#also you can just say your 'bad' art is a stylistic choice meant to reflect the crudeness of slobs

[sporco-filth]

I hope you go ahead with your cyoa slob game, there's so little stuff with slob goodness

i have left this project on the backburner so long i kind of considered giving up on it completely but you know what, you're right, anonymous tumblr user, there's not enough slob stuff.

I'm not promising anything, but I'll try to finish it.

If I'm not mistaken, the hard part of the coding is done, I just need to finish the artwork and make the writing better. It's a functional game (more or less) but it's just got a lot of placeholder text and images.

[shock777archive]

I got this question on deviantart, and I felt like reposting my answer here, in case anyone is interested :P 

THIS IS GONNA BE A LONG REPLY BUT BEAR WITH ME LOL When I first started drawing/am I self taught : I've been drawing since kindergarten. Anime specifically, since I was about 8 years old. so that's been uh...18 years since I've started drawing in the anime-esque style? I am self taught on these areas. I picked up a digital artist tablet at the age of 13 or so, (it was a wacom Graphire 4 4x5 in) so it's been 13 years of digital art practice i've gotten in. I have picked up several how to draw books over the years until i surpassed some of them. But even now i'm constantly referencing tutorials and poses, looking for ideas and color palettes, etc. I have taken some schooling in college for art. I took beginner's drawing and color theory and maybe a little of art history but that's about it before i quit lmao What inspired me to draw in the first place/what I first drew: The thing that inspired me to draw in the first place was my favorite cartoons. from a very young age i knew that cartoons weren't real, but it fascinated me that actual people could create almost living people. I related to cartoons, and even though they were fake characters, I just loved the idea of creating a whole world of my own. So I took up drawing in kindergarten. First things I drew were flowers, rainbows, trees, etc. But My first biggest undertaking was powerpuffgirls. lol This was the series that started it all. Began drawing tons of powerpuffgirls stories and oc's. For the next few years I would watch different things like all the standard cartoon network shows. But I watched yugioh and dbz and other anime things too. What also got me into anime art style was the online game neopets lol Their faeries designs ( http://images.neopets.com/games/pages/icons/screenshots/586/4.jpg ) kind of had an anime resemblance, so I started drawing those for a while. When I was 8 or 9 years old my father bought me my first how to draw manga book (this one in particular: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Drawing-Manga-Ben-Krefta/dp/1841931713  ) looking back on it, this book is terrible and the anime in it is so ugly looking lol. However, i used that thing religiously and began making my own characters like a blue elf girl and a human friend of hers. ( in fact, here's the post. i tried redrawing them recently lol: https://shock777.tumblr.com/post/145898896143/finding-old-art-is-the-best-cause-you-can-redraw ) ...Then the real transformation began once I started watching Teen Titans when it aired in 2003. I was 10 at the time. That show started my love for japan. The language interested me and I began researching Japanese songs and trying to sing along to them. I didn't know what the words meant, but the artistic style and meshing of western cartoons and anime of the show really piqued my interest. My earliest drawings of them suckedddd XD; As Teen Titans drew to a close near 2006-2007 ish, I picked up Naruto and then it was all over since then lol my anime style and weeb days really came into full force lol I thank naruto though. I learned how to draw more realistic anatomy as opposed to cartoony anatomy. It was a very wild ride, but it's all documented here on my deviantart page as I got this exact account around the same time! I started posting my work in 2008, so you can go back far enough into my gallery and see the progress XD; I keep the old cringe up because it just motivates me and hopefully others, to keep drawing and keep going farther! :) PHEW lol long history there XD I do have some of my old art!!! If you wanna see some, I've posted a little here: https://shock777.tumblr.com/tagged/old-art plus I already said there's a few still on my dA gallery haha Tips I can give to you: 1. And I think this is most important, JUST KEEP GOING. It's soooo tempting to quit drawing when things aren't going right and when you're not happy with how your art looks. Trust me, every artist I've ever known including myself have gone through this. It's so easy to compare your work to someone else's. The thing is, we're all in this together. No one expects a newborn to be able to file taxes or drive a car lol. We all have to evolve and change, and that change comes from consistent work. Art isn't an inherent talent, it is hard work that is honed over several years of blood, sweat