#....might get started on the 3d modelling and printing of the others soon if the weather stays this dreadful tho | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

spaceselkie · 1 year ago

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I broke down how I would go about making Dimitri's new winter alt because I'm completely normal about it and not obsessed with him at all. (Also my spouse already emotionally committed to winter Felix and the designs match well).

I thought I would share because designs with a lot going on can be intimidating to break down, but going layer by layer and thinking about what makes sense for the garment helps me and is helpful to do if you get stuck or overwhelmed.

This one is on my list for AWA 2024, since it will be in December (and as much as I'd love to go to Holmat, there is no way my queer ass is going to Florida any time soon). I can't start this until I finish dancer Dimi and I'm still in goldwork hell for that.

(I forgot his pants so further detail about that and also a breakdown of the layers more concretely below the cut).

Here's the most informative referece images we're working with (first one is just the clean version of the one above):

Starting with the inner most layer to outermost (because I think that's the most straightforward):

1) The Pants

There are a lot of options here, depending on what you're going for. It's cold in Faerghus so if you're going for most appropriate options, you'd want to make these out of a heavier fabric. They're not skin tight (you can see this in the second image more clearly), so I personally will stay away from stretchy leggings, but I don't think that would matter much aesthetically if that is your preference. You could also match these to the jacket material, but I personally don't want to make velvet pants. A nice, heavier cotton or linen would probably do the job nicely here. A heavier cotton blend knit would be a good choice, with an elastic waistband (basically you'd be making sweatpants). If you do a nonstretch, you don't have to go with an elastic waistband, but consider how easy it is to reach your closure for things like bathroom breaks. There is a seam (maybe a pleat?) on the front of the legs so that is something to pay attention to if you're going for maximum accuracy. I'd make this a seam on the stretch pants. I'd make these pants capri length so that there is enough to fit under the knee armor and top of the boot so it stays, but there isn't excess bulk in the lower boot, and probably finish the end of the legs with an elastic cuff like some sweat pants are finished. Pockets are unnecessary for this layer because you really can't get them under the layers.

2) The Boots

I'd buy a pair of knee high black boots with a very short heel. You could make boot covers, but I'd only do that if you had a hard time matching the finish. These don't look like suede to me, these seem like a smooth black leather/faux leather. The heels you could leave alone (they just won't 100% match), or paint gold. I tend to scuff up heels that I paint, so if you go that route make sure to be prepared to touch them up occasionally. The cuff with the fur I would add as a separate piece, trying to match the leather texture as much as possible. You could glue or sew this on (probably by hand) to the base boot, or make it removable with something like velcro. I'd personally just attach it permanently, since you have to add the stars on anyway, and I'm not likely to make those a temporary attachment, though you could. For the fur, you can get some fur trim, or use the same fabric as the cape and fur mantle. I'll touch on construction of the stars later, since they match the ones on the coat, but I'd just glue these onto the boot with a good glue (E6000 would be my first choice). Not every glue works for every material so you may want to experiment. Other options that might work would be contact cement or loctite (which makes a pleather glue).

3) The Knee Armor

I'd go with EVA foam for these. You could use worbla for additional sturdiness if you wanted, or even 3D print these if you'd rather model them yourself... but the foam may help with movement, as it will give where plastic will not. These will be sturdy enough though with a thicker EVA foam (5 mm?), with thinner layers for the upper ones. The accents I would make with a thinner foam and as the top layer. It looks like these are 3 layers to me (4 with the details). They remind me of Byleth's knee armor on the Enlightened One, which I have worn and can attest to them being very stable with just craft foam. Honestly I would just attach these to the cuff at the bottom, and add some strapping behind the knee that can open with snaps or velcro for maximum stability. You could also add a snap onto the pants at the front of the knee for extra security as well.

4) The Tunic

This is the blue layer under the red coat. It has a slit in the side seam (you can see it in the second picture) - make sure you keep that for mobility if nothing else. I'd make this out of a fabric that has a sheen, as it looks like it does in the art. If you wanted to be really indulgent, you could use a silk of some kind (I think you could use smooth or textured, depending on the aesthetic you were going for). I'd probably go for a nice cotton (a cotton sateen would be very appropriate), since this cosplay will be hot and that will help with breathability. A dull poly satin would also work in a pinch, or maybe even a crepe back satin. Lots of options here, I'd just go with nonstretch. Since this will be covered, you have options for neckline and sleeves. I think it would be a good idea to have sleeves, since the coat, depending on material, could rub. For the gold motif at the bottom, you have lots of options too. You could use heat n bond with a gold satin to make an applique, or you could use a vinyl fabric for an applique. You could do beading here. Iron on vinyl would also work (I'd go with the shiny metallic one). I'd just make sure this is shiny, ideally shinier than the tunic fabric. This is a festive costume after all, you can bling it up. I'd only worry about the front panel. You can ignore the back since it won't be seen.

5) The Coat

I really think this should be made out of a sturdy, nonstretch velvet (probably one of the home decor velvets). An alternative would be microsuede. Based on the art, I think some kind of nice sherpa would be best for the fuzzy edges, to contrast with the fur on the cape. The brown belts I would just make out of a pleather, with snap or hook and eye closures on one side. The stars, since I said I would talk about those (this applies to the ones on the shoes too), I would do out of foam, worbla, a combo of those two, or 3d print. I'll probably 3d print these since I have it on good authority that I'm getting one for Christmas this year. The gold lines at the sleeves and bottom you could do as a satin applique, beading, vinyl, or some combination. Iron on vinyl may or may not work with the velvet, you'd want to test that. I'd probably use a gold satin bias tape for the edge at the front of the coat, I think that would be the easiest thing and would look the nicest for that part.

6) The belt

This would have a secret closure at the front for ease of getting on and off without having to undo the belt. I'd interface the hell out of a red fabric (probably a satin, cotton/cotton sateen, maybe velvet), and add an applique of the green at the edges (or bias tape). I'd make the tassels out of a fine metallic thread or floss, personally. You probably want to stiffen these so they stay nice and clean. The star I'll talk about with the mantle. Metallic pieces on the belt would be a combination of foam, worbla, and/or 3d printing.

7) The Breastplate

My spouse has already made a breastplate almost exactly like this, thankfully. I'll be making this out of EVA foam, 10 mm for the larger layer and 5 mm for the bottom (which will probably just be attached at the bottom edge of the 10 mm layer so there is less bulk to worry about). The details would be a thin foam. It looks like the top motif is probably a fleur de lis. The chest star, which mimics his timeskip armor in houses, looks like it is convex rather than concave, so I'd make this out of foam and maybe fill in the underside with something just for structure. The plate itself would work like a reverse backpack, with buckles that would attach at the back to keep it sturdy. When I work on this I'll upload a picture of the breastplate my spouse made for reference.

8) The Scarf

I'd match this to the cape liner or the tunic fabric, so go for something with a slight sheen. The gold details I'd iron on or applique, and potentially add some coordinating rhinestones for sparkle's sake.

9) The Cape

The big, fluffy cape. I think the outside should be made from a heftier fabric, probably a microsuede. This would drape nicely and match the overall aesthetic of the costume. The liner I would match to the tunic or the scarf, so some kind of satin or sateen. I would probably go for the iron on vinyl for the stars of the liner, but you could do the satin applique strategy.... but that's a LOT of satin stitching to finish edges. Applique would work better for the stars at the bottom of the outside. You could also incorporate beads and/or rhinestones. This is festive after all... I'd get a nice fake fur for the edge, which you can match to the furry mantle.

10) The Mantle

This matches his houses design, based on the references, so you can refer to the in game art. Making this out of fake fur is the easiest option. My spouse attempted to make this by latch hooking yarn, but the brushing..... it will be less time and energy to go the fur route, but would be more money. For the stars, you could 3d print them, and gold leaf if you wanted a lot of shine. You'd probably want to hook these to the fur with invisible thread instead of gluing them, or you could match the thread to your gold paint. I'm also considering beading these on felt and I would attach them the same way, with invisible or matching thread. The one at the bottom of the belt you can sew or glue on, but I'd match construction to the mantle stars.

11) The Gloves

Technically lower in the layers than the coat, but awkward to put in earlier. These look like a faux suede or leather to me. I'd make them out of a nonstretch with a personalized, gusset-including glove pattern.

12) The Wig

It's a short, pale blonde wig. You might want a lace front with his hairline. But I think you can make it work without it... you'll have to do some styling with those bangs. This matches his pre-timeskip hair closely. The holly I would wire in to the wig after making, and use maybe beading or glitter an existing floral pick.

13) The Axe

I'm not a prop person, so this will be very basic. Pvc or dowel base, with foam, worbla, and/or 3d printed parts. The bow would look nice as a loop bow. You'd put the color blocks on there as previously discussed with bias tape.

That's my wall of words on that! I hope this was helpful to somebody. I'm planning on getting started on this one next year after some other costumes in the queue.

If you want to see a breakdown of anything else please let me know.

#cosplay breakdown #fe heros #dimitri alexandre blaiddyd #cosplay reference #dimitri winter alt

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northwest-cryptid · 10 months ago

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How are the 3D modeling and printing exercises progressing?

To be totally honest, it's not progressing as much as I'd like. Around the start of the new year I unfortunately developed a medical issue we're not 100% sure how to identify yet. We've spoken with doctors on the matter and I'm currently on a ton of meds for the symptoms. That being said I'm still not functioning as well as I'd like to be, I get horrible sudden spots of vertigo and lightheadedness along with frequent headaches, blurring vision; and general body pains. We believe a core contributor of the problem to be black mold that has been growing in our walls for some time now, with other contributors being everything from asthma to anemia and potential infections in my jaw which are making it near impossible to eat and drink without severe pain.

The unfortunate result of all of this is that I have little time to actually sit down and focus on things as much as I'd like to. When I do have time I find myself debating over what to spend that time on, I have a lot of hobbies and some of them demand more of my time or energy than others. I have been meaning to stream for the last whole month, I often find myself saying "I'm planning to stream tomorrow" or some such and then tomorrow comes and I literally can't get out of bed. Some days I want to sit down to work on art or modeling or stream assets; only to find that it's hard to even sit upright at my desk.

On a less depressing note, I have been trying to dedicate some time towards digital 3D modeling rather than simply developing 3D models for exclusively printing purposes. A key difference being how things are constructed; with digital modeling if the model is only being used for things like VR or Streaming purposes it can lack a lot of the core support features that help a model print and stay upright when dealing with that pesky thing we call gravity. When you're designing a 3D Print you have to take everything into account like weight of parts, support structures, and generally how everything is going to connect. Things can't clip through each other and everything needs sturdy connections. We have a saying in our household that all prints need to be "thick and printable" (a variation on the "submissive and breedable" meme) where as with fully digital models a piece of the model could be loosely attached or simply not attached at all and have no issues provided I do my job rigging everything correctly.

I'm working on some animation shorts, stream assets, and hopefully getting some stuff developed for VR in the future. While I may be progressing much slower than I'd like; I'm still alive and kicking so I don't want to let poor health keep me down. I wish I had some examples of what I'm working on to show off, but I will have plenty to show soon enough, I might have to figure out a time to show some stuff on stream or something.

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nasa · 5 years ago

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5 Ways NASA Technology is Shaping the Transportation of Tomorrow

We have always been in the transportation business, whether launching astronauts to the Moon or improving airplanes to make them fly faster and safer on less fuel. And whether directly – like more aerodynamic wings for passenger jets – or indirectly – like more comfortable driver seats in sedans – this is yet another way our innovations benefit the public.

Today, the world of transportation is on the brink of some big changes. Drones are poised to make more efficient deliveries, crop surveillance and even disaster relief efforts. Taxis may soon take to the skies as well. And self-driving cars are ever closer to reality.

As we release our latest edition of NASA Spinoff, our yearly publication that celebrates the many ways our technology helps people on Earth, let’s take a closer look at some ways we’re helping augment transportation — and keeping everyone on the roads and in the skies safe.

1. Better data for driverless navigation

If cars are going to drive themselves, they need to be able to “see” and assess the world around them, from other cars to pedestrians and bicyclists to a construction cone in the road. This is accomplished with the help of 3D cameras, or light detection and ranging (lidar), which sends out laser pulses and calculates where obstacles are by how long it takes that laser to bounce back.

But that, says engineer Farzin Amzajerdian at our Langley Research Center, is like building a 3D picture one pixel at a time. Instead, a new kind of lidar grabs a full array of pixels all at once. This “flash lidar” is faster and, because it has fewer moving parts, more reliable. It sailed through initial tests for possible use on a future Moon lander, and our partner has also sold the technology to a major car parts manufacturer, for autonomous cars.

2. Opening the airspace for drones

Air traffic control has largely been a human operation so far, with people in control towers actively directing all 50,000 or so flights daily across the United States. But add in drones, and humans won’t be able to keep up: experts estimate there will soon be millions of aircraft in flight every day.

We’re helping automate and streamline flight control, working with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and private companies to build the new technology needed to manage the anticipated challenges. Among other advances as a result, one company has built a platform used at airports, by air traffic controllers, and by drone operators around the world to more easily file flight plans, view the airspace, get clearance in restricted areas and more.

3. Software modeling for air taxis

It may sound like something from the Jetsons, but real people are imagining the technology needed to make flying taxis a thing. And they’re probably not going to look anything like the passenger planes that we’re used to.

But when you start with a totally new design, there are all sorts of variables, including how much it will weigh. When it comes to flying, weight is a critical factor. For one thing, a heavier craft needs more fuel, but more fuel makes it even heavier. And all that weight stresses the structure, which means reinforcing it (more weight again!). Do it wrong, and all these factors cycle endlessly until you have something too heavy to get off the ground.

New software, designed with our help, generates fast and accurate weight estimates of novel aircraft designs, helping engineers figure out what works and how to make it better. Among other customers? UberElevate, which is trying to take rideshares to the skies.

4. More nimble hand controls

We’ve even played a part in improving different kinds of joysticks, for everything from planes and video games, over the years. We had to because—especially in the early days of space travel—spacesuits were pretty unwieldy under the high g forces of launch and re-entry, so we needed to develop easy-to-use hand controls.

One former astronaut, Scott Parazynski, had acquired a wealth of experience training on and using NASA joysticks for jobs like maneuvering the International Space Station’s robotic arm. He realized similar technology could have even more of an impact on Earth. Parazynski, who is also a medical doctor, envisions improving robotic surgery with the new joystick he created; in the meantime, it’s already on the market for drones, making it easier than ever to use them to record aerial video, inspect a gas pipeline or even assess damage after a hurricane.

