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roisinstudios.bsky.social
Róisín
@roisinstudios.bsky.social
1.8K followers 180 following 280 posts
cartoonist 🏳️‍⚧️ ♡ "roh-sheen" ♡ 18+

slowly drawing a longer comic (new page every other monday)
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roisinstudios.bsky.social
dance drawing
A pencil drawing of many people dancing. The focus is on a slow-dancing couple, one femme and one masc. You can see the femme’s face over the masc’s shoulder. She is smiling with her eyes closed.
November 27, 2025 at 6:31 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
new bill in my state mandating that public teachers “may” provide instruction on positive impacts of religion on american history, which is pointless on its face. teachers can already do that. seems designed to elevate a “positive” telling of history and frame it as neutral. yell at these idiots
State Representatives Gary Click (R-Vickery) and Mike Dovilla (R-Berea) today announced that the Ohio House of Representatives passed House Bill 486 – the Charlie Kirk American Heritage Act – legislation that works to preserve the ability for educators to discuss the positive impact of religion on American history, highlighting its consistency with freedom of speech and emphasizing how imperative it is to reduce politically motivated hate and violence in society. A screenshot of the text of the bill. This section is highlighted: “When providing instruction on the topic of American history, a teacher in a public school may provide instruction on the positive impact of religion on american history.”
November 26, 2025 at 8:58 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
kaiba continues to be my holy grail of character design
A still from episode 1 of Kaiba. A group of men and boys (I think?) are standing around a strange machine. Still from episode 3 of Kaiba. A girl is seen in profile. She looks down, her eyes closed, as her air blows in the wind behind her. A still from episode 2 of Kaiba. A crown of men and women. Two of the women look concerned. They are all oddly dressed.
November 24, 2025 at 10:37 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
i used to use this strong-hold Ouidad gel, because it really gives the curls a solid shape, but I recently switched to this Davines serum and I like it a lot better. still gives a defined shape but its much lighter, plus it smells nice
Product image of Davines' Curl Building Serum Product image of Ouidad gel
November 24, 2025 at 6:52 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
i recently got to spend a good chunk of time reading anim history & theory (pic is the contents from my over-organized notes) and Frank's book was really the standout. thoughtful and passionate, but i was floored esp by her dedication to imagining alternative social configurations for artistic labor
The table of contents from my animation notes: Michael Barrier, American Animation in Its Golden Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Danny Peary and Gerald Peary, eds., The American Animated Cartoon: A Critical Anthology (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1980). Hannah Frank, Frame by Frame: A Materialist Aesthetics of Animated Cartons (Oakland: University of California Press, 2019). Donald Crafton, Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898-1928 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982). Thomas Lamarre, The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009). Donald Crafton, Shadow of a Mouse: Performance, Belief, and World-Making in Animation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013). Nicholas Sammond, Birth of an Industry: Blackface Minstrelsy and the Rise of American Animation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2015). Christopher P. Lehman, The Colored Cartoon: Black Representation in American Animated Short Films, 1907-1954 (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2007).
November 23, 2025 at 7:49 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
for anyone interested in Frank's book, here's an intro from my notes. it's actually an edited version of a manuscript that she left unfinished at the time of her (tragically early) death
The cover of Hannah Frank's book, "Frame by Frame: A Materialist Aesthetics of Animated Cartoons." Hannah Frank (1984-2017) was a professor of film studies at the University of North Carolina at the time of her untimely death at age thirty-three. She had a master’s in film studies from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in cinema and media studies from the University of Chicago. In his editor’s introduction, Daniel Morgan writes: “Frame by Frame is basically the dissertation that Frank defended in August 2016. It is not the book that she would have published. In the months before her death, Frank had begun to think about how she might revise and change it.” On its publication, the book appears to have made something of a splash. J. Hoberman’s review in Artforum begins: “It’s not every day that a posthumously published Ph.D. thesis nudges the world of cinema studies off its axis.” Hoberman puts Frank’s book in the lineage of Ester Leslie’s Hollywood Flatlands: Animation, Critical Theory and the Avant-Garde (2002). In his foreword to Frank’s book, Tom Gunning describes her intervention as a turn to the still image and the labor that went into making it: “Frank makes us look at cartoons differently—no longer as images that flit across the screen, but as documents of human labor that should be scrutinized.” (p. xiii) Another of Frank’s interventions is to treat animation as a photographic medium. Daniel Morgan notes that animation is generally not treated as a photographic medium, and has therefore been excluded from film theory. Morgan writes: “Historically, animation has been defined as what cinema is not. The radical gesture Frank undertakes is to show that the two are inextricably intertwined, and to insist that we treat each cartoon seriously as a succession of photographic documents.” (p. xxxv) Frank forges this continuity between animation and cinema by shifting focus from the cel to the photograph of the cel. Morgan continues: “the photograph of the cels, the creation of an image of an animated film, is actually of the world of its production.” (p. xxxvi)
November 23, 2025 at 7:25 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
coming home from hanging out with friends to find that my um actually 101 dalmatians post blew up
A screenshot from the Simpsons. Two yellow hands are holding a pamphlet, which has been crudely edited to read, “so you’ve started a discourse.” Under the text is a depiction of a depressed-looking woman.
