matter how many caveats and disclaimers you put in plain sight. many people will never read them, or deliberately ignore them.

but that's the case even if you're posting ""normal"" stuff, so the fact that you only have hangups about ""problematic"" works tells me you still have some shit to work through.

desperately clutching your hand in mine you get it. you Understand.

i'm always grateful when people enjoy any of my works, but elysium was my first foray into original storytelling. i didn't have much confidence when writing it, and i still had a lot of baggage around writing original works at all. it's a much simpler and highly straightforward story--which is why i've never been compelled to revisit or expand upon it. it's self-contained, and i also feel like my later works are much more in line with the kinds of stories i want to tell in the first place.

i'm drawn to emotional complexity, to haunting ambiguity. making goofy little porn comics is fun, too, but i don't feel like it's what my heart always really yearns for.

thank you for writing in... to be completely honest, i'm fairly sensitive to how i'm perceived. it's why i've been dialing back existing very much on my main accounts--i never anticipated cultivating an audience of even this size. i've always sought to aggressively cater exclusively to myself. the fact that i've somehow impacted so many people in the process is touching, but occasionally stressful for me.

there have definitely been times where i've felt like things would simply be easier if i was "just" the loli guy, or the robots guy, or the rule 34 guy, or... the list goes on and on. at the end of the day, i'm a multifacted person with a variety of interests and preferences. i can't change that. and i can't change what people do or don't appreciate about my work--but i CAN make sure i'm still chasing my own bliss.

in doing so, maybe someday i'll touch someone else's heart enough to receive another message like this.

our society of consumption makes it very easy to feel entitled--whether people demand particular works from a creator for free, or think an indie game should never cost above ten dollars, or use whatever justification under the sun to insist that an artist's commission prices should be cheaper...
artists will, generally, charge what they personally feel is fair, or at least what they think they can get away with. in a kinder world, nobody would be forced to tie a monetary value to self-expression. art is highly personal. self-worth and self-judgment often become tangled up in it, particularly when money gets involved. people work at different speeds, at different levels of experience and confidence. all the client sees is the art, and the price tag. they don't see any of the internal context leading up to any of it.
our society also encourages us to punch down, to blame each other for systemic issues. newer artists are especially prone to "underpricing," since they lack confidence and experience. it's also more difficult for them to attract an audience. i don't see any reason to shame them over it. it's none of my business.
i try not to begrudge anyone for charging more or less than what i, an uninvolved bystander, feel i would personally pay. if i am commissioning someone and i feel they are not charging enough, i tip them appropriately, within my means.
this has better results than arbitrarily guilt tripping a stranger over a topic as volatile as pricing, in my experience.

hello! i use fl studio 21. it's not cheap, but there is a trial version that you can at least play around with for a while, despite the restrictions. also, if you're savvy, you can just pirate it. notably, lisa: the painful's ost exclusively utilized the trial version of fl studio and various samples...
whatever DAW you end up trying, i'd recommend first and foremost figuring out the most important keyboard shortcuts for what you want to do. fighting an unintuitive UI every step of the way while trying to learn is a very easy way to get discouraged, in my experience. in fl studio, for instance, f6+f7+f9 each focus some very useful windows.
VSTs (things that make noises) and plugins (things that alter noises) will also impact your experience. i recommend starting small, since downloading 200 things all at once can be kind of overwhelming to sort through as a beginner! vital is a free VST that's very robust, and there's plenty of youtube tutorials on how to make particular sounds in it. i also get a lot of mileage from the free ("discover") version of spitfire's bbc orchestra. and if you're after some fun distortion, i use ohmicide a lot. it's free on the official site.
for vocals, i either use the free version of synthesizer V, or i record my own voice in audacity.
at least for me, making music involves a lot of experimentation and play, and a lot of the initial inspirations for my songs stem from a single cool noise or effect i managed to come up with.
i also use a lot of samples in my work, and i (mostly) source them from royalty-free sites, such as freesound.org. but if you're not setting out to monetize your work, you have wayyyyy more options. get creative! music is as limitless as any other kind of art. and it doesn't have to be perfect--all that matters is that you had fun making it, imo (:

well, i think the only actually important thing to remember is to have fun. if you lose sight of this tenet, your character design will not necessarily suck, but it will definitely have less of your soul and ass in it. and what's the point of making any kind of art if you don't share a little piece of yourself along the way? art is communication, baby! do your best to work up the nerve to add your unique voice to the choir of creation, no matter how offkey or shaky. chances are, there's people out there it'll resonate with--if not now, then someday soon.

