You know what's fun? Doing panel redraws of frustrating ramen man artwork is fun, that's what. Maybe a little much fun to fit into a single already overpacked evening, but I've barely drawn in foreverrrr and I'm enjoying myself! Spoiler: large
goddammit spock you're gonna spoil me for when I actually hit whatever issue that is I'm gonna go in expecting sweet sweet thirteen lore and pretty pretty art and only end up with the lore :T How Very Dare how very dare idw give all the fun issues to ramen man tbh
Thank you! Also, if you do have recs for good Bumblebee fics I would be very appreciative? Real life has been super busy but I'm hoping to actually get into Transformers because it seems really cool and I really like it.
Hey. Hey. Guys. Hey. :D Rodimus 'doesn't like himself very much at all', that is one thing that I haven't seen in any tumblr posts about JRO at the con. But. The DJD and codependence. Okay, so, the pet is solid gold. Everything to do with him. I actually have an ANCIENT wip I haven't touched in a year and a half that I suddenly feel inspired to finish, because I nailed that dynamic buy just right. But the team as a whole. That kind of codependence, along with obsession over presenting an unassailable public image. That was a KILLER combination, it let them operate as an incredibly effective force for ages, and it even let them weather a traitor without anyone outside the team noting that something was wrong. Now, the BREAKDOWN of that team. Awright. Agent 113, that was the first thing chronologically, fairly recently before the series. And I do wish SO MUCH that we could have seen the team's reaction. But extrapolating, if everyone on the team is super codependent, and if they're united by their INTENSE devotion to the decepticon cause, finding out that someone you trusted and depended on is a traitor, that's gotta be so rattling. Which happens for ALL the members, not just Kaon. But they get a new Vos, they get a pretty little puppy to love, things are mending. Then.... what must have been an intense fight, if it took out two of their members. Vos and Kaon are taken out... and are left behind. So soon after they lost a member to betrayal, and have been trying to recover, they lose two more members. And Tarn makes the call to leave them behind. However people felt in the aftermath, it unsettled Helex enough to criticize Tarn. Even while he was in the performance review, which it seemed like he was plenty darn uncomfortable with already. And Tarn reacts with INTENSE DISPLEASURE. I'm sure he's terrifying to everybody when he gets angry, team included, but it makes so much sense in this context as the product of a strained team dynamic being stressed even further. It's really interesting to me that they took in Nickel around this time. It REALLY doesn't seem like their usual style, but... I mean... They've lost three members in a period of a few years, and the first thing we learn they've done is they adopt a team mom. And then, when they recover Vos and Kaon, bam, thought you were doing better? NOPE. Time to learn that Megatron has renounced the decepticon cause? I'm sure this but everyone hard, but, dude. Tarn almost killed himself,over this. He came back, and outwardly pulled himself back together, but Tarn's feeling about Megatron are a Thing. So when Tarn meets up with Deathsaurus, they've got similar attitudes towards their teams. Capable military leaders, but with legit depth of caring about the people they lead, and being protective of their lives. Smash cut to Necroworld, as everything starts to go to hell. Tarn's first thing he does as an individual is to go confront Megatron. Megatron.... fails to live up to Tarn's personal ideals. To put it lightly. Overlord shows up to prod Tarn in the ego and challenge his authority in a much more direct, insulting way than Deathsaurus ever did. Tarn's priorities: Lov my team Megatron Image At resting state, lov my team can take the lead. Maintaining their image isn't that hard, they just have to be brutally effective sadists. Easy peasy. And Megatron is a force of nature. No need to worry about Megatron. Right, Megatron has been yanked out from under him, and Overlord is talking massive amounts of unconcerned shit right to his face. His team... has been through a lot, honestly. Even as unrepentant assholes. They needed a leader willing to account for their emotional needs right then, because they were more in need of unity and mutual support than usual. Vos I betrayed them. Kaon and Vos II died. WAIT, no, they're not dead, it's a miracle..... but Megatron left us. Tarn, under lots of stress and not thinking very carefully, proceeds to make many bad decisions. Kaon comes to him in distress over the pet, compromising their image, while Overlord openly laughs at them. Hlin a moment of anger, he kills Kaon, abandoning those principles he held when he talked to Deathsaurus. He takes a family member from his team. He horrified Nickel on an especially painful, personal level. He does this as team members are already getting frustrated with each other (helex and kaon, mainly), and they need him to make careful, considered decisions. He does.... the opposite of that. Also while they're getting bombarded with the guilt ray. I think I need to grab some screencaps and go into more detail and pretty this up for tumblr, because I've got my sympathetic-even-when-sticking-close-to-canon angle on Tarn. This is so INTERESTING :D
