#“Tutorials won't get you far”

[stinky-toons]

There's nothing better than melting away what feels like years of pent up anger and loss and watching and listening to it flow out my talented hands as I pluck each chord of my bass. It's like a part of my sorrow is taken away through each chord I play, it's the most soothing sound I've ever heard, cutting and severing through my own emotional turmoil.

[arolesbianism]

In the future I believe I shall be calling looped Chou Piéride even tho they'd still go by Chou for clarities sake 👍

[jojojoy1]

Obsessed - Lando Norris

Lando Norris x reader

As soon as Lando entered your shared apartment he froze in awe. You were in the living room following a yoga tutorial on your TV. And Lando loved it.

Lando always said he loves each part of you equally, because he really does love every part of you, but you knew there was one part of you that he found irresistible. He would never admit it, but Lando's an ass man. He loved how it filled his hands perfectly, he loved to slap it any chance he got. If his hands weren't on your hips they were on your ass.

And he couldn't take his eyes off you as you bent over into a new pose, your ass wiggling slightly.

You hadn't heard him enter the apartment, so when you heard a loud groan from behind you, you jumped. You spun around quickly, making eye contact with your boyfriend.

"Baby, don't stop. I was enjoying watching you. Keep going." Lando said, clearly disappointed that you'd stopped your actions.

"Why? So you can keep staring at my ass?" You chuckle.

"Me? Staring at your ass? I would never! I just merely would like to observe your form?"

"Really? So you're a yoga expert now?"

"Of course," He places his keys and wallet down and starts making his way over to you, "I know that my favourite position is the one where you're on your hands and knees." His hands reach out to hold your waist, his lips getting dangerously close to your own.

"Great view of my ass in that position." You tease. Lando's lips continue to ghost over your skin, so close but yet so far away. The way he lingered, teasing you in the most simple way, made you hot in want of the man in front of you.

His eyes met yours, swimming with desire. Suddenly, he captured your lips with his own in a hungry kiss. A kiss so full of love and passion, rough but sweet all at the same time. Caressing your skin softly, his hands slowly travelled down from your hips to Lando's favourite spot. His hands gripped your ass as though if he let go it would disappear and be gone forever.

You could feel his need in the kiss, and a little lower as his used his grip on your ass to roughly pull you into him. Hips moving together in an attempt to get much needed friction. "Lando.." His name floats from your lips, letting him know with just one word how much you needed him. But you weren't about to let him get his way after he interrupted your workout. He was going to have to wait.

Gently, you push your boyfriend away from you. Confusion evident on his face.

"Baby..." His hands reach out to grab your waist again, but you turn around and return to your yoga, ignoring his attempt.

"Be patient and let me finish my yoga, and I promise I will let you have your way with me." Your voice sensual and seductive.

"But baby..." He whines.

"No 'buts' or you definitely won't be getting this butt."

"How long will you be?"

"As long as it takes."

Lando places a sweet kiss on your cheek as he reluctantly walks to your shared bedroom.

[blackpearlblast]

a rundown on the listed e-sim platforms from this tweet from mirna el helbawi. visit esimsforgaza to learn about this effort. (they also have a tutorial on how to purchase an esim and send it to them)

update v12 (5/21/24) holafly (israel and egypt), nomad (regional middle east), simly (palestine and middle east), mogo (israel), and airalo (discover) are currently in the highest in demand. if it has been more than 3 weeks since you initially sent your esim and your esim has not been activated, you can reforward your original email with the expiration date in the subject line. you can see gothhabiba’s guide for how to tell if your esims have been activated. if your esim has expired without use, you can contact customer service to renew or replace it.

troubleshooting hint 1: if you are trying to pay through paypal, make sure you have pop-ups enabled! otherwise the payment window won't be able to appear. (this issue most frequently seems to occur with nomad)

troubleshooting hint 2: if you are trying to purchase an esim using the provider's app, it may block you from purchasing if your phone does not fit the requirements to install and use their esims. use their website in your browser instead and this problem should go away.

nomad

for the month of may, first time referrals give 25% off for a person's first purchase and 25% off the referrer's next purchase! it's a great time to use someone's referral code from the notes if you are a first time buyer.

you can use a referral code to get $3 off your first purchase and also make it so the person whose code you used can buy more esims for gaza. many people have been leaving their referral codes in the replies of this post and supposedly a referral code may eventually reach capacity so just keep trying until you find one that works! BACKPACKNOMAD is another code to get $3 off your first purchase, it's been working for some people but not others so try out a referral code instead if you can't get it to work. NOMADCNG is a code for 5% off any middle east region nomad esims posted by connecting gaza. it can be used on any purchase, not just your first but is generally going to give less off than the first-purchase only codes, so use those first. it can be used in combination with nomad points. AWESOME NEW CODE: nomad esim discount code for 75% off any plan, NOMADCS25 do not know how long it lasts but this is an amazing deal esp. since they are really low on esims right now! (nomad promo codes do not work on plans that are already on sale, unlimited plans, and plans under $5)

weekly tuesdays only code on nomad web, PST timezone! it gives 10% off plans 10gb and above. NOMADTUE

nomad also seems to be kind of sluggish sometimes when it comes to sending out emails with the codes. you can look for them manually by going to manage -> manage plans -> the plan you purchased -> installation instruction and scroll down to install esim via QR code or manual input then select QR code to find the QR code which you can screenshot and email to them. often just the act of logging back into your nomad account after purchase seems to cause the email with the code to come through though.

mogo

mogo's website is fucking annoying to navigate and i couldn't find any promo codes, but their prices are massively on sale anyway. you have to pick if you want your esim to be for iphone, ipad, or android for some reason. according to statcounter, android makes up approx. 75% of mobile markets in palestine while iphone represents approx. 25%. so i would probably recommend prioritizing donations of android esims but if you can afford multiple, try buying an iphone one too? if i can find any official direction from the connecting gaza crew on this i will update with it.

a good referral code to use for mogo is 8R29F9. the way things are worded are confusing but as far as i can tell, if you use it we both get a 10% discount on your first purchase. (the referrer gets a 10% voucher that allows them to top up in use esims, they are someone who i know has bought a lot of esims and will be able to make good use of the top-up discount vouchers!) also upon signing up it automatically generates a password for you which you can change by downloading the app. (check your email to find your account's current password)

holafly (also looking for holafly esims for egypt now)

holafly is pricier than the others and the only promo code i could find was ESIMNOW for 7% off. someone in the tags mentioned GETESIM7 as another 7% off code they had received, so if you have already used ESIMNOW or can't seem to get it to work, try GETESIM7. another 7% off code is HOLAXSUMMER7 which is valid until june 2nd. referral codes only seem to give 5% off and they don't stack. (i don't remember the source, it was on some sketchy coupon site i don't want to link to and only can recommend because i tried it myself) you can also use my referral link for 5% off if you can afford the 2% worse deal on your end, it will give me $5 credit which i can put towards buying more esims. connecting gaza has also posted the promo code HOLACNG for 5% off but since it is less than the 7% off codes and as far as i can tell does not give credit towards others to buy esims like the referral links, i would consider it lower priority for use.

simly (note: simly must be downloaded as an app to be used, the website link is to help people confirm they are downloading the right app)

i have not personally used simly so i am going to be going off of the sixth slide of mirna el helbawi's instagram guide, with some corrections from someone who has successfully purchased an esim from simly. after downloading the app and making an account, search for palestine or middle east and purchase your preferred package. the page the app takes you to after your purchase should have the QR code to send to the esimsforgaza email, it won't show up in your email receipt. someone kindly left her referral code in the tags of this post, it gives $3 off your first purchase and will give her $3 credit to put towards purchasing more esims for gaza. the code is CIWA2. (if this referral code doesn't work, try one from the notes of this post!) according to someone in the notes, ARB is a simly promo code for 25% off esims that is still working as of march 3rd.

airalo

some people have noted issues trying to sign up for airalo using the browser version of the website, it worked for me but if you are struggling you can give the mobile app a try and that should work. you can use a referral code to get $3 off your first purchase and give the code suppler a $3 credit for buying more esims. KARINA9661 is a code sourced from this post which is also a wonderful example of how using people's referral codes can really make a difference. if for some reason that referral code isn't working, you can find more in the notes of the original esim post i made here.

