Every time I see a ‘modern au’ ft a character that has some sort of limb replacement like a metal arm or w/e and the ‘cool au version’ of it is a sleeve tattoo I literally want to reach through the screen and slap some sense into whoever posted it
They got a prosthetic in canon they gonna get a prosthetic in the au!!!! Because, I know this is a little far-fetched, but people who need prosthetics actually exist!!! In real life?! What a coincidence?!
Also you want cool prosthetics??? They totally exist
Want your character to have a cool prosthetic in the modern day?
steampunk? check
#aesthetic? Floral?
avant garde?
cyberpunk?
there are no excuses for erasing canonical disabilities
So recently I came across a fellow artist who was struggling to find a free art program, and considering dropping the large amount of money for a Photoshop license. I know not everyone can afford such an expensive program, so I’ve compiled a list of programs with no cost to download and use.
Keep in mind all computers are different, so not all will work for everyone. Also, I’ve only ever used Windows, so for the most part, I’m not sure if everything will work for Mac. if in doubt check the website linked.
If you know more free programs, please add onto this!
OpenToonz has made many improvements since it’s initial release! (Windows & Mac)
Medibang Paint is a comic drawing software forked from FireAlpaca mentioned earlier in this post, and is available for mobile devices as well! (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android)
Sharing is Caring 🙂
Autodesk sketchbook is free too ^^
Tho you have to buy the full version, but the free one is good for quick sketches
It’s easy to get caught up in the heat of writing (especially in first person) and just add words in, not realizing you’re actually breaking the fourth wall. While breaking the fourth wall is hilarious in satire and romance novels it doesn’t fit too well in dystopia. Why?
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Because your characters are in the middle of an oppressive situation. Maybe they’re sick and can’t afford medicine. Maybe they are being sold into a form of futuristic slavery. Perhaps they’ve been imprisoned for something that shouldn’t be a crime and the list can go on forever. Dystopia is centered around oppression. Catch my drift? All these situations are serious situations in which people, or a particular class/race/gender/ect. are being oppressed or tormented or killed.
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Dystopia is serious, and therefore you should NEVER break the fourth wall unless you’re writing your dystopic novel as a satire. Otherwise, keep the story well contained within the four walls of story-telling.
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Here are some words that should never be used in a serious dystopia story and reasons why:
• dystopia – obviously. But believe it or not I’ve seen it used. Why shouldn’t you use this word? Because using the genre in which your novel is set makes the readers feel stupid. They know this is a dystopia novel. They found it under that genre or tag to begin with. Don’t take their intelligence for granted – never belittle your readers because they are your bread and butter. Same goes for fantasy, science fiction… practically any genre.
• apocalypse – even if you’re writing a zombie story, never allow your characters to refer to their situation as ‘the zombie apocalypse’. This makes your writing seem cheap and poorly thought out. Likewise, don’t ever use the terms ‘nuclear apocalypse’, ‘alien apocalypse’, or anything like that. Just don’t. It doesn’t make you sound like a trustworthy author.
• iron-fisted – again, another obvious one, but I’m adding it because I’ve seen it used. Using terms like iron-fisted to describe the government and/or authority in your novel makes it seem like your characters are fully aware of their oppression, which is completely unlikely. Even for people in a position of slavery, or a position of royalty. Remember, deep POV isn’t always the best, though it is my favorite style of POV. If you’re writing in third person that it’s totally okay to be omniscient and divulge more to your readers than the characters know. But if you’re writing in first person, and in present tense, deep POV is absolutely necessary. You can’t just divulge everything to the readers. Only what your character knows or thinks they might know. You can have them state that their situation is unfair, but even that can be on the fence unless your character has a specific reason to feel this way.