Okay, I feel really ridiculous for having to ask this, but can anybody give me context on who baltmatrix is, like... beyond that he reviews toys on youtube. Because that is the only thing I know. Genuinely, feel free to ignore this. It's a result of me being perpetually frazzled, easily rattled, and being very very tired and overloaded and just Generally A Mess after a long, noisy weekend. Spoiler: stupid context, REALLY feel free to ignore me, i feel like i'm doing a humblebrag but that is not my intent :///// This is DUMB, having to ask about this at all, but my brain is glitching out on me. Between jro (!!!!!), mscott (i left key words out of a message and have humiliated myself), and baltmatrix (?????) this weekend has been an emotional roller coaster, and I am physically and mentally exhausted and losing all ability to process basic thoughts. So.... basically, baltmatrix tracked me down in the con to get my contact info because he wants to commission a cross-stitch. One of the big monster many-colored ones. I am 1) highly flattered, 2) OH GOD WHAT IS HAPPENING TIME TO PANIC IN FIVE SEPARATE DIRECTIONS. Mainly that these things would be hideously expensive if I charged even a minimum wage hourly rate, and I'd really prefer to charge more than that because I make a comfortable work salary already and this hobby devours all my free time and I kind of resent it even when I'm making things for just myself. Additionally that these things take forever. Additionally that things get Complicated with what art can be used for this, whether the artist's permission has been given (especially with knowledge of how much would be paid for one of these suckers), and that color scheme and level of detail all drive size and color depth, which drive time sink and therefore cost. And finally, I have no idea how much commission work is allowed to add up to before it starts mucking up my taxes. In prior cases when this has come up, I've been able to scare people away with a rough cost estimate, and that was for relatively uncomplicated work. On the other hand.... this fandom frequently drops ridiculous amounts of money on merch, so I'm not at all calibrated for what people are willing to pay for this sort of item. He seemed like a fairly well-known name, which makes it seem more likely he has dropped ridiculous amounts of money on transformers goods in the past. And he was calling a $50 toy an extremely affordable price, which is just extra evidence that this fandom makes its own rules for what's reasonable money to pay for things. High, HIGH cost, giant time sink, complicated art selection process, am I going to fuck up my taxes?, how likely is any of this to go through?, [muffled puppy whine noises] because he probably doesn't realize that a quality framing job for this nonsense can easily set you back a few hundred dollars more, and what if everything else works out and i spend months on this thing and he is dissastisfied
You're basically on point for who Baltmatrix is. He's a really big name in the Transformers fandom for those reviews since he's been doing them for years and is considered one of the best. He's enough of a name that most third-party companies will send him test-shots and toys for free to review them, similarly to how game companies do that with well-known game reviewers. Since he does review a lot of third-party toys, his sense of "fair price" is probably quite a bit higher than yours. Third-party toys are expensive, both because they tend to be a lot better designed, engineered and built than Hasbro/Takara stuff, and because the third-party companies can't scale as much. So he's totally not above dropping $80 on a single figure and considering it a bargain. I really like his reviews. I definitely take them into account when I'm purchasing stuff. Anyway, it's pretty cool that he approached you! It means that your name is also getting out there!
You could ask him to take care of clearing the artist permission thing - if he's going to be picking the art, it'd be his responsibility, right?
WELL, spd had a litle book for people to write nice things for people to send to mscott, but i was still adjusting to the crowds and trying to make a purchase at the same time, and I tend to accidentally drop words from sentences without noticing when I get rattled or distracted, and I'm not positive, but I'm pretty sure I didn't properly say 'art done for your writing' and.... instead implied that she was the artist herself. And signed with my actual url, for bonus idiot points XD But at his first Q&A, jro asked if anyone in the room was wearing a getaway shirt. I wasn't, and didn't want to wave around a giant scroll frame with pointy corners and a dangling needle in the middle of a crowd. Buuuut the next day I went through the autograph line and was like 'it's not a shirt, but--', and he was super delighted and asked if he could take a picture of me with the project Ahahaha, yeah, that's what I was afraid of XD I think.... god, I still have no idea how many hours go into each of these, because it's just so many hours, spread out over a month at a bare, bare minimum (if I dedicate all my free time to it), or more likely threeish months. Fahhhhhk, this is hard to figure out. Let's start at a round number and work my way back. $1000. At $10/hour, that would be 100 hours. Spread out over thirty days, that's 3.33 hours per day, which seems.... not enough. So that's still probably lowballing it, but that is a terrifyingly huge number to ask for. On the one hand, insanely cool that it's even a possibility. On the other hand, insanely terrifying that it's even a possibility XDDD (so many XD faces, they cannot be contained). I'm currently being a mature adult and pretending my email doesn't exist, but I'll need to make some kind of decision and sort that out soon. Wow. Seriously not anything I'd ever expected to happen.