5. Helping farmers get the full picture

The “bird’s-eye view” is an expression for a reason: flying overhead provides a perspective you just can’t get with two feet planted on the ground. For the first time ever, we are going to get that bird’s eye view on Mars, and the same expertise that got us there is also giving farmers a new way to keep track of their crops.

The Mars Helicopter is poised to hitch a ride to the Red Planet with our latest rover, Perseverance, later this year. Designing it was a challenge: because there is so little air to provide lift on Mars, we needed something incredibly light (less than four pounds!) with large rotors that spin incredibly fast (nearly 3,000 times per minute).

We teamed up with a company we’ve worked with in the past on high-altitude, solar-powered, unmanned flyers. That company had something else in the works, using the same expertise: a drone equipped with two high-res cameras to capture images of crops as it flies overhead. The data from these images tells farmers where plants are thriving and where they’re not, informing them where they might need more (or less) water or fertilizer.

You can learn more about all these innovations, and dozens more, in the 2020 edition of NASA Spinoff. Read it online or request a limited quantity print copy and we’ll mail it to you!

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

#NASA #space #science #new tech gadgets #new technology #drones #drone photography #drone package delivery #futuristic #flying car #the jetsons #farming #farmers #Mars #space technology

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kedilerkabilesi · 5 years ago

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Ways to Select the Best Product Concept to Offer Market

There are numerous steps needed to bring an item to market, yet ultimately, everything begins with the item suggestion itself. If you have the incorrect product concept, after that all the other steps, despite how well you execute them, will not matter.

I always claim execution is where the real value is, yet it still needs to begin with the product concept. You should pick the greatest item concept to offer the marketplace.

1: Economical to Develop and also Prototype

The top attribute of a winning product is it needs to be inexpensive to create as well as model. Product development is so much more complex than a lot of laypeople can picture.

It's essential that you, specifically for your first product, try to make the product as basic as feasible. That way your advancement expense will be decreased and also your time to market will certainly be much less.

You must obtain your product to market as quickly as feasible so you can start collecting market responses. You can utilize that feedback to potentially customize the product to satisfy what the actual market demand is.

I constantly urge the concept of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Allow's say your item's core functionality is Bluetooth sound, however, you are likewise thinking about potential secondary features such as activity discovery or GPS monitoring.

In such a case it is usually best to focus on only the core, see also how to promote my invention. important functions for your first item version. As soon as you have genuine market data and sales after that you can take into consideration adding any type of possible second features.

However, you still should study and evaluate every one of the potential features so you can pick the most effective functions to consist of in the future as soon as you have the marketplace information to back them up.

For instance, if a particular function enhances your production expense by 10% but also allows you to increase your list prices by the same quantity, then that may be a smart option.

Or maybe, the additional function will instead offer to raise sales of your product, hence compensating for the 10% boost in cost.

2: Budget-friendly to Scale to Mass Production

You desire an item that's not only budget-friendly to create but is likewise inexpensive to scale from the prototype stage to mass production. These 2 requirements can be completely different for many items.

It's possible to have an item that is easy to establish, but complicated to range to manufacturing. One significant difficulty of scaling an item to mass manufacturing is the cost of shot molds required for any custom-made plastic parts.

Each personalized item of plastic will certainly require its shot mold. For truly high quantity production, these molds are extremely expensive. A minimal expense for mold and mildew will be about $1,500 for an easy, low-volume mold. A lot more complicated molds for high-volume manufacturing can cost 10s of countless bucks each.

Although establishing a product that requires a bunch of customized shaped plastic items may be economical making use of 3D printing, it will become considerably extra pricey to scale when injection molding comes to be called for.

3: Prospective for a High-Profit Margin

I understand creating and marketing a brand-new item can be significantly amazing and also enjoyable. Eventually, the goal is to make cash?

This implies you need to focus on an item with a high-profit margin. You ideally desire the suggested retail price for your product to be around 4x what it sets you back to make.

You can push that to 3x the manufacturing price, especially if you're offering straight to customers and also not experiencing distributors or retail chains. Yet I would not go any type of reduced. For one point, it comes to be remarkably challenging to expand a business with low-profit margins.

That being claimed, you can not anticipate making a high revenue when initially beginning. You'll be fortunate if you can simply break-even on your initial tiny production run. Often you will certainly need to sell your first several hundred systems muddle-headed.

As your manufacturing quantities boost so will your earnings margin. As soon as you get to quantities of 10k-100k items for many customer items that are when you should anticipate making a substantial profit.

Earnings need to never be your prompt objective, and that will come later as you scale to greater volumes. At the onset, focus your efforts on reducing your growth expenses, not on making the most of profit.

You do require to have exact estimates on what your production price and earnings margins will be once you get to those higher volumes.

You may break even on quantities under 1k, make a small revenue on volumes in between 1k and also 10k, then make a revenue margin of 33% for 10k items, as well as finally reach 50% at quantities of 100k devices. You just need to understand upfront that as soon as you get to high adequate manufacturing degrees, significant revenue is feasible.

If you determine in your evaluation that 25% of earnings are all that can be made, even at high manufacturing volumes, then you likely may wish to think about various products or consider if you can boost your sales price.

Keep in mind that capitalists enjoy high-profit margins (obviously, right!) so having a higher possible earnings margin will make it easier to find them.

4: Existing Competition

You want to pick a product suggestion that has some competition. Wait a min, isn't competition a negative point? Should not I concentrate on establishing a product that is completely unlike anything else in the marketplace?

The answer to both of those inquiries is no!

Bringing a distinct item to the marketplace can be challenging. Not only do you have to convince people that this problem even exists which they need to be fixed, but you likewise have to persuade them that your product is the most effective remedy to the problem.

Additionally, with completely new items, you don't also understand for sure that there is a market for the item. Nevertheless, having a competing product that currently markets well gives some proof that there is a market for your product. You can consider a completing item as in advance proof that a market already exists for your product.

That being stated, you do not want excessive competition, which is what I'll go over next.

5: No Dominating Competitors

Although some competitors is a good thing, too much is a bad point. If you assume you're going to compete with the likes of Amazon or Apple, you're just going to get consumed for breakfast. That's not something you intend to ever before attempt to go after.

As an example, I would not suggest that you attempt to come up with a product that directly takes on an Amazon Echo. Of all, you will never be able to compete with Amazon's rate because they have substantial economies of range.

You can never contend with them from a branding or advertising perspective. Dominant firms like Amazon.com, Apple, as well as Microsoft have online reputations for essentially ruining their competitors.

As an additional instance, I would certainly never advise that anybody develop a new mobile phone.

To start with, a smartphone is unbelievably complicated and also pricey to establish (Apple spent millions establishing the first iPhone).

There are so many competitors already that it would certainly be impossible for a brand-new startup company to ever stand out in such a jam-packed market.

6: Convenient Market

You wish to pick a product that has an easily-reachable market.

Possibly you might be believing, "Everybody on the planet can utilize my item. It does not matter their age, area, gender, line of work, or income, they all will desire it!".

Perhaps you are believing "so 1% of individuals purchase my product that will suggest 100 million units as well as $10 billion in earnings". By the way, such a statement is a significant red flag for capitalists, causing them to flee as rapidly as possible. Please don't ever claim something like this.

I understand it seems wonderful, as well as you're likely seeing dollar signs in the billions! Yet the fact is a market that includes everybody will certainly be difficult to reach.

It will constantly be much easier to sell your product to 10% of the people in a group of 100,000, than 1% of a team of 1,000,000 people.

You are much better off focusing on a niche product, or at least somewhat of a particular niche item, that has a market that you can get to. This is the factor for the expression "the treasures remain in the specific niches".

Many of you understand that I developed and also brought to market my hardware product. What you do not understand is before that, one of my very first business ideas included marketing tourist-related things in Australia.

I had eventually developed the idea that precedes there is no up or down, so there is no defined top or bottom to the Earth. The reality that Europe, as well as The United States And Canada, get on the top of globes was plain since Europeans developed the majority of the early maps as well as globes.

There is no reason why a globe can't be inverted with locations like Australia, Antarctica, as well as South America on top of the world. My idea was to offer upside-down worlds and maps (as well as tees as well as such with upside-down maps) in nations situated south of the equator.

I'm not Australian nor have I ever before checked out Australia. I was pursuing this completely from the other side of the world in the U.S.

I had some initial good luck with it. I had called a lot of individuals in Australia, vacationer stores loved my suggestion, and also they wanted to bring my items in their shops. However ultimately, that company suggestion wound up stopping working. You can also check how to get my invention off the ground

The main factor it failed was I was trying to get to a market that was actually on the other side of the world from me. It was a market that I did not comprehend.

7: Recurring Income

Lots of may state the Holy Grail of earning money is it to develop repeating revenue streams. Recurring profits simply implies that your clients pay you a fee automatically every month. Most of the on-line software program solutions you use are spent on a regular monthly persisting basis.

If someone acquires your hardware item, can you include a monthly charge to utilize an internet solution or an app that connects to your product?

Discovering a way for your organization or product to have reoccurring profits will certainly be a substantial boost for your business, especially if you ever wish to look for outside specialist investments.

A lot of investment companies such as this element since it makes earnings much more predictable and enables a firm to expand much faster. Bolt.io is an angel investment group that concentrates on equipment products. They particularly favor equipment products with a recurring income model.

Repeating revenue is such a coveted method of making money because it's foreseeable. People can cancel their subscription or subscription, yet as a whole, you will certainly have a team of customers that just keep paying, allowing you to know just how much you're going to be bringing in each month.

8: Upfront Marketing Research

You always need to perform significantly ahead of time marketing research before you fully seek a new item idea. This research study is going to help you identify if you're focusing on the most effective product idea.

Let's claim you conduct some early marketing research using surveys, as well as your study feedbacks return as, "I hate this item," or, "I would certainly never buy it," or, "I would certainly pay $5 for it, but you're asking me for $100?".

Those results are informing you that this item is not something worth going after.

It's hardly ever that easy. It might be simple to quickly confirm a suggestion misbehaves, yet not so easy to confirm that it is a good suggestion.

This is particularly true with physical products where you are restricted in just how much ahead of time research you can do because you don't have a product yet to offer or reveal.

Your early market study surveys might reveal that individuals like the item concept, they claim they need it, and they also say they will certainly acquire it when it ends up being readily available.

Nevertheless, if the item does become available these same people might never, in fact, acquire it.

This is because it's one point to state you like an item and would buy it, but it's rather another point to place your hard-earned money down to purchase it. A person who states "I love the product, I would purchase one," could stroll by it a hundred times in a store as well as never acquire one.

Simply recognize the constraints of any market information that doesn't consist of cash changing hands. What people tell you they will certainly do is a lot various than what they actually will do, specifically when it concerns spending money.

You must still make it a concern to collect as much of this very early feedback as possible.

Market research is just one of the essential benefits of having an on the internet target market. If you do not have a target market already, then begin developing one right away.

After gathering feedback from your audience, you can move on to the best marketing research, which is to begin pre-selling your product. This is what happens with crowdfunding campaigns.

For crowdfunding, lots of people focus on the money they will certainly get, yet the most useful part is the marketplace comments and also evidence you will certainly get since individuals are choosing your product with their money.

9: You Currently Know the marketplace

Concentrate on an item for a market that you already understand. This is preferably a market that you have previous experience in. This can be prior experience marketing to this market, or just on your own belonging to this market.

If you're a carpenter, for instance, focus on items that woodworkers use or that are used in home building and construction.

You do not need to constantly restrict yourself to your prior experience, yet the markets that you have operated in, ideally over several years, are going to be the ones that you recognize the most effective.

You're already able to comprehend what the marketplace desires, versus trying to pursue an unknown market, as I did with Australia.

10: Fixes a Known Issue

Your item needs to resolve an issue that individuals already understand they have. It's testing enough to inform individuals on why they require to acquire your remedy to a problem they have.

It's also tougher to inform them concerning a problem that they don't recognize they already have. It will make it significantly more difficult to sell your product if you have to do both.

Having to make the client aware that a problem also exists, suggests it's something they've never thought of, so it's not going to be a top priority for them.

That's tough to market. Rather, concentrate on items that address issues people already understand they have.

11: Distinguished Item

Your product requires to be dramatically varied from what's currently around, and you do not ever before wish to remain in a scenario where you need to contend on price. Contending on cost relates to low-profit margins, which as discussed already is never a good thing.

Rather, you require to contend on the item itself and also the value that it adds, and out the cost. Doing so will offer you a lot higher profit margins and also permit your company to expand much faster.

To do this your item needs to be distinguished somehow from any other options currently on the market. What makes your item much better than any kind of remedy presently on the market?

12: The Price Is

Make sure to pick an item that's in a good cost range. To start with, you don't want a product that has as well reduced a cost. That's because it will require a lot of volumes to make any kind of significant income.

This was among the major errors I made with the physical item I offered the marketplace. It only sold for between $5 and $10 meaning I had to offer a massive number to produce considerable earnings as well as revenue.

On the other extreme, if your item is too pricey, state $1,000, then that will certainly present a substantial obstacle to people buying, particularly if you're an unknown business.

It's much easier to get $5 or $10 out of an individual, and even $100 than it is $1,000. Particularly if they do not understand you or have experience with your items. That's mosting likely to be a substantial barrier to purchase.

Concentrate on products that aren't too low in cost, however also not too expensive. I 'd claim between $29 as well as a few hundred dollars would be the best cost variety. Follow inventhelp on Instagram for more advice https://www.instagram.com/inventhelp/?hl=en

Verdict

The genuine value may be in the implementation, yet it all starts with the concept. You require to make certain you are putting your time, cash, and also initiative right into an item that has the very best opportunities for success.

If your item concept isn't the very best idea to seek wouldn't you rather recognize it currently as opposed to later on? You need to constantly be able to pivot as fast as possible. The even more you know, and also the earlier you know it, always the far better!

