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jajalalaTechnically I posted my first fanfic to fanfiction-dot-net, but as soon as I found AO3 I posted every single fic after that to AO3, and completely neglected the ff account. After a conversation with some friends on discord tho, I decided that it might be nice to add some of my old works onto ff for the very strange folks who are sticking there (in spite of AO3 being better in almost every way).
So I booted up the ol' account and had to relearn how posting worked... and discovered that you can add covers to your stories. And since I have a backlog of stories to post on there, I was like "Ooh time to make fun little covers for some of my SFW works..."
And ohoho is it addictive, I spent several hours just dicking around with little graphics and fonts and finding/making pngs of characters to put on there... I am absolutely not a graphic design student, but it's a great joy to arrange images and text for a fic.
(Image sourced from a discord message I sent to some friends, so sorry if it disappears in the future (as far as I know discord isn't a great long-term image hosting) but it's not as important as my thoughts)
Please don't mind the first image which is for my profile pic... and please don't laugh too hard at the among us cover XD it was for a FE3H Among Us AU, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to put a bunch of those lil Among Us ppl on the cover.
Nothing makes me realize how long-winded my titles are like trying to fit them onto a tiny book cover! For Shigaraki's Walkthrough... in the lower right-hand side I literally just gave in and made almost the entire cover text.
Looking at them I'm kind of like "I may be cringe... but I am free." I like to draw and write, but this collage/graphic design style of expressing and communicating is something somewhat new, so I am just delighting in the process of creation. Plus it's really fun to connect to some of my older works again in a quicker way than re-reading the whole thing (which I love to do, but takes quite a bit of time). I will admit that I am self-obsessed, so getting to think about and collage about my own things is like maximum dopamine.
Also forgive me that they're so small, but also bc some of the images I had were of varying quality... it is perhaps a good thing that it's small (since some of of the images on the same cover sometimes had varied qualities, does not look great blown up). Also on ff the cover is pretty small, so I tried to focus on it looking semi-readable from a distance anyway.
I don't think AO3 should necessarily start making covers (image hosting is expensive, and I think their current focus on text-only is good for long-term longevity. Plus I do think it adds a graphic-design pressure to ppl who just want to write) but I cannot deny that it's really fun to do. And of course even if AO3 doesn't host images, technically you can still put them into your fic, which provides plenty more flexibility if I ever felt so dedicated to making covers that I wanted them there as well (right now I'm finding it fun but my current creations are a little embarrassing, so I'm keeping it to ff).
(And note: If you want to do some of your own, the program I used is Canva, introduced to me by the legendarythisbinks. It's in-browser and free, though there's a "pro" version to unlock certain perks it's pretty easy to work around that and do what you want for free.)
So I booted up the ol' account and had to relearn how posting worked... and discovered that you can add covers to your stories. And since I have a backlog of stories to post on there, I was like "Ooh time to make fun little covers for some of my SFW works..."
And ohoho is it addictive, I spent several hours just dicking around with little graphics and fonts and finding/making pngs of characters to put on there... I am absolutely not a graphic design student, but it's a great joy to arrange images and text for a fic.
(Image sourced from a discord message I sent to some friends, so sorry if it disappears in the future (as far as I know discord isn't a great long-term image hosting) but it's not as important as my thoughts)
Please don't mind the first image which is for my profile pic... and please don't laugh too hard at the among us cover XD it was for a FE3H Among Us AU, and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to put a bunch of those lil Among Us ppl on the cover.
Nothing makes me realize how long-winded my titles are like trying to fit them onto a tiny book cover! For Shigaraki's Walkthrough... in the lower right-hand side I literally just gave in and made almost the entire cover text.
Looking at them I'm kind of like "I may be cringe... but I am free." I like to draw and write, but this collage/graphic design style of expressing and communicating is something somewhat new, so I am just delighting in the process of creation. Plus it's really fun to connect to some of my older works again in a quicker way than re-reading the whole thing (which I love to do, but takes quite a bit of time). I will admit that I am self-obsessed, so getting to think about and collage about my own things is like maximum dopamine.
Also forgive me that they're so small, but also bc some of the images I had were of varying quality... it is perhaps a good thing that it's small (since some of of the images on the same cover sometimes had varied qualities, does not look great blown up). Also on ff the cover is pretty small, so I tried to focus on it looking semi-readable from a distance anyway.
I don't think AO3 should necessarily start making covers (image hosting is expensive, and I think their current focus on text-only is good for long-term longevity. Plus I do think it adds a graphic-design pressure to ppl who just want to write) but I cannot deny that it's really fun to do. And of course even if AO3 doesn't host images, technically you can still put them into your fic, which provides plenty more flexibility if I ever felt so dedicated to making covers that I wanted them there as well (right now I'm finding it fun but my current creations are a little embarrassing, so I'm keeping it to ff).
(And note: If you want to do some of your own, the program I used is Canva, introduced to me by the legendary
thisbinks. It's in-browser and free, though there's a "pro" version to unlock certain perks it's pretty easy to work around that and do what you want for free.)
no subject
Date: 2022-05-11 07:51 pm (UTC)i love watching people find new stuff and just fucking around, letting out their creativity in ways not yet used (cue me throwing canva at basically every single person around me 🤣)
So happy you're having fun and also, making like little film posters 🥰🥰🥰 would totally watch every single one of your fics in film form if given the chance
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Date: 2022-05-12 11:22 pm (UTC)And 🥺🥺🥺 Thank uuuu fanfic films would be a dream
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Date: 2022-05-11 09:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-12 11:23 pm (UTC)And hell yeah do it! I've been finding it fun so far
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Date: 2022-05-11 09:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-05-12 11:25 pm (UTC)Oooh moodboards is a whole 'nother endeavor I've never been on... it's certainly cool, but I fear my aesthetic sense may be too weak for it lol
no subject
Date: 2022-05-13 06:48 pm (UTC)