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scythepuppet

Bipartisan Longbowman
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Amendment XII
Clause G guidelines for Submission etiquette
1. Deviants submitting artwork which use "base images" they did not create or do not own must make a good faith effort to provide credit for artists responsible for images in their work.
2. Deviations submitted to the DAPF gallery may not have comments disabled nor may deviants ban individual commentary, excepting instances where the deviant feels they have been harassed or that the commentator has otherwise violated the DA Etiquette Policy.
3. Deviants who ban an individual or prevent comments under "acceptable premises" listed in XII.G.2 must be prepared to defend their decision to a representative of the DAPF.
4. Deviants who violate these and other guidelines may have their work or works removed from the gallery.

Clause H Guidelines for submission review etiquette
1. Downvoting a submitted deviation must include a reason offered somewhere in the submission review, either on public or private commentary board.
2. Discussions of political relevancy should be posted in a form that is visible to the deviant responsible for the deviation being discussed.
3. Statements about the quality of the piece, its accuracy as a political message and other thoughts pertaining to the content of the deviation should be directed to the comments section of the deviation being submitted, not the review process.
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Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to people you think would find this interesting (including me). You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "My Life According to (BAND NAME)"

Pick Your Artist:
Modest Mouse

Are you a male or female?
Cowboy Dan

Describe yourself:
King Rat

How do you feel:
Night on the Sun

Describe where you currently live:
Dark Centre of the Universe

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:
Interstate 8

Your favorite form of transportation:
Wild Pack of Family Dogs

Your best friend is:
Bukowski

Your favorite color is:
Baby Blue Sedan

What's the weather like:
the Ocean Breathes Salty

Favorite time of the day:
Night on the Sun

If your life was a tv show, what would it be called:
Here It Comes

What is life to you:
This Devil's Workday

Your relationships:
Bury Me With It

Your fear:
Black Cadillac

What is the best advice you have to give:
March Into the Sea

If you could change your name, you would change it to:
Little Motel

Thought for the Day:
Missed the Boat

How I would like to die:
Talking Shit About a Pretty Sunset

My soul's present condition:
Perpetual Motion Machine

My Motto:
I've Got It All
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大家应该要保护环境。目前,很多人用一次性产品。我觉得我们换世界。

我们否应该用一次性产品。我觉得说的说最好了。 如果我们不需要用一次性产品,我们否应该不用。为什么我们用一次性产品?因为他们比较卫生和方便?
我不同意;一次性筷子保护只纸套子, 难道卫生吗?。你不知道做那个筷子。 如果人们只带自己筷子还是刀叉, 他们常常知道他们的工具干净。听好吗?

实际上,没有人会想带自己筷子。我知道没有人想做,只是我觉得大家应该。

我知道别人在都地方勉强带刀叉还是筷子。 我也知道我出去参观的时候我不带自己工具。很多人说"带自己刀叉不方便!" 只是说在环境保护上,我们应该做这个策。

一次性产品只变成垃圾。一次用,而产品永久是垃圾。十分钟下来使用,一千年在垃圾场。看不好经贸。

我们靠世界为生。 我们应该保护环境,所以我们不可以持续污染世界要不然大家没有家里。我们不见得等为止情急之下儅污染。
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I'm a participant in the Beasts of 9 Creature Contest. One of many, and I've been looking over the entries. I mean no offense, but it's been a fair few that really wowed me. It might be that my expectations are very different from a lot of the other contestants, but a lot of them aren't specifically impressive design-wise.

Is it a little big-headed of me to pretend that mine is better, or the best?  I think yeah, it is self-serving, a little.  But I prided myself on Googling a dozen shots of the monsters, and perusing (not merely using) the official website, which (as luck would have it) featured a clip of one of the monsters, the Seamstress, in action. I watched the original 9 short film, and did more thinking on this drawing than I've probably put into any other single drawing in several weeks.

Partially out of narcissism, I decided to outline my thoughts on the matter, along with some common themes, the evident design laws that I saw. I apologize in advance for sounding like some bloated windbag, but I rarely feel like I have such a clear look at my own creative process and wanted to document it.

1) The glowing red Eye. Looking at the monsters that are shown in the preview, you'll notice that all of them have at least one glowing red eye. It's a common feature, and has its basis in the origin of the beasts themselves. It's a fairly obvious suggestion, I think, but a good start. I only mention it because I didn't notice in during my preliminary sketches.

2) Animalistic features--all three of the beasts that appear in the trailer have specific animals they at least partially borrow their appearance from. The Cat is the first, and has the least in common with its base animal (being that it's partially bipedal). The Seamstress (the one with the doll face) was evidentially inspired by a cobra, although it has certain traits borrowed from an angler fish. I have the least amount of experience with the Wing Beast, but it's pretty clearly a large predatory bird--an eagle, if I had to guess.

3) They're not symmetrical. A lot of really beautiful designs are marred by their uniform construction. I saw one that was a spider with legs made from old-fashioned church keys. The problem, though, is that each of the keys was identical, and gave the impression that the monster had been manufactured en masse as opposed to constructed from incidental scraps and garbage.

4) They're not heavily mechanical. From what I've seen, there's very little mechanical parts to any of the beasts; the biggest deviation is the Wingbeast, which uses an old-fashioned desk fan for propulsion. Most of their weapons are pretty simple. Claws made from scissors, exacto knives, erector sets. Chainsaws and power drills seem pretty elaborate compared to the simple manual tools most of the beasts are constructed from.


