Would You Believe It, Even More Art Fight Art!

Drew the new lemon demon plush! Very excited for this little guy to be shipped out in the summer.

With the Community Day wrap up event in Pokémon Go I thought I would share all of the Community Day illustrations I've made this year!

Strange Bird

Happy Bagon Community Day to my fellow Pokémon Go enjoyers!

[Start ID: A stylized digital drawing of the Pokémon Bagon. The piece is very bright in saturation and is in a semi-lineless style. Bagon is at the center in a mid-walking pose. Bagon is a bipedal dragon Pokémon, with stubby arms and legs, and no tail or wings. Bagon's body is a bright sky blue, with yellow accents on its jaw, underbelly, and a yellow circle on the side of its head. Bagon's mouth is open with two white teeth sticking out. On top of Bagon's head is a grey crest that falls over its neck. Its eyes are triangular and white with black pupils. The shading and highlights on Bagon's body are stylized with a checkerboard pattern. The background is a bright coral red, with darker lines in the imprint of Bagon's body, and lighter pink square shapes. In the bottom right corner is a watermark with the username 'TheCraftyDragonC". End ID]

No matter what a post on tumblr tries to tell you, your moral and ethical stances will never be determined by what you reblog and what you scroll past. Don’t let manipulation tactics force you into doing anything you don’t want to do.

There's this sort of anthropomorphizing that inherently happens in language that really gets me sometimes. I'm still not over the terminology of "gravity assist," the technique where we launch satellites into the orbit of other planets so that we can build momentum via the astounding and literally astronomical strength of their gravitational forces, to "slingshot" them into the direction we need with a speed that we could never, ever, ever create ourselves. I mean, some of these slingshots easily get probes hurtling through space at tens of thousands of miles per hour. Wikipedia has a handy diagram of the Voyager 1 satellite doing such a thing.

"Gravity assist." "Slingshot." Of course, on a very basic and objective level, yes, we are taking advantage of forces generated by outside objects to specifically help in our goals. We're getting help from objects in the same way a river can power a mill. And of course we call it a "slingshot," because the motion is very similar (mentally at least; I can't be sure about the exact physics).

Plus, especially compared to the other sciences, the terminology for astrophysics is like, really straightforward. "Black hole?" Damn yeah it sure is. "Big bang?" It sure was. "Galactic cluster?" Buddy you're never gonna guess what this is. I think it's an effect of the fact that language is generally developed for life on earth and all the strange variances that happen on its surface, that applying it to something as alien and vast as space, general terms tend to suffice very well in a lot more places than, like... idk, botany.

But, like. "Gravity assist." I still can't get the notion out of my head that such language implies us receiving active help from our celestial neighbors. They come to our aid. We are working together. We are assisted. Jupiter and the other planets saw our little messengers coming from its pale blue molecular cousin, and we set up the physics just right, so that they could help us send them out to far stranger places than this, to tell us all about what they find out there.

We are assisted.

And there is no better way to illustrate my feelings on the matter than to just show you guys one of my favorite paintings, this 1973 NASA art by Rick Guidice to show the Pioneer probe doing this exact thing:

"... You, sent out beyond your recall, go to the limits of your longing. Embody me. ..."

Gravity assist.

Hello Dungeon Meshi fans

[Start ID. A redraw of the "Dog playing chess" meme with the characters Laios and Kabru from the anime Dungeon Meshi. The two characters are sitting at opposite ends of a wooden table with a chess board in between them. At the back end of the table is Kabru, a human wearing armor, he has a brown skin tone with bright blue eyes and wavy dark brown hair. His hands are pressed up to his face, obscuring his nose and mouth, and he has a frustrated and confused expression. There is text in a white font with a black outline over Kabru saying "The smart kid, not understanding how he's losing to me". At the front of the table, sitting very close to the viewer is Laios, a human with a white skin tone with light gold eyes and spiky blond hair. Just a profile view of his face is visible with a little bit of his armor in frame. He is looking to the side at the viewer in a slightly mischievous way and it looks as if he is chewing something in his mouth. Text next to Laios in a white font and black outline reads "Me, who's been eating monsters when he's not looking". In the bottom left corner of the drawing is a watermark with the username "TheCraftyDragonC". End ID] I'm sure other people have drawn this meme with these characters before, but it really fits them so well I couldn't shake the idea. I'm really enjoying watching the anime so far, it's fun to have something to look forward to each Thursday but the wait between episodes is also a little agonizing lol. Also here's a version without text, for funsies.

[Start ID. the same image as above, a redraw of the "Dog playing chess" meme with the characters Laios and Kabru from the anime Dungeon Meshi, but this time there is no text over the drawing. End ID.]

I have some new free to use dragon bases up on my Ko-fi, as well as all of my previous bases from DeviantArt!

Ko-fi

Visit TheCraftyDragonC's Ko-fi Shop!

I've opened a Ko-fi shop. Come take a look!

Weekly gift Trapinch 19

Happy Pride month!!! Here's a tiny rainbow dragon I drew awhile ago

[Start ID: A digital drawing of a small rainbow themed dragon. The dragon is a light sky blue with a darker blue underbelly, with feathered wings in pastel rainbow colors, and bright rainbow spines. They have brown horns, bright blue eyes, and they are sticking their pink tongue out. At the end of their tail is a red heart shape. Floating around the dragon are hearts in the colors of the rainbow. Above their head is an arched rainbow with clouds at the ends. End ID]