Caitie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
commandant) wrote2011-10-14 03:24 pm
commandant) wrote2011-10-14 03:24 pm
Entry tags:
CAITIE RAMBLES ABOUT SUBETA HAS
I've been on Subeta for over four years now, and without a doubt my main focus on the site is the human avatars. I loved making HAs four years ago and I love making them now. The system as a whole has improved over the years as well as the items and art themselves. Along with that has grown the fashion culture on Subeta, along with my sense of it. For example here's one of the first HAs I remember making along with the HA I made yesterday.
I like to think that there is a significant improvement there, haha. You can clearly see the increaed quality of the item art, for one. Most of the items on the 2007 HA are now old and outdated and no one uses them, but I have used the Symphoni Nacht Bloody Sunday Blood Spray several times since, and I think my use of it becomes more judicious over time.
They also become less colorful over time but that is a coincidence. Looking back on it paler skin would have made more sense on the 2009 one but that was during my phase where I was fixated on that skin tone and the one a shade darker. It was a very long phase in that it was pretty much the entirety of 2009.
2009 was not a good year in general because I had grasped the concept of color matching for the most part but not the concept of "just because it's the same color does not mean it looks good together or is appropriate for the HA. Even though my HAs were always male I was often guilty of using feminine items just because they matched, as you can see. I know now that you can't just throw a bunch of frills and bows and flowers on a male HA, and slap on Essence of Manliness (the item that adds the facial stubble/body hair) to compensate. Though actually I think I just liked using the Essence.
BUT MOVING ON, another thing that I have is my affection for the item Dark Shaman Buck Skull. The Dark Shaman costume trunk was one of my first Cash Shop purchases, and I use items from it a lot. The mostly naked HA above I made right after getting it, all the bone items, along with the arm tattoo and the brown wig poorly layered under the Roll of Gauze wig (another favorite of mine). The Buck Skull is in the top row. It's literally just a buck skull that is placed on the top of the head. I was rather taken with the vaguely macabre oddness of it, and that one was my first attempt at using it.
Ok to be fair here, the third one is an improved version of the second. BUT STILL. I have used it several times and will probably use it again. The last two also had previous versions though unlike the second/third they never made it to stylefile.
The female one (it's title on Stylefile was Pearl, inspired by this song because all the cool kids were doing Cirque du Soleil inspired HAs) actually stemmed from me accidentaly discovering the Underling Dress Tails/High Elf Corset layering. IT'S SO SEAMLESS YOU WOULDN'T KNOW IT WAS TWO ITEMS! I hadn't really ever made a female HA before at that time but I had to use it. The original color scheme came from the hair, which was actually from the cosplay I was wearing at the time, Akira from Togainu no Chi. (That's why there's those red streaks by the eye.) I abandoned the idea for a few months, and morphed it into the final product. I was pretty happy with it but then I became a little bitter when NIGHT used the same dress layering I did and got all the credit. W/E W/E I WAS STILL THE FIRST TO DO IT.
And the one on the right was my preliminary version of the last one. It was inspired by an OC of mine. It is also committing a MAJOR FAUX PAS!!!! That is, using the toe claws instead of shoes. BUT YEAH. WE MOVE ON.
Something I started doing in 2010 was making HAs based off of other things. A lot of people do it, especially music, but what really got me started on it was the pokemon inspired HAs that were a small fad for a while. I ended up doing one based on Palkia and then one much later based on Houndoom. Poketars are fun. And people like them. They are both in my top 5 on stylefile even though the Palkia one is pretty old. BUT FROM THAT I was like "clearly I must do ones inspired by Tales of characters" because clearly Tales needed to be a pervasive theme in my life. It started with just Tales of Vesperia but I ran out of ideas and branched into other games.
The Yeager one is apparently my glass ceiling as I have yet to make an HA with more adores than it. EVEN AS AN INSPIRATION FOR AN HA YEAGER IS A TROLL. So rude.
BRANCHING OFF THAT, a specific aspect of HAs I have been into for a long time is cosplays. There was back then, and still is a limit to how accurate you can make an HA cosplay, but I am a perfectionist in some ways so that was NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!! So I had the idea to use my PSP skills to tweak them to make them PERFECT. At first I was not very good and my finished products were very clearly edited. BUT OVER TIME MY SKILLS GREW. I picked up tricks over time and my edited HAs looked nicer and nicer! Also I made a fuckton of them it is kind of ridiculous. Since I like compiling images I have compiled ALL OF THEM into one hideously large image. (So large than tinypic shrinks it. All the tales ones at full size here and the rest here.) Almost all of them were edited in some way (some albeit slightly), a few aren't though (those few being N, Sissel, Keisuke, Beat, Haruka, Cress, Hasta, Kohak, Richter, and Caius.)
A lot were just minor edits either because I was lazy or the designs were fairly simple. I think the ones that I put the most time/work into were Sanaki, Fang, Waka, Dhaos, Hilda, Ange, and Innes. Ones like those usually take me several hours. Hilda is the most recent one I did but I think Fang remains my best. I actually did a step-by-step of how I made the Fang one.
I guess thats it. I've had my boring ramble.