#InventHelp #InventHelp Instagram #help with inventions #InventHelp inventions #Prototypes #Ideas #Patent #inventors #How does InventHelp work #How to get my invention off the ground #What is InventHelp

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vintagesimstress · 5 years ago

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III. Meshing a (vintage) dress

(Previous: II. Learning to mesh)

Now that you know how to get around in Blender, you can finally put your newly acquired skills into action and mesh your first dress. I just hope you did your homework and really made your donuts - otherwise you might find it very difficult to understand what's going on in this part! I'll assume that you've watched and practised it all, so I won't explain the basic yet again. I will be writing the shortkeys in brackets though – there are way too many of them to remember them all after just a couple of videos.

So, let's get it started... But where?

As usually, there's no one proper answer to this question. Generally speaking, creators' approaches to meshing can be divided into 3 categories:

Combining parts of different EA meshes into a new mesh – a.k.a. frankenmeshing.

For sure you've seen frankenmeshed CC many times, even though you might not have realised it. Let's say EA releases a new DLC which includes a top with some cool, never-seen-before sleeves. Let's say there's a dress in game which you think would look great with those new sleeves instead of the boring old ones. In such case you can simply export both meshes in S4S, open one of them in Blender and append the other one (more on it later). A bit of deleting & merging of vertices and voilà! The mesh is ready. Most of the time you don't even have to worry about uv-1 and weights (again, more on it later... LOTS on it later).

Mesh editing

That's pretty self-explanatory, isn't it? This method is what most tutorials try to teach you. Look for a piece which resembles the most what you'd like to make. Export the mesh and make the necessary adjustments. Depending on how much you edited, you might have to mess with uv-1 and weights a little bit, but usually it shouldn't be too problematic.

Making a mesh from scratch

As far as I know without having ever used Marvellous Designer, this is what MD creators do: 'sew' their mesh completely from scratch and then import it to Blender. Such a mesh doesn't carry any of the vital information – uv-maps, weights, bones, anything - so all of those have to be manually assigned to it. This, obviously, significantly increases the workload and can be very tricky to do; however, this meshing method gives you almost unlimited freedom. If you don't limit yourself to editing existing stuff, you can make pretty much ANYTHING.

As you can see, all of those methods have their pros and cons - and they're all equally valuable as long as they help you achieve your goal. The method which I like the most and which I'm going to show you lands somewhere between no. 2 and 3: I use an existing top and make it into a dress. This way I have lots of creative freedom, but also reduce the unnecessary workload (yes, in most cases meshing a top from scratch would be totally unnecessary).

Enough theory, let's go grab that top!

Open S4S. Choose the “Create 3D mesh” option under “CAS” menu and then click that “CAS” button. You will see the list of all CAS items in your game.

NOTE: If you DON'T see the list, that probably means S4S didn't manage to find your TS4 files. You have to open the 'Settings' tab and manually change the 'Sims 4 Path' and 'Sims 4 Documents'. And if you're already there, make sure your Blender path is correct as well!

As you can see, there are many categories you can choose from at the top to narrow down your search. I need a top for adult females, so that's what I'm going to select. My favourite starting point is that simple BG top – it's skin-tight (meaning: the texture is only printed on top of the body, not really meshed, which makes it perfect for any future edits) almost everywhere, except for the breast area: there it's nicely stretched, just like it should be in case of my dress. If I wanted to make a dress with a deep décolletage, like an evening or ball gown, I'd type 'nude' in the search bar and select that naked female Barbie top instead.

The swatch doesn't matter. Select any of them and then click 'next'. I chose the red one, just because I like the colour:

What you're doing now is cloning a BG item and creating a new package. Name it whatever you want and save it in some 'Tutorial' folder or so. It doesn't really matter, as soon you won't need it anymore – we're here only for the mesh.

Once you've done it, a new window will appear. This is your new package with all the information it carries. We'll delve into details later – for now, as I said, we only need the mesh. Go to the 'Meshes' tab and click the 'Export mesh' button (make sure NOT to change the level of detail by accident!). Save it in your Tutorial folder as whatever (e.g. mesh_1).

You can close S4S now – we won't need it for a loooong time. Open your newly exported Blender file instead. This is what you should see:

NOTE: It won't make any sense to you right now, but check if you see the 'S4Studio CAS Tools' on the right side! If they're not there, it means your Blender and S4S are not properly connected and you'll run into problems later. Go back to S4S settings and assign the correct Blender path!

I'd suggest you immediately change the perspective to Ortho (num 5) and hide those sidebars on the right (n) and left (t) of the main window. Better, right?

Make sure your cursor is in the main window! If the shortkeys aren't working, it's probably because the cursor is in the wrong place.

When you go into edit mode (tab), you might notice one very important detail: body parts are also parts of the mesh. If you delete them, they won't appear on your sim either. Our top includes hands and neck only – the rest of what you can see is visible only in Blender. A good way to check if your mesh isn't missing anything is clicking that little plus next to 'rig' and then 'closing' all those little eyes next to all the listed body parts. Now your model will look a bit different:

Of course, missing some of those body parts is not a problem. A dress shouldn't include head or feet – those are separate categories. We can toggle feet, both heads and teeth visible again. What we lack is a bottom, i.e. legs – but luckily, we don't have to worry about it, as they'll be hidden under the skirt anyway. I will explain how to add legs (or any other missing body parts) to the mesh at one point, but a bit later – for now let's say we don't need them.

There are two methods of meshing a skirt that I'd like to show you, and they both start with the same basic steps:

1. Just after exporting, your mesh is cut wherever its uv map was cut, which might lead to some problems. Better select all your vertices (a), press w and choose 'remove doubles' from the list. Almost 300 vertices got merged!

2. Turn on the X-ray. Make sure you're in the front view (num 1) and then select (b) all the vertices below the waistline. Press X or del and choose 'vertices'. Kaboom!

3. Select (b) the lowest remaining row of vertices.

4. Extrude those vertices down (e, z) until the point to which your dress should reach. If you're using a reference picture, that's one of those moments when you should take a close look at it.

5. Scale (s) those extruded vertices until the bottom of your dress is as wide as it should be. If you're using a picture, pay attention to the proportion of the bottom of the dress vs shoulders – that's usually the best reference point you can get. Mine should be quite a bit wider than the shoulders, so I got this:

6. Turn the camera around and check how it looks from other viewpoints. I can see that my skirt is kind of asymmetrical, and not in a good way: flat at the back, going too far to the front. Let's go to the side view (num 3) and move those vertices back a bit (g, y). Much better!

7. I still don't like that flatness at the back. Let's go to the top view (num 7) and select only the central vertex on the back. Now, do you remember what you did to get that icing on the donut? Proportional editing? That's what I'm going to use. I'll turn it on only for connected vertices (alt + o) and then move that central vertex back (g, y).

NOTE: If your whole mesh is moving when you're trying to use proportional editing, scroll your mouse wheel until you see a white circle on the screen. The smaller the circle, the smaller the area affected by your edits. By default it's very big, that's why everything is moving!

8. Once again look around and make sure the basic shape of your skirt mesh is correct. Save, e.g. as mesh_2 (ctrl + shift + s).

Did you make it till the end? Congratulations! I'm sorry it got so long and I hope you could follow everything (also, please tell me if something isn't clear, I'll try to add explanations). Of course we're not done with our meshing adventures; the skirt still needs lots of tuning, but we'll deal with it next time. Now we all deserve a good rest :).

(Next: III a. Method I: Loop, Sculpt, Cut)

#tutorial #meshing

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murasaki-murasame · 4 years ago

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After a billion years of waiting, the 2nd anniversary digest is out, and even though it didn’t talk about quite as much stuff as I expected, the stuff it DID show off was extremely good on just about every level, and oh boy do I have some thoughts about it, lol.

I’m not even sure where to begin with this one, lmao. There’s so much stuff they talked about, and so much stuff they DIDN’T even talk about. Like how they didn’t talk about the October events and banners even though they’re teased at on the 2nd anniversary website, which I guess means we’ll have to wait longer for info on that.

we also didn’t get any info on a collab, but I assume they’re going to announce that at the start of November and have the collab itself release a few weeks later.

I’m kinda sad that they accidentally leaked out the existence of guns, but I still got to experience all the shock and surprise about it, so that was fun. I’m really surprised that they’re adding a new weapon type so late into the game. Especially since they don’t seem to be planning to retcon any old adventurers into being gun units, which means that they’re going to make up a super tiny portion of the pool. But I still really like how they work, from what we’ve seen of them.

It’s great that Joe got a new gun alt who everyone gets for free, but it really feels like they screwed him over by making him a 3-star, lol. He’s probably gonna get immediately replaced by any light gun units they introduce after this point. But it’s still nice to see him get some love. He was the perfect unit to go for to showcase the new weapon type.

All the changes to weapon and wyrmprints are extremely overwhelming, so it’ll probably be a while until I have an actual opinion on them. But thus far I think it’s fine, but we REALLY need the ability to save wyrmprint set-ups so we don’t have to spend so much time shuffling them about again and again.

It’s kinda sad that it’s such an eldwater sink if you want to equip the same print to multiple units, but it’s much cheaper to do that with event prints, so you can still fill your team out with some good prints. And on the other hand, this is actually why I’m fine with the fact that so many prints are almost identical now, since it means you have way less of a need to actually spend eldwater to get extra copies. There’s like 4+ different prints that all give 30% skill damage, so you’d never actually have a reason to bother getting extra copies of any of them, if you at least already had all these prints before this update. It does make it harder to keep track of if you end up using like 15+ different prints across a whole team, but still, the eldwater cost is more or less avoidable if you just use different prints with the same effects.

I think the weapon bonus thing is going to be the most grindy, long-term part of this update, but I’m cool with it. It gives everyone something to slowly work towards, like when you’re at the stage of leveling your dojos. The issue is that people will want to max their weapon boosts as quickly as possible, but it’s clearly not designed to be rushed like that.

It’ll all take a lot of getting used to, but I’m happy that they’ve drastically cut down on the amount of weapons in the game, and made the progression system more linear. Once everyone gets used to it and more people start playing the game after this update, it’ll become more natural.

We also got a bit of an overhaul to the textures and lighting/rendering for all the 3D models, which still feels like a really strange decision to me. It gives them a really different sort of aesthetic, and I have mixed feelings about it. I think if they made it a bit less ‘harsh’ I’d really like it, but at the moment there’s a bit too much contrast between the lighting and the shading, and the black outlining just looks a bit odd.

We also got the big adventurer balance change, and even though it’ll be a while before we’ve got all the new numbers and stuff for everyone, I already get the feeling that Vice is gonna end up way worse than he was before this. Which is sad, since outright nerfing people always sucks, but I get why they did it. It messed with the balance too much to have a 3-star be in like the top 3 for DPS units across the entire game. At the very least they gave him poison on his S1 so he can afflict that more often now, instead of it just being on his S2.

Just going by what they’ve said, and what we can see in-game, one of the really big changes seems to be how basically all of the healers except Grace now have strength buffs on their S1s, which basically all seem to be 15% for 60 seconds. Which is a really interesting way to make healers more relevant, but I like it. I think it doesn’t stack, so you won’t get as much buff uprime as with dedicated buff units, but it at least means they contribute SOMETHING to the team’s DPS.

One other notable change is how T-Hope now has a 15% strength buff on his S1, which makes it pretty much exactly the same as Patia. So that should make auto eCiella a lot faster, with how often he gets that skill off, lol. This was something I expected him to eventually get via a spiral, but in general a lot of stuff in this balance patch feels like mana spiral upgrades in all but name, which is neat.

Lots of characters also got more status punisher stuff, which should hopefully at least make more units stronger. Most of it’s all pretty self-explanatory, but it’s kinda interesting that Norwin is now a poison punisher unit. I guess it’s one way to make him somewhat relevant to the shadow meta, lol.

They also buffed the older gala units, which is great. At least this way they can put off on establishing the precedent of gala mana spirals, by just directly buffing the old ones. We’ll see how it turns out when all the exact numbers have been datamined, but it seems like they’ve addressed the main isseus with G-Mym, G-Sarisse, G-Ranzal, and G-Euden.

I also noticed that they added defense debuffs to a fair amount of units, and made a lot of existing defense debuff moves land more often, so that’s interesting.

I’m also pretty excited to try out Pipple with this balance patch, since he now gets a 30% strength buff for himself with his S2. It at least makes it so that it’s always worth using whenever you can.

They didn’t announce anything about new endgame bosses like we expected, but it does sound like we’re still getting some eventually, and it’ll just come up later. Which is a good idea, probably, since we need some time to keep focusing on Agito stuff.

And on the note of the Agito fights, and current endgame content in general, I really like the addition of solo versions of all of them. For one thing it means a new wave of first clear bonuses, but it also means that you can pretty much entirely avoid co-op if you want to. The solo fights seem to give less rewards, but hopefully still enough that you can just stick to doing them exclusively if you want to. I haven’t tried any of it out, but it sounds like they’re all balanced around solo play, which should make it way more easier to do them than it was to try and solo fights that were designed for co-op.

It’s also kinda funny to me that even though they said we’re getting another tier of difficulty for the Agito fights, the only thing we know that we’re getting from it is fancier skins for the Agito weapons. They’ll probably still get stat boosts, but I could see them pretty much just being cosmetic upgrades.

They also upgraded the amount of weekly chests for HDTs and Agitos to five, and it sounds like we’re gonna start getting double drop events for them soon, so that’s great. In general I think this whole update will make it way easier to actually do endgame grinding, especially with the solo fights.

And then there’s the elephant in the room, which is the new battle royale mode. I haven’t tried it yet, but honestly I actually like the sound of it, lol. I absolutely never expected that they’d add something like this, especially since it’s effectively PVP, but it actually sounds perfectly fine. It’ll probably get tweaked as time goes on, but it sounds like you barely even get any extra rewards from it by winning compared to just dying immediately, and the whole mode is designed to have you start from a blank slate where you and everyone else are at the same playing field, so it’s basically entirely skill-based, and you don’t even need to be good at it to get rewards.

I wasn’t even sure how they’d handle PVP in an action RPG like this, but I think this is a good way to go about it.

We’re also getting a return of the time attack mode, which is . . . worrying, but hopefully now that people are much more familiar with both HDTs and Agitos, it’ll go by a lot more smoothly. I’m surprised they’re even touching this concept again after how badly it was received the first time, but I’m curious to see how it goes. I know a lot of people really liked it, so hopefully it’s balanced so that you can ignore it if you want to, without feeling like you’re missing out on too much.

