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[darantha]

Important to note among the itch drama: you gotta pressure payment processors to undo the same bans applied to Patreon, Gumroad, OF, and the many adult sites they already hit in the years leading up to this, too.

It CANNOT stop with itch.

Like y'all please don't abandon this if banned games come back— sex workers and adult artists have been under fire by this shit for the past couple years already.

Don't leave folk to dry if you get itch and steam fixed.

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The filter relies on manually curated open-source blocklists, including the ‘nuclear’ list, provided by uBlockOrigin and uBlacklist Huge AI Blocklist,” DuckDuckGo said in a post on X. “While it won’t catch 100% of AI-generated results, it will greatly reduce the number of AI-generated images you see.

Left: AI filter is off Right: AI filter is on

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Great and now there's this. Theres truly no room for an ounce of complacency this is a direct attack on queer creatives.

Here's a link to the whole thread for more context

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Well, Daggerheart from Critical Role is out today, which means some art free from NDA jail :)

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sticker design for pride this year! 💞🏳️‍⚧️

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Sanity check project between work, playing dressup with my Warden. :')

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Sanity check project between work, playing dressup with my Warden. :')

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friendship ended with Gumroad

Hi everyone,

just got a cold ass email (actually two) this morning that my Gumroad account has been suspended and I can't get my money until I 'agree to their guidelines' which a third party content moderator service iffy (yes, really – their logo is literally the :/ face) is supervising. TLDR; I'm tired, angry and I swear quite a lot.

The funny thing is, I had already archived all my nsfw works on my Gumroad account, which left them with status 'unpublished'. Unknown to me, the contents should have been permanently deleted instead, because apparently in Gumroad unpublished works are still available for purchase via direct links. My bank statement doesn't separate the individual services I get payments from, so I wasn't aware of this.

Even funnier is, someone was still able to buy two comics from me after my account was suspended. Is my money ok but just so they can keep it at Gumroad?? I do not understand.

Anyhow, I deleted all my products on Gumroad. Permanently. Then I followed the guide on to how to get my account back – only to find out that the form for it does not work. At all. So now I'm either stuck with not getting something like 20 USD back from Gumroad or just deleting my entire account, which I'm not sure will help me getting paid. I'm sleepy and tired and most of all, really angry about their way of operating.

This is not the same service I signed up on. Changing the content guidelines, moderating content via a third party service that could be used for, idunno, rake hate speech, is instead used to weed out adult fancomics online. Gumroad's FAQ is written in a flippant way that made my eye twitch from sheer anger. Look at this:

idk, maybe Mrs. Gumroad can give me a fucking break for trusting that my stuff was safe with her instead of being a fucking bootlicking republican ass kissing spineless sandworm?

Anyway, my time with Gumroad is over. They made money from my art and they thank us all like this. It's a middle finger to the face. I'd suggest everyone else consider moving to itch.io from Gumroad as well.

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So earlier in art class today, someone drew a characters hands in their pockets and mentioned that hands are really like the ultimate end boss of art, and most of us wholeheartedly agreed. So then, our teacher went ahead and free handed like a handful of hands on the board, earning a woah from a couple of students. So the one from earlier mentioned how it barely took the teacher ten seconds to do what I can’t do in three hours. And you know what he responded?

“It didn’t take me ten seconds, it took me forty years.”

And you know, that stuck with me somehow. Because yeah. Drawing a hand didn’t take him fourth years. But learning and practicing to draw a hand in ten seconds did. And I think there’s something to learn there but it’s so warm and my brain is fried so I can’t formulate the actual morale of the lesson.

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Can't afford art school?

After seeing post like this 👇

And this gem 👇

As well as countless of others from the AI generator community. Just talking about how "inaccessible art" is, I decided why not show how wrong these guys are while also helping anyone who actually wants to learn.

Here is the first one ART TEACHERS! There are plenty online and in places like youtube.

📺Here is my list:

Proko (Free, mostly teaches anatomy and how to draw people. But does have art talks and teaches the basics.)

Marc Brunet (Free but he does have other classes for a cheap price. Use to work for Blizzard and teaches you everything)

Aaron Rutten (free, tips about art, talks about art programs and the best products for digital art)

BoroCG (free, teaches a verity of art mediums from 3D modeling to digital painting. As well as some tips that can be used across styles)

Jesse J. Jones (free, talks about animating)

Jesus Conde (free, teaches digital painting and has classes in Spanish)

Mohammed Agbadi (free, he gives some advice in some videos and talks about art)

Ross Draws (free, he does have other classes for a good price. Mostly teaching character designs and simple backgrounds.)

SamDoesArts (free, gives good advice and critiques)

Drawfee Show (free, they do give some good advice and great inspiration)

The Art of Aaron Blaise ( useful tips for digital art and animation. Was an animator for Disney. Mostly nature art)

Bobby Chiu ( useful tips and interviews with artist who are in the industry or making a living as artist)

Sinix Design (has some tips on drawing people)

Winged canvas (art school for free on a verity of mediums)

Bob Ross (just a good time, learn how to paint, as well as how too relax when doing art. "there are no mistakes only happy accidents", this channel also provides tips from another artist)

Scott Christian Sava (Inspiration and provides tips and advice)

Pikat (art advice and critiques)

Drawbox (a suggested cheap online art school, made of a community of artist)

Skillshare (A cheap learning site that has art classes ranging from traditional to digital. As well as Animation and tutorials on art programs. All under one price, in the USA it's around $34 a month)

Human anatomy for artist (not a video or teacher but the site is full of awesome refs to practice and get better at anatomy)

Second part BOOKS, I have collected some books that have helped me and might help others.