and tears lmao JUST KEEP GOING. as I've mentioned, my old cringe art is still on my dA page. Back then when I was younger I was less concerned with things being perfect and I spam posted almost every doodle. And I began a "fanbase" i guess because of those days and my consistent posting. I've had this freaking deviantart page for 11 freakin years. If I had stopped drawing whenever I felt my art was imperfect or not good enough, I would have stopped posting around 2009. so...just keep going. And I'd even dare you to post your "shitty doodles" that you think aren't that great. Because you never know what someone else will see in it that you don't. Be confident, and never give up! 2. Soak up any tutorial and really focus on studying your favorite artist's styles. If there's something you want to replicate in your art that someone else is drawing, try to see how they do it. sometimes artists have tutorials posted and sometimes they don't. I have a few posted on my youtube channel ( https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLRB9xQBsGpfetNJbmXWZ1fL9d5IlqQs1w ) and some in my gallery. Don't exactly copy some things stroke for stroke, but try to add your little spin to something. Like sometimes I will see art senpai drawing a specific eye style I wanna replicate, but I don't like one part of the process. So sometimes I'll just add my own little addition, or just omit that process completely. Usually though, if the art style isn't necessarily super unique, you can copy a lot of mainstream styles without anyone really griping saying "oh you're just copying so and so's art style". It's important to look up to art senpais i think. They make me want to try harder lol 3. Take an art class if you're able. Color theory really helped me grasp things that I never had before. LIKE REFLECTIVE LIGHT FOR INSTANCE. I never drew that shit but now I do because DUH it's so freaking obvious lol It also helps to learn what colors neutralize others, complementary colors, analogous ones, etc. It's nice to have an eye for what matches together and to know the principles of art. I still have a lot of work to do when it comes to perspective, which we did cover a little in class lol but work on your own pace. If your college near you offers a class for beginners, take it if you're able. it will help you view things differently. 4. Copy realistically. Like, I'm talking look at a freaking object in your room and try to draw it. Once you can draw it semi realistically, you can then add your own little stylistic choices to it. Like so many artists who draw chibis or cartoony things, they more than likely know the proper proportions of people and anatomy. But they draw the proportions all whacky and it creates their own style. However it does help to know how they work in reality lol 5. TRACE OVER POSES. Sometimes I do this. I'm not saying to trace someone's art, but if you see some kind of pose on say a google image, or a stock photo, try sketching over it to get a feel for where the joints connect if you're working on anatomy. It reaaaallly helps you memorize where the arm would end, or where the torso connects to the hips. 6. Take advice and criticism well. If someone sees something you don't about your art, they may be on to something. It's not wrong if someone gives you a heads up that a proportion seems lacking or something seems too big or out of place. It will actually help you to see what others see. Sometimes we get in the habit of drawing something a certain way and it's hard to break that habit especially if you've drawn the same thing several hundred times. It will help you in the long run to just accept that you're always going to be improving. You'll never be perfect at drawing, so what do you have to lose? Just keep walking forward and learn what you can. 7. Flip the canvas. This is more or less a digital art tip, but please flip the canvas to make sure the proportions are not off. lol A lot of professionals have to flip the canvas until they get a feel for where things are placed. Another good tip is to use a stabilizer of some kind to draw straight lines. Paint tool sai has one at the very top of the window. It helps tremendously. 8. Draw what you like and don't feel bad for not drawing everything everyone else likes. Don't sacrifice your morals or your personal desires for something everyone else likes. If you're paid to draw something you don't like, thats another thing. but don't let people pressure you to draw stuff that you don't want to. You'll be much happier, and build an audience that is much like-minded to you. Be considerate of what your audience likes, sure, but remember at the end of the day, art is something to express one's self. Art is not and should not be a job. Even if you get paid money to draw or design things, it's important to take a break and draw something for yourself every once in a while. Be self indulgent, and treat yo self from time to time :) And uhhh...that's all I can think of for the time being. :') let me know if you have any further questions or if I need to clarify anything :) Thanks again!