November 23, 2025 at 5:04 AM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
btw the source of this info is Hannah Frank's excellent Frame by Frame (2019)
The cover of a book by Hannah Frank called "Frame by Frame: A Materialist Aesthetics of Animated Cartoons."
November 22, 2025 at 4:26 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
the reason 101 dalmations looks like that is because disney incorporated xerography (ie early photocopying technology) into the animation process. rough pencils (by mostly male animators) were copied onto the cels so that disney could fire the (mostly female) inkers. remember that art can lie to you
A post from twitter with a screenshot from 101 Dalmatians. The caption says, “A lot of animation snobs will say that the sketchy linework of Disney movies in the 60s and 70s was sloppy and cheap, but man I adore it. The shifting outlines do just enough to remind you that every single frame of the movie was made by a human being.”
November 22, 2025 at 3:22 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
i'm sick, and i can't mix cold meds with my tremor meds, so no inking for a little while. here are some pics from my reference folder as consolation, three different "views of rome," all oddly satisfying in their own way
View of Rome, from Jacopo Filippo Foresti, Supplementum chronicarum, Venice, 1490. A woodcut with clean outlines. Lots of little buildings clustered together. Taddeo di Bartolo, view of Rome, 1414, fresco. The view is enclosed in a circular frame and the buildings are oddly spaced out on a brown ground. View of Rome, ca. 1538, tempera on canvas. A sprawling vista. The relative size of the building is somewhat nonsensical, and again there's too much space between everything.
November 21, 2025 at 6:37 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
bottom drawing
An intimate scene with two women in bed. One is one top of the other, saying, “you’re such a bottom!”
November 13, 2025 at 2:31 AM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
(here’s an example — you can see one on the bottom left)
November 10, 2025 at 6:29 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
LIVES OF THE ARTISTS/6
Page six of a comic titled "Lives of the Artists." We see Prima walking through the woods, wiping the ochre off her lips, the two mattocks from the prior scene swung over her shoulder. Gio trails behind her. Prima turns around, then turns ahead again and asks, "What is it, Giovanni?" Gio hesitates for a moment, then responds, "I haven't had any training." After another pause, he continues, "Beginner artists are supposed to be bad!!" In the final panel, Prima says, "Come on now -- whether you're good or bad is beside the point."
November 10, 2025 at 4:32 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
cutie practice
Pencil drawings in my sketchbook. Some of the drawings are of existing characters (Nami, Miffy, My Melody, and Pochacco) and some are of my characters.
November 2, 2025 at 2:51 AM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
LIVES OF THE ARTISTS/5
Page five of a comic titled "Lives of the Artists." Prima takes the mattock from Gio and uses it to smash the rock with his drawing on it. In the aftermath, we see Gio laid out on his back, a blank expression on his face. Meanwhile, Prima looks to the sky as the blind-folded angel disappears behind the clouds.
October 27, 2025 at 3:00 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
all the jean jackets
A watercolor painting over an ink drawing. Three views of the same woman. She's nude except for a jean jacket. In one view she's standing with a hand on her head. In the other two she's sitting, the jacket slipping down her shoulders.
October 18, 2025 at 2:17 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
more jean jacket
A watercolor painting over an ink drawing. Two images of the same woman. She is nude except for a jean jacket.
October 18, 2025 at 12:20 AM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
jean jacket
A watercolor over a pen drawing. A nude woman in a jean jacket. She has shoulder-length gray-blue hair.
October 17, 2025 at 3:16 AM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
pressed
A watercolor painting over an ink drawing. A giant finger is pressing a nude woman to the ground. Big plumes up dust rise up behind her.
October 16, 2025 at 9:11 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
my old post about the borghese hermaphrodite is going around again so here’s another fascinating piece in the louvre, the “mazarin hermaphrodite.” the wall text describes it as a combination of a funerary effigy with the lower part of different statue
A photograph of the “Mazarin Hermaphrodite,” a restoration that combines the top and bottom of different statues. In its current state, the statue appears as a standing nude with their arms over their head.
October 15, 2025 at 4:07 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
painting
A gouache painting of a woman revealing herself. She has brown hair, a yellow sweater, and light green jeans. She looks sad.
October 15, 2025 at 5:48 AM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
got gouache. it’s gouache time
A photo of a Holbein gouache set.
October 14, 2025 at 4:06 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
LIVES OF THE ARTISTS/4
Page four of a comic titled "Lives of the Artists." The following is a text synopsis. Prima asks, "Are you with me, Giovanni?" Gio doesn't respond, lost in thought. Prima asks, "What are you looking at?" Gio says, "It's me ... and it's you? I combined our features." We can see that he has been carving an image into a flat-surfaced rock. The image combines Gio's hat and hair with Prima's dress. Gio continues, "I just can't tell ... if it's any good." Meanwhile, Prima looks on in horror. Above the trees, an angel guard flies by.
October 13, 2025 at 5:24 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
monday morning sketchbook
A drawing from life in my sketchbook. A man in a light jacket, jeans, and chelsea boots is bent over a laptop.
October 13, 2025 at 4:23 PM
roisinstudios.bsky.social
la fornarina
A pen drawing loosely modeled on Raphael’s La Fornarina. A nude woman with a complicated wrapped hat sits before a background of foliage.
October 12, 2025 at 8:06 PM