Sideblog for my personal projects, whether that's art, writing, oc stuff, inspo, or whatever! Yall can call me duck, i use they/them and ey/em pronouns Main blog: @duck-in-a-spaceship
99 posts
Latest Posts by duck-in-the-universe - Page 3
The decay of the mechanical.
My webcomic FACING THE SUN has a new update
Read on my website | Read on WEBTOON
As someone who is trying to write their own story, I'm so happy that there are author's out there who have written books with disabled rep, who have written books with queer rep. Because I am both of those things, and it really helps to know that mine won't be the only one like it.
Happy birthday to @glacierruler!!! I hope you have a great day, and enjoy the art :)
This is one of storm's ocs, Fig, who I love very dearly and was a blast to draw! You can find their character info here
"Enough lounging, I need to keep moving." // vikas chander
A note by the photographer:
"In the far north west of Namibia lies possibly one of the remotest and least inhabited places on Earth. Kaokoland is home to the ethnic group known as the Himba, but I came here in search of the Lone Men of Kaokoland. They are not marked on any map and blend seamlessly into the landscape making them, difficult to spot. The Lone men have been wired together using small rocks found in the area by artist, Trevor Nott and each of them has a small tag on them with their number and a small caption. Seen here is Lone man # 5 who says – “ Enough lounging, I need to keep moving”. Rumoured to be in excess of about 40 men of stone, I could discover only 18 of them, during my adventures in Kaokoland. The rest await me and for my next trip into the area."
Challenge Day 276 of Year 9 Teb was a simple plastiform home kit robot that it's builder less than legally squeezed a grey market AI into. It was fairly sure that it hadn't been put together correctly, but didn't have the tech to do diagnostics on itself just yet.
What I used: Muji Light Blue 0.7mm pen, and Muji 0.5mm Light blue pen on Karst Stone Paper Notebook. What this is: Daily Character Design Challenge, 2024-02-26 Year 9 - No276a, by Jeff Stewart
Some notes on black holes for a short story I have in the works. Not going for too hard of sci-fi. I know some of the basic rules here but am also going to be breaking and twisting them around a bit. Really, these are some very, very basic notes. I'm more interested in sensation and experience than knowing a bunch of complex physics, with a dash of the right vocabulary to make things seem smart.
“Some books you don’t read so much as live, and finishing one of those always makes me think of ascending from a scuba dive. Like if I surface too fast I might get the bends.”
Emily Henry, Book Lovers
kyhuine southern (dry valley group) crop farmers in a field of "siesu". Which are basically mold balls that can be used like cotton.
The post will be updated with additional text later about domesticated siesu and its usages.
drawing started months ago on krita but it wasn't going well, finished and painted on rebelled 7
Baily's Beads during the solar eclipse of March 29, 2006 as seen from Türkiye // Tom Victor
Training
Glass teaching Desmona the tricks o' the trade. It means a lot to her to have a way of self defense that she can control, and that is very much designed to be non-lethal. I originally gave her a spear to be more matchy-matchy with Glass, but quickly realized that didn't fit.
So now she gets a staff! Still very much a weapon Glass can help teach her how to use, of course. It's something they can bond over as well- they worked on that staff together, and now they can train together with it.
I feel like there should be some sort of symbolism for the long bandages on the glass bots spears. Practically, they can help with grip for a people with very smooth, slippery hands, but there's not really a reason to leave a tail that long. Could be some kind of status symbol, or maybe vitality? Glass bots can be a little obsessed with age, so maybe you clip it as you get older? Idk, but I need to come up with something so it's not just impractical for no reason haha.
Stages | Developing Nepenthes Pitcher plant by Steve Mackay
Hold my hand
Ooo baby it's a long way down
To the bottom of the river
Some scattered thoughts about Desmona's mask, why she wears it, and how she got it.
Taglist: @glacierruler
astro sunset
Scavengers art! I imagine this one would be pretty early after Desmona joins them, before she has the armor and all that. None of them really know what they're doing yet, they're just trying to coexist as best as they can. Glass and her do a lot of the cooking around here, but Sprocket likes to help pick the ingredients. She needs her nutrition, goddamnit!
Tags and text transcript below the cut
Sprocket: It's bone broth, from an aurack. It has calcium in it.
Desmona: Oh cool. That's nice.
Sprocket: Did you know calcium is good for your bones?
Desmona: Uh, yeah.
Sprocket: That's good.
Taglist: @glacierruler
Glass and Sprocket doodles! Been thinking about these two as a duo a lot lately. So much time spent together, wandering the desert, scavenging the sands...
Some context for the first little sketch (harmonized humming): the glass bots communicate exclusively via different pitched hums. The range of these goes outside of what humans can perceive, so for the most part, Glass communicates with Sprocket and others through sign language. But Glass has also been teaching him what ey can of eir own language. (which ey VERY much enjoys, and in return Sprocket has been teaching em a kind of morse code language he knows. which again ey very much enjoys.)
And the way Sprocket's sensors work means he doesn't pick up a lot of external stimuli, but he is more sensitive to vibration and larger impacts that can make their way through. So this has become a way of showing affection for them!! Glass can express eirself in a way that feels natural, and Sprocket can pick up on and try to reciprocate these sensations that are one of the few things he can actually feel.
The bottom right sketch is titled "One robot teaches another how to be human" The piece of text next to the more complicated part gives a description of what it is and how commonly it's found, while the bottom part with the toaster simply reads "I have no idea."
Taglist: @glacierruler
Okay then! Bumblebee!