They also finally got around to adding sparking, which is great. I honestly wasn’t really expecting it at this point, but after the patch notes got revealed yesterday I figured this was probably gonna happen. I know some people would wish it had been introduced earlier, but I’m glad it’s finally a thing. I still don’t think it’s as much of a make or break issue for me as it is for others, but it’s still pretty much an objective bonus over the old/current system. My main concern with sparking, though, has always been that it might lead them to notably tanking the amount of summons we can do each month as F2P players, which would cancel out the good parts of sparking, but I doubt they’d do that.

Either way, it seems to work in exactly the same way as GBF, in that each summon gets you a unique bit of currency, and when you get 300 of it, you can trade it for a featured unit of your choice. But also like with GBF, your sparks reset after each banner and turn into different items that you can exchange at a store for regular in-game items, so your 300 summons all have to be on the same banner, and you can’t just accumulate a spark by summoning across several banners. Though one thing that seems to be different to GBF is that summons done with diamantum give you twice the amount of sparks, which is really interesting, since it really cuts down on the amount of money you’d need to spend to get a spark that way. It’d still be super expensive to do an entire spark just through diamantum, but 150 summons with diamantum is still way cheaper than 300, lol.

If they keep our monthly summon income about the same as it’s been thus far even after they add sparking, I think that we’d be able to do a spark every 6-8 weeks just from event and log-in bonus rewards. At the moment we get around 150-200 summons per month just from all that, so it seems like it’ll be WAY faster to save for a spark than it is in GBF [where outside of specific holiday periods that have free summon events you’re probably looking at 4+ months of saving to be able to spark].

This at least means it’ll be way easier to plan out my hoarding, since I know that as long as I have 300+ summons saved, I can at least spark a new unit I want. And there’s always the possibility of just getting them early and being able to quit while I’m ahead.

And on the note of summons, we’re also getting 330 free summons total between the anniversary and the end of October, which is absolutely insane. Sadly you can’t save up sparks across banners, so you won’t be able to do a spark JUST from that, but it’d go a long way to helping supplement a spark on a specific banner.

It looks like we’re gonna get a short pre-gala of sorts soon that’ll contain all the previous gala units, but I’m probably gonna skip that, outside of the free pulls. The only one I don’t have from that set is Gala Alex, and at this point I’d rather just chase her when she’s in a future gala remix. If it’s anything like the same type of bonus gala we got for the first anniversary, all the featured units on this banner will probably have lower than normal rates to make up for how many of them will be on the banner, so it’d just be a really low-value banner for someone like me who already has all but one of them. I’m also not even sure if I’d be able to get all the way to 300 summons that quickly.

Either way I’m more interested in saving for stuff like Halloween, Christmas, new gala dragons, and New Years.

We’re also getting Gala Zena on the anniversary itself, and I think everyone saw her coming, lol. She’s not a gun unit, though, which is actually a bit lame, even though I figured it wouldn’t happen. Her being an attack-type light staff unit is really interesting, at least if she ends up working like Heinwald, but I’m still not sure if I’d be interested in actually spending resources to try and get her.

The gala banner is also going to have the new girl from the anniversary event, and a Midgardsormr alt. Though it sounds like he’s going to be non-limited, so he’s not our wind gala dragon.

The anniversary event also sounds extremely interesting. It sounds like we’re time-traveling back 1000 years to when Ilia created her religion, and she seems to basically be a punk biker girl, which is extremely cool on so many levels. It also kinda looks like Zethia is going to be the MC of this event, and it might not even feature Euden and co, which would be a nice change of pace.

I thought Ilia might be our new welfare unit, but going by the preview image for the event it looks like it’ll be Mordecai, who looks like he’s gonna end up possessed by Morsayati or something, since he looks a lot like Morsayati’s human form we’ve seen a few times. I hope he’s a gun unit, just so we can get more of them, but we’ll see how it goes.

I’m guessing that Ilia will eventually be playable, but maybe just for the 3rd anniversary event or something.

We also got a tease at the next three main story chapters, which all look really interesting. It seems like the Archangels event is going to pretty immediately become important to the story, and now we’re heading off to North Grastaea. We’re also going to be going to the fairy kingdom eventually, which is cool, especially since the teaser for it heavily implied that Notte will become a playable character then.

Which also reminds me that we’re probably eventually going to get a gun unit from the main story, since we have all the other weapon types already, but I doubt Notte will be a gun unit, lol.

Going by the teasers, I also get the feeling that Leonidas and Chelle will be our next two gala adventurers, and at least one of them, if not both, will probably be a gun unit. I think one of the shots of Leonidas had a gun visible in it, but Chelle’s also apparently the one who introduced guns to the world, so who knows how that’ll turn out. At the very least they did say that we’re gonna start getting new gun units soon, and we might get a lot of them really quickly to help fill out the pool. Which also means that some of the new holiday units might end up using guns, so that’s also worth saving for.

I also get the feeling that we might take a break from gala dragons for a while, since we’ve basically run out of good options for them. But who knows. We still need ones for water and wind.

Hopefully with the spark system in place I’ll be able to spark on at least the Halloween and New Years banners, since those are my top two priorities, but we’ll see how it goes. It’s always scary to enter limited holiday banner hell season, but at least they introduced sparking right before it all starts. At the moment I think I’ve got like 150 summons saved up, but I’ve still got most of my reset co-op rewards to go through, and I haven’t touched the Halloween event they added to the compendium, so that’ll add a lot. I think the anniversary log-in bonus will also give us like 2k wyrmite, and if the retweet event succeeds we’ll get an extra 1.2k wyrmite. So as long as they don’t tank our monthly summon currency, I should be able to spark on Halloween if I can commit to saving for it. Which is much easier said than done, lol.

All in all I think I really love this update, but it REALLY changes the entire game, so it’s gonna take a long time to get used to. And thankfully even with the introduction of stuff like sort-of-PVP, it doesn’t look like they’re going in any sort of P2W direction with the game.

Also, there’s still the 45-minute Game Live presentation set to come later tonight, but I’m not expecting that to tell us much, since it’ll probably be targeted at new players. I’m still holding out hope for a Switch port announcement, though.

#murasaki rambles #dragalia lost

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mymemoirs · 4 years ago

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Unrecorded Memories and Missing Taiwan #6

Yay, the last two weeks of my summer program experience! I’m glad that this series is going to be over soon. The last two weeks of my summer program, I remembered being too comfortable that I let myself feel all kinds of feelings: embarrassed, awkward, angry, etc. This is so different than when I’m in my first two weeks where I mostly confined myself in my dorm room and have little exchange with others except my group mates and a few classmates. So, the last two weeks was like a roller coaster of feelings but in a good way. In spite of the negative feelings I felt at those moment, I can still view them as a life enriching experience and see it in a good light.

24) Creativity and Entrepreneurship program is the most laid-back class I have ever taken. I can’t quite remember the details of what I’ve learnt from the class, I vaguely remembered that we’re being taught about introduction to Bitcoin (yeah, and that’s also the first time I heard about bitcoin) and business model. I still kept some of the teaching materials that our professors sent to us and realized that most of the materials he sent to us weren’t related to our program, it was just a bunch of journals or articles that he worked on. So, I guess I can’t reviewed what he had taught us before. Oh, well.

What I clearly remembered during the class is how bored and unfocused I am. Having to go through from a very serious and fast paced class in AI to a more relaxing and slow paced class like Creativity and Entrepreneurship, my mind easily gets bored. I wasn’t the only one to feel that way too, sometimes I observe my classmates’ face and could sense that some of them were bored too. I think it’s normal to be bored during class, even back in my country, there were instances that I even fell asleep during class (please don’t do this!).

One of the drawings I drew when I’m bored in class. Aside from drawing, I actually read comics too and was found out by my lecturer. Welp! Such an embarrassing moment!

To be honest, being in this program, I can’t guess what we will learn the next day. I also can’t guess what our activity would be if our professor didn’t tell us beforehand. Most of our class consists of team building activities like games that were arranged by the teaching assistants. We enjoyed playing inside the classroom and it’s also a good way for us to bond. We also have a lot of group discussions and presentations. The professor even let us have a day off in order for us to survey and make a video for our presentation.

I personally think this is an ideal program if you only aim for the ‘fun’ summer program. Well most of the programs were fun, like the ones taken by my roommates which is about “Community Care Practice in Taiwan” (if I’m not wrong). I heard they went to a lot of excursions and they also have fun activities in the class too.

25) The second day of the class, the professor told us that the next day we would be going for an excursion. So, before the field trip, he told us to fill some forms which actually is an aptitude test for a job assessment. He told us something along the line of “knowing thyself” and letting us get this facilities while in his class. Well, to be honest, I’m excited and I’ve always enjoyed this kind of activities: getting a personality test and reading the results.

After filling the questionnaires, we hand it in. Since it’s just an aptitude test, we could actually get the results pretty fast. However, considering they have to processed the questionnaires from all of the participants in our class, it would take a day or two.

Now, the day we’re waiting for: the field trip~!

I actually had to search it up in the internet because the place won’t come up when I type it in. Turns out the name of the place were too common and they had a lot of branch so I had to find the specific one where we went on our field trip. For our first field trip, we went to a job center that have a makerspace. It’s usually a space for people to learn and create things, usually those who came there are taught about tech stuff. The makerspace is located in Nantou District. To be exact, I think the address is No. 8, Sanhe 1st Road, Nantou City. Well, I’m not too sure about it, but as far as I remembered that’s the building I went in with my classmates.

Once we arrived there, we were handed our aptitude results and a career coach explained to us the meaning of our results. She was speaking in Chinese, so there was a translator beside her. Fortunately, since I understand a little bit of Chinese, I can keep up with her explanation without waiting for it to be translated.

She then proceeded to explain that in life there were occupation categories, such as: artistic, social/ volunteering, professionals. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing I remembered so I think I subconsciously wanted those types of occupation in my life. She also explained that as we live a different phase of our life, we might shift our activities to that of artistic, social, or even professionals. For example, on our 20s - 30s we would like to spend our time as professionals. After that, 40s - 50s in artistic or even social, and so on. I think this is a very interesting concept that stuck with me ever since. I would really like to apply it on my own life. Too bad, I didn’t jot down the details back then. If I had, I would be able to explain it in great detail.

One of the Arduino/ Microcontroller projects in the makerspace. This project is an automatic watering system for plants. Okay, just take your time to think about this. There’s definitely a sensor that sense the humidity of the soil, but how the water travels from that pipe still baffles me.

After the presentation, we were given an ample time to explore the maker space and also ate our lunch. We provided our own lunch by buying in the nearest convenience store though. Looking around, it was actually very fun. I see quite interesting Arduino projects and they also have interesting woodwork for it. I guess Arduino and woods are interesting, should put that as one of my prospective projects. There’s also a 3D printing projects laying around in the makerspace.

26) The next activities that the career coach prepared for us is a team building activity. Since I’m always with my previous classmates from AI and most of our classmates are close to one another, our groups were instantly formed. Over the course of the game sessions, I don’t know what’s got into me, I became very competitive at that time. There weren’t even a prize for those who win as far as I remembered, but I think the point system were making me ambitious. I mean, it’s not really the first time I got too competitive, however my competitiveness kind of clouded my emotional thinking and I was a bit too harsh to my teammates.

The games that we played were mostly games that involves problem solving. Each team were first given a wood puzzle that requires us to separate blocks of wood without breaking it. That piques my interest and I was so into it. Our team weren’t the first one to solve it, but since I knew the direction the game is heading involves thinking, I was really riled up for the next game. So, every time the career coach asked each team’s opinions, I was always the first one in my team to speak. Well, part of the reason was because I’m used to standing in for my teammates and they’re not confident with their English skills yet compared to me. But I later realized that was very selfish of me.

There were also games that involves teamwork and communication which the career coach named “Noah’s Ark” (actually that’s the name of the board game). Basically we were told to balance animals figures on a board which looks like a seesaw and we must make sure not to let the board touch the surface of the table. The team that had more animals figures on the board wins. Every team had so much fun in the game, there were even a team that sings “Happy Birthday” after they messed up.

When it’s our team’s turn, I was really stressed out. We should have take turns putting the figures on the board, but a teammate of mine was really excited that he was technically dominating it. I kept on telling them to take it slow and take turns but I guess everyone were focused on it. Also being the only one who didn’t speak Thai at all in the group was making it worst, since my teammates suddenly spoke in Thai the moment the game started. I guess they were excited. Some Indonesian classmates who were observing us playing suddenly said, “Semangat” to me which technically means “Hwaiting”/ “Fighting” in Korean (I didn’t know a word that suits this in English context). I could only sighed at that, because I think they knew that I was struggling in that particular game since I didn’t understand what my teammates are talking about. Of course, we ended up losing way faster than the others and the animals figures we had were the least. I was kind of irritated by that so when the career coach asked us what we’ve learnt from the game, I told annoyingly while looking at my teammates that “communication is important”. Yeah, I was kinda harsh at that time.

27) At the end of our sessions, the career coach suddenly said that she’s actually been observing us the whole time and would like to share her observations. She mentioned teams and individuals that caught her attention. I wasn’t really expecting that she would mentioned me too, and she referred to me twice during her conclusion. I can’t remember the exact details but she had been observing us before we played the games. That’s why she told me that I was actually the first person to take the initiative to help the staff in moving the tables and chairs when we were going to play the games. I actually didn’t realized it but it’s good to have someone acknowledging it. I think my habit of tidying up the chairs back when I’m in a temple became something worth observing? *laughs*

At one point, she started to describe me. I think I’m such an open book, huh? I can’t remembered what she said, but it was like she’s literally praising me. Ah, if only I can remember, I was really flattered but embarrassed at the same time. The reason I’m embarrassed wasn’t even because of the praising but because of what she said after that. I guess that’s what stuck to me. My mind was interpreting it as her way of telling me that I’m wrong but subtly.

She said while patting my shoulder, “You were always the one who took the initiative and lead your teammates. Every time you would represent your team. It must be tiring for you, yeah?”

Ah, the power of communication. Sometimes what you said can be interpreted in so many ways. I interpreted it as a criticism, I felt I was being selfish for not letting my teammates have a chance to speak. I felt I was hindering their development because if you don’t push yourself then you won’t be good at it. So after the career coach left our table, I immediately apologized to my teammates. They in return apologized back to me because they knew I felt left out at times. I really regretted it for letting my competitiveness get the better of me.

