#and a lot of the photos ive seen have some great accuracy behind them

[postcrashcurly]

Some Thoughts

I think can confidently say that Curly should not have survived as long as he did, and he certainly couldn't have been saved if he had been found. He was likely riddled with infections and tissue death. TBSA of 90% is a strong predictor of mortality. We also can't set aside inhalation damages and other comorbidities post-crash and the inability to access life-saving treatment. Fourth-degree burns are fatal if they aren't immediately treated. I'd have given him hours or maybe days. Even taking into account skin-grafting like allografts and autografts Curly didn't have any healthy tissue and the criteria for donor skin would still be dictated by a close tissue-type match to avoid rejection.

But I think that fact alone makes the ending far more impactful.

[saunteringvaguelydownwards]

My Dragon Con 2019 photos pt. 2

Descriptions below (L-R, T-B)

Anne Lister and her thermometer. I saw the thermometer bopping through the crowd and thought ‘wait I know that’. I’m gonna go ahead and admit I haven’t seen Gentleman Jack YET, but I knew my flist would get a kick out of this so I grabbed the photo.

Good Janet and Bad Janet from The Good Place. There were actually a bunch of Janets at the con this year, but I caught these two posing for a photo for someone else and jumped in to grab one too. The TGP panel I went to was very good as well.

Annie Lennox and Vyvyan Basterd from The Young Ones. So con etiquette (and common human courtesy) involves asking before you take someone’s photo. Cons are very loud and very crowded, and also people aren’t necessarily used to responding to a character’s name as “oh they mean me”. So what I do is try to get their attention by calling the name, catching their eye, etc, and holding up my phone as a question. This gives the cosplayer the opportunity to say no for whatever reason, and lets them pose how they want. A good pose is important, and a lot of cosplayers, myself included, practice how they will pose if asked for a photo. I absolutely work on what facial expressions I’ll use, what stance makes the costume look best, where to a hold a prop so both it and your face are visible, etc. So, all that being said, I made my way across the lobby towards this couple and held up my phone to communicate “Photo?”, and the guy dressed as Vyvyan Basterd stepped to the side so I could get clear photo of Annie Lennox, and he looked surprised/pleased when I said “Oh no, I want both of you, you look great.”

“Burt Reynolds” and “Sean Connery” from the SNL Jeopardy sketches. Another show I don’t watch, but cultural osmosis being what it is, I am familiar with these characters, have seen a couple of these bits, and could quote some of it. So yeah, I laughed and asked for a photo.

Lucy Ricardo from the I Love Lucy chocolate factory episode. This was so damn clever. Like, insane screen accuracy, huge builds, intricate builds, puns, mashups, large coordinated groups, there are lots of ways a cosplay can make you go “Cool!”, and this was a 'I have never seen this before' cool, which is one of my favorite kinds. My friend who had never been to D*C before, but is a con veteran, said “So the theme for cosplays at Dragon Con seems to be ‘yes’.” And that’s exactly it. If you can call yourself a fan of anything, and can figure out how to cosplay that, Dragon Con is the place to do it, because at least one other person is gonna recognize what you’re doing and say “Cool!”.

The witch and Sir Bedevere from Monty Python and The Holy Grail. I’ve seen a couple King Arthur and Patsy duos, including one this year, but I hadn’t ever actually seen this before, which I thought was damn clever. Also, you could totally tell where they were in the lobby by the sheer number of quotes from that scene being yelled out.

Damian from Mean Girls. This was another cosplay that I caught in passing out of the corner of my eye that made me bust out laughing. He wasn’t doing it on purpose, but he was kinda photobombing a lot of photos by just wandering around the lobby with that sign, which made some of them incredibly funny. I told him “Four for you” and thanked him for the pic.

Romy & Michele. I appreciate the ability of a good prop to sell a cosplay, especially when it involves wearing off the rack clothes. So yes, having their name written on Post-Its and carrying Post-Its around was super clever, but I totally recognized them before I even got close enough to read what they said.

The pink shorts-wearing boom op from behind the scenes of Star Wars IV: A New Hope. Again with the ‘I’ve never seen that’ cool, and the ‘if you can think of it someone will recognize it’ cool. There was a huge Star Wars meetup photoshoot that my friends and I went to in our JediPuff Girls cosplay, and this guy showed up and I think nearly everyone knew exactly what he was doing. Fully awesome.

The Three Amigos. Great accuracy, totally recognized them, but I took this photo and kept looking at the guy on the left, thinking “Jesus he looks familiar. I know I’ve seen him before. Another con? SCA? Friend of a friend? WTF?” Then I posted the photo to Facebook and my friend was like “Oh yeah, he’s got a funny YouTube channel” and I smacked myself because yeah, I’ve seen him in the video about picking out the necklace for a your new grandma name and a few others. Dammit! Missed opportunity.