Definitely!! I'm thinking of setting up conditions like curlicuecal has for papercrafts, where commercial art is fair game, and the more personal stuff needs permission. So official IDW content would be chill, etc., anything else would require permission. Though I should... also probably go prod at official copyright law :/ But no matter what happens, the viable art is going to be hella limited, because that's how it is for me too. Anything with heavy linework runs a high risk of pixelating ugly (or needs to be traced in excel, which is its own kind of hell), and in terms of regular artists, I think it's mostly down to Sarah Stone and Ramondelli. Anything from television would be fairly easy, but I'm also seeing less content that would be appealing enough to justify these stupid-high prices.
haha wow congrats! let us know how it goes. (And dude, cross stitch is like high art probably on the same level as an oil painting IMO. Like, there's cross stitch pieces in museums I have seen that are not as nice as yours.)
Hey so i ran into the book tie ins for bayverse and so far they are weirdly adorable. The writer seems to have been bitten by a radioactive dictionary.
I have acquired an internet box and an unexpected day off, so clearly the thing to do is start watching RiD Spoiler: rid s1e1 BEE that doesn't sound quite like bee but it's whatever she's beautiful literally 30 seconds in and I want to bang strongarm and smokescreen into each other like barbies "Whatever we're doing, I'm honored to do it with you" who said it????? is that knock out hovercar stop. stare at cops. do three donuts and ollie outtie I would 100% expect this of knock out but he's not flirting enough :P sideswipe bl e s s where's sunstreaker what is this the lion king bee... rememberrrr.... who you aaaaare 'shit. okay. okay my commander might be a little insane. shit. what do I say.' "That's okay, you meditate, I'll handle this" A++ strongarm god I love sideswipe and strongarm and all of them I'm choosing to believe that sound is sides' hover engines because Prime had much better transformation sounds oh my god strongarm it's a statue, chill bless sideswipe poor bee tho is it taken as canon that optimus is dead by this point, then? or is predacons rising in a different offshoot bee you have wheels why are you running on legs strongarm maybe you should... start thinking for yourself did Ultra Magnus train her? just RUN ACROSS FOUR LANES OF TRAFFIC JUST DO IT BEST COP Obligatory Humans, ugh yeah this guy is creeping me out and it's not just the animation TINY ORANGE and.... what sounded like the first bar of the Invader Zim theme? I wouldn't put it past kline tbh they reference plenty of things OH MY GOD BEE DON'T JUST RUN OFF ON YOUR OWN GET A SQUAD ....okay for real what's the deal with optimus not that I'm not glad to see him but you're kinda abusing your Primely powers to speak from beyond the Well dude STRONGARM WHY THE HELL bless sides tho bee you realise how literally delusional you sound right "following a path no one else can see"? "directions" from a dead guy? you, uh maybe strongarm should take you in for a psych eval sideswipe's face if strongarm isn't magnus's descendant and/or student I will Cry tho prowl would be an acceptable substitute ble s s sideswipe also @Petra pointed out that he kinda has a japanese gang/punk #aesthetic going and I can't unsee BEE YOU'RE BAD AT LIFE "tell the guards you tried to stop me" as guards walk into the room A+ also "find another hobby" I'm dyin g me too bee me too sides. sides no you're cute but pls oh my god that lil smirk sides no bless bee too bad he has to speak english for the viewers now, we could've used some b(l)eeped cursing there :P tiny orange bot is love tiny orange bot is life fixit ilu FIXIT ILU protect!!!!!!!!! fixit!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! bless sideswipe you play with that echo sideswipe that's a nice color scheme is what it is con aesthetic best aesthetic thunderbat is a rad name hardcore parkour it's a magical girl transformation sequence perfect bee: "he's an okay kid, he just needs some guidance, and--" sides: [nearly runs over the officers, has already kidnapped a human] strongarm no ....oh. oh it's underbite. audio processing strikes again. underbite's still a cool name tho nyooooooooooooom Spoiler: s1e2 oh nice netflix has a "skip recap" button now, sweet aliens!!!!!!! NICE hug fixit for all of us, russel BLESS BEE BLESS SIDESWIPE does fixit have a Thing for sides He's Red oh oh no :c r00d sides ....I kinda wanna see Fixit and Swerve in the same room. Let Them Talk this is the Most Oblivious Human can we get a darwin award over here rip bee sideswipe has acquired An Friend the lil tail waggin ....wait is the green one grimlock why is Grimlock In Jail just a thing is this a g1 reference I'm missing r00d sides also People Making Bee In Charge Now That Optimus Is Gone Let him rest yeah the soundtrack for this is still bangin ....strongarm. no. it has redneck written all over it and also maybe Breakdown okay I like green dino I'm a little disappointed that Punchy Guy is the only one with a black guy voice but yknow the aliens I won't doubt but there is no way that mundane human car wouldn't be crumpled like a tin can, much less still working Optimus can Disappointedly Stare at cons from beyond the grave, this is gr8 ROBOT DAD COME BACK And Together, They Fight Crime Spoiler: s1e3 oh my god babies I want to throw smokescree right in the middle of this it would be hilarious and awful for poor bee but strongarm's voice actor can do an Excellent growl grimlock carrying bee bridal-style I Can't bless them baby spaaaaaaaaaades it's the furry I've seen him.... Somewhere either tumblr or discord or maybe even this thread I don't remember but I've Seen Him his voice they have an opening now bbies I'm so proud it even bows to the g1 opening fixit baby honestly giving bee Expressive Eyebrows was the best design decision children Grimlock: MISSION! bee: ~look at this stuff isn't it neat wouldn't you think this planet's complete? wouldn't you think earth's the wooooorld the world that has everything?~ bless bee that face is the epitome of ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ bless steeljaw tbh why is the shark australian ...what happened to built-in weapons? did steeljaw just.... sit there and wait for her to wake up what are you doing with your life steeljaw oh no he spent some of that time tying her up that's marginally less weird and... built a den... steeljaw r u okay "making you a criminal" bless russel the face of "close enough" bee you did not think this through "Grimbee" sideswipe do you ship it SIDESWIPE YOU'RE BAD AT LYING [stares off into the distance] "I never got to punch him..." RIP "Apparently I can send you into the field together." Sides: [blank stare] A++ russel is temporarily possessed by Bee Spoiler: s1e4 "Fixit finally gets a chance to fight" WHAT DO YOU MEAN FINALLY NO PROTECT HIM how long have yall been living out here that the kid doesn't know his own neighborhood shit, I don't talk to anybody but even I know "oh, there's an apartment complex up there, a meeting house and tiny playground up the way, convenience store/gas station down there...." snrk puns ....I thought that was sideswipe, but it was you, dio a lobster his name is Bisque oh my god bisque is a nintendo fan I see MY CABBAGES ah suddenly I see why he has no friends the self-sabotaging little twit oh my god there's caste laws again who let this happen "everyone hide" [t-rex piggybacks away on a cop truck] definitely stealthy does knock out have a second pair of eyes now bc that seriously looked like him oh nevermind that's still a rad design tho insecticon combiner insecticon combiner!!!!!!!! grimlock where did you see a kool-aid commercial bb bee that's not an answer FIXIT NO YOU ARE NOT CUT OUT FOR A LIFE OF DELINQUENCY sideswipe has his priorities in order they stole the viewfinder oh my god someone please remove denny
CROSS-STITCH! (i'm running on like four hours of sleep because i stayed up late to finish this) Spoiler: getaway, lorge Prrrr prr prr PRR PRRRRR I love this palette. I love this horrible boy. And JRO pretty much told us that we're going to get inside his head a little and kind of implied he's not quite as terrible as the narrative has framed him so far, and yesss yes yes I want to love him while despairing of him the same way I do with Prowl. This palette brings me happiness. I might ask the framing people to do all the matting and framing in golds and browns, with no black at all, see if that works. I still need: Prowl, Cyclonus, maybe Overlord. WINDBLADE. But more than that, I need to try to focus on something. else. While I still can.