@/fairuzfan also has a tag of esim referral codes for various platforms!

(note: mogo and holafly both link to israel esims as there are no general regional packages for the middle east like on nomad and the esims for gaza website specifically linked to the israel package on mogo, so i linked to the equivalent on holafly.)

[catt-nuevenor]

A Brief Guide on Uploading ChoiceScript Demos to Itch.io

Since Dashingdon is shutting down, and there will be a lot of folks wanting to host their ChoiceScript demos elsewhere, I thought it'd be a good idea to provide a brief guide on how to do so for itch.io.

This is for Windows in the folder actions, but it shouldn't be too difficult for folks to translate for Mac. This also assumes you haven't changed any of the files within your game folder other than those found under 'scenes'.

Within your game folder, locate the 'web' subfolder, right click it and select 'Send to' then 'Compressed (zipped) folder. Name your newly compressed file something sensible, and I recommend moving it to a new folder outside of your game files, just to keep everything neat and tidy.

2. Assuming you already have an itch.io account, navigate to your dashboard, and click the 'Create New Project' button.

3. Name your project as you like, and under 'Kind of project', select the 'HTML' option.

4. Set the 'Pricing' to 'No Payments', you cannot use ChoiceScript for profit unless it is with the Choice of Games or Hosted Games publishing labels. No one wants to get in trouble unnecessarily here.

5. In the Uploads section, upload your newly zipped file we made in step one. After it's finished uploading, you'll be given one drop down and two tick boxes. You need to tick the 'This file will be played in the browser' option.

6. I've found so far that 'Viewport dimensions' work quite well for desktop at 1080 x 640. Either use these numbers or experiment and find what works best for you.

7. You must tick the 'Enable scrollbars' option for your game to display properly, otherwise options, text and buttons can be clipped off the bottom of the viewport.

8. Continue filling out the rest of the form, or skip it for now and scroll all the way to the bottom to the 'Visibility & access' section. Here make sure you have 'Draft' selected. This prevents others from finding your game until you're ready, and I always recommend play testing things before you make your work public.

9. Finally, hit the 'Save' button, then go and have a look at your creation by hitting the 'View page' link. And there you go! When you're ready for public release, just change the option in section 8 to 'Public'.

---

A few things to bear in mind about hosting on itch.io:

There isn't currently any way for your readers to save their game. I'm sure someone could write in a plugin similar to Dashingdon's at some point, but as for right now, this isn't available. See addition/edit below.

Make sure you properly tag your game with the 'choicescript' and 'interactive-fiction' tags. There are an awful lot of games on itch.io and it's easy to get lost in the crowd. Make sure folks can find you by having the right tags.

I hope this brief guide was useful to folks.

Best of luck to you with your writing!

---

Addition/Edit:

Thanks to @hpowellsmith for bringing this to my attention. You can add save functionality to your game by using this addon:

The ChoiceScript Save Plugin

Just tried it out on my own game and it works perfectly.

Rather than run through the addon author's own tutorial here, I'll just forward you to the Readme on their Github page.

One small note I would add is when it asks you to make the two small additions to your index file, make sure you right click the file and open it with your coding program, don't double-click it as this will just open it in an internet browser, and it won't give you the access to what you need to change.

[0ccuria]

This is a list of various guides and resources you can use for making your own texture edits and mods within DA:TV.

As modding the game is still in its early stages, things are subject to breaking and causing issues. Texture's have been, so far, safe with little problems. Still, it's advised to use CAUTION when modding anything and always backup vanilla files!

This is all assuming that you know how to use Frosty Editor and Mod Manager tools, so there won't be any guides on how to use those tools here.

Wavebend's Frosty Toolsuit Alpha 5 (In active development)

Guide by @pinkydude

This index is an active WIP by myself and Metamancer and will be periodically updated with each faction's wearable armors and eventually NPC assets as well.

Armor and Clothing by me

Companion and NPC's by me

UV Map Layouts by NoraLee

Tutorial by Padme4000

Padme's Various Guides

Basic Editing Guide by Pina

Scar Texture Editing by Bearpants13

Tattoo Editing Guide

Armor Tinting Resources by Labotor

Normal Map Editing

This post will be updated as things progress! Those of us within the Dragon Age Frosty Discord are hard at work getting things ironed out!

Happy modding!

[paper-mario-wiki]

Just hit that crisp 18 and growing up is HARD. Any advice?

don't rush into going out of your way to make adult friends and fervently seeking out adult spaces. i get it, most of your life has been waiting so far, like waiting to be old enough to not sit in a car seat, old enough to stay at home by yourself, old enough to get a driver's license, old enough to move out. etc. and the thing is, you're not at the starting line. the tutorial isn't just "over" now. there wasn't a tutorial, you were already in the world this whole time. you're gonna keep waiting and growing just as slowly and patiently as you were before. so keep being patient, like the rest of us. you won't strain yourself as much on the way up.

[pterribledinosaurdrawings]

I heard you make clothes, is there a specific way to make the patterns? Or do you find them online?

I draft all my own patterns, often based on diagrams of patterns copied from historical garments. I have an old post where I talked a bit about my patterning process, but it definitely won't work for everyone. I did learn to do drafting the "proper" way in college, which gave me a good start at understanding the shapes, but all the basic blocks we made aren't anywhere near the right cut or fit for the 18th century stuff I like to make.

You don't need to go to college to learn basic block drafting though, there are instructions in books and on the internet! You can make a basic block for a bodice, a sleeve, pants and/or a skirt, and once they're fitted to your measurements and you've learned a bit about pattern manipulation you can do many things with them. We used the same basic bodice block as a starting point for both corsets and tailored coats. Just make sure to always do mockups in a cheap fabric.

The Closet Historian has some videos on basic block drafting and dart manipulation and such. She mainly does vintage inspired feminine styles, but in college we did more or less the same dart placement on the basic bodice block wether or not the wearer had boobage. (I'm sure there are lots more tutorials out there too, but I haven't looked them up.)

Getting back to the more historical stuff, I have an old post with a lot of resource links which I keep meaning to make into a better organized post on my blogspot, but there's just so very much of it.

There are places to buy patterns online, but not having bought any of them I can't personally speak on their quality, and also every company has different focuses so it would depend on what you specifically want to sew. I mostly do 18th century menswear, so if I did want to buy patterns my options would be very few and far between.

[namism]

in the a.m. | hange zoë

➳ categories: college au, female reader

➳ warnings: nsfw (top hange, afab reader)

➳ word count: 1.8k

➳ summary: Hange wakes up next to a pretty girl in bed.

➳ notes: made in the A.M. was my favorite one direction album so why not use it as a fic title lolol

➳ cross-posted on ao3

Hange awakens to a dark room when a cool breeze glides over their skin. As they stare into nothingness, they reach over to their bedside table, feeling for their cellphone to check the time.

Their mobile lights up. Through blurry eyes, Hange tries to make out the words that flash on the screen.

'4:34 AM'.

They put the device back down. They pull themselves to a seated position on their bed, then reach out to the bedside table once more to turn on a lamp.

Their corner of the room illuminates a faint orange glow. Hange leans on the headboard, still half-awake, before noticing the presence that had been beside them all along.

You sleep soundly with your body turned to them, strands of hair partly covering your face. You're bare naked under the sheets just like them, the sight of your shape and the cleavage of your breasts serving as gentle reminders of last night's events. While the grogginess remains, Hange vividly remembers how the two of you got yourselves into this situation—from making out after a failed tutorial attempt to stumbling over to the bed, from undressing you swiftly to fucking you roughly, they remember it all too well.

It doesn't take long for you to stir awake, sensing the brightness of the lamp that disturbs your peace. When you open your eyes, the first thing you see is Hange's naked torso before averting your gaze to their face.

Hange pats your head, then plays with your hair.

"What time is it?"

"Around quarter to five," they say. You snuggle into Hange's pillow as they continue their gentle touches. "How's your body?"

"Probably sore." You shrug. "I won't know unless I move, but... you weren't the nicest, you know?"

Hange chuckles as an answer. They can't necessarily apologize since you enjoyed it so much and it was your incessant begging that drove them to that degree. It was a night that you two had always looked forward to, so all sores were deeply wanted.