[dadmilkman]

i never really post on here personally because i migrated to twitter a few years ago and the appeal of tumblr left me shortly after but ive talked about this topic ive had on my mind on twitter a lot already and ive bugged my friends in their dm’s too much but i still need to get it off my chest so im gonna talk about it some more anyway

in november this past year i messaged an artist hosting a secret santa event pledging to participate, and the next day they sent me back saying, no, i cant participate, because my art looks “too traced”

i dont post my art on this blog much anymore since i started posting it on my sideblog but i do draw fairly often and for years, for YEARS, one of the things that has contributed to my horrible, horrible depression (besides like, everything else) is my very bad habit of comparing myself to literally everyone and everything else. its taken me a long time to start trying to break this habit and not feel bad about my own abilities or skills in comparison to other people, and to this day im still struggling with it. art has been a personal battle for me, as it is for anyone who creates things regardless of what it is, and ive given up, sometimes for months or years at a time, only to eventually come back and start drawing again and then hate how far behind i felt because of all the time i spent not improving any at all.

so fast forward from 2012 where i “seriously’ start drawing to the start of last year, after going through maybe 3 hiatuses where i didnt draw for over 6 months, to where i finally bought my own tablet (after borrowing off my girlfriend or just drawing with pencil) in april and started actually seriously drawing again, all summer and during school even i was just drawing out the ass, all the time, i was putting more shit down than i had for a long long time and it was bad but i was real proud of it because i was creating things! and thats what ive always wanted to do, is just put stuff out in the world. to make things with any sort of permanence. so all last year i was really pleased with my progress and i was even getting better at drawing faces and coloring so i was real pleased.

so i get into a few new hobbies during the year and start following a bunch of artists on tumblr, or blogs that promote other artists, because id gotten to enough of a point where seeing other people accomplished at art didnt make me feel quite so bad about myself as it used to - i was able to look at other peoples success with pride on their behalf and not anger or jealousy. and at this point id start liking a little bit of my own attention, so i make a separate art blog dedicated to my art and my characters. and theres this one artist i really admired. they draw nothing but their oc’s, which is also nothing but what i draw too, and they were popular and everyone liked their characters and they had lots of artists friends they could talk with and do trades with and it was and is everything i wanted to be. i wanted to be that sociable and liked and known, even if it was just among a small group of friends in a small part of a niche interest, i wanted to participate in something.

so i see this secret santa i really want to join, hosted by none other than this artist i look up to, quite a lot. id sent them a few anons before with various questions on things and felt comfortable enough to message them and ask about joining the secret santa. i was finally comfortable enough in my artistic abilities to want to join, too, which was huge for me. so i message them, and wait for them to message me back.

and they do , the next day, and its to immediately tell me that my art looks too traced and that i should “stay away” from their art trade. as any aspiring artist will tell you, tracing photos is good. it helps you get muscle memory and learn perspective, anatomy, blah blah. as long as you dont do anything with it or pass it off as your own.

but tracing photos or god forbid other  peoples art and then posting it online and saying “look at this thing i drew all by myself arent you proud!?” is entirely different, and obviously isnt something ive ever fucking done, but its what they wanted to accuse me of, saying i was being deceitful and that other people in the trade would be mad if they knew. so, no, ive never done that. i never said ive never traced photographs before, i do it all the time to practice poses and anatomy and then i send them to my friend and say “ha i drew my characters doing this thing” and like, thats the only light of day it sees.

but apparently this artist was and still is under the impression that everything ive ever drawn was traced, as if i never put any work into anything. i do. i dont even know how to express that statement enough. i do . i do put hard work into the stuff i make. i practice and i draw and i sketch and no, im not fucking great at art, but it makes me happy and i can draw my ocs and thats really all i want to be able to do, so when someone comes to me , someone i looked up to and admired , and accuses me of being a liar and a fake, it hurt.

and of course i tried to explain i dont trace my art? i used photo references, a lot. sometimes ill take a photograph of myself to use as a reference too. i have a bunch of pvc pipes in my room i use when i need a ref of someone holding a staff or sword so i can make the angles better. i have a reference blog i use heavily and most of the time the outfits i draw are from stuff i see models wearing and want to put my ocs in. but i dont trace it, and that accusation hurt. the only thing i ever “trace” when i draw figures is a stick figure on a pose, IF im having trouble, like this 

and then the rest of the drawing, the lines, the hair the clothes the face, whatever, i draw that free hand, its not like i sit there and trace a whole photo or drawing? and if i did im not gonna...post it online and pretend i did all this hard work? and this is all the same thing i said to this person, i admitted to doing this stick figure technique, and that i sometimes trace photographs but i use it as a mechanic to help me improve anatomy accuracy and not as a cop-out for doing my own work and ive never passed off someone else’s skills as my own like they were insinuating. i mean, is this tracing? ive seen self taught and professional artists (and artists/photographers like senshistock, where i get a lot of refs) use this or a similar stick man figure approach when trying to draw people. i never thought i was doing something deceitful , and not to mention i dont even do this with every thing i ever draw. just stuff with weird angles or if theres a specific pose i want to capture correctly. i cant tell if this criticism reminds me too much of the argument circa a few years ago that using references or photos of any sort at all was cheating, or if this is genuine criticism and its a practice i shouldnt use anymore. which i havent been doing anymore anyway.

it was so infuriating to be confronted with this and have the whole argument portrayed like i was a sham and i was duping people on purpose. “stay away from the art trade” was their exact words. it hurt a lot and it still does, and its still killing my confidence every day. ive been trying to move on from the whole thing but when someone you admire shoots you down like that, i just dont know how to keep going knowing them and other people they apparently talked to about this are looking at my work thinking im a cheat. this has been on my mind nearly every day for 3 months and its killing me.