Designing the Hermit
I sat down to work on the contest basically as soon as I found out about it. After a few noisome doodles trying to get these things in my head, I decided to kick around Google looking for an animal that I could co-opt. Considering what I'd seen, I thought a non-mammal would be best. Mammals are fairly relatable and I felt it would undermine the creature's monstrosity; even the Cat doesn't act particularly cat-like, with sudden, reptilian movements that make it seem more like a raptor.

I had a couple ideas, but I really liked the idea of the hermit crab first. So I drew four simple hermit crabs, looking for a pose that I liked, with the idea that once I'd done a rough of the crab I could just drop found items over the top until I had me a creature.

The first two drafts looked pretty rough; the first was too symmetrical and ended up looking flat, the second had its body drawn too tall and looked more like a grotesque shrimp. But not wanted to make too much work for myself, I inked it, and after making some detailing mistakes and poorly choosing a shell (originally a rusted bucket), I decided that I would completely redraw my crab.

The third draft looked good (this drawing morphed into Hermit Crab 2 ). I really liked this drawing; but there was something off about it. The actual beast didn't seem dynamic enough, it had a very poor silhouette. The antenna overlapped the wrench but didn't extend past it, and the right eye/circuit seemed too static.

The fourth and final drawing (seen here succeeded in presenting a more dramatic silhouette, although the bottle irritated me by being much flatter than the original. However, the omission of the cork on the bottle was something I liked, and together with the slightly more dramatic linework I decided it would be the preferable model.

Transferring it from my sketchbook to my computer without a scanner was a trick and a half, but I think that's a story for another time.

So what do you think? How well did I adhere to my rules? Any changes you would suggest to the drawing or the rules?
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The Nightmare

4 min read
I woke up early today, earning myself a mere three hours of sleep last night. Deciding to persevere rather than huddle back in my bed, I finally collapsed at 6pm, waking up a scant two hours later. But my travels into the somnulance were marred by a nightmare, which I intend to describe here.

It started, as dreams do, en media res, with me being instructed to go do something in town. I immediately left, realized I'd forgotten to dress, and returning.  Without remembering the return home, I realized I was in town, but that I'd evidentially made the trip into the City twice, and that I no longer remembered precisely why I'd decided to come to the city in the first place.  I puttered around an imaginary road I now recognize as a portmanteau of the childhood town where my parents often took me to see the movies, and the more familiar city where I spent two years in college. The drive in town wasn't terribly important, but in my rush to figure out why I was in town, I began driving through parking lots.

The parking lots belonged to swimming pools, or so I imagined, because they were full of adults, children, and minivans. Some aspect of dream logic insisted that I was in my familiar college town (although the geography was visibly incorrect), and so I, like any good amnesiac, began demanding of strangers what I had driven to town to do, and where I was (even though I knew). It was at this point that through the dim prism of my faulty senses that I perceived a hellish child--or not hellish, but certainly malevolent.

And then in that way that dreams do it reconfigured itself, and I was to be her mentor for some reason.  I was incorrigibly negligent in this regard, and quickly left to perform some activity with a group of faceless men with whom I was on quite good terms. The activity was violent but otherwise incoherent.  Eventually someone (I recognize him now to be some hilariously-realized attempt to create a realistic looking Krusty the Klown) came to let me know the status of my little protege. Upon being reminded of her I'm fairly certain that she retroactively was written into earlier scenes where her presence was omniscient. She was receiving good marks, the crude Klown informed me. I responded with indifference, this girl was of little consequence.

The Klown was joined on my (nonexistent) patio by several guys, none of whom I know to be real but one of whom was inexplicably "new". I immediately splashed him with several unidentifiable liquids, all by accident.  Each time I tried to clear out the vehicle that had materialized, another fluid leapt from my hands onto the poor man, and embarrassed I would apologize while he angrily waved me off. Angry with myself, I hurled a large barrel a considerable distance away, being careful not to hit him.  The barrel smacked against a van, which, of course, was his.  I was mortified.

And so I got into the newly emptied van, when two young girls accosted me, asking me questions and staring at me with colossal clear eyes. In the distance a van was stopped and the little evil girl was being doted upon by loving and ineffectual parents. I calmly answered the questions when it occurred to me that the winds were whipping up. In the distance street lights exploded.  The explosions got closer, and the dream changed again, with me huddling in the back seat of the van, protecting the girls (who'd also always been there, although I'd never noticed them). Street lights burst and the wind howled and ululated in circles. The devil girl was in front of me know as I tried to shield those poor girls, and she was shrieking "It's my birthday sing me a song". Terrified the girls and I belted out "Happy Birthday" in torn strips snatched away by the wind.  The wide eyed demon-girl sang along with us, then abruptly switched to Christmas carols. I tried to match her, our voices rising ever higher over the storm, me singing "I saw Three Ships" while the ebony-haired villainess shrieked "jingle bells". The girls' voices cracked and rose to a scream, I stared at their wide white eyes and realized I was screaming too.

When I thought I'd die just to ease the terrible singing I woke up, sweat soaked and groaning in my apartment.
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Featured

Proposal for Amendment to Submission Policy by scythepuppet, journal

Devious Journal Entry by scythepuppet, journal

Devious Journal Entry by scythepuppet, journal

Meditations on the '9 Contest' by scythepuppet, journal

The Nightmare by scythepuppet, journal