"Get some sleep." You shake your head. "No? Class doesn't start until 10."

"But why are you up?" You pull yourself to a seated position, covering your chest with the blanket. Hange's hand falls from your head to your shoulder, their hand warm on your bare skin.

"Just woke up randomly, that's all," they say. It's the truth—their body clock has been shitty since midterms season, and as much as they want to keep it secret, the night with you has been the longest time they've slept in months.

You lean on the headboard, the blanket uncovering your feet and Hange's as you pull the sheet up to your face. When you move your body, you feel a sore on your thighs, arms, and back that triggers a gasp of pain. Memories flood your head, prompting a shyness from you that shouldn't even be there to begin with. Hange is no stranger, but damn it, why is it so nerve-wracking to be around them?

They notice your predicament. After all, that's what they always do; scientists have an eye for detail and Hange is not far off from that archetype. Their intelligence surpasses many others' and it so happens that they're bright in the romance department as well. They have it all—god, they have it all—which makes them so irresistible.

They can make you crumble in a matter of seconds, like now.

"Baby."

Their hand slides to your jaw, then your cheek, which they caress with a finger. Your stomach turns in excitement, but you suppress a reaction.

Baby, really? It's not your favorite nickname, but it's endearing when it comes from Hange. They're addicting, so addicting.

"It hurts, doesn't it?" They ask.

"Just a bit," you admit. Hange turns on their side to face you, placing a hand on your jaw before seductively tracing random patterns on your skin. Your core clenches. You feel it coming—Hange's in the mood for it, and you would be lying if you said you weren't, too. "Hange…"

"I can help you soothe that."

Leaning into their hand, you decide to roll over to their side, inevitably feeling the ache in your legs. Hange wraps an arm around you and hoists you on top of them, then instructs you to straddle their waist. Their mind goes numb upon watching the sheet fall off your body, your skin so beautiful and tits so tight.

Hange kisses you. You respond with a kiss back, moaning softly into their mouth to let them know you're in for more. When they come back for another kiss, you dodge their lips to attack their neck, a move that effectively surprises them that they tighten their grip on your waist, dragging your body closer to theirs.

A prideful smirk laces your kisses, a trail beginning from their jaw down to their clavicle, which Hange judges is enough free control as they peel your lips away before you could go down any further. They kiss you instead to put you back in your place, regaining their control before they fuck you—but you grind down on them in response, and an idea comes to mind.

"It would be bad to stuff you again since you're already sore enough," they pause in between a heated kiss and their eyes go down at your pussy, a sight that causes them to smirk, "but you can always sit on my face?"

Last night, Hange didn't bother eating you out once they had their mind settled on splitting you apart on their strap, but they're sure to taste you this time around. They tap your hips and motion for you to lift your legs, so that they could scoot down the bed and position themselves under your sore pussy and get to tasting you. Embarrassment settles on your cheeks as you look down at Hange, their hungry eyes peering up at you.

"Come on, sit on my face." Their arms wrap around your thighs and they tug your limbs so you could get closer to them, but you resist. "What's the matter?"

"I-I just—" Hange waits patiently, a reaction that relieves you. "How, um, how will you breathe?"

They smirk. You probably never had your pussy eaten out before or you simply never had ridden anyone else like this. Either way, it's a fair question, Hange thinks, since they most likely wouldn't be able to breathe that well anyway, and it would be a bad idea to freak you out mid-intercourse.

"It's part of the experience, my dear," they say. "Anyway, you don't have to worry. You got me, right?"

You nod. Hange promises to signal you if they ever want you off of them, and with no worries holding you back, you sink into their awaiting tongue.

A sigh passes your lips upon feeling their warmth. Hange takes it slow at first, giving a few licks to test the waters, before digging right in and pressing their face into your pussy harder. Their tongue digs into your entrance every so often in a rhythmic manner before gliding it across your dripping pussy to swill your juices. Hange repeats the action in a way that drives you crazy, the rhythm so good that you don't want it to stop.

You gently rock your hips into their face when their nose hits your clit, wanting to relieve the strained feeling and lack of touch in the area. Hange notices your eagerness and uses one hand to spread your legs wider. You obey out of pleasure. Their lips detach from your hole to suck on your clit, and you get lost in the feeling once again. Hange is soft at it before becoming rougher, hungrier, and more passionate, something reminiscent of last night's events when they fucked you ruthlessly into the bed.

Their two hands anchoring your thighs move closer to your cunt with light touches. Hange stretches the skin on your inner thighs as their tongue moves in between your clit and your opening. An urge to cum emerges in your gut, but you resist.

"Fuck, fuck me like that," you beg in a low tone, eyes shut tight as a response to their work on your cunt. You imagine the different other things that Hange could do to your pussy, which help your building orgasm. "Oh god, you're crazy."

With a sly grin, they tap on your thigh to catch your attention. You look down at Hange whose mouth and nose drip of slick. Maintaining eye contact, you watch them slightly withdraw their head from your cunt before spitting on your wet hole and spreading apart your lips with an experimental touch. Hange accepts your moaning as a sign to continue, so they waste no time mixing their spit into your cum to create something they could lap up again.

Your hands clutch free strands of Hange's hair as they begin yet another rhythm on your hole. You follow them with the rocking of your hips, riding what you can in a needy attempt to bring back the pleasure of release at the pit of your stomach.

Hange eats you so good—"so fucking good, Hange"—that you inevitably bounce on their tongue following the rhythm they created. You feel the heat at your stomach again, the urge to orgasm coming back quickly as you bounce hotly on them. With each bounce, your hands maneuver on their hair to tighten your grip on it while your mouth opens to a string of curses: "fuck, fuck— Hange, Hange—"

"Good— good girl," they say in between bounces. Hange stills you seconds later so they could focus on your pussy, their tongue working quickly to send you over the edge.

You crumble in a matter of seconds. Hange notes the gasp you let out as a sign of your orgasm. They feel your warm cum on their tongue and another wave of gentle rocking of your hips. They allow you to ride through your release, while they catch their breath.

You get off them once you've come down. Hange runs a hand through their hair and covers their eyes with the other.

Leaning toward them, you kiss them by surprise, uncaring of the mess on their lips. Hange groans when you swipe your tongue on their bottom lip to taste your juice. They pull you closer to them, only breaking the kiss once it's hard to breathe.

They wipe their mouth with the back of their hand, taking a mental note to shower before going back to bed. You rest your head on their chest.

"What's one thing you can't do, Hange Zoë?" They chuckle. They tidy your hair and pat their work.

"I hope you feel better," they respond. You can imagine the smirk dancing across their lips as they refer to last night's sores. You nod weakly. "I think I'm going to clean up. Are you coming?"

You come with them in the shower, after which you get back to bed quickly. Hange promises to wake you in a few hours and you drift off to sleep in their arms.

[lj-lephemstar]

Progress Checkup! (Aug. 2024) | Scratchin' Melodii Devlog

Hello again, strangers! I thought it was about time to add another devlog again! This time I'm trying out a more in-depth approach to this, to somewhat make up for the lack of gameplay previews. Let me know what you think!

For starters, I've revamped the rhythm system 🤯 (like... again! 🤯) Don't freak out, though. Surface level gameplay-wise, it works mostly the same as it did in the last demo, so you won't have to re-learn much. I just needed to redo some things so it'd be easier for me to work with in the long-run while developing the rest of the game. Way less headaches await me now when working on new levels. In the process, I was also able to incorporate some neat new aspects to it and make the core aspects of it better. If you're familiar with older rhythm games, it's now a tad closer to what the dog was doing.

The opponent's icon has been covered up to avoid spoilers. I might be updating all of the character icons soon, actually.

I still plan to revamp the game's tutorial at some point. Something I've noticed is that often, new players don't seem to understand the purpose of the beat dots. Initially, I thought the idea that "on the beat dot = on beat" would come as second nature to new players without need for explanation. However, I hadn't considered that many players are likely to be more familiar with rhythm games that don't even have beat dots in this manner, so they're probably inclined to focus more on getting as close as possible to matching the order of the suggested inputs, and in this game, even at the cost of being off-beat if they aren't keeping up. So, I think the most important thing I need to emphasize when I give a new in-game explanation of the mechanics is the beat dots and really getting new players into the mindset of prioritizing the tempo. I think I should also have the tutorial's gameplay portion try to discretely get the player used to the control scheme to help people who haven't particularly memorized where all of their controller's buttons are without looking. This'll probably result in the tutorial song shown in the demo being replaced in the full game. I do still like its instrumental though, so maybe that will be repurposed for another game feature, at least.

