blue-ten

[blue-ten]

Need Some Help ;v;

I've got a website bill coming up, a recurring payment to the IRS, and only $5 in my bank account at the moment, so if you want to lend a hand I have a few great ClipStudio/Photoshop brush sets on my web store for $1 each (or more if you want to add a tip): https://blueten.gumroad.com/

My personal favorite is the Graphite Pencils set, which has great tilt functionality in Clip Studio :> Edit: Gosh, thanks so much for the response to the brushes! I put a lot of work into making sure these are brushes that I'd enjoy using, so I really hope you all enjoy them too! :D I also have a ko-fi with some exclusive Everblue art in the gallery for any donations!

Thank you so much for any help, reblogs, etc.

[blue-ten]

hi there, in your opinion which pen tablet non-display are the best in terms in quality and durability?

I haven't used many non-display tablets recently, so I can only speak to my general experience with the 3 big tablet companies: Wacom, Huion, and XP-Pen. For starters, my experience with Huion has been very positive. The build quality of my Kamvas 13 and the durability of the drawing surface after over a year has put Huion pretty high on my list of trusted hardware companies. The pen and drawing experience has been great too (I have both the "PW517" and "PW550S" pens, which will likely be the pens you'll get with the newer Huion non-screen tablets) For reference, this is the surface of my tablet after over a year of use:

No scratches that I can see or feel and I tend to draw with more pressure than most people. Also, special shout-out to the PW550S "Slim" pen, which has been super nice to draw with. I haven't had as much luck with XP-Pen, although to be fair this was years ago and I've only used one tablet from them (the Deco Pro). The drawing experience was great, but it started having disconnection problems after a year. They tend to review well, though, so it's possible I had bad luck with mine. Lastly, I've had the most experience with Wacom and it's been a mixed bag. I've used the Intuos 3 and 4, and the Cinitq 13HD, and while the drawing experience is fantastic across the board, all of them suffered from heavy scratching issues, and the Cintiq in particular had an awful connector that disconnected at the slightest nudge and a screen that was burning out at the corners after two years. It's really kind of shocking when you consider how much they tend to cost in comparison to the so-called "budget" options. If I were to buy a tablet from these companies today, I'd probably go with: Inspiroy Giano from Huion | $199 USD - I've had such a good experience with them, I'd be willing to go in on one of their more high-end non-screen devices. Deco L from XP-Pen | $69 USD - At that price, this feels like a steal and a good device to give XP-Pen a shot with if you want to test out their current hardware (it looks slick af). Wacom One S (non-screen) from Wacom | $59.95 USD - You'd get that trusted Wacom drawing experience without sinking a ton of money into it. Keep in mind, this has been based on my personal experience with these tablet companies! I may have just gotten a Deco Pro with a bad connector and... well, the Wacom experience is a bit harder to excuse, but it's possible I just got a dud of a Cintiq, haha. I hope that helps! Sorry for all the text x'D

[blue-ten]

Thanks so much for the commission! Had a lot of fun getting to work with Dang's character design!

Runescape art of the character Dang challenging you to a duel! An absolutely stunning commission by the kind and gracious @blue-ten . He did such a lovely dynamic pose and it's just overall one of my favorite artworks of Dang.

[blue-ten]

[blue-ten]

My drives were saved!

I edited the original post, but I'll sum it up here too! I got some help from a tech support forum and managed to repair the drives by booting into a Windows Installation USB and running the 'chkdsk' command to scan for errors and fix them. I still feel like I'm in need of an extra backup drive because I'm worried about the stability of my current ones after this, but everything's okay for now! ; v ; I'm backing up as many files as I can onto my old laptop just in case.

[blue-ten]

oh no!! how much do you need for the hard drive?

I'll need a 2TB drive to make an image of both affected drives, and I think those cost about $80 to $100 these days! I don't know how much the data recovery will cost, but hopefully I can find a company to quote something for me ;v;

[blue-ten]

HELP! Power outage fried my hard drives!

Update: I managed to repair my drives thanks to some help I got on the tech support SubReddit. I used a Windows Installation USB! Ran 'chkdsk /f /r' from the command line for each drive and after hours of scanning, they were mountable again! ; v ;

I'm backing up all my files to my old laptop now. They'll exist in at least three places at all times from now on. I'm not taking any chances.

I'm still gonna need that backup drive, because now I'm really worried about the stability of these disks after what happened, so thank you so much for your donations ;v;. I'm glad I won't need to shell out for data recovery because I hear it can get pricey D: There was a power outage and now both my main drive where I store all Everblue related things and my backup drive stopped working (they are no longer readable/mountable). They're both hard disks, so I'm not super worried about the data being completely gone, but if I want to keep working on Everblue, I need those files ;<; I need to get myself a big USB drive so I can make a backup image of the drives and send the originals off for data recovery, but I'm basically flat broke right now...

I have a ko-fi where you can donate to help me get that backup drive if you want, but signal boosting this post also helps! I've never been so scared of losing my comic. I have 20 years of project files on those drives. I never thought both my main data drive AND the backup would go at the same time, aah, this is so messed up ;-;

[blue-ten]

Did a quick paint-over of a Luna sketch I found in my files :D

[blue-ten]

New Everblue page is up! Click here to read! (cw: blood)

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[blue-ten]

Hi,

I am Amani, and as you know, my sister Eman and I are currently living in the besieged Gaza Strip. We are the only ones left from our family. We live with our children in a tent, experiencing the worst living conditions. We are still suffering and struggling to provide water, food, and other necessities. Basic living conditions are not available, and we are living in extremely difficult circumstances.