[wristwatchjournal]

Hands-On With The Breitling Endurance Pro Watch For Athletes

Whether you’re a fighter pilot, a civilian aviator, or just a dyed-in-the-wool tool watch enthusiast, there’s a pretty good chance that your first brush with Breitling was one of its Professional watches – a broad line of stylish quartz-powered references that has remained one of the brand’s core collections since its informal debut as the Aerospace in 1985. Over the last three and a half decades, the Professional umbrella has evolved dramatically, from the entry-level Aerospace to more feature-rich offerings like the rugged Chronospace, the state-of-the-art Exospace, and the mighty Emergency – a legendary adventure watch capable of summoning a helicopter (ie: the world’s most expensive Uber ride) for when things go really sideways. Given its cool, modern aesthetic and long legacy of highly accurate, multi-function utility watches, the Professional line is a natural home for Breitling’s new Endurance Pro – another category-specific tool watch, this time designed with athletes in mind.

With regards to its Professional collection stablemates, the new Endurance Pro probably has the most in common in both proportion and functionality with the Chronospace Evo – a fully analog spin-off of the ana-digi hybrid Aerospace Evo. Though marketed at pilots, the modern Aerospace was already an excellent multi-sport & adventure watch (and a perfect cycling watch, I’ll add), thanks to its light weight, easy wearability, and multiple functions. The new Endurance carries that torch, reportedly with design input from Breitling ambassador and three-time Ironman World Champion Jan Frodeno, yielding a reference that mixes in a few new elements, including a Breitlight carbon fiber composite case that’s 30% lighter than titanium, a bi-directional rotating compass bezel (likely cribbed from the Chronospace Military), and a subtly updated aesthetic, which appears to be reflecting the new art direction for the Professional collection as a whole.

Now it doesn’t matter if you’re a professional athlete like Frodeno or a fitness enthusiast logging miles between a regular nine-to-five, if you run, swim, or ride bikes and appreciate watches, you already know that finding just the ‘right’ watch to keep you on-time and your wrist tanline dutifully maintained during training season can be a tricky affair. An oversized dive or pilot watch might have the shock countermeasures requisite to keep an automatic movement running accurately, but these larger designs often trade legibility for weight – and a distracting, top-heavy watch is hardly the right choice, especially during longer or harder efforts. Conversely, though a cheap, battery-powered watch might be the safest concession (especially in the instance of a crash or a fall) in this instance, it undoubtedly lacks that certain ‘je ne sais quoi’ that many athletes seek out when it comes time to personalize their gear or riding kit.

Obviously, most professional athletes tend to train or race with GPS-enabled digital devices that measure efforts and comprehensively track workout data, but just as a professional divemaster might wear a digital dive computer on every outing, the Endurance isn’t meant to replace such a device, it’s meant to supplement it. By the same token, I ride with a Wahoo Roam, which displays power, heart rate, VAM (when climbing), along with distance and elevation metrics, but I leave the day’s timekeeping to the wrist, as I simply prefer to wear a watch. Plus, I’ve had head units die on me while out on a ride, and at least being able to get home in time for brunch is never a bad thing. Two is one, and one is none, right?

Ultimately, I’m particularly impressed that Breitling has actually touched on the elements of not just what makes a sports watch cool, but one that’s actually useful in practice – y’know, as a sports watch. In keeping with the traditions I’d come to expect from Breitling, it’s detail-rich, quite masculine by design, and extremely well made. And in the same traditions, it’s also large and legible at a glance, but hardly unwearable – thanks to the impressive lightness of its 44mm x 12.5mm Breitlight case, which weighs a scant 35 grams without its rubber strap (funnily enough, the strap weighs about the same, adding 30 grams to the total package). And it’s powered by a quartz movement – which, though perhaps not the first choice for many watch enthusiasts, is actually in practice, a much safer and more accurate option from workout to workout.