There's probably some guy out there who just REALLY loves Astral Advisory as the tutorial song that will be very upset to hear this. In solidarity with them, I've depicted their enthusiasm with this rather silly image I've created.

As for other levels, now that I've got the updated rhythm system up and running, the 3rd rival battle of act 2 is almost complete. If you didn't like the Pow-Notes in Supastar Tennis, you might not like me very much after this! So far, I think this level has some of the best and most ambitious animation work I've done yet, so I hope you'll look forward to it. Not sure when I'll show a gameplay preview of this level, but I probably will at some point.

Also, I've made a new logo for the game! I'll gradually be phasing this one in to replace the old one, but until the full game releases you'll probably still see the old one hanging around too in some places.

That's all I can talk about for now, but thanks for reading! - LJ

[mookymilksims]

ULTIMATE Realistic Populated World Roleplay Mods | The Sims 3 | Guide and Tutorial

What's up everyone! Welcome back to my channel, I am super excited to give you guys this tutorial, I've been wanting to make it for awhile! I'm going to offer some alternative and lighter weight techniques on how you can populate your sims 3 world with a small combination of mods and households. I'm also going to show you how to tweak your ini files and how to actually create the lots in your world to simulate the best experience. Let's jump straight into the video because I am so excited to show you!

Ini Tweaks:

So the first thing you want to do is open your graphics rules ini file in your bin folder. You won't have to scroll or search , the cpu settings will be there as soon as you open the notepad file, change all of those numbers to 4. What this does is massively improves how the sims 3 engine allocates resources in your game. This alone will start sending more sims to more community lots naturally, without any mods. However, we are going to add some extra mods on top of this to help sims make more logical decisions on which lots they will visit, as well as insure that every lot a sim in your active household visits will autonomously send available sims there.

Before we get into the mods I need to explain two very important things to you first.

Community Lots and Households:

These are very important factors when you want to go about creating a more lively world. Contrary to old beliefs, you don't need over 50+ households to populate your worlds. And the smaller the world is, the less sims you'll actually need to fill it.

You also do not need every single community lot available to you in every world, either. In fact, the more optimized your community lots are in the world, the more likely sims will visit them on their own. I will explain this further in depth.

Let's start with community lots:

For example, if you have 3 gym lots in your world, sims will get very confused on which gym to visit. They won't just pick the gym closest to them, and the decision might be so taxing on their little minds they will more than likely choose to not go to any of the gyms altogether.

So if you want to see a more active Gym lot, only regulate this to one gym lot in your world. This may not have been the perfect example as most of you will already have one gym lot in your world, but then you should also notice that it's the easiest lot for the sims 3 engine to fill up. Because it's only one decision the townie sims have to make on where and how to visit this lot.

So for the bars and clubs in your world, you want to regulate this to one of each, and you could probably fit in a second one if you have the NPC's to fill it. Remember that the engine can't send sims to fill the lots if there aren't enough sims to fill it. You also have to factor in if those sims have children and their work hours as well.

So, I typically will make 2 dive bars, one will be a low end hole in the wall, and another will be on the whole other side of town in a completeley different theme or style, I try to incorporate new activites that you can't find on the other lot, so a pool table, karaoke machines, the bull rider, etc. I can get away with 2 dive bars because I use this fixed MSC mod, this mod fixes the EA LN oversight that didn't send townies to these lots very well, it adds a script that will automatically invite sims to these lots when your sim goes to them. So I don't have to worry too much about how many sims are available, as the mod does this for me and invites sims who are free without me having to do anything. The fixed MSC mod also applies to all of the LN lots, btw. And the reason why I keep emphasizing "Fixed" is because someone fixed the travel crash and error code 12 issue that was on the older builds.

As far as an exclusive lounge and dance club, I only make 1 of each. This gives me 3-4 options respectively to have an authentic bar hopping experience in my world. As I love doing this on my sims fun and wild night outs.

So when it comes to all of the other community lots, you already know to have one of each. The only other tip I can offer is that you don't want to put too many functional objects on these lots. As again, this could result in overloading a sims decision making process. The lot and sims become way more optimized when you give them less to do actually. This means you can create themed lots for very specific occasions. For example, when I downloaded a casino lot for my simler90 series, the lot had a ton of the gambling store objects, including a bunch of random objects that wouldn't neccassarily fit into this lot, which resulted in sims standing around a lot more and choosing to sit down instead. When I lowered the amount of functional objects, you begin to see sims gambling more as they now had a clearer reasoning path to decide on what objects to use. This resulted in the lot overall feeling and acting much more realistic, as I would enter the lot and see sims already gambling on it; acting like a real casino.

This is how I was able to understand the sims 3 engine and AI a lot better. We used to make 64 by 64 lots with a bunch of stuff and wonder why it was so laggy, empty, and when sims did get there they weren't really doing anything. You have to optimize lots to get a better aesthetic and gameplay experience.

A coffee shop should only have the ability to buy coffee and free space to sit and chat or use a laptop. This will force sims on this lot to just buy coffee and talk with sims while sitting down. So this lot will look and feel like an actual coffee shop.

So as a basic overview for the lots:

You now know to limit the amount of community lots actually available to all the sims in your world. This makes for a much more immersive experience overall, as sims will naturally populate these lots a lot more when given a reasonable amount of options to visit them.

You now know to limit the amount of functional objects on these lots so that when sims do decide to come to these lots, they will act in a much more realistic way on these lots resulting in a more immersive and roleplay experience.

So now if you are a builder, or just some who likes to remap your world to have a better gameplay experience, consider these steps above. Since you now know that you don't have to add every kind of community lot to get a more active experience, and in fact, this actually hurts the goal you're trying to achieve, remapping the world becomes less stressful and more strategic.

For example, if I have a fish village kind of world, this allows me to add new unique lots specifically for this world that would make more sense. I can send sims to a savvier seller fish market, this is functional, sims can come here and buy all kinds of fish. I can make a cozy cottage core type of wedding venue and winery, this could fit into this world. I could make a small camping lot that can only be reached through a hiking trail on foot, this could fit into this theme. When I think of a fish village I think about family play, so I could add a unique arcade, daycare, and adorable festival lot, where you could see some younger sims running around more frequently. I could make an old town themed pub as a dive bar. I would really only need one of these in this world, so it would be very active, especially at night. I could add an underground rave scene and give it the dance club community lot type, this could signal a small rebellion of these traditional fishery values in the village, and still be quite active, since there would be only 2 "party" lots for sims in this world to visit.

And etc, make the lots fit for your world, and limit the access to how many types of community lots there will be. This ensures more time spent on detail without having to worry about how full these lots would get, as you know they will be very full using this method.

As a final note, you also want to consider opening up your rabbit holes. While, you won't have to make them functional with zerbu's uc mod, you can make these lots functional using other techniques without having to sacrifice less activity. So for example, opening up the diner and bistro RH, allows me two external dining options for my sims. The diner could be a mcdonalds, and the bistro could be a benihana's. I typically roleplay this, like the diner rh being a nice chill hangout and eatery, and the bistro being a much more wealthier upscale place, I use the consort dress code mod, so you can only be in formal attire here, or you could combine this lot with an exclusive lounge and get play out of both types of lots on one optimized lot. Adding Ani's business as unusual set, a piano which will auto assign a pianist, some pretty ball room floors and deco, and you've got a perfect date night or mobster family dinner. Depends on your play style. Because there are 2 of these, the engine will send sims to these lots because it has the RH on them, and when sims get there they will use the menu's to sit down on there own and begin ordering.

So now let's talk about Households.

I made a pretty extensive guide about this on tumblr, which I will link. But as a basic overview, I figured out a couple years ago that you don't actually need a lot of sims in a world to make the world feel populated. However, if you do add a lot of sims, there are ways you can go about it, which isn't as taxing on the sims 3 engine. As you may have noticed, having a lot of sims in your world increases lag and freezing, this is because when you hit the world's limit of townies, you'll get a lot of routing errors (which cause the freezing), with too many community lot options they get confused on where to go change their mind half way, go somewhere else, too many objects on that lot, so an ai freeze when trying to decide what to do. This overall results in a chaotic and laggy experience.