i can definitely talk a bit about how i personally approach my own designs, though, which is somewhat to the left of this prompt.

i think silhouette is pretty important to consider. it doesn't have to be the #1 focus, but if you have a muddled overall shape, your character might be harder to pick out from afar. granted, this isn't always bad, but as someone who strives to make designs with a strong sense of identity, it's not quite what i want.

as a result, i try to be fairly intentional about shape distribution. i consider a character design as an artistic composition of its own. if any sort of complexity is added, i want there to be simpler regions where the eye can "rest" between details. i also want to consider range of motion--something that might read clearly from the front may become incomprehensible from another angle, or when partially obscured.

i suppose i have a pretty form-based approach, when i think about it that way. i want to carve away at a shape and simplify it to its barest essentials, but maintain what i like about it in the process, and consider how it fits in with the rest of the design. there are many cases where i end up scrapping a component i love on its own, which simply didn't play nice with everything else.

for example, i love plumed helmets a lot. so, when i was designing zepar, i originally set out to give him a plume. however, it ended up looking a bit too regal and noble for what i valued more about his character concept, so it was scrapped. weighing things you like vs. what you want to actually accomplish is crucial--the specifics can change when you're in the middle of designing! listen to what your heart wants. it might be onto something.

in most cases, i also try to keep the color count fairly low, and distribute/re-use colors appealingly throughout the entire design. it doesn't have to be completely equal or totally balanced whatsoever, it just has to feel cohesive and intentional. this is entirely vibes-based, so i can't be very helpful about it... sorry! ^^;;

beyond that... it really just boils down to me thinking about what i would find fun and/or sexy. sometimes i come up with the initial concept for a brand new character by simply being like "oh shit, i don't have a character with this specific boner-inducing thing going on yet". i'm not immune to re-using design elements--lord knows i have a billion guys with giant tits and broad shoulders--but i do try not to make overly repetitive designs. it's a bit of an ongoing process, i suppose.

i really love talking about character design! thanks for giving me an excuse to ramble about it.

(this question was ported over from curiouscat)

i already like my characters the way they are, because they were designed to my specific preferences, aesthetically and fetishistically. i view character designs, in general, as expressions of the designer's aesthetics, carved from specific concepts/themes--they may not always be polished to a mirror sheen, and they especially won't always be to MY tastes, but i can only assume they are somehow beloved by their creator(s), because the alternative saddens me.

i understand character redesigns are a simple and fun design exercise for many, but as someone who is extraordinarily fussy about designwork and media, i'm not especially interested in seeing redesigns of my own characters. not from strangers, and not even from friends. i make what i want to see, above all else, so seeing someone skew what i want to see to their own preferences, instead, is likely to make me feel... not great. it's not like i'm going to stop anyone from making redesigns, though, because people can draw whatever they want. i would just prefer not to see it.

i've admittedly had the inclination to tweak designs of other characters, but i've only ever followed through with it for "canon" characters, where it's much less likely for my depiction to reach the original designer(s). i also don't really enjoy the concept of publicly touting a redesign of someone else's work as "superior". it can be fun to view different interpretations, and i might even prefer them to the original--but that's someone else's art that they made, and art is highly subjective. i don't believe in art being "objectively" good or bad. i don't believe in a particular person's preferences or fetishes being "better", including my own. someone who rigorously studied anatomy for decades doesn't always make more interesting art than an eight year old with some colored pencils. the former may be more "accurate", which is often a trait i seek out, but that isn't necessarily "better".

i think if you're redesigning your own characters, though, the only wrong conclusion to arrive at is one that doesn't satisfy you, personally. i definitely have some characters that feel like they need endless revisions...