Piggy-backing off the Chronospace Evo, the movement in question deployed for the Endurance is an in-house manufactured 1/10th of a second quartz chronograph calibre, though unlike the aforementioned, the Endurance uses Breitling’s Caliber 82, which trades the Evo’s 24-hour register at 9:00 for a 30 minute counter. This is a thermo-compensated, COSC-certified Chronometer movement, and it’s awfully nice to see some brands still catering to HAQ (high-accuracy quartz) watch fans – in addition to the athlete community.

Specifications

Brand: Breitling Model: Endurance Pro Dimensions: 44mm x 12.5mm Water Resistance: 100 meters Case Material: Breitlight Crystal/Lens: Sapphire (double-sided AR coating) Movement: Breitling Cal. 82 (thermo-compensated, COSC-certified SuperQuartz) with hour, minute, second, date, 1/10th second and 30-minute counters Power Reserve: 3 – 4 year battery life Strap/Bracelet: Rubber or recycled nylon (Econyl) NATO strap Price & Availability: $3,000 USD

Like the rest of the Aerospace Evo collection, the new Endurance is water resistance to 100 meters, making it plenty sweat and swim-resistant for any workout. And with a 22mm lug width and a 52mm lug-to-lug measurement, it also has a near-identical footprint to the existing Aerospace, though the sculpted lines on the case are a lot more refined, with deep, twisted lyre style lugs that create a cool beveling on the 9:00 side of the caseband. And thanks to the subtle patterning of the Breitlight material, the whole case has a very warm and organic look and feel on the wrist – an effect that’s contrasted beautifully by bright pops of blue, yellow, orange, red, or white. Other embellishments like the crown’s grippy rubberized surface, the steeply sloped pulsometer chapter ring (a fun touch, though I can’t imagine any serious athlete discarding their Whoop for this), and the gold-hued 3-6-9 & Breitling wing elements all lend a very cohesive, premium feel that I can only best describe as ‘distinctly Breitling.’ Speaking of which, the lone design criticism I could probably levy at the new Endurance, is with the applied 3-6-9 markers. These have long been one of my favorite stylistic flourishes of the Professional collection, and cutting each of them off to make room for other dial elements feels a bit like design heresy.

Available in a multitude of colorful strap and dial options, and built around an ultralight composite case, the design brief for the Endurance feels a bit like it’s paying homage to the original fiberglass-cased TAG Heuer F1 watches from the late eighties which were also marketed for sporting use. In many ways, this particular reference was the first Swiss watch for an entire generation of cyclists, who might remember them being worn by the stars of the American 7-Eleven cycling team, like Bob Roll, Davis Phinney, and Andy Hampsten. Unlike the rather crude F1 watches (nostalgic as they may be) though, the Endurance is a sleek, premium, and far more modern affair that strikes just the right balance between style and utility. And with a price of $3,000, it’s certainly not an inexpensive choice, but it’s a markedly more practical, period-correct option for watch fans looking for the perfect ride companion for that new Tarmac SL7. breitling.com

For the next two weeks, the global athlete community can participate in Breitling’s Endurance Pro Challenge on the fitness app Strava, with the aim of completing 500 minutes of any sporting activity (running, cycling, swimming, or any combination are all fair game) in the two weeks following the time of this writing, to be put into the *ahem* running to win a Colnago bike, a Breitling Endurance Pro watch, and a Breitling cycling kit. Why 500 minutes? Well, it’s a little essentially an eight-hour window, and around the same amount of time it would take an elite triathlete to complete an Ironman – luckily, you’ll be able to break it into as many sessions as you need, such as long as you’re done in the 14 days following the 26th of August. Breitling’s own professional athlete squad, including three-time Ironman World Champion Jan Frodeno, and multiple cycling Grand Tour winner Vincenzo Nibali will both be participating in the challenge.

The post Hands-On With The Breitling Endurance Pro Watch For Athletes appeared first on Wristwatch Journal.