In general, I like adding townies I will actually care about, but this number of households needs to be manageable. So I make around 10-12 official townie households in my world, with a lot of detail on their cas and homes. I decorated their homes in the same way I would mine, because I'm more than likely to actually visit these sims in their homes. This means I can remove all the other houses in my world, because I don't want SP to fill these homes with more sims I don't care for, and will add more strain on the engine anyway. This also leaves more room to configure where I'll be placing my optimized community lots. Don't worry, when I want to world to look like it's more populated than it really is, I add deco buildings, homes, and sims.

Then I add, NPC households. This is an interesting and amazing method because of how it works. I make a very basic home, usually in a basement, with 8 beds, 1 bathroom and 1 kitchen. Just the basics, no cc or detail or decor. Then I add 8 sims. This could be single men/women, teens, children, cashiers, robots, elves, etc.

This is how I can begin to actually populate my world with very little strain on the resources in the sims 3 engine. You see, when sims don't have any way to entertain themselves, or advance their skills, or fulfill their wishes, they are pushed more than ever to LEAVE the home to achieve this. This means you'll see 8 sims from each NPC household more than likely OUTSIDE than sitting in their homes. The engine seems to spend a lot more resources on maintaining the townies when they are in their homes more than when they are visiting a community lot. I noticed this when I had a lot of townies in their homes, without any of these mods or ini tweaks, I had a significant lag because the engine was micro managing all of those sims in their individual homes. This removes so much strain on the engine, when all it has to do is force the sims to leave their homes, as also mentioned before, the engine spends less time on extending resources to them on community lots vs when they are in their homes.

So esentially, what I've done here, is given my engine a huge break, allowing it to allocate ram and resources much more effectively and much quicker, while at the same time introducing more sims into the world without the engine thinking this = more strain.

The third and even less engine intensive technique I use is, Arsil's custom role generator mod. This allows me to add any kind of sims I want, that the engine doesn't actually have to control or allocate, as this mod is a script and sims from this script are seen as bin sims/service sims. They simply disappear back into an invisible bin until their shift starts. So if I want to add regular customers to my Benihannah's without worrying about the strain on my engine I can achieve this effortlessly. However, I use this method on lots that aren't seeing a lot of activity. Keep in mind, everyone builds their worlds differently, and there are many factors to consider why a sim may not be as interested in one community lot as others, while this is mostly self explanatory sometimes, this isn't as cut and dry. So, for example, I notice that unless my sims actually visit the beach lots in my worlds, there won't be a lot of sims on it. Sometimes, there will be one or 2 sims, but in general, it doesn't see a lot of action. So I set a seasonal lot marker on the lot, and then proceed to add 4-6 new custom role markers (I transmogrify them into beach deco items, to blend in), I set this up for the summer time, as this would make the most sense for more sims to visit. And then I add a bunch of deco beach sims to the lot on top of that. That way when my sims visit the beach, it will already have 4-6 sims on it, but it will look like 20 sims are there, and the engine will probably send 5-8 more sims which will result in a very active lot everytime I visit.

This is how you can utilize the arsil technique to gain more popularity on lots.

Which leads to my next point, consider what is actually about the population that you care about so much? For me, I want the world to look full without the lag. I was able to achieve this with deco sims. The engine doesn't have to do anything at all for this, as deco sims are objects. I want to play on lots where I could take a screen shot without having to even set up a scene, like for instance making the lot look and feel full. Deco sims are already posed, so all I have to do is move them into place. I have learned how to severely decimate these objects to make them completely playable in the sims 3, so I am going to have a lot of fun converting ts4 deco sims to ts3. This is going to be perfect for my building and roleplaying style.

For me, a townie that I don't care for might as well be a deco sim, the only use I have for them is to decorate the background of my screen shots. That may sound harsh but it's the reality. I make every sim in my world with intention. If I can't see you being an enemy, lover, friend, at some point in my story, then the sim isn't useful to me. And if the sim isn't manning a savvier seller station, or cooking and serving at my benihanna's then what are you even doing here other than taking up resources? I wouldn't even care for the sim to populate my UC lots, because I can just use deco sims for that, too.

Understanding these new household techniques, combined with your new understanding of community lots creates a POWERFUL new experience that's results in smoother/faster gameplay on active and filled community lots.

So in general, you actually want to have more townies than community lots. You can achieve both without lag using my NPC households method, and more strategically themed community lots together. This means all of your community lots will more than likely always be active no matter what your sim is doing in the world.

And now we are going to add mods on top of that.

We already discussed the fixed MSC Mod. So let's move on to the others.

I know most of you were expecting to see the Lot Population mod on this list, but I'm going to tell you exactly why it isn't. The mod teleports sims randomly around my world, the mod promised to send sims to lots they would actually visit, and even according to the season, but I didn't see this result. Instead, sims, no matter what their personality was, were randomly appearing at every lot I paused an looked at. I wouldn't even be sending my sims to this lot, I'd just be looking at the lot, this often resulted in freezing, hiccups, and slight lag. If I had more than one sim in my household out and about and I switched over to other sim, I would see the same sims I just saw across town pop out over there. This broke my immersion by a lot. Not only that, but a lot of these sims would be using objects, with props, and when being teleported it temporarily broke the interaction, which resulted in props and objects floating in mid air, or being unusable, or showing up on other lots where it wouldn't even be possible for those objects and props to show up. This caused routing and script lag in my game by a noticeable amount. I was on a reduced version, and still noticed these issues. I really wanted to like this mod, and if it didn't break my immersion and cause more performance issues, I would otherwise love it. But unfortunately, I had to find some lighter alternatives that handled both of the issues I noticed with this mod.

This leads me to the Get out project, or you could of course just download arsil's script yourself and tweak the settings to your liking. BoringBone's tweaks the settings of Arsil's script and includes his own mods in a few modules to balance out the tweaks he made as well as enhance the overall experience.

These are the modules I downloaded for my mod list: Pedestrians Smart Vehicles

With all of these mods combined, sims are being pushed out and about in the world immediately, consistently, reasonably, while still allowing some sims to stay home. Which is another issue I had with the lot population mod. There were never any sims at home. This caused issues when townies threw parties, and invited me, I would go and no one would be home; so no party. This caused issues when I wanted to visit a friend I made in their homes for story telling and gameplay purposes, because they weren't home to open the door. This caused issues when inviting sims out, going on dates, inviting sims over. They would be randomly selected to teleport to another lot my other sim was on so it would completely break these interactions. The get out script isn't that invasive. It doesn't break these features and interactions, sims aren't being teleported, they are choosing to visit more lots more frequently. If they throw a party, or invite me out, or I invite them out, the EA script function takes back over and allows me to actually see the end of these interactions. On top of that, there wasn't any lag with this mod installed, as sims would be doing what the engine is already coded for them to do, just more of it; visiting community lots. The mod also adds walk abouts like how you'll see in the TS4, which I also combine with Shimrod's townies out on the town, where you'll see double the amount of walkabouts, while also extending a reasonable and light weight function to populate the lots in between.

Combing this with the Supreme AI mod, unlocks the sims AI in very innovative ways, for this particular guide, the supreme ai mod allows sims to make more logical decisions on which community lots to visit based off of their traits. While it's not completely set in stone, and still has a randomized feature which adds more interesting outcomes, now you'll see a lot more athletic sims at the gym, sims with hampers in their home at the laundromat, rebels and part animals at bars, clubs, and arcades, teens and kids at parks, arcades, libraries, the pool, etc. Let alone all of the other changes included in this mod, it has to be recommended for the logical fixes it applies to EA's system of how sims decide to go where.