Our homes have been completely destroyed, and our future shattered. We no longer have a house or anything we own. We have been displaced four times, facing exhaustion and severe illness, including gastroenteritis, high fever, cough, and amoebiasis due to contaminated water and malnutrition. Despite our efforts, we struggled to find the necessary medicine. Here we are now in the Mawasi Khan Younis area, where the intense ongoing bombardment continues.

My brother created this donation link to help us reach safety and save our lives and our children’s lives. Here in Gaza, we find nothing, and the truth is we are fighting to survive. We appeal to the entire world to move to a safe place where we can rebuild our lives in peace. Travel costs are high, but it is the best solution.

Your support means a lot to us.

Thank you very much for your understanding and assistance ❤️

[blue-ten]

I do apologize for that long Microsoft vent in the last post xD. I try to keep this account to mostly art posts, but sometimes it feels nice to get the rant off your chest (still gonna do the thing I mentioned in that post, though :B)

Dagger sketch!

[blue-ten]

Windows 11 and the Last Straw

Bit of a rant coming up. TL;DR I'm tired of Microsoft, so I'm moving to Linux. After Microsoft's announcement of "Recall" and their plans to further push Copilot as some kind of defining feature of the OS, I'm finally done. I feel like that frog in the boiling water analogy, but I'm noticing the bubbles starting to form and it's time to hop out.

The corporate tech sector recently has been such a disaster full of blind bandwagon hopping (NFTs, ethically dubious "AI" datasets trained on artwork scraped off the net, and creative apps trying to incorporate features that feed off of those datasets). Each and every time it feels like insult to injury toward the arts in general. The out of touch CEOs and tech billionaires behind all this don't understand art, they don't value art, and they never will.

Thankfully, I have a choice. I don't have to let Microsoft feature-creep corporate spyware into my PC. I don't have to let them waste space and CPU cycles on a glorified chatbot that wants me to press the "make art" button. I'm moving to Linux, and I've been inadvertently prepping myself to do it for over a decade now.

I like testing out software: operating systems, web apps, anything really, but especially art programs. Over the years, the open-source community has passionately and tirelessly developed projects like Krita, Inkscape, and Blender into powerhouses that can actually compete in their spaces. All for free, for artists who just want to make things. These are people, real human beings, that care about art and creativity. And every step of the way while Microsoft et al began rotting from the inside, FOSS flourished and only got better. They've more than earned trust from me.

I'm not announcing my move to Linux just to be dramatic and stick it to the man (although it does feel cathartic, haha). I'm going to be using Krita, Inkscape, GIMP, and Blender for all my art once I make the leap, and I'm going to share my experiences here! Maybe it'll help other artists in the long run! I'm honestly excited about it. I worked on the most recent page of Everblue entirely in Krita, and it was a dream how well it worked for me.

Addendum: I'm aware that Microsoft says things like, "Copilot is optional," "Recall is offline, it doesn't upload or harvest your data," "You can turn all these things off." Uh-huh. All that is only true until it isn't. One day Microsoft will take the user's choice away like they've done so many times before. Fool me once, etc.

[blue-ten]

New Everblue page is up! Click here to read! (cw: blood)

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[blue-ten]

LUNAR BOY IS NOW AVAILABLE WHEREVER AMERICAN GRAPHIC NOVELS ARE SOLD!!

Let's make history today! A book about a moon boy's journey with diaspora angst, finding a queer family, and figuring out what it means to truly belong, is finally OUT! Not long ago I believed queer Indonesian representation like this couldn't even exist in my life time, but here we are! To celebrate, we got a book cake and nasi tumpeng. Culturally tumpeng is eaten to celebrate life milestones.

If you see Lunar Boy in a bookstore or a library, please take a pic and tag me or send it my way! It's my dream to see my book out there, but I likely won't see my book in my home country. Thank you :')

[blue-ten]

2023 Tax Fundraiser for Everblue ;v;

I still owe $621 on my taxes, so I'm setting a goal on my Ko-Fi to help get there! ko-fi.com/everbluecomic You'll get to see some exclusive Everblue costume/fashion concept arts that I made for Patreon in the Ko-Fi gallery as a thanks for any donations!

[blue-ten]

New page is up! Click here to read!

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[blue-ten]

I made sure to do this (here near the bottom, for people having trouble finding it on Desktop). Having said that...

Why do sites always position this as an opt-out thing? Wouldn't it make more sense for it to be opt-in only? That way you can be 100% sure that the people who ticked the option to share their data actually wanted to. How many forgotten blogs are going to get scraped for AI training now because they got opted-in without consent?

Hi, Tumblr. It’s Tumblr. We’re working on some things that we want to share with you. 

AI companies are acquiring content across the internet for a variety of purposes in all sorts of ways. There are currently very few regulations giving individuals control over how their content is used by AI platforms. Proposed regulations around the world, like the European Union’s AI Act, would give individuals more control over whether and how their content is utilized by this emerging technology. We support this right regardless of geographic location, so we’re releasing a toggle to opt out of sharing content from your public blogs with third parties, including AI platforms that use this content for model training. We’re also working with partners to ensure you have as much control as possible regarding what content is used.

Here are the important details:

We already discourage AI crawlers from gathering content from Tumblr and will continue to do so, save for those with which we partner. 

We want to represent all of you on Tumblr and ensure that protections are in place for how your content is used. We are committed to making sure our partners respect those decisions.

To opt out of sharing your public blogs’ content with third parties, visit each of your public blogs’ blog settings via the web interface and toggle on the “Prevent third-party sharing” option. 

For instructions on how to opt out using the latest version of the app, please visit this Help Center doc. 

Please note: If you’ve already chosen to discourage search crawling of your blog in your settings, we’ve automatically enabled the “Prevent third-party sharing” option.

If you have concerns, please read through the Help Center doc linked above and contact us via Support if you still have questions.