📚Here is my list:

The "how to draw manga" series produced by Graphic-sha. These are for manga artist but they give great advice and information.

"Creating characters with personality" by Tom Bancroft. A great book that can help not just people who draw cartoons but also realistic ones. As it helps you with facial ques and how to make a character interesting.

"Albinus on anatomy" by Robert Beverly Hale and Terence Coyle. Great book to help someone learn basic anatomy.

"Artistic Anatomy" by Dr. Paul Richer and Robert Beverly Hale. A good book if you want to go further in-depth with anatomy.

"Directing the story" by Francis Glebas. A good book if you want to Story board or make comics.

"Animal Anatomy for Artists" by Eliot Goldfinger. A good book for if you want to draw animals or creatures.

"Constructive Anatomy: with almost 500 illustrations" by George B. Bridgman. A great book to help you block out shadows in your figures and see them in a more 3 diamantine way.

"Dynamic Anatomy: Revised and expand" by Burne Hogarth. A book that shows how to block out shapes and easily understand what you are looking out. When it comes to human subjects.

"An Atlas of animal anatomy for artist" by W. Ellenberger and H. Dittrich and H. Baum. This is another good one for people who want to draw animals or creatures.

Etherington Brothers, they make books and have a free blog with art tips.

📝As for Supplies, I recommend starting out cheap, buying Pencils and art paper at dollar tree or 5 below. If you want to go fancy Michaels is always a good place for traditional supplies. They also get in some good sales and discounts. For digital art, I recommend not starting with a screen art drawing tablet as they are usually more expensive.

For the Best art Tablet I recommend either Xp-pen, Bamboo or Huion. Some can range from about 40$ to the thousands.

💻As for art programs here is a list of Free to pay.

Clip Studio paint ( you can choose to pay once or sub and get updates. Galaxy, Windows, macOS, iPad, iPhone, Android, or Chromebook device. )

Procreate ( pay once for $9.99 usd, IPAD & IPHONE ONLY)

Blender (for 3D modules/sculpting, animation and more. Free)

PaintTool SAI (pay but has a 31 day free trail)

Krita (Free)

mypaint (free)

FireAlpaca (free)

Aseprite ($19.99 usd but has a free trail, for pixel art Windows & macOS)

Drawpile (free and for if you want to draw with others)

IbisPaint (free, phone app ONLY)

Medibang (free, IPAD, Android and PC)

NOTE: Some of these can work on almost any computer like Clip and Sai but others will require a bit stronger computer like Blender. Please check their sites for if your computer is compatible.

So do with this information as you will but as you can tell there are ways to learn how to become an artist, without breaking the bank. The only thing that might be stopping YOU from using any of these things, is YOU.

I have made time to learn to draw and many artist have too. Either in-between working two jobs or taking care of your family and a job or regular school and chores. YOU just have to take the time or use some time management, it really doesn't take long to practice for like an hour or less. YOU also don't have to do it every day, just once or three times a week is fine.

Hope this was helpful and have a great day.

"also apologies for any spelling or grammar errors, I have Dyslexia and it makes my brain go XP when it comes to speech or writing"

[darantha]

Gentle reminder to any students that follow me, that generative AI's aren't thinking entities. These programs don't know what you're asking of it, or what it is delivering to you.

They're built on pattern recognition. What sort of words and phrases usually accompany these keywords.

If you ask a chatbot about something, it can give you the equivalent answer to saying 2 + 2 = 5.

Except you and I have enough knowledge of math to know that that isn't a correct answer.

But! What if you don't know enough about the subject to verify the answer? Think about it.

Don't use these things for your schoolwork. I know school sucks. I hated sitting in the library in college and pour over books on a subject I didn't give a shit about. Even more so once my depression really started to kick in. But I know I have valuable tools from that time to look up information, think critically about it, and reference my sources.

"AI" is a buzzword meant to evoke the glitzy sci-fi association we have with that word. But it's not a thinking entity.

It's a program that is fed other people's hard work without their permission or credit, and then spits it back out according to what its programming says is a common pattern, even if that means making up references to works that doesn't exist.

It's a mimic that doesn't know what it's doing. It's just copying shapes.

(And for all that is good, don't insult handicapped and neurodivergent people by crying "it's ableist to criticise use of generative AI". Fuck off.)

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(Source)

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it sees you

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Society's a bit fucked up, but continuing the art improvement grind anyway.

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Things suck right now but Sheryl has some good words for us all.

ALT So a cool French woman dropped a cool quote from Camus on me today: "In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer." (I mean, who does resistance like the French, right?) We're going through it right now. It's a lot, everywhere... But DA isn't dead. There's fic. There's art. There's the connections we made through the games and because of the games. Technically EA/BioWare owns the IP but you can't own an idea, no matter how much they want to. DA isn't dead because it's yours now.

Seeing Sheryl said it wasn't dead because of us was a bitter pill but I'm glad she said it. Cause she's right, Dragon Age isn't dead. If we still love it, create with it, and put our energy into it, it isn't dead. If EA takes DA off the shelf again it will definitely be different, but what the devs brought us and what we put into it won't change.