The last mod I want to recommend here is the nana no shop in RH's. This mod makes it so sims no longer autonomously visit and enter RH lots. If you ever wondered where all your sims were, and you knew they weren't working at the time, they were probably inside of a RH. The game pushes them to sit inside of them for an extended period of time, this is to simulate to the player that the townies are alive and doing their own things. This isn't a problem in an unmodded game, however, when you're like me and open up your RH anyway, this mod would be a perfect enhancer, it still sends sims to my opened RH lots, and RH's in general like to eat outside of a bistro or diner, but it no longer allows them to enter RH's and sit inside of them. This means more sims who are available to visit community lots actually visiting those lots. Townies don't need to go grocery shopping in the RH because they can automatically get their ingredients from the fridge, with whatever recipes they choose to cook. The only reason a townie would need to visit the hospital is if they are giving birth. Unless a sim works at the police department or is going to jail, they don't need to be there, either. And well, you get the point. Any need for a RH for townies will be assigned to their tasks and they will be unable to take it off, this is for what they NEED. When you want to actually see those townies around town instead of sitting in RH's, this mod fixes that issue altogether.

So now I'm going to go in game and show you the kind of results that you can expect by following this guide.

First I will show you the normal populated world, this is what you're used to seeing in game. Then I will show you what it looks like when you optimize your community lots and add my NPC Household method. Let's begin!

Conclusion: As you all saw the massive difference in gameplay, either one still works out much better than the normal EA lot population method. So you can play this in either style. With my NPC household method and more optimized community lots this just promises better performance with populated lots, significantly. You don't have to follow this method, you can just use the guide and mod collection outlined here!

I want to thank you all for joining me , I am so happy I finally got to show you guys how to populate your worlds lag free, I love all of the support I've been getting, you guys are just so awesome! I have more videos coming for you so I'll see you in the next video!

Mod links:

MSC Fixed mod get out supreme ai shimrods townies out on the town

nana no shop in RH's

Arsil Custom Role Generator

[mixtape-racha]

boyfriend!park sunghoon thoughts

(a/n: this is for the anon who requested the first enha ver of this in my asks!) | sfw and nsfw below the cut

warnings:

sfw

boyfriend!sunghoon who always plans the most aesthetic dates and your instagram truly thanks him for it - whether it be an evening picnic in the sunset, or the aquarium, or even pumpkin picking

boyfriend!sunghoon who complains he might die if you don't have a matching/similar outfit !! like fr this man could be the other side of the globe and he's spamming you for outfit pics so he can match with you

boyfriend!sunghoon who looooves being your sous chef in the kitchen, even though most of the time he just ends up getting in the way :( he tries though, bless him

boyfriend!sunghoon who comes and sits in your home offices while you're working, usually reading a book or scrolling on his phone silently. he just liked being near you whenever he can

boyfriend!sunghoon who brings you bowls of fruit as a snack, and said fruit has usually been cut into cute shapes like stars and hearts - although, he ends up eating most of it

boyfriend!sunghoon who makes sure to stand the side closest to the road when you walk down the street together, like honestly he'll just tug you to the other side of him so you're not standing near the road, and its usually subconsciously

boyfriend!sunghoon who sends you the cutest, most heart-warming, gut-wrenching, soul-crushing selfies of his little smile when he's away on tour - and you keep them all in a folder called "hoon says :D" for when u miss him

boyfriend!sunghoon who enjoys doing your makeup for you !! and he tries so hard :( even going as far as to watch makeup tutorials so you can leave the house "not embarrassed that he's made you look silly"

boyfriend!sunghoon who takes you ice-skating with him at Least once a month <3 and he never laughs at you or teases you if you slip; in fact, he's rushing over to check you for injuries and pepper you in kisses to wash away the embarrassment

boyfriend!sunghoon who has a groupchat with your parents to swap pictures of you for pictures of your family pets <3 and he likes to surprise you by printing the pictures out so you can have new pictures of the pets even when you're away from your parents' home

nsfw

boyfriend!sunghoon who is so precise during sex, hands always in the right place, strokes always hitting your g-spot, and it honestly surprises you every time

boyfriend!sunghoon who refuses to cum unless you cum first !! and if you can't for whatever reason, then he doesn't want to either because its not worth it to him if he doesn't get to see you cum

boyfriend!sunghoon who won't cum anywhere but inside you, because he revels in the way your jaw drops at the feeling of it and your eyes cross

boyfriend!sunghoon who, although he adores fucking you raw, would wear a condom in a heartbeat if you ask him to - sex is all about your comfort and your pleasure to him

boyfriend!sunghoon who started imagining you all swollen and pregnant with his kids from the second date, and he always gets (nearly) unbearably horny when you're ovulating

boyfriend!sunghoon who brought up the idea of using a vibrator on you, and it shocked you because every guy you'd slept with before him had viewed toys as competition rather than a teammate

boyfriend!sunghoon who has a habit of biting down on your collar bone when he cums, almost as if to muffle his moans so he can hear you rather than himself

boyfriend!sunghoon who loves it when you take a bath together and it turns into riding him, even though jungwon always has a go at him for the amount of water that spills

boyfriend!sunghoon who enjoys lazy, half asleep sex more than anything !! laid tangled together, your legs over his hip as he shallowly thrusts, mixed with the sleepy kisses - its his idea of heaven

boyfriend!sunghoon who lost his virginity to you, because he knew you were the one from the moment you met, but has never told you that's the reason why

(a/n: scheduled post!)

-> don’t forget to reblog or comment if you like my works ♡ please refrain from modifying, translating, or copying my work. - © mixtape-racha

tags ✮⋆˙ : @pretty-racha @demetrisscarf @fluerz @bangtancultsposts @yevene

[cy-lindric]

hello juliette! may i ask, how did you get into sewing? your work is so precise and meticulous (not just the dress but the previous outfits, especially the landsknecht one), it’s hard to imagine what it must take to arrive at this point of mastery.

wishing you all the best and excited to be following your work, kat 💛

Hi Kat !

Thanks a lot for your kind words ! I started sewing kind of out of the blue two years ago. I'd never had any sewing education, formal or otherwise, and I'd always found sewing too tantalizing to get into, but eventually my friend @surikane and I decided to give it a try together because we really wanted to make costumes to wear at our local big medieval festival. I got a Reconstructing History doublet pattern, youtube tutorials, and off I went.

I'm far from mastery and to be honest I just pick a project I really want to do and learn what I need to learn as I go along. It's maybe not the cleanest way to go but as a casual hobbyist driven by pure brainworms and impatience it works great for me. When it comes to historical costuming of course it does take some passion because usually looking at one source won't be enough and you'll need to peruse around. At first, my best combo was to get a printable pattern as a base, and then check out more precise books and videos/lectures on the side to help make sense of it and adapt what needed changing.

I really think anyone can get into sewing at any stage of their lives and make something wearable pretty much rightaway. With the ressources we have today, it's way more doable than it looks. And it really doesn't have to be perfect to spark a lot of joy ! I'm really proud of how far I got in just two years of sewing and I really encourage everyone to give it a try !

[laurabenanti]

I got a couple of asks on how I did the text transition in this set. I'm going to explain as best as I can (with image references).

*Disclaimer: this assumes you have a basic understanding of giffing with video timeline, and keyframes. If you're new to keyframes, check out this tutorial by @userpeggycarter before proceeding.

Step 1: Go through, make your gif, color and all that jazz. if you're not familiar with giffing and need a guide, check this one out by @cal-kestis. Be mindful of the number of frames you have, as it is extremely important when keyframing begins. Make sure you have an even number of frames, or you will have an uneven transition. For this gif I'm at 60 frames total, and I'd be careful exceeding 70, as if you need to go back and delete... It just sucks, so be mindful! You'll see my gif and coloring under a group I titled "base" - and I highly recommend putting your gif/coloring/etc. into groups, as it will make the timeline a bit cleaner, and it's a little easier to find everything you need. But when you're done, you should be here:

*Quick note 1: Make sure your gif is in 8-bit mode. If you aren't familiar with bit modes, that is a tutorial for another time. For now, you can change it here:

Step 2.1: Pick your font/placement/etc. I really recommend being 100% on whatever you pick, along with the size. I've encountered problems when I move the font after the fact with alignment, so it's best to look your gif over to ensure you're satisfied. For this set, I went with Figtree, placed dead center.

I want to add to this by saying, thus far, I have found that white is the only color that works for this. I'm playing around with some other options, but black is 100% a no go. If you find a way to get that working, let me know. I'll amend this tutorial.

Photo of text settings, along with where you should be now.