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[dinosthoughtsandreviews]

A critical assessment of select research on working class culture in cultural studies

1.    Introduction

    A working class culture can be defined as a spectre of cultures that are created and/or popular among the people that belong to the working class. These cultures are usually a mixture of high culture, popular culture, and low culture. The working class culture of the UK is very geographically diverse, sometimes to a point where finding anything in common between them seems impossible. Yet, they all share some characteristics of everyday life, such as financial hardships, political and racial problems, and a sense of unity that is reflected in the way the act, talk, dress, etc. This essay will cover studies from well-known British sociologists such as Paul Willis, Phil Cohen, Angela McRobbie, and others, and their take on what the working class in the UK is, what it does, and how it presents itself to the world.

 2.    Paul Willis' „Learning to Labour“

    Paul Willis, a British social scientist, wrote a book in 1977 called „Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs“. which is an ethnographic research where he, in his Marxist point of view, studied several high-school students in their transition from high-school to finding and keeping jobs. „Learning to Labour“ is an attempt to try and explain the paradox of the working class „lads“, as Willis calls them, being happy with their jobs, where they felt that was their own free choice, and that „choice“ further strengthening the preservation of their social condition and class opression.

    Willis noticed that the students, now workers, developed a subculture; he coins the term „counter school culture“ which is based on rejecting and resisting the discipline taught in school systems. It was thought that these lads choose physical labour because they are less capable, but Willis soon found out that is not the case. They just developed a kind of antagonism to the „moving up in the world“ mentality of the modern education. In doing so, they distance themselves from school culture, creating their own counterculture which values masculinity, „street wisdom“, practical knowledge and skills over theoretical knowledge that would only give them desk jobs which they viewed as feminine. Thus, working hard is perceived as masculine, and not as an expression of exploitation. Willis' work showed that the school systems and the modern education failed to produce ideal, compliant, even submissive workers for the capitalist system, and the counter school culture provided a window into what capitalism is for the workers.

  3.    Phil Cohen's „Subcultural Conflict and Working-Class Community“

    In his article, „Subcultural Conflict and Working-Class Community“, Cohen addresses the re-population of urban London and modernizing the working-class houses. The houses looked middle-class, but the tenants were not, and this loss of appropriate working-class houses was connected to the loss of working-class jobs. The loss of jobs led to losing the unifying power of London's working class and without this sense of unity, youth culture separated itself from the parent culture.

    Youth culture is the focus of Cohen's articles, and he starts the article by stating what influence the rapid development in the 1950s had on urban neighbourhoods. The poorest families were moved to the edges of the neighbourhoods, while immigrants changed the area they left behind according to their own culture. After seeing the immigration of the working-class family, the authorities wanted to transform their neighbourhoods by building buildings and houses for the working-class. The problem was that none of these buildings were built to consider the quality of working-class lives, such as socializing. They were meant for eating, sleeping, storing things and some private time for your family. This caused the nuclear family to be dislocated from their near or extended family, and the lack of a neighbourhood community transformed nuclear families into isolated units. Cohen provided an example of mothers that are bound to the house, and with no social interactions, the mothers become like caged animals, lashing out and hurting people around them.

    Furthermore, Britain was recovering from World War II. The technology that was used in the war was now used to aid the businesses that came to a stall during the war. This led to small family businesses being no longer viable, and jobs such as crafting, carpenting and other working-class jobs were now on a rapid decrease. The working-class youth (and by „youth“, Cohen meant white male) that was just out of high-school and looking for jobs found themselves unable to find a job where they can work all their lives like their fathers did before them.

    In addition to having trouble finding jobs, the youth also faced the problem of their skill becoming obsolete when their jobs became mechanized and automated. With little or no work to be had, working-class youth had no financial stability to participate in the commercial enterprises that were being built around them. This led to an emergence of youth subcultures that were opposite to the parent culture. With the confusion that came their parent culture was gone, the subcultures of mods, skinheads, crombies, and parkers sought to retrieve some of the cohesive elements of the destroyed parent culture, even though they rebelled against it. Cohen points out four distinct subsystems within the workin-class culture and its youth subcultures: dress, music, argot, and ritual. He states that this creation and development of the subcultures are „circular“, meaning the subculture can never truly break away from the parent culture. The youth tries to delay the adulthood by participating in the subculture while also trying to capture the stability and cohesion they lost in their parent culture.