Are you better at action, descriptions, or dialogue?
-g
Oh man descriptions all day everyday. They're so fun, and there's so much room for all that delicious symbolism and metaphor and pretty word choice.
Dialogue is also chill. Action is so goddamn hard, it always feels like a puzzle to find the right pacing and balance and word choice and interesting shit happening in a way that makes sense?? I know I can pull it off, but it requires a lot more thought than just letting descriptions or conversation flow.
I was scrolling through your blog and saw a yellow themed ask game. Are you still taking questions for that?
Yeah go for it! I don't really consider ask games to have an expiration date, as long as I remember what you're talking about lol
from da archives!!!! a screenprinted zine i made <3
As the storms ebb and flow, those ships foolish enough to get caught in their swell drop down from the sky.
It's a good time to be a scavenger.
'Drop season' is the period of time on Deslocar when the storms start to cease, as the scavengers call it. It's both a time to trade your goods with off-worlders, and collect from the ships that aren't quite used to the rougher conditions...
Tags: @glacierruler
Deslocar Playlist!
Still very much a work in progress, but long enough I figured I'd share. Filled with strange tunes, some western stuff, character songs, and some story themes if ya know where to look.
Tags: @glacierruler
Rough background stuff for Deslocar. At its heart, this story is a western, so of course we've got to have a good old fashioned saloon. A lot of things might happen here, meetings, bar fights, drinking away your troubles. With Glass's spear and an upside-down cup, this was meant to harken back to Glass's and Sprocket's first meeting, at the start of the scavengers.
Tags: @glacierruler
The most detailed and clearest shot of the third quarter Mineral Moon.
"I captured around 50,000+ images over 186 GigaBytes of Data which almost killed my laptop with the processing."
When you post stuff for your story, can you tag me in it!!! It seems so exciting and I don't want to miss a thing!
-g
Yeah of course! Thanks for the reblogs today lol, that was really nice to see!
Also while I'm here, might as well answer your question from the tags earlier: Yes the Glass post is watercolor. All of the art I've posted here so far is lol, it's my main medium and my absolute fav <3
To anyone else that sees this as well, let me know if you want to be added to a taglist for my story stuff or whatever else!
"This is the land of the glass bots. We abandoned them, abandoned their lands, and instead of staying dead like they should have, they turned into walking memories."
And now, finally, Glass (ey/em), linguist, translator, and traveler of the desert.
Info:
First to join the group, joined Sprocket a while ago.
It was just the two of them for a very long time
Glass' main role on the team is as a protector (ey wields that spear well) and as a navigator
Before Sprocket, ey was a translator
Glass lived with other glass bots, and worked closely with their king
When humans needed to interact with the glass bots for any reason, Glass would act as a translator
Because Glass people speak in frequencies humans can't always hear and cannot learn to speak any other language, Glass learned sign language, which ey still uses to communicate now
Ey also became a kind of negotiator, learning how to translate what the King had to say into mannerisms and politeness that the humans would view favorably, and vice-versa
This regular involvement with humans grew Glass's fascination with human culture and languages, something not necessarily appreciated in the glass bot world
Of course it was Glass's job to understand these things, and ey was respected given eir high-ranking position, but ostracized as well
Eventually, this fascination with the outside world, resentment in eir own community, and disagreement with the King's rule drove Glass to leave and strike out on eir own
Soon after, ey met Sprocket, who offered em a job
Out of the group, those two are probably still the closest
They had a lot of time out in the desert to grow this bond, learning about each other, about each other's worlds
Glass is a very curious person, and often has many questions
Ey is very passionate about languages, and always eager to learn more, as well as teach people
Glass is an excellent teacher as well, eir patience makes em well-suited for it
Once Desmona joins the team and they have an actual human mouth to feed, ey also discovers a love of cooking!
"She's a walking fucking warning is what she is. Something you can tell your kids about so they don't go fucking with the transport vehicles, so they stay away from the facilities. I mean, she should have died, but I guess this makes a better story, huh?"
Desmona (she/her), the outcast turning to the desert to survive.
Info:
Was the third to join the group, initially it was just her, Sprocket, and Glass
Used to live in a mining town where they were drilling the liquid, magical energy substance that sits mostly under the surface of the planet
During an accident where one of the vehicles transporting this substance crashed, spilling out its contents, Desmona came in contact with a high amount of it
Instead of killing her, as it most certainly should have, it became a part of her
The energy is wild, impossible to control. It bursts out of her randomly and destructively, and she was driven out of her town as a result
Sprocket and Glass found her not long after
Glass is immune to the magical energy she can't help but wield, and Sprocket is somewhat resistant towards it
She latched onto them quickly because of that, glad to be around people she couldn't hurt
Sprocket and Glass eventually made the armor that can help contain the magic
Desmona is fairly withdrawn, especially around new people
When the group needs to travel into towns, she usually keeps to herself
She knows her mask makes her look somewhat strange and off-putting, and she's VERY happy to lean into that
She's very sweet though, despite all that
She gets along well with both Sprocket and Glass, but she's especially close to Glass
Since Glass is very curious about humans and different cultures and food and languages, Desmona is happy to teach em what she knows. She picks up on sign language pretty fast so they can talk without having to go through Sprocket.
They do a lot of cooking together
She also learns how to wield a spear from Glass
Desmona is very much a pacifist, but she knows it's important to protect herself, and it feels good to be able to do that in a way she can control
She doesn't want to hurt anyone, and hates the fact that now it feels like some kind of default state for her
journey to jupiter
prints available :) link in bio