Step 2.2: Since we're transitioning into a new set of words/text, you need to get that text ready as well. Shorten the length of time the first piece of text runs to halfway (I have 60 frames, so I cut it to 30).

Step 2.3: Duplicate your text layer, type your other text. The two texts should show for length of time, as you have an even number of frames, meaning you can divide by 2. Move it over to the end of where the previous text ends. If that makes no sense, it should look like the below: (again, folder for the typography to know where to reference. I have a small organization addiction so.. creator's choice)

*Quick note 2: I do not recommend changing to a new font or size with this, it won't look quite right. Of course, experiment away! This is just a small caution based on my own experimentation.

Now, to get to the actual fun part...

Step 3.1: Duplicate the first text layer. For this gif, it's the one that says "it didn't change anything". Once you duplicate it, you'll be turning it into a smart object. This is so the filter we apply works. Repeat for the second text layer. Lil gif below:

Quick note 3: I recommend going one text bit at a time, and also would tell you to put each typography layer into its own folder. This is really important for later, so doing it earlier is better.

Step 3.2: We will now apply the filter. To do this, you're going to click the smart object version of our text, then go to Filter → Stylize → Wind. For the gifset I made, I used Method → Blast and Direction → From the Right. Click "OK" and the filter will apply. Duplicate this for the other text layer.

Step 4: We now begin the keyframing. I highly recommend the rule of 0.3, which is when your transitions are over the span of multiples of 3 (i.e. if you start at frame 1 with 100% opacity, frame 3 will be at 0%). We'll be doing 6 frames from 100% to 0%, and vice versa, for this transition. This was the best time I found for this transition, but it's a matter of preference. Just follow that rule of 3.

Step 4.1: Click the smart layer of the text we made on the timeline, then click the little arrow on the left of the name of the layer. You'll see this:

See the little clock next to Opacity? Click it, and you get this lovely little yellow diamond. This is how we control the visibility of the Wind layer. It will start at 100%, keep it there.

Click the arrow on the right of the play button 6 times (aka get to the 6th frame), click the stopwatch again. While on this frame, and the yellow diamond clicked, change the opacity of the Wind layer to 0% It'll look like this:

You will repeat this, in reverse, at the end of the text layer.

Quick note 4: Sometimes, Photoshop is moody. To get the diamond on frame 30 (or whatever frame # the end of your text layer is), put it on the frame prior. You can then nudge that diamond over 1 frame. See below:

Repeat the process for the other text layer.

Step 5: We're basically done! Change your gif from video timeline to frames, maybe do a quick play through to make sure all is well.

Quick note 4 (it's the last one I promise): I have heard from many that when they work with keyframes, they end up with duplicate frames. I, personally, have not encountered this issue. I do not know if it is because of the version of Photoshop others are using, PC vs. Mac, or some other secret third thing. I recommend that, when you check your gif, verify if there are duplicate frames. The keyframe tutorial I linked earlier goes into further detail, and here is another lovely explanation from Nik, the master of all things keyframe transitions.

Step 5.1: Export, and give yourself a high five because you deserve it.

If you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out! I'll try to clarify anything if needed. Happy giffing!

[pink-vacancy]

Hi ^^

It’s me, the creator of some gifs you like and the creator of many gifs you could’ve probably lived without. A few people have asked me for a giffing tutorial recently so I have made one documenting my normal process! I’m going to gif this Aespa stage in this tutorial because I am still pretty bad at coloring stages. So come struggle along with me 🫶!

Step 1. Getting Sources & Vapoursynth

The worst enemy of the tumblr gifmaker is tumblr itself. You will spend your time making the clearest gif imagineable only for the blue site to reduce it to pixels. But alas, we must gif on. The best way to get good results is have a good source and to precompress your gif with vapoursynth.

As far as downloading from Youtube the best app to use is 4k Video Downloader. 4kVD let's you get download your file as a .mkv which is how youtube stores their 4k quality vids. Only limitation is on the free tier you get only 10 downloads. There are other more technically dubious methods to get 4kvids but I've literally never hit this limit.

10 out of 10 gifmakers agree if you want those good good crystal clear gifs you gotta stick with 4k or 1080p sources. Although if you are a complete sicko like me you can gif 720p and still get pretty good (not great) results.

So now you got your source video but you won't actually be able to open that bad boy up in PS yet. This is where the Vapoursynth step comes in. Vapoursynth will blast that footage into a nice denoised, sharpened and resized little baddie of a video clip for us.

To download VS and get a more in depth explanation of the exact steps on how to use it please reference this post. The basic steps of Vapooursynth are:

Drop your source video on the "vapourscript (drop a video file on me).bat" icon and type in the timestamps

Crop your gif to your liking (I do a lot of 540 x405 or 540x335 for horizontal gifs. 268x480 for vertical.)

Apply the sharpness and denoise (these are the options I use):

copy the code from the white box and paste it into the script like below

I set my denoiser to 1.5 and my sharpening to .5. (I stole this from @hyeongseo lol)

Go to Script > Encode Video. Make sure on this screen to name your file and set the header option to 'Y4M'. (Sometimes this is the step where it crashes and all your dreams are ruined because it can't convert it unfortunately. But 99% of videos are good lol)

You will find your Photoshop ready clip in gifs/output

Step 2. Photoshop

You are now good to open up your clip in Photoshop.

if we export our gif at this moment it will look like this:

Which isn't too bad. They just are pretty washed out and a lot of times at this step you'll see a lot of grain.

Sharpening (again lol) and Noise:

This might sound weird cause we just denoised lmao but stick with me.

We are going to convert our clip to a smart object. If you want to slow down or speed up your clip make sure to do so before converting.

(Often times if i have 60fps clip I put it at half speed, but if the action of the gif is really jerky or flashy at 30fps a lot of times I'll set it to 85% speed)

Convert your video to a smart object by right clicking it in the layers panel and selecting the "Convert to Smart Object" option

Create a copy of layer 1 and arrange it so it is aligned perfectly on top of the first video in the timeline. You have to drag it outside of the video group to do this. It should look like this once you are done:

On the bottom clip (layer 1), select filters -> sharpen -> smart sharpen. Apply the filter with these settings:

Then on the same clip (layer 1) apply the same smart sharpen filter with these settings

Setting up the Sharpness like this makes sure the finer details with stand out with crisp lines in the final product. (Look at how the mesh on her arms is in finer detail now)

Your video might look a little crispy at this point and that is ok cause we are going to soften that.

Now on our top video layer (layer 1 copy) select filters -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur. Use this setting:

Finally apply filters-> Noise -> Add Noise to layer 1 copy with these settings

"Vacancy what the hell? It looks like shit now."

Yeah... But now we'll put layer 1 copy at 25% opacity and it will look less like the shit that it does look like right now I prommy. Here is the current output:

The idea behind all this blurring and adding noise is that it will help create smoother transitions between the colors of the gif and reduce large blotchy bands of pixels that can sometimes show up

PLEASE!!! Save your current step as a PSD file. You can skip having to apply all those filters and just drag the filter groups on to the layers after the smart object conversion step.

Step 3. Coloring

Now to the fun part! There is a lot of trial and error in this step since we only have 256 colors to play with.

Typically my goals for this step are:

Raise the black point (Make Giselle's outfit in this gif black so more color can be used on her hair, skin and the background.)

Reduce the overall contrast of the gif. (Darken the lightest lights if possible)

Saturate the colors enough so they stand out but not so much that everything looks gross.

Depending on how we do these steps we may need to subtract frames from the gif. (Which I hope not cause there is exactly 69 frames in the current version lol)

Here is an example of what my coloring difference can look like:

In this case the colored gif is actually smaller because I elminated a lot of the dark greys in the background.

Vacancy's Dumbass Original Recipe thing

This is probably the only thing different that I do from most creators

My first adjustment layer is usually a gradient map. The green and red one to be more specific.

I then change the blend mode to luminosity and set the opacity somewhere between 12 and 20% (Usually 15%).

This step brings all our shades closer together so we have more freedom with coloring later. Also when idols are very white wash this seems to bring out the shadows and skin tone better in later steps as well. If you overdo it though the person in the gif can wind up looking very orange or yellow so less is sometimes more here.