28) Before going back, our class were offered a chance to use 3D printer pen. It’s really interesting how you can squeeze the polymer by using a wireless 3D printer pen. I’m not really good at using it though and I didn’t managed to make anything that’s worth taking back home. Some on the other hand were able to produce their own souvenir. Oh well, too bad.

Wireless 3D Printer Pen

29) And on our way home from the excursions, I was sitting alone by the bus window. I was really drained out interacting with people from my class and that day I don’t really feel good either. It was at this moment, a Thai friend of mine, Phoom, who’s also my group mate sat beside me. He suddenly struck a conversation with me and taught me some Thai words out of the blue.

I really appreciate his effort to make me feel better and I think I can say we end the day in a good term. Especially, as an avid language learner, I tried jotting down words he taught me. It was really fun and I think starting from that day, my Thai friend kept teaching me how to speak Thai with them. Although, I kinda forgot it now and I’m not really that fluent either. Anyway, I really appreciate those kind of people in my life. While it’s short, it’s really worthwhile to know them.

-Reina

PS. Okay, I know this post might be very wordy and the pictures aren’t really interesting. But I think, it’s one of my memorable moments during my Creativity and Entrepreneurship class.

#Taiwan #Asia University #summer exchange #Creativity and Entrepreneurship Class #Taichung #makerspace

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goliath-de-senfina-sango · 5 years ago

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Local Teen Unaware of how Weird Family is, Local Goth Decides To Go All In and Learn Magick, Exhausted Teens Do Fun Dumb Teen Stuff

It was the day after they’d taken down Skulker, and Tucker had to collect up the armor. Danny helped him, of course, and he flew home with some help from his favorite ghost boy. They landed in Tucker’s room, and Tucker gave Danny a hug as soon as the suit was set down. Danny returned to his warmer flesh and blood self and hugged him back before they got to work searching for a port to plug Tucker’s laptop into. Thankfully even the dead respected the U in USB and they manage to connect. Before long, however, Tucker’s mind wanders from his code-breaking program that’s now hard at work with Skulker’s head and to his situation with Sam. And considering what all he’d learned about Danny’s family so far, he might as well ask. “Danny do you have access to transparent solar panels?”

“Yeah, all the windows at Fenton Works are solar panels - I think they run at uh 50% efficiency. Why?”

“Danny, that’s like, the exact last piece I need for my solar-powered car design.” Tucker was tempted to inform Danny of how amazing that fact was, but he knew Danny wasn’t a fan of being extraordinary, so he’d let it slide for now. “Now I just need some way of building it.”

“Well, you have the design itself saved right?”

“Yes…” Tucker wasn’t sure where this was going, but he was hopeful that it’d be a place he liked.

“We can just print out the design at my house?” Danny shrugged, as though that was obvious and the most simple thing in the world. “We have like, a pretty big 3D printer, it’s uh modular, and we use scrapped metal from junkyards that we liquified as filament. We can print a car pretty quickly.”

Danny was going to say something that made Tucker fall completely in love with him one of these days, the idiot. “Danny I need you to take me to this 3D printer. Now.” Skulker’s head was left where they’d put it on his desk, the rest of the suit stuffed in Tucker’s closet, and the pair flew off to Danny’s house.

When they arrived at Fentonworks, they turned to one of the other buildings on the block and set down there, Danny taking the time to unlock the door and everything. “So this 3D printer you guys have…”

“Well, Dad calls it the Fenton Fabricator. See, there's a theory that went around a while ago when 3D printers and fabricators first started, it was the Recursive Loop Theory. It goes like this. You buy a 3D printer. Mid-range, sorta useful, but with enough detail and strength that you like it. But then you need something a bit more detailed. So you look online and you find a set of 3D models for a second printer. This one you can build on your machine, and with only some minor parts you can make the more detailed printer for a tiny fraction of what it would cost.”

Danny took them to a set of stairs and Tucker was so focused on his friend he nearly missed all the art Danny’s ever done hanging all over the walls.

“So, you can make more detailed parts. And you find designs for a bigger printer. It's modular and sorta rough, but it needs those detailed parts. So you can then build massive somewhat detailed pieces… and so you do. And now, with your 3 printers, you find designs to a fourth. Bigger, better, more detailed, it's another generation, and you can print it off your current designs. Boom, bam, rinse and repeat. Eventually, your diminishing returns drop till you can’t make a more detailed printer, but at that point, you have one hell of a machine, particularly if you have a couple of crazy hackers building your final design as a custom project. Course, it’s not quite that easy. We had to fabricate a lot of weird and unique bits for them in other ways - well, my folks and their friends in the Secret Scientists did anyway."

“So the Fenton Fabricator?”

“Is a massive, customized high detail 3D fabricator that can even print metal and glass, yes.” Danny turned on the lights as they entered a large underground workspace. Tucker saw the fabricator and felt he might’ve gone to heaven. It was a massive aquarium tank, easily twenty feet from corner to corner and at least eight feet tall. Above it, hanging like a mechanical spider on segmented green and red limbs with shiny metal joints and points, was a motorcycle sized 3D printing extruder. Tucker could see a set of lasers for dust printing, a pair of high-heat high-speed extruders for wires, several dozen smaller legs with colors and specific grades of wire, all of which fed up and around the room to spools of plastic and cylinders of dusted metal.

“There are hidden parts in the walls with directed gravity manipulators and some arms kept out of the way until needed for assembly-based stuff. I think Mom and Dad built a car or something down here recently. The canisters are all refilled completely.” Danny shrugged, moving around the lab and grabbing up papers - notes about what feeds to use, hints for setting things up. “I can help you connect up and plug in your stuff - though you’ll have to leave it here so that the thing can print. If you’re legit making a car here, it’ll take about 2 days to finish printing it out at all, let alone assemble.”

“Danny, after I finish with that, we are so using this place for other projects together, do you understand me?” Tucker saw doors that likely lead off to other rooms in the lab and wondered just how Much of Fentonworks there was. “This is too amazing.”

“If you say so, bro. Here, let’s get started. I can help with setting up the print file.”

Sam had to say, going through the bs of school was beyond irritating when both of her friends were barred from the school until they could get around the weapons the Fentons were installing. Paulina’s gratingly loud personality was especially difficult to tune out that day, and Sam found herself feeling proud of her self control in not throwing something at the shallow cheerleading idiot when she started going on and on about the upcoming spirit week.

Once school was out, Sam grabbed the board that Danny apparently made for her after he finished Tucker’s, though she wasn’t sure how, and put on her helmet. New, magnetic boots planted firmly on the board, Sam pulled out her phone, put in the address of the Skulk and Lurk, and activated the Nav AI that Tucker had managed to make an app for to download. “One of these days Tucker is going to overwork himself into an early grave.” Shaking her head Sam took off into the sky, and no amount of gothic reputation could keep the smile off her face or prevent her from cheering. “Woooohoooo!” Who could possibly blame her? She was flying . There was nothing more awesome than this that she knew of.

When she arrived, Sam had her board hover itself up to the roof, where it was less likely to get snatched by someone who thought it’d be cool to snag a hoverboard. Walking into the store, Sam took off her helmet and grinned. The Skulk n Lurk was one part book store, one part poetry reading area, and one part coffee shop. It had the gothic, occult theme down pat with black, blue, and shades of purple being the only colors to be found around the store. Heading straight into the books section, Sam managed to flag down an employee and nudged him in the arm. “Nice mohawk, Chris, I see you’re branching out.”

Chris turned around, hair dyed a brilliant blue and his clothes all pastel shades of purple and grey with a bat-shaped nametag pinned on his chest. He smiled and elbowed her right back. “Yeah, just got it done the other day. How’re you holdin up, Sam? Parents still trying to push you into being a prep?”

“Such is my curse.” Sam sighed and leaned heavily on Chris while he laughed. “But, that’s not what I’m here for today. Think you can help me find some books on magick?”

“Cursing people is wrong, and will always go wrong for you, I hope you know that.”

Sam rolled her eyes, standing up straight. “It’s not for cursing anyone, Chris, it’s for something else.”

“Hitting that cheerleader with a love spell is not the way to go about getting over your crush on her.” Chris smirked and turned away from her, walking steadily while Sam scoffed and scowled at him.

“That’s gross on two fronts. A love spell sounds ridiculously creepy, and I don’t have a crush on Paulina of all people.” Sam made a gagging noise and Chris laughed yet again.

Ludicrous notions about cheerleaders aside, Chris lead Sam to a section about magick and left to go help another customer while Sam browsed. She held her hand up, letting her fingers brush over the spines of the books as she read their titles and stilled. There was a vibration, warm and far more humid than any bookstore should be and humming so much like Danny and Agatha and even that piece of trash Grovsner did when she was close. It was a feeling that she hadn’t really noticed until now that all of the ghosts she’d encountered shared, however few of those there were. The tiny hairs all over her arms and the back of her neck stood on end and Sam grabbed the book.

Roots, stems, rain, warmth, leaves, petals, heat, crushing cold, withering emptiness, life granting rain and growth . Sam dropped the book and just barely bit off a loud swear, staring at the cover. Magick: The Life Blood of the Earth. “Well. Danny can see weird shit, I guess I can feel it. Being that close to the portal must’ve done something to me.” Picking up the book slowly, Sam waited for any weird feelings to hit her again. When none did, she grinned slowly. “Let’s see what I can do with that.”

Danny takes some of the time after fighting Skulker to relax at home, get his schoolwork done that was emailed to him, and figure out a plan for working around the school's new anti-ghost security system. It had been two days already and he was coming up blank. Of course, it's at dinner that Danny thinks to ask his parents. "Hey Mom, you said the Fenton Finder works by keeping track of a ghost's ectosignature, right? What is that, exactly?" Jazz, as she standardly did when Danny instigated ghost-themed rants, looked as offended as one might have had their mother been described with every cuss word in the dictionary. She stabbed her chicken alfredo while holding this look for 5 continuous seconds without blinking.

Mom smiled wide and ecstatic. "Well you see, Danny, an ectosignature is the frequency of electrical signals running throughout a ghost's body, shaping its form and directing its actions."

"Like brainwaves?"

“Exactly, hon!” Mom reached into her pocket and pulled out a macaroon, which Danny devoured immediately. “When a ghost manifests outside of the Ghost Zone, its ecto signature is a signal being broadcast from the Ghost Zone into our reality. Since ghosts are 4-dimensional constructs made of exotic matter that of which exists beyond our standard perceptive abilities, a ghost can receive this ectosignature from just about anywhere on Earth or beyond. Like the best cellular reception in the universe.”

“Like any signal though, an ectosignature can be tracked! And that signal can be disrupted and blocked!” Dad only spoke in exclamation points Danny realized some time ago. He waved his fork around in presentation at the blueprint that his mind had likely superimposed on the air next to him. “The Fenton Thermos™ uses charged ectoplasm and what I’ve coined as Fentonite to isolate any ectoplasmic mass contained inside of it from its corresponding ectosignature by creating a four-dimensional enclosure! The filthy ghost is still charged with the ectosignature though, there’s a centralized network of energy that allows the ghost to immediately take on its form after it’s released.”

“So the ghost is conscious within the thermos?”

Mom shrugged. “As conscious as a ghost can be, sweety. It’s not an actual person or anything, just a static imprint of what used to be a person’s thoughts. Like an A.I.”

“The Fenton Finder™ used scanners specially made to detect ectosignatures that are on our satellites up in space! It’s also how our security system works, though that works off of scanners here in the house!”

"So is there a way to track down ghosts by their specific ecto signatures? If you can track the general signals maybe you can create a way to lock into a specific one."

"Mm, I suppose we could! That'd be useful for tracking down that scum that attacked you and friends! We've got the blueprints for the ecto signature scanner down in the lab somewhere if you wanna try the idea out, son!"

"Will do, Dad. I'll tell ya how it goes." Danny grinned around his chicken and pasta. He had a game plan now.

After dinner, Danny raced downstairs to print out the blueprint from the computer - his father stacked the blueprints in an infuriatingly chaotic way that Danny hadn't the patience to sort through - and then ran through the door on the left. Behind it was a hallway into a tunnel, one that lead Danny to the alternative lab under the building right next to the house. Hopping into his wheely chair, Danny slid over the linoleum floor to his work table and laid down the blueprint.

"Alright, I can work with this. A signal can be tracked, and it can be isolated. Which means that My signal can be isolated and tracked specifically." A smirk crossed his face. "Which means the scanners can be set to ignore my signal. Perfect!"

Danny slid over to the laptop connected to a second Fenton Fabricator, glad that his parents were always thorough enough to make a back up of everything they did. "This should be done in no time. Then Sam can help me test it and Tuck can- speak of the devil." Danny whipped out his phone and hummed, tilting his head at the simple message his best friend had sent him.

FriarTuck: Hey Dan, almost fin breaking the security in Sklkr's suit. Bout to crack this badboi open n make it mine. Muahahahaha! Hyd?

"Ugh, stars, I don't wanna think about that asshole." Danny shot back a quick reply and set his phone down, finding a notebook he typically kept around. Writing in a code only he, Tucker and Sam knew, Danny got everything down that he could. "Skulker has been a major set back in my plan to prove not all ghosts are evil to Mom and Dad, and a few other weird developments made themselves known. I can now see everything in the lower intensity ultraviolet spectrum 24/7 instead of having to concentrate, as well as the electrical currents running through everything; I can somehow see my emotional connections with people I'm close with and use those connections to influence their emotions as well as read them clearer than other aurae." He stopped, taking a breath and looking over what he'd just written. " Mierda , ain't that creepy?" Danny pulled on his hair a bit while he wrote.

"Joining that on the list of creepy-ass things about Danny: I can reach across that link to everyone and pull on their love and affection and all that and use it to heal myself. Stars, that's such a gross way to look at everyone's care for me. Just a fucking- a bandaid? A free trip to the nurse in a minute?"

Turning back to the parts being made, Danny huffed and dragged his nails against his scalp a touch too roughly. "Physiological changes in my ghost occur when Tucker and Sam are in danger; Canines grow into fangs and according to Sam my voice starts to echo as though it's coming from everywhere. Thankfully a check in Tucker's mirror proves that the changes are temporary. Reaction to my temperament? On that note: being a psychoreactive exotic material, the ectoplasm that makes up my ghostly body reasonably reacts instantaneously to my emotions, but it seems to be enhancing them as well. It's either that or maybe puberty, but I have a feeling puberty doesn't make you violently angry at the slightest provocation and likely to turn any ghost you see into a splatter on the ground." Danny groaned, closing his notebook. "I fucking Executed Skulker. What the fuck? Why didn’t I just suck him into the thermos?"