  4.    Angela McRobbie's „Feminism and Youth Culture“ and other works

    Angela McRobbie emphasizes the absence of discussion of wome's place in subcultures and how they create their own subcultures; not much has been said about women in these social groupings and subcultures. In „Feminism and Youth Culture“, McRobbie focuses on ordinary femininity and contributes to the debate that gender, or rather femininity, is something cultural, not natural. She continued by saying that young girls' position in youth subcultures such as Mods and Teds had been completely ignored or mistakenly described as being passive in contrast to their male counterparts. The discussion about working-class boys has focused only on street life and relationships between men, (as seen in her article „Settling Accounts with Subculture: A Feminist Critique“, which is a critique of Dick Hebdige's „Subculture: The Meaning of Style“ but has completely neglected other important factors such as their family and domestic life, relationships with their mothers, sister, and girlfriends, and their sex life. McRobbie insists that critics should not focus on the absence of girls in various street gangs, but try to understand how women create their own subcultures.

    Furthermore, McRobbie emphasizes the role of fantasy in young girl's lives by studying girls' magazines, such as Just Seventeen, and the way teenage girls make sense of them. These magazines offered advice on how to dress and socialize, but also gave insight into what the adult life has in store for them, such as careers, motherhood, etc. Comics also played a huge role in girls' fantasy, albeit a rather controversial one; comics were considered a male thing to read, so girls should focus on other things, but it heavily affected the discussion about what kind of influence these fantasies (power, romantic, etc.) have on their teenage years.

5.    Jonathan Rose's „The Intellectual Life of the British Working Class“

    When we look at history, we can see that reading can be dangerous. It elevates the mind, and authorities, fully aware of the power of the word, burned hundreds of books and imprisoned booksellers or anyone who read them. In his book, „The Intellectual Life of the British Working Class“, Rose tries to raise the working class from the position of unthinking consumers of the „low“ culture. Not everything they read was inferior; they liked highbrow works and classics too, just as much they liked their yellow press. Furthermore, not only men thirsted for knowledge and reading; it was surprising, and even alarming, that women sought out these books as well. Naturally, you can see how this might cause problems with the upper-class, but to one's great surprise, working-class families were worried their kids or relatives would become these thinkers, writers and philosophers. They deemed it just as bad as being homosexual.

    Rose also heavily criticized Modernism, saying it was „a body of literature and art deliberately made too difficult for a general audience“ with intellectuals „convincing themselves that the typical clerk was subhuman, machine-like, dead inside, a consumer of rubbishy newspaper and canned food“. The result of this are poems like „The Waste Land“, which are stylistical and bold in the references to past cultures, but are essentially patronising and showing false sympathy for the workers.

6.    Conclusion

    All in all, working-class culture in Britain and its subcultures is something that is not so easily defined. Looking at the working class as a collective, some easily discernible traits are visible, but on an individual level, the working class and its subcultures are much more complex than what meets the eye. To try and generalize them would do them injustice, but there were some characteristics that was common to all the subcultures. Teds, mods, crombies, men and women, blacks and whites -  everyone had their own culture, and everyone was part of a greater culture.

             References:

1.      Willis, Paul. Learning to Labour: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. London. Columbia University Press. 1977. Print.

2.      Cohen, Phil. Subcultural Conflict and Working-Class Community. Birmingham. Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. 1972. Print.

3.      McRobbie, Angela. Feminism and Youth Culture: From Jackie to Just Seventeen. London. Unwin Hyman. 1991. Print.

4.      McRobbie, Angela. Settling Accounts with Subculture: A Feminist Critique. London. Angela McRobbie. 1980. Print.

5.      Hebdige. Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London. Routledge. 1979. Print.

6.      Rose, Jonathan. The Intellectual Life of the British Working Class. London. Yale University Press. 2010. Print

 7.      Eliot, Thomas Stearns. The Waste Land. London. Horace Liveright. 1922. Print.