There's also probably a better way to achieve this but you know... oh well

My Other adjusment layers usually consist of:

Levels: With the gradient map applied you can darken the blackpoint of your gif pretty significantly.

Selective Color: This is the most useful adjustment layer. Make sure to expirement with adding to the black slider on the blacks and neutrals color options. Often times kpop vids are over exposed and darkening this can bring out a lot of unseen color.

Hue/Saturation: I use this layer to darken the blues of the background with the lightness slider as well. You can adjust individual colors with this layer and with selective color and that is a very powerful tool for coloring.

Start:

Finish:

Because I darkened the gif so much I was able to add around 6 frames!

Though I’m not 100% satisfied with this gif, this would be my process from the start. You can put those adjustment layers all in a group and save it to the psd as well to skip all the steps to apply them. I used all the same adjustment layers for the header gif of this post as well which saved me a lot of time ^^!

Since every video is different you usually have to play around with the sliders a lot between clips.

Step 4. It Flops…

Jk jk but it does happen a lot tho on this site so don’t get discouraged ☺️

Parting Notes

If you want a really nicely colored fancam to practice on I would see if MIRAI on YouTube has a fancam of your fave idol. Their videos are really nicely color balanced from the start where stages like this tend to be very bright.

I’ll probably make a follow up post with more coloring tips and my thought processes while making gifs but this is the very basics to making hq gifs hope you learned a lot.

You can always hit my dms or inbox with questions if you have them ^^!

[jakeyp]

GRID + TORN PAPER + RAINBOW LAYOUT TUTORIAL (yeah, i'm sorry, but that is the title i came up with)

Hi everyone! This tutorial was requested by an anon, and we're going to make a gifset like this. You need, as usual, basic gifmaking skills and basic photoshop knowledge, but i'll try to explain this as easily as possible!

You'll also need a torn paper brush, which you can download here.

And here are the links to download the fonts used in my gifset: x, x

Okay let's start!

→ First you're going to create a new canvas, and it will be 540x540 px. Make sure to click on create video timeline (if you dont have a timeline, go to window > timeline. We'll leave this canvas there waiting for us :)

Then, onto our first gif. We're going to make the small square gifs first. All i do is resize the image and make it 120 px high, and you'll see why in a moment.

Make sure to remember the number of frames of this gif!! All the gifs we're going to put in the same canvas should have the same amount of frames.

Okay, so we have our first small gif:

As you can see it's a smart object, and I added some brightness, but so far that's all. You can sharpen it, but i like to sharpen until i've colored it. Now onto the important part:

Most of the gifs i worked with were mostly blue (aside from the skin color), which is recommendable, because you can create lots of colors starting from blue, using the hue/saturation adjustment, or camera raw filter. I also recommend you to use a gif that doesn't move a lot, so it'll be easier to color the background:

For the tutorial, we have our predominantly blue gif, but we are going to make it yellow, which is the opposite color, so it's the hardest to get. I hope you can see how i manipulate colors, and do it yourself :)

Here, you can use camera raw filter (filter > camera raw filter) to turn the blues and purples greener, like this:

And click ok to exit the camera raw filter. Then, we're going to use hue/saturation (image > adjustments > hue/saturation) to turn it yellow:

Since it was cyan, i changed the cyans, but if you got a much greener result you'll have to use green (duh, right? i dont know i just dont want anyone to get confused akjsdhs)

And you can also add a selective color adjustment to make those yellows more yellow:

The reason i don't directly use hue/saturation is cause it might look ugly and lose quality, or it wont pick up all the colors i want it to but they're also very small gifs so if you wanna do that, do it :)

I sharpen it until this point, but if you already have that's okay.

Now we're going to color the background! For that, you just add a new layer, and set the blending mode to color.

Then you'll use your brush, set it to 20px and 0% hardness, and pick the color you're using for this gif, you can use the eyedropper tool. This is why it's important that the gif doesn't move a lot, so you can color the bg like this:

I colored carefully around the edges, and that's the result. In some gifs from my gif set I colored Jake's jacket too because i was too lazy, but this looks cleaner :)

You might want to select the color layer and the gif layer to convert them both to a smart object, just to make everything easier. So, be careful, because after that you won't be able to change anything!

But let's say you have a scene that you want to include, and it moves too much and has no blue and it's going to be a nightmare to color it.

Well, don't worry, you can! Simply, instead of manually coloring everything, you can just choose to add a gradient map to it (image > adjustments > gradient map), like this:

And this is the result:

Just remember, it has to be the same amount of frames as the other ones!

You repeat the process, until you have 10 small gifs. I made around 5 manually colored gifs, and 5 gifs with gradient for each gif. That's a confusing sentence but i hope you get it.

We are going to start pasting the small gifs on our first canvas.

(You can paste them one by one but i did this so you can see my 10 gifs)

You're going to create a square that has to be 108x108 px, using the rectangle tool. You can remove the default white background.

And you may be wondering, why did we not just crop the small gifs into those dimensions? Well, you can do that, but to me it's much easier this way, because sometimes cropping isn't accurate, or it's tedious.

Place the small square on top the gif you're going to crop, right where the face of the character is (or whatever objects you're giffing), and while holding ctrl, click on the square. It will select it:

You're going to create a layer mask:

And then drag that layer mask to the gif:

And voila! It's now the same size as the small square. Once that's done, right click on the layer and convert it to a smart object, because we have to remove that mask. Make the square layer invisible, and start placing your gifs where you want them:

You're going to repeat that process with the rest of the gifs, and then place them all together. Don't forget that if you're making the first gif, they will all be at the bottom of the canvas, if it's one of the middle gifs, one row should be at the top and the other one at the bottom, and when you're making the last gif, they should all be at the top. Here we're making the first one, so they will all be at the bottom:

If you forgot to check that all the gifs had the same amount of frames, you can fix it here, just make sure no gif is past this little guy:

Okay! Now, to create the gutter, we're going to add a layer mask to each small gif, so that we can cut some of it.

The gutter has to be 4 pixels, (i recommend you to REALLY zoom in). What i do is make sure the width of the gutter takes 2 pixels from the edges of the gifs, since they are all together. As you can see in the image above, there's no a single empty pixel between the gifs.

This is a close-up of what i'm talking about. I select two pixels from each gif, and go all the way down to create the gutter:

(I hope I'm not over or underexplaining)

I usually use this tool when i have to make so many selections:

But that was just an example :)

(Another way you can do this, is by changing the size of the small square from the beginning and make it be 104x104 px, but i don't know why that seems more complicated to me ajsdks)

Anyway, this is what we have so far:

Now we're going to create the big gif. Its normal dimensions are usually around 1920x1080, unless you have different dimensions and have to crop it, but whatever it is, we're going to resize it and crop it to be around 550 px wide, and 400 px high:

We'll do the same thing of adding an adjustment of gradient to it to make it the color we're using. For this, i usually add a brightness layer before, because sometimes the gradient is a bit dark.

And using a 600px brush with 0% hardness, you can add some "light" on a new layer, like this:

Selecting all the layers, right-click on them and convert them to a smart object. Again, be careful, because once its a smart object, you wont be able to change any of it!

Then we paste our big gif on the canvas with small gifs, and add a layer mask to it. Using the torn paper brush at 600px, remove some of the gif to shape it like the torn paper. Make sure you're using black, otherwise it won't work correctly:

To make the effect better, add a layer UNDER the big gif, and using the torn paper brush, with the same size, you can paint under it:

Yeah, I covered some of jake's face, but that's how it supposed to look so the effect works!

And finally for the text! I used Granesta, at 150 px, and at -10.00º to make it a bit askew.

We're going to double click on it and give it a color overlay, set to normal, and give it a solid shadow if you want, then place it right here on the corner:

But as you can see, it's too big for the gif. So we're going to add a layer mask to it, and again, shape it the same way that we did with the gif. Make sure they're exactly the same shape, like this:

And that's it! This is our final result:

As always I'm sure there are easier ways to do many of these things, this is just how i do it but if you know an easier way to do it, go ahead. I hope this was at least understandable enough so you can apply the logic of it any way you want :)

If you have any questions you can send me an ask and i'll clarify!

If you found this helpful i'd really appreciate it if you left a tip on my ko-fi!

Happy giffing!