A ding from his phone and Danny snorted.

GardeningClaws: Hey Star boy, don't go angsting without us there to hug you. We will know and you will pay the price.

"And what price is that, being buried in a pillow fort?"

GardeningClaws: do you know how many pillows I have in this house?? Do you think, like a fool, that I won't use them against you?

Danny laughed, sending a quick 'fair point' before heading to the door opposite the one into the house lab. Behind it was a room with rows of lockers, each holding three sets of suits. Danny didn't need them though. At the far end, there was a large octagonal metal rim, blast doors sealed shut within.

Opening it up to just the right coordinates, Danny watched the doors pull back and felt the building charge of the portal's startup. For a fraction of a second, Danny was filled with a bone-deep fear that gripped his entire body and held him stock still. With a thunderous crack, the fabric of space-time was folded around and torn, and Danny relaxed, staring out at an expanse of white and grey. Opening the blast door, he let the void fill him up and spread outward to chill his bones and freeze his veins. Skin blue, eyes and freckles green and his fluffy hair snow-white, Danny flew past the event horizon and gasped silently at the sight before him.

The moon is so much more beautiful when you can look with your own eyes instead of through the lens of a helmet visor.

Sam, smartest of the group that she was, called Danny and Tucker both to head to her house for a horror movie marathon. “After what we’ve been through, none of these B rate movies are gonna scare us.” It was so close to inarguably true that the boys both shrugged at their phones and headed on over. Danny came down from the sky in that space where everything was heat and impossible colors, everything around him highlighted in a panorama view that almost made him dizzy. Landing in an alleyway, Danny checked to make sure he didn’t see anyone around him and took a deep breath. He folded himself up, cold edges practically trapped within him tugged and bent until the brilliant moonlight that bled from his form retreated into the center of his chest, light and freezing cold as it hummed in an offbeat pulse next to his heart.

Pulling the hood of his jacket over his head, Danny jogged out of the alleyway and down the sidewalk with his hands in his pockets. He looked around the neighborhood properly and hummed, wondering how he never put together that Sam was rich when the address she’d given them ages ago was very obviously in the rich part of town. “Stars, we’re really just that oblivious aren’t we?” The stars in mind, Danny cast his gaze up and smiled at the full moon that greeted him, counting the tiny dots of the stars around it while he walked. Thankfully, his odd kaleidoscopic vision seemed to extend to his human form a bit and his foot froze mid-step as a car drove past him at an intersection. “Sweet mother of the gods, why can rich people not drive right?”

When he got to the gates of Manson Manor, Tucker was there typing away at his phone. When he looked up Danny waved and grinned, pointing a thumb at the huge mansion behind the gate. “This is ridiculous.”

“It’s just so much . Why does anyone need that much space? How do they keep it clean?”

“If I meet some butler named Alfred I’m going to eat your hat.”

“Are you sure you wanna make that bet, Danny? This is looking Batman-ish.”

The gate opened up before Danny could respond to that and instead, he nudged Tucker’s side before jogging toward the door. Sam was there, opening it before Danny could trip on nothing and faceplant into the mahogany or whatever expensive wood the door was probably made from, and he instead landed on a soft carpet. Tucker nudged his foot with his shoe and Danny groaned, resigned to simply laying there for the rest of his life. Two pairs of hands lifted him up from the ground however and Danny laughed, getting up properly.

“You can’t just let me wallow in my shame in peace, can you?”

“Of course not,” Sam scoffed. “If you’re going to be ashamed, I have to be there to make sure it’s appropriate. Now, c’mon!” Sam dragged Danny down a few halls, and up some stairs, followed closely by Tucker.

“I need to make a map of this place so we don’t get lost the next time we come to visit,” Tucker muttered, and Danny nodded. When Sam opened the door she was headed for she let Danny go and grinned at them like a cat that’d eaten the canary. Walking in, Danny felt his jaw drop and took a moment to soak in what he was seeing. “You have an entire movie theater in your house?”

“I know, it’s grossly excessive and we absolutely don’t need it, but-”

“Sam, what the heck are you talking about?” Danny waved a hand in the goth’s face and snorted when she swatted at him. “This is awesome! We can marathon every Dead Teacher movie here and it’ll be like when we went to see it in the actual theaters but better !” Danny pulled down his hood and hopped over one of the chairs - of which there were two whole rows - and plopped himself into the soft cushioned seat with a laugh. “The only thing that could make this room better would be if you had movie snacks.”

“Well, good thing I have a popcorn machine right back there full of fresh popcorn, a cotton candy machine, and ordered us pizzas.” Sam grinned, sitting next to Danny with a bowl in hand full of greasy buttery popcorn, and Tucker sat on his right. “What should we watch first?”

Halfway into Dr. Sleep, the pizza arrived and three laughing teens had to pause the movie and pull themselves together from the heap of giggles that they’d become. “Oh, oh stars, that hurt , laughing so much hurts!” Danny leaned on Tucker while Sam leaned on him, the bowl of popcorn practically forgotten next to Tucker. After a few minutes, Danny took a deep breath and patted his friends on the back. “I can grab the pizza - I can fly, so unlike you two I can actually go and be back before the things are cold.” Before either friend could protest, Danny let the shimmering void of silvery dark cold spread out from the center of his chest to every hair on his body in a flash of light. He slipped through Sam and Tucker like water through the air and flew off toward the red aura of the pizza guy, diving to transform behind the front door when he appeared outside. In just a moment he was back inside and setting three pizza boxes down on the snack table. “I see we got ourselves a meat-lovers for Tuck, a veggie everything for Sam, and-” Danny gasped. “A dragon’s tongue pizza for me! Aww, Sam~”

“Oh stuff it you goof,” Sam said as she and Tucker grabbed slices and plates. “I just knew that you’d complain your pizza isn’t spicy enough unless it has ghost peppers, reaper peppers and every other kind of spice known to man and dolphin on it.”

Tucker rolled his eyes, already scarfing down his first slice. “Dolphin? Really?”

“Dolphins are the closest animals to humans in behavior and observed intellect, Tucker.” Danny took the time to go through three slices of pizza while Sam ranted about how dolphins might as well be classified as non-human people before pointing accusatorily at her.

“There is nothing wrong with my sense of taste, thank you. Anyone with a strong enough tongue can handle this pizza, Sam.” Danny took a bite to emphasize his point and smirked when he was flipped off. “I’ve just got the strongest stomach here.”

“ Excuse you? ”

“Unlike you, I can eat veggies without my stomach declaring a mutiny.”

“Um, go fuck yourself? That was the lowest of all low blows, I am utterly betrayed !” Tucker covered his forehead with the back of his arm and half fell backward. “Truly, my trust has been shattered by mine own brother, how could you? And I’ll have you know that the amount of capsaicin you consume is well beyond what any human being should have in their body.”

“Funny, I’m pretty sure I’m not human.” Danny paused mid-chew, ignoring the look of disgust on Sam’s face over the two of them talking around their food. “I wonder… what smaller changes like that might be going on because of my ghost? Like, regular puberty is already horrible enough but now I’ve got like, ghost puberty to deal with.”

“First of all, ghost wise, you’re baby.” Danny pouted at Tucker, feeling mildly offended. “You haven’t even been half-dead for a whole year yet, you’re baby.”

“Tucker, can you be reasonable for one moment?” Danny nodded, gesturing to Sam, who was clearly the only one with her head on straight between them. “Danny is always baby, not just because of his ghost.”

Crossing his arms over his chest, Danny rose up in front of the movie screen, less crossed in the air as he frowned down at his friends. “I am offended, I am revolted, I dedicate my life to our lord and savior Jesus Christ and this is the thanks I get?”

“I wonder,” Sam said loudly as she walked toward his pizza box. “What it would taste like if I put cotton candy on your pizza?” Danny dove for his pizza box, nearly crashing into Sam as he grabbed it up and flew toward the ceiling. He flipped upside down and stood with his feet to the ceiling, grinning down at his friends. Carefully opening his box he took out a slice and stopped.

“Sammy that is a wonderful question!” Gravity shifted, reasserted itself in the correct direction, and Danny flipped with it, landing in front of the cotton candy machine. He dipped his pizza slice into it and smirked at the despaired wail of his friend while he ran away from her, munching away at his unholy pizza slice. “This is so sad, Alexa-”

“You don’t think I’d have Alexa in my home, do you? First you defile my cotton candy, now you insult my common sense? Do me a favor and parish.”

“Been there, done that.”

“As amazing as all that is, I was wondering something about you, Danny.” Danny flew over to Tucker, landing on his shoulders with a snicker. “So like, can you do that thing from the movie? Like, turn your head all the way around like an owl?”

A wide grin spread over Danny’s face and he set his food down on the table, before pulling the void up and out and around himself. Bright silver light illuminated Tucker and cast odd shadows on his face. To think about later. Danny turned his head slowly, cautious of being wrong, and almost stopped when he heard the pop of the joints in his neck. Still, he kept going until he was looking at Sam’s gaping face right behind him. He raised a hand to give her a thumbs up and winced at the sound of more popping joints - though, fascinatingly enough… “None of this hurts at all.”

“Well now I gotta see you spider-walk up the walls, that’s just the natural result of you showing off like this, Danno.” Turning his head the rest of the way around, Danny saw Tucker’s phone pointed at him and snorted. “Dude this is wicked !”

“Oh my gods, we have to time you, hold on.” And like that, Danny was doing laps around the walls and ceiling, reversed on all fours while Sam timed him and Tucker recorded. When he dropped back down to the two rows of seats, Danny crossed his legs behind him with a hum.

“Anything else y’all wanna test?” Tucker raised his hand and Danny let his gaze slide from Tucker himself to the brilliant yellow-gold-grek air around him. “I’m going to regret hearing out this question, aren’t I?” Tucker nodded, his grin widening and the grek in his aura growing brighter. Danny sighed and pointed at his brother.

“Can you possess people? Cause that would be pretty fuckin cool.” Tucker T posed as if that would help Danny with the wave of discomfort that crashed over him at the idea. “How would you know? Go ahead, try me. See if you can like, take me over.”

Danny drew the darkness back into his chest, warmth and the beat of his heart and the weight of gravity tugging relentlessly against him like countless invisible chains made themselves known to him. Digging in his pocket, Danny pulled out a coin, looking at Tucker with as much seriousness on his face as possible. “Heads I tell you to yeet your PDA into the cotton candy, tails I try to possess you.” Danny flipped the quarter and caught it in his open palm. He took in a deep breath through his nose, and let it out the same way. “Shut.”

Slipping back into the void, Danny stared at his Tposing best friend and considered just how he was supposed to do what he had asked. The only thing that made any sense, of course, was to slide even deeper into the void. Light and sound and even the air circulating through the room all faded away and the world shifted like a gradient scale from Xtreme Indigo to a deep dark blue sprinkled with green that lit up the empty world in bands, rivers, and threads that Danny could’ve stared at for the rest of his life and probably never grown tired of. The only constants were the gold and green aurae at the ends of silver threads that shone like solid moonlight. Danny dove for the golden light and dipped a hand in where he guessed Tucker’s head was. The silver thread practically yanked him in, and Danny sank into a desert of yellow and glittering light.

In the next instant, he was blinking unfamiliar eyes, falling out of a dumb pose he hadn’t taken, stumbling on legs longer than he was used to and warmer than he’d been in months. “Holy shit.” Danny held out his - Tucker’s hands and turning them over each other again and again. He took a few testing steps forward and back, turning and stretching every way he’d ever seen Tucker move, and felt a laugh bubble out of hi-Tuck’s mouth. “Sam holy shit!”

Sam was staring at Tucker-Danny like he was the most out of this world thing she’d ever laid eyes on and she wasn’t sure how to react to him. The cheer of figuring out yet another ability dimmed at the sight of her expression and what might’ve been horror was building itself up in his chest. Then Sam schooled her expression and pointed at him. “You sound the way you do when the two of you are speaking in unison.”

“I feel like I’m wearing a costume that doesn’t fit right, I’ll be honest about that. Stars, Tucker’s vision is horrible.”

“Alright, that voice thing is actually getting annoying, can you like, leave him now?” A moment of silence passed, the room growing incredibly small and Sam stepped closer. “Danny, you can leave Tucker’s body now, right?”

“Gimme a second, Sam, I didn’t know I could go into him in the first place.” Danny huffed and closed his eyes. He focused on what was different and wrong about being in Tucker’s body instead of his own, thought about floating upward to the surface of a large body of water, the moon coming to his mind’s eye and he reached for it. There was a solid kick at the edge of his shadows, golden sands rising up and filling the empty space to push him up and out toward the moonlight and-

Danny flopped onto the ground face first, sensing a trend of him faceplanting on Sam’s floor, and Tucker let out a loud gasp. “Holy balls, that was weird as fuck !” Danny flipped around onto his back, letting his own familiar warmth and heartbeat fill his senses before he looked up at Tucker and found him wiggling his fingers and toes. “It was like blacking out or something. I had the weirdest dream where I was like, I dunno, made of fire or something?”

“It was a lot of weird, hard to describe feelings on my end but mostly like a suit that doesn’t fit right. Like, I know what my body feels like and that wasn’t mine, ya know?” Sam and Tucker nodded and while Danny knew they had absolutely no idea what he meant, it was relieving all the same. Standing up, Danny reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the scanner he’d printed earlier. “By the way, I made something that’ll help me get back into school.”

Tucker, without missing a beat, said, “That sounds like a horrible evil device.” Sam snorted and Danny nodded. “What does it do?”

Danny launched into an explanation of what he’d learned about ectosignatures and his idea for tricking the security system at school. “Also,” Danny added when it came to mind, “the car should be done printing in my basement by now.”

“Wait, you not only finished designing it but also started making it?” Sam looked between them with narrowed eyes. “What do you mean printing?”

“The Fenton Fabricator™ is a giant, modular, high detail 3D printer that can make complex metal technologies - like our hoverboards. The first 3D printed car took a couple of days and it wasn’t as complicated as this so I guessed about 48 hours.” Danny shrugged. “Probably done by now.”

“Isn’t that cool?” Tucker practically had stars in his eyes. “We can build anything in there, Sam!”

“Before that, we gotta get this ecto signature of Danny’s recorded." Sam held up the scanner and Danny nodded. Things had to happen in the right order or things would go wrong.