• oppression – same thing as iron-fisted
• rebellion – firstly, this has been waayyy overused. It’s kind of sad, actually. Not to mention that it again seems a little unrealistic. Why? Because you’re dealing with a future society and the authority in your novel could have totally omitted words from the dictionary in order to keep people in line. We even see this sort of behavior today. Definitions are not what they were 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago, and it seems to me like they keep changing them in an effort to help systematically dumb us down, am I right? Half of dystopia is researching current world issues that have the potential to become something much worse. ( like the ever-pressing issue of a third world war being completely technological) Do your research and come up with an original, but believable, foundation for your world.
I could add more words to this but I’ll stop there, since those are the big ones. However, I do have a few more tips to add.
1. Come up with your own unique idea. Don’t just copy everybody else’s. How many novels, whether actually published, or posted online have you seen that almost directly resemble the Hunger Games? The whole fight to the death scenario is getting old. Break the clichè!
2. Make sure you don’t repeat your character’s situation too much. I struggle with this sometimes because it’s easy to go back and mention that they’re poor and you don’t realize that you’ve expressed their situation for the umpteenth time! If you’ve explained your protagonists situation to the readers once, and it should usually be within the first five chapters, you don’t have to keep telling them why your character is oppressed. They’ll get bored really quickly and leave your novel on the bookstore shelf.
3. Do your research. I’ve read countless stories on Wattpad that sounded cool but the world building and the plot are weak and unbelievable. You have to ground everything in your novel in research. You can’t just throw your characters into a future society that has absolutely no ties back to current world history. If you struggle with world building, then ask for help. Or use first person, present tense with deep POV. Your character doesn’t have to understand the world and you can get away with giving your readers just enough for them to carve out a general idea of your world’s social constructs, laws, and protocols.
Measuring system anime uses? Do you mean the metric system? Like, centimeters and kilograms?
Figuring out heights and weights is actually pretty easy for me. *shrug* The average height of white males is 5′10 And the average height of white females is 5′5.
Around 4′8 and under is where someone can be considered a little person I believe(for a fully grown adult), and around 6′7+ is where you can start seeing problems as well(not saying everyone that tall has joint/bone problems, but its more common).
So I just kinda think of that when making characters. Obviously, if you’re making characters of a different race, you’d have to look up the average heights for that race.
As for weight, I usually just google “average weight for *insert height here* male”, or whatever. And then I decide if I want them heavier, or lighter than the average. Muscles are heavy, so contrary to what alot of people seem to think, a heavily muscled character isn’t gonna be light, just cause they’re in shape.
If coming up with a non-human character, think about the weight of appendages. Do they have extra arms? An average arm weighs around 6-8lbs. Maybe a tail? How thick is the tail? Is it mostly muscle, or is it something like fur with a skinny base? How about horns? Those can add some weight as well depending on their size. A bighorn sheep’s horns can weigh up to 30lbs. AND WHAT IF THEY HAVE WINGS!? If they have wings and need to fly, their wings are either gonna have to be enormous, or the individual with the wings is gonna have to have hollow, light bones, like a bird. How much do a bird’s bones weight per square inch?
(i’m probably going way too deep into this, and fantasy nonsense can be applied to most of this lol)
BUT ANYWAYS. Try taking examples from real life too. Look at someone who is a certain height and think, “Hm, would my character be shorter or taller than them?”
As for the metric system. You can literally just google like, “What is 5′3 in centimeters” or, “What is 150lbs in kilograms?”
here’s an old patreon reward to fill in the drawing-hiatus void a bit; something I get asked about a lot is the ‘acting’ in my comics and how to be subtle with conveying emotions. The answer is mostly experience and constantly observing people in real life to learn about expressions, but knowing when to ‘dial up’ or ‘dial down’ emotion is very important! context is king- this is basically the same advice that Carl Barks gave on one of his reference sheets here (in a much more succinct manner!):
It’s basically a massive database full of high-quality images of different hairstyles. I mean, look at all the options in that sidebar (and part of it’s cut off):
In total they have 976 pages of hairstyles with about 17 styles each, that’s about 16592 hairstyles to look at.
Ginger's Art n Junk 