forkplease:

Sebastian Moran and James Moriarty do not agree often. If Sebastian says apple, Jim says orange. If Sebastian says gun, Jim says knife. If Sebastian says, “The sky is blue.” Jim says, “The sky is purple, you moron.”

FUCKING HELL WHY DON’T I READ MORMOR EVER?

the-writing-desk:

A word is a “part of speech” only when it is used in a sentence. The function the word serves in a sentence is what makes it whatever part of speech it is.

For example, the word “run” can be used as more than one part of speech:

Sammy hit a home run. (run is a noun, direct object of hit)

You mustn’t run near the swimming pool. (run is a verb, part of the verb phrase must (not) run)

Here is a simple overview of the English parts of speech and what they do.

NOUN – Nouns are naming words. We can’t talk about anything until we have given it a name.

PRONOUN – A pronoun is a word that stands for a noun.

VERBS – The verb is the motor that runs the sentence. A verb enables us to say something about a noun.

ADJECTIVE – An adjective is a word that describes a noun.

ADVERB – An adverb adds meaning to a verb, an adjective, or another adverb.

PREPOSITION – a preposition is a word that comes in front of a noun or a pronoun and shows a connection between that noun or pronoun and some other word in the sentence

CONJUNCTION – a conjunction joins words and groups of words.

INTERJECTION — An interjection is a word or phrase thrown into a sentence to express an emotion, for example, Homer Simpson’s “Doh!”

[source]

chirart:

So many people have asked me for character design tips over the past couple of years. Here’s a whole list of rules I keep in mind with my own character designs.

In no specific order:

1. Simple is good. Streamline your design to its essence. The more shit you add on your character the more you make it about what they are wearing, and not who they are.
   
   
2. Popular ideas of beauty are limiting. There are only so many ways to make a character conventionally beautiful before you start noticing they all have the same face (i.e. “Six Faces Syndrome”). What most people consider “ugly” or undesirable is actually features that make your character unqiue. Who would you likely remember more: A perfect-faced model or that model’s twin with buckteeth?
   
   
3. Understand typical archetype designs and visual stereotypes to use them effectively. What are characteristics found in a “hero” character? In a “villain” character? In a “child” character? What can you do to mix them around, or play it straight?
   
   
4. Don’t draw the lines of the character, rather: draw the character in the lines. In other words: if someone told you to draw a horse, don’t just draw a plain old horse—draw the personality in the horse. A Royal Noble Horse has a much different character from an Old Sickly Stubborn Horse, for example. There’s a difference between Hark! A Vagrant!’s Fat Pony and Tangled’s Maximus, for another example.
   
   
5. Make your characters relatable. Making a character as wildly unique as possible (a pink-purple-blue haired goth wearing nothing but Hot Topic gear, for instance) actually is one of the most alienating thing you can do for your audience. It’s trying too hard to make your character a special snowflake. Limit this extreme to very specific characters and roles, be calculating and precise about going crazy. It will be more effective.
   
   
6. In addition, find what makes a person special through the boring features. Not everyone has crazy tri-colored hair, but there are a lot of people who have short brown hair. Can you draw five different characters with short brown hair and make them all unique? Try it out.
   
   
7. Silhouettes are important. Are you varying body mass? Are you utilizing basic shapes? We are able to recognize people and objects just from their shadow, and we do it so often we don’t even notice we do it! If all your characters have the same “shadow,” challenge yourself to mix it up more.
   
   
8. If you drew your characters naked and bald, could you tell them apart?
   
   
9. Be consistent in the ‘tone’ of your design style.
   
   
10. All these rules can be broken according to how calculated your irony is for your story. But you need to know what to do right before intentionally doing it wrong.

Be a Sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.

-Kurt Vonnegut

(Source: the-writing-desk, via bajillafindshelpfulthings)