Danny reached inside of himself and pulled the dark, endless space between space that rested within him out to wrap around him like a cool, relaxing blanket. The extreme indigo of the world rose to an even more brilliant blue and purple that blended together and unwove from each other and wrapped around everything. Tucker shone from within with gold that glittered like desert sands and Sam was wreathed in the viridian green of the forests. The threads between them were silver and thick as though woven from many. "I never need to take drugs cause all I need to do to get a trip is go ghost. I swear."

"Yeah, well, I think I have the reading on you right here. Tucker, can you make any sense of this?" Tucker rolled over and stared at the data on the Fenton Finder remake. After a moment of silence, Tuck started tapping away at his PDA ferociously. "I'm gonna guess that means yes."

"I can record this signal and have a filter to keep the school's system from recognizing you as a threat by tonight. Think we can break in and do it then?"

"Probably," Danny shrugged, flipping a few times in the air. "Ishiyama probably had them set the security system to an activation button or lever or verbal input. They wouldn't want them to make something automatic in case a ghost was too close to a student."

"Fair. Tomorrow night then?" Tucker grinned as Danny tucked that blanket of not so empty empty space back into the very center of his everything and flopped onto his seat.

"Sooner I can tell my family we beat Skulker the better. I don't like worrying them like this." Ever since his Spirit Vision or whatever got turned permanently on, Danny could feel the undercurrent of anxiety that ran through his family. It made his skin crawl with the itch to make them all feel better and left a bitter taste on his tongue.

"Agreed, I can only keep this info from my parents for so long." Sam sighed, rolling her eyes. With a grin she handed the scanner fully over to Tucker and ran a hand through Danny's hair, messing it up as much as she could.

Danny swatted away Sam's hand after a moment and sank further into the soft cushiony seat. "Your chair is eating me, Sammy."

"You've been getting a healthier amount of meat on you, so yeah it might be." Tucker was steadily getting engrossed in his task and Danny knew they had precious few seconds before he was completely lost to them so he decided now was a good time to be a dick.

“So like, when the first hoverboard exploded and I put up a forcefield on a reflex we completely skipped over that cause of hyper-focus but like. Should we talk about that?"

"You have protective instincts," Tucker mumbled, "and ghost stuff reacts to the deeper parts of your mind right? So it's just you defending someone you care about."

"Which reminds me." Sam poked Danny in the sides until he was squirming and giggling to get away. "You're keeping like, a journal of all the things you can do right?"

"Mostly notes on what I learned about ghosts in general, like a bullet point list of the stuff that happened with Agatha and Skulker, and stuff but yeah. I need to add ‘owl neck’ and ‘possession’ to my list of Things I Can Do."

“And what, pray tell, is on that list?”

"I can turn intangible or invisible, defy- no, actually, with what happened at the zoo I guess I can influence gravity, I can see all the radiation in the world, which is a trip lemme tell ya, I can apparently make a wall of ectoplasm?" Tucker and Sam were staring at him for a long beat of silence before both were tackling Danny and pulling him into a big group hug. “I know, I’m awesome, but so are you guys and you should celebrate it.”

“Yeah, I am pretty awesome,” Tucker said with a grin. “You guys are lucky to know me. I feel I deserve a reward for the amazingness I bring to this group.” Tucker was promptly dropped by Sam onto the floor and Danny laughed.

“Another cool thing you can do is heal yourself and other people.” Sam poked Danny in the side until he was squirming away from her in that unreal state of being, slipping through her fingers like the space between air and flopped onto Tucker’s lap before solidity came back to him. “That’s probably one of the coolest powers you have.”

“One day, Tucker is going to copy everything I can do, but with technology.” Danny poked Tucker a couple of times and got his hand swatted away for his trouble. “He’s already copied my language-”

“Spanish doesn't belong to you just because your dad is Mexican, Danny, try again.”

“And now he’s tryna say what’s mine isn’t even mine, can you believe this guy?” Danny didn’t even try to hold in his laughter now, waving a hand emphatically in Tucker’s face. “Next he’ll say I’m not the greatest ghost fighter in the world-”

“Your Mom.”

“Or the first boy to step foot on the moon-”

“Neil Armstrong - also, did you just say you walked on the m-”

“Or the unthinkable, like I’m not the very first Fenton that’s gonna be built like a brick house.”

“No no, you can’t just talk your way out of this one, Danny, you were on the moon? ” Ah, Danny loved riling up his friends.

#Danny Phantom #Danny Fenton #Tucker Foley #Sam Manson #OCs #Maddie Fenton #Jack Fenton #Jazz Fenton #Fanfiction #Phanfiction #fanPhiction #Phanphiction #fanfic #phanfic #fanphc #Phanphic #MCS #Monstrous Chosen Spellslingers #Rexy Writes

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bloodydamnit · 5 years ago

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You went to MICA, right? I’m currently going there and it’s good (stressful as fuck, but good) and I wanna know; what did you hate and what did you love about it? (Oh my god I sound like those end of year surveys they give you)

Hello there!!! Omfg I’m literally on campus right now for pride!!! LOL just got myself a smoky burger from OTH what what. okay okay okay good questions.

MICA has changed quite a bit since I was there. Like, my freshman year was fucking lit. If you take the shuttle and get Mr. Robert or Ms. Yvette, ask them about the nudists. Shit was wild.

Our freshman/foundation year was different in general too? Like

Okay. So. lol. Our classes were:

Elements of Visual Thinking - Which was a chance to explore concepts, mediums, learning how to properly critique, etc.

Critical Thinking - Which was just critical theory, but more on your own practice I guess? I don’t really know how to explain it.

EMAC - Which was exploring different forms of digital media and how to use them (Premier, Photoshop, Audacity, recording devices, etc)

Sculptural Forms - Which was a chance for you to explore 3d media. So it was held in what used to be 15/15 and it was woodshop, plaster, 3d printing, and cardboard.

Then, this is where I get pissed off and seriously fucking angry about this change.

But we USED to have Painting and Drawing. Now, if you got a 5 in AP art, you gained an extra credit and could skip Drawing/Painting 1. HAH. IMAGINE THAT. HAVING A PAINTING AND DRAWING CLASS AS A FOUNDATION FOR YOUR ART. BECAUSE IT’S KIND OF NECESSARY.

can you tell im a bit fucking salty?

They were separate classes and I think, they were extremely fucking important to the development of not only my art but my peers. For example, I fucking hated painting when I went to MICA. Literally fucking refused to touch the medium.

I went to my first class with Latoya Hobbs, tried oil paint, and everything fucking changed. I was a GD major (or that was my plan) and I immediately switched to Painting and I never looked back.

Unfortunately, yall don’t have that opportunity anymore. Especially since when you choose your major, you tend to stick with those classes. Which really fucking sucks, because you can tell the variety of art has gone down since this change happened. And I think that’s the thing that I dislike about MICA NOW the most. I had the chance to take things, was required to take them, and then I knew how to do a variety of things BECAUSE of those changes. And from what I understand, you don’t have those opportunities anymore. Which really fucking sucks. Because you also miss out on the amazing fucking professors in other majors as well. For example, Karen Warshal. I HIGHLY recommend taking her Portrait class and her Anatomy class. I swear to god, those were the best, more useful classes I’ve ever taken. Is she crazy? A bit. But she’s the most genuine, caring, supportive, and one of the hardest professors I’ve ever had. And thats what you WANT. You don’t want someone to butter you up, tell you your art is poppin when it’s not, and to try and let you off easy because you look upset. Karen tells you how it fucking is and that’s so god damn important. no matter what major you are, TAKE HER FUCKING CLASSES. They’re important and they’re necessary to your development as an artist. Even if you’re not into figural art. - also she makes food and brings it in. and if you’re sick she might make you chicken noodle soup. shout out to karen

Honestly, Karen was probably one of my favorite things about MICA. Along with Mark Karnes, TONY FUCKING SHORE. LISTEN. YOU NEED TO TAKE A CLASS WITH TONY SHORE (PAINTING). I think he might be doing a class on race (which haha he knows hes white as fuck) and i think it will be fantastic. so keep an eye out, AND RUTH TOULSON THE ANTHROPOLOGY TEACHER. IT MIGHT STILL BE A REQUIREMENT. HER CLASSES HAVE AN 80+ WAITLIST. IF YOU GET ON. ITS SO WORTH IT FUCKING TRUST ME. SHES OUT OF THIS FUCKING WORLD. PAUL LONG, HE’S AN ACADEMIC TEACHER (TEACHES POETRY AND SOME OTHER SHIT. HE’S GREAT. BRINGS SNACKS EVERY DAY), and others?? if you want to know more, please message me and i’ll give you them!

Anyway, I havent really answered your question!

Dislike:Housing situation fucking sucked. getting a room was fucking ridiculous. They ran out of room for us because they started accepting more (this happened when sophomore housing was required. My year was the first year that went into effect and they had to buy out bolton hill apartments. people had to break leases, etc. it was fucking ridiculous).

The MICA store is eh? It used really good and held in dolphin. But it was literally falling apart. Now its too.. idk. It’s fine. I prefer artists and craftsmen.

Access to studios and equipment is eh too. Because of time constraints.

How the student body treats the fucking faculty is DISGUSTING. One girl literally called one of the sweetest security guards the ‘help’. Ms. Gloria (senior in security) is fantastic, Officer Green is everything, Ms. Yvette is so fucking sweet, and Mr. Robert makes my heart sing.

The student body in general LOLOLOLOLOL. ‘Surround yourself with good juju’ - Former MICA Grad (my best friend) The fucking student body mica page is a fucking dumpster fire lol.

I don’t like how white MICA is and how entitled a good part of the student body is. The amount of entitlement is fucking ridiculous. And the amount of ignorance is astounding. Also the obviousness to what fucking city you're in, is so wild i cant fucking even. Like. MICA is deceptively beautiful (the MICA bubble). Which is why it is high in crime lol. Just be alert and don’t be a god damned dumbass walking around at 3 am with your fucking headphones in, smoking a cigarette, and acting like you’re fucking immune to being mugged. Just saying. Take the shuttles and you’ll most likely be gucci.

I don’t like how MICA spends its money (our money). And what they choose to invest in - like buying random fucking buildings and not telling the students what it’s for, and fucking raising the price of tuition and living in order to compensate.

The total and utter lack of transparency, etc. It felt eehhhh I don’t know how to explain it.

NOW. I KNOW THIS SOUNDS LIKE A LOT AND THAT IM JUST SHITTING ON MICA. BUT MY MICA EXPERIENCE WAS THE BEST OF MY LIFE. I LEARNED SO MUCH. AND I FIND WHAT I LEARNED THERE TO BE INVALUABLE (except for the fact that I’m 56k in debt. just saying)

But really. I loved MICA. I wish I could go back. I met so many amazing people, made great connections, and I don’t think I would have had the same love at any other art school. (I have friends in SAIC, Pratt, Parsons, FIT, SVA, RISD - they all complain about the same things. they in the grand scheme of things, are material. Which important because, hah, money. But, material nonetheless. If you have the means, I don’t think these things I explained are deal breakers)

Now what I loved about MICA. Because honey. I fucking LOVED MICA:

When I was touring schools, I was kind of eh about them? Not in the sense that I wouldn’t have a good time or be ungrateful, but I didn’t get that feeling. Does that make sense? For example, I took a tour at SVA and I have very very strong opinions about SVA, I had no feeling. When I stepped on MICA’s campus, that was fucking it for me. Not only was I comfortable there, but the professors that were at the tour, made it their duty and went out of their way to make myself and the other potential students feel welcome. They were personable, they were kind and welcoming, they were warm, and that continued even after I decided MICA was the place for me.

My class at least, had no drama lololol. Again, my freshman year was a hell of a lot of fucking fun. We didn’t have any big racist shit going on like other years (ahem ahem 2018, 2019). INSTEAD, we had the nudists, we had carrot videos (ask around about that), it kind of felt less cliquey? Because everyone was generally interested in being friends? Idk. Like we definitely had groups and they became more evident as majors really clicked in, but in the beginning, everyone was pretty much together (this was the first year that the grill opened and leake was a thing. So we were all figuring out the dorms together). I mean we had drama but it wasn’t... idk. It wasn’t like mica student body (maybe its because we didnt have that to fuck shit up lolol).

On The Hill was my shit. Still my shit. I fucking love on the hill with a fucking passion. Pom Iced Teas, where you at. The neighborhood in general was really nice. Baltimore is one of my favorite cities and the stigma of it will be broken as soon as you start exploring it. HOWEVER, BE FUCKING SMART. DONT BE A FUCKING IDIOT. IF YOU DON’T FEEL COMFORTABLE SOMEWHERE, YEET THE FUCK OUT OF THERE. TRAVEL WITH OTHERS. DON’T BE THOSE DUMB ASS WHITE GIRLS FROM RURAL FUCKING TOWNS THAT THINK THEY CAN WALK AROUND AT 4 AM OR JUST WHEN IT’S DARK OUT, ALONE, AND BE OKAY. TAKE. THE FUCKING. SHUTTLE.

The studio spaces were really nice so as they’re taken care of. the equipment is really nice. take advantage of it while you can. because once you’re out of school. hah. you’re screwed.

Networking was nice.

Being close to the Walters was amazing and the ability to go to DC for the day only spending 8$ on the Marc train to get there was amazing. Having Penn right on campus.

Again, the professors were in majority, fucking amazing.

Some professors had classes outside of MICA (karen has model drawing classes at her studio) take them! They’re really worth it!

I actually didnt mind the dorms. 10x better than most colleges.

Accessibility was amazing. Especially since its not a closed campus, but everything is in one place. That’s not the case with a lot of Art colleges.

And most of all, I just loved being there. I loved learning. I loved the people. I loved baltimore, i loved the professors. MICA 10000% shaped how I am as an artist in the best way and I think it’s an amazing place to be despite the downfalls.

Don’t take everything I said as gospel. like I said, these are just my experiences as well as a few of my friends in the same fine arts department. The others, I’m not sure about. But yeah. I hope this helps! You can always message me and I’d be happy to refer you to classes, professors, etc. Good luck with next year!

#MICA #MARYLAND INSTITUTE COLLEGE OF ART #'17 GRADUATE #PAINTING MAJOR #FINE ARTS #Anonymous

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kyzarix-stuff · 5 years ago

Text

3D Printing, aka “machines are going to steal your cheap labour”

thdisclaimer: this blog post is for an academic requirement, please do not attack me with pitchforks or fire.