OH ALSO, BONUS. When Tales of VS was about to come out I decided I needed to do HAs of all the playable characters. Most of them were half assed and unedited. At that time I did an unedited one of Iria from ToI. Later I did a nicer, edited version.
QUALITY
I like to think that there is a significant improvement there, haha. You can clearly see the increaed quality of the item art, for one. Most of the items on the 2007 HA are now old and outdated and no one uses them, but I have used the Symphoni Nacht Bloody Sunday Blood Spray several times since, and I think my use of it becomes more judicious over time.
They also become less colorful over time but that is a coincidence. Looking back on it paler skin would have made more sense on the 2009 one but that was during my phase where I was fixated on that skin tone and the one a shade darker. It was a very long phase in that it was pretty much the entirety of 2009.
2009 was not a good year in general because I had grasped the concept of color matching for the most part but not the concept of "just because it's the same color does not mean it looks good together or is appropriate for the HA. Even though my HAs were always male I was often guilty of using feminine items just because they matched, as you can see. I know now that you can't just throw a bunch of frills and bows and flowers on a male HA, and slap on Essence of Manliness (the item that adds the facial stubble/body hair) to compensate. Though actually I think I just liked using the Essence.
BUT MOVING ON, another thing that I have is my affection for the item Dark Shaman Buck Skull. The Dark Shaman costume trunk was one of my first Cash Shop purchases, and I use items from it a lot. The mostly naked HA above I made right after getting it, all the bone items, along with the arm tattoo and the brown wig poorly layered under the Roll of Gauze wig (another favorite of mine). The Buck Skull is in the top row. It's literally just a buck skull that is placed on the top of the head. I was rather taken with the vaguely macabre oddness of it, and that one was my first attempt at using it.
Ok to be fair here, the third one is an improved version of the second. BUT STILL. I have used it several times and will probably use it again. The last two also had previous versions though unlike the second/third they never made it to stylefile.
The female one (it's title on Stylefile was Pearl, inspired by this song because all the cool kids were doing Cirque du Soleil inspired HAs) actually stemmed from me accidentaly discovering the Underling Dress Tails/High Elf Corset layering. IT'S SO SEAMLESS YOU WOULDN'T KNOW IT WAS TWO ITEMS! I hadn't really ever made a female HA before at that time but I had to use it. The original color scheme came from the hair, which was actually from the cosplay I was wearing at the time, Akira from Togainu no Chi. (That's why there's those red streaks by the eye.) I abandoned the idea for a few months, and morphed it into the final product. I was pretty happy with it but then I became a little bitter when NIGHT used the same dress layering I did and got all the credit. W/E W/E I WAS STILL THE FIRST TO DO IT.
And the one on the right was my preliminary version of the last one. It was inspired by an OC of mine. It is also committing a MAJOR FAUX PAS!!!! That is, using the toe claws instead of shoes. BUT YEAH. WE MOVE ON.
Something I started doing in 2010 was making HAs based off of other things. A lot of people do it, especially music, but what really got me started on it was the pokemon inspired HAs that were a small fad for a while. I ended up doing one based on Palkia and then one much later based on Houndoom. Poketars are fun. And people like them. They are both in my top 5 on stylefile even though the Palkia one is pretty old. BUT FROM THAT I was like "clearly I must do ones inspired by Tales of characters" because clearly Tales needed to be a pervasive theme in my life. It started with just Tales of Vesperia but I ran out of ideas and branched into other games.
The Yeager one is apparently my glass ceiling as I have yet to make an HA with more adores than it. EVEN AS AN INSPIRATION FOR AN HA YEAGER IS A TROLL. So rude.
BRANCHING OFF THAT, a specific aspect of HAs I have been into for a long time is cosplays. There was back then, and still is a limit to how accurate you can make an HA cosplay, but I am a perfectionist in some ways so that was NOT GOOD ENOUGH!!! So I had the idea to use my PSP skills to tweak them to make them PERFECT. At first I was not very good and my finished products were very clearly edited. BUT OVER TIME MY SKILLS GREW. I picked up tricks over time and my edited HAs looked nicer and nicer! Also I made a fuckton of them it is kind of ridiculous. Since I like compiling images I have compiled ALL OF THEM into one hideously large image. (So large than tinypic shrinks it. All the tales ones at full size here and the rest here.) Almost all of them were edited in some way (some albeit slightly), a few aren't though (those few being N, Sissel, Keisuke, Beat, Haruka, Cress, Hasta, Kohak, Richter, and Caius.)
A lot were just minor edits either because I was lazy or the designs were fairly simple. I think the ones that I put the most time/work into were Sanaki, Fang, Waka, Dhaos, Hilda, Ange, and Innes. Ones like those usually take me several hours. Hilda is the most recent one I did but I think Fang remains my best. I actually did a step-by-step of how I made the Fang one.
I guess thats it. I've had my boring ramble.
OH ALSO, BONUS. When Tales of VS was about to come out I decided I needed to do HAs of all the playable characters. Most of them were half assed and unedited. At that time I did an unedited one of Iria from ToI. Later I did a nicer, edited version.
QUALITY