What is 3D Printing?

3D Printing is the act of creating a 3D object, such as a figure, mechanical part, or physical model, through the use of a computer software (which contains the plans and components for said object) and a printer that prints in 3-dimensions (usually using materials like plastics or pvc.) First, you must make a model, or acquire a blueprint of what you would like to print. After you have a blueprint, you are able to print said material out of heated plastics through a 3D printer. If you’d like to go even deeper into the world of 3D printing, you can check out this video by Mashable:

youtube

Wait, but what does 3D printing mean for me? Or for other people who aren’t me?

Well, specifically for me, 3D printing means that I can get blueprints of D&D monsters, figures, and other printables, and print them out for my sessions. (You can do that here, by the way.) If I were to buy my own 3D printer.

“That would be expensive,” you might argue; thinking that only multimillionaires with factories can afford to buy such a thing. May I direct you to this list, where you can buy a 3D printer for around 170$? These are not simply factory machines, they could be there, in your own home, right next to your regular, 2D InkJet printer.

In fact, I could start my own 3D printing business if I wanted to. I could make 3D blueprints for figures or physical modifications to everyday objects. I could even 3D print others’ items for a certain price, which in the long run could possibly make a profit (depending on how expensive plastics are.) This can pave the way for different kinds of personal businesses. (By the way, you can learn how to make money through 3D printing here.)

But 3D printing also means that we change the way things are manufactured as a whole. Imagine, what used to take several workers doing tiny detail work on parts in order to get them to a very precise size and shape-- you instead just turn on a robot, upload a plan, and wait.

The 3D Printing agency says that minimum wage workers such as the ones in Cambodia could potentially lose jobs in clothing, textiles and footwear because of the rise of 3D printing and its accessibility for manufacturing. Automation is simply cheaper, and is less prone to human error. The Vice President of the Coalition of Cambodian Apparel Workers Democratic Union even says that without regulation by the government, the use of machine automation could create several social issues for low-skilled workers in the industry. They could, quite likely, be replaced by a hunk of metal that doesn’t need to eat.

So this is technically a bad thing, right?

Not entirely.

The innovation of 3D printing is a change in the very idea of creating something. President Obama even acknowledged it in his 2013 State of the Union Address, stating:

"A once-shuttered warehouse is now a state-of-the art lab where new workers are mastering the 3D printing that has the potential to revolutionize the way we make almost everything,"

This could potentially change the labour force forever. Countering the idea that machines might be stealing our jobs, it might also be creating new ones. There will be a demand for creatives and designers-- in creating blueprints and model designs, as well as integrating these parts into other parts.

This also has applications in the sciences, particularly in computer science, where knowledge of troubleshooting and software adjustment (particularly in Computer Aided Design or CAD) is extremely important for creating 3D printed parts suited to the user or buyer. (For example, for custom-created items.)

Greg Morris, the team leader for GE Aviation, claims that you wouldn’t be replacing machinists or other labourers, but that the job would be evolving: you would be asking them to learn a slightly different skill set. The rise of 3D printing would necessitate new workers trained to be technicians, designers, maintenance, and yes, quality control (even for robots!)

However... we can’t say that 3D printing is the most cost-effective solution at the moment. Even if the technology is becoming more and more accessible and cheaper, Timothy Laseter, a professor at the Darden school of business, says the production cost is still too high for it to replace the cheap labour of mass production.

Business Insider’s Rob Wile and 3DPrint.com’s Krasstein agree that it is too soon to say what 3D printing will do-- it may destroy thousands of jobs, but create a thousand more in the process.

We can continue to imagine and ponder the possibilities of 3D Printing in manufacturing, personal use, and the labour market, but in the end only time will be able to truly show us the impact of this innovation. New technologies continue to develop all around the world, and they do change society forever.

SOURCES:

https://dismalscience.journalism.cuny.edu/2019/03/28/worried-about-a-robot-taking-your-job-3d-printing-may-help-you-land-one/

https://www.businessinsider.com/how-3d-printing-will-affect-manufacturing-jobs-2014-8

https://3dprintingindustry.com/news/90-of-jobs-could-be-lost-85413/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx0Z6LplaMU

https://www.3dnatives.com/en/low-cost-3d-printer290320174/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imhAyR8OelA

https://geekandsundry.com/artist-releases-300-printable-dd-miniature-patterns-for-free/

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attract-mode-collective · 6 years ago

Video

youtube

Exactly 79 Photos & Videos Concerning The Game Boy (plus other handhelds)

So... hope you’ve all been following me on Twitter, which is more or less the unofficial new home for Attract Mode. Mostly cuz Tumblr’s days are, alas, numbers, plus I haven’t warmed up to Medium as much as I had hoped to. Though I’ve actually spent the past two months republishing every single post that contains mainline Game Culture Snapshots, so it has remained somewhat useful at least.

Now, for a while there, I had been compiling every single thing tweeted. But because I’m now so damn active on that end… plus I’m busier than ever with other projects… I’m way behind with those digest posts, and the very idea of playing catch up legit gives me anxiety. Yet I have been sharing lots of cool things, which all deserve to be in the blog proper… and because a lot of them are specific to the Game Boy, I figure, why not just focus on that?

Like the above, which is a technique for producing full color photographs via the Game Boy Camera, and yet another thing that I can’t believe hasn’t made the rounds!

Sticking with Game Boy photography, here have a pair of mods that will greatly enhance picture quality. The first involves mounting SLR lens onto a Game Boy Camera (via ekeler.com)...

And the second has one shoving a Game Boy Camera into a SLR itself (via @MaxKriegerVG)...

As someone who was into video games as a kid, and also interested in photography, the Game Boy Camera was the first camera I was able to call my own. Am pretty sure this was the case for others as well?

I also remember seeing this ad in Nickelodeon Magazine (which I would eventually writer for, not too long later) and being absolutely gob smacked (via nintendroid.org)…

Though as much I loved Nintendo brand of FUNtography, I would quickly discover… as did everyone else I also assume… that taking pictures is serious business (via @PolandNintendo)…

Not only did I have a Game Boy Color, but I also had the Game Boy Printer (I still own both, for the record). Unfortunately my snapshots from Link’s Awakening have long since faded, but as with many things, you can find copies online (via gameandgraphics.com)…

Speaking of the world of print, coming soon is a handy guide to Nintendo handy game machine (via miki800.com)…

That one magazine ad featuring Princess Peach catch your eye as well? Well here’s a much better look at it (via suppermariobroth)…

I love handheld gadgets of all kinds, yet some of the popular ones confuse me. Like Hudson’s Shooting Watch; it makes no sense to have a gadget that can detect button presses without a game attached. Guess I’m not alone (via instagram.com/kazzycom)…

A realization I made while sifting through Game Boy related content is how popular the color yellow is with many. Cuz Pokemon? Anyhow, the final post from a blog that specializes in gorgeous photographs of gorgeous hardware, which I just brought up again very recently (via hard-aware)…

How your parents used to trade Pokemans online (via melonjaywalk)…

And no, Game Boys weren't the only things that one could connect to keitais ya know. And yes, Game Boys aren’t the only portables I’ll be showcasing (via anthony10000000)…

I own quite a few VMUs and am always looking to expand my collection… but nothing yellow, sorry. Instead, I want the one covered with dolphins (via anthony10000000)…

So my new favorites artist is Eri Kitamura, and not just cuz she makes pretty looking Game Boys…

She also makes pretty looking girls playing Game Boys (well, this one is technically listening to music)…

Was originally going to post the first thing from Eri that caught my eye, which is a Game Boy with a girl on it, but instead here’s a Game Boy with a girl on it playing a Game Boy…

Time for two more videos from the same individual responsible with the process for producing color photographs at the very top. And it’s what everyone has been waiting… specifically the backlit Game Boy Color mod everyone has been waiting for.

The process is detailed in this two-part video, and here’s the first one (it’s about 50 minutes long cuz spoilers: this shit ain’t easy)…

youtube

And here’s part two, which is ONLY 40-ish minutes long…

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The author of the videos actually has a store, so if the process seems a bit too daunting, you can purchase a pre-modded unit for $250. Actually, this one is $260, cuz of the dual shells. Quite the price tag, yet somehow totally worth it (via instagram.com/esotericmods)…

Now might be a good time to mention how… remember that GBA with the GameCube finish from eBay a few months back? Well, I decided to get the one that resembles a Super Famicom, something I’ve been lusting over for years.

Well, here’s what the aforementioned seller had in his listing…

And this is what I got instead…

Yeah, that green shoulder button is not the right shade. After some complaining, I got the seller to admit that the one in the picture was hand painted; he didn’t know where it get ones that it’s exact color as on a Super Fami controller.

He also had a no refund policy, yet I bitched & moaned enough to warrant an exchange, for another Cube-esque model, one sans the stick. Cuz it’s comparatively boring to look at, here’s a version with the stick…

Again, mine just has the standard d-pad. As for my replacement… the colors of the A & B buttons are not an exact match, once again. But it’s close enough (am mostly just sick of dealing with that guy, aka johnnys_merchandise, whom you should all avoid btw), plus I have started to scour AliExpress for replacements.

BTW, my failure to obtain a modded handheld that channels another form of hardware has me wondering if I should go for something completely different instead (via instagram.com/wakuwakuisland)…

Up in the mountains, flower bloom amongst Game Boys & Game Boy Colors, whereas deep in the forest, you’ll find mushrooms and Game Boy Advances (via pxchinko)…

Some say memories are fuzzy, though for others, they're leafy (via lyosphe)…

I’ve looked all over for tinycartridge's original post, but no luck, so you can all instead have my personal copy of the earthy wallpaper that was shared years ago (and which I still to this very day)...

The Game Boy Micro, DS, and DS Lite are like family, and like siblings, there can the occasional squabble (via benkyo-es)…

@frankcifaldi: When I met this guy in 2003 and he told me he was going to make an extensive fan site about the Supervision, a Taiwanese Game Boy knockoff, I was like "sure dude." 15 years later he actually launched the thing??

Meanwhile, the Game & Watch Perfect Catalogue just came out, with the full low down on all 59 models. BTW, had no idea there were 59 in total until @ionadisco mentioned it…

How Game & Watches were sold in America; I fondly recalls this ad in-between the pages of Amazing/Spectacular/Web of Spider-Man (via suppermariobroth)…

And how Game Boys were sold in Japan, one day one apparently, which would explain this salesperson’s rather perplexed demeanor (via flashbak.com)…

Silly as it sounds, and as silly as he looks, the US version of Firebrand is nonetheless a warm & welcoming face from my childhood (via nintendometro)...

Mario dropping a knowledge bomb (via suppermariobroth)…

Here’s Peach seemingly kicking Toad’s ass in Super Mario Bros Deluxe, which I’ve been meaning to tweet for a while now, but now seems like the right time & place for obvious reasons (via nintendometro)…

A cute comic about someone finally beating a game after ten years, or at least I believe that's the case (you know, language barrier and all; via @desune593)

Sailor Moon seems to enjoy handheld gaming more so than in the arcades (via uglygreenjacket)…

It saddens me that ravages of time is robbing me of my precious memories, including the names of 90s anime, hence why I had to ask on Twitter who exactly is this (answer was Tenchi Muyo; via shxtfased)...

It’s SethEverman, just playing some pokemon blue…

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Speaking of music, it again saddens me that I wasn’t about to make the trip to Japan to catch chiptunes at Square Sounds, and various associated venues. At least @bit_shifter_ took this great snapshot of Glomag at Cyberpunks Osaka…

Meanwhile, here in NYC, we actually still have record stores. And you can grab Josh’s latest release, his first in 12 years(!) at Rough Trade (via bit-shifter)…

Though back to Japan; attended Square Sounds would have also afforded me the chance to check out Tokyo Game Show, where I could have gotten that VMU shaped USB drive that was being sold at the Sega booth (via miki800)…

A few weeks before TGS, there was an earthquake in Japan, in northern island Hokkaido. Many were left without power, but one person was able to keep up with the news, thanks to an old DS peripheral that basically provides bunny ears (via kotaku.com)…

On a semi-related note, here’s someone watching old ECW VHS tapes on their Game Gear (via heavyelectricity)…

Sorry, but the only other thing I have that’s related to Sega’s Master System on the go is this gif from a pizza ranch salad dressing (yikes) commercial, which was cross-promoting Sonic Chaos (via sonicthehedgeblog)...

I have no idea why I'm so amused by this Getty Image of a Neo Geo Pocket that was confiscated at summer camp. Or perhaps no explanation is needed? (via hellomrkearns)…

Speaking of the Great Outdoors, here’s my buddy Steve enjoying some Mario Kart 8 in the middle of a forest (via instagram.com/vitaminsteve)…

And speaking of Mario Kart on the Switch, Bowser seems like a pretty cool dood to have a car trip (via suppermariobroth)…

The Switch is so beloved that people are doing fan art, not for any particular game but the simple the act of playing with it (via annazees)…

Granted, one of the best things about the Switch is all the different ways in which one can play (via kanekoshake)…

If you enjoy your Switch on the go and are looking for a way to store games… and are a diehard Breath of the Wild fan as well… plus if you have access to a 3D printer (via miki800.com)…

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It’s a tribute to Star Wars… games… all of them… featuring Princess Leia focused on her DMG (via deviantart.com/robduenas)...

BTW, do you still have your Game Boy? If not, here ya go (via anthony10000000)…

When the realization hits that your Game Boy Color library is incomplete (via @Bootleg_Stuff)…

Back to my buddy Steve, who visited the Primark at the Staten Island mall and took pics of the game related apparel that, sadly, were no longer in stock by the time I was able to swing by. With the one thing I really wanted being this shirt…

This pair of Super Mario Land X Air Jordans is only $1,350.00 (via miki800.com)…

I’m sure you’ve seen him already, but for the sake of completion, here’s that grandpa from who rigged this bike with 11 phones to become a Pokemon Go master (via bbc.com)…

Yet another sign of our times, literally (via fuckdragonballz)…

This image features a PSP and a MacBook, both of which are from the mid-2000s, yet feels very late 1990s/early 2000s. Why? Those USB cables (via jcgraphix)…

And last but not least, here’s Paris Hilton with her DS in 2005 (via @